War is not an Option

Saw a bumper sticker on a recent travel: WAR IS NOT AN OPTION and the thought immediately jumped into my mind: Yes, but sadly sometimes it is the only alternative available.

Would that it were true, but unfortunately, human nature being such as it is, war,violence, death, destruction, all are sometimes the only alternative we have if we wish to remain at liberty and live our lives as we have chosen. Of course, we could chose to surrender our liberties …. we could choose to die quietly or be slaves, but that would not be my choice.

If there are those who have sworn to see my death as well as those who I care for or to those who believe as I do in the dignity of the individual above all, then I will fight them … on any and all levels of conflict.

RIP War Powers Act

It seems to me that President Obama is going to get the Libyan operation past Congress without a whimper.

Lord, this strikes me as funny and I wonder where the hue and cry is? The president is acting without Congressional authorization … of any type … and few if any (other than the much derided Fox News)  of the pundits or elected leadership in the Congress seem to be making a major deal out of it.

I guess that is what it means when it is said that elections to make differences. My guess that if our previous administration had ignored at least attempting to follow at least some parts of the 1973 War Powers Act, he probably would have been impeached, or had even more people in the streets.

Well, we get what we deserve … or at least vote for … and it is go0d to remember that democracy only works until the majority figures out it can vote itself money from the common treasury.

New book

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We got him!

Sunday, May 1, 2011, Osama Bin Laden died at the hands of a small group of American Navy SEALS.

Well Done!

It is not the end of the Global War on Islamo-fascistic Terrorists, nor even the end of the beginning, but it is a milestone.

To put it in perspective the World War II generation. This is not the equivalent of the death of Adolf Hitler, but more akin to the death of Isoroku Yamamoto in April 1943. The architect of the attack on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor and much of the very successful Japanese conquest of the Pacific was dead, was killed by a small group of Army Air Force aviators who flew hundreds of miles on a scrap of intelligence from the U.S. Navy.

It did not end the war in the Pacific, which went on bloodily  for nearly another 2 1/2 years, but it was a major blow to the Japanese and a major victory and morale boost for the Americans.

Such is it today.

Random Thoughts 20

As I watch the events marking 9/11 and the controversy surrounding the pastor in Florida who threatened to burn copies of the Islamic holy book, I was struck by the differences between the US and say Afghanistan or Indonesia.

In those countries, demonstrators angry over the prospect of some obscure non-denominational preacher in a faraway country with a church with a membership of about 50 will destroy a copy of their sacred text. They protest by burning American flags, a relatively sacred object to many Americans, and urging death to Americans everywhere. I imagine that if they had Christian Bibles to burn, they would readily do so.

Americans, who thought the idea of burning the Islamic sacred text … or at least a copy of it … was not a very good idea were able to talk to the point that the pastor reconsidered his idea and apparently has decided that it is not such a great idea after all.

Still, the riots and demonstrations persist, just because someone even thought of burning the text. How bizarre is that?

I wonder if Christian Americans were to go on rampages every time an American flag was burned, or Christian sacred symbols were destroyed in Muslim countries, how that would be received? How about Americans calling for the deaths of all Muslims and then violently following up?

Yes, I know, there are those who say Americans already are doing that with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that would be a misrepresentation of those efforts.

Besides, much of the violence in those war torn countries is not directed at coalition forces as it is against local indigenous people.

It just strikes me how hypocritical it is to hold the US to one standard while absolving others and holding them to an entirely different standard. It doesn’t matter that Americans look at themselves as unique or exceptional in this world where multicultural people have been able to come together and for the most part live in peace and harmony (especially when compared to the rest of the world where peace and harmony, if it exists at all) comes only with homogeneous countries with one race, one religion and one government ideology.

But then, it is acceptable to find fault with everything the US does, both internally and externally, and to absolve others of the selfsame failings or worse.

It really gets depressing sometimes.

testing

this is a test

A Gathering Storm at Sea off the Carolina Coast

c. Richard Browne, November 2007

Random Thoughts 19

Life really is all about contracts. In everything we humans do, it involves a contract of some sort, implied, verbal or written.

We have social contracts, business contracts, financial contracts, purchase contracts, sale contracts, partnership contracts, corporate contracts, marriage contracts, contracts on every aspect of human life. Unfortunately, most people forget that the world is made up of such contracts.

