> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Marvin Long, Jr.
[snip]
> And yet, "a city on the hill cannot be hid." Christ exhorts us to let our
> lights shine. While I've always argued that our alleged city on the hill
> needs a hell of a lot of work, that's no reason to deny that in certain
> areas, we are a hell of a lot better than al Qaeda and the Taliban, and
> those things are worth fighting to preserve.
The fact that I consider Friedman's essay to be a dangerous line of thinking
should not imply that I deny that we should fight against terrorism. Is the
world so simple that one can equate any criticism of America as denial of
our right to defend the values it stands for? Or worse, equate it with
support for the terrorists?
It is intellectually and morally lazy to label every argument, every
*person*, as either good or bad, right or wrong, with no gray in between.
That is fundamentalism at its worst, the self-centered illusion that one can
point to a particular set of values and rules at a particular point in time
and proclaim that these are, for all time, the only correct and proper
truths, insisting that people to choose between one and the other.
Fundamentalists of all species imagine, as was written here, that history
has ended, they have the truth in their back pockets, and anyone who
expresses doubts or suggestions for improvement must therefore be siding
with the enemy.
Truth is complicated and often seemingly contradictory:
"Whoever is not against us is for us."
"He who is not with me is against me."
Nick
