Nations are of two types.

The traditional kind with shared genetics, culture, and language.

The second type is an outlier - The USA - with a shared law. Our alligance is to the Constitution.

At best Iraq could be a Federation of states. There has to be a unifying principle besides geography and British borders (which is not much of a unifying principle at all).

BTW the lack of a unifying principle is why Saddam needed to be so brutal.

M. Simon:
You are correct as far as you have gone, but you can also inspire people with traditional differences that their common interest lies in common national identity. This is harder, when you have to overcome the ideas of family (tribe) and land (blood and land, an ancient European idea, too), common to most of human history.
Iraqis, as a whole, are not stupid or evil human beings, but the decades of Baathist rule (the 1976-2003, Saddam Hussein), have destroyed much of the "civic" life that can make a common ground for nationhood. The "Civil War" has indeed been going on that long.
That's the hard job we face now in Iraq; making peace and at the same time building civic institutions that are larger that SCIRI or DAWA or the other sectarian parties. The Iraqis have stared into the abyss, and most (but obviously not all) have recoiled from it.

Time is the one thing that the Iraqis need, and obviously they are not going to get it.

M Simon (#1)

Nations are of two types.

The traditional kind with shared genetics, culture, and language.

That is an ethnic group constitued as country but not a true Nation as it was the four originals founded in the 14th and 15th centuries: England, France, Portugal and Spain.

I think it is far more complex. France shares a language with a part of Switzerland and Belgium. Spain included up to six kingdoms with differences in culture and language

The Nation was an European development were the population of a certain area, descendants of a mix of the German and Normand invaders on a Roman sustrate, decided to pursuit the same goals. Foreign invasions of other Nations had a very important role in conforming a National spirit:

- The one hundred years war, between France and England.

- The France constitution as a Nation for the antagonic Aragonese kings, that look for a union with Castille creating Spain.

- The Castillian civil war, in the 15th century, when the Portuguese were defeated, and the Portuguese absorption into Spain in 1580. Finally Portugal seceded in 1640 with English help, remaining an independent country depending on the English economy till 1975.

- The Spanish Gran Armada against England, which deeply influenced them conforming a strong National spirit.

Later, in the 19th century, two other European Nations evolved: Germany and Italy, but both were creations of Nationalism, and followed a different process.

The USA does not belong to any of these groups. It is some kind of Nation devoted to Freedom and full Democracy.

Of course, Iraq is not a Nation, but I think a balance between the three or four ethnic groups, under a common neutral law and a common management of the oil resources can and should be accomplished. I think all this was already thought before the invasion: Iraqis need to learn to live together, otherwise they will be the slaves of their neighbours.

Linked from Saddam Hussein is still dead.

To view a cynical and sarcastic visual of George Bush playing a round of "Hangman"...link here:

www.thoughttheater.com

Duplicate post, Daniel. And not even one with any content from you.

France was made by the insitence on a common language. It was bloody and they are still fanatical about it.

Well anyway I didn't want to go into the details. Just a broad outline.

David, I think you are right. Not enough time. To make Iraq work America would need a colonial mind set. Not interms of wealth extraction, but a certain bloody mindedness about adherence to the rules of civilization. We are insufficiently ruthless.

It is one of the reasons we have never been able to fix Hati despite 200 years of sporadic efforts. We would need to create schools with our approved ciriculum. We would have to send in Christian missionaries. We would have to ruthlesssly put down revolts. etc. It is not in our nature. Nobody wants to do that kind of job any more.

Not even the Iraqi government is willing to do what is required to make a nation out of Iraq.

Our best hope is osmosis of culture through the marvels of modern communication. A process that will weld the planet in the long run. However, it will probably take as long as the creation of France or China. Centuries.

The same goes for Iraq. It will be centuries in the making. Tell that to Americans who are already tired after 3 years.

There's nothing inherently weird about multiethnic or multicultural nations. The Netherlands and Switzerland are both good example of long-term stable countries with multiple ethnic groups. In fact the Dutch model of pillarization was exported to Lebanon, where it worked perfectly fine until Israel and Hezbollah saber-rattled earlier this summer. The Sunni-Shi'a split in Iraq is too serious now to try it, though.

