These are all the Blogs posted today: Monday, 12, 2008.
The War Prayer, by Mark Twain
69 recommendation(s).
+Recommend this blog From time to time, oh, say perhaps once a year, I think it is useful to revisit The War Prayer, by Mark Twain. _It has now been more than a year since I offered it for anyone’s reconsideration, and I think it’s once again time. _From mid-June 1964 through mid-June 1967, I was an infantry soldier in the United States Army. Without going into details I’d just as soon not recount, suffice it to say that however I didn’t see much, I saw enough to know that no one should see any more, or that anyone should urge others to the terrible task that is war. I find that the most despicable cowards among us all too frequently are those cheering loudest on behalf of a flag and a cause he or she has no intention to defend. _And I will say once again what has been lodged deep in my soul these past four decades: “No! you are NOT entitled to the first element of honor and pride that is purchased with the blood of those your own all too timid heart prefers to send forth. If the ‘job’ really is that important that it needs finishing, then pledge your own life and fortune to it, or, if you are too old and feeble, pledge the lives of your own children, and their fortunes; if the finishing of it is that important.” And this, though I hate to bring some up short, manning a position aboard an aircraft carrier, or on an Air Force tarmac many leagues from all peril just is not the same as looking that peril in the eye. Lastly know also that, no more than am I any longer today, ‘you’ are no part of the ‘we’ who are at war. Please, do not feign to try to speak for any of those who are. That consequent purchase you’ve no right to make. _It is time. _— Ed Tubbs _ Palm Springs, CA _The War Prayer _by Mark Twain _It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. __Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation __*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!* __Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory -- __An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" __The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: __"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think. __"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. __"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! __"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. __(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said. __Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere. The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed. See Jim Zwick's page "Mark Twain on the Philippines" for more of Twain's writings on the subject.Read more | 1 comments
DAHR JAMAIL: US INVASION LEADS TO FOOD CRISIS IN FALLUJAH
We're DOOMED!
83 recommendation(s).
+Recommend this blog We’re DOOMED!
I don’t care what anyone says about the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the LA Times, or any other news-daily or periodical or what have you. Look, I’m no Stephen Hawking, but I can read and I am pretty good at critical thinking and I’m not afraid that if I read or see or hear something somewhere that approaches the limits of the pale of reason I’m going to buy it just because it’s in _(fill in the blank)_. After all, premised on the Godfather’s advice to keep my enemies closer, I do subscribe to the way far out far Right rag Human Events, and it hasn’t swayed me yet. What I like about the above-cited sources (including HE) is that they don’t dumb something down into a single column so I might understand what three pages might be too tough for me, or so they’ll have more ad space. Yesterday, Sunday, May 11, LAT featured an article, Civilization’s last chance. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-mckibben11-2008may11,0,5497066.story It’s unlikely you’ve read it. I strongly recommend that all Americans do. Essentially “Civilization” is a distilled summary of NASA’s chief climatologist James Hansen’s warning, “if we [as in you, me, and everyone we know and know of] wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed,” there are a number of pretty heavy steps that all earth’s habitants need to take right now, since yesterday, which would have been more advantageous to our chances of survival, is a few decades too late. And by heavy duty steps, Hansen does not mean making our bottled water purchase decisions based on the gauge of the plastic bottle. No, no, no . . . According to Hansen, it’s gonna take a whole lot more than that, and I really don’t think we’ve got it in us to save ourselves. The ‘it’ that we’ll need: By the time I was in my 20s, I began reading the Bible; seriously, and most important, critically. And, forgetting the idealistic notions in the New Testament, it occurred to me to ask rhetorically, “Who really believes this stream of utter silliness and rationalization on behalf of wholly and clearly erroneous stabs at beginnings answers, not to mention mass theft and genocide?” Then I played with a ‘what-if’ bet between two gods. One god bets another that if He/She/It (and do not get me started on the ridiculous proposal that God has a gender; think only what the sole purpose of gender is: sexual reproduction!) develops a being with a near godlike intelligence and foreknowledge of it’s own death that this being would ultimately end up the tool of its own demise. The other god says that if this being is given