The Left Forgets/Ignores the East
Is anybody out there aware of the fact that 1000 years ago the most culturally and technologically advanced civilization on earth was a Christian theocracy that knew the Earth was round? That's right people, it's true. The Eastern Roman Empire, mistakenly referred to as the "Byzantine Empire" had the finest technology and naval and civilian ships in the world. It's economy was the most stable and they came from all over the world to trade. The ruler of the Empire, centered on the opulent city of Constantinople, was Khristos Pantokrator, Christ the Ruler of All. The Basileus Rhomaion, the Roman Emperor, was merely his vassal, his regent on Earth. Eratosthenes of Alexandria calculated that the Earth was round in the 3rd century BC. His works were still extant and widely read in the libraries of the Empire a thousand years ago. And they were believed. Far from stifling scientific progress, Roman science grew by leaps and bounds in the Christian period from 350 AD- ca 1180 AD.
Why isn't your average Public School child taught about this? Why, instead, are they taught that Christianity hampers science? I heard a very ignorant woman on tv many years ago. She said that Christianity so stifled scientific progress that we'd have had a man on the Moon by 300 AD if there had been no Christianity. To make an uninformed statement like that, she has to have absolutely zero knowledge of Rome when its capital was Constantinople. Quite the contrary, in the more Christian areas of the Roman Empire from the 3rd Century- 6th Century AD (those areas furthest to the South and East, closest to Jerusalem) the economies and innovations grew. The economy in that period collapsed in the most pagan areas of the Empire, those furthest to the North and West (ie furthest in the Empire from Jerusalem).
Part of the blame lies with the disdain that early modern classicists like Edward Gibbon had for the Byzantine period of the Roman Empire. Thus, this period was glossed over in our education systems. And it's not like the Liberals who've dumbed down our Public Schools in the last forty years are going to have any revival of the study of this. Leftists, with an incomplete picture of the Medieval Period, looking at it Western and Arabic, but ignoring the whole world in between them, the remnant of the Roman World, centered on Greece and Asia Minor.
The Left looks at the collapsed economy of the Medieval West from ca 500-1000 AD and, in its irrational hatred for Christianity, chooses to blame it. They act as if the incessant Germanic invasions of these places from 165-486 AD had nothing at all to do with it. The Muslim invasions of the 7th and 8th centuries AD which reduced or nearly cut off trade with vast swaths of the East, formerly ruled by Rome (ie Egypt, Syria, Africa Proconsularis). And let's not forget Attila the Hun!
Christianity, on the contrary, preserved what little of the knowledge of the Roman Period that remained in the West in the monastaries.
So what happens? The Left, in its worldview, forgets what happens in the East. If they looked at the great technological progress in Constantinople, they'd know that Christianity, if anything, spurs science along. Christianity gives people a belief that universe is an ordered place, a place of Intelligent Design, and that all they have to do is figure out the ways and means of the order, the design, and they can gain knowledge.
And it seems to be a pattern, forgetting the East. I realized this as I was writing about Khmer Rouge Cambodia yesterday. One of the many oft repeated lies of the Secular Left is "religion has killed more people throughout history than anything else." Oh really? Anyone who could make an ignorant statement like that is abysmally ignorant of the tens of millions murdered in Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and other Secularist Darwinist regimes that emerged directly from the so-called Age of "Enlightenment." Yes, Nazi Germany too was a Secular State, with Darwinist views (its racial policies) and Separation of Church and State was the law of the land there. So, on the contrary, 150-200 million people murdered by "enlightened" secularists in less than a century was bloodier than a thousand years of inquisitions. More people have been butchered by Secular Humanism than anything else in the history of man. Secular Humanism is the prideful self-deification of man. And when man tries to be God, he ends up being a devil. The people who are buried in all the mass graves from Berlin to Phnom Penh would attest to that. If they could say anything.
Of course this forgetting of the East is all part of the grander plan to rewrite history by the Left, demonizing the West, especially America. "He who controls the past controls the future," Orwell famously said. I do not believe it is by accident that our children are without knowledge of history and world geography. Our education system was the best in the world in 1960. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that what put it completely in the dumps by 1975-1980 was the influx of hippie dopeheads into the teaching profession in the 1970s. But its more than just reefer madness that has dumbed down our schools. This is by design, that our history is being stolen from us by the Left. If we have no past other than what Left Wing pseudo-intellectuals give us, then we also have no future other than what they deign to give us.
