marganonymous, “I don’t understand how the best healthcare in the world benefits those who cannot afford to access it.” It was a d*mn site easier to write off the cost of therapies for folks that couldn’t pay ‘ere health care was enumerated as a “right”. The folks that can afford to access it DID pay for many that couldn’t afford it, though that largesse now must appear, at least, to flow from DC, inside the holy beltway and the manse of mammon.

The Death of the West, by Patrick Buchanan
Slouching Toward Gomorrha, by Robert Bork
The Coming Economic Earthquake, by Larry Burkett

The proverbial chickens are, indeed, coming home to roost.

The comment about how we create a society with intelligence and compassion is positive. However, most of the people who created that society (founding fathers, the Greatest Generation) knew quite a bit about sacrifice, risk and most of them had some sense about the meaning of the word “Providence”. We can learn from them for sure. However, times have changed and to just go out and risk one’s life in war may no longer be the ticket we have to ride either.

One thing we could surely learn from them is that there is a higher dimension to life that tracks and guides us if we gain the courage to quiet down and listen to it.
We must take it to a personal level. As below, so above. Furthermore, to suggest that some leader in the Whitehouse can lead the way is to suggest that you and I would, in fact, call forth a Big Daddy who can lay down the law and force quietude on the nation. This would be the compliment to Socialism… Totaliterrorism. Just as capitalism (the stock piling of assets) finds its compliment in communism (spreading the weath around to the community), what would the compliment of Socialism be? A strong, enlightened leader? And can we embrace that? If not lets look in a different neighborhood for the answers. Let’s look perhaps in the neighborhood of the individual. What is an individual? What confers personhood? How can one live so as to model the integrity, vision, compassion and committment needed to create that world?

I love David’s blog and so I am starting my own blog on Word Press: georgedrexel.wordpress.com in order to keep from diverting too much steam from this, more political blog…
In this conversation I plan to discuss ideas from Jefferson, Franklin, the Native American cultures, anamism, quantum physics, mathematics and such. I think that there are fundamental ideas which we as a culture could gain greatly from if we can pick up the pieces and start making whole understandings, stories that we can live into (metaphysics, mythology). Among others, one key point of inquiry in order to see the way forward, I think, will come from taking a stand about the value of each individual. David disagrees. (See his Hamas comment on my blog) I think that each person is of value to the whole. If we start with rock solid commitments as this assertion and live into them, I believe we will begin to create a sound new world where people know their worth and respect themselves. If you take issue with my statement that each person is of value then quite possibly you would also believe that the end justifies the means… or that we have to eliminate everyone that doesn’t agree with us. Just banging for the hood.

No matter if we take issues such as abortion, immigration or privacy, all of these ideas and a million others broach the question of what it means to be an individual? In physics, we might ask: what is a singlarity?

Let’s keep discussing these great ideas. Let me leave you with one of my pet ideas: if, as Einstein claims, there is no point which is stationery, couldn’t we then conclude that each point becomes a stationery point from which to perceive movement. We started with thinking that the earth was stationery. Then we learned that the sun is stationery. Now perhaps we could claim that each person is a circle whose center is a stationery point and whose circumference is everywhere without collapsing into relativism. If any of you want to intuit where I might be heading, or issue me a warning, I’d like to listen.
Change is fun if there is something changeless at the core.

Swing low, sweep chariot.

Very interesting. So many points. They need to pass some sort of law that will limit new legislation to readable lengths. And he’s dead on when he says that no one can take in all this “information” and remain sane. I notice the “good woman” limits her news intake. It’s becoming more and more difficult to function, and it strains every aspect of our lives — our jobs, our relationships and our psyches. I can’t say that one party’s answer is more effective than the other’s, but we all know (except, perhaps, the legions if American Democrats) that the Democratic party’s agenda has always been socialism, which will insure the end of America as a prosperous nation at the helm of the world. Revolution? Perhaps. White flight? Most definitely. While much of Europe has been socialist for years, the difference is that European individuals still possess a large amount of daily freedom, which vanishes by the hour in the US. I say we choose our country now, storm in and blow up all the natives, then go about setting up a new society where freedom reigns, honest work is valued, and intelligence is fostered and encouraged. But wait, that’s been done before. Such is life. We begin with ideals, we create with intelligence and compassion, we flourish, and someone begins to squawk. The squawking becomes louder and louder and the idealistic, educated, compassionate society members pull out while the squawkers trample everything that’s left into the ground. And it isn’t even the province of humans to destroy. The Minoan society was successful, inventive, creative, female-ruled, peaceful, and wiped out in entirety by a volcanic eruption and tidal wave. The “universe” rewards neither the higher-end societies nor the lower-end, much as old-growth forests are ravaged by fire to make way for the scrappy saplings. Change is everything, and it’s rarely fun.

At 08:42 AM 2/21/2009, you wrote:

David, I hear your alarm at the suggestion of healthcare for all, but I don’t understand how the best healthcare in the world benefits those who cannot afford to access it. As things are, it is difficult to get an appointment with a practitioner in a reasonable length of time, or to find a doctor who is accepting new patients. My step-daughter has been prescribed (at times) a course of treatment for which there is a $9000 MONTHLY charge. Like so much else, this is not sustainable. I suppose I rank as some kind of communist for suggesting that the obscene amount of money that is SKIMMED OFF THE TOP TO SUPPORT PAPER PUSHERS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR DENYING TREATMENT is near criminal. We in the United States spend more for less care than those in other “developed” nations. God forbid I should lose my right to “choice” in regard to healthcare.

How is sucking more oil going to solve anything? Oil is a finite resource. If our concern is longterm (GENERATIONAL THEFT), perhaps we should act now to change our energy generation and consumption.

It does appear that, at any time, half of us will always be in an uproar. I recall feeling, during the Bush administration, the same kind of alarm at erosion of our rights. Freedom of misinformation seems to be intact.

I am traveling on the alarm train right along with you…in a different car. What a mess.

Were that some of the headlines did not bear resonances of Tom Clancy novels or hints of Hal Lindsey’s magnum opus.