mikejryan

[mikejryan]

If you actually think yourself a patriot, and if you actually love the US [or at least what it is supposed to represent]... read on.

For any US citizen who even slightly calls himself patriotic, if you care even the slightest for veterans of foreign wars, and if you dare to know history kept out of textbooks, out of classrooms, but that is 100% accurate and true, then read the story of Maj. General Smedley Butler, USMC.

The most decorated US Marine in history, and deservedly so, he foiled a plot by the powerful and monied interests to launch a coup to remove FDR from the White House and replace him with a person more in line with Mussolini. The industrialists and bankers, the oil men and their wealth, also controlled major media back then, so Butler was ridiculed and erased from history by the mainstream, even though the congressional hearings into the coup attempt said he was truthful and these events happened, but it was 1933, and money talks, like it does today.

After this fail, the monied interests played the long game to eliminate the New Deal and to impoverish the people of the US and make them more and more dependent upon them. The proceeded to purchase politicians and political parties, all so they could remove protections for the common folks [things like unemployment insurance, universal education, social security, medicare and health care... and to privatize everything and leave almost the entire government in the hands of their greedy tentacles]. Over the last 90 or so years, they have managed much success [look at Project 2025, the GOP platform, look at how we treat education and how the word "entitlement" is used for social security and medicare when working people have paid into it their entire lives, look at how they have managed to divide us into the most idiotic camps, how they've propped up a character who will do exactly what they want and do it for cash and judicial leniency...].

If it weren't for another journalist, mostly lost to history because he spoke the truth and called them out, George Seldes, I would never have known the amazing man Major General Smedley Butler. I would not have known his story, as initially told to me through Seldes, then through Butler's own writings... I would never have read "War is a Racket" and understood how vile Douglas McArthur and George Patton were, and how they smashed veterans.

If you actually care about this nation, its future, and the honor and integrity it should have, and if you care about your fellows and despise cruelty and ignorance, then read Butler. Do it for the sake of us all.

#smedley butler #1933 coup attempt #power #politics #democracy

[mikejryan]

The US has never done it alone...

Several things have bothered me for years, festering if you will in the face of cries of self-proclaimed exclusivity to patriotism, a US-centered view of the world and history, denials/removals/avoidance of facts in our actual history, this apparent need by some factors of US citizens and residents to promote a very particular view of the nation without recognizing the long and complex history of our relationships with other nations and cherry-picking or completely rejecting the existence of such things – this idea that we did it ourselves and it’s all about us, and finally the cries and screeches that we are either perfect the way we are or should revert back to some woebegone era in the past that is either fantasy or a perversion of actual facts and evidence. 

Please permit a few questions, some facts, and perhaps a comment or two related to these various important aspects of our nation. 

First a statement of opinion: No person, group, organization, media, political party, state, or entity has a monopoly on or exclusive and singular ownership of this very idealistic and sometimes very dangerous concept of patriotism.  Is patriotism support for your country no matter what?  If it commits atrocities and crimes against its own citizens or against neighbors, do we owe a debt of “patriotism” [by whatever definition you decide and like] to it?  Is patriotism unwavering support for a person or group within the nation that claims to be the most patriotic?  Related to the prior questions, is patriotism the pure and simple obedience to any and all aspects of, statements by, and decrees from the nation’s leadership?   Is patriotism questioning the institutions and systems, the citizens, the groups, the parties, corporations, and finding ways to do what we do and serve all the people well?  Is it continuing the ideas and messages of our founding fathers or is it using their general concepts to build a greater future?  Is patriotism somehow related to religion?  Why and on what basis?  Is patriotism of any value at all?  Is it just getting all bubbly and warm inside, perhaps even shedding a tear during the national anthem at a sporting event or simply supporting our troops?  Is patriotism necessary?

Looking at these questions and exploring them is vital to our future, if indeed we are to actual have one.  Is there only one definition of patriotism, and is it found in Webster’s Dictionary?  Is the definition more fluid and dynamic or it it solid and static?  The answers to these questions speak volumes about your thought processes, morality, ethics, and belief systems, how you view the nation and its people.  By whatever definition and system you come up with for yourself, I would hope you would at least ask these questions and then take your answer to the extremes of how it might affect the nation and its people, the future. 

