Today's headline is - "GOP unveils its Pledge to America". I haven't read it all yet, but I will. I'm sure it will include a claim that only rich people and money-obsessed people deserve freedom; a claim only rich people and money-obsessed people deserve healthcare; a claim that birth control equals death; a claim that murder of women and children in Afghanistan or wherever equals freedom; and so on. I fully expect to see those claims, couched in slightly different terms.
But I also expect to see some good sense, too - for the Republicans have their share of it. First of all - that the US Federal budget MUST be balanced. Of course, this good sense will be vitiated by a pledge to maintain American military might in all corners of the earth, etc. Their pledge will be to create leeway for balancing the budget by eliminating social welfare programs, regulatory programs, educational programs, and progressive taxation of the overly-wealthy.
But I am going to read the thing. I'll have to get through my Liberal knee-jerk reactions to their myopic, athlete-hardass knee-jerk rhetoric, but then I can consider what might be valuable in it. Something's got to be done, whether it's done slowly (Obama et al.) or quickly (Boehner et al.) We'll see.
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A Ghostly World in Collision with Yours
- Old Mr. Still Struggling with Ceaseless Chaos
- City: Let's call it "Fingiswold"...., California Franciscensis, United States
I only wish I could, like Beowulf, say:
"Hwæt! þu worn fela, | wine min Unferð,
beore druncen | ymb Brecan spræce,
sægdest from his siðe. | Soð ic talige,
þæt ic merestrengo | maran ahte,
earfeþo on yþum, | ðonne ænig oþer man."
"Ah, you've said quite a bit, my dear Unferth,
drunken with your beer, about Breca,
and laid out his triumph! But I say sooth,
that I owned much more sea-strength,
suffering the waves, than any other man!"
Yet I cannot!
Perhaps, like Epictetus, I may say, of the world and its evils,
"What is that to me? Is it within my control or a matter outside of it? If it is not within my control - and the only thing that is within my control IS my Will - then I shall not fret over it at all, but accept it and apply myself to it as best I may."
For the truth is - these evils are normal, they are natural, they are not (in the end) evil at all, just - consequent; and matters of indifference.
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