Questions for Muslim Candidates
No more softball
The essay, below, briefly discusses how
the Judeo-Christian tradition affected American democracy. It summarizes how
Protestant America reacted to Catholic candidates. It ends with questions that
should be put to Muslim candidates.
Part One: A Brief Look at the Impact of America's Judeo-Christian Foundation.
At his peaceful home overlooking the bay of Argos, the poet Linos of Lerna, who was with the Argives at Troy and served for a time as Agamemnon’s personal chronicler, decides to set the historical record straight.
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The excerpt, below, is interesting! Thank you to Michal for sharing it.
Here is an excerpt from the ending of Chapter Two. The poet Linos is talking to his helper, Glaukos:
"As for the story of the Trojan
campaign, you and I both know, my boy, that the spur for Agamemnon’s enterprise
was primarily the lust for conquest and booty and an opportunistic land-grab at
the expense of the isolated Trojans. Helen’s abduction may have been the
motivation for Menelaus himself, but it only served as a convenient pretext for
Agamemnon.
Of course, the entire thing is now being painted by Menelaus and his
acolytes as some kind of mythical quest of divine origin, with the abduction of
Helen coming to the fore and increasingly being proposed as the one and only
legitimate cause for the Achaeans to make war on the wealthy city of Troy with
its fertile lands and its world-famous horses.
But the Spartan propagandists
and spinners of Menelaus are also engaged in something quite sinister. They are
already doing their utmost to try to shift the blame for the war onto the
Trojans. The perpetrator is beginning to blame the victim. The glaring example
that springs immediately to mind is the expression ‘Trojan Horse’.
How so, sir?
Think about it, Glaukos. The famous
Trojan Horse. The wooden horse was constructed by the Achaeans and was left on
the Trojan shore. Should it not be called the Achaean Horse or the Argive Horse
or the Danaan Horse? Or perhaps the Horse of Odysseus, after the man who
thought of it, or the Horse of Epeius after the actual architect?
No, the
revisionists at the court of Menelaus have successfully labelled it a ‘Trojan
Horse’, supposedly on the grounds that it was built in Troyland of Trojan wood.
What they are actually doing, of course, is subtly and deliberately trying to
conflate victim and aggressor. Any surviving Trojans who hear the story of the
ruin and burning of Troy will recall not only the horror of the desperate
fighting and carnage and atrocities committed upon the civilians of Troy, not
to mention the total devastation and destruction of the city, but they will
also suffer the added indignity of having the engine of their destruction
labelled as ‘Trojan’.
And, judging by the frequency of the use of this phrase
by now – I had to remonstrate with that minstrel fellow for using it – I
wouldn’t be at all surprised if this expression becomes the generally accepted
shortcut in future ages.
I had never considered that, venerable
sir.
Thersites was one of those who
understood the value of propaganda quite early on. “In the long run, propaganda
can be more effective than a sword-thrust,” was one of his maxims. We may be
fighting a losing battle against the revisionists of Menelaus, but fight we
must, Glaukos. We owe it to the inhabitants of Troy, who may not have had a
perfect society, but who certainly did not start the war nor do they deserve
the kind of denigration which is being heaped upon them by the victors.
There
were certainly xenophobes among them, and far be it from me to defend the
indefensible, but on the whole, they were no more and no less xenophobic than
any other society of the region. Far be it from me to be an apologist for
injustice and I did, after all, take part in the campaign against them, because
we all believed they had transgressed against the gods by abducting Helen, and
I was one of the many among us who believed that much more should have been
done by way of diplomacy, but I am not biased either for them or against them.
I can understand that Menelaus might want to present some kind of justification
for his own and his brother’s actions, but aggression must be called out for
what it is and no amount of revision will disguise that and no amount of
myth-making can convince posterity that the Trojans were the architects of
their own downfall or somehow deserve to be collectively slandered, much less
deserved to be obliterated in the first place."
