China and Russia has their own internal factions, which may or may not ally with Islam.

Instead of trying to create a round robbin free for all, sometimes it is just easier to look at a nation’s domestic policies vis a vis a particular enemy, like Islam itself.

Even if China or Russia or the US competes for the world superpower status or dominion or power balance, it still wouldn’t affect the relationship of a country to Islam itself.

That is nicely stated and is a profound tribute. Writing can make a difference in the world. Reflecting on that is a wonderful way to remember den Beste.

Goodbye to a beautiful mind and an enormously helpful person. May his memory be a blessing.

Steven Den Beste once presented a useful overview of recent world affairs as a three-way gun fight between (roughly) (1) Western conservativism, (2) Western liberalism, and (3) Islamism. (His actual categories were far more precisely crafted, but beyond the point I wish to make.)

The classic strategy in a three-way gunfight is for two parties to form a temporary alliance to kill the third, and only afterward fight each other.

In today’s world, Western liberals and Islamists are allies. Make no mistake, their values are fundamentally incompatible, but for now they are united in trying to kill off Western conservatism, and they will settle with each other later.

This still seems the true kernel of the West/Islam conflict.

As a programming exercise I downloaded his USS Clueless wesite and converted it to a unified PDF file so I had access to it offline. I’ll make it generally available someday.

I sent him a copy and thanked him. I never heard back of course, but like neo and others I didn’t expect to.

Best of … can be found here, as a web archive…
https://web.archive.org/web/20160119040224/http://denbeste.nu/bestof.shtml

“So any info about that split? ”

No, not really. He didn’t write anything about his chronic illness, apart from the reference above, and that was 12 years ago. He had a stroke about four years ago from which he made a pretty good recovery, but he’d been in decline ever since – he had been wheelchair bound for at least the last year. This is just gleaned from what he chose to write about his health, you understand. When Chizumatic went dark after the 14th, I and his other readers feared the worst.

I corresponded with him on energy matters and could tell that he really got cheesed at the flamers and trolls.

When I finally discovered his work, the feeling I got is best described as

满意的启蒙和确认完全令人愉快的发现。
MÇŽnyé¬ de qǐméng hé qué¨ré¨n wé¡nqué¡n lé¬ng rén yéºkué i de fÇŽ xié n.

…roughly

utterly delightful discovery of satisfied enlightenment and confirmation

He was enormous. Even his mere musings influenced my world view.

…I work weekdays, so the wake doesn’t begin until Saturday morning at the Davis’s.

Here’s to you DB. RIP.

His Chizumatic front page gives an intro to stuff he didn’t like like unsolicited comments. But I got the impression that all the really “negative” stuff, he didn’t even want to deal with.

Even more so, if you consider his personality or his other limits.

So any info about that split? It doesn’t feel like his only problems were commenters that gave unsolicited advice, but rather that was the only thing he wanted to write about in reply to.