A War of Cultures

The Washington Times ^ | September 6, 2001 | Arnold Beichman

[PA Engineer]

Some years ago, the distinguished Harvard professor Samuel Huntington wrote: "It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in the new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural . . .The clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future." (Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations," Summer 1993.) He later published a book titled, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which expanded on this proposition.

[PA Engineer]

I found this to be a good read. With the recent UN "hatefest" on racism I am reminded again of the work The Plaque, by Albert Camus.

Anti-semitism seems to follow a wavelike pattern in history. Rising and then subsiding like the tides on the shore of the ocean. Each outbreak has left nothing but ruin and death in it's path.

I shake my head at those who do not see the outbreak of institutionalized anti-semitism as something similar to the way miners use to view a canary that had just fainted.

Anti-semitism is anti-life and it's target always spreads beyond the Jews to everything that represents both life, liberty and goodness. This recent conference is the same as the canary that has just collapsed. It should be a warning to everyone.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

I recently told a good friend that this IS the Third World War, but people are too confused to see it. They expected nukes and mighty weapons of destruction. What they are getting is the ever-classic good versus evil. Gog and Magog, as some people might call it, isn't about distinct countries. It is about whether or not we have reached the global equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah. We are being sorely tested and I fear the worst is yet to come.

[Hugin]

People who buy the Humanistic lie that "people are all the same" never seem to realize that people are shaped by their culture, and cultures are vastly different. The reverence we hold for freedom, rights, liberty, tolerence, etc. is a product of our Western Civilization, and is the exception, not the norm. Those who love to point to our imperfections in this regard seem to have a blind spot to the fact that the supposed underdogs they tout do not share these values in the least. So they side with third world tyrants who lecture us about "racism" and "oppression" and feel morally superior for doing so.

[brat]

"The reverence we hold for freedom, rights, liberty, tolerence, etc. is a product of our Western Civilization, and is the exception, not the norm."

This is why we must fight the forces of Globalism in this country-it's destroying our liberties!

[Blunderfromdownunder]

As an anthropologist (oooh hotbed of social engineering, fuzzy science, liberal pettyfoggery, relativism and holism!) and archaeologist, I am going to have to disagree with you. Although people are superficially different, and these differences are indeed shaped by local circumstance (environment, history etc), fundamentally they are the same; They react in similar ways to similar problems, they have similar needs and desires, they develop similar strategies for dealing with the incomprehensibilities of life, and so on. They are also, at times, resistant to change (although culture should never be seen as static).

"The reverence we hold for freedom, rights, liberty, tolerence, etc" in a very recent phenomenon, predicated on historical circumstance (and I wouldnt be so quick to ascribe these values solely to western civilisation either) and as such it will take time for the potential benefits of democracy and capitalism it to filter throgh; this is only natural.