Dear E,
Thanks for your email.
It is harder for scallywags to "take over" when they are unorganized...
... and easier when political appeals are made with the unifying battle cry of "uncompromising principle."
When we compromise, we realize that shades of grey are more representative of "the people" than radical dichotomization of "black and white."
Matthew 5:
43-45 “You have heard that it used to be said, ‘You shall love your neighbour’, and ‘hate your enemy’, but I tell you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Heavenly Father. For he makes the sun rise upon evil men as well as good, and he sends his rain upon honest and dishonest men alike.
46-48 For if you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even tax-collectors do that! And if you exchange greetings only with your own circle, are you doing anything exceptional? Even the pagans do that much. No, you are to be perfect, like your Heavenly Father. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5&version=MSG (Alan: Increasingly, biblical exegetes consider the word "complete" a more accurate translation that "perfect.")
Lamentably, the emotional energy generated by manichaen separation of "Good" and "Evil" "feels" better and makes it easier to inflame political passion in ways that disguise America's anti-democratic theocratic impulse as "God blessed" patriotism.
Devout Christian, Blaise Pascal
"American Theocracy," By Kevin Phillips
The Newsroom: The Tea Party Is The American Taliban
If I never sent you (what may be) my favorite quotation, here it is:
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.
The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
More Merton Quotes
On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 9:17 AM, EK wrote:
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