The other thing, imperialism, doesn't state the real difference between the US and British imperialism. Britain spent money on administering countries, training local elites, supporting allies, and investing in infrastructure. Not coincidentally, the countries it colonized fared a lot better than countries colonized by other European powers. Britain may have ruined India's import replacement capability, but it didn't mess it up the way Belgium destroyed Congo.

The two things you mention, M. Simon, are incidental. Britain didn't send Christian missionaries and India remains Hindu to this day. Spain and Portugal did send missionaries, but they barely engaged in the kind of imperialism you're talking about. As for ruthlessness, the US has typically worked through proxies, which hasn't prevented it from invading Latin America at will. It's put down revolts with no less force than any other imperial power in the countries it has colonized.

On point, the idea of the nation of Iraq is a bad one: as I have mentioned previously. Saddam's methods held Iraq together, little else has worked; that goes to show Iraq is an ill conceived idea.

Foreign countries cannot successfully colonize, administer, or occupy nations that are self aware. If a people understands that being colonized makes them lesser persons, in a world that gives lip service to equality they will resist that humiliation. Can any reader hear honestly think they would not fight a foreign occupying army in their own country?

Military powr has little utility. We could have gone into Baghdad, hnaged Saddam and his top ten crony's, split off Kurdistan, ceded some territory to Jordan, and left. That is the limit. Occupation takes a mindset we don't have, and and an eyes open ruthlessness we lack. U.S. troops will leave "Iraq" one day, then the inhabitants can get on with making their own political settlement. Every dollar, and drop of blood expended since the government was toppled has been for nothing.

Alon -- the Dutch are monocultural and monolingual and mono-sectarian.

You are thinking of the folly of Belgium, created by the British as a barrier to France and Germany, and a complete disaster. See brusselsjournal.com for a complete discussion of the dissolute nature of Leopold and his descendants, the lack of a there there (to quote Gertrude Stein), and the dissolute nature of the Belgian state now (some serial killer was apparently acting as the procurer for various elites within the Belgian state).

Belgium would be the model of WHY multi-ethnic and multilingual states fail. Switzerland has the germanic speaking swiss running the place and transferring money to the Italian and French speakers.

Even the United Kingdom seems coming apart at the seams (Scotland and Wales home-rule or devolution or independence, to say nothing of Northern Ireland).

Iraq WILL fail the way Yugoslavia, the Congo, and the Soviet Union failed in their own unique ways. Perhaps active partition and civil war, or "low-level" civil wars ala the Congo.

Tom Perry -- on the contrary military power remains THE only means to make a point. Saddam thumbed his nose at the US, cozened Al Qaeda and others who killed Americans, and seemed invincible for decades. Now he and his family are effectively dead. THAT makes a great point. At some point we will have to do the same for Iran and it's insane ruling class. Very likely the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a few others.

This is inevitable since despite sitting on a sea of oil Muslims are incapable of operating in the modern world and must destroy it to remain Muslims. The age of globalization and a shrinking world means conflict is inevitable so making points like Saddam are going to be repeated over and over again.

Compared to say losing NYC or DC or BOTH the losses and bloodshed and treasure have been bargains.

Saddam is hanged. Once Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs face the same fate, it won't matter if Iraq (or Iran for that matter) look like Yemen or Somalia. Because the point will have been made in the only way it matters to people in Islamabad, Damascus, Cairo, and Riyadh.

the Dutch are monocultural and monolingual and mono-sectarian.

They're monolingual, but not monosectarian. Traditionally, there were three or four pillars of Dutch society - Catholics, Protestants, secular liberals, and socialists - that were mostly endogamous. The Dutch model of consocialization was then based on letting each group run its own internal affairs and base national politics on negotiations among each group's community leaders. This has been less pronounced in recent years because the Dutch are too secular nowadays to care about Catholicism versus Protestantism, but for a long time, that's how politics worked in NL.

Even the United Kingdom seems coming apart at the seams (Scotland and Wales home-rule or devolution or independence, to say nothing of Northern Ireland).

