From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun May 16 2004 - 03:10:37 BST
Wim said:
Yes, I'm glad that the problem is thus reduced a bit. But how big is it
still in your experience?
dmb says:
It's pretty darn bad. The USA has the highest rate of inequality in the
industrial West AND the USA is the most religious nation in the West.
Co-incidence? I think not. To be fair, religion thrives in the USA because
religious freedom is protected by her highest laws and always has been.
Wim said;
Is this 'manifest destiny' idea rooted so strongly in your culture that it
even influences people who don't consider themselves religious anymore
(maybe only 'spiritual' in the Gallup poll Platt quoted) and is this 'end
times' thinking even popular among people who wouldn't think of going to a
church where literal interpretations of Revelations are taught?
dmb says:
Definately. Manifest Destiny is part of our civic religion. Secularists buy
into as well. George Bush frames his foreign policies in religious terms and
openly asserts that the USA has God on its side, but the neo-conservatives
who have written about and planned for the democratization of the
Islamic-Arab world don't put it in those terms. In fact, the original
architect, Jean Kirkpatrick, openly espoused an unprincipled stance toward
democracy and human rights. We'll use the principles of freedom to sieze the
moral high ground when deal with thugs and tyrants tht we DON'T like, she
said, and we'll just keep quite about the same violations when they're
committed by thugs and tyrants that we DO like. That's a long way from
saying that freedom is a gift from God given to all humanity, as Bush has
said. And yet, both of them just sort of assume that the world should be
shaped and led by the USA.
And even I have to confess that it does seem like the world's best shot at
global democracy. Not while these reactionary fools are at the healm, but in
the long run, the West, if not the USA alone, will have to take the lead.
Wim said:
...Americans obviously ARE educated to think irrationally. (by politicians
employing 'manifest destiny' thinking, by bestseller writers employing 'end
time' thinking) The problem may be how to change the patterns of that kind
of education rather than how to strengthen other types of education that
compete with it?
dmb replies:
What on earth are you saying? Politicians and popular writers are considered
educators on YOUR PLANET perhaps, but not in this world. And the suggenstion
that Americans would be better educated, not by improving the educational
system, but by demanding better best-sellers and political rhetoric is way
past weird. C'mon Wim. I'm only suggesting that people who know HOW to think
are less prone to irrationality. I'm only suggesting there is a link between
the quality of education and the level of irrationality within a culture. Is
that really even debatable?
Or perhaps you were giving me an example of Dutch irrationality? Yikes.
dmb
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