My friend Clark has given me some much-appreciated feedback on my blog. He wrote:
I think your blog is losing focus. It seems like it's about religion and the difference between America and Europe... But all of this seems tangential. It just seems like you could write about anything... It's kinda like, "What is society and is it worth defending?" Though it is an interesting read.
This was my first reaction: the West has to resolve its identity crisis before it can really find something to fight for. By an identity crisis I mean cultural identity crisis. Under this falls the issue of the "Christian identity of Europe," that has swallowed up Rocco Buttiglione, among others; issues in bioethics, in the US and abroad; also, the model of secularism that the West wants--French-style laicism or American-style secularism? The issue of identity is of the utmost importance.
But there is also a culture war within Islam. People like Irshad Manji are struggling in an effort to retrieve the religion from the hands of fundamentalist extremists who give it a bad name. Their success against the extremists is just as instrumental to defeating terrorism as any effort the West can make.
At the core of the War on Terror are cultural questions, on both sides. That's what I try to cover in this blog. This may mean lots of articles on Europe, bioethics, and pop culture, but those are the battlegrounds.
I think your blog is losing focus. It seems like it's about religion and the difference between America and Europe... But all of this seems tangential. It just seems like you could write about anything... It's kinda like, "What is society and is it worth defending?" Though it is an interesting read.
This was my first reaction: the West has to resolve its identity crisis before it can really find something to fight for. By an identity crisis I mean cultural identity crisis. Under this falls the issue of the "Christian identity of Europe," that has swallowed up Rocco Buttiglione, among others; issues in bioethics, in the US and abroad; also, the model of secularism that the West wants--French-style laicism or American-style secularism? The issue of identity is of the utmost importance.
But there is also a culture war within Islam. People like Irshad Manji are struggling in an effort to retrieve the religion from the hands of fundamentalist extremists who give it a bad name. Their success against the extremists is just as instrumental to defeating terrorism as any effort the West can make.
At the core of the War on Terror are cultural questions, on both sides. That's what I try to cover in this blog. This may mean lots of articles on Europe, bioethics, and pop culture, but those are the battlegrounds.
