They hate our freedom – and so do Obama and Clinton

“This video is disgusting and reprehensible,” Mrs. Clinton said in remarks at the State Department, broadcast live on CNN.

Maybe she should not be telling people who murder ambassadors that they have perfectly good reasons for doing so, regardless of whether they do or they don’t.

Every Muslim believes that a video that depicts Mohammed, let alone a video that depicts him as a the thuggish power drunk mass murdering terrorist that he actually was, must be suppressed, and it is the responsibility of governments to suppress it, and that it is legitimate to wage jihad to suppress it.

When I say that every Muslim believes that,  almost everyone who thinks of themselves as a Muslim agrees, and anyone who does not agree is wrong to call himself a Muslim.  The number of Muslims, whether heartfelt Muslims or merely nominal Muslims, that disagree on this issue is similar to the number of Americans that doubt that all men were created equal.  It is the official government religious belief, and the average man in the street accepts official government religious beliefs without really thinking about them much, whether it is the US government or the Egyptian government.

If you are a sincere Muslim, you should be murdering Americans.  Of course most Muslims are not all that sincere, but the ones that are not nonetheless give at least lip service to the rationale that leads to murdering Americans.  That is what they learn in school.  That is what all the respectable people around them believe, or piously pretend to believe, what all the affluent, urban, well connected people, the ones that had lots of education at the most elite schools believe.  It is the high status belief of high status people. If you don’t believe it, it is like being a raaaciiiisssst in America. It is low status. It makes you one of those inbred hicks who lie far out in the wilderness.

The progressives wanted to export democracy because they believed it would lead to rule by people like themselves – urban, privileged, highly educated in all the correct elite schools.

And that is exactly what it did.

They failed, however, to notice that Osama bin Laden and company were urban, privileged, and highly educated in all the elite schools.

Progressives don’t recognize that they are a theocracy, or rather an atheocracy, that they are a priesthood. Their belief system is supposedly simply the truth, even though the official truth keeps rapidly moving ever leftwards, so they look at people very similar to themselves, with institutions very similar to their own and are endlessly astonished that these institutions somehow inculcate a truth other than “progressives should rule”. They cannot believe it, for in order to believe it, they would have to recognize that they also are a priesthood, a different and competing priesthood.

Theoretically, education is supposed to select the smartest, but the natural state of an education system is to select the obedient, those who will by rote echo back whatever they are told. Smart students are difficult. Teachers don’t really like them. Most teachers are not very smart, and find it a lot easier to deal with students less smart than themselves. Thus just as the natural tendency of any bureaucracy is to strangle itself in red tape until all motion stops, the natural tendency of any elite educational institution is to become a religious seminary, churning out docile brainwashed idiots, selecting the most compliant, not the most intelligent.

Hence the stagnation of Muslim countries, and the diminution of technological advance in the west.

The progressives look at people similar themselves, and institutions similar to their own, and cannot believe that it will not produce progressivism.

Because people have no incentive to form true opinions on political questions, the vast majority will vote as directed by religious or quasi religious groups.

If the military are in charge, the influence of religion will be small, soldiers and priests being natural enemies, like doctors and lawyers, and the propensity of theocracies to become ever more extreme will be restrained, perhaps by firing the extremists and blighting their careers, perhaps by shooting them, perhaps, as in Uganda, by chaining them into the shape of suitcases and feeding them to the crocodiles – whatever it takes. But usually making excessive religious purity a poor career move will amply suffice. You don’t need to purge the whole board. Just quietly let it be known that the business or institution will not get any government contracts unless it removes one of its more difficult board members, and appoints someone who loudly proclaims more appropriate beliefs as a replacement board member.

Democracy is apt to become theocracy, rule by priests, because religious organizations, especially official religious institutions teaching the official religion (schools and universities) can so easily manipulate the people, because the ordinary person has no incentive to form correct beliefs on these matters, and every reason to form beliefs that associate him with the powerful, the elite.

I repeat: The progressives wanted to export democracy because they believed it would lead to rule by people like themselves – urban, privileged, highly educated in all the right elite schools. And it did. Where formerly we had soldiers ruling, who not only did not take that stuff very seriously, but also seriously disapproved of actually acting on it, we now have priests ruling, and each priest wants to show he more pure than the other priest. Where once excessive faith was a bad career move, now it is a very good career move, and insufficient faith is the bad career move. The guy who was formerly on the board because the government liked him there, is now the guy who is off the board because the government does not like him there.