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How does the profession of priesthood for so many centuries prove to be so effective in attracting the psychologies of men who like to punish? And for an absolutist to defend his preference for sadism by arguing for cultural relativism, well, is there a better definition of nihilism?

How can the harsh moral purity of a theocracy result in anything other than a people destroyed by whippings, hangings, stonings, mutilations, and stake burning?

ML:

Many thanks for this exceptionally thoughtful post.

“Pardon him, Theodotus, he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature”
George Bernard Shaw,
“Caesar and Cleopatra”

ML:

Great!

It should be noted that the “culture” that the so-called Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Terror of Iran refers to is the culture of savage terrorism whose main initiator, supporter, and implementor is the Tehran regime, not Iranian people.

The Iranian people reject this regime, and its murderous culture of terrorism.

I put it to you, Michael: have their been people who have done things that were irrefutably wrong, and they did not apologize to their dying day?

The heights that humankind have achieved is only part of the story, for there are depths which have had humans there.

ML:

Actually many Germans have spent half a lifetime apologizing. I quite agree that the depths are more densely populated than the heights.

Al Capone allegedly said that “you can get more with a nice word and a gun, than you can with a nice word alone”.

It is clear that the mullahfia operate under the same mentality, albeit with a certain 2nd century barbarism that replaces guns with swords.

The “protection rackets” apply to nation states rather than neighborhoods as terrorism is exported into the shadows of back alleys abroad.

Next comes the doe-eyed protestations and claims of being “victimized, picked on and misunderstood” because of cultural bias, of course, and these are likewise fed through fawning media outlets and wire services, championing “understanding and tolerance”.

And jury nullification seizes the day in the court of public opinion.

Nice words and a sword indeed go much farther for the mullahfia.

“The Iranian people reject this regime, and its murderous culture of terrorism.”

In that case, Ira Zad, why have not the Iranian people risen up and given the Ayatollahs and their poodles the Mussolini treatment, shot and hanged upside down from a lamppost? The Pharaohs of Tehran have now ruled Iran for 29 years, oppressing and impoverishing the Iranians and directing terrorism against the outside world. They are now in the process of getting nukes with which, as leaders such as Rafsanjani and Ahmedinejad have assured us, they intend to use to provoke a nuclear war just as soon as they can get one to lob at Tel Aviv. They seek those nukes for purposes of genocide, protection against retaliation for terrorism, nuclear terrorism and blackmail and imperial expansion.

Right now the best thing that could happen to Iran is for some Iranian Augusto Pinochet to overthrow the Ayatollahs and save his country from ruin. That won’t happen, because the Ayatollahs have anticipated the problem and ensured that the generals are gelded and their own SS, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, stands ready to defend them against any coup attempt.

The Iranian people put these evil clowns into power 29 years ago. Their consent, tacit or overt, keeps them in power. Either the Iranians will overthrow the Pharaohs of Tehran, and soon, or they will fry in the nuclear exchange these genocidal maniacs will unleash. It’s up to the Iranians.

To be sure, the Iranian people are suffering under the mullah’s tyranny.

But they are also suffering from inaction and disillusionment due to reasons which include:

(a) The regime has all but eliminated any and every form of opposition inside the country by mostly murdering them. It seems there are no Mossadegh’s, Lech Walesa’s, or Kamal Ataturk’s left in Iran, thanks to the regime’s political murder machine.

(b) Vacillating or lack of meaningful support for democratic movement in Iran from the West, and in particular the ever-changing hot/cold US policy towards the regime. In the eyes of the Iranian people who seek a secular democracy, US Iran policy cannot be trusted since US sate department has been seeking more to make deals (e.g., Grand Bargain) with the terrorist regime, than to confront it in any meaningful way. Unfortunately, this misguided and inconsistent US policy has created, amongst Iranians, mistrust and lack of confidence about US support for a genuine democratic movement in Iran.

(c) Most people are afflicted by a combination of fear, political apathy, regime media propaganda and brain-washing, depression, day to day survival battling soaring prices, etc.

(d) In addition to being frightened of the regime, the more affluent, the technocrats, the Bourgeoisie, etc. in Iran do not care about politics per se. They are too busy making huge profits on a real estate bubble economy and import/export with Gulf States, and with their indoor dinner parties, Caspian Sea and Kharg Island villas, etc.–This class has an undeclared “silent pact” with the regime: leave us alone, and we will leave politics alone.

(e) Most youth, high school and college age students are into everything but politics these days. Fashion and style, plastic surgeries to improve facial features (for males as well as females), fixation on clandestine sexual gratification, fad drugs, and other superficialities seem to have taken an upper hand to the bitter and painful realities of living in the hell that the mullahs have created for the young generation. The ones who can afford it, are dying to get out of Iran at any cost.

There are other reasons, but the above are just some major ones that come to mind.

ML:

Good points, all. Plus the fact that Iranians do not believe any fundamental change can happen in the world unless the United States wants it to happen.

Ira Zad,
Seems to me that your points boil down to: very few people are interested in changing the regime, or recognize the need. I have followed the activities of the brave pro-democracy people there, mostly through Mr. Ledeen’s writing but including other sources, but they seem to be very few. Your response confirms that.

The State Department is full of nitwits, but overthrowing the Pharaohs of Tehran is in the interests of the Iranian people no matter what the idiots at Foggy Bottom say. The Iranians should do it for their own sakes, not because they get encouragment from the USA. I have long wished that our government gave more support to the democracy movement in Iran. The exhaustion of the Bush Administration has allowed the Conventional Wisdom of our Foreign Policy Elites to rise to the surface again, and they are generally retrograde in their attitudes. But there is no reason that the Iranians should wait for them to wise up, when their own interests demand a change of regime.

If governments are based on the consent of the governed, tacitly given or actively exercised (as in elections), a fundamental assumption of the American founding, what you have posted says that the Iranians consent to the government of the Pharaohs of Tehran. That is not consistent with the statement that they rejct the regime.

It is very difficult to resist a modern, totaslitarian state with all its police powers and control of the economy, so that he who does not obey does not eat. My impression is that the Iranian rulers are nowhere near as total as the Communists or Nazis were in their day. Nevertheless, if the Iranians want to avoid disaster they have to stop preoccupying themselves with real estate deals and plastic surgery and do something now. Once the Pharaohs have started an overt shooting war, or carried out nuclear terrorist acts, it will be too late, and we will not be able to make fine distinctions between those who supported the Pharaohs and those who did not. They will all be fried together.