Memorial Day...........................

 

Remember...............................

Normandy American Cemetery     France

Almost certainly worth trying...............

 

more fun here

Sacrificial...........................

To the disciples' embarrassment the Master once told a bishop that religious people have a natural bent for cruelty.

"Why?" demanded the disciples after the bishop had gone.

"Because they all too easily sacrifice persons for the advancement of a purpose," said the Master.

-Anthony de Mello,  One Minute Wisdom

It's that "sacrifice" part that is so hard.............

"The delusional state of the ruling elite infects the general populace, and magical thinking abounds, as do vague claims to future greatness based on the mythologies of previous eras that had earned prosperity with sacrifice and thrift."

-on the inevitableness of the collapse of once-thriving states and empires

If...............................

     We'll start our analysis with a truism, stark, self-evident and understated:  Sometimes things do not go well.  That seems to have much to do with the terrible nature of the world, with its plagues and famines and tyrannies and betrayals.  But here's the rub:  sometimes, when things are not going well, it's not the world that's the cause.  The cause is instead that which is currently most valued, subjectively and personally.  Why?  Because the world is revealed, to an indeterminate degree, through the template of your values (much more on this in Rule 10).  If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it's time to examine your values.  It's time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions.  It's time to let go.  It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.

-Jordan B. Peterson,  12 Rules For Life:  An Antidote To Chaos

Delay...............................

People watched the successful succeed and the unsuccessful fail for thousands and thousands of years.  We thought it over, and drew a conclusion:  The successful among us delay gratification.  The successful among us bargain with the future.  A great idea begins to emerge, taking ever-more-clearly-articulated form, in ever more-clearly-articulated stories:  What's the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful?  The successful sacrifice.

-Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules For Life:  An Antidote To Chaos

Pondering virtue.....................

     It is true that the idea of virtuous self-sacrifice is deeply embedded in Western culture ( at least insofar as the West has been influenced by Christianity, which is based on the imitation of someone who performed the ultimate act of self-sacrifice).  Any claim that the Golden Rule does not mean "sacrifice yourself for others" might therefore appear dubious.  But Christ's archetypal death exists as an example of how to accept finitude, betrayal and tyranny heroically - how to walk with God despite the tragedy of self-conscious knowledge - and not as a directive to victimize ourselves in the service of others.  To sacrifice ourselves to God (or the highest good, if you like) does not mean to suffer silently and willingly when some person or organization demands more from us, consistently, than is offered in return.  That means we are supporting tyranny, and allowing ourselves to be treated as slaves.  It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

-Jordan Peterson,  12 Rules For Life:  An Antidote To Chaos

Take a moment to remember.............

............................It's a lot more than just another holiday.

image via

Sacrifices..............................

      John Adams began writing directly to his son in the spring of 1776.  His first letter must have overawed the boy:  "I hope that you will remember how many Losses, dangers, and Inconveniences, that have been borne by your parents, and the inhabitants of Boston in general, for the sake of pursuing freedom for you and Yours."  Johnny probably needed very little reminding about sacrifice:  in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the British had blockaded the port of Boston and placed the city under martial law.  Even the most basic products were unavailable or impossibly expensive.  Abigail, always self-sufficient, laid in her own stores of flax and wool in order to make the family clothes and linen herself.  By the spring of 1775, the Adams family servants had either returned home or joined the militia, leaving Abigail to make the soap, nurse the sick, tend to the animals, and of course for her children virtually on her own.  The battle of Bunker Hill, that June, only offered the most vivid lesson in the sacrifices compelled by the pursuit of freedom.

-James Traub,  John Quincy Adams:  Militant Spirit

The message............................

“By living in a spirit of forgiveness we not only uphold the core value of citizenship but also find the path to social membership that we need.  Happiness does not come from the pursuit of pleasure, nor is it guaranteed by freedom, it comes from sacrifice.  That is the message of the christian religion and it is the message that is conveyed by all the memorable works of our culture.  It is the message that has been lost in the noise of repudiation, but which it seems to me can be heard once again if we devote our energies to retrieving it.  And in the Christian tradition the primary act of sacrifice is forgiveness.  The one who forgives sacrifices vengeance and renounces thereby a part of himself for the sake of another.” 

-Roger Scruton

Majestic...............................

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

-The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Full text of the letter is here.

Flat tax anyone..............

Megan McArdle riffs on tax "expenditures":

Paying for new spending by “closing the loopholes” is a favorite rallying cry of almost everyone. But rarely are those people picturing giving up their own deductions for mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, dependent children, or retirement accounts. Why, no! Those aren't loopholes. Those are just the basics of a decent middle-class life. Loopholes are the deductions used by other, richer people who can afford crooked lawyers.

Full post is here.

Are we really talking about the...............

..................................tax code on Christmas Eve?   Yep.

John Cochrane talks common-sense governing.   Wishing the attempt all the luck in the world.  Post here.   Excerpt here:

We need to move from the equilibrium of, I have my subsidy/deduction/credit/special deal, so I won't complain about yours, to the equilibrium of, I gave up my subsidy/deduction/credit special deal, so I'll make darn sure you give up yours too.

this post was really just an excuse to post my favorite hugh macleod cartoon.

Memorial Day...................................

Saving Private Ryan.................................the cemetery scene

 

Debt..................................

Remember.......................

On machines and men.................

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
-Elbert Hubbard

Great Speeches..................

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a transformative
speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The date was August 23, 1963.  King, the public face of the
Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, was a student of Gandhi's
non-violent "soul force" approach to change.  As such, words,
both spoken and written, were one of his most powerful tools.
King was a craftsman.  Listen and read.  Judge for yourself.

The video below contains his whole "I have a Dream" speech.
The text is here.  Two excerpts here:

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
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I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."