Personally, I believe that people who have to throw up flags on their cars or trucks, have so many on their property [to make it like a shrine of sorts], border on idolatry in the Christian sense and lean to followership and blind obedience, but not the government per se but to a leader or entity they believe fulfills their definition of patriotism.  If you have explored these questions or similar ones and have decided upon a necessity for the term and its related ideas to which you ascribe, and you have taken the exploration seriously and not relied on some group, person, or entity to drive the definition into your head and heart, then I respect your decision [although I may not accept your definition].  We are not clones and copies, so variation will exist and is absolutely healthy for our future and development. 

Let’s debunk this idea that we formed our own country without any help from or allegiances to other nations or people, and that we have won all these wars or fought against terrorism all by ourselves, and while doing this dispel the incorrect ideas that we don’t have or don’t need allies and that we don’t need other countries for anything. 

Let’s begin with the Revolutionary War, our first president, and the founding fathers, who, while they stated outwardly the importance of not forming permanent allegiances formed many crucial ties and agreements with nations in order to survive and divide the nation from British rule.  Chief among our agreements, even before the first shots were fired, was with the French.  They supplied money, troops, weapons, and supplies to the Revolutionary Army but only after negotiations and agreements reached after some of our founding fathers spent time there.  We relied on the French and Spanish navies for support and defense against the British.  Spain also provided supplies and munitions to the cause of our rebellion against the British and by intervening in the West Indies, which was also in its own interests, and making New Orleans as a base for privateers and seizing the British posts in West Florida, thus seriously impacting all British shipping and supply lines.  The Dutch also provided much needed aid and went to war against Britain [opening another front], and the Czarina of Russia helped by obstructing British naval power… So how much of this do we study in our schools?  How much of this is accepted and considered in our present foreign policy and relations with the peoples of those nations?  How much should be?  Did we win the Revolutionary War all by ourselves?  The answer is NO. 

Oh, and that foreigner go home crap, well, please don’t forget that the Treaty [or Peace] of Paris signed after the Revolutionary War or War of Independence, allotted everything west of the Mississippi and everything south of a line which now creates Florida to Spain, so the Spanish owned it…  Just saying that when some folks in the US go off on or critique people of Spanish origin, well, they were quite literally here first.  In various ways, some of them very bloody, we took their homes. 

Okay, well certainly the Civil War was just all about us…  Nope.  What other countries helped the Union win the war?  Well, let’s start with the fact that no other nations recognized the Confederate States when they broke away, thus diplomatically and financially stranding and isolating the southern insurrectionist states.  So what?  Well, if these other nations, particularly the world powers of the day, decided to work against the Union, there was high probability that the war continues for years and years, hundreds of thousands more dead, and an uncertain outcome.  We also relied upon, yes, you guessed it, Britain for naval support to ensure the economic blockade of the southern states [as much as they were able due to their ships sailing all over the seven seas].  Oh, and here’s one for you.  Russia.  Yup, that place, pre-Lenin, sent naval vessels to help secure the northern states and support our small navy.  So did we do this ourselves?  Again the answer is no. 

The Spanish-American War, which engulfed the US in global conquests and issues because it involved not only Cuba and Puerto Rico, but also the Philippines and Guam, stretched our small military and navy to its maximum at home, near home, and far away.  Without agreements with France and Great Britain, and naval support primarily from Britain, we would have lost.  Period. 

Dammit…  Did we do anything without the help of other nations?  Well, honestly, no. 

Didn’t we save Europe during WWI and WWII?  Well, we certainly helped a great deal, but we often forget that the armed forces arrayed against our declared allies were often using US steel and manufactured goods in their military equipment, so when we fought in both wars not only were allied troops killed by US built machines, but later so young American lives were taken by materials formed in the US.  If we take the sinking of the Lusitania as the spark for our final decision to engage in WWI, then the submarine and the torpedo used to sink the ship contained hundreds of components either constructed by materials from or actually built in the US.  Given our history with Britain and France, complex though they were to this point, we kind of owed them something. 

In WWII, even with factions of people in the US supporting Hitler and Nazi Germany, chief among them the famous aviator Charles Lindburgh and the “America First” movement, when the Japanese [arguably not without some provocation] attacked Pearl Harbor, all our efforts went into defeating the Axis powers and so good ol’ Chuck and America First took a backseat to our revenge and re-establishment of deeper alliances with our European allies, France and Britain. 

