The Binary Circumstance

Check out this site for some great quotes by famous people. Here are a few on the subject of government, most of which I agree with.

Thoughts on the Government
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. —Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. —Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. —George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. —G. Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. —James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. —Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850).

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. —Ronald Reagan

The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. —Ronald Reagan

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist. —Joseph Sobran, Editor of the National Review (1995)

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. —Voltaire (1764)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you. —Pericles (430 B.C.)

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. —Edward Langley, Artist 1928-1995

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. —Barry Goldwater, U.S. Politician

Every country has the government it deserves. —Joseph de Maistre, French monarchist (1753-1821)

Talk is cheap—except when Congress does it. (Unknown)

My thanks to my friend, Keith, for supplying this link.

More on the Schwarzenegger/Mapplethorpe Photos

UK Gay.com has an interesting article about the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger posed for Robert Mapplethorpe. (see previous posting also)

They quote Jack Fritscher, Mapplethorpe’s ex-lover:

“Europeans are so much more open to nudity than Americans, it makes sense to me that Schwarzenegger, as a European, would pose nude and have it be no big deal,” Fritscher said. “Robert did not have sex with Arnold, though. He had sex with a lot of his models, but not with him,” Fritscher said.

GayMonkey.com reports that the photographs are “shocking,” but until somebody actually produces the photographs, we’ll never know if 1) they actually exist and 2) they are shocking.

There might be hope for David Guterson’s new novel, Our Lady of the Forest. In an article today in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, author John Marshall writes:

A novel about an apparition of the Virgin Mary might seem an odd, if not outright chancy detour in literary fiction, especially by a writer who is of Jewish heritage but is now an agnostic. But this unusual subject does give an insight into Guterson’s creative process, as well as his current faith. A chance reading of a reference to the Mary apparition seen by Bernadette at Lourdes sent the devoted researcher off on a reading expedition to other such accounts.

What struck Guterson was their similar elements: how the apparitions usually come during times of travail; how they are usually glimpsed by the dispossessed, often young women unable or unwilling to describe what they have seen; and how what they have witnessed sparks extraordinary public interest and grave official doubts.

The writer soon became energized by the challenge of transporting such an event to the current day. He was intrigued that such events involved something missing in many religions, the notion of the feminine. He also concluded that such sightings, although Catholic at the core, are more universal — providing a rigorous exercise in the nature of faith and doubt. Who believes what, and why? And is it more important to faith that something truly happened, or just that people believe it happened? Is that enough?

Guterson is convinced that such questions should resonate with many readers searching for belief in the post-9/11 world, readers who share his existential unease: “I feel dissatisfied and frustrated about what current religions offer. My relationship to faith is tenuous at best.”

It is understandable that Guterson or anybody else would be dissatisfied and frustrated about what “current” religions offer. They offer nothing other than an escape from what exists into the realm of what doesn’t exist. That is the same thing as saying they take us from something to nothing, from that which can have value into the realm where no value can exist. (Things that don’t exist, can’t have value.) They teach us to reject the present, the now, in favor of some unknowable future, they require that we reject what is knowable with what cannot be known. That is inherently frustrating and dissatisfying to rational minds which want to know. Religion puts man at war with his rational nature, his desire to know and understand; it is understandable that it causes a sense of unease which it then purports to satisfy.

Like any addictive drug, religion as an escape from reality into mysticism and faith, creates the craving which it then seems to satisfy. But the more religion is used to escape from reality, the more uncomfortable the rational mind becomes with it, creating greater unease and an even stronger craving.

At another point in the article it says:

“I became paralyzed as an artist with writer’s block,” Guterson says outside a Bainbridge cafe. “I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn’t find my way into the fictional world. …

As a writer, Guterson is stuggling with the same issue–the real v. the fictional, the unreal–which is reportedly at the center of his novel. But this is a phony dualism, just as the dualism between the world we live in and the worlds that religious people believe in is a phony dualism. The unreal and the fictional exist only as a function the human mind. Reality does not distort itself; distortion is created when a mind is out of sync with what exists. By definition, there can be no “fictional” reality. If it’s reality, it’s true because it exists. Similarly, there is no need for faith in things which are real; if they are real and true, you have knowledge. Faith is only required to force the mind to accept that which cannot be seen, demonstrated, has no evidence to support it and therefore cannot be proven.

There is only what exists. If something doesn’t exist, it’s not there. So we must see religion for what it is; the manifestation of collective delusions and a corresponding rejection of the real world. We must see “fiction” for what it is, a writer’s view of reality, seen through the filter of his basic premises and values.

I suspect that Guterson’s own subconscious struggle to draw the line between existence and non-existence (a prerequisite for knowledge) is splashed all over the pages of Our Lady of The Forest. If that’s true, it’s really the story of Guterson’s mind struggling to get from a fictional, faith-based world into a real world that can be known and understood; moving from the irrational toward the rational. And that would be a good thing.

Troops To Get Two-Week Vacations from Iraq

Finally some relief for the troops:

The program was ordered to provide relief and boost morale for forces serving 12-month tours of duty in the hot, dangerous and sometimes primitive conditions in Iraq, as well as those in support roles in neighboring countries. That means it’s available to the vast majority of the more than 130,000 troops deployed there, officials said.