*The following topic is posted in like a dozen installments. Each contributing cause to the topic is followed by a series of thought provoking quotations from a wide assortment of individuals, some Americans but many non-Americans too. Some alive but most dead. Like many aged souls, I cannot be sure my dissatisfaction with the priorities and behavior of my government is objective, or just the natural tendency of age to resent how the next generation handles about anything. But for me personally, never have I been so unhappy with my own country---to the point I am almost ashamed to be American these days. At the same time---again personally---never have I personally had it so good, sequestered away in a self constructed 'Garden of Eden', at least for now. Like in the bigger picture, Mother Nature bats last, and I too, will sooner rather than later, take that great leap in the dark, a meaningless footnote in the history of some Deistical evolutionary process.
WHY THE UNITED STATES, LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
11. RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE
Religion is obtuse a subject to analyze as any. Both philosophy and religion are attempts to understand the meaning of human life and human living. Philosophy is based on logic and reasoning while religion is basically a matter of faith. One cannot use science, reason, or logic to prove the tenets of one religion over another. Every religion kind of assumes those with the greatest faith in the tenets of their religion will get to some kind of heaven after death. What happens to others of a different religion is kind of left murky. The core of most religions is the Golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". In theory, the presence of so many religions with such a core would make this world a wonderful place for everyone to live. Yet Buddhists and Quakers are about the only worshipers who take the Golden Rule seriously. After that, the reality is a religious world of intolerance, intransigency, pageantry, elaborate rituals, greed, indifference, and violence. In America, Christianity is anything but Christ-like. One would have to be illiterate or menticidal to read the Bible and picture Christ endorsing the Vietnam or Iraq wars, the amassment of wealth in the hands of a few, kids without health insurance, the War on Drugs as a criminal rather than a medical battle, the tax laws which favor the rich, a legal system which favors the affluent or majority tribes, the exploitation of slave labor anywhere on the globe, indifference to overpopulation, or the depletion of the world's natural resources. How anyone can prevent the distortion of pure religious concepts by human priests, of this or that sort, is beyond my grasp. Without exception those humans who have projected themselves as some sort of God's emissary to their flock of worshippers have been historically proven to be illusionary. Yet faith always prevails. Those with the most faith end up being the most blind. Change becomes a virtual impossibility---to change would call into question everything else believed---for if some beliefs are wrong who is to feel safe against other beliefs being wrong? To me, religion without reason behind it, however fragile and temporal the reasoning, is a disaster waiting to happen. Every Christmas Eve, for as long as I can remember, the headline in the paper is always------always----"Pope Prays For Peace". Has there ever, in the history of mankind, been a more useless plan for Peace? The Pope may get the headlines, but the message is the same across the globe----titular religious leaders of varied ilk, all praying for peace. Be all that as it may, the greatest leaders for peace, justice, and freedom in the world's history have essentially been mostly deeply religious persons with little or no ties to organized religious sects, possessing the greatest determination to keep church and state totally separated. Organized religion and intolerance have gone hand in hand as the norm, not the exception. And from the intolerance comes arrogance, distrust, dislike, and then the persecution and killing starts---like night follows day. We are close enough now to the edge that any more religious crusading is really scary.
Throughout my own life, my perception of religion has undergone endless change. The Universe, including our own planet, with some sort of God created evolutionary process--- exists---that much can be reasoned out just as can the existence of an anonymous donor who gives us a gift---reason dictates that the donor must exist. It appears humans have an innate sense of moral values in that so much of basic moral principles, like stealing and cheating, concern for others, etc. are common to all cultures across our globe. Most everyone, minus psychopaths, understand basic right and wrong. The core goal of civilized moral government seems to be a collective effort to promulgate moral values to the maximum. We know right or wrong, for the most part anyway, but whether we do the right rather than the wrong is the problem. The good that religious beliefs can do for an individual is obvious and undeniable. Yet the core religious values inherent in human nature, once formed into religious sects---these dogmas and rituals of sects adopted via inheritance and acts of faith, become social dynamite. There simply is no objective reasoning which leads one to sign on as a Baptist, or a Jew, or a Catholic, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Muslim, etc. The presence of inherited faith based religious gangs across the world creates endless intolerance, distrust, conflict, and often subsequent wars. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Churchill, and endless other leaders were very religious in terms of their moral values, but were identifiable with no particular religious sect. In part, perhaps because of that independence, they were able to bring people together. Religious gang leaders never bring people together, they instead pretend their own peculiar rituals, traditions, and opinions on endless social and political matters are derived from some sort of God assisted human written scripture, or from human designated inter-mediators to God Himself. History has long proven that to be bunk, and those delusional enough to believe they are emissaries of God have been guilty at times, of every crime known to man. Yet the farce goes on, and as it does the world is becoming an increasingly dangerous place for more and more people. The idea that God is pal-ing around with the most faithful of certain religious sects, protecting them from danger, ill luck, etc. is just untenable from any rational observation of history.
The period of history in which religious leaders and Kings had the most control is now referred to as the Dark Ages. The French Enlightenment, which followed this period of time, was essentially a period in which printing presses were able to provide ordinary citizens with the principles and discoveries of science. Once ordinary people were exposed to rational reasoning about the world in which they lived, then superstition and the tyranny of the lettered classes over the untutored, lost ground and, in fact, became overthrown. This really ushered in the concept titled separation of church and state. The pomposity of self-appointed authority came under substantial ridicule and the hold of priests and kings over citizens was considerably weakened. From this point on human populations began to be separated into two basic groups: those who saw faith based religious tenets as the salvation of mankind, and those who viewed some sort of naturalism as the last word---a world in which nature is scientifically examined to provide the truth of matters, not faith based human derived religious dogma. As the body of scientific knowledge increases, to remain stationary is to become stagnant, and the future under no obligation to mimic the past. To faith based worshippers this is heresy--a sign of decadence and disrespect to the laws of God.
To view the above as two groups---the God fearing and the Godless---is way over simplification. Polls consistently show most people believe in God. If believing or not believing in God is not what separates these two groups, what is it that separates them?
To the extent any of the above is true, the problem really is to find a way to dissemble all the human tacked on debris to basic moral concepts and build religious values on the core moral values inherent in human nature. All the rest is diverse societal nonsense. People can dance to the tune any way they want as long as they stay on pitch to these basic inherent moral values.