Devolution looks like coming apart at the seams because Brits think anything short of a unitary state is anarchy. Devolution is closer to federalism than the old situation or even the current situation in France, but it's still on the unitary side of the divide. The Scottish and Welsh Parliaments are still weaker than state legislatures in the US. A few legal traditions are different because Scotland used to be independent, but compared to Louisiana's civil law tradition, Scotland's lumping of slander and libel together as defamation is a minor deviation from the rest of the country's standard.

Alon -- Scottish Independence? It's own currency, seat at the EU, taxes stay in Scotland? Scotland and Wales as independent countries relegates Britain to Luxembourg to Belgian status -- a minor European nation that simply doesn't matter.

And IMHO the drive for independence (and the inevitable nasty nationalism that will be associated with it) comes from the failure of identity politics. The unitary state has lost legitimacy (like the late Western Roman Empire) because it can't even provide basic security or rule of law in the cities and other areas controlled by religious or ethnic (and notably non-Western) minorities.

Francafada may have burning cars but the pitched battles between Muslims and Englishmen in Windsor heralds IMHO the Welsh and Scots going their own way. Which will inevitably lead to expelling their own Muslims and a good dose of the Jackboot. [I don't applaud that, but view it as inevitable as US vigilantism when authorities abdicate responsibility]

Iraq notably suffers the same predicament. The Sunnis and Al Qaeda have deliberately made the nation ungovernable, seeking to break it up in their own enclaves. With that in mind, Saddam WAS right. Iraq as a nation simply cannot exist now without brutal terror in the mode of Saddam, and without a strong man and national army to intimidate the neighbors that situation circa 1991 is impossible. Iraq's future looks much like Germany's circa 1618-1638. Too many of the neighbors will simply be unable to restrain themselves from intervention.

#9 Alon Levy,

The purpose of the Christian missionaries is to counter Islam on two points: rationalism and tolerance.

Sure America has acted with decisive force. However, its record of acting and then leaving is a very long one. Punitive expeditions vs colonialism.

If you want rationalism and tolerance, then support secular NGOs, like the Open Society Institute. The last time imperialism was bound with Christianity, it was also bound with the Inquisition. It took Spain and Portugal until the 1970s to adopt Enlightenment modes of government; before 1945, Catholic countries were as backward as Islamic ones are today.

Jim, there are secessionist movements everywhere: Scotland, northern Italy, Quebec. A Scottish secession could be a bit like the breakup of the Scandinavian union, down to the fact that Scots is in the gray area between a dialect of English and a closely related language. But so far it has no steam, and even in the unlikely case the UK broke up, England would have 50 million people and cultural domination.

As for France, one of my own blog's commenters alerted me to a poll suggesting that the problems in France are more economic than cultural: 42% of French Muslims identify as French first compared with 46% as Muslim first, a weaker religious identity than Muslims in any other country polled, including several Muslim-majority countries (but not the US or Canada). That's barely more religious than Christians in the US, of whom 48% identify as Americans first and 42% as Christians first. The riots were about French racism and the 50% unemployment rate in certain ghettos, not about Islamic identities.

"before 1945, Catholic countries were as backward as Islamic ones are today."

Thanks, Alon, for putting France and Ireland in their historical place.

France was the exception to the rule. Not coincidentally, it was politically anti-Catholic, going back to the Thirty Years' War. It was also a world power until World War Two, when it was downgraded to regional power status.

But Ireland was a backwater until after World War Two.

... before 1945, Catholic countries were as backward as Islamic ones are today ... France was the exception to the rule. Not coincidentally, it was politically anti-Catholic, going back to the Thirty Years' War.

This is a totally bizarre argument that you're making here.

Your French exception applies much better to Mexico, which was popularly Catholic, politically anti-Catholic (far more than France), and yet backward.

For that matter, Spain was politically anti-Catholic before WWII until the fall of the Spanish Republic. My guess would be the big improvement in their fortunes was not Franco, Catholics, or anti-Catholics, but fewer Marxists and anarchists.

I suppose Austria would be another exception to your rule, saved from backwardness by the anti-Catholic Nazis.

The last time imperialism was bound with Christianity, it was also bound with the Inquisition. It took Spain and Portugal until the 1970s to adopt Enlightenment modes of government; before 1945, Catholic countries were as backward as Islamic ones are today.

That is an exaggeration over another exaggeration.

