Collateral damage, Vietnam-style (sound familiar?)
I’ve been reading Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, an examination of what I’ve referred to as the “second act” of the Vietnam War, the period of Vietnamization under General Creighton Abrams.
I have a feeling I’ll be writing quite a few posts based on this book before I’m through. But for now I’ll just offer a quote or two.
The following is tossed in almost casually on page 44 of Sorley’s 388-page tome:
Military facilities, such as the antiaircraft gun on which Jane Fonda posed, were deliberately crowded in next to civilian areas, almost ensuring extensive collateral damage if they were attacked, thus using American scruples against causing such injuries to inhibit attack.
Sorley’s book was written in 1999, so it includes no comparison to the techniques of Islamic totalitarian terrorists, Palestinians, or the like. But reading it now, one cannot escape the similarity.
When our press focused on civilian casualties during the Vietnam war, the connection between this enemy technique of locating their forces among civilians and the resultant collateral damage could have been made clear. It was not.
For that matter, why pick on the press? Perhaps it’s my memory that’s at fault, but I certainly don’t recall our own government making the excellent point of emphasizing the details of the pernicious nature of the enemy we faced. It would have helped ordinary American people understand who we were fighting, and the reason it was extraordinarily difficult to avoid civilian casualties.
Here’s more to ponder from Sorley’s book; he is describing events that occurred during 1968 [emphasis mine]:
While loudly protesting civilian casualties in North Vietnam, supposedly caused by allied bombing, casualties that were minuscule by any reasonable measure, North Vietnam’s agents in the South systematically murdered, wounded, kidnapped, and impressed thousands of South Vietnamese civilians. At Hue, temporarily under his control during the 1968 Tet Offensive, the enemy seized the opportunity to execute, hands tied behind their backs, some 3,000 civilians whose bodies were then dumped in mass graves. Rockets fired indiscriminately at cities, grenades thrown into school yards, bombs in churches—all these were part of the North Vietnamese way of war. And of all this the antiwar movement had little or nothing to say, then or later.
Could Seymour Hersh’s editors, in their coverage of My Lai, have possibly spared a little ink for some photos of those North Vietnamese atrocities? And, if so, why not?
Oh, that’s right, I remember—they were freedom fighters [/sarcasm].
By the way, if anyone can find contemporaneous MSM stories that did emphasize the true nature of the North Vietnamese way of war, please send me a link to them. I’d be much obliged (and specialized periodicals such as “Stars and Stripes” don’t count).
Here’s a bit more from Sorley [emphasis mine]:
These enemy proclivities—indifference to their own combat losses and to the harm done to innocents alike—produced a disparate pattern of casualties. South Vietnamese armed forces, while suffering substantial losses, to be sure, inflicted greatly disproportionate casualties on enemy armed forces. In the civilian populations, just the reverse was the case. Since no ground combat took place in North Vietnam, and the allies structured their bombing there to minimize civilian casualties, relatively few civilians were killed in the North. In the South, meanwhile, enemy terrorism and the rocketing and shelling of cities ensured a high civilian death toll.
Sorley makes a good case that, after Tet and its Vietcong excesses against South Vietnamese civilians, the population of the South became far more united against the North. Until then, many of the urban areas of the South had not experienced for themselves the true nature of the invaders and their extreme disregard for the lives of their fellow Vietnamese. The process reminds me of the way in which the Iraqi people, even Sunnis, have turned on al Qaeda in the last year after experiencing al Qaeda’s bloodthirsty viciousness for themselves.
Sorley’s book is complex in its details, much too long and involved to convey in a few sound bites here. But the tale it tells is one that has become familiar.
Too little, too late, of course, for the Vietnamese people. But maybe not too late for the Iraqis. And for the rest of us.
Acting to late, and with to many restraints, is a sad and reoccurring theme, but what if a hyperpuissance were unrestrained to act soon and swiftly out of a moral urgency and necessity for human justice, what rewards would be bestowed upon such a substitute for the divine, and what would others stand to lose? The party’s of God and the agents of totalitarianism will not have it, the presence of democracy is a great disturbance to the old orders of humanity, it challenges a bronze-aged faith for celestial divination and judgment, and its syncretistic associations to Stalinism and National Socialism — the force of reason can be so much better than this.
There’s two particulars to the Vietnam War that many folk either forgot or never knew.
1. The war in Vietnam was a hybrid of both non conventional and conventional. Added to the usual Counter Insurgency problems was the need to operate against full regiments and divisions of North Vietnamese regulars, trained and equipped to current Soviet standards.
2. The presence of a number of Soviet “advisers” in North Vietnam that always equaled or exceeded the number of US personnel in South Vietnam.
As much as it would kill me to do it, I wish our government would loosen my shackles. If it waits, either I or those of my ilk will no longer need their release, terrible as that would be, in more ways than it might seem. Our enemies need to be completely destroyed. The world needs to be shook to it’s bones. And, some, many, people need to die.
Our left understands how terrible we can be, they just do not see the righteousness of it. Blind men also do not play pool, but timidly speak of logic or other non-contact sports which they may compete on some sort of level field, given their crippled nature, though, if then. Certainly, they never speak against an enemy who would have no compulsion against pulling their teeth out or cutting out their tongue… or worse. Best save their greatest insults for the only ones who might save them, in hopes that as a bee sting might, their tongues might enrage their real heroes enough to smite their real foes, despite the twistedness of their blighted tongues.
Jane Fonda, such a fine memory. I honestly hope I never meet her anywhere, though not truly. A pseudo hero of mine suggests what to do with the rude. I am not so elegant, being a creature with a simple if amazing nature. Jane, her entourage, state or private, would not be ready. I would be surprised if the last of them even saw me for what I am, death. Oh well.
Utmost contempt for human life is a hallmark of all totalitarian regimes. North Vietnam leadership is not something unique in this respect. Soviet communists behaved just the same.
Curiously, the one major media element I can think of that actually portrayed the NVA and more so the VC as evil terrorizers of civilians, contrasted by our forces who were earnestly trying to make a better place for them, was the movie “The Green Berets”.
Sure, the lefties dismiss it as a cartoonish, ham handed effort to demonize the ‘enemy’, because they just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that people do such heinous things (unless of course they are U.S. military personnel). Funny that a John Wayne movie should be closer to the truth than the nightly news reports…
Including the final scene as the Sun sets in the east. The press has been suppressing that historical tid-bit as well.
Fiendish bastards!
In The Secret of Father Brown, in the closing story, The Secret of Flambeaux, G.K.Chesterton has his hero character say “There are two ways to be afraid of the devil. One is to be afraid of him because he is so far away, and one is to be afraid of him because he is so near. And no virtue and vice are so widely separated as these two virtues.” (From memory; someone can correct me.) It seems to me that the people who hold America’s enemies blameless cannot see their evil across the distance, but the nearby faults they exaggerate, excoriate, and anathematize. It’s the opposite, really, of what Jesus said about seeing a splinter in someone else’s eye but not a plank in our own. Except that it’s seeing a paring knife in our neighbor’s hand, but none of the machetes in the hands of the gang coming to kill us.
> I certainly don’t recall our own government making the excellent point of emphasizing the details of the pernicious nature of the enemy we faced.
Ahhh, via what channel?
….The Press?
Certainly their handling of the media appears to have been rather lame and boneheaded, but if there was an effort to get the Truth out, then I’d suspect that it would not have had much effect in getting past the media’s filtration of such data — any more than news of The Surge has made it past the media in this era.
> Except that it’s seeing a paring knife in our neighbor’s hand, but none of the machetes in the hands of the gang coming to kill us.
That’s like this moron I went off on a while back (not here, elsewhere):
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> When will the religious right in this country sit up and take notice of the fact that they resemble in almost mirror-like fashion the jihadist religious extremists in the Mideast?
Oh, come ON. Do you realize what an abysmally ignorant ASS you sound like?
