Today we need to reset our moral compasses. Greed is not good. Greed is one of religion's deadly sins for good reason. We all need to take a step back and realize what we have become. It is an ugly sight.
Our brain-dead tax and economic policies are backwards and regressive. The majority of this Nation's wealth is becoming concentrated in ever fewer hands and each year more people fall between the cracks.
If we can wake ourselves from the media mantra of selfishness and consumerism we will see that we are allowing our children's future to be stolen by the opulent minority.
Change is created first in our minds, then through our actions. The first step is to take a hard look at ourselves and see what we have become.
Today we collectively act as though this Nation's criminal invasion of the Sovereign Nation of Iraq was OK. We don't object to our government torturing people. We remain silent as our Presidents claim powers above all laws of this Nation and this World. The President claims the right to disappear or assassinate anyone. By the way, that does include you, me, and our children. This is a horrid legacy we are leaving or children.
We need to change our thinking and behavior. We need to realize that what goes around, comes around. If we accept vicious criminal behavior from our government, the day that viciousness visits us gets closer. Caring about others pays long term dividends, we need to realize this.
Today we have allowed ourselves to be sold the dark, empty socio-economic policies of greed and violence. Empathy is the key to change. Please invest a few minutes of your time to listen to sociologist Sam Richards sharing his insights on empathy.
"I call you my base: the haves and the have mores." ~ Geo. W. Bush
"There's class warfare, all right,but it 's my class, the rich class, thats making war, and we're winning"
~ Warren Buffet
" They only call it class warfare when we fight back" ~ Cindy Sheehan
"What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood." ~Aldous Huxley
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." - Thomas Paine
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." ~Sir Peter Ustinov
“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. ” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS." ~ Mohondas Gandhi
"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." ~Desmond Tutu
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed" ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower
The photographer who took this photo, Kevin Carter committed suicide about three months later, due to depression. According to the New York Times, where this picture first appeared, the little girl survived.
Here is a link to a NYT story about this tragic situation.
One image of tragedy resonates in two lives
"You just gotta look inside yourself and the eyes of your friends, and you'll find the secret of how to be a humanitarian. So, love to you." ~ Neil Young