Between 1833-1870 all countries in Western Europe separated Civil and Religious affairs. Even in Rome, then a Pope's territory, restrictions against the Jews that lived in that city were lifted begining in 1848.

For instance, a 1924 decree gave the Spanish citizenship to any Sephardic Jew that asked for it. The Inquisition was abolished in 1824, and the Church was stripped of its belongings in 1837.

It also took Germany until the 1920's to adopt a fully democratic form of government that soon perished under the prevailing National-Socialism, and many Germans are not Catholic.

#15 Alon Levy,

I was thinking more along the lines of all types of Christian missionaries. Let them compete. That is one nice thing about the Protestant denominations. No central authority. Schisms are relatively common and unremarkable.

The Open Society Institute? Surely you are joking. With those guys it is socialism all the way. And, as Hayek pointed out socialism inevitably leads to fascism. We don't want to go there do we?

"is Iraq a nation?"

As the American Civil War taught us, a nation is one in which a powerful majority is willing to use lethal force and civilian punishment in order to remain in one piece. Better still if there is some moral cause to rally around.

Therefore -- we still don't know yet. One assumes the Shia have what they consider to be a strong moral outrage against the Sunnis. Perhaps if they could generate a U.S. Grant, and an Abe Lincoln, then things would be looking up for them. Instead we have a culture that wants to grab every little advantage it can today because tomorrow may never come.

A self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps.

The Open Society Institute? Surely you are joking. With those guys it is socialism all the way. And, as Hayek pointed out socialism inevitably leads to fascism. We don't want to go there do we?

When Christian missionaries get even half as many countries democratic as George Soros did, I'll take the argument that they help anything seriously.

And Hayek's argument hasn't stood the test of time. The most socialist countries in the free world are the Scandinavian ones, which regularly top press freedom and civil liberties rankings, even though were Hayek right, they'd be totalitarian now. Overall, the correlation between the economic and social scores on the Political Compass is positive rather than negative for individuals as well as societies.

I would take issue with your characterization of Scandinavian countries as the most socialist in the free world, unless by socialism you mean something other than the state tending to exert control over economic activity.

Consider the rankings of Scandinavian countries in the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom:

• Iceland: 5th most free (2-way tie)
• Denmark: 8th
• [U.S.: 9th (3-way tie)]
• Finland: 12th (2-way tie)
• Sweden: 19th (2-way tie)
• Norway: 30th (2-way tie)

All countries are in the "Free" category except Norway, which fell into the "Mostly Free" category. Two of the Scandinavian nations are ranked as economically more free than the U.S. Quite a number of countries in the free world fall below Sweden, and looking at them I think it would be hard to argue that Sweden is more socialist than all of them. Perhaps if you focus on a few issues, that impression can be given, but consider the broad list of issues in the country-by-country discussions (linked above), and it's pretty clear that the situation is just not that simple.

Alon Levy (#22)

And Hayek's argument hasn't stood the test of time.

What hasn't stood the test of time is Communism, as Hayek predicted.

The most socialist countries in the free world are the Scandinavian ones, which regularly top press freedom and civil liberties rankings, even though were Hayek right, they'd be totalitarian now.

That is putting Hayek's argument out of place. Totalitarian countries need aggression to sustain its Socialist regime. Smaller nations such as the Scandinavian ones cannot use aggression, because its size, low population and un-strategic position. Spanish Socialists could not consider aggression as an option to solve their acute internal problems. They'd be defeated.

So what happens in these cases? Usually the Socialist system collapses before reaching Totalitarism.

You know, Swedish PM Olof Palme, that portrayed the model of Socialism for Western Europe, died gunned down in 1986

"The assassination remains unsolved to this day..."

Sweden has never returned to that kind of Socialism that impoverished the country and make the best professionals flee.

Norway can still maintain some kind of it due to the revenues from oil (something Chavez is also doing).

Finland took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, forget Socialism and embarked itself in an expansion programme in critical industries such as electronics. Their break-through approach, compared to the rest of European countries, continues as they are building the first new generation nuclear reactor

Alon Levy #9 said, "In fact the Dutch model of pillarization was exported to Lebanon, where it worked perfectly fine until Israel and Hezbollah saber-rattled earlier this summer."

