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Wiley, LOL!!!
I love your comment, you really made me laugh! Sorry to be such a pessimist! And anyway, the funny stuff belongs into the other blog...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 17, 2006 at 6:36 PM
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Nautikos
"It is an Idea that is growing, and whose bitter fruit we shall be tasting far more of than we have so far..."
Nah, you're way to pessimistic, and ya oughta start reading Cat in The Hat or something more happy.
See, the world was never able to nuke a religion out of existence in the blink of an eye like it can make happen with this lot.
Either that or they'll all croak from eating food by hand instead of using utensils like Lawerence taught 'em to.
posted by
WileyJohn
on December 17, 2006 at 6:15 PM
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Yeah Naut
I'll believe that as soon as Carl believes I don't snoop!
posted by
bel_1965
on December 17, 2006 at 10:50 AM
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Moi? Trouble?
Naaaahhh...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 17, 2006 at 10:47 AM
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LOL Naut!
Now you really are looking to get us into trouble!!!
posted by
bel_1965
on December 17, 2006 at 10:45 AM
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bel
I am confident you can handle Carl's jealousy, but I'm not so sure you could handle
mine! Then again, we could have a flirting threesome...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 17, 2006 at 10:43 AM
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Naut
But then Carl might get jealous...I figure most men don't mind if their wife flirts with other women LOL! Besides, Timmy likes a cheap thrill from time to time and since Mr. W won't bring her to the US, I figure we are all safe LOL!
posted by
bel_1965
on December 17, 2006 at 10:36 AM
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bel,
what's this business of
you flirting with Whinge? What am I getting mixed up here? You are supposed to flirt with the
other member of the Whinge team! I was talking about
me flirting with Whinge...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 17, 2006 at 10:33 AM
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By the way, OFFBEATS,
Thanks for the flower!
posted by
Nautikos
on December 17, 2006 at 10:28 AM
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LOL Naut
I am not so sure about that!
posted by
bel_1965
on December 17, 2006 at 10:28 AM
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bel
does that work with women too?
posted by
Nautikos
on December 17, 2006 at 10:27 AM
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Teaching the cat to read
You must get a book, newspaper or anything that is considered reading material. Lay it out and pretend you are trying to read. The cat will come and lay exactly where you are reading.
posted by
bel_1965
on December 17, 2006 at 6:56 AM
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posted by
Offy
on December 16, 2006 at 5:59 PM
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Muser,
thanks for your long and insightful comment! As you may recall, I am an agnostic, hence not a Christian, and my knowledge of scripture is virtually nil. But your citation is very apt, and generally your comment shows that we are singing from the same 'hymn book'! The difference is that you do it with your heart, and I only with my head...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 15, 2006 at 2:05 PM
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Pat B
Thanks for your comment and the compliment! It's nice to know that there are other admirerers of TSE's poetry here in Blogitland...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 15, 2006 at 1:57 PM
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bel
that's okay, I appreciate your visit...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 15, 2006 at 1:51 PM
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Nautikos, this series you have written is one of the finest on the current
state of the world I've read. I am in the process of reading it again to Max. I profess Christianity, as you know. I am nowhere near being a Bible scholar, but as I finished reading this excellent post, a few verses of scripture came to my mind. In Revelation 3:15-17, a message is sent to the Church of the Laodiceans who had become basically politically correct by today's standards. Their ambivilant attitude and "tolerance" toward the world and it's worldly ways out of their reluctance to stand up for their faith and Christian beliefs for fear of offending others had indeed left a vacuum in their church. They are warned about this in a message delivered to them from Jesus by an angel: Revelation 3:14-17: "And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."
I would have to say that I think this is more and more true today...just a syou have shown. Christians back down from their standards and beliefs out of fear of being labeled "fundamentalists", and a void has formed in our churches. One small example is that we are losing Christmas. "Merry Christmas" used to be a joyous greeting this time of year; now folks say the generic "Happy Holidays"...or pass others with head down saying nothing at all...they have been shamed for who they are, and for what they believe. Islamists, however, are filling the void created by those Christians who are weak and ashamed to be known as fundamentalists...those who believe in the fundamentals of their faith. If one does not believe in the fundamentals of Christianity, he is not a Christian...he is something else. To think that religion and politics...church and state...can be neutralized is naive. I believe the void created by shamed Christians will be filled by a "brave new world" in which church and state will be inextricibly intertwined to "please" every one...the void will be easily filled with a one world government and with a one world, one size fits all, religion.
