This is a time for important anniversaries. We’re looking straight into the heart of the 9/11 anniversary this year with terrible rumblings shaking the foundations of our free and open society. The earth itself is about to turn the northern part of our planet away from the sun and into winter. Lost in this reflective time is likely to be an anniversary that we might not want to remember or think comes close in the wash of time and history. This is the second anniversary of the meltdown on Wall Street that has defined our economy ever since.
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Pharisees
Terry Jones is more than the Pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida. He is the man who can calmly look into the camera and explain why he intends to publicly burn a copy of the Koran in what he says is “… Not a message of hate. Our message is a message of warning to the radical element of Islam”. The constant attention of this incident and his bizarre inability to understand his own actions has made Jones into much more than just a Pastor. He has become a media darling, the center of attention – and it has given him the ignoble status of Pharisee.
First Amendment
Nearly every heated argument on the internet between Americans eventually gets to one fundamental point. All it takes is a label of some kind – racist, liberal, nazi, socialist – and within a few messages someone is bound to claim that their First Amendment right to Free Speech is somehow being squashed. This whine is both laughably silly and, like any well-cut joke, deeply reflective on our culture’s basic values.
What does it mean to be oppressed and have your right to Free Speech taken away?
Dark Issues
It is possible to write about how silly our “politics” has become and never run out of new material. That much has to be obvious by now. But it is still amazing how far from reality the election year chatter has become. Dark Issues have taken the place of any sense of reality and rationalism.
Are we really that scared of what is happening to our nation that we’ll talk about nearly anything else?
The Only Issue that Counts
This election year, like any, has a large number of issues that politicians use to distinguish themselves from each other. Budget deficits, immigration, gay marriage, jobs, and corporate misdeeds are all big hits. But what is less obvious is that these issues that appear in the press in long scorecards and lists as if they are important are nothing more than pointless noise. A big bundle of issues, however eagerly they are debated, is no substitute for a genuine strategy – and the real leadership that shapes and executes that strategy. But this point is utterly lost in what pathetically passes for “debate” in our politics.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 