Iranian Crisis Escalates
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Turkey on January 19, Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned his country’s Arab neighbors against aligning themselves too closely with the United States in the ongoing crisis over Tehran’s nuclear program. Saudi Arabia was particularly vocal in its condemnation of Iran’s warning last month that it might close the Strait of Hormuz—through which one-third of the world’s seaborne oil passes daily—if the United States and her allies apply sanctions against Iranian oil exports.
A day earlier Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said American troops in the Persian Gulf region do not require any build-up for a possible military conflict with Iran. “We are not making any special steps at this point in order to deal with the situation,” he said. “Why? Because, frankly, we are fully prepared to deal with that situation now,” Panetta explained.
In the meantime the European Union is on track to agree to an oil embargo against Iran at the EU foreign ministers’ meeting next week.
The latest rhetorical escalation follows President Obama’s decision on December 31 to apply sanctions against any institution dealing with Iran’s central bank, effectively making it impossible for most countries to buy Iranian crude oil.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao criticized the U.S. position in comments published on January 19, and on the same day foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said that “sanctions and military threats will not help solve the problem but only aggravate the situation.”
On Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the military option mooted by U.S. would ignite a disastrous, widespread Middle East war. “Unilateral sanctions against Iran has nothing in common with the desire to keep the nuclear weapons nonproliferation regime unshaken,” Lavrov said.
Unsurprisingly, the neoconservative advocates of a preventive war against Iran are delighted. They see Tehran’s threat to block the Strait of Hormuz as a “golden opportunity” to force the issue by military means:
A military plan would have to include the elimination of the offending Iranian ships or submarines laying mines, and the destruction of missiles that might menace shipping. Most of Iran's navy would find itself gracing the bottom of the sea as a result. Meanwhile, major U.S. Marine amphibious landings on Iran's coast and Army airborne drops deep inside the sparsely populated Hormozgan region would have to create a physical cordon and an occupied buffer zone between Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. It would be a very long time before the West gave this territory back to Iran.
Furthermore, the argument goes, by seizing Hormozgan, the West would have a forward base within Iran from which to conduct attacks on known nuclear sites: “Strike aircraft (and, more worrisome to Iran's regime, Special Forces troops) would be just 60 to 90 minutes away from Iranian nuclear sites. Iran's threat to block the Strait of Hormuz has given the West new options.”
The issue that remains moot is not whether Iran is developing a nuclear weapon—let us assume that this is a documented fact, though it is not—but whether an Iranian nuclear weapon would be a threat to the United States. What are the motives of the Iranian decisionmakers? To threaten Europe, thus necessitating an American antimissile shield along Russia’s western borders in Central Europe? To threaten the United States even, regardless of a guaranteed hundred-fold retaliation to any attack? Or to protect Iran from what her leaders perceive to be a threatening environment?
Iran has one neighbor to the west and another to the northeast who were both invaded by the United States over the past 11 years. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq would have been invaded had they actually possessed weapons of mass destruction. Iran’s eastern neighbor is Pakistan, an unstable and unpredictable nuclear power. In the wider neighborhood there are two other key players with an atomic arsenal, India and Israel, with Turkey not far behind. Under the circumstances, having an independent nuclear deterrent is a perfectly rational option for the government in Tehran to pursue—any Iranian government, Islamist or secular, monarchist or republican, pro- or anti-Western. That option is based on the realities of the security equation and not on the millenarian zeal of Shi’ite fanaticism or on genocidal Jewhatred, as the proponents of war would have us believe. Even if Iran were to garner an arsenal of a dozen devices, which would take a decade at least, the overall strategic balance would remain fundamentally unaltered. Indeed, the political climate in the region may actually improve: Iran would feel safe from an American attack and therefore at least potentially less likely to indulge in destabilizing proxy interventions in the region, notably in Lebanon.
Israel may have reason to feel threatened by Iran’s long-term plans, but it is up to Israel to consider her options and to act accordingly. She may well decide on a robust response, like her bombing of the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq in 1981, with all the attendant risks and uncertainties. She should not expect the United States to do the job on her behalf, however.