Are we really so naive to believe that all the people in the world can live happily and FREELY together under one government where we are required to embrace one religion?...just one muser's musings...
posted by
muser
on December 15, 2006 at 2:08 AM
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TS Eliot - beautiful tie-in to your essay. I love him (& your cogency.) :)
posted by
Pat_B
on December 14, 2006 at 3:49 PM
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I'm staying out of politics
but wanted to let you know I was here.
posted by
bel_1965
on December 14, 2006 at 11:03 AM
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Justi
thanks for your comment! Abortion certainly has had an effect on the birthrate, but people living together these days have kids if they want to. I know of several couples like that. However, I don't see how gay marriage affects the birthrate. Guys wouldn't have kids anyway, and girls, well, look at Cheney's daughter...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 8:00 PM
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Nautikos
Along with the decline of Christianity came abortion, couples just living together, gay marriage and euthanasia; all of which are factors in decreasing populations. All of this is clearly predictable through Biblical study. We are near the reckoning. All the superior studies in the world will not make man greater than God. He keeps his word without fail.
posted by
Justi
on December 13, 2006 at 7:08 PM
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Corbin
Thanks for your long comment. It's funny that you should bring this up, because I actually had something in my post (edited out because it was getting too cumbersome) about the way in which the European's self-confidence almost automatically translated into 'racism' - all Christians were white (with a few minor exceptions) and all non-Christians were not.
The White Guilt concept, which is the modern opposite of the White Man's Burden concept, has been around for a while, of course. (Thanks for the link, by the way!)
Unfortunately, the West has allowed itself to be persuaded that colonialism was purely and invariably bad. But if one takes my 'vacuum theory' seriously, and I do, one first comes to understand that, whatever it was, it was certainly inevitable. Having accepted that, one can then look at the historical specifics, and one comes to understand that colonialism also contributed positively to the colonies. And I am fully convinced, that most of Africa would be much better off today, if the colonial powers had remained.
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 7:08 PM
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The decline of the self-confidence and sense of superiority ......
is also attributed to "White Guilt" Shelby Steele writes an interesting piece about it in the WSJ...and I invite you to check it out, Naut:
Link The collapse of white supremacy--and the resulting white guilt--introduced a new mechanism of power into the world: stigmatization with the evil of the Western past. And this stigmatization is power because it affects the terms of legitimacy for Western nations and for their actions in the world.
Of course the white supremacy mention here is not of the KKK variety...it refers to the centuries of domination over the world by the Europeans...The Colonial Times.
White guilt makes our Third World enemies into colored victims, people whose problems--even the tyrannies they live under--were created by the historical disruptions and injustices of the white West. We must "understand" and pity our enemy even as we fight him. And, though Islamic extremism is one of the most pernicious forms of evil opportunism that has ever existed, we have felt compelled to fight it with an almost managerial minimalism that shows us to be beyond the passions of war--and thus well dissociated from the avariciousness of the white supremacist past.
We are no longer willing to fight a battle to win it.......or defend our way of life because we are manipulated into embracing feelings of guilt over our past, surrendering our moral authority.
Europeans are utterly confounded by the swelling Muslim populations in their midst. America has run from its own mounting immigration problem for decades, and even today, after finally taking up the issue, our government seems entirely flummoxed. White guilt is a vacuum of moral authority visited on the present by the shames of the past.
I have loved reading this entire series........you should consider publishing or submitting it for consideration.
posted by
Corbin_Dallas
on December 13, 2006 at 5:30 PM
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TAPS
thanks for your comment. There will be only one more in this 'mini series' and one which, unlike the last few, will be almost pure Steyn. What I shall try to do is illustrate some of my general points with specific examples from the book. I think...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 5:13 PM
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Nautikos
You have a way of holding my attention totally from the first word of your posts to the last. You covered many things here and each time you made a little change in focus, my emotions changed with your "vehicle" until I had run the whole gamut of emotions. Where do we go from here?
posted by
TAPS.
