ARTISAN BATIKS SANTA FE TRAIL QUILT PATTERN 52" X 73" at Hancocks-Paducah.com
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Friday, October 2, 2009
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Praise to the Men and Women Who Forged Ahead
I’ve had such a burning in my bosom today and this week about Joseph Smith, the Saints, the pioneers, Mormon and non (though especially Mormon) the Patriots/Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims. Let me outline some of my thoughts.
1. I’m reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose about Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson and the Discovery Corps
2. Joseph Smith was born in 1805 in the middle of this exploration of land just acquired by Jefferson in a genius and inspired act which would become the haven of his (Joseph’s/ the Lord’s) people in just 40 years or so time.
3. The obstacles confronting an exploration of the West were innumerable!
4. As were those faced by the Mormon Pioneers, the Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims
5. Jefferson was one of the absolute the brightest men alive during his time if not of all time and Lewis was taught by him, yet these two brilliant men faced the exact same types of challenges I face daily in building a straw-bale solar and wind powered home: namely, everything is harder, longer, and more expensive than your most conservative estimates.
6. The challenges, Nephi, Smith, pilgrims, pioneers, explorers, and so forth face are the same, they’re all of a type, because they are pioneering, blazing a trail.
7. I can more easily imagine what they suffered and endured because of the past two and a half years of drudgery, uncertainty, need, stress, critical decision making, and facing the elements and sickness. Cooking outdoors day in and day out is a real testimony breaker or builder.
8. After a hard day of work the last thing you want to do is build a fire and cook a meal over it and then wash the dishes and put them away only to drag them out early the next morning and do it again in the driving, dirt-blinding wind and many times they just didn’t, they went to bed hungry because they were too tired to cook.
9. Sometimes these explorers and inventors, they sink into depressions, they encounter so much disappointment and hardship they find it difficult to continue and sometimes they do not.
10. This is a physical world with physical challenges and physical consequences, it’s not virtual reality. Our bellies have dictated the outcome of many a crucial moment.
11. The Hope the Saints (and we) had/have in Christ is essential to our being able to carry on, but also survival is a complex thing, we are animals that have an instinct to live, given us by God to assist in carrying on. Hence, why one Saint crossing the plains wrote, “I lived only because I could not die.” Her body didn’t give out though maybe emotionally she was much closer to dead.
In conclusion, the beautiful timing, the intricate play of events from basically 1800 to 1900, though of course it stretches backwards and forwards, is no accident, all of this material was beautifully shaped to create such an outpouring the world had never before seen. The veil was lifted and the Spirit filled the Earth, much of the greatest music ever written was during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, some of the most peaceful and influential writings came from this period, such as Thoreau and others from the transcendentalist movement.
It is a glorious thing to be alive, overwhelming obstacles and all. It is thrilling to know you’re filthy and sweaty trekking through wildernesses with Lewis and the Saints and Joseph and Jefferson and Washington and Clark and all our proud heritage who’ve gone before, for the same cause – real breathing incarnadine LIFE. We didn’t come here to sin that's a by-product, we came to live which by its very nature would necessitate repenting and if we don’t do that we’re missing out on the best part of living, but we’re here to do, to get bruised and bloody and figure it all out.
We’re not here to read, chant and make pithy sayings while keeping our hands clean. We're not here to be perfect. We have to go out and breathe in deep the oxygen and the dirt that comes in with the air. It is all a part of this corruptible life and the time will come to lay down this corruption and put on incorruption, but in the meantime its do and repent, do and repent, get dirty and then washed in the blood of the lamb and do it all over again until you die – that’s enduring to the end. It's the strait and narrow way that is one eternal round. Glory! Hallelujah! Amen and Amen.
1. I’m reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose about Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson and the Discovery Corps
2. Joseph Smith was born in 1805 in the middle of this exploration of land just acquired by Jefferson in a genius and inspired act which would become the haven of his (Joseph’s/ the Lord’s) people in just 40 years or so time.
3. The obstacles confronting an exploration of the West were innumerable!
4. As were those faced by the Mormon Pioneers, the Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims
5. Jefferson was one of the absolute the brightest men alive during his time if not of all time and Lewis was taught by him, yet these two brilliant men faced the exact same types of challenges I face daily in building a straw-bale solar and wind powered home: namely, everything is harder, longer, and more expensive than your most conservative estimates.
6. The challenges, Nephi, Smith, pilgrims, pioneers, explorers, and so forth face are the same, they’re all of a type, because they are pioneering, blazing a trail.
7. I can more easily imagine what they suffered and endured because of the past two and a half years of drudgery, uncertainty, need, stress, critical decision making, and facing the elements and sickness. Cooking outdoors day in and day out is a real testimony breaker or builder.
8. After a hard day of work the last thing you want to do is build a fire and cook a meal over it and then wash the dishes and put them away only to drag them out early the next morning and do it again in the driving, dirt-blinding wind and many times they just didn’t, they went to bed hungry because they were too tired to cook.
9. Sometimes these explorers and inventors, they sink into depressions, they encounter so much disappointment and hardship they find it difficult to continue and sometimes they do not.
10. This is a physical world with physical challenges and physical consequences, it’s not virtual reality. Our bellies have dictated the outcome of many a crucial moment.
11. The Hope the Saints (and we) had/have in Christ is essential to our being able to carry on, but also survival is a complex thing, we are animals that have an instinct to live, given us by God to assist in carrying on. Hence, why one Saint crossing the plains wrote, “I lived only because I could not die.” Her body didn’t give out though maybe emotionally she was much closer to dead.
In conclusion, the beautiful timing, the intricate play of events from basically 1800 to 1900, though of course it stretches backwards and forwards, is no accident, all of this material was beautifully shaped to create such an outpouring the world had never before seen. The veil was lifted and the Spirit filled the Earth, much of the greatest music ever written was during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, some of the most peaceful and influential writings came from this period, such as Thoreau and others from the transcendentalist movement.
It is a glorious thing to be alive, overwhelming obstacles and all. It is thrilling to know you’re filthy and sweaty trekking through wildernesses with Lewis and the Saints and Joseph and Jefferson and Washington and Clark and all our proud heritage who’ve gone before, for the same cause – real breathing incarnadine LIFE. We didn’t come here to sin that's a by-product, we came to live which by its very nature would necessitate repenting and if we don’t do that we’re missing out on the best part of living, but we’re here to do, to get bruised and bloody and figure it all out.
We’re not here to read, chant and make pithy sayings while keeping our hands clean. We're not here to be perfect. We have to go out and breathe in deep the oxygen and the dirt that comes in with the air. It is all a part of this corruptible life and the time will come to lay down this corruption and put on incorruption, but in the meantime its do and repent, do and repent, get dirty and then washed in the blood of the lamb and do it all over again until you die – that’s enduring to the end. It's the strait and narrow way that is one eternal round. Glory! Hallelujah! Amen and Amen.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Divine Daughter
Here's a shocking statistic:
Teens were asked to respond to questions about circumstances under which a man "has the right to have sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent." Eighty percent said the man had the right to use force if the couple were married, and seventy percent if the couple planned to marry. Sixty-one percent said that force was justified if the couple had had prior sexual relations. More than half felt that force was justified if the woman had led the man on. Thirty percent said it was justified if he knew that she had had sex with other men, or if he was so sexually stimulated he couldn't control himself, or if the woman was drunk. More than half the students thought that "if a woman dresses seductively and walks alone at night, she is asking to be raped." -- Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher, PhD, p 206
Dr. Pipher does a good job helping young women and girls create expectations and set limits. The incredibly sad thing is even after Dr. Pipher's counsel, these women still are living way below their inherited rights. In one of her exercises Pipher asks girls to imagine what a good date would be like. After what is sometimes even days of pondering this is some of what the girls came up with: "he has to take me someplace nice, like McDonalds," "he has to say nice things, say he likes me." These are girls not even eighteen yet, who have had every kind of sexual experience (not to mention side effects like abortions) except the one where they actually are comfortable with the man and have a pleasurable time and yet all they demand is a $5.00 meal and just be told they are liked, not loved, liked.
It is information like this that brings a little more insight on how God must feel. How He must lament over his children when they ignore or are ignorant of, their royal nature and live as if they did not deserve so much better.
The true sexual nature of women has been hedged about by a swirl of coercion and contradiction. Entertainment, fashion, and commerce do not have the health, happiness or success of women as their objective. Hollywood does not believe virtue sells, confident beautiful women have no need for more new clothes or make-up, business will not touch the “family-wage” with a ten-foot pole, they love the increased labor pool driving down the value of the employee – this has been the teaching of the world. The teaching from Heavenly Father has been much clearer. The inspired Young Women's Theme from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints instructs us on the true identity of women:
We are daughters of our Heavenly Father who loves us and we love Him. We stand as “witnesses of God at all times and in all things and in all places” (Mosiah 18:9) as we strive to live the young women values, which are:
Faith
Divine Nature
Individual Worth
Knowledge
Choice and Accountability
Good Works and
Integrity
We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values, we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the blessings of the Temple and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.
