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To: dougjn who wrote (14012)	8/22/1998 10:36:00 AM
From: limtex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

dougjn - ***OT*** Sorry its a bit long. In early 1934 Theodore Abel a sociologist from Columbia University managed to convince the new Nazi State that Americans knew far too little about National Socialism and its followers. Abel proposed an essay contest for the 'Best personal life history of an adherent of the Adolf Hitler movement" Turns out this book is a seminal study in the subject and the book of it is called Why Hitler Came to Power and Abel gives an analysis of the essays and the subject. " p 29...... From the point of view of a movement, impaired or threatened social values are far more important than individual values. For social values, being shared by individuals as members of a group, are common factors in the life organization of many people. Consequently they serve as powerful rallying points of concerted effort to oppose any danger that threatens them. The significance of social values is futhermore enhanced by the fact that they permit an individual to disguise intentions emanating from purely personal feelings under the cloak of socially approved sentiments, and thus to justify extreme conduct. Chief among social values is the group as a going concern. Associated with it are other values involved in the maintenance of the group and of the conditions that make the adequate functioning of the group possible. Such social values are the purpose of the group, its social social position in relation to other groups, its traditions, ideals, symbols and so forth. When the group is a nation, the emotional connotation of social values is called nationalism. This feeling is more postive than patriotism, or love of ones country.......It is more a desire to keep the nation intact. It is primarily a strong postive feeling for the accomplishment od the nation, its position fo power, the men and institutions and the traditions which are associated with the glorified events in its history. ...... The feeling of nationalism is strongest in a country where the educational system makes it a primary point of emphasis." From the Atlantic ocean to the Indian ocean and beyond hundreds of millions of people live in a society where the main educational system is religion based. Their civilization has simply not provided anything near the economic results that Western civilization has provided for its people. Other than a few countries with small populations whose economies are based almost exlcusively on unearned income from the chance location of a major commodity the rest of these countries populations are dirt poor and what is worse they are getting poorer and their populations are increasing substanitally and are forcecast to do so as far as can be predicted. These poor people live under a philosophy that has so far completely failed to deliver anything like the economic improvement required to lift their daily conditions. Millions of young men in Algeria cannot afford to get married because they have no job and no foreseable prospect of a job, they are only allowed to see part of the hand and one eye of girls the rest of whose bodies are totally covered on black, they have no life like kids in the US and as teenagers especially going through puberty you can only imagine the frustration these people feel. Then in Fridays they go to pray and there they are fed with a constant diet of hate against the West in general and the US in particular. These people also pick up from all sorts of media the clear differnces in our standards of living. From mobile phones to TVs and CDs and Rock and Roll and Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford and all the movies stars and our cities and our holidays and planes and all our military hardware. World wide media today helps to quickly assure that knowledge of all the bits and pieces of our civilazation percolates through to these people and with it the implicit understanding that their civiliztion is bankrupt and has failed against the West. Their preachers, for all the reasons set out by Theodorre Abel sixty years have for years been filling these minds with a diet of hate. Thus satured in hate they are ready to do the bidding of Mr Bin Laden just as they were when they joined another party of hate sixty years ago. Of course bringing out the old scapegoat ( it used to be Jews but its easier to call it Israel today) yet again looks like an easy answer. But Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia have a lot more to do with Europe than they do with Israel. They run form those counties in row boats to go to Spain, France and Italy. Indonsians didn't go killing the local Chinese this year because of Mr Netanyahu. The Phillipnes didn't have a civil war with its large religious minority because of the Israelis and Saddam Hussein didn't invade Kuweit because of the Israelis. It wouldn't make the slightest difference to the daily lives of the hate filled minds from Morrocco to Afganistan what Mr Netanyahu did or as I said even if Israel and everyone in it were to disappear completely tomorrow morning. The only thing that would make a real difference would be lifting the economic conditions of the people concerned. And for that they are going to have to change their ideas and thats the real problem. Sorry its a bit long but the Abel book is also a great read. Regards, L