some thoughts on day 1

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

--- Dan Jizzenberry <pantychrist at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm getting a bit a bit of a Cold War 'vibe' here: the idea that to
> protect 
> our freedoms we must limit them. Not good. Should we allow that point
> of 
> view to prevail? If we do, then I think the terrorists have won.

I have no desire whatsoever to live in a police state. I don't even
like the idea of those newfangled eelectronic highway toll machines
that give you a print out every month that shows exactly when you went
through what toll where -- this is creepy. But I don't understand this
sentiment.  I don't think the "terrorists" give a tinker's damn about
our civil liberties. They view these liberties as our weaknesses and
put them to use.  I think that the terrorists will have "won" when we
are so paralyzed by a combination of fear and timmorous, self-regarding
scruple that we are incapable of meaningful self-defense, and unable to
come to the defense of our allies, or even to further the entirely
"western" ideological program of 'Self-determination for the Peoples'.
*Then* they will have "won". 

The Third World has no monopoly on "goodness", and the "badness" they
perpetrate today is not the fruit of o'erthrown european colonialism. 
It is the fruit of human nature.  History is a parade of bastards
wringing wealth and power out of the twisted bodies of the weak.  I
would submit that even the easily maligned "trans-national capitalism"
is, on the whole, a relatively benign system compared to most
everything humanity has dreamed up since some kind and
ever-to-be-blessed woman first made beer out of cultivated grain in the
fourth damn millenium BCE.

Cold war vibes?
Self-determination for the Peoples!
Mark

__________________________________________________
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help?
Donate cash, emergency relief information
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/