وطنالاعتداء على الحضارةتعليمجامعة أطلس
لم يتم العثور على عناصر.
الاعتداء على الحضارة

الاعتداء على الحضارة

4 دقائق
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September 13, 2001

Most of us still find it impossible to grasp the destruction of the World Trade Center. It was real, we saw it, but it does not belong in any reality we can understand. We saw the airliners, full of people who might have been us, streak incomprehensibly toward the walls of steel and glass. We saw them morph into fireballs that trapped thousands of people, working at their desks on a routine morning, in an inferno that killed most of them. We saw the shimmering towers collapse, and the towers of volcanic smoke that rose to take their place in the New York skyline.

The images have been imprinted on our minds, never to be forgotten, but they will not compute.With rare unity, Americans have grasped that this was an assault on their values.

In that sense, the terrorists succeeded. They have rocked our sense of reality. They have confronted us with a horror we could not have imagined, and may never assimilate. But they have also revealed, for everyone to see, the real nature of their cause. The assault is being described as an act of war against America, and it is. But unlike the Pentagon, the World Trade Center had no military significance. Unlike the White House—which the fourth, unsuccessful plane had apparently targeted—it had no political significance for U.S. policy in the Middle East, or anywhere else. The attack on the twin towers cannot be seen as an effort, even a twisted effort, to redress the grievances of people who feel dispossessed. It was an act of sheer destruction, for the sake of destruction.

Our enemy is not Islam.  Our enemy is the nihilism of this subculture.

These towers became landmarks of the skyline of New York City, which has always been a powerful symbol in its own right, a beacon of freedom and opportunity. From the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, that skyline was forged from the melting pot where the best in man is refined from the accidents of race and nationality. In Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead , the famous novel of a New York architect, one character says that when he sees the city, "I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body." Many of us wished we could have done just that when we saw the towers finally crumple and collapse.

Technology, achievement, trade, law, peace, freedom—these were the values under attack. They are not American values but human values, the values of civilized life.

Though it is not yet known for certain which particular terrorist band committed the atrocity, we have every reason to believe they sprang from a fanatical subculture of Islamic fundamentalism. But our enemy is not Islam, which created one of the world's great civilizations, nor is it the Arab or Iranian or Afghani peoples. Our enemy is the nihilism of this subculture.

The terrorist leaders claim to speak for Palestinians. But the grievances of that people, even if legitimate, cannot explain the motivation for this act, much less justify it. The terrorists claim to speak for the victims of Western imperialism. But any literal imperialism is a thing of the past, long since redressed by the wealth that Europe and America have showered on these countries. It is clearly not the military or political power but the cultural power of the West that they resent.

What makes them denounce America as the great Satan is nothing as superficial as Coca-Cola or blue jeans. It is our secular culture of freedom, reason, and the pursuit of happiness. They hate our individualism; what they want is an authoritarian society where thought and behavior are controlled by true believers. They hate capitalism as a system of trade, production, innovation, and progress; what they want is a return to a primitive mode of existence from which these "materialist" aspirations have been banished. They hate the political system of individual rights, the rule of law, and secular government; what they want is a tribal society ruled by command.

The nihilist subculture is a worldwide phenomenon. We see it in the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect that released poison gas in the Tokyo subways. We see it in the hate-filled eyes of Christian killers in Northern Ireland. We see it in the eco-terrorists who spike trees and blow up electrical transmission towers. We see it in less murderous forms in the anti-globalization protesters who want to stifle international trade. We see it in the theorists of primitivism from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Unabomber.

Civilization has always attracted parasites who want to steal wealth from those who produce it. But this phenomenon is different. The nihilists do not seek wealth for themselves. They want to destroy the wealth of others. They do not seek freedom from domination. They want to abolish freedom. They do not seek a place at the table of world commerce. They want to smash the table. They do not seek a better life. They glory in death. They represent the worst form of envy, the most vicious form of human evil. They hate us not for our sins but for our virtues, and they will not be appeased.

The United States and its allies must cease the policy of trying to counter terrorism by negotiation. Negotiation is an exercise of reason that civilized people use to resolve their differences. We are not dealing with civilized people. We must cease the policy of excusing their violence by their poverty and trying to buy them off with subsidies. We are not dealing with people who seek such gain. We must declare war on the terrorists and use whatever force it takes to render them incapable of posing any further threat. In the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson sent the United States Navy to rid the Barbary Coast of pirates. We urge President Bush and the Congress to undertake a similar campaign not merely against the perpetrators of this outrage but against every nest of terrorists who have declared themselves, by the death and destruction they have wrought, to be enemies of mankind.