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It went on from there, as I listed off a litany of blatant differences, involving responses to hot-button issues, etc.
The government and the military cannot always illuminate the American public because the bearer of the word (MSM) would refuse to carry it. Only THEY know the truth.
We kicked their asses during Tet of ’68 and Walter Cronkite decided we could not win the war. Game over. What good does the truth do once the elitist left handed weasels decide we’ve bled and died for nothing?
Easy to run, hard to fight.
Jane Moonbat Fonda, John F***Face Kerry and Noam Chomsky, to name but a few cockroaches I dream of meeting on a dark jungle trail, jumped right on the media whore bandwagon. Thanks again.
Not much outcry about the millions killed in the ensuing genocide brought to us by those charming “freedom fighters” either. Police states are all the rage…right? Blood on your rotten leftist souls (again).
I think I have PTSD because I keep flashing back and worrying that I maybe could have killed more communists. Well…sadly, no do overs allowed.
gm
Here’s my question for you, though, Neo. I don’t think that most liberals actually thought the problem with the Vietnam War was that we were fighting on the wrong side (though of course many hippies probably did, since Marxism used to have a better reputation then than it does now). But I think the main argument against Vietnam was that it was not in our national interest to get involved in a proxy war in Southeast Asia. What was at issue was the domino theory — and whether we should send significant numbers of American troops to deal with an internal dispute in a former French colony. As noble as the cause might have been, I still think it’s questionable whether we should have been sending American boys to die fighting it.
I used to be rather critical of the conservative realist view that one should be very reluctant to get involved in foreign wars, even if they seem noble … but after Iraq I have a renewed sense of respect for conservative realism (as opposed to neoconservative interventionism, which overturns most of what used to be conservative foreign policy thinking). I am reminded of this statement by John Quincy Adams:
http://www.fff.org/comment/AdamsPolicy.asp
[quote]
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force….
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….
[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
[end quote]
It would have helped ordinary American people understand who we were fighting, and the reason it was extraordinarily difficult to avoid civilian casualties.
Johnson had to first convince himself that civilian casualties couldn’t be avoided due to enemy tactics, before he could go and try to tell the Americans that. As it turned out, Johnson thought he could command the Vietnamese and his own military to “lower casualties”, which is what he did. He lowered the casualties for enemy forces to the point where getting devastated at Tet did not do anything negative to the strategic position of the North Vietnamese.
In the South, meanwhile, enemy terrorism and the rocketing and shelling of cities ensured a high civilian death toll.
This is what happens when you think you can win wars on the defensive. The leaders get a pass and survive, while the people at the bottom get crapped and bombed. That’s how it goes. The S Vietnamese weren’t Johnson’s constituents, so tough luck for them. Democrats don’t care for you unless you can vote them into power.
The process reminds me of the way in which the Iraqi people, even Sunnis, have turned on al Qaeda in the last year after experiencing al Qaeda’s bloodthirsty viciousness for themselves.
And it also is a reminder of what some folks said in relation to how it is inevitable that the civilians in Iraq would turn against AQ’s brutality. There is nothing inevitable to it, if only because no matter what the S Vietnamese civilians wanted, the tanks could still crush them undertracks.
You can’t turn against terrorists when you have been cut off at the knees, you know.
But I think the main argument against Vietnam-Mitsu
Are you focused on winning a debate or talking about an actual war that was fought and lost by real people?
What was at issue was the domino theory
What was at issue was the fact that people didn’t care if women and children died so long as they could win political points for anti-war organizations and Leftist activists.
You could talk about the domino theory all you want, Mitsu, but it won’t suddenly make killers residing in the US into saints. Nor will it get rid of people who break laws and sacrifice American patriots for political, economic, and social gains.
[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty.
The difference is that you think liberty ends and begins wherever you are, Mitsu: that it doesn’t really matter whether people in Arabia, Africa, China, or Europe have liberty if them having liberty requires America to control foreign territories and invade foreign governments.
That’s the glory you see. Stay here and play it safe; don’t even talk about or make a big deal about foreign and domestic enemies.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
You don’t have the excuses of the America’s ancestors. You are part of a nation with a overabundance of power and influence, not a small nation that must husband its resources because every bit is going towards self-survival and self-sufficiency.
You think you can still act like a miser, Mitsu, with trillions in socialized welfare programs behind you and billions spent on defense in front of you. That’s completely invalid in today’s circumstances.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
Does it really matter what happens to foreigners like Arabs or the Vietnamese, when liberty and justice is only for people like you, Mitsu?
I used to be rather critical of the conservative realist view that one should be very reluctant to get involved in foreign wars, even if they seem noble … but after Iraq
That’s kind of obvious given that the Democrats were in control for most of the Cold War, with various foreign entanglements like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Bay of Pigs. Now when it is the Republicans trying use America’s forces for self-defense, suddenly you’re now supporting isolationism.
Mitsu,
If I’m a neighbor of yours and a bad guy has a gun aside my head, may I pray I don’t have to depend on your “mind” to make him not pull the trigger?
gm
>That’s kind of obvious given that the Democrats were in
>control for most of the Cold War, with various foreign
>entanglements like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Bay of Pigs.
Ymarsakar, I hesistate to reply to you since I find your arguments in general quite scattered, and I really am only interested in commenting for Neo, not really you. However, I have to say this is one of the most illogical things you’ve posted in a while. First, you deride me for saying that we probably shouldn’t have been involved in Vietnam, for realist reasons, and then you say that Democrats got us involved in a “foreign entanglement” in Vietnam. Which is it? Was Vietnam a bad idea or a good idea? You seem to be only interested in attacking anything I say, regardless of what it is.
I *am* critical of Vietnam, even though it was instigated by Democrats — just as I was supportive of the first Gulf War and the Afghan war, though they were instigated by Republicans. I was also supportive of the Kosovo operation, instigated by Democrats.
I am not saying that I agree with realists entirely — I am saying I now appreciate their wisdom more than I did in the past. What I AM saying is that conservative realists tended to argue in favor of propping up foreign dictators (like Saddam Hussein) if it was in our national interest, regardless of how ruthless they were. I felt it made more sense to try to resist them, if possible, through covert action. I never believed that we should go around trying to invade every country controlled by dictators in the world — which seems to be implied by your derisive comments above. The idea that we ought to overthrow every dictator through invasion is something that is utterly ridiculous.
galensmark:
Just think about this, galensmark: do YOU think we ought to invade and overthrow every dictator in the world? Every repressive regime? I can give you a big long list and we’ll fax it to the DOD and I’m sure they’ll start drawing up plans.
Mitsu,
Of course you’re right, but all monsters are not equal. I would have boots after the butchers of Darfur but not the idiot of Caracas.
gm
As for contemporary reports about the Hue massacres – I know they must have been reported by major media, because I was aware of them as a middle school/junior-high school aged student. My parents had the LA Times, which I read religiosly from back to front… and I wondered at the time how come there was wall-to-wall condemnation of the My Lai atrocity, but hardly a breath about the massacres at Hue.
Sorry, can’t even begin to supply links for contemporary news coverage – but if a 13-year old SoCal school-kid could know of it immediatly afterwards, then it must have been reported… but I remember realizing that the outrage over SE Asian war atrocities was extremely selective. A hundred or so South Vietnamese murdered by American troops was worth thousands of pages more of news coverage and commentary than 3,000 South Vietnamese murdered by the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese.
Nobody seems mention that Vietnam War was launched by Communists with whole backing of China and Soviet Union, and in this respect hardly differed from Korean war. Why it was OK to stop Communist aggression in Korea but wrong to do the same in Vietnam? Cold War was not cold everywhere, it had hot spots, and Vietnam was one of them. To stop Communist expantion it was crucial to stop it everywhere.
