*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)
