Kindness transcends all (or should)

On being kind

A modern way to remind us of Plato's old quote: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Happy new year and all the best in it for you, family and friends.

Quote of the day

"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." -Plato

Quotes of the day--on reason to vote today

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

--Plato

Quote of the day--on reason to vote tomorrow

“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”

--Plato

On Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Fox "News, etc., etc.

"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."    --Plato

Why the gap between rich and poor matters in the US and the world

Don't think the tax rates on the wealthiest 1% should rise to that whopping 39% from where they are, by letting the George W. Bush Tax Cuts expire?  Then read on, McDuff:


First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us. 


The marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest it’s been in more than 80 years. Under President Dwight Eisenhower (who no one would have accused of being a radical) it was 91 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. Congress is even fighting over whether to end the temporary Bush tax cut for the rich and return them to the Clinton top tax of 39 percent.


The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.

We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.  --Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley


And so we're reminded, this from none other than Plato, all those centuries ago:  


"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."  

Link:  http://robertreich.org/post/1344561814

Plato knew a true, complete Libertarian bent can't work

"Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil."


But that's my take on him and this quote.


The flip side to this is that there can, in fact, be too much law and/or too much government, certainly:

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

What's really needed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the whole world

Plato had it right, of course:  "Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil."

Whether the topic is Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or Christine O'Donnell or Sarah Palin or the Tea Party or the Democrats or Republicans or whatever or whomever, what we need is awareness and information.  And I'm not talking Western indoctrination or influence.  I'm talking broad, intelligent, non-biased information and hard data.

Instead, we get this, today:

Iran has imposed new restrictions on 12 university social sciences deemed to be based on Western schools of thought and therefore incompatible with Islamic teachings, state radio reported Sunday.

The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran's conservative leadership — women's studies and human rights.

So this is what our American soldiers have died for and what our money is paying for--ignorance in Iran.  Terrific.

The United States of Perpetual War

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader."    — Plato

We need to get beyond this so our leaders can't manipulate situations and so we don't find ourself in a literal, perpetual state of war, which is where we seem to be right now. 

We're smarter than this. 

Or we should be, anyway. 


Again, enjoy your Sunday.

Plato on elections and politicians

“In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.”

So don't think our situation, ugly as it might be, is new to us.


And in the meantime, enjoy your Sunday.  It's another beautiful one out there.