I had my knowledge of Vietnam in high school, my reasons for joining the US Army, my time in Vietnam and the aftermath and a career continued in the Army. The government has no soul, yes we should destroy every evil dictator, yes we should judge them and yes we should be happy with good works everywhere. I am permanently marked by my combat experiences and I am at peace with whom I am, but the picture of Jane Fonda brings back the confusion of my youth, she was so much better as Barbarella and Catbalow… she still isn’t worth talking to…
Sgt. mom: Yes, I’m assuming that there was some MSM coverage of atrocities committed by North Vietnam. But for most of us the news fell way, way under the radar screen.
And so I’m also assuming that the story was covered sparsely, and not headlined and underlined and reiterated. That’s why I’m curious to see contemporaneous coverage—what page was it on? How far down in the story? How often were such things mentioned?
I have some doubts about the poor handling of the press by our government. That is not to say that what some of you are saying seems true, only that what was represented in the news to some larger extent is exactly what was intended. Why would our government do such a thing? Simply, to pace the lust for war in the general public a bit. To tame that urge to kill and win, knowing our men in arms are at risk in every event. As well, of course, is the reality that for this to be a representative republic, with some real power vested in the ballet box, some of the true enemies of the state will by necessity be elected. And that will also have an effect upon what is presented in the press.
No, the press does not get a free ride. However, it should not receive all the blame, all alone. Like two teens caught on the couch in a midnight kiss and don’t tell, there are two tangling hereabouts. And though I grumble, I only make sure they know that I know, I do not quite think it is time to go down there and sort things out. It might have gone too far, it might go too far, but for now, a grumble will suffice.
I felt it made more sense to try to resist them, if possible, through covert action.
OK. Mitsu. Like what kind of ‘covert action’?
Ninjas like Bill Clinton wanted to use on Al Qaeda?
When did you attend the JFK Special Warfare School at FT Bragg? I heard it’s a tough course: is this where you learned all about ‘covert action’?
Greetings:
I think a more contemporary question might be “Where are the stories of our troops heroism in Iraq and Afghanistan in today’s media?”
njcommuter..”It’s the opposite, really, of what Jesus said about seeing a splinter in someone else’s eye but not a plank in our own. Except that it’s seeing a paring knife in our neighbor’s hand, but none of the machetes in the hands of the gang coming to kill us.”
Very nicely put.
Nobody seems mention that Vietnam War was launched by Communists with whole backing of China and Soviet Union-Sergey
Either MItsu or Chris views Vietnam as a civil war, essentially an internal dispute, that they want to armchair and second guess in relation to whether the US should have been there in the first place.
They don’t mention it because it really matters little to none to them. The myth of America the invulnerable is so large that it prevents people, on purpose, from acquiring a correct analysis of enemy resources, logistics, and capabilities. They are too confident, like French aristocrats, that tactical problems can be solved with simple and repetitious solutions like “charge”. And if it doesn’t work, “charge” again.
This would also apply to whatever covert action Mitsu would have been willing to approve from the armchair seat. He could do more but the lives of professionals are much easier to expend than more numerous lives that would appear on the news. The ability for the press to tailor national security policies so that the people authorizing policies feel more inclined to the press’ sentiments instead of to the security of American civilians at risk at home and American military professionals at risk overseas, is one of the problems people on the Left simply ignore.
Mitsu,
First, you deride me for saying that we probably shouldn’t have been involved in Vietnam
I deride you for believing in things that are not only false, but that are inconsistent with your other beliefs. For example, to divert attention from the media’s crimes against humanity, you start mouthing off about how the media is an equal opportunity killer for “both sides”. To divert attention from the real people that went dead during Vietnam, you start talking about “probably shouldn’t have been involved in Vietnam” in the first place.
This tells you little, perhaps, but it tells us much.
then you say that Democrats got us involved in a “foreign entanglement” in Vietnam. Which is it?
You really need to start reading the quotes, of yours, that I am responding to. Does your own words tire you that much?
To sum things up so you don’t get confused by the tracks skipping in your head, Mitsu, you were against realism when the Democrats were in power and had foreign entanglements. Now you are “for realism” when Republicans have gone into Iraq. What this means is that you are not an equal opportunity fence sitter, you go whereever fake liberals go. You are for progressives, and whatever “agreements” you have with the right is relegated only to the paleo-conservative and isolationist groups that found common cause with the Klu Klux Klan back when the South had a Democrat majority. Some of that shifted over to the right when the South abandoned the failed policies of the Democrats. This might be tentatively called Ron Paulism, although the connections are only ideological in terms of the need to be isolationist and populist.
You seem to be only interested in attacking anything I say, regardless of what it is.
You have to read what you have been saying before you know what I’m going up against.
just as I was supportive of the first Gulf War and the Afghan war, though they were instigated by Republicans.
The reiteration analysis is that you only supported those wars because you were for those wars. You don’t support wars because of Republicans or Democrats, you support Republicans or Democrats based upon whether they are doing what you want them to do. There’s nothing high minded about it. “Realism” is just an excuse you use to explain why some wars you support and others you don’t.
Your support for the first Gulf War is invalid because you’re running Limited War scenarios that could only be handled by UN Resolutions, sanctions that nobody obeyed, and other things of an international looting and corruption bend that you are for and I am not. The problem with your support for the Afghan war is that you are trying to collapse the Iraqi front, which will divert Iran’s attention back to Afghanistan and redivert all the terrorists going from Pakistan to Iraq, to Afghanistan. I don’t know how you think you “support a war” by trying to get more people in the war zone killed, but perhaps it has a weird sort of logic to your way of conducting warfare. The overall arching goal of breaking terrorist networks can be done in Afghanistan or Iraq. You want it to be in Afghanistan not because of a valid strategic reason but because that’s just your personal beef with things as they are. There’s no particular strategic argument to be had here.
I never believed that we should go around trying to invade every country controlled by dictators in the world – which seems to be implied by your derisive comments above.
My derisive comments above imply that you will go with whatever belief seems convenient to you. What you actually stated is that we should not go around trying to invade every country controlled by dictators even if we could and could succede. You don’t think we will succede or even that we could even make the attempt for long, which is a different thing entirely.
Your outlook on reality is totally different, Mitsu. From that, all else follows concerning your beliefs, which are derided and looked down upon by me. Since you refuse to argue your basic philosophical assumptions, Mitsu, I have no choice but to undermine your “beliefs”, as if your beliefs actually mattered.
The idea that we ought to overthrow every dictator through invasion is something that is utterly ridiculous.
Which is why you chose to argue it. Your beliefs are ridiculous but if you make an argument about it, I guess to you it gains credibility. You don’t want to argue about the basic preconceptions, prejudices, and assumptions you have made about Iraq and Afghanistan, so you lump the topic into something about conservatives and neo-conservatives wanting to “overthrow every dictator”.
Get back to the real world, Mitsu, with real people dying in real wars called Vietnam, OIF, and OEF. Those things happened. Your hypotheticals and what if scenarios played from the armchair didn’t and won’t happen.
You’re not even monday quarterbacking a decision already made. You’re making stuff up as you go along concerning decisions nobody has made. Decisions like ‘invading all countries with dictators”. In case you hadn’t notice, that is a decision nobody has made and nobody has even thought about making. A little thing of being concerned with the real day events with real people and their problems.
I can give you a big long list and we’ll fax it to the DOD and I’m sure they’ll start drawing up plans.
The DOD already has plans to military attack or defend against a majority of countries on the planet, the ones with military presences at least. Did you just forget that for some reason, Mitsu, due to the fact that you wanted to make a point?
Mysticism and religion prepares populations for totalitarianism; ‘adulation of gods’ to ‘cults of personality’, ‘impossible miracles’ to ‘megaleaps in agriculture or science’, ‘inquisitions’ to ‘show trials’, ‘the devil’ to ‘foreign adversary’; the table is prepared, the players are seated, and the poisoned grub is served, it’s an old template, ready-make for the unimaginably cruel and opportunistic one who wishes to fulfill the prophecy. OK, enough bad poetry, I’ve got laundry to scrub.
