The Scandal of the Secular Mind
It is troubling how little capacity for self-examination we encounter in the conservative punditeska, the talking heads on Fox News and similar venues. After 4,500 dead, 33,000 wounded, and a trillion dollars, America is left with an Iraqi regime that openly supports the strategic objectives of Iran, America’s most dangerous adversary. As the Washington Post reported Oct. 8, “More than six months after the start of the Syrian uprising, Iraq is offering key moral and financial support to the country’s embattled president, undermining a central U.S. policy objective and raising fresh concerns that Iraq is drifting further into the orbit of an American arch rival — Iran.” And with the Obama administration’s reported readiness to cut and run by Dec. 31, it seems unlikely that Gen. Petraeus’ mercenary irregulars, the “Sunni Awakening,” will last very long. [As a matter of record: The American Enterprise Institute did not first propose the “surge,” the counterinsurgency plan that pacified Iraq, in 2006. It was first proposed by the Asia Times’ Marc Erikson in January 2004.]
Some of my conservative colleagues think me a renegade. The fact is that the conservative intellectual elite is sadly out of touch with the conservative base, and especially the evangelical Christians who comprise just over a quarter of American voters. During the past couple of weeks I have spent a good twenty hours on the air talking about my new book, How Civilizations Die (and why Islam Is Dying, Too), mostly on self-described Christian stations. And I’ve been talking to a lot of Orthodox Jews as well, my home audience.
Talking to religious conservatives is like breathing pure intellectual oxygen. They know that there is a basic difference between a nation committed to the biblical concept of individual sanctity, and one based on mere submission. They may or may not not know Thucydides, but they know the Bible, which is a far better source-book for statecraft. In short, the religious have a better education in political philosophy than their secular counterparts. They get the joke right off, while the secular types waste the declining days of their careers trying to defend the indefensible.
Isn’t is amazing how the Bible, Old and New, still works? Can anyone name an anthropocentric work of such longevity and power?
But men keep trying. And now, of course, women are trying their hand at it.
It seems that feeding the human ego is Satan’s most effective weapon, starting in the garden.
God is the only constant.
Yes, the Bible, and the Qu’ran and a couple other religious books have certainly stood the test of time. And all of the “major” religions continue to have millions upon millions of followers. However, the questions remain… Have these majority religions, and their brand of “God” brought us closer together or further apart? And is the “the biggest church” really the best church? Interesting indeed.
Is “bringing us together” the goal in life?
Look at the assh*les protesting all over. Do you want to be closer together with them? Or would you prefer a social system that leaves them utterly behind if they won’t work?
Spiritually it’s the same thing. If people want only mischief, selfishness, deviance and partying in life, do you want to be closer together with them?
The koran doesn’t stand the test of time. If people bothered to read it’s a murder manual full of intolerance and hatred for anything not islam.
Have you really been so brainwashed by your leftist masters that you can’t see the difference between what at least was until very recently the Christian world (modern medicine, science, women’s suffrage, universal equality) and the Muslim world (caliphate, sharia, stoning innocent women to death, jihad)???
You really think there’s no meaningful differences there but it’s right that your leftist buddies made me sit through several semesters of American union history?
That’s what’s so funny.. All of you pagan barbarians have no idea that your bitter, banal behavior makes the Bible seem more real than anything else could.
Why else wouldn’t you spend your life on UFOs if some righteous pursuit of debunking myth was really your goal? No no…you guys hate people who keep you from sacrificing more “fetuses” (innocent children) to Satan or handing out yet more free condoms, and the UFO people don’t give you any problems there!
It is false to say the Koran has stood the test of time when its strictures have proven to be incompatible with modernity and human coexistence. The same may not and cannot be said of the Bible upon which belief in individuality, liberty, free enterprise, and freedom of choice rests.
“Isn’t it interesting how the Bible still works?”?
Yeah, . . . “nation building”: “And yourselves, multiply, . . . and, digging, cutting, chopping, making, sharing, helping, selling, you know, have dominion.”, . . . the very things which the OWS type crowds despise or would prefer as susceptible of ignorance, . . .
“the biblical concept of individual sanctity”?
Yeah, and for all that nation building laid out above, a shovel or a machete or a hammer, say, can be used by only one individual at a time—a concept and related concepts also, which the OWS crowds would blithely prefer to ignore. For the gain which is essential to sustenance, they appear to be in search of some group activity, some return of the Leninist Soviet model, in which—of a cool morning—they might all be seen (at gun-point) to climb on the wagon and head out for endless days of joyous hand-work in the fields of common effort, . . . and largely because, there is no G0D, . . . there’s only us, . . . and what we repeat for each other, . . .
The bible stands the test of time. The reason secular books come and go is that our understanding of the universe and ourselves continues to improve, so each book supercedes the last. The secular books are now so far ahead of the bible that the only proper attitude to the science, logic, and morality of the bible is utter ridicule.
Voltaire would probably have agreed with you. His house is being used by a Baptist publisher, I think.
You can rail on the Bible and its truths all you like because God has led his followers to allow you that freedom in America, but eventually, you will answer to Him in person. In the meantime, we’re not laughing with you, we’re laughing at you.
You probably think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is clever.
“You can rail on the Bible and its truths all you like because God has led his followers to allow you that freedom in America.”
Oh thank you so much kind master.
[Offensive language censored]. People died for that freedom, god did [offensive language censored]. It sickens me how people are falling all over themselves to be slaves to some deity. Have some dignity.
Cassius,
If you use ALLCAPS and redouble your enthusiasm, I’m sure I’ll find your ideas much more persuasive.
Menachem,
Its an interesting theory, but the evidence seems pretty heavily against it.
Right now, this is just turning into a shouting and sneering match, which is perhaps my fault. So going back to what our host is talking about…
Are we having problems compared to Germany because…
1. We hit Iraq way too softly. Despite what W said about shock and awe, he was really a very nice and gentle guy. In order to change a culture, you have to pound it into total surrender of the will is one thoery.
2. Islamic vs. Protestant culture.
3. We just have not had enough time. Patience!
4. Lefty propagandists encouraging the terrorists.
5. We’re on the verge of collapse as a power, and so we just do things less effectively. This was Mark Steyn’s idea in a recent post.
The Jews experience of G-d predates the birth of Jesus by one thousand five hundred years. The reference you made to testaments as ” old and new” , while common, has no merit. They were not published as a boxed set.
That of course, is our difference. I believe the new was grafted onto the root of the old to create a greater tree…and expand the believing universe from just the chosen few (which I concede) to include the adopted many.
Our G-d is great. Our petty differences do not add righteousness to any of us.
Your analogy is flawed. It presumes the new is better than the old of which I see no evidence. I have no problem with you drawing from my well. I do have a problem of you claiming it as your own.
It’s not your well, my friend. Nor is it mine. It is God’s revelation to man. Which is what the Jews were supposed to be sharing with the world, I think or guess. I strongly suspect God’s original plan was to not need the Church, but if one tool keeps rebelling (and how else is one to read the Prophets, but as the tale of Jewish rebellion against God, and His chastising them, and them returning, and then they rebelling again?) then He may turn to another tool.
And in case, you’re wondering, no we Baptists don’t teach the Prophets as a specifically Jewish tale of ingratitude to the Most High, but as an example to all humans.
My brother, the New is not better than the Old. If you read it you would see that. Instead, the New stands on the Old and fulfills it’s promises. Without the Old, the New is incomprehensible. Without the New, the promises of the Old are questions whose answers are to be wondered at. What you have is a complementary pair that does what God intended it to:speak to Man about who He is and His restorative plan for us in given the events of Bereshyt 2 and 3. Moreover, it is not your Word. The Word is God’s and He speaks to whom He will as and when He pleases. So, unlike the Muslims, we are not against you. Rather, we are part of you.
Mike, how are you related to the guy who wrote the Hoskins Standard Baptist Manual?
Comparing the Bible to the Koran perfectly illustrates your colossal ignorance. The Koran is a piece of trash based on the mad ravings of a pedophile mass murderer.
Mankind is bent. Born to lie, cheat, steal and murder. Only the spiritual infusion of God through the man Jesus The Christ can change that. This is THE TRUTH. Everything else is obfuscation and darkness.
Ayn Randism will destroy us just as fast as communism or nazi-ism.
And the hearing and obeying of the message of THE TRUTH is voluntary….
It ASKS you to listen, and then decide. It converts followers through its freely revealed truthfulness. Its True and Just message is “self evident”.
It does not depend on Violence or intimidation, to succeed.
There is no practice of LYING about its nature and its intentions, in order to squeeze it through the door.
That is “the truth” about THE TRUTH.
In contrast to the Great Murderous Lie of Islam.
All religions are NOT the same.
The Iliad, Odyssey, Plato’s Republic. These books have withstood the test of time, and are not religious.
The Greeks of antiquity would disagree about whether Homer was a religious text. And Etienne Gilson speaks of Plato’s god-haunted world. Everything in our culture is not blblical. Just the best things.
Not to mention that the works of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Cicero, and many others wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t been Christianized by the likes of Augustine and Aquinas. Secularists who try to appropriate the mantle of the Greeks always manage to forget that.
Also, the Western ideal of the primacy of the individual comes directly from Augustine’s conception of free will.
David P. Goldman writes:
“The Greeks of antiquity would disagree about whether Homer was a religious text. And Etienne Gilson speaks of Plato’s god-haunted world. Everything in our culture is not blblical. Just the best things.”
