[Grovenet] Interesting quotation

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

I think some things occur naturally in society, whether or not the
individuals involved ever read about them. That observation by Herbert Read
is one.

It occurs to me that those "conforming mediocrities" include not just the
people in public office in Washington who march to the beat of the
right-wing extremist drummers, but also those voters who cast their ballots
for them. 

The voters were exalted by the Constitution's "one person, one vote"
doctrine. They, in turn, exalted those now in office to