This of the #year of #enlightenment and #light related #technologies Let us make it our own since the #United Nations has already named it as such and begin at this #70 Anniversary of Auschwitz #USA President #Obama is correct – words actually mean something. If we use phrases like “#radical Islamist extremism” we stain the reputation of a great peace loving #religion and offend hundreds of millions of peace loving # Muslims. Nice, tolerant, multicultural people just don’t do things like that. After all, #terror is not and can never be #Islamic. Moreover, #Islam’s contribution to world civilization in #philosophy, #science, #mathematics and #medicine is stupendous. Most historians agree that without Islam the Italian Renaissance and subsequent #Scientific Revolution would not have occurred. So that #Turkey’s Islamist President #Erdogan’s claim that without Islam there would have been no #United States of America is correct. The #Renaissance and #Scientific Revolution gave birth to the #European #Enlightenment which provided the philosophical foundation and practical infrastructure upon which the #Founding #Fathers built the edifice of the #American republic. We should respect and celebrate #Islam and not sully its good name by calling terrorists #Islamist. After all, #terror is perpetrated by non-Muslims also – #Timothy McVeigh comes to mind. And look an #Stalin #State #Terrorism, #Pinochet , #Videla And others. In this #HOLOCAUST Memorial Day I want to #propose that this sensitivity to other #people’s #feelings become a #universal principle; that we no longer use racial, religious or national modifiers of any sort when describing #evil. For example I want to expunge the phrase “#white racism”. After all, not all #whites are #racists and the white race, like the Muslims, has contributed greatly to human civilization in #science, #technology, #industry and #democracy. Moreover not all racists are white. The #Chinese and #Japanese are #openly #racist. #Black #Africa is rife with #racism – the #Rwandan #genocide being only the latest example. So I propose that the very term “white racism” cease to be used educated company. Continuing in this line I want to remove all reference to #Catholics when referring to the #Spanish #Inquisition. The #Inquisition had nothing to do with true Catholicism which as we know is a peaceful and tolerant religion – founded by the #Prince of #Peace. Its adherents included such sainted individuals as #Francis of Assisi and many other gentle souls who established the first hospitals and catered to the poor and weary. #Jesuit priests in Latin America defended the natives from the predations of the Spanish colonizers. #Catholic contributions to philosophy (#Augustine, #Aquinas etc.), to science (#Occam, #Copernicus etc.), to art and music and architecture are unmatched in the annals of human history. We should not sully the reputation of this great faith because of the actions of a few #criminal #Popes. Look at #Papa #Francisco #argentino how #loving humanitarian he is. Indeed we shouldn’t even call it the Spanish Inquisition (why insult Spain, without them there would also be no America), simply the #Inquisition. And if we are talking about insulting nationalities I think we should stop referring to the #Nazis as #German. Just because #Hitler spoke German and talked about the superiority of the #German ‘race’ doesn’t’ mean he was a real German. Or as President #Obama could say : He was about as German as I am” (actually he was #Austrian). The #German nation gave the world the greatest music ever composed (#Beethoven, #Bach, #Mozart, etc.) as well as the most prominent # philosophers, #scientists and #social critics of the modern age. We should not #offend them by talking about the Nazis as being German. Getting back to religion we should remove the phrase ‘#Wars of Religion’ from our text books for fear of offending #Protestants and #Catholics or other persons of religious belief. Why should the fact that people justify their #slaughters in the name of #God & #religion be taken seriously? If we do we risk offending people of religious sensibilities. Just because more human beings were killed by people calling themselves #Protestants and #Catholics than died in the #Black Plague doesn’t mean they were real #Protestants and #Catholics. We should also be very careful about discussing the mass #pogroms that characterized the #Indian partition and killed millions of people. Too many people think those pogroms had something to do with the intolerance of both the #Muslims and the #Hindus. This is the kind of thinking that is potentially offensive to billions of people because it stains the name of two great faith traditions. And what about the #Jews? All those #Nobel prize winners and we still dare to call #Yigal Amir, assassin of #Yitzhak Rabin, and #Baruch Goldstein, #murderer of 29 Muslim worshipers, #Jewish terrorists just because they perpetrated their acts in the name of #Judaism. How dare we offend a great faith tradition in this manner; how dare we offend a people who have given so much to humanity. In this regard we should also expunge the word #Yiddish from our vocabulary. It literally means #Yid-Deutsch or German-Jew As we all know, the term ‘#Yid’ is as offensive to #Jews as the ‘#N’ word is to #African Americans and thus the ‘Y’ word should become verboten in polite discourse – no more Yiddish. Let’s now stop this linguistic justification and apply the principles of delicate political correctness across the board. Or, on the other hand, let us stop pussy footing around and call a spade a spade. A #majority of #Muslims (#terrorists and #non-terrorists alike) have declared #war on 21st century #western #civilization, most especially its most prized asset #freedom of speech . Let us make #freedom,#equality and #liberty our goal and since the #United Nations has already named this year lets begin at this #70 Anniversary of #today: a time of the #year of #enlightenment and #light related #technologies and #start being a #torch of # freedom at this #70 Anniversary of #Auschwitz #Liberation
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 15:16:26 +0000
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