combat writing badge C O M B A T
the Literary Expression of Battlefield Touchstones
ISSN 1542-1546 Volume 01 Number 02 Spring ©Apr 2003



Redemption



We're at war. Not the dramatic and decisive shooting war broadcast throughout the civilized world, like the latest episode of some lurid adventure series, but nonetheless a bona fide war[1]. Our basic culture is under siege by vehement adversaries, who intend to brainwash us into a new lifestyle.

The latest[†] tempest in a teapot occurred when a professor[2] at Saint Xavier University took umbrage with a routine e-mail solicitation from a cadet at the Air Force Academy; and used this opportunistic excuse to label the student as a baby killer[3] and to defame the military from his lofty pedagogical perch as an august and sagacious pacifist. After the multitude of boosters and activists put in their two cents on free speech and academic freedom[4], apple pie and the American flag, the incident was settled[5] by a formal apology being tendered to both the cadet and the Academy, and by the reprimand and suspension of the professor. Everything returned to the status quo ante[6]. This must mean that civilization is progressing, since, in the bad old days, some blood would've undoubtedly been spilled. The political history of related incidents, from the English Civil War and the American Civil War to the American Revolution and the Boxer Rebellion, has not been expunged, but their meaning has been revised and reinterpreted.

Welcome to the Brave New World[7] ... where the philistines are once again profaning the sacred temples, where the Retro Hippies are defiling our culture, where the New Barbarians are desecrating our civilization, where the Blame America Firsters are fomenting discord and dissension throughout the aspiring world. The purported Third Wave[8] is supposed to inundate the wicked present and drown the evil past, while the anointed[9] are adroitly surfing the positive combers onto an inviolate paradisiacal shore[10], a new right thinking hierarchy. But the new Thought Police are exploiting their good offices to maladminister political correctness into ordinary affairs. It's not unlike sending our precious children to trusted physicians to be inoculated or healed, only to discover that the medicos are dispensing diseases, are infecting and crippling our progeny.

The former arsenal and breadbasket of democracy has become the home for hypocrites, the shelter for slothfuls, the infirmary for indulgents. The old exhortation of we don't have to get along with you, you have to get along with us has become the new hortatory doctrine of we can't stand for anything because somebody might be offended. Once postulating that if you want to be all things to all people, then you're nothing to anybody has been revised into where you stand depends on where you sit. The old isolationist progressivism claimed that America is too good for the rest of the world but the new multicultural liberalism claims that America isn't good enough for the rest of the world. The we are the world fascist elite wants to build a bridge to the New Era permitting only restricted passage, so our disagreeable past can be burned and everything undesirable[11] will be stranded on the other side of the abyss. Elitists are notorious for NOT getting their hands dirty, and the inheritance they've laid claim to was purchased by the sacrifice of the very forebears from whom they seek disassociation.

These arrogant elitists have utter contempt and disdain for anyone who has the courage of his convictions, and acts to defend them, since the proof of their superior acumen is their demonstrable ability to compel others, as inferior functionaries, to do their bidding. They envision a scenario wherein their guile dupes the ignorant rubes so completely that their profiteering is never suspected or detected. Just as they imagine the worst of others and the best of themselves, they presume that everybody can be fooled[12] all of the time, and that everyone's motives are as base as their own; and then fall prey to their own contrivances. It's all about power ... power in its various guises of sex, money, politics, documentation. Power is the proper use of force, culminating in compulsory social or ethical effects ... hence, the forceful will of the people is only proper when it's coincident with supervening authority. But if the authority is fungible and plastic, then truth is conditional and convertible ... it is whatever we say it is whenever we say it is. Violence is, ipso facto, always an unjustified application of power[13]; and never mind that indirect or surrogate violence will nullify the axiom.

Some people gaze at the midden we call the past and wonder how our ancestors could've lived such brutish lives; and others stare at the abattoir we call the future and wonder how our descendants will be able to live such brutish lives. Since the moral hiatus of the CounterCultural Revolution, exacerbated by an irresponsible mass media, many people believe that we are in the next iteration of the persistent Culture Wars[14], the outcome of which will define and delimit all prospects and opportunities. This is not an overtly violent war[15], but the battlelines are passionately drawn. While hysterical extremists vie for power, moderates plead for the new appeasement between foes, as if reasonable compromise ever did more than legitimize the interval[16] between strikes. The shot heard 'round the world heralded the paradigm for the rational balance of power; and manipulative men have been devising cunning ruses to unbalance that power ever since. Our tenets are allegedly resilient enough to withstand contentious plaints, but no system based upon good will and good character is resistant to methodical deconstruction, to deliberate re-invention, to intentional sabotage.

