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Robert Spencer in PJ Media: U.S. Couple Murdered by ISIS Fell Victim to Left’s Fantasy World

Aug 22, 2018 6:51 pm By Robert Spencer

They embraced the Left’s lie that “evil is a make-believe concept.” My latest in PJ Media:

The story has invited more derision than sympathy for the victims: a couple that ridiculed the idea that “the world is a big, scary place” was murdered by Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis while biking through Tajikistan. But those who are mocking Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan for their naivete are being too harsh.

The responsibility for their deaths lies not just with ISIS, or with this starry-eyed couple, but also with the Leftist world in which they moved and lived. The Left’s leaders constructed a fantasy world, because Leftist ideas are dead on the drawing board without it.

In their fantasy world, Islam is peace. Borders and nation-states are unwelcome relics of a bygone age, because people are good everywhere — with the exception of Donald Trump and the “far-right.”

Austin, an employee of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Geoghegan, who worked at Georgetown University, decided two years ago to leave their jobs and go on a bike ride around the world. They kept a blog about their journey, on which Austin wrote last April:

You watch the news and you read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse.

I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own — it’s easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that’s quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.

Yes, Austin and Geoghegan were unwise to carry this Pollyannish philosophy into Muslim Central Asia, but they didn’t originate it. In this sad episode, ISIS is not the only one with blood on their hands.

Where did Austin get the idea that “evil is a make-believe concept? Perhaps in today’s universities, which are saturated with moral relativism, contemptuous of absolutes, and dogmatically convinced that there is no dispute between people that can’t be settled by mutually respectful “dialogue.”

This perspective dominates contemporary culture, and is taken for granted even at the highest level. When Barack Obama and John Kerry entered into negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, they were working upon the assumption that it was wrong to think that people “are not to be trusted” and that “people are evil.” Obama and Kerry were essentially embracing the idea that “evil is a make-believe concept.” That the mullahs were perhaps “self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes,” but ultimately good-hearted. The Leftist intelligentsia was and still is unanimous in applauding that initiative.

Likewise, it is a matter of dogmatic certainty for the Left that Islam is a religion of peace, and that only racist, bigoted “Islamophobes” think otherwise. Why should Austin and Geoghegan have had any reason to be concerned about bicycle riding through the Muslim-majority countries of Central Asia?

After all, those who don’t believe that “evil is a make-believe concept” are subject to furious and concerted demonization. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — and the establishment media that treats the SPLC as if it were a reliable source — sees only one group of genuinely evil people in the world. Those who recognize that there are evil forces in the world that are set against the United States, and who want to protect Americans against Islamic jihadists, criminal migrants, and more, are the only evil ones. Austin and Geoghegan no doubt had nothing but contempt for such “intolerance” and “hate” manifested by foes of jihad terror and unrestricted illegal immigration.

The Left forces people to believe these fantasies, lest they be charged with “hatred” and “bigotry.”…

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: Featured, Robert Spencer, willful ignorance Tagged With: Jay Austin, Lauren Geoghegan


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Comments

  1. Ann Marie says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 6:54 pm

    On the other hand, would these be the same type of people who would attend a rally calling us Nazis because we voted for Trump?

    Just wondering….

    • Andy says

      Aug 22, 2018 at 7:42 pm

      More leftie/liberal fantasy land thinking

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OTuI2LmUy8

      Dirty People Topple Confederate Statue: Silent Sam at University of NC

      • CogitoErgoSum says

        Aug 22, 2018 at 9:39 pm

        I think the problem with statues honoring the Confederacy is that the sculptures reflect too much defiance and pride. The South fought for a lost cause and the statues should reflect that. I would put up another statue in place of the one that was vandalized but I would make it one of a mother and father holding their dead son in their arms. People could reflect upon that. But I wonder if even then the radical leftists would let it stand.

        • Andy says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 12:41 am

        • Andy says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 1:11 am

          Is this what leftie/liberlism is all about, destroying your own history?

          Okay you pull down Confederate statues, what’s next. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson anything that is European or Western Judeo-Christian Heritage based?

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=452F129UaBI

        • Andy says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 1:19 am

          HK Edgerton talks about his fight for Confederate monuments

        • CogitoErgoSum says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 2:29 am

          No, the history of the United States should not be forgotten and I think men like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were brave men of admirable character who played a very important role in our history. However, each man who fought for the Confederacy was flawed and greatly mistaken in choosing loyalty to an individual state as being more honorable than loyalty to the nation as a whole. These men also erred in choosing to fight for a cause that supported slavery.