I don’t see how Homer could be considered a religious text in any meaningful sense of the word religious. The claim perhaps could be made about the Homeric Hymns (Homer not being the author of the Homerica Hymns). Plato’s is not a god-haunted world; that’s a fine phrase trying to pass as an accurate exegesis. For the most part, Plato’s world is grounded in the sublunar Lebenswelt. There is, to be sure, a considerable amount of god talk in the Phaedo, but that may be excused seeing as Socrates was about to drink the Kool-Aid that day.
To get a sense of the dialectic of a non-religious Plato dialogue, I recommend
http://www.charlesumlauf.com/critias.htm
and
http://www.charlesumlauf.com/affects.htm
Michael Eisentadt
Austin Texas
Franz Rosenzweig said that the history of the world was the history of Israel; by that he meant that the history of humanity is the history of its search for immortality. The Bible isn’t the only book about this; the first book to raise the topic is the Epic of Gilgamesh. In a sense every important book is about this. What the Bible gives us is a model of an eternal nation, for the first time, premised on a covenant with an eternal God — neither of whom are imagined in any of the previous books. That implies an anthropology and a political life also imagined in other books, including the Greeks. And it leads to the American founding,
Dear Spengler,
I am a bit confused about the entire article.I agree Islam does not provide a suitable ground for a modern democratic state.What about Hinduism … or Buddhism…Sikhism… Jainism etc, etc?
Even though one can agree about Islam being fundamentally incompatible with democracy, how can any government or political party have a plan or program on this basis?Is it possible with 1500 million muslims all over the world?
In the Indian subcontinent they have been a major drag on progress but there is no way they can be ignored.
Maybe I missed the point…
Indian
Hinduism is not doing badly at all. Somehow the combination of Hindu regard for the sanctity of life and Anglo-Saxon democratic institutions have given rise to a real democracy. I am not sure what to say about Buddhism: which form are we talking about? Is Japan Buddhist, or Shinto, or neither? What about Thailand? There is no territory with a majority Jainist or Sikh state in question.
“Is Japan Buddhist, or Shinto, or neither?”
All three — and no, I’m not joking, but that’s a long story.
Japan too was successfully “rebuilt” after WW II.
For whatever reason, Germany and Japan had created large and highly effective militaries, so effective it took years to dislodge the Germans and the Japanese were still unwilling to come to peace after Hiroshima (Nagasaki finally did it).
Nation building here consisted of helping with the destroyed infrastructure and hanging a few top war criminals and pointing the obviously dynamic cultures of these countries in a different direction.
Afghanistan may be the graveyard of empires, but as Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic remarked “It is also the graveyard of itself.” Culture matters!
We were able to rebuild in Japan because we took their god from them. Something to think about in islamic countries. It’s a fake religion just the the god-emperor was in Japan.
To Anne and Lolly.
Yes, we took their God from them, but the world should clearly know by now what the implications of that are…that peace, prosperity, and a greater standard of living for your people WILL be the result when the United States topples your God.
The hatred between Japan and America was viceral…death marches, prisoner torture, internment camps, fights to the death, and the sacrifice of whole cities in Atomic Storms never before seen, or since repeated….
And yet now we are allies, friends even. Partners in a better world, with no true ill will towards one another.
It can be done. It HAS been done before…
Someone, someday, must simply call out Mohammad for what he was, and the better people of this earth must not be afraid to renounce him completely, as easily and naturally as they now renounce facism, nazism, and slavery.
An ugly victory to topple a false and malignant God of Death HAS been done before…and the results are proven to be stunningly positive for the world at large.
We need to do so again, or else we will be treating the symptoms of the disease forver.
But the Japanese are dissapearing as a people even faster than the Germans and Italians. Their total fertility rate of 1.21 is nearly the lowest in the world.
Islam is fundamentally distinct from all of the other systems, in that Islamic doctrine REQUIRES its adherents to take over all political systems so as to institute a theocracy under shari’a law. They will use any means available, including the mechanisms of “democracy”, to make that happen.
“any means possible” is a very effective approach.
I concur.
I write this because this statement by the author -
“… for they all come out of a school of “political philosophy” that believes (with Thomas Hobbes) that religion is useful for socializing the masses but never to be taken seriously, and that what human beings really care about is individual self-preservation.”
Is NOT correct.
That is – Islam embodies the merging of the state with religion; creating a theocracy wherein the imam is also the mayor or governor or president.
Indeed look at Iran with its religious “Guardian Council”.
All government edicts are enforced via the beliefs and writings based on the Koran.
In short, Sharia Law is the basic law of society – it will trump any attempts at establishing a secular constitution.
Thus Hobbes is (still) corrects in his view that – in an Islamic society – self-preservation dictates that each individual will comply the imam under pain of death.
Hobbes can’t explain why millions of individuals are ready to blow themselves up. Now, that’s something we’ve never seen before, not even with the Japanese kamikaze. And he can’t explain why whole societies engage in suicidal behavior. I wrote my book, “How Civilizations Die,” to exorcise the ghost of Thomas Hobbes, to paraphrase his characterization of the pope — the ghost of reason, sitting on its tomb.
Actually this is something we have seen before in two variants. The non lethal movement of Christian Martyrdom who were immolated by the State as an act of faith. The closest parallel is the Islamic Assassins in the Middle Ages (Hashemites) who certainly would have blown themselves up had they had explosives.
I think the martyrdom moment is a variant (my word is perversion) of the concept of martyrdom from Christianity: to lead by example versus to force. this is the major problem – Islam is ultimately about conformity and force to insure that conformity. As such it is not incompatible with democracy per se ( if 80% agree on stoning, stoning it is), but with limited government and restraint. Aristotle’s’ criticisms of direct democracy apply.
Also a slight quibble re Hobbes – suicide in advance of a community’s goal can be within the contract, but just not of a sane man’s one, as he would see it from his perspective. At the age of 57 having slogged through Leviathan (last cracked 38 years ago), there was a lot more subtlety apparent this second time around. Or maybe I just need new glasses.
Hobbes can’t explain why millions of individuals are ready to blow themselves up. Now, that’s something we’ve never seen before, not even with the Japanese kamikaze.
Actually, we have – in any war. Humans will sacrifice themselves in order to assure themselves of immortality. This immortality may take the form of fame (in the case of Hollywood stars and rock-and-roll artists), it may take the form of one’s children and society (any soldier), or it may take the form of pleasing one’s god. Christians, of course, have allowed themselves to be Martyred from the very beginning (although deliberate self sacrifice is discouraged); Buddhists have martyred themselves in protest.
The unique feature of Islam, however, is that dying in Jihad is the only act that will guarantee the believer of achieving Paradise. The Christian and the Buddhist will allow themselves to die, knowing either that they have already achieved salvation, or that (in the case of the Buddhist) that it really doesn’t matter (a true belief in reincarnation will do that to you). Allah, however, is arbitrary and capricious (see especially Robert Spender’s Jihad Watch (http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam-101.html) and “The Arab Mind” by Raphael Patai). A Muslim can follow the 5 Pillars of the faith from birth to death and still be unsure of achieving Paradise. The act of dying in combat against the infidel, even if that death is self-inflicted, however, assures him beyond all doubt of immortality.
” Hobbes can’t explain why millions of individuals are ready to blow themselves up.”
Mao Zedong could.
The reason this guy can’t explain why millions are ready to blow themselves up is because there is no such animal. If muslims had such a suicidal impulse they wouldn’t have turned and run against Israel in ’73 or against the U.S. in Iraq during the Kuwait episode. Were muslims suicidal like the Japanese in WW II, they could’ve easily overrun Israel before Israel went atomic. The reason muslims don’t do so now is that they fear death and immolation, quite the contrary to what you suggest. Retreat is very much a word in muslim armies in history. Let’s not mistake a relatively few fanatics for a true cultural imperative as existed in Japan.
Muslims, generally speaking, don’t even come close to the fanaticism of the Japanese in WWII and that was a very specific cultural imperative, not to be generalized or transferred to other cultures. In recorded human history there are few examples of the impulse the Japanese had; the Balinese nobility sacrificing themselves against the Dutch or Indian cultures who had such fanaticism but never an industrial country like Japan.
I am a Swiss, and I often still instinctively tend towards being a neocon because I realize that pax-americana has been very good for the Swiss.
My father (100% American) always used to say that the biggest problem with the jews was that you never knew in a pinch whether they were more Jewish or more American.
As a Swiss, I often find myself defending neocons out my concern for the world’s freedom, far less than my concern for American freedom. I think Mr. Goldman and many American Jews, and most Neocons, do the same.
Lately as I have watched the federal government “progressively” encroach on innumerable freedoms, I have decided that Ron Paul is right. America should get out of all these foreign entanglements and centuries old blood wars. America should concentrate on her own problems which have run out of control. Israel and the rest of the west should concentrate on saving themselves. The Neocons and their obsession with fixing the world have become part of the problem. Until America is fixed (ie. the constitution restored) obsessing about the world problems just provides a platform for those who ignore constitutional rights to continue to abuse them.
I don’t see all foreign entanglements as a bad thing. Why wouldn’t we want to be “entangled” with countries that share our culture and values?
unfortunately those are not the countries we are entangled with.
I’m not sure your father’s comment about the Jews was relevant to the topic.
What is good for the Jews is good for America, and vice versa. If Hitler was not a deranged hater, he would have come to the same conclusion about Jews and Germany, and won the war, likely. Same for any country with the good fortune to have had the Jews on board, only to fall into failure when they sent them away or massacred them (the only major exception being England).
In your fathers remark there is something of the accusatory – the Jews are capable of dual loyalty, and therefore untrustworthy ‘in a pinch’ – which means they may ‘stab us in the back’.
(Note: I’m not talking Israel here. I’m referring to Jews living outside of Israel.)
