DCrom - I accept your explanation.
Stop putting words in the mouths of people. Nobody says it’s ok because they’re nasty Jews. By saying this, you’re doing exactly what the Bush administration is doing: distorting the truth to make your point. Incidentally, this is also a two way street: there’s plenty the Israeli government does to Palestinians that is morally reprehensible, but I don’t hear you arguing THAT point.
Last time I checked there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence of any connection between Saddam and Al Quaeda. Keeping on repeating it does not make it so. Even Powell admitted to that.
Everybody agrees that Saddam was evil and the world a better place without him, BUT this is not what was sold to us as a reason to go to war. Now that the real reason turned out to be phony, this administration is turning to the alternate reason. It still remains that the American public was deceived.
Thanks. Though we come in all political stripes here, I regard people here as my friends.
I’m willing to argue - passionately! - for those beliefs I hold most strongly, but I do listen to others, too. And though it’s hard, I can be - and on occasion, have been - persuaded to change my views on a subject.
Just to be clear - I’m accepting that you didn’t intend to offend anyone. But I do not see the accusation that someone else has forgotten Nazi Germany’s crimes as a product of differing politics. I see that suggestion as an imposition, a replacement (if you will) of their position, with one they never stated. I’m not really certain you yet see the error in that.
Actually, I agree with you on this. And I suspect the majority of people in Israel might agree with you on some points (I was amazed at the bitterness I’ve heard on the issues of settlements and the exclusion of religious students from military service by more secular Israelis - the religious parties can afford to be among the most hard-line: their sons don’t need to serve).
There are no entirely unstained hands in this, but it’s fairly easy for me to choose between the flawed and the utterly repugnant - which is precisely how I’d describe the actions of the two sides.
[quote=“DCrom”]
there is at least some evidence he may be slipping information/aid to Al Quida (who most definately > are > our enemies . . .
[/quote]Last time I checked there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence of any connection between Saddam and Al Quaeda. Keeping on repeating it does not make it so. Even Powell admitted to that.
Evidence of full cooperation - no. There is, I believe, evidence of a certain amount of information flow and tacit aid (passports, free passage, etc)
And given the state of hostility that existed between us, and Hussain’s unwillingness to cooperate in disproving it, as well as his open support of other terrorists (such as Hussain’s much-heralded support for the families of suicide bombers), I believe action was justified on that count alone.
[quote=“DCrom”]
He did his best to make himself look dangerous. And succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.So: we either took out a real enemy or (worst case) deposed a vile, evil, dictator who did his best to > look > like a real enemy. I can live with that. And it looks a far sight more moral than the EU leaderships blind opportunism.
This > was > a war for oil - being fought with words by the governments of Germany, France, and Russia. Pfui.
[/quote]Everybody agrees that Saddam was evil and the world a better place without him, BUT this is not what was sold to us as a reason to go to war. Now that the real reason turned out to be phony, this administration is turning to the alternate reason. It still remains that the American public was deceived.
And if you look at last year’s State of the Union message, or Bush’s speechs to Congress justifying the war, you would see these were NOT listed as the only, or main, justification for war. Anti-war people keep repeating this, but the full text of the speeches don’t back this up.
BTW - Clinton in 1998 stated that “unquestionably” Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. UN reports a year or so after that 1999-2000 made the same claim. Maybe Hussain had fooled all of them. Maybe he had destroyed them all. Maybe - given the several months of delay imposted by UN shilly-shallyiing - he was able to destroy, bury, or send them from the country. But it was only after the war that people dared to started claiming Bush made it all up.
U2, as I said: I misunderstood Claudine. That part of my reply to her was based on that misunderstanding.
I may state things strongly, and I may get things flat-out wrong sometimes, but I will do my best to answer fairly. And if I see I made a mistake, I’ll admit it. I may have a lot of faults, but I try to avoid intellectual dishonesty.
Yeah, I believe you intended to be fair from your own perspective. I didn’t think your writing masked some kind of evil intent.
Thanks. As I said, I basically like most of the posters here, even when we have very different worldviews. I think we’re reaching an area where tempers are frayed, and strongly-held-beliefs differ.
I’ve said my piece (a lot more than I first intended), and will try to resist the urge to jump back into the thread. Best wishes to all.
Dana
If I were to compare Americans to Europeans, I think I’d turn to Shakespeare for guidance.
“I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon.” -Love’s Labour Lost
psssssst…if the big word sounds strange, just look at it anagramically–
“Hi! fabulous tit in idiotic brain” 
No, seriously…the big difference between Americans and Europeans is this:
- How does each respond to something that isn’t free?
- How does each interact in on-line communities? Does one confront the other with the silent, but otherwise loud, “I’m better than you,” inbetween the lines, and the other one respond “(sigh) excuse me, I really need to be going now.”
