A little iPhone journalism, from our Italian correspondent*, on irresponsible religious politics in action. In case you can’t read it, the sign says, “There’ll be no need for hybrids in heaven! Revelation 21: 1-8.” Ugh. Why try to save the Earth, after all, if God’s going to care of things tomorrow?
In an earlier post, I attacked Reverend Hagee for focusing so narrowly on “the Rapture” as to neglect the world of the living. But there’s another problem with legislating towards the Rapture: if one neglects to fix the world himself, firmly believing that God will fix everything in the not-so-distant future, when He inevitably fails to do so we will all be worse off for the waiting.
Politics and basic human responsibility mandate that we take care of our own problems ourselves. If God chooses to make our task easier by magically appearing and curing those remaining ills, so much the better, but we cannot count on God to handle our problems for us. Thomas Jefferson once famously said that the World ought to belong to the living: increasingly, too, I believe that the World ought to belong exclusively to those who embrace their role as being among the living, rather than those who seem to deride their presence on Earth as a minor layover, to be treated as such.
For your information, Revelation 21:1-8 is reproduced below. Below the line, you’ll also find a thanks to our Italian correspondent (currently in Texas) for this picture, and a closing.
Sorry I’ve been slacking off lately. I’ve been starting a job, traveling, then sick…. Hopefully, though, you can still get a laugh out of the mental picture of me paging through corporate documents at home while blowing my nose silly.
Filed under: Author - ACG,History,Politics | Tags: Democracy, Practical History
Ancient history is often over-dramatized in the primary sources. As one of many examples, Plutarch wrote his “biographies” more concerned with teaching a moral lesson than with the facts. Regardless, it sure makes for good reading! Today, the sad story of the Etruscans.
The Etruscan League (or, “League of Etruria”) was a loose confederation of twelve city-states in Italy, existing before the rise of the Roman Republic. The cities of the League practiced a loose, early form of democracy, and committed themselves strongly to the idea of unity through freedom. But when their strongest city (Veii) lapsed into a kingship, the League expelled it, and refused to defend it against a Roman invasion. When Veii fell, the League all of a sudden lacked its strongest power, and it quickly fell thereafter to Roman Legions, city by city.
In direct contrast, the thirteen young American colonies, after much politicking, came to the defense of Massachusetts against the British, sensing that the colonies would all hang together, “or surely hang separately.” The difference of result – enslavement versus centuries of prosperity – shows the strong importance of unity in the face of a common foe, a continuing lesson that today’s leaders ought to heed. Although I can’t for the life of me think how to apply this lesson today, it’s nonetheless fun to repeat.
Above, the symbol of the Etruscan League, the fasces – twelve sticks bound together around a common commitment to strength through unity, symbolized by the axe. Curiously, the fasces found its way into Roman, then American iconography. Hopefully the message will prove just as enduring.
Not with a bang but with a whimper go constitutional freedoms. Although it didn’t pass the notice of Arrested Development, free speech has become, under the Bush presidency, less of a right and more of a privilege, a privilege to be exercised so as to make minimal impact, and to prevent any from taking notice.
During presidential addresses or rallies, the Bush team took to making attendees swear loyalty oaths to the campaign before entering, and to restricting “first amendment activities” to off-site, fenced-off locales, like the one pictured above. While the law gives the government the right to make “reasonable” regulations of speech going to “time, space, and manner” thereof, to allow free speech to be cordoned off from the public eye is to let the exception swallow the rule, and to allow the government to sideline dissent.
The word “censorship” is thrown around a lot these days, to the point that it almost loses its meaning. But when the government singles out a preferred view, and tells dissenters to sit in a far-flung cage to express their opinions, maybe it’s time to invoke that tired term again.