I think the “problem” with the Jews is that they are too nice for their own good. They need to get some hair on the chest and stand up for themselves without excuses. You cannot talk biggots into treating you nicely. You have to hit the biggots over the head with a baseball bat. When you push (provoke) Jews, usually there is no resistance. It’s like Jews are unhealthily obsessed with being nice and civil. And that leads to lack of respect and ultimately to bullying. Jews needs to learn to crack some skulls.
I observe that that is the difference between a Diaspora Jew and an Israeli.
I think it was Desmond Morris who put it down to having a territory to defend, the Israelis have Israel, the Diaspora Jews have two thousand years of having lived on the sufferance of others. Viewed from that perspective, it easy to understand that some of them would try to be not-Jews, but the anti-Semitics never recognize the difference.
And what were your father’s observations about Swiss Americans? Greek Americans? French Americans? Catholic Americans? Were they also capable of being more Swiss than American or more Catholic than American? Or are Jews the only ones whose particular identity threatens their American identity? And just how loyal is any country to its Jewish citizens? Does the average Swiss see the Swiss Jews more like Swiss or more like Jews and therefore dangerous aliens, no matter how long they’ve lived there?
Jews are a different people than NW Europeans, or any Europeans, for that matter. Jews are a Semitic people (so are Arabs/Bedoins) from the eastern Mediterranean. Degree of similarity would go geographically – closer to Persians and Greeks. less close to Italians/Slavs, even less close to Germans/Scandinavians/Anglo-Saxons, or Celts.
“the biggest problem with the jews was that you never knew in a pinch whether they were more Jewish or more American.”
“I have decided that Ron Paul is right”
Ugh.
” I am a Swiss, and I often still instinctively tend towards being a neocon because I realize that pax-americana has been very good for the Swiss.
My father (100% American) always used to say that the biggest problem with the jews was that you never knew in a pinch whether they were more Jewish or more American. ”
The demented juxtaposition of those two statements is glaring.
Your father was, ” 100% American ” , yet raised a child who proclaims he is Swiss? And he had the arrogance to question the the Amercanism of Jewish Americans?
Perhaps he should have thought more and spoken less.
@ConfederateH – unfortunately your father (and probably yourself) seems to be a flagrant anti-semite (an unfailing trait of the Swiss) as well as simply ignorant. Historically Jews are as loyal to their host/mother country as any of the “100%” natives.
When someone asks me my ethinicity, I tell them I am an American. When they ask, “yes, but …,” I enjoy to point out that if you have to hyphenate it and “American” doesn’t come first, then you aren’t really putting your country first.
So speaking as a patriotic American, I’d like to point out that I can very much understand how a Swiss would like the U.S. to pull back into itself so that it can contnue to retain the spoils of war it stole from the Jews during World War Two, as the Swiss very nicely profited from its dealings from the Nazis and stole untold wealth from the Jews that moved their monies, art, and jewelry into Swiss banks by denying the Holocaust survivors’ families any access to that wealth.
The Jews have always been better to the world than the world has (especially the Swiss) been to them. And they have always benefited the countries they have settled in by providing that counry and its citizens many economic and technological benefits from their hard work.
What have the Swiss done for anyone but themselves? What have you?
Yes, right up until the time that the host country begins to try to exterminate them, at which point some of them revert, quite justifiably, to self-protection. Sadly, some simply accept their extermination.
Despite this solid and easily verified track record of benefiting the “host” country (an interesting choice of words, Sam), hatred of Jews runs so deep and is so irrational that nation after nation has chosen to turn on these benefactors.
There is no adequate explanation for this irrational behavior, except the supernatural one.
Reconstruction didn’t begin until AFTER unconditional surrender. Reconstruction in the middle of a war is a new concept. The late great baseball manager and war strategist Sparky Anderson said you don’t win the pennant in July. You don’t build a nation in the middle of a war, either.
Furthermore Reconstruction after the War of Secession was not a project of nation building on the part of the North. It was more akin to nation sacking. Reconstruction was the slow and bitter effort of a defeated people to rebuild their own society and economy, beginning with a system of share cropping, the rise of the textile industry (which moved south to exploit cheap labor), state land grant universities, and home grown industries such as Coca Cola and their patronage of educational and civic institutions. Reconstruction was not achieved until the economic boom of the 1960′s, which saw northern companies leave the Rust Belt for the Sun Belt, followed by the arrival foreign companies such as Toyota and Michelin. None of that was nation building on the part of the United States government. I know it because I lived through it.
Mr Goldman, do you think pardoning the Ba’ath Party members and servicemen and integrating them into a new somehow representative system would have made the difference in Iraq?
BTW Germany:
[i]… for the Germans and Italians both are disappearing as peoples.[/i]
Germany’s TFR seems to have been assumed as too low, as reported by the Max-Plank-Institute:
http://www.mpg.de/4411213/1_6_Children_per_Woman?filter_order=LT&research_topic=KG
Don’t you think there is some hope for Germany left?
Windhorst,
Petraeus effectively did that via the Sunni Awakening. Iraq should have been split up into the three Ottoman provinces from which it was amalgamated: an independent Kurdish state (and the devil take the Turks), a US-supported puppet Sunni state, and a Shi’ite state with a US troop presence on the Iranian border.
Wasn’t this Biden’s plan back when he was a senator? A plan, by the way, that the right has mocked him for ever since, proof of his idiocy.
This was actually the only reasonable plan Biden ever had.
The 2 neurons with an interposed spirochete convulsed, randomly, into just the right pattern that day.
Too neat for the West, would have probably resulted in war of all against all with the US sitting duck in the middle long-term and bankrupting itself.
“Petraeus effectively did that via the Sunni Awakening.” DG said concerning Windthorst cooment about “pardoning the Ba’ath Party members and servicemen and integrating them into a new somehow representative system would have made the difference in Iraq?”
I don’t know if “effectively” is the right word, I know the attempt was made way too late to be effective and yes the break-up into 3 would have been a better strategy once the Admin made the mistake of not keeping Ba’ath members and servicemen engaged and too busy to become a force in the insurgency.
I don’t think something like the Sunni Awakening was possible before 2006/2007. It took the “Petraeus Surge” to give the Sunnis a look into the brink and make them realize 1/3 to 1/4 loaf was better than national extinction. Sadly, by 2009, US politics had changed and we sold out the Sunni and moderate Shia. It was not pretty to see Sunni leaders who had fought side-by-side with us rounded up by the radical Shia dominated Iraqi Police in Baghdad.
I question whether a separate Shia mini-state around Basra could have resisted Iranian influence. A better solution was a moderate Shia and Sunni government in Baghdad to fight the radicals for control of Basra, as happened successfully in the Spring of 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Basra_(2008).
intlen
1.6 is still too low. The birth rate necessary to maintain the current size of the population is 2.1. The good news are that the researches cited in the article are talking about a reversal of the trend.
How much of that increase is from Muslims who have no intention of adopting German culture?
The increase is mainly caused by women in their late 30s or early 40 suddenly deciding to have child before it’s too late. So I guess it’s mainly Germans and other Europeans living in Germany
That’s also why the official TFR in the last 10 years was lower than the real one, because the researchers decided that after their mid-30s a certain generation would have no more babies.
I hope those projections come true for Germany. (Japan too has disastrous demographics, even worse than Europe).
A far better sourcebook for statecraft, for example, 1 Samuel 8: A government that can give you anything you want can take everything you have.
Thanks for writing. It is always worth my time to read.
There’s an old anthropological model of cultural structure – Clocks versus Steam Engines.
Clock like cultures are static by way of being cyclical, gears constantly turning on their axes. Buddhism, Hinduism, many animistic faiths, and those in between, such as Islam. Buddhism and Hinduism as well as perhaps Sufi Islam have developed these to the most refinement, with energies directed towards improvement and progress in the spiritual realm, but not so much the material and social.
Steam engines, on the other hand, are on the move from here to there, and are characterized by a drive towards progress in the material and social realms. Science, medicine, liberal democracy – these are the the best fruits of these cultures, and they are facilitated by a Judeo-Christian worldview such as promulgated in the Bible. One sees the greatest application of these concepts among Jews, and certain Protestant denominations, the former, not having an afterlife to speak of, driven towards progress in this world, and the latter seeing their bodies as tools for, rather than vessels of (cf Catholicism), the divine spirit.
These is for sure not a universally applicable paradigm, and one can find exceptions (do they prove the norm?), but it may be useful, in a rough sense, much as 3.14 is a good enough approximation of Pi for determining how much fencing you need around a circular pool.
The violent and intolerant forms of Islam we generally see arise, geographically, in the boundary between clock and steam engine cultures (east and west).
Their spirituality requires (often violent) manipulations of the material world. They do not produce medicines and airplanes, or even cell phones, but they can use the internet to help crash airplanes into buildings, and take cellphone pictures of Copts run over by military vehicles.
@Michael of Maine — you my friend have no understand of Buddhism, which is distinctly different from Islam, Judiaism and Christianity. Islam is borne from the same sources as Judaism and Christiantity and is a Western religion. Buddhism as well as Hinduism is an Eastern religion. Western religions place man above nature — God has given man dominion over the Earth, i.e. independent origination. Eastern religions put man squarely within Nature, i.e. dependent origination.
I do not think your clock/steam engine analogy is very good and if youi borrowed from some other pseudo-philosophrer, then they are not very astute. I’ll hit one of the many flaws: 1) clocks are the invention that enabled the exploration of the world, for without clocks, man could not discern longitude and it is the very invention of longitude that enabled long distance navigation across the oceans.
