[MD] Soldiers as victims

Marsha marshalz at charter.net
Sun Jul 6 01:13:39 PDT 2008 

Greetings Platt,

To me, Bush Jr. would be more like Hitler and Tojo than like Roosevelt and 
Churchill.  The former were clearly the aggressors in the name of 'national 
interests'.  An argument is sometimes made that Hussein was a bad man 
because he was responsible for death and torture.  Well?  Sounds like an 
appropriate description of Bush.   Hussein was not the aggressor in this 
case.  Bush definitely was the aggressor.  It was comforting that you didn't 
put Bush in the same sentence with Roosevelt and Churchill.  -  But I 
understand this isn't a boxing match.  Things are far more complicated than 
Bush and Hussein.  Maybe it's time the people of the United States see and 
acknowledge this country's underbelly, its dark side.  For that is clearly 
what is on display at the moment.  We have met the enemy and it is us.

It sometimes seems like things have flipped.  Germany is concerned with 
peace instead of aggression.  The Jews have switched to being brutes instead 
of victims.  And where the United States were once heroes, we've become 
villains.  It's a strange world indeed.  But this is all interrelated, 
ever-changing static patterns of value on a global scale, isn't it?

No matter how I struggle to see a quality solution, I can only see it is 
time for the Financial Markets and Capitalism to be replaced with a more 
intelligent system.  Communism seems to have kept Capitalism in check, and 
vice versa, now it's greed gone wild.   And like the U.S.S.R. went into 
descent, it seems now to be our turn.   Maybe it's time to go to the Native 
peoples and ask them how to care for the Earth and intelligently plan for 
the seventh generation.

Can quality created with heart, head and hands make a difference?

Marsha





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Platt Holden" <plattholden at gmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 10:08 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Soldiers as victims


Hi Marsha,

Agree with your take on today's intellectuals, but don't quite get your
putting Bush and Hussein on the same moral level. By that logic Roosevelt
and Churchill were more immoral than Hitler and Tojo because Roosevelt and
Chruchill were responsible for so many deaths in leading the fight for
individual freedom against the totalitarians.

Platt

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 9:18 PM, Marsha <marshalz at charter.net> wrote:

