Tuesday, September 5, 2006
[1897 - Arthur Charles Nielsen, market researcher, born in Chicago, Illinois]
[1902 - Darryl F. (Francis) Zanuck, writer, producer, born in Wahoo, Nebraska]
[1905 - Arthur Koestler, journalist, novelist, born in Budapest, Hungary]
[1972 - PLO terrorists kill 11 Israeli team members in Olympic Village, Munich, Germany]
Premature Infatuation
President Bush's latest mantra is to label the clash between Western civilization and Islamic terrorists as:
"the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century"
Putting aside for a moment the merits of that statement (it has few), on its face this assertion simply makes no sense.
Unless poorwilliam has entered a time warp and this is the year 2106, it would seem just a trifle premature for anyone at the dawn of the 21st century to claim to know what will prove to be its decisive ideological struggle. If President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 had said that the greatest threat to American cities in the 20th century was earthquakes based on the disastrous San Francisco experience earlier in that year, he might have missed a few significant events that were yet to come. (e.g. hurricanes, floods, nuclear weapons, incendiary bombing, chemical weapons, biological weapons, tornadoes, and the like). Fortunately for the country, President Roosevelt had more sense than that.
Even now, barely half a decade into the 21st century, you could generate quite a debate among scholars by making an assertion as to what constitutes the decisive ideological struggle of the 20th century. Most historians, I suspect, would caution that we have insufficient perspective to make such a call, and should wait at least until all the trends of the previous century have fully played out. In retrospect will it prove to be the struggle between colonial empires and nationalism, the battle between totalitarianism and free states, the clash of capitalism and communism, or the tension between industrial development and preservation of the environment? Remember, that there is still some controversy as to what actually caused the decline and fall of the Roman Empire almost 2 millennia ago.
William's Whimsical Words:
If our president was not so consumed by his delusions of Armageddon and if he was less enthralled about his own importance in history, perhaps he would not be inclined to stick his dude-ranch boot in his mouth.
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