          I have no problem with erecting monuments depicting such men, but ONLY if it illustrates the idea that they fought for a misbegotten cause and that they were not the winners but rather the losers of a terrible and costly war. For each Confederate monument that is removed I would support erecting a new one … but one which shows the man being remembered NOT as if he were a proud victor but as he actually ended up being …. a completely defeated soldier whose friends and family were left suffering in a devastated homeland. If a statue of Lee looking proud is removed, replace it with one of him looking distraught and despondent as he appeared after Gettysburg. If a statue of Stonewall Jackson on a horse is demolished, replace it with one of him lying in a hospital bed with one arm missing as he was after his own men fired upon him by mistake. I say yes, have statues that remind us of the Confederacy but have them remind us of the pain, suffering, death and destruction we as a people endured during the four years of the Civil War, a war that forged our country into one, united and indivisible nation. Long may it stand.

        • LR says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 10:27 am

          “I say yes, have statues that remind us of the Confederacy but have them remind us of the pain, suffering, death and destruction we as a people endured during the four years of the Civil War, a war that forged our country into one, united and indivisible nation. Long may it stand.”…

          Best posting on the confederate statues I have seen…It is so important to have public art represent our history…You should write letters to the appropriate orgs. to support the creation, and displaying of this art in public.

      • infidel says

        Aug 23, 2018 at 3:53 am

        This is just an amazing video.. BLACK ON BLACK VIOLENCE is the biggest killer of blacks 2day just like the biggest killers of Muslims are mad Muslims themselves. Thanks for posting this.

        • Andy says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 6:55 pm

          No problem, infidel,

          The more truthful, honest information we can get out the better.

      • don vito says

        Aug 23, 2018 at 2:52 pm

        Andy, you 1:11 am post you ask what is next? I believe the answer has been answered by a recent street rally vid were the the rally participants were heard to be shouting NO Border, No Wall, No USA at all. This is their goal, I know this goal has been a long term objective, population replacement, as an illustration, has been going on how long? I take them at there word. It is not just the USA but all kufr lands (the WEST).

        • Andy says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 3:29 pm

          +1

          Your right don vito

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 23, 2018 at 5:53 pm

          Grimly true, Don.

    • Colin B. says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 2:07 am

      These people were true believers in cultural relativism. (There’s a contradition there somewhere….)

      Anyway, they made a terrible mistake, just as cultural relativism is.

    • Charles says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 5:42 pm

      Anne Marie: Too bad Robert Spencer does not distinguish between his nebulous “Left” who, he writes, believe Islam to be a “religion of peace” and the real Left who have no use for any religion whatsoever. As a proletarian Catholic I deplore the Pope’s pie-in-the-sky irenism, by the way.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 23, 2018 at 6:04 pm

        Firstly, not everyone on the Left is anti-religion–I know quite a few liberal Jews and Christians.

        But even many on the Left who are normally anti-religion–that is, anti-Judaism and -Christianity–are still disturbingly pro-Islam.

  2. Emilie Green says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 8:11 pm

    “The story has invited more derision than sympathy for the victims”

    As it should. Life’s a tough teacher; you get the test first, then the lesson.

    • Mac-101 says

      Aug 22, 2018 at 8:13 pm

      I couldn’t believe how many people claimed to have rode their bikes over the very same stretch of road in the 6 months prior. How many crazies are there!

  3. Mac-101 says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 8:11 pm

    Any idea yet why no posts for two weeks before they were murdered? Add to that the last post was not really completed.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 6:09 pm

      It sounds as though they were already running into trouble–aggression and threats of violence–from the local Muslims.

      • Mac-101 says

        Aug 23, 2018 at 8:00 pm

        Please keep us posted if you see anything more. I’ll let you know what I find. One or two days I can understand. Two weeks, something’s up!

  4. HugoHackenbush says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 8:39 pm

    “Austin, an employee of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Geoghegan, who worked at Georgetown University,”

    Enough said.

  5. pumbar says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 8:52 pm

    I’ve always maintained that bicycle helmets provided no protection at all.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 22, 2018 at 9:44 pm

      They do if you just take a spill. If you are deliberately run over by a Jihadist, not so much…

    • DirkaDirka says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 1:50 pm

      Nor do they help protect you at all from knife attacks after getting run over by Jihadis in a Daewoo. Honestly, I think the worst part about this was that they were run down by a Daewoo.

  6. gravenimage says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 9:41 pm

    Robert Spencer in PJ Media: U.S. Couple Murdered by ISIS Fell Victim to Left’s Fantasy World
    ……………………..

    Grimly, this is true.

