ABC Radio National
Peter Kuznick:
[During the Cuban missile crisis] US boats were dropping depth charges on the Soviet sub that was … accompanying the ships that were moving toward … the quarantine line.
And we'd knocked out the power systems, the carbon dioxide is rising, the Soviet sailors are … passing out, and the commander says:
War must have started already, let's fire our nuclear torpedo!
— and gave the order to fire.
[Vasili Arkhipov (1926 – 98),] who was a sub-commander on the ship, talked him out of it.
Had Arkhipov not talked him out of it, then the Soviets were going to fire their nuclear torpedo, nuclear war would have begun in 1962 and much of the world as we know it would have been wiped out.
Tony Windsor (1950):
I've always been a fan of having a price of carbon …
Even John Howard, and Malcolm Turnbull, and Tony Abbott supported it back in [the day.]
They proposed to have an emissions trading scheme, but to get the institutional framework in place, you've really got to have a fixed price for a certain period of time.
[For Howard and Turnbull that was 1-2 years.]
[Under the current scheme it's] only a fixed price, or a tax, until 2014 when it becomes an emissions trading scheme. …
It is the cheapest way of trying to deal with the risks that are out there.
The City on the Hill
Peter Kuznick [Professor of History, American University, Washington]:
This notion of
American Exceptionalism [dates back to] John Winthrop, in his sermon on the
Arbella in 1630 in Massachusetts bay, where he says that
[Wee] shall be as a citty upon a hill.
The eies of all people are uppon us.
(A Model of Christian Charity)
You are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
(Matthew, 5:14)
That belief has been central to American mythology throughout American history.
That the United States is different from all other countries.
That the United States is more moral, more righteous …
(Oliver Stone,
Untold History of the United States, 1 July 2013)
George Will [Conservative Columnist]:
There are many magic moments in American history that convince you that there’s something miraculous about the American experiment.
And one of them is the simultaneous death, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
These great rivals, the crusty, awkward — not very lovable, frankly — New England Federalist and the
graceful Virginia gentleman striking up this wonderful correspondence that becomes one of the treasures of American letters, dying simultaneously on July 4, 1826.
And John Adams’ last words were,
Jefferson still survives.
Indeed he does.
(Ken Burns,
Thomas Jefferson,
PBS American Experience, 1997)
On Tolerance
Douglas Murray (1979):
We are the inheritors of Christian culture whether we like it our not. …
What we have in countries like yours, countries like mine, is historically very unusual.
Values like tolerance … are not made such a big thing of in many other societies around the world.
(
Is Islam killing Europe?, 13 June 2017)
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
The Syrians, who were largely Nestorian, suffered persecution at the hands of the Catholics, whereas Mohammedans tolerated all sects of Christians in return for the payment of tribute.
Similarly in Egypt the Monophysites, who were the bulk of the population, welcomed the [Muslim] invaders.
(
A History of Western Philosophy, 2nd Ed, 1961, p 513)
Fanaticism:
From Latin fānāticus (“of a temple, divinely inspired, frenzied”), from fānum (“temple”).
(Wiktionary, 22 December 2012)
Historically speaking, religious tolerance is no more an essential feature of Christianity than intolerance is of Islam.
In the 17th century the Catholics and Protestants fought each other to a standstill.
It was only after the Catholics found there were too many Protestants to kill that they resigned themselves to 'tolerating' the continued existence of the heretics.
They did, however, give it their best shot.
If it had been in their power to destroy them, they would have.
Indeed, when Christian minorities were sufficiently small and weak, eg the anabaptists (who were persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics), they were annihilated.
Ironically, in the Middle Ages, the Nestorian and Monophysite Christians were safer under Islamic rule than Christian rule.
Tolerance arose not out of religious doctrine but military exhaustion.
Not from divine inspiration but practical reality.
From necessity rather than choice.
Western civilisation owes its tradition of religious tolerance not to its Christian heritage, but to secular modernity.
Fanaticism is the breeding ground of atrocity.
Atrocity is the breeding ground of fanaticism.
Christian, Jewish and Muslim fanatics are not dangerous because they are Christian, Jewish or Muslim.
They are dangerous because they are fanatics.
Dogmatic adherence to scripture is not productive of civil relations between diverse groups.
