If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.(Link)
For abundant proof: Here. And here.
Or just wade through the merde that is any comment thread on any progressive blog.
68 comments:
Beautifully said.
I couldn't agree more that there must be tradeoffs and I believe the FF did a great job of doing just that.
Professor Berlin died in 1997. I wonder if he would have been as optimistic had he lived to see the rise of the Islamic terrorism with the apparent acquiescence, if not approval, of much of the world.
Plus, when thwarted, they can literally be driven mad.
But, in fairness, there are lots of people who call themselves progressives who aren't revolutionary utopians and don't believe any methods can be justified. Plus meliorism is alive and well on much of the right, with some pretty dramatic consequences. Indeed, modern Western thinking is so infused with notions of progress and improvement that we may now be unable to understand any mentality that doesn't share them or, even more disturbing, rejects them.
SKipper,
Well, thanks for the Link.
The original text is rich in wisdom, and I rarely find a text of this kind with which I couldn't agree more.
But if you do take his message, you should be aware that "progressivism" and "conservatism" can well share different but equally doomed prescriptions for us all.
Clovis:
True, but.
I could well be wrong, or at least falling prone to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, but I don't see anywhere -- outside Islam -- where those that could be labeled as conservatives have collectivist desires, or go nearly to the lengths as progressives to demonize and delegitimize those who disagree.
And I'm not sure Islamists could, strictly speaking, be considered "conservative". They suffer the same hubris as progressives, but it isn't at all clear how Islamists means or ends are even remotely conservative.
They are, though, collectivist.
Gee, can Bret explain how the spam above passed the anti-robot test?
Skipper,
I don't think it is hard to find examples, among the conservative American hard-Christian-right, of behavior not so different from the Islamist ones you decry.
And a point that may deserve better appreciation by Libertarians is that excerpt of your link:
"Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep." ... "So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals."
Clovis wrote: "...can Bret explain how the spam above passed the anti-robot test?"
Y'all are being subjected to captcha? I have it turned off.
By the way, I'm surprised that captcha still works. I'm sure that the current level of technology could beat it. I'm not sure it could do it without using a lot of CPU cycles and therefore having more cost than it's worth.
Darn. Signed, E, ROBOT
the conservative American hard-Christian-right
Oooh, isn't it amazing how those words add up to a modern scary bogeyman for adults? "Bobby, if you don't settle down and go to sleep, the conservative American hard-Christian right will come in the night and eat you". Change any one word and the whole effect is lost. "The conservative Canadian soft Christian right"? The conservative Brazilian hard Jewish right? Nope, doesn't do it. But so terrified are we by it that we don't even pause to note that Clovis's argument that they emulate Islamicist behavior is absurd.
Peter wrote: "But so terrified are we by it that we don't even pause to note that Clovis's argument that they emulate Islamicist behavior is absurd."
But ya know, trying to force the teaching of Creationism in schools is far worse that hacking off people's heads left and right. :-)
Bret,
Yeah, I am still being subjected to captcha. If you have any doubs about by humanity, I would say that's ironic coming from a Libertarian.
Clovis;
I don't think it is hard to find examples, among the conservative American hard-Christian-right, of behavior not so different from the Islamist ones you decry.
I don't think it is hard to find examples, among the "liberal, American hard-Atheist-let, of behavior not so different from the Islamists ones you decry.
Therefore...?
As for you subsequent paragraph, that is precisely why I am a minarchist and have a "maximizing consent" philosophy.
Peter & Bret,
I wonder how much time have either of you spent in a "hard-Christian-right" church, listening to their sermons, before making fun of my comment.
I have a very close friend who did spend time in a few, around the time of Iraq war. I can tell you, the Holy War sermons he heard and described to me would make any passing Islamist feel at home.
But I guess the suggestion you may know less about your fellow neighbors than this far distant Brazilian may sound too ludicrous, isn't it?
Interesting that Clovis didn't ask me :-), because I have spent quite a lot of time in such places and I find Clovis' friends' characterization vastly different from my experience.
AOG,
---
I don't think it is hard to find examples, among the "liberal, American hard-Atheist-let, of behavior not so different from the Islamists ones you decry. Therefore...?
---
Therefore follows my initial point, to which Skipper first replied, that "if you do take his message, you should be aware that "progressivism" and "conservatism" can well share different but equally doomed prescriptions for us all."
AOG,
As far as I remember, you go to a Lutheran church. They are usually not among the ones he described.
