The Progressive Blog Alliance HQ

[Simultaneously posted at stuck in the middle...]

From the comforts of his ranch in Crawford, Texas, GW says: “We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. We cannot leave this task half finished, we must take it all the way to the end.” I wonder what Iraq vets would say to him? How 'bout these for starters:
“It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor. I see this guy in the most prestigious office in the world, and this guy says ‘bring it on.’ A guy who ain’t never been shot at, never seen anyone suffering, saying ‘bring it on?’ He gets to act like a cowboy in a western movie…it’s sickening to me.” -- Corporal Abdul Henderson

" wait till i tell ye" .... a Northern Irish literary journal (of sorts)..... http://itellye.blogspot.com/ 

And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination. It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal. Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain. A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

• The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."
• The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.
• If it requires a uniform it's a worthless endeavor.
• I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
• Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Excerpted from Notes on Nationalism (1945)By George Orwell

There is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation — that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. (read more...)

Just some philosophical food for thought:

Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope. It matters not whether it be hope of a heavenly kingdom, of heaven on earth, of plunder and untold riches, or fabulous fabulous achievement, or of world dominion...

*

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual. And as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably multiplies failure and frustration...

I know, I know. Mencken was no progressive. In his later years, he soured into a nasty reactionary. But the Sage of Baltimore still retains my affection for his witty and wise observations on the various forms of idiocy, quackery, and fakery that plague civilization. Here are several that strike me as suitable for adoption by progressives. Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic. The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on I am not too sure. Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiotsEvery election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right.I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the instruments of war.Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently.Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation.

Emergence is what happens when the whole is smarter than the sum of its parts...And yet somehow out of all this interaction some higher-level structure or intelligence appears, usually without any master planner calling the shots. These kinds of systems tend to evolve from the ground up.

- From Emergence, by Stephen Johnson

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized. Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.

• I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

• Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

• It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.

• This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.

• Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds that there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.

• The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.

• If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.

• This is what I'm good at. I like meeting people, my fellow citizens, I like interfacing with them.
• There's not going to be enough people in the system to take advantage of people like me.
• It's amazing with the software that has been developed these days that enable a camera to distinguish the difference between a squirrel and a bomb.
• For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it.
• Look up the word. I don't know, maybe I made it up. Anyway, it's an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees.
• Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. -May 5, 2004
• Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. It's ... you're a ... you're a ... you've been given sovereignty, and you're ... viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between ... sovereign entities.
• If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow.
• It's hard to be successful if you don't make something somebody doesn't want to buy.
• I've been talking to Vicente Fox, the new president of Mexico... I know him... to have gas and oil sent to U.S.... so we'll not depend on foreign oil.
• I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man.
• Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.
• Border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better.
• He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.
• [A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.
• I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.
• The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.
• I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
• Do you have blacks, too? -to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Nov. 8, 2001, an April 28,
• First,

• To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.
• Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
• Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
• Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
• Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
• An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
• In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
• If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
• But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
• Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
• Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
• In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President is unpatriotic and servile - Theodore Roosevelt