How a Tolerant Country Can Avoid Being a Doormat for Intolerant Countries

Tolerance and mutual respect for different cultures and religions is great — as long as it is mutual. When it's not mutual, then tolerance becomes a self-destructive doctrine. When it is not mutual, one side gives and the other side takes. In normal parlance, it is called being a doormat.

Islamic supremacism is religiously-sanctioned intolerance, and many in the West tolerate the intolerance out of a blind multiculturalism. But multiculturalism (respect for other cultures) need not be blind. The addition of one simple distinction is all that is needed.

When I was younger, I lacked the same distinction in my own personal life. I had read the book, How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, when I was very young, and it had a profound effect on the way I treated people. And for the most part, the effect was good.

The basic approach to Carnegie's book is to give to people, to trust them, to see the best in them, etc. When you do this, people will respond positively, and they'll give back to you and trust you and they'll want to fulfill your trust, etc. This approach has worked great for almost everybody I've ever met, because most people reciprocate. It becomes a mutual thing.

But several times in my life I ran into people who only took advantage of my kindness or generosity. They took, and sometimes not only did they not reciprocate, but sometimes they've even responded to my kindness by stabbing me in the back. They weren't interested in cooperating. They didn't care about good long-term relations.

With those people, I had to figure out a different way of dealing with them. I had to make an extra distinction. My tolerance and goodwill were blind. I did it with everyone indiscriminately, and that's just stupid.

A few years ago, a biography of Dale Carnegie came out, and I found out that Carnegie left out a chapter in his book. He didn't get the chapter to the publisher on time so the book was published without it.

The missing chapter was about what to do with uncooperative, selfish, self-serving people. A small percentage of the population doesn't have normal human empathy. The way you deal with these people must be different or you're just being foolish.

A very similar thing is happening with orthodox Islam and multiculturalism. There is nothing wrong with the multicultural doctrine. Nothing at all. It's wonderful, in fact. One of the reasons democracies are so much more enjoyable countries to live in than non-democratic countries is because we are so tolerant of each other.

But the multiculturalism doctrine is incomplete. It is a great strategy for most people and most cultures and most religions. But it is disastrous when you stick with it blindly.

All that's missing is the added distinction of mutuality. We can simply amend the doctrine to something like this: We respect all religions and cultures who do us the honor of respecting ours as well. All others will be treated with less generosity.

Another characteristic of both selfish people and Islamic supremacists is the use of deception. They pretend to be thoughtful and kind. They pretend to be peaceful, tolerant, and cooperative. They try to fool their victims into keeping their guard down. They pretend in order to gain an advantage.

Over time, most of us have learned to pay attention to what people do and see if it matches what they say. Most of us who have lived long enough to see our 30s do not automatically trust everyone. We give people a chance to earn our trust. That's a sensible way to live.

Orthodox Muslims often try to fool non-Muslims in the same way selfish people do. They mimic peaceful religious people. They try to act as if they believe what we believe (see the principle of religious deception), and this makes it more difficult to determine whether or not these are cooperators or back-stabbers. But we can apply the same principles we use in our personal lives. We can watch what they do and see if it matches what they say. We don't have to automatically trust. Let them earn our trust.

On the DVD, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, you can literally watch what they do. You can see Muslim leaders saying one thing to the western media, appearing to be moderate, peaceful, reasonable Muslims, and then you see the same person saying another thing entirely to their own people in Arabic.

If we didn't automatically trust, we could see they are intolerant, uncooperative, and even bloodthirsty, and not the cooperative people they pretend to be.

If we pay attention, we will see some Muslims are not mutually respectful. In fact, they actively exploit our well-ingrained respect for other cultures, and use it against us, considering it a weakness they can exploit.

For years, the Wahhabi Muslims in Saudi Arabia have been spending their oil-enriched billions building mosques all over the western democracies. They then preach hatred of the West in those mosques, and we have been allowing this.

Within Saudi Arabia, no churches or synagogues are allowed to be built.

