[quidnunc]

Paul Johnson is the author of "Modern Times, A History of Christianity", and "A History of the Jews", among many other books.

[wizardoz]

I would say that to hate Americans is to hate humanity as a whole.

Yep.

[Cap Huff]

Bump for later read.

[citizenmike]

Excellent article. Can it be translated into Arabic?

[gogogodzilla]

Very good, very good indeed.

[Billthedrill]

BTT for a good one. Had we ended up using the atomic bomb on Germany the thing would have come full-circle.

[GOP_1900AD]

He did miss one thing. The Chinese also have a strain of anti Semitism. It wells up overtly in their demonization of Americans. To them, the USA is "ruled by the neocons" (read "Jews") and deserves destruction. The main difference between the Chinese and Arabs is that the Arabs have translated their anti Semitism into a relatively inneffective campaign of terror whereas the Chinese have translated theirs into a cunning, slowly undertaken strategy to wipe out the USA.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[dervish]

bttt!

[Tolik]

More of Paul Johnson's brilliance!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

    This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of good stuff that is worthy attention. You can see the list of articles I pinged to lately on my page.

       Besides this one, I keep separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson, Orson Scott Card, David Warren and Lee Harris (sometimes). You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

[Yardstick]

*Bump*

That was a good read.

[beckett]

An exceedingly persuasive theory of history well constructed by the always interesting master historian, Paul Johnson.

[gobucks]

There are MANY Paul Johnson fans at FR. But I have not encountered any of his writings which suggests the 'how-to-manual' for transforming people who think unreasonably into reasoning people. In short, to him, the cure for antisemitism is 'reason'.

So, how does one grow (get converted?) into 'reason'? How does one teach 'reasoning'? (Is there a basic website Reason 101? Or is 'Reason' like golf? Only a few are graced w/ the ability to shoot par, and its teachers can never agree about how to teach it?)

What I seek here from you three is any knowledge regarding what Paul Johnson has said regarding these two questions. Given that 9-11 is likely a preview of things to come from the unreasonable, these two questions I think are of paramount importance.

I found this essay to be unsatisfactory, and in fact, I'm curious as to what provoked him to write it...

To attribute 'unreasonableness' as the chief cause of antisemitism doesn't really work very well. Hitler, for example, basically was incredibly motivated. But how would he have been different if his Dad had lived throughout his growing up years? Being 13 years old is a tough time to lose a father; and given Adolf was under the impression that his Dad was half Jewish, and that up to the time he died, his Dad mistreated him ...? Just how different would his story have been had the Dad lived, or better, had the Dad loved him properly?

But in the essay, the implication is stark: we as a human race must function within 'reason', or we end up destroying ourselves from an unavoidable contraction of the 'diesease' known as antisemitism. But how do families function? Johnson seems to have little to offer here...; the great exception was his book 'Intellectuals'. But even there, the patterns he pointed out were ones about how misfunctional families created intellectual beasts, now how functional families created intellectual giants...

The solution according to him is to be inoculated w/ philosemitism (or at least asemitism), via 'reason'. But he doesn't show how this is supposed to be done....and I think the lack of that hurts the credibility of his analysis...

Fathering is a reasonable subject to consider regarding the flow of History...; and I've noticed a very, very unreasonable tendency to overlook this subject in all facets of Western life. Why is this?

[veronica]

BTTT...