CONSIDERING POLITICAL ART

So argues Nick222:

Actually, for reasons that I detail in a my blog, I think that Geert Wilders made a mistake by producing the film and would make another mistake by releasing it. Of course I agree that Wilders has the freedom to offend Islamic ideas and agree with him that the Koran is "a fascist book inciting hatred and violence", but (as Thoreau would say), Wilders is "hacking at the branches of evil" rather than "striking at the root."

To strike at the root (and more), I think that the ideas of C.W. Walton, Jefferson, and H.L. Mencken are crucial. Respectively they are:

"Believers are interested in fulfilling emotional and spiritual needs, not intellectual needs. In some cases, one might as well try to use reason on a dog. For many people God is primarily a warm feeling. How can one argue with a warm feeling? Arguing with someone who places reason below faith... is blowing against the wind." (C.W. Walton)

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them…" (Thomas Jefferson)

"The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe – that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." (H.L. Mencken)

He then concluded:

Therefore, my recommendation to Wilders would be that, if he wants to help both his homeland and humanity, then he shouldn’t release his film criticizing the Koran. Not that the criticism isn’t correct, but it’ll just harden the Muslims’ bunker mentality. Instead, he should (for example) hire some competent comedians whose wisecracks would ridicule all religions, excoriate all clerics, and most importantly, get all who bought into their clerics' con games rolling in the aisles—not in some religious trance but laughing at themselves for paying fortunes, forfeiting their freedoms, for permission to live within fairy tales.

But not all people agree that chopping at the tree of religion is the intelligent thing to do. Islam is a political manifesto dressed up in the rag doll outfits of religion. We must address it the same way we addressed Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Imperial Japan—as a very dangerous political ideology that requires a thunderous defeat. Whacking at the persistent windmills of religion is not going to solve our immediate problem. Only then will the "arts of life" survive to encourage us another day.

We can an undaunted quote generator for these two gems:

Edmund Burke once wrote, "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

And if that was not plain enough, shall we turn to Sir Winston Churchill, who observed that "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."

GT