The De-Modernization of America
M. Orhan Tarhan
June 20, 2007
The United States is the wealthiest and most modern country in the world. But, President George W. Bush is changing some of the most basic characteristics of this society and risks to destroy it.
The Europeans fought for 400 years to break the power of the church and to separate church from state. They did scientific research and used its products to improve the lives of the common men. They learned to make their daily decisions based on science and technology and not based on religion, tradition, and superstition. Rational thinking and acting became the mark of the West. These changes made them superior to the rest of the world, so that they could colonize most of the rest of the world.
When America was discovered, West Europeans occupied it and they brought with them the European habits responsible for their superiority. When the United States was founded, our third president Thomas Jefferson added the separation of church and state to the constitution and this has been the law of the land ever since. This made Europe and America the most modern countries in the world. Americans were the people who first went to the moon. They were the ones who continued the exploration of most of the solar system. However, ever since George W. Bush became president, things have begun to change.
President George W. Bush is making his daily decisions based on religion. He espouses the banning of abortion, the prohibition of stem cells, the funding of faith-based organizations for various purposes, the preference of the Bible-based conception of “Intelligent Design” to the scientific evolution theory accepted by the whole civilized Western World, and the introduction of prayer to public schools. He thinks and acts irrationally in his desire of propagating democracy to the Islamic countries.. About a century ago Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had observed that most of the above attitudes of President Bush existed in the crumbling Ottoman Empire and were causing its further downfall. In order to save the Turkish people from disappearing from history, he convinced them after 1923 to adopt the modernization characteristics of the West and succeeded in changing the identity of most Turks to a Western people. The United States has been the most modern and the strongest power in the World, a society that has the best universities, and a society that does most of the research in the world. If the American people do not awaken and reverse the course given to the United States by President Bush, we will start sliding back and, Heaven forbid, go the way of the Ottoman Empire. What President Bush is trying to achieve may be called the De-Modernization of America.
I wished that some one convinces him that his actions are first against the separation of church and state, and second, they are extremely destructive to the United States.
The Europeans fought for 400 years to break the power of the church and to separate church from state. They did scientific research and used its products to improve the lives of the common men. They learned to make their daily decisions based on science and technology and not based on religion, tradition, and superstition. Rational thinking and acting became the mark of the West. These changes made them superior to the rest of the world, so that they could colonize most of the rest of the world.
When America was discovered, West Europeans occupied it and they brought with them the European habits responsible for their superiority. When the United States was founded, our third president Thomas Jefferson added the separation of church and state to the constitution and this has been the law of the land ever since. This made Europe and America the most modern countries in the world. Americans were the people who first went to the moon. They were the ones who continued the exploration of most of the solar system. However, ever since George W. Bush became president, things have begun to change.
President George W. Bush is making his daily decisions based on religion. He espouses the banning of abortion, the prohibition of stem cells, the funding of faith-based organizations for various purposes, the preference of the Bible-based conception of “Intelligent Design” to the scientific evolution theory accepted by the whole civilized Western World, and the introduction of prayer to public schools. He thinks and acts irrationally in his desire of propagating democracy to the Islamic countries.. About a century ago Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had observed that most of the above attitudes of President Bush existed in the crumbling Ottoman Empire and were causing its further downfall. In order to save the Turkish people from disappearing from history, he convinced them after 1923 to adopt the modernization characteristics of the West and succeeded in changing the identity of most Turks to a Western people. The United States has been the most modern and the strongest power in the World, a society that has the best universities, and a society that does most of the research in the world. If the American people do not awaken and reverse the course given to the United States by President Bush, we will start sliding back and, Heaven forbid, go the way of the Ottoman Empire. What President Bush is trying to achieve may be called the De-Modernization of America.
I wished that some one convinces him that his actions are first against the separation of church and state, and second, they are extremely destructive to the United States.