The Saudis would also feel uncomfortable with a nuclear-armed Iran across the Gulf, and that would be a good thing. The more the royal kleptocrats in Riyadh focus on potential threats in the neighborhood, the less likely they are to escalate their global proliferation of Islamic extremism, which they have lavishly financed for decades. In any event, as the example of North Korea shows, the possession of the bomb by a single actor does not necessarily lead to a sudden nuclear rush in the region.
The second objection is technical. Regardless of its formal or substantial justification, can a U.S. war against Iran be kept limited and winnable? The initial intent may be to execute bombing raids against a dozen or perhaps two-dozen specific targets, but would that merely set Iran’s efforts back by two or three years? And what if Iran retaliates by detonating dirty bombs in downtown Tel Aviv and midtown Manhattan? What if the Iranians treat a U.S. attack not as a limited action that, in the War Party’s calculus, would produce a limited response, but as an existential struggle comparable to Khomeini’s all-out reply to Saddam’s attack 30 years ago?
If the Iranians respond forcefully, the advocates of limited air strikes against nuclear installations are certain to demand troops on the ground, regardless of risks and consequences, because our “credibility” would be at stake. In reality, America’s credibility would be terminally undermined by the resulting Iranian quagmire. An all-out “Operation Iranian Freedom” is not a rational option, because even with our unsurpassed military capabilities, the United States would not be able to mount a full-fledged invasion.
The third predictable consequence of a U.S. attack on Iran would be a global economic meltdown of unprecedented severity and magnitude. Not only would Iran’s output of some four million barrels per day be halted, but the maritime traffic through the Straits of Hormuz would come to a standstill for months on end—regardless of outcome. The resulting global energy crisis would make the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War pale in comparison, pushing a barrel to $300 within weeks and making the economic and financial crises of the past three years in Europe and the United States seem like the good old days.
Last but not least, we’d witness internal consolidation of the Iranian regime, a calcified theocracy devoid of ideas and solutions as it faces economic stagnation and political tensions. Domestic squabbles and the infighting of recent months would be forgotten, and any sign of opposition to the regime would be equated with treason. There would be no Iranian Spring for decades to come. On the other hand, without the unifying effect of an external threat the mullahs’ regime may yet prove more vulnerable to implosion than we would otherwise suspect.
Instead of considering a military action against Iran with no clear exit strategy at a prohibitive cost to our core interests, Washington would be well advised to prepare a strategy for dealing with Iran—even as a putative nuclear power. Deterring and containing Iran would be easier than deterring and containing the Soviets 50 years ago. The country’s regime, admittedly unpleasant, is neither suicidal nor tainted by the blood of untold millions, as the two communist nuclear powers had been.
Real concerns about Iran’s nuclear program exist; they are also present in Moscow and Beijing. It is still possible and politically profitable for Washington to pursue bilateral diplomacy based on an offer of U.S. security guarantees to Iran in return for a rigorous supervision regime and a formal pledge that Iran refrain from developing nuclear weapons. A reasonable agreement would also allow Iran to enrich uranium to the extent needed for power generation and accept Iran’s right to the enrichment technology, so long as she agrees to subject her entire nuclear program to international oversight.
By pursuing sanctions similar in intent and likely consequences to FDR’s sanctions against Japan in 1941, the Obama administration may produce similar outcomes. That would be a disaster for all concerned.
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Another perceptive post by the indispensable Dr. Trifkovic. His important distinction between Iran with nukes and the Communist giants is particularly insightful; the West and the US managed nearly a half-century with the Soviets' vast nuclear arsenal so we could certainly deal with an Iran with but a handful of nukes at most.
Iran's acquisition of a weapon would be frightening -as would any proliferation - but understandable when you consider the plight of its non-nuclear neighbors in the past decade or so. While its rhetoric vis-a-vis Israel and the US has been careless and unseemly, it is most unlikely to launch any attack on an Israel holding the key to hundreds of nukes, led by the war-like Likuds and able to count on the US arsenal to be there to render into rubble anything they might have missed themselves.
