Another Global View
Kudos to Mr. [UT President John] Shumaker and the UT Programs Abroad Office for working to expand opportunities for students to study abroad. My best experiences as a UT undergrad were spent living and working abroad, as well as learning from visiting international students and professors on campus.
My time abroad taught me more than I could ever learn in a classroom about life outside the United States and about my role as a responsible global citizen.
As the editor shifts his [Editor's Corner, June 26] column to talk about the global economy, I remember vividly much of what I have seen abroad as I have met workers producing for U.S. firms and consumers. As I follow the trail of U.S. companies, moving thousands of Knoxville jobs to a lower-wage workforce in Mexico, then leaving Mexican workers behind as they move production on to China, I remember all of the good-hearted people I have met at home and abroad and question if this is "the way of the world."
Economic growth is needed to reduce poverty, but the growth we have seen through factory production "shifts" from country to country is not providing sustainable growth for workers in Knoxville, Mexico or China. China, home to a quarter of the world's population, 1.5 billion people, has an average manufacturing wage of less than 50 cents per day, a wage that keeps Chinese
workers in poverty while they work under some of the worst human rights conditions in the world.
The "free" market is governed not only by supply and demand, but also by volumes of legislation. This legislation has failed to provide adequate support to workers dislocated by foreign imports and job exports, while continuing to fail to raise human rights standards globally.
I want to see international trade legislation raise global standards instead of relaxing the standards won by the diligent efforts of citizen organization. As a globalist committed to building a nurturing and sustainable global community, I believe a different type of globalization that raises global standards is possible and will continue to work with others towards this end.
Kristi Disney
Greenback
Keep On Challenging
I am concerned about your choice to eliminate Attica Scott as the columnist of Color Conscious from your paper. One is hard pressed to find any outlet for intelligent public discussion about race in this region. I was encouraged that Metro Pulse took the risk to open the forum in the publication of Ms. Scott's column and the responses to her views. So, suffice it to say, I am discouraged that you have silenced a voice that presented a strong, and to some, controversial perspective on race and racism in this community.
It seems that part of what Ms. Scott was offering to us was that we, as white people, are in a position to not have to face the struggles of racism if we choose not to. And it seems that Metro Pulse's decision to eliminate her voice proved her point sadly enough. I expected more from this publication.
My hope is that your attempt to diversify opinions on the subject of race and racism will be as engaging and challenging to our community as Ms. Scott's views have been. This community can only benefit from such a challenge.
Betsy Deeter
Knoxville
Basic Rebuttal
Smearing Christians remains great leftist sport. In this wearisome malignant tone, Massimo Pigliucci ("Rationally Speaking" June 26) departs from reason, spewing out an article so full of fallacy as to be a study piece.
First, understand what Mr. Pigliucci omitted: he is an atheist who publicly advocates his own beliefs. Terrorism is merely the platform from which he launches this latest attack on Christianity.
Next, observe how he proceeds. First, the gross but selective generalization: it is "fundamentalism" that curses the world, not terrorist mayhem. Then, he turns the focus knob to identify religious fundamentalism as the demon. Finally, he quickly works his way to his true target, Christianity. He dismisses what he calls "political fundamentalism," blithely sidestepping millions of corpses left in the wake of atheist terror manifested in communist China, the communist Soviet Union, and communist North Korea, all passionately atheist regimes. His subtle gospel is that atheists must save the world from delusional idiots (terrorists and Christians) clinging stupidly to their gods.
Finally, in a breathtakingly absurd generalization, George Bush, Gary Bauer and (unstated but implied) those neighbors of yours at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church or Calvary Baptist morph into bin Laden-like "fundamentalists?" Apparently, if you actually believe that God exists, and believe further that He matters, then you are a fundamentalist. You rascally church members, you. You're not fooling Mr. Pigliucci! You might as well be walking around in suicide bomber vests instead of polo shirts.
For fun, let's parody his logic. Mr. Pigliucci, are you not fervent in your atheist belief? And, I have heard you publicly preach atheism. I suppose that this makes you a fundamentalist, evangelical atheist. Therefore, Mr. Pigliucci, you join this most dangerous group you denounce.
In your zeal to revile Christians, Mr. Pigliucci, you fail to probe that one more layer deeper into the psyche of hate-consumed terrorist murderers. Mass murderers first de-humanize the victims. To enslave, rape, murder, and to fly jetliners into occupied office space, your victims must be deemed things less than people, unworthy of mercy or continued existence. Muslim terrorists divide the entire rest of the world into two groups: the faithful and the infidel. Infidels are enemies of God; therefore, rationally speaking, eradicate them.
Your atheist Communists rationally followed your own worldview to its horrific conclusion, and the Soviets and Chinese people became nothing more than mechanistic tools of the state. Once relegated to the status of expendable machine parts, killing them was easy. This is the horrible truth that your antipathy toward God causes you to miss. Indeed, your own article hints chillingly that ridding us of George Bush and all other Christians is our only salvation, and who better to do this, than the right-thinking atheist?
In your atheist worldview, we are all accidental stuff, just noisy protoplasm. Perhaps you and I are noisier than most, but, really, Mr. Pigliucci, are you not haunted by the fact that—if you are correct—torture, rape, suicide bombings, concentration camps, poisoning the environment, scorning the homeless and mass murder just do not really matter?
Mike Mollenhour
Knoxville
Greed for Power
Masssimo Pigliucci wrote an interesting article [June 26] about religious fundamentalism in the modern world. His opinions are valid and may be of the best, but they are still that—opinions. Castro may not be universally popular, but the man accomplished something extraordinary and with little means. The only way to bring equality is to make everyone equally poor, and perhaps there is some satisfaction for them in making it on their own as opposed to what is often the case. In, for example, banana republics, [that means] being poor minions for a rich corporation within some shell of a democracy. If popular music is an acid test, then the Cubans have some joy of life that is now, at least in part, missing in the States. Money alone is not what makes us content. And no, I don't want to move there.
Mr. Pigliucci further asserts that religious fundamentalism is the "real problem." He later goes on to contradict or to correct himself by saying that it is the "greed for power" which taps in to religious fundamentalism and is "therefore the problem." So the title of his essay should read It's the Greed for Power, Stupid! Either way it is, rather sadly, not a perfect world.
I would like to take issue with one point. Mr. Pigliucci says that fundamentalists of any sort are "...ill suited to live within a democratic and pluralistic society...." Fundamentalism is one of the things that make a pluralistic society pluralistic. Like the implied irony in nonconformist jokes (nonconformists unite!), you can't qualify that which is allowed as a component of a pluralistic society. In a free society people are free to be extremists. By the same reasoning, others are free to be intolerant of the extremist's intolerance.
There are a couple of things I would like to compliment our author on. He puts Christian and Muslim fundamentalism on a par. This is a refreshing twist and hits closer to the truth than the ethnocentric carte blanche often given to our side's rabble rousers. And he has broached the taboo of Knoxville's media by mentioning Benyamin Elon who has, among others, "called for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians".
I shall close with my own opinion, and I shall dispense with the generalities. There is a fear of Muslim extremists in the United States. A righteous man does not fear retaliation. In the results of one poll, 70 percent of the people thought there would be a greater likelihood of terrorist attacks after, rather than before, the Halliburton-Iraq war. If you can call it a war—what has been called a bait and switch, sell Osama and switch to Saddam. Killing more and more people on the off chance that they might possibly, who knows, kill us first does not make us safer. I leave it to the readers to hash this one out for themselves.
Robert Minick
Knoxville
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