One of the principal combat zones of the new Culture War is the arena of ideas[17], that sanctum of erudition, that ivory tower of preserved scholarship[18]; where creative expression is as implausible as original ideas, and mutual respect is as unlikely as chivalric honor. One is as likely to encounter archaisms in the novel lyceum as ancient wisdom or antique lore. The revisionists[19] declare that all pedagogy is biased, just as all acts are political, therefore all education should be a conscious indoctrination toward a particular objective. That this modern innovation merely recapitulates the form of the original religious universities is immaterial to doctrinaire bigots. This discrepancy in prevailing authority hearkens to the Platonic philosopher king and the Aristotelean golden mean. In Plato's republic of illusions, the knowledgeable autocrat decides what's best for everyone; but Aristotle insisted that people be sufficiently well informed that they could make a decision from the evidence, which would change as circumstances changed. These debatable polemics needed to reconcile the distinction between thought and feeling, and like Alexander's solution of the Gordian Knot, the resolution was destructive to both. It's noteworthy that Socrates, a former soldier, only established his school when his tutelage would be worthwhile, and he accepted his community's punishment when they determined his unprogressive teachings to be wrong. By comparison, when Plato was confronted with the same moral dilemma, he chose to flee into protective sanctuary. Because Plato survived to record what Socrates refused, revisionism insinuates that we should respect Plato's cowardice. This distinction also exists for Camus and Sartre in the modern era.

The problem with complaining about the concomitants of a ME generation upon a ME generation, to use Charlotte Allen's phrase for the first society that has not had to introduce itself to the cult of self-fulfillment, and is populated by automata who will not decry any evil that has not been asseverated in their liberal missal, is that nothing supplanted the demolished edifice of tradition. Now that God is dead, it's obvious that there are no SuperMensch. Now that there is no Holy Spirit, it's obvious that there's no vital spirit either. Now that there is no Sacred Book, it's obvious that all books are profane, and every word is vulgar. Now that there is no Divine Intervention, it's obvious that every meddling interruption has arrogated autonomous sanctions. The erratic and haphazard icons of these New Age institutions, in which sensations have superseded knowledge and feelings have replaced facts, are inconsistent and contradictory. Regardless of the potential for individual actualization entailed by this ostensibly dynamic New Age, the personal pursuit of rainbows and the private devolution of pernicious self-absorption doesn't contribute to community development or common defense. Societies, from nuclear families to urban agglomerations, are composed of individuals, with more or less latitude; but estranged individuals don't comprise a society ... hence entailing their own extinction.

The historic canon only serves as documentary proof of ideological corruption, of biological liability, of moral guilt ... such dissociative contempt[20] bespeaks more than self-loathing. It champions nihilism as the only alternative to Neo-Fascism[21]. In common with the chic nihilism of New Age elitists are the proliferating autocracies which would rather extinguish everything than be supplanted. Such infantile destructiveness is reminiscent of childish tantrums that wreck lost games, that demand attention, that reject implacable forces, that fantasize alternative realities. These immature demigods do not accept the universal laws, but desire the ego-gratification of cosmic creation ... or annihilation. It has been said of these barren monomaniacs that you can shoot yourself in the foot, or they will shoot you in the foot, but the result is foregone: everyone will be crippled one way or another.

When extremism becomes fashionable, the anticipated repression is expected to radicalize the proletarian wage slaves, the conventional hoi-polloi, the normative squares and straights; but this proliferating non-conformity dissipates and devalues every anti-Establishment posture, such that fashionable conformity becomes meaningless, and resistance to disestablishment becomes the truer revolution[22]. The individual who stands against the suasive tide is the real radical, the authentic insurgent, the true heretic.

