To be honest modern day progressives sound a lot like 3ed century christens. I remember a christian official talking a roman official into allow a German tribe over the boarder who then took up farming and living peacefully. The church official wrote that they had "beat their swords into plowshares". 20 years later the barbarians started rampaging through the empire during a weak period. I'm unable to find the quote but I believe it was from decline and fall of the roman empire.
This sounds very much like modern day progressives.
@Grim - that sounds like a very partial and biased account to me.
If you read this blog you will often hear me say *Byzantium* - the often forgotten devoutly Orthodox Christian Eastern Roman Empire; a highly sophisticated and artistic civilization that survived many hundreds of years after Rome despite being surrounded by powerful and determined foes.
Real Christianity is not soft.
Nothing has *ever* been as soft as political correctness, because PC is too soft even to admit its own softness.
The modus operandi of the left seems to be to take the simplest and most convenient interpretation of any ideology.
This is how they distill every ideology to the same thing: absolute equality of the people versus anyone with power, more money or more ability. They are a force of entropy.
In the case of Israel, this resentment manifests itself at the successful Israelis; most people are not successful, so want to drag down the successful, and if they can do so through a symbol of pity like the Palestinians, so much the better.
Speaking of Byzantium and reminiscence, nominally Christian leftists who fall all over themselves to promote Islam as a "religion of peace" while condemning conservative Christians for being, well, conservative ... remind me of the Fourth Crusade.
Let's see, we could attack those prickly Muslims, but they're likely to defend themselves. Byzantium is much closer to us and they won't be expecting the attack.
I know I am way oversimplifying the history but that's how it occurs to me now. And I guess, just as it's hard to say exactly when the east-west schism happened, it's hard to say exactly when it became more important to the "Christian" mainstream to be tolerant (i.e., of evil) than to be Christian.
The sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade was the death blow to Eastern Christian civilization - although, after a gap, it continued for another couple of centuries and managed a final cultural renaissance.
It seems to me that the combined effect of 1204 and 1453 was to destroy a possibility of wholeness in earthly Christian civilization, and both were a consequence of the east-west Great Schism.
It seems to me that the combined effect of 1204 and 1453 was to destroy a possibility of wholeness in earthly Christian civilization, and both were a consequence of the east-west Great Schism.
Whoa. I hadn't thought of 1453 as having had anything to do with the east-west Schism, but it surely did. I noticed you mentioned the same things at HBD Chick recently.
I think the ERE / Byzantium must be my next great study project.
Od'E - do it!. It is like reading about a real-life Gondor, only better!
9 June 2011 at 18:49
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It is very difficult to understand some Left alliances except in terms of pure expediency (collecting support under an arbitrary umbrella) - yet I find expediency inadequate as an explanation, since it would imply a need to ally with those whose sociopolitical aims are, if not in exact agreement, then at least not in irreconcilable opposition.
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So that the 'Respect' political party in the UK is hard to comprehend ideologically:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_Party
And in more general terms it is hard to understand how Leftist support for 'Palestine' has become the primary article of foreign policy.
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(Palestine is a litmus test for radical Leftism - despite its being an entity which does not feature as such on recent maps - and on older modern maps merely as a name for the British mandate; after which (in 1947) it was divided into a Jewish homeland of Israel and an Arab homeland of Jordan. Strictly, then, Jordan is Palestine, as the Left means the word. Perhaps, when they say they want an Arab state called Palestine, the Leftists merely mean that Jordan should change its name back to Palestine and accept the displaced Arab refugees who have been living in camps since 1948? Only kidding...)
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The alliance between aggressively secular Trotskyite International Communists and conservative non-Christian religious of whatever type is hard to understand ideologically.
But it struck me that the unifying factor is perhaps being anti-Christian.
This not really operating at a personal level, but as a consequence of historical logic.
Leftism being a Christian Apostasy...
