From jefferis at petersonsales.net Tue Jul 20 10:01:43 2004 From: jefferis at petersonsales.net (Jefferis Peterson) Date: Tue Jul 20 10:12:43 2004 Subject: [Roundtable] Anti-Americanism - a Frenchman got it right! - Must reading :-) Message-ID: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2004/004/10.26.html A Great article on a newly translated book by a Frenchman who analyzes the virulent anti-Americanism of Europe. It seems like a must read. Books & Culture, July/August 2004 Durable Contempt Why anti-Americanism thrives. by Allen C. Guelzo Excerpt of review: Of all the great creeds which steered Europeans into disaster in the last century (and the list only begins with Marxism and fascism), only one still survives. But it is thriving, and one does not have to listen very closely in order to hear it: anti-Americanism. It not only thrives, but has been thriving longer than any of its comparatively short-lived rivals of the last hundred or so years. America was, after all, the place where Britain sent all its unwanted social baggage, starting with its Puritans and eventually running the gamut to include debtors, Quakers, unruly Irish and Scots, unlucky Africans, convicts, and so forth; it was conventional wisdom that no good thing could emerge from this human slag-heap. Nor did the establishment of the new federal Republic in 1787 redeem American reputations. The collapse of the French Republic into Napoleonic dictatorship, and the revulsion from the politics of Enlightenment reason which washed over Europe after Waterloo, made the United States the butt of Romantic scorn. There was no real national identity in America, complained Joseph de Maistre, only a cheap mixture of races and nationalities united solely by the hope of materialistic gain. "The American knows nothing; he seeks nothing but money; he has no ideas," raged the German poet Nichlaus Lenau. America, Heinrich Heine wrote (anticipating Marcuse and the Frankfurt School), was a "gigantic prison of freedom": Sometimes it comes to my mind To sail to America To that pig-pen of Freedom Inhabited by boors living in equality. ..... A creed this persistent and this virulent must feed on something more than our occasional displays of arrogance, cultural boorishness, and the general sense that the United States has a God-given right to tell the world what it should be doing. The British did the same thing in spades, and so have the Russians, the Germans, and even the French, and yet there is nothing in any of their misbehaviors which has provoked anything so totalizing as the relentless and consuming passions of anti-Americanism. What is it in the American itch which provokes so violent a European scratch? Jean-Francois Revel first pondered this in 1970, while he was still reeling from the collective blows delivered to the stability of the Fifth Republic by the Prague Spring, the Parisian student riots of 1968, and the Vietnam calamity. For many years a columnist and editor of L'Express, Revel could not reconcile the free pass European intellectuals gave to evils on the Left?e.g., the brutal suppression of Alexander Dubcek and the Czech dissidents by the Soviets?with their fanatical criticism of the American war in Vietnam, much less with the eagerness with which students of the Sorbonne threw up barricades, not in praise of liberte, but of dictatorship. Through all this, America?"parasitical, murderous, and sick"?became what Pascal Bruckner remembered as "the ideal scapegoat." Human capacities for forgetting the inconvenient, or not-seeing what is as plain as day, were never on better display.3 It finally came to Revel that anti-Americanism had little to do with what Americans actually were, and much more with what Europeans were becoming. He poured his conclusions into three savage indictments of European self-righteousness: Without Marx or Jesus (1970), The Totalitarian Temptation (1976), and the almost-despairing How Democracies Perish (1983), which railed against the indulgent European willingness to excuse the outrages of the Soviets while weeping over the pecadilloes of the Americans. He wondered out loud whether democracies have some kind of natural tendency to embrace their destroyers.... Revel... suspects that the anti-globalist program is not really about anti-globalism at all, since in fact the Euro-Left "has always hoped for globalization, but without the market?in other words, an ideologically correct world government." They are supremely "indifferent to the fate of the underdeveloped countries; what they really want is to destroy the economies of the developed countries, inasmuch as development and capitalism are, in their eyes, one and the same." And to the extent that, in their minds, capitalism is "absolute evil," it is "incarnated and directed by the United States." What Revel does not seem to recognize is how much a first principle anti-Americanism has become for America's own ?lites... ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jefferis Peterson, Pres. Web Design and Marketing http://www.PetersonSales.com From jefferis at petersonsales.net Tue Jul 20 10:13:11 2004 From: jefferis at petersonsales.net (Jefferis Peterson) Date: Tue Jul 20 11:39:19 2004 Subject: [Roundtable] What is the difference between Liberalism and Civil Rights? Message-ID: This issue of Books and Culture review has some excellent insights. This article is on the main difference between modern liberal idealism and the biblical understanding of human nature evidenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. In analyzing the current stock market malaise, I think the prospect of Kerry as pres and terror attacks are both creating a background of high anxiety for investors. There is no fix for this situation of possible future terror and Americans in general don?t have the patience to wait out a protracted conflict. That is why they want to go to what appears as a simple solution - just avoid war at all costs, vainly thinking that a vote for Kerry will solve this problem. This naivet? and fantasy is mixed with