Posted on 11/09/2003 8:40:45 AM PST by quidnunc
Or wear a paper head covering and say, "You want hummus with that?"
Well, it's not just Arab culture.
I can think of many off the top of my head both gone and present ones:
Arab, Amerindian, Sub-Saharan, most Oriental ones...
If all knowlege of all of them were to disappear tomorrow, I am firmly of the conviction that the civilized world's level of science, liberty, comfort and progress will not have changed one iota.
That, to me, makes them clearly and permanently inferior.
I don't really care how the savages managed to lift 150-ton rocks for their amusement.
I don't care if one had a calendar accurate for 450,000 years. I don't see too many space projects using the Mayan calendar.
Of course some civilizations and cultures are inferior.
That's why most of them no longer exist!
If using those faculties (the human intellect) that separate me from the lower animals make me racist, so be it.
Color me unapologetically and permanently racist.
Next lame argument, please.
There HAVE been attempts by the more "enlightened" middle Eastern/Arab countries to develop other industries (specifically petrochemical). These have NOT been successes (despite large amounts of money invested) for exactly the reasons given in the article.
That is one of the most amazing intellectually bankrupt statements that I have ever heard.
But it does explain nicely why the "Celt" culture has not existed for almost two thousand years.
But it does raise a tantalizing issue. China fits this category somewhat.
In the book 1421 it is persuasively argued that Chinese ships circumnavigated the earth, a "mistake" which the Chinese culture attempted to erase.
That, together with many other achievement in all the sciences, should have made them the dominant culture on earth today.
What happened? Exactly the same mentality that is dooming the muslim culture: Hubris.
In the case of the Chinese, they once had a real culture to "protect".
In the case of the muslims, they are simply doomed to disappear because not only are they as a culture ignorant, but also delusional.
I am not sure if this is a myth sustained by the sandmaggots themselves, or by the mindless PC idiots.
Historically, in every instance of Arab "achievement", the greatness exhibited in any given area was the result of exploiting skills and knowlege already existing in the conquered area.
The one clearly muslim characteristic in every case was that innovation, inventiveness, technical, scientific skills and intellectual inquiry came to a grinding halt.
Islam and all those things are permanently and irrevocably mutually exclusive. That's what a primitive, inflexible and ignorant religion does.
My graphic actually depicts Marx, Lenin and Hillary. She is, after all, a radical Marxist - has been since college days.
In the days/weeks following 9/11 the left was wringing their hands saying that we needed to give money to Afghanistan and the Middle East so that their people wouldn't live in poverty. Never mind that 5 of the world's 10 wealthiest individuals live in the Middle East. The money is there; these people instead live under wealthy monarchs and dictators who'd rather construct another 10 gold plated palaces.
Even today we hear the lies of the left that this was a war over oil so that American corporations can steal those oil dollars from the "downtrodden" Middle Easterners.
Just to correct an error in the first line - Mahathir was the Prime Minister of Malaysia not Indonesia.
Mel
That, and a dollar, will buy you a 20 oz. soda at the local convenience store. This is dangerous -- a large number of college grads either unemployed or underemployed because they majored in a field of study with no practical application. Their disappointment and frustration is far more likely to lead them to radical politics than someone who never went beyond the Saudi equivalent of the 5th grade and became a tent maker. That person doesn't expect much out of life. This isn't hypothetical -- during the 1970s, Italy had a big problem with the Red Brigade -- largely drawn from unemployed college grads.
Ironically enough, the Saudis are still importing large numbers of Europeans and Americans for management positions and Pakistanis for janitorial jobs.
But cultures that let themselves be overrun by barbarians from outside aren't so superior --- political correctness is a very poor culture.
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