Tapsearch Com EditorIndividuality can be communal
January 25th 2010 19:26
Liberalism wants to make everything one size fits all and the other side just waits to take advantages of their mistakes for the sake of profits
Below is an article by Tom Palaima which provides different interpretations of the 1950s and my comments are added at the bottom as someone being from the 1950s
It comes down to this - Liberals try to make one size fits all and in the process they actually annul diversity. It comes down to this if you want to change what the founders of our nation or any organized group sets down as their guiding principles, then call it something else and do not try to add or change what was formulated by the founders .
A review by Thomas Palaima about Going by the Book from The Austin - Texas - Statesman with Tom being a regular contributor
The books that political figures write tell us lots about their future ambitions.
Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" re-released in 2004 and "The Audacity of Hope," published two years later, were written with 2012 in mind. They turned out to be just as useful in 2008.
John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" (1955) won the Pulitzer Prize and in 1960 gave him a much-needed brand of statesmanlike wisdom beyond his years. Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" signals that her real ambitions lie outside the Fox News studios.
We ignore the books of politicians at our own risk. Their books give us both the sheep's clothing and the wolves'. The classic example is Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Hitler's rambling narrative later became prescribed reading for the youth of Germany and newlywed couples. But the fascism, hatred of Jews and intellectuals and grandiose dreams of personal power and German hegemony were all there well before Hitler actually became leader.
Of the candidates for Texas governor, only incumbent Rick Perry has gone author like Palin. Not surprisingly, she has endorsed Perry: "He walks the walk of a true conservative." Palin likes Perry's opposition to abortion rights and to using federal money for education in Texas or to help unemployed and uninsured Texans. We don't know how Palin feels about the words Perry writes. But we should take the time to find out how we feel about them.
Perry's book, "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For," came out in February 2008. Although classified as a book on parenting and families and the Boy Scouts, they are the sheep's clothing.
George W. Bush gave us an unending war on terror. Perry, according to his publisher, gives us "a culture war that rages close to the surface of American life." The book recounts in great detail what Perry calls "the left's attacks on the Boy Scouts of America" and "takes dead aim at the moral relativism of the secular humanist movement, indicting its corrosive impact."
Perry describes rural Texas in the 1950s as a simple, homogenous Garden of Eden, from which we were cast out in the 1960s. In his view, the '60s were a dark period of "sexual revolution, anti-Vietnam War activism and opposition to government authority" that brought about our current "overemphasis on individualism" and failure "to teach children right and wrong."
He does not consider that the authority we defied in the '60s cost 57,000 American lives in Southeast Asia, kept black Americans separate and unequal, kept women locked up as little homemakers, kept gays and lesbians in the closet and viewed free political speech and thought as un-American activities.
Perry puts "attacks on Scouts" in three main categories: girls and women, God and sexual orientation or gay rights. He admits it was good that the Boy Scouts finally permitted women into all adult leadership positions in February 1988. But he refuses to see what many scouting organizations in other countries have already seen: Having adults of all sexual orientations being openly and naturally who they are is healthy for the youngsters and teenagers who need to have nurturing role models for their own developing identities.
And there is also no harm in finding out that adults can behave reverently as scout leaders even if they doubt or deny the existence of God. I was an active and caring scout leader for eight years and kept my agnosticism in the closet.
Do read Perry's book. He thinks he is fighting a culture war. You might want to know how he is fighting it and which side he thinks you are on.
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________
Ray Tapajna's response to the above article - Living and thinking in the 1950s
I grew up during World War 2 and in the early 1950s. The 1960s were strange to someone like me. There was a brief span of time before the Korean War where many believed there would never be another limited war due to the atomic bomb. It was also a time when individuality was much stronger than any prejudices. The commual parts pushed by liberals was a turn off and as a young boy working in our family food store, I found that liberals knew nothing about business while the other side would take advantage of every liberal mistake to cut out competition and fair trade for the sake of profits.
In my high school days, all kinds of prejudices surface and I ignored most of them or found a way to quietly counter them. Our secular high school was not allowed to play Catholic school in sports. I flunked a history course because the teacher had prejudices about religions and nationalities and I countered him. I challenged our local state library about not having some philosophy books on the shelf or when they put a philosophy book in the religious section. There were no marches but quiet individual encounters. Our prejudices were conquered quickly by meeting an individual who took our eyes off the color of their skin or any other differences. The common statement would be - he's a good guy even though he is this or that. Judgements were broken down that way. Frankly, I do not know how deep, prejudices are in me and I don't think anyone really knows that part of themselves. In the 1950s, we were coming out of an era where the saying - there are no atheists in a fox hole ruled - and the extension of that meant you had to get along with the person that may save your life no matter who or what they are. We came out of the 1940s knowing this in our relations to others. When a young soldier lost his rifle and you noted how afraid they were about the possible consequences, you did not care what color or whatever, they were, you found their gun. It was all about communal survival . However, if you had to go on a combat patrol and select who you wanted and where to place them, everything counted in the decision making process.
