These manipulations are not evidence that evil is a result of religious beliefs. Instead, they show how evil men usurp the authority of religion to promote war. That this tactic can succeed reflects that too much complacency among people is preventing resistance against the thugs who coopt religion and use it for evil ends.
Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization. And when the tides turn and the culture again celebrates what it means to be free, our battle will be won. It could happen in our time. It might happen after we are gone from this earth. But it will happen. Our job in this generation is to prepare the way.
Secrecy is paramount for the government and privacy is lost for the citizens during wars as well. Everyone is a suspect and liberty protections are ignored by the empire. The excuse is always that restricting liberty is required to make the people safe from enemies, seldom seen and identified but ever-present and demonized.
In addition to Eisenhower identifying the military-industrial complex, we now have the police-industrial complex, the medical-industrial complex, the surveillance-industrial complex, and the media-industrial complex.
I believe individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should be used only defensively. We should respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion. That, and not a desire for “economic efficiency,” is the primary moral reason for opposing government intrusions into our lives: government is force, not reason. People.
One thing for sure, Muhammad Ali stood his ground and refused to go thousands of miles from home to kill people who never did him any harm – a heroic stand. For this stand, he, like others, was arrested and faced imprisonment. What the government wants is efficient, sterile killers in immoral wars who can be awarded medals and paraded before cheering audiences as great patriotic defenders of our liberty.
Public opinion is a powerful tool, if not the ultimate tool, for changing policies of the seemingly omnipotent political leaders. The greatest danger is an apathy that allows for evil to thrive when bad people rule over us and provoke nationalistic and patriotic fervor that intimidates many into compliance.
And the irony is that the war purchases are recorded as a positive for economic growth and the GDP. Though the war spending is an economic negative and provides no improvement in the people’s standard of living, the government statisticians brag about an upward blip in the GDP. Besides, these bills are paid for by borrowing and printing money, thus increasing future debt obligations and causing higher prices for the next generation.
Government is wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive by its very nature. To get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, government power has to be dealt with. Government’s legitimacy has to be challenged. Its claims of success must be refuted. The people who desire peace and prosperity must accept the fact that government and the politicians never deliver peace or prosperity.
It still amazes me how complicit the media are in propagandizing for war. This is true whether it’s a Republican or Democratic-leaning entity. Both sides spout the lies delivered by government officials to encourage public support for wars. Whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat, the media will be supportive. It just may be that the owners of the large media entities are closely connected to the military-industrial complex.
Once a war is underway the process of deceit continues with regard to the troops who return with broken bodies and broken minds, especially when the wars were never justified. Admitting that the wars are senseless and in vain is too much to bear.
In the end, there is no substitute for clear thinking, logic, and common sense... A better path to enlightenment involves reading and thinking for yourself.
Though all dictators endorse the same principle of government aggression to suppress people’s liberty, some dictators are harder to detect than others. A slick neocon can seem virtuous compared to a Hitler, yet still endorse invasion and the slaughter of innocent people.
Some people charge that Obama is a socialist. He isn’t a socialist in the precise sense of the word. He supports corporate medicine, central banking and international banking elites, the military-industrial complex, and, with great exuberance, the surveillance-industrial complex.
Equal justice is forgotten in our current judicial system. Wealth, power, and prestige protect the ruling class. The counterfeiters, the warmongers, and the thieves who steal from the treasury go free. Our prisons are filled will nonviolent drug users and disproportionately by minorities and the poor.
Today, however, it is often not so much that one Christian nation is fighting another as that hatred has developed between factions of Christianity and factions of Islam. I believe this is a distortion of both religions. Yet the individuals who advocate for war are adamant about the evil of the other side.
The system that existed in Germany at that time tragically prevented the people from protecting themselves from tyrannical government. This is a system many people vehemently want to impose in America.
Rubio’s sudden concern for the humanitarian situation in Venezuela smacks of hypocrisy, as he supported all US sanctions that have made life for Venezuelans miserable.
September 11, 2001 turned out to be that “Pearl Harbor event” the neoconservatives were hoping for in order to prepare the American people to support the foreign policy for which the neocons longed.
We also hear of internet corporations cooperating readily in mass surveillance and receiving payments for turning over information to the government.