Global Culture
Items on Global development, immigration, environmentalism, wealth and poverty, and so on
Johnston on Speaking of Faith
Tue 06 May 2008 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Douglas Johnston was featured on a recent edition of the public radio program, Speaking of Faith. The greatest threat in the post-Cold War world, he says, is the prospective marriage of religious extremism with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. spends most of its time, resources, and weapons fighting the symptoms of this threat, not the cause. The diplomacy of the future, he is showing, must engage religion as part of the strategic solution to global conflicts.
China, Tibet, and the Olympics
Mon 05 May 2008 by David Aikman
Placing the Olympics above world politics is a valiant but vain hope.
When the French nobleman and historian Baron Philipe de Coubertin revived the idea of the Olympic Games in Paris in 1894, he was motivated by both nationalism and idealistic internationalism. He felt the French had lost their war with Prussia in 1870 because of their poor physical conditioning. But de Coubertin had also been inspired by an English physician, botanist, and magistrate, William Penny Brookes. Another eccentric idealist and philanthropist, Brookes had first organized an “Olympian Games” in 1850 in the English rural village of Much Wenlock, Shropshire. De Coubertin visited the Much Wenlock Olympics in 1890, and returned to France inspired.
Eyeless in Gaza
Thu 24 Jan 2008 by David Aikman
In case you didn’t know it, “Eyeless in Gaza” is the name of a British, post-punk New Wave musical duo who chose the name of their band from the novel by the same name by British writer Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s novel, which has nothing to do with the Middle East, was first published in 1936. Its title is borrowed from a line in Milton’s poem, Samson Agonistes, portraying the fate of the Biblical character Samson, who finally achieves revenge on the Philistines by pulling down the temple of Dagon with the last remains of his strength, and killing, in his dying act, more Philistines than he slew when he was a strong young man.
But less than two months after the much-publicized one-day conference in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted by President Bush to re-launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, “eyeless in Gaza” might well be an appropriate subhead—to use journalistic jargon—for anyone associated with negotiations over the future of Gaza and of Israeli-Palestinian relations as a whole.
Justice and Civility in the Immigration Debates
Fri 18 Jan 2008 • Responses: 3 • by Luder Whitlock
Meanness adds no value to the decision-making process. It often wounds those targeted by it and such wounds can quickly metastasize into lasting hostility and alienation.
America is a nation of immigrants. Our schools, offices, and neighborhoods now host many ethnic groups with some school districts having more than fifty language groups. My own ancestry, rooted in multiple Northern European countries, bears testimony as well.
Given that, why has immigration become such a hot political issue recently? In some senses it is not new; the previous century saw several immigration flare-ups. Today terrorism, triggering a concern for national security, is undoubtedly a factor, as are the millions of Hispanics who have entered the country illegally and continue to flood across our southwestern border.
A Church in China
Wed 16 Jan 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman
Independent, But Not Underground
“Sauna City” is a commercial building in the Asian Games district of Beijing that is only a few years old but already is beginning to look distinctly shabby. The main entrance to the building has a sign over it, “Night Club,” and there are advertisements for various kinds of bath-house activity; it doesn’t look like the most salubrious location in the Chinese capital. But as a visitor approaches the right-hand-side front entrance, his attention is captured by a most unexpected sound wafting down from somewhere above: Christian hymn singing.
Those Hard-Worked Chinese Ideologists
Fri 11 Jan 2008 by David Aikman
Poor Chinese Communist leaders! It’s not enough to rise to the top of the largest political party in the world, the Communist Party of China (66 million members in 2002) and rule the world’s most populous nation (1.3 billion). Chinese Communist leaders seem predestined to become brilliant ideological innovators in the opaque mists of Marxism.
Losing Touch with a Friend
Thu 03 Jan 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Peter Sanlon
Do we need God to experience true friendship?
In a tedious meeting I noticed the blinking light on my BlackBerry. Disinterestedly I glanced at the e-mail that had landed in my inbox—the sender’s name evoked memories. Years had passed; we had vacationed together, shared meals, talked of hopes and fears. The e-mail was from a friend I lost touch with. Last I had heard from him he was heading to college, excited but slightly fearful of what the future might hold. It was a joy to discover that he has since graduated and established his own art business, selling his work via the internet.
Cicero asked himself what the most important thing in life is, concluding that, “Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is friendship.”
A Mandarin-Speaking Prime Minister for Australia
Tue 04 Dec 2007 by David Aikman
There was no doubt some handwringing, not to say heartburn, in the White House recently when America’s great Australian ally, John Howard, leader of Australia’s conservative coalition government, was defeated in Australia’s general election. Howard had been prime minister since 1996, and was a staunch ally of President George Bush. He had sent his country’s best troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion of 2002, and when the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003, Howard sent troops there also. Howard had a blunt, Anglo-Saxon conservative view of life that was instantly attractive to George Bush. The two men clearly liked each other.
Two Virtues of Western Culture
Mon 03 Dec 2007 • Responses: 3 • by Roger Scruton
Irony, Sacrifice, and the Transmission of Culture
Roger Scruton, in a speech first presented to the Trustees of The Trinity Forum, draws engagingly from his autobiographical experiences to help us explore the purpose of education and the formative role of faith in fostering two virtues in Western culture that make it worth celebrating and preserving.
Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations
Mon 05 Nov 2007 • Responses: 6 • by David Aikman
Cynics have already charged that in the Bush administration’s intensive focus on Israeli-Palestinian issues, we are seeing a repeat of the Clinton years. Supposedly, in the seventh and eighth year of any White House administration, there is an attempt to break the deadlock over one of the thorniest negotiating issues in the world: the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians. Just as President Clinton, in his last year in office—indeed, in his final days in office—came tantalizingly close to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in 2000, so President Bush is trying the same ploy in 2007 and 2008. He has dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East region to try to prod the two sides towards an accord, and to mobilize support for any subsequent agreement among regional powers.
