Posted on 09/26/2002 11:51:03 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
The same lovely lady who brought you this thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/757163/posts) wherein she whined about becoming "a target for America's zealots" now invites us to send her our favorite anti-war quotes (after sharing a list of her own that probably includes every anti-war quote EVER!). I think we Freepers should accept her kind invitation. Here's mine:
Dear Anita,
Thank you so much for posting this wonderful, life-affirming thread. I was unsure that you would want to post again so soon after all those conservative types suppressed your speech by assaulting you viciously with email. I hope your injuries aren't too severe and that your stock of Body Shop products will soothe those sling and arrow wounds. Allow me to share one of my favorite anti-war quotes:
"Torture, killings and mass arrests had started on the day of the invasion. Men and women were pulled off the streets for interrogations. The wrong responses brought pain, mutilation, and in many cases death. Iraqi soldiers also raped women. After the war, Iraqi 'torture centers' in Kuwait were found to contain bloodstained saws, axes, pick handles, meat hooks, a power drill, hand vise, and electric cattle prods, pliers to extract fingernails; carpenter planes to shave off skin; and a pair of industrial driers, also stained inside with blood. Liberators also discovered a bed frame and a hot plate that had been wired to give electric shocks. The number of Kuwaitis tortured and murdered during the six months of Iraqi occupation is estimated to be in the thousands."
-From the CNN book "War in the Gulf"
You see, I'm against the people of Kuwait, Iraq or any other country having to suffer under Saddam Hussein. He is trying to develop weapons that make the pain in the quote above look like playtime at the sandbox. If he will not turn from the course of terror, we will send him to the dustbin of history, where his ideas (and yours) belong.
By the way, Anita, I just wanted to express my total confidence in you as a "radical" "voice for change"; I'm sure you'll find some way to blame America if L.A., New York, Riyadh or Tel Aviv disappears under a mushroom cloud. After all, blaming America appears to be what you do best.
Warmest Regards,
Mr. Silverback
--"Lawrence of Arabia"
Almost, but not the precise quotation, originally by Arnold Aimery, the Papal Legate at the siege of Beziers, and sometimes offered in scholarly and pious Latin:
The Cathars of the Languedoc were dualist heretics who probably presented the greatest doctrinal challenge faced by the Catholic church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The word Cathar comes from the Greek katharos, meaning pure. They Cathars professed a neo-Manichaean dualism - that there are two principles, one good and one evil, and that this world, the material world, is evil. Similar views were held in the Balkans and the Middle East by the medieval religious sects of the Paulicians and the Bogomils, with whom the Cathars were closely connected.
They were dissident, pacific Christians who would not accept the orthodox position that an omnipotent and eternal God could possibly have been responsible for the material world of matter, as to them, this world was the product of an evil creator, not a good one. To the Cathars, as Dr. Malcom Barber states in his latest work, The Cathars, such a Creator was "either a being fallen from the perfection of Heaven who had seduced a proportion of the angelic souls there and then entrapped them in matter, or, he was a co-eternal power, quite independent of the Good God of the spirit. The only release for those souls encased in the material prison of the body was through the Cathar ceremony of the consolamentum, which was the means by which they could return to their guardian spirits in Heaven." (p.1)
The Cathars believed that matter was evil, and that Man (Humanity) was an alien sojourner in an essentially evil world. Therefore, the main aim of Man was to free his spirit, which was in its nature good, and restore it with God. They had strict rules for fasting, and were strict vegetarians. The Cathars also allowed women to be perfecti, i.e., priests. They did not believe in a Last Judgement, believing instead that this material world would end only when the last of the angelic souls had been released from it. They believed in reincarnation, and that souls could take many lifetimes to reach perfection before their final release.
