Reply
Thu 11 Nov, 2004 10:09 am
Gibbon attributed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to "the triumph of barbarism and religion". Is the United States following the seme path?
Actually, he said that the Roman Empire was already falling because it was split by rulers in the East and West each believing themselves to be the 'real' rulers of the empire. Also, they spent so much time in conquest that they took on the vices of all the conquered lands and became disjointed and didn't know what to do with themselves without a battle. Religion, and more accurately, the persecution of religion, contributed to the speed of the fall, but served to soften the blow from the barbarians - as the barbarians were converted, their violent over-throw of the empire became less violent. (All according to Gibbon)
Rome enjoyed nearly 500 years of world dominance...holding sway over their world in ways that dwarf the way the United States dominates the modern world...
...and when they were strongest...when they were rising to greatness and sustaining it...
...they were pagans engaged in some of the most unbridled, uninhibited debauchery ever seen on the planet.
Then along came Christianity...and within a generation or two of its ascendency...Rome was no more.
Some would argue this is over simplification...and a misreading of what happened, but...
...the fact remains that almost immediately after Christianity began to exert real influence, the western world, which had been flourishing in art, science, architecture, philosophy, city planning, and all the other essentials of civilization...
...was thrown into a stagnation so sever, the next 800 years are still known as the Dark Ages.
I love it when a Christian avers: Do you want what happened to Rome to happen to us?
Because the reality is that if you don't...you should be doing everything possible to be rid of Christianity...and all its influences.
Hi, Frank.
God works in mysterious ways, doesn't He?
Ticomaya wrote:Hi, Frank.
God works in mysterious ways, doesn't He?
Hi Ti,
I wouldn't know.
I wouldn't know if there is a God.
I wouldn't know if God, should one exist...qualifies as a He.
I wouldn't know if God, should one exist..."gets involved", so to speak.
And I wouldn't know if God, should one exist and get involved...works mysteriously.
I do, however, know that Christianity's ascendency in the Western World coincided with the downfall of one of the most powerful nations ever...and with civilization going into the dumps for almost a thousand years.
What the hell... I haven't cut and pasted anything in awhile...
The myth of the bigoted Christian redneck
Charles Krauthammer
November 12, 2004
WASHINGTON -- In 1994, when the Gingrich revolution swept Republicans into power, ending 40 years of Democratic hegemony, the mainstream press needed to account for this inversion of the Perfect Order of Things. A myth was born. Explained the USA Today headline: ``Angry White Men: Their votes turned the tide for the GOP.''
Overnight, the revolution of the Angry White Male became conventional wisdom. In the 10 years before the 1994 election, there were 53 Nexis mentions of angry white men in the media. In the next seven months there were more than 1,400.
At the time, I looked into this story line -- and found not a scintilla of evidence to support the claim. Nonetheless, it was a necessary invention, a way for the liberal elite to delegitimize a conservative victory. And even better, a way to assuage their moral vanity: You never lose because your ideas are sclerotic or your positions retrograde, but because your opponent appealed to the baser instincts of mankind.
Plus ca change ... Ten years and another stunning Democratic defeat later, and liberals are at it again. The Angry White Male has been transmuted into the Bigoted Christian Redneck.
In the post-election analyses, the liberal elite, led by the holy trinity of The New York Times -- Krugman, Friedman, and Dowd -- just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. As usual, Maureen Dowd achieved the highest level of hysteria, cursing the Republicans for pandering to ``isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism'' in their unfailing drive to ``summon our nasty devils.''
Whence comes this fable? With President Bush increasing his share of the vote among Hispanics, Jews, women (especially married women), Catholics, seniors and even African-Americans, on what does this victory-of-the-homophobic-evangelical rest?
Its origins lie in a single question in the Election Day exit poll. The urban myth grew around the fact that ``moral values'' ranked highest in the answer to Question J: ``Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?''
It is a thin reed upon which to base a General Theory of the '04 Election. In fact, it is no reed at all. The way the question was set up, moral values was sure to be ranked disproportionately high. Why? Because it was a multiple-choice question and moral values cover a group of issues, while all the other choices were individual issues. Chop up the alternatives finely enough, and moral values is sure to get a bare plurality over the others.
Look at the choices:
-- Education, 4 percent
-- Taxes, 5 percent
-- Health Care, 8 percent
-- Iraq, 15 percent
-- Terrorism, 19 percent
-- Economy and Jobs, 20 percent
-- Moral Values, 22 percent
``Moral values'' encompasses abortion, gay marriage, Hollywood's influence, the general coarsening of the culture, and, for some, the morality of pre-emptive war. The way to logically pit this class of issues against the others would be to pit it against other classes: ``war issues'' or ``foreign policy issues'' (Iraq plus terrorism) and ``economic issues'' (jobs, taxes, health care, etc).
If you pit group against group, moral values comes in dead last: war issues at 34 percent, economic issues variously described at 33 percent, and moral values at 22 percent -- i.e., they are at least a third less salient than the others.
And we know that this is the real ranking. After all, the exit poll is just a single poll. We had dozens of polls in the run-up to the election that showed that the chief concerns were the war on terror, the war in Iraq and the economy.