There are many many things this mission statement teaches young girls, not least of which is that she has the right to be respected, loved, cherished, to be safe, touched only when she wants to be touched, that not only can she say no, but is not even required to say no, she is a princess and who would dare to molest her. Anyone who would is an ignorant loutish oaf not even worth raising one’s eyebrows for. She is beautiful, divine, and powerful with purpose and mission and a work.
Therapy, advice, counsel, these things may alleviate and ameliorate, but they do not inspire, they do not match her glorious destiny. Taught to do so women objectify, demean, ignore and undress themselves and live in constant pain and confusion, convinced they are powerless, deserve to be unhappy, and are unworthy of being loved.
I refer now to my original statistic at the beginning. At no time in my church membership, in all the meetings I have attended was I taught there were times when it was proper for me to be forced. In fact it has been just the opposite. I can recall sermons declaring that no man should ever in any thing use force or coercion in his family. I recall preaching affirming the love God feels toward his daughters, proclaiming the rights and privileges of women, of the daughters of God and any who violated such was condemned.
How different a message from that received at nearly every conceivable venue. How blessed are the women who are taught that their value lays not in their bodies, youth, or appearance, but by virtue of their divine heritage have a responsibility and an intense inclination to strive for pure beauty.
I have a vision of the Women of God, the Queens and Priestesses of God: she is a woman of assurance, ability, peace and laughter. She is clothed in purple robes, a crown is upon her head, and healing is in her touch. Her courtly gowns, her precious gems, her emblems of power are not visible to our physical eyes, but this is her real appearance. No such person would slurp a soda in muddy pick-up truck down at the look-out and let herself be groped by the pimply cocky sixteen year old or the broad-shouldered over-eager quarterback. No such woman would set up an assignation at the Four Seasons Hotel presidential suite and there clad in Donna Karen wait for her grey-templed, pin-striped millionaire lover.
One of my favorite stories is A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Sara who was much loved and cherished by her father is orphaned and Ms. Minchin the mean heartless school mistress does her best to convince Sara she is a worthless, forgotten beggar. Sara draws herself up and with great power declares that she is a princess, all girls are princesses, “didn't your father ever tell you that?” And in that moment oh, we know like an arrow just pierced our hearts that no, Ms Minchin’s father never did tell her she was a princess and that is why she is angry and hard and tries to destroy Sara.
What a world-wide difference it would make if girls knew and were taught that they were daughters of God with rights and privileges who could demand much and expect to receive what they desired! Too many women settle, haven’t the slightest idea that there is more or their fragile desiring is quickly extinguished by overwhelming images and messages from media and elsewhere. Too many preach birth-control, use scare tactics projecting images of diseased and rotting flesh on the classroom wall, and deny her desire to be loved and unified with a man for the purpose of creating a strong family unit and try to replace this legitimate God-given mission with career, make-overs and expensive furniture.
Only the positive beautiful principles illustrated in the Young Women’s Theme can start girls on the right path to happiness and contentment. Only the Atonement of the Saviour Jesus Christ can heal the broken hearts. Anything else, sex education, therapy are just stop-gaps that inadequately deal with the overwhelming flow of the bruised and disfigured, it can never be a preventive measure or a positive-action alternative.
Teens were asked to respond to questions about circumstances under which a man "has the right to have sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent." Eighty percent said the man had the right to use force if the couple were married, and seventy percent if the couple planned to marry. Sixty-one percent said that force was justified if the couple had had prior sexual relations. More than half felt that force was justified if the woman had led the man on. Thirty percent said it was justified if he knew that she had had sex with other men, or if he was so sexually stimulated he couldn't control himself, or if the woman was drunk. More than half the students thought that "if a woman dresses seductively and walks alone at night, she is asking to be raped." -- Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher, PhD, p 206
Dr. Pipher does a good job helping young women and girls create expectations and set limits. The incredibly sad thing is even after Dr. Pipher's counsel, these women still are living way below their inherited rights. In one of her exercises Pipher asks girls to imagine what a good date would be like. After what is sometimes even days of pondering this is some of what the girls came up with: "he has to take me someplace nice, like McDonalds," "he has to say nice things, say he likes me." These are girls not even eighteen yet, who have had every kind of sexual experience (not to mention side effects like abortions) except the one where they actually are comfortable with the man and have a pleasurable time and yet all they demand is a $5.00 meal and just be told they are liked, not loved, liked.
It is information like this that brings a little more insight on how God must feel. How He must lament over his children when they ignore or are ignorant of, their royal nature and live as if they did not deserve so much better.
The true sexual nature of women has been hedged about by a swirl of coercion and contradiction. Entertainment, fashion, and commerce do not have the health, happiness or success of women as their objective. Hollywood does not believe virtue sells, confident beautiful women have no need for more new clothes or make-up, business will not touch the “family-wage” with a ten-foot pole, they love the increased labor pool driving down the value of the employee – this has been the teaching of the world. The teaching from Heavenly Father has been much clearer. The inspired Young Women's Theme from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints instructs us on the true identity of women:
We are daughters of our Heavenly Father who loves us and we love Him. We stand as “witnesses of God at all times and in all things and in all places” (Mosiah 18:9) as we strive to live the young women values, which are:
Faith
Divine Nature
Individual Worth
Knowledge
Choice and Accountability
Good Works and
Integrity
We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values, we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the blessings of the Temple and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.
There are many many things this mission statement teaches young girls, not least of which is that she has the right to be respected, loved, cherished, to be safe, touched only when she wants to be touched, that not only can she say no, but is not even required to say no, she is a princess and who would dare to molest her. Anyone who would is an ignorant loutish oaf not even worth raising one’s eyebrows for. She is beautiful, divine, and powerful with purpose and mission and a work.
Therapy, advice, counsel, these things may alleviate and ameliorate, but they do not inspire, they do not match her glorious destiny. Taught to do so women objectify, demean, ignore and undress themselves and live in constant pain and confusion, convinced they are powerless, deserve to be unhappy, and are unworthy of being loved.
I refer now to my original statistic at the beginning. At no time in my church membership, in all the meetings I have attended was I taught there were times when it was proper for me to be forced. In fact it has been just the opposite. I can recall sermons declaring that no man should ever in any thing use force or coercion in his family. I recall preaching affirming the love God feels toward his daughters, proclaiming the rights and privileges of women, of the daughters of God and any who violated such was condemned.
How different a message from that received at nearly every conceivable venue. How blessed are the women who are taught that their value lays not in their bodies, youth, or appearance, but by virtue of their divine heritage have a responsibility and an intense inclination to strive for pure beauty.
I have a vision of the Women of God, the Queens and Priestesses of God: she is a woman of assurance, ability, peace and laughter. She is clothed in purple robes, a crown is upon her head, and healing is in her touch. Her courtly gowns, her precious gems, her emblems of power are not visible to our physical eyes, but this is her real appearance. No such person would slurp a soda in muddy pick-up truck down at the look-out and let herself be groped by the pimply cocky sixteen year old or the broad-shouldered over-eager quarterback. No such woman would set up an assignation at the Four Seasons Hotel presidential suite and there clad in Donna Karen wait for her grey-templed, pin-striped millionaire lover.
One of my favorite stories is A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Sara who was much loved and cherished by her father is orphaned and Ms. Minchin the mean heartless school mistress does her best to convince Sara she is a worthless, forgotten beggar. Sara draws herself up and with great power declares that she is a princess, all girls are princesses, “didn't your father ever tell you that?” And in that moment oh, we know like an arrow just pierced our hearts that no, Ms Minchin’s father never did tell her she was a princess and that is why she is angry and hard and tries to destroy Sara.
What a world-wide difference it would make if girls knew and were taught that they were daughters of God with rights and privileges who could demand much and expect to receive what they desired! Too many women settle, haven’t the slightest idea that there is more or their fragile desiring is quickly extinguished by overwhelming images and messages from media and elsewhere. Too many preach birth-control, use scare tactics projecting images of diseased and rotting flesh on the classroom wall, and deny her desire to be loved and unified with a man for the purpose of creating a strong family unit and try to replace this legitimate God-given mission with career, make-overs and expensive furniture.
