Russia, Georgia, and “The West”
This is really neither here nor there as far as any public policy issue is concerned, but as a Russophile since my teen years it’s been a bit strange for me to see a conflict between Russia and Georgia described as somehow implicating a larger issue of a clash between “the West” and an alien Other. For one thing, the classification of Russia as non-western is a bit problematic on its own terms. There are some clear differences between Russia and the west proper. But at the same time, figures like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Tchaikovsky are part of the western cultural tradition. Russia, meanwhile, was a key participant in many of the major historical events of “the West.” Unlike, say, China or Brazil or Nigeria — important countries, but peripheral ones to the western experience — you can’t write the history of World War I or the French Revolution without talking about Russia.
Then on the other side of the equation, you have Georgia. Georgia, like Russia, has a reasonable amount in common with the West. But insofar as Russia has non-western characteristics, Georgia shares all of those characteristics. Like Russia, Georgia was ruled by Mongols, lacks a tradition of liberalism or democracy, practices Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but it means there’s no gaping cultural void between Georgia and Russia that puts Georgia on the side of “the West.” Georgians have often conceived of themselves as a far-flung outpost of European civilization, but the relevant contrast there was that Georgians are Christians just like Russians but unlike the Muslims who live nearby. It happens to be the case that the current constellation of power politics in the Caucasus has Georgia (and Muslim Azerbaijan) aligned against Russia while (orthodox Christian) Armenia is aligned with Russia but I don’t think any of that reflects some extraordinarily deep cultural divide or deep affinity between Georgia and the West.
68 Responses to “Russia, Georgia, and “The West””
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
August 14th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
For some folks, the “Western” in “pro-Western” basically stands for the United States.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I suspect DTM is right here, but one could argue that Georgia has been “the Eastern Outpost of the West” for a lot longer than Russia has. Remember that Jason and the Argonauts as well as Medea of mythological fame were from Colchis, which, along with Iberia, is the predescessor kingdom to Georgia.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Stalin and Beria were both from Georgia.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
People tend to be savvy enough about foreign policy to call bullshit on literally saying “us” and “them”, or “us” and “the evildoers”. Unfortunately that’s about as far as it goes and you can pepper your rhetoric with terms like “the West” and no one cares to think about it too deeply.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Does anyone think George W Bush or Dick Cheney give a hairy rat’s ass about obscure historical cultural connections when $10 Trillion? in oil is at stake?
It’s really too bad that Matthew is not sitting in on White House councils — Dick Cheney would blow a gasket from rage and expire on the spot after Matthew gave the above Harvard undergrad lecture
August 14th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Technically, Beria was Migrelian from Sukhumi, in Abkhazia. Which means it looks like Beria’s back to being Rossiyan (as opposed to Russkiy).
August 14th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Please excuse me if I am misunderstanding, but how is Brazil non-Western? Brazil is as Western as the United States or Australia. There isn’t a single country in the Western Hemisphere that isn’t “Western” geographically or culturally/historically. They may not have contributed as much culturally as European countries, but every country in this Hemisphere has its culture, politics, religion, and elite class overwhelmingly derived from Europe’s and is a part of that civilization. It’s a heck of a lot more Western than Georgia. And I wouldn’t exactly call Brazil “peripheral” to the Western experience, either (unless the colonization of the Americas is peripheral, in which Spain and Portugal’s rivalry is key, is “peripheral” to that history).
August 14th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
To treat this conflict as a trivial matter of importance only to the parties involved is naive.
To treat it as a sign of another Cold War is naive and dangerous.
http://www.political-buzz.com/
August 14th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
The primary religion of Armenia, the world’s first Christian nation, isn’t Orthodox. It is Armenian Apostolic, a different thing altogether. And believe me, Armenians take the distinction seriously.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
What’s happened to the assignment desk?
August 14th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
A lot of what’s going on here is Russian pride poking the US in particular, and NATO in general. They were deeply upset over our backing of Kosovo in the 90’s, and even more upset by our recognition of Kosovar independence. They couldn’t do much about that, but they didn’t like it – and recall that the Russians have historically backed the Serbs up.
So, after we (to their way of thinking) poured salt in the wound by recognizing Kosovo’s independence, kicking Georgia – a border state that has been trying to move out of their orbit – was an easy way to poke back.
