Clash Of Civilizations
With prescience, he sang the about the clash
that faces our uncivil civilizations,
whose differences might lead to nuclear ash
descending from the skies on all the nations.
He wrote that peaceful plowshares would be turned
to swords because of differences between
religions whose intensity still burned,
destructively addictive as morphine,
far more intensely in the heart and mind
than ideologies that atrophied
like plants for which the prophet Jonah pined
when Ninevites accepted his new creed.
The clash that Samuel Huntington foresaw
materialized, we saw, on 9/11
when we found out some people wish to soar
straight from earth’s kingdom to hubristic heaven,
and in autos da fe compound their error
by their rejection of reality, and try
to change the universe with acts of terror
performed the very moment that they die.
Sam Huntington may once have been a loner,
but since his views do not defy belief
we must now all acknowledge this late Jonah,
Greek chorus of aggression and great grief.
Inspired by Tamar Lewin’s obituary in the NYT, December 29,2008 of Samuel P. Huntington, who died on December 24,2008:
By the late 1960s, Dr. Huntington had turned his attention to foreign affairs. His 1969 book “Political Order in Changing Societies, ” still widely used in graduate seminars, analyzed political and economic development in the third world. In recent years, Dr. Huntington was best known — and, since 9/11, acclaimed — for “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, ” a 1996 book based on a 1993 Foreign Policy article. The book predicted that in the post-cold-war world, violent conflict would arise from cultural and religious differences among the major civilizations. The spread of American pop culture, he wrote, did not mean the spread of American attitudes. The book has an almost uncanny image of what was to come: “Somewhere in the Middle East, a half-dozen young men could well be dressed in jeans, drinking Coke, listening to rap, and between their bows to Mecca, putting together a bomb to blow up an American airliner.”
12/29/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Related quotes
Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind. In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
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The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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And so in terms of territorial control, in terms of economic preeminence, the western share of the gross world product is declining as Asian societies in particular develop economically.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Why.............?
The American book of 'why',
The Asian book of 'why',
The European book of 'why',
The African book of 'why',
The Australian book of 'why',
The most asked question in the valley of world events;
Especially when one explodes a bomb!
The Christian book of 'why',
The Muslim book of 'why',
The Jewish book of 'why',
The Hindu book of 'why',
The Krishna book of 'why',
lLife is like the yeast which makes the bread rise;
But, the writer always has his or her own mind.
The Pagan book of 'why',
The Buddhist book of 'why',
The Protestant book of 'why',
The Confucian book of 'why',
To all life's aspects with the remaining books of 'why';
Poetry is the literature that muses with the mind.
Shall the trumpet be blown in the city and,
The people will not be afraid?
Seven bulls and seven rams,
I am the planted tree by the rivers of waters.
I am very young in years but,
The word 'why' is the question that goes around easily.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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It was this society and culture that among other things - including economic opportunities here and repression in Europe - attracted subsequent generations of immigrants to this country.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The great problem there is we have to have the cooperation of those other Asian countries.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Huntington High
Looking around
Looking in
Looking out
Everybody's walking by
Everybody's got their own thoughts running
over and over in their minds
Some of their thoughts are bright and sunny
and they laugh at the jokes that they think are
funny
In other people thoughts
They jab them like thorns in the side
While memories keep them company
The best they can
At Huntington High
Drama overflows
Love glows
Romance grows
Believing and disbelieving go hand in hand
Seriousness will always abound
Cynicism always makes its way around
Some are drifting
Some are dragging
In all their eyes
Their life story is mirrored
And they try to keep their secrets from
being discovered
As well as the sadness and happiness
they're all trying to recover
At Huntington High
There always will be
Mascara and lipstick
Syringes and razor blades
Ladders and snakes
Cheek blush and nail polish
At Huntington High
You'll either have an adventure
Or you'll get a romance
poem by Justin Gildow
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Jonah 180 Degrees Of Misdirection
Jonah an Old Testament prophet
from Galilee his fab story takes place
between years 780 B.C to 760 B.C.
Assyria was a powerful evil nation
Israel’s most dreaded enemy foreign.
The Lord spoke unto Jonah told him
go to Nineveh capital of Assyria
preach to warn sinful Ninevites.
Jonah 1: 2.
Jonah by God’s word commanded
told to warn the Ninevites to repent
or suffer judgement for wickedness.
But Jonah disobeys the will of God
Jonah plots swiftly high tales it out
180 degrees in opposite direction
Jonah boy child brought back to life
resurrected by Elijah the prophet
1 Kings 17: 17-24.
Jonah son of Amittai the son of truth
2 Kings 14: 25.
Jonah departed not to Nineveh but
to Tarshish with motives of what?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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First of all, we haven't always welcomed immigrants.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Our relationship with Mexico in this regard is unique for us, and in many respects unique in the world.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I think clearly the United States, as well as other western nations, should stand by their commitments to human rights and democracy and should try to influence other countries to move in that direction.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Total falsehoods can be easily exposed for what they are by citing exceptions to their claims. Hence, they are less likely to be accepted as the total truth.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities.
quote by Leslie Caron
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mexican immigration poses challenges to our policies and to our identity in a way nothing else has in the past.
quote by Samuel P. Huntington
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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