Now, if you did go to one where the bloody war passages of the Old Testament were being used to defend the death of Islamic people, well, than you better tell me how different you think that is from the Islamist positions Skipper so much condemns.
With the word: AOG...
Clovis, it’s the lord’s work you found us or we'd never know it's our neighbors, the hard-Christian-right (close relatives of the slave-owning democrats who turned republican just in time to abuse the post-reconstruction darkies in the south and the capitalists who whipped the coal miners and burned children alive in sweat-shops) who've been chopping off the limbs of the poor unfortunate cripples among us and who are stoning to death the girls whose bodies litter the streets because they whined about being raped. s/off
Clovis,
I'll take your word for it that the american hard christian right's sermons are every bit as vitriolic as Islamists' sermons. Having been in neither's place of worship I wouldn't know. Has your friend really been to an ISIS sermon in Syria to compare?
Anyway, what I do know is that there haven't been very many beheadings at the hands of the american hard christian right's hands, at least not for many, many decades. To me, the actions are more important than the alleged rhetoric.
Like Bret, I compare actions rather than words. The other fun thing I get to think about: several of my evangelical friends are more tolerant than many of my progressive friends.
Clovis;
Let me quote you
--
I wonder how much time have either of you spent in a "hard-Christian-right" church, listening to their sermons, before making fun of my comment.
--
I answered that directly, and you moved the goalposts.
--
if you did go to one where the bloody war passages of the Old Testament were being used to defend the death of Islamic people
--
I have to admit, that's the first time I've seen the "No True Scotsman" fallacy used on the offense.
P.S. You should really have brought up the Reverend Wright's church and sermons, that'a much better example and well documented. Or maybe Al Sharpton, who has caused actual deaths which his speechifying.
I'll go with Bret and Howard - real world effects, not unverified claims by "a friend", are what matter.
Howard, one thing's certain, fundamental christians aren't anti-Semitic like most lefties.
Bret, there hasn't been a christian beheading in my lifetime -- that I know of, but Harry will no doubt tell us of some obscure historian who has written about a cult of beheaders in the hollers where he grew up.
Errr the Robot test is back -- bigger and better.
AOG,
I will take your answer as... [crickets].
Bret,
I did not try to establish an equality between Islamists and the American Christian-right, that's only your rhetorical device.
I've only pointed out you can find some defending attacks on Muslims using the Bible. That's an example of delegitimization practiced by conservatives, and one Skipper apparently didn't think about.
Another is, of course, the Nazi movement, which you guys very conveniently try to deny as being related to the Right. I don't want to get back to that discussion, but it is too easy to proclaim your side as never at fault and, when someone points out one, you excluded that as being in your side. That's indeed the "No True Scotsman" fallacy in operation, AOG.
but Harry will no doubt tell us of some obscure historian who has written about a cult of beheaders in the hollers where he grew up.
Or that his uncle was one. In any event, he will assure us that it is only because of the tireless struggles of secular leftists over the past thousand years that all Christians aren't beheaders.
Clovis, what about that two million strong conservative Brazilian hard-Voodoo right? Seems to me they're a real scary threat to international peace, no?
Peter,
It may look funny from outside, but they do scare the hell out of a lot of people down here.
And thanks to PC, they have been lately able to bully people around very effectively. You see, they can carry both the religious-minority and race cards, that's a powerful combination.
I've only pointed out you can find some defending attacks on Muslims using the Bible.
Clovis, the birth Mohammed is put in the 7th C. C.E. and the bible was written considerably earlier, so it is very doubtful that anyone can use the bible to attack Muslims.
And as for Nazis being of the right as in "hard-right-christians," since Harry hasn't stepped up to the plate to explain that ridiculous contention, why don't you explain it to us.
Peter,
Voodoo rightwing fascists in Brazil and they play a race card too??? Whoa!
I thought all the rightwing fascists in Brazil were garden variety nazis who left Germany while the going was good after that war that was won by the mighty Soviet armies. I think it ended in the 40’s sometime. If I remember correctly, some of the rest of the world also played a minor role in it.
Too bad we don't have a real newspaperman around here to report on good stuff like this.
Erp,
You didn't know? Most Germans who emigrated to Brazil back then were either people running from famine between 1890 to 1920, or Jews running from Hitler in the 30's.
How anti-Semitic you are for mocking them here?
Erp,
By the way, you clearly know very little about the bible, Muslims and anything related to Old Israel and their surroundings.
