Moral coordinate systems

The response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and his confederates speaks volumes about a person’s moral standing.

At Harvard, I had many opportunities to pass by the MIT campus. On one such occasion, someone asked me if I had seen the massive mast in front of the school. Unless you had your eyes closed, you couldn’t miss it. “This mast is ground zero for all US nuclear missile mapping systems.” Although there were several MIT people involved in the Manhattan Project, I have no idea if the venerable mast actually served as a coordination point for what were then thousands of nuclear warheads and delivery systems.

As humans, we need our own moral coordinate systems. In the past, when there was more religiosity, people tended by default to have similar views about right and wrong, bad and holy, good and evil, and the like. Many problems in Europe today stem from the internal and external destruction of what were once relatively homogeneous societies. It didn’t take any convincing from the American people to know that the Japanese and Germans were evil. Their actions in China and Europe were enough to convince people who had functioning moral systems that these two men were evil incarnate. When the US finally entered the war, it sent millions into battle and lost over half a million soldiers. Everyone knew that the Axis had to be destroyed, and while the price paid was steep, the alternative of Hitler and Tojo winning would have been much worse.

When people and societies abandon their moral systems, whether religiously based or philosophically defined, then they no longer have that pole orientation position. Their opinions change with the tide or the latest news. For nearly a year, students and disturbed adults have sung the praises of a terrorist group that has mass-raped Israeli women and burned families alive. Their visceral hatred of Israel, and often Jews more generally, means there is no harm Hamas can do – such as killing six emaciated hostages rather than letting them live to join to their families – which can make these fools say, “Enough!” and throw up signs calling for the genocide of Israelis and the destruction of their country. The Intifada Revolution? The wounds we suffered during the second intifada are with us every day of our lives.

And so it was telling that as Israel began to turn its attention to Hezbollah, suddenly the same crew now came out with Hezbollah flags! The fact that Hezbollah has killed many Americans over the decades just means nothing to these brainwashed leftists; in fact, it might actually be another positive feature of the group. People who cannot definitively define evil cannot know what true good is. So the same people who support terrorists who have killed Israeli civilians in their homes are the ones who think that cutting off perfect body parts of children and thus sterilizing them is a wonderful thing. When one has no moral coordinate system and no moral compass to steer one in the right direction, right and wrong are defined by your prevailing feelings or attitudes.

In the US, one sees the moral turpitude in allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter with serious repercussions in crime, economic damage and loss of social cohesion. A people without a moral compass can depose a candidate for president and replace him with a giggling clown who didn’t have a single primary vote, unlike the 14 million that Joe Biden banked. The US is calling on Israel to cease fire against a group that has killed not only in Israel but also in South America and Europe. Israel is decimating a really bad terrorist group and the West can only scream that Israel should stop. A moral people like the one who fought hard that was World War II would encourage Israel to extinguish the real evil from its borders. The moral middlemen of Biden and Blinken want nothing but quiet, like octogenarians who can’t stand the noise those loudmouths make downstairs. Just call a ceasefire! That such arrangements will explode in five years or a decade is of no concern: they will no longer be in office.

Religious downward spirals and associated birthrates in Europe have opened the door to bring in millions of people who often hate their host countries and openly express their disdain for the locals. A strong moral people – they might still be alive in Poland and Hungary – would oppose bringing in millions of people whose presence and opinions would disrupt and potentially destroy everything that defines their home countries. Like the women who proudly burned their bras in the 1960s to declare their freedom, Western society believes it has moved away from the shackles of religion and all its backwardness, fairy tales and arbitrariness. The problem is that without the moral system that Christianity gave Europe, neither good nor evil can be defined. So one can let in people who promise to replace you and your laws with their brothers and Sharia. And, in parallel, one can march vociferously in protest against the people who have mass-murdered a ruthless terrorist group.

The destruction of arch-terrorist Nasrallah provides moral clarity between those who know that people like him are unique and must be destroyed and those who bleat about kumbaya and just stop killing. The incredible pager and walkie-talkie raids by Israel’s secret services and the honorable killing of Nasrallah and many other senior Hezbollah commanders stand in stark contrast to the Israel that has been bypassed by Hamas. Apparently, after the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel invested huge amounts of money and resources to penetrate Hezbollah and know everything about the terrorist group and its actions for the day it might act. On the other hand, Hamas was considered a much smaller threat and did not receive the same level of attention. Hamas’ surprise pogrom and Hezbollah’s surgical disorientation are two sides of the same Israeli intelligence coin. Israel actually practiced deep enemy penetration drills – in the north, waiting for Hezbollah and not Hamas in the south.

If you can’t stand the violent death of terrorists and their leaders, then don’t be surprised if people only laugh at you when those same terrorists kill someone who meant a lot to you.