>
> Greetings Platt,
>
> I think this quote is more helpful:
>
> "The Metaphysics of Quality says there are not just two codes of morals,
> there are actually five: inorganic-chaotic, biological-inorganic,
> social-biological, intellectual-social, and Dynamic-static. This last, the
> Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life isn't defined by society or
> intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from domination by any static
> pattern, but that freedom doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction 
> of
> the patterns themselves."
>                 (LILA, Chapter 24)
>
> Maybe I would naturally feel more patriotic if the country was being lead
> by men and women of the sort that framed the Bill of Rights and 
> Constitution
> instead of the mental midgets that occupy the White House and Congress
> today.  As the one who decided (The Decider) to go to war in Iraq, Bush is
> as responsible for as many deaths as Husseins.  For the moment, the
> Intellectuals in this country have lost their minds.  That is why I, too, 
> am
> happy with the Supreme Courts recent decision.
>
> Marsha
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Platt Holden" <plattholden at gmail.com>
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 5:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [MD] Soldiers as victims
>
>
>
> Hi Marsha,
>
> Not at all. Pirsig is helpful here, citing individual rights, such as 
> those
> described in our Constitution's Bill of Rights (and recently upheld by the
> Supreme Court), as resulting from the moral supremacy of the intellectual
> level over the social level. He further makes it clear that the social
> level
> (patriotism) serves an  important function in keeping biological forces,
> used by totalitarian ideologies to abolish the independence of the
> individual (Germany, Japan, Russia, North Vietnam, North Korea, Hussein's
> Iraq), from dominating, warning that, "Where biological values are
> undermining social values intellectuals must identify social behavior, not
> matter its ethnic connection, and support it all the way without 
> restraint.
> Intellectuals must find biological behavior, no matter what its ethnic
> connection, and limit or destroy destructive biological patterns with
> complete moral ruthlessness, the way a doctor destroys germs, before those
> biological patterns destroy civilization itself." (Lila, 24)  So I have no
> problem with social level patriotism when that patriotism is directed at
> preserving our individual rights.
>
> Platt
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Marsha <marshalz at charter.net> wrote:
>
>
>>  From Wikipedia:
>>
>>>
>>>
>> Anti-patriotism is the ideology that opposes patriotism; it usually 
>> refers
>> to those with cosmopolitan views and is usually of an anti-nationalist
>> nature as well. Normally, anti-patriotism stems from the belief that
>> patriotism is wrong since it forces people born in a country, whether 
>> they
>> like it or not, regardless of their individuality, to love the country or
>> sacrifice themselves for it; consequently, people who oppose patriotism
>> may
>> oppose its authoritarianism, while others may believe that patriotism
>> leads
>> to war because of geopolitical disputes so it may be viewed from a
>> pacifist
>> or anti-militarist point of view. Usually, this term is used in a
>> pejorative
>> way by those who defend patriotism or nationalism, and terms such as
>> cosmopolitanism or world citizenship may be used to avoid the bias that
>> comes from the typical usage of the word anti-patriot or
>> anti-patriotism.[1]
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-patriotism
>>
>> Platt,
>>
>> Have you become anti-individuality?
>>
>> Marsha
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Platt Holden" <plattholden at gmail.com>
>> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>> Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 11:09 AM
>> Subject: [MD] Soldiers as victims
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> In Lila Chapter 7 Pirsig describes how the killing fields of WW I
>> destroyed
>> Victorian morality:
>>
>> "The period ended when, after having defined for all time what 'Truth" 
>> and
>> "Virtue" and "Quality" are, the Victorians and their Edwardian successors
>> sent an entire generation of children into the trenches of World War I on
>> behalf of these ideals. And murdered them. For nothing. That war was the
>> natural consequence of Victorian moral egotism. When it was over the
>> children who survived never got tired of laughing at Charlie Chaplin
>> comedies of those elderly people with the silk hats and too many clothes
>> and noses up in the air. Young people of the twenties read Hemingway, Dos
>> Passos and Fitzgerald, drank bootleg gin, danced tangos into the night,
>> drove fast roadsters, made illicit love, called themselves a "lost
>> generation," and never wanted anything to remind them of Victorian
>> morality
>> again." (Lila, 7)
>>
>> But Thomas Sowell writing in The Washington Times presents another side 
>> of
>> the story:
>>
>> "In France, after World War I, the teachers´ unions launched a systematic
>> purge of textbooks in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.
>> Books
>> that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended
>> France against the German invaders where called `bellicose´ books to be
>> banished from the schools.  . . . The once epic story of French soldiers'
>> heroic defense against German invaders at Verdun, despite massive French
>> casualties, was now transformed into a story of horrible suffering by all
>> the soldiers at Verdun -- French and German alike.  In short, soldiers
>> once
>> depicted as national heroes were now depicted as victims - and just like
>> victims in other nations´ armies.  . . . Did it matter? Does patriotism
>> matter? France, where pacifism and internationalism  were strongest,
>> became
>> a classic example of how much it can matter. . . . During World War II,
>> France collapsed after just six weeks of fighting and surrendered to Nazi
>> Germany. . .  Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mauriac, and other Frenchmen
>> blamed a lack of national will or general moral decay for the sudden and
>> humiliating collapse of France in 1940. "
>>
>> Sowell concluded with a sobering question:
>>
>> "Our media are busy verbally transforming American combat troops from
>> heroes into victims, just as the French intelligentsia did - with the
>> added
>> twist of calling this `supporting our troops.´ Will that matter? Time 
>> will
>> tell."
>>
>> Reminds me of the Hippie chant of the 60´s during the Cold War expressing
>> a
>> similar lack of patriotism - "Better red than dead."
>>
>> The full text of the Sowell article is  at:
>>
>> http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/04/does-patriotism-matter/
>>
>> Regards, Platt
>>
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