[Buddha-l] Reviewing the meaning of fundamentalism in the USA--pause for reflection

[jkirk]

A discussion of the worldview of this country we live and practice in,
making space for further reflection on our Buddhist practice in this
context.
Joanna
=======================================================
 
HYPERLINK
"http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2524"http://japanfocus.org/products/
details/2524
American Fundamentalisms and World Disorder
A Tomdispatch interview with James Carroll


He's a man who knows something about the dangers of mixing religious fervor,
war, and the crusading spirit, a subject he dealt with eloquently in his
book Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews. A former Catholic priest
turned antiwar activist in the Vietnam era, James Carroll also wrote a
moving memoir about his relationship to his father, the founding director of
the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. 

He submitted to a Tomdispatch interview back in August 2005 and when, this
summer, I suggested that we meet again, he agreed to discuss "American
fundamentalisms," a subject that receives remarkably less coverage and
consideration than other fundamentalisms of our world. Tom Engelhardt.
 
........Well, embedded in that joke is a central idea: that what matters is
not outcome, but purity of intent. A mark of a fundamentalist mindset is
that one's own personal virtue is the ultimate value. The American
fundamentalist ethos of the Cold War prepared us to destroy the world. In
other words, a world absolutely devastated through nuclear war was
acceptable as an outcome because it reflected the virtue of our opposition
to the evil of communism. Better dead than red.
........
Better Red Than Dead
TD: A phrase I hadn't thought about in a long time...

Carroll: Better the world destroyed than taken over by communism. It's
profoundly nihilistic, which is also one of the marks of the fundamentalist
mindset. An irony, of course, is that so much, then and now, is done in the
name of realism, but this is such a profoundly unrealistic way of thinking.

TD: It's in this sense, I suppose, that our President has been unable to
learn. So, give me the basics on American fundamentalisms, as you see them.
[article continues]


 

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