The peace" candidate Obama has displayed his eagerness to meddle in the region already, and the neo-con Three Stooges at the top of the GOP roster breathlessly await war on Iran like a child awaits Santa on Christmas eve. In some of the debates these folks have made it seem they would go further to protect Israel from a threat -real or imagined - than they would Ohio or Alabama.
The record of neo-con policy failures in the region is clear, yet the drive for more of the same continues. This is the unhappy harvest of leadership that is directed by policy makers who are historically blind, militarily ignorant and culturally and linguistically crippled. Where once we had people like George Kennan, we now have people like Richard Perle. Ora pro nobis.
Dr. Trifkovic, I had a foreign policy question, with reference to this very topic.
Kim Jong Il pursued a nuclear weapons program, and won over massive concessions from American government and the Western world, including huge food subsidies, through his nuclear blackmail.
Muammar Gadaffi gave up his nuclear weapons program in return for better relations with the West, and was repaid with a forced regime change on his soil.
Does this establish a precedent that has it now make more sense than ever for every dictator or elected leader across the globe to amass nuclear weapons and keep their neutrality? That maybe everyone from Malaysians to South Africans to Brazilians must now keep nuclear weapons to avoid taking sides with the Americans or Chinese or Russians?
Indeed it does. Had Saddam had a bomb, he'd still be in power. Global interventionism gives an impetus to proliferation.
I am never quite sure and will likely pass from this earth being never quite sure whether our aggression in the Middle East is driven by Israeli interests, pushed and plied by their advocates and apologists here and elsewhere, or whether the interests of Israel are merely a stalking horse for a greater agenda of those who operate behind the fog and the mist. Iran, had it not been aided and abetted in is radicalization by our own interventions, would potentially been an "natural" ally in the region: not Arab, not Turkish, and civilized to an extent not found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One of the remaining questions seems to be whether or not Obama will launch the war, in whatever form it comes, prior to the November elections or after the November elections. If the Republicans, who will likely nominate either Romney or Gingrich agitate against Obama as weak concerning Iran, the necessary pretext might be placed on the table and the war initiated before the elections. If the Republicans do not, for whatever reasons, attempt to show Obama weak on dealing with the Iranian "threat," then he will likely pursue the war after the elections because there will be no check by the electorate for the next four years.
I could be very wrong, but I anticipate war with Iran sometime between October of 2012 and March of 2013. Obama is a political animal. I do not believe that, if he can control the variables, he will launch the war too early so that the Republicans can criticize him for the way that he is handling the war or so that the Republicans can temporarily morph into peaceniks as he himself did in the 2008 campaign.
One Mexican state that borders the US had more organized crime related deaths in 2011 that all of Afghanistan (and that is just one Mexican state). Meanwhile a Jewish columnist in Atlanta, GA suggested that Israel consider assassinating Barack Obama if the Iranians obtain a nuclear weapon in order to bring in a more pro-Israel president. Yet our elites tell us that it is Iran that we are supposed to be losing sleep over.
Iran also has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world, at a mere 2.6 per 100,000 people. The homicide rate in DC is almost 10 times the same rate.
Here is what is outrageous. Men like Rick Santorum would have us believe that devoted Shi'ia people in Iran belong to a death cult, are savage barbarians, and are ruthless killers. Hence, they would have no mercy killing Jews in Israel. Yet Iran has a fairly sizable Jewish population, and you don't see Iranians murdering Jews on the streets. A quick look at a few online travelogues would show anyone that Iranian Jews are even proud to be Iranian.
On the other hand, people in DC who tell us that Iranians are a savage or evil people live in one of the most cutthroat parts of the world. Intentional homicides in Washington DC are shockingly high and at almost Central American levels.
It's ironic that people who belong to a region of extremely uncivilized peoples would criticise the civility and intentions of people who are far more enlightened, cultured, and peaceful than them.
