Faith.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Pregame religious exercises.

And I say, so what? And what about the First Amendment?

I don't hear anyone on the team, including the non-Catholic coach complaining. And yet, why would this article be printed if there weren't some anti-religionists in the pile somewhere?

Everyone is entitled to his personal faith, organized or not. I think a lot of the stance taken by some outfits is just noise to get attention.

Like the bedroom, the law should stay out of people's minds. The United States of America has the G. word built in so deeply it is probably impossible to remove it entirely. If the US is not a Christian country, it needs to shake its collective head. When people of other faiths immigrate to the US, they are not constrained from practising their beliefs unless they are against the civil law (Sharia, for example).

Since most of the founding fathers were members of the Masonic Order, by the way, you can be sure they were all practising Christians belonging to a Protestant denomination. At that time Catholics were not admitted to the order.

[Wiecher 192]

Well, as long as atheists can't assume public posts in certain states, there is no reason to complain about religion in something irrelevant like sports.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I don't see this as very newsworthy and it is not really written with any controversy.

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Why should there be any controversy?

[Ocram's Razr 963]

You seemed to imply that this article was controversial in some manner.

--Ocram

[dazza262 133]

Surely the USA is considered to be a secular nation, isn't it ?

[Meg 368]

Pregame religious exercises.

And I say, so what? And what about the First Amendment?

Notre Dame is a private university. The separation of church and state becomes an issue when tax dollars are involved.

Surely the USA is considered to be a secular nation, isn't it ?

In theory, yes. There are, however, large sections of the country where it is difficult to be anything other than a Christian.

One friend of mine lives in a small town, about 3,000 people. (There were more students than that in my high school.) There, one is expected to be a member of one of the local churches and attend the various church functions. Avoiding a church doesn't seem to be an option.

Another friend grew up in the "Bible Belt". We were discussing these things and I said that I was an adult before I knew that anyone took the bible literally. He replied that he was an adult before he knew anyone who didn't.

[Darth Apple 54]

Peer pressure from the culture seems to play a large part. If most of your area is secular, the drive to be secular increases. If you are in the Bible belt, the church becomes hard to avoid. My problem is when people don't really consider what they believe and know why the believe it, but believe it simply because everyone they know believes it. Our culture seems to be downright afraid to give a real look at all of this, and to me, that doesn't make much sense.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Large population will have, for want of a better word, social knots that are very difficult to untie. Since it harms no one, usually, why bother?

[dazza262 133]

Personally, I don't allow anybodies religious beliefs to impinge upon my life.

I don't have a problem with anyone having faith in whichever deity they choose to follow, it's when they try to impose those beliefs on others that don't agree with.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Personally, I don't allow anybodies religious beliefs to impinge upon my life.

I don't have a problem with anyone having faith in whichever deity they choose to follow, it's when they try to impose those beliefs on others that don't agree with.

Well, of course. That is one of the tenets of freedom we have all come to recognize. I suggest you stay out of Islamic states.

[macvirt 361]

Personally, I don't allow anybodies religious beliefs to impinge upon my life.

I don't have a problem with anyone having faith in whichever deity they choose to follow, it's when they try to impose those beliefs on others that don't agree with.

Well, of course. That is one of the tenets of freedom we have all come to recognize. I suggest you stay out of Islamic states.

Considering the frequency people tend to confuse the uniquely distinct concepts like belief, faith and religion topics like these tend to be without hope.

To offset a common misconception right there, it is actually Islam which has an incredibly strict set of rules for tolerance of other religions, particularly those that came from Abraham, back in the day. Unlike particularly Christianity, which recognises only the relation to Judaism and attaches a set of values to it - by means of 2 or 3 Papal briefs. For the most part Christianity has incorporated over the centuries into its dogma a strict intolerance for other religions coupled with the duty to convert non-believers.

In simple terms, Islam requires the believer to respect and recognises not only the Abrahamic religions but also extends that to any other religion, recognising the presence of a multitude ways to god. While Christianity incorporates the sacrosanct status of Christian dogma and disallows any other potential way to god.

