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Entry: Is There Conservatism Beyond Christianity? (or how to book a mental vacation in Athens or Valhalla) Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/is_there_conservatism_beyond_christianity_or_how_to_book_a_mental_vacation#23337 Post contents: One other note which may be worth chewing on-- we've all vilified universalism so much that we may have gotten carried away. Where exactly would science be, without universalism? How exactly is our tribe supposed to make it in the struggle between tribes without science, and the technology it confers? We all bash Sid (and rightly so) when he refuses to recognize race & ethnicity as scientifically-verifiable realities. But what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: Mexicans, Africans, and Chinamen ARE human beings. This is a verifiable fact as well. How we react to this fact is of course an open question -- we may decide to follow the Enlightenment route, or we may agree with Augustine that we should pay more attention to the needs of our kin and next-door-neighbors, about whom we actually know something. But if we construct a worldview so tribalist as to be actively dedicated to denying this humanity of the Other, then we are once again playing the ideology game, and shunning truth. Which has practical consequences, if I may appeal to nothing else. Perhaps the Reich would have been better off recognizing that Slavs were not subhuman weaklings who would fall down impotently before the German onslaught. Perhaps American policy toward the Middle East would be wiser, were we to recognize that terrorists are in fact human beings with human motivations (a la Ron Paul), vice inhuman demons who only hate us for our freedom (a la Giuliani). Sent at: 2008 10 07