Wise Words From Ron Silver

I found a blog by Ron Silver today. I learned something very interesting that I thought I should bring to all my readers. He writes of the many stated refutes that we are supposedly paraonoid of "just" some men in a cave and that to us here in the West living in a cave signifies backwardness and nothing to be afraid of:

...caves in the Muslim narrative have a resonance different from ours. We may associate caves with Neanderthals, but many a Muslim intuitively understand that it was from a cave that Mohammed received not only revelations (The Night of Power) but went on to conquer by sword much of the world.

A few more highlights from his blog post on Fear:

Is it so heroic to make a film or a speech that has the support of everyone in your community? What kind of courage does it take to go after the Bush administration if you’re a member of the Hollywood community, and most everyone agrees with your position and will reward you for it — or you’re part of the political class in Washington, D.C. or in New York or in parts of California? Forget the tenured and not so tenured academics, who while not being able to change the world in 1968 have devoted their lives to teaching future generations about the evils of the one, seemingly dispensable sovereign nation that evidently makes the world unlivable.

What I would not do is to minimize the threat and construct an alternate universe that lives by the rules we value. In Lee Harris’ book %%AMAZON=0743257499 Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History%% (Free Press, 2004) Mr Harris makes the point that we live “In a civilization with an intellectual culture that is reluctant to take the idea of an external enemy seriously; its enemies, though have no such qualms… we are caught in the midst of a conflict between those for whom the category of the enemy is essential to their ways of organizing all human experience and those who have banished even the idea of the enemy from both public discourse and even their most innermost thoughts.”


For those of us who are willing to confront these realities, Mr. Rothstein’s concluding sentence, “for those prepared to accept Mr. Harris’ premises, there is nothing to fear but the lack of fear itself,” serves as a reminder.

Be reasonably afraid. Be very reasonably afraid. And act accordingly.

Update: This video was found on Did I miss something's blog?