Go figure. Incidentally, these differences are why it is so ludicrously easy to settle arguments using theological debate in the Middle East, because it is a process which there requires (both by secular and religious law) study and exchange. We Christians actually reserve that right of study to the clergy only, and even today the church disallows non-priests that instrument of exchange. But, yes, theology. Politics and economics are an entirely different story alltogether. For the most part, because we the west have dictated so. Let's be honest, aside of the drama of crusades, we were the ones to draw arbitrary straight lines on a map, we were the ones who played chess with countries, we were the ones who invented realpolitik and applied it.

The world today is the world we created. We turned islamic countries today into the mess it often is - but not always, and certainly not everywhere. I'm dead serious there, whether it is the Iran case or that of Afghanistan or even the existance of Al Qaida, it's our creation. I should add that if you do not want your world view to be shattered, I strongly recommend to not do any research in these matters. Particularly as an American. Not that it wouldn't upset the random deranged terrorist either, for him to find out where he actually comes from But honestly, be careful. Our world of comfort is much different than merely subjective. We're only human after all.

Never confuse the actions of men with those of institutes of organised religion. Overall, we christians have a history of deliberate abuse of both belief and religion for the purposes of both dogma and societal forms of power. We also have an amazing history of intolerance coupled with rewarding those of us who do unleash all sorts of madness on other belief systems. Even today in our modern times, the present frustrations, violence and bloodshed from people of this or that belief system pales in comparison to how we christians have institutionalised such matters over time.

See, we humans tend to make our deductions on the basis of information we receive. Not only do we rarely seek out our own information, we tend to receive our information better if it is filtered according to value of information for the group dynamic of which we are a part. This is why - for example - we in the west tend to hear little to nothing about peace protests in muslim countries, or support protests for western journalists when the one-out-of-a-million madmen doesn't know his own religion enough to get sucked in to statements of burn this or that comic artist or journalist. We in the west tend to deliberately confuse belief with the interests of politics and economics (just even look at how the concept and word "faith" is used in media and politics alike). Not a surprise, we have done so ever since that smart Roman emperor put a convention together to put together a christianity for the deliberate purpose of utilising belief as a means of and to power on every level of society. We tend to never hear on the news of citizens in Dar Es Salaam making a massive stand against a deranged preacher trying to seed hate, nor do we ever hear of the efforts of people on Pemba to ensure that no single belief system is taught at local schools.

Twisted isn't it.

As I said, we should never confuse our perception of matters with the realities on a human level. Nor can we in any way or form try to put ourselves on a moral ladder. Some simple research would make us fall damn hard, and long, from our desired convictions. Yes, there is madness and the threat of the uninformed everywhere, just like everywhere there are those that will use anything and anyone for the purpose of power. Before we in the west can make any sort of statement like in the post above, we should take an informed look in the mirror of history - past and present. That threat of the uninformed, it is a double edged blade.

[dazza262 133]

In short, religion is the biggest cause of death, suffering and intolerance we have in the world.

Like I said, faith isn't the problem, rather than the religious groups themselves trying to impose their beliefs on everone else.

Isn't it time we, as a world, moved on from this now ?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Unfortunately, religious faith is very easy to instill in the ignorant because mankind always wants to point a finger at something to explain his ills. God is as good as any scapegoat. After all, there is a good chance He is entirely the invention of men or in the case of some really ancient civilizations, She (the Mother) is the butt of all this abuse.

More wars have been fought in recent history because some religious leader declared it. In Christianity, some fool in the Vatican only had to yell out "Deus vult" and off we go on a Crusade. Of course at that time, the general populace was illiterate and the nobility saw an opportunity to become richer. Life was short, dark and ugly, so why not ramp about looting and killing?

These days some "Islamic" clerics take it upon themselves to issue bills of proscription (fatwas) because of some imagined slight. Islam need to clean house.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Unfortunately, religious faith is very easy to instill in the ignorant because mankind always wants to point a finger at something to explain his ills. God is as good as any scapegoat. After all, there is a good chance He is entirely the invention of men or in the case of some really ancient civilizations, She (the Mother) is the butt of all this abuse.