And you say you studied in a Catholic school? I am shocked they were already that sloppy back then.
I don't mock innocents only fools. Many nazis went to South America, Brazil in particular.
The bible isn't studied in catholic schools. They have a catechism of their own for students.
Many Nazis went to Argentina, Erp. A few went to Brazil, and mostly in illegal ways.
Far more Nazis went to the USA than to Brazil. One of them was the mastermind that gave you intercontinental missiles and made your travel to the Moon possible.
I know you do little research, but you ought to do your homework one of these days Erp...
Clovis,
I'm completely lost.
Given that you wrote: "I did not try to establish an equality between Islamists and the American Christian-right...," how was I to interpret this other quote by you?: "I can tell you, the Holy War sermons he heard and described to me would make any passing Islamist feel at home...?"
So your pointing out that Islamists would feel right at home with at least some portion of the activities of the "American Christian-right," in particular the "Holy War sermons," didn't mean that you were trying to describe any sort of "equality" between them.
In that case, what were you trying to say? What is the point you're trying to make with the fact that somebody heard something called a "Holy War sermon" (I have no idea what that even is) given by the so called American Christian Hard Right? Other than trying to create some sort of equivalence between some subset of Christians and a subset of Islamists, I don't know what to make of this rather ill-defined information.
I suspect several of us are confused by this.
[Clovis:] I don't think it is hard to find examples, among the conservative American hard-Christian-right, of behavior not so different from the Islamist ones you decry.
I think you are missing something very important.
I don't spend a lot of time in church these days, but I'm not completely unfamiliar with Christianity, or sermons. In Christianity*, they typically fulfill a single goal: exhort the listeners to a kind of behavior or belief. They underly that exhortation with a promise, or threat, of what will happen in the afterlife should the listeners fail to take the exhortation on board.
When people claim the Bible is just as bloody a document as the Quran, they miss one extremely important distinction. The vast majority of the Bible's sanguinary content is time-bound to people's that, whatever the historical facts, haven't existed for at least a couple thousand years.
In contrast, the Quran's murderous incitements are perpetual and, given the insistence on its absolute truth, difficult to dodge. There simply is no Christian equivalent to Islam's attitude towards apostates, for instance.
Christians — not even the Westboro Baptist Church — threatened anyone on this mortal coil.
Compare and contrast with the steaming merde routinely spewing forth from Islamic clerics.
Google [islam cleric outrages] and [christian pastor outrages].
The results are very different.
*The contemporary version, where contemporary means pretty much anything over the last couple hundred years.
Another is, of course, the Nazi movement, which you guys very conveniently try to deny as being related to the Right.
What we guys (or at least I) deny is that there is any meaningful difference between "Left" and "Right". They are both absolutist and collectivist; they both have personality cults; they both have priesthood analogs; they both have sacred text analogs.
Okay, there is one difference, although I'm not sure how meaningful it is. The Left (communism) sees its collectivist ambitions as being universally true. The Right (Fascism) confines its collectivist ambitions to an ethnically defined group — "the Nation".
That, IMHO, isn't an important distinction, unless one wishes to consider that the scope of communism's destruction far exceeded that of the Nazis. Fascism is self limiting.
I've only pointed out you can find some defending attacks on Muslims using the Bible.
I'm not at all sure what you are talking about. As erp said, it simple isn't possible that the Bible can be used to attack Muslims qua Muslims. Now, if the Bible was used to attack Muslims qua non-believers, that is very different.
But even so, I'm hard pressed to find any reference to what I think you might be saying. How about a link or two?
Wow, I am mesmerized. I thought it was only Erp, as usual, but hey guys, seriously?
I guess Judeo-Christian traditions are indeed fading away for good. I did not expect to find a group of adults (and old ones at that), who call themselves conservatives, and yet without a clue of our old traditions.
Skipper, the only thing you learned when a kid in church was that sermons are to "exhort the listeners to a kind of behavior or belief"?
And our guys with Jewish background - weren't you supposed to learn all that before making 13 years old? Or you carry the Jew identity card just for the benefits, and let the tradition to those guys in kippahs?
So let me ask you a few questions. You think the problems of Israel with the surrounding people you call Muslims nowadays, is a new thing that started circa 1948? Or not, that only by the 7th century they started beheading a few Jews around?
And you have no idea of what is the biblical reference from where you can locate the begin of their clash?
Oh my...