No – islam was NOT born from the same sources as Judeo/Christian sources. Rather it stole bits and pieces of both to make it SOUND the same, but by the time you get to the Mecca verses (written after both Jews and Christians rejected the pedo-fauz-prophet) it just becomes a mass murdering hate fest.
” Western religions place man above nature — God has given man dominion over the Earth, i.e. independent origination. Eastern religions put man squarely within Nature, i.e. dependent origination.”
I cannot speak to” western religions ” as I am no expert but as far as Judaism is concerned you are mistaken. Man is not only the last to be created but is created from the very earth itself. There can be no more ” dependent origination ” than that. The lessons of the Torah are quite clear- Man is supposed to live in harmony with nature. Allowing both his working animals a day of rest ( something entirely missing from so called eastern religions ) to giving his farmland a year of rest ( also lacking from eastern religions ).
I think perhaps you did not read the post carefully. I did not claim Islam was like Buddhism. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Islamic culture is neither a clock nor a steam engine. It is an explosive device. It has only the most superficial connection to Judaism and Christianity, based on plagiarized passages/concepts, and appropriated prophets. Islam is a bizzaro world version of Judaism and Christianity (much as the Palestinains are the bizzaro world opposites of the Jews. They are anti-Jews, in the same sense as anti-matter).
I did not make up this clock steam engine paradigm. I remember it from some undergraduate anthropology course, but find it useful.
As for the clock making navigation possible, that is a non sequitur. Irrelevant.
Having said the above, I enjoyed your response to the closet anti-semite (who may not even have revealed it to himself) confederateH, above.
David – You have expressed what I have been thinking on and off for a while: We have spilled all that blood and treasure for what? To make Iraq safe for Sharia (and for Iran)? Really swift of our political leaders (Bush included).
BTW Mo’adim l’simcha, chagim u’zmanim l’sasone. (Translation: Your intermediate days of the holiday — in this case, the Tabernacle fesitval – should be joyous.)
Jack – It did not have to be that way. By 2007/2008 Iraq was on the way to a balanced Sunni/moderate Shia/Kurd government with a pro-American tilt. We were not aiming to create Switzerland on the Euphrates. Jordan with oil wells (as I heard Sen. Lieberman put it when he was on the campaign trail for McCain in a Philadelphia area synagogue) would have been just fine.
We gave Iraqis a leg up and a chance. If they blow it that’s their problem. Until Islam stops being a Satanic death cult, the Muslims don’t have a prayer at a decent life or society.
Foreign entanglement is a requirement for the US, in order to keep: A. oil prices low until the US can develop its internal reserves (about 15-20 years provided Greens do not sabotage it) and then the US should of course try to move oil prices as high as it possibly can. B. Control of the Seas and key shipping lanes and choke points. C. Protect key allies and spheres of influence.
The US has no interests and no reason to care about the Lord’s Resistance Army, or Uganda, or much of West Africa. The US does have reason to intervene in the Gulf, and in places in North Africa, as well as parts of Asia. The Pacific as an American lake has profound security implications for the US, the experience when the Western Pacific was under hostile control did not work out well for us.
These are practical things. I see no relevance of the Bible to statecraft, rather Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Miyamoto Musashi offer practical, easy to understand advice that has worked out well for those following it over the centuries. The US has enemies, allies, and those who fit in neither category. [You are a bit unfair to De Gaulle, he was the only French officer who proposed to keep on fighting, and did, after May 1940. That counts for something.]
We could develop our own energy reserves a lot faster than that, if we were to begin to treat the eco-hucksters as the Saudi-sponsored traitors that they are.
The only rational foreign policy for us to follow is a stringently anti-Muslim one. In other words, exactly the opposite of what we have been doing.
It would also help if the eco’s would stop agitating against Canada’s tar sands oil. Right now (due to pipelines) that oil stays in Canada and the US and makes a $25 a barrel difference in the North American price of oil versus world price.
At the moment, a pipeline from Alberta to the BC port of Prince Rupert is out of the question due to natives raging against it crossing their land and eco’s not wanting oil tankers off the coast of BC.
Whiskey, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Miyamoto Musashi haven’t been that successful. Nothing of theirs is still standing.
I am sorry.
ta
Nothing? I think the Chinese will tell you otherwise.
@michael hoskins – Nothing? Really? These are the still very influential writings of key strategists from hundreds or more years ago. I think at least the Chinese would easily refute you. Or more likely laugh even louder than myself and my office mates are laughing at your ignorance.
I apologize for multiple postings – there has been considerable delay in them getting posted and I had assumed that the earlier posts were unsuccessful.
In other words, “Oops”.
Mea Culpa
I don;t get your point. I enjoy whiskey all the time, while Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Mushashi and evered strategists whose writings are influential to this very day. I find your comment silly and baseless.
Is there going to be a Kindle edition of your latest book?
D
“How Civilizations Die” is available on Kindle.
“America is left with an Iraqi regime that openly supports the strategic objectives of Iran, America’s most dangerous adversary.”
Technically, this statement is true. Stunningly misleading – yet absolutely truthful!
No secular with a modicum of knowledge and intellect ignores religion, particularly Islam and its dangers. To the extent that Suri did, it has nothing to do with secularism and everything to do with ignorance, political correctness and probably poor intellect.
The current circumstances of the US are what could be expected in the case of a dominant power: corruption, decadence and ossification at home, wasteful overstretching abroad. Those who contest this should provide one example of a dominant power not ending this way.
I wonder if David P. Goldman wrote the title of this essay, which is really about foreign policy, not secularism. The word “secular” has lost its original meaning, I think. It used to refer to a culture that lacked a state religion and that permitted religious pluralism, or no religion at all, as in the U.S. First Amendment and other sources. It was also understood that the very fact of pluralism tended to vitiate the authority of religion as such, and was and is opposed by some on the religious Right. I tried to clear the matter up in numerous places on my website, but see this one: http://clarespark.com/2011/06/02/glossary-to-some-terms-in-dispute/, retitled The Mass Culture Problem.
The title was entirely my idea, a play on Mark Noll’s “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” Sorry if the terminology is not precise enough to suit you, but the term “secular” conveys indifference to religion.
Thanks for the response to my query regarding authorship. You might not agree with the Wikipedia definition of secular, but it seems adequate to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity. I stand by my original comment and find the hostility to the separation of church and state to be quixotic and anti-Constitutional and potentially theocratic. And surely authoritarian.
The Establishment Clause is a Federalist Provision that has been twisted into something it was never intended to be….except by those who had an Anti-Christian agenda.
In a book about Japan, I read that with the introduction of rail roads the late 19th century, the demand for accurate time keeping increased and the Japanese became as time bound as everybody else in the West.
Mr. Goldman, twice now, I have seen your notices of imminent media interviews on this blog, only to realize I have just missed them. Can you post links to any podcasted interviews so we can hear them after the fact?
I have read and reread your book at this point and it’s one of the most startling theses I have ever encountered, both in its causes and effects. I self-identify as one of the 25% you mentioned, and have believed for some time that America’s problems are at heart spiritual. But I was inclined to see the low birth rate as caused by availability of contraception after 1964 and also as an economic issue with the high cost of raising a child as the most likely explanation, which could be alleviated by a better tax policy. I generally view socialism as envy driven nihilism.
However it is astonishing to see the nihilistic basis of the statist worldview laid out so clearly in its adherents’ failure to even notice or comprehend their failure to reproduce. The practices of Moloch are recycled as abortion and are as virulent as ever. The unfolding collision of Islamic culture with the modern world and its predicted collapse is as breathtaking as it is unexpected. Either we accept we are made in God’s image with inherent dignity, and hold life sacred, or we fail.
Thanks for the encouragement.
CNBC keeps a page of my appearances, which are sound-bites more than depth analysis. But in case you’re interested,
http://www.cnbc.com/id/36693570
Good thread. Glad Spengler has come to the world-class PJM stable. Wish I could agree with #9 Gary Ogletree –his is far and away the best attitude to try to maintain against the mouthful of ashes the Obama brain trust is determined we trade for presence atop what is probably the largest oil reserves on the planet –a presence that has guaranteed –even in the rise of the OPEC-pricing-monopoly-targeting Caspian Axis –an open-access auction market and unfettered global supply lines (not counting the bear shadow across key transit Georgia), including ‘freedom of the seas’.
Speaking of bear, the comment above re oil-exporters and possible hands in the high-tempo 20 year green attack on USA energy production, it has been pretty clearly a desk ion the Kremlin. Gorby’s San Francisco launch of Green Cross as his segue out of premiering the USSR dismantling, the cast, tone, and method of the mimetic warfare (‘America the pollutin’ natural resource hog’) –which has never touched Russia, the 13 time zone Gaea despoiler.
As far as the new by-December 31 2011 date-certain Iraq departure, many feel that the lack of any 9/11 repeat has had more to do with the US military being just over the sand line on the roads to Tehran and Damascus than any HSA wizardry (who to better police the hotheads than their OIF-unnerved masters?).
If this has been the case, we may know it soon enough. If the ongoing attack on the Dollar, faltering now along with the other NWO fronts (see Copenhagen Climate and Doha Trade, the Euro and the lingering cold response to Putin’s 2008 Georgia gobble), has another Soros plot to ploy, we’ll likely see it in the interregnum of boots leaving Iraqi ground and the Green Reds getting the boot from DC in January 2013.
Thank you David. I found this article refreshing.
Me too. When I am feeling emotionally pinched or spiritually exhausted, I don’t revert back to my favorite political commentators like Charles Krauthammer, or even my favorites of PJM like VDH seeking counsel. Don’t seek comfort from my good friends either, or my wife, or my mom. Don’t look to Ronald Reagan’s historical wisdom, or history’s great secular thinkers. Intelligentsia or academicians, nada.