My observation is that there is little logic in pitting the question as one of God's laws or the Laws of Nature. Rather, the more logical approach would seem to consider the Laws of Nature to be God's Laws. The more irrational approach would seem to lay claim to faith based religious dogmas as God's laws. At one point in history religious dogma stated the world was flat. As scientific knowledge increased it became obvious the world was not flat. To me, it is ok to have faith based beliefs----religious or otherwise----under two conditions: one does not insist such faith based beliefs be made the law of the land, and one is willing to drop these beliefs as increased scientific knowledge proves a faith based belief wrong. It is one thing to say God is never wrong and quite another thing to claim YOU are never wrong.
It is not uncommon for a lot of people to believe God created man in His own image. If one believes that, evolution is bunk. While there is no scientific or logical evidence that God created man in His own image, there is ever increasing scientific evidence for an evolutionary process that has been in operation for billions of years. Given the evidence for such an evolutionary process, and given that almost everyone believes God exists, then logic would seem to dictate that God is the author of this evolutionary process---a rather amazing process at that. Of course this God created process does not lend itself to the notion of humans as some kind of 'special' creation with favored status---like God's faithful human servants get to go through life with God's arm around their shoulders answering their prayers and providing them special protections from HIS Law's of nature. Man is distinguished from other animals most clearly by an advanced ability to reason, as sure as birds are distinguished by the ability to fly, and fish to swim. Reason is the only tool for human understanding of anything---any field, any reality. Even ethics and morality, or if you prefer the term religion, are subject to reason as the basis for validity. With time ethics or religious beliefs change, as they should, with increased understanding of ourselves and others. Faith based religious beliefs that supported slavery, limited rights for women, opposition to birth control, and a whole host of ignorant faith based beliefs eventually lose their hold on believers. Even today faith based notions about gays, about abortion, about control over the dying process, etc. are slowly being changed. And as always, there are those who sincerely feel these changes to be some sort of assault on the Laws of God---as preached by the church religious leaders of their inherited religion.
The most insidiously dangerous faith based belief, one that could conceivably doom the future for the human species, is the belief that a few functioning human cells constitutes a human being and cannot be terminated or it will be an affront against God himself. Even birth control, family planning, and rigid control over population growth are all considered by most to be an affront to the 'will' of God. For any human claims about understanding the 'will' of God, these claims seem the ultimate in arrogance. The best humans can ever do is use our evolutionary gift of reason to protect our future. To claim a few functioning human cells to be a human being is a conceptual absurdity. With this absurdity under our belt we then claim abortion is murder, that assisted suicide during a difficult dying process is murder, that putting to sleep a human 'vegetable' is murder, that birth control is murder, etc. It then follows that bringing to term a child who cannot, for whatever, reasons, be properly cared for---is the 'will of God'. From this I guess it would follow that the 'will of God' is for as many LIVING HUMAN sperms and eggs be fertilized as possible, that all these 'potential' human beings be assisted to materialize into conceived and birthed children----some sort of 'whole lot of fucking going on'. Of course with modern scientific advancement there is no need for a 'whole lot of fucking going on', we could kind organize donated sperm and eggs into some kind of assembly line production. All of this might be good for a ludicrous chuckle except the total absence of a any systematic planned parenthood across the globe is generating a whole lot of human misery across our globe because the ability of our earth to support such large populations has become exceeded. Oh well, God wills it. Look down---now you see it----the edge of the cliff right at our feet.
Associated Quotations:
"In the same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished, but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate; and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its goal."
(Matthew Arnold)
"I came to the conclusion long ago...that all religions were true, and also all had some error in them." (Gandhi)
"Prayer: to ask that the laws of evolution in the Universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy." (Ambrose Pierce)
"And we all have known
Good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes
Good Statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state
Good patriots, who for a theory, risked a cause
Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax
Good popes, who brought all good to jeopardy
Good Christians, who sat is easy chairs
And damned the general world for standing up
Now may the good God pardon all good men!." (Elizibeth Browning)
"The question before the human race is whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles." (John Adams)
"The moralist preaches reason, because he believes it necessary to man; the philosopher writes, because he believes truth must sooner or later prevail over falsehood; theologians and tyrants necessarily hate truth and despise reason because they believe them prejudicial to their interests." (Paul Henri Thiry)
"All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty." Henry Clay
"Man is a religious animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion---several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight." (Mark Twain)
" If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have nothing in it mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous. (Blaise Pascal)
"He who begins by loving Christianity better than the truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all (others).." Samuel Coleridge
"The mob that would die for a belief seldom hesitates to inflict death upon any opposing heretical group." (Ellen Glasgow)
"It comes to pass that nothing is so firmly believed as that which we know least; nor are there any persons so sure of themselves as those who tell us fables, such as alchemists, prognosticators, seers, chiromanticists, quacks, id genus omne. To which I would join, if I dared, a host of persons, interpreters and verifiers-in-ordinary of the designs of God." Michel Montaigne)
"What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other? (Michel Montaigne)
"There is nothing men more readily give themselves to than pushing their own beliefs. When ordinary means fail, they add commandment, violence, fire and sword." (Michel Montaigne)
"Give the Church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all the ages will turn to ashes." (Robert Ingersoll)
"The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody." (Robert Ingersoll)
"Christendom has done away with Christianity, without it being aware of it. Therefore, if anything is to be done about it, the attempt must be made to reintroduce Christianity." Soren Kierkegaard)
"The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation." (Jeremy Bentham)
"Let us worship God again in simplicity, instead of making a fool of him in splendid edifices." (Soren Kierkegaard)
"Minorities need the majority to free them from their fears. The majority needs minorities to free them from their guilt." (Paraphrased from Martin Luther King)
"The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being." (Ashley Montagu)
" People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards." (Oscar Wilde)
"How many things which served us yesterday as articles of faith, are fables for us today." (Michael Montaigne)
"You have got our country, but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us....Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?" (Redjacket)
"There is no creed so false but faith can make it true". (Henry David Thoreau)
"The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its ends when rebels against it disturb the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics who cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to disturb ecclesiastical order......to despise legitimate authority, no matter in whom it is invested, is unlawful, it is rebellion against God's will......women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adopted at once to preserve her modesty and promote the good bringing up of children and well being of the family. (Pope Leo XIII)
"Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.....Either God must be unjust, or you, Jews, wicked and ungodly. You have been, about fifteen hundred years, a race rejected of God..... what shall Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? I will give my faithful advice. First, that one should set fire to their synagogues...then that one should also break down and destroy their houses.....since we punish thieves with the halter, murders with the sword, and heretics with fire, why do we not turn on all those evil teachers of perdition, those popes, cardinals, and bishops, and the entire swarm of the Roman Sodom with arms in hand, and wash our hands in their blood........because the sword is a very great benefit and necessary to the whole world, to preserve peace, to punish sin, and to prevent evil.........whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.......Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the ad of spiritual things, but---more frequently than not---struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." (Martin Luther)
"All great religions in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely." (Henry Mencken)
"Conscience is God's presence in man" (Emanuel Swedenborg)
" No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe in them." (Ernest Renan)
"When the State intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine." (Bertrand Russell)
"That they (the dogmas of religion) do little harm is not true. Opposition to birth control makes it impossible to solve the population problem and therefore postpones indefinitely all chance of world peace." (Bertand Russell)
"Always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice and corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." (Joseph Pulitzer)
"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of him." (Thomas Carlyle)
"Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character." (Sankara Acharya)
"To cling to the principles of the Judeo-Christian ethic----honesty, integrity, compassion, love, ideas of hope, charity, humility---is an integral part of any person's life no matter what his position in life may be....My prayer is that my life be meaningful in the enhancement of His Kindgom on earth, enhancement of the lives of my fellow human beings; that I may help translate the natural love that exists in this world and do simple justice through government." ( Jimmy Carter).