More wars have been fought in recent history because some religious leader declared it. In Christianity, some fool in the Vatican only had to yell out "Deus vult" and off we go on a Crusade. Of course at that time, the general populace was illiterate and the nobility saw an opportunity to become richer. Life was short, dark and ugly, so why not ramp about looting and killing?

That or the belief in God actually instills some kind of mental peace and security, and gives people the opportunity to get away from all the hectic stressful business of modern life. Of course there are those who believe so out of ignorance, but there are also plenty of people who do not believe in anything also out of sheer ignorance.

And again, the amount of wars fought because some religious leader wanted it is relatively small. In all of these so called religious wars there has always been a strong political or economic dimension to it as well. And usually it were actually political or economic reasons that caused wars to be fought, with religion just being used as a propaganda trick to get people to support the war. Not much different than how states used nationalism as a trick to get people to fight their wars.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

<snip> ... the nobility saw an opportunity to become richer.

<snip>

And again, the amount of wars fought because some religious leader wanted it is relatively small. In all of these so called religious wars there has always been a strong political or economic dimension to it as well. And usually it were actually political or economic reasons that caused wars to be fought, with religion just being used as a propaganda trick to get people to support the war. Not much different than how states used nationalism as a trick to get people to fight their wars.

I think that's pretty much what I said. Small compared to what?

[LexusInfernus 908]

Small compared to the times secular political leaders wanted to fight a war.

[macvirt 361]

In Christianity, some fool in the Vatican only had to yell out "Deus vult" and off we go on a Crusade. Of course at that time, the general populace was illiterate and the nobility saw an opportunity to become richer. Life was short, dark and ugly, so why not ramp about looting and killing?

And this is different from today .. how? We in the west still engage in conflicts utilising those doctrines as instruments of power. Politics, economics, military, cultural. It is only because of the length of the cold war conflict that we have a measure of civil wealth that has enabled us to offload most of the negative consequences of such practices on those we engage on.

These days some "Islamic" clerics take it upon themselves to issue bills of proscription (fatwas) because of some imagined slight. Islam need to clean house.

That is actually done a lot, in muslim countries, we are just never informed of it in media. Take the case of Bin Laden, disavowed on all ends of islamic clergy, accompanied by active engagement in challenging Al Quaida's religious instrumentation, and so forth. Keep in mind that our media tend to present the politics in a heavy religeous cloak. We don't seperate matters, as is done in most of the rest of the world.

Not that we in christianity do not have our own house cleaning to do, I should add It's not like we stopped falling prey to excess in the past, on the contrary.

[LexusInfernus 908]

And this is different from today .. how? We in the west still engage in conflicts utilising those doctrines as instruments of power. Politics, economics, military, cultural. It is only because of the length of the cold war conflict that we have a measure of civil wealth that has enabled us to offload most of the negative consequences of such practices on those we engage on.

Oh come on, its not that bad. Up until the second world war we civilized the way we engaged in warfare. Even today, we try to keep the impact as small as possible. It are our enemies that force the excesses on us by hiding behind civilians.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Now isn't that clearly from someone who believes all the propaganda we see on the western networks. How many people are "collateral damage" in some of these drone strikes? The euphemism makes me slightly ill.

[Duke87 1,070]

Whenever you blow anything up remotely, the possibility of accidentally hitting the wrong target always exists. If the enemy is hiding, sometimes you may think you know where they are when actually you don't.

Of course, a lot of the innocent people killed in these conflicts are killed because the bad guys mingle with them, both as a way of hiding and by way of employing the "human shield" tactic. It is thus not possible to get the bad guys without also killing some innocent people... you could try to be more surgical about it and put boots on the ground rather than using drone strikes, but even then, people will get caught in the crossfire, will get taken as hostages, and more of our guys will die that way.

The bad guys know this and also know that it works in their favor to keep things this way since the more "collateral damage" we inflict going after them, the worse we make ourselves look, and the more they can convince everyone around that we're the bad guys.

Ultimately the simple reality is you can't fight a war without killing people. That's what war is. There is no way to make it not ugly other than to not do it. Which would require dropping the attitude that we need to be a dominant force in the world (or at least getting over the fear that if we don't kill them, they'll kill us), something most Americans are not willing to do.

