Posted by
Mike on Friday, July 01, 2011 2:25:58 PM
http://www.westernperspective.blogspot.com/
The notion currently in vogue that Israel is somehow the cornerstone
upholding the edifice of Western civilization is based on a false
misconception of history. It has now become popular, particularly in
America, due in no small part to the growing hostility toward
traditional religious beliefs in the Western world stretching from
Europe to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and other more remote
locations.
Hilaire Belloc, who lived during the last century, was a British
historian who understood quite well the true foundations of Western
civilization, and the corroding effects which the Protestant Reformation
had on it.
One biographer has proposed that Belloc's paternal ancestry dates back to a 17th century Jew named Bloch who was a wine merchant in France. His ideas owe no small debt to the recently beatified Cardinal
John Henry Newman in Britain whose ancestry has been traced to the Jewish
community in Britain. Neither Belloc nor Newman were overtly
anti-Semetic.
Belloc essentially describes in detail how the ideals of liberty and
freedom began in Europe during the Middle Ages, and grew over time as a
result of the adoption of Catholicism within the late Roman Empire. The
Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries was in reality a return to
the slavery of a barbaric past involving a vast power grab by a small
minority, and large-scale expropriation of property from the majority
and from the Church which had provided, up to that time, an excellent
safety net for the poor through charitable works of
monastic institutions. The medieval guilds, today disparaged by
capitalist apologists such as Glenn Beck, insured justice for all in
allocating the fruits of honest labor. With the discovery and
settlement of the New World and the rise of capitalism in the West, the
functions of the medieval guilds were taken over by labor unions. This
is the situation in which we live today.
No question about it, Jews did settle in many parts of the Roman Empire
during the diaspora both before and after the destruction of the temple
in Jerusalem. In many ways, they played a role in society as money
lenders and middlemen. As Belloc points out, although many Jews did
become Christian and convert to Catholicism, the Jewish community as a
whole remained separate from the larger European culture. Belloc
perceived rightly that this would ultimately lead, unless some changes
in European relationships with the Jews were drastically made, to
discrimination, persecution, and finally the mass extermination of Jews
in Europe.
What Belloc suggested and advocated then was nothing less than mutually respectful
recognition
that the Jews in Europe belong to a separate people within each host
country, having their own separate culture and traditions which could
not be merged with the prevailing European Western culture having its roots firmly within
the Catholic Church.
To be continued. . .