[ExI] riots again

[Jeff Davis]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 7:58 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 3:28 PM, Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com> wrote:

>> "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
                 - Samuel P. Huntington

> "in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years
of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
>
>            - Orson Welles


These competing quotes then is your distillation of the argument?  Fine.

What did the Swiss produce?  Five hundred years of democracy and
peace.  Five hundred years without warfare, terror, murder, and
bloodshed.

***AND*** they produced the cuckoo clock to celebrate the minutes and
hours of their magnificent accomplishment.

And Welles, the narcissistic, over-achiever with the Randian ethics of
a spoiled two-year old got it wrong.  It wasn't the Borgias that
generated those accomplishments -- the Renaissance in particular.  It
was the money generated by the trade in silk and spices.

And DaVinci produced DaVinci, with a little help from Mom and Dad.

Bettering the human condition is the source of value in material
accomplishments.  Science (art, politics, commerce, et al) must serve
humanity, not the other way round.  Crime does not serve humanity.
The Borgias were arch criminals.

Best, Jeff Davis

 "We don't see things as they are,
      we see them as we are."
                 Anais Nin