Back at ya', Clovis. It takes a particular kind of modern rationalist mind to draw straight line causal connections between "exhort the listeners to a kind of behavior or belief" to the kind of brutal theocratic intolerance that has characterized the Muslim world frequently and widely. Too much Dawkins. There have been theocratic experiments in the West, but they have generally been unusual and short lived, and the last ones were several hundred years ago. Secular dictatorships, on the other hand, have been more frequent, modern and brutal. You know that much-repeated secular shibboleth about how more people have been killed in the name of religion than in any other cause? It's a bunch of nonsense.
As we are beating you up on this thread, I feel constrained to defend Brazil's honour about the war and Nazis. You are quite right to be outraged at being confused with Argentina, although, I trust you appreciate how you all look the same to us. :-)
Clovis, We don't call people Moslem or Muslim as it’s now spelled, that's what they call themselves. In my youth, they called themselves Mohammadin, but that became offensive – similarly as it's offensive now to use the word, oriental, to denote someone (or for all I know, even something) from the orient; the politically correct word is Asian??? A distinction without a difference, but then what else is PC all about?
You may not be aware, that some, maybe most, Protestant* sects to not consider Catholics to be Christian mostly because Catholics do not believe the Bible to be a playbook. It is also contradictory, e.g., “An Eye for an Eye” as opposed to “Turn the Other Cheek.” The nice thing about the U.S. is that everyone can pick whatever religion appeals to them and let others go about their own business either attending a place of worship or not, so one is not required to “sit through” religious diatribes of any persuasion.
To repeat, Mohammad invented Islam in the 7th C. AD (Common Era). As you are sure to know, the calendar was changed around a bit, so these time frames aren’t exact, but the Torah aka as the Old Testament goes back to at least to 400 BC (Before the Common Era) or about a thousand years before Mohammad; the New Testament was written later around the historical time of Christ or about 500-700 years before any Muslim trod the earth.
Please provide some evidence for your ridiculous assertion that the bible speaks to Muslims or retract your statement.
____
*I was on a board of an organization that was a precursor to RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program). It was privately funded and started by all the protestant churches in his area, IIRC there were about nine of them and the local synagogue (the local catholic church was not invited to participate). The board was non-sectarian. There was no mention of the bible or other religious issues discussed – only matters of assistance to seniors in the area – and BTW this was a long time ago before I reached senior-hood myself.
Peter, Clovis may not recognize that you have your tongue firmly in your check, so to help him, here is a link to page after page of Nazi-Brazilian links.
Clovis;
I will take your answer as... [crickets].
I will take that as "la la la, I can't hear you!".
I am with the rest here in failing to grasp your point - you want to make an equivalence that's not an equivalence.
Also, I note in terms of crickets that you fail to provide any specifics for these passages / claims / sermons, just "they're bad!".
The question here is not whether such things as you claim happen (every large groups will have its nuts) but whether such things are pervasive or significant, a point on which you have utterly failed to deliver. As far as I can tell your sole evidence is "things your friend heard", although my personal experience is dismissed with "[crickets]".
Erp,
Congratulations, I see you started learning how to use Google. It is a firt step.
The next one is to filter through all those links to extract useful information.
If you do, you'll learn that from the 9.000 Nazis projected to have escaped to South America, nearly only 20% end up in Brazil.
Compare that with estimates of a few dozen thousands Nazis going to the USA, and you have just confirmed what I told you before, but now using your own links. Good girl.
Clovis, why are you so defensive and quibbling about illegality. Nobody's is denying nazis went elsewhere besides Brazil, only that a large number of them did go to Brazil and they weren't voodoo doctors.
Why should I filter the links? You're the one who said, and I quote: A few went to Brazil, and mostly in illegal ways.
Here on planet earth, 20% of 9,000 is a substantial number and none of us have any idea if that number is correct because you didn’t supply a link.
Study my methods for an effective method of conducting a reasoned discourse. ;-}
Erp,
---
Please provide some evidence for your ridiculous assertion that the bible speaks to Muslims or retract your statement.
---
Far from me to impose to you "to “sit through” religious diatribes of any persuasion", but since you express to admire the Jews while showing so little knowledge about them, I'll tell you a bit about their beautiful traditions.
