WORLD SALVATION THROUGH CULTURE                                                                                                        (文化救世)

Korea's policy of nation rebuiding with culture(文化立国) marks a pivoting point in human civilization.  It has touched the hearts of many a culturally devoted people of the world and demonstrated the first viable challenge to the present course of anti-cultural, materialistic endeavers to improve our environment rather than ourselves.  In fact, the Koreans have shown us culture can be used to save a nation.

The overwhelming success of the Korean program has produced many sour grapes in China.  The leading Chinese artists are crying plagiarism.  The culture Korea used to rebuild the nation is the Chinese culture.  Little did they realize it's also the culture that they have trashed in the last century.  Faced with militatry threats from the western barbarians, that trashing, however, was fully justified.  But refusal to revive it now is not. Being the biggest country in the world, China's responsibility to the world must extend beyond her border. 

China must use culture to save the entire world.

As the first step, China must revive her own culture, learning from Korea how to do it if that's what it takes.  China must become a leading example to all those Asian nations that share the common culture, as well as racial, root with China.  China must make it her diplomatic goal to unify with these nations through mutual cultural conversion by pushing aside the Western approaches of imposing political systems on each other backed by military might.

Specifically, China must take advantage of the opportunity of the world's emerging interest in learning Chinese.  China must introduce the language to the world as the embodiment of thousands years of Chinese culture, which all Asians inherited.  Someone once defined the Chinese people as people who speaks Chinese.

In terms of mass media, the Asian countries must work together to offer a united front to introduce to the western audiences their culture by ways of movies and TV series as the Korean has taken the first step.  This requires the skills of intercultural  persons, that fortunately are aplenty. But unfortunately, they are now preoccupied with verbal sparring against Western anti-culture forces that typically leads nowhere.  However, if mobilized into a culture-bridging tool, this would be an unstoppable army of word soldiers that would finally wake up the humanity to the precious heritage of Asian culture.  We must transform the present predatory society of democracy, freedom, equality and human rights into a harmonious society of fellowship of men.  Unless the cause of our current dispute is genetic, or if we rather have the religious fundamentalists push their causes, along with humanity, over the deep end, we may do well to let culture lead us down the road to an one Earth one people.

                                      Appendix: The Western Approach
                              (plagiarism of comments in Amazon.com)
 
As proposed in his book:"The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?", Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, offered the following approach.

In 1941, the West stood together against the forces of barbarism. They need to do so again. This urgently needed book explains why, and how.

Blankley basic premise is that the free thinking, democratically minded west is being asaulted by the closed, fascist oriented peoples from the region sandwiched between India and Europe.

But the message the radical imams preach to the deracinated young is a militant one. If you wish eternal life, pray five times a day to Mecca, fast during Ramadan, reject the alcohol, drugs, music, and immorality on offer from the satanic Western popular culture, and stand by the umma.

The political message is more toxic. Islam’s eternal enemy is the Crusader West. The irreconcilable conflict has lasted for 1,400 years. While Islam was dominant in the first millennium, the West conquered in more recent times, and Islamic nations were colonized and their peoples oppressed. But today Islam is rising and the West retreating. America, Britain, and Israel still occupy Arab and Islamic lands, and they are all in transparent retreat.

Today's analogy is the Internet - Blakely sees it as making militant Islam's growth possible, and notes that militant Islam sites have grown from 12 to about 2,000 in only a few years. (Blankley also points out a parallel growth in the U.S. of Protestant evangelists since the Roe vs. Wade decision.)

Blankley has a chapter on the actions America took during WWII - enlisting directors like John Ford and Frank Capra to make patriotic morale-boosting movies, censoring the broadcast of economic plans or criticism of physical equipment or troop morale, travel restrictions, etc, and in doing so shows how the Patriot Act is a fraction of what American once did to fight the enemy. He says that Americans during WWII were a little less concerned about rights, and more concerned about what the damage the enemy could inflict.

He proposed that secular Europeans will have to return to the church if they are to have any hopes of conquering the jihad threat.The solutions that Blankley offers seek to devaluate the influence of both multiculturalism and political correctness, while at the same time, returning the tenets of liberalism to a state of higher confidence.

Blankley would do this by encouraging religious proselytization by Americans (about 10% regularly attend church in Europe, vs. 50% in the U.S.
(section from a previous posting)
Moves Blankley believes we must take now: Formally declare war on radical Islam. Give Bush the same war powers FDR had. Should he need more, amend the Constitution. Permit wartime censorship. Give the government the right to inspect mail and e-mail to protect the national security. Secure our borders. Use ethnic profiling when checking airline passengers. Create a biometric national ID card. Deport all non-citizens who agitate for violence against our society or government. Expand the U.S. armed forces by hundreds of thousands of troops to deal with new Afghanistans and Iraqs.


                                               

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