"The great law of culture is, Let each become all that he was created capable of being: expand, if possible, to his full growth, resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these what they may" (Thomas Carlyle)
"Living is not the good, but living well. The wise man therefore lives as long as he should, not as long as he can. He will think of life in terms of quality, not quantity." (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
"It is a cruel crime thoughtlessly to bring more children into existence than can be properly taken care of." (Rabindranath Tabore)
"Creeds must become intellectually honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world. That is perhaps the most stupendous fact in the whole world-situation." (Bernard Shaw)
"The Popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. All Popes are a certain species of man-gods, for the purpose of being able to conduct the functions of mediator between God and mankind. All powers in Heaven, as well as on earth, are given to them." (Pope Stephen V)
"Of all religions, Christianity is without doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men." (Voltaire)
"Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." (Arthur Schopenhauer)
"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one." (Thomas Jefferson)
"This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men....re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem." (Walt Whitman)
"I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
And upon all oppression and shame.....
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners....
I observe the sights and depredations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon others who are different,
All these---all the meanness and agony with out end
I sit looking out upon,
See, hear, and am silent" (Walt Whitman)
"They (the Clergy) believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." (Thomas Jefferson)
"...it cannot be lawful for the press, under the pretext that it is free, to make daily and systematic attempts on the religious and moral health of mankind." (Pope John XXII)
"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.......He that never compares his notions with those of others, readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, and very seldom discovers the objections which may be raised against his opinions; he, therefore, often thinks himself in possession of truth, when he is only fondling an error long since exploded." (Samuel Johnson)
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot (the Bushs' of the world)........they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose. (Thomas Jefferson)
"I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking the the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simply beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue." (Oscar Wilde)
"Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teaching of Christ so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin." (Ambrose Bierce)
"Write on my gravestone, 'Infidel. Traitor"---infidel to every church that compromises with the strong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people." (Wendell Philips)
"I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The Still, sad music of humanity." (William Wordsworth)
" There is not any thing, which has contributed so much to delude mankind in religious; matters, as mistaken apprehensions concerning supernatural inspiration or revelation; not considering, that all true religion originates from reason, and can not otherwise be understood, but by the exercise and improvement of it." (Ethan Allen)
"In order to see Christianity, one must forget almost all the Christians......the efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith---that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind." (Henri Frederic Amiel)
"It is forbidden to decry other sects; the true believer gives honor to whatever in them is worthy of honor." (Asoka) Buddhist Emperor of India
"Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but---live for it." (Charles Colton)
"Religion has lost itself in cults, dogmas, and myths. Consequently the office of religion as a sense of community and one's place in it has been lost." (John Dewey)
"There is only one step from (religious) fanaticism to barbarism." (Denis Diderot)
"Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand." (Frederick the Great)
"As a general rule the classes that are low in economic efficiency, or in intelligence, or both, are peculiarly devout---as for instance, the negro population of the South, much of the lower-class foreign population, much of the rural population, especially in those sections which are backward in education, in the stage of development of their industry, or in respect to their industrial contact with the rest of the community." (Thorstein Veblen)
"Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief." Sigmund Freud)
"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives." (Albert Schweitzer)
"Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person." (Walter Kaufmann)
"Even those who do not regret the disappearance of religious illusions from the civilized world of today will admit that so long s they were in force they offered those who were bound by them the most powerful protection against the danger of neurosis." (Sigmund Freud)
"Nothing in the whole world, or even outside of the world, can possibly be regarded as good without limitation, except a good will. No doubt it is a good and desirable thing to have intelligence, sagacity, judgment, and other intellectual gifts, by whatever name they may be called; it is also good and desirable in many respects to possess by nature such qualities as courage, resolution, and perseverance; but all these gifts of nature may be in the highest degree pernicious and hurtful if the will which directs them, or what is called the 'character' is not itself good." (Immanuel Kant)
"Fear of death was the first thing on earth to make the gods." (Lucretius)
Friday, January 18, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
(Part 4) WHY THE U.S., LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
*The following topic is posted in like a dozen installments. Each contributing cause to the topic is followed by a series of thought provoking quotations from a wide assortment of individuals, some Americans but many non-Americans too. Some alive but most dead. Like many aged souls, I cannot be sure my dissatisfaction with the priorities and behavior of my government is objective, or just the natural tendency of age to resent how the next generation handles about anything. But for me personally, never have I been so unhappy with my own country---to the point I am almost ashamed to be American these days. At the same time---again personally---never have I personally had it so good, sequestered away in a self constructed 'Garden of Eden', at least for now. Like in the bigger picture, Mother Nature bats last, and I too, will sooner rather than later, take that great leap in the dark, a meaningless footnote in the history of some Deistical evolutionary process.
