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Dalton
Roberts |
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Our government has been the perpetrator of great evil in the world, most of it inflicted on our own people. Before we urge people to toe the line on the latest line of bull coming out of our government, we need to stop and consider the morality of the matter. We need to remember the atrocities inflicted upon the original Americans who owned this land before Columbus came. We killed them like flies. We negotiated treaties that were either ignored or changed when greed needed to be satiated. I recently read a biography of Gen. Sherman. If you think his march from Atlanta to the sea was cruel and heartless with its burning of southern homes, barns, livestock and crops you need to read what he did to the Indians. He ordered his troops to decimate entire villages, including women and children. That’s your government at work. He thought Indians were sub-human, as if he possessed the morality and intelligence to define what was “human.” Would you have felt it your patriotic duty support such a government policy and practice? Yet appeals to patriotism have always been the way the government brings the populace into blind compliance. They also do it by exerting influence over the news media. The media are now owned by so few that they have a simpler job of shaping them to their purposes. We started an unwarranted war against an “enemy” that had done nothing to us. Suddenly we saw thousands of “support the troops” ribbons pop up on cars. After five years of awesome suffering on both sides and a bankrupted treasury, we are finally saying, “I support the troops but the war is unjust and should be stopped.” Such a view is even more patriotic because it calls us to honor our values as a people. It calls us to a higher view of our duty as citizens. That’s real patriotism. I am always dubious when I see the masses respond to government policy with lockstep behavior. This is the attitude that made slavery possible for so long. “If our government is for it, can it be wrong?” we ask. It certainly can be wrong! It allowed millions of to be chained down like cordwood in boats and delivered to our shores to be enslaved, beaten and dehumanized. It allowed us to herd the original inhabitants of this land onto reservations to be dehumanized. If the Christian doctrine of sowing and reaping and the Buddhist/Hindu idea of karma have any validity at all, and if nations are like people in being subject to those laws, this could be the reason we are experiencing so many pervasive curses in our society. “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever you (individuals and nations) sow, you shall also reap.” We glibly intone, “God bless America” without any thought of our responsibly to bless God. How better to bless God than to resist all efforts at brainwashing our God-given intelligence into the support of evil causes? When we have blessed God by showing independent judgment and adherence to basic human morality, we have set the stage for God to bless us. Unless we become morally indignant over the use of torture by our government, we will become villains in the eyes of all the people on the planet who value common decency. We forget that American military and diplomatic personnel will also be tortured in response to our torture. When you torture another, you give them license to torture you and yours. I never ask God for anything these days before praying, “Help us realize this power-mad blindness is destroying our own self respect and our spiritual and moral influence. Let us not take pride in our power but in all the values that have made America be seen as a place of freedom and a refuge from evil men.” Let us become worthy to say, “God bless America.” |
