From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu 28 Nov 2002 - 20:56:54 GMT
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 1:51 AM
> Subject: Re: Why Europe is so Contrary
> > I'd say the greatest biasing factor for Europe is the number of
> > different culutures and languages that influence policy making and
> > world view. The various European cultures have been fighting and
> > dominating each other for milliniums now. Most of the protestant
> > church groups sprang up in opposition to Catholicism in Europe first
> > and than spread to parts of the U.S. The U.S. assimilated these
> > various groups relatively peacefully
> while
> > Europe fought over them and hundreds of thousands of people died
> > over
> them.
> > Our religious debates were downright gentlemanly by comparison.
> >
> > The result in Europe has been large groups of people with strong
> > opinions who are willing to die for what they believe in.
> > Americans, on the other hand, are willing to die for what we believe
> > in as a nation but seldom
> feel
> > that way about individual faiths. We don't have members of one
> > faith
> trying
> > to domainate members of another faith for religious reasons.
> > Members of
> one
> > faith may look down on members of another faith but we don't have
> religious
> > wars about it. At least, we didn't until the Muslims came.
> >
> > America, with its mere 200 years of assimilation fighting for such
> > beliefs as the idea that sheep ruin the land for cattle and that the
> > only good indian is a dead indian. We also believe that any man has
> > the potential
> to
> > become president of the U.S. and such men as Bill Clinton, Abraham
> > Lincoln and John Kennedy seemed to prove the point. They said
> > Kennedy would never become president because he was a Catholic. But
> > we didn't have to fight a civil war for him to prove it. In Europe,
> > Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox groups are still
> > fighting to the death in some places. Such divisions make for strong
> > opinions about the memes that make one religion different from
> > another and one group's concept of what is right
> and
> > wrong compared to another.
> >
> > The advent of radio, television, and the movies have made the U.S.
> > relatively homogenous by comparison. We all picked up pretty much
> > the
> same
> > values from media that differed little from one place to another. I
> recall
> > an old "Beyond the Fringe" skit in which a Brit is comparing
> > American political parties and says In America they have the
> > Democrats who are similar to the British Liberal party and the
> > Republicans who are like the British Liberal party. Despite the
> > fact that we have so many different nationalities and faiths in the
> > U.S. the basic ideas about government and foreign policy are pretty
> > much the same across the land. Instead of fighting about which
> > religion should be in control, we fight about
> economic
> > policy. That seems much more important to the average American than
> > religion.
>
> Grant, Joe,
>
> Yes I can see your point, though, but from my POV that is maybe the
> fact I dislike the most in the American/ Usasian attitude, that there
> ain 't ' individuality ' in it. You seem to think all quite the same,
> one country, one nation, one voice !
>
It becomes more and more obvious that you have never been here.
>
> IMO, what you described in above can be seen as a ' faith ', no doubt
> a positive one from your side of the channel when you look at it, but
> from my side of the great pond I see a country that is willing to
> impose its " democratic " values and its compulsary memes upon the
> rest of the world. If you don 't realize that for others that is
> unacceptable you ' re in the wrong country.
>
The whole idea behind democracy is that it is the END of imposition.
There can be no such thing as a democratic dictator. Once a country
becomes democratic, its citizenry gets to decide the course of their
country through the electoral selection of its leaders, rather than having
those leaders dictate the direction of the country to them.
>
> Oh I believe that is part of the American tradition and part of the
> ways by which America was founded, but it seems fair to say if you see
> the European cultural/ social/ political diversity as the major point
> why we don 't engage ourselves in a stupid war, than you make me
> upset. Than is the ways by which Americans, like you and Joe talk to
> us the Europeans a question of " culture " ! If you say that the
> diversity, like Joe seems to indicate, is a flaw to the reason why we
> don 't go to war with Iraq, than you attack our/ my way of life... and
> I am not a Radical Muslim, far from it !