WHY THE UNITED STATES, LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
10. VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE----From the frontier days onward America has always been a violent culture. Guns, lynchings, murder, assassination, war, riots----whatever the nature of conflict, Americans more often than not sought solutions via the barrel of a gun. Might makes right has been the prevailing American foreign policy for decades now. Bush has given violence a new wrinkle----preventive warfare. According to this policy, if we think someone might cause us trouble down the road it is ok to attack them now, sort of cut them off at the pass.
It is not at all clear how much the tax cuts to the rich trickle down in our society, but the penchant to solve conflict through violence certainly does. We may give the appropriate ceremonial lip service to historical moral leaders like Christ, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Lincoln, etc. but, for all practical purposes as it relates to our government policies---these 'moralists' are fools, idealistic wimps lacking the necessary patriotic fortitude or strength of character to really teach domestic and global dissidents a few lessons, or preferably bomb them off the face of the earth. I guess we call our current policies tough love, albeit places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam must by now, after centuries of tough love by militarily powerful countries hell bent on realigning their politics, religion, or economic priorities----certainly by now they might be weary of so much 'tough love'. If there are any better examples of countries who have been repeatedly bombed back into the stone age, I can't think of any off hand. What is new, lets say in the last 50 years, is the entrance of the U.S. as a participant in this sort of venture. Once violence, as a national policy to solve conflict, becomes acceptable, it tends to become acceptable at all levels of our society. Whether it is our government using violence to solve conflict, some kid blasting other school kids, gang members killing each other, spouses assaulting or killing each other, torture of prisoners, police brutality, dog fighting for entertainment, sexual violence, violent music, violent movies, or whatever the scenario of the violence-----it all proceeds from the top down. If we cannot denounce violence as the national policy means to stop conflict, there is no way to curb the violence at any other level in our society. Bush is on TV practically every day defending violence to achieve his objectives. And he has the support of the weapons manufacturers, professional soldiers, gun owners, the religious right, and I guess most of those eager to teach this or that group of people a lesson or two. When people are in the mood to teach others a lesson or two, Christ, King Jr, etc. are not attractive role models. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not compatible with any mood to kick the shit out of this or that group of people. A more peaceful alternative approach is ok with the next door neighbor, at least as long as the neighbor has his religious and political priorities in order. Like Bush preaches----we can all get along if everyone learns to do things his way, or at least 'their way' if you want to include his clones.
I have seen some awful sights in my life, but Bush or Condalesa Rice on the TV insisting that others stop using violence to resolve their conflicts has to be the all time winner of awful sights. Others should stop the violence but Bush, by his own repeated insistence, is going to win conflicts by military slaughter no matter how many hundreds of thousands need to be killed, or how many millions need to be left homeless, or how many communities need be leveled into the Stone Age, or how many guilty or innocent need to be tortured, or how many billions of dollars need to be diverted or borrowed to fund massive wars on several fronts. I suspect this might be true: over the past 50 years no country in the world can match the United States in number of countries invaded---out right or via guerrilla armies financed by the United States-----or number of people rendered homeless by our military actions, or number of communities bombed into the stone age with our planes, or number of our own military dead via military ventures, or in money spent on guns, bombs, delivery systems, or have as many military bases in foreign countries as the United States. Let's face it: 750 military bases in 130 countries is the all time world record. But as Bush amazingly insists, with the proper contorted look of moral turpitude, if "other countries would cease sending men and arms into sovereign countries, these military and terrorist activities would cease". Yet most Americans cannot understand why Bin Laden is more popular globally than George Bush. How far down the ladder of morality and ethics have we slipped as a country to earn such widespread disdain by others across the globe? Of course it doesn't mean other countries are so righteous, but we like to think we are. Maybe we once were, up until the end of World War II, but like other advanced civilizations, time takes it's toll, and the same factors which have toppled every past advanced civilization are now present in our own advanced empire Time goes, it is often said. Wrong, time stays, we go.
Associated Quotations:
"Force---that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever erected for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts. You will find yourself hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourself obliged by the law of conflict into which you have plunged, to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourself day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you to commit harsh and violent action." (Auberon Herbert)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the houses of its children. This is not a way of life....Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging itself on a cross of iron." (Dwight Eisenhower)
"We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die." (Wystan Auden)
"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." (George Santayana)
"It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior." (George Santayana)
"When the rich wage war it is the poor who die." (John-Paul Sarte)
"I have known war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes." (Douglas MacArthur)
"There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the war of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority (political or religious), long standing custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge." (Roger Bacon)
"Think of the dull functioning of dogma, age after age. How many millions have been led shunted along dogmatic runways from the dark into the dark again.....endless billions, and at the gates, dogma, ignorance, vice, cruelty, seize them and clamp this or that band upon their brains." (Theodore Dreiser)
"Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on the Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics." (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal)
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals." (William Penn)
"It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies." ( Bertrand Russell)
"Birth control, family planning and population limitation are most important in any effort to bring real peace into the world." (Margaret Sanger)
"Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God..... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire." (George Santayana)
Violence proceeds from fear and "Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth---more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive, and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid....thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. But if thought is to become the possession of the many, and the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back---fear that their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves prove less worthy to the respect then they have supposed themselves to be." (Bertrand Russell)
"The greatest power in the world today is the power to change........The most reckless irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today." (Karl Dutsch)
"(Violence) has no head and cannot think, no heart and cannot feel. When she moves it is in wrath; when she pauses it is amid ruin. Her prayers are curses, her god is a demon, her communion is death, her vengeance is eternity,, her decalogue written in the blood of her victims, and if she stops for a moment in her infernal flight it is upon a kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for a more sanguinary desolation." (Daniel O'Connell)
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.....A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions......A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.---"Ah, so you are sure to be misunderstood."-----is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton and (Terrell Owens), and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
"Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall lean nothing".