[macvirt 361]

And this is different from today .. how? We in the west still engage in conflicts utilising those doctrines as instruments of power. Politics, economics, military, cultural. It is only because of the length of the cold war conflict that we have a measure of civil wealth that has enabled us to offload most of the negative consequences of such practices on those we engage on.

Oh come on, its not that bad. Up until the second world war we civilized the way we engaged in warfare. Even today, we try to keep the impact as small as possible. It are our enemies that force the excesses on us by hiding behind civilians.

Um, not really. The historic impression of earlier warfare prior to the second world war being civilised is a bit of a misconception. First of all we should note the relative scale in terms of popular sizes, demographic spread, economic development, etc. But even more importantly just about every type of wars we engaged in as a species were detrimental to each of these factors, particularly civilian populations - the idea of even trying to figure out what type of warfare is a bit hmmm, but alright, let's have a look at history. Let's see if we actually had civil or civilian friendly wars.

Napoleontic warfare? American Civil War? The Boer war? The lining up of thousands of men in an organised manner for the purpose of determining engagements on a chosen field of battle while behind those periodic and selective fronts the civilian populations suffered every consequence of warfare ranging from economic impact via organised burning of crops and villages even firebombing of cities and so forth. Right. Not to mention the organised looting and both civil, cultural and financial bleeding instruments like reparations and such (let's be honest, most of our "modern wars" are the direct results of the horrid and detrimental reparation concepts that came with these types of warfare). Or should we look at WWI where this type of warfare resulted in an industrialised manner of killing which in spite of hardly being the first of its kind left horrid marks on environment, cultures and entire populations alike.

Medieval warfare? Where class segregation involved the doctrine of "living off the land" (which meant starving entire populations of food and other means of life), organised denial of use of resources (land, people, etc) by means of incorporating concepts into campaign planning which we now call "scorced earth". A quick example, the depopulation and deforestations alike during the English / French conflicts in Normandy (around the time of that poor girl getting visions and being put to "good" use for PR), where entire cities were wiped off the map, where the natural landscape was so transformed that it took nearly a hundred years for cultivation to once again reach reasonable levels of productivity for local farming and resource harvesting. Yeah. Days where people in spite of cities being hotbeds of epidemics and civil violence sought shelter because staying outside of the cities meant rape and killing which on a relative scale of casualties to population left no significant difference to - for example - the firebombing of dresden. Incidentally, people seeking shelter in cities in those days is rather significant, since cities in those centuries tended to not keep their populations due to such factors as disease. Cities were instruments of economics, but they had to regularly import new populations via subsidies and taxation instruments, it was not till much later in our history that cities did not actually have to recycle populations. Either way, another example, look at the cost in civilian casualties during the Papal campaigns in France agains the Cathar. Genocide on a scale and with such a success rate of which the instigators behind the recent conflict between Hutu's and Tutsi's in Ruanda would be jealous of.

The Roman days? Where a commonly used instrument of pacification was to execute every second woman and every third man? Do we remember what became of Carthago (delenda est)? Or the Roman campaigns in what today is Israel? Or the punishment campaigns by Roman legions stationed in controlled territory if a legion on a foreign campaign lost a battle? Heck, let's look at Caesar's campagn in Gaule, which pretty much depopulated entire providences (and really, not by simply driving out the local populations as refugees). Or shall we look at China in those days, where ethnic cleansing was an instrument of conflict resolution between warlords, or where the construction of fortifications was done on foundations of the corpses of slaves taken from the populations of both opposing and local domains. Or the African continent where mass slaughter was just as organised even in varying tribal formats to a point where it became practice in both the west and south/east regions to kill every man and child followed by institutionalised rape of the woman in order to ensure ownership of the lands for the future (incidentally, something the predecessors to both Massai and Kikuyu referred to as "perfectly fine" because that is what lions do when they take over a pride).

The sad truth is that the scale of violence has always been relative to population pressure in any given area we try to look at in order to find civilian friendly or even civil warfare. Alexander the Great was very astute in his dealings with local nobles and royal families, he also saw the point of attempting to merge his own and babylon's populations in a friendly manner, but beyond that he failed to see the point of not using local populations up to the burning point as a means of resources of any kind. What we call the Pashtun these days was pretty much depopulated by the guy.