20th Century Socialism goes a long in refuting your assertion
Russian peasantry for 100’s of years under a Czar, who was considered something between more than human and divine, who owned the Russian people — a populace yearning for redemption from the ruins of the war, someone to worship was ready-made for Lenin, then Stalin. And what did these authoritarian give the people, wild advances in science, engineering and agriculture, at what cost, the gulags for the unbelievers, remember the soviet show trials, and the West the ‘Great Satin’ — show a connection between religion and Socialism is easy.
Socialism like some religions have Utopianism in common.
The mistaken notion that human nature can be overcome by force of will and the perfect society can be acheived.
So there is nothing about religion per se that makes it any more or less prone toward these things than any -ism. It’s an ideology that disregards human nature and not religion that is the problem. Some religions have these ideologies.. and some of those ideologies do not have religion.
The ol’ Moral Equivalence ‘tardation. History without perspective, exactly like the cultural destroyers love to teach it.
The single unbroken and universal similarity is that humans are involved when things go bad. That means humans are bad. Humans must be eliminated, then the world will be nice.
Kinda like what the newest branches of neo-communism teach in the more perverse renditions of moronic ecoism.
Sorry, the above was meant in reply to the general level of intellectual inbreeding displayed by the blatherings of nyomythus in his last couple comments. Not as a statement aimed at the original post.
Military facilities, such as the antiaircraft gun on which Jane Fonda posed, were deliberately crowded in next to civilian areas, almost ensuring extensive collateral damage if they were attacked, thus using American scruples against causing such injuries to inhibit attack.
Indeed how callous! And to think, the audacity of our very own government in locating gigantic naval stations right in the midst of major cities, or giant AFBs located in urban areas where they are ripe for bombardment, either nuclear or otherwise.
The process reminds me of the way in which the Iraqi people, even Sunnis, have turned on al Qaeda in the last year after experiencing al Qaeda’s bloodthirsty viciousness for themselves.
Oh, now lets not go analogizing too much here. Whereas the people of S. Vietnam may have been a wee bit surprised by the ferocity of the North Vietnamese, they were not making a calculated move to shift their allegiances for political gain. Who would they turn to? Their own government? Us? No, rather they found themselves between a rock and a hard place; a North Vietnam intent to win, and a corrupt South Vietnamese puppet government.
Could Seymour Hersh’s editors, in their coverage of My Lai, have possibly spared a little ink for some photos of those North Vietnamese atrocities? And, if so, why not?
Or perhaps because it’s a story if our soldiers massacre civilians, whereas it’s no story if theirs do because they’re barbaric enemies and our soldiers are just good ol’ boys trying to be good soldiers. You fail to note, it’s usually the propagandist who play up the massacres by the other side.
Oh my, Neo – you’d probably have to go to a paper or microfiche archive to determine placement of the Hue Massacre stories in the LA Times! My recollection pretty much jibes with yours though – inside pages, in-passing mention, and almost no outrage. I do remember being struck by that, most of all: 3,000 people methodically rounded up, excecuted and buried in mass graves… and there was absolutely no outrage about it, editorial or otherwise. It was almost as if the attitude was “Oh, those crazy romantic communist revolutionaries – it’s just their way!”
Every major war nessessary includes propaganda effort. Do you remember WWII movies, songs, posters? They were issued in vast quantities. The problem with US press is why in Vietnam era and afterward it became vechicle for enemy propaganda?
Indeed how callous! And to think, the audacity of our very own government in locating gigantic naval stations right in the midst of major cities, or giant AFBs located in urban areas where they are ripe for bombardment, either nuclear or otherwise.
X shows that so long as Americans and foreigners die, and not people he values, the US Constitution will always be a document that sacrifices other lives for Xan here.
nyomythus overstates the point about religion because it is not as if one could get rid of religion, which is simply belief. People have to believe in something, and other people can manipulate that belief whether you call it religion or anything else. The particular point that “religion” is more perfectly suited to controlling the masses and introducing totalitarianism, is invalid. Anything that is organized, like Alinsky mentioned, can control the masses easier than an unorganized effort. Religion isn’t the source of the problem.
When you become blinded by anti-religion sentiments, you are not looking at the big picture. Which is that revolutionaries will use any belief system and any organization of the masses to gain power. Focus just on religion and they will beat you, guaranteed.
It’s an ideology that disregards human nature and not religion that is the problem.
That’s exactly what religion does, disregards human nature, particularly the nature of our dignity, religion says we are born sick and commanded to be better. Religion says human beings didn’t know it wasn’t OK to murder and steal, until some burning bush revealed to a roaming goat herder that those things weren’t kosher after all. Religion says we are born in the image of the divine, but not until a little genital cutting is done to infant males and females. Religion says that you can have paradise if you slam a jet liner into a skyscraper. Religion survives because it appeals to the very worst in us, our self-importance and fear of death. People acting simply on innate abilities to reason would never dream of these things — and Religion is not the source of our enlightenment, it has been the obstruction of our enlightenment. Religion prepares us for exactly the opposite; it makes good people do bad things. It commands communities to despise, shun, or stone the unbeliever. Religion is the infection we bear from the early days of our species, when we knew nothing of germ theory, or why the stars shown at night, or anything about the mysteries of nature and the universe. It is a base human nature to invent a scheme or conspiracy in the absence of knowledge and reason, we have 9/11 Truther lower-primates to highlight this example. Science and reason replaces religion. As long as religion exists, radical theism will exist. Religion is the benign gene that when mixed with opportunistic egotism and gullible ignorance mutates and forms the malignant cancer of radical theism. Science has shown us that the human species has been on the planet for at least, surely much longer, but for at least 100,000 years, over this period untold multitudes died in child birth, often killing the mothers with them, those that survived perhaps lived to 20-30 years, dieing of dentinal disease, or tribal slaughters, yet over many centuries, we managed to advance, probably by our innate sense of morality or common sense that it can be a good thing to care for the young, to care for women in labor, that mutual cooperation with others is good for survival, and still slowly advancing over the centuries until 6,000 years ago, in a remote wasteland of the world, the news is given to humanity that despite your groveling existence the universe was designed with you in mind and there is a plan for salvation for humanity, a message that has still not reached all the corners of the world today, for 94,000 years God stool by with folded arms and said, “Ok now I’m going to do something.” Religion is man-made. The alternative is, a God that could stand by and watch this for thousands of years is an immoral and lazy God and one not worth our adoration, or worse he is an Evil God and should be extirpated from us. Of course I’m shamelessly parroting Hitchens, but I see the reasoning of his point on the connection between religion and totalitarianism. Religion is the father of Totalitarianism; believe in God, audaciously absolve yourself of your wrong deeds with a mumble and clasp of hands, and if you don’t you can burn in Hell forever, this is not a moral teaching, Jesus was not a moral teacher, to say nothing of the teachings and utter barbarism of Muhammad. Even little children see right though Religious nonsense, little children that we indoctrinate into this pre-historic cult, where mysticism was born.
We can do much better than this, and we must do much better than this.
Neo, fantastic post — as I almost always think when you post on Vietnam, which is too often mentioned in a near context free “America’s mistake, America’s blame.”
To the important question:
“Was Vietnam a bad idea or a good idea?”
It was, post WW II, a TERRIBLE idea to support France and DeGaulle in a re-colonization effort of Indo-China. France lost the colonies, and forced colonization was a mistake.
Truman should have supported Ho Chi Mingh, the anti-Jap, anti-French, pro-Vietnamese, dictator / possible authoritarian. Instead, partly to get France into NATO against the greater evil of the USSR, the US opposed Viet-self rule.
The commies supported Ho. (AFTER? the US declined.
‘Ho asked for commie help against the French.
Are you a commie?
Will I get guns if I say I’m a commie?
Yes.
Yes, I’m a commie.
Here are your guns.