In many ways, Catharism represented total opposition to the Catholic church, which they basically viewed as a large, pompous, and fraudalent organisation which had lost its integrity and "sold out" for power and money in this world. The Cathars could also not accept the orthodox beliefs regarding the Eucharist, and other sacraments of the church, as this implied that Christ would have actually lived on this earth in the flesh, been crucified, and resurrected from this evil, material world - something that they felt a divine, good Being like Christ could never do in the first place, as God (i.e. Christ, in the orthodox Christian view) would never exist in this material world, only in Heaven. So, they rejected a fundamental tenet of the orthodox church: the Incarnation.
The Cathar church was organised into dioceses, who bishops presided over an order of succession consisting of elder and younger 'sons', deacons, and perfecti and perfectae, their priesthood. Many supporters were among the nobility of the Languedoc, which was one of the most sophisticated, wealthy and cosmopolitan civilisations in all Europe at the time. Many lay people supported the perfecti (priests) by becoming credentes, and most took the consolamentum when near death, as the hard, ascetic rigours of the life of the perfecti were too demanding for the average person. So, they could marry and have a family, while the perfecti lived a monastic life; it is also known that the Cathar perfecti travelled in pairs while doing their ministry. They were successful healers and doctors, and knew a great deal about herbalism. Overall, the Cathars had a large number of followers, and the greatest success in southern France and northern Italy. Soon, with such radical beliefs and large numbers, they became a definite threat to the Catholic church, and the Inquisition was finally launched on them, culminating in one of the bloodiest, ruthless crusades the world has ever seen.
Various crusades were preached to the Cathars first, but to no avail. Bernard of Clairvaux was known to have said that he thought they lived basically good lives, yet heretical, but others took a more severe line. Eventually, as all else seemed to fail, a policy of violence was instigated by a desperate church, resulting in many deaths and atrocities, fuelled by the greed of northern French barons who supported the crusades against the wealthy Languedoc in the south. The Inquisition persisted in earnest and, in some cases, whole villages or cities were annihilated, including women and children, and even Catholics, with the justification by the church that this serious heresy must be eliminated no matter what the consequences. Arnold Aimery, the Papal Legate at the siege of Beziers, ordered his men: "Show mercy neither to order, nor to age, nor to sex....Cathar or Catholic, Kill them all... God will know his own....". Catharism finally vanished from the stage of history by the end of the 14th century. But, since the final, fateful siege of Monsegur in 1244, the Cathars, and their memory, continue to fascinate many people today.
"Those who give up their freedom for security will have neither."
...but I'm not absolutely sure I have the wording right and am only about 90% sure it's Franklin.
There is also Niven's Fourth Law, put forth by science fiction grand master Larry Niven. Niven is a freedom-loving man (he put together an advisory group on SDI before they called it SDI or Star Wars) but his view is like "Franklin With A Twist"
"Niven's Fourth Law: F X S = k The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa."
Can you tell Larry's degree is in Math?
"Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness. A sincere love of peaceis no excuse for muddling hundreds of millions of humble folks into total war. The cheers of the weak, well-meaning assemblies soon cease to count. Doom marches on."
Churchill said this in March, 1936. The P.M. at the time scoffed at him. France did nothing to counter Germany's buildup. A few weeks later, Hitler took the Rhineland without opposition.
A little of both. I tutor a few university Military History and Journalism students. But I was a newspaperman on and off from 1970, and as a writer sometimes worked a few historical matters into some of my columns, so there was a professional interest beyond the two possibilities you suggest.
And any serious military affairs writer would be well advised to know tat least some of the details of old Blind Ziska, essentially the first field commander to maneuver tank formations.
-archy-/-
I wouldn't hold my breath...Unless she decides to write you up in a future column on suppression of all public debate. We could be getting our 15 minutes of fame real soon...
I suspect her staffers probably threw it in the trash before they finished.
More than likely. The amount of argument a lib can tolerate is inversely proportional to their distance from the political center.
So I'll resend them tonight.
Heh heh! Good idea! Just because you're using precision weapons doesn't mean there shouldn't be "repeated servicing of the target." Bomb her until she grows grey matter! Thanks for pointing out the quote lists, I'll be sure to take advantage of them.
STEEL RESOLVE -Mr. S.
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