(Thomas Huxley)
"Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it." (Howard Mumford Jones)
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie---deliberate, contrived and dishonest---but the myth---persistent, persuasive and realistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears." (John Kennedy)
"Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate". (John Kennedy)
"Those who make peaceful revolutions impossible will make violent revolutions inevitable." (John Kennedy)
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." (John Locke)
"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection, is a poverty stricken day, and a succession of such days is fatal to human life." (Lewis Mumford)
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." (Issac Newton)
"A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory." (John Steinbeck)
"Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.....violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness. (Rollo May)
"A devotion to humanity...is too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously blood-thirsty." (James Baldwin)
"If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him." (James Baldwin)
"I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to one, may appear to be error to the other." (Gandhi)
"Aggressiveness is taught, as are all forms of violence which human beings exhibit.....Aggression is the expression of frustrated expectation of love." (Ashley Montagu)
" Women's rights, men's rights, ---human rights---all are threatened by the ever-present spectre of war so destructive now of human material and moral values as to render victory indistinguishable from defeat." Rosika Schwimmer
WHY THE UNITED STATES, LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
10. VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE----From the frontier days onward America has always been a violent culture. Guns, lynchings, murder, assassination, war, riots----whatever the nature of conflict, Americans more often than not sought solutions via the barrel of a gun. Might makes right has been the prevailing American foreign policy for decades now. Bush has given violence a new wrinkle----preventive warfare. According to this policy, if we think someone might cause us trouble down the road it is ok to attack them now, sort of cut them off at the pass.
It is not at all clear how much the tax cuts to the rich trickle down in our society, but the penchant to solve conflict through violence certainly does. We may give the appropriate ceremonial lip service to historical moral leaders like Christ, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Lincoln, etc. but, for all practical purposes as it relates to our government policies---these 'moralists' are fools, idealistic wimps lacking the necessary patriotic fortitude or strength of character to really teach domestic and global dissidents a few lessons, or preferably bomb them off the face of the earth. I guess we call our current policies tough love, albeit places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam must by now, after centuries of tough love by militarily powerful countries hell bent on realigning their politics, religion, or economic priorities----certainly by now they might be weary of so much 'tough love'. If there are any better examples of countries who have been repeatedly bombed back into the stone age, I can't think of any off hand. What is new, lets say in the last 50 years, is the entrance of the U.S. as a participant in this sort of venture. Once violence, as a national policy to solve conflict, becomes acceptable, it tends to become acceptable at all levels of our society. Whether it is our government using violence to solve conflict, some kid blasting other school kids, gang members killing each other, spouses assaulting or killing each other, torture of prisoners, police brutality, dog fighting for entertainment, sexual violence, violent music, violent movies, or whatever the scenario of the violence-----it all proceeds from the top down. If we cannot denounce violence as the national policy means to stop conflict, there is no way to curb the violence at any other level in our society. Bush is on TV practically every day defending violence to achieve his objectives. And he has the support of the weapons manufacturers, professional soldiers, gun owners, the religious right, and I guess most of those eager to teach this or that group of people a lesson or two. When people are in the mood to teach others a lesson or two, Christ, King Jr, etc. are not attractive role models. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not compatible with any mood to kick the shit out of this or that group of people. A more peaceful alternative approach is ok with the next door neighbor, at least as long as the neighbor has his religious and political priorities in order. Like Bush preaches----we can all get along if everyone learns to do things his way, or at least 'their way' if you want to include his clones.
I have seen some awful sights in my life, but Bush or Condalesa Rice on the TV insisting that others stop using violence to resolve their conflicts has to be the all time winner of awful sights. Others should stop the violence but Bush, by his own repeated insistence, is going to win conflicts by military slaughter no matter how many hundreds of thousands need to be killed, or how many millions need to be left homeless, or how many communities need be leveled into the Stone Age, or how many guilty or innocent need to be tortured, or how many billions of dollars need to be diverted or borrowed to fund massive wars on several fronts. I suspect this might be true: over the past 50 years no country in the world can match the United States in number of countries invaded---out right or via guerrilla armies financed by the United States-----or number of people rendered homeless by our military actions, or number of communities bombed into the stone age with our planes, or number of our own military dead via military ventures, or in money spent on guns, bombs, delivery systems, or have as many military bases in foreign countries as the United States. Let's face it: 750 military bases in 130 countries is the all time world record. But as Bush amazingly insists, with the proper contorted look of moral turpitude, if "other countries would cease sending men and arms into sovereign countries, these military and terrorist activities would cease". Yet most Americans cannot understand why Bin Laden is more popular globally than George Bush. How far down the ladder of morality and ethics have we slipped as a country to earn such widespread disdain by others across the globe? Of course it doesn't mean other countries are so righteous, but we like to think we are. Maybe we once were, up until the end of World War II, but like other advanced civilizations, time takes it's toll, and the same factors which have toppled every past advanced civilization are now present in our own advanced empire Time goes, it is often said. Wrong, time stays, we go.
Associated Quotations:
"Force---that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever erected for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts. You will find yourself hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourself obliged by the law of conflict into which you have plunged, to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourself day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you to commit harsh and violent action." (Auberon Herbert)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the houses of its children. This is not a way of life....Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging itself on a cross of iron." (Dwight Eisenhower)
"We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die." (Wystan Auden)
"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." (George Santayana)
"It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior." (George Santayana)
"When the rich wage war it is the poor who die." (John-Paul Sarte)
"I have known war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes." (Douglas MacArthur)
"There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the war of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority (political or religious), long standing custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge." (Roger Bacon)
"Think of the dull functioning of dogma, age after age. How many millions have been led shunted along dogmatic runways from the dark into the dark again.....endless billions, and at the gates, dogma, ignorance, vice, cruelty, seize them and clamp this or that band upon their brains." (Theodore Dreiser)
"Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on the Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics." (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal)
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals." (William Penn)
"It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies." ( Bertrand Russell)
"Birth control, family planning and population limitation are most important in any effort to bring real peace into the world." (Margaret Sanger)
"Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God..... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire." (George Santayana)
Violence proceeds from fear and "Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth---more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive, and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid....thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. But if thought is to become the possession of the many, and the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back---fear that their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves prove less worthy to the respect then they have supposed themselves to be." (Bertrand Russell)
"The greatest power in the world today is the power to change........The most reckless irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today." (Karl Dutsch)
"(Violence) has no head and cannot think, no heart and cannot feel. When she moves it is in wrath; when she pauses it is amid ruin. Her prayers are curses, her god is a demon, her communion is death, her vengeance is eternity,, her decalogue written in the blood of her victims, and if she stops for a moment in her infernal flight it is upon a kindred rock to whet her vulture fang for a more sanguinary desolation." (Daniel O'Connell)
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.....A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions......A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.---"Ah, so you are sure to be misunderstood."-----is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton and (Terrell Owens), and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
"Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall lean nothing".