The part that could get nasty is that such small conflicts have a nasty way of growing. See July/August 1914, for instance. As of late July of that year, few expected general war. And yet it came…
August 14th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I thought Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. I’m sure I’ve heard John McCain and other Republicans tell me so.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Well, actually, Georgia was known to the Greeks, subsequently hellenized, and then was a part of the Roman Empire for a few hundred years, nearly a millennium before anything that could be construed as Russia had come into being. In that sense, Georgia is more connected to Western tradition, particularly as Western tradition seen as being derived from classical antiquity.
Of course, over the last thousand years Georgia has been definitively dominated by the Mongols and Russia, and this has no bearing on the current state of affairs, so I’m just being pedantic.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I think it’s pretty simple. Thanks in large part to Bushian rhetoric, the “West” means pro-”freedom” and non-western is against “freedom.” As such, the only thing that matters from the perspective of the media framing is that Georgia is an ex-soviet state and thus presumed to be “pro-freedom” and the former Soviet Union, now incidentally called “Russia,” has invaded, suggesting that they have an “anti-freedom,” agenda. If you’re looking for West versus Other and you don’t care about the facts, you can find it in all sorts of strange places.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I’ll throw in that while Russian is an Indo-European language distantly related to English (and closely related to the other Slavic languages including Polish and Czech), Georgian is a totally unrelated South Caucasian language. Linguistically speaking, Russia is clearly more “Western”.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I think a point that a lot of people are missing is that, at the minimum, Georgia started this. This should be repeated over and over again: this conflict only started to get dangerous when Saakashvili decided to intervene militarily in South Ossetia. With friends like him, who needs enemies? Some higher up in the State Dept needs to sit down and let him know exactly what kind of American assistance he can expect – not much – so we can get to the more important matter of getting Russia out of Georgia proper.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I’d agree with Kal – Brazil is definitely not peripheral to the western experience.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I basically agree with this post and think it goes well with Spackerman’s “category error” post yesterday… but Matt, I’m pretty sure that citing Dostoevsky, of all people, to refer to the “Western cultural tradition” that Russia shares is a bit of a faux pas.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Pushkin! VN!
August 14th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Armenian Apostolic Christians are not at all part of the Orthodox tradition. Some Western Armenians are Roman Catholic, but Armenians in the Republic of Armenia are almost exclusively Apostolic.
August 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
thejerz:
Some higher up in the State Dept needs to sit down and let him know exactly what kind of American assistance he can expect – not much – so we can get to the more important matter of getting Russia out of Georgia proper.
He saw that the Russians were doing a creeping annexation of the two disputed provinces and the West wasn’t going to do anything about it. He didn’t expect any help. I see it as a desperate measure and a mistake because of all the lives it cost. But the Russians aren’t blameless.
To me it’s like with the Israelis and Palestinains. The Palestians start something, the Israelis overreact smash them, kill civilians, etc., And all people can say is: sucks to be a Palestinian. But who cares? They’re half way around the world.
August 14th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
The bottom line is that not even Douggie Feith isn’t fucking stupid enough to prod the Russians into making New York, Chicago, LA, DC and a thousand other American towns and cities into smoking holes over Tskhinvali.
Right? (I hope?)
August 14th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
The bottom line is that not even Douggie Feith isn’t fucking stupid enough to prod the Russians into making New York, Chicago, LA, DC and a thousand other American towns and cities into smoking holes over Tskhinvali.
Right? (I hope?)
August 14th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Armenian Apostolic Christians are not at all part of the Orthodox tradition.
