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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (202621)	9/11/2006 9:43:23 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I think of religion a little like drug using and homosexuality - they make me squeamish and nervous about what dangerous things they might do to me, via community adoption of their ideas, but their practices are not directly an issue for me. If you want to prance around your bonfire, naked, clutching your little gold talisman, chanting your mystical incantations, that's not my problem or my business [as long as you don't use old engine oil to fuel your fire]. <... very cynical, possibly true. Does that mean, by your book, that we should do away with religion or outlaw politicians?> I find my cynicism stands me in good stead and when I get all wet and trusting, swaying and ululating with the crowd, I very soon find I am making/have made a major blunder. Cynicism, like panic, are well-honed genetic traits which we deny at our peril. A darn good panic really gets things moving. One takes the right steps in panic. Great big ones, away from the source of panic. When Goebbels and co were enunciating their "Law of the Big Lie", they were not speaking just for the gullible and soon to be dead Germans. If somebody was really a Christian, would they be seeking and struggling and manipulating in Machiavellian ways to gain the reins of Rome, which was the geopolitical body responsible for suppression of individuals, peer to peer networking and universality rather than murderous alpha male territorial dominance hierarchy? That's a rhetorical question. The answer is no. They nailed Jesus to the cross for -od's sake [well, that slightly misuses that phrase, as it wasn't for Go-'s sake that they did it, though ironically, it was]. Now they have effigies of the poor guy all over Europe and I suppose in the USA, which is obviously a direct warning to anyone else who gets uppity what they can expect if they don't genuflect to the Mighty Emperor Caesar. None of that habeas corpus muck. It's rendition for those challenging the power. Children looking at that horror story from infancy must develop a fearful outlook on what disobience will bring. Apparently that's not the message that's supposed to come out of it, but that's what it looks like to me. "If you don't behave, look what happened to this guy. We'll do the same to you too!" Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (202621)	9/11/2006 11:47:59 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

he did it because he thought he could win his la la land strategic aims by doing it. He is of course wrong, because he is a simpleton, and an particularly ignorant one at that, for thinking that communities would welcome invaders who rape their young daughters and kill their old grandparents. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. For a politico, he's very candid, except when he's not, which would make him a tough poker player. Easy to generalize, tough to know with any certainty. The simpleton label is simplistic, easy, and wrong. No simpleton becomes Prez of the US. Iraq was a miscalculation which we were led into by Rumsfeld and his ideas about a cheap victory then departure. He snowed W, I think, who had no defense or foreign policy experience to speak of, and who cannot depart without emboldening the Muslimofascists--and they do exist and they are deadly and deadly serious about harming us. We cannot leave Iraq without creating a worse situation. It's a perfect Chinese finger tap--the more we may wish to leave, the less we can. Got any good ideas?