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not only off topic, but the mushiest piece of do-gooder crap I've seen in a
while. if anything Berlin stated is true, and it applies to him, he is
equally guilty of every intolerance he abhors. the quotes from him are the
exact basis of every intolerance he decries:
"to believe that you alone are right; have a magical eye
which sees the truth; and that others cannot be right if they
disagree."
it always amazes me that liberals refuse to examine themselves with the same
standard they desperately want to apply to others. not only is every
generality in the mush piece innaucrate or incorrect, the bigger problem is
that if there is no truth worth living by and for, then Berlin's entire
thesis crashes and burns of its own weight; his position cannot be correct.
Berlin can hold hands and sing kumbya if he wants to, but he forgot the
mote, he forgot to look in the mirror. His brand of dictatorship is as
abhorant as any other; bend over at your own risk.
BTW: my comments are directed to the quoted piece only and not to the
sender.
Happy New Year , 'eh?
Michael
> Los Angeles -- IF 2001 will be known in history for anything, it'll
> probably be as the "Year of Hate."
>
> Just consider how widespread hatred is today: of men for women,
> Muslims for Hindus, Jews for Muslims, Christians for Muslims, Islamic
> terrorists for fat- cat Westerners, mainland Chinese for standoffish
> Taiwanese, unforgetting Koreans for unrepentant Japanese, surly
> Indians for prickly Pakistanis, Palestinians for Israelis, and so on
> and on.
>
> Lay out all the hatreds of the world and you have the ugliest list on
> Earth.
>
> The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center provides the Year of Hate
> with an all-too-perfect icon. What kind of people do such things to
> each other? We are an intolerant humanity.
>
> And the only way to fight intolerance is with intolerance of
> intolerance. As one of the world's leading liberal intellectuals, the
> late Oxford don Isaiah Berlin, once put it: "Few things have done
> more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or
> tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are
> in sole possession of the truth; especially about how to live, what
> to be and do -- that those who differ with them are not merely
> mistaken, but wicked or mad; and need restraining or suppressing."
>
> Sir Isaiah offered an enduring legacy of a road map to intellectual
> and political humility. "It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance,"
> he wrote in notes to a friend, just published in the New York Review
> of Books, "to believe that you alone are right; have a magical eye
> which sees the truth; and that others cannot be right if they
> disagree."
>
> When arrogance propels a self-appointed collection of the self-
> righteous, armed and committed, into action, the effect can be
> terrifying. As Berlin tells his friend: "That makes one certain that
> there is one goal and one only for one's nation or church or the
> whole of humanity, and that it is worth any amount of suffering
> (particularly on the part of other people) if only the goal is
> attained."
>
> Usually, the chosen enemy is advertised as lacking humanity in a way
> that shrinks them to a convenient, contemptible cartoon. The delivery
> vehicle for hate is ignorance, willful or not. "All stereotypes,"
> Berlin insisted, "are substitutes for real knowledge -- which is
> never of anything so simple or permanent as a particular generalized
> image of foreigners -- and are stimuli to national self-satisfaction
> and disdain of other nations. It is a prop to nationalism."
>
> The world is witnessing the rise of aggressive nationalism in many
> places, even in the United States. Observed Berlin: "Nationalism --
> which everyone in the 19th century thought was ebbing -- is the
> strongest and most dangerous force at large today, the product of a
> wound inflicted by one nation on the pride or territory of another."
>
> The world's New Year's Resolution for 2002 ought to be to start
> replacing blind hatred with eye-opening understanding and respect.
> Again, Berlin, the great teacher, guides us wisely: "Knowledge opens
> the windows of the mind (and soul) and makes people wiser, nicer and
> more civilized; absence of it breeds irrational prejudice, hatreds,
> ghastly extermination of heretics and of those who are different; if
> the two great wars plus Hitler's genocide haven't taught us that, we
> are incurable."
>
> May whatever God you worship or respect bless the world by helping
> spread the gospel of tolerance.
>
> Tom Plate is a communications professor at UCLA.
>
> ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 15
>
>
>
>
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