- If one criticizes the other, will the other vigorously defend themselves or try to find common ground? (never trust your opinion of yourself)
Because of my statistical obsession, I’ve logged those of us who are the most vocal detractors. There are two broad categories:
Superficial Detractors. These are people who just pop in from time to time to rip on us in some personal way, but are just as likely to say, in their next post, “Coca Cola sucks!” Superficial detractors rarely go beyond the elementary and personal insults like “X sucks” comments.
Dedicated Detractors. These are the people who consider it their personal mission to educate the world on whats right and wrong. And, their focus is often with the craft of inventing arguments for agument’s sake.
Now Hume is an interesting case. First of all, he’s Scots, which is a BIG difference in this respect. Second of all, I don’t think he is “as impersonal and analytical as they come.” Not after reading Kant, who in his introduction to the Prolegomena even cites to Hume for starting a thought that Kant took further.
Third of all, my claim is one of those blurry, soft ones that tend to disintegrate whenever you look closely at one particular spot. Doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to run through the list and test the hypothesis. In fact the exceptions are particularly interesting: Nietzsche seems to work quite well in English, where as Schopenhauer doesn’t really. Quine could written in German, but not Dworkin. Kelsen had to write in German (he was very neo-Kantian of course), but Rawls couldn’t have. Correction: He could have, but the book would have been 30 pages rather than 300. 
I hereby dedicate my online existence to detracting from this sort of asinine drivel. I am trying to add a smilie but it’s sticking in my keyboard.
Reflecting on Bloom’s comparative post as well as recent submissions by others on topics of literature, philosophy, religion: so much brain power, all drawn together here through whistling. Smartie-Pies.
You forgot history, weeks!
For the record: though I think that Israel is in the wrong on settlements on the West Bank (unjustifiable from any practical or moral standpoint, but a constant stick with which their opponents can beat them), the willingness amoung EU to equate that with the out-and-out-terror campaign that is openly sponsored by the Palestinian Authority shows a truly remarkable amount of self-willed moral blindness. And the statements issued condemning Israel for measures like the security fence while either ignoring or applauding Arafat and his bloody-handed minions just reeks of the open Jew-baiting supposedly condemned to the musty past. As do the vandalism and violence directed against Jews in both France and Germany.
I think it’s a mistake to brand serious, even mistaken, criticism
of Israel as anti-semitism or Jew baiting, and that do so serves the wrong
interests. I’m unaware of the Palestinian authority’s 'openly
sponsoring an out and out terror campaign. ’ To my knowledge Arafat has repeatedly condemned terrorist attacks on Israelis.
I take this
to be the bottom line: Sharon
came to power determined to destroy the peace process
because Likud wanted expansion and settlements, a Greater Israel. Negotiators on both
sides had drawn dangerously close to a workable
settlement in the months after Camp David failed,
and it was at this point that Sharon
called off the talks. Part of Sharon’s program was
to destroy the Palestinian Authority (at least partly
because then there would be no one with whom
to negotiate peace), and the sidelining
of Arafat was part of it, because it was bound to
result in a badly divided PA that could
not effectively negotiate anything. An unelected prime minister who
negotiates with Israel while Arafat, the elected
leader of the Palestinians, is under seige by Israeli
troops cannot have the backing of the Palestinian
people; nor is he likely to be able to
reign in Hamas. Continuing terrorist
attacks are the cover Sharon has been
exploiting to expand the settlements
and to continue to destroy the PA.
The branding of Arafat as a ‘terrorist’ and,
on several occasions when Palestinian cease fires
were holding and terrorist groups
were effectively being reined in, the provoking of
terrorist attacks (by assassinating political
leaders of terrorist groups) have been part of Sharon’s means.
The constant humiliation
of innocent Palestinians, collective punishment,
and the continual excessive use of force (‘The Palestinian
people must be made to suffer until they
chose responsible leaders,’ I quote Sharon), have
been another way of keeping terrorism
going. If peace were to break out, expansion
would have to stop; Sharon’s policy has been
to make sure this wouldn’t happen; he is
determined to block a negotiated settlement,
because in anything at all fair, Israel
will get less land than he wants.
European criticisms of Israel are
principally a realistic reaction to this,
not bigotry, IMO, and serve the cause
of peace.
Also, there is considerable anti-semitism
in some European countries, I’ve seen it myself,
but that is another matter. Best
Wow, this one is too late to jump into but I will make a few rude statements here.
Me and pthouron should hang out sometime.
I would also like to thank Europe for their declining populations. Now only if the rest of the world could get in line and follow your example.