Great, I have capitalist French Imperialists in my sights now… thru 1954 & Dien Bein Phu’)
In 1956, it’s not clear whether America should allow commie Ho to be elected as Viet leader. But not allowing ‘commie victory democracy’ means the US isn’t really supporting democracy as much as opposing communism.
Advisors, a CIA assasination (?), a growing proxy war between corrupt S. Viet anti-commie client gov’t and the horrible Soviet supported N. Viet murderers. By 1964 it’s too late to have a total hands off, because leaving means accepting commie victory.
Yet the Dem Johnson Gulf of Tonkin lie was certainly a bad idea. Also the sending of 500 000 occupation troops (the McCain style advocated ‘do Iraq right’ — perhaps I’ll vote for McCain in Nov, despite thinking he’s simplistic against the Rumsfeld ‘light footprint’).
My Grandmother (nuke Hanoi, mine Haiphong), with an older son as Green Beret trainer, was upset that the US was fighting without trying to “win”.
After racist Dem Wallace ran as the most successful third party candidate (in last 50 years?), drawing off the racist Dem South, allowing Nixon to win in 1968, the war changed to put a bigger S. Viet face against the commies — but by then the Media was against the US fighting.
Unfortunately, when two sides fight, if you want one side to stop you are an active ally of the other side. The anti-war folk were active allies of the commies, whether that was their intention or not.
After commie military failure at Tet, and then the final 1972 failed push by the NVA, Nixon “won” the war and Henry the K plus Le Duc Tho (who declined, perhaps knowingly?) got Nobels. Nixon pulled out all troops, but was still missing POWs and MIAs.
Then in 1974 & 75 the Dem Congress voted to not allow any military action in Vietnam by the President, followed by cutting off money to the corrupt, incompetent, cowardly S. Viet gov’t — although it was slowly becoming less cowardly and less incompetent.
Thus, when the Soviet supported N. Viet killers attacked again in 1975, there were no US casualties fighting them, nor US support to S. Vietnam, nor any France or International outcry against the Peace Accord violation.
Dems voted for losing — acting as de facto allies of the N. Viet commies, and the re-education camps. And the Chinese supported Cambodian commies, and the Killing Fields.
I rage over the support by the Democratic Party of the USA for commie victory — any my own 1976 Dem vote for Naval Academy graduate Jimmy Carter.
The worst genocide in my life, and I voted for it. Iraq has only made my shame of 32 years ago more acute.
was meant in reply to the general level of intellectual inbreeding displayed by the blatherings of nyomythus in his last couple comments.
You’re forgiven.
To Ymarsakar
Devils advocate: Are we neocons making a religion out of human liberty?
Xan:
“Indeed how callous! And to think, the audacity of our very own government in locating gigantic naval stations right in the midst of major cities, or giant AFBs located in urban areas where they are ripe for bombardment, either nuclear or otherwise. “
Anti-aircraft batteries need not be placed in high density population areas in order to be effective. In fact, you would preferably want to sight those weapons systems with a better view of the horizon. And that would especially apply to the type of weapon Fonda posed with. (though dont dare question here patriotism).
her, not here.
Christ!
Devils advocate: Are we neocons making a religion out of human liberty?
Actually, idea of liberty is so old that can be traced to the first free societies – ancient Greek city-states. I do not remember author, but one of the classics of this time wrote: Slavery robs men half of their virtues. In my observation of personality degradation under totalitarian state, much more than half. You can find the same idea in the first chapter of Genesis, describing revolt of angels. It was provoked by requirement of God that they bow to Adam. The were offended: We are made from light, and he from earth. On that God answered: All beings in Universe obey laws I made for them, and only humans will obey the laws they will make for themselves. Thus, in the very first verses of the Bible about humans, the theme of free will is already introduced.
The idea of liberty as a fundamental value is not a religion, this is simply value judgement. More close analog is American Constitution as a secular, political Bible. But still I see nothing neo-conish in Constitutional fundamentalism: this is simply classical liberalism, to which neocons reverted after disenchantment in totalitarian heresy of progressivism.
Collateral Damage in Iraq:
I was at the funeral just Saturday of a young soldier killed in Diyala province along with five others in a house rigged to explode.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/09/iraq.soldier.deaths/
Instead of just calling in airstrikes and destroying the suspected terrorist lair, the Army sent soldiers in on foot to avoid any collateral damage to nearby buildings or killing any civilians.
Al Qaeda has no such compunctions and boobytrapped the entire house which exploded when the 6 entered.
Those soldiers died searching on foot to avoid civilian casualties from airstrikes and artillery. It is the right way to fight a counterinsurgent war, but it is expensive in time, treasure and blood.
I don’t want to hear another damned word about ‘indiscriminate airstrikes’, ‘our trigger-happy boys’ or ‘civilian massacres’.
Our soldiers are dying to avoid even inconveniencing Iraqi civilians!
Our soldiers are dying to avoid even inconveniencing Iraqi civilians! They represent the very best in humanity, whether they realize it or not.
All beings in Universe obey laws I made for them, and only humans will obey the laws they will make for themselves.
Sounds good — I never saw this in the Bible — which version?
How about when Jesus says “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.”
Clearly an admonition to abide by civil law, while simultaneously abiding by God’s law.
Thats from Matthew 22:15-22
re: “The Green Berets”
“# harry9000 Says:
January 20th, 2008 at 5:31 am
Including the final scene as the Sun sets in the east. The press has been suppressing that historical tid-bit as well.
Fiendish bastards!”
Here is a photo taken at Cam Rahn Bay, showing sunset over the water, no land in sight on the far side. Also, Many areas in the far south around the Mekong Delta could present similar circumstances, and there is even some west coast of Vietnam facing the Gulf of Thailand.
Again, I’ll posit that there was more truth in the John Wayne film than in news coverage of the time.
To Ymarsakar
Devils advocate: Are we neocons making a religion out of human liberty?
In reference to your other reply, I could get into theology but I don’t think it would do anything productive.
Suffice it to say that I don’t believe in Revealed Religion that God is perfect and the whole thing about the bible and what not. However, religion is not “designed” to put down or shackle man, all religions or even belief systems are simply attempts by human beings to discern the truth about their environment. Because humans are born flawed, and which Original Sin seeks to explain the reason for, our efforts to derive truth from our senses will run into problems. What you see as a problem with religion, Ny, is really a problem that started with human nature. When human beings were born imperfect and unable to make the “right” choice between good and evil. Or to look at it another way, we are imperfect because we have free will. We can choose which ideologies we will believe in, whether liberty or tyranny, Democrats or Republicans, Mitsu or anti-Mitsu.
Because of the existence of choice, you will get beliefs that go wrong and you will get beliefs constructed by human beings with the intent to get things wrong. Like Communism and Leftism. Are those two fundamentally different than religions? No. Because religions are neither fundamentall good nor fundamentally evil. Just like humanity. Neither fundamentally good nor fundamentally evil.
Religion survives because it appeals to the very worst in us, our self-importance and fear of death.
Advertisements and politics appeal to people’s self-importance and fear of death. So why do you continue to think religion deserves a special position in the human spectrum of beliefs?
Religion prepares us for exactly the opposite; it makes good people do bad things.
People do bad things because people want to do bad things. Religion is just an excuse or justification. The only thing that prepares a suicide bomber is other human beings. Religion won’t jump out a book and recruit people into the Suicide Bomber club, after all.
Religion is the infection we bear from the early days of our species, when we knew nothing of germ theory, or why the stars shown at night, or anything about the mysteries of nature and the universe.
Ancestor worship is the oldest religion. The Romans had it way before Christianity, although technically not before Judaism. America also engages in ancestor worship, when they respect and revere the American Founding Fathers. Is America’s belief in the Founding Fathers an infection we bear from the early days when we knew nothing of germ theory or why the stars shone at night?
The alternative is, a God that could stand by and watch this for thousands of years is an immoral and lazy God and one not worth our adoration, or worse he is an Evil God and should be extirpated from us.
