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From: cramer@sun.uucp (Sam Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Seein' Red and God?
Message-ID: <3122@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 7-Jan-86 21:02:44 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3122
Posted: Tue Jan  7 21:02:44 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jan-86 17:50:44 EST
References: <125@drutx.UUCP> <463@whuts.UUCP> <3119@sun.uucp> <1528@ihlpg.UUCP>
Reply-To: cramer@sun.UUCP (Sam Cramer)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 23

In article <1528@ihlpg.UUCP> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
>> [Sam Cramer]
>>
>> The choice is between ideologies that recognize that there are moral
>> (God-inspired) limits to the power of the state, and ideologies which 
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> recognize no higher authority than the state and act accordingly.
>> Communism is the example *par excellence* of the latter.
>-----
>A question for Sam Cramer:
>	In which category is Iran?

The barbarous theocratic regime in Iran, while guilty of horrendous crimes,
does recognize limits to it's own behaviour - those outlined in the Koran.
While I'm not a big fan of that book, there is an important theoretical
(and, I think, practical) difference between Khomeiniism and communism,
which, rejecting "bourgeois morality", recognizes no limits to it's behaviour.

For those who are interested, there is a good discussion of this issue in
"Modern Times" by Paul Johnson (available in paperback at finer bookstores
nationwide, as they say).

Sam Cramer	{decwrl,hplabs}!sun!cramer