> I dunno, but it seems to me that dogmatic, xenophobic, recidivist behaviour is on the rise > worldwide -- Islam certainly has no corner on the market for running amok, not now, and not > historically, and the term "Christian" probably carries as much negative baggage through > the years as "Muslim" does.

This quote is a good example of an all too common species of politically correct fool. So much wrong with it. It assumes time is immaterial. That events in the dark past are indisinguishable from current events and carry the exact same moral weight. That persons, events and movements must be judged with the exact same modern politically correct intolerant eye.

We are still crawling up from the muck, people and events must be viewed from the perspective of the time they occured in. For example the US Founders lived in a time when slavery was accepted as normal and had been since recorded history began. Individual liberty of any sort was a REVOLUTIONARY idea. After exhausting peaceful means they became violent revolutionaries. And most of them understood the inherent conflict between slavery and "All Men are created equal..." but also realized the new nation wasn't ready to follow where that line of thought lead. But notice that less than a century later the only places still practicing slavery were parts of Africa and the Middle East outside the range of the British Navy. Christianity did some nasty things but went through the Enlightenment, pretending that didn't happen and judging it as if that didn't happen and that the religion of the Inquisition still exists unchanged is daft.

Islam didn't experience the Enlightenment and rejects it today. The past is just that, past; we have a problem in the here and now as a result. Islam's rejection of the foundational principles of modern civilization is a problem NOW. Coexistance isn't even possible because of their expansionist and supremisist ideas. We in the West either abandon our civilization and accept Sharia or sooner or later (and with Nukes spreading it better be sooner) we are going to be forced to end Islam as it is currently known and practiced. That means Ann Coulter's solution of "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." It will be the worst human rights atrocity in recorded history but I'm damned if I see a better solution. We just don't have the time left to embark on a psyops action to slowly pervert their religion so as to remove the nastier bits.

So if it comes down to them or me I'm picking me and mine. Politically incorrect selfish bastard that I am. Future generations can flagelate themselves like the modern campus set do now about the American Indians, the Monroe Doctrine, ending WWII with the Bomb, the Cold War or any of that other stuff. So long as it IS civilization having that discussion in the future and not some starving primitives worshiping an insane child molester in a radioactive wasteland. And they will be sort of 'right' in that by the more advanced civilization our hard choices will allow them to build what we will do in our day will BE wrong... but still making the same mistake modern scholars keep making of judging us by their standards. So be it.