Posted on 11/10/2004 4:13:23 PM PST by Kulturkaempfer
Of God and Men
Unlike America's, Europe's political establishment is hostile to Christianity.
BY ROCCO BUTTIGLIONE Wednesday, November 10, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
ROME--George W. Bush concluded his election victory speech with "God bless America." It's likely that in the European Parliament, the U.S. president would be considered unfit for his job on account of his religious beliefs. Even worse, for Europe's legislators, would be that he's not ashamed to express those beliefs so clearly and so publicly.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
A good essay.
Agreed. Clearly the EU borked one of the best men who could have served.
Nice concise article. Unfortunately, I disagree that the political establishment isn't hostile to Christianity here - it's more or less "tolerant". Government isn't championing Christianity, "We the People" are.
Still... we could use a guy named "Rocco" in Washington, if he ever wants to immigrate...
This just shows the EU as the sham that it is.
Europe has always been on the brink of tyranny, whether in war time or in peace, and the emerging EU is following in the footsteps of its past dictators; to what end nobody yet knows.
What's most serious about this, for Americans, is the idolization of European "ideals" among our Judiciary and so-called "elites". These are the supposedly "smart" people who haven't the common sense they were born with.
Om a Sunday morning in Sweden, Norway or Denmark you will find more people in bars than you will in church.
Which is why American churches now rountinely send missionary families to Europe.
Of note:
* One of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, was convinced that politics needed values it could not produce itself and had to rely on other agencies (mainly the churches) to nurture the virtues civil life needs. The state could therefore not privilege any church in particular but had to maintain a positive attitude to religion in general.
* Jean Jacques Rousseau thought, on the contrary, that the state needed a kind of civil religion of its own and the existing churches had to bow to this civil religion by incorporating its commandments in their theology. Many scholars see in this idea of Rousseau's the seminal principle of totalitarianism. The tradition of Rousseau and of the Jacobins has survived in Europe in less virulent forms than in the not too distant past, but it's still part of the European political and ideological landscape.
* In the 1960s, both Europe and the United States lived through a cultural era that belittled traditional values and wanted to prepare the young generation for a world of tomorrow in which individual responsibility, self-sacrifice and other virtues of the past would be needed no more. In this world nobody would need moral convictions. It would be a world without the constraint of limitedness disposable resources. Nobody would need to toil for his bread.
* We still live in a world in which resources are limited, we have to work hard to have our share of them, we need the support of a family and we need the old traditional virtues that had been too easily dismissed. Americans have become aware of this state of affairs sooner than Europeans.
Bravo!
Thank you for your tip. I'll do it better next time.
That's why we left that sorry continent in the first place.
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