Men and women have been trying to reason their way into a good life for centuries. Accepting every ideology proposed by the latest crack-brained intellectual, they fall farther and farther away from the moral and political realities required by human nature.
This post is a composite of a series of pieces I did on Sophocles. Religious and skeptical of sophistry, Sophocles was both a profound writer and an Athenian citizen who served his city in war and peace. His works are a warning against intellectual and political arrogance.
The greatest of the philosophes, the Marquis de Sade, took the Enlightenment to the ultimate conclusion. God did not exist; religion and morality were invented to repress mankind; therefore, rape, torture, and multi-sexual orgies were all part of a program for liberating the human spirit from the shackles of Christianity.
These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows
Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance,
Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak
Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew,
Nations make choices, usually unconsciously, though it is too late, when a later generation complains about their teeth being set on edge, to refuse to drink the cup of sour wine that was offered to their fathers.
There is a tedious meme making its weary way around FB. It shows a smiling British soldier and informs the viewer that the USA, a country that once fought a revolution against taxation, has just hired 87,000 more IRS agents. Where are the FB fact-checkers? There was no revolution against taxe
The FBI has made it official: The USSA is a single party dictatorship where the ruling party persecutes opposition candidates. Even if Trump were guilty as charged, a lawful regime would seek to avoid the appearance of government harassment of opposition leaders. Instead, this government has put us all on notice.
