Dear Kobi,

On Jan 8 1964, President Johnson declared 'War On Poverty' in his State of the Union address. This launched a congressional landslide of programs (and the tax increases) that continue 40 years later. Victory in this war was never announced. In fact, 35 million Americans still live in poverty and the number grows by about a million a year.

That seems to be the problem with declaring war on a noun. How do you win? Now, we have 'The war on Terror' another noun. As long as there are six guys with towels on their heads that hate our country and have access to a stick of dynomite or a box cutter, the war goes on. When would we able to declare victory in the war? When we have won their hearts and minds? In the winning of hearts and minds department we are getting our *** kicked.

The mindset of many Americans is for the Government to "do whatever it takes" to "keep us safe". Do whatever to the enemy and do whatever to us.

This seems to fly in face of our legacy of being True Americans.
Our legacy has been...
"Give me Liberty or give me Death"
"Better to be Dead than Red"
"Live Free or Die"

Our current day motto appears to be...
"Do whatever you want, to keep me safe"

Ok, enough soapbox here's my question...
If we temporarily suspend a certain amount of Rights and Freedoms to win this war, will we get them back when the war is won.....scratch that...will our grandchildren get them back when the war is won?

 

Dear Kobi,

Define the universe, give 3 examples.

 

F her and the jackarse she banged. The only thing you need to "work through" is cleansing yourself of the ho and her so-called affection for you. It's not forgivable... well in a way it is, but staying with her is not. Move on dude.

 

Preach on brotha man.

 

What happens the next time she is drinking or is she smart enough to quit drinking?

 

Dear Raoul -

I was awakened early this morning . . .

Actually, you know what, I'm going to answer kretinus' question below as it is much more simple and straightforward.

Sorry, hang on a second, I'll be right back:

 

kretinus -

I haven't even had any coffee yet and I can answer this as it is simple.

I also don't need three examples as there is only ONE answer.

The universe is LOVE. It all comes back to love. It is the energy that permeates everything and ties all things together.

On the human level, for us mere mortals, we have lost love and neither see it or understand it. As humans we only know FEAR (which is the antithesis of love).

To think the universe is a thing, to see it as definable, to see it as something outside yourself is seeing things through fear.

Embrace love and you will know the answer to your question becasue your question will cease to exist as it will no longer be valid. Once all things are reunited thru the power of love, then all will be, as one (which is the meaning of universe (from the latin universus which means combined into one, whole).

 

You need to start a seperate thread on this so we can pummel some sense into you without disrupting Kobi's thread. Or e-mail me. Something, anything. Good lord just kick her **** to the curb. First, you can't believe her, your friends are out as well. YOU make YOUR own choice. People can try to sway you (like me) but ultimately its your call. However, don't post that your going to choose to take her back, as I will have to hunt you down and open up a case of whoop ****.

 

I'm stickin with Dzervit. You know this never would have happened if she hadn't seen what you post on this board.

 

Dear Kobi,
I met a girl at the bar Friday night. Got her phone number, but then ran into her at an after bar party. We hooked up and now something resembling strawberry quick is dripping from my man parts.
Problem is this girl is really cool, but I forgot to call her this weekend. So is it too late to call? Should I apologize for not calling the next day?
Thanks,
Benny

 

Definitely!

 

Thank you D. I was going to suggest the same thing.

 

Sorry Raoul -

If you read my answer to kretinus, it briefly touches on "fear". As I am sure you are aware, all that you touch on here is about fear. Fear seems to be man's natural state (actually it is anything but natural, but it seems to be the state mankind has adopted for itself).

Politics and politicians know how to exploit this, and all that is going on right now is born out of fear and continues through fear.

Although your little soap box bit was rhetorical, there are some things that I would like to address:

First of all, as long as there is money, as long as we operate on a monetary system, there will always be poverty. When you think about it, it's rather ironic that the perceived answer to "poverty" is to throw money at it. That does nothing more that to make the "problem" bigger.

This however is academic. I bring it up because ultimately it demonstrates the futility of "war". Any kind of war, ironically enough, turns into tools and makes use of the very thing it is trying to defeat. It therefore fails by the very nature of what it is.

Which brings us to:

As mentioned above, you can't. A war, by it's very nature, can not be won.
On one level you can defeat an enemy in a battle, but the underlying ideologies, the thoughts and beliefs that people held prior to the "war" still exist.

I'm sure you've seen the bumper sticker that goes something like this:

Aside from defeating slavery, fascism, communism, (and it probably lists a few other isms, I don't remember), War has accomplished nothing.

It's quick and clever (as most bumper sticker wisdom is), but it's not true. If it were, fascism, communism, slavery, and the like, if they were actually defeated, would then, not exist. And last I looked, they still do exist in various parts of the world. In the past, certain of our enemies who subscribed to such beliefs many have been defeated, but the ideas, the beliefs, (the nouns if you will) still live on.

Unfortunately, and I don't enjoy sounding defeatist here, as long as human-kind exists, so will such silly ideas. Sure, it's one thing to say LOVE is the unifying force that ties all us together, but will mankind ever achieve that? I tend to doubt it because man, by his very nature, is flawed. Maybe that's ultimately why we are here, to learn we are flawed and that we can never achieve ultimate love. Maybe from that lesson we learn that there is something bigger beyond what and where we are and that to get there we have to let go of who we are (human-kind) and transcend to some higher level.

But that is a whole different thing than what you were discussing . . . getting back on track:


CONTINUED NEXT POST . . .

 

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POSTING . . . .

Aside from the fact that "ultimately" it is all futile, let's stay in the practical world that we live in day to day.

I won't get into a debate of whether or not we actually had Rights and Freedoms in the first place to lose or surrender, let's assume we did.

Once something is surrendered, it is very hard to get back. It demonstrates that it was not desired/valued enough to begin with in the first place that it was so easily given up.

It is often in situations like this that the act of surrendering something is necessary to remind us of what we had in the first place. Often you don't realize what you had until you no longer have it. Maybe this is the wake-up call we are going to need to be re-taught just what it is we have here.

Often times, unfortunately, by that time it is too late and what ends up being lost is never recovered.

In the case of "freedom", it is easily lost and defeated by fear. There is a lot of fear now (always has been actually) and I think that the amount of fear far exceeds the value of freedom. So in answer to your question, given the present mindset, then "NO", we are not getting those freedoms back. Too much has been put in place to allow us to return to where we were.

The only way it could happen is for enough people to join together and collectively decide that they want it back. As has been said by many here about the war in the Middle East, and about war in general, FREEDOM IS EARNED, NOT GIVEN. If that's true, then what makes them think that in this instance it can be given back? Is there something different or special in this case that the"freedom needs to be earned" rule does not apply? For us to get it back we are going to have to earn it, fight for it. Essentially a revolution will need to happen to take back those rights.

But people (read Americans at least) do not have the stomach for that and so their freedom will be forever lost. (Granted this runs contrary to my discussion on how ultimately war is futile, but for example's sake I am dealing with the practical world here).

If it's live free or die . . . and we have pretty much given up freedom, I guess that leaves only one outcome.

What you are witnessing now is the death of the great American experiment. That death started some time ago, long ago, probably the moment the experiment started, but it's dying none-the-less.

Change. Such is the nature of life.

 

Damn, now I need a cup of coffee.