In the quote that Dr. Trifkovic provides it is acknowledged that long-term occupation of Iran would be necessary to ensure that Iran remains deprived of nuclear weapons. The probable consequences of occupation of a country like Iran, as demonstrated by Robert Pape in “Dying to Win” and “Cutting the Fuse,” would be suicide terrorism against the occupying power. If the United States provides the occupation force and becomes a target of suicide terrorists we can expect the War Party to demand escalation of military action, and William Bennett would be enabled to say, as he said the day after 9/11, “Now we are all Israelis.”
Cui bono?
Personally, I have a lot of respect and admiration for Persian heritage and history. Far from being apocalyptic fanatics (projection on part of the John Hagee types no doubt), the Persians gave the world men like the philosophers al-Ghazali and Avicenna, who would go on to influence St. Thomas Aquinas and other medieval European philosophers, and beloved poets Omar Khayyam, Hafiz, and Rumi. When one hears Rick Santorum or Glenn Beck speaking of Shi'ite theology (which is no doubt in favor of violent jihad and social discrimination of Jews and Christians, but not nuking the world for the Mahdi), one can see how ignorant and malicious they truly are. Of course the current Iranian regime is evil, but that does not make it an international threat even should it obtain a nuclear weapon. The world has far more to fear from the Rick Santorums, Newt Gingirchs, and Barack Obamas that rule from Washington.
Mr Sanjay, your point is well put.
The insane level of crime in DC is the result of the same social policies and the same kind of tinkering with criminal law that these fools would impose on a defeated and colonised Iran.
Does anyone know how much Russian investment would be affected by a Great Satan attack on Iran, and how many Russian scientists, engineers, oil industry specialists, and military advisers might be endangered in such an attack?
I'm not trying to imply that there is an evil Russian conspiracy with Iran. Rather, I'm concerned that an American attack might bring the Russians in to rescue their nationals, or even enter the war on Iran's side if their interests in Iran are threatened, especially if the attack is nuclear.
One caveat to Iran: its theocrats believe themselves, as Muslims, above respecting traditional diplomatic practices (such as diplomatic immunity) and impose capital punishment on apostates from Islam.
Persia was certainly an awesome civilization that has left a brilliant afterglow, even though the last forty years in particular have not been kind to that legacy and risk doing it serious harm. (Compare India with Pakistan to see what I mean.)
Certainly the average Iranian behaves in a more peaceful and civilized manner than the average D.C. denizen or Washingtonian bureaucrat, but I wouldn't call their government "enlightened" or "cultured" by any stretch.
That being said, I do tend to agree that a U.S. invasion of Iran would only solidify public support for the Islamic regime and wipe out all the wonderful remaining particularities of Persia. Iran would be transformed into the Saudi Arabia of Shia Islam.
Western Christian Civilization is down at the moment (for centuries), even if the emphasis is only on civilization (and christianity itself is comatose or in a coma, some of it sleep-walking to Jewish pied pipers). It's all merely a predators' ball with the great *anachronism of Jewish pop culture on the secular side and orthodox Jewish culture on the religious side really in tribal tandem (they were never a 'civilization') as chief predator against all goyim (non-Jews), pulling the strings. Only in Russia is Christian civilization even flickering back into existence. As a result of Putin's (an Eastern Orthodox Christian himself) allowing Christianity to be popular rather than portrayed by the media therein as an anathema and evil.
So not only were we born into this context but so was the U.S. born into it it's been going on for so long while continuing to move in this weird direction farther and farther away from its own civilizational roots.
One wonders if the Church itself in the West via Rome, unlike the Orthodox Christian Church in the East, even remembers its own roots. It's all so bizarre it defies description.
To be honest and accurate with hindsight, too bad Christianity didn't have its own 'sharia' laws. Even though we don't prefer the metaphysics of Islam, their at least codified knowledge via 'sharia' laws that there--given an acceptance of human limitations--can really only be one religion per state or one religio-politicus christian, jewish, or islamic, seems smart? If there's even two, one will win, making the point there can only be one.