Hey, how about more modern wars like Vietnam and Korea?  Gulf War I?  Afghanistan?  Iraq?  Present day war against terrorism?

Apparently we need a history lesson. 

Korea?  Yes, I know many countries were involved, but we did it ourselves, right?  We defended the Koreans from the nasty Chinese?  Well, besides the Koreans, you also had troops and support from Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Greece, The Philippines, Ethiopia, France, Belgium, and Colombia.  Some nations sent expeditionary forces: South Africa, Netherlands, Turkey, and Luxemburg.  Still other nations like India, Norway, Sweden, and Iran contributed support and medical personnel.  Hmmm, so not alone then.  We did not do it ourselves. 

Okay, screw you…  Vietnam was America’s War.  Ha, not so fast.  First it was the French-Indochina War, and we left the French out to dry after the end of the Korean War [they were plastered by US made artillery captured by the Chinese and shipped to Ho Chi Minh’s forces and then pounded by the best artillery the Chinese and Russians could provide].  Thank you Korean War…  However, when we got involved, we did it alone, right?  Nope.  Not even.  The South Koreans sent hundreds of thousands of troops and support personnel.  Other countries that provided troops?  Well, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand with Spain, The Philippines, and Taiwan sending personnel.  This does not include UN troops used to man the DMZ…

Hopefully recent history does not forget the support from our NATO and other allies in the wake of 9/11, both militarily and otherwise in the War in Afghanistan against the Taliban.  If it does, well, all I can say is how sad that you have forgotten or neglected to consider all those who fought in support of our cause in that war.  At a peak, over 130,000 non-US troops served in the war, with countries like Denmark, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, Turkey, Italy…  the list is over 30 nations engaged in helping us on land and sea as well as in the air. 

Not as many helped in Iraq, but that was because the evidence was flimsy and in some cases deeply flawed, but we were on a mission [for what?  Since Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and spent much of his reign imprisoning or executing extremists and remember he fought a bloody war with Iran, our apparent sworn enemy], but still Denmark, Australia, Great Britain, Poland… and more helped out there. 

Heck almost everyone was involved in the Gulf War to kick Saddam out of Kuwait…  so that was a communal effort, even if it fired up Osama bin Laden and his band of idol-worshipping followers. 

Recently, to express and enforce our foreign policy and keep our assets and corporate interests safe and sound, we have maneuvered the African Union nations and troops to do the fighting in our stead, so we use proxy troops to keep our global business profits alive and well.

Double and triple dammit… 

So the story of American Exceptionalism, the Monroe Doctrine, our growth into a world power, our might and size, our borders and our ownership of the land, now and always [even before we struck for Independence], our doing it all alone, not needing anyone, and all that related garbage…  It’s got a lot of holes and a lot of questions. 

If you truly look at our history, from BEFORE the first shot of the War of Independence to the last shots fired in Iraq, we have never done it alone.  Between foreign policy, agreements with nations, actual physical support from nations, and nations declaring war on our enemies at the moment to take pressure off of us [albeit often to also benefit themselves], we have relied heavily upon the generosity and support of other nations, big and small.  We should not be so quick to judge or dismiss these nations or any nation out there in the world. 

#education #political parties #politics #civil war #War of Independence #Korean War

[mikejryan]

Other than laziness, stupidity, or selfish reasons, why do we have and support political parties?

Why? Even our forefathers in the first United States realized and understood the dangers and detriments of party politics and fictitious, convenient, and deliberately divisive nature of and forces behind them. Nothing has changed for the better over the decades.

Do we follow them out of habit, a form of simple-minded followership or idolatry? Because mom, dad, my friend... followed this artificial entity, and so I owe [and swear] my allegiance to it?

Do we fall in line and mouth the same words and mindsets because it gives us all manner of pre-packaged "ideas" and "opinions" about things we could never really know anything about [as in the present economy, the various global conflicts... oil pricing... unless we had multiple degrees and ongoing studies with fingers directly on the pulse of one thing, we cannot know all, but just a vague notion of it, like if we have never been to Paris, France but have ideas and opinions about the city]? Is it because we don't have to think? It's already done for us by the media, the talking heads, attached like a barnacle to some parties and then the actual party itself?

Do we simply want to feed our narrowed cultural and societal biases by gravitating to a group that feeds our need for acceptance, our need to feel and be right [and righteous], and our intellectual laziness combined with our need for instantaneous all-at-once answers and black and white thinking?

This issue of making any issue or aspect of governing and life ridiculously simpleminded by bifurcating everything into black/white, yes/no... types of and pre-packaged responses, pseudo-thoughts, and vagaries eliminates all exploration and probing into the gray areas, where actual helpful and deeply thought out answers and solutions exist and common ground and reduced idiocy can be found. This oversimplification into party-prepped and exported black/white, right/wrong, yes/no, good/bad... presses people and systems into a narrow window and forces confrontation and foments anger and division.

Or do we follow out of a sad and personally unrecognized need for fulfillment and simple acceptance by others - the need to belong?

People make up all sorts of feeble and truly vacant reasons for sucking up to and into a political party, anything other than deep reflection on choices, morality, ethics, and helping each other. What if we abolished parties and affiliations and simple voted for the best person for the job - the most qualified, the most moral, most ethical... most experienced? The person who had genuine ideas and possible answers, who could represent our interests, not merely follow the dictates and whims of the crowd?

Just a thought... and some questions to ask ourselves when we look in the mirror.

#mass appeal #politics #simone weil #political parties #democracy

[mikejryan]

...A totalitarian movement. Its disregard for facts, its strict adherence to the rule of a fictitious world, becomes steadily more difficult to maintain, yet remains as essential as it was before. Power means a direct confrontation with reality, and totalitarianism in power is constantly concerned with overcoming this challenge. Propaganda and organization no longer suffice to assert that the impossible is possible, that the incredible is true, that an insane consistency rules the world; the chief psychological support of totalitarian fiction -- the active resentment of the status quo, which the masses refuse to accept as the only possible world -- is no longer there; every bit of factual information that leaks through the iron curtain, set up against the ever-threatening flood of reality from the other, nontotalitarian side, is a greater menace to totalitarian domination than counterpropaganda has been to totalitarian movements.

Hannah Arendt, 1966... And again, as someone who lived through it, who studied it, probed its depths, witnessed its horrors and manipulations, we should stand up and take note of what is going on in the US and several other countries, as they turn more and more towards totalitarian leaders and more and more away from reality and facts.

#totalitarianism #hannah arendt #politics #mass appeal

[mikejryan]

How tempting it was, for example, simply to ignore the intolerably stupid blabber of the Nazis. But seductive though it may be to yield to such temptations and hole up in the refuge of one's own psyche. the result will always be a loss of humanness along with the forsaking of reality.

Hannah Arendt, 1955. From someone who lived through it, who excavated through the time and its aftermath, who was unafraid of truth and not doing things and writing to be popular but to explore and probe truth, to seek answers, and all for the sake of improving our condition and our future, words to live by in today's era. All too many slip easily into nonsense and forsake reality and truth for the sake of party or leader, and not for the first time [but hopefully for the last]. Let us not be tempted into the black hole of ignorance and stupidity, yielding to our baser instincts and following people and groups who spout evil and lies.

#politics #hannah arendt #Nazis

[mikejryan]

The easiest, laziest thing to do is to sort out youngsters by their test scores and forget the complications. Teachers should combat this laziness; they should be constantly on the alert for other attributes that promise to strengthen and guide performance in later life.... To the extent that we insist on sorting individuals out on the basis of one or two scores that sum up one dimension of human performance, we are constricting reality and denying the richness of human possibilities.... It cannot be emphasized too often that the greatest enemy of sound and fair selection processes today is the apparent simplicity and efficiency involved in assigning a single score (or pair of scores) to each youngster.

John W. Gardner, 1984. We've fallen deep into this rabbit hole, thanks more to the political powers that be and their desire to quantify and reduce education and learning down to a simple number, predigested and easily swallowed by the public, and one that guarantees elimination of creativity, innovation, and actual critical thought [the results of which we see in the insanity in this era and the ease with which people fall into moronic obedience and beliefs in the absurd].

