[MD] Soldiers as victims

[Christoffer Ivarsson]

Ah, yes.  The way I see it something that was founded out of the dynamic 
advancement of the intellectual level can very quickly be turned into just 
another social-level fortress. As with the US. Oh, there is no doubt in my 
mind that the founding guys were operating in the service of the 
intellectual level mainly and mostly when they tried out their little 
experiment, but history showed us how the strongest social level pattern 
there is - the Giant indeed - soon took hold of it all: capitalism. People 
say that intellectual patterns can use the capitalist system - be in control 
of it so to speak, but the way I see it there is very few occasions when 
that actually is the case, and even fewer on the other side of the Atlantic.

I'd just like to add one tiny note about human rights and the concept of 
freedom. Human rights is a product of the intellectual level as I'm sure 
most of us will agree, but it has since become a social level patterns - 
I.e. people call upon these principles and defend them and so forth; most of 
them never reflecting  over where these principles came from or why they are 
the way they are - it is a given pattern, widely accepted, and socially it 
is of high value to respect them. Freedom is even more seldom something that 
people reflect over, negative and positive freedom etc - and in america it 
seems to be of very low social value to do so. I got the following line from 
a young republican when I pointed out to him that freedom was a complicated 
concept that can be defined differently "No, freedom is what is written in 
the constitution" .. well, I suppose that kind of "thinking" is to be 
expected from a country in the grasp of social level patterns to that 
extent.

In conclusion I would like to say that I can't think of any place on earth 
where intellectual patterns is really in control  - in the sense that social 
level patterns never are allowed to subjugate or override intellectual ones. 
But, there are places where reason maintains a higher status then on other 
places, and it is typically not places where people hold texts in Divine 
veneration, weather those texts be the Quoran or the Constitution, and it is 
typically not places where diffuse dreams and ideals of honour or  of 
"making it on ones own" is allowed to strangle reason.

But, as you might suspect: this is only my (in truth not very) humble 
opinion.

Regards
Chris


> 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.