The timing for good reads is now, evidently:
Posted on 07/07/2008 3:32:49 PM PDT by mojito
To ascribe a special grace to America is outrageous, as outrageous as the idea of special grace itself. Why shouldn't everyone be saved? Why aren't all individuals, nations, peoples and cultures equally deserving? History seems awfully unfair: half or more of the world's 7,000 or so languages will be lost by 2100, linguists warn, and at present fertility rates Italian, German, Ukrainian, Hungarian and a dozen other major languages will die a century or so later. The agony of dying nations rises in reproach to America's unheeding prosperity.
An old joke divides the world into two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. America is one of the things that sorts the world into polar opposites. To much of the world, America is the Great Satan, the source of the plague of globalization, the bane of the environment, the Grim Reaper of indigenous cultures, the carrier of soulless industrialism, and the perpetrator of imperial adventures. To hundreds of millions of others it is an object of special grace. Whether one subscribes to the concept or not, America's grace defines one of the world's great dividing lines, perhaps its most important.
Violent antipathy to America measures the triumph of the American principle, and the ascendance of America's influence in the world. America's enemies make more noise than her friends, but her friends are increasing faster than her enemies. America's influence in the world leapt as result of her victory in three world wars, including the fall of communism in 1989. Arguably, America is ascending even faster today, despite the reverses in its economic position and the strains on its military resources.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
You’re right. Very thoughtful. I was reading an essay by Dr. Thomas Sowell the other night where he pointed out that America has always been a multicultural society. Our lettering is Roman, our numbers Arabic, our paper comes from China, on and on. But, as he pointed out, it is a result of judging the merit of something foreign and adopting it IF it is superior to what we already had, not just because it was from another culture. Now that we are forbidden by political correctness to judge superiority among cultures and to pick and choose among them, the real multiculturalism is stymied.
The rights of Americans are held to be inalienable precisely because they are a grant from God, not the consensus of the sociologists or the shifting custom of a particular historical period. Ridiculous as this appears to the secular world, it is embraced by Americans as fervently as it was during the Founding. Even worse for the secularists, it has raised a following in the hundreds of millions in the Global South among people who also would rather be ruled by the divine law that holds their dignity to be sacred, than by the inherited tyranny of traditional society.
Nearly too much in those brief sentences to discuss at length, and they were a small part of the essay. I'll simply leave it with a strong recommendation to read and a BTT.
It is difficult to know what to expect from Spengler. But I will say that whoever he is, he’s a man of deep, if quirky, erudition, and a sincere religious faith. I always read him with interest, and almost always learn something.
On the contrary. America's unheeding prosperity rises in reproach to the agony of dying nations.
—bflr—
Thanks for posting this. It is, as you say, another fine one from Spengler.
Spengler Strikes Again [Michael Ledeen]
Spengler at his best is dazzling, a philosophical high-wire act, swinging gracefully from platform to platform. Here he is in rare form, flying from the Founders to Obama with nary a slip. Why do they hate us? Because we’re the “almost chosen people,” as Lincoln said. But the real question is why does Obama hate us? And Spengler has a grim answer:
In return for the sanctity of individual rights, Americans are freed from the constraints of traditional society and made responsible for their own actions. For an American presidential candidate to refer to traditional society as the model for the solution to American problems has no precedent. It is one thing to denounce American errors while upholding American principles. Never before has America considered electing a president who prefers the alternative, and that might just be the most dangerous thing to happen to the United States since its Civil War.
Read it all. Then read it again. Don’t leap for your keyboard, think about it. It’s very important.
07/08 08:08 AM
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWEwOTVlYzhkZGJjNGM4OGM3NWI5YmJlNTdmOGJmNTI=
The timing for good reads is now, evidently:
"It is difficult to know what to expect from Spengler. But I will say that whoever he is, he’s a man of deep, if quirky, erudition, and a sincere religious faith. I always read him with interest, and almost always learn something."
Spengler? Quirky? Naah..!
You are right to draw attention to that, but the Spengler argument also suggests that a blood-and-soil nationalism of the Pat Buchanan type does not work in America, and if it takes root we will cease to be what made us great. We are a nation of individuals, and individualism is our culture.
Multiculturalism is so pernicious precisely because it seeks to turn us into mere members of blood groups, with the groups tied together in an uneasy peace managed from on high by the diversity wizards. It is a doctrine designed to empower experts, and to destroy the individualism essential for a free society.
I agree that a xenophobia is contrary to the American Way. What multiculturalism should be is the freedom to pick and choose among various cultural ideas those most suitable to what America stands for. But not all cultures are amenable to America just as my Mercedes won’t run on gasoline as well as diesel and, if I continue putting in gasoline instead of what it was designed for, the vehicle will eventually break down. Multiculturalism should be a wise, open shopping trip for the best there is, not some means of preserving unworkable ideas and cultures in this 21st Century.
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