The Danger of Tomorrow

My tomorrows, it appears, can arrive at the moment of their choosing, not at 12:01 am on an immediately following day. Nice to have that kind of leeway, but revealing of the fact that I have not regularly kept this blog updated. It's not that I am lazy, though I am, it is a question of there being something important enough, concrete enough, I want to write about.

Even though I am watching the Democratic Primary as it wends its lazy way toward September, I have lingered over a different subject for the last few days and have finally been goaded by thought and events to sit down and deal with it.

The question of world dominance. It's up for grabs. It's about tomorrow.

Pretty clearly the Age(a bit short for an Age) of the Pax Americana is ending or over. Looking back it was not a bad period and Americans can be proud of it overall. Of course evil things were done along the way, but almost all of them came in the context of the Cold War. I have long since forgiven the government for those, even though I recognize that a few of them laid the groundwork for our present situation. To name two: we were allied with Saddam Hussein, and we sent arms and money to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. We did what we believed we had to do in the context of the time.

Now, however, things are very different. Not only has our status dropped precipitously as a result of the Iraq war, but technology, most of it originally US developed, and the fairly placid,economically expanding, world environment we supported has stimulated the development of both China and India. Brazil, long neglected, is surging too. All this, at a time when Radical Islam is on the move using terror, makes for a very chaotic, and thus dangerous world. Still, I don't see this as a time for fear.

I watch the 'scared of China' group, and while I recognize China's growing nationalism, and am conscious of the probability that all those unwed young men will end up in the military, I also see the growth of unrest in that gigantic country. While I worry that they "own us" financially, I see the trade links as forestalling confrontation. All in all, I see no reason not to pursue China as a competing partner. Trust, but verify. A wise and non-confrontational stance.

Islam is different. What worries me there, worries everyone.

To follow Islam, as I understand it, is to accept not just a religious belief, but a way of life, a day to day prescription of behavior that is all encompassing. This way of life has a legal code. Could the promise of the dominance of that legal code, the return to supremacy, seduce moderates into accepting the other aspects of an ascending fundamentalist minority? Will the vast majority of Muslims, the moderate Muslims, whose empire vanished long ago, now be like the majority of Germans, humiliated by WWI, who went along with Hitler, even as his evil increased exponentially, seeking new world dominance? Nobody knows.

I do worry that moderate Muslims do not speak to this in a louder voice and in greater numbers. What I also see is the rest of the world bending over backwards not to offend, and going to ridiculous lengths in that effort.

Alan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the American Mind, way back in the Sixties said, to paraphrase, that it is wonderful to be tolerant, to equate everyone's value system as equal in worth to your own. But look out , he warned, if someone comes along who says,"Mine is the one, the only one," he will roll over you like a tank.

It's the tank I worry about. I would love to discuss this and find my concerns are groundless.