Dcrom, you just reminded me about how much better Republicans are at forgetting what ACTUALLY happened and how great they are at blaming Clinton. And you said we could destroy anybody and everything if we wanted to… ever hear of the cold war? Ever hear of mutual guranteed destruction? Russia and the US could have killed everything but guess who haulted that? My buddy Richard Nixon helped get us out of that one. My enemy George Bush has put us back into danger saying he wants to research “tactical” nukes which abandons our nucleur arms agreement with Russia (Not the only agreement or accord he has abandoned). So I wouldn’t talk about how we have no ambitions to invade other countries or kill innocent people because we have almost triplet the amount of innocents killed between afghanistan adn Iraq than were killed in Iraq and in NYC by the terrorists. You had better learn a bunch of tunes by the next getogether cause you don’t want to get into a political discussion we me
And just for good measure, I want to thank the Europeans again for not pumping out 6 kids per household.
I would just like to second everything Jim said up there regarding Isreal and Palestine. It’s the absolute truth and the perfect breeding ground for terrorists in Palestine. If my house got bulldozed over and I was forced to move my home without any reason or compensation I’d be pretty pissed too. Not having enough water or freedom of mobility would really make me mad too. People often forget the Gollan heights that control almost all of the water in teh region is controlled by Isreal which they siezed. So the palestinanians don’t get any water.
Hmm, it’s a touchy subject to talk about and you can quickly get labelled an racist. I wonder why the Arabs don’t get a oscar award winning movie every year on top of several made for tv movies to remind us of their tragedies.
I’ll try to respond briefly to Gary’s latest very long, very contentious and very confusing post. As far as I can tell, Gary’s complaint is that Weigel offers no footnotes for his statistics. In fact, Gary seems to suggest that there may not actually be any looming decline in absolute population, although it’s hard to tell because he also does refer to declining birthrates.
I know I’ve been reading statisitics on this topic for the last twenty years or so in newspapers and magazine of every conceivable stripe and I assume that Weigel took it for granted that his readers would be generally familiar with the popular literature on the subject. For the disbelievers, if you go to Google, type “birth dearth” and press the “Enter” key you will be presented with “about 42,000” references. I suppose a more imaginative person than myself could come up with a better search phrase and have the relevant statistics at their fingertips in seconds. For example, if you type “falling european birth rates” you get “about 110,000” references. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that one or more of those “about 110,000” references contain the relevant statistics. Welcome to the internet, Gary. Perhaps Weigel had reason to expect that his readers would be familiar with this concept, after all.
As for Gary’s suggestion that we needn’t be concerned about an absolute decline in population because science is extending our life span, I’ll leave that to a mathematician or statistician to explain in detail and will simply assert: those numbers don’t work. The greater the percentage of non-reproducers past child bearing age in a population with a birth rate at non-replacement levels, the sooner and more steeply your population will start to decline in absolute numbers.
Brigitte: you understood me correctly the first time. Moreover, I wasn’t complaining that you had confused my views with those of the author but instead was complimenting you on drawing precisely that distinction. Since you’re working so hard at your English and my German is so rusty, I’ll try to explain why I think we’re saying approximately the same thing about what I call “clericalism.”
My view is that many Europeans are not essentially anti-religious but rather are anti- the clerical establishment, be that Protestant or Catholic. The close association of religion and the state in many European countries has tended to discredit religion in the eyes of many, and they resent paying taxes to support that religion. I think it was DCrom who explained to Claudine that in the US we have little real experience with that type of situation (prescinding from certain niceties of what I like to call American “history”). The result is that religion in America is very much a bottom-up phenomenon rather than a top-down phenomenon. What I mean is, if you decide to drop out of organized religion, there will be no higher authority taxing you or enforcing rules of piety, etc. Participation is essentially up to the individual. The result is that, while there is certainly a thriving cottage industry of religious detractors and those who decry clerical hypocrisy, there is very little of what I call “anti-clericalism” in the US.
Coca Cola sucks.
So I thought I’d respond to this thread, and so I wrote 1300 words, but I’ve decided that it’s not worth the hassle (for me or for anyone trying to decipher it). I have stored it as an example to myself, but may revisit, edit, and submit later on, depending on how much time I have.
As a short comment on this article: I agree most closely with what Gary has said. Elendil, you may slate his second post as being contentious and confusing; I think that his points are valid, and not that far off the mark. Yes, he is being a little too blunt, perhaps, but you should have seen my 1300 words. And I wasn’t even close to being finished. Vitriol was gushing forth.