The western democracies, in other words, are being doormats. We are giving and allowing, respecting and tolerating, and the Islamic supremacists are taking, expressing intolerance, and stabbing us in the back. Being a doormat is not a successful long-term strategy.


TIT FOR TAT
In the 1970's the political scientist Robert Axelrod created a computer "world" using the famous Prisoner's Dilemma as a game computer programs could play against each other. He wanted to find out which computer program would succeed the best.

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a hypothetical situation used to test whether someone will cooperate or compete, and how well the strategies work in the long run.

The game is played by two people. If one cooperates and the other competes, the one who cooperated will lose and the competitive one (the selfish one) will win. If they both compete, they both lose, but not as badly.

If they both cooperate, they both win. That's how the game is set up.

If you were one of the prisoners, what would you do? That's the dilemma. How much can you count on the cooperative nature of the other person?

The game is often played repeatedly with the same two people, each of them choosing to cooperate or take advantage of the other through successive rounds of the game.

The Prisoner's Dilemma game is designed to parallel real life. If two people in real life cooperate with each other, it very often works to their mutual advantage. But if one person cooperates and the other takes advantage, it often works out very well for the selfish one and very poorly for the cooperative one.

On the other hand, if you go around preempting people — trying to take advantage of them before they take advantage of you — you will miss out on the advantages of cooperation, people will resent you, and you might get people working against you.

What is the best long-term strategy? This is the dilemma we are faced with every day, personally as well as culturally.

Robert Axelrod, the man who created the computer world, invited computer programmers to create a program to play the Prisoner's Dilemma with other programs. The question is, which program would succeed the best?

In a game that resembles the real dilemma we all face, what strategy is the most effective?

The program that proved the best was named TIT FOR TAT. It was designed by Anatol Rapoport and it was one of the simplest programs submitted. For the first interaction, it would cooperate. After that, it would repay in kind whatever the other did. That was the whole strategy.

If the other cooperated, TIT FOR TAT benefited. So did the other. If the other took advantage, TIT FOR TAT cut its losses immediately.

As the game went on, TIT FOR TAT gained more (and lost less) than any other program. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright wrote, "More than the steadily mean, more than the steadily nice, and more than various 'clever' programs whose elaborate rules made them hard for other programs to read, the straightforwardly conditional TIT FOR TAT was, in the long run, self-serving."

And it's the most fair to everyone involved.

I suggest we in the West use the same program when dealing with other countries and other cultures. We should begin with tolerance and cooperation, and then be as tolerant and cooperative as the other is from that point on.

We would be fools to tolerate intolerance — even if that intolerance is hiding behind a cloak of religion. An intolerant culture should be the exception to the principle of universal multicultural tolerance.

For example, if orthodox Islam does not tolerate other religions, it should not be tolerated itself.

Tolerance and cooperation are definitely the best way to go, but only if the other side is tolerant and cooperative also. If they prove to be otherwise, intolerance and competitively cutting our losses is a sane response.

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Is It Possible For Islam To Take Over The World?

Sometimes I tell people Islam is a political doctrine and its purpose is to make every country on earth, including this one, follow Shari'a law.

Of course, most people think, "Yeah right. Good luck with that one."

In other words: Okay, so they want to take over the world. So what? It ain't gonna happen, not now, not ever. Completely impossible.

But the truth is, it doesn't matter whether it's possible or not. What matters is that a growing number of already-numerous people hold that as their most important goal. They consider it their holy duty. They consider it their ticket into heaven and the only assurance they can get that they will not burn in the fires of hell for eternity. They are motivated.

