Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteWhatever the world wants now, it sure ain't love.
It's probably better organization
I'd throw in assurance and the guaranty of integrity for sustaining cultures and their differences.
That's a tough one.
Some years ago, Disney, a capitalist force if ever one existed, nosed around for land in the Manassas, Viginia area: it wanted to build a theme park close by the historic Manassas Battlefield Park, a civil war monument.
Some locals, enticed by the Big Development Package, would have welcomed it, but those passionate about America's legacy made no bones about it: "Get lost" was the message to The Mouse.
It might seem odd trotting out that passion for authenticity, integrity, and respect as regards the American memory of its Civil War with what will become the Jihadi's experience of a preserved Salafist Islam, but it's apt as well: the notion of freedom does not, should not, and may it never pair with arbitrary assimilation.
Assimilation is not freedom but rather, and to the heart, worthless capitulation and conformance.
For the intellectuals and law makers engaged in improving the political and social frameworks in which diverse people may live, how to define and establish boundaries between cultures while integrating them economically and politically proves a challenge.
For one thing, the "open societies" strive to remove coercion and fear from group affiliation and enable individual election to participation in its place.
In fact, to a progressive westernized mind, the very act of threatening apostate and heritical thinkers weakens the claim on them: where there's freedom, groups exists or disappear according to individual volition rather than the will of either organizationally appointed or self-appointed leaders.
Moreover and not suprising given the power of religious ideation and sentiment, the privilege of individual election in religion leads neither to athiestic or agnostic societies, nor does it necessarily diminish the persistence of fundamentalist sects in the society at large--just check out the Amish and Mennonite communities in my neighborhood: they're both in good repair and keeping themselves vital.
I had the privilege many years ago of attending a Native American Sun Dance (my job on one morning or another: smudge the field, watch the fire). For authenticity, black skin, red, or Irish white and freckled, there's no pretending to play Indian with cedar pins, leather bands for pulling on them, and broken and bloody skin (not to mention eight days of fasting, four of them without water).
Was it legal? Yes.
The dancers, every one of them: volunteers.
Demonstrations of giving; demonstrations of submission; demonstrations of loyalty; demonstrations of faith: freedom outlaws none but may confine such to private properties and properties reserved by treaty.
That is how it's done in the United States these days, and not that all are happy with that, but no one is left either unable to construct individually or as a group the forms of worship appropriate to their identities and souls.
Micky Mouse makes out well in the movie house and the Disney entertainment and education complexes, but on the battlefields, which we commemorate and make into hallowed places, he has no place or presence.
Critics want the contemporary deck of cards to contain two jokers--one for anhilation, the other assimilation, but neither card exists.
The protection of individual conscience and choice provide for far other than that.
1. Viscusi, Gregory. "Islamist killers use God, guns in South Lebanon camp." Ya Libnan, August 17, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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