Posted on 05/16/2006 4:56:45 PM PDT by wagglebee
BTW, you certainly chose a beautiful place to live. The U.P. and nearby Canada are among the most beautiful places I've been--up there with the Greek Isles, Hawaii, the Georgia Coast, Greenland from the air, the Canadian Rockies, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, the Alps, the Amalfi Coast, the redwood forests, etc.
I'll throw in northern Wisconsin while I'm at it.
And Manhattan from the air at night!
And Toldeo, in Spain, as you drive around the curve and this beautiful city arises before you!
And Baden Baden in the spring when the flowers are blooming!
And Venice!
And Caneel Bay!
And the trainride from Zurich to St. Moritz in the winter!
And the vaporetto ride from Venice to the airport!
Hardiwar when the flowers are flowing in the Ghanges!
And...oops! Sorry. I got carried away.
If being a deep thinker requires accepting claims at face value and jumping to wild conclusions, you may have a point.
I expect an article claiming growth of some activity to at least document that growth, rather than just throwing in one line about unnamed operators seeing an increase.
I also don't think it's wise to predict the violent downfall of civilization based on a single poorly written article.
If those make me a shallow, immature thinker, then I guess I'd rather be a shallow, immature thinker.
Almost every private action can affect everyone else, to varying degrees. Do you believe there should be any sphere of private autonomy? That is, are there some private actions which, despite their affect on others, should remain solely under the control of the individual?
Okay, back by popular demand, some thoughts by those who were indisputably deep thinkers:
"We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." President James Madison
"We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions ubridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."John Adams, address to the militia of Massachusetts, 1798
"We've staked the whole future of American civilization not on the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us . . . to Govern ourselves according to the commandments of God. The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded." President James Madison
"A general dissolution of Principles and Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader . . . If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security."Samuel Adams, 1779
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests
of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in
which all religions agree." --Thomas Jefferson
"[O]ur ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits."
-- Daniel Webster, American Jurist and Senator
"[W]hen People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners,
they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign
Invaders." --Samuel Adams
"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private
families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just
Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if,
from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in
habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as
constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." -- General Douglas MacArthur
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites--in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;--in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;--in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
-- Edmund Burke
Good word!
And if anyone wants to claim "Sectarianism!" here's what Thos Jefferson had to say, and I agree with him at least 100% if not more:
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests
of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in
which all religions agree." --Thomas Jefferson
Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity (and even Islam but I'm not really fond of Islam at the moment) - they all say that sex should be within marriage (man+woman) and THAT'S IT!
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