Faith and reason

In Thionville, there is an altar dedicated to Reason. In the heydays of the French Revolution, the "citoyens" had decided that religion was a chief source of wars and conflicts, and that it was time to graduate out of superstitions, and into the worship of Reason. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, all respected founding fathers of the young American Republic, were quite taken by this new philosophy. They by and large agreed with Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, and subscribed to the idea of the universal Clockmaker.
But today it seems that we have been backtracking. We are in a new religious era. The rapturists dispute the loony prize to the islamists.
It would be inconsequential, or even ridiculous, if it did not kill thousands of people on behalf of God or Allah.
The theocratic State of Israel is pitched in a battle to the death against the Islamist Hezbollah sect. Both are competing for Holy territory and are inspired by God. Unfortunately, just as in past religious wars, the human carnage is horrendous. The Qana massacre today, the second time for Qana which had already lost 129 people in 1996 to Tsahal, is a replique to the bombing of Haifa and other civilian areas.

The Islamist fanatics want nothing less than the total destruction of the infidel West.

On Bill Moyers'excellent PBS program "Faith and Reason", Margaret Atwood gives the following explanation: We like the idea of a God because the alternative, billions of atoms, cannot talk to us nor take care of us. In the same broadcast,Martin Amis feels ashamed of sharing a specie with the faith based fanatics who orchestrated 9/11, and is afraid for its future.
Whereas Europeans have "graduated" from the mirage of religion, 64% of Americans still live in a pre-reason era.

Intercourse.

My Chinese friends and I decided to leave the high tension suburbs of Washington for a short trip to the past. We drove to Intercourse, PA., in the heart of Amish land. The Amish, are descended from a group of Anabaptists who left southern Germany and the Colmar region of Alsace, to settle in the rich agricultural state of Pennsylvannia.
The Amish speak German at Church, a German dialect close to Letzeburgish at home, and English with outsiders they call....the English. They do not accept any benefits from the State, do not serve in the military, and live without cars, electricity, phones or other modern inputs.They drive buggies, work in very rich farms, and wear plain looking clothes.
After Lancaster county, we drove on to Rte 15 in Maryland, and took a walk in Catoctin mountain State park, with its lake and Cunningham falls.

It was a welcome break from the news with its constant drums of war and destruction. Israel has of course the right to survive, and I feel for the grieving Lebanese. Is it a proxy war between the West and Iran, or the Umma? The Bush Administration is playing for time. Europe, as usual, talks and talks and talks, but cannot act.

Blessed are the Amish who, above all, fear "Hochmut".

Whirlwind

I just came back from a whirlwind tour that took me from Edinburgh to Wasshington, and then immediately to Chicago, Portland, Las Vegas, Washington, Brussels, Thionville, Paris, and back to DC!
The US tour with the French-American Foundation was very interesting. It was a fact finding tour destined to find new solutions to social housing, or, as it is called here, "affordable housing". You can easily imagine that solidarity based systems do not compare easily with market based ones. Yet, the French group I accompanied was very interested by the innovtive solutions they found in this country. In the end, both countries have the same problem and the waiting lists for decent housing are just as long in Chicago as they are in the Paris suburbs.
In Thionville, I found a very hot and sunny Lorraine. The entire family gathered to honor my parents for their 60th wedding anniversary. A great feat in this day and age. Thionville was even on the first stage of the Tour de France, and we saw Hincapie in his yellow jersey.
We managed a day trip to Paris, thanks to the French High Speed Train network.

Lucky for me, I missed the inglorious end of the World Cup. We just landed at Dulles Airport as France lost to penalty kicks. As to Zidane's loss of cool, I attribute it to the racial taunts the French team had to undergo for a month. Part of the solution to the difficult ethnic mix of French society is to be found in its multicolores soccer team. Oh well!