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05.12.2020 Ovi Team Ovi Story Ovi Guide Newsletter Submissions Partners Links Contact
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Obama or Clinton? Huckabee!
by Europe & Us
2008-01-09 09:51:35
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For many months, the two most asked questions raised in the US presidential elections were "Is America ready for a woman in the White House?“ and "Is America ready for an Afro-American in the White House?“. Somehow, the question of the next president of the USA was reduced to the duel between Obama and Clinton.

europeusWhile Barack Obama outscored his competitors on the Democratic side in Iowa by scoring 38% in this strange Iowa caucus grass-roots democratic process, pushing Hillary Clinton (29%) back to the third place, even behind John Edwards (30%), the presidential race has seen another major surprise in Iowa, the state where the last three primaries gave a very exact idea of the two nominees for the final race.

This main surprise is Mike Huckabee, who actually won 17 of the 33 grand voters who will represent Iowa in the final stage of the elections. Huckabee, not very much known to the US public and a former senator of Arkansas, stands for rather conservative, religious values and might be the answer of the American people to the two questions raised at the beginning of the campaign.

So, who is Mike Huckabee? Huckabee is a fierce opponent to abortion, defends the right to carry guns („It is not the guns killing people, it’s their illegal use“) and considers the war in Iraq to be „a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror“. Consequently, he is opposed to any time table for the withdrawal of the troops from Iraq which translates into the continuation of the US war in Iraq. His falcon attitudes sharply contrast with the change attitude of the democrats and indicate some sort of extra time fort he Bush politics in the world. Although all polls indicate that a vast majority of US citizens would like to terminate the US war in Iraq („bring back our boys“), they are still able to vote for a candidate who wants to continue this war.

The presidential race in the USA can not be limited any longer to the question Barack or Hillary. The winner of the democratic nomination process might as well be a republican who is likely to continue the George Bush politics. A woman in the White House? An Afro-American in the White House? Change of US politics? You think that the world and the USA have seen the worst with George W. Bush? Huckabee might become the next step of the USA back to the Middle Age. Is America ready for a woman or an Afro-American in the White House? Probably not, Americans might even vote for the Iraq war just to avoid any of the two in the supreme office.

Kai Littmann is journalist


(Taken from www.europeus.org)


    
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Emanuel Paparella2008-01-09 13:59:38
Intriguing and "enlightened" political commentary: America going back to the Middle Ages (assumed to be the Dark Ages)a place where America never was to begin with. Be that as it may, was it not during the Middle Ages that Europe has a semblance of authentic cultural identity?
Sand2008-01-10 09:10:55
Anyone who would like to check on the good old days of the Middle Ages should go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
to see how wonderful those times were.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-11 18:01:51
Point missed and/or distorted. The point was not about life-style but about the cultural identity of Europe about which it would appear you know precious little.
Sand2008-01-11 18:09:24
Another fine demonstration of your blatant idiocy. If you read the recommended article you would have re-enforced your meager understanding that the bulk of people in Middle Ages Europe had absolutely no sense of belonging to the continent as a single culture.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-11 20:24:30
Had you bothered to read the article yourself from the Wikipedia Encyclopedia (which you denigrated sometime ago when it did not agree with your biased viewpoints) you would have read this about the early Middle Ages:

"Charlemagne's court in Aachen was the centre of a cultural revival that is sometimes referred to as the "Carolingian Renaissance". This period witnessed an increase of literacy, developments in the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, as well as liturgical and scriptural studies. The English monk Alcuin was invited to Aachen, and brought with him the precise classical Latin education that was available in the monasteries of Northumbria. The return of this Latin proficiency to the kingdom of the Franks is regarded as an important step in the development of mediaeval Latin. Charlemagne's chancery made use of a type of script currently known as Carolingian minuscule, providing a common writing style that allowed for communication across most of Europe. After the decline of the Carolingian dynasty, the rise of the Saxon Dynasty in Germany was accompanied by the Ottonian Renaissance."

So much for lack of cultural cohesion and unity in the Middle Ages. O tempora, o mores. Even Henry Ford who said that history is bunk would be perplexed at this kind of biased and invincible ignorance.




Sand2008-01-11 20:49:07
However the hell the various aristocracies might have have related to each other the real Europeans, the peasants and military, were constantly chopping each other up in continual warfare for centuries. If you glory in that type of unity and wish it on modern Europe you delight in far more viciousness than I can accommodate in my preferences.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-11 23:18:07
To any reader who may be tempted to be taken in by the above large brushed smear and obvious ignorance of the Middle Ages I reccomend one single book among the thousands that could be chosen: Christopher Dawson's THE MAKING OF EUROPE.

I am presently in the process of writing a piece on Dawson and his central idea to which he dedicated some forty years of indefatigable research and scholarship. Stay tuned! It ought to soon appear in Ovi but reading the book and making up your mind on your own is even preferable.

As a preview, the one single developed idea above mentioned which is the master key to all of Dawson's thought was this: religion is the soul of a culture and a society or culture that has lost its spiritual roots is a dying culture, however prosperous it may appear externally.

