[Vision2020] Crazy Train

[Ted Moffett]

Michael, Ed et. al.

Social Science, like Political Science, is an oxymoron... but I think that
"morality," and certainly not sexual morality, may have little to do with
the survival or demise of a given society.  Some very brutal and dictatorial
societies (ancient Egypt) survived for millennia, but not because they were
"moral" by the standards of morality you appear to follow.  In fact, I think
a good case could be made that some societies fall in part because they are
"moral," meaning, from my moral perspective, less violent and brutal.  Other
societies survive by doing whatever it takes to survive, "moral" or not.

Success in warfare is one of the most critical variables in maintaining the
survival of many societies throughout history, and the more ruthless and
vicious the warriors and the tactics employed, the more the society has the
means to maintain itself against external threats, or to conquer other
societies.  Thus the willingness to kill "enemies," to wipe out or
assimilate entire other cultures without compunction, may be a very
important variable to maintain the success of a society, but I trust this
does not fit your definition of how a "moral" society functions.

Societies not structured around the willingness and the technology to wage
all out brutal take no prisoners warfare may be at a disadvantage in
competing with more war oriented societies.  Why did the invading European
culture dominate the native cultures in North America, ending in genocide
for many of the native cultures?  One dominate variable: superiority in
warfare.  This may have had more to do with war technology and the numbers
of Europeans invading (small pox blankets were a clever tactic, a form of
biological warfare), than a lack of willingness on the part of the native
cultures to fight and kill.

But I doubt it had anything to do with the European rejection of
homosexuality based on Biblical or Judeo-Christian moral superiority, or any
other moral or religious principle that rendered the European
culture morally superior.  In fact, I think the European culture invading
North America, based on this vaunted Judeo-Christian moral tradition, was
morally despicable, that their treatment of native cultures in North America
ranks among the most horrendous and cruel examples of human inhumanity to
other humans in the history of the human race. And that the Judeo-Christian
tradition was in fact employed as ideological/religious
justification/rationalization for the hideous, cruel, monstrous conduct of
the Europeans against the native cultures.

QED

Ted Moffett


On 4/22/06, Michael <metzler at moscow.com> wrote:
>
>  Ed Writes:
>
>
>
> >> My example (in
>
> >> gestalt form) was specifically meant to illustrate that when we began
>
> >> to accept homosexual marriage and relationships as normal, we morphed
>
> >> from the idea of being a Christian or Judeo-Christian society based
>
> >> on biblical morality. And, of course, this is historically when
>
> >> societies get into trouble--the beginning of the end so to speak. My
>
> >> previous post laid out all the societal dangers for normalizing
>
> >> homosexual activity..... So, some say that there are so few, embrace
>
> >> them. The issue is not how any individual poses a threat to anyone,
>
> >> but how the normalization of homosexuality endangers the entire
>
> >> society.
>
>
>
>
>
> I think we have too easily dismissed this argument.  The problem is not
> the inference; the problem is making the premises probably true. Ed now has
> to tell us a short world history, focused on the causal relations between
> acceptance of homosexuality and the general moral break up of society, and
> the typical cultural result in the West when the classical and/or
> Judeo-Christian framework is rejected. There is still the possible problem
> of confusing appropriate law with appropriate morality, but I think we could
> table that in order to hear Ed out.  So, Ed, are you going to start in the
> ancient East or the ancient West? If you can historically verify these
> claims I think you would have one interesting argument.
>
>
>
> Michael Metzler
>
>
>
> P.S.  And thanks for treating us like normal human beings; not often you
> see conservatives do that around here.
>
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