1) The collapse of the U.S. Republican party in the 2008 election as well as the party’s continued drift not only rightward, but into religious territory that is unacceptable to someone as secular as Charles. In this, he’s rather late to the game. My father is conservative and secular and he’d had enough of the GOP (“Grand Old Party” - another name for the Republicans) by 2004.

2) Another thing that is clear in reading Charles’ posts is that somehow, somewhere it became abundantly clear to him that his anti-Islamic fellow travelers were genocidally inclined. He’s flat-out said it in his posts that some of the people he used to run with want to destroy every Muslim on the face of the earth—and that is unacceptable to him.

Don’t get me wrong. Charles is still very conservative, he still thinks Obama is bad for the USA (although he applauded the rescue of the captain a few weeks back and gave credit to Obama) but he also thinks the GOP is going down the tubes because the people running it are bound and determined to turn it into a regional (Southern), religious (Christian) party, and, as I said above, that’s unacceptable to a secular Californian like Charles.

3) Charles still has an anti-Islamic streak to him, but he’s willing to call stupid what it is. He directed his lizardoid followers to a piece about alleged “FBI” “spy” and known con artist Craig Monteilh a couple of days ago. Some of his followers were confused, but, Charles’ point is clear—do it right, do it legal or don’t do it at all. You can agree or disagree, but I think a few years ago he would have been cheerleading for the FBI and willing to overlook all the operational stupidity in his war to “get Islam.”

Yes, I occasionally drop into LGF, mostly for the jaw-dropping value. I still remember when he had a link to where you could send a pizza to the Israeli Defense Force. That link is gone. He’s changed a lot.

“Marx instead, just feared the idea of “strongest survives” and had countered it with a kibbutzy ideology which is now thankfully laid to rest.” No he didn’t. Nor was he “influenced by Charles Darwin”. He regarded Darwin as working in exactly the same way as himself in a different field. Would you explain the influence of Darwin on- say- Einstein, Schoenberg, Feynmannn, Kraus, Wittgenstein, Proust, Popper or Haber?

The “thinkers” you mentioned such as Freud and I guess Marx is what you have in mind were all influenced by Charles Darwin; simple. Freud’s work is simply a study of human-animal behaviour esp his works on the sexual desires of man and consumerism.

Marx instead, just feared the idea of “strongest survives” and had countered it with a kibbutzy ideology which is now thankfully laid to rest.

How can you compare pioneers such as Adam Smith to anybody?” I didn’t compare anybody to anybody. Adam Smith wasn’t a pioneer. Montaigne, Newton, Locke, Montesquie- you could claim these as pioneers of the enlightenment, but they worked in different fields and individually. The explosion of thought in Edinburgh in the eighteenth century which changed the way people thought about everything and which has affected all thought after that either as inspiration or reaction and all society too was made by a small group of men who knew one another well and influenced and encouraged one another directly. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the most influential thinkers in philosophy, sciences, social sciences, music, literature, art had an astonishingly high proportion of jews. One of them, Freud, compared the human mind to what Rome would be like if the city ahd been biolt with every builing still extant and actually constructed on the buildings of the previous era. Civilisations are much like that- for what is a civilisation but a way of thinking expressed in the way people live?-: what is underneath comes from a great many sources, but what has been produced in the last three hundred years, which is different in kind from anything that went before, is heavily dependent on Scots and jews. The Scots to begin the change, the jews to carry it through.

“Some of the fiercest Islamophobes I have met are socially liberal at heart whilst believing in a multicultural society and deploring racism. They say that the doctrine of Islam is fascist and goes against everything what liberalism stands for.” Except that they aren’t islamophobes. Their dislike of islam is perfectly rational and soundly-based. You’ll have to find another term for them.

A few problems with your classification of civilisation, GC: for one thing there were other European civilisations contemporaneous with Greece and Rome- most notably the Celts and Germanic tribes and the “barbarians” who took over from Rome. Many European political institutions and Britias law derive from the latter. Greece at least- in philosophy and science- had a heavy effect on muslim civilisation, which also affected European civilisation- do we count the Greek influence on European civilisation as coming directly or through muslim civilisation, for example? Equally, muslim civilisations were heavily influenced by other previous civilisations- most obviously Arabic, but also judaism and christianity and Persian, Indian and others that were conquered by muslims. Finally, “Western Civilization 3.0 - Industrial and post-industrial Western world” involved a change in the way people thought and the way they looked at the world and the universe which was completely different to any previous civilisation. It’s a difference in kind. It’s a change- transformation- that contimues and increases at a steadily growing rate.

Gess, here’s how I’d classify civilizations:

Western Civilization 1.0 - Ancient Greece and Rome Western Civilization 2.0 - Medieval and early modern Christendom Western Civilization 3.0 - Industrial and post-industrial Western world

Islamic Civilization 1.0 - Arab caliphates Islamic Civilization 2.0 - Ottomans/Safavids/Mughals Islamic Civilization 3.0 - ?????

It is time to wrench ourselves out of a state of denial. There is one major factor in common. In each conflict there are those…who argue that they are fighting in the true name of Islam

Understandably, this has been a hit today in the islamophobes blogosphere.

The only libertarians I have encountered who follow a religion are liberal Jews, Hindus, and Protestants who are only religious on a Sunday morning.

The communists in the Soviet Union also held a grudge towards Islam and tried to eradicate it from their territory. I suspect that the far left parties in Britain dominated by humanists and atheists hold an equally big grudge against Islam as the Soviet communists did. Do they really want to live in a country governed by Sharia law? No, but they could take advantage of the Iraq war to use Muslims to put them in power then turn against them in the future. Their plan has probably failed.