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Post 40

Friday, November 11, 2005 - 12:13pmSanction this postReply
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Kurt, I feel the same dismay.

We are as 2 islands in a vast ocean, communicating via morse code by lighthouse, about what those on the far-off mainland -- can, should, or are about to -- do next. The important difference is that there are at least hundreds of others (silent internet onlookers) watching our morse code signals, and interpreting them in the context of their lives and in relation to their influence on political events.

Ed


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Post 41

Monday, November 14, 2005 - 10:08pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, if you attack and destroy the country's regime, you can leave it in anarchy or stay and fix it up so that it becomes an ally, rather than another enemy in a few years. 

What's preventing it becoming an enemy? When the US trained the Taliban they didn't seem to have much consideration of them becoming an enemy, and I'm not sure they have much consideration now. Iraq seems to be heading towards becoming an Islamic State, in which case, it's going to be an enemy. Perhaps leaving it in a state of anarchy would be the better option - when they are fighting amongst themselves they have no time to fight us.


Post 42

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 10:22amSanction this postReply
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According to Pirenne[4] the real break in Roman history occurred in the 7th century as a result of Arab expansion. Islamic conquest of the area of today's south-eastern Turkey, Syria, Palestine, North Africa, Spain and Portugal ruptured economic ties to Europe, cutting the continent off from trade and turning it into a stagnant backwater, with wealth flowing out in the form of raw resources and nothing coming back. This began a steady decline and impoverishment so that by the time of Charlemagne Europe had become entirely agrarian at a subsistence level, with no long-distance trade. Pirenne says "Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would have probably never existed, and Charlemagne, without Muhammad, would be inconceivable".
[4] Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pirenne


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Post 43

Friday, September 14, 2012 - 7:29pmSanction this postReply
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Another blast from the past, sadly relevant today on so many levels. 

Translations [of Atlas Shrugged] currently in print include Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
http://atlasshrugged.com/the-author/foreign-translations/
[See anything missing?  It is not that no one has made the effort, so much as no one has perceived a market for the effort. -- MEM]

I have written here before about Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'il Ibn Taqiyya by Nellie Hanna.  Ismail ibm Taqiyya was a coffee merchant in Cairo.  Coffee had been condemned by clerics as an intoxicant and mobs of fanatics had burned coffeehouses.  Finally, a court convened and some volunteers drank coffee and the judges waited for signs of drowsiness and stupidity.  We know of Ismail ibn Taqiyya only from court cases and notarized contracts.  Among the many telling facts is the court case of a Bosnian slave woman who sued men who entered into a contract with her master and attempted to cut her out of her share.  No free woman, not even a noble woman, of London or Paris 1600 had an equivalent right. 

What happened to Islam?  Nothing. Literally.  Meanwhile the West experienced the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment.  We Objectivists are satisfied that we have a better (if not the best) understand of Truth.  But what made the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment was pluralism, many people seeking truth by many paths.  If you look at the works and thinkers who influenced the Founders of our Republic, you cannot but be surprised at the wide range of contrary and contradictory opinions: Locke, Hume, and Hobbes... St. Paul, Beccaria, and Montesquieu...  Pufendorf and Grotius... Tacitus, Plutarch, and Machiavelli...  It was a time of ferment, of different and differing opinions.

Indeed, Cairo of 1600 was something like that... but the Enlightenment never happened there... and the rest is history.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/14, 7:34pm)


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