This is a really good article. I thought about trying to quote portions of it, or summarize it, but I think I'll revert to just linking to it and recommending to all that they read the thing in full.
There is one major thing that he misses completely and another that he skirts around without really saying quite enough about it. The former is that there is no such thing as Judeo-Christian. The Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition, especially the Anglo-American Protestant tradition, has remarkably little in common with Judaism. Well, I suppose it's not really remarkable; Christ himself said as much repeatedly during the course of his earthly Ministry, as we're learning this year in Come Follow Me. Considering that since that time, Judaism was essentially completely hijacked by Phariseeism and in fact the trends of Phariseeism were amplified by the Diaspora experience in Babylon where the Talmud was written means that Christianity and Judaism should be seen as completely different traditions, and the attempt to lump them together is either ignorant or dishonest. Surely it's (in part) driven by the fact that while the author is Israeli, he's looking out for his Jewish brethren in America and Britain. I notice, however, that Israel has very strict laws about Christianity, and Christianized Jews are not permitted by law to make aliyah and emigrate to Israel. Why not? Because the Jews recognize that Christianity would fundamentally remake their society, just as Jewish influence has fundamentally remade ours from our Christian heritage, and not to the benefit of Americans.
The second thing is that while he recognizes that large numbers of immigrants can't be permitted unless there are societal structures in place that cause them to assimilate rather than remain apart from the host population, his historical empiricism would suggest that this isn't actually possible, and that therefore large numbers of immigrants is not doable if one wants to maintain the host culture; they have to come in small enough numbers that there is no chance for them to practice competing culture in the same place as the host culture. What is a small enough number? I dunno, but if you think about the fact that Jews make up 2% of the population of America, yet have had a tremendous effect on changing our legal traditions, our entertainment industry, our education industry, and our financial industry—historical empiricism suggests that the number must be very small, and they must assimilate, not maintain themselves as a undilutable block within the host population. Read this snippet from the history of Rome:
The Crisis of the Third Century was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of barbarian invasions and migrations into Roman territory, civil wars, peasant rebellions, political instability with multiple usurpers competing for power, growing influence and Roman reliance on barbarian mercenaries, and commanders nominally working for Rome, but increasingly independent, plague, debasement of currency, and economic depression. The crisis began with the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander by his own troops in 235, initiating a 50-year period during which there were at least 26 claimants to the title of emperor, mostly prominent Roman army generals, who assumed imperial power over all or part of the Empire. The same number of men became accepted by the Roman Senate as emperor during this period and so became legitimate emperors.
By 268, the empire had split into three competing states. Later, Aurelian reunited the empire; the crisis ended with the ascension and reforms of Diocletian in 284. The crisis resulted in such profound changes in the empire's institutions, society, economic life and, eventually, religion, that it is increasingly seen by most historians as defining the transition between the historical periods of classical antiquity and late antiquity.What are some other conclusions to be drawn from these points? The first one means that I suspect that even rather slight confessional differences can bring about tension that will be difficult to overcome. There have been centuries of warfare between Papists and Protestants in Europe, and our own LDS history suggests that we only had peace when we were either a very small scattering mixed in with the Protestant majority, or when we had our own religiously homogeneous territory in what was then called either Deseret or Utah Territory, and which makes up almost all of Utah, northern Arizona, southern Wyoming, western Colorado and Idaho.
This is something that many members of the Church would rather not face, but again—if historical empiricism is a feature of conservative democracy, then one needs to suggest that historical empiricism should lend a great deal of scepticism to the success of the religiously and culturally heterogeneous state unless that heterogeneousness is in small enough numbers to not threaten the dominance of the homogeneous majority.
No comments:
Post a Comment