We need to read our history books, Red State America. We need to study the history of the East. And everywhere else also. We need to learn Arabic history as well. Our heritage will be completely lost to mob rule of the Left if we do not.
Why isn't your average Public School child taught about this? Why, instead, are they taught that Christianity hampers science? I heard a very ignorant woman on tv many years ago. She said that Christianity so stifled scientific progress that we'd have had a man on the Moon by 300 AD if there had been no Christianity. To make an uninformed statement like that, she has to have absolutely zero knowledge of Rome when its capital was Constantinople. Quite the contrary, in the more Christian areas of the Roman Empire from the 3rd Century- 6th Century AD (those areas furthest to the South and East, closest to Jerusalem) the economies and innovations grew. The economy in that period collapsed in the most pagan areas of the Empire, those furthest to the North and West (ie furthest in the Empire from Jerusalem).
Part of the blame lies with the disdain that early modern classicists like Edward Gibbon had for the Byzantine period of the Roman Empire. Thus, this period was glossed over in our education systems. And it's not like the Liberals who've dumbed down our Public Schools in the last forty years are going to have any revival of the study of this. Leftists, with an incomplete picture of the Medieval Period, looking at it Western and Arabic, but ignoring the whole world in between them, the remnant of the Roman World, centered on Greece and Asia Minor.
The Left looks at the collapsed economy of the Medieval West from ca 500-1000 AD and, in its irrational hatred for Christianity, chooses to blame it. They act as if the incessant Germanic invasions of these places from 165-486 AD had nothing at all to do with it. The Muslim invasions of the 7th and 8th centuries AD which reduced or nearly cut off trade with vast swaths of the East, formerly ruled by Rome (ie Egypt, Syria, Africa Proconsularis). And let's not forget Attila the Hun!
Christianity, on the contrary, preserved what little of the knowledge of the Roman Period that remained in the West in the monastaries.
So what happens? The Left, in its worldview, forgets what happens in the East. If they looked at the great technological progress in Constantinople, they'd know that Christianity, if anything, spurs science along. Christianity gives people a belief that universe is an ordered place, a place of Intelligent Design, and that all they have to do is figure out the ways and means of the order, the design, and they can gain knowledge.
And it seems to be a pattern, forgetting the East. I realized this as I was writing about Khmer Rouge Cambodia yesterday. One of the many oft repeated lies of the Secular Left is "religion has killed more people throughout history than anything else." Oh really? Anyone who could make an ignorant statement like that is abysmally ignorant of the tens of millions murdered in Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and other Secularist Darwinist regimes that emerged directly from the so-called Age of "Enlightenment." Yes, Nazi Germany too was a Secular State, with Darwinist views (its racial policies) and Separation of Church and State was the law of the land there. So, on the contrary, 150-200 million people murdered by "enlightened" secularists in less than a century was bloodier than a thousand years of inquisitions. More people have been butchered by Secular Humanism than anything else in the history of man. Secular Humanism is the prideful self-deification of man. And when man tries to be God, he ends up being a devil. The people who are buried in all the mass graves from Berlin to Phnom Penh would attest to that. If they could say anything.
Of course this forgetting of the East is all part of the grander plan to rewrite history by the Left, demonizing the West, especially America. "He who controls the past controls the future," Orwell famously said. I do not believe it is by accident that our children are without knowledge of history and world geography. Our education system was the best in the world in 1960. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that what put it completely in the dumps by 1975-1980 was the influx of hippie dopeheads into the teaching profession in the 1970s. But its more than just reefer madness that has dumbed down our schools. This is by design, that our history is being stolen from us by the Left. If we have no past other than what Left Wing pseudo-intellectuals give us, then we also have no future other than what they deign to give us.
We need to read our history books, Red State America. We need to study the history of the East. And everywhere else also. We need to learn Arabic history as well. Our heritage will be completely lost to mob rule of the Left if we do not.
posted by Cato Uticensis at 11:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home