Nope, I want the straight scoop straight from God’s Word preached like it should be preached. And it strengthens me like nothing else on earth.
Then and only then, am I ready to do battle.
“They know that there is a basic difference between a nation committed to the biblical concept of individual sanctity, and one based on mere submission.”
You bet the left knows too. After all, why wipe out religion as they are desperate to do, if it has NOTHING to do with how one regards a life well lived? They ARE seeking to build a life based on submission…to the state. It seems the only ones who don’t get it are, as you called them, the conservative intellectual elites. And since they don’t get it, that moniker is rather a contradiction don’t you think? There is nothing “intellectual” about them except for their own definition of what it means to be an intellectual. In fact, not that long ago, if the Bible did not figure in one’s understanding and knowledge of history and philosophy, you were considered to be the opposite of intellectual. Those “bitter clingers” are the learned ones.
Even in a secular taxonomy, it strikes me that the Marshall Plan or Reconstruction were more “nation RE-building.” There was human capital in the broadest sense, to work with, including not least the remembered history and remaining emotions of having been/being a nation. Setting aside the religious factor (only for the sake of this one point, as I agree it is very important), it seems to me that something like tribal Afghanistan is a completely different matter.
The only way Afghanistan will be a nation is if we leave.
As a “friendly” Afghan told my son, “These mountain tribes will never change. We know which villages the attacks come from, and will will completely wipe them out, but we can’t do it while you Americans are here.”
Islam is not a religion comparible to the others. It is a sociopolitical philosophy with a religious veneer. Observant Muslims pray the obligatory prayers, and follow the labyrinthian precepts of Sharia. It is a form of social control, a government by and for the Mullahs.
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– John Adams
Which explains why:
1. John Adams didn’t write the Constitution alone.
2. The word “God” does not appear in the Constitution.
3. The word “Religion” appears once in the Constitution.
4. The word “Lord” only occurs in the date.
John Adams may have had his opinion, but that is not the law of the land.
You’re mixing your metaphors here.
It makes no difference if Adams did or did not write the Constitution; this was the common kind of thinking amongst the Founding Fathers. Adams only gave voice to it.
Nor, is it a requirement that the government itself foster a state religion for Adams to be accurate. The religious and moral beliefs he speaks of are all internal, not some government-fostered program.
The law was written with the understanding that there were common norms among the populace: belief in their leaders, a sense of community, shared morals and ethics.
Those have mostly been abrogated in the last 40-50 years, and look where it has gotten us. A belief that the law is provisional if it suits you; the destruction of inner-city families via absentee fathers; rampant drug abuse; foul language the public “norm.”
I could go on, but you see my point.
I agree, Allston. One has to ask the obvious question: why risk a war to fight the British Empire? No-one dies for checks and balances. The answer is that the Americans were preponderantly radical Protestants, the losers of the English Civil War and the 30 Years’ War in Europe, including the remnants of German Protestantism. They stepped dripping out of a bloodbath to make their way to America and they knew what was at stake.
I see that your point is to falsely attribute the success (relative of course) of the Constitution to belief in middle eastern fairy tails. I used no metaphors, I stated facts.
The framers, many if not most of whom were religious knew this, and, to their credit, kept religion out of the Constitution. A Constitution for all citizens regardless of mysticism.
Religion has no place in secular government. As you say, it is an internal attribute and should be left there.
As to the author’s premiss, each and every example he sights as “nation building” was/is, in fact, the attempt to set up friendly governments in occupied countries. And it’s never worked long term. The desire for the rights of states and limited federal government is still strongest in the south. The Germans, who’s parents were saved from starvation by the Marshal plan actively resent our presence there.
For all of the good intentions and flowery prose, “nation building” is and always has been a huge mistake. It is better to leave our enemy to wallow in the ashes of their country after we destroy it. We would do well to remember that no nation of power has ever survived because other nations “respected, loved, or admired” it, only because other nations fear it.
It’s fine to be religious, but it is not a per-requisit to be conservative, nor to enjoy and be worth of the blessing of liberty as put forth in the Constitution. When I read articles or comments making religion a central part of conservatism I see more and more of the swing vote pushed into the arms of the Bolsheviks.
I suggest that you lack a full enough knowledge of the Founding Fathers, and thus are asserting ignorance as fact.
If you would like to see what the Founding Fathers thought on the matter of religion (especially Christianity) and government, look to the State Constitutions (which were written and approved by the same legislatures who ratified the US Constitution after having to revisit the Articles of Confederation). And read Joseph Story on the 1rst Amendment (here is a hint it was a Federalist Provision, it was a limit on Federal Government power, not a general restriction on Church and State.
But alas…
Its “tales”; not “tails”.
Please think!
If there were no God to reward the good and punish the wicked, if you were nothing but a chance collocation of subatomic particles, you would have no inherent, value, worth, or rights. And your notions would be no better than those of, say, Adolf Hitler. God is the ultimate Absolute. Try to leave Him out of it and you divest yourself of a creator, Father, Savior and Protector.
And you will never be able to explain life or intelligence.
Reply to the gentleman below.
As to my “ignorance” please point out a single example of my not understanding the lack of reference to religion in the Constitution with the exception of those I listed.
I don’t care what the framers said, wrote, thought, or did out side what they wrote in that single document. Unlike the leftists, and apparently you, I do not think this is a “living document” to be interpreted. It was written so anyone who was literate could understand it.
It is our Constitutional form of government, geographical isolation, and plentiful natural resources which have helped our nation flourish, not a mythological being.
Keep your religion, but keep it out of our government and out of our wars. As I’ve stated before, “nation building” is a folly, it has never accomplished what we’ve wanted it to do long term, it didn’t work for the Romans, the Ottomans, the British, and it’s not working now. When our nation is attacked the reward should be obliteration, not new schools.
Reply to “Escape Velocity”.
As to my “ignorance” please point out a single example of my not understanding the lack of reference to religion in the Constitution with the exception of those I listed.
I don’t care what the framers said, wrote, thought, or did out side what they wrote in that single document. Unlike the leftists, and apparently you, I do not think this is a “living document” to be interpreted. It was written so anyone who was literate could understand it.
It is our Constitutional form of government, geographical isolation, and plentiful natural resources which have helped our nation flourish, not a mythological being.
Keep your religion, but keep it out of our government and out of our wars. As I’ve stated before, “nation building” is a folly, it has never accomplished what we’ve wanted it to do long term, it didn’t work for the Romans, the Ottomans, the British, and it’s not working now. When our nation is attacked the reward should be obliteration, not new schools.
I don’t care what the framers said, wrote, thought, or did out side what they wrote in that single document — Al
And still you dont even understand that document…and that the Establishment Clause and No-Religious Tests in the Constitution were Federalist Provisions and not General Principles with regards to Religion and State(especially Christianity).
Your unwillingness to look at the State Constitutions and the deliberations of the US Constitutions within the Legislatures and people of import in the states, and any wider scope undoubtably helps you to cling to the Leftist, Secularist, Anti Christian, Atheist revisionist historcial narrative. Eyes wide shut.
As a Federalist Provision, it was a restriction on the Federal Government. The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was not to speak on these issues. The power to speak to these issues of Religion were reserved to the States…where they spoke if you are willing to listen….which I doubt, because you wont like what you hear.
Ive even given you the hint to look into Supreme Court Justice Joseph Stories works with regards to the US Constition, if you really want to understand that you are just plain wrong. The Church State Seperation was advocated by Madison and Jefferson, and they pushed that version of the general principle of Church State seperation in Virginia and the Virginian Constitution, where it passed not as a Federalist Provision, but as a general principle IN VIRGINIA ALONE of all the States.
Ignorance is not bliss. Willful ignorance is downright ugly. Willful ignorance in pursuit of an agenda is dispicable. Look at yourself in the mirror.
As a member of a small religious minority, I am glad that the Constitution does not establish a religion. And a republic cannot claim Divine authority (unlike a king, for example), and must base its authority on the people. Nonetheless the notion of “inalienable rights” with which all men are equally “endowed by their Creator” as in the Declaration is a restatement of the idea of Covenant: if these rights are “inalienable,” then God has limited his own power by granting them in perpetuity. And that is a distinctly biblical idea. The mere mechanism of the Constitution does not work without the underlying sense of sanctity of individual rights.
I may be restating the obvious, but government of, by and for the people should be the least amount of government possible; its only function to provide a civil society in which to live. Religious law, rules, traditions etc. are an act of Worship, a fact lost on Islam. For example, a given tradition promotes dietary laws that are not (now) health related. That is not a function of civil government. Observance is an act of worship. Period.
Its fullest end, as attempted by the Constitution, protects life and property to use in worship as God demands. Charity, therefore, should not be corporate, but individual. Charity is as much the act of giving, face to face, as it is the act of receiving, humbly, face to face. Charity is never a right, it is always an Act of Worship.
thnx
The following are the eight levels of charitable giving according to Maimonides-
There are eight levels of charity, each greater than the next.
[1] The greatest level, above which there is no greater, is to support a fellow by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others .
[2] A lesser level of charity is to o give to the poor without knowing to whom one gives, and without the recipient knowing from who he received. For this is performing a good deed solely for the sake of Heaven.
[3] A lesser level of charity than this is when one knows to whom one gives, but the recipient does not know his benefactor.
[4] A lesser level of charity than this is when one does not know to whom one gives, but the poor person does know his benefactor.
[5] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person directly into his hand, but gives before being asked.