(Leftism being - in evolutionary terms - the end result of progressively discarding more and more Christian doctrine until only a distorted and partial sample of Christian ideas remain - which have also been translated into material proxies e.g. translating the spiritual ideal of love (charity, agape) into the material proxy of egalitarianism...)
...it seems natural that the Left be inclined to ally itself with any who share a hostility to Christianity.
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Arguably that has been a broad historical pattern.
The party of Christian apostasy has always been on the Left; and it is perhaps understandable for the Left to form tactical groupings with any who are who are hostile to Christianity, for various different reasons.
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(This anti-Christian group including, of course, mainstream, politically correct 'liberal' Christians - who are monolithically Leftist and perhaps the group which is most actively hostile to real Christianity; since they have the most immediately to gain from displacing real Christians - in terms of access to enhanced status, power, jobs, resources etc).
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If so, alliances such as 'Respect' can be conceptualized as tactical anti-Christian alliances - not strategic ruling coalitions - and are held together by a negative ideology, not a positive shared goal.
Which unobvious negativeness may explain why the combination seems superficially incoherent and incomprehensible.
"Understanding the revolutionary Left - anti-Christian alliances?"
7 Comments -
To be honest modern day progressives sound a lot like 3ed century christens. I remember a christian official talking a roman official into allow a German tribe over the boarder who then took up farming and living peacefully. The church official wrote that they had "beat their swords into plowshares". 20 years later the barbarians started rampaging through the empire during a weak period. I'm unable to find the quote but I believe it was from decline and fall of the roman empire.
This sounds very much like modern day progressives.
26 May 2011 at 20:52
@Grim - that sounds like a very partial and biased account to me.
If you read this blog you will often hear me say *Byzantium* - the often forgotten devoutly Orthodox Christian Eastern Roman Empire; a highly sophisticated and artistic civilization that survived many hundreds of years after Rome despite being surrounded by powerful and determined foes.
Real Christianity is not soft.
Nothing has *ever* been as soft as political correctness, because PC is too soft even to admit its own softness.
26 May 2011 at 21:12
The modus operandi of the left seems to be to take the simplest and most convenient interpretation of any ideology.
This is how they distill every ideology to the same thing: absolute equality of the people versus anyone with power, more money or more ability. They are a force of entropy.
In the case of Israel, this resentment manifests itself at the successful Israelis; most people are not successful, so want to drag down the successful, and if they can do so through a symbol of pity like the Palestinians, so much the better.
27 May 2011 at 13:42
Speaking of Byzantium and reminiscence, nominally Christian leftists who fall all over themselves to promote Islam as a "religion of peace" while condemning conservative Christians for being, well, conservative ...
remind me of the Fourth Crusade.
Let's see, we could attack those prickly Muslims, but they're likely to defend themselves. Byzantium is much closer to us and they won't be expecting the attack.
I know I am way oversimplifying the history but that's how it occurs to me now. And I guess, just as it's hard to say exactly when the east-west schism happened, it's hard to say exactly when it became more important to the "Christian" mainstream to be tolerant (i.e., of evil) than to be Christian.
8 June 2011 at 02:15
The sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade was the death blow to Eastern Christian civilization - although, after a gap, it continued for another couple of centuries and managed a final cultural renaissance.
It seems to me that the combined effect of 1204 and 1453 was to destroy a possibility of wholeness in earthly Christian civilization, and both were a consequence of the east-west Great Schism.
8 June 2011 at 06:09
It seems to me that the combined effect of 1204 and 1453 was to destroy a possibility of wholeness in earthly Christian civilization, and both were a consequence of the east-west Great Schism.
Whoa. I hadn't thought of 1453 as having had anything to do with the east-west Schism, but it surely did. I noticed you mentioned the same things at HBD Chick recently.
I think the ERE / Byzantium must be my next great study project.
9 June 2011 at 02:00
Od'E - do it!. It is like reading about a real-life Gondor, only better!
9 June 2011 at 18:49