As soon as Jews set up their state again of israel they seemed to remember. Maybe we christians just lost a long time ago and there's no coming back from that. Maybe we're all the Palestinians now-???-or Persian Iran, the next target or prey. I've considered *judaism but it supplies another thought precisely where the more thoughtful consideration would place an idea in the metaphysical construct or schematic. Thus I don't find it all that uplifting. Then all of the abstracting going on wink-wink is really only as cover for even more very shrewd thinking. I don't know how that unrelentingly down to earth process can necessarily be called metaphysics or religion?
Christianity DOES have a moral and canonical constitution. It's called the Divine Law. The difference is that Sharia takes no distinction between the Divine and what we call the Eccleasiastical, and still less between the Ecclesiastical and the civil. There will always be tension between Church and state in any Christian land.
Asking for Christianity to have something like Sharia law is like asking what if Mile Tyson hadn't bitten that guy's ear off? Well, then he wouldn't be Mike Tyson!
Also, Russia is *not* the only place where Christian civilization can still be found in a viable form. And not having been to Russia, I cannot say to what extent it can be found there, although here in the West there are plenty of dreamy-eyed romantics pouring out nauseating libations to "Russia, our Savior!" when they've never been to the country. Yes, my experience is that the average non-practicing Russian Orthodox is much less banal and far more deeply a believer than the average non-practicing French Roman Catholic, but let's not forget that the rates of divorce, abortion, fertility and Sunday attendance in Russia are not very heartwarming and do point to potential danger.
Mr. Moses what do you think of Judaism?
Many things, most of them gleaned from Jewish friends and acquaintances and not all of them well-informed or valid points of view for publication. On the subject of law, however, I think one can say that if Christianity is a religion and Islam is a religion and a polity, then Judaism is a religion, a polity AND an ethnicity.
Modern notions of "religious tolerance" assume a sort of "confessional identity" that can be altered without even the slightest risk of altering other gentilic notions of the self (which governmental system one lives or wishes to live under, which ethnic group one belongs to, what city one considers home). This is because this modern notion of "tolerance" has its origin in the Protestant Reformation era and is certainly applicable between Christian or crypto-Christian denominations (Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian and even, to a lesser extent, Orthodox).
The sort of fragmentation seen in present-day "tolerant" societies arises because the form of "tolerance" they push is centered around this assumption of a purely confessional religious identification. Historically, that sort of identification has not really been the case for ANY non-Christian "religious" group. Ironically, though many Christians may find it easier to get along with Jews or Hindus, Islam probably comes the closest in that respect, though it is still very far away.
Very fascinating your point that religious tolerance assumes a confessional identity by which i suspect you mean perhaps at root the sense of guilt which gives one 'pause', and yet can be altered without affecting or altering the gentilic sense of self. Although therefore a superficial if effective civilizational and control mechanism for moving folks mostly politically around the room, nonetheless was it an improvement or beneficial addition to the classical self? If you insult the ancient Greek he doesn't turn the other cheek (even once) rather as one scholar put it, he's turning it to reach for his sword. Whereas insult a Quaker businessman of the 19th Century and he's apt to reply sir I would as soon rap you over the head for that impertinence, though being a Christian gentleman I can forgive it if you meant no offence?
Today the reformed protestant would either faint, or knee-jerk into spineless people-pleaser mode-?-unless a thug? The middle ground of the Quaker in this example is preferable? (humor, intended, if present.) Where to now, St. Peter, I mean Moses. By the way do you recommend any books dealing with this particular subject matter. Are you still in Paris. If so is it working out ok? I detest "purely" anything...the enlightenment gave us the mistaken notion of "purely" rational, and now with the reformation you point out we suffer with this "purely" confessional religious identification with regard to the form of 'tolerance' being peddled. However what sort of platform for excessive 'tolerance' could there be except the superficial, or exclusively confessional identity. We're Christians we already turn the other cheek ONCE (we only have one other cheek); but now are christian doormats? [Reformation] = that there should be every orthrodox christian's actual doormat at their front door. I'm sorry this is off the cuff, and given my own proclivities I'd love to consider and work on this response all day if given the time...so i hope it ain't too much all over the place. Thanks for your reply it was edifying and at the very least catalytic. Please check my spellings for accuracy. (sorry, humor?)