There was once a great man named Abraham, who was born in Babylon from a merchant who adored shallow idols. Abraham had the great vision of realizing there was only one God, and was the first to establish with Him a pact. He abandoned the easy life of the city to live like a nomad and to establish his own people, who would be God's own. Later in life he had his first son, names Ishmael, but out of his wedding: it was with the Egyptian midservant (Hagar) of his wife (Sarah). That happened with approval of Sarah, who thought she could no longer bore children. Yet, by a miracle of God, she could later on conceive too and there was born Isaac - whose offspring would be what you today call Jews. Ishmael - a bastard and now outdone by a legitimate son - was later on expelled from Abraham's home, and went on to found the Ishmaelites, a good number of them being what you call Arabs today or - since more than 92% of Arabs follow Islam - what you call Muslims now.
Well, you may be tempted to dismiss all that as mythology, but when you take aside a lot of messy details, it remains the fact that Arabs and Jews share many genetic traces, and indeed came from common populations in the ME.
More than that, they have been in dispute through wars from a long time now, a few of them registered in... the Bible. And that, Erp, answers your question - the later on developments related to Muhammad, almost a thousand years later, were not a whole new book, only a new chapter in that long brother rivalry.
You should also take notice that Muslims do take the above story (with a few tweaks) to their heart too, and act accordingly.
Clovis, Arabs and Jews are both Semites -- on that we can agree.
AOG,
---
As far as I can tell your sole evidence is "things your friend heard", although my personal experience is dismissed with "[crickets]".
---
I recognize the limitations of my source, yet I do believe he listened what he listened.
I did not dismiss your personal experience, I only made it clear I did not consider Lutheran churchs part of the "hard-Christian-right" (the "hard" is there to indicate the far part of the spectrum). And contrary to the "No true Scotsman" fallacy you mention, my "hard" adjective was there from the begin, scroll up and take a look yourself.
Bret,
---
In that case, what were you trying to say? [...] Other than trying to create some sort of equivalence between some subset of Christians and a subset of Islamists, I don't know what to make of this rather ill-defined information.
---
An equivalence would mean two-subsets identical in every way.
What I pointed out was not that. I pointed to one single aspect (the use of the scriptures to justify war acts) present in at least some of those subsets.
I have no idea of the size of those subsets, nor of what more they would have in common, so how can I pose an equality?
It was supposed to be an example of intolerance among members of a conservative and non-islamic society, just to make a counterpoint to Skipper's comment. It may well be a non-representative one, but that does not make it invalid.
Clovis;
I did not consider Lutheran churchs part of the "hard-Christian-right"
I've spent time in Lutheran churches and I have seen some that I would count as "hard right". Unless, of course, you define "hard right" as "saying the things my friend heard". That's the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Clovis wrote: "...a counterpoint to Skipper's comment..."
I see (maybe). So you just wanted to put forth an exception to Hey Skipper's "but I don't see anywhere -- outside Islam -- ... go nearly to the lengths ... to demonize ... those who disagree."?
So if Hey Skipper had written "I don't see many places" instead of "I don't see anywhere" you wouldn't have written your "counterpoint?"
Bret,
Yes, you get me now.
AOG,
Let me try a definition of "hard-Christian-right": churches that only accept literal interpretations (hence creationism) coupled with high levels of proselitism, and where rightwing political directions are delivered from the pulpit, usually with very Hawkish tendencies.
The Lutheran churches you went to still qualify?
Clovis - whatever. If you get to define your terms to suit your argument, you are of course correct.
AOG,
Can you provide another definition of hard-Christian-right? You never asked mine.
'The vast majority of the Bible's sanguinary content is time-bound to people's that, whatever the historical facts, haven't existed for at least a couple thousand years.
'In contrast, the Quran's murderous incitements are perpetual and, given the insistence on its absolute truth, difficult to dodge. There simply is no Christian equivalent to Islam's attitude towards apostates, for instance'
Holy cripes! There sure is. And not thousands of years ago, or even hundreds.
Still after all these years, erp's depths of ignorance continue to startle me. No, erp, the believers never called themselves Mohammedans. That was the Christian bigots.
Harry, actually it was the faithful themselves whom I knew and who were guests in my parents' home who referred to themselves that way. Their kids were my friends.
In those days Mohammadins were indistinguishable from any other Albanian immigrants. IOW they were hardworking family people just like we were.
You are getting dangerously close irrationality with these rants.
Clovis;
Sorry, you're not our dear Mr. Eagar so I presumed your definition of a term was the standard one. That by "hard right" you meant the standard political meaning. E.g., against single sex marriage, disbelief in global warmening, lower taxes, less regulation, etc.