Ah, yes. But the fallback is then to attribute Bush's victory to the gay marriage referendums that pushed Bush over the top, particularly in Ohio.
This is more nonsense. George Bush increased his vote in 2004 over 2000 by an average of 3.1 percent nationwide. In Ohio the increase was 1 percent -- less than a third of the national average. In the 11 states in which the gay marriage referendums were held, Bush increased his vote by less than he did in the 39 states that did not have the referendum. The great anti-gay surge was pure fiction.
This does not deter the myth of the Bigoted Christian Redneck from dominating the thinking of liberals, and from infecting the blue-state media. They need their moral superiority like oxygen, and cannot have it cut off by mere facts. And so once again they angrily claim the moral high ground, while standing in the ruins of yet another humiliating electoral defeat.
jpinMilwaukee wrote:What the hell... I haven't cut and pasted anything in awhile...
The myth of the bigoted Christian redneck
Charles Krauthammer
November 12, 2004
WASHINGTON -- In 1994, when the Gingrich revolution swept Republicans into power, ending 40 years of Democratic hegemony, the mainstream press needed to account for this inversion of the Perfect Order of Things. A myth was born. Explained the USA Today headline: ``Angry White Men: Their votes turned the tide for the GOP.''
Overnight, the revolution of the Angry White Male became conventional wisdom. In the 10 years before the 1994 election, there were 53 Nexis mentions of angry white men in the media. In the next seven months there were more than 1,400.
At the time, I looked into this story line -- and found not a scintilla of evidence to support the claim. Nonetheless, it was a necessary invention, a way for the liberal elite to delegitimize a conservative victory. And even better, a way to assuage their moral vanity: You never lose because your ideas are sclerotic or your positions retrograde, but because your opponent appealed to the baser instincts of mankind.
Plus ca change ... Ten years and another stunning Democratic defeat later, and liberals are at it again. The Angry White Male has been transmuted into the Bigoted Christian Redneck.
In the post-election analyses, the liberal elite, led by the holy trinity of The New York Times -- Krugman, Friedman, and Dowd -- just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. As usual, Maureen Dowd achieved the highest level of hysteria, cursing the Republicans for pandering to ``isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism'' in their unfailing drive to ``summon our nasty devils.''
Whence comes this fable? With President Bush increasing his share of the vote among Hispanics, Jews, women (especially married women), Catholics, seniors and even African-Americans, on what does this victory-of-the-homophobic-evangelical rest?
Its origins lie in a single question in the Election Day exit poll. The urban myth grew around the fact that ``moral values'' ranked highest in the answer to Question J: ``Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?''
It is a thin reed upon which to base a General Theory of the '04 Election. In fact, it is no reed at all. The way the question was set up, moral values was sure to be ranked disproportionately high. Why? Because it was a multiple-choice question and moral values cover a group of issues, while all the other choices were individual issues. Chop up the alternatives finely enough, and moral values is sure to get a bare plurality over the others.
Look at the choices:
-- Education, 4 percent
-- Taxes, 5 percent
-- Health Care, 8 percent
-- Iraq, 15 percent
-- Terrorism, 19 percent
-- Economy and Jobs, 20 percent
-- Moral Values, 22 percent
``Moral values'' encompasses abortion, gay marriage, Hollywood's influence, the general coarsening of the culture, and, for some, the morality of pre-emptive war. The way to logically pit this class of issues against the others would be to pit it against other classes: ``war issues'' or ``foreign policy issues'' (Iraq plus terrorism) and ``economic issues'' (jobs, taxes, health care, etc).
If you pit group against group, moral values comes in dead last: war issues at 34 percent, economic issues variously described at 33 percent, and moral values at 22 percent -- i.e., they are at least a third less salient than the others.
And we know that this is the real ranking. After all, the exit poll is just a single poll. We had dozens of polls in the run-up to the election that showed that the chief concerns were the war on terror, the war in Iraq and the economy.
Ah, yes. But the fallback is then to attribute Bush's victory to the gay marriage referendums that pushed Bush over the top, particularly in Ohio.
This is more nonsense. George Bush increased his vote in 2004 over 2000 by an average of 3.1 percent nationwide. In Ohio the increase was 1 percent -- less than a third of the national average. In the 11 states in which the gay marriage referendums were held, Bush increased his vote by less than he did in the 39 states that did not have the referendum. The great anti-gay surge was pure fiction.
This does not deter the myth of the Bigoted Christian Redneck from dominating the thinking of liberals, and from infecting the blue-state media. They need their moral superiority like oxygen, and cannot have it cut off by mere facts. And so once again they angrily claim the moral high ground, while standing in the ruins of yet another humiliating electoral defeat.
Now I remember why I'm staying away from the political threads. They are absolute horseshyt.
See ya guys around. I'm going back to the philosophy threads...andI'll come back to the political threads when the next election rolls around.
Since I did post here...I'll continue to monitor the thread. But my guess is I will respond to any responses by starting a new thread over in philosophy.
jpinMilwaukee wrote:Frank Apisa wrote:Now I remember why I'm staying away from the political threads. They are absolute horseshyt.
See ya guys around. I'm going back to the philosophy threads...
Glad I could help Frank
Good response, j.
And I guess a "thank you" is in order. :wink: