••can ye pass the acid test?••

ye who enter here be afraid, but do what ye must -- to defeat your fear ye must defy it.

& defeat it ye must, for only then can we begin to realize liberty & justice for all.

time bomb tick tock? nervous tic talk? war on war?

or just a blog crying in the wilderness, trying to make sense of it all, terror-fried by hate radio and FOX, the number of whose name is 666??? (coincidence?)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009



to use one of today's most overused phrases, "in the interest of full disclosure" i confess my first reaction was that it's a bit premature. i wondered what the nobel committee could have been thinking.

then i recalled that the process isn't over. obama won't get the prize in the mail. he'll have to go to oslo to pick it up, and while he's there he'll have to give a speech. not just any speech. the nobel lecture.

and what's he going to talk about? the weather? i don't think so. he'll likely commit himself to negotiation, disarmament, peacemaking, defending the environment, and some other things.

when he gets home he'll have to follow through on those commitments.

in other words, giving the peace prize to obama was a strategic move. it's meant to put gentle pressure on him to realize his potential.

not just him. us too. the president can't do much without the help of the american people.

think back: woodrow wilson won the peace prize in 1919. he didn't get it for winning the war. he got it for his peace plan.

the joker in the deck was that the republicans took over the senate earlier that year and held the majority till 1933. they refused to ratify membership in the league of nations. without american leadership the members of the league ignored many of wilson's proposed 14 points. they imposed harsh penalties that fractured germany's economy, bringing on the rise of hitler and a long period of instability culminating in depression, war, and genocide.

of course i'm oversimplifying, and i encourage everyone that hasn't already done so to look up the history of various countries during that period, but i don't think many of you would disagree with the oft-cited notion that failure to heed the lessons of the past predisposes us to make avoidable errors.

let's not repeat the mistakes of the 1920s.

let's get it right this time.

blessed are the peacemakers.

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