Re: Fundamentalism in America


There is a fellow in Greece whose grandfather was the godfather of my
grandfather. When the Turks were leaving Greece during the population
exchanges, this fellow's grandfather worked for a wealthy Turkish
family. This Turkish family decided to give him their house since they would
get a house in Turkey from their government and they preferred the house go
to someone they knew.

In the university, I never had a Turkish professor I didn't like, and only
one Turkish student was ever hostile to me. I wondered why the Greeks &
Turks I went to school weren't the ones running things. In the end, during
the 1999 quakes, Greeks and Turks who had studied abroad together reached out
to their old friends, even though, when I was young, my relatives in Greece
mocked my NYC Turkish classmates and neighbors. A couple even lived next door
where the wife was Greek and the husband Turkish.

However, let us not be so blind to our differences lest they sneak up on
us. Turkey's muslim heritage has the potential to flare up. I'm not saying
all muslims are bad. But there is something going on in Islam which is
inflamatory. Much of it is a cold war phenomenon due to Nasser. Germany also
taught Turkey many evil things during 1890-1930. What made it possible for
Turkey to invade westward for five hundred years was precisely their
brutality. It doesn't mean this brutality is forever. The question is how
much do Turks want to change? If they really do want to change, most Greeks
today are willing to help them.

In psychology there is something called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. When
someone has food, they want shelter, then they want family, then community,
then fairness. When Korea suprassed $300/person in income, it was no longer
possible to have dictatorship. The same thing happened in Poland in 1980,
thanks to the Helsinki pact. It ill-behooves Greece to have the unstable
pre-Evren Turkey that produced Ali Mehmet Agca next door. WHat do you think
is happening with Lebanon and Palestine? The extremists saw Hamas about to
recognise Israel and started the fighting. Why? If the Palestininas and
Lebanese live peacefully and prosper, they won't want to fight. Greece &
Turkey settled their exchanged populations, but all of the Arabs wnet out of
their way to keep the Palestinians in camps, first in Jordan, then Lebanon,
then Jordan again. Commerce always defeats war. Before Alexander, the Greeks
didn't conquer with weapons, they conquered with commerce and ideas. Greeks
invented the modern city and modern capitalism and modern democracy.
Globalisation is fundamentally a Greek idea, the Megali Idea itself.

Redfield Peasant Society 1956 Chicago LC56-6654


p117 The possibility presents itself that around the Mediterranean Sea the
prestige of the town, the polis, carried with it at an early date the
peasant's distaste for agricultural life

Lincoln's Vitures Wm Lee Miller 2003 Knopf 0-375-40158-x

p43 religious skepticism.. In a society of hunters, Lincoln did not
hunt.. fled from farming.. avoided manual labor..

Thucydides Peloponnesian War TransBenjJowett

A141 men who cultivate their own lands are more ready to serve with
their persons than with their property; they do not despair of their
lives, but they soon grow anxious lest their money should all be
spent, especially if the war in which they are engaged is protracted
beyond their calculation, as may well be the case.


- = -
Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Reagan Mozart Pindus BioStrategist
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Yellary Clinton & Yellalot Spitzer: Nasty Together]
.

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