The only reasons we *think* that WWII is a changing point is because a) it is our most current reference to vaste warfare in perspective to that which we consider ancient history - the generations of WWII are after all still with us, and our media today keep that era fresh in mind and b) we forget that technology has always been with us, even industrialised forms of killing but we fail to offset events to points of scale of whichever days in history we look at.

Either way, the idea of a debate of which war is worse. All war is equally detrimental. It's only in the abstract that we can try to make comparisons, and even then we have to be damn careful not to forget the human element in every variable. And yes, the relative scale of it all. When what is the Netherlands today had a population of a few dozen tribes totalling up to around 300.000 people it may not seem like much by our current modern scales that some 50.000 were killed by Romans while another 50.000 plus were driven northwards as refugees - but look at the scale. Yes, we've had bombing campaigns in modern times where more were killed with fancy machines, but it is still a third of a country that got wiped. That the Romans did it with swords, spears and horses does not change the gruesomeness or the results. Even the variable of time / speed in relative terms to the globalisation curve is no different.

By the way, hiding behind civilians in our modern times is hardly an invention of "our enemies" To be brutally honest, we deliberately and consciously created our enemies - for reasons of economics, politics but also other more subtle concepts like continuity and control. The British Empire was a master at divida et imperia for example, only to be outclassed later in history by the US. The first Chinese emperor applied the same concepts as well though, except to his own population and not foreign ones.

What or who are our enemies today really? Should it not suffice to say that history shows us that man is his own enemy, and that as such we should put man's actions and motivations at every point in time under a microscope in order to at least try and prevent us constantly falling prey to the same psychopathy present in human behavioural dynamics? No really, who are our enemies today? For the past 250 years or so we have utilised the concept of "enemy" as a derivative instrument of empire building. The French did it, the British did it, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Bantu, and so forth. It's only in the 20th century that we saw the presence of this fall "back" (so to speak) from multiple countries to just the US engaging in the use of that instrumentation. Communism? Please do not take it the wrong way, but Americans really do not know half their own correct and untainted history in these matters. Terrorism? A phenomenon we created, where again most people have no idea why or how we did that because it is "not done" for the few remaining media networks to report on unpleasant matters. Islam? Because we the West created margin trends among them - after usually setting those countries back a few centuries in development because strategic interests required this - in order to use these as a means of continuity for dominance?

It does not matter where we look. There is no such thing as "enemies" other than ourselves. Collectively, on a species level, we suffer from conditional and conditioned weaknesses that make us vulnerable to the creation of concepts of enemy for the sake of power. It is ironic, because while there were lands to discover and continents to claim there is a certain plausability in the idea of establishing dominion, but not when we pretty much "have" the "world" - and all that remains is a petty struggle for resources which with our current technology we really would not have to bother with if we simply reaped it from the skies. Trouble is, that is just not in the interests of maintaining dominion.

We today create our enemies, because it serves our interests. I honestly can not think of any "enemy" since the second world war which we have not deliberately and consciously created or aided in its rise for the safeguarding of our interests, from the economic to the political all the way even to the cultural and organisation of our societies. It is sad that we have come that far, sunk that deep.

Maybe it would be nice if people in some places actually had access to means and methods for information other than propaganda constructs. And the inclination to make the effort. But alright, bread and games right? At least that is not an invention of us in the West

[LexusInfernus 908]

The only reasons we *think* that WWII is a changing point is because a) it is our most current reference to vaste warfare in perspective to that which we consider ancient history - the generations of WWII are after all still with us, and our media today keep that era fresh in mind and b) we forget that technology has always been with us, even industrialised forms of killing but we fail to offset events to points of scale of whichever days in history we look at.

Thank you for demonstrating my point. The more you go back in history, the more brutal the methods of pacification were and the brutal the form of combat as well. But with the rise of organized professional armies, we (and with we, I mean Europe) reduced the scale of the war to only the points where armies clashed and their immediate surroundings, rules governing warfare where put into effect, etc. No more living of the land, no more widespread rape of everything, and more controlled violence. I should note that this only accounts for the European theater of war.

