From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Censorship. (was re: killing of Japanese exchange student)
Date: 6 Nov 1992 00:02:34 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

schoinas@fox.cs.wisc.edu (Yannis Schoinas) writes:
>silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva) writes:

>>	Yannis, you are apparently blind to the double standard vis a
>>vis religion that permeates your response to my post. The implication
>>of your reply is that religion-based _total_ bans on alcohol in the 
>>Islamic world are to be respected on the grounds that they are a 
>>product of religious tradition. Yet American laws restricting the 
>>distribution and use of alcohol are likewise based on religious
>>tradition, and you feel comfortable ridiculing us for the existence
>>of such laws.
>
>Well, I wasn't in the mood of writing a long article this morning
>and I failed to make myself clear. O.K., let's see the two situation
>and see if they are the same.
>
>i) Fundametalistic islamic states that based upon a tradition of
>   1200 hundred years ban alcohol completely.
>
>ii) [ In the US] Mostly rural states try to control the use of alcohol.
>    The federal government tries to force the states to have
>    funny age limits if they want to get funded for road repairs.
>    And all these in a secular state (if we ignore that little part
>    about trusting God).
>
>Why I do not have a problem with the people in the first situation 
>while I do with the USA. [...] For two reasons, actually. The first is that 
>these laws are applied to a homogenized society that in the course 
>of centuries has incorporated this tradition in the way it works. 
>This may not make me like them but they have been self proven as long 
>as the society isn't externally influenced.

	Yannis, the idea that a 1200 year-old religious tradition is 
more valid than a 200-250 year-old religious tradition is not one that
will ever go over well in the US. The Fundamentalist Protestant temperance
tradition here is quite old vis a vis the age of the society as a 
whole. The age of a moral tradition is not a measure of its validity;
if it were, the abolition of slavery would not be deemed as important
or as valuable as, say, the abolition of human sacrifice.

>The second is that USA is 
>supposed to be the land of the free, yet there is always some great 
>philosophical debate on things like alcohol, drugs, abortions, gun 
>control that must be solved in a clear and definite way by wise people 
>that know what's good for the masses and of course a compromise for them 
>is unthinkable. BTW, I don't know of any muslim country prohibiting alcohol 
>and claiming to be a seculiar state.
>
	The US was not, at the time of its founding, as free a state
as it is today, and it is not as free a state today as it should be. 
The key word in your statement above however, is "debate". The elements
in our society who seek to exert totalitarian control upon the 
general population are largely either thwarted, impeded, or at 
least freely questioned by others within the society.

>>	If you respect Wahabi 
>>religious attitudes towards alcohol due to the fact that these
>>attitudes are a part of their cultural-religious heritage then
>>intellectual honesty _requires_ that you (at least publicly)
>>give the same respect to Protestant fundamentalist tradition
>>in the US. The idea that it's 'OK' to despise and ridicule western
>>fundamentalists because they should somehow 'know better' than to
>>be the way they are --- and to accord respect to non-western
>>religious fundamentalists  on account of the hallowed nature of
>>their traditions --- is implicitly patronizing, in the worst
>>neo-colonial sense.
>

	There is nothing in your two reasons given above to cause me
to revoke or ammend this statement. You have a double standard vis a
vis the Islamic world and the US that is apparently based on a lack
of acceptance of the religious elements in modern US society and 
in American history. American society is a living, imperfect thing;
it is not an iconographic idea developed for the amusement/contemplation
of young European intellectuals. Your comments on certain aspects of
its myriad flaws were unconstructive and tiresome (I'm addressing this
to both Yannis and Jerky at this point). 

>I can respect (or ignore) all fundametalists as long as they don't 
>affect my life. So, is USA a Protestant fundamentalist country?
>
>
	The USA is a Protestant fundamentalist-influenced country,
and if you live here, this _fact_ will affect your life. So stop
whining. 

--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa