Well hold on, I think we need to look at Rhys-Davies's speech again. He's talking about two issues. The second one is the supposed inherent triumph or superiority of "the jewel of Western Civilization", which I think many learned posters not necessarily including myself have proven to be short-sighted bunk and really we don't need to discuss it again. And the first issue is the huge Muslim immigration to Europe which is failing to assimilate or integrate itself, which I do think is a very serious issue but we should be extraordinally careful talking about it.
I wouldn't say western culture is superior. I think you're referring to western economic, military and technological superiority.
In my opinion Western culture is clearly
inferior in many respects, mostly philosophy and art, but that's a personal issue and not subject to objective debate
on the other hand anyone who denies the ascendancy of the Western army and the Western economy in the past few hundred years clearly has fingers stuck in their ears
Interesting debate. The thing that strikes me is that arguing that evil muslims will take over the place ndicates a belief that our cultures are weak, nt appealing to anyone and could only survive by complete and utter stagnation.
See what I mean? Not to take examples [and you didn't mean what you were saying, you were just interpreting what Gimli meant] but this rhetoric is a clear echo of several unmentionable characters in the darker decades of the past century. This "Clash of Civilizations" rhetoric is to me nothing more than a rehash of the ubernationalism of Stalinist Russia and Hitler's Germany. It's not quite so polemic but it's a stepping stone. That's why this debate needs to be conducted by level-headed fellows like us, not dramatically stupid actors like Mr. Rhys-Davies.
And on the other end of the spectrum you see isolationists of almost Medieval Chinese fervor:
Question is why we let them in, in the first place? They don't
have (as a rule) any special technical skills, just more grunt
labourers. Why does the west allow immigrantion? No other culture allows it, you don't see canadian monorities in Iran...
Again the message is clearly "We don't have anything to learn from those barbarians and we never will".
This alone should scare the bejeezus out of everybody. For those that fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it, and failure to educate EVERYONE in the world about the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust will be to the world's detriment. People are scared to speak their minds these days
I am a Jew and I will be the first to admit that the unique thing about the Holocaust was certainly not its chosen victims, the Jews, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities. And it wasn't the country that perpetuated it, a modern advanced Western European state. Nor was it the terrible scale of the thing, millions upon millions of people murdered. And the barbarous methods used were virtual plagiarisms, only adapted for modern technology. The fact that should make us EXTREMELY uneasy is that there was in fact NOTHING unique about the Holocaust! And that to me is an even greater reason that we should learn all the more about it - not as something unique and Hell-inspired, but as just ONE example of what can happen when we give human nature the slightest excuse to sink into barbarity, to sink to the supposedly "lowest" depths that are sunk to far too often.
I am DEFINITELY for education about the Holocaust, even more so than learning about the Cold War and Stalinist atrocities [another "learn-it-or-repeat-it" lesson]. But I still feel uneasy that we gloss over the deliberate genocides of the first Americans, to take just one example. Bartolome de las Casas was a supplementary optional text in my world history class, but Elie Wiesel was required reading. In my opinion, students should be reading both!
This has very much to do with Mr. Rhys-Davies's mental illness. I'll tell you what it is,
it comes from acting in too many Indiana Jones movies. The villains are always the Nazis and perhaps one or two deluded pawns. And in Lord of the Rings, the evil emanates from Mordor, although the Ring-temptation comes from within each character. In both instances we are allowed to pin evil to an unmentionable scapegoat, Sauron or Hitler, instead of where it belongs, which is human nature. The arch-villian is only an excuse which allows Gimli [and us] to divide the world into terrible villians to be struggled against, and a heroic whitewashed civilization to be struggled for. For those of you who are Jones fans like me
, take "The Last Crusade" as an example [it's the Holy Grail search transplanted to 1938, and incidentally Gimli stars as a rather unconvincing Arab]. Aside from all the action scenes, is there any actual soul-searching? Maybe in the last scene where Elsa falls into the chasm while reaching for the Grail. But look at the rhetoric - it even DIRECTLY mimics what we will see in LOTR.
The quest
for the Grail is not archaeology.
It's a race against evil.
If it is captured by the Nazis,
the armies of darkness will march
all over the face of the earth.
Do you understand me?
Is that Indy's father or Elrond Halfelf speaking?
I think this about wraps it up for Western civilization!
"It belongs in a museum!"
"And so do you!"
maybe Gimli should pay closer attention.
