On Brian Lehrer's NPR show today, broadcast among other places on WNYC, Thomas Friedman was playing the guest, answering questions from the host and from callers. He opined on numerous subjects including, but not limited to, religion, Park51, supposed clashes of civilizations, the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck, and other interesting topics.
Now, he claims that the era of colonialism and imperialism is over. I can't really agree with that, given how much we Westerners are meddling in the government affairs of various sovereign nations, or working to undermine the sovereignty of said nations - like maintaining installations where no laws (whether local law, US law or international treaty law) apply to the treatment of prisoners, just for an example.
He also argues that, because this era of colonialism and imperialism is (allegedly) over, it's time for Near- and Middle-Eastern communities to stand up for themselves. They who've objected to various social ills, which they allegedly blame upon us Westerners in general and perhaps Americans in particular, are not simply unwilling pawns in an American game of global chess; rather, says Friedman, it's time for them to stand up and fight back against top-down power structures (authoritarian governments), gangsterism and private armies, or the treatment of women and gays. I happen to agree with him on the last bit, but problems with authoritarian governments, car bombings, and vigilante violence in places like Iraq and Iran are not being helped by American or more generally Western interventions. But never mind all that. Friedman is known for missing the point.
The title of this diary is his remark about Tea Partiers. Although Lehrer suggests the Tea Party movement is trying to paint itself as being about limited government, Glenn Beck's Tea Party-esque rally was about turning America "back to God". Were not the Tea Partiers and their allies also about conservative views on religion?
The thing is, Friedman says, Beck and the Tea Partiers are an "emotional voice" whose blather appeals to something on a lower level than reason in the people of this country. That nostalgia for the "good old days", without necessarily thinking about what that meant...
What happened to us? I thought our society was one that valued reason. I thought we valued adventurism tempered by clear thought, not mindless adherence, or Brownian motion-style herd thinking. Now, my fiancee, who is an ex-Baptist, says this comes of an authoritarian approach that people learn from their churches, where there is only one Truth, and the pastor shows this Truth to the parishioners, and one does not question or even really think about what one is told. (I found myself unable to convince a rather nice, if genteelly anti-semitic lady that my fiancee'd grown up with, that "shalom aleikhem" means "peace unto y'all" rather than "peace and good health", as her congregation was taught.) But is that all? I mean, I really don't know. I was raised with a philosophical tradition of questioning authority at the same time that I was taught a somewhat doctrinaire approach to religion, which isn't the best combination for getting little kids to believe what they're told about the cosmic order of things.
Is it religion? Is it the dumbing-down of our education system? (I don't think so, since the Tea Partiers seem overwhelmingly middle-aged or older.) Is it just a simple, low-level fear of being left out of the herd if one doesn't think along with everyone else? I just don't get it at all.