!!!!!!!???????

Perfectly fine? The 1958 crisis? The 150,000 killed in the civil war?

Multicultural models cannot work in the Middle East because Arab/Islamic culture simply cannot tolerate it.

[No, the "golden age" of Andalusia was not multicultural; Christians and Jews remained subjgated dhimmi.]

I would take issue with your characterization of Scandinavian countries as the most socialist in the free world, unless by socialism you mean something other than the state tending to exert control over economic activity.

In Sweden and Norway, government spending is over 50% of GDP. It's not up to Soviet Union levels, but it's certainly the highest in the free world. If they were members of a socialist bloc instead, I'd call them the most capitalist countries in the bloc, even though by American standards they're anything but capitalist. Every country in the world has a mixed economy, but some tend more capitalist, like the US and Mexico, while others tend more socialist, like Venezuela and Vietnam. Yet others, like China and Japan, are capitalist by some metrics and socialist by others.

Sweden has never returned to that kind of Socialism that impoverished the country and make the best professionals flee.

In the senses that its Gini index has gone up from 21 to 25, its public share of the economy has fallen from the 60s to the 50s, and its regulations of business have been slightly relaxed, you're right. But in a country where conservative politicians regularly deride people who want to keep the government's share of the economy at 30 as socialists, complaining that today's Sweden isn't a good example of socialism seems misplaced.

More on-topic, M. Simon's original comment was about the Open Society Institute. The governments it has inspired aren't socialist even by Scandinavian standards. If you don't believe me, look at government spending and regulation in every ex-communist EU country, as well as in Ukraine and Georgia. So you can't defend quoting Hayek against color revolutions.

Smaller nations such as the Scandinavian ones cannot use aggression, because its size, low population and un-strategic position.

Countries of all sizes use aggression and repression. The Ba'ath Party took control of Syria when its population was 5 million, and has been in power for over 40 years. Portugal's fascist regime was established when its population was less than 7 million, and survived 46 years. Castro's revolution was in a country of less than 7 million people.

Alon #9 said, "Britain spent money on administering countries, training local elites, supporting allies, and investing in infrastructure. Not coincidentally, the countries it colonized fared a lot better than countries colonized by other European powers."

Absolutely correct -- good point.

Alon Levy said, "The riots were about French racism and the 50% unemployment rate in certain ghettos, not about Islamic identities."

Superficially, yes.

But that doesn't exclude as an underlying problem the same cultural (Arab/Muslim) traits as create terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: refusal to adapt, refusal to compromise, regressive social mores, extreme and pathological male pride, rejection of responsibility ....

Perfectly fine? The 1958 crisis? The 150,000 killed in the civil war?

The model was imported to Lebanon in the Cedar Revolution. It had about a year and a half before the war destroyed it.

No, the "golden age" of Andalusia was not multicultural; Christians and Jews remained subjgated dhimmi.

The golden age of the Mughal Empire was multicultural. Before 1947, the closest India ever got to a liberal democratic rule was under a Muslim dynasty, which won a lot of converts who got the short end of the Hindu caste system's stick. As late as the 1920s, Muslim pro-independence activism was more secular and liberal than Hindu pro-independence activism.

A good rule of thumb is that if your insight about Islam would apply to Europe in 1600 or India in 1800 but not today, it's not as central to the religion as you think it is.

Alon, you sound like an apologist for Islam.

1. Are you admitting that your claim of "worked fine" in Lebanon is pure nonsense?

2. As one with relatives in the subcontinent, I vigourously dispute your nonsense about Mughal multiculturalism. Simply Google "Mughal oppression" for a few thousand Hindu and Sikh views of the matter.

Alon claimed, "The model was imported to Lebanon in the Cedar Revolution. It had about a year and a half before the war destroyed it."

Here we have the reason why I, a socialist, abjure any formal association with the left: self-important but ignorant and meretricious fakir loony-leftists like this fellow Alon Levy.

No, Mr Levy, Lebanon's "model" was NOT established during the Cedar Revolution (2005). The "model" was established half a century ago, in 1943, and revised in 1990.

That "model" has never had two successive decades of success, failing in 1958 and in 1975-1990.