>
Actually, a war to disarm a bloodthirsty dictator inhabiting Europe's
vulnerable southeastern underbelly who would not agree to disarm
himself would not be stupid, but would be of great benefit to both the
US and Europe. Just as it was a great benefit to Europe for the US to
deal with Serbia's Milosevic - and y'all bitched and moaned about that
one, too, even though it saved your bacon.
>
> It is this kind of attitude, this kind of reasoning, the lack of
> patriotism that you see as a slur on the European vail, that we/ I
> dislike ! It is just in the diversity of our, yes, bloody cultures we
> find peace and ease of mind, and yes, the same diversity holds us back
> to become a true European nation, but at least we hold back the
> praises of wherein patriotism and sacrifice of authoritatives are
> displayed.... That kind of conservatism is since long replaced by the
> Enlightment and Modernism and even Post- Modernism.
>
Europe seems to not lack effluvient praises for the appeasement of
vicious dictators and virulent ideologies. At least that has been its
unfortunate history - and unfortunate for the US, too, for we have spent
much blood and treasure saving you from your own sick, twisted and
demented tendencies.
>
> And please, stop the stupid phrase that you have rescued us ! I am
> from the second generation after WWII and, really I don 't care,...the
> war is since long over, each year we remerber the deaths, but you ain
> 't gonna get that meme in my head ! We the younger generation don 't
> care that the US helped us, we don 't even border to say thanks ! Why
> should we !? It was and still isn 't our war, and moreover, the war on
> terrorism is not our war either !
>
Yes that war is. Al Quaeda has a major commander in charge of the
planning and execution of European attacks. As long as Europe does
not submit to shari'a law, they are Dar al Harb, and eminently
attackable by Al Quaedans for the greater glory of their conception of
Allah. And those who do not learn the lessons of history, even those
they were too young to live through, are indeed doomed to repeat them,
unless others (like the US) intervene to prevent it. As we did with
Milosevic. As we're doing with Saddam.
>
> For far I can tell, in Europe, Western Europe there hasn 't been an
> attack by any Muslim organisation in the sense of dictating us to
> convert ourselves to Islam !
>
The first use of terror flyers commandeering airliners was supposed to
have been directed at the Eiffel Tower. But it was thwarted.
>
> The hardest things that happened here
> were demonstrations and a few riots the last couple of days in
> Antwerp. And than again, when a racistic whitey shoots a Marokkian man
> out of, what now seems to be psychological distress, and when the
> Marokkian community haunts the streets shouting we' re all racists and
> don 't even border to watch_ its so spoonfed.
>
That's Morroccan. and you have the benefit of being a tiny country that
gets a free ride, so it's in bad taste to criticize the car that picked you up
off the bloody street and is transporting safely you into the twenty-first
century.
>
> The possible, maybe real danger is that AEL movement, the
> Arabic European Liga, which is defending the ' rights ' of the
> Arabic community in Europe, with no support within that commu-
> nity...so for the time be...
> On the other hand, we had Trabalsi, a footballplayer who tried
> to blow up the American embassy in Paris, but failed, but again,
> there is no real threat.
> And today, after the attacks in Kenya, the police set a double-
> guard at the gates of the Jewish neigbourhood in Antwerp, but
> that's all....no soldiers in the streets, nothing !
>
Tell that to your entrant in the Miss World pageant. And of course, you
would not see the threatened annihilation of a US embassy in your
country as a terrorist threat. How sad.
>
> You 're getting panaroid folks !
> And like 9/ 11 indicates you have good reasons to be, but don 't
> compare Europe to your home country, we' re different and I like
> it to stay it that way.
> Maybe we're in the wrong and the future will tell, but don 't try to
> get us hooked on the terrorism- meme. Denile maybe works for us, let
> us be ! Fights your wars, but leave us out of them.
>
But THEY will not leave you out of them. And when the massive terror
action comes and you are crying in the streeets, you will ask
yourselves, "Why didn't we listen?" But then it will be too late for the
dead. It happened to us. And it will eventually happen to you. You
cannot continue feeding that hungry terrorist alligator, hoping it'll die
before it gets around to eating you, because your apathetic food keeps
it alive, and it will devour you eventually.
>
> Kenneth
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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