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Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!
It is not a question of age. One respects he who deserves respect. Age is irrelevant in that regard.
Thank you for validating my claim and demonstrating in the same blow that you are nothing more than a mediocre propangandist (and not an intellectual) who displays the exact same sort of behaviour as the one he decries by others.
I'm afraid the world (even the armenian one) is not conveniently divided into "democrats" and "fascists" (Willi Münzenberg died a long time ago but his propaganda tricks are still much in use to this day it appears) as you would want your readers to believe.
A genuine intellectual would advocate our nation following its own path on the grounds of its own identity, not present it with this rigged (and totalitarian) choice westernization/ottomanization.
Still I will tell you, of the two alternatives, the first one is the worst for westernization destroys the very spirit of a nation and leads to its enslavement to matter. westernization is the death of a nation, its degeneration into anamorphic cattle. As long as the spirit lives, there is hope. With westernization there is none whatsoever.
Btw anyone who invokes democracy in an argument/discussion instantly qualifies himself as either a dupe or a charlatan. With your level of knowledge and experience, one can only opt for the latter.
Too bad I could not find an online version of René Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World (http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Modern-.../dp/0900588241).
Chapter 8 "WESTERN ENCROCHMENT" deserves to be quoted here.
It appears you read french so here is an excerpt just for you:
"Il est vrai que, quand certaines passions s'en mêlent, les mêmes choses peuvent, suivant les circonstances, se trouver appréciées de façons fort diverses, voire même toutes contraires : ainsi, quand la résistance à une invasion étrangère est le fait d'un peuple occidental, elle s'appelle « patriotisme » et est digne de tous les éloges ; quand elle est le fait d'un peuple oriental, elle s'appelle « fanatisme » ou « xénophobie » et ne mérite plus que la haine ou le mépris. D'ailleurs, n'est ce pas au nom du « Droit », de la « Liberté », de la « justice » et de la « Civilisation » que les Européens prétendent imposer partout leur domination, et interdire à tout homme de vivre et de penser autrement qu'eux-mêmes ne vivent et ne pensent? On conviendra que le « moralisme » est vraiment une chose admirable, à moins qu'on ne préfère conclure tout simplement, comme nous-même, que, sauf des exceptions d'autant plus honorables qu'elles sont plus rares, il n'y a plus guère en Occident que deux sortes de gens, assez peu intéressantes l'une et l'autre : les naïfs qui se laissent prendre à ces grands mots et qui croient à leur « mission civilisatrice », inconscients qu'ils sont de la barbarie matérialiste dans laquelle ils sont plongés, et les habiles qui exploitent cet état d'esprit pour la satisfaction de leurs instincts de violence et de cupidité. En tout cas, ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que les Orientaux ne menacent personne et ne songent guère à envahir l'Occident d'une façon ou d'une autre ; ils ont, pour le moment, bien assez à faire de se défendre contre l'oppression européenne, qui risque de les atteindre jusque dans leur esprit-, et il est au moins curieux de voir les agresseurs se poser en victimes."
This was written in the 1920s btw.
80 years later one still has to argue against the same fallacies. Quite a sysiphian task.
When I am dealing with people such as you, I cannot help but be reminded of the following:
"trau' meiner Kunst!" says the ignominious Nibelung to Siegfried in Wagner's opera. You are such a Künstler, Ara, a top-notch con artist.
Originally posted by freaky
Originally posted by ara
Originally posted by ara
A genuine intellectual would advocate our nation following its own path on the grounds of its own identity, not present it with this rigged (and totalitarian) choice westernization/ottomanization.
Still I will tell you, of the two alternatives, the first one is the worst for westernization destroys the very spirit of a nation and leads to its enslavement to matter. westernization is the death of a nation, its degeneration into anamorphic cattle. As long as the spirit lives, there is hope. With westernization there is none whatsoever.
Btw anyone who invokes democracy in an argument/discussion instantly qualifies himself as either a dupe or a charlatan. With your level of knowledge and experience, one can only opt for the latter.
Too bad I could not find an online version of René Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World (http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Modern-.../dp/0900588241).
Chapter 8 "WESTERN ENCROCHMENT" deserves to be quoted here.
