two very different, both thoughtful, takes on why & what's next

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For two very different, thought provoking points of view, I recommend the 
following:

1)  from Jerry Pournelle (long time Byte columnist, also PhD in Political 
Science with a background that includes Defence and Space related work and 
analysis, and many Science Fiction novels -- and this hosted web site with a 
'day book' that often deals with matters very technical and computer oriented, 
but also with current events)

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/currentview.html

(the above points to current week, from next monday on it will be archived as 
prior week, then by date)

and if you go that far be sure to take the link

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/war/whattodo.html

And

2) in pretty much complete counterpoint, Michael Finley who sends out his own 
columns a couple of times a week (sometimes very good, sometimes on tech topics 
- I recommend subscribing) sent this:

  Michael Finley <mfinley@mfinley.com> wrote: To: mfinley@topica.com
From: Michael Finley
Subject: "By the waters of Babylon"
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 01:59:23 +0000
Reply-to: mfinley@mfinley.com

A friend of mine, Richard Broderick, asked if I would post this on the
listserver. It's an interesting alternative to a lot of what we've been
hearing the past few days. If you have a comment, I can pass it on to
Rich.

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON
The Old Testament and the “Attack on America”

by Richard Broderick

In the Book of Genesis, there is a deeply instructive story about a
rich, arrogant, and heedless people who attempt to build a tower that
will reach heaven itself as a monument to their own godlike power. This
is a people who have long ago forgotten their humble beginnings, who
have forsaken the strictures of their Creator, who have come to mistake
might and money for righteousness, and who have fallen into the fateful
trap of believing they are in control of fate and can escape the
consequences of their actions.

Well, we know how that story ends. Just as construction nears
completion, the building collapses and the people, who have heretofore
spoken a single language, find themselves jabbering in mutually
unintelligible tongues. Instantly divided into tiny bands, they scatter
to the four winds. Impoverished, fearful, stripped of their pretensions
by God’s judgement on the sin of pride, they are once more put in touch
with their inescapable vulnerability. In other words, chastened for
their wickedness. From this story about the Tower of Babel we derive, of
course, the word babble, a kind of speech in which sound is divorced
from meaning.

Babble is mostly what we have been hearing from people in authority and
from media pundits since the attacks in New York and Washington. Perhaps
because we have been assaulted by a steady stream of rhetoric divorced
from reality, a country that takes great pride in its Judeo-Christian
heritage has overlooked the obvious parallels between the destruction of
the Tower of Babel and the destruction of the Twin Trade Towers.

In the story of the Tower of Babel hubris is epitomized by the way the
people have come to abuse the gift of a single, unifying tongue,
perceiving it as something to which they are entitled – and which cannot
be taken away from them. It is, they believe, their birthright. In the
contemporary story of the Twin Trade Towers, our own hubris is
epitomized by the greedy expectation that globablization cannot fail to
knit us together in a single “total market,” as some financial
“idealists” call it – into a world in which the values of the market
have penetrated every inch of the globe, including the inner space of
the human soul. A world, in short, in which there is only one God and
the Global Market is His Name.

That hubris, in turn, includes the heedlessness of a people who enjoy
the gift of unparalleled wealth in the midst of, and in large part on
the back of, the off-stage suffering and oppression of two-thirds of the
earth’s population, of a people who have come to believe that this
wealth is not a gift, but something to which they are entitled – a
birthright that no one, not even God, can take away. Of a people who
listen to their leader proclaim that their “high consumption lifestyle”
is “blessed” and do not wince with shame or quake in holy terror.

This is indeed a time for mourning and prayer. But in the midst of our
grief and lamentation, what we need now is not politicians falling all
over themselves to proclaim our innocence – politicians who themselves
embody the very worst of our collective arrogance, shallowness,
venality, and puffed-up sense of entitlement. What we need now are not
pundits declaring that no possible reason can be found for this attack
upon us.

What we need now is a prophetic voice — maybe two or three. We need an
Isaiah or a Jeremiah, harsh men who directed their anger not at external
enemies but at the waywardness of their own people. We need prophets
demanding that we look upon these events and ask ourselves what it is we
have done – or not done – to call this savage retribution down upon our
heads. We need voices rising up not to placate us with empty talk about
how the People of Israel surely could not deserve such punishment, or to
divert our attention with bombast about wreaking vengeance on others,
but to remind us that the very belief that human beings are in control
of their own destiny is a kind of blasphemy, that overweening wealth in
and of itself is a sin, that selfishness is a transgression which a Just
and Merciful God will punish in order to put His children back on the
path of righteousness.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln warned his countrymen
that even though the Civil War appeared to be drawing to a close,
Almighty God might decide it should continue until every drop of sweat
wrung from the brow of the slaves was repaid with a drop of blood on the
battlefield – and that there would be nothing that anyone could do to
prevent this should God deem it necessary.

In the 135 years since this prophetic restatement of true
Judeo-Christian values, we seem to have forgotten about the moral order
that prevails in the universe – a moral order that, if tipped off
balance, will redress collective guilt by punishing the innocent along
with the wicked.

In the days and weeks ahead, let’s hope we find the strength not just to
lash out, but to look inward, at what this prophetic destruction of our
own Tower of Babel is trying tell us. As Jews and Christians, let’s hope
we pause to ask ourselves what Isaiah or Jeremiah – or for that matter,
Jesus – would be saying to us right now about our waywardness. Instead
of gnashing our teeth in self-pity, let us instead sit ourselves down by
the waters of Babylon and, yea, weep for Zion.

— Richard Broderick wrote an award-winning column for the Minnesota
Journal of Law & Politics

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