Posted on 05/28/2005 7:21:59 AM PDT by voletti
In Europe religion doesn't rise to the level of burning away “in the open air”; in fact, it barely smoulders. Most European politicians would rather talk about sexually transmitted diseases than their own faith in God. The hugely bulky European constitution doesn't mention Christianity.
America's policymakers, by contrast, don't seem to talk about anything else. Look at the issues that have dominated the past week.
America's religious wars are only going to intensify. Fourteen moderate senators averted a nuclear explosion over conservative judges this week; but explosions over the issues which made those judges controversial seem all but inevitable. Just wait for the next Supreme Court ruling on abortion. Or for the next vacancy on the court to open up.
Forget today's crowing about the ceasefire in Congress. America's wars of religion will get a lot nastier before any long-lasting peace can be declared—if ever.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
Yes. That's because "Secularism" is shallow, dismal, nihilistic, and barren.
The Economist isn't too bad but being British they typically have a axe to grind and they are VERY PRO EU to a fault.
"Most European politicians would rather talk about sexually transmitted diseases than their own faith in God. The hugely bulky European constitution doesn't mention Christianity."
Doesn't THAT TELLL YOU SOMETHING?
Perhaps the Godless are not in good standing with God?
Maybe some punishment is happening?
Gee, did the Crusades happen in America or was it EUROPE?
Hmmmmmm?
Yes, the triumph of Secularism, i.e. of decadence, in Europe has destroyed religion there and will destroy Europe itself if present trends continue.
This decadence has infected Europe like the Black Plague and threatens to be even more devastating and catastrophic. Europe recovered from the plague. It will probably be destroyed by this decadence, unless Europeans wake up and come to their senses.
Americans hope and pray that Europeans will save themselves before it's too late, but so far it appears that prayers to St. Jude are the best bet, and apparantly most Europeans don't believe in prayer or saints (or anything else).
Nothing more than the classic liberal view that "we are right and you religious nuts are wrong".
God help them, because they are in for actual religious wars when Islam decides to impose its beliefs on their countries.
I love how the author makes sure to say:
"The hugely bulky European constitution doesn't mention Christianity."
But makes no mention of the fact that ours doesn't either, thereby implying that it does, which further implies that we have religion written into the basis of our government. From there the inference is that that is why we are "religious fanatics."
You can say a lot with what you DON'T say, sometimes.
I think that is exactly what is going to happen, too. The only question is which country falls first? Great Britain, France, Germany or Italy?
Why? Because people are attacking Christians.
"The libs want you to think that it is necessary to REMOVE the religious from the public square to avoid conflict, but in truth it is the opposite."
Excellent point. Thank you.
That and the state churches. Christianity thrives amidst competition. That doesn't mean that the government shouldn't enforce reasonable things like prayer in schools and the ten commandments on public buildings, because ALL religion is under some rubric (either Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or atheism). But the more competition you allow, the more vibrant religious faith is, according to numerous studies.
Europe has had a whole series of religious wars and persecutions. As far as I know, America has had none, throughout its history.
There has certainly been religious prejudice. There used to be signs in windows, "No Irish need apply," or "No Jews welcome." But there have never been organized religious wars or killings like the Thirty Years War, the British Civil War, or for that matter the French Revolution and the various Communist revolutions, which took great pleasure in exterminating Christians of various kinds.
It takes a peculiar kind of ignorant marxist mentality to call a quarrel over the rules of when it is permissible to filibuster as a "religious war."
Similarly, America's division of powers means that the courts are constantly being asked to give firm answers to profound questions such as when life begins and ends. Europeans fudge these issues, by leaving them more often to parliaments to find political compromises.
That's an interesting take on things, but we've exported some of our judicial ideas to Europe. Some countries have Supreme Courts, as I believe does Europe itself. A deeper cultural difference is at fault, or maybe it's a question of timing: Europe made its arrangements on some of these issues before judicial activism became common or acceptable there, whereas courts have tended to have or take more power here, and were heavily involved when questions like abortion came under debate.
