|
The
United
States of
America by Jerry Cates |
||
|
When a small group of radical Islamic terrorists carried out a series of suicide attacks on the United States of America on 9/11/01. they went after our way of life. They hijacked and flew two commercial airliners into the two buildings housing the World Trade Center, the heart of America's global economic success. They flew a third airliner into the Pentagon, the hub of her military might. A fourth airliner, bound for Washington D.C., crashed before reaching the hijacker's objective when a group of heroic passengers wrested control away but were unable to prevent their own deaths. Some believe the assertions of a growing list of conspiracy theorists who claim the entire episode was carried out by U.S. Government insiders. Yet, we have been told, not only by our leaders, but the self-proclaimed leaders of the hijackers themselves, the identities of the radical Islamic terrorists who hijacked the planes. From that, we know who pulled their strings, i.e., who it was that sought to hurt us. But hurting us wasn't their only goal: they hoped to bring us to our knees as well. That hasn't happened yet, but the final chapter is still playing out. Will they succeed? This paper explores that question. To do so we must ask a bunch of additional questions. I believe we have to ask, for starters, how the U.S.A. got to this place in its history; yet that question can't be answered without first having a grip on the whole panoply of American history. So we have to go to the beginning, and start there. We think we know how our nation got started, but even that may need to be examined more closely, to insure we get off on the right foot. Then we need to ask how our country has changed over the past 230 years. Now that Barack Obama, an African-American member of the U.S. Senate, is running for president, we must ask other questions, focusing them in the context of the present campaign. For example, how does slavery, which began in the 1400's and officially ended in 1865, affect current politics and the psyche of the average American on the street? A lot of blaming seems to be going on these days, and we need to ask ourselves how the blame-game, as it is often called, should be played. Many wonder, in the larger context of America's history and our place in the world, how much blame today's U.S. citizens shoulder because slavery once took place here. That institution, which began about 300 years before this nation became independent, continued on for another 82 years afterward. Whatever blame is valid, how should it be apportioned? According to race, economic status, or to all equally? And what about American Apartheid, the segregation of races sanctioned in law and custom for 100 years after black slavery was abolished? How did segregation influence our collective psyche? Where should blame for that injustice be cast? Is segregation separate from slavery? Or are they two sides of the same injustice? How does inequality, whether racial, religious, ethnic, lingual, economic, or legal, divide Americans today? Is inequality so heinous that it should be abolished? Or is it, as some would have us believe, the engine that drives us, wherever we fall in each of those categories, to break out of our own version of mediocrity and strive for excellence? How should social disparity be mitigated? Some, especially over the past fifty years, look to our legal system for redress. Do laws against inequality work? Or do they interfere with natural human processes? Why do some economists, anthropologists, political scientists, and--increasingly--geneticists and ethicists, see the indomitable human spirit as the best, most effective force for positive change? Like most explorations into the human mind, this poses more questions than it answers. And, though we can't give many answers, we can feed our thoughts and formulate tentative solutions to the challenges our thinking minds come up with. In the process, we will almost certainly inch upward to higher ground. If that sounds philosophical, good. Philosophy was formalized by the Greeks of antiquity. Intellectual giants like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and a host of their fellows used the word φιλοσοφία--philosophía, "love of knowledge and wisdom," to explain their deepest ponderings. It is a tribute to the human spirit that many, if not most, begin life with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and truth and an utter disdain for dishonesty. You would not be reading these words if you felt otherwise, methinks. But don't be flattered. No person who has lived long and faced fierce adversity can ever be called a perfect paragon of virtue. Each of us also hungers and thirsts for things less honorable than knowledge and truth. It is a paradox that the only way to retain our grasp of either virtue is to turn our back to them. Each time we do, we relearn a bitter--but quintessential--lesson: Nothing surpasses genuine knowledge and truth. Nothing is more noble than embarking upon the process