Nor does the "Cedar Revolution" have much to do with the governmental/confessional model, referring instead to a popular movement for independence from Syrian control.

In sum, you're full of it.

Alon, you sound like an apologist for Islam.

And you sound like someone who, lacking facts to support the view that Christianity is inherently superior to Islam, resorts to ad hominem attacks.

Alon Levy claimed, "And you sound like someone who, lacking facts to support the view that Christianity is inherently superior to Islam, resorts to ad hominem attacks."

So, we have several more indications of the hypocrisy of loony-leftists like Alon:

1. Alon condemns ad homs -- then attacks me personally as (he assumes) Christian.

2. He assumes wrong.

3. He creates a strawman's opinion that "Christianity is inherently superior to Islam," a view never stated (and which as a non-Christian I would be unlikely to state).

4. Having in other venues indicated his connection to Israel, Alon undoubtedly is motivated by a perverse self-righteousness in defending those who would eliminate both his country and his people. However, one need not be Israeli or Jewish or Christian to see the obvious: The secular values propagated by post-Englightenment, superficially-Christian Europe are a far greater protection to Levy against reactionary Islam than his perverse self-righteousness.

5. Alon attacks my "facts" -- but all his presentation of "facts" about Lebanon has shown is that he either is entirely ignorant of facts, or simply makes them up as he goes along, or both.

Tell us again, Alon, about the embodiment of the Lebanese "model" in the "Cedar Revolution"!

[Alon] In Sweden and Norway, government spending is over 50% of GDP. It's not up to Soviet Union levels, but it's certainly the highest in the free world.

As I said, if you focus on a few issues, you can make Scandinavian countries out to be socialist, but that strikes me as simplistic. From the Index of Economic Freedom, consider:

• The U.S., Sweden, Denmark, and Finland all get the same rating on wages and prices (2.0, the market sets most wages and prices)
• Sweden's rating on foreign investment (1.0) is better than the U.S.'s (2.0)
• Denmark's rating for regulation (1.0) is better than the U.S.'s (2.0)

State controls on wages and prices, restrictions on foreign investment, and regulation are all hallmarks of socialist economies.

Some of the notes on Sweden:

Although the state owns about 25 percent of the domestic economy, the Economist Intelligence Unit reports that "most operations are run on a strictly commercial basis." Deregulation in major sectors such as telecommunications and banking has put Sweden ahead of the European Union in market openness to new entrants, including foreigners, and has contributed to faster GDP growth than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's average in recent years.

Doubtless the Swedes have engaged in a socialist form of deregulation.

Note that I don't think that the most social-democratic country is automatically the most socialist. My sense is that France is more socialist than Sweden, but that Sweden is at least as social-democratic as France, and perhaps even more so. That Sweden is economically freer than France seems unquestionable.

By the way, Matt Welch seems to think that you have a point about Soros not being a socialist, if that's any comfort.

However, one need not be Israeli or Jewish or Christian to see the obvious: The secular values propagated by post-Englightenment, superficially-Christian Europe are a far greater protection to Levy against reactionary Islam than his perverse self-righteousness.

The problem with parsing your statement like that is that it tells me nothing. It's like saying that your position on affirmative action is that you're against racism, or that your position on separation of church and state is that you're for religious freedom.

Yes, secular values are superior to Islamic values. So what? Thinking that is consistent with thinking Europe's cultural-ethnic policies are deeply racist and largely responsible to the surge of Islamism in Europe. It's also consistent with thinking the surge of Islamism in Europe is a problem of excessive tolerance of intolerance.

My point about Christian versus Islamic values is that if Christianity is as bad as Islam, then given that Christian countries managed to have an Enlightenment, why is it so out of the question that Muslim countries will?

the market sets most wages and prices

The Heritage Foundation also reports that "Wages are set through collective bargaining agreements that traditionally apply to all workers regardless of union affiliation." This can't be understated; Sweden and Norway have union participation rates nearing communist levels. They have no statutory minimum wages, mostly because unions are powerful enough to set wages. Think of it this way: Sweden has about one ninth of Germany's population, but 38% of its number of union members (link).

