someone around here mentioned that Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisc,
was the only person searching for the truth…a couple of points,
Johnson is proof that some village in Wisconsin is missing its idiot…
secondly, Johnson wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and bit him…
but it brings up some points I have been meaning to go over…
it has been said that, I support X candidate because “they hold my values”…
as is clearly evident around ILP, that people have no idea what values are “their values”…
They say, I am “pro-life” and yet their beliefs are “anti-life”… If you support
the continuation of police brutality against the poor or people of color,
then you are not ''Pro-life"… if you support torture as a method of
getting information as to keeping a country ''safe", you are not “pro-life”
the use of violence against our fellow human beings is by its very nature,
“anti-life”…How can you say, I am "pro-life’’ if you condone violence
against other human beings? Who is the person around here who is
constantly talking about violence and hatred toward others and then
post a “Only Jesus Christ loves you” thread?
There are many here who need to undergo a “revaluation of values”…
as Nietzsche said, it isn’t enough to have the courage of ones values,
but the courage for an attack upon ones values… why am I a Christian?
Do I actually hold Christian values? and how would you know if you don’t
have some engagement, a daily engagement with your values?
Once again, let us use UR, as he is useful as a village idiot,
he clearly states, in virtually every post, that he hates liberals and
democrats… but is hate, is hate a Christian value? Well it depends upon
which Testament one uses… the Old Testament is clearly full of anger
and hate, the amount of violence in the Old Testament is rather stunning…
virtually every book of the Old Testament is a story of violence, of violence
between man and man, a people and a people, god against man…
From Cain and Abel to Samson to the book of Job, to Moses, each book contains
acts of violence of one sort or another…
The New Testament has much less violence in it…and the message changes,
from the reason for Man’s existence is to worship god in the Old Testament,
to an engagement with love… so which Testament should we hold to?
the old with all its violence or the new with its emphasis on love?
Now this question of “what values do we hold” should become,
“What values ought we to hold?” for the values we hold underline
our understanding of society, the government and the economics of
our times…Marx thought it was economics that was the substructure of
existence, but in fact, the substructure of existence lies in the values we
have and the values we ought to hold…
Capitalism holds a dim and nihilistic understanding of the values that drive
our actions…for in Capitalism, human beings are simple cogs in the machine
that used to drive what is really important in capitalism, that of the getting
and keeping profits… we human beings are simple a means to an ends…
everything we do or think about is viewed through the lens of Capitalism…
we can see this in every response or statement like this, “this road needs to be replaced”
and the capitalistic response is, “How much is that going to cost?” When we see everything
through the lens of “how much will it cost?” we see life through the lens of
Capitalism…we must expand our food programs to feed the homeless…
and in the Capitalistic eyes, we see the question, “How much will it cost?”
if we were truly, truly “Pro-life” then who cares how much it costs to
feed the homeless?.. the question of values lies in the emphasis one
puts on the question, if the emphasis is “we must expand our food programs
to feed the homeless” reflects the values one has, if the question is about
“how much will it cost?” and that reflects what values one holds…
if you answer with “how much will it cost?” you are not ''pro-life"
because being “pro-life” means it doesn’t matter how much it costs if
people are being fed, clothed, housed, educated, given health care…
the question is, becomes, do we value people, or do we value money?
If you value money, you are not “pro-life”…
for being “pro-life” means it doesn’t matter how much money something costs,
as long as people are being taken care of…
as I have made it quite clear, I am an Atheist… I make no bones about it…
but just as clearly is the fact that, UR for example, isn’t a Christian either…
but as I am engaged with values like love, hope, charity, peace, justice,
I am far closer to being a Christian then UR will ever be…because my values
are closer to Christian values…
and what about the society, government/state, economics of
existence? with what values shall we work out our understanding of
what it means to be human… in other words, if we have violent, hateful,
anger values like UR and gLOOM, that is the values they bring to the table in
regards to what is our society, government/state, the economics we have…
so they view our society, state and economics, with their values of hate,
anger, violence… and they cannot see anything beyond those negative values
whereas I see the society/government/state/economics in terms of the values
I hold, the values of love, peace, justice, charity… and “what is”, can become
“what ought to be” in terms of the values we hold…
I have no interest in the Marxist creation of a government/state where everyone is
a worker… because that isn’t the end of history, that is just the next/latest stage
of existence… there will be something after that… the question becomes, what will
be the next of human existence? What will be after the ‘‘worker state?’’
So I use my values of love, peace, justice, hope to create the next step in what
it means to be human…what will the society, government/state, the economics
of the society look like if we hold to these values? and not to the hateful, anger,
violent values of Capitalism?
So instead of using ism’s and ideologies to work out our society, government/state,
economics, we use our values of love, peace, hope, justice to work out
what our society, government/state, economics looks like…
Kropotkin