This article is written by someone too impressed with his usage of rhetorical devices and obscure words (eg. tellurians for just "earthlings", or better yet "people"), but I found the following thought provoking:
Actions speak louder than words, but if political speeches are preserved in National Archives, it’s because they help us learn our history and shape our future. President Obama said, “The future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” and President Reagan stated: “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave….” Every public speaker will either acknowledge his audience’s right to freedom of opinion and expression or learn it the hard way.The first thing it did was to send me looking for the context that BO uttered those words in, easy to find on the internet.
The speech was to the UN General Assembly and it is the usual BO fare that makes one wonder who writes this crapola. The whole applicable quote is.
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied.My sense is that BO is intelligent, and fully understands the inanity of his remarks, but finds them to be effective in his "higher purpose" of an undefined secular future world utopia arrived at by indeterminate means. Heaven on earth with no religion too (John Lennon sort of)
The key problem with this vision is defined in the Bible "Man does not live by bread alone". Human kind is wired to require more meaning in our tenure in this mortal coil than "I was fed and entertained", or to put it in the Roman manner "bread and circuses".
Note that while I'm not going to cover it here, "I'm advancing" -- the "Star Trek philosophy" also holds no meaningful answer. It begs the question of "toward where or what?", and "that a way" is not enough to draw the human soul.
The idea "Muslims and Christians are one" juxtaposes the transcendent / spiritual with the corporeal / profane. "Humans are one", in their humanity, but it is the secular humanist that strives to make real that which as not been so since man first formed groups. The humans that made it through the last 500K years or so are those that put SOMETHING at a higher position in their minds than their day to day existence -- idol worship, animal worship, conquest, etc, and eventually Yahweh, Christ, Muhammed, etc.
A Muslim can NEVER say "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me", nor can a Christian say "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet". They are both human, but in what gives their life meaning beyond food and entertainment, they are explicitly NOT "one" in religion, which they hold ABOVE their humanity!
It is quite possible that the question of the 21st century is "Is it possible for Muslims to allow Christians and Jews to exist peacefully without attacking them?" The 20th century -- and really the last 500 years, have shown that the Christian / Jewish answer to that question is definitively "yes with proof of history".
The other likely question that may be answered this century or later is "Can secular humanists allow Christians and Muslims to worship and live peacefully in their states and around the world without overt harassment?" Historically and currently -- USSR, Nazi Germany, China, increasingly in the US and Europe, the answer is "NO!!!".
Reagan was naturally right -- the future always goes to the brave, especially those brave enough to have enough children so their viewpoint is around to see it -- yet another area that the secular humanist view fails. If the purpose of your life is to "have a good time", children don't make that cut in any advanced society, so such views are self-limiting on the multi-generational scale.
'via Blog this'
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