[6] A lesser level than this is when one gives to the poor person after being asked.
[7] A lesser level than this is when one gives inadequately, but gives gladly and with a smile.
[8] A lesser level than this is when one gives unwillingly.
Why can’t the inalienability of human rights be owed to morality rather than a master in the sky?
And pls let’s not get into the “religion is the source of morality” stuff.
There is agreement there are positive and negative parts in the scriptures, so apparently the criteria to discern among them are external to religion.
Interesting discussion.
Doesn’t the D of I list reasons for the dissolution of a political relationship?
Whereas the U.S.Constitution list the framework/foundation by which a republic is to be built? The treaty of Tripoli 1797, Article 11 and several letters of John Adams point to the secular origins/nature of the federation of states.
Matters of conscious are to be the domain of the individual.
Morality-the group decision to form a society built on the recognition of individual rights (defending property, punishing crimes against the individual-murder, rape, theft)far predates the christian version. So a moral people need to be the foundation of a republic that espouses individual freedom and responsibility, however the only-religious-people-can-be-moral meme is coming to a close.
Yes, the spoiled brats of OWS show one avenue of freedom without personal responsibility, however, it does not follow that all who espouse freedom without a religious basis also espouse a lack of personal responsibility.
This grand experiment has proven that there becomes more than one way to skin the proverbial moral cat, and build a moral society based on a moral people that reach the same conclusion with different paths to common moral principles.
Peace
Please dear Americans: re-start some nationbuilding in Europe. “They” are trying to abolish us. I don’t want to be a EU’er. The EU-people does not exist. Never will. I want to be a Dane. A Danish Dane from Denmark.
The immigration and the EU is a crime against humanity. Sweden should be Swedish. Germany should be German. And so forth. Now we have the Middle East all over the European countries. The loss. All those fine cultures will soon be gone. Is it really the right of a small unelected pseudo-elite to take all that away from the world and away from so many peoples who have been against these changes for half a century?
It’s the conservative middle that has been side lines. God, king and fatherland and old Danish expression says. Core coservative values that now adays are deemed – yes: racist. The new slogan seems to be Allah, EU-president and EU.
It used to be that conservative middle that the left and the pin-stribed right lived of. The left took money from the conservatives as taxes and the right gambled with conservative money on the burses – the financial sector.
The EU-belief still is that the economic man thinking will sort it all out. They think that you can have “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” without the protestant ethics and the spirit of conservative capitalism. That the left and the pin-stribed right can keep taking money from those conservatives that they are trying so hard to disappear.
The US is looking at a very lonely future. Please help Europe. Or: the European counties. We are still nations. But barely. Please help the conservatives over here. For your own sake? For the future of all of us?
Universalgeni,
I am an admirer of the Danish monarchy, particularly King Christian X. The Danish-American artist Karen Gunderson did an equestrian portrait of him:
http://www.karengunderson.com/figurative/figure_1.jpg
I own Gunderson’s painting of King David.
http://www.karengunderson.com/figurative/figure_6b.jpg
Thank you for answering, David P. Goldman. I see that you understand the line of thinking that I wrote about above. I thought you would.
And I hope that you share most of it. Very, very likeable paintings. They speak of good things…
I’m sorry, – I see now that it is spelled bourse. Old English for exchange. Brokers and dealers. Just looked it up. I made more spelling errors but this one needed correction.
I have no idea how Europe gets itself back. I know the EU is strange in that, one of the first ever Industrial Revolution firms- in England- was a wool-spinning and dying company. With EU regulations, the firm could not afford to offer to sell yarns in colors that they had sold since they had opened- Queen Victoria and her children wore sweaters in these colors. No mas– that’s just so bizarrely incomprehensible- they had the capability- people wanted to buy- and there were regulations and fees standing between the transactors. Which means I, a consumer, will never, ever get to buy certain colors to make some very famous knits- not because it’s ugly, unavailable or any reasonable reason.
Also, I was counting- how big is big? B/c I was at a church picnic- and everyone had three or four kids. It’s not heroic, supersive families, but it’s above replacement rate- probably higher, since the really big families I know have a few kids who won’t even get married, much less have kids.
Families will be back the moment you start allowing for it. Parents still want children. Parents want a job, salary, colleages etc. – not nessesarily a career. There is a difference there that no one pays attention to.
Unemployment among the young is absolute poison for the birth rate. Many Europeans spend their fertile years as poor unemployed and can’t start a family.
And the siesta is mega-poison. I don’t read Greek. Don’t even know the alphabet. But look at this and tell me what you see. Look please: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Business_hours_Greece.JPG
You can’ have children in a siesta culture. Your childen will be grown ups before you meet them. In Denmark we have a 37 hour work week. And only 25 minutes lunch break. So: both parents (most) are home with their childern a litte before five in the afternoon. Some times the mum’s reduce their working hours hours a little. And our bith rate is more healthy than that of the siesta countries.
Note: don’t try to send mothers home. That too will kill the birth rate. If women are to chose between a job and children, they will make their choice. And the birth rate will look there after.
You must regulate your labor marked so that both parents come home from work at a decent time in the afternoon. America is ½ way a siesta society, right? How is your protestant birth rate looking? Worrying. Truely worrying, is how it looks.
Believing in God is a fine thing and I do. But he has very little to do with it. Let’s face it: that trick hasn’t worked since virgin Mary and that was some 2000 years ago.
Fertility among the white race – as a whole – is down. That’s where God comes in. Ask Abraham and Sarah.
what on earth? I was talking about a Lutheran church picnic. Mayonnaise on Wonderbread Lutheran.
I’m just curious, b/c the “big family demographic” always seems to have Mormons, with six or seven kids, or Catholics, with more kids. But I know families like that- I’m related to families like that, and there is a big chunk of “failure to launch” kids, mostly down the list- past #5 kid, usually. So, I’m curious about what “size” Mr Goldman is talking about.
And, yeah, yeah, god, sarah, abraham….there’s also reproductive endocrinologists, and IVF clinics.. I think half the kids in their age group passed through the hands of two particular fertility doctors. I want two more, not because I’m a brilliant super-mom, but b/c I like hanging out with the current ones. At my age, it means a trip to these same doctors. And, yeah, begging the God of Sarah and Abraham to lay some grace down on me. I don’t have nation- building plans, just- I like my kids. I’d like more. This helplessness and que sera–we’re human. god wants us to make stuff and create stuff. including medical technology.
which means I’m not a catholic priest, basically….
Why do you have to regulate the workweek? Why not split it? My husband works and I stay home. When the last little goes to school, I’ll work half-time. Maybe high- paying jobs need 70 hour workweeks? Tech jobs seem to need crazy hours. Why should the government force companies to shift hours.
I mean, okay, we said bakers can’t work 12 hour days, six days a week, in the Great Depression, so we got weekends off. But, 50 hours for a highly paid accountant is pretty normal. Or 60 hours for a starting programmer. The spouse worked 70 hours when he was first starting his business. He’s relaxing more, now, but still- at 37 hours he wouldn’t have a business at all.
@ Georgiaboy61: I’m not waiting. I’m advocating. Writing. Using the internet. And I try to call for support and more rhetoric. Using all democratic tools available. But we do need help.
Around 80 percent of the laws in Denmark comes from the EU. That is of cause also the case for the rest of the European countries.
Our parliament can’t make laws that contradict the EU laws. And the Danes only elect 13 out of 736 members of the European parliament – 1.8 percent. That was one point eight percent.
Then we have all the treaties and the EU courts such as European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights.
Verdicts from institutions like these have resulted in what we call Human Lefts. We no longer have Human Rights.
As a result we are overrun by immigrants. We have tightened as many immigration laws as we can. We do not have any more ways to refuse immigrants because of EU regulations. Danish courts often set our own legislation aside in these matters as well as in criminal matters and align their verdicts with verdicts from European Court of Human Rights and institutions of that kind. Our own national laws are not used as intended.
All the national parliaments in all the EU countries are powerless. It does not matter what laws they make or what government we elect. Left, right or center: they all have to adhere to European laws and the framework from European Court of Human Rights and other EU courts where judges are legislating from the bench.
In Denmark 17 – 20 percent of what we pay in taxes is used to cover expenses connected to immigration. That is one in every five or six dollars (or Danish kroner). Imagine that.
It is virtually impossible to fit immigrants from Muslim countries into the abor market. And the majority of all immigrants comes from Muslim areas. This imported social capital can’t read or write. They come from areas where the average IQ is 15 to 40 points below the Danish average. Thanks to cousin marriage some say.
The Danes can’t afford children of their own because they have to finance the immigrant burden as tax payers. The politicians pick our pockets. Have done so for decades.
It started in the early sixties. Guest workers. Not one opinion pole has ever shown a majority in favor of non-western immigration. On the contrary. So: we’ll soon be able to celebrate our 50 years anniversary as a people who have been against this consecutively for the whole period.
That was fifty years in a row. Not a mistake in writing.
We are not even a people anymore because of all these strangers.
What is going on has no democratic legitimacy what so ever. Not one single European country have a population that is in favor of what’s happening. We do not want this immigration. We do not want a cancellation of our nations.
The real problem is, that we do not have democracy any longer. Not in a single European nation. Elections, yes, but not democracy.
No democracy. We are powerless.
The absurd immigration and refugees laws came from the UN charter of Universal Human Rights. That’s where the EU got the blue print for their laws. In reality they serve as Europe’s constitution now.
The mess accelerated because of agreements with Arab countries about taking in some of their over-population in return for oil. The famous year 1973. There were no overpopulation. Not then. Not now.