Only the positive beautiful principles illustrated in the Young Women’s Theme can start girls on the right path to happiness and contentment. Only the Atonement of the Saviour Jesus Christ can heal the broken hearts. Anything else, sex education, therapy are just stop-gaps that inadequately deal with the overwhelming flow of the bruised and disfigured, it can never be a preventive measure or a positive-action alternative.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Oh, Inevitable, Temporary Death
Published earlier this year was Gene Bauer's book Farm Sanctuary also the name of his foundation that works to remove unhealthy or "downed" farm animals from the meat market and to revolutionize (one small practical step at a time) the meat packing/livestock raising business. I found one of the most remarkable things about the book to be the sincere love the author had not only for animals but for mankind.
For those who are fairly staunch meat eaters this book (at least in conjunction with others like it: Dominion by Matthew Scully, Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz) may convert you to vegetarianism and maybe even Veganism. I highly recommend the book as one of the most readable on the subject of farm animals and slaughterhouses.
Near the end, he mentions briefly a comment his friend made something to the effect that, something dies so another may live. Perhaps the author agreed maybe he didn't, he seemed to wish it wasn't true and thought that it shouldn't be that way. I don't know Bauer's beliefs, what he has faith in, in fact Bauer has served his purpose for this blog article, I'm now leaping from the springboard I've set up with this quasi book review to speak on the eternal qualities of death.
Unavoidable and intrinsic to mortal telestial life is death -- there's no getting around it. We eat, something dies. We build, something dies and this is true for all living things not just humans. We bring life into the world by passing through the valley of the shadow of death.
Without the hope in the Plan of Happiness this is a dim view of things. Since the fall of Adam there has been death on this planet -- before that there was none. This was a spiritual world without physicality until Adam ate the fruit and became the "first flesh." Yet, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ all men will live again. When this world receives its paradisaical glory and men are resurrected there will be no more death. The lion will lay down with the lamb and we will all be Vegans.
There is no reason to lament, at least not forever because this life as it is will not exist forever. This state of death and decay is temporary, it's the result of a fall and the Earth and we will die and then we will live again with out any more death -- ever.
Of course for this cessation of death to come about One must die the Perfect Death.
For those who are fairly staunch meat eaters this book (at least in conjunction with others like it: Dominion by Matthew Scully, Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz) may convert you to vegetarianism and maybe even Veganism. I highly recommend the book as one of the most readable on the subject of farm animals and slaughterhouses.
Near the end, he mentions briefly a comment his friend made something to the effect that, something dies so another may live. Perhaps the author agreed maybe he didn't, he seemed to wish it wasn't true and thought that it shouldn't be that way. I don't know Bauer's beliefs, what he has faith in, in fact Bauer has served his purpose for this blog article, I'm now leaping from the springboard I've set up with this quasi book review to speak on the eternal qualities of death.
Unavoidable and intrinsic to mortal telestial life is death -- there's no getting around it. We eat, something dies. We build, something dies and this is true for all living things not just humans. We bring life into the world by passing through the valley of the shadow of death.
Without the hope in the Plan of Happiness this is a dim view of things. Since the fall of Adam there has been death on this planet -- before that there was none. This was a spiritual world without physicality until Adam ate the fruit and became the "first flesh." Yet, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ all men will live again. When this world receives its paradisaical glory and men are resurrected there will be no more death. The lion will lay down with the lamb and we will all be Vegans.
There is no reason to lament, at least not forever because this life as it is will not exist forever. This state of death and decay is temporary, it's the result of a fall and the Earth and we will die and then we will live again with out any more death -- ever.
Of course for this cessation of death to come about One must die the Perfect Death.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
How We Determine Value: Gold, Barley and Paper Clips
"I’ve never been a student of economics. . . Indeed, the only time I took an econ class, I spent much of that semester drunk, missed the final and mercifully got a “D” by a retiring professor tired of failures.
But it’s not like gold has any real value. It, like a floating currency, it simply worth whatever someone wants to pay for an ounce of gold. Gold is just a shiny rock, and its value floats daily, just as the value of a dollar floats daily. It trades on the commodities market like pork bellies, (though, like petroleum, its price is not set by supply-and-demand, but rather by international bureaucracies and political currency), doesn’t that make it a crummy benchmark?
I mean, we can’t control its production, we don’t control its value, we don’t control its supply. What is different between that and any other commodity? Why not use a silver standard? Corn standard? Unleaded standard? Paperclip standard? They’re not worth any more than someone is willing to offer, either. [SIDEBAR: if we don’t control the supply, production or value then who does? The Fed? The Fed does not by any virtue in itself have power over us or what we decide has value.]
I mean this in an earnest (and skeptical) way. What’s so great about gold?"
See post here.
". . . although material things have no intrinsic VALUE, they do have intrinsic QUALITIES that allows for utility for different purposes. Gold, as opposed to paper, is hard, malleable, most people consider it to be beautiful, and most importantly, it's rare."
-- Stephen P
“Now these are the names of the different pieces of their gold, and of their silver, according to their value. And the names are given by the Nephites, for they did not reckon after the manner of the Jews who were at Jerusalem; neither did they measure after the manner of the Jews: but they altered their reckoning and their measure, according to the minds and the circumstances of the people, in every generation, . . .
v. 7 A senum of silver was equal to a senine of gold, and either for a measure of barely, and also for a measure of every kind of grain.
v. 15 A shiblon is half a senum; therefore, a shiblon for half a measure of barley.” -- Alma 11: 4, 7, and 15 (Book of Mormon)
". . . by faith, everyone knows that a standard of values exists. You can not know that you are cold, without having a standard of temperature. You can not like or dislike or want or not want, anything, without having a standard of good. You can not generate energy to act, without desiring something that (to you) is good. You can not think, without faith that you exist and faith that a standard of value, a God, exists in the universe. "
-- The Discovery Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority, Rose Wilder Lane, p xxiii – xxiv
I do not use these excerpts as an appeal to authority, but to show a line of thought. I make many declarations in this post, I’m trying them on for size, but I do make these declarations:
The majority of the people of Ammonihah had faith that a senum is equal to a measure of barley. This is a standard they use to determine the value of things. It is true nothing is worth more than what people are willing to offer for that item, but this does not mean that value is arbitrary and subject to any whim – not based in reality. It can be, but it is not inherent in the nature of value to be whimsical.
Yet, are paperclips as durable as gold coins, as difficult to come by as gold, are paperclips as beautiful as gold coins? For something to have worth there must also be something that does not have worth – worthy things do not exist in a vacuum. There is a standard that the worthy thing is being measured against otherwise there would be no such thing as worth or value. There is a standard of beauty, of truth, of value, of good.
Now, the standard people measure against changes from person to person and society to society, still that does not mean there is not an eternal standard that exists independently of man’s limited understanding. Why would we measure anything if we didn’t have faith that the perfect standard existed some where in some time?
Conclusion, if a group of people, whose very survival, as any group’s does, depends on their togetherness, can agree that one senum equals one measure of barley it does not mean the value was pulled out of thin air. Though we are justly skeptical of group think a group in agreement does not necessitate they are wrong. In fact, generally the majority is a fairly reliable indicator that they’re right, except of course, when they are not.
If you have not read Rose Wilder Lane’s book I could not recommend more fervently that you do. Her work is seminal; it shaped the thought of many other great thinkers, Mises, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Mainspring of Human Progress to name a few.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
The Good War
FREE MAN
“American Government is not an Authority; it has no control over individuals and no responsibility for their affairs. American Government is a permission which free individuals grant to certain men to use force in certain necessary and strictly limited ways; a permission which Americans can always withdraw from American Government.” (emphasis added)
-- Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom
To have peace there must be war; too often man is tricked into fighting those who are not truly his enemies. Time and life spent fighting a false enemy will never result in peace, for the real enemy is sneaking in the back door during the distraction. The true enemy is not outside, but inside. In America’s misguided efforts to force freedom on the rest of the world freedom has become a principle few Americans remember how to live. Liberty is not something that can be legislated. Writing a law that says man is free does not make him so whether he be German or Iraqi; and some dusty, yellowed unfamiliar documents do not make Americans free.
Man is free when he studies to know, judge, and then obey the right and just laws. Freedom is exercising agency to study out a problem, devise a solution, and act upon that decision. A young woman named Traudl Humps Junge was employed by Adolf Hitler to be his secretary in 1942. Two and a half years later in Berlin as the Russian front advanced, she witnessed with sorrow and confusion the downfall of the Third Reich. She had loved her Fuhrer and as the facts came out during the Nuremburg trials she was shocked, but still did not connect those horrors with her actions – her life. Some years later, upon observing a plaque memorializing Sophie Scholl, a resistance fighter, on Franz Joseph Strasse she noticed that Sophie was born the same year as herself and executed the same year she began working for Hitler. It was then that it became clear to Traudle that her youth was no excuse, that there was no excuse; there were ways to know what was really going on if she had wanted. Traudle realized she had chosen not to know, with her agency she had given up her right to reason and act for herself. She, along with many others willingly became a slave, delighted to let Hitler make their moral choices for them. The Germans made war on “evil capitalists” instead of against their evil desires to relinquish responsibility, blame their troubles on others, and feed their pride and anger with incendiary speeches and literature.
