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March 30, 2006
Population Studies
I posted this at Winds of Change yesterday and it generated a heated argument.
Dennis Prager crunches some numbers:
Far fewer people believed in Nazism or in communism than believe in Islam generally or in authoritarian Islam specifically. There are one billion Muslims in the world. If just 10 percent believe in the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, the Sudanese regime, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, bin Ladin, Islamic Jihad, the Finley Park Mosque in London or Hizbollah -- and it is inconceivable that only one of 10 Muslims supports any of these groups' ideologies -- that means a true believing enemy of at least 100 million people. Outside of Germany, how many people believed in Nazism? Outside of Japan, who believed in Japanese imperialism and militarism? And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism?
Some people just don't get the relative proportions of things until you make this kind of comparison. For example, I find it useful to point out that Israel is the size of New Jersey. Maps like this help too.
Here's my version of Prager's reality check:
If only 2 percent of all Muslims believe in "the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, etc." that would still be more than the total number of Jews on the planet. At all. Period.
Try it on your friends. It's a real conversation-killer.
PS Prager makes another extremely important point about why this is not your dad's clash of civilizations:
Nazis and Communists wanted to live and feared death; Islamic authoritarians love death and loathe life.That is why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the Soviet Union. Communist leaders love life -- they loved their money, their power, their dachas, their mistresses, their fine wines -- and were hardly prepared to give all that up for Marx. But Iran's current leaders celebrate dying, and MAD may not work, because from our perspective, they are indeed mad. MAD only works with the sane.
There is much less you can do against people who value dying more than living.
Judith | 03/30/06 at 11:40 PM | Categories: WWIV
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Comments
"There is much less you can do": Well, "much less" does include nuclear options. They die, we survive. Win-win all around. Oh, what was I thinking? PETA would never go for it....
Jeremiah | March 31, 2006 12:34 AM
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