idealism not grounded in real understandings of the world around us but built upon the illusion that everyone really wants to ?just be nice and get along.? In other words, they have no capacity for understanding or facing real evil because they deny its existence in the world and in their own actions. They believe they and that we all are basically 'good'. It is not a biblical view of human nature, but a utopian one. In contrast, the Civil Rights leaders recognized the profound evil of human actions in segregation and oppression. They had felt the sting of this evil first hand and were under no illusions as to the makeup of human nature. There is also an article on Gandhi in this issue, which pokes holes in his sainthood, especially on his dealings with the Nazis. Non-violence as a social methodology is extremely dependent upon the context in which it is used. Sadaam for example would have executed Gandhi before he had a chance to raise the conscience of the British or the nation. Hitler hung protestors and labor strikers immediately and without trial in public settings. Passive resistance doesn't work across borders or against governments without conscience. Here's an excerpt from the King article: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2004/004/5.08.html Hopeful Pessimism The lessons of the civil rights movement turn out to be quite alien to liberal pieties. by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese > This tradition, as King professed, had little to do with facile optimism > either about people or about prospects for transforming the world. Indeed, the > black leaders for whose thought Chappell was able to find sufficient > intellectual records "believed that the natural tendency of this world and of > human institutions (including churches) is toward corruption." But, like the > Hebrew prophets, they felt compelled to harangue the world about its failings, > even when they expected it to revile them for their efforts?and they were > determined to do what they could to achieve justice, even as they maintained a > clear-sighted recognition of human fallenness. > > The white liberals who supported the movement were cut from a different cloth > entirely. In the first place, they lacked southern blacks' sense of urgency > and mission. However sincerely they may have opposed the injustice of > segregation, they had no personal experience of its pains and no passionate > convictions about the timing of its demise. Believing in the power of reason > and the inevitability of progress, they were content to await the unfolding of > appropriate changes. Liberals took pride in having substituted reason for > blind, irrational faith, although the most thoughtful and intelligent among > them had a keen understanding of what they had lost... > > > Seen through the lens of the leading black activists' view of the fallen and > depraved character of human nature, liberal optimism seemed more than slightly > facile, especially liberal views about the natural?indeed, > inevitable?improvement of the position of minorities in general and black > Americans in particular. Black leaders harbored no such rosy expectations of > their fellow citizens, yet, as Chappell acutely demonstrates, their very > pessimism on that score derived from the same faith that sustained them > through a long and difficult struggle?the "stone of hope" evoked in Chappell's > title and King's speech. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jefferis Peterson, Pres. Web Design and Marketing http://www.PetersonSales.com From jefferis at petersonsales.net Sat Sep 18 09:42:35 2004 From: jefferis at petersonsales.net (Jefferis Peterson) Date: Sat Sep 18 10:28:00 2004 Subject: [Roundtable] Re: sample paper In-Reply-To: <000801c49d39$05a654e0$40f5e8d8@tomq7gpfn95fix> Message-ID: Thank you Tom. I?ve done a lot of thinking about it but haven?t a lot to add to the basic cultural context that created this breakdown of family and society. It is a much broader beast than the mere sin of homosexuality. Paul called homosexuality the consequence or punishment upon a culture for the sin of idolatry [?God gave them up...? ] in Romans 1-2. So I am starting to view the rise of homosexuality more as a cultural judgment rather than as an ?individual choice? to sin. In the Scriptures, sin is usually corporate, of the community and not just an individual act, while individual acts are the expression of corporate sin. If I am right in my analysis, then the whole distortion of female roles in society and the abstraction of feminist theology [did you see my paper on that in the same area?], is problematic because it assumes that value is given to people on the basis of their production and work and not upon who they are in relationship to one another and the community as a whole. That means that feminists are fighting on the side of capitalist industrialism and are trying to retrieve value and affirmation for themselves as people by the very system of thought and economy which is denying them intrinsic value in the first place! Rather ironic, don?t you think? In Christ, Jeff On 9/18/04 12:36 AM, "Tom Whitestone" <> wrote: > Androgyny in Popular Culture > > While perusing the internet I came upon the site wherein I read the topic > "Androgyny in Popular Culture". I just wanted to thank you for sharing the > history of how this mindset (spirit) came to the forefront. While reading the > Scriptures i see a particular prophetic evaluation regarding this subject and > am pleased to find such historic background as to how this "Beast" raised it's > head. > > Have you added to this "sample paper" and if so could you direct me on how to > receive its content. > > God bless you. > Tom Whitestone. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jefferis Peterson, Pres. Web Design and Marketing http://www.PetersonSales.com Sent using the Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac Test Drive. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/roundtable/attachments/20040918/41c2717d/attachment.html