You’re still buying into the Revealed Religious belief that God is like a person. Why should God be a person if you don’t believe in Revealed Religion, meaning the HOly Books? The universe is so big, why does God have to be someone like our neighbor?
We can do much better than this, and we must do much better than this.
Until you improve upon the human condition, which has stayed unchanged for tens of thousands of years, you can’t do better. Even if you got rid of religion, humanity will still believe in con artists.
Tom Grey – Liberty Dad Says: “…The worst genocide in my life, and I voted for it. Iraq has only made my shame of 32 years ago more acute.”
Thanks for the personal and profound post, you have a lot of company, I identify strongly with you, we all have our personal stories… I like to think that it means something positive that we are at least able to be honest about the past now, and try to be an active and vocal force of solidarity for the “good fight” now, supporting the troops, and their mission, in Iraq. It’s an issue and nuance which should not be begrudged. The stakes are higher than ever. While issues of religion have always been a severe intellectual problem for me, the profundity of that famous line is now very clear and deep: “… forgive them for they know not what they do…”
Neo has gone a long way to explaining why she felt as she did before she came over.
Has Liberty Dad figured out why he was so wrong?
It’s hard not to gloat, considering all the crap I and others who were never on that side have taken and continue to take.
But the question remains: How did people, who have proven to have consciences, come to have been on the wrong side initially?
Was it the relentlessness of the propaganda? Was it a lack of alternatives in one’s immediate surroundings?
When I was in college in the mid-Sixties, the idea that we (on the left) constitute a morally superior but embattled minority was a potent tool to use on students who, being college students, had instantly thought of themselves as superior beings. Who wouldn’t want to be in that group and to escape from the great redneck unwashed, such as our parents?
There was a reason older people going to school are less easily stampeded by their professors. They already know who they are.
Anyway, why were those who are honest and self-critical enough to abandon the inhuman left on the left initially?
all religions or even belief systems are simply attempts by human beings to discern the truth about their environment.
Oh come on be honest. Religion and the Natural Sciences don’t clash? Do I really need to give examples of this?
Advertisements and politics appeal to people’s self-importance and fear of death. So why do you continue to think religion deserves a special position in the human spectrum of beliefs?
You’re establishing a chasm of tautologies, I could then say fire ants appeal to the kid with the magnifying glass whose allergies are so bad with one sting his survival is 50/50, can we go any lower than this?
People do bad things because people want to do bad things. Religion is just an excuse or justification. The only thing that prepares a suicide bomber is other human beings. Religion won’t jump out a book and recruit people into the Suicide Bomber club, after all.
I think you argue against yourself and make my point when you say, “People do bad things because people want to do bad things. Religion is just an excuse or justification. Yes, religion is often the excuse and justification. We see it all the time with West Bank Jewish settlers who think it’s OK to steal other people property, and the apocalyptic evangelicals that support them, Palestinian suicide bombers and sing-song chanting from the minarets, Islamist killing one another in Iraq — and bombing one another’s centuries-old mosques — no normal person with an appreciation for beauty and architect would do this, Hindu and Muslims killing one another through out the sub continent, Buddhism regimes and opposition monks fighting each other in Thailand, Irish Catholics and English Anglicans, in former Yugoslavia a three ways war between Muslims militias, Roman Catholic militias, and Orthodox militias, people do bad things because their Holy Book give them permission to do so. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams visited the Algerian ambassador to ask him why this people seized Americans on the high seas he responded with, “…all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.” — American slavery was enabled a century more than it should have for economic reasons and southern political muscle but the south subjugated the populous by Biblical justifications. Every time religion makes a statement that can be checked or refuted by science, reason or common sense, or humanitarian reasons — then religion makes a fool of itself.
Ancestor worship is the oldest religion. The Romans had it way before Christianity, although technically not before Judaism. America also engages in ancestor worship, when they respect and revere the American Founding Fathers. Is America’s belief in the Founding Fathers an infection we bear from the early days when we knew nothing of germ theory or why the stars shone at night?
OK, and it’s sad to see, when you can’t defend a position, you again create a chasm of tautologies, this one is really just stupid.
You’re still buying into the Revealed Religious belief that God is like a person. Why should God be a person if you don’t believe in Revealed Religion, meaning the HOly Books? The universe is so big, why does God have to be someone like our neighbor?
I’ve come this far I might as well take it to the end, one more to go…
Until you improve upon the human condition, which has stayed unchanged for tens of thousands of years, you can’t do better. Even if you got rid of religion, humanity will still believe in con artists.
Stayed unchanged for tens of thousands of years? I know it’s a sort of joy for you to write and blog and format and such, but please think of something intelligent to respond with beforehand, those who hoped for a robust defense against my writings, I can only imagine, are sorely disappointed. I’ll put it in fragments: horse drawn carts, electricity, man on the moon … what was the time span of these events? People will believe in con artist … yes many will, yes many will, but maybe they won’t have to believe in filthy old virgins that molest young children, or tell lies to them about eternal fires for thoughts no normal human imagination can censor, or than we can kill those people because they are the wrong kind of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist…
Overall, neoconservativism as an intellectual reversion from a totalitarian-like heresy and disenchantment from progressivism, as Sergy said, is perfectly understandable. But let’s not take our steps into conservatism, or our alliance with neoconservatism, so far as to stop thinking like main stream conservatives; an examination of truth sometimes requires painful philosophical sacrifices. As a hardcore Leftist I loathed Christians, I think I have a broader perspective today, moderate theism, because that’s where we are in our chronology, is fine with me, it would be like wishing all trees were orange, nevertheless it is the seed of radical theism, if secular democratic governments can ‘keep a lid’ on these things we might shake of this old, bad diaper (religion).
Spend an hour or more typing and formating and writing and posting the last word, having the last word is a small victory, it’s the only one you’ll have on this matter. So, hop to it — I can’t be any clearer than I’ve already been.
Anti-aircraft batteries need not be placed in high density population areas in order to be effective. In fact, you would preferably want to sight those weapons systems with a better view of the horizon. And that would especially apply to the type of weapon Fonda posed with. (though dont dare question here patriotism).
Well yes…unless those high density population areas are targets of bombing (Hanoi, Haiphong, etc., etc.) In which case the AA batteries are following the bombings, and not the other way around.
The mistaken notion that human nature can be overcome by force of will and the perfect society can be acheived.
Unlike neo-conservatism, which believes that human nature can be overcome by force of arms, and that democracy can be installed on a society that has known no such system.
Unlike neo-conservatism, which believes that human nature can be overcome by force of arms,
Human nature isn’t squalid servitude. People like the freedom to Pursue Happiness. Force of arms can never overcome the desire to be happy–no one has ever had to install happiness.
and that democracy can be installed on a society that has known no such system.
There’s the soft racism of the dirty, dirty left.
What do you have against self-determination? Not everyone is an over-educated self-loathing leftist. Given a choice, most people want to be happy.
Maybe this ‘neocon thing’ will keep the leaders of the unhappy from trying to kill us.
Don’t you like happiness?
Well yes…unless those high density population areas are targets of bombing (Hanoi, Haiphong, etc., etc.) In which case the AA batteries are following the bombings, and not the other way around.
Not so much.
AA batteries are located ancillary to, but not in, high value targets. They are located along probable Air Avenues of Approach.
“High population density areas” aren’t intrinsically high value targets unless an enemy chooses to locate tactical or strategic assets in those areas. Now why would they do that? Hmmmmm?
You don’t really know anything about this kind of thing, do you?
nyomythus Says: “moderate theism… is the seed of radical theism”
Xanthippas Says: “The mistaken notion that… Unlike neo-conservatism, which believes…”
the dynamic duos…..
Xan:
“Well yes…unless those high density population areas are targets of bombing (Hanoi, Haiphong, etc., etc.) In which case the AA batteries are following the bombings, and not the other way around.”
