And if we are to win the war, we have to show some respect for our civilization, with all its flaws and problems. It has to be worthwhile to fight the coming war. And so, we must look around and note all the valuable items were defending.
We all have lived through a generation of intellectual trashing of our civilization. This must be fought as hard as the battle to the Litani, going on today.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Heather Nails It
Our erstwhile colleague from Roger's focuses on the real issue. Tell it Heather!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
hi
read your views
war is not solution and also i am not aware about israle or lebnon problem hizbulah problem
i will try to read more
http://mit11.blogspot.com/
http://mit2.blogspot.com/
Regards
mitesh
thanks mitesh, that really clears things up.
i don't think this is quite what Heather had in mind, but i recently watched the HBO Series "From The Earth To The Moon" and relived the awe i felt at the Americans' ability to 'just do it' while growing up in the UK. I had honestly not thought about it before, but i think right then and there I first fell in love with the place. (though Motown also didn't hurt.)
If our civilization is like a building, Christianity and Judaism are its support beams.
If you let those beams rot, it may take awhile, but the building will founder.
So, don't just listen to intellectual charlatons. Learn about our accomplishments (we hear enough of our failures)... they are many.
Also, Mitesh: war is ugly. But a little bit of history will tell you that it is definitely a solution.
This is so true. Whatever our faults we are the hope of the world.
We are forward looking, humane, and creative. Far from perfect but we know that the dark ages were not a period in history to return to.
For the life of me I do not understand why it is that people feel there is something noble in self flagellation.
And what is war good for? Fighting injustice.
If our civilization is like a building, Christianity and Judaism are its support beams.
... and the rest of us can just shut up.
So, don't just listen to intellectual charlatons. Learn about our accomplishments (we hear enough of our failures)... they are many.
This would work better if you knew how to spell "charlatan".
I have a series of posts over at IBA wherein I enumerate the things we would lose if Islam were to take over. I borrowed the title of a U2 album for the series,
All The Things You Can't Leave Behind.
In the series, I post photos of the things Islam would ban; classical musicians, semi-nude women, dogs, Piglet, etc.
... and shame. We're taught in school and Sunday school that everyone is sinful, that we can't hope to be good people on our own, that our highest urges --- to create, to do things of which we can be proud, to love --- are things that are inherently corrupt.
I don't think it is just about Islam. I think it is a combination of Islam and unearned wealth and a tribal culture and the fact that the world is getting smaller and smaller.
I heard Tony Blair say something that I think is very true, this kind of fanatical jihad is like communism. After all communism was global movement as well.
Well said UK re: the rope.
It may be (and I believe it is, given the right conditions) that any particular or group of humans is capable of the direst deeds. But I also think that their are certain belief systems which encourage and enable such dross. We face such a thing today.
The difference I see between Islamic fascism and western fascism is that the latter is clearly (to my reading of Christianity) heretical - it is Gnostic; I'm not at all sure that the same can be said of Islamic fascism (it is Gnostic but not obviously heretical) - there seems to be a definite paucity of Islamic scholars who are willing to come out clearly and strongly against the current Jihad. Sure, all kinds of ordinary Muslism are people with ordinary desires and hopes for the families, etc., who pay about as much attention to Islamic scholars as ordinary westerners pay to our scholars. But the failure of institutional Islam to speak up for western freedoms (which includes the market and scientific system that is the only way to feed anywhere near the present global population) and to jump instead on the bandwagon of White Guilt should stop us in our tracks. Our nation states and global economy are clearly under concerted attack by our own postnationalist left in tandem with Islam as it is actually represented today. Another terrorist plot is uncovered in Britain and the Muslim leaders there jump to blame the government's foreign policy. Not exactly a mature response.
And Seneca, learned Christians do not teach that our greatest accomplishments are corrupted by orginal sin. Sure, some people are brought up with loads of guilt and shame, but that's just ignorance.
Humans are indeed "sinful" because we are mimetic beings: we learn our desires from each other and this inevitably entails conflict over common objects of desire. The gnostics promise us a way beyond conflict, if we defer to their special knowledge (e.g. the Nazi mysticism of the Third Reich). Orthodox Christianity, and perhaps Judaism even more, rejects the gnostic heresies and calls on our patience to reject utopian thinking in this world. This world is what it is - no utopia - but that doesn't mean our achievements and failures are anything less.
I agree with Seneca.
I have heard some race baiters in this country say things that lead me to believe fascism is possible anywhere.
Sure it can happen anywhere - and western culture is not at all in good shape at the moment - Terrye. But let's worry most about where it is happening now: your local university, mosque, department of foreign affairs (or state department) and news wire service. The sins of these institutions are on a different scale compared to those of the local "Islamophobes" or those calling for immigration restrictions.
Peter, in regard to the present leaders of institutional Islam, "moderate" - which is a term we affix and the "moderates" like to hem and haw about - means one doesn't approve of bombing "innocents", as Islamic law conceives innocence. But the resentments that "explain" the bombings are understandable, and rooted in western guilt. In the long run, one favors the transformation of western societies through immigration and changes in cultureal values. One also favors either 1) the integration of Sharia and western law. 2) the integration of one's Islamic identity with western leftism and the the revolt of the third world in justifiable actions of post-colonial liberation. In either case, Jews are at least to be begrudged.
And Seneca, learned Christians do not teach that our greatest accomplishments are corrupted by orginal sin.
Um, er, did I argue that? Where?
Sure, some people are brought up with loads of guilt and shame, but that's just ignorance.
I agree. But it's a kind of ignorance that seems awfully wide-spread.
Humans are indeed "sinful" because we are mimetic beings: we learn our desires from each other and this inevitably entails conflict over common objects of desire.
Is this orthodox belief? It's been a *loooong* time since Sunday school, but I sure had the idea that Original Sin had a lot more to do with disobedience to God, eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, all that; and that all people partake of Original Sin as part of their natures, not as something we learn from others.
Sen, i was referring to this: "We're taught in school and Sunday school that everyone is sinful, that we can't hope to be good people on our own, that our highest urges --- to create, to do things of which we can be proud, to love --- are things that are inherently corrupt."
My explanation of original sin is not orthodox, unless you are a follower of mimetic theory. But this theory is a way of explaining the anthropological basis of received orthodoxy. Anyway, whether we learn our sins from each other or whether is is "part of our natures" what's the difference? Our nature is that we learn good and bad from each other, that we are not simply hard-wired animals. But you have a point... I would insist that we are sinful because we are first of all capable of the good and love, that humanity begins with an ethically positive act, not a negative one. But the latter is implicit in the former, an inescapable corollary of our freedom. We can't be good and altruistic all the time or we'd starve to death; at the end of the day we have to hash out a way to distribute the fruits of our co-operative goodness and while we've made this pretty rational today, this business is not made completely innocuous yet. Lives are still ruined by it....
Post a Comment