Posted on 12/31/2006 8:12:14 PM PST by quidnunc
As Saddam was being hung, the voices of several of those present in the room were heard crying out. They didn't cry out "a bicameral legislature!" They didn't cry out "checks and balances, for god's sake let us have checks and balances." They didn't cry out "we want a government of limited powers." No, they cried out "Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr."
Amurath an Amurath succeeds.
And will, until it is realized that people suffused with the tenets and attitudes of Islam are not interested in Western parliamentary democracy. Nor are they interested in guarantees of the rights of minorities and especially of the individual, or in the Spirit of Liberty, which is defined by Learned Hand as the spirit that is "not quite sure that it is right." Try to imagine a Muslim Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, James Wilson, Clay or Webster or Calhoun or John Randolph of Roanoke, Lincoln, or for that matter a Muslim John Marshall, a Muslim Louis Brandeis, a Muslim Oliver Wendell Holmes. You can't. And you know why.
And unless, and until, the Camp of Infidels understands that it must not only understand, but make its constant theme, the connection between those assorted amuraths and the politico-religio-legal system of Islam, that refuses to locate legitimacy in the will of mere mortals, all of them rightfully slaves of Allah, and that urges submission to the ruler, no matter how despotic, as long as he is declared to be a Muslim, you never will be able to imagine such creatures. They will continue to be chimerical as long as the connection between the inshallah-fatalism of Islam and the economic backwardness, despite the OPEC trillions, of Muslim lands (where the only real economies are found, in some form, in those countries where Islam has been constrained as in Turkey or Tunisia) continues to go unnoticed. And the connection between the social failures, the moral failures, the intellectual failures, of Muslim societies must be connected to the doctrines, the teachings, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam. The case for such a connection is overwhelming. It will not be easy to deny it, and at the very least, the world's Infidels will see that connection, and so will the most advanced people born into Islam. It will put Islam permanently on the defensive among its own adherents, who will indeed begin to wonder why their countries have a series of despots succeeded by other despots, why their countries are so naturally violent in their politics, why they are, despite such oil revenues, unable or unwilling to create advanced economies, why their societies, so hostile to non-Muslims and to women, will remain estranged from the rest of the world as that world passes them by, and why the habit of mental submission encouraged by Islam will always prevent them from the enterprise of science, or from all else that requires the encouragement, and not the punishment, of free and skeptical inquiry.
-snip-
And the elfin language of Legolas resembles Gaelic.
"Tangado haid! Leithio i philinn!"
We will fight the Islamofascists and grind them to ashes and dust.
And we need to get them all to gather in one spot. Thats the ticket!
They even scream a lot alike...
There aren't many written records for scholars to study.
This simply is untrue.
I just finished a college-level course on the history of Western church music, taught by our choir director (who has a doctorate from Juilliard and did a Fulbright at the Lyons Conservatory).
We have thousands of written records from the late Roman empire right on into the reign of Charlemagne. I just got through studying the 1st volume of the Oxford Anthology of Music and there are plenty of music manuscripts from this period as well as a lot of other stuff.
The thing is, there was just so MUCH of it that even though things were lost over time a great deal remains. The monasteries did good work preserving a lot of classical literature that would otherwise have been lost.
The Victorians - especially the Germans - wanted history to Teach A Lesson. They greatly exaggerated the darkness of the "Dark Ages" because they loved the Renaissance period, and they enjoyed the moral lesson of the progression from virtuous Roman Republic, decadent Roman Empire, dreadful Dark Ages, and the returning dawn of the Renaissance that recovered the best of the Romans. "Every picture tells a story."
The High Elven, Quenya, is based on Finnish. The "ordinary" Elvish tongue, Sindarin, is based on Welsh.
Music manuscripts can you say the Church?
The Dark Ages the period from the late 400sAD to about 1000AD was marked by a lack of written historical records.
What we know largely comes from monestary records and archeology.
One could not earn a degree with a major in history from Beloit College in the '50 as I did without being well-grounded in the history of Western Civilization.
We can thank the monastic movement for most of the written records of the period from the fall of the Roman empire to the rise of feudalism.
This knowledge has been augmented through other non-written sources such as archeology and forensic pathology.
PS: Music manuscripts add very little to the historical understanding of the period outside of the very narrow nich of Church music.
Oh please, Islam was never advanced. It was a warrior cult that took over other Middle Eastern societies that actually were advanced, ranging from Iraq and Iran to Spain. The learning came from the cultures Islam conquered, but in all cases it extinguished learning, freedom and art within 100 years of its arrival.
How perfectly right you are!!! Precisely correct!!! America is the most exceptional nation ever to exist on planet Earth, due to the works of God through inspired people. The constitution is the second most inspired written word by mankind, up until some of the more recent amendments, that is...
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12/31/2006 10:25:12 PM CST |
Europe was not the pathetic mud hovel you imagine. One center of "islamic learning" was actually at Cordoba in Spain, where European scholars worked side by side with moslems who came in and assumed authority. Also well known is that much of "islamic learning" was accomplished by Christians living among them, and by jews who fled persecution in Europe, bringing western knowledge and inquiry with them, and were accepted in moslem regions.
For a knowledgeable presentation read Bernard Lewis. He makes clear that while the moslems had their high points, and made their contributions, they were best thought of as an "intermediate civilization". He also explores the fatal flaws of the civilization that has caused it to derail.
Trade was already growing fast between western europe and the eastern civilizations, and without the moslem middlemen the west would still have soon come alive in the renaissance. Taken all together the "golden age of islamic civilization" doesn't pass the Atlantis test.
Oooh, Ooh, Ooh!!
I know, I know....
Let's Rock !! (moon rock that is)
That's very true, but the Dark Ages refers to the history of western Europe and the British Isles.
One has to differentiate between the Roman empire and the Byzantine empire.
Their relationship is too complex and lengthy to be thrashed out here, but for purposes of this thread let it be said that Byzantine sources aren't much help in filling in the historical record of the Dark Ages in Europe.
I didn't say the elfin languages were based on Gaelic. I said they sound like Gaelic( read my post 41 again),and they do indeed!
And BTW, Welsh(Cymraeg or y Gymraeg) is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales (Cymru).As such it is closely associated with Gaelic.
I like your nits.
I have got to disagree on this one. It used to be, but is no longer. Is there anything that the government can do and wants to do but doesn't because doing so would exceed their powers?
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