You may want to look up the terms "literalist" and "fundamentalist" as terms describing religious belief, those may be closer to whatever definition you have in mind for "hard right".
Mr. Eagar;
Your comment is so filled with your usual specific detail, examples, and links that no one can dispute it.
AOG,
But if I wanted to talk about the hard-right only, I wouldn't have used the term hard-Christian-right.
And if you think a bit, my definition covers yours and more. It is the "and more" part that mattered here.
[Clovis:] Skipper, the only thing you learned when a kid in church was that sermons are to "exhort the listeners to a kind of behavior or belief"?
Yet another example of why it is best to quote directly and completely. What I actually said was directly and exclusively with respect to sermons only: in my experience, they fill two functions only, and none of them, ever, come anywhere close to the murderous vitriol that routinely spews from Islamist clerics. Contrary to your assertion, I can't find any attacks on Muslims using the Bible, whether as a source of condemnation, or as an actual bludgeon.
If you can, by all means do us the favor and provide links.
[Harry:] Holy cripes! There sure [is a Christian equivalent to Islam's attitude towards apostates]. And not thousands of years ago, or even hundreds.
I'm calling shenanigans. Unless, of course, you can provide some sort of evidence.
I'm betting you can't.
Skipper,
---
Contrary to your assertion, I can't find any attacks on Muslims using the Bible, whether as a source of condemnation, or as an actual bludgeon.
If you can, by all means do us the favor and provide links.
---
As I said, my source was a friend and the sermons he listened to. I could spend some time in the internet trying to find something, somewhere, that fits with his descriptions. But I won't, for two reasons: i) I'll loose my time, for it will still be difficult to argue how representative that is, and ii) by what I've seen up to now, the sermon's message will be probably lost at the crowd here.
So Clovis are you now retracting this as proof of biblical attacks on Moslems?
Erp,
You do give me the dull feeling of arguing with a wall. I give up.
Clovis, I take that as a no and you continue using as an argument something from an Islamic website (I actually saw the same website) you apparently copied and pasted -- naughty naughty no citation -- as proof that "hard-right" Christians whom you cannot even identify are using the bible to vilify Moslems.
FYI - Mohammad credits the Arch-angel Gabriel for revealing Islam to him. I guess he was part of the hard-Christians too because Judaism doesn't speak to arch-angels.
Erp,
At this point, I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about.
I basically described to you a bit of Genesis. It happens to be in the Torah and in the Old Testament. And the Quran, with a few modifications. I guess I first heard about it when a very little kid, sorry but there were no websites back then, Islamic or not.
How do yout get to almost 90 years old so largely ignorant of your own culture, Erp?
Nothing you have said has shown that the bible speaks to Moslems because as has been demonstrated, they didn't exist until Mohammad converted Arabs to his new religion well over a thousand years after the any of the holy books of Jews and Christians were written.
That's what I'm talking about Clovis.
Mohammad cleverly appropriated snippets of earlier holy books into his own even adding some biblical characters into Islam to give his fantasies credibility. He wasn’t the first to take from earlier religions. Christianity incorporated many of the myths of the pagans, i.e., virgin birth.
Read the history of the Arabs before you tell us that they are the direct descendants of the biblical characters in Genesis any more than we are all direct descendants of Adam and Eve (after evolution, contact with aliens ala "Chariots of the Gods," or other myths and legends of your choice, of course).
Erp,
I guess I answered all the above points previously, but as I said, it is like talking to a wall...
Clovis,
I can't say you've been particularly clear in your exchange with erp, but let's see if I understand what you're trying to say.
1. That the Abrahamic religions had a major divergence from the very beginning, which we can metaphorically name (with some chance that there's some relationship to actual pre-history) the tribes of the descendants of Isaac (which became the Jews and eventually Christians) and the tribes of the descendants of Ishmael (which much later became the followers of Islam).
2. That there were constant wars between all of these and other tribes in the region during the time of the old testament.
3. That the old testament has passages regarding war where god directs the Jews to exterminate the other tribes. For example, from Deuteronomy:
"7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them"
4. You would consider "Holy War" to be an apt term for the above passage.
5. That since the "Holy War" was directed by the old testament against the ancestors of those who ultimately became Muslims, you are claiming that's equivalent or at least similar to the old testament directing "Holy War" against Muslims.
Is that it?