The platitudes of the co-opted institutions captured by fanatical elitists are falling on deaf ears. The platitudes persistently promulgated by conventional wisdom include: the world is going to the dogs, the younger generation has no respect, the future will be worse than the past ... and similar dogma can be found in Plato. The predicted take-over has failed to win-over! The so-called radical revolution sustained by CounterCulture Wannabes is stagnating. Just as every functional committee devolves onto a singular efficient person, so the herd or swarm mentality of Leftist political action is functionally moribund. It's as strategically insignificant as the human wave assault or the suicide attack ... that is, a mere operational footnote that requires some tactical adaptation. Although revisionists believe that words can be retracted and yesterday restored, that lies have a higher truth and good too results from evil, their derangement[23] need not be contagious. Pining for the simple life, or a time of innocence is worse than futile; since Pandora's Box cannot be unopened, sin cannot be undiscovered, and accidents cannot be undone. Bemoaning what might've been[24] assists the enemy by dispersing and diverting our concerted efforts.

Indirection, if not misdirection, must now be a daily concomitant. One must do what's required to get someplace in order to do what's important[25] ... not saving the world, but saving a home. We ought not sacrifice our family for our career, but the blended balance is individual. Where would some of us be without dyadic acceptance or altruistic forbearance? Where would we be without someone who sacrificed for us? ... or helped us? ... or forced us to help ourselves? Every war has casualties and destruction, so we must restore and re-build what's been sundered ... redeemed with work and love and prayer. In a strange way, combat offers more opportunity than not. This Culture War is a chance for redemption. We can strive for deliverance from wrongful influence and evil oppression. And we can dedicate ourselves to the re-purchase of what's valuable in our lives. It's an ancient fight, not unlike a quest, to redeem our personal pledges in good faith. The redemption of our heritage requires devotion and dedication.