on December 13, 2006 at 4:54 PM
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Joe Love,
thanks for reading and commenting! No problem about the 'brevity' of your comment - I'm happy if people just read this. And it's a huge and complicated subject, which dawned on me only after I had started this 'series', although I should have known better. I think I'll have just one more post on this topic, and will be easy because, unlike this other stuff, it'll be more or less 'straight' Steyn...I think...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 4:54 PM
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I TRIED to leave an extensive comment. . ,
but on this one I had to struggle a bit just to hold on!!! (sigh)
posted by
Joe_Love
on December 13, 2006 at 4:00 PM
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LeRoy
thanks for your extensive comment. Let me try and clarify my view a little further. I am not in a position to measure a culture's or a religion's 'moral value' in any kind of objectively verifyable way. In fact, if we eliminate extreme cases, I don't think that kind of measurement is possible. Of course, if I were a Christian, which I am not, I would be obliged to value my own religion above all others.
However, not being a Christian, I conclude 'objectively', (and allowing for the possibility that I may well be wrong) that it was the firm belief in the certainty of Redemption and Salvation which gave the culture as a whole (and not just the conquistadores) the self-confidence and sense of superiority over all others. And of course, once the 'ball got rolling', as it were, once European achievements and successes were obvious, that itself led to a reinforcement of that self-confidence.
But what I see in Europe (and in the entire West) today is a profound lack of self-confidence, which I relate to the loss of the faith that once helped to sustain it.
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 3:57 PM
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Nautikos
Very thought-provoking, yet again. And, very scary, too.
posted by
Joe_Love
on December 13, 2006 at 3:48 PM
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Naut, interesting post
Your critique of Christianity in the minds of the European colonizers is a concise version of what is taught to today. I think what it leaves out is that what the conquistadors, as brutal as they were, were overcoming was not in any way morally equivalent to their civilization so they had no trouble replacing it, whether they really had Christian faith or not. The Aztec capitol, bigger than any in Europe, was feed by an industrial cannibalism. Countless native peoples supported the Spanish and other Europeans. With the Islamo-fascists its the same stark contrast. No non-Muslim moves to Saudi Arabia permanently, no matter how much of a salary they pay; they'd rather take their pay and run back to poor Philippines or wherever. Not All Islam is opposed to us, The Sufi conversions of many young Iranians might be a good sign. The funny thing is the Albanians, who are nominally Muslim, are hostile to the rest of Europe even though they attend mosque about as much as their neighbors attend church. The hostility to European civilization runs deeper than religious conflict. It is a funny thing for a man-of-faith like me to say, but Europe would still be under attack from outside even if the religions were different or even if both sides were secular.
posted by
LeRoyCoyote
on December 13, 2006 at 1:17 PM
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strat,
thanks for the compliment!
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 10:10 AM
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OFFBEATS,
Thanks for your comment. I must confess, though, that virtually everything you see here is my own analysis; outside of the final quote, you won't find this in Mark Steyn's work. Nonetheless, I think Steyn's book is about things that exemplify what I am saying here. And you are absolutely right - I think we are witnessing the first stages of a kind of cultural 'changing of the guard'.
But then, it may not go beyond the 'first stages'. It is not likely that Europe will ever be 'exactly' like the Arab world is today.
But as it goes on, it won't be pleasant. And neither you, nor I, nor anyone alive today will know how it will 'end'...and I put that in quotes, because history of course never 'ends', as long as there is still human life...
posted by
Nautikos
on December 13, 2006 at 10:09 AM
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This is some of the best reading I've done in some time, Naut.
Very, very compelling.
posted by
strat
on December 13, 2006 at 6:00 AM
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Naut
Very interesting indeed. The loss of spirit is a dangerous thing as it provides a door for those seeking to conquer with their own agenda, in this case..religion!
So with the loss of the European spirit Islam sees them as ripe for the picking. Good grief that could almost be said of America too. Basically what your author is saying is there is a time when every great people will be replaced by another due to the loss of spirit which creates a vacuum? I wonder why so many don't understand what is at stake here...life as we know it could soon be gone and life as someone else wants it would replace it..
Very interesting and yet scary...especially considering what will be coming next..
Excellent read and I look forward to the next...
posted by
Offy
on December 13, 2006 at 4:46 AM
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