I am willing to wager that the self-declared pooper scooper and guardian of the gates of political correctness of Ovi will cavalierly and egregiously consign Dawson and his forty years of scholarship to the virtual bonfire too. But that would be no great surprise to me or most readers I dare say.
Sand2008-01-11 23:35:38
It is you who are burning books that I disagree with. A very strange reaction.
Since you feel so elated over the centuries of dissension and butchery that erupted amongst the ancient kingdoms of Europe to the point that you feel it is superior to the peace now reigning here you have discovered a new way for me to find you criminally disgusting.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-12 02:12:23
The voices have been visiting again? Is that what they told you? Don't believe them for a second. Read Dawson's book but not while they are visiting.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-12 02:15:56
P.S. Read the book before sending it to the bonfire and then disagree if you must but don't disagree with it just because I recommended it. That is both unfair to Dawson and idiotic to boot.
Sand2008-01-12 07:23:50
Whenever you are at a loss to answer me directly you demand I read this or that or something else so there is a truck load of books I must plow through before I can get some hint at what a simple direct answer from you might be. This is a pseudo-intellectual dumb ploy by someone who would rather misdirect a questioner than display a clear explanation of an indefensible position. If you have read these books you must be aware of what might satisfy my objections and since you would rather push away my simple demand than answer my objections I can only assume you have no answer and prefer to assume a smug superior stance with no real basis in acceptable fact.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-12 09:52:30
The reason books or articles are recommended is to impress upon you the fact that more often than not you speak out of sheer ignorance and prejudice; out of a need to gring an ax and bash religion in general. You however, having already the answers a priori, need to ask the questions which no answer will satisfy because what is sought is not to expand one's knowledge but the kind of answer that will allow you to say: gotch you! When one refused to play the silly game, you console yourself with the illusion that your interlocutor is at a loss to answer your powerful question. I wonder if you realize how sterile such a game is, or are you too stupid to realize it? Be that as it may, you you keep playing it. That way lies projection and irrationalism parading as rationality; the snake eating his own tail and envy of even the fiddle one plays. Chesterton pointed out in one of his books that no English poet ever went mad while chess players do. He had one exception, Cowper and that because of his obsessive theory of predestination. Pity indeed.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-12 10:19:57
P.S. In any case the advice to read Dawson The Making of Europe was not to you who only reads author that agree with yourself, but to the more open minded reader who may have been taken in by your misinformation about the Middle Ages; misinformation deviously and erronesously imputed to an article in Wikipedia which actually says the contrary of what you imputed to it. Talking of "criminally disgusting"! Indeed!
Sand2008-01-12 11:04:52
I am sadly aware that you are always playing to an imaginary audience seeking approbation to puff up your idiotic offerings and continually avoiding any actual engagement in direct discussion which anybody really interested in pursuing a topic would do.
Sand2008-01-12 11:29:22
And if anybody is "gringing axes" it is you who continually implies I would deny examination of your nonsense by burning books whereas I am most interested that people examine and re-evaluate traditionally accepted material to understand that a good deal of it is fallacious.
But your unfortunately dull intellect with a good many obvious axes to "gring" finds that beyond your perceptive capabilities.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-12 13:57:42
So you begin a priori with axes to grind and fallacies to disprove and then go look for them. In academia those who engage in that kind of scholarship are branded as charlatans. You must know that since you went to school eons ago and must have learned something about the world of scholarship. But I understand that memory plays tricks on us and the mind can even conjure up voices that come to visit periodically. Pity.
Sand2008-01-12 15:05:17
I wondered why you were kicked out of academia. Tough!
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-12 21:21:14
Is that what the voices have been telling you lately? Are they the same voices that advice you on the Cahtolic Church? Thank God there is a big ocean in between or they might have gotten you sued for slander and defamation by now. I wonder, might that be the reason why you had to run all the way to Finland? I told you some time ago that those voices would eventually get you in big trouble.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-13 01:48:38
Don't listen to those nasty voices or you may also be driven out of Finland to find yourself in an igloo at the North Pole.
Sand2008-01-13 05:15:24
I have never before heard of your latest church. Sounds rather weird.
Since you have continuously and violently protested, at every opportunity, the major intellectual adherents of secular science and advocated, in a similar manner, adherence to obsolete historical idiocies I have logically assumed that your insistent and persistent ax grinding had thrown you out of academia, a procedure that you mentioned was demanded of such irrational behavior. If you are still within that elite group I assume you still might squeak by if you reform and start thinking sensibly. It would be a good move.
Emanuel Paparella2008-01-14 08:43:45
Is that what the voices told you to advise to me? You ought to consider taking them with a big grain of salt and perhaps add some mustard too.
Sand2008-01-14 19:28:27
I really pity you in your lack of the means for internal discussion of my comments. Your continual comments on my own internal voices where different perceptions are discussed indicates a frightful envy of this mental capability. I'm really sorry, it must be something genetic and I doubt that help is available.
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