[lit-ideas] discussion or the same old slugfest?
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 12:15:24 EDT
In a message dated 4/8/2004 3:59:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Having given the matter some thought, I am arriving to
the conclusion that Eric has got a point. Surely acts
of individual murder, however despicable, pale in
comparison to the extermination of whole nations,
classes, races and civilizations. For such
enterprises, those backward Mid-Easterners are not
much use. Here you need the rational, progressive,
enlightened West.
Omar, I was seeking to engage people on the value of the ancient near eastern
influence on Western cultures. In doing so, we could be discussing attitudes
toward authority, approaches to learning, etc., styles of government,
paradigms of our relation to the natural world, the impact of Greek thought on
the
ancient near east after 323 BC, etc.
Instead you and Mike Chase (who both should know better) immediately engage
in name calling, racist stereotyping, and ad hominems, as if I were some Bubba
trying to say them thar Ay-rabs were baaaad.
If we could stick to the topic, or at least closely define it, we could
maintain civility. That way, everyone who was disposed to learn something might
learn something instead of practicing the usual modes of attack.
As for your Jesus reference and my Sufi reference, why not add G. Bruno and
others to reinforce the point that orthodoxies tend to persecute individual
thinking everywhere? Otherwise you are merely making a covert political point
about Jews killing Jesus and I am countering with a political point about
Moslems
killing Sufi mystics.
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