"My point about Christian versus Islamic values is that if Christianity is as bad as Islam, then given that Christian countries managed to have an Enlightenment, why is it so out of the question that Muslim countries will?"

It's absolutely not out of the question for Muslim countries to experience an Enlightment. But it took the 30 Years War for Christians; what's it going to take for Muslims?

Alon and SG, I think you are both underestimating the extent to which the Enlightenment was an outgrowth of Christianity. The Jewish God is a
God of law and reason. Man, made in the image of God, can conceive the workings God built into the universe. The incarnation of Christ made the creation itself sacred and a fit subject for investigation to the greater glory of God. It's no coincidence that Descartes was trained by Jesuits or that Isaac Newton was a devout Christian. The story of Gallileo and the church is much more complex than it is conventionally told. The church in no way rejected Gallileo's theory. It merely told G. that he should present his theory as an unproven idea (which at the time it was) and not as a certainty. He published work that disobeyed that injunction and it was that disobedience for which he was punished, not for his ideas. The idea that the Enlightenment was a sudden rupture in a stale, oppressive theocratic Europe is a myth invented by certain figures (particularly Voltaire and the philosophes) and perpetuated by those who, for whatever reason, oppose religious belief. Islam has no such tradition. I think we'll be waiting an awfully long time for an Islamic Reformation much less an Islamic Enlightenment.

It's a great point.

Show me the Islamic Luther and I'd have a lot more hope. There's not exactly a huge tradition of rationalism there. Instead, there is a deep fideist tradition and open anti-scientific bent. Wasn't always that homogenous, but that's the way it is now.

Having said that, it simply must happen. Nature wills it.

I beleive it's going to be very protracted and painful for the rest of us.

Luther and the Reformation were not a liberalizing influence on Christianity; it was reactionary. Luther wanted a stricter, more theologically pure practice as the church had grown to secular and permissive.

I'd argue Islam is experiencing a Reformation (and I'd argue Qutb is fairly analogous to Luther). Unfortunately, jihad is what you get when Islam gets backs to its roots.

I'm not suggesting that an Islamic Enlightenment is a trivial undertaking. From what I've read, Islam doesn't have the theological underpinnnigs to really support it. But it's a creation of man, and as such man can change it.

But while Christianity did have support for an Enlightment, it still took a horrifying amount of bloodshed to cause people to lose their zeal for converting the heretic. Dragging Islam into the modern world is going to be much, much worse.

Luther wanted a more stricter application of the creed, sure, but what changed was the acknowledgement that a reasoned discussion was possible. That the Roman church was not the final arbitrer of personal reality. The subsequent 30-years war reinforced in people everywhere how stupid fighting for faith-oriented ideas were. The reaction to it formed the basis of the Enlightenment.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Alon Levy (#26)

Countries of all sizes use aggression and repression. The Ba'ath Party took control of Syria when its population was 5 million, and has been in power for over 40 years. Portugal's fascist regime was established when its population was less than 7 million, and survived 46 years. Castro's revolution was in a country of less than 7 million people.

Syria -> found its prosperity in the occupation of Lebanon, a smaller and wearker neighbour.

Portugal -> Colonialism. Angola, Mozambique were the subjugated.

Castro -> help of the USSR and then Venezuela.

All Totalitarian countries need imperialist policies (subjugate neighbouring countries), oil or help from other powers, as Hayek stated sixty years ago. This fact is founded on economic reasons, and that is science, not opinion.

In the end, Alon, you stay in the surface and really don't discuss the core of the matter. Hayek (well Mises:http://www.mises.org/, who was his professor) was right.

The Heritage Foundation also reports that "Wages are set through collective bargaining agreements that traditionally apply to all workers regardless of union affiliation." This can't be understated; Sweden and Norway have union participation rates nearing communist levels. They have no statutory minimum wages, mostly because unions are powerful enough to set wages. Think of it this way: Sweden has about one ninth of Germany's population, but 38% of its number of union members

The reason why these wages apply to non-union workers is because the Employers' organizations negotiate with the unions, so the wages/benifits etc. applies to all employees employed by members of the Employers' organizations.

The deals are so much part of how the Scandinavian system works, that many Danes are suprised when I tell them that there is actually no statutory minimum wage in Denmark.