of discovering what genuine knowledge and truth are. That trail is paved with mistakes. Small ones; medium sized ones; grotesque ones. We are carried onward by accepting blame, and by trying to avoid those mistakes again. That is why life isn't easy. It is a personal journey we take alone and naked, with only our wits to defend us. Mistakes, though costly, are unavoidable and become our personalized recipe for wisdom or folly, depending on how we learn from them. If we are wise, we rejoice as each mistake makes us stronger and more useful, to ourselves, our families, and our communities. We improve our skills at coping, teaching, and production for good. If we choose to be foolish, we do the opposite. Or, like Rudyard Kipling's Tomlinson, we can be half wise and half foolish, seeming to do neither good nor evil, but getting nowhere. The tools of philosophy analyze ethereal matters like existence (what and why we are), knowledge (what we know), truth (what is true and real), justice (what is right and good), beauty (what is deserving of our adoration and devotion), validity (what can be proved with logic and reason), mind (the conscious and unconscious underpinnings of our thought processes) and language (how we express ourselves, in every possible form of communication, to others). What makes philosophy special is that it focuses on hard truth, not just what we want to believe but what we perceive to be honest and real. To do this, it employs critical and systematic approaches, and relies on reason instead of religion, mythology, or mysticism. Why is this article and those that follow it posted on the www.bugsinthenews.com website? A young lady named Anna sent me an e-mail in early May 2003 asking that question. Here's what I told her: Dear Anna:
We
use the word “bug” to cover a gamut of things. Entomologists call
insects in the order Hemiptera “true bugs”, while others use the word
in an informal way to refer to any insect they wish. Journalists and even
medical workers use the
term for bacteria and viruses that manifest disease. Those in the computer
world apply it as a formal definition for defects in programming, hardware
design and assembly. Informally, Anglophones use it to refer to anything
that causes an unintended result. Etymologically, then, “Bugs in the
News” could refer to a wide variety of topics without extending beyond
the broad province of definitions it legitimately embraces. My first attempt to understand "government" took place, I believe, in 1947, when I was only five years old. World War II was over, but the world was not at peace. Communism, which most Americans regarded with deep distrust, was succeeding in China, and Palestine was a seething cauldron of unrest. As news of these battles came over the radio, I asked my father what they were about. He tried to tell me, but he was intentionally vague and I did not understand. How do you explain such things to a five-year-old? Between 1947 and 2001, my attempts at grappling with such questions were unsuccessful, despite serving in the U.S. military and spending 30 months in Vietnam as an intelligence analyst. Later, besides my "day job," I volunteered in the fire service, in disaster relief, and in law enforcement, seeing every facet of life up close and personal. Such experiences might have given me special insights, but they did not prepare me for the events of 9/11. I was almost as ignorant of political realities at age fifty-nine as I had been at age five. Politics, and the mechanics of governance, held no interest for me. The chores of living had gotten in the way. I had "better things to worry about." Suddenly, 9/11 came along, and the "better things" lost their importance. Understanding the big picture became an imperative. Now terrorists wanted to destroy all I held dear. Given a chance, they would succeed. I needed to understand why. Since 9/11/2001 we've had time to ponder the big picture afresh. There are at least two paths we might follow in that process. The path to the left leads to understanding the mind of the terrorist, so we might have insight into the issues that lead down a path of destruction. The path to the right examines the basic objectives of this nation we call the U.S.A, the object of the terrorist's hatred, what we stand for, and why we stand at all. Some advise taking the path to the left, to feel the terrorist's pain and understand how terrorism can be justified. That path seemed, at first, short, and unsatisfying. Yet perhaps it must be travelled at some point, just to keep us honest. We will begin, however, with the other, to understand why America came into being, and why, today, it has become the target of some of the most determined terrorists this planet has ever produced. Some of the most important documents relating to America's founding are linked to below. In the coming days additional articles on these topics will be added as well. ---The Declaration of Independence ---The Articles of Confederation ---The Constitution of the United States of America Back to: Bugsinthenews |
||