Frendship Quotes
“Liberalism” was a catch all Chinese term at the time which was very derogatory in Communist vernacular very much like the negative connotation of liberalism to American Conservatives at the turn of the millennium 1990-2010.
This is a proverb reflecting a major difference between Arab traditions of justice and that of most Western societies where guilt is not to be vested upon family and friends of a person who commits a crime. While Western jurisprudence recognizes harboring a fugitive as a crime, it is always considered a less heinous crime than the original murderer, robber or whatever. However, in the Bedouin tradition the befriender of the criminal is guilty of the same crime and deserves the same punishment as the criminal. Ironically, Arabs are not the only people with this notion. Sephardic Jews (whose roots and origins are from Spain and the Middle East and who spent many generations in Arab dominated and controlled lands tended to use a different standard from the traditional European Jews with regard to retaliation for acts of terrorism and often used the principle illustrated by this proverb to justify bulldozing the homes of terrorists even after they were dead and attacking associates of leaders of terrorist organizations.
This is one of the proverbs of King Solomon of the Jews, son of King David.
At the time, he was president of a de facto Puppet state of the soviet Union. However, many Afghans paid him no heed, and attacked Russians and their assets in Afghanistan with the object of driving the Russians out which they finally did.
Gennadios II, 1400-1473, had been taken as a prisoner when the Ottomans captured Constantinople 3 days earlier. Despite the fact that there was doctrine that said that Islam should be the only religion, Mehmed—only 21 at the time—realized that he had to rule the city including the many Greek Orthodox and had Gennadios freed and personally invested him as the Petrarch of the Eastern Christian Church. Mehmed was particularly shrewd in his choice. Gennadios had been a strong opponent of the Union movement of Eastern and Western Christian Churches would end their schism and reunite. See {635099} for another notable who was vehemently opposed to Union. There were some Unionists among the defeated Christians who were still alive. The last thing strategically that the Ottoman’s wanted was for Union to have traction and the Eastern Christians of Constantinople looking to the Western Christians led by the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Christian European Kings for an alliance to eject the Ottomans from and retake Constantinople. The graphic depicts Mehmed investing Gennadios—a practice that was followed with each new Patriarch and the Sultan then in office. See {635084} for another quotation describing Ottoman pragmatic religious tolerance. One of Mehmed’s historical heroes was Alexander the Great who was able to rule most of the known world in large part because of his education by Aristotle advising him to be very tolerant of conquered people’s cultures, religious and otherwise. Mehmed, after his death, came under criticism from ultra orthodox Muslims including his own son and successor, for his religious tolerance and emulating a non-believer—Alexander the Great.
The Koran is even more discriminatory regarding Jewish & Christian clerics: {584380}.
Many cultures and nations, even after a century will not admit to the human rights violations that previous governments might have committed. Most dramatic is the Turkish government's not even allowing studies or discussions about the organized government mass murders of citizens of Armenian extraction—–the so called "Armenian Genocide ", but even in his native Poland there was and has been little admission of those Poles who collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis in the murder of millions of polish citizens and stole the residences, farms and other properties of Jews and other Poles who the Germans sent to concentration camps and even for the few who survived threatened them with death when they returned to reclaim their own property. Most modern societies have great difficulty coming to grips with police brutality and often denying that it is an endemic problem as opposed to one or two "bad apples".
Of all the defenses is American slavery, this one is probably the most absurd. If it were remotely true, this may have been the only example in human history where people were beaten, debauched, tortured, murdered and degraded by their “friends.”
The Congress was debating President Johnson’s Voting Rights Bill. Southern Democrats and Conservative Republicans were opposed to legislation that would prevent states from discriminating against Black and other minority voters. Johnson needed the support of minority leader Dirksen and the moderate Republicans. Dirksen was at the White House discussing the strategy for the passage of the bill. This quotation illustrates the “partisanship of the day” where opponents were quite friendly even when they were “denouncing” each other, The venom and personal disrespect and hatred of the beginning of the 21st century was absent in the 1960s even though the most radical and controversial legislation was being debated. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Non Discrimination in Housing and Medicare were all passed that year with filibusters and cloture votes. Yet there was always comity.