The colloquial term for the Christians who did not recognize the Council of Chalcedon — the Armenians, Coptics, Syriacs, and Ethiopians — is “Oriential Orthodox.” Even today, the Eastern Orthodox and the non-Chalcedonian Christians consider themselves pretty much more on the same page theologically, so the term is an acceptable one.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Obviously Dostoevsky (and Tolstoy too, for that matter, in different ways) tended to dislike the west, and this comes out in his work. But he was certainly part of a dialogue with western literature. He was influenced by western writers like Dickens and Balzac, and himself influenced an enormous number of later writers in the west. Whatever Dostoevsky’s self conscious opposition to the west, he was very much a part of the western literary tradition.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I’m not sure why they would be seen as more on the same page. Obviously in some ways this is true, but they split off from the main body of the church in the 5th century, as compared to the eastern orthodox, who only schismed with the western church in the 11th century. The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox are more closely aligned on questions of church organization than either is to the Catholic Church, but the Eastern Orthodox are closer on doctrine (specifically, Christology) to the Catholics than they are to the oriental orthodox. I suppose at this point organization is more important than christology, but it’s probably unwise to refer to the Armenians as “Orthodox” with no further explanation.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Wrong in every way possible. South Ossetia’s history did not begin last week just because that’s when you started seeing it on CNN.
And LOL at the importance of Brazil to the West. Outside football, that is.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
This is a dumb argument we’re having, but…
1) Brazil is not Western because it was found on artificial means, i.e. mass slavery and genocide of the indigenous population.
2) Georgia is not Western; it doesn’t matter if the Greeks knew about it, the Greeks wrote a lot of books on the Persians and I don’t see anyone describing the Persians as Western even though they have a lot more in common with the West than backwater Georgia.
3) Armenia/Azerbaijan/Abkhazia/etc. are not Western either; just because Russia, a Eurasian country, dominated you does not make you Western. Tajikistan is not Western, and it doesn’t differ from Azerbaijan in any qualitative way (name me one famous person from either country).
4) Turkey is not Western, I haven’t heard any Turks claim so.
5) Russia IS Western, at least the St. Petersburg area of it, which gave us many famous mathematicians and philosophers and authors. Anything west of the Urals… not so much.
6) Romania, Bulgaria, the Yugoslavias – not Western, no contribution to modern Western thought (okay, maybe Tesla).
7) Am I forgetting anyone?
August 14th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Brazil is not Western because it was found on artificial means, i.e. mass slavery and genocide of the indigenous population.
There is a case to be made that that’s everywhere on the planet, but for damn sure that would proclude the U.S from being part of “the West”.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Don’t forget, Armenia allies with Russia in part because of the Turkish genocide combined with 400 years of Russo-Turkish distaste for each other.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:40 am
“… the current constellation of power politics in the Caucasus has Georgia (and Muslim Azerbaijan) aligned against Russia …”
If I was Azerbaijani I might be rethinking my position after this fiasco …
August 15th, 2008 at 8:06 am
There’s a lot I could comment on on this post.
1) Brazil, Armenia, Georgia and Russia are none of them what I would consider ‘The West’. I don’t think that what we think of as ‘The West’ today is primarily defined by the borders of ancient Christendom (by that definition Ethiopia and Lebanon would also be Western).
2) I think that the modern definition of the West in large part connotes those countries that share the common historical experience of the Enlightenment and the subsequent liberal revolutions (in large part, this resulted in them sharing a common historical tradition of political and economic liberalism). So anything south of the Rio Grande or east of Lithuania is not Western.
3. A large part of this has to do with historical self-definition. The Catholic or Protestant countries of Eastern Europe, e.g. Latvia, Poland, and Hungary I would include with the west since historically, for religious reasons they have looked west instead of east. Greece on the other hand, even though it has been a liberal ‘democracy’ for more years than, say, Estonia, is not ‘Western’ in the same sense since their historical affinities are with Russia, sharing the legacy of Byzantium.
4. Basically I accept the thesis that there are three great divisions of Christendom, which constitute Latin America, Eastern Christendom, and the West (i.e. Western Europe and the Anglophone settler states e.g. USA, Canada, Australia).
5. Iberia vs. the Latin American countries is somewhat tricky, since obviously they share a lot in common. Nevertheless I would draw the civilizational line between the two. Iberia was _more_ influenced by liberalism and the other West European countries, because of geography, than Latin America. Also most Latin American countries draw strong elements of their culture from the indigenous (e.g. Peru, Bolivia, Mexico) or African (Brazil, Cuba) roots.
6. If you talk to a Greek or Russian nationalist they would probably deny to you very strongly that their country was part of the West. Consider for example the ultranationalist Papadopoulos regime in Greece, who were very clear that Greece was not part of the West. Of course the cosmopolitan Greeks disagreed, but since cosmopolitans tend to be the ones who deny the existence of essential civilizational boundaries to begin with their opposition is somewhat a moot point.