In Europe today, the courts, bureaucracies, and legislatures tend to be controled by the same political elite. It works together, and there's far less ability for ordinary citizens to influence the machine. Given the silence and passivity of the people, courts in Europe today probably could get away with a lot. That same impotence of the public, though, allows the ruling elite to have its way through other channels.
One morning they are going to wake up and find that the Euro-Taliban is outside their door readying them for the whip for missing morning prayers.
Well, I guess you could say that the Revolution and the Civil War had a religious component in that people of faith argued that God's laws were being violated. And they were right.
The wars are not wars of religion, they are wars that are fought because of the values that our country believes are important. Those values came from our religious background as a nation.
This is wrong. Most Leftists may be secularists but secularism is much larger than that. It is based on the idea that supernatural phenomena are not a part of our lives. We don't have to create them, or infer their existance, in order to explain natural phenomena or morality or any other aspect of our lives and experience.
Also, the U.S. Constitution says this:
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
Which Lord were they referring to?
From repeated Latin American and Asian currency blow ups, to directions of markets, to predictions of political shifts, there is hardly a major trend in our time that The Economist was not completely wrong headed about. They have a batting average on a par with J. K. Galbraith or their "co-relgionists" in the CIA.
Are you aware that they have a separate US edition, so you are not see an unvarnished EU point of view?
There was a time perhaps when we looked to The Economist as a source of good information. They have long since gone farther to the left, and they are nearly as suspect as Newsweek.
Americans have matured, or at least some of us have.
This article is, of course, sensationalist hogwash of the sort that pervades European media. It is all rhetoric full of straw men.
As other posters have pointed out:
There has never been a religious war in the USA. There are still "religious wars" - or at least battles in Europe - just witness the Balkans. Just what was that all about? But, as usual, we do not hear that mentioned. We often hear of the Euros grousing about "social unrest" in the USA. As far as I know, we have not made open war on one another for some one hundred and fourty years; there are still NATO troops in the Balkans. What is that that I hear out of the editorial staff of The Economist? "Well, that is not really Europe, don't you know? And besides, they are not in the EU. I mean, really, it is the Balkans, after all, they are not really Europeans. Say, how is that pipeline out of the Caspian going?"
All of which would be, of course, another clutch of straw men and complete evasions, and it is a quite common sentiment in the EU.
I am surprised that they do not just call them "Mud Races." We might have to wait, however, for another EU "treaty" before we get to that sort of language.
I would also point out that we, unlike the Dutch, do not have members of our legislature feel that they should have to go into hiding for fear of being kill my one of their Muslim "minorities."
(Not that I should be perturbed if select members of our "representatives" laid low for a time.)
2) If they are referring to "culture war," the only reason that they are not having one is the fact that the left won in the EU. The reason that we are still at it is that we have a free press and, at least for the moment, are a free people.
I suspects that some of the tub thumbing we are hearing here is a mixture of bewilderment, impatience and disgust with a working democracy. 3) The EU will face a major "religious war" as they Face their growing Muslim population, a fact I alluded to above.
4) Do not discount the possibility of a reemergence of Christianity in Europe. It did not seem to me that those white faces in Saint Peter's Square during the funeral of JP2 where mostly American.
What we must realize is that the cultural right in the EU has essentially gone underground. We will hear scarcely a peep out of them in the EU media machines. That does not mean that they are not out there.
It may turn out that, yet again, America is 20 year ahead of Europe, and the GOP and the Christian Right were as "progressive" a force in survival of Western Civilization as Reagan and the GOP's Cold Warriors and Ronnie Reagan was back in the 1980's; the one facing up to external dangers and the other facing internal ones.
As usual, the "citizens" of the EU not only inhabit a fictitious "Nation," the nation that they are always complaining about is a fictitious one was well.
It is like talking to a not too bright, fading beauty in the throes of menopause.
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