#John W. Gardner #mass appeal #politics #stupidity

[mikejryan]

Between 1920 and 1940, in the cultural complexes first of Italy, then of Germany, culture attempted a form of suicide. The civilized word was replaced by the club, the truth by the lie, the private thought by public error, reflection by obedience. Schooled patience was supplanted by unthinking haste, analysis by emotion, intricate social co-operation by outlawry, the rule of law by pogrom and confiscation and trial by ordeal. The reversion exposed its most dramatic symptom in the astonishing revival of torture and genocide.

E. A. Havelock, 1950. Our danger today is reflected all-too-clearly in this recent past. Because it was so close to his time and experience, Havelock in his studies and analysis, in his personal experiences in living in that era, has a perspective we have conveniently lost or twisted for political and party gain, for profit and power. We are on the precipice, and sadly so many people simply refuse to see and recognize it for what it is. Too late, they will see, but by then catastrophes could swallow up so many and so much.

#E. A. Havelock #politics

[mikejryan]

If we indoctrinate the young person in an elaborate set of fixed beliefs, we are ensuring his early obsolescence. The alternative is to develop skills, attitudes, habits of mind and the kinds of knowledge and understanding that will be the instruments of continuous change and growth on the part of the young person. Then we have fashioned a system that provides for its own continuous renewal.... All too often we are giving our young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. We are stuffing their heads with the products of earlier innovation rather than teaching them to innovate. We think of the mind as a storehouse to be filled when we should be thinking of it as an instrument to be used.

John W. Gardner. 1981. Gardner was a Republican leader and the head of Health, Education, and Welfare under the Johnson administration, back when the two parties used to actually work together for the success of the nation rather than divide and conquer votes and entrench and abuse their positions for gain of party or leader. Gardner, for many reasons, his incredible wisdom and foresight high among them, remains a national treasure for me [and should be for us all]. In our world today, we see parties and states trimming education, reducing thought to pre-packaged tidbits of factoids and patriotic drivel, when we should be teaching them to think clearly and precisely, to create and innovate, and to not be held down by traditions or aspects of the past in attempting to forge a future for the nation and the entire planet. Their vessels should be open to grow and adapt, not shut and full of easily regurgitated quasi-/pseudo-facts.

#John W. Gardner #education system #learning

[mikejryan]

More I have, more I shall give and offer up.  

Burning within, flowing outward.

It’s been on the edge of my tongue, so-to-speak, for many months, perhaps years.  Tonight, in deep prayer and meditation, asking and opening myself up to what God wanted from me, which direction He wanted me to go, He steered me back to writing and to helping set His people free from the bondage of this world.  

Here is what flowed forth in the 12 minutes of rapid typing and opening up to His Will, not mine:

I need more from you. If you are to fulfill yourself in me, in this mere mortal life, I need more from you.

I call you not to pass laws to force people to bend to your will, to what you perceive as My Will. This is the vilest form of legalism and allows you an excuse, a dark path away from Me and deeper into the world and its ways. Wherein did My Son, My Emissary and Missionary among you, who called you to me with Love and a beacon of Light and Truth, wherein did He exalt the need for laws or call on you to pass laws and attach to the world’s legal systems or try to somehow sway them to Me?  

I call you not to judge and heap judgment upon others, even in passing glances or in placing yourself in any way above others.  Did I not say that he who is least or last shall be highest or first?  In this life, every judgment, even the simplest ones that mark someone in your world’s heart and spirit, sets you farther from Me and farther from the Truth and Path.  

I call on you not to attach yourself to political powers, even at the smallest or seemingly harmless levels.  Beyond the idolatry it demonstrates, beyond the ease with which you have used this excuse throughout time, from the moment you demanded a king, an earthly leader, it says you replace Me and My Will, My Divine Power with an earthly one, even one feigning to rule and control in My name.  When you do so, you attach yourself to Rome, or you attach yourself to the Sadducees and Pharisees, no different from the those who fulfilled My Will in murdering My Son.  

I need more from you.

I call you to live every breath of your life through Me.  I call you to be a beacon of light and truth, to let My Light shine through your every deed and word, that you would shine out as models of love, caring, kindness, and all the wonders that are Me as shown clearly to you in My Son, Jesus Christ and in My Word before and then through Him.  

I call on you to be brave and to trust Me.  Have the courage and wisdom to trust Me.  Be emissaries of and for Me, and do not persecute others in My name, for that is the most vile form of judgment and Satan’s lie [in which he brings you deeper, in his sly ways, into the world and its ways, into the shams and feints that purport to be Me but are farthest from Me].  

