archived: 23 - 29 Oct, 2005 Back Next
UPDATED: October 27, 2005
JUNKIE
“A CANDLE IN THE DARK”
Junkie and family attended a Durham, North Carolina candlelight ceremony Wednesday night to mark the 2,000th American soldier killed in Iraq. MoveOn organized the candlelight vigil across America.
There were many reasons citizens gathered in vigil.
We mourn American troops who have died in Iraq and we grieve with their families. We express our sympathy for American troops, and their families, wounded; both physically and emotionally as a result of war.
We mourn for the thousands of Iraqis, including countless children, and their families who have been killed and maimed in the holocaust of this war.
We hope for enlightenment that exposes to the world the falsity of the reasons for and political corruption of public trust leading to this war. We demand understanding by our political leaders that a war so conceived and so prosecuted can never bring freedom, democracy and justice to the victor or the vanquished.
We lit candles with urgent wishes and fervent prays that the millions of people across the world opposed to this war will continue to work to end the corruption of principles on which this war was founded.
We lit a candle to represent that it is more blessed to light one candle than curse the darkness.
We lit a candle with a pledge that as long as one person is willing to stand against this war that they will not stand alone.
We lit a candle with a promise to each other that no matter what circumstances arise, we will not desist until there is an end to this war, with justice.
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RICK RYAN
“WIN”
I think Carville's advice has some truth in it. We can hold all the lofty ideals and pure liberal positions we want, but if we don't win elections to implement policy what good are they? The Democratic Party needs to run candidates that fit their district for Congress and state for Senate.
We are as guilty as the GOP when it comes to litmus tests. WIN, WIN, WIN, regain the majorities in the Congress so we can roll back the most heinous of the right wing agenda. I know that some Dems feel that winning with centrist candidate is as bad as losing. The Gore v Bush election shows the stakes involved when Progressives think they will teach the Dems a "lesson" voting for Nader etc.
The stakes are too high and the consequences are too great to allow liberal purity to prevent us winning elections. Sometimes we must be pragmatic and come together to WIN!
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Junkie: Ryan is responding to TPJ’s article ADVICE FOR THE FORLORN DEMOCRAT that questions recent advice from Carville and other “centrists” on beating the radical Republicans.
JOHN RHODES*
“When Faith Is Not Enough”
Unless one understands the subtleties of history, the subject is often seen as perfectly meaningless, a subject that has no practical value because it cannot be used to turn crude resources into gold. Those who take this view, as Paul Krugman stated in his Oct. 28, 2003 New York Times column, "A Willful Ignorance," often lack curiosity (a certain type of intelligence). And when their curiosity is roused, the spark exists only for selective reasons.
Personal faith is important, especially in times of crisis, when life becomes a living hell, when you bottom out and lose everything you think there is to live for. In the public arena, while making important decisions that involve the lives of those who are vulnerable, individuals who do not have access to reliable information, those who have no time to examine things fully, who have children to feed and alimony to chase or pay, faith based leadership is not enough.
It is the responsibility of civic leaders, presidents included, to look beyond faith, to use their minds for the reason they supposedly have them, to use foresight so that those whom they are responsible for are not put in situations where faith is the only answer. When leaders rely solely on faith as a means to protect what they are responsible for, as a plan to protect the welfare a nation, they then lack what is required to lead.
And it is also the responsibility of our educational institutions and free press to challenge those who are willfully ignorant. This is what education is supposed to be about. Those involved in the academic and publishing fields, however, are sometimes subject to stifling social pressures, the marketplace included. After all, it is important not to upset the hand that feeds you, funding sources, gifts, and endowments. And so, by knuckling under to certain pressures, the academic world and press sometimes contributes to a vicious circle, producing "leaders" who have nothing more than faith as a plan to lead.
Somehow, even after all the hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, millenniums that have passed between the 12th and the 21st Centuries, the United States of America - "leader of the free world" - can only produce a president who lacks the curiosity to understand what many of his citizens think of his leadership? Why else screen those who are to appear at public rallies? And when visiting devastated areas ripped apart by natural disaster, disasters that a real leader could have taken steps to prevent, why else shield yourself from thousands of human bodies, sick, injured, and dead? There is a reason our president shuns hearing and seeing the unpleasant truth about his inability to lead, and the answer may be related to the fact, as Paul Krugman suggests, that "Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity."
President Bush's stubborn leadership is a poor substitute for the substance required of a true leader. For all his self-inflicted weaknesses, Bush is a man who relies on faith when faith is not enough, a cheer leader who uses buzz words that appeal to human emotion - freedom, spreading seeds of Democracy, liberty, patriotism, hero ... tax cuts ... private accounts - a cheer leader who only offers leadership (financial profit) to those who benefit - suspending the Davis / Bacon Act to rebuild New Orleans - from decisions created by the storm of his own neglect.
With the exception of what is required to mislead a nation into launching what US Secretary of Defense adviser Richard Perle described as "an illegal war" ("War critics astonished," Burkeman and Borger, The Guardian, 11/20/30) - Iraq, an illegal war that, according to retired Army General Wesley Clark, also excludes an exit strategy ("Act now, before it's too late in Iraq," Washington Post, 8/26/05) - is George W. Bush willfully ignorant enough to ignore the importance of producing something other than faith as a plan to lead? And then of course, there are also the questions pertaining to Michael Brown's fabricated qualifications to be Director of FEMA (the same pattern already established requiring a nation's faith to believe in WMD where none existed).
Whatever leadership Bush offers to those who cannot profit from bad decisions, it seems, comes only after it is too late. "Strong and steady," indeed.
And so, after a storm named Katrina, it will be interesting to see if the president continues to ignore the needs of the nation - according to the Census Bureau's annual economic report, an additional 4.1 million Americans slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004 - insisting, as did England's Charles the First, on having his way - promoting a self-serving and unnecessary war agenda with self-indulgent economic perks - or whether he opens his eyes (and mind) to realize he is guiding himself toward, as did King Charles, his own impeachment.
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*John Rhodes is a North Carolina writer. His most recent guest column - "Is journalism losing its perspective?" - appeared in The Chapel Hill News.
Last Update: 03/23/2006