Weigel seems intent on establishing a contrast between the US (the shining light of the democratic project, it seems) and ‘Europe’. Some of his points are valid, if applied purely to the European Union and its workings, but are woefully inadequate in terms of individual countries. Likewise, some points work if applied to an individual country, but not to the EU as an entity. Weigel seems confused as to the differences between the US and the EU. There is not enough parity or commonality to make a broad comparison between the two. The EU is not a ‘United States of Europe’, just as the US is not an ‘American Union’. This is the first (and a very valid and important) point, in my opinion, which must cast some doubt on his subsequent statements.
I think perhaps that one of the EU’s most important strengths is its lack of homogeneity. For example, should the President of the EU ever decide to (for example) bomb, say, Guatemala, because there are terrorists there - we know there are really; they might have big nasty weapons that could kill us all, but they won’t let us look, so they must have lots - the EU as a whole would realistically never let this happen. And, while Weigel sees this as a fault - a fatal flaw, really, and the crux of his argument about the EU backing away from democracy and binding itself in bureaucracy, as far as I can see - I (and probably many other Europeans) see it as a strength.
I could go on - I would like, however, to hear your response to these points, Elendil. The issues of anti-religiosity being at the root of all evil, and of the world’s problems; and of Islamic fundamentalists just waiting in the wings to take over all the countries of Europe once their indigenous populations have fallen below a sustainable level, are, in my opinion, so far-fetched as to be in the realm of conspiracy theory. I must say, though, that the fact that Weigel sees these two issues as being central to his argument prompts the question: why is only Christianity (ok, and grudgingly Judaism, but even the Jewish philosopher/historian quoted used Christianity in his argument) deemed to be of moral importance? Surely the vast majority of Muslims do not subscribe to the views of the fundamentalists - otherwise we would all have been overrun by those evil people who are into jihad by now. And surely Christian fundamentalism is just as dangerous and morally reprehensibly as Islamic fundamentalism. Yet only Islamic fundamentalism is pointed to as evil, and to be stopped, in this article.
Gary’s comment about the Puritans being recognised as religious fundamentalists and locked up in Cuba, should they arrive today, is (I feel) somewhat incorrect - judging from this article, they would be more likely to be welcomed with open arms, and invited to share their views on the religious decline of Europe with Weigel. That this article is being viewed as a valid piece of research and scholarship shocks me.
I have written enough - 650 words is excessive, even for me.
I do not mean this as an attack on anyone’s beliefs, rather as a critical look at what seems to be an inherently flawed treatise on matters of importance to all of us.
Deirdre
fluter_d wrote:
Vitriol was gushing forth.
Geez! Forth from where?
fluter_d wrote:
Weigel seems confused as to the differences between the US and the EU. There is not enough parity or commonality to make a broad comparison between the two. The EU is not a ‘United States of Europe’, just as the US is not an ‘American Union’.
There doesn’t seem to be much point in comparing commonalities, but why not compare differences? That might be an interesting and useful exercise.
fluter_d wrote:
Surely the vast majority of Muslims do not subscribe to the views of the fundamentalists - otherwise we would all have been overrun by those evil people who are into jihad by now.
A cursory reading of history would suggest that the reason “we” have not been overrun is actually due to superior force of arms. Were it not for Poland’s famed Winged Hussars at Vienna under Sobieski (when the French, characteristically, were allied with the Turks) and the Grand Coalition under Don Juan at Lepanto the history of Europe would undoubtedly be rather different. And history would also suggest that you oughtn’t to be quite so sure.
fluter_d wrote:
And surely Christian fundamentalism is just as dangerous and morally reprehensibly as Islamic fundamentalism. Yet only Islamic fundamentalism is pointed to as evil,
Um, while I have no sympathy with Christian “fundamentalism” I think the “fundamentalisms” involved here are somewhat different. In general, I think it’s a bad idea to apply the same word to diverse realities. It leads to confusion and sloppy thinking.
fluter_d wrote:
Gary’s comment about the Puritans being recognised as religious fundamentalists and locked up in Cuba, should they arrive today, is (I feel) somewhat incorrect - judging from this article, they would be more likely to be welcomed with open arms, and invited to share their views on the religious decline of Europe with Weigel.
Why you or Gary should choose to extrapolate from this article and speculate as to the likely reception that religious fundamentalists might receive upon disembarking in America is anybody’s guess. I certainly can’t figure that. However, having read Joyce’s “Ulysses,” I’m quite sure I wouldn’t like Ireland at all.
fluter_d wrote:
And surely Christian fundamentalism is just as dangerous and morally reprehensibly as Islamic fundamentalism.
and then for some reason added:
I do not mean this as an attack on anyone’s beliefs
Where I come from, characterizing someone’s beliefs as “dangerous and morally reprehensible” constitutes an attack on those beliefs, but, hey, suit yourself.
Have a nice day. As for the vitriol, I say: Let it rip! It’s only words. Right?