After that came the “moral” inflation – such as leftism and EU judges legislating from the bench. And Europe strongly need help from the US in order to set the record straight. We need to address the UN so that we can get sensible Human RIGHTS back.
Europe can’t do it alone. We – the peoples of the European nations – have all of the legal apparatuses against us in all of the European countries. As well as the EU bureaucracy.
All protests are deemed racist.
It’s a crime unfolding. So many culture being lost. World heritage gone forever. Taking protestant ethics and the spirit of conservative capitalism with it.
We are starting to move out of the EU area now. Because we have lost our nations and our democracy. And barely enough freedom of speech left to tell the world what’s really happening.
Henry Kissinger’s problem will remain unsolved. Now that he do know who to call when he wants to talk to Europe no Europeans will answer the phone.
He’ll be talking to the inferior, non-democratic, theocratic Middle East.
We need help.
That is seriously crazy. And sick-making. How can you stand it? I’m furious that my local rep didn’t listen on ObamaCare. Don’t you have North Sea Oil? Can’t you tell the Arab world to go jump in a lake?
Good grief, in-bred? Don’t you have enough eugenicists still laying around? To stop that?
I am so sorry you are living through such an unfortunate theft of your country.
I’ve read the Amazon excerpt of your book and it looks very interesting.
But I see an interesting hole in your argument. If we are concerned with immortality and don’t think there is an afterlife, wouldn’t we want to have more children to make sure our culture continues to survive? It seems to me, then, that the lack of religion isn’t the reason to not have kids.
I think the reason people don’t have kids is that it is prohibitively expensive to do so. Kids are now enormous liabilities instead of worthwhile assets. And the joys of child rearing are diminished by the nanny state, which seems keen on sticking its nose into families.
Do you address this question and any potential ways to resolve it in your book?
D
Attaboy. Exactly right.
Ultra-orthodox Jews have lots of children due to religion, that’s true, but then everything they do is due to religion. And their growth may well be a serious risk to Israel’s existence.
Both secularists and traditional Jews — that is, believers who are not fanatic — decide matters on economic and personal grounds e.g. leave something behind, have support in old age, a family social life etc. It has little to do with god.
The sanctity of the individual comes from the Enlightenment, not the Bible.
Let’s not confuse the effectiveness of a religion with the truth of that religion.
The Enlightenment came from the words of St Paul defining the teachings of Jesus The Messiah.
Paul’s invention had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. Indeed, if a Jesus existed, he would probably turn in his grave if he saw what Paul did with him.
I strongly recommend THE MYTHMAKER by Hyam Maccobby, although I suspect it would not have much effect on you.
BTW, thanks for acknowledging that the source of Christian morality comes from the mouth of one man.
Your ignorance of Christian theology and philosophy is showing.
First, the Western ideal of the primacy of the individual is rooted in the Christian concept of free will, developed mainly by Augustine.
Second, the Enlightenment itself borrowed heavily from Christian sources. Descartes’ dictum ‘I think, therefore I am’ was a variation of Augustine’s teachings. And it was the naturalism of the Scholastics (mainly Dominicans like Aquinas and Albertus Magnus) that legitimized the natural world as a proper object for intellectual consideration.
Ironically, Luther’s sola scritura was a reaction against the naturalitic and Hellenistic influences found in Thomism.
Just bought your book from Amazon. When will you be in the D.C. area so you can sign it?
No current plans, alas. My publisher does not believe in book tours but in electronic media.
I don’t see it as secularists v. religious conservatives, but it certainly seems clear that Leftist predictably raise a lockstep preferred narrative over reality.
As I recall, GWB made it clear that nation building wasn’t the point of our Afghan campaign. And then somehow we have morphed into nation building there.
I was appalled to read of some new award for our military troops in Afghanistan under Obama, a military honor you might describe as the “kindest, gentlest soldier” award.
Andrew McCarthy discusses the downside of the hearts & minds thing in Islamic countries
Influential writings a life philosophy do not make. Note, they do provide some limited insights to certain parts of human organization, but a system of governance and societal organization? No.
I am glad your office had a laugh.
I only hope their work matches their egos?
The difference between arrogance and confidence is competence. Self congratulation is not a sign of confidence.
This should have been linked to comments above. Fingers sometimes do the talking. Sorry.
Mr. Goldman, re: “It is troubling how little capacity for self-examination we encounter in the conservative punditeska, the talking heads on Fox News and similar venues. After 4,500 dead, 33,000 wounded, and a trillion dollars, America is left with an Iraqi regime that openly supports the strategic objectives of Iran, America’s most dangerous adversary.”
The so-called “conservatives” who support nation-building in the Muslim world, are not conservatives and never have been; they are better-described as Wilsonian utopianists. The connection, it will be recalled, comes from President Woodrow Wilson, whose fervent belief was to make the world “safe for democracy.” Wilson was elected on the promise to keep us out of World War One, but took us into that conflict almost immediately. Wilson is also the father, with FDR, of that utopian dream the United Nations.
Many present-day Wilsonians are Democrats migrated to the GOP as adults, bringing their leftism with them, and clothing it in more respectable attire than the beads and bell bottoms of their youth. The sad fact is that a substantial portion of the GOP isn’t conservative, and has not been in many years. Dr. Russell Kirk would not recognize the party today, nor would Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater,or Ronald Reagan. These men would see our nation-building enterprise for what it is – a folly of historical proportions.
I was never convinced that it’s ideology that distinguishes between the parties, or that even there are significant differences between them.
Sure, they have different declarations for public consumption, but watch what they do (not what they say) domestically and internationally and they’re both the same: a kleptocratic alliance between the political and corporate systems – the former robs the public for the benefit of the latter in return for kickbacks that keep them in power. That’s also why the US is in decline.
The rest is conversation.
Well-done, Spengler, making the connection between Christianity and foreign policy wisdom. Many is the time that I have noticed the degree to which secularists misjudge the realities of the world and human events, because they lack the Biblical view of human nature – which teaches us that we are fallen, that we are not made for perfect things. This is what might be termed the tragic view of human nature, and it is one that informed our ancestors, who knew its truth from lived experience. Most of our political leaders no longer subscribe to this view, and in consequence, we engage in costly, tragic and tremendously naive adventurism of the kind Bush and now Obama are waging.
David,
I must disagree with you on what you would have liked to have seen in Iraq.
In my world view we should have found Gen Ali ibn Black Mustache from another of the Sunni tribes and made a deal. Anoint him and his tribe the effective rulers of Iraq, allow him to reconstitute the largely Sunni resistance back into an organized fighting force and allow them to impose their rule on Iraq while setting up base in different areas of the country especially the Kurdish provinces.
That would have left an American-backed Sunni country to counter-balance Iran and allowed America the room to intimidate those countries to liquidate their own Jihadists while giving the US a cleaner exit because the fundamental balance of power was restored.
Universalgeni, re: “Please dear Americans: re-start some nationbuilding in Europe. ‘They’ are trying to abolish us. I don’t want to be a EU’er. The EU-people does not exist. Never will. I want to be a Dane. A Danish Dane from Denmark” and “Is it really the right of a small unelected pseudo-elite to take all that away from the world and away from so many peoples who have been against these changes for half a century?”
Why are you waiting for us to do it, Geni? The United States has done nothing these last one hundred years but do the heavy lifting for Europe, in WWI, WWII, and then the Cold War. We saved your continent from the two most dangerous geopolitical threats of the 20th century – Nazism and Soviet communism. Cemeteries filled with the remains of American soldiers dot the landscape in places like Belgium and France. America is now going broke in part because we drained our treasury defended Europe for more than half a century. And how have you thanked us? By handing the continent over to Muslims, proponents of an ideology which can considered the 21st century counterpart of Nazism. Sorry to sound frustrated and angry, but when will Europeans themselves take up some of the burden? If the EU elites are giving away your birthright, don’t just sit there – do something! Rise up and throw them out of power!
A recent news item disclosed that 100% of the “cleared” (solved) rape cases in Oslo, Norway in the last year, had been committed by Muslim men raping Norwegian women. Where are Norwegian men in all of this? Certain cities in Denmark can no longer guarantee the safety of Jewish children, and will no longer permit them to enroll, because of the threat to them posed by Muslims.
We Americans with our guns and “cowboy” attitudes know something that many Europeans seem to have forgotten – that some things are worth defending, by force if necessary. If Europeans are simply too polite to resist the de facto invaders flooding into their nations, they will be overrun. It is that simple.
And this time, you may not be able to count upon America to come to the rescue.
By the way, I myself am half-Danish. My father was an American, my mother is a Dane by birth. It breaks my heart what is happening to Europe, but I am – unfortunately – entirely serious about not counting on us to rescue you again. If Europeans won’t help themselves, why should Americans help them?
I misplaced my answer – it’s sitting a little above this comment…
General Sherman, in his memoirs, clearly states the policy for Reconstruction – break the Southern aristocracy. Before one can build, one often must first destroy – and Sherman was good at it.
The Radical Republicans made a hash of it though. Like many government projects, it quickly became a corrupt boondoogle with scalawags and carpet baggers doing their worst. The idealism of the Abolitionists gave cover to criminals, much like solar power does today.
Mr. Goldman should note that Iraq wouldn’t be so cozy with Syria and Iran if the US maintained a larger military presence there. We have been too quick to pull out. If we had pulled out of West Germany after WWII, the Germans would have been cozier with the Soviets too.
Islam rose due to the weakness of other adjacent civilizations following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and a ruinous volcano. Much like a mental virus, their creed is designed to attack and conquer the weak.
Western civilization discovered new sources of physical power and had the internal cultural resources to support its expansion.
