[Group523] My Answer to a Message from Tatiana Covington

[L. Neil Smith]

Dear Tatiana -- and anybody else who's listening:

>  Paul McCartney has refused to cancel his concert in Israel,
 > despite threats from Islamic militants, the Israeli newspaper
 > Haaretz reported. The response follows comments made by
>  Omar Bakri Muhammad, a militant Lebanese Islamic activist,
 > in an interview. Mr. Bakri said, “If he values his life, Mr. Mc-
 > Cartney must not come to Israel… He will not be safe there.
 > The sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him.”

    As you know, I'm a staunch, life-long atheist, and my opinion, after 
many decades of study, is that all religions are equally wacky.

    However it is vitally important for all of us who consider ourselves 
decent to remember that is is not Islam that has targeted Paul McCartney 
for death if he plays a concert in Israel, it is a single individual who 
calls himself Omar Bakri Muhammad. Most of the Muslims I have met in my 
life -- and they have been many -- have been kindly, gentle, warm, 
generous people who love their families and have a marvelous sense of 
humor. One murderous cuckoo squatting in a minaret somewhere should not 
be permitted to influence our view of these people, a third of the 
world's population.

    How would you like it, my friend, if that same world were to judge 
you, not on on the basis of your own behavior, but on the inane rantings 
of an Al Sharpton or a Jerry Falwell?

    Libertarians are, first, last, and always, _individualists_.  As we 
demand that the world view us as individuals, so we must strive to view 
the people of the world the same way. Group punishment and preventive 
law enforcement are not a part of our political vocabulary. Moreover, 
adopting the socialistic policies of, say a Hillary Clinton or a George 
Bush, only feeds their insatiable lust for raw power and unearned 
wealth. If 9/11 had happened on a libertarian's watch it would have been 
dealt with as the crime it was, rather than as an act or war, which it 
was not, under any definition of the concept. The remaining individuals 
criminals responsible for 9/11 (assuming they really were Middle Eastern 
terrorists, an assertion never proved) would have been run to earth, 
cdaptured, tried, and punished.

    And we would not now be at war and plunging into a Depression.

    I'm extremely glad Sir Paulie, in effect,  told this cowardly 
threatener -- who sends young people out to die for him, exactly like 
American politicians do -- to shove it. But the creature was not 
speaking for Islam, and it is is not Islam that McCartney will be 
defying, but a single moral and intellectual toadstool.

N.

P.S. If you think Islam and the Koran are uniquely evil or favor 
unbridled violence, I suggest you read your Old Testament a bit more 
closely.

-- 
================================================================
    "Men cannot be governed and remain men. Domesticate the wolf
and he changes both physically and mentally. His muzzle shrinks,
his teeth diminish, he loses size, speed, and strength, He grows
spots. His ears flop. His brain withers. He becomes a _dog_. Men
are on the verge of becoming dogs -- the changes are underway
already -- unless we do something to stop it."

            -- The Ceo Lia Wheeler, _Phoebus Krumm_, forthcoming

    Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been
writing about guns and gun ownership for more than 30 years.
He is the author of 27 books, the most widely-published and
prolific libertarian novelist in the world, and is considered
an expert on the ethics of self-defense. His writings may be
seen on the following sites:

LNS at JPFO: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/lneilsmith.htm

The Webley Page:  http://www.lneilsmith.org

_The Libertarian Enterprise_:  http://www.ncc-1776.org

_The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel_, _Roswell, Texas_,
and _TimePeeper_ (August 2007): http://www.bigheadpress.com

LNS at Random (blog): http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/



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