It appears you read french so here is an excerpt just for you:
"Il est vrai que, quand certaines passions s'en mêlent, les mêmes choses peuvent, suivant les circonstances, se trouver appréciées de façons fort diverses, voire même toutes contraires : ainsi, quand la résistance à une invasion étrangère est le fait d'un peuple occidental, elle s'appelle « patriotisme » et est digne de tous les éloges ; quand elle est le fait d'un peuple oriental, elle s'appelle « fanatisme » ou « xénophobie » et ne mérite plus que la haine ou le mépris. D'ailleurs, n'est ce pas au nom du « Droit », de la « Liberté », de la « justice » et de la « Civilisation » que les Européens prétendent imposer partout leur domination, et interdire à tout homme de vivre et de penser autrement qu'eux-mêmes ne vivent et ne pensent? On conviendra que le « moralisme » est vraiment une chose admirable, à moins qu'on ne préfère conclure tout simplement, comme nous-même, que, sauf des exceptions d'autant plus honorables qu'elles sont plus rares, il n'y a plus guère en Occident que deux sortes de gens, assez peu intéressantes l'une et l'autre : les naïfs qui se laissent prendre à ces grands mots et qui croient à leur « mission civilisatrice », inconscients qu'ils sont de la barbarie matérialiste dans laquelle ils sont plongés, et les habiles qui exploitent cet état d'esprit pour la satisfaction de leurs instincts de violence et de cupidité. En tout cas, ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que les Orientaux ne menacent personne et ne songent guère à envahir l'Occident d'une façon ou d'une autre ; ils ont, pour le moment, bien assez à faire de se défendre contre l'oppression européenne, qui risque de les atteindre jusque dans leur esprit-, et il est au moins curieux de voir les agresseurs se poser en victimes."
This was written in the 1920s btw.
80 years later one still has to argue against the same fallacies. Quite a sysiphian task.
When I am dealing with people such as you, I cannot help but be reminded of the following:
It was then simple enough to attempt to show them the absurdity of their teaching. Within my small circle I talked to them until my throat ached and my voice grew hoarse. I believed that I could finally convince them of the danger inherent in the Marxist follies. But I only achieved the contrary result. It seemed to me that immediately the disastrous effects of the Marxist Theory and its application in practice became evident, the stronger became their obstinacy.
The more I debated with them the more familiar I became with their argumentative tactics. At the outset they counted upon the stupidity of their opponents, but when they got so entangled that they could not find a way out they played the trick of acting as innocent simpletons. Should they fail, in spite of their tricks of logic, they acted as if they could not understand the counter arguments and bolted away to another field of discussion. They would lay down truisms and platitudes; and, if you accepted these, then they were applied to other problems and matters of an essentially different nature from the original theme. If you faced them with this point they would escape again, and you could not bring them to make any precise statement. Whenever one tried to get a firm grip on any of these apostles one's hand grasped only jelly and slime which slipped through the fingers and combined again into a solid mass a moment afterwards. If your adversary felt forced to give in to your argument, on account of the observers present, and if you then thought that at last you had gained ground, a surprise was in store for you on the following day. The ??? would be utterly oblivious to what had happened the day before, and he would start once again by repeating his former absurdities, as if nothing had happened. Should you become indignant and remind him of yesterday's defeat, he pretended astonishment and could not remember anything, except that on the previous day he had proved that his statements were correct. Sometimes I was dumbfounded. I do not know what amazed me the more--the abundance of their verbiage or the artful way in which they dressed up their falsehoods. I gradually came to hate them.
(...) How futile it was to try to win over such people with argument, seeing that their very mouths distorted the truth, disowning the very words they had just used and adopting them again a few moments afterwards to serve their own ends in the argument!.
The more I debated with them the more familiar I became with their argumentative tactics. At the outset they counted upon the stupidity of their opponents, but when they got so entangled that they could not find a way out they played the trick of acting as innocent simpletons. Should they fail, in spite of their tricks of logic, they acted as if they could not understand the counter arguments and bolted away to another field of discussion. They would lay down truisms and platitudes; and, if you accepted these, then they were applied to other problems and matters of an essentially different nature from the original theme. If you faced them with this point they would escape again, and you could not bring them to make any precise statement. Whenever one tried to get a firm grip on any of these apostles one's hand grasped only jelly and slime which slipped through the fingers and combined again into a solid mass a moment afterwards. If your adversary felt forced to give in to your argument, on account of the observers present, and if you then thought that at last you had gained ground, a surprise was in store for you on the following day. The ??? would be utterly oblivious to what had happened the day before, and he would start once again by repeating his former absurdities, as if nothing had happened. Should you become indignant and remind him of yesterday's defeat, he pretended astonishment and could not remember anything, except that on the previous day he had proved that his statements were correct. Sometimes I was dumbfounded. I do not know what amazed me the more--the abundance of their verbiage or the artful way in which they dressed up their falsehoods. I gradually came to hate them.
(...) How futile it was to try to win over such people with argument, seeing that their very mouths distorted the truth, disowning the very words they had just used and adopting them again a few moments afterwards to serve their own ends in the argument!.
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