Of Cosmic significance - Of Comic Significance

In primitive cultures the word for stranger and enemy can be the same word.

In the west, led by a sensationalist media looking for customers rather than truth, we have become myopic.

What is deemed important by media is last night's political protest or family murder. We demand no real news and analysis - the media provides none.

Public schools teach worthless blather, and ignore history and its lessons. I talked recently with a public school teacher - he teaches junior high history. World history in his class is limited to ancient Egypt. His students are building him a burial chamber. He said that will give them a love of history.

While I might have enjoyed building a burial chamber for a teacher - a whole course dedicated to that construction is less than worthless. The students have studied no great minds, no conflicts, no principles that separate the ignorant from the civilized.

These students have learned - as fact - vague guesses on an ancient "acceptable" religion. That is their world history course. They are more ignorant than prior generations - reflecting their society slowly reverting to its primitive roots.

I received a subscription e-mail from Bob Bauman today. He writes well, he understands civilization, he has a wide view of history. He talks of the fourteen centuries of battle between some parts of Islam and the West.

Put simply, certain Muslims don't like us, not because of what we do, (which is provocative enough; Iraq, oil, Israel) but because too many Muslims reject the West's love of freedom and perhaps because they have been on the losing side for 300 years. Muslims' refuse to be ruled by infidels and to many of them all non-believers are infidels. Read history and you will understand why these street riots are another stark symptom of a much deeper, chronic problem that will torment the world for a long time.

That battle will not end as long as the west prefers freedom. As we can see from the reaction to a few cartoons - that battle is not going to end this century.

As we also can see in Iraq - even the conversion of the world to Islam would not stop the violence. Different flavors of Islam are more than willing to blow each other up.

This is not primarily a religious issue - this violence against "others" or strangers is a primitive cultural reality.

I saw a placard held up by one of the rioters for the media to record; the placard read something like: "behead the enemys of Islam."

You are likely an "enemy of Islam" to this person. You believe in liberty - you are a stranger. They will not be satisfied until you are beheaded.

That person will probably not change their view. If their children are raised the same way - their children will probably think you need to die also. The west is becoming more primitive, large parts of the world are not advancing from the primitive, we are all becoming more wary of strangers.

I can remember a time when Lebanon was a land of peace and prosperity. Jew, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, and others were treated well by each other. An element entered the country that was violently divisive. Lebanon is now a primitive war zone.

Because you are comfortable today - does not mean the dark ages won't re-start tomorrow. Perhaps we have never really left the dark ages.


We are strangers.

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