I confess to agreeing more with Eugene than Michael on this one. First, one can equate, say Zionism with Nazism on various grounds without anyone taking offense. Both are nouns, both are names for political movements. This does not strike me as offensive, even though I am a Zionist who regards Nazism as evil. And all I mean to say is that people ought to be as free on this list to make arguments that the American government is dominated by Zionists as they are to claim that the United States is a Protestant Empire. Michael may even remember that, while finding all arguments for the former utterly unconvincing, I am fairly sympathetic with the latter. The issue is strictly what may be said, not the truth value of assertions and, for better or worse, while I think "kike" clearly crosses the line, my line is not crossed by calling the U.S. Government "Zionist dominated," however mistaken I think that may be, and however ghastly the history of that accusation has been.
Mark A. Graber >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/13/05 2:48 PM >>> You are way off the mark, unless you mean to criticize the dominant school of American religious historiography, including people like Martin Marty and Sydney Ahlstrom, among others, who routinely referred to America as a Protestant Empire. You don't think that I invented the term out of whole cloth, do you? (By the way, as near as I can tell, the term fist appeared in the 1840s through the pen of Rev. Robert Baird, an American Calvinist preacher, in a book he wrote styled Religion in the United States of America, first published in Glascow in 1844. Baird, for better or worse is reckoned by some as one of the founders of that historiography, a historiography that was dominant for well over a century.) Equating "zionist-occupied government" with "Protestant Empire" is unacceptable and I take great personal offense. It is like equating Nazism and laissez-faire Capitalism, both being theories of political organization. And it is equally offensive. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