Maybe the era of cEuropean olonization wasn’t such an unalloyed evil after all.
The immature brats on the left are not going to have a moment of self-enlightenment. The Palestinian women throwing rocks at the Israeli tanks are not going to wake up and suddenly realize that they are hurting their children’s future rather than working to improve it.
Both of these groups do what they do because it makes them feel powerful to throw rocks at symbols of authority when there is no risk for themselves to do so.
They have no desire to work together with others to solve anything. Their whole game is to find a group of others to blame so that they can feel better about themselves. They will not change. They will not grow up. They will ALWAYS be useful idiots for those who seek to divide and conquer.
Steve, it´s hard to give an explanation about this, because the video it´s very short. I´m sorry.
ISLAM has it’s own language- what you need to know is that to a MUSLIM- ISLAM is demomcratic- even though his definition of that word is 180 degrees from ours.
Democracy in Iran gave us Ka-Ka-meni & A-mad-in-the-head, in occupied ISrael , err I mean, GAZA they elected Ham-asses.
In Egypt & Libya expect the same results.
Iraq is our own fault- when we wiped out the Sunni from power who did we think they would ally with but their brohter SHIITES next door?
Our pols and moral equivalencers still caNnot see AND REFUSE TO UNDERSTAND- they do not perceive the world as we do and “it’s the ISLAM stupids”
I do not agree that conservatives who support nation building are somehow not true conservatives. I disagree with them but I do not impugn their motives.
It’s not a question of impugning motives, just one of confused principles. Nation building by a state–true conservatives don’t believe the govt can do such things.
I see the liberal-conservative continuum as a circle — the extremes meet and where they do, they are not very different in totalitarianism instincts.
These Atheists dont understand that they are Anti Christian Civilization and part of the problem. They are unaware of their own ignorance, and are harsh critics based upon a lack of deeper understanding….they also cling to Leftist revisionist Anti Christian historical narratives (aka false historical narratives). Which is all bad enough, but they sneer at you, whilst they promote lies and Anti Christian narratives. Very unpleasent bunch.
Does that Christian civilization you’re referencing include the Spanish Inquisition and the Borgia popes? Just wonderin’.
The de-Islamification of Spain via the Inquisition was a necessary action. It’s why Spain isnt like Turkey, or threatened with seperatism and continuous wars in the Balkans.
In fact, we are going to need another program of De-Islamification if non-Muslims are going to prosper in the West in the future. I suggest the Jews not cozy up to Muslims in the West under the guise of minority empowerment and rights, and NOT to continue to vote for the destruction of Western Civilization by supporting Western Leftists parties and Anti Christian, Anti Western, agendas…for their own good. Sucking up to the Muslim authorities and assisting in the oppression of Christians and human rights abuse didnt pan out to well for them in Andalusia.
Does the secular civilization you’re talking abiout include the Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Khmer Rouge? Just wondering…
Christianity has an answer for the philosophical problem of the one and the many. Islam, on the other hand, knows that its foundation is weak and crumbing, which is why they must force their religion by the power of threats,as they did with Steve Centani. Thus, the state is combined and in fact is one and the same as with Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood now essentially controls moe than 60 countries. AQ is but one manifestation of the problem. The struggle is only beginning, not ending, and the end for them is the forcible implementation of Sharia.
There is no grace or mercy in Islam, as you say. Just submission. It’s as much a political-religious philosophy as anything, unsuitable for life in general.
Re: “I’m not waiting. I’m advocating. Writing. Using the internet. And I try to call for support and more rhetoric. Using all democratic tools available. But we do need help.”
Universalgeni, thank you for your reply. I sympathize with your dilemma. We face something similar here in America, where our elites have hijacked the political process and now ignore the people and enact policies that run counter to public opinion. I don’t have an easy answer for you, except to say that the Danes will have to call upon that same spirit of resistance they found in the darkest hours of WWII. I would only remind you that when the law itself has become corrupt, and no longer serves the right and the good, it is the duty of good people to disobey it, to find ways to overcome it. The E.U. has power over you and other Europeans only because you allow it to hold that power by granting it legitimacy. I have a friend from Italy who complains about the EU much as you do. What it will take for real change to occur, is for common people like you to organize, band together, and force it to happen. Look, for better or worse, the Yanks aren’t coming to rescue Europe, not as long as Obama remains in power anyway. Have you considered organizing an anti-EU movement in Denmark? That strikes me as your best course of action. I also recommend supporting men like Gert Wilders.
Re: “I do not agree that conservatives who support nation building are somehow not true conservatives. I disagree with them but I do not impugn their motives.” Spengler, I am entirely comfortable labeling Republicans with a neo-Wilsonian foreign policy of nation-building, as being unconservative – but that is only because my point of reference for conservatism is the constitution, and to a lesser extent, what is now called “paleoconservatism,” or the strain followed by Goldwater, Kirk, Reagan, et al. The label “conservative” has come to mean almost anything these days, depending on who is doing the talking, but if this much-abused term means anything, surely it cannot be expanded to accomodate policies so closely tied to historical progressivism, which itself was the polar opposite of the conservatism of the founders.
As for motives, the neo-con nation-builders may have had good ones, but so what? Private citizens have the luxury of considering motives in judging others, but we should hold our leaders to a higher standard, that of results. In the end, it does not matter that the nation-builders had “good” motives; history will not remember those. It will instead take a cold-eyed assessment of the costs and benefits, and will find the latter wanting. I imagine we are in aggreement on this point.
The revolutionary hobbyists can dress up and play their game. In the end, it will be how the elites exploit them that matters.
Oops, posted comment to wrong page. Sorry.
1. It’s true that the Straussians think religion is useful, not true; but I’m not sure it follows that they don’t take religion “seriously.”
2. I seriously wonder if they “get” Hobbes’ on religion. I’m much more familiar with Locke’s religion and among Locke scholars their view that he was a secret Hobbsean atheist is utterly contentious (though it is likely that Locke was a secret unitarian; overtly, he seemed Trinity agnostic). Likewise Hobbes never claimed to be an atheist but a “Christian” (and too could have been just a freethinking Christian).
3. Be these as they may, the Straussians foreign policy project had no problem enlisting a great deal of traditional, conservative, especially evangelical Christians to get on board.
Strauss had plenty to say on religion–he was a brilliant scholar, although on the wrong track, in my view. But the silence from that quarter regarding Islam is deafening.
I think they want Islam to reform itself to embrace the tenets of liberal democracy. The non-Jaffaites believe Christianity too, really wasn’t compatible with liberal democracy until through bloodshed it made itself so. Perhaps they see “that” as their Islam project. “Education” of liberal democratic principles in the Muslim world through force (ala Germany and Japan, their success stories).
Maybe. But I’ve seen no extended presentation on the subject. Turkey was supposed to the model of democratic Islam, and it’s turning into something very ugly. The Bush administration welcomed Erdogan. I guess we need to read the occult messages more carefully.
It’s my view that the Bush Freedom Agenda will lead to a wider understanding in the West of the ugliness of Islam, and the fallacy of the so called Moderate Muslim/Moderate Islam majority. Moderate Muslims are Extemists from Western perspectives.
This will allow the reality of Islam to be percieved more widely in the West, and a shift leading to the political will to implement a policy of containment which includes restrictions on Muslims in the West, their travel priveleges to and within the West, and the encouragment of Muslims who are already here to leave the West….even deportation and revocation of citizenship in some cases.
We will also, ala the Cold War, move to give military assistence to those on the perifery of Islam, like in Africa (Nigeria, South Sudan, etc.), India, Israel, and so on and so forth.
We will be able to correctly idenitify our enemy as Islam and not Terrorist Extremists, Most Muslims (Agents of Islam), not Extremist Muslims.
Which is a good development, as many in the West have lost the plot.
Japan is the exception that disproves Goldman’s claims.
A highly secular society wherein Christians constitute well less than 1% of the population, yet on of the two great successful postwar reconstructions. Germany being the other one.
Whether or not a country can be “rebuilt” depends not on whether or not it is Christian or Islamic, religious or secular, but on the level of civitas that exists in the culture.
Civitas in the sense of social order and cohesion, and a sense of civic duty – the existence of a widespread understanding of the benefits of working towards a common good.
Northern Italy has civitas and successfully rebuilt, while southern Italy, being tribal, failed to do so.
Iraq being an artificial post-colonial construct lacks civitas, so the prognosis is that the US effort will fail.
Afghanistan, a tribal society, also lacks civitas and the US occupation has a similarly high probability of failure.
Finally,
“Talking to religious conservatives is like breathing pure intellectual oxygen. They know that there is a basic difference between a nation committed to the biblical concept of individual sanctity, and one based on mere submission. They may or may not not know Thucydides, but they know the Bible, which is a far better source-book for statecraft. In short, the religious have a better education in political philosophy than their secular counterparts. They get the joke right off, while the secular types waste the declining days of their careers trying to defend the indefensible.”
Translation: people who agree with my point of view are brilliant.
How novel a revelation.
I never said that national success was the exclusive province of Judeo-Christian society. Japan modernized faster than any nation before it. By the 1930s, it had built the world’s best fighter plane. Japan also had a credible nuclear bomb program during World War II.
My argument is that Muslim society cannot deal with modernity, and it is scandalously wrong to talk about nation-building in Muslim countries without discussing religion.
As for southern Italy: Tribalism has nothing to do with the case. Naples, not Milan, was the premiere city in Italy until 1870. The Savoy monarchy ruined the south.
“Herman Cain was in 2nd place in most of the national polls, behind Mitt Romney. Apparently his message of ‘less government, more toppings’ has been well received.” –Jimmy Kimmel