The Germans are not unique in their absconding of personal responsibility. Americans acquiesce to political parties, to their bosses, professors, their favorite Hollywood star, to their pastor, their own young children. We make war with Vietnam, Korea, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq. We make bloody war while our inner tyrant runs rampant as divorce soars, pornography grosses increasing billions, illiteracy becomes a nation-wide plague, and consumer debt skyrockets. We’re fighting the wrong war.
THE MEN WHO MAKE WAR
“My business was to know more about the German Army than anyone else and to brief division personnel at every level on that meaningful subject both before and during operations. What I saw on every side was the Mahan Principle in full force, that “great secret” of converting life into property—your life for my property, also your life for my promotion (known as the Catch-22 Principle). ”
-- Master Sergeant Hugh Nibley, 101st AB
Wars get started when some men, who usually haven’t been to war, persuade and convince other men, usually younger than themselves, with sophisticated rhetoric and half-truths, to take other men’s lives while risking their own so that the persuasive men may have more power and more money. This only works if the fighting men believe that they are fighting for a true principle that is seriously at risk. Thus begins intense sophisticated commercial campaigns to make the American people feel threatened and that war is the only solution.
Otherwise there is a Vietnam fiasco and it is impossible to win because there is not enough support. Support is essential. War cannot be fought successfully without a convinced public. An army that is forced rarely wins, e.g. the Russian (that is if winning means permission to go home afterwards to be imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the government you just defended). A Government whose lies begin to wear thin loses its will to fight, e.g. the German. To convince men to go to war, not going must be at least as unpleasant as, or more so than staying home. A decade of poverty can help with this, career opportunities and better pay has its advantages, glory and honor are almost always convincing, for it is innate in man to believe he was meant for something great.
In 1941 if no war had been what America really wanted they could have chosen not to fight. War just puts off the inevitable discussion that solves the original problem. Hindsight of course has the benefit of offering solutions that may not have been thought of in the heat of the moment. That is why it is so important to operate based on what was decided when one’s head was cool. War should not be America’s first choice. Instead of immediately opting for flagrant waste of life and resources, a few precise non-military blows (stop foreign aid or halt trade, which of course we can only do if we aren’t depending on exports for our necessities) may do the job. Millions upon millions of untrained men were thrust into such poor odds situations that no high-stakes gambler would bet all he had, as Montgomery certainly did when he was allowed to divert almost the entirety of Allied resources on Operation Market Garden; an operation that depended on uncontrollable factors and faulty intelligence that ignominiously, but unsurprisingly, failed. Just like it is easier to spend someone else’s money it is easier to risk someone else’s life.
THE MEN WHO FIGHT
“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now what are they? Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines?”
-- Henry Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
In 1775 men went to war because oppressions had become unbearable. In 1861 the South went to protect their sovereignty from greedy industry and power hungry central government. The North was divided; the rich paid others to go in their place and those from the Midwest, removed from the political intrigues, were persuaded that the issue at hand was slavery. In 1918 it was to protect the world from democracy, excuse me, that is, for democracy.
For joining the fracas in 1941 we can no longer claim self-defense. There are others who have documented their research and made it clear that Roosevelt provoked and planned for the Pearl Harbor attack as a means to enter the war. If the popular HBO collaboration between war historian Stephen Ambrose and popular opinion producer Steven Spielberg is any indication, it was for the noble cause of liberation.
The Ninth part of HBO’s made for TV mini series Band of Brothers is titled “Why We Fight”. The soldiers in the story become increasingly bitter and disillusioned as they witness the senseless deaths of comrades and carry out life-threatening orders for officers’ promotions. A soldier yells bitterly, “why am I here?” and hurls violent accusations and curses at surrendered German officers. The story climaxes when a concentration camp is discovered during the occupation of a German town.
The implication is that the freeing of the Jewish people was the reason these young men sacrificed their youth and innocence. The message of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks seems to be that America went to war to free the captive, in particular those trapped behind the barbed wire fences of the death camps. This is hard to believe since between 1933 and 1939 over 300,000 Jews migrated from Germany and Austria seeking refuge from Hitler, and yet the US never relaxed its strict immigration laws or exceeded its quotas, even in the thick of fighting World War II when rumors trickled down about the death camps.
Accepting these refugees would have been a comparatively easy and effective way to help those who suffered and thwart Hitler – if that had really been America’s intention. In 1939 nine hundred Jewish refugees on the ship St. Louis, sought haven in the United States and were denied. They returned to Germany and most met their destiny in concentration camps. Apparently, rescuing the Jews was only worth doing when it was too late. For even those Jews who survived the concentration camp had to live with the nightmarish experience the rest of their lives.
There must have been a reason other than “The Jewish question” as Hitler labeled a whole demographic, that inspired America to go to war. Let’s not forget that while we were cutting down the German’s barb wire we were raising our own fences around American citizens of Japanese descent. (Not to mention our esteemed ally Joseph Stalin who sent more people to their deaths than the not-to-be-beat Adolph Hitler).
In the book Band of Brothers Stephen Ambrose records the reasons the members of Easy Company gave for joining the Paratroopers: to be the best, for glory, and for practicality’s sake. The better trained he was and the soldier next to him, the more likely he would make it out alive. Though certainly not a bad reason it is not quite as heroic as rescuing the persecuted.
What these reasons tell us is that there were men with foresight who believed they deserved more than being drafted into the dregs of the army. Ambrose summarizes it this way,
“They resented having to sacrifice years of their youth to a war they never made. They wanted to throw baseballs, not grenades, shoot a .22 rifle, not an M-1. But having been caught up in the war, they decided to be as positive as possible in their Army careers.” [1]
Most soldiers, officers, and NCOs were under thirty and many of those under twenty-four. As survivors of the privations of the depression, they joined the army because they were devout believers in the Law. They owed their lives to Roosevelt, after all he had saved them with programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps. Not to mention the pay raise for paratroopers, fifty dollars for enlisted and one hundred for officers.
A combination of necessity and misbegotten duty is a more likely reason that young American men joined up. Since they felt they had to they figured they may as well do a good job of it. It did win the war. The several men who expanded their fortunes and power through war are undoubtedly, extremely grateful for this sacrifice. Young men, boys really, signed up for the glory and the pay and when in Bastogne that clearly was no longer a good reason to be starving, freezing, and weaponless, soldiers began looking for a purpose in killing men who across the front line sang Stille Nacht on Christmas Eve. The Jews were a good reason; they had served as scapegoats before often enough.
MAN OVERBOARD
“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes the law breaker, it breeds contempt for laws; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.”
-- Brandeis dissenting on Olmstead
“CNN gave us bits and pieces of McVeigh’s last morning. Asked why he had not at least said that he was sorry for the murder of innocents, he said that he could say it but he would not have meant it. He was a soldier in a war not of his making . . . McVeigh had also noted that Harry Truman had never said that he was sorry about dropping two atomic bombs on an already defeated Japan, killing around 200,000 people, mostly collateral women and children. Media howled that that was wartime. But McVeigh considered himself, rightly or wrongly, at war, too. Incidentally, the inexorable beatification of Harry Truman is now an important aspect of our evolving imperial system. It is widely believed that the bombs were dropped to save American lives. This is not true. The bombs were dropped to frighten our new enemy, Stalin. To a man, our leading World War II commanders, including Eisenhower, CW Nimitz, and even Curtis LeMay were opposed to Truman’s use of the bombs.”[2]
Power can delude a whole nation into thinking bigger is better. The British Army was bigger than the Colonial, but it wasn’t better. The British Empire was bigger than Gandhi, but it wasn’t better. Rome was bigger than the Gauls, but not better. Soon, Americans will discover that small guerilla tactics also known as terrorism may best them, just as it bested the most powerful army on earth in 1783. Terrorism is all a matter of perspective and it certainly isn’t new. What do you call the sinking of the Lusitania?
Why was Britain defeated when a tatterdemalion pathetic excuse for an army rose up against them – because they continued to act as though government could control human energy. As Bob Dylan crooned, “you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changin’.”
Things have changed, but Americans continue to believe that the nation we live in now is the same that was constructed over two hundred years ago. America is now a corporate structure, it is corporations that own technology, own senators, own property, own ninety per cent of all food production, and it is corporations that build missiles, bombs and tanks. Americans no longer control the production of anything they use. The homes we live in, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the energy we use, for all of this we depend on a corporation to deliver it to us and for the poor manufacture and exorbitant prices we thank them.