Second, the WWII was an actual turning point for two reasons. First of all, it saw the return of deliberately attacking civilians as a valid part of warfare. Terror bombing, reprisal raids and genocide mark WWII rightly as a very bloody war indeed. This is a turning point because before, most European wars saw a decrease in deliberate targeting of civilians with the WWI as its prime example. WWI was bloody certainly, but the violence, especially at the western front was concentrated on a relatively small area. Lots of people died yes, but most of those were soldiers. Cities were bombed yes, but not on the scale as WWII would do. And no one deliberately tried to wipe out a specific ethnic group.

The second reason why WWII can be seen as a turning point is because after WWII, there is a sharp decrease of wars fought in the European tradition. That of professional armies fighting it out on the battlefield in a series of quick and decisive battles. Instead, irregular forces, guerillia warfare and terrorism become more and more common. Yes, it was there before as well, but after WW2 it becomes the rule rather than the exception.

By the way, hiding behind civilians in our modern times is hardly an invention of "our enemies" To be brutally honest, we deliberately and consciously created our enemies - for reasons of economics, politics but also other more subtle concepts like continuity and control. The British Empire was a master at divida et imperia for example, only to be outclassed later in history by the US. The first Chinese emperor applied the same concepts as well though, except to his own population and not foreign ones.

I never said that they invented it. And Im not going to argue that we did not have it coming. But that doesn't make them any less of our enemies. They want to kill us, or at least they want to hurt our interests. That makes them our enemies. And they utilize terrorism and irregular warfare as methods of attacking us, or preventing us from defending our interests. That means that it will be harder for us to avoid and contain collateral damage. Our armies and our military doctrine would actually prefer to meet them on a big empty plain and fight them in the old fashioned way, but they know very well that doing that would mean their defeat. Conventional military doctrine is pretty useless against insurgencies and they know it, so that why they avoid conventional methods.

@A Nonny Moose, I clearly said 'up until WWII'.

[macvirt 361]

There is a difference between "we did not have it coming" and "we create enemies", it may be subtle at first glance but it is rather of interest for determining the reality of our world view.

Solving that challenge requires breaking away from the mentality and methods that have created the circumstances and conditions. In simple terms, there is no "dealing" with those enemies effectively without solving the case of their creation. The mindset that we are given today of adaptation to different circumstances (on the field, in our societal organisation, our political choices, etc) is one of servitude. It is not one of security or even safeguarding. It is ironic that every study NATO/OTAN has commissioned on these "new" challenges tend to come up with the same analysis: to deal with the challenges and adapt both militarily and in other fashions we should stop creating the conditions for these challenges to arise. Any other approach only serves selective interests (arms, energy) as opposed to general interests (cultural, society, political). The hinge point as always is economics.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Let's face it, the hinge point is always greed. Homo Sap. is a predator and will always want what his neighbour has. For us, "live and let live" is impossible because of our built-in genetic traits. We are a member of the "kill or be killed" set, and we are not at all pastoral creatures.

Our veneer of civilization is our attempt to curb this. For the most part, we are at the top of the food chain in the world right now.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Peer pressure from the culture seems to play a large part. If most of your area is secular, the drive to be secular increases. If you are in the Bible belt, the church becomes hard to avoid. My problem is when people don't really consider what they believe and know why the believe it, but believe it simply because everyone they know believes it. Our culture seems to be downright afraid to give a real look at all of this, and to me, that doesn't make much sense.

Can't the same be said for everywhere on Earth?

Anywhere you go there's things influencing your line of thinking. If you got to a 'liberated' region where religion isn't weighed so heavily, then you'll probably be indifferent to religion yourself.

The idea of completely independent thought is an illusion.

[LexusInfernus 908]

There is a difference between "we did not have it coming" and "we create enemies", it may be subtle at first glance but it is rather of interest for determining the reality of our world view.

I think the one implies the other, though the latter one is more direct about it.

[macvirt 361]

Heh, yes and no. On a general level we can state that the first is our generic perspective that functions as both a means and excuse for cultural motivation, the trouble is that while this is culturally internalised (we do not question the idea / conviction, it has become part of our cultural orientation and "knowledge") it largely comes from a lack of available perspectives in information sourcing (media as instrument of economic, political and social organisation tends to dominate - on a cultural level - the information sources practically available to people. If you repeat a certain message long enough using means that people like, embedded in cultural development over time (shaping the cultural perception, for example through movies) people "grow up" with that chosen message. It is simply the cultural application of indoctrination.