Clovis;
--
if I wanted to talk about the hard-right only, I wouldn't have used the term hard-Christian-right.
--
Of course. But it's a reasonable presumption that "hard right Christian" means the intersection of the sets "hard right" and "Christian". I think we agree on the definition of the latter, so I defined the former.
My claim is that, based on my experience with elements of that intersection, your examples are non-representative.
AOG,
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My claim is that, based on my experience with elements of that intersection, your examples are non-representative.
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Fine, I have so far conceded that may well be the case.
Bret,
That's the general idea, although you are being more specific than I can be (e.g. I don't remember which passages in particular they used in those sermons, although the one you pointed out make for a good example; also, not all of those tribes cited in that passage were of arab ethnicity, and/or they also could be of arabs but not ishmaelite-arabs, AFAIK).
The point is that arabs and muslims are generally regarded as the same thing nowadays (at least for the average Joe), and my friend detected a lot of war talk being justified along the lines of war-related passages of the old testament. I remember he mentioning explicitly the pastor as relating one thing (those old biblical wars) and the then present Iraq war (that was 2004 - and another reason I am refraining from being more specific, I am trying to remember a conversation 10 years old).
As for "Holy War", that was only my description of it, I did not mean the sermon used such term explicitly.
So there again Erp: the point is not if the Bible refers to Muslims (of course they don't), but some passages were being used to make apology for war, mixing it with the relationship to arabs of the war being then fought. It is that simple.
[Clovis:] As I said, my source was a friend and the sermons he listened to. I could spend some time in the internet trying to find something, somewhere, that fits with his descriptions. But I won't, for two reasons: i) … and ii) by what I've seen up to now, the sermon's message will be probably lost at the crowd here.
That's a cheap shot.
If you are going to make an assertion that such a thing is easy to find, then it shouldn't cost you much in the way of time to find it.
The worst thing I can think of, offhand, is the Florida preacher who threatened to burn a copy of the Q'uran. The Islamic reaction pretty much proved every negative stereotype of Islam, and also brought to mind the riots and murders that followed Piss Christ.
Wait. What?
During the Reagan administration, Barbara Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian novel about a near future where a totalitarian Christian Theocracy has overthrown the United States.
I've read it; it's a very well written book. However, unlike 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, or Animal Farm, which are timeless, The Handmaid's Tale today reads as a preachy example of leftist paranoia. It's an alternative history that wasn't particularly plausible at the time, and is decidedly so, now.
[Clovis:] But if you do take his message, you should be aware that "progressivism" and "conservatism" can well share different but equally doomed prescriptions for us all.
Rethinking what you said. I'm not sure that "conservatism" has ever had the butcher bill, or caused anything like the social dysfunctions that "progressivism" has.
Jim Crow was easily bad enough. Conservatives would have allowed it to continue far longer than it did. However, it's not as if progressivism in that regard didn't have huge costs.
Besides, the labels are practically meaningless. "Progressive" is the label that leftists gave themselves after they had sufficiently tainted "Liberal". Unfortunately, "Progressive" is a religious term, in that it accepts as true that which isn't proven: "progressive" ideas are good and true because progressives hold them. It is a label and a value judgment at the same time. Not so for "conservative".
But, today, though, who would be more "progressive", or less "conservative" than someone advocating states' rights, and reducing the scope of the federal government?
Progressives would label that conservative, even though it isn't. And those in favor of getting government back to its knitting might very well produce more progress than progressives for whom every government problem requires a government solution.
That's why I prefer to think along a spectrum between collectivism and individualism. Strongly collectivist societies, no matter their raison d'être, have a pretty good track record of leading to horrible results. There really has never been any such thing as a strongly individualist society, in the sense of getting anywhere close to doctrinaire Libertarianism, because it has no way to deal with the free-rider problems that crop up long beforehand.
Individualism, by definition, cannot fall prey to the hubris that plagues collectivism of every stripe.
Skipper,
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[On pro-war/anti-arab sermons] If you are going to make an assertion that such a thing is easy to find, then it shouldn't cost you much in the way of time to find it.
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You are mightly right, Skipper, a fast google search can give you better evidence than my scant remniscences of an old conversation with a friend.
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Individualism, by definition, cannot fall prey to the hubris that plagues collectivism of every stripe.
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I don't buy that, but even if I did, I'd point out that "hubris" is not the only thing that can lead to "horrible results". Indifference, of the type cultivated by individualism, can also lead to some pretty bad results.
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