An Interesting Word, Dignity
Re Conversations with Dave
I note And Now, Islamism Trumps Arabism in Sunday's New York Times for its use of the word "dignity." Four times, by my count.
I suppose I was struck by this because it's not a word oft found in the discussion of the global socio-political conflicts.
Which led me to wonder what a set of international policies would look like if their aim was to provide dignity to as many as possible.
Update on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 07:47PM by
James Drogan
James Drogan
Jim - saw that and it sparked some thoughts indeed. Agree with your points.
Just re-watched "Miracle" (about 1980 Olympic hockey team) and one of the backstory points was how important that was for restoring morale. A leadin to the Reagan years. Notice, and I agree, that one of Ronnie's major contributions was his version of 'all we have to fear is fear itself'. We can do this.
Turn it around - when we look at the Arab cultures we're looking at cultures that've had the crap kicked out of them for 700 years and know it. After being the most sophisticatged society in the world for a major timespan. Doubt if we'd handle it any better.
The more I contemplate it the more it seems to me that there's a major role for compassion in statesmanship. That doesn't mean not doing what's necessary when necessary. But, ala Harvard Negotiation project, it does mean adding with clear-minded comprehension and sympathies for your enemy and not going beyond what's necessary.
I've tabled the notion of looking the Islamofascism term and the bloody borders of Islam argument. As I recall it wasn't the Muslims who brought us 3 world wars and the Communist horrors. Defensible estimates but the number of directly ascribable estimates for the latter at around 100 million, 60+ million for WW2 (50% civilian and mostly on the allied side - who says the Axis weren't in fact evil) and 16 million for WW1. All that's interesting on several levels. For all practical purposes we killed 200 million people in the 20th century and complain about the violent Islamicists ! For further contrast the Chinese Taiping rebellion circa 1850s has 20Million+
Hmm....let's talk about dignity and integrity indeed.
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