Messrs Moses and Yurick,
I have never thought Christopher Dawson as astute and honest as, Mr. Belloc, but his essay on Christian Culture and the Bourgeois Mind is quite good in understanding the current predicament of a political duopoly in a "post christian culture" -- that is to say, a once Christian culture reduced to supply and demand and the seven deadly sins.
You can find the article http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=2580 or search for it under title and author. It is worth looking at to understand why the extremes of socialism and fascism eventually meet as Erik Von Kuenelt- Leddihn often pointed out in the now defunct pages of National Review so many years ago when educated gentlemen still wrote for the old rag and decades before the kids took over.
I happened to watch one of those short interviews 'on the hour' on Russia Today several weeks ago, during which an American correspondent for Infowars (can't remember his name unfortunately) mentioned several future flashpoints of conflict to watch out for, in light of the most tense areas of geopolitics today. The places he mentioned were the Strait of Hormuz (or is it Shahaat El Arab?), the Sinai peninsular and the Horn of Africa. As far as Sinai was concerned he clearly stated how he expected Israel to retake it from the Egyptians, but it doesn't seem very implausible that this may well come to be, not only because of the ever prevailing strategic importance of the Suez canal and the rather less solid ground on which the Egypt-Israel Treaty of 1979 after 30 straight years now stands, in light of the massive upheavals that swept Egypt within the past year, but also because it appears to tally up well with Dr Trifkovic's proposition of robust, practical (realistic) ways in which to deal with or contain rouge or potentially rogue states - based on identifying real threats that may arise from their actions. What do other readers think about the future of Sinai and any implications it may have for the wider region, with an eventual takeover by Israel?
And with respect to Iranophobic Saudi Arabia, would anyone possibly care to explain to me what use those weapons BAe systems keeps selling her are if she is obviously incapable or unwilling to launch an offensive assault against the former by herself..?
"would anyone possibly care to explain to me what use those weapons BAe systems keeps selling her are if she is obviously incapable or unwilling to launch an offensive assault against the former by herself..?"
As Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State,George Schultz, testified in the Iran-Contra affair when asked why the U.S. was supplying weapons to both Iran and Iraq in their war against each other---- "If you help one side over there, you must help the other." It is good for business.
Yes Mr Reavis, that is what I was suspecting too - and nothing much more than that. I don't know the exact figures, but Saudi defense spending just keeps on increasing over time in the billions, and the UK is a major trading partner. Yet how much is the desert kingdom willing to use those weapons, considering an eventual assault on Iran appears supposedly unlikely without Israel as a partcipating state, or is the weapons spending simply just a way for kleptokrats to spend virtually endless amounts of cash for the hell of it, whilst the British gladly get more of it..?
Robert,
Thanks for a very informative link, which allowed me to fill in some annoying blanks in my knowledge of European history. The insight into the bourgeois versus baroque spirit is helpful, too.
Mr. Jacobi,
The thoughts and references were of course not my own, I simply learned them from my family and friends or remembered them from old conversations. Chronicles is the only place I know where you can still mention such things. They have shut Pat Buchanan down and banned him from public discussion for such references,( no longer part of the national conversation, they say) so enjoy while it lasts.
As Robert Frost once said in an invitation to life,
" I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long. You come too. "
Mr. Reavis ditto Mr. Jacobi, for the link you provided. Are they nipping Dr. Fleming's Daily Mail blogs too? Hasn't been one in a while. What is it with these bourgeois, why are they so preTHcious-?-they can't take the debate? They'll never again let, apparently, while they last in power someone like Pat get to where Pat was. Leave us to our ways here. I liked your Frost quote. Put me in mind of Frost's "A Brook In The City" ... The farm house lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in.
... etc.
Yes, the silence of the editor in chief is becoming deafening ..... natives are growing restless, hungry .... On the plus side, I've had time to reread The Seventh Letter.
Perhaps the Winter school in Italy might explain the silence??
