Found this article on the situation in Somalia interesting:

Islamic militiamen who have seized control of the capital fired guns in the air and cut electricity to makeshift cinemas to prevent Somalis from watching the World Cup, witnesses said, and some enraged residents were planning to hold a protest Sunday.

The Islamic Courts Union broke up gatherings to watch the soccer matches on Saturday, witnesses said. A strict interpretation of Islamic law often bans Western films and television as immoral.

“As soon as the Islamists took over the security of our city, we thought we would get freedom. But now they have been preventing us from watching the World Cup,” said Adam Hashi-Ali, a teenager in Mogadishu. (emphasis mine)

Waitaminute…how does this make sense? He thinks Islamists taking over would mean FREEDOM??

The saying “be careful what you wish for” applies here — you’d have to be an idiot to think muslim extremists wouldn’t try to ban every trace of western culture — but it goes further than that. Later in the article is a clue as to what he means by it:

The growing power of the Islamic Courts Union has forced the U.S. and other world powers to take notice amid concerns that radical Islam could be taking hold.

The United States supported a secular alliance of warlords that was fighting the Islamic militia, in an attempt to root out terrorists. But that plan backfired — most alliance leaders are in hiding after weeks of fighting killed at least 330 people.

Figures. What people like that teenager in Somalia refer to as “freedom” is a sort’ve cultural independance. Regardless of how restrictive the actual culture is, people like him see outside involvement as worse. But because of that, he just now realizes that the islamists had no intention of respecting freedom at all. Kinda too late for that…

This logic that “freedom” is little more than “let us torture each other in peace!” sounds familiar. Hmm, where have I heard that before…

I know I’ve used this example before, but the movie Braveheart offers a good illustration (which is why so many conservatives loved it). In that film Mel Gibson, as the Scottish freedom-fighter William Wallace, barely utters a single sentence without demanding “freedom” for his countrymen. But this isn’t the Left’s “freedom” to do whatever floats your boat. For instance, when Wallace tells the English, “Go back to England and tell them there that Scotland’s daughters and sons are yours no more. Tell them Scotland is free,” he’s not saying that the Scots are now adopting a new no-fault divorce law or a judgment-free attitude toward buggery.

Obviously, Wallace’s freedom still leaves room for arranged marriages, primogeniture, harsh justice, mandatory consumption of haggis, and all sorts of things which fall under the rubric of “authority and prescription.” The point is that Wallace’s Scottish freedom is the freedom to be Scottish — even if that means living according to rules which are just as authoritarian as England’s.

The above quote is Jonah Goldberg, right-wing compulsive pop-culture name-dropper.

So let’s recap: people overseas end up supporting islamists because of an interpretation of “freedom” that neglects that there is no society without individuals, & right-wingers stateside argue that this conception is just fine. Yet they’re the ones most rabid about intervening in these countries, ironically violating their own (mis)conception of “freedom” when others apply it.

Says a lot about this whole careening-towards-WW3 thing we’re on, doesn’t it?