Subject: HAB: Re: Modernity vs. Premodernity  (Re: samizdat 2/28)
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 23:15:40 -0500


Tom,
       perhaps you're investing more in modernity than it's worth...in fact
enron seems rather apt metafor here...underneath all the hype and glitz and
gleaming jewel-case towers (bourgeois liberal ideologies of individual
freedom and democracy and cultural pluralism)...just a big swindle, a
nothing.

...anyway, the case with the palestinians, displaced from their homelands,
is one of a monstrous criminality, ...a simple one of justice - restore what
was stolen, punish the criminals,..., wherever that might lead.  There's no
illusion re power, the bush team and sharon are deaf to claims of justice
and right and law or even simple human compassion; and, of course,  are
possessed of an awesome power of bribing and/or killing; but philosophers
who demur at affirming meaning, howso'er forelorn,  in the dark hour of
nihilism ascendant, lose their right to philosophy, no?

bob



----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas McDonald <mcdonald928-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 1:05 PM
Subject: HAB: Modernity vs. Premodernity (Re: samizdat 2/28)


> To suggest that "they want another 9-11" is absurd. Please don't allow
> the insanity of the middle-east situaiton to allow you to lose your own
> sanity.
>
> I'm not big fan of Israel myself, but how can Israel deal 'rationally'
> with Palistinian forces that can be so extremely irrational in their
> desires/motives? I don't mean this in a derogatory sense towards the
> Palestinian people. But we would have to acknowledge that Islamic
> religious culture has not adapted to rational, pluralistic
> modernization in the way that Jewish and Christian cultures have.
>
> If Israel were to give in to full demands, pullback of borders, etc.
> What's to say that the cultivated, passionate desires of a radically
> anti-jewish Islamic Palestinian culture will not want more? That they
> won't want to eradicate Israel altogether?
>
> What can satisfy a people who's desires are not for modernity?
>
> It seems to me the real problem is that this is a clash between
> modernity and premondernity.
>
> We could all use to contemplate the problem this way in a non-partisan
> manner.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom
>
> --- bob scheetz <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com> wrote:
> >
> > Bush pronounces the "axis of evil",...Sharon responds to Prince
> > Abdullah's
> > conciliatory gesture with the shredded corpses of hundreds of
> > defenseless
> > Palestinians,...Ari Fleischer adverts contemptuously on the Clinton
> > era
> > mid-east initiative. There's no mistaking the Wolfowitz policy
> > ascendancy,
> > the US/Israeli intention of escalating war with Islam.  These are all
> > actions manifestly calculated to produce optimal street rage from
> > Morocco to
> > Jakarta, raise the popular stature of OBL,... to the end of provoking
> > more
> > "terrorism", a much needed 'nother casus belli.  Apparently the Danny
> > Pearl
> > incident was not large enuf, or inconveniently situated, or tied to
> > the
> > already devastated Taliban, ...; they want another 9-11.
> > Let us earnestly hope they are frustrated, ...and speak out, that
> > perhaps
> > for once this trap should remain un-sprung.
>
>
>
> ====> Tom McDonald  CONTACT INFO:
> WEBSITE:  http://www.ThomasMcDonald.com
> EMAIL:  mcdonald928-AT-yahoo.com
> INSTANT MESSENGER:  "omhats" on AOL & MSN, "mcdonald928" on Yahoo
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email!
> http://mail.yahoo.com/
>
>
>      --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---