Tom has probably enetered into the great silence of our old civilization, musing and wondering, hearing Mass at dawn, taking good coffee and bread for breakfast, walking the streets of some Italian city or village still full of life, and enjoying some deserved rest and retirement with his lovely wife. Let him be for now because when he finally comes back, it will be a vigorous return I am sure.
Beautifully put Mr. Reavis
I too love the sensibility of Mr. Reavis, among others here.
I apologize for not responding earlier. Work has consumed quite a bit of me but as it is a lazy Sunday and I found myself contemplating the difference between "bobo" and just plain "bo." Then it occurred to me that I had yet to respond to Messieurs Yurick and Reavis..
Very fascinating your point that religious tolerance assumes a confessional identity by which i suspect you mean perhaps at root the sense of guilt which gives one 'pause', and yet can be altered without affecting or altering the gentilic sense of self.
Basically right, from a psychological point of view. My interest was mostly sociological, though, in terms of how one relates to and fits in with others.
Here's a concrete illustration: A couple years ago mainstream magazine in France (yes, I am still here, and on the whole it is going well; thank you for asking) ran a cover headlined "Religious integralists" and had three photos side-by-side. One was a close-up of a bearded, tonsured monk from the SSPX; one was of a gathering of Orthodox Jewish men; one was a group of Muslims at prayer.
But - and this is very telling - notice they actually had to search into the depths and pick the "integralist" Catholic figure that even "integralist" Catholics find peculiar in order to show off Catholic "integralism" as something "otherworldly" in the photos. In reality, this was just ridiculous. On the streets you could never pick out a French-born parishioner of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet among his non-practicing counterparts. Even *at* Mass you would have great difficulty spotting the non-regular unless you paid careful attention to how he observed the rubrics (this includes the women; the use of the chapel veil is not particularly common even at Tridentine Masses in France).
On the other hand, hardline Muslims and certainly Orthodox Jews are almost always VERY distinctive (particularly the women among the former and the men among the latter).
That is not to say that a practicing Roman Catholic is not far, far more comfortable "being himself" among fellow Catholics than among others (he almost always is) or that a non-religious person who talks to the former in a setting where the former feels he can let his guard down will not consider that there is something rather intriguing (he almost always will), but it is also quite possible to worship anonymously. The Muslim and the Jew do not have this option. (Actually, the Orthodox Jewess might well be able to conceal her Jewish identity - indeed, Esther provides ample precedence - but this is rather exceptional.)
Christianity is indeed supposed to transform a person and his ethical mentality, but the notion of this confessional label as a "social identity" is the product of the splintering of all-Christian lands into a multiplicity of mutually hostile sects (especially in England). Modern notions of religious tolerance have their origins in responses to this situation and an attempt to cool the flames, since Catholics and Protestants gradually accepted (and definitely accepted after the Thirty Years' War) that neither side would, in the short term, make any further snap-jaw gains at the other's expense.
But, of course, once the budding deists, atheists and pagans of the 18th century got ahold of this idea, they and their intellectual descendants, hoping to destroy Christianity, took such principles of religious tolerance, once considered purely practical measures to be expended when expedience no longer demanded them, and made of them a moral philosophy to govern relations among people of ALL religions, without any regard for the magnitude of the underlying sociological differences between Christianity and almost any other religious system. The cracks in their system didn't show up right away, of course, since apart from Christian or Christian-derived sects Western countries counted only Jews among them, and the Jews were far too small in number to have made much of a difference. In contemporary Europe, however, with a large and growing Muslim immigrant population, the problem is now becoming all too apparent. (But might the innate weakness of this system have something to do with the particular form of anti-Semitism that grew up in the late 19th and early 20th century? I do not know; I am not very well-versed in the subject of anti-Semitism and I am not particularly interested in studying it. That is largely because the field is ENTIRELY dominated by either on the one hand dogmatic self-profiteering victims [real and imaginary, though it is mostly the imaginary ones who raise the ruckus] who consider any reactionary views on religious tolerance as tantamount to Holocaust denial or at best inadvertent Holocaust enabling, or on the other hand dogmatic Holocaust deniers.)