We are no longer the stalwart and free people who fought for the right to benefit from our own skilled labor. We are a people, who watch Desperate Housewives, (if Good Morning America is to be believed) while corporations pay to have struggling countries like Afghanistan bombed, for no other reason than that Afghanistan may be hiding a man who is fighting to repulse a foreign power, who is seducing it’s way into his country’s government with their ill-gotten wealth.
Tom Hanks and Toby Keith urge us to remember the miserable conditions that were endured, the lives and limbs that were sacrificed, but what we need to remember is that war is a con. The greatest fear of the soldier is that his sacrifice is for nothing and if his grandchildren believe war is glorious and shed tears at emotional, but meaningless rhetoric then his fear is not unfounded.
Every signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lost his property, family, and life, gave it up willingly so we could never own our home and land, but pay a rent on it every year. The much decorated and famous 101st Airborne suffered 150% casualties, so we could live in a police state and have our luggage rifled in an airport, having committed no crime. Wars have been fought so we could continue to fight more. This is the glorious legacy of the men who laid down their lives at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown.
The problem with an army is that it creates soldiers. “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.”[3] We train generations of men to believe that waging war is the way to peace. None other than the great standing Army of The Untied States of America can be blamed for Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden. Timothy McVeigh met violence with violence because it was the only solution he knew in a century that had experienced chronic war. He was a decorated hero from the Gulf War, but in his opinion his actions didn’t merit medals. He came home disillusioned and then there was Ruby Ridge and Waco. It was the last straw as it should have been for all Americans; his action was intended to be a wake-up call. He chose the wrong method, but what will wake America to the fact that she has been overthrown by an out-of-control standing army?
MAN ALIVE
If Art indicates the mind of a society, then to consult media, the art form of the twenty-first century, is not too far wrong. The two most popular themes for television drama are doctors and cops. If the actions of our Law and Order and ER heroes are any indication, Americans are ready to give up the responsibility of reasoning; they are willing to have their homes searched without warrants, be bullied into self-incriminating confessions, and welcome condescending doctors to pump them full of drugs before they even discover the nature of the patient’s malady. Americans are denying their intrinsic right and ability to think and act and instead pay exorbitant sums to professionals, a group of people who at one time were looked down upon as people who would sell their integrity for an income, to do for them what they can do for themselves. Americans are steadily devolving into Solzhenitsyn’s rabbits. Let us reclaim the satisfaction that comes from doing a job well. In so doing we become brave and virtuous. Build your own house, grow your own food, make your own sources of energy, and become that proud, independent, vibrant thing called alive. This kind of life has the power to halt injustice.
How many people are saying (including the members of these organizations who are just regular Americans) to the ATF and FBI and the CIA, “Stop! You can’t kill innocent or even guilty American citizens with tanks and poisonous gas. You can’t search an American’s house without a warrant. You can’t break into a woman’s home and shoot her, unarmed, in the neck in front of her six year old daughter and then proceed to handcuff her.”[*]
Someone must be first to bury his weapon of ignorance, apathy, or professional snobbery and say, “I refuse to take another life. Life is precious and cannot be replaced once it is gone. I no longer will act as though killing is anything but this. Laugh at me, fire me, imprison me, do what you will, but I will no longer do your dirty work.”
American citizens remember your first duty as a human being, connected to every other living creature on this planet and revolt. No longer submit to oppression out of fear. Man is the crowning creation created with a glorious end in mind, as a sculpture is first seen in the imagination of the artist and then created for the purpose of expressing lofty thoughts that inspire men to be great.
We were created to be great and so we should go about with straight back and clear brow proclaiming our divine heritage. Man is meant to have all that he needs and enjoy life fully without hesitation. He is not meant to lose his ability to provide for his own needs and spend his life in a kind of slavery where he pays others to do for him things he never has the opportunity to enjoy. He is not meant to kill others, plunder their countries, and enforce what ever laws he sees fit. A people cannot be forced into freedom, force of freedom will destroy freedom. Man is not designed to be forced into anything, it is his distinguishing characteristic that he can reason and choose and experience the consequences of his decisions. As knowledge increases so do choices, the more we choose freedom the more choices we have to choose from. In an age when information is so readily available it is only ourselves that keep us from learning all there is to know about living free.
There are many areas crying for reform, airports are one of them. If we understood fully just how dangerous the Patriot Act is, airport security would quit their jobs. They would no longer search and inspect their fellow innocent brothers and sisters as though they were cattle. Pilots would refuse to fly as long as their passengers were treated as convicted criminals. Passengers would refuse to fly with passenger airlines as long as they lived in a police state.
Walk, live in a smaller home, and pursue arduous study with an eye towards leadership not retirement. It is these internal battles of will we must gird up our courage for instead of looking abroad for an enemy. We cannot expect to spread liberty across the globe if here in our homes we uphold and are party to that which we know is unjust. We will die another more deadly death if we do. Perhaps we will be harangued, persecuted, maybe even imprisoned for such actions, but we will be in good company, for Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Henry Thoreau will be our cell mates.
Let us be, not rabbits, not soldiers or Americans, nor businessmen or professionals, but first let us be MEN.
[1] Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992): 17
[2] Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002): 97
[3] Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, (New York, Viking Press, 1947): 112
[*] Robin Pratt, the Seattle Times, 1992
“American Government is not an Authority; it has no control over individuals and no responsibility for their affairs. American Government is a permission which free individuals grant to certain men to use force in certain necessary and strictly limited ways; a permission which Americans can always withdraw from American Government.” (emphasis added)
-- Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom
To have peace there must be war; too often man is tricked into fighting those who are not truly his enemies. Time and life spent fighting a false enemy will never result in peace, for the real enemy is sneaking in the back door during the distraction. The true enemy is not outside, but inside. In America’s misguided efforts to force freedom on the rest of the world freedom has become a principle few Americans remember how to live. Liberty is not something that can be legislated. Writing a law that says man is free does not make him so whether he be German or Iraqi; and some dusty, yellowed unfamiliar documents do not make Americans free.
Man is free when he studies to know, judge, and then obey the right and just laws. Freedom is exercising agency to study out a problem, devise a solution, and act upon that decision. A young woman named Traudl Humps Junge was employed by Adolf Hitler to be his secretary in 1942. Two and a half years later in Berlin as the Russian front advanced, she witnessed with sorrow and confusion the downfall of the Third Reich. She had loved her Fuhrer and as the facts came out during the Nuremburg trials she was shocked, but still did not connect those horrors with her actions – her life. Some years later, upon observing a plaque memorializing Sophie Scholl, a resistance fighter, on Franz Joseph Strasse she noticed that Sophie was born the same year as herself and executed the same year she began working for Hitler. It was then that it became clear to Traudle that her youth was no excuse, that there was no excuse; there were ways to know what was really going on if she had wanted. Traudle realized she had chosen not to know, with her agency she had given up her right to reason and act for herself. She, along with many others willingly became a slave, delighted to let Hitler make their moral choices for them. The Germans made war on “evil capitalists” instead of against their evil desires to relinquish responsibility, blame their troubles on others, and feed their pride and anger with incendiary speeches and literature.
The Germans are not unique in their absconding of personal responsibility. Americans acquiesce to political parties, to their bosses, professors, their favorite Hollywood star, to their pastor, their own young children. We make war with Vietnam, Korea, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq. We make bloody war while our inner tyrant runs rampant as divorce soars, pornography grosses increasing billions, illiteracy becomes a nation-wide plague, and consumer debt skyrockets. We’re fighting the wrong war.
THE MEN WHO MAKE WAR
“My business was to know more about the German Army than anyone else and to brief division personnel at every level on that meaningful subject both before and during operations. What I saw on every side was the Mahan Principle in full force, that “great secret” of converting life into property—your life for my property, also your life for my promotion (known as the Catch-22 Principle). ”
-- Master Sergeant Hugh Nibley, 101st AB
Wars get started when some men, who usually haven’t been to war, persuade and convince other men, usually younger than themselves, with sophisticated rhetoric and half-truths, to take other men’s lives while risking their own so that the persuasive men may have more power and more money. This only works if the fighting men believe that they are fighting for a true principle that is seriously at risk. Thus begins intense sophisticated commercial campaigns to make the American people feel threatened and that war is the only solution.
Otherwise there is a Vietnam fiasco and it is impossible to win because there is not enough support. Support is essential. War cannot be fought successfully without a convinced public. An army that is forced rarely wins, e.g. the Russian (that is if winning means permission to go home afterwards to be imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the government you just defended). A Government whose lies begin to wear thin loses its will to fight, e.g. the German. To convince men to go to war, not going must be at least as unpleasant as, or more so than staying home. A decade of poverty can help with this, career opportunities and better pay has its advantages, glory and honor are almost always convincing, for it is innate in man to believe he was meant for something great.
