Orson Scott Card on The Riots of the Faithful

I've liked Orson Scott Card ever since Ender's Game. He's a talented writer that can convince you his characters are real. He's also a talented essay that grasps what's real. Here is evidence:

the media are no better than government at exercising unchecked power. When it's known that no one can punish you, a certain kind of person stops caring whether he hurts anybody. And such people tend to rise within any organization that doesn't work hard to have a conscience.

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So during such a difficult time, even people who think the Iraq War or even the whole war on terror is a horrible mistake still have an obligation of loyalty to the nation that offers them protection, prosperity, and freedom.

I mean, what kind of idiot breaks a hole in the hull of his boat during a storm, just because he doesn't like the guy at the tiller and thinks the storm could have been avoided?

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Consider his judgement of the Media and the culture to which they demonstrate their unrelenting loyalty:

They are loyal to a community -- but it's not America.

It's Smartland. The nation of the newsmedia people. That's where they live. Not in America. These newspeople generally don't even know anybody, apart from "sources," who serves America in the military. Smartland consists of a very different crowd.

I know that crowd. I've heard them jeer at all the values that most Americans still care about, laughing at religious people, at the middle class, at suburbanites, at the poor ignorant saps who don't think correct thoughts all the time. You know -- the citizens of Heartland. Those poor sentimental fools who stood in line to see The Passion and who like Adam Sandler movies and who get tears in their eyes when they see the American flag and whose hearts break a little when it burns.

And yet the irony is that the reason the radical Islamists hate the West so much is primarily because of the unchecked and uncheckable excesses of the Smartish. From Hollywood to newspeople to the soft-subject professors in our universities, the culture that makes people like Osama bin Laden want to blow us up or crush us into dust is the culture of the R-rated movie, the anti-religion intellectual, the glorified abortionist, the babies-without-marriage crowd, and the what-me-worry media elite.

Meanwhile, he observes that radical muslims will achieve nothing by rioting and killing fellow muslims. On the contrary:

What the rioters haven't learned is that blowing up with rage accomplishes nothing except to make themselves look like big babies throwing tantrums. It doesn't make anybody in the world respect Islam more -- it makes us respect Islam less.

After all, when babies are prone to throwing tantrums, we may tiptoe around the house to avoid waking them up, but we don't give them the car keys. It's not respect you're giving them. You can't take them seriously as equals. You only avoid provoking them. They're a nuisance.

It's quite interesting, isn't it? "Smartland" as the heartland of the reasonable: yes, that fits. The utopian worship of nothing leaves a void in their hearts that they try to fill with empty icons, such as "tolerance", "multiculturalism", "self-determination", and the entire litany of unprinciples torn from their proper moorings in the Truth. This leaves the media prone only to find what proves its theory. Therefore, korans flushed down a toilet--a clear violation of multiculturalism--must be shown to the American people right away. For surely they will be outraged, right?

If only the media were as concerned about Catholic outrage when the Dung-covered Madonna was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum. If only they were concerned about Christians' feelings when "Piss Christ" was stuffed down our throats as "art". Ironic, then, that they rush to the defense of civilian-garbed combatants that fought US Special Forces in Afghanistan over the Qur'an.

And did we riot, when the media told us to "deal with it"? Did we kill each other in our rage? Strange, I didn't catch those headlines.

This is what we can expect. Fools understand. Since the Reasonable rule, what else could we expect? Respect? Did the Reasonable of Jesus' time respect him? Then why should we expect the Reasonable of today to respect us? Nothing demands the absolute loyalty that we Fools cannot give. Instead, we must laugh. We laugh with the Truth that He has already conquered the world. Then we gather what he has claimed, in his name, one soul at a time.

via Relapsed Catholic