7. Happy Assumption day everyone.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:51 am
It might be wrong in some ways, but surely not wrong in every way possible. Georgia was the one that escalated this crisis into something dangerous, by attacking South Ossetia. One can argue, of course, that this does not constituting “starting it”, but one can’t argue that it’s wrong “in every way possible” to say that they did.
Er…want to rethink that? Because I can think of at least one other country that wouldn’t be western for the same reasons. Obviously, there was more slavery in Brazil than here, but I’m not sure that’s really a qualitative difference.
My understanding was that Ataturkian secularism was an attempt to make Turkey part of the west. (Similarly, Russia has for a long time intermittently wanted to be part of the west).
What contribution has Switzerland made to modern western thought? Or Portugal? Or Finland? Croatia and Slovenia are certainly part of the west, because they are Catholic. They are no less western than Hungary or Poland, certainly If you’re going to draw the line, you should draw it at the actual great schism line between eastern and western christendom – Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia forming the eastmost countries in the west (and with Transylvania and Lviv, with their large number of Eastern Catholics, arguably in the west.)
I’m not sure how you can say that Latin America did not share in the Enlightenment or the liberal revolutions. The wars of independence in Latin America clearly form part of the age of liberal revolutions. And at least small elements of Russian society certainly shared in the Enlightenment (e.g. Catherine the Great corresponding with Voltaire and bringing Diderot to Russia). The mention of Lithuania, at any rate, suggests that what you are really talking about, in fact, are the borders of western Christendom, and not anything to do with the Enlightenment at all.
I would say this is more “the historical line between western and eastern christendom” than anything to do with self-definition. Historically, Greece was sort of more connected to Russia than to the west (although even this is kind of dubious – their religious organizations were obviously related. Otherwise, the historical relationship was never very strong), but I’d say that in terms of self-definition today, Greeks think of themselves as western. Otherwise, I agree – the historical line between eastern and western christendom is the key one.
I’m not sure why Latin America should be separated out on its own. The distinction between eastern and western christendom is religious. The distinction between western christendom and latin America is primarily a racial one, and even that is pushing it. Why is a black person in Brazil not part of the west, but one in the United States is? For that matter, why is a white person in Argentina not part of the west, but a white person in Portugal is?
Iberia vs. the Latin American countries is somewhat tricky, since obviously they share a lot in common. Nevertheless I would draw the civilizational line between the two. Iberia was _more_ influenced by liberalism and the other West European countries, because of geography, than Latin America. Also most Latin American countries draw strong elements of their culture from the indigenous (e.g. Peru, Bolivia, Mexico) or African (Brazil, Cuba) roots.
And the United States does not? What liberal revolutions there were in Spain and Portugal were, in fact, closely connected to said revolutions in Latin America. And there’s a fair number of countries in Latin America with little connection to indigenous or African roots – Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina come to mind, particularly. And in all these countries, the elites were, until quite recently, entirely Criollo, and even now it’s rare for pure blood Indians to have any political power – for instance the last four presidents of Guatemala, with the highest percentage of Indians of any country, seem all to have been of almost wholly European heritage. This guy is the current president.
I also think it’s too essentializing to divide countries like Greece and Russia between “cosmpolitans” and “nationalists” – there’s a lot of layering, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people in those countries who will assert that they are, in fact, part of the west, while saying at the same time that China or Turkey are not.
As to the general question, Russia is pretty clearly more a part of the west in every way that matters than is Georgia, which is an Asian backwater. Tbilisi was burned down by the Persians 200 years ago. Not even the Turks, the Persians! The idea that Georgia is a western country and Russia is not doesn’t pass the laugh test.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Re Hector’s comment “Greece on the other hand, even though it has been a liberal ‘democracy’ for more years than, say, Estonia, is not ‘Western’ in the same sense since their historical affinities are with Russia, sharing the legacy of Byzantium. ”
————-
Gee, I guess I need to weed out my library.
Throw out Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, Plato’s Dialogues, and anything by Aristotle.
