(January 1, 2014 at 12:17 pm)theyear12013 Wrote: East Asia's various nationalisms don't strike me as very Buddhist in nature, but I'd be interested to hear how they are. The Chinese Communist Party is still very materialist in nature -- and not particularly interested in Buddhism. It is the most dominant force in the country -- and uses Han nationalism to rule with a dose of capitalist materialism. At the moment it is crushing the most authentically Buddhist country in the world Tibet.
This contrasts with the Anglosphere whose humanism is manifested in an ideology with universal claims of human rights, scientific reason, anti-racism (through a tortured and hypocritical history), republican/democratic governance and materialistic capitalism. It uses this humanism to justify its actions much more than say China uses buddhism to justify its actions.
You really do not seem to know very much about East Asia. I am currently in East Asia right now and I'm a Buddhist, Certainly Buddhism in Thailand, Burma and Sri lanka is closely associated with Nationalism. Certainly China is going through a massive Buddhist resurgence tied to the rising of a new middle class. I have no idea what you mean by 'Most authentically Buddhist country'.
China as a country does not use Buddhism because it has no official religion. As I said Buddhism is growing, as is Taoism.
I would still like you to show that Western government is less competent than elsewhere in the world since the opposite is quite patently true
