To be clear here I am not comparing like for like in the present day in terms of standards of human rights. I do not believe human violations in Iran are on a par with western (by which I include Europe, this isn't a slight against America) civilisation's standards.
I agree the west is some way further down the road in terms of being a tolerant society than Iran (as the example you have chosen) and to argue otherwise would be stupid. My argument is simply that the road to get there has not been a smooth one and it was a road that we still had to take, we were not just born civilised, the noble savage with an inborn sense of what was right and what was wrong.
So "never hit a woman, ever...unless she is your slave then do onto her as you will" would probably be a more exact message. "Property is 9/10's of the law" would be another common phrase or "every Englishman's home is his castle" would be another. Again to pan them out further, property is 9/10ths of the law unless on foreign soils then it is fair spoils in the name of expansion of empire. Look at how Europe expanded out even into late 19th Century colonising much of the world typically with an earnest sense that we were doing God's will and it was just to colonise (read butcher) the native heathen savages. The American economy, its sugar cotton, tobacco trades were built on the fruits of slave labour and what rights could a pretty slave girl expect from her master, chivalry? Hardly. With the abolition of slavery, it took a civil rights movement to recognise the rights of black people after decades of violence and oppression which we all know about and who was leading that violence and oppression? Extremist christian sects such as the KKK always with that earnest sense of it being religious and right.
Look I'm an atheist, I have no interest in a religious calling, I'm capable of setting my own standards and then trying to meet them. I want to see us leave religion behind as obsolete and achieve something more spectacular as a race beyond petty belief systems but it will take some time yet before we get there. I understand you consider yourself Christian (I think from other posts) and generally I tend to agree with a lot of what you say, it just never fails to suprise me how often it seems to be the non-believers of the world preaching a little tolerance and perspective to the believers. I can condemn what I see in Iran but only once I see they are committing the same violations that we have done for years to reach our lofty position of 'leaders of the free world' to which we still have some way to go and Iran, certainly, has a much longer way to go too. I just ask you perhaps acknowledge the same, then perhaps I can agree with you. If not we’ll agree to disagree and apologise for hijacking this thread about ex's.
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Oh and on the subject of being the most charitable nations... we are rich economies, we are always going to be near the top in absolute terms. Sadly, in terms of giving what we can afford...we are both a little lacking... (*this may have changed since April 2010*)...
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the countries giving the highest amounts of money (in absolute terms) are as follows:[1]
1. United States – $28.67 billion
4. United Kingdom – $11.50 billion
As a percentage of GNP..
Official Development Assistance by country as a percentage of Gross National Income in 2009 (April 2010)To provide an alternative perspective, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development also lists countries by the amount of money they give as a percentage of their gross national income. The list includes international giving through official channels that qualify as Official Development Assistance, and national charitable giving. This list is as follows:[1]
1. Sweden – 1.12%
2. Norway – 1.06%
3. Luxembourg – 1.04%
4. Denmark – 0.88%
9. United Kingdom – 0.52%
19. United States – 0.21%
"
Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is the traditional code of conduct associated with the medieval institution of knighthood"....
"These concepts of "religious chivalry" were further elaborated in the era of the
Crusades, with the Crusades themselves often being seen as a chivalrous enterprise."
"The term "
crusade" is also used to describe
religiously motivated campaigns conducted between 1100 and 1600 in territories outside the Levant[a] usually
against pagans, heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons"
Chivalry indeed...
Thats it I'm done!
