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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
you are obtuse. I DID NOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT CREATIONISM. God and evolution can co-exist.
Marxism's influence can is found in disciplines as diverse as economics, history, art, literary criticism, and sociology. German sociologist Max Weber, Frankfurt school theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, British economist Joan Robinson, German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, British literary critic Frederic Jameson, and the French historians of the Annales school have all produced work drawn from Marxist perspectives.
Don't tell me the only thing that's taught in school is the failures of Marxism. Most of the books you read in public school and college are based on Marxist perspective.
Marx's influence can be found in a wide range of disciplines because not everything he said was wrong, he was after all a genius, but the economic philosophy of Marxism has been totally discredited and is taught as such.
As to creationism: Darwinism is essentially the theory of evolution, with the alternative being creationism. Teaching Darwin's theory is not religious, it is science, hence it is in there.
One of the things that should be in schools, which unfortunately cannot be there because of constitutional constraints and a definite slippery slope would be teaching the King James Bible in litrature classes.
It is fairly central to a lot of English litrature, but because of the difficulty in teaching the basis of a current major religion (It can't be taught as mythology, because that favours atheism) it is not going to happen any time soon.
Hitler, loudly proclaimed his Christianity in the bulk of his speeches and boasted about stamping out atheism.
Of course he did. That's campaign rhetoric for you. The Nazi leadership were peerless demagogues, adept at pandering and utterly insincere. After all, they called themselves Socialists, too, for populist appeal. And Nationalists, to run the Patriot con.
I'm well aware of their pronouncements. I also know what they did.
Hitler, Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Walther Darre...they played every angle. Every ego had a take on it, even Himmler with his Wotanism.
None of them were Christians. Some of them, like Alfred Rosenberg, even wanted an explicit campaign to purge Germany of all Christian influence. But the pragmatists- Hitler,Goebbels, Goring- stifled that project, or anyway set it aside,, because they realized the importance of keeping the Christian masses of Germany (so to speak) conned and lulled into complicity. They were having pretty good short-term political success by confabulating their own version of Christianity- "Aryan Teutonic Christianity", you might call it. I can imagine Goring laughing about the very idea now, loaded to the gills.
His soldiers had belt-buckles adorned with the maxim "Gott mit uns"
Well, yeah. The idea is to never miss a trick.
and the policy he instituted with regards to genocide targetted people specifically according to what religion they belonged to.
No, no...the Nazis paid minimal attention to the Jew as religionist. They concentrated on the Jew as ethnic other, interloper on the Homeland, outsider...biological inferior. A sociobiological pitch, to "the locals"- the "pre-immigrant, indigenous Northern-Middle European" German- a category that is in actuality delineated by language rather than "ethnic purity"...but why let that get in the way of a good scam?
Yet you proclaim he was a secularist.
I wouldn't say that I made a "proclamation" of my opinion. I would have put more swank into it, if I wanted to proclaim something.
fwiw, this is the first time I've ever encountered the term "secularist', much less employing it to describe Adolf Hitler. I have studied his life and career, and I don't think he viewed religion as anything but a means to an end for his will to power- something that could be invoked, exploited, withdrawn, and even disparaged at will.
At any rate, my earlier characterization of "secular" was directed not at Adolf Hitler, but at the political movement known as Nazism itself- due to its obviously materialist precepts, which owed overwhelmingly more to certain monomaniacal notions of animal husbandry than on Christian ethics and priciples.
You know, that is the thing about Christians I have noticed, you guys do love lying for your Jesus.
If that statement gives a fair indication, you consider Christians to be so monolithic a group in terms of their character, that describing them in terms of common disparagement doesn't constitute ignorant and willful stereotyping.
I can only reply that I don't consider all secular people to share the same character.
1: Hitler's personal beliefs didn't change the highly religious nature of his rhetoric and government.
2: Hitler's Nazi government also targetted Christians who belonged to the wrong sects.
3: Even if one takes the concept that Hitler's statements were just so much propaganda, secularism is the belief in the seperation of Church and State (Which is why states that are atheist aren't always secular.) The Nazis tried to unite both under Nazi control.
1: Hitler's personal beliefs didn't change the highly religious nature of his rhetoric and government.
I can accapt that bit about the rhetoric- although a religious pitch was hardly at the center of Hitler's spiel, in his speeches. He simply used it as an obligatory touchpoint. I've heard lots of politicians who do that, and it often rubs me the wrong way. Occasionally it sounds sincere. Very occasionally. (Not that sincerity should be confused with actual relevant merits, on a political issue.)
But the government part, no. It was an ad hoc bureaucracy of thugs, nothing more.
2: Hitler's Nazi government also targetted Christians who belonged to the wrong sects.
We are talking about very opportunistic people, here. They picked their scapegoat populations very shrewdly.
3: Even if one takes the concept that Hitler's statements were just so much propaganda, secularism is the belief in the seperation of Church and State (Which is why states that are atheist aren't always secular.) The Nazis tried to unite both under Nazi control.
The Nazis were involved in a cynical plan to turn out German Christianity and whore it to their own purposes. Too bad they largely succeeded.
I'm neither religious nor at all a fan of Bush, but - pun intended - for Christ's sake, it's the goddamn Christmas tree. There are a zillion other places to show protest, and we've shown Bush the door. Can we just leave this confused icon of Jesus and consumerism alone?
I have to say, though, I wouldn't mind hanging a replica of that ball on our tree....
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
