Word: westernness
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...Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It inspired the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion that swept the West three decades ago, an attempt to force the federal government to turn over land it controlled in a number of Western states to local authorities. The passions it stirred up helped propel the self-proclaimed Sagebrush Rebel, Ronald Reagan, to the presidency. Now the Amendment is being invoked by pro-gun advocates to press for state, rather than federal, regulation of gun manufacturers. (See pictures of America's gun culture...
...Holy Land is both an important symbol of continuity with the origins of the faith, and a reminder of the multisectarian and tolerant history of Arab and Islamic culture. That culture of tolerance is today under threat from the rise of religious extremism. But clash-of-civilizations pundits and Western leaders like the Pope often ignore how the West helped spark such intolerance, especially through its one-sided support of Israel. (Check out a story on the Pope's relationship with the Jews...
Israel is a major stop on Pope Benedict's journey and a focal point of Western involvement in the Middle East. And while support for the modern revival of the ancient biblical nation runs deep among many Christians in America and Europe, the creation of Israel has been a disaster for Christians in the Middle East. Many of the Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948 - never to be allowed back - were Christians. The flood of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon helped spark a civil war between Muslims and Christians there. And the ongoing occupation...
...their own to implode and create fertile grounds for extremism to flourish. But that doesn't mean that a speech from a foreign religious leader is going to heal mistrust and stop the cycle of violence that started 60 years ago with the creation of Israel. In fact, Western concern for the region's dwindling Christian societies reminds Muslims of the European colonial era, when British and French rulers elevated the region's Christian groups to positions of authority in order to manage their mostly Muslim empires...
Even Middle Eastern Christians have given up looking to the likes of the Pope for help. In Lebanon, the Middle Eastern nation with the largest concentration of Christians, roughly half of the country's Christians have broken away from their traditionally pro-Western leadership, forming a political alliance with Hizballah, the Shi'a Muslim anti-Israeli militant group. The leader of these breakaway Christians, a populist former general named Michel Aoun, is betting that the only way to secure a Christian future in Lebanon is to look east toward the rising power of Shi'a Islam. It may seem...