I think all ya'll should look for a book by Colin Wilson called The Outsider. Its a study of people, mostly writers and their literary characters who are not at home in the world and with its values.
This precedes the first chapter (called Country of the Blind):
Broadbent: ... I find the world quite good enough for me - rather a jolly place, in fact.
Keegan (looking at him with quite wonder): You are satisfied?
Broadbent: As a reasonable man, yes. I see no evils in the world - except of course natural evils - that cannot be remedied by freedom, self goverment and English institutions. I think so, not because I am an Engishman, but as a matter of common sense.
Keegan: You feel at home in the world then?
Broadbent: Of course. Don't you.
Keegan (from the very depths of his nature): No.
Bernard Shaw: John Bull's Other Island, Act IV.
Perhaps we fail to fully realize our own conclusions that fools run the world and that we are force the be pulled through the effects of their follies, kicking and screaming. Why do fools run the world? Because they sell to the public the a cleaner world. Intellectuals have only questions, and the public thinks that this is a matter of a choice to be pessimisticly unentertaining. But, we know it to be a fact that there are no definite answers. Politians however sell these tidy world views to the publics because they are to shortsighted to realize effects of their ignorance (can't imagine why). When Mr. and Mrs. Amerikkka have opinions like ''I'm not a materialist, I just want the best for my family'' who do you think that they will vote for the politian with answers for the chaos of the world, or the intellectual who has concieted the fact that there are no answers and it no at home in the world's chaos or the nation-state's false sense of order?
So while waging war may seem like the best thing to do, we cannot hate those who oppose it as a matter of principle, because while they may have read too much Chomsky, they realize that in a world of linear conformists, there will be much opportunity to join the ignorant war-mongers should their cause suddenly appear redundant.
As fer TAK, I thought I was anti-war, but axiom's post changed my mind. I no longer oppose the war, because it may infact be needed. So I'll find a war the wage on my own, against my own enemy, my own war that does not divide the world between in only two parts, because to choose one of two armies in such a large and wonderful world is a waste of humanity.
But, then again, would it really be that bad if Saddam atacked the West?
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A scholar's ink lasts longer than a martyrs blood - Irish proverb
''One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.''
-Bertrand Russel