There is no one size that fits all. Liberals in many segments of our life try to fit the same shoe on everyone's foot. I see a future where diversity really means diversity which means a total freedom to do your own thing according to your conscience. And Cardinal Newman - a convert to the Catholic church said - everyone must follow their conscience even if that conscience is ill informed. Liberals in all their writings seem to tell me something different. They seemed to want to command a communual conscience that all should obey. I think liberalism leads to totalitarianism in the end more than conservatism. Conservatives at least try harder to follow what the founders set up.
For me President Obama was trained to be a white Ivy League thinker with a "plantation owner" mentality. And someone like Pat Buchanan is more humble in his belief systems and I am still working to digest his most recent book about World War 1 and World War 2 never having to happen. He does not claim it to be history but I think it is. Less we forget, liberal Democrat presidents started both of these wars. The 1940s and 1950s conservatives of good will followed the policies of balancing of power rather than war. The bad ones of course found ways to make profits from war after the liberals started them.
And the Civil War was not about slavery even though both sides used the issue. The real issue was states rights over a powerful central government. The South was more in tune with diversity than the North. With globalization we see a new kind of centralization that is moving so fast that it breeds more evil than good. When things are decentralized in smaller capacities, social justice and the common good have more of a chance to rise above it all. I see a post globalization era coming where things will divide by the quality of their essence with human dignity in the workday growing and not being thrashed in a universal way. I see an era where the indivdual right to be born will be more in balance.
Things like the Boys Scouts is not something correctable in universal ways. Like everything else they must be loyal to their founders or call themselves by a different name.
( After more than ten years in my advocacy for human dignity in the work day and fair trade - and real world trade, I write about my journey in the global economic arena at It's time to tell my story of my journey in the global economic arena and also note Communications by Rank - The Unnetted- Workers having no voice in the process of globalization and free trade - Who caused so many to be missing in action from any kind of reporting?)
Cross of 9/11 Tangle of Terror - Who can untangle the terror globalization and free trade have bred by both poltical parties
Below is an article by Tom Palaima which provides different interpretations of the 1950s and my comments are added at the bottom as someone being from the 1950s
It comes down to this - Liberals try to make one size fits all and in the process they actually annul diversity. It comes down to this if you want to change what the founders of our nation or any organized group sets down as their guiding principles, then call it something else and do not try to add or change what was formulated by the founders .
A review by Thomas Palaima about Going by the Book from The Austin - Texas - Statesman with Tom being a regular contributor
The books that political figures write tell us lots about their future ambitions.
Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" re-released in 2004 and "The Audacity of Hope," published two years later, were written with 2012 in mind. They turned out to be just as useful in 2008.
John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" (1955) won the Pulitzer Prize and in 1960 gave him a much-needed brand of statesmanlike wisdom beyond his years. Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" signals that her real ambitions lie outside the Fox News studios.
We ignore the books of politicians at our own risk. Their books give us both the sheep's clothing and the wolves'. The classic example is Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Hitler's rambling narrative later became prescribed reading for the youth of Germany and newlywed couples. But the fascism, hatred of Jews and intellectuals and grandiose dreams of personal power and German hegemony were all there well before Hitler actually became leader.
Of the candidates for Texas governor, only incumbent Rick Perry has gone author like Palin. Not surprisingly, she has endorsed Perry: "He walks the walk of a true conservative." Palin likes Perry's opposition to abortion rights and to using federal money for education in Texas or to help unemployed and uninsured Texans. We don't know how Palin feels about the words Perry writes. But we should take the time to find out how we feel about them.
Perry's book, "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For," came out in February 2008. Although classified as a book on parenting and families and the Boy Scouts, they are the sheep's clothing.
George W. Bush gave us an unending war on terror. Perry, according to his publisher, gives us "a culture war that rages close to the surface of American life." The book recounts in great detail what Perry calls "the left's attacks on the Boy Scouts of America" and "takes dead aim at the moral relativism of the secular humanist movement, indicting its corrosive impact."
Perry describes rural Texas in the 1950s as a simple, homogenous Garden of Eden, from which we were cast out in the 1960s. In his view, the '60s were a dark period of "sexual revolution, anti-Vietnam War activism and opposition to government authority" that brought about our current "overemphasis on individualism" and failure "to teach children right and wrong."