So we have one group that says, "Yeah, right," and goes on about their business, watching their sitcoms and buying stuff on eBay. And we have another group that feels strongly that the Almighty has given them a clear mission to take over the world by every means available to them, including recruiting new soldiers, having lots of children, protesting against any criticism of Islam, working to change laws, giving money to organizations that sue people for criticizing Islam, putting political pressure on politicians to alter laws, immigrating to infidel countries to help build an Islamic political presence there, going on web sites and arguing with people who try to criticize Islam, complaining to YouTube (and getting all their Islamic friends to complain to YouTube) about any video that criticizes Islam until YouTube removes the offending video, going to schools in democracies and speaking to the infidel children about how loving and peaceful and wonderful Islam is, reading about nothing else and thinking about nothing else.

Now over a period of time, who will gain more ground: A totally committed group, or the ones watching sitcoms and buying stuff on eBay?

And the more ground they gain politically, the more ground they can gain because they are gaining more political clout. Already in Europe, the politicians are very careful about not offending their Muslim constituents because the Muslims are very organized and politically active, and most of the rest of the voters are lackadaisical and not really paying attention. So Muslims are gaining power quickly in European countries. (Read more about the removal of freedom and Shariatization of Europe.)

The same has begun to happen elsewhere: Canada, the U.S., Australia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and of course India has been dealing with this issue for a very long time.

Remember this when you're talking to someone and you can see them thinking, "Impossible. There is no way the Muslims are going to take over the world."

It doesn't matter if it's impossible. With all that commitment they can make our times very troubled, they can make the fight more difficult, they can take away freedoms one by one, and in fact, they really can take over the world. It is not technically impossible. It doesn't seem likely, but only if you don't know much about what they're already doing, which most people don't (partly because of what they're already doing).

What this means is that if you'd like to do something about this, if you'd like to help preserve the freedoms we enjoy, then your most important task is to simply share this information with your fellow countrymen. Learn about jihad, and share what you're learning with others.

Here's what you can do about it: What Can a Civilian Really Do?

Here is an ongoing list of concessions Islam is pushing for and winning from democracies around the world: Concessions to Islam.

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Which Emotional Strategies Influence Orthodox Muslims?

Al Siebert, author of Survivor Personality, said something interesting in his book, and I've been thinking about it for awhile now. The book is about what personality traits survivors hold in common. Siebert has studied survivors of POW camps, concentration camps, plane crashes, boats sinking, etc. He's made this study his life's work. Here's the quote, and then I'll tell you what I've been thinking:

"Bob Mitchell, a marine who fought first on Bataan and later on Corregidor, told me that many of the POWs who gave up were unable to cope with the cruelty and hostility directed toward them by the guards. He said that many prisoners tried to influence the guards by feeling upset, expressing pain, pleading, or trying to win them over. When this didn't work, they had nothing left. Many gave up and died."

Siebert's main quest with his research is to discover what survivors do that non-survivors do not do. In the case above, the non-survivors didn't change their strategy when they could see it wasn't working.

Now here's what I was thinking: Most people I know who don't want to believe Islam is a political and supremacist ideology are good-hearted people. They believe we should all just get along, that killing is a bad thing, and that even hurting someone is bad and it should never be done. They are kind to dogs. They recycle their trash so as not to make things harder for future generations, etc.

I am overgeneralizing here, but I'm not too far off with this characterization. These good-hearted people don't want to believe there are millions of fundamentalist Muslims in the world who would like nothing better than to cut off their heads. It's unthinkable. Maybe these fundamentalists just need some clean water and enough to eat. Maybe they've been abused in the past. Maybe they just need to be understood.

These are all perfectly good strategies for normal interactions between healthy people within a liberal democracy with a good police force and an overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens.

When you want to work out your differences with someone, and you have a disagreement or anger between you, it's a pretty good strategy to talk and try to come to some kind of mutually-acceptable compromise. That's one kind of strategy and it works very well in a particular context. The problem is, it doesn't work in every context, nor with every person.

One of the traits Siebert found common among survivors is the ability and willingness to change strategies. Siebert discovered it is one of the most universal traits survivors have that non-survivors do not have: They are flexible enough to see the strategy they're using isn't working in a particular situation, and they're able to come up with something else.

Those who can't do that in some situations die.

