Sinclair,
Thanks for the thoughtful note.
I don't sense any anti-Americanism behind your comments, my friend. I AM
having a great deal of trouble figuring out your political philosophy. At the
risk of offending you, I'll tell you my very tentative conclusions at this
point. You seem to have a political philosophy rather like American liberals
in some respects, but conditioned by something I will (probably quite
inaccurately) describe as "a certain European cynicism" regarding the likely
success of any political activity by man.
Then again, my judgment regarding the political motivations of others is
primitive at best. I confess that most American liberals are completely
inexplicable to me. I honestly don't know how they can view the same problems
I do and then proceed to initiate policies that will and do make them worse.
The complete bolux that they have made of our primary and secondary education
systems is perhaps the best example, but there are countless others. For some
reason, they never seem to learn from their mistakes. I deal with it by
calling them morons, but that really doesn't help them learn any faster, and it
certainly does make them angry. ;-)
In spite of all the above, I remain terminally optimistic about the works of
man. I can't help it. Teilhard de Chardin (S.J.), wrote lucidly about the
unrelenting "urge" on the part of life forms to optimize themselves by evolving
more and more complex structures to handle their environments. His ideas, and
those of the late archeo-biologist XXXX* explain the complex assemblages of
cooperating cells that comprise the living plant and animal entities that
populate the world today (including us). The same ideas also explain the rise
and steadily increasing success (and complexity) of social organisms of
cooperating people.
I think it is rather short-sighted to focus on the death-roll of civilizations
that preceded us, rather than on the steadily increasing success that man has
achieved on our planet. Man is fated to get it right in the long term. Why
not America? And why not now?
Joe
* Unfortunately due to a bad case of advanced senility, ;-) I can't remember
his name today, but using new species he discovered in the Burgess Shale strata
in British Columbia, he revised the conventional Darwinian theory of evolution
by pointing out that evolution proceeds in fits and starts. He has written
many popular books on evolution, biology and archeology.
********************
Sinclair wrote:
> Dear Joe,
>
> The biggest guy on the block is always looked at with envy. America is a
> diverse and powerful nation. If all the powers of hell waked to madness it
> would not change the adaptability of the most powerful nation that ever
> existed in the history of our species. As long as you stand by your
> principals you will remain great. Your country was born in a love of
> liberty and forged in a fire of hope and prayer. Guns do not win a war. The
> victors are those who from the crucible of battle emerge with their dreams
> and principals intact. The danger is that for immediate advantage you give
> up what you have paid in blood for.
>
[ Excess quotations omitted. ]
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