After All We’ve Done For Them, Why Do They Hate Us?

A follow up, answer, another viewpoint…

The title is somewhat rhetorical. Hate–in its undiluted, culturally-disseminated form has only one reason–the perpetuation of local power–for the individual, the power to insist that he/she is right and refuses to countenance criticism, implicit or otherwise; for the state, the power to maintain power in the face of outside insistence on change. . If those against whom the hatred is directed are unfortunate enough not to see how they play into it, then the issue becomes complicated. What we now see in the Middle East and many other parts of the world is a hatred based on local potentates (single rulers, committees, vested interests, or cultural hegemons) desire, need, hunger to maintain a privileged position in their section of the world, something that became more and more untenable int he aftermath of World War ll.

Can that really be? After the decades of beating ourselves (namely, the West, which includes Europe, North America, and certain isolated pockets here and there and may now, paradoxically, include Japan, but certainly includes Australia, and may in time include India…) for our “responsibilities” in causing global problems (such self-recrimination soundly based on the legacies of a colonialist past), maybe it’s time to revisit some of that surplus self-loathing and see where the responsibilities actually lie.

The current exacerbating events of the current mess are all from the same source–the end of the second world war and the onset of the Cold War. Lest we forget, WW ll was …

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Not All Creationists are Christians

While I was wasting spending time looking for intelligently written and clearly presented arguments for a Young Earth, I came across a suite of sites that are well worth the time to peruse. They are beautiful, ornate, and relatively well-reasoned. Visit www.evidencesofcreation.com and some of its links. It's not a…

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It’s The Thought That…

     Senator Rick Santorum, Republican, Pennsylvania, is having a difficult time getting re-elected.  He’s fighting a hard race against someone who has more moderate views.  I’m not altogether thrilled with his opponent, either, but Mr. Santorum–who has now taken the tactic of showing the people of Pennsylvania that they should vote for him because he can bring federal money to the state–is a banner emblem for the fundamental problems of the Republican Right.  Lest we forget what he’s all about, I remind you that he is a social conservative who doesn’t Approve.

Doesn’t approve of much of anything representative of a liberal society.  Let me here pick on one of the things as example of his mindset.

Homosexuality.

(As a point of debate, let me state up front that my issue with this has nothing to do with my own sexual orientation.  My support of gay rights is a bit broader than that.  I am not gay–but I am a sexual being, and one of the major points that gets overlooked in these debates is that when the specific proclivities of one group of consenting adults is attacked, all groups are attacked, because what is being attacked is a variation.  While there is only one “natural”  way to procreate, there is no single “natural” way to indulge in sensuality.  Note, most laws in this country that have sought to limit homosexual behavior have in the past not stopped there, but have gone on to enumerate specific actions for illegalization, actions with …

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You May Have It Cockeyed If…

Science cannot disprove the existence of god. I have heard this claim made so often and by such a broad spectrum of people that I rarely really think about it. But is that the end of it? Science is concerned with materialism ( in a philosophic sense) and does best…

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Moral Bias

I’ve been thinking about this since the initial post on our biases and all the responses.  In the course of trying to come up with an “appropriate” response to the world, we often find ourselves caught up in endless exception-making, fudging, attempts to shoehorn certain proclivities and habits into convenient moulds so we don’t go through our days constantly flinching at our inadvertant insensitivities. 

Does it do any good?  The flinching?  I mean, after the Sixties, one had to have been living on Mars for half a century not to be aware that there had been a Big Shift away from what might be called Gross Cultural Reliance to a more nuanced approach which has been (often derisively) termed Political Correctness.  The former is a condition wherein one “borrows” wholesale from the culture to make associational choices.  It doesn’t occur in this instance to question the wisdom of the culture–it’s what it is, and we are part of it, ergo…

But we realized that the Culture At Large was in many ways an Idiot.  It stepped on people.  It made too little room for variation.  It tried to be all things to all people, but it was necessary that all people somehow be The Same in order for that to work.  Those with a vested interest in keeping everything the same mightily resisted movement to change the rules.

We never did come up with a solid formulation that allows for prejudice.

You have to, you know.  What we ended up …

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