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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (54349)	10/20/2001 12:12:45 PM
From: Fred Levine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Mike-- I did read the NY Times article. The nature of religion is to define THE good and to define morality. If someone has a different definition, that person is evil and constitutes a threat. Yet, since the 4th century BC, the notion of universal compassion was introduced, in India by the Buddha and in the Mideast by the "discovery" of hidden books of Isiah. I have been reading the New Testament and, overwhelmingly --but not completely--is universal compassion promulgated. The Q'uran was based on pillers of prayer and compassion, with one pillar being charity. Again, the well-known paradox is the amount of destruction committed in the name of good. In fact, my personal conversion from Marxism was when I realized that it presumed people would work, not for personal gain, but for the common good. Altho this sounds noble, what happens when Stalin's version of the common good differs fromn Levine's. Levine becomes an enemy of the people and a threat. In addition, I often heard my Marxist friends rail about the evils of the monopolies. I then asked them what greater monopoly was there than the combined monopoly of business, law, military, and social that was considered desireable in communism. Altho GM and Exxon are indeed powerful, the worst evils committed against me have been by government and not by private businesses. I asked my Marxist friends for one communist country that had a democratic government and heard --with the brief exception of Allende in Chile--bullshit. My point is that the US is based upon a fear of concentration of power and a belief of the synergy of pluralism. And it works well. IMO, we are faced with a threat from righteousness. I think we are in a state of war and have to take drastic actions to defend the liberties that we value. It is damn hard to balance our values of multiculturalism with the existing risks. I know of no easy answer. Last week I had dinner with a LT Shiite friend and last night we were invited to dinner by a Lebanese and Syrian couple. The Syrian woman had her entire family slaughtered by Assad when he gassed her village. Assad did this for protection of the Syrian people, I assume. I relish the American multiculturalism. Sorry for the ramble. fred