(Thomas Huxley)
"Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it." (Howard Mumford Jones)
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie---deliberate, contrived and dishonest---but the myth---persistent, persuasive and realistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears." (John Kennedy)
"Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate". (John Kennedy)
"Those who make peaceful revolutions impossible will make violent revolutions inevitable." (John Kennedy)
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." (John Locke)
"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection, is a poverty stricken day, and a succession of such days is fatal to human life." (Lewis Mumford)
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." (Issac Newton)
"A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory." (John Steinbeck)
"Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.....violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness. (Rollo May)
"A devotion to humanity...is too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously blood-thirsty." (James Baldwin)
"If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him." (James Baldwin)
"I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to one, may appear to be error to the other." (Gandhi)
"Aggressiveness is taught, as are all forms of violence which human beings exhibit.....Aggression is the expression of frustrated expectation of love." (Ashley Montagu)
" Women's rights, men's rights, ---human rights---all are threatened by the ever-present spectre of war so destructive now of human material and moral values as to render victory indistinguishable from defeat." Rosika Schwimmer
Friday, January 4, 2008
(Part 3) WHY THE U.S.,LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
*The following topic is posted in like a dozen installments. Each contributing cause to the topic is followed by a series of thought provoking quotations from a wide assortment of individuals, some Americans but many non-Americans too. Some alive but most dead. Like many aged souls, I cannot be sure my dissatisfaction with the priorities and behavior of my government is objective, or just the natural tendency of age to resent how the next generation handles about anything. But for me personally, never have I been so unhappy with my own country---to the point I am almost ashamed to be American these days. At the same time---again personally---never have I personally had it so good, sequestered away in a self constructed 'Garden of Eden', at least for now. Like in the bigger picture, Mother Nature bats last, and I too, will sooner rather than later, take that great leap in the dark, a meaningless footnote in the history of some Deistical evolutionary process.
WHY THE UNITED STATES, LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
6. THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD CLAIMS IT CANNOT AFFORD UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL CITIZENS even though we are the only industrialized country not to do so. We are like 27th in infant mortality rate, many countries are ahead of us in average life span, and there are like 40 million people in the U.S. without health insurance at all. Strangely, those who scream the loudest about abortion, who claim to be the most legitimate Christians, who have the most affluence in our society, are the largest blocs of people who adamantly oppose universal health care. "Who is going to pay for all this?" they scream. Well, maybe it should be those with the most money, those most concerned about right to life, and those with the highest degree of Christian morality. You know, "Onward Christian soldiers"......Ooops, wrong hymn---that is for marching to war.
7. THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD CLAIMS IT CANNOT AFFORD TO SPEND THE SAME AMOUNT OF DOLLARS PER STUDENT TO EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN. I guess some kids just deserve bad schools, bad teachers, less books, etc. If they had chosen their parents with more care they wouldn't be in such dumps for schools. Meanwhile the reading and math scores for American students keep falling further behind the scores of dozens of other countries. Oh, what the hell difference does it make as long as the right kids inherit all the money. When is the last time any of us affluent ever even drove through the seedier portions of our community? Now let us all rise, open our hymnals and sing stoutly, "Onward Christian Soldiers........", wave a bible, family valuize ourselves, thank God for all our blessings, and vote for some sort of George Bushite.
Associated quotations:
"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country." (John Adams)
"That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call tragedy." (Thomas Carlyle)
"On one occasion Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated. 'As much,' said he, 'as the living are to the dead.' " (Diogenes Laertius)
"Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and education." (Abraham Flexner) At least Bush is proving something.
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness." (George Washington)
"The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people to ignorance." (Thomas Jefferson)
"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education...appears to be an object of vital importance." (Abraham Lincoln)
"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men,----the balance wheel of the social machinery......It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich, it prevents being poor." (Horace Mann)
"I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not reach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools." (Jawaharlal Nehru)
"But if you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is easy; that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly" (Plato)
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" (Ronald Reagan)
8. THE USURPTION OF CONTROL OVER ALL 3 BRANCHES OF OUR GOVERNMENT BY CORPORATE LOBBYISTS AND SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. If anyone wants to know who now controls all the branches of our government they just need to examine what our government spends our money on (our priorities), the tax codes, the kinds of laws passed, the nature of court decisions, who our wealth is going to, the slipping status and protections of employees, world trade policies, etc. Democracy is such a vague word these days (or any other days) as to be almost meaningless. Democracy was the same word used when slavery existed, when women couldn't vote, when segregation existed etc. It is just the kind of word made for some dim witted President like George Bush to throw around as an excuse for his puppetiered behavior on behalf of his support base. The truth is that money now completely controls our elections with precious few exceptions, while the open primary system leaves the public completely under the control of money and sophisticated psychological ploys which prey upon prejudice and fear to manipulate a sufficient number of special interests groups to coalesce behind a single candidate who can win slightly more than 50% of the vote of the 50% of people who still bother to vote. George Bush rules America today with less than 25% of the votes of those of age to vote. As mentioned, democracy is a tricky word. When corporate monopolistic cabals like the oil, gas, and coal industries are given essentially free reign to exploit our environment and our pocketbooks en route to accumulating vast profits, just as monopolistic professional sport owners/player unions are given the same unmonitored freedom to exploit sport fans and taxpayers of the cities in which they play---when this kind of reality can be sold to the public as a healthy function of democracy, well----democracy is in need of emergency life support. Democracy, as I understand it, should not be a tool for the rich, the powerful, any religious group, any racial group, etc. to grab control of all three branches of government. As the Judicial branch falls, all protection against abuse by those who have seized the power is gone. Strangely, the current situation is not mob rule---not yet---since those in power get there with less than 25% of the votes of those eligible to vote. This is specifically special interest rule---a rule, which if allowed to continue, will lead to mob overthrow through domestic terrorism. Most empires in history have fallen due to foreign overreach of power and domestic accumulation of wealth in the hands of too few. Nervous? We should be.
Associated quotations:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars." (Will and Ariel Durant).
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." (Thomas Jefferson)
"I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute" (John Kennedy)
"The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting all working people of all nations and tongues, and kindreds." (Abraham Lincoln)
"We have no more a real democracy in the world today. Democracy in politics has in no country led to democracy in its economic life. We still have autocracy in industry as firmly seated on its throne as theocratic kings ruling in the name of god or aristocracy ruling by military power; and the forces represented by these twain, superseded by the autocrats of industry, have become the allies of the power which took their place of pride. Religion and rank....are most often courtiers of Mammon and support him on his throne. ( George W. Russell)
" A liar lies to the nations.
