[RickC]

"The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind."
Edmund Burke

I'm no fan of GW. But the haughty holiness of those who try to say accidents are similar to murders is an insult to all of us.

Remember that all of life lives on - sometimes thrives on - the death of others. This (for me at least) is hard to live with if I really THINK about it. At the most basic level, do we REALLY have the right to eat plants or animals (a distinction we created!)? I suppose we just have to admit our horrible reality - that we need to kill something to live, that we make mistakes, that our race has an evil streak that we must try (and often fail) to rise above.

No, America is not perfect. And no, I don't think GW is really trying (he's more a businessman, with all the compromises that implies - and without whom we'd be living in caves - than an idealist), but even when he's out of office in 1 or 5 years, we will still be hated by the small minded men and women who seek to grasp power in other countries and the sheep who follow them. This is true of all ages and all human circumstances. How - or if - we will ever rise above this to some happy "Star Trek" future I just don't know.

Mark Twain wrote this:
"In a moment we were in a French village. We walked through a great factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved, and weak and drowsy. Satan said:

"It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors are rich, and very holy; but the wage they pay to these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is only enough to keep them from dropping dead with hunger. The work-hours are fourteen per day, winter and summer--from six in the morning till eight at night--little children and all. And they walk to and from the pigsties which they inhabit--four miles each way, through mud and slush, rain, snow, sleet, and storm, daily, year in and year out. They get four hours of sleep. They kennel together, three families in a room, in unimaginable filth and stench; and disease comes, and they die off like flies. Have they committed a crime, these mangy things? No. What have they done, that they are punished so? Nothing at all, except getting themselves born into your foolish race. You have seen how they treat a misdoer there in the jail; now you see how they treat the innocent and the worthy. Is your race logical? Are these ill-smelling innocents better off than that heretic? Indeed, no; his punishment is trivial compared with theirs. They broke him on the wheel and smashed him to rags and pulp after we left, and he is dead now, and free of your precious race; but these poor slaves here--why, they have been dying for years, and some of them will not escape from life for years to come. It is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the difference between right and wrong--you perceive the result. They think themselves better than dogs. Ah, you are such an illogical, unreasoning race! And paltry--oh, unspeakably!"

Then Satan dropped all seriousness and just overstrained himself making fun of us, and deriding our pride in our warlike deeds, our great heroes, our imperishable fames, our mighty kings, our ancient aristocracies, our venerable history--and laughed and laughed till it was enough to make a person sick to hear him; and finally he sobered a little and said, "But, after all, it is not all ridiculous; there is a sort of pathos about it when one remembers how few are your days, how childish your pomps, and what shadows you are!"


So tonight let's drink to our short lives, and our noble attempts to spread peace and prosperity to a greater percentage our planet, and try to do better when we fail rather than forfeit the attempt entirely just because our leaders our not always worthy of us..........

RickC