{"id":917,"date":"2003-02-23T09:26:03","date_gmt":"2003-02-23T14:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/02\/23\/917.html"},"modified":"2003-02-23T09:26:03","modified_gmt":"2003-02-23T14:26:03","slug":"the-french-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/02\/23\/the-french-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The French, again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\nIf Your Humble Blogger keeps on about the French, it'll be a running gag, right? Which every blog needs, right?\n\n<p>Well, Regis DeBray, a former adviser to Mitterrand, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/02\/23\/opinion\/23DEBR.html\">writes<\/a> in French, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman, in this morning's New York Times (reg. required) that \"In its principles of action, America is two or three centuries behind 'old Europe.'\" He is, particularly, comparing the American plan to disarm Iraq with the Crusades. Further, he suggests that Europe is secular, and that fundamentalism is ebbing, and that the US is intent on giving the fundamentalists something to rally around.\n<p>I do think that people should be aware of the deep divide between secularists and fundamentalists. I am a secularist. I am also a believer, and a traditionalist in that belief. I do no think that my belief, or anyone's, forms a good basis for government.\n<p>I have been doing a trifle of reading in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenbookstudies.com\/en\/greenbook.html\">Green Book<\/a> of Muammar Al Qathafi; his arguments against secularism seem to me totally unanswerable. They are unanswerable in the sense that they derive from totally different principles than mine; I can't challenge his principles other than to say they don't appeal to me at all. I believe in liberty, in principle; Qathafi does not. Nor does Bin Laden. Plenty of people don't; it's possible, if I had not grown up in America, I would have started with different principles and kept them.\n<p>All this is beside the point, as is, at the moment, the divide between secularists and fundamentalists. It's important to keep that divide in mind, as a part of my perception of the universe, but it isn't the only thing to keep in mind. And it doesn't answer my main question, which is pretty simple: If the UN can't enforce a mandate on a matter of serious importance, in this case Iraq's capabilities for murdering millions of people through chemical, biological, or nuclear war, what future does it have?\n<p>Thank you,<\/br>\n-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> If Your Humble Blogger keeps on about the French, it&#8217;ll be a running gag, right? Which every blog needs, right? Well, Regis DeBray, a former adviser to Mitterrand, writes in French, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman, in this morning&#8217;s New&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nytimes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}