[1] : "The godly have been swept from the land; not one upright man remains. All men lie in wait to shed blood; each hunts his brother with a net. Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire — they all conspire together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen has come, the day God visits you. Now is the time of their confusion. Do not trust a neighbor; put no confidence in a friend. Even with her who lies in your embrace be careful of your words. For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man's enemies are the members of his own household." Micah 7:2-6 Bible (NIV).
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[2] : Peter N. Kirstein, Professor of History, Saint Xavier University; kirstein@sxu.edu.
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[3] : On Thursday, 31 October 2002, Professor Peter Kirstein sent this e-mail response to a routine invitation to participate in an academic conference conducted as an annual assembly at the U.S. Air Force Academy which had been sent by a cadet responsible for its organization: "You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage. Help you recruit. Who, top guns to reign death and destruction upon nonwhite peoples throughout the world? Are you serious sir? Resign your commission and serve your country with honour. No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries without AAA, without possibility of retaliation. You are worse than the snipers. You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us. September 11 can be blamed in part for what you and your cohorts have done to the Palestinians, the VC, the Serbs, a retreating army at Basra. You are unworthy of my support. /s/Peter Kristein[sic], Professor of History, Saint Xavier University".
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[4] : Information on academic freedom, scholastic censorship, student and professorial civil rights, constraints of 1995 Anti-Terrorist Act and 2001 Patriot Act may be found at the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Universities websites. Because knowledge will always be exploited, the scholar must choose which community benefits; hence Archimedes elected the bonds of loyalty over shackles of gold in scientific servitude. Daedalus was a captive scientist who preferred to risk death in escaping from Crete, after completion of the labyrinth for King Minos, to perpetual intellectual slavery; unlike coerced Nazi scientists in the modern era.
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[5] : On 15 November 2002, the following statement regarding Professor Peter N. Kirstein was published by Dr. Richard A. Yanikoski, the president of Saint Xavier University: "During recent weeks Saint Xavier University has attracted national attention because a tenured professor of history sent a young Air Force Academy cadet some e-mail containing inflammatory, anti-military comments. Professor Peter N. Kirstein, an avowed pacifist, quickly apologized to the cadet and to the Air Force Academy for his e-mail message, but in the meantime thousands of other interested parties have taken offense. From the beginning of this incident, Saint Xavier University has worked to achieve four objectives: (1) to make things right with the cadet and the Air Force Academy; (2) to respond compassionately to the anger and anguish aroused in so many quarters; (3) to counsel and discipline Professor Kirstein in appropriate ways; and (4) to ensure that teaching and learning at the University will continue unimpeded. The following actions have been or will be taken to make things right with the cadet and the Air Force Academy: (1) Professor Kirstein sent a personal apology to the cadet and to the Air Force Academy. Subsequent correspondence between them has been open and respectful. (2) The University extended an official apology to the Academy’s Superintendent, and as president of the University, I have agreed to accept an invitation to visit the Academy within the coming year. (3) Saint Xavier University will send a delegation to the Air Force Academy’s upcoming Academic Assembly. (4) Campus officials have attempted to respond to all cadets, parents, and members of the Academy staff who telephoned or wrote to the University. Any omissions in this regard have been unintentional. To respond compassionately to the large number of men and women who somehow received copies of Professor Kirstein’s e-mail and thereby came to feel demeaned by his intemperate criticisms of the military, the University has done the following: (1) Faculty, staff and administrators throughout the University have fielded telephone calls during the past two weeks, in each case listening sensitively to complaints and advice. (2) We answered hundreds of e-mail messages personally, until the rising volume of correspondence made individual responses impossible. (3) We cooperated with the press in an ongoing effort to ensure accurate and responsible coverage. (4) We used web-page updates to summarize the University’s response to this emerging situation. (5) We consistently admitted that Professor Kirstein’s e-mail message was unwarranted and unbecoming a scholar. By far the topic of greatest interest to most people has been the University’s response to Professor Kirstein. After careful deliberation, I have decided to take the following actions on behalf of the University: Effective on the afternoon of November 11, 2002, Professor Kirstein was relieved of his teaching responsibilities for the current semester and reassigned to other duties. An administrative reprimand will be delivered to Professor Kirstein and placed in his personnel file. While on sabbatical leave during the spring semester of 2003, Professor Kirstein will submit his teaching, scholarship, professional development, and service record to peer evaluation within the norms of the University’s procedures for periodic review of tenured faculty. Professor Kirstein volunteered to have this review conducted earlier than it otherwise would have been. Any future faculty contract(s) extended to Professor Kirstein will include a binding addendum specifically requiring him to adhere both to institutional policies and to the norms of the American Association of University Professors in matters relating to the proper exercise of academic freedom and extramural activities. No additional information will be released by the University with respect to the above actions or other personnel matters concerning Professor Peter Kirstein. This is in accord with University practice. Professor Kirstein and the University community deeply regret the incident that began this chain of events. Saint Xavier University remains committed to the pursuit of teaching and learning in a campus community where all are treated with respect, caring and justice and where academic freedom is enjoyed for purpose of promoting quality teaching, careful research, critical analysis, thoughtful discussion, and programs of direct service to metropolitan Chicago and beyond."
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[6] : "To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities ... than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises. But, it would be naive to expect this to change the nature of modern science or hinder the war effort, naive also to deny that the resulting limitation might well lead to a lowering of university standards." by Hannah Arendt, "On Violence" sct 1 Crises of the Republic (1972).
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[7] : The anti-utopian satire entitled We (1921, tr 1924) by Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin is indebted to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and is credited for Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, but its apparent influence on Brave New World by Aldous L. Huxley is denied. In common with other gifted Russian authors, Zamyatin became an expatriate.
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[8] : The Third Wave and Creating a New Civilization, the Politics of the Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.
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[9] : "The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things .... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal." by P.J. O'Rourke, intro Give War a Chance (1992).
