Empire State Troops

Posted in game miniatures by admin on December 6, 2010

It is popular among historians to treat the Reformation of Medieval European history primarily as revolution or change in matters of faith, belief and practice of religion in Europe. The significant fact that the major zones of success of the Reformation were the Northwestern states of Europe whose people are of a common Germanic ethnic origin is very often overlooked as coincidental to the primary motive of the need of the people for a reform in religious and spiritual life.

Underlying the appearances of religious reform in the Reformation was a clash of civilizations, namely the Latin and Germanic civilizations. Too much is made out of the fact that the men who championed the Reformation were men of faith whose primary concern was religion rather than politics. A clash of civilizations is one resulting from the incompatibility of the orientation of cultures. The ramifications of a "kulturekampf" are multifaceted and its first sparks may arise from the differences in the spiritual-religious outlook of different cultures in contact. Protestantism reflects the individualistic cultural outlook of Germanics as opposed to the Latin perspective which places relatively greater emphasis on its institutional aspects. The fall of the Greco-Latin Roman Empire at the incursion of "barbarian" peoples from the northern boundaries of the empire in to the Mediterranean world civilization resulted in a hybridization in which Latin civilization found itself playing the role of wet nurse to Germanic cultures yet at an early stage in their evolution to maturity. Germanic civilization over the Dark and Middle Ages found an opportunity of nurture, in its infancy, on the pre-existing matrix of Greco-Latin civilization. The Reformation was Germanic civilization signaling its coming of age and readiness to stand by itself in the expression of the unique genius and spirit of the race.

Many factors contributed to the emergence of Germanic civilization's push for cultural independence of Latin civilization. The first significant incidence was the Crusades. The impression of Germanic Europeans that the Medieval Arab world communicates to us reveals a lot about the state of north western Europeans in the early medieval period. The Arabs were deeply impressed by the level of barbarism and cultural backwardness of the Germanic Europeans they fought in the wars of the Crusade. The Medieval period witnessed the height of cultural advancement and sophistication of Arab Islamic civilization. Arab civilization of the medieval set the standards in the fields of the sciences and the arts; medicine, astronomy, mathematics, literature and philosophy. The greatest scholars of medieval times were Arab: the mathematician Al Khwarizmi, the polymath Ibn Rushd (known in the West as Averroes) and the physicist Al Hacen (known in the West as Avicenna) were all Arab intellectuals who stood at the forefront of intellectual culture in the Middle Age.

The culture of the Arabs had been stimulated into growth by its access to the heritage of Greek civilization through its discovery of the manuscripts of the ancient Greek civilization. The ancient Greek manuscripts had come into the possession of the Arabs during their conquest of the Eastern half of the old Roman Empire.

By comparison with the Arabs, the Germanic troops who arrived in the Middle East during the Crusades were a horde of savages. The Crusaders themselves were deeply impressed by the sophistication of the Arab civilization they encountered, and the prime lasting heritage of the Crusades was the opportunity of exposure of western European civilization to new advanced ideas and learning. Soon after the Crusades, translations of ancient Greek manuscripts from Arabic back to the original Greek began appearing in Western Europe. The prestige that Greek civilization acquired in Western Europe resulted from the astonishment of Western intellectuals at their discovery of the heights to which Greek civilization had attained in the sciences and arts. An interesting feature of the development of the culture of Western Europe, during the Dark Ages, is that most of the Greek manuscripts available in the West had been converted by monks for use in copying scriptural texts and writing theological treatise. The coming to light of the significance of the content of the palimpsests, as the manuscripts are called, led to attempts to recover their contents by European scholars.

The effect of exposure of Western civilization, during the Crusades, to new and relatively advanced cultural influences was the stimulation of learning and consequently enlightenment which were the precursors to the Reformation and finally the Renaissance. The stimulating effect of the contact of Western civilization with Arab Muslim civilization had initially been most pronounced in Latin Spain and Portugal which had come under direct Moslem rule. The defeat of the Moors at Grenada in 1492 by the Spanish was followed by the emergence of Spain as the leading European power and a brief period in which Spain and Portugal ruled the waves. This also was the period in which the illustrious Henry the Navigator, whose school produced great navigators, successfully explored the West African coast and discovered the "New World" which would be brutally subdued by the Spanish Conquistadors.

It is not a coincidence that the period of the Reformation, in which Germanic Catholic priests began challenging the authority of Rome, also coincided with the period in which Germanic European states began challenging the power of Spain and Portugal, both in Europe and on international transatlantic waters. The vital support that the Germanic princes gave to men like Martin Luther was an extension of the struggle in the military and political arena of the conflict between Latin and Germanic civilizations. The Reformation would not have succeeded had the need to break the onerous Latin yoke not been felt in all spheres of Germanic cultural life. The sinking of the Spanish Armada by the English in 1588 marked the beginning of the rise of Germanic civilization to world power, a position it has retained to present times.

The Reformation set the stage for the Renaissance in northwestern Europe and the rise of Western Civilization.

The writer JohnThomas Didymus is the author of "Confessions of God: The Gospel According to St. JohnThomas Didymus." (http://www.resurrectionconspiracy.com/). If you have found the article interesting you may read the article IS WESTERN CIVILIZATION CHRISTIAN? on his blog: http://johnthomasdidymus.blogspot.com/2010/07/is-western-civilization-christian.html

Do Americans realize it is the empire which has caused this economic collapse?

Empires become strong and powerful. They then get arrogant, and start spending irresponsibly. They sell debt to finance the welfare-warfare state and soon the economy collapses because they resort to monetizing the debt.

It happened to the Romans, to the Brits and to the Turks.

The empire is then forced to cut back spending and bring all it's troops home because it it impossible to keep them abroad.

To be honest I think most Americans (Average Working class) are to worked up and distracted to see the truth. And whos to blame them, they have so much propaganda shown as news that they do not know right from wrong. They are in a state of fear. Fear of losing thier home, fear of losing thier job, fear of terrorist, fear of government, fear they will be attacked, fear thier country is loosing freedom, fear they will loose their guns, affraid of obama, affraid of healthcare reform, affraid of their neighbour. Every american can say atleast one of those things strike fear in them. And all in al they are affriad of change, because change leads to the unknown and they think the unknow always leads to disaster

Empire State Troopers - Upstate Again