A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people.
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie." (Carl Sandburg)
"It is not man's fault but the malice and imposture of priests and kings which have everywhere destroyed truth." ( Charles De Talleyrand-Perigord)
"It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic Government, without a long interval of limited monarchy." (Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel De Tocqueville)
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." (George Bernard Shaw)
WHY THE UNITED STATES, LIKE EVERY HISTORICAL EMPIRE, HAS REACHED THE EDGE OF THE PROVERBIAL CLIFF:
6. THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD CLAIMS IT CANNOT AFFORD UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL CITIZENS even though we are the only industrialized country not to do so. We are like 27th in infant mortality rate, many countries are ahead of us in average life span, and there are like 40 million people in the U.S. without health insurance at all. Strangely, those who scream the loudest about abortion, who claim to be the most legitimate Christians, who have the most affluence in our society, are the largest blocs of people who adamantly oppose universal health care. "Who is going to pay for all this?" they scream. Well, maybe it should be those with the most money, those most concerned about right to life, and those with the highest degree of Christian morality. You know, "Onward Christian soldiers"......Ooops, wrong hymn---that is for marching to war.
7. THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD CLAIMS IT CANNOT AFFORD TO SPEND THE SAME AMOUNT OF DOLLARS PER STUDENT TO EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN. I guess some kids just deserve bad schools, bad teachers, less books, etc. If they had chosen their parents with more care they wouldn't be in such dumps for schools. Meanwhile the reading and math scores for American students keep falling further behind the scores of dozens of other countries. Oh, what the hell difference does it make as long as the right kids inherit all the money. When is the last time any of us affluent ever even drove through the seedier portions of our community? Now let us all rise, open our hymnals and sing stoutly, "Onward Christian Soldiers........", wave a bible, family valuize ourselves, thank God for all our blessings, and vote for some sort of George Bushite.
Associated quotations:
"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country." (John Adams)
"That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call tragedy." (Thomas Carlyle)
"On one occasion Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated. 'As much,' said he, 'as the living are to the dead.' " (Diogenes Laertius)
"Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and education." (Abraham Flexner) At least Bush is proving something.
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness." (George Washington)
"The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people to ignorance." (Thomas Jefferson)
"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education...appears to be an object of vital importance." (Abraham Lincoln)
"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men,----the balance wheel of the social machinery......It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich, it prevents being poor." (Horace Mann)
"I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not reach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools." (Jawaharlal Nehru)
"But if you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is easy; that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly" (Plato)
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" (Ronald Reagan)
8. THE USURPTION OF CONTROL OVER ALL 3 BRANCHES OF OUR GOVERNMENT BY CORPORATE LOBBYISTS AND SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. If anyone wants to know who now controls all the branches of our government they just need to examine what our government spends our money on (our priorities), the tax codes, the kinds of laws passed, the nature of court decisions, who our wealth is going to, the slipping status and protections of employees, world trade policies, etc. Democracy is such a vague word these days (or any other days) as to be almost meaningless. Democracy was the same word used when slavery existed, when women couldn't vote, when segregation existed etc. It is just the kind of word made for some dim witted President like George Bush to throw around as an excuse for his puppetiered behavior on behalf of his support base. The truth is that money now completely controls our elections with precious few exceptions, while the open primary system leaves the public completely under the control of money and sophisticated psychological ploys which prey upon prejudice and fear to manipulate a sufficient number of special interests groups to coalesce behind a single candidate who can win slightly more than 50% of the vote of the 50% of people who still bother to vote. George Bush rules America today with less than 25% of the votes of those of age to vote. As mentioned, democracy is a tricky word. When corporate monopolistic cabals like the oil, gas, and coal industries are given essentially free reign to exploit our environment and our pocketbooks en route to accumulating vast profits, just as monopolistic professional sport owners/player unions are given the same unmonitored freedom to exploit sport fans and taxpayers of the cities in which they play---when this kind of reality can be sold to the public as a healthy function of democracy, well----democracy is in need of emergency life support. Democracy, as I understand it, should not be a tool for the rich, the powerful, any religious group, any racial group, etc. to grab control of all three branches of government. As the Judicial branch falls, all protection against abuse by those who have seized the power is gone. Strangely, the current situation is not mob rule---not yet---since those in power get there with less than 25% of the votes of those eligible to vote. This is specifically special interest rule---a rule, which if allowed to continue, will lead to mob overthrow through domestic terrorism. Most empires in history have fallen due to foreign overreach of power and domestic accumulation of wealth in the hands of too few. Nervous? We should be.
Associated quotations:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars." (Will and Ariel Durant).
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." (Thomas Jefferson)
"I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute" (John Kennedy)
"The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting all working people of all nations and tongues, and kindreds." (Abraham Lincoln)
"We have no more a real democracy in the world today. Democracy in politics has in no country led to democracy in its economic life. We still have autocracy in industry as firmly seated on its throne as theocratic kings ruling in the name of god or aristocracy ruling by military power; and the forces represented by these twain, superseded by the autocrats of industry, have become the allies of the power which took their place of pride. Religion and rank....are most often courtiers of Mammon and support him on his throne. ( George W. Russell)
" A liar lies to the nations.
A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people.
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie." (Carl Sandburg)
"It is not man's fault but the malice and imposture of priests and kings which have everywhere destroyed truth." ( Charles De Talleyrand-Perigord)
"It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic Government, without a long interval of limited monarchy." (Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel De Tocqueville)
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." (George Bernard Shaw)
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
January T.O. articles (added as appear)
Jan10th Article: 'Phillips insisted that the receiver is still a game-time decision.
"You think he's going to play, you don't think he's going to play, that's where I am. We'll see," Phillips said. "No, I don't think it would be a surprise (if Owens plays), but it would be a nice present."
Jones said it is a "very legitimate game-time decision" and that one consideration would be if playing could threaten Owens' availability for future playoff games if the Cowboys beat New York.
But Jones then made it clear that, "Sunday is the major point of emphasis, and any decision will be made risking most anything to have success Sunday."
Plus, Jones knows it would be hard to keep Owens out if the receiver wants to play.