In doing so, we will be acting in our own self-defense, with the moral authority of those who have been attacked. But we should understand and declare to the world that we are acting to preserve a world order on which civilized values depend, and civilized peoples everywhere must join in this cause.

ديفيد كيلي

نبذة عن الكاتب:

ديفيد كيلي

ديفيد كيلي هو مؤسس جمعية أطلس. فيلسوف محترف ومعلم ومؤلف الأكثر مبيعا ، كان مؤيدا رائدا للموضوعية لأكثر من 25 عاما.

د. ديفيد كيلي
About the author:
د. ديفيد كيلي

David Kelley fundou a The Atlas Society (TAS) em 1990 e atuou como diretor executivo até 2016. Além disso, como Diretor Intelectual, ele era responsável por supervisionar o conteúdo produzido pela organização: artigos, vídeos, palestras em conferências, etc. Aposentado do TAS em 2018, ele permanece ativo nos projetos do TAS e continua atuando no Conselho de Curadores.

Kelley é filósofa, professora e escritora profissional. Depois de obter um Ph.D. em filosofia pela Universidade de Princeton em 1975, ele ingressou no departamento de filosofia do Vassar College, onde ministrou uma grande variedade de cursos em todos os níveis. Ele também ensinou filosofia na Universidade Brandeis e lecionou com frequência em outros campi.

Os escritos filosóficos de Kelley incluem trabalhos originais em ética, epistemologia e política, muitos deles desenvolvendo ideias objetivistas em novas profundidades e novas direções. Ele é o autor de A evidência dos sentidos, um tratado de epistemologia; Verdade e tolerância no objetivismo, sobre questões do movimento objetivista; Individualismo inabalável: a base egoísta da benevolência; e A arte do raciocínio, um livro didático amplamente usado para lógica introdutória, agora em sua 5ª edição.

Kelley lecionou e publicou sobre uma ampla variedade de tópicos políticos e culturais. Seus artigos sobre questões sociais e políticas públicas foram publicados em Harpers, The Sciences, Reason, Harvard Business Review, The Freeman, On Principle, e em outros lugares. Durante a década de 1980, ele escreveu frequentemente para Revista Financeira e Empresarial Barrons sobre questões como igualitarismo, imigração, leis de salário mínimo e Previdência Social.

Seu livro Vida própria: direitos individuais e o estado de bem-estar é uma crítica das premissas morais do estado de bem-estar social e da defesa de alternativas privadas que preservem a autonomia, responsabilidade e dignidade individuais. Sua aparição no especial “Greed”, da ABC/TV, de John Stossel, em 1998, provocou um debate nacional sobre a ética do capitalismo.

Especialista reconhecido internacionalmente em Objetivismo, ele deu muitas palestras sobre Ayn Rand, suas ideias e seus trabalhos. Ele foi consultor da adaptação cinematográfica de Atlas Shrugged, e editor de Atlas Shrugged: o romance, os filmes, a filosofia.

 

Obra principal (selecionada):

Conceitos e naturezas: um comentário sobre A virada realista (de Douglas B. Rasmussen e Douglas J. Den Uyl),” Reason Papers 42, no. 1, (verão de 2021); Esta resenha de um livro recente inclui um mergulho profundo na ontologia e epistemologia dos conceitos.

Os fundamentos do conhecimento. Seis palestras sobre a epistemologia objetivista.

A primazia da existência” e”A Epistemologia da Percepção”, The Jefferson School, San Diego, julho de 1985

Universais e indução”, duas palestras nas conferências do GKRH, Dallas e Ann Arbor, março de 1989

Ceticismo”, Universidade de York, Toronto, 1987

A natureza do livre arbítrio”, duas palestras no Instituto de Portland, outubro de 1986

O Partido da Modernidade”, Relatório de política da Cato, maio/junho de 2003; e Navegador, novembro de 2003; Um artigo amplamente citado sobre as divisões culturais entre as visões pré-moderna, moderna (iluminista) e pós-moderna.

Eu não preciso“(Diário do IOS, volume 6, número 1, abril de 1996) e”Eu posso e eu vou” (O novo individualista, Outono/Inverno 2011); Artigos complementares sobre como tornar real o controle que temos sobre nossas vidas como indivíduos.

Ideias e ideologias