such intelligence, it will act wisely, to counter what are, in the final analyses, suicidal tendencies. Yesterday, here in Palm Springs, a mere four days into the month of May, the temperature reached to near 100. You’re damned right: Put on the AC! I don’t care that the draw on electrical current will require the electric company to churn out more pollutants. (I don’t actually know that my turning on the air-conditioning will have that effect, but then, that’s so not the point. The point is: I do not care, I just want to feel comfortable.) The undercurrent-truism running through all of this is that just because you may believe something is either so or not so, just because I may believe something is either so or not so, has zero relationship to whether that thing is in fact either so or not so. Perhaps the greatest example of this truism is the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition-led indictment and conviction of Galileo in the first half of the 17th century. Galileo expanded on the Copernican proposal that the earth orbits the sun. The Church had it on Divine Authority — and the pope, as everyone knows, is infallible — that it was the sun that encircled the earth. Another fact that a lot of folks are going to have to, sooner or later, face goes 100% to personal responsibility: No one has ever breathed earth’s air with a greater knowledge of what is right for you than YOU! So why anyone would sit in a pew, caring what another human being claimed were behaviors and beliefs other human beings should adopt is beyond me. It’s your life. Take responsibility! In the 50s, I remember with sadness how there were boards of human beings in this country deciding what adult human beings morally should not, and legally could not, read or see or hear. And even as a preteen I wondered, “Who imbued them with wisdom above others, and why would any adult with the least respect for him- or herself surrender to anyone else the right to freely form his or her own opinions?” It’s just nuts; doesn’t have the first lick of sense on its face. But there we were, and here we are. Newsflash: We’re running out of resources, including clean air! _ _Second Newsflash: Everyone on earth wants the same sort of life Americans and Europeans have! _Third Newsflash: They have just as much a human right to the same sort of life Americans and Europeans have! _Fourth Newsflash: The first newsflash isn’t completely correct — We’re not really running out of resources. The problem is, we’ve just got too many people for the finite resources that are presently available, and that will become available. _ _That brings me at last to Thomas Malthus, and the terrible spot we’re in; not just Americans, everyone. If you don’t know who he was and what he promulgated concerning population growth and resources, do yourself and all humankind a favor: do a Google search. However, for goodness’ sake, consider Malthus’ postulations critically; come to your own opinion! Don’t look to your priest or pastor or minister for an answer to anything, most especially whether Malthus’ propositions have merit. As much as any other institution and its tenets, the Roman Catholic Church and its position relative to birth control have been prime causes of the distress we’re under. Children have this nasty requirement to consume limited resources. Yes! to the extent children replace their parents they are not only a blessing, they are essential. But numbers beyond replacement, and, ultimately, the added mouths become civilization’s death knell. When I was growing up, the Church claimed that any attempt whatsoever by a couple to limit the number of children they brought into the world was veritably a sin against God. Forget condoms! At the time, even the rhythm method was perceived by the Church as heretical! A woman’s primary purpose was to glorify God by making of her body a never-ending baby machine conveyor belt! Right now, the earth’s population stands around six billion; a nearly 50% increase over what it was just a short time ago. Right now, the earth’s population is poised on the brink of realizing an additional 25%. And we can’t feed those we have right now. We can’t clothe them. We can’t house them. We don’t have the water. And the right of all that we currently have to the lifestyle you and I currently claim as our right is what the LA Times article was about. I want my air conditioning. But so do those in China and India and sub-Saharan Africa. Fire up those coal-powered electric generators. Let those parts per million of carbon dioxide fly! We're doomed . . . maybe. Unless, and until, all in the world pause for just a moment to conclude, “I’m not stupid. I don’t need someone else to connect dots for me.” Then dig deep within to find some mote of courage to tell the shaman and the ayatollah and the priest and pope and the pastor and the rabbi, “Know what? The dots you’ve been telling me to connect have led to the terrible, dark chasm I’m staring into, and I think I’m gonna, like, you know . . . head down a different path. You can keep on keepin’ on, if you want to, but I’m just not that stupid that I’m gonna be followin’.” It’s just that I don’t see the evidence that many are ready to claim that element of self respect and courage. I think we are doomed. — Ed Tubbs Palm Springs, CA Read more | 0 comments
NEW YORK TIMES: SADR CITY CEASEFIRE PUT TO TEST AND FAILS
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