In 1941 if no war had been what America really wanted they could have chosen not to fight. War just puts off the inevitable discussion that solves the original problem. Hindsight of course has the benefit of offering solutions that may not have been thought of in the heat of the moment. That is why it is so important to operate based on what was decided when one’s head was cool. War should not be America’s first choice. Instead of immediately opting for flagrant waste of life and resources, a few precise non-military blows (stop foreign aid or halt trade, which of course we can only do if we aren’t depending on exports for our necessities) may do the job. Millions upon millions of untrained men were thrust into such poor odds situations that no high-stakes gambler would bet all he had, as Montgomery certainly did when he was allowed to divert almost the entirety of Allied resources on Operation Market Garden; an operation that depended on uncontrollable factors and faulty intelligence that ignominiously, but unsurprisingly, failed. Just like it is easier to spend someone else’s money it is easier to risk someone else’s life.
THE MEN WHO FIGHT
“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now what are they? Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines?”
-- Henry Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
In 1775 men went to war because oppressions had become unbearable. In 1861 the South went to protect their sovereignty from greedy industry and power hungry central government. The North was divided; the rich paid others to go in their place and those from the Midwest, removed from the political intrigues, were persuaded that the issue at hand was slavery. In 1918 it was to protect the world from democracy, excuse me, that is, for democracy.
For joining the fracas in 1941 we can no longer claim self-defense. There are others who have documented their research and made it clear that Roosevelt provoked and planned for the Pearl Harbor attack as a means to enter the war. If the popular HBO collaboration between war historian Stephen Ambrose and popular opinion producer Steven Spielberg is any indication, it was for the noble cause of liberation.
The Ninth part of HBO’s made for TV mini series Band of Brothers is titled “Why We Fight”. The soldiers in the story become increasingly bitter and disillusioned as they witness the senseless deaths of comrades and carry out life-threatening orders for officers’ promotions. A soldier yells bitterly, “why am I here?” and hurls violent accusations and curses at surrendered German officers. The story climaxes when a concentration camp is discovered during the occupation of a German town.
The implication is that the freeing of the Jewish people was the reason these young men sacrificed their youth and innocence. The message of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks seems to be that America went to war to free the captive, in particular those trapped behind the barbed wire fences of the death camps. This is hard to believe since between 1933 and 1939 over 300,000 Jews migrated from Germany and Austria seeking refuge from Hitler, and yet the US never relaxed its strict immigration laws or exceeded its quotas, even in the thick of fighting World War II when rumors trickled down about the death camps.
Accepting these refugees would have been a comparatively easy and effective way to help those who suffered and thwart Hitler – if that had really been America’s intention. In 1939 nine hundred Jewish refugees on the ship St. Louis, sought haven in the United States and were denied. They returned to Germany and most met their destiny in concentration camps. Apparently, rescuing the Jews was only worth doing when it was too late. For even those Jews who survived the concentration camp had to live with the nightmarish experience the rest of their lives.
There must have been a reason other than “The Jewish question” as Hitler labeled a whole demographic, that inspired America to go to war. Let’s not forget that while we were cutting down the German’s barb wire we were raising our own fences around American citizens of Japanese descent. (Not to mention our esteemed ally Joseph Stalin who sent more people to their deaths than the not-to-be-beat Adolph Hitler).
In the book Band of Brothers Stephen Ambrose records the reasons the members of Easy Company gave for joining the Paratroopers: to be the best, for glory, and for practicality’s sake. The better trained he was and the soldier next to him, the more likely he would make it out alive. Though certainly not a bad reason it is not quite as heroic as rescuing the persecuted.
What these reasons tell us is that there were men with foresight who believed they deserved more than being drafted into the dregs of the army. Ambrose summarizes it this way,
“They resented having to sacrifice years of their youth to a war they never made. They wanted to throw baseballs, not grenades, shoot a .22 rifle, not an M-1. But having been caught up in the war, they decided to be as positive as possible in their Army careers.” [1]
Most soldiers, officers, and NCOs were under thirty and many of those under twenty-four. As survivors of the privations of the depression, they joined the army because they were devout believers in the Law. They owed their lives to Roosevelt, after all he had saved them with programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps. Not to mention the pay raise for paratroopers, fifty dollars for enlisted and one hundred for officers.
A combination of necessity and misbegotten duty is a more likely reason that young American men joined up. Since they felt they had to they figured they may as well do a good job of it. It did win the war. The several men who expanded their fortunes and power through war are undoubtedly, extremely grateful for this sacrifice. Young men, boys really, signed up for the glory and the pay and when in Bastogne that clearly was no longer a good reason to be starving, freezing, and weaponless, soldiers began looking for a purpose in killing men who across the front line sang Stille Nacht on Christmas Eve. The Jews were a good reason; they had served as scapegoats before often enough.
MAN OVERBOARD
“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes the law breaker, it breeds contempt for laws; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.”
-- Brandeis dissenting on Olmstead
“CNN gave us bits and pieces of McVeigh’s last morning. Asked why he had not at least said that he was sorry for the murder of innocents, he said that he could say it but he would not have meant it. He was a soldier in a war not of his making . . . McVeigh had also noted that Harry Truman had never said that he was sorry about dropping two atomic bombs on an already defeated Japan, killing around 200,000 people, mostly collateral women and children. Media howled that that was wartime. But McVeigh considered himself, rightly or wrongly, at war, too. Incidentally, the inexorable beatification of Harry Truman is now an important aspect of our evolving imperial system. It is widely believed that the bombs were dropped to save American lives. This is not true. The bombs were dropped to frighten our new enemy, Stalin. To a man, our leading World War II commanders, including Eisenhower, CW Nimitz, and even Curtis LeMay were opposed to Truman’s use of the bombs.”[2]
Power can delude a whole nation into thinking bigger is better. The British Army was bigger than the Colonial, but it wasn’t better. The British Empire was bigger than Gandhi, but it wasn’t better. Rome was bigger than the Gauls, but not better. Soon, Americans will discover that small guerilla tactics also known as terrorism may best them, just as it bested the most powerful army on earth in 1783. Terrorism is all a matter of perspective and it certainly isn’t new. What do you call the sinking of the Lusitania?
Why was Britain defeated when a tatterdemalion pathetic excuse for an army rose up against them – because they continued to act as though government could control human energy. As Bob Dylan crooned, “you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changin’.”
Things have changed, but Americans continue to believe that the nation we live in now is the same that was constructed over two hundred years ago. America is now a corporate structure, it is corporations that own technology, own senators, own property, own ninety per cent of all food production, and it is corporations that build missiles, bombs and tanks. Americans no longer control the production of anything they use. The homes we live in, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the energy we use, for all of this we depend on a corporation to deliver it to us and for the poor manufacture and exorbitant prices we thank them.
We are no longer the stalwart and free people who fought for the right to benefit from our own skilled labor. We are a people, who watch Desperate Housewives, (if Good Morning America is to be believed) while corporations pay to have struggling countries like Afghanistan bombed, for no other reason than that Afghanistan may be hiding a man who is fighting to repulse a foreign power, who is seducing it’s way into his country’s government with their ill-gotten wealth.
Tom Hanks and Toby Keith urge us to remember the miserable conditions that were endured, the lives and limbs that were sacrificed, but what we need to remember is that war is a con. The greatest fear of the soldier is that his sacrifice is for nothing and if his grandchildren believe war is glorious and shed tears at emotional, but meaningless rhetoric then his fear is not unfounded.
Every signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lost his property, family, and life, gave it up willingly so we could never own our home and land, but pay a rent on it every year. The much decorated and famous 101st Airborne suffered 150% casualties, so we could live in a police state and have our luggage rifled in an airport, having committed no crime. Wars have been fought so we could continue to fight more. This is the glorious legacy of the men who laid down their lives at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown.
The problem with an army is that it creates soldiers. “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.”[3] We train generations of men to believe that waging war is the way to peace. None other than the great standing Army of The Untied States of America can be blamed for Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden. Timothy McVeigh met violence with violence because it was the only solution he knew in a century that had experienced chronic war. He was a decorated hero from the Gulf War, but in his opinion his actions didn’t merit medals. He came home disillusioned and then there was Ruby Ridge and Waco. It was the last straw as it should have been for all Americans; his action was intended to be a wake-up call. He chose the wrong method, but what will wake America to the fact that she has been overthrown by an out-of-control standing army?
