Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirik  I love how the liberals on this forum are allowed to attack other people's roots.  But that as a small aside, hypocrits. I guess this forum is the only place where the supposed nazis are the ones merely defending their own ancestry and it's the liberals being racist.
Anyway, minimum requirements for a perfect society imo:
1) Cultural and economical protectionism
2) Small scale
3) Large living space |
What's this all have to do with paper labels like "liberal"? I'm hardly a rubber-stamp liberal politically, but I will toss this one into the list of things that make for a free, open society:
Freedom from superstition.
Medieval Europe (my ancestors) burned thousands of witches at the stake during the Dark Ages and perpetrated some of the most heinous atrocities in history against native peoples they encountered. I will never excuse that, but the fact is that their culture offered far more than merely violence against things they didn't understand.
Just like it can lead modern witch-hunting in places like Kenya, Sierra Leone and South Africa.
There may be a lot of positive things to recommend a culture, but I fail to see how violence and atrocity spawned by superstition should ever be one of them, regardless of the national origin. That includes places like Africa, South America, Borneo ...
Witch-Hunts: A Thing of the Past? Witches, Black Magic and Penis Snatchers | Suite101.com BBC News | AFRICA | Congo witch-hunt's child victims Quote:
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Congolese children are being accused of witchcraft and made scapegoats for the country's many ills. Jeremy Vine reports from Kinshasa on the gruesome business of exorcism.
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... and even secular America can be subject to this kind of dangerous nonsense.
Sarah Palin Linked Her Electoral Success to Prayer of Kenyan Witch Hunter | Election 2008 | AlterNet
Enlightened secular societies have a far better chance of forming working, benevolent governments than do primitive, superstitious ones. Then again, sometimes it's a matter of scale - it's easy to keep peace in a group of under 100 people. Once you get into the millions you'd better offer something better than superstitious fear, because that dark path tends to bend around on yourself.