...from a friend and a doctor of history (no worries: we're buddies and he's at a different institution). I responded with what's below around noon today, and haven't heard a word back from him or anyone else on the list-serve (about 23 other friends and professional acquaintences who lean to the left to varying degrees). Keep in mind that I was keeping in mind who my audience was when writing this response. And now, my original e-mail (names altered to protect the guilty):
Dr. "X,"
Good cartoon, although it reminds of that old Ulrich B. Philips argument, that the slaves in the South were never able to take care of themselves, and thus the Plantations and Plantation owners were a necessary component. Of course, Ulrich was wrong, but still a product of his racist society (supported by "Objective Science"). Anyhow, as a comparative study of cultural norms, we're a lot more fragile these days than they were back then -- 650,000 lives to crush that "peculiar" institution, and
another 100 years to bring actual Civil Rights to the south.
How long will it take to do the same in Mesopotamia and in Islamic culture and society? The war has been mishandled, but in talking with returned soldiers (both my bro-in-law who served in Baghdad, and an Army Ranger who served two tours in Afghanistan), they know that the problems in bringing a Democratic Republic to the mid-East is so complex due to cultural differences from the bottom-up, as well as from the top-down.
We're living in too great an age of skepticism and sarcasm these days to continue what was started -- perhaps that's
because we're so fat and saucy in America as compared with the rest of the world (further symbolized by our Thanksgiving tables this past weekend).
If we take the 18th-century Enlightenment as a model, skeptics and writers of the upper-middle class will need to begin challenging the religious powers with such a force that even if they are attacked and killed by suicide Jihadists, the remainder will carry on. How's that for a moment of idealism? The graduate students of the 1950s and '60s helped bring Civil Rights to the south, but I don't see the numbers or idealism in departments today.
Perhaps Mesopotamia will someday produce their own Voltaires and Humes and Smiths and Gibbons en mass and thus check the power of their religious leaders and zealots. Like the Enlightenment, however, it'll have to come from within their own society, and from all strata of society (perhaps even the "backwaters," like it did in 18th century Scotland).
We're looking inward to realize and fix the problems and contradictions of America and the Western world, but are they looking inward too?
It's all very complex, and very complicated. I better get back to my studies.
~"mft"
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Perhaps Mesopotamia will someday produce their own Voltaires and Humes and Smiths and Gibbons en mass and thus check the power of their religious leaders and zealots. Like the Enlightenment, however, it'll have to come from within their own society, and from all strata of society (perhaps even the "backwaters," like it did in 18th century Scotland).
Noble words, MFT. Devoutly to be wished, but alas, Porky Pig has a better chance to fly than this to happen...
Sure Islam has produced Voltaires and Humes and Smiths and Gibbons....they just had to peep silently if they wished to die of old age.
The Ulrich B. Philips analogy has been avoided by others who's hatred of Bush excedes their desire to bring more power to the masses of Mesopotamia.
For that analogy, for supporting the decision to beat the shit out of the 1860s South, and for supporting the Civil Rights Movement, I suppose I'm now considered a "neo-con."
Day two has passed, and still no response to my original mini-essay. I asked a self-admitted left-leaning girl today that if someone said they still believed in helping the Iraqi people, would she consider them a "neo-con." She said, "No... why?"
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