Strangely enough, the Romans might have agreed with you. They stole their culture and knowledge from the Greeks, but didn’t care much for the source.
They would not have agreed with you re Byzantium , of course, since that was their fallback fortress — the area where they survived for 1000 years after their open-door immigration policy led to some unfortunate events in the West.
The ROMAN Catholic Church would agree with you, of course, since the ancient Greek Orthodox Christian churchs have an unfortunate habit of laughing at the Vatican’s pretensions.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Oh, and you might look at the sources James Madison cited in his “Notes on Confederacies Ancient and Modern” — which he submitted at the Convention here in Philly as part of his argument that the United States needed a radically new form of government– and what that form should be.
“Polybius”? Is that an American name?
See also the Federalist.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:59 am
The Persians could kick your ass any day John.
But I agree with Hector – I think the most appropriate term for that part of the world was and remains Asia Minor, they had no role in the enlightenment or french revolution or any of the defining events of western civilization. The only problem is that in the US Asia usually means Oriental which means Chinese, although back in the day both terms referred to the Mid East. So it’s hard to call it Asia Minor, but Western it is not.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:14 am
IT seems hilarious to me to conflate “the West” with both the Enlightenment and the Roman Catholic Church.
After all, the Enlightenment was largely an effort to overthrow the 1000 years of dictatorship the Catholic Church had attempted to impose on the collective mind of Western man. In which any idea that could even be INTERPRETED as deviation from the party line could get you burned Alive at the stake. See Galileo, Trial of. Or what happened to those who tried to teach people to actually read the Bible themselves.
The Church has produced some great intellects — but also great errors. You would have to go pretty deep into the jungles of Africa to find superstitous nonsense to rival what the Vatican has produced.
Actually, such a quest would probably be futile at this time — given the massive dieoff of African population caused by the Vatican’s propaganda against the use of condoms to prevent AIDS.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:16 am
contemporary “non-western”=Cold War era “communist”=universal “soon to be invaded”
The three phrases are interchangeable, and describe nothing but their status on the American hawks’ hit list.
Searching for further meaning will only upset you.
Tblisi certainly seems more “Other” than does Moscow.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:34 am
In which any idea that could even be INTERPRETED as deviation from the party line could get you burned Alive at the stake. See Galileo, Trial of.
Galileo was an arrogant ass, as many brilliant scientists tend to be. And house arrest on the beautiful hills outside Florence is not quite burning at the stake. The mythology of science is itself quite fascinating.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Re nolaboyd’s comment “And house arrest on the beautiful hills outside Florence is not quite burning at the stake. The mythology of science is itself quite fascinating.”
———-
Is it “mythology” that:
1) Galileo suffered house arrest and censorship only because he RECANTED his absurd claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun — and agreed with the Church’s position that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
2) That if Galileo had resisted the extreme duress he was placed under — and had refused to recant — he would have been found guilty of heresy. What was the penalty for that?
2) That The Church did not release Galileo’s works from its Index of banned books until 1835
3) That The Vatican did not acknowledge that Galileo was right –that the Earth revolves around the Sun — until 1992.
Everything we have in Western civilization is the product of Science and Rational Thought. Without that we would be mere savages. And the Church tried relentlessly to ..er.. Abort that tradition at its birth.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I spent time in both Russia and Georgia when they were part of the Soviet Union.
Back then, *nobody* in Russia ever considered themselves part of the west. It was Russia *vs.* the west. That was the distinction that in large part even defined their identity. Tolstoy was not western just because his work was appreciated by western cultures. (That still holds true, Matt.)
Curiously, everyone in Georgia seemed proud to call themselves Asiatic as opposed to European. “We’re Asiatic!”, they kept telling me. I had the impression that Georgians defined themselves as Asiatics so as to be distinct from Russians: Russians were Europeans, and they really hated Russians, so Georgians must therefore be *emphatically* Asiatic.
Now, it sounds as if Georgia is trying to jump over two hurdles at once here: Not only are they no longer Asiatic, they are not even Eastern Europeans. They are *western*!
It’s a big leap, powered by a burning desire to both be and be perceived as distinct from Russians.
August 15th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Why Russophile?
What is Russia’s contribution to civilization in the last 100 years?