  7. Rarely says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 10:45 pm

    The criticism could be extended to GoFundMe for blocking exposure to the violence that pervades islam. I would ask them how they will feel when further Pollyannas are raped and/or murdered because they didn’t know better and had believed the only narrative out there.

  8. Expat88 says

    Aug 23, 2018 at 4:21 am

    Twice when I traveled around Central Asia I saw lots of bicyclists with overland round the world groups traveling east to China. It was popular and adventurous. In Tajikistan the route was to take the famous Pamir Highway. The people in that area weren’t very religious after the Soviet days of repressing Islam, but since then ISIS and extremists have moved in. It is too scary to ignore the threat and this unfortunate couple should have done their homework before taking risks.

  9. Johnjjj says

    Aug 23, 2018 at 4:28 am

    Best comment I saw was “It was a nice hypothesis, pity the way they had to disproved it”

  10. Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says

    Aug 23, 2018 at 6:24 am

    This couple died in service to an ideal: “imagine all the people living life in peace … and the world will be as one”. Whether in the twentieth century or the seventh, visionaries have been striving for a world united and free of discord; see https://quran.com/8/39 .

    • StellaSaidSo says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 6:31 am

      Indeed. One might think they would have learned something from John Lennon’s experience. On his final day, what he needed was a gun, not an ideal.

    • Elizabeth Honaker says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 10:48 pm

      Mark Spahn — how on EARTH does their death further this pie-in-the-sky fantasy? Who is going to commemorate them? For what? For foolishly biking around crazies who are out to kill non-Muslims? The reason our brave military willingly sacrifice life and limb in war is because their work actually ACCOMPLISHES something. Consider this: What happens AFTER death? Will Austin and Geoghegan be rewarded by God for throwing their lives away for “fun”?

  11. Stephanie Chalmers says

    Aug 23, 2018 at 6:30 am

    I offer my deepest sympathy to their families and friends, and all who will miss them and mourn their absence.

    • don vito says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 2:59 pm

      I too offer my deepest sympathies, as posted above, they found a cause they were willing to die for. They died doing what they loved. Um…..I wonder what happen to their bikes?

      • Andy says

        Aug 23, 2018 at 3:34 pm

        Mr. Spencer I believe had a story about this couple earlier where I offered my sympathies.,

        They looked for the best in mankind and experience the worst.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 23, 2018 at 6:11 pm

      Agreed, Stephanie and Andy.

  12. Adam says

    Aug 23, 2018 at 7:59 am

    The amount of hurt is directly proportional to the amount of stupid. Science kids, learn it.

  13. FYI says

    Aug 23, 2018 at 11:08 am

    Speaking of The Left’s Fantasy World,let’s not forget their favorite Fantasy World:

    “Palestine” where the “Palestinians” live. …

  14. Horseman says

    Aug 24, 2018 at 12:03 am

    I’m sorry, but, stupid is as stupid does.

  15. LR says

    Aug 24, 2018 at 12:17 am

    Oops…Did they forget to read Robert Pelton’s, “Come Back Alive”…

    http://www.comebackalive.com

    Very, very tragic…My condolences to all friends and family…

    I was reminded of late regarding the state of evil residing in mankind, stated on the Dennis Prager show…” Did you ever need to teach a child to be bad”?

    There are many people who have adventerously roamed the world, encountered dangerous situations and made it back alive. Unfortunately, these poor people were not so fortunate. One bicyclist still surviving his world travels is a whole heck of a lot of fun to watch, since he takes us on his journeys through his go-pro. He is a very unique guy, and is comfortable in the hot desert, or in sub-freezing temps.

    May these evil, evil ISIS loving murderers receive their JUST REWARDS!

  16. Felix Quigley says

    Aug 24, 2018 at 11:53 am

    This piece reflecting CogitoErgoSum is the essence of Stalinism/fascism and its approach to art…

    “I say yes, have statues that remind us of the Confederacy but have them remind us of the pain, suffering, death and destruction we as a people endured during the four years of the Civil War, a war that forged our country into one, united and indivisible nation. Long may it stand.”…

    Best posting on the confederate statues I have seen…It is so important to have public art represent our history…You should write letters to the appropriate orgs. to support the creation, and displaying of this art in public.”

    The above is Fascist. Art is not to be directed by anybody. The only person responsible for the art is the creator of the art. The same as with literature.

    Unbelievable!

    That is exactly what the left fascists and me too are doing. Do not like that statue tear it down. Do not like that film do not let it be shown!

    Get a grip!

  17. Daniel Silvan says

    Aug 24, 2018 at 4:38 pm

    Good thing that they were wearing their bicycle helmets. Safety first. They moaned about missing too many sunsets and now they will never see another one.

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