The United States was a much greater nation than it is now. I say that because I think we've lost our way. This war we're in, the way we carry ourselves, it's not going in the best direction. That are millions of reasons why that is, and I've said it before, a major reason is the way we perceive capitalism. I'm no commi, but I think things have to improve. This two part interview with Benjamin R. Barber sounds very realistic to me. I suggest you watch it.
He does a very good job of saying that we the citizens are ultimately responsible of how we reward capitalism. We can make capitalism tend to our needs vs us tending to its needs with our never ending buy, buy, buy mentality.
Most people believe that the World Trade Center Towers collapsed because of the two airplanes that few into them.
I've seen lots of evidence showing otherwise. Below are the best explanations I've seen. I believe this was an inside job. Before some of you go off accusing me of being a conspiracy theorist, think about how the media has conditioned you to discount any skeptical information that is against what the government says is true by simply saying the words "Conspiracy Theory".
Here are some other great sources (Move your mouse over the thumbnails to see their titles)
As a homosexual atheist I admit I greet anything that makes the Christian Right look bad with open arms. So when Chris Hedges put the Christian Right in the same sentence with the word Fascist, my ears perked up.
This short interview with him on his new book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, is incredible. Their attempt to legislate their hatred towards scientific fact and homosexuality is just the beginning according to Chris.
I ran across this, this morning from Diana Walker's "The Bigger Picture".
They are laughing so hard that it makes me want to cry from joy.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON AND PRESIDENT BORIS YELTSIN - The two Presidents come out of Franklin Roosevelt’s Hyde Park estate to meet the press following a summit meeting on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, October 23, 1995. "This is when I’m howling. Yeltsin says to the press, ‘You think I’m ridiculous. You think we’re ridiculous. But you’re ridiculous!’ I was laughing so hard because Yeltsin loved a good laugh. And he was one of those politicians that could get away with saying something the rest of us could never say. Telling the American press and the world press they were ridiculous-he made them laugh about it, too. We were all laughing. That was Yeltsin’s special quality. He could do that." -Bill Clinton, 2002.
Is Jesus the Reason for the Season?: Many conservative evangelical Christians at this time of year want to “put Christ back in Christmas” and insist that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” With these slogans, they hope to remind people that Christmas is a Christian holiday and that without Christ, there would be no Christmas in the first place. Such Christians are offended that so many people enjoy the holidays without any reference to Jesus or Christianity and want it to stop. Unfortunately, they don’t have much of a case.
Pre-Christian Reasons for the Season: If Jesus is the Reason for the Season, why are so many aspects of the season pre-Christian and pagan? Christians took over the Decemer 25th Roman holiday of Natalis Solis Invicti, festival of the birth of the invincible sun, as well as Saturnalia. Christians took over German mid-winter festival celebrations which used evergreen trees and holly as symbols of eternal life. Where is Christ in all of this? How is Jesus the reason for the season of mid-winter festivals that pre-date Christianity?
Pagan Christmas Trees: The most central and recognizable symbol of Christmas today is the Christmas tree — and it has nothing to do with Christianity, Christ, or Jesus. It’s a purely pagan symbol taken from ancient German mid-winter festivals. Even if people hang religious ornaments on the tree, the hanging of ornaments is originally pagan, not Christian. The practice of cutting down trees and taking them home to decorate them with gold and silver is even condemned by God in the book of Jeremiah.
2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
Jesus is not the Reason for the Season: What is most mistaken, and even offensive, about the slogan “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” is that Christians are attempting to claim ownership of and priority over the entire holiday season, not just Christmas. There is, however, no reason to imagine that there would be no mid-winter holidays in the absence of Christ or Christianity.
Modern Christmas celebrations have little or nothing to do with Jesus, the Feast of the Nativity, or the Incarnation. Consider some popular Christmas traditions: erecting and decorating a tree, hanging wreaths, sending cards, drinking eggnog, giving presents, hanging mistletoe...where is Christ in all of this?
Thus we also have slogans about “putting Christ back into Christmas,” but it’s difficult to see how Christ was ever central to Christmas. When Christians celebrated it at all, it was about the nativity of Jesus, not the salvation from Christ. Today, even Jesus has receded into the background.
Our modern Christmas is a large number of ancient pagan practices, a few pieces of Christian traditions, and a large number of modern creations which are almost entirely secular in nature, no matter where they got their inspiration from. I see little room and little need for any “Christ” in all of this - but more importantly, I see little place where a “Christ” could be put back into the mix.
This is why Jesus is not the reason for the season for non-Christians. Whether non-Christians celebrate some form of Christmas or something else entirely, the reason for the season is whatever meaning they invest in their holiday — and that is up to them, not to Christians.
To put it simply, Christians who insist that Jesus is the reason for the season and that Christ needs to be “put back” into Christmas are seeking to assert their cultural superiority over everyone else. It’s yet one more example of attempts to reassert Christian privilege in an America that has moved on to religious pluralism.