How countries under the russian influence in the last 100 years have fared?
p.s.: i am no neocon troll, but, please, let’s be serious.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Re “What is Russia’s contribution to civilization in the last 100 years?”
———–
They acquired the means to destroy it and did not do so.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
RE “How countries under the russian influence in the last 100 years have fared?”
Not well but somewhat better than Iraq, Vietnam, Latin American,etc.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Don,
my point is that the russian national pride, to which Putin is pandering, is completely unfounded. They have nothing to be proud of and still other countries risk to pay, again, the consequences of this pride.
I agree that we should use realism on this issue, as Matt is suggesting; that even Georgia is not pure, etc.
But it is the “russophyle” adjective that strikes me. I understand that, being born in U.S., if you want to rediscuss some mainstream views, becoming more russophyle is one way to go. Maybe that is what Matt did. I am all in favor of rediscussing mainstream views. But one has to keep in mind that sometimes they are right.
August 16th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Re: Technically, Beria was Migrelian from Sukhumi, in Abkhazia.
The Mingrealians are close ethnic kin of the Georgians. Their language is one of only three others related to Georgian.
Re: Please excuse me if I am misunderstanding, but how is Brazil non-Western? Brazil is as Western as the United States or Australia.
The difference is that Brazil (and most of Latin America) includes enormous native and African elements. In the US (and Canada for that matter) these elements were suppressed by near-genocide, and the remnant was forcibly assimilated to Anglo ways. For the same reason Botswana and Tonga are not Western nations even though the use of English and the profession of Christianity is widespread in both.
Re: I’m not sure why they would be seen as more on the same page.
The differences between them and Western Christendom (Catholicism and definitely Protestanism in its myriad forms) are far more deep and numerous than the differences they have with each other.
Re: but the Eastern Orthodox are closer on doctrine (specifically, Christology) to the Catholics than they are to the oriental orthodox.
The Oriental Orthodox rejected the Council of Chalcedon, because when its decrees were translated out of Greek and into Syriac, Egyptian, Aremnian, etc. they seemed to be affirming the very things that the Council of Ephessus had rejected. Modern Oriental Orthodox (for the most part) reject the charge that they teach the Monophysite heresy and many Orthodox (and Catholic) theologians agree that they do not.
Re: Georgia is not Western; it doesn’t matter if the Greeks knew about it
No, it isn’t Western– Greece itself is not Western for that matter. But it is more or less European, being a former Roman territory civilized by Greece and then Christianized, without ever giving its cultural allegiance to Islam or any other culture.
Re: Romania, Bulgaria, the Yugoslavias – not Western, no contribution to modern Western thought
Last I checked the Finns haven’t contributed much culturally to the West, but would you exclude them too?
Re: Basically I accept the thesis that there are three great divisions of Christendom, which constitute Latin America, Eastern Christendom, and the West
So Catholic countries are not Western? OK, Napoleon said Europe ended at the Pyrenees, but where does that leave France and Italy? Or Ireland for that matter?
Re: Tbilisi was burned down by the Persians 200 years ago.
Athens was once burned by the Persians too.
Re: Everything we have in Western civilization is the product of Science and Rational Thought.
I can think of innumerable works of glory and beauty that are not scientifically motivated. Some (like a great many works of art) are even very explicitly religious. Shall we junk Notre Dame, The Last Supper and Paradise Lost because they are not scientific works?
Re: And the Church tried relentlessly to ..er.. Abort that tradition at its birth.
Modeern science dates backs to the Greeks and it was nurtured and preserved by the Church. And by the way, the available evidence back in 1634 actually supported Galileo’s opponents– his case was awfully thin on merit, even though we now know he was right. This happens in science of course: ideas are mocked when they come out (see: Continental drift theory) and evidence emerges only much later that they were right.
January 14th, 2009 at 9:21 am
laptop battery
laptop batteries
February 8th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
laptop battery
February 9th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
KuM7cH hi! hooli?
March 1st, 2009 at 6:11 am
viagra
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 am
levitraIt is the coolest site,keep so!
March 11th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Incredible site!
March 17th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:28 am
tramadol
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 am
Great site. Good info
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:24 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Very interesting site, Hope it will always be alive! viagra