A Word From Patrick And Paul

     Neither one of whom is a saint.  That is, I am not speaking of the estimable St. Patrick, nor am I speaking of the amazing St. Paul.

     I am thinking, rather, of Patrick Henry and Paul Craig Roberts, both of whom are fine men, Americans, and perhaps nothing more.  Nor less.

     In the generation of the American Revolution, two hundred and plenty years ago, the patriot Patrick Henry is quoted as having said:

    "The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

     Quite recently, Paul Craig Roberts -- who is not as well known, nor as well heeded as he should be, but he is very accessible right now -- said this:

     "Washington thinks nuclear war can be won and is planning for a first strike on Russia, and perhaps China, in order to prevent any challenge to Washington's world hegemony."

     Now you and I can do our own due diligence, and see for ourselves -- as well as we can, given the deceptions and obscurings that characterize our national experience (and which Patrick Henry, in the quote above, was considering) -- whether what Mr. Roberts is saying has a large and serious grain of truth to it, or not.  I, personally, think that it is far more than a grain, and this causes me to have a pretty intense degree of concern.  We have been here before, those of us who are older than fifty, in the era of nuclear hubris and irresponsibility that characterized our government during the 50s, 60s, and mid-70s.

    Those members of the Boomer and Buster generations who were attracted to the power, or to the personal license, that is offered to those placed highest in our government -- and yielded to that attraction without the advantage of any clear and honorable moral self-governance, or political intelligence, or common sense -- are a dangerous clan to have governing us, or our destiny.

     Have done with my rambling words.  William Butler Yeats says it better:


     The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

     Sadly, he was talking about the United States of America.  And tragically, we knew it not.  We always thought it was The Other Guys.  Not us.  Not U.S.