Perhaps predictably, as well, what we have nowadays is nothing like the Romans' acceptance of a multiplicity of sects all subordinated to the Imperial Cult, nor even the laxer phases of Islamic dhimmitude. So when beady-eyed sentimentalists romanticize about the "religious tolerance" of Imperial Rome or Moorish Spain, they speak the truth insofar as permissible semantics do allow a certain sense of the modifier "religiously tolerant" to be applied to those realms, but they often have in mind a notion of "religious tolerance" completely anathema to anything that actually happened before the 18th century.
That's definitely not the only explanation for the anti-Christian Enlightenment, but it is one angle, and it certainly helps to explain the failure of religious tolerance as a general worldwide goal.
Now, regarding books... I honestly don't know that there is a work that concretely classifies the different layers of social and self-identification in comparative theology the way I have attempted to do here. My thoughts on this matter are mostly my own, actually, built on various historical facts and personal observations of how different people think.
On a related note, I think it was actually Max Weber and Christopher Dawson (definitely the former) who spoke of Calvinism as a sort of "layman's monasticism," a sort of religious system that would pervade and show through at every level. Perhaps this never went quite so far as it did in, say, Islam, but it did influence my own opinion (and that of some others) that Calvinism and its offshoots have, in the sociological sphere, an almost Islamic pervasive effect. Consider their radical application of the "universal priesthood." Consider the obsessive wholesomeness of the Puritan colonies. Consider that Calvinists have at times been known for their distinctive austere dress. Consider the lay obsession with one's remunerated occupation as almost a divine "calling" (there is nothing like that for laity in Catholicism: one's sacred "vocation" refers to one's state of life as married, celibate or religious, and only in this last state would a vocation take a particular form). (Although I do believe "the calling" was Lutheran in origin... see The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism chapter 4.)
Consider, nowadays, the way that Evangelical Protestants envision God's transformative work in their lives. Everything suddenly has to have the label CHRISTIAN stamped visibly on it. They buy their reading material at a CHRISTIAN bookstore. They listen only to CHRISTIAN radio stations and are wary of any song that does not utter the divine name in the lyrics. Et cetera, ad infinitum.
AAAAAND... Mr. Reavis, thank you for the link. I think I have read that essay, actually, though it's been a few years. I must say, though, that I was a little surprised by the invocation of Belloc. I would never have thought to compare Dawson and Belloc except to say that both happened to be 20th-century English Roman Catholic writers. Though since you mentioned it, I will admit I rather prefer Dawson, if only because my own nonfiction tastes lean more towards the scholarly analysis and away from the heartfealt honesty (Saint Augustine's Confessions being a notable exception).
Anyway, enough on that. The notion of the modern revolution as a movement of the bourgeoisie first adopting a peculiar non-human mindset and then attempting to impose this on the rest of Christendom is definitely one I am familiar with. It is not often discussed in American Trad Catholic circles; it IS discussed in a few more highbrow French Catholic circles, but not nearly often enough. Also, I have noticed that some of the most venomous Parisian Catholic critics of "the bourgeoisie" are, themselves, "bourgeois" in terms of residence, occupation and wealth stratum. (Marx himself was, in his mindset, as bourgeois as they come, "disgruntled" though he might have thought himself.) I do think that a distinction can be made between "bourgeoisie" as a social class and "bourgeoisie" as a sociological phenomenon, but Dawson's essay seems to suggest (and I would agree) that the particular position of the occupational bourgeois - dependent as he is on MONEY and in an urban environment - makes the temptation to materialism an ever-present danger.
Mr. Moses,
Thank you for your good reply. I almost always recommend Dawson over Belloc to friends or acquaintances when both authors have addressed the same subject and mostly for the reasons you mention. For my own secret garden,however, I always find myself returning to the essays and novels of the more cantakerous of the two. Here is a recent example I enjoyed and pass along for those who also still read for the sheer delight of learning. http://catholictradition.org/Classics/belloc2-9.htm