MAN ALIVE
If Art indicates the mind of a society, then to consult media, the art form of the twenty-first century, is not too far wrong. The two most popular themes for television drama are doctors and cops. If the actions of our Law and Order and ER heroes are any indication, Americans are ready to give up the responsibility of reasoning; they are willing to have their homes searched without warrants, be bullied into self-incriminating confessions, and welcome condescending doctors to pump them full of drugs before they even discover the nature of the patient’s malady. Americans are denying their intrinsic right and ability to think and act and instead pay exorbitant sums to professionals, a group of people who at one time were looked down upon as people who would sell their integrity for an income, to do for them what they can do for themselves. Americans are steadily devolving into Solzhenitsyn’s rabbits. Let us reclaim the satisfaction that comes from doing a job well. In so doing we become brave and virtuous. Build your own house, grow your own food, make your own sources of energy, and become that proud, independent, vibrant thing called alive. This kind of life has the power to halt injustice.
How many people are saying (including the members of these organizations who are just regular Americans) to the ATF and FBI and the CIA, “Stop! You can’t kill innocent or even guilty American citizens with tanks and poisonous gas. You can’t search an American’s house without a warrant. You can’t break into a woman’s home and shoot her, unarmed, in the neck in front of her six year old daughter and then proceed to handcuff her.”[*]
Someone must be first to bury his weapon of ignorance, apathy, or professional snobbery and say, “I refuse to take another life. Life is precious and cannot be replaced once it is gone. I no longer will act as though killing is anything but this. Laugh at me, fire me, imprison me, do what you will, but I will no longer do your dirty work.”
American citizens remember your first duty as a human being, connected to every other living creature on this planet and revolt. No longer submit to oppression out of fear. Man is the crowning creation created with a glorious end in mind, as a sculpture is first seen in the imagination of the artist and then created for the purpose of expressing lofty thoughts that inspire men to be great.
We were created to be great and so we should go about with straight back and clear brow proclaiming our divine heritage. Man is meant to have all that he needs and enjoy life fully without hesitation. He is not meant to lose his ability to provide for his own needs and spend his life in a kind of slavery where he pays others to do for him things he never has the opportunity to enjoy. He is not meant to kill others, plunder their countries, and enforce what ever laws he sees fit. A people cannot be forced into freedom, force of freedom will destroy freedom. Man is not designed to be forced into anything, it is his distinguishing characteristic that he can reason and choose and experience the consequences of his decisions. As knowledge increases so do choices, the more we choose freedom the more choices we have to choose from. In an age when information is so readily available it is only ourselves that keep us from learning all there is to know about living free.
There are many areas crying for reform, airports are one of them. If we understood fully just how dangerous the Patriot Act is, airport security would quit their jobs. They would no longer search and inspect their fellow innocent brothers and sisters as though they were cattle. Pilots would refuse to fly as long as their passengers were treated as convicted criminals. Passengers would refuse to fly with passenger airlines as long as they lived in a police state.
Walk, live in a smaller home, and pursue arduous study with an eye towards leadership not retirement. It is these internal battles of will we must gird up our courage for instead of looking abroad for an enemy. We cannot expect to spread liberty across the globe if here in our homes we uphold and are party to that which we know is unjust. We will die another more deadly death if we do. Perhaps we will be harangued, persecuted, maybe even imprisoned for such actions, but we will be in good company, for Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Henry Thoreau will be our cell mates.
Let us be, not rabbits, not soldiers or Americans, nor businessmen or professionals, but first let us be MEN.
[1] Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992): 17
[2] Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002): 97
[3] Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, (New York, Viking Press, 1947): 112
[*] Robin Pratt, the Seattle Times, 1992
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Immigration
On Jan 15, 2008 10:57 AM, Sarah wrote to her friend Azul, an illegal immigrant:
What do you think about immigration? Is there really all this government aid w.i.c., free hospital care, free school lunches, available to non-citizens? Do you think that is right?
Who would you vote for? Don't look at not being able to vote as a handicap. It’s all a big farce; I don't think I should be allowed to vote. Certainly the president should not be elected by majority vote. He was supposed to be elected by electorates who's job, perhaps one they'd hold only once in a lifetime, was to diligently seek out the best candidate, to know him personally and be acquainted with his accomplishments. We, common voters were intended only to elect our representatives in the white house for the purpose of directly checking the spending of our tax money. How are we to know, so busy with the job of living to know who would make a good candidate for president? It's all a crap shoot, the Internet makes it more likely to know more about the candidate, nevertheless we can't control the president once he is in office, voting him in is no guarantee he will do what he promised or what we want -- and there's no need to prove that point.
I don't know how many times I've heard already this election "let the voter's decide." Oh, bullhonkey. Plenty of elections in this country have been bought and fixed, e.g. Harry Truman when elected to Eastern Judge (administrative equivalent to County Commissioner) by the clout of the Pendergast family of Kansas City in 1922. Then there's whatever happened in 2000-01 in Florida, I don't know what that was about, but I don't see why I should assume it was honest when presidents can't even keep the simple promises they've made to their wives, when they're embroiled in middle eastern wars and they just happen to also be big oil magnates.
Dearest Sarah,
It is interesting that you should ask about immigration. My case is still unresolved and might take a couple more years (hopeful estimate), so it is a proverbial light at the end of a complicated tunnel. As it stands I am in the grayest of gray areas regarding my status.
A lot of people do say stuff about health care, w.i.c. and government aid. And although all of this is true to some extent, I feel it is largely exaggerated. People don't sit down and think it through- how is someone who can't even get a drivers license going to get aid? These people can't even have library cards! Yes, some people sneak around it, but I dare say that the majority of folks just do without or go to the little Hispanic markets and get their penicillin or whatever prescription medicine that was imported from Mexico. It's practically impossible to get anything in this country without a SS# and I dare say that the majority of the crowd, people go after don't have one.
On top of that there are the millions and millions of tax dollars immigrants contribute (you can still pay taxes if you're illegal!). What's astonishing is how many illegals who are aware of their rights (and how limiting they can be) actually pay taxes. People say they don't, but almost every court hearing I've been to the defendant shows their tax forms. Not only this, but the government keeps a HUGE amount of the money with no returns because these same immigrants are not aware that IRS and ICE don't really talk to each other and therefore, getting a tax return won't mean deportation. Yes, you may need a SS# for that too, but it is amazing how Uncle Sam easily over looks this document faux pas.
On top of that add all the people working out in the fields (which people don't consider as much as they should) people who in the government’s eye don’t exist. They have no rights, and are invisible because the labor they provide is so cheap. Taxes may not be paid for them in a lot of cases, but in a way they still are because most of these people work under corporations and they still pay taxes. Not only that but it is those same pickers who have to work 16 hours days 6 days a week who keep the fruit and vegetable prices to so low.
In Florida, during tomato picking season, a worker needs to pick two TONS of tomatoes to make fifty dollars. Two TONS. Who else does work for so freaking cheap?! The thing is, the people who do that aren't even aware of their rights, and I assure you, for whatever taxes they may not be paying they're helping the U.S. flourish. All in the name of sending some money back to their families. Or working. John Bowe's book 'Nobodies' is excellent if you want to read more on that.
Not only that, but I blame the government in part, if not in whole for Illegals using their system. Do you know that it is easier for me to get government aid (I have a SS Card) than it is for me to get a job? As it stands now the government fines anybody who hires illegals heavily, and has even threatened to take business permits away. I don't have a work permit, but I want to work, which is the problem for many of the young first generation immigrants. They want to go to college and they want to improve themselves (the American Dream, no?) but all they get is a slap for not being born in this country. There was the DREAM act, a bill that might someday actually get somewhere, but that thing is made of hope and stitched with prayer. As an interesting fact, McCain was one of the few Republicans actually fighting for the bill to see the light of day and thus he has a small Hispanic following. But for a country that touts it's reason and compassion I find myself lied to and violated, and all because I couldn't control my mother’s uterus.
Not only that but the venues for legalization are almost nill.
There is a large population of youth who are immigrants, but find themselves illegal or unable to become residents or citizens because the clauses are so strict. In the end it doesn't matter how long you have been here -- if you do not have a qualifying relative (parent or spouse who is a citizen) then you cannot be here.
For someone who's heard that I can be whatever I want to be when I grow up because I grew here, it gets really stifling when I hear my lawyer say "You know, you should just get married". I feel like I'm back in those ages where the only way to derive any self-worth as a woman was by the type of man you managed to marry. One giant step backwards for women if you ask me.
I agree that people should come here legally, but I think the U.S. should get its Canada on and do what they're doing. Canada has an agreement with Mexico where immigrants can go to Canada legally and work. This has actually benefited both greatly, what with Mexico having a huge class difference and Canada being under populated.
I know that the argument is 'improve your country and stay there' but you know, there are still a lot of Mexicans in Mexico, a lot of Salvadorans in El Salvador, a lot of Colombians in Colombia and so forth. I think the spill was inevitable- Hispanic countries have a huge focus on the family, and its expansion. America's focus has become the individual.
There's also the fact that it is the average immigrant worker who is paying for SS now.