I need you to be more. It is not easy, which is why so many fall off and away, so many seeds planted, but so many landing on rock, flowing away to the sea, or falling upon hard and infertile ground.  The Life is in Me, as it was, as it is, and as it always and eternally will be.  Be the Light, and do not mock Me by dimming the Light I placed within you and try, with every trial and tribulation to bring forth and rekindle and build upon so that the world may know Me through you, and you may know Me better through opening up to Me and turning away from the enticements of the world.  

Satan teases you, and he gets you to join in the world’s ways to try to make things more like he wants you to think I want.  Be warned, yet again, that the devil himself can speak with a sweet tongue, but he is always a deceiver.  He gets you to think that laws, that judgments, that world leaders of all manner are the way, the path, and the truth, whereupon nothing could be farther from My Truth, from My Will.  

Call upon me as I call upon you.  As I call you to be more, to be greater than the mere legalistic world, the simple solutions, and the world’s ways, if you ask for help, it is yours, joyously granted. Be the Light, not the shaft of darkness trying to reflect a dimmed and perverse version of Me and My Will.  Be more like my Son, in whom I was always, from the Alpha to Omega, most pleased.  Follow in His footsteps and be not afraid.  Satan’s greatest fear is that you listen to Me, and that you cast away his seemingly reasonable and godly enticements, and that through the way you walk in this life, the way you show the Spirit is within and living Truth is within you and radiating freely and openly, and that you demand more of yourself and I need more from you and that you become the powerful lamp to light the path for those lost in the world and its ways.  To walk girded against the evils and enticements all around you, to stand aside and in the holy place when the abominations start to grab power and dominions, this is the Light and will sustain you to BE the Beacon to all the lost.

Know that I am God. Trust Me, and allow Me to work freely in you and your spirit that you may show the way to all those who see or hear about you,

In those glorious smidgens of Light, each ray can rekindle the downtrodden faith in others and bring them to Me for eternity.  

I need more from you.

[mikejryan]

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-tired wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid...  Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Bertrand Russell, 1926.

#thought #Bertrand Russell #Fear and hate

[mikejryan]

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell, 1929.  

#Bertrand Russell #public opinion #absurdity

[mikejryan]

It is unlikely that governments composed as they are today will change the existing system of education in such a way that there will be a demand for a complete overhaul of governmental methods.

Aldous Huxley, “Ends and Means”, 1937

#government #role of government #aldous huxley #education system #education reform #education

[mikejryan]

The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true.  They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

John Adams, 1765. 

Makes you wonder about these freedoms and liberties of which people scream and yell these days...  Heck, makes you wonder why the founding fathers ever settled upon the present democratic system with all its deeply inherent flaws. 

#John Adams #the masses #liberty #freedom

[mikejryan]

Long on Fascism...

Ha, a fair while ago I posted a quote from a journalist I have found to be extremely enlightening.  It dealt with fascism and Huey Long.  Some devotee of Long’s commented that Long was not a fascist.  Don’t get me started on the idea of idolatry, the uses and abuses of language, and then the actual definition of fascism arising out of the era of fascism.

What was most amusing to me was the ease with which foolishness flows from the brain onto the internet with nary a thought.  

[mikejryan]

All empty souls tend to extreme opinions.

William Butler Yeats, 1936

In the US, and for that matter the world, we see all manner of empty souls, all claiming righteousness and piety, screeching conspiracy theories and extreme opinions, all in the names of their various and often variable truths and worldviews.  They are 100% indebted to the world and its ways for their extremes, and many of them are, sadly, lost souls who excuse all manner of evil, cruelty, injustice, and ungodly behavior in their pursuit of the vain justices of the world [sometimes barely clothed in some biblical tidbit where they fail to see and understand that the devil quotes scripture]. 

(via christology101)

[mikejryan]

No one ever became extremely wicked suddenly.

Juvenal [c. 60-140 A.D.].  I share this with a thought to the Insurrectionists from the attack on our nation’s capital earlier this year...  

#wickedness #Juvenal #capital attack

[mikejryan]

Revisionism is the opium of the people.

Mao Tse-tung.  Need we say more?

#Revisionism #mao tse tung