It seems to me that all Doug wants to say in response to me is generally "fuck you," regardless of the length of my post, no matter what its content is. The Azmi Bishara article, for instance, was merely four paragraphs, as Mideastwire did not provide the full translation of the longer original article in Al Hayat . Doug somehow took it to be an article by "a parliamentarian in a religion-based state to defend the principle of religion-based states" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070723/013899.html>).
He was wrong about the identity of the author (Israel, if anything, is based upon ethnic nationalism), which he admits, but he was also wrong about the content of the article, too: Bishara doesn't defend "the principle of religion-based states" in the article and rather criticizes Islamic parties in the Arab region that act as if the victory of the AKP, an Islamic party abiding by the principle of a secular state, were their own, when many of them have yet to make it clear that they would follow the same principle, even as he criticizes secular parties and regimes that prioritize secularism at the expense of democracy. If an author who is actually from "a religion-based state," as Doug initially thought Bishara was, wrote an article like Bishara's, however, the argument would be just as valid and perhaps more cogent. Doug's response is rooted in a mental block, of a similar sort that doesn't allow Chuck to consider other questions than if Castro is a dictator or if Chavez sucks. Such mental blocks, imho, really dumb down discussion. A fair moderator might try to elevate the level of discussion rather than lower it himself. -- Yoshie