Letters to the Editor
azdirk
Published Letters: 105 Editor's Choice: 6
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Molly's humor
[Read the article: Molly lives]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Time and again the right accuses liberals of not having a sense of humor. Obviously they never read Molly's work.
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Enlightened Despots
[Read the article: What was so great about Catherine?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]According to my history professors, Catherine was one of the socalled "enlightened despots" of European history. As such, she keeps company with Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia and Louis XIV of France. Although these rulers are positive examples of absolutism, in the end they were just absolutists. Too often the reforms they brought about died with them. When "the decider" died, his or her reforms died as well. In England, Henry and Elizabeth were followed by a succession of inept Stuart kings; Frederick the Great's successors were poor copies of their forebearer; and the last Bourbons in France were royal disasters. Catherine's legacy was a succession of czars that increased the empire but set the stage for the Russian Revolution that racked Russia in the twentieth century, ushering in a new form of despotism.
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The Role of the Fundamentalists
[Read the article: Israel's surge of despair]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One aspect is lacking in this conversation is the role of fundamentalism: Islamic, Jewish and Christian. These people see the Middle East as the battleground between "Good" (their position) and "Evil" (the other guy's position). It is in this context of fatalism the strife in the Middle East is being fought. To a fundamentalist Muslim, Allah will triiummph over the infidel. To a fundamentalist Jew, Israel will be permanently established and the Messiah will appear. To a fundamentalist Christian, the Battle of Armaggedon will be fought and the world will end. Because of these fundamental beliefs, charlatans on all sides are gathering wealth and power at the expense of those who support them. The primary players in the Middle East all give more than just a wink and a nod to these beliefs in order to further their own ends. Until fundamentalist see the fraud being perpetrated on them, the Middle East will be in turmoil.
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What is a Christian?
[Read the article: My daily bread]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In our society, the word "Christian" should be self-defining and have meaning only on a personal level. Sadly, the word has been usurped by those who hold a particular world view. The truth is that there is more than one Christian world view. When someone begins a statement with "As a Christian" I watch my wallet and my back.
What that person is doing is trying to capture the moral high ground. Once that is captured, the "Christian" is implying that his morality is superior to yours and that
you are really not a Christian. He is the right kind of Christian and you are not. He is now licensed by God to behave as he does, expecially toward those who are not "Christians." If he decides to pay (bribe?) local homeowners to support zoning changes that would benefit his church, he will do so and cry anti-Christian bias when a planning commission denies the zoning change. He will be insulted by someone's wishing him well because that person says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." His business becomes a "Christian" business and he is justified in laying off "nonChristian" employees with equal skills and superior seniority before he lays off the "Christians." He writes books claiming that public school libraries are not allowed to have Bibles when he really objects to their having translations of the Torah or Koran. He paints atheists as having no morals or ethics. He claims that quotas under affirmative action are contrary to the Bible and ignores that before affirmative action the quota for some minorities in many areas of our society was zero. In his view, the World Trade Center tragedy was our fault because we are not "Christian" enough. Sadly, this is the Christian that has become fixed in the public mind. To me, being a Christian must result in living honestly and fairly. If that is not achieved, whether or not you are a Trinitarian, Aryan, Unitarian, Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox or any of the other faces of Christianity is meaningless drivel.
Christians are what they are, with all the warts in plain sight. They do not have special insights nor can they see the future. A friend of mine once told me that if someone says he does not go to church because it is full of hypocrites, he (my friend) would reply that there is always room for one more.
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The Explosion
[Read the article: Cheney escapes bomb attack]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just a little message that tells Cheney that the Taliban is still here.
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What is next?
[Read the article: Inside Bush's prosecutor purge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Will there be such a crisis in 2008 that George will be forced to run for a third term using Diebold voting machines? Will there be a fire at the Capitol (ala Reichstag in Germany, 1933) or a border incident with Canada or Mexico with corpses dressed in appropriate uniforms? Probably not. But what is happening deeply disturbs me.
Remember Lord Acton's dicturm: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
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An old axiom
[Read the article: Kerry gets a turn]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What goes around comes around.
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It's all about perception
[Read the article: Why do journalists suddenly love Al Gore?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have a friend who thinks much as I do about the issues of the day. He told me that when he watched the debates in the 2000 election campaign, he reacted negatively to Gore and positively to Bush. However, when he analyzed their positions he almost wholly agreed with Gore. He was predisposed to dislike him from the very beginning. It was a case of, "I don't know him, but people say they don't like him." Although he finally voted for Gore in that election, many others voted for Bush, giving Bush the opportunity to finagle a "victory" in the ACTIVIST CONSERVATIVE Supreme Court.
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The Rhetoric Brings Back Memories
[Read the article: Terrible hatred and anger on the left]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Greenwalds observation about the negativity of this type of Conservativism brings memories of the 1960's. Remember how the SDA and other organizations were intent on tearing down the system without a rational plan to create a new one?
These movement operate on the principle that anything will be better than what we have now. They only assume that whatever happens, they will be the ones to make it happen. In the 1960's, the student radicals would take control; in the present situation it will be the White, Conservative Christians that call the tune.