"I haven't said `no' to Terrell Owens since I gave him the check," Jones said. "There's no question that he's going to say that he wants to play. ... Terrell knows his situation better than any trainer, or any doctor or certainly than Wade or anybody else. He knows his situation very well, and you're going to have to count on him to use a little bit of judgment."
Fellow receiver Sam Hurd said Owens has spent "like 19 hours out of his day" trying to get back on the field and expects T.O. will play.
"He tells me all the time, opportunities like this don't come around every season, so he wants to take advantage of them," Hurd said. "He believes in this team so much that he wants to get out there and help this team get to the Super Bowl."
Dallas Cowboys to benefit from Owens' radical rehab
09:37 PM CST on Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Wade Phillips thinks Terrell Owens will play Sunday against the New York Giants.
You couldn't possibly be surprised.
T.O. is blessed with great genes, which help his recovery. But the one aspect of his ability to heal quickly is the relentless way he attacks rehab.
He works harder to get restore his body than he does when he's on the practice field.
He went through rehab on Christmas Day. And New Year's Day. He's been working after hours on the Mavericks' underwater treadmill, which allows him to condition without putting stress on his ankle.
He spends virtually every waking hour trying to get his ankle healthy enough to play and be the difference-maker the Cowboys need him to be to end their 10-year playoff drought.
The Giants won 11 games. They have won eight straight on the road. They led the league in sacks.
They are a worthy opponent and the Cowboys need T.O. to beat them. He understands this.
That's the reason he's worked so hard to get back in time for Sunday's game.
• Just wondering if Wade Phillips still is having a good ol' time in Big D? Hey, there are five other teams that would love to have home-field advantage throughout, but right now, there's not a whole lot else good going on with the Cowboys aside from having Terry Glenn on the field. For the second time in three weeks, Dallas was held to six points. And Sunday, with Tony Romo in the lineup, the Cowboys were limited to just 86 yards through three quarters. For both the team and Jason Witten's sake, Dallas had better get Terrell Owens back soon. Witten has just four catches in the six quarters since Owens went out with a high ankle sprain against the Carolina Panthers.
• E-mail
LANDOVER, Md. – The Cowboys ended November as the NFC's hottest team, and their offense was second only to New England's.
They end December with a 2-2 record; they failed to score a touchdown in the two losses, and their offense, minus Terrell Owens, isn't anywhere close to the league's finest.
Maybe none of this will matter in two weeks. Maybe Wade Phillips is right and the Cowboys will play great.
If Owens duplicates the recovery from injury he made to play in the Super Bowl three years ago, the Cowboys could indeed be Super Bowl-bound.
On Sunday, they were very earthbound. Without the deep threat of Owens, the Cowboys endured their worst rushing day ever, gaining a single yard against a spirited Redskins team that earned its way into the playoffs with a 27-6 victory.
If Owens is anything less than 100 percent when he returns from the ankle sprain he suffered in Carolina, the offense is in trouble.
Since Owens went out last week, the Cowboys have played more than six quarters and produced all of 12 points."
"You think he's going to play, you don't think he's going to play, that's where I am. We'll see," Phillips said. "No, I don't think it would be a surprise (if Owens plays), but it would be a nice present."
Jones said it is a "very legitimate game-time decision" and that one consideration would be if playing could threaten Owens' availability for future playoff games if the Cowboys beat New York.
But Jones then made it clear that, "Sunday is the major point of emphasis, and any decision will be made risking most anything to have success Sunday."
Plus, Jones knows it would be hard to keep Owens out if the receiver wants to play.
"I haven't said `no' to Terrell Owens since I gave him the check," Jones said. "There's no question that he's going to say that he wants to play. ... Terrell knows his situation better than any trainer, or any doctor or certainly than Wade or anybody else. He knows his situation very well, and you're going to have to count on him to use a little bit of judgment."
Fellow receiver Sam Hurd said Owens has spent "like 19 hours out of his day" trying to get back on the field and expects T.O. will play.
"He tells me all the time, opportunities like this don't come around every season, so he wants to take advantage of them," Hurd said. "He believes in this team so much that he wants to get out there and help this team get to the Super Bowl."
Dallas Cowboys to benefit from Owens' radical rehab
09:37 PM CST on Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Wade Phillips thinks Terrell Owens will play Sunday against the New York Giants.
You couldn't possibly be surprised.
T.O. is blessed with great genes, which help his recovery. But the one aspect of his ability to heal quickly is the relentless way he attacks rehab.
He works harder to get restore his body than he does when he's on the practice field.
He went through rehab on Christmas Day. And New Year's Day. He's been working after hours on the Mavericks' underwater treadmill, which allows him to condition without putting stress on his ankle.
He spends virtually every waking hour trying to get his ankle healthy enough to play and be the difference-maker the Cowboys need him to be to end their 10-year playoff drought.
The Giants won 11 games. They have won eight straight on the road. They led the league in sacks.
They are a worthy opponent and the Cowboys need T.O. to beat them. He understands this.
That's the reason he's worked so hard to get back in time for Sunday's game.
• Just wondering if Wade Phillips still is having a good ol' time in Big D? Hey, there are five other teams that would love to have home-field advantage throughout, but right now, there's not a whole lot else good going on with the Cowboys aside from having Terry Glenn on the field. For the second time in three weeks, Dallas was held to six points. And Sunday, with Tony Romo in the lineup, the Cowboys were limited to just 86 yards through three quarters. For both the team and Jason Witten's sake, Dallas had better get Terrell Owens back soon. Witten has just four catches in the six quarters since Owens went out with a high ankle sprain against the Carolina Panthers.
LANDOVER, Md. – The Cowboys ended November as the NFC's hottest team, and their offense was second only to New England's.
They end December with a 2-2 record; they failed to score a touchdown in the two losses, and their offense, minus Terrell Owens, isn't anywhere close to the league's finest.
Maybe none of this will matter in two weeks. Maybe Wade Phillips is right and the Cowboys will play great.
If Owens duplicates the recovery from injury he made to play in the Super Bowl three years ago, the Cowboys could indeed be Super Bowl-bound.
On Sunday, they were very earthbound. Without the deep threat of Owens, the Cowboys endured their worst rushing day ever, gaining a single yard against a spirited Redskins team that earned its way into the playoffs with a 27-6 victory.
If Owens is anything less than 100 percent when he returns from the ankle sprain he suffered in Carolina, the offense is in trouble.
Since Owens went out last week, the Cowboys have played more than six quarters and produced all of 12 points."
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