I have a lot (a lot!) more to say on the subject seeing as how I am an immigrant and I've actually done a lot of research, reading my brains out about act, after act, after act. I'm trying to get myself through all of the immigration books out there. The problem is extremely complex. My view may be a bit biased because the government that I have pledged allegiance to for most of my life is screwing me over. I just feel as if I am dealing with a hypocrite -- this is a nation that asks immigrants to assimilate but doesn't allow them to be a part, a member. How can a person who has to continuously hide out of fear ever assimilate? Is there a magic potion?
As I said before, I have a lot more to say on the subject, but this email is already pretty lengthy. Suffice it to say that it is a complicated issue.
To quote the White Stripes "Who's using who?/ What can we do?/ Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too."
Love Muchly,
Azul
On Jan 15, 2008 1:16 PM, Sarah wrote:
Azul, Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! I am spell-bound. I would love it if you published this on my blog. I'm not real sure how to do that. I'd like to try and add you as an author, if that is alright. Until then could I put our communication so far on my blog without full names or email addresses etc. to protect your privacy? I really want to talk more on this subject. Really. Vent on me. Exhort me. Preach at me. Pretend I'm the US gov't. if you want. I want to know. (Should I leave out the parts where you say you are not a citizen?)
Sarah
Azul wrote:
Illegal as I am, if I leave voluntarily (just to put an end to this idiocy) I'm barred from entering the country for 10 years. Can you believe it? So, it's OK if you leave that on there because it's the truth, and it's not like they can deport me. They've been trying to do that for the past 14 months.
It's funny because I didn’t realize how much I actually knew until I just ranted all that out. But I'd love to keep talking.
Sure I'll write on your blog about it. It might get scandalous though.
What do you think about immigration? Is there really all this government aid w.i.c., free hospital care, free school lunches, available to non-citizens? Do you think that is right?
Who would you vote for? Don't look at not being able to vote as a handicap. It’s all a big farce; I don't think I should be allowed to vote. Certainly the president should not be elected by majority vote. He was supposed to be elected by electorates who's job, perhaps one they'd hold only once in a lifetime, was to diligently seek out the best candidate, to know him personally and be acquainted with his accomplishments. We, common voters were intended only to elect our representatives in the white house for the purpose of directly checking the spending of our tax money. How are we to know, so busy with the job of living to know who would make a good candidate for president? It's all a crap shoot, the Internet makes it more likely to know more about the candidate, nevertheless we can't control the president once he is in office, voting him in is no guarantee he will do what he promised or what we want -- and there's no need to prove that point.
I don't know how many times I've heard already this election "let the voter's decide." Oh, bullhonkey. Plenty of elections in this country have been bought and fixed, e.g. Harry Truman when elected to Eastern Judge (administrative equivalent to County Commissioner) by the clout of the Pendergast family of Kansas City in 1922. Then there's whatever happened in 2000-01 in Florida, I don't know what that was about, but I don't see why I should assume it was honest when presidents can't even keep the simple promises they've made to their wives, when they're embroiled in middle eastern wars and they just happen to also be big oil magnates.
Dearest Sarah,
It is interesting that you should ask about immigration. My case is still unresolved and might take a couple more years (hopeful estimate), so it is a proverbial light at the end of a complicated tunnel. As it stands I am in the grayest of gray areas regarding my status.
A lot of people do say stuff about health care, w.i.c. and government aid. And although all of this is true to some extent, I feel it is largely exaggerated. People don't sit down and think it through- how is someone who can't even get a drivers license going to get aid? These people can't even have library cards! Yes, some people sneak around it, but I dare say that the majority of folks just do without or go to the little Hispanic markets and get their penicillin or whatever prescription medicine that was imported from Mexico. It's practically impossible to get anything in this country without a SS# and I dare say that the majority of the crowd, people go after don't have one.
On top of that there are the millions and millions of tax dollars immigrants contribute (you can still pay taxes if you're illegal!). What's astonishing is how many illegals who are aware of their rights (and how limiting they can be) actually pay taxes. People say they don't, but almost every court hearing I've been to the defendant shows their tax forms. Not only this, but the government keeps a HUGE amount of the money with no returns because these same immigrants are not aware that IRS and ICE don't really talk to each other and therefore, getting a tax return won't mean deportation. Yes, you may need a SS# for that too, but it is amazing how Uncle Sam easily over looks this document faux pas.
On top of that add all the people working out in the fields (which people don't consider as much as they should) people who in the government’s eye don’t exist. They have no rights, and are invisible because the labor they provide is so cheap. Taxes may not be paid for them in a lot of cases, but in a way they still are because most of these people work under corporations and they still pay taxes. Not only that but it is those same pickers who have to work 16 hours days 6 days a week who keep the fruit and vegetable prices to so low.
In Florida, during tomato picking season, a worker needs to pick two TONS of tomatoes to make fifty dollars. Two TONS. Who else does work for so freaking cheap?! The thing is, the people who do that aren't even aware of their rights, and I assure you, for whatever taxes they may not be paying they're helping the U.S. flourish. All in the name of sending some money back to their families. Or working. John Bowe's book 'Nobodies' is excellent if you want to read more on that.
Not only that, but I blame the government in part, if not in whole for Illegals using their system. Do you know that it is easier for me to get government aid (I have a SS Card) than it is for me to get a job? As it stands now the government fines anybody who hires illegals heavily, and has even threatened to take business permits away. I don't have a work permit, but I want to work, which is the problem for many of the young first generation immigrants. They want to go to college and they want to improve themselves (the American Dream, no?) but all they get is a slap for not being born in this country. There was the DREAM act, a bill that might someday actually get somewhere, but that thing is made of hope and stitched with prayer. As an interesting fact, McCain was one of the few Republicans actually fighting for the bill to see the light of day and thus he has a small Hispanic following. But for a country that touts it's reason and compassion I find myself lied to and violated, and all because I couldn't control my mother’s uterus.
Not only that but the venues for legalization are almost nill.
There is a large population of youth who are immigrants, but find themselves illegal or unable to become residents or citizens because the clauses are so strict. In the end it doesn't matter how long you have been here -- if you do not have a qualifying relative (parent or spouse who is a citizen) then you cannot be here.
For someone who's heard that I can be whatever I want to be when I grow up because I grew here, it gets really stifling when I hear my lawyer say "You know, you should just get married". I feel like I'm back in those ages where the only way to derive any self-worth as a woman was by the type of man you managed to marry. One giant step backwards for women if you ask me.
I agree that people should come here legally, but I think the U.S. should get its Canada on and do what they're doing. Canada has an agreement with Mexico where immigrants can go to Canada legally and work. This has actually benefited both greatly, what with Mexico having a huge class difference and Canada being under populated.
I know that the argument is 'improve your country and stay there' but you know, there are still a lot of Mexicans in Mexico, a lot of Salvadorans in El Salvador, a lot of Colombians in Colombia and so forth. I think the spill was inevitable- Hispanic countries have a huge focus on the family, and its expansion. America's focus has become the individual.
There's also the fact that it is the average immigrant worker who is paying for SS now.
I have a lot (a lot!) more to say on the subject seeing as how I am an immigrant and I've actually done a lot of research, reading my brains out about act, after act, after act. I'm trying to get myself through all of the immigration books out there. The problem is extremely complex. My view may be a bit biased because the government that I have pledged allegiance to for most of my life is screwing me over. I just feel as if I am dealing with a hypocrite -- this is a nation that asks immigrants to assimilate but doesn't allow them to be a part, a member. How can a person who has to continuously hide out of fear ever assimilate? Is there a magic potion?
As I said before, I have a lot more to say on the subject, but this email is already pretty lengthy. Suffice it to say that it is a complicated issue.
To quote the White Stripes "Who's using who?/ What can we do?/ Well you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too."
Love Muchly,
Azul
On Jan 15, 2008 1:16 PM, Sarah wrote:
Azul, Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! I am spell-bound. I would love it if you published this on my blog. I'm not real sure how to do that. I'd like to try and add you as an author, if that is alright. Until then could I put our communication so far on my blog without full names or email addresses etc. to protect your privacy? I really want to talk more on this subject. Really. Vent on me. Exhort me. Preach at me. Pretend I'm the US gov't. if you want. I want to know. (Should I leave out the parts where you say you are not a citizen?)
Sarah
Azul wrote:
Illegal as I am, if I leave voluntarily (just to put an end to this idiocy) I'm barred from entering the country for 10 years. Can you believe it? So, it's OK if you leave that on there because it's the truth, and it's not like they can deport me. They've been trying to do that for the past 14 months.
It's funny because I didn’t realize how much I actually knew until I just ranted all that out. But I'd love to keep talking.
Sure I'll write on your blog about it. It might get scandalous though.
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