Re: Agreed. I think Gustav is following the credo that if its European, it has to be...
...different! Europe and the US don't have the same history. Keep in mind my pet theory about Byzantine Europe vs Roman America. I still believe that Europe will meet the same fate as the Byzantine Empire of yore --which doesn't mean that she'll be Islamicized or Turkified altogether. Religion is increasingly meaningless for "post-Christian Europe", therefore I'm of the opinion that Europe's Byzantine metamorphosis will occur at another, geopolitical, level....
Likewise, Judeo-Protestant Americans are behaving like the Latin (=West European) crusaders of the Middle Ages --always gung-ho to fight the ugly Saracens and recover the Holy Land, self-righteous to the point of denying the Patriarch of Constantinople an equal status with the Patriarch of Rome, aka the Pope. Remember, the Byzantines were in favor of a multipolar world --just like today's Europeans. Byzantines didn't want the world to be ruled by one unaccountable Catholic superpower --instead they wanted a Pentarchy(*).
As for the issue of race relations, there's another key difference between the US and Europe: colonialism. Most Europeans, and especially those whose countries ruled a colonial empire up to the 1960s, watch the current mess in Iraq with amusement.... Of course, Americans don't plan to settle in Iraq, they don't intend to populate Third-World countries with their surplus workforce. Yet, just like the Belgians in Congo, the French in Indochina and Algeria, or the Brits in India, Americans want to run the place, impose their laws and turn hostile wannabes into harmless satellites.... And that, even more than white settlers, is the gist of colonialism. On that account, Europe and the US have switched places: in the 1960s, the US was in the throes of civil unrest and black revolt against domestic colonialism (Jim Crow,...) whereas lily-white Europe was struggling to disengage herself from colonies overseas. Somehow, Rev M.L. King and Malcolm X were the domestic versions of third-world leaders Patrice Lumumba and Ahmed Ben Bella.
Today, as demographics and immigration have increased Europe's racial mix, European leaders are faced with the same "civil rights" challenges JFK and LBJ faced in the 1960s whereas the US has recklessly entangled itself in colonial overreach....
Gus
(*) The Pentarchy or Multipolarity before time....
The theory of the pentarchy and Byzantine arguments against the Roman primacy
(a) The pentarchy
Apart from traumatic experiences of this kind, however, and the rancour they engendered, there were, as we have already seen in part, theoretical considerations which led to estrangement. One of the most significant of these arose from conflicting ideas concerning the organization and administration of the Church. Specifically, papal absolutism was at variance with the Byzantine conception of the pentarchy, a scheme of ecclesiastical government which the Byzantines believed to have been established by the Holy Spirit.
Under this system, all five of the patriarchates (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem) were regarded as equal. The theory of the pentarchy underwent considerable revision in the course of time, and reached its highest development in the period from the eleventh century to the middle of the fifteenth. But its basic principles go back to the Emperor Justinian I (527-65), who often stressed the importance of all five of the patriarchates, especially in the formulation of dogma.
Like the five senses of the human body, the Byzantines maintained, none of which has ascendancy over the rest, the five partiarchates were entirely independent of each other. Together, they constituted the Church (designated as "Christ's body"), and were subject only to him as their head. Each was responsible for the administration of its own affairs, and no cleric in one patriarchate had the right to appeal above his own patriarch to another. All questions of common interest were to be settled by joint action of the five patriarchs as determined by themselves or their representatives. Decisions were to be rendered by majority vote, and no binding oecumenical rulings could be made, Theodore the Studite and others had declared, except in this way.
The pentarchy, as thus conceived, had a strongly anti-Roman orientation, since the mediaeval popes claimed the right to the final word on all matters concerning the Church, and insisted that they had the authority to judge all members of the clergy, including the patriarchs. Nevertheless, Rome agreed that the pentarchy performed a necessary function, and Anastasius Bibliothecarius (ca. 817-79), who tried to usurp the papal throne in 855, and later became the principal adviser of Popes Nicholas I (858-67), Hadrian II (867-72), and John VIII (872-82), accepted the comparison with the five senses of the human body. But he added the characteristically papal qualification that the patriarchate of Rome, which he likened to the sense of sight, ruled the other four.
[...]
myriobiblos.gr
France still insists on multipolarity, resists U.S.
By Andrew Borowiec
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
PARIS — While applauding Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's call for a new chapter in trans-Atlantic relations, French politicians and pundits cautioned yesterday against premature optimism.
Senior officials stressed that France remained committed to the concept of a "multipolar world with several centers of power" in which the United States would be treated as a partner and not the leader.
The influential liberal daily Le Monde commented that France "rejects the idea that American-type democracy should be imposed throughout the world."
[...]
washingtontimes.com |
