Strength without Mercy: Winston Churchill on Technology and the Fate of Civilization

Abstract

Churchill's lifelong meditation on scientific progress led him to search for ways in which its transformative power could be moderated and guided for the preservation of civilization. The increasing role of scientific discovery and technological innovation in maximizing the destructive potential of warfare, Churchill believed, had brought a moment of decision for humanity: Whether to foster and maintain the moral and political principles that formed the foundation of civilized life or to trust wholly in an amoral science. He found guidance in the study of the humanities, Anglo-American constitutionalism, and Christian ethics.     

Gideon's Band: America and the Middle East since 1945

The people stared at us everywhere, and we stared at them. We generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them….
If ever those children of Israel in Palestine forget when Gideon's Band went through there from America, they ought to be cursed once more and finished. It was the rarest spectacle that ever astounded mortal eyes, perhaps.
—Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
On a rainy Saturday in June 1867, Mark Twain scurried down Wall Street and boarded the S.S. Quaker City , a first-class steamer bound for the Holy Land, where he would witness one of America's earliest and best publicized encounters with the Middle East. Expecting to find a blend of Old World splendor and Christian asceticism in a setting as familiar as the nearest Bible, Twain's fellow travelers—self-styled pilgrims who hailed from Boston, St. Louis, and points west—stumbled instead into terra incognita. Appalled by scenes of oriental squalor, harried by constant demands for baksheesh, and astonished by how little nineteenth-century Arabs and Jews resembled idealized biblical figures, Twain's innocents abroad scrambled back aboard the Quaker City and steamed home, leaving the Middle East to the handful of American missionaries and merchants for whom the exotic region remained a life's work.     

大力士陈家博阔的传说

农历的八月秋高气爽,硕果累累,到处是丰收的景象。八月十五是中华民族的传统佳节——中秋节。三川莽图下排沟的纳顿节恰好在这一天。所以,下排沟的男女老少都穿着节日的盛装,怀着喜悦的心情去参加自己盛大的民族节日。马路上是络绎不绝的行人,会场上五颜六色的彩旗迎风飘扬,还有那隆隆的锣鼓声回荡在山谷,会手们有秩序、有节奏地跳着自己的纳顿舞。