Ah, so the population centers themselves were the target of our bombs! Once again we’re the blood thirsty murderers. Almost makes you wish you were at the trigger of one of those quads doesnt it Xan? The brave Marxist fighting off the murdering imperialist invader.
“Unlike neo-conservatism, which believes that human nature can be overcome by force of arms, and that democracy can be installed on a society that has known no such system.”
and incapable of figuring it out right Xan? To brown for that? Whats the better alternative Xan? What is it?
Nyomythus, I understand your abhorrence of religion, but it really doesn’t make sense.
You gave a long, jumbled, mix-and-match list of atrocities that were somehow connected, however tenuously, to religion. Was this to imply that religion is the root of all evil? How then does one explain the long, long list of atrocities that have nothing whatever to do with religion? What of atrocities that have only to do with race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, geographic happenstance, secular political power struggles…? How do you explain them? Perhaps it’s that, left to our own devices, without the limits of some universal moral code, we will try to take advantage of our neighbors when we perceive them to be weak? Could be, eh?
Once you understand that as the truth, you can then understand that religion, like any tool, can be used for it’s intended purpose, or used for nefarious purposes. You could make the argument that religion, because of the faith element, is particularly susceptible to abuse, and I might even agree, but it hardly damns religion. You’d have to convince me that those misuses outweighed the good done by religion as well as the bad suspended by religion. I think you also need to discuss the effects of specific religions independently, as there have been many, to quite varying effects. I’d venture to say that religion, particularly the Judeo-Christian ethic, have been the most significant force in promoting civil society as we enjoy it today. Where do you posit the origins of such a society if not from Judeo-Christian ethics?
You might enjoy the book:
“The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success”
A bit about the ideas in it:
In an essay that recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, author Rodney Stark explained the thesis of his book “The Victory of Reason” this way:
“A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories occurred within Christianity. While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy. But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little impact on Greek religions. Those remained typical mystery cults, in which ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred origins. Similar assumptions concerning the fundamental inexplicability of the gods and the intellectual superiority of introspection dominated all of the other major world religions.”
I thought you’d find that interesting especially since you said:
“Science and reason replaces religion.”
Certainly you know enough history to understand how it was religious institutions that supported and preserved the sciences in the middle ages, don’t you? Oh, and spare me the lecture on Galileo. I’m sure everything you think you know about him is wrong.
Religion and the Natural Sciences don’t clash? Do I really need to give examples of this?
Again, without getting into theology, no, I don’t think they clash fundamentally. Can you have one but not the other? I don’t prefer to think so. It is not really about examples, but about “why should religion and natural science clash”. If the study of God includes the study of God’s creations, then how does that conflict with the study of the natural world that has not been proven to be made by God? If a person has to choose between what his eyes and data tells him or what his religious dogma and teachings tell him, then it is up to that person to change the beliefs of his church and religion. These kinds of reforms always occur, continuously, like with Martin Luther and the various astronomers of the Catholic Church.
You’re establishing a chasm of tautologies, I could then say fire ants appeal to the kid with the magnifying glass whose allergies are so bad with one sting his survival is 50/50, can we go any lower than this?
If you don’t want to argue why other things apply to what you have said about religion, then that is your choice to make. It still doesn’t make your contentions about how religion is a special threat of a large nature, sustainable. Especially since you have already admitted the truth of my statements. It remains to be seen whether you can back up your claims that religion is something so special that it is on a different level entirely.
no normal person with an appreciation for beauty and architect would do this
Actually, most of those people are normal. The natural human desire to belong and to be part of productive society fuels much of the Islamic rage. They know they are worthless compared to the West, so they lash out at the West and at their own daughters. If these people were anti-social or did not care about right or wrong, then they wouldn’t be blowing themselves up for “community” and “jihad”.
I think you argue against yourself and make my point when you say,
How am I arguing against myself when I make the point that people have free will and thus bear the majority of the responsibility for their actions, not “religion”? You may recognize that people use religion as justification and as an excuse, but you don’t recognize that this can be done by all people, not just those that believe in religion that you mentioned.
people do bad things because their Holy Book give them permission to do so.
The law gives me permission to kill whomever trespasses on my property. Does that mean if I do that, it is the law’s fault for giving me permission? No. Does that mean Laws are this great Holy Book that causes people to do good things? No. Not bad things either.
I place a higher priority on free will, which applies to all human beings, social or anti-social or asocial. You place a higher priority on this mythical “religion” that makes human beings do things. I don’t believe, as you do, that just because I have permission to do something, that I necessarily must do it. Even for people brainwashed in Leftism, Communism, and Shariah, they still have a choice somewhere along their lives to choose differently.
OK, and it’s sad to see, when you can’t defend a position, you again create a chasm of tautologies, this one is really just stupid.
Let’s see if I got this straight. I can’t defend my position that religion is something mythically and dogmatically special in your world view, by enlightening you to the fact that America’s respect for the Founding Fathers is part of man’s oldest religion? Now you’re becoming overzealous and fanatical, Ny. Which is purpotedly what you are supposed to be against. Which, again, justifies and defends my position that the ills you see coming from religion is nothing special about religion. You are human, thus you are capable of doing exactly what you see as coming from religion.
The ability for human beings to deceive themselves that they are not “capable” of certain bad and evil actions because they don’t believe as those others do, is the cause of much of humanity’s conflict. You cannot shuffle all the ills of human history into this idol called “religion”, Ny, and expect yourself to be immune from that which you speak ill of.
When I object to your beliefs about religion and take it seriously as something to be respected and argued, rather than attacked and belittled, you respond with meaningless accussations of stupidity. There is nothing stupid about my arguments, Ny. You cannot just proclaim this as coming from your god and expect me to accept this. I do not believe in your god, so to speak.
What is your god? The belief system that says the ills of humanity are caused by “Religion”, not human free will and beliefs. I am not under the impression that religion is different from the things humanity is capable of believing in. Any belief can thus, to me, become a religion. Including your beliefs. You say no, that religion is something horribly special, and thus try to exclude yourself from that horridness through your refusal to believe in religion or refusal to believe good can come of religion. But that’s not possible for you to exclude yourself, and thus it won’t work.
Stayed unchanged for tens of thousands of years? I know it’s a sort of joy for you to write and blog and format and such, but please think of something intelligent to respond with beforehand, those who hoped for a robust defense against my writings, I can only imagine, are sorely disappointed. I’ll put it in fragments: horse drawn carts, electricity, man on the moon … what was the time span of these events?
This may seem a simplistic counter-argument to this portion of your diatribe, Ny, but do you actually know that you made no concrete progress in refuting or undermining my arguments, that you quoted?
There was absolutely nothing you said about why I was wrong that human nature remained unchanged for tens of thousands of years… unless you think inventing fire, electricity, and nukes changed human nature. You do know that by human nature I mean free will, the capacity for violence, love, hate, and self-deception, right?
I wouldn’t presume to know whether those that hoped for a robust undermining of your writings is disappointed by my attempt. As with all beliefs, some are right and some are wrong.
As a hardcore Leftist I loathed Christians, I think I have a broader perspective today
There’s a difference in transfering your hatred from Christians to all religions? I don’t see the difference. There may be one, but it doesn’t seem to matter much.
I not being clear even though I have stated it, There’s a difference in transfering your hatred from Christians to all religions?
I don’t hate religions … I’m just pointing out the connection between religions and totalitarianism, moderate theism is relatively benign, I can go to church and accept it for what it is, which i have done resently once or twice and be perfectly polite and cordial, though I have no need for the message, or the vice of trust and faith.
Certainly you know enough history to understand how it was religious institutions that supported and preserved the sciences in the middle ages, don’t you?
OK, fine, the Dark Ages revered the advances of Science … fine. I just don’t share that view.
I don’t hate religions … I’m just pointing out the connection between religions and totalitarianism
Do you really think people will buy that after what you have written?