Just as unfortunately, people tend to forget that the role of government, and about its only legitimate role, is the enforcement of all these contracts, should someone fail in their obligation to meet one of the contracts’ particulars.

It matters not whether a contract is written down or merely implied, it remains an obligation of each individual to uphold his or her end of the bargain. We agree to certain laws and rules governing our social structure. These are not necessarily written down but by custom and tradition they are just as valid as any business contract.

Courtesy is part of our civil contract, unfortunately as aspect that it all too often ignored in modern society.

When parents bring a child into the world, they have, without their explicit endorsement, agreed with the society in which they live to raise the child with the values and mores necessary for the child to be prepared to be a member of that community and social structure. A baptismal is sort of a formal ceremony to recognize this responsibility with the church acting as the agent of enforcement.

Do good, the church says, then you will go to heaven and that is your contract. Do bad, and you will not go to heaven or paradise or whatever afterlife the religion observes. Again, a contract.

You go to the grocer to buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk and you exchange whatever currency is the medium of exchange in your community and that too is the result of a contract.

Even social relations basically are contracts. When you enter into any relationship, you are offering your expectations, to be satisfied by another, while you are agreeing to try to satisfy the expectations of your partner. It is a simple but again just as valid contract. It may sound cynical but it is true just the same.

Today, in the U.S., we are seeing a crisis of confidence in the national institutions with the failure of many of those institutions to meet the expectations of individuals who literally failed to read the fine print, or as in the case of many in the large financial institutions, of individuals seeking to avoid personal responsibility for their own mistakes in judgment and efforts to make a game out of reality. Unfortunately, in such situations, the fallout hurts other people.

In the U.S., however, over the last century, it has become socially acceptable to protect people from their own foibles and failures, much less mistakes, and expect the government, as some neutral third party to provide the protection.

Again, unfortunately the problem is, that most people fail to realize, that government is not a disinterested benign third party. First it is a creation of society and second the same type of fallible human beings that the government is trying to protect from mistakes and failures makes its decisions.

Random Thoughts 18

When thinking about people and human relations, I think we sometimes forget that at our core we are but a very adaptable species of the primate family of the kingdom of mammals.

What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that we are animals. Granted we are animals that have highly developed communications skills and a sense of self-awareness, but we still are animals and evolution has left us with the usual animal instincts toward procreation and self-preservation.

With our highly evolved social structures that dictate much of our behavior, people far too
often forget that deep down, the two things that actually motivate individuals is their desire to live or survive and the instinct to pass on another generation.

People, generally, are not instinctively altruistic. Most people are driven by their instinct for self-preservation and the necessity of satisfying their basic needs of food, shelter and protection from the elements. Only when those needs are met will most people find the capacity for altruism. Granted, there are exceptions, but altruism is more a choice than an instinct.

The human individual also has the instincts of a pack animal to an extent as well as some of the instincts of herd animals. Most humans have a need to have the acceptance of either type of animal and find solace in the hierarchical structure of the pack and safety in the comfort of numbers in a herd.

The other thing people are most likely to forget is that governments, organizations, corporations, and other social groups are made up of individuals and it is how those individuals think that eventually is reflected in how that entity deals with the world around it.

It seems to me that if you keep these elements in mind, then it becomes easier to explain and understand human history and current human behavior.

It is our socialization as we grow up in whatever social construct we are born into that shapes our abilities to control and channel the basic instincts. What we so often fail to remember is that there are many social constructs on planet Earth and many of those constructs are not necessarily compatible with the others.

Those raised in the American Occidental Democratic Republican Capitalistic Tradition are imbued with certain values and expectations that have been the world around them. To them, the way they live becomes the “norm” and any other cultural construct is either wrong or abnormal.

There are those who cannot understand or even conceive of a world that, let’s say, has no computers, cars, trains, planes and the Internet. It is difficult in this era to conceive of a world where information moves not at the speed of light but perhaps at the speed of sound, if not slower. This also is the source of much of the problems in the world today.

With information moving at the speed of light, then change comes at people at almost the same pace. Humans, as they are now evolved, have not yet adapted to such rapid change. Change is difficult in its own right, but the speed of change apparently does not allow time for the modern human to perceive, process and the adapt to the new whatever. Evolution doesn’t work in this environment in that the species can not codify the necessary adaptations before new adaptations are required.