The result of that is that the first statement displays a perspective of no participation in the rise of an enemy (a perspective of innocence if you will), the second recognises the dependancies we as a society pose for the necessity of enemies in our social / political / cultural organisation.

These dependancies are a phenomenon directly linked with empire building. Countries do have their own sorts of mess and issues, obviously, but only empires or countries with imperial ambitions engage in those dependancies. By choice.

For the US it is a road that began when an industrialist saw the potential in a situation and utilised politicians and other means to instigate the blowing up of the Maine. Admittedly the country did have a long period where it was virtually divided by whether to replicate that which its people had turned away from (the practices of the empires of the old world), ultimately though the case of the Philipenes sealed the deal. A bit of irony in that regard, the only place where the changes in approach have not yielded desired results still is Cuba. And well, we have to be honest, just like the empire before the US, the British, it is not like we have not seen the continuation of this approach in our recent times. The Bush administrations should pop out to even the most oblivious internet visitor Not that they were the exception to the rule, far from. Who still remembers who trained Noriega? Bin Laden? Khomeini? What media question the motives behind using them? For the US it simply does not matter anymore. Von Clausewitz probably is turning in his grave wishing to write another book War as extension of politics surpassed by politics as extension of economics - with war a simple low level instrument of it.

In terms of historic perspective, that is actually quite a substantial shift in empire patterns. Not even the Romans went that far. Yes, for the Romans the military was an economic entity as much as it is today for the US, and they had their times of fanaticism guided by quite simple lack of perspective and information (purposefully guided by both senate and emperors alike). But with the exception of Julius Caesar they did not go as far as politics in servitude of economics with the first instrument of war, that actually spooked them on a cultural level. Soldiers in Rome were variables of military and economic roles within society. They were not currency for profits of selective interests only. As sad as it is, under the guise of an enormous mount of dream building and marketing, the soldier today is the currency of private profit.

[LexusInfernus 908]

The result of that is that the first statement displays a perspective of no participation in the rise of an enemy (a perspective of innocence if you will), the second recognises the dependancies we as a society pose for the necessity of enemies in our social / political / cultural organisation.

Im sorry, but I got to disagree with you here. 'We had it coming' implies that we did something on purpose and as a result of that, we now have people, organizations, states, whatever that want to hurt our interests and ourselves.

A little example. A schoolyard bully who bullied a lot of kids has an asswhooping coming when the teachers find out or when the bullied kids team up to beat the bully into the hospital. You can safely say in those situations that the bully had it coming with 'it' referring to the asswhooping he received. While if some normal kid who doesn't really do anything to other kids, is always friendly and polite and is generally well liked, but suddenly gets beaten up by a bunch of kids without any provocation, you can hardly say that such a person had it coming, with 'it' referring to being beaten up.

[Dewm 177]

Pregame religious exercises.

And I say, so what? And what about the First Amendment?

I don't hear anyone on the team, including the non-Catholic coach complaining. And yet, why would this article be printed if there weren't some anti-religionists in the pile somewhere?

Everyone is entitled to his personal faith, organized or not. I think a lot of the stance taken by some outfits is just noise to get attention.

Like the bedroom, the law should stay out of people's minds. The United States of America has the G. word built in so deeply it is probably impossible to remove it entirely. If the US is not a Christian country, it needs to shake its collective head. When people of other faiths immigrate to the US, they are not constrained from practising their beliefs unless they are against the civil law (Sharia, for example).

Since most of the founding fathers were members of the Masonic Order, by the way, you can be sure they were all practising Christians belonging to a Protestant denomination. At that time Catholics were not admitted to the order.

While the U.S. was founded on judeo Christian values. I would agree that in this present day and age, we are no longer a Christian nation..

That being said, I really care if other express their religious beliefs. As long as its on a equal footing. I don't care if you say a buddhist prayer.. but you'd better not complain when I say a Christian prayer.