He does not consider that the authority we defied in the '60s cost 57,000 American lives in Southeast Asia, kept black Americans separate and unequal, kept women locked up as little homemakers, kept gays and lesbians in the closet and viewed free political speech and thought as un-American activities.
Perry puts "attacks on Scouts" in three main categories: girls and women, God and sexual orientation or gay rights. He admits it was good that the Boy Scouts finally permitted women into all adult leadership positions in February 1988. But he refuses to see what many scouting organizations in other countries have already seen: Having adults of all sexual orientations being openly and naturally who they are is healthy for the youngsters and teenagers who need to have nurturing role models for their own developing identities.
And there is also no harm in finding out that adults can behave reverently as scout leaders even if they doubt or deny the existence of God. I was an active and caring scout leader for eight years and kept my agnosticism in the closet.
Do read Perry's book. He thinks he is fighting a culture war. You might want to know how he is fighting it and which side he thinks you are on.
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net
_____________________________ _____________________________ ____________
Ray Tapajna's response to the above article - Living and thinking in the 1950s
I grew up during World War 2 and in the early 1950s. The 1960s were strange to someone like me. There was a brief span of time before the Korean War where many believed there would never be another limited war due to the atomic bomb. It was also a time when individuality was much stronger than any prejudices. The commual parts pushed by liberals was a turn off and as a young boy working in our family food store, I found that liberals knew nothing about business while the other side would take advantage of every liberal mistake to cut out competition and fair trade for the sake of profits.
In my high school days, all kinds of prejudices surface and I ignored most of them or found a way to quietly counter them. Our secular high school was not allowed to play Catholic school in sports. I flunked a history course because the teacher had prejudices about religions and nationalities and I countered him. I challenged our local state library about not having some philosophy books on the shelf or when they put a philosophy book in the religious section. There were no marches but quiet individual encounters. Our prejudices were conquered quickly by meeting an individual who took our eyes off the color of their skin or any other differences. The common statement would be - he's a good guy even though he is this or that. Judgements were broken down that way. Frankly, I do not know how deep, prejudices are in me and I don't think anyone really knows that part of themselves. In the 1950s, we were coming out of an era where the saying - there are no atheists in a fox hole ruled - and the extension of that meant you had to get along with the person that may save your life no matter who or what they are. We came out of the 1940s knowing this in our relations to others. When a young soldier lost his rifle and you noted how afraid they were about the possible consequences, you did not care what color or whatever, they were, you found their gun. It was all about communal survival . However, if you had to go on a combat patrol and select who you wanted and where to place them, everything counted in the decision making process.
There is no one size that fits all. Liberals in many segments of our life try to fit the same shoe on everyone's foot. I see a future where diversity really means diversity which means a total freedom to do your own thing according to your conscience. And Cardinal Newman - a convert to the Catholic church said - everyone must follow their conscience even if that conscience is ill informed. Liberals in all their writings seem to tell me something different. They seemed to want to command a communual conscience that all should obey. I think liberalism leads to totalitarianism in the end more than conservatism. Conservatives at least try harder to follow what the founders set up.
For me President Obama was trained to be a white Ivy League thinker with a "plantation owner" mentality. And someone like Pat Buchanan is more humble in his belief systems and I am still working to digest his most recent book about World War 1 and World War 2 never having to happen. He does not claim it to be history but I think it is. Less we forget, liberal Democrat presidents started both of these wars. The 1940s and 1950s conservatives of good will followed the policies of balancing of power rather than war. The bad ones of course found ways to make profits from war after the liberals started them.
And the Civil War was not about slavery even though both sides used the issue. The real issue was states rights over a powerful central government. The South was more in tune with diversity than the North. With globalization we see a new kind of centralization that is moving so fast that it breeds more evil than good. When things are decentralized in smaller capacities, social justice and the common good have more of a chance to rise above it all. I see a post globalization era coming where things will divide by the quality of their essence with human dignity in the workday growing and not being thrashed in a universal way. I see an era where the indivdual right to be born will be more in balance.
Things like the Boys Scouts is not something correctable in universal ways. Like everything else they must be loyal to their founders or call themselves by a different name.
( After more than ten years in my advocacy for human dignity in the work day and fair trade - and real world trade, I write about my journey in the global economic arena at It's time to tell my story of my journey in the global economic arena and also note Communications by Rank - The Unnetted- Workers having no voice in the process of globalization and free trade - Who caused so many to be missing in action from any kind of reporting?)
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