Monthly Archives: July 2006

“On the Eve of Modernity”


[The Israel bombing of Qana yesterday was not the first such attack on this town. The horrendous picture above is from a similar bombing there in April, 1996, when as many as 300 villagers were killed.]

In a syndicated commentary on July 28, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman illustrated the journalistic malady that exemplifies biased reportage masquerading as informed analysis. While in Damascus he picked up a copy of the English-language Syria Times and noted an ad box that read “The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity.” He continues:

“I thought: What a perfect way to describe the Middle East today – going back to some pre-modern era? Alas, the Syria Times was not trying to be ironic. It turned out the headline was the title of a book about the 18th century. But had it been a news headline, it would have been apt. Continue reading “On the Eve of Modernity”

In God We Strut

One of the major casualties of war is the opportunistic rise of God-talk. Before the American Civil War preachers north and south saw their political differences along religious lines. Slaveholding advocates below the Mason-Dixon line viewed blacks as the cursed children of Ham, forever branded to be servants to the Japhethetic spiritual (and plantation-owning) heirs of Noah and Abraham. Liberal abolitionists up north proposed the novel idea that Uncle Tom was the kind of man Jesus died for and who a nation should go to war over. World War I America road the crest of a revivalist movement leading to the current evangelical wing of conservative Protestantism and “death to Darwinism” bannerism. After World War II the pulpit not only was bullied to save wayward sinners but warned of the immanent takeover of America by godless Commies. Now we have the debacle in Iraq in which President Bush entered the fray on the apparent advice from a heavenly father (certainly not the logical assessment of Pentagon planners). Look out God, here come the self-righteous mantra bearers once again. Continue reading In God We Strut