Flexibility means being able to be kind in some circumstances, and cold-blooded in others if it is necessary. It means being able to be cooperative with some people, and more competitive or even hard-nosed with others if it seems necessary.

A lack of flexibility means you'll run out of options for some situations.

I think that's what is happening with at least some blind multiculturalists. They don't realize that the strategies they might normally employ do not work with someone who is hell-bent on murdering us all for no other reason than we're not Muslims.

That kind of ruthlessness is hard to fathom for most people, I think, and multiculturalists seem even less willing to even entertain the possibility. They think there must be some other explanation. And because they think people can't really be that way, or that a large group of people or a religion can't be that way, they don't understand why anyone would criticize Muslims.

If you can't understand the strength and intensity of the ruthlessness arrayed against western democracies, then you can't understand the need to defend against it.

Those who can fully grasp the ruthless intentions of orthodox Muslims will recognize how profoundly indifferent they are to pleading, expressing pain, feeling upset, or trying to win them over with appeasements.

We need to use some other strategy if we are to survive. My guess is that in a serious situation such as a concentration camp, the people who are now multiculturalists would be the kind of people who would die first. Peaceful, cooperative strategies don't work against ruthlessness, and those who aren't flexible enough to change their strategies are less likely to survive.

Even with ample flexibility, ruthlessness is almost impossible to deal with successfully. I squirmed while I watched a Frontline program called Target America. It showed the clumsy, incompetent attempts of one American president after another trying to deal with Islamic terrorism.

I said ruthlessness is almost impossible to deal with successfully, but that's not really true. Ruthless terrorists would be easy to deal with if you were willing to be equally ruthless yourself. But it is very difficult to deal with within the parameters of humanity and human rights.

The jihadis, of course, are aware of the West's ethical restraints and so they tailor their strategies for us. Their strategies are carefully designed to put us in double-binds where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. And where we make a horrible mistake no matter what we do. Orthodox Muslims constantly do their best to give us Sophie's choice.

The most obvious response is against our code of ethics, and any other response is inadequate.

You can watch the Frontline program online. It is painful to watch the presidents try (and fail) to deal with the jihadis' double-binds. The presidents just wanted the problem to go away. They were all seeking a short-term, quick-fix solutions, and refused to see this for what it is: A global, long-term strategy of millions of orthodox Muslims who will do anything to gain a political advantage, with the ultimate aim being something that to most westerners is unthinkable: An Islamic world.

I like Western civilization. I like normal interactions between healthy people within a liberal democracy with a good police force and an overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens. I like not having to settle differences with my fellow citizens with violence. But I hope the island of civilization within which we live our lives doesn't blind too many of us to the fact that there are still people in this world who think differently and that different strategies than we're used to may sometimes be required.

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What Happens When a Warrior Culture Meets a Cooperative, Tolerant, Peaceloving Culture?

In the fascinating book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (which has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam) the author, Jared Diamond writes:

On the Chatham Islands, 500 miles east of New Zealand, centuries of independence came to a brutal end for the Moriori people in December 1835. On November 19 of that year, a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs, and axes arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements, announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still then have defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided in a council meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship, and a division of resources.

Before the Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en masse. Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and enslaved all the others, killing most of them too over the next few years as it suited their whim. A Moriori survivor recalled, "[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep...[We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed — men, women, and children indiscriminately." A Maori conqueror explained, "We took possession...in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed, and others we killed — but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom."

The moral to this story? It doesn't matter how tolerant you are when you're the target of someone with different values. You and your culture's tolerance and cooperativeness will not win over someone who sees those as merely weakness.

What is the best response to an aggressive culture with intolerant, uncooperative values? Find out here: Does Niceness Work With Everybody?

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Free Societies Exaggerate Their Vices

"Totalitarian societies exaggerate their virtues. But free societies like ours somehow seize the temptation to exaggerate their vices. The negativism of our press and television reporting are, of course, the best evidence of our freedom to scrutinize ourselves."

- Daniel Boorstin

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