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[10] : "Even the propagandists on the radio find it very difficult to really say let alone believe that the world [after World War Two] will be a happy place, of love and peace and plenty, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb and everybody will believe anybody." by Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen (1943, 1945); "The lion shall never lie down with the lamb. The lion eternally shall devour the lamb, the lamb eternally shall be devoured. Man knows the great consummation in the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the two are separate and never to be confused." by D.H. Lawrence, ch 2 Twilight in Italy (1916, 1954); "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." Isaiah 11:6-9 Bible.
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[11] : "We find ourselves in the last of the three generations history chooses to repeat every now and then. The first generation needs a god, so they invent one. The second erects temples to that god, and tries to imitate him. And the third uses the marble from those temples to build brothels in which to worship their own greed, lust, and dishonesty. And that is why gods and heroes are always inevitably succeeded by mediocrities, cowards, and imbeciles." by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Fencing Master (1988).
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[12] : "You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time." attributed to Abraham Lincoln; "The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time." by Franklin Pierce Adams; "You can fool too many of the people too much of the time." by James Thurber; "You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough." by Joseph E. Levine.
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[13] : "... peace is a militant thing ... any peace movement must have behind it a higher passion than the desire for war. No one can be a pacifist without being ready to fight for peace and die for peace." by Mary Heaton Vorse, ch 5 A Footnote to Folly (1935); "Pacifists aren't unarmed or disarmed, but they simply refuse to employ any of the readily available armaments when settling disputes." attributed to Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party; "For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard himself, as is shown later on. Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together. And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war...." by Niccolo di Bernardo Machiavelli, ch 14 The Prince (1513).
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[14] : "A just war is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience." by Alexander Cockburn, New Statesman and Society (8 Feb 1991). Cf: The Second Civil War and A Necessary Evil by Garry Wills.
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[15] : "Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual, and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another's keeping." by Theodore Roosevelt, sixth annual message to Congress (4 Dec 1906).
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[16] : "He, therefore, who desires peace should prepare for war. He who aspires to victory should spare no pains to form his soldiers. And he who hopes for success should fight on principle, not chance." by Vegetius, De Rei Militari (AD4c); "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." by George Washington, first annual "State of the Union" address to Congress (8 Jan 1790); "Preparation for war is the surest guaranty for peace ... as ... an armament fit for the nation's needs, not primarily to fight, but to avert fighting." by Theodore Roosevelt, "Washington's Forgotten Maxim" speech to Naval War College (1897).
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[17] : The Lecturer's Tale and Publish and Perish, Three Tales of Tenure and Terror by James Hynes are good parodies of academe; compare with The Closing of the American Mind by Allan David Bloom, and The Road to Serfdom or New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas by Friedrich August von Hayek.
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[18] : "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave." by Lord Brougham, speech to the House of Commons (29 Jan 1828); "What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook." by Henry David Thoreau, Journals (Oct/Nov 1850); "Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education -- if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon -- all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness." by Harriet Beecher Stowe, ch 5 Little Foxes (1865).
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[19] : `There's now a tribunal that's higher than God ... the committee of educated men intent upon progress!' paraphrase of "There's a new tribunal now Higher than God's -- The educated man's!" by Robert Browning, bk 10 The Ring and the Book.
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[20] : "In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially speaking) is one in which the members of the 'wrong' groups have the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they can't. But, alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. The trick thus becomes to make the freedom as nominal a freedom as possible and then (since some of the so-and-so's will do it anyway) develop various strategies for ignoring, condemning, or belittling the artistic works that result. If properly done, these strategies result in a social situation in which the 'wrong' people are (supposedly) free to commit literature, art, or whatever, but very few do, and those who do (it seems) do it badly, so we can all go home to lunch. by Joanna Russ
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[21] : "If fascism came to America, it would be on a program of Americanism." by Huey P. Long; "I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system." by Noam Chomsky.
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[22] : "Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." by Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
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[23] : "Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded." by Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, 13 April 1752 letter #276 vol 2 The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son; "Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices." by Rémy De Gourmont, "The Dissociation of Ideas" (1899; "Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones." by Charlotte Brontë, ch 29 Jane Eyre (1847); "There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice." by William Hazlitt, "On the Tendency of Sects" The Round Table (1817); "Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them." by G.C. Lichtenberg, aph 17 "Notebook A" Aphorisms (1765-99; tr 1990).
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[24] : "He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it." by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, intro Propyläen (1798).
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[25] : "Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that .... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen." by George F. Will, ch 7 Statecraft as Soulcraft, What Government Does (1984).
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[†] : [Editorial note: immediately prior to publication, the "latest" prejudiced idiocy was uttered by a professor of anthropology at a Columbia University "teach-in" where he fervently hoped that his own country would be defeated in battle by the myrmidons of Iraqi dictatorship, and that America should suffer "a million Mogadishus" in the form of degraded casualties; but his studies should've informed him that no other nation on earth would tolerate such cruel disrespect and abusive disloyalty.]
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by Bock Pauldron
... who is a Vietnam War veteran, a social worker, and freelance writer; with works published in professional journals and literary magazines.