If you were “just” pointing out the connection between religions and totalitarianism, you wouldn’t be so zealously invested in the myth that nobody else could intelligently introduce causes and problems that didn’t start with religion. If you were “just” pointing out a parallel, you would be more accepting and considerate of other causes of human problems. Instead, you reject alternatives as beneath you for consideration.
OK, fine, the Dark Ages revered the advances of Science … fine. I just don’t share that view.
You don’t share the view that your ideas can be challenged in such a way that you have to defend them with reason and logic. Your view is that you can defend yourself by calling other people’s views “dumb” and unintelligent. Obviously you don’t share views with people you see as believing in dumb and unintelligent views.
That is totally beside the point, since what is important is why you don’t challenge the statement that Catholic monks preserved knowledge and texts from before Rome’s fall. Instead of challenging douglass’ factual statement, you make up this dumb, yes dumb, statement that you don’t believe the Dark Ages revered the advances of science. Well, that is kind of obvious since it was the “Dark Ages”, not the “Age of Enlightenment”, you know. When Rome fell, the barbarians weren’t invested in Greek literature and philosophy, you know. That’s why it was a Dark Age when the German Vandals couldn’t maintain Rome’s engineering and sewage systems.
I can go to church and accept it for what it is, which i have done resently once or twice and be perfectly polite and cordial
In case you hadn’t noticed, most anti-Americans are perfectly cordial with actual Americans. It doesn’t change their beliefs either way because they are polite. In fact, to impart a more extreme example, most serial killers are perfectly functional in a good neighbor sort of way. How a person acts in public, does not necessarily determine his beliefs.
Al Gore acts like a free spending capitalist, but he believes he is anti-capitalistic, for the little guy, and environmentally friendly. Gore has two 23 inch LCD screens for his computer, last I saw on a photo of him.
or the vice of trust and faith.
The sheer conceit of stating that you have no need for the “vice” of trust and faith when every second of your life, Ny, you engage in acts of trust and faith, is phenomenal.
As a final note…
Ny, did you really expect you could say something like this,
and get away afterwards with just your inadequate one liners? Or is the requirement that a person must defend his position only something that applies to people you disagree with, and not you, Ny?
“Unlike neo-conservatism, which believes that human nature can be overcome by force of arms, and that democracy can be installed on a society that has known no such system.”
People might recall the X debates concerning the US Constitution and how X was for the US Constitution while we were all traitors and apostates to the US Constitution. It is just good to see that X is now finally willing to admit that X does not believe in the philosophies powering the US Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution.
After all, if we believe a system of government designed to safeguard liberties can be installed in a place, like the Colonies, that has never known Constitutional or Federal government, that has never known a Bill of Rights and taxation with representation, then what does this make X?
Ymarsakar, don’t put words in my mouth .. and over all to the above post … huh?
The sheer conceit of stating that you have no need for the “vice” of trust and faith when every second of your life, Ny, you engage in acts of trust and faith, is phenomenal.
OK, OK who do think I am? Mr. Perfect?? … Yes I have faith that I will wake up in the morning … breathing air … and my one liners are VERY adequate. Any else care to challenge my one liners? Pitch it to me one-at-a-time, slow and easy, just one, one question, then one answer, and we’ll go like this.
The choice has always been yours. Cover douglas’s contentions if you don’t prefer mine. There are plenty of questions for you to choose from.
Perhaps it’s my memory that’s at fault, but I certainly don’t recall our own government making the excellent point of emphasizing the details of the pernicious nature of the enemy we faced. It would have helped ordinary American people understand who we were fighting, and the reason it was extraordinarily difficult to avoid civilian casualties.
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it always boggles my mind when Americans have traveled thousands of miles to bomb to smitherines inhabitants on their own land and we call them “enemies” when they have never laid foot on our soil.
It’s paranoia, like the dictator who can neither rest nor sleep out of fear that everyone is out to kill him so he keeps killing everyone else first. Is that suppose to be ok for the everyone eles? US policy dictates that someone has to destroy us or be destroyed. 9/11 was only the beginning. It demonstrated the discontentment out there and I hardly think it’s going away as US policy has only gotten worse for everyone else “out there”. We should have been better citizens of the planet rather than plunderers and hoarders.
Oh look at Bonnie blaming the US for Jihad.
It’s paranoia, like the dictator who can neither rest nor sleep out of fear that everyone is out to kill him so he keeps killing everyone else first. Is that suppose to be ok for the everyone eles?
Saddam kind of died because the US went on killing people “bonnie”.
What happened to Clyde, btw?
It demonstrated the discontentment out there and I hardly think it’s going away as US policy has only gotten worse for everyone else “out there”.
As if you give a damn about anyone else out there.
We should have been better citizens of the planet rather than plunderers and hoarders.
When you solve that problem for you and your own, come back and tell us about it.
We should have been better citizens of the planet rather than plunderers and hoarders.
K’…. You first.
nyo, the story I mentioned is from Oral Torah, I heard it from my Rabbi. But it is in Talmud – and in Book of Enoch. Most Christian churches do not include it in their canon, except for Ethiopean one, but early Christian authors, like Tertullian and Origen, cite it. Fragments of this text are also found in Dead Sea Scrolls, so it was written in Second Temple period, just before or soon after Maccabey uprising.
Wasn’t “Bonnie” actually “Laura” at one point? Or am I mistaken about this?
I’m curious; how are we supposed to be “Citizens of the Planet?” There is no governing body for Planet Earth, at least not until it’s conquered by the Spider Beings of MuArae! And don’t talk about the UN—it’s a corrupt joke, incapable of governing anything. So where is this “Earth” we’re supposed to be a citizen of, the way we’re citizens of America, or England, or Dubai or Costa Rica? Where is Planet Earth’s defending army? (and no, it’s NOT the UN!) Where’s it’s constitution? (no, it’s NOT at the UN!) What are those special “Earthian” customs and traditions all human beings follow? Are we supposed to pledge allegiance to “Mother Gaia?”, instead of our nations of origin?
And don’t the other nations on Planet Earth have some obligation to be good Earthian citizens? Why is it people like Bonnie/Laura always blame the US for everything that goes wrong, as if we’re the only ones responsible for the world? Don’t Russia, the decadent oil-rich states, Africa with its warring tribes, Europe with its incompetent, socialist economies and propensity for creating weird political movements (such as Marxism, Facism, etc.) bear at least a teensy bit of blame for the mess the world’s in today?
I dunno, but it seems to me quite a few other nations have been—and still are—“plunderers and hoarders”—and on a far greater scale then the US.
Wasn’t “Bonnie” actually “Laura” at one point? Or am I mistaken about this?
Bonnie certainly claimed she was Laura. We haven’t heard from “Laura” back on this one, of course ; )
And don’t talk about the UN–it’s a corrupt joke, incapable of governing anything.
Leftists are famous for lost causes, Talkin. Don’t underestimate them and their determination to bring Hell on Earth.
bear at least a teensy bit of blame for the mess the world’s in today?
They were all created by American and Western Imperialism? Why? Because America is on this pillar, you see, high up on in the sky.
I dunno, but it seems to me quite a few other nations have been–and still are–”plunderers and hoarders”–and on a far greater scale then the US.
And that’s how the Leftist aristocrats prefer it to be. Goody two shoes Americans, if they ever conquered France, would put the kibosh on kickbacks and corruption.
Thanks Sergey
Ymar, I’m afraid you’re right about the Left—on all the points you make.
(Maybe Laura was actually “Clyde”?)
Neo – I admire your courage and curosity. I read Sorley’s book about a year ago and yes, it’s a real eye opener. Once you’ve finished there’s one more piece you need to read:
Halberstam’s History by Mark Moyar on NRO. The link is http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTI2N2RhOTRjMTQxZGY2NWE0NmYzOWJjOWE4ZDhhMjg=
I drop in on your blog every month or so because I’m amazed that an East Coast woman would have the interests that you do and come up with the conclusions that you do. Bravo. You’re breaking through the Matrix, Neo.
Gearhart, Oregon
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