"Eliezer's characterization describes a large minority of Americans very well."

All I see there are familiar platitudes, not a description of anybody who thinks about things. All I see, in fact, are familiar formulas employed by politicians. Nor are the formulas necessarily wrong. It should not be hard to see what is cowardly about most terrorist attacks.

American Heritage has a fairly good definition of cowardice: "Ignoble fear in the face of danger or pain."

The ignobility is an important factor which other dictionaries tend to miss. But American Heritage misses something that Cambridge has: "a person who is too eager to avoid danger, difficulty or pain"

It does not have to be danger and pain, it can be difficulty. So in a nutshell, a coward is someone who commits a discreditable act in order to avoid a difficulty (which might be pain or danger but might be something else). In the case of terrorists, the discreditable act is an attack on civilians, and the difficulty thereby avoided is the difficulty of engaging the enemy's armed forces. Similarly, it is cowardly to break certain Geneva conventions, for example disguising yourself as, and mixing with, civilians, to thereby shield yourself from the enemy, is cowardly, because you are committing a discreditable act (using civilians as shields) in order to avoid difficulty (greater exposure to enemy fire).

I will quote an old essay on the topic and answer some key points.

http://www.slate.com/id/1008268/

"Perhaps the idea is that it is cowardly to make a sneak attack, especially on a defenseless civilian target, rather than confront an armed enemy face to face. But no one seriously expects Osama Bin Laden to invite the 101st Airborne to fight his terrorist organization on equal terms."

The first sentence is a fair summary of the point I just made, but the second sentence is no answer. Compare the above with the following:

"Perhaps the idea is that rape is forcible sexual intercourse. But no one seriously expects Ugly Albert to get sex any other way than by forcing the girl."

The fact that the only possible way to succeed is discreditable or illegal or immoral, is no answer to the point that it is nevertheless discreditable or illegal or immoral. It is still what it is, even if it is the only way. If the only way to make a mark is a cowardly way, that makes it no less cowardly.

"And besides, the reason we usually consider it cowardly to make a sneak attack is because the attacker avoids facing the consequences."

Not necessarily. As the Chambers dictionary correctly recognized, what is necessary is an avoidance of a difficulty. It does not have to be specifically "facing the consequences".

So it should be fairly easy to see that it is not incorrect to say that the terrorists are cowards. It is furthermore, then, not incorrect to say that if someone says the terrorists are not cowards, then he is wrong.

But backing up, even though I have defended the familiar platitude that terrorist attacks are cowardly, nevertheless I do not think this accurately reflects man in the street thinking on the topic. Rather, it represents an old political formula that has caught on and that hardly makes a ripple. It's about as meaningful as saying "good morning". It is not significant to say it; it would be significant to stop saying it. Same as "good morning." We say that in order to avoid doing anything significant. It is a distant cousin of the "dead metaphor" - a metaphor that has lost its force through overuse. But like the dead metaphor, its overuse does not mean that it is not valid.

Setting this aside, there is also the matter of the habit that some intellectuals have of shocking the bourgeoisie. If you say that the bad guys think that they're the good guys and we're the bad guys, you probably won't raise any eyebrows. But if you make the statement in a way that implies that you agree with the bad guys' assessment, or that you are positioning yourself as a neutral party who favors neither side, then you will probably raise some eyebrows. And based on my own experience, an awful lot of people like to present the rather familiar and tired and unremarkable view that the bad guys think that they're the good guys, in just such a way, so as to maximize their effect on their listener. This seeming undercurrent of support for the enemy is something that can be easily avoided without changing the factual content of what you're saying, but it is in my experience often not avoided, indeed, it seems to be sought out and nurtured. And then, when the predictable reaction occurs, like clockwork Mr. Epater-les-bourgeois loudly complains about the impossibility of making obviously true statements in front of the the foolish masses.

Good posts. This series is the first thing in a while to make me really glad to participate here.

I think that the stereotype of Alabama bars is pretty reliable. OTOH, the stereotype of suicide bombers is much much less so. If you read the rhetoric of radical Islam, or for that matter if you read ancient mythology such as Homer or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, you will see people who are occupying a VERY VERY different moral universe from us Platonized Christianized (that includes the secular children of "modern orthodox" Jews) post-Enlightenment Westerners.

In terms of realistic psychology fitting neither the SSSM nor the Evolutionary Psychology brand (which you really should spend more times reading non-leftist criticisms of), the Muslims who flew planes into the World Trade Center undoubtedly saw themselves as heros, but in some sense that we would have a VERY hard time empathizing with or relating to. They are NOT a mirror reflection of ourselves, but genuinely something that has to be understood with empiricism, not empathy and wishful thinking.

I like Eliezer's essay on belief very much. I've been thinking about the role of belief in religion. (For the sake of full disclosure, my background is Calvinist.) I wonder why Christians say, "We believe in one God," as if that were a particularly strong assertion. Wouldn't it be stronger to say, "We know one God?" What is the difference between belief and knowledge? It seems to me that beliefs are usually based on no data. Most people who believe in a god do so in precisely the same way that they might believe in a dragon in the garage. People are comfortable saying that they know something only when they can refer to supporting data. Believers are valiantly clinging to concepts for which the data is absent. Most people who believe in a god do so in precisely the same way that they might believe in a dragon in the garage.

Regarding the dialogue between the dragon claimant and his challengers, why didn't the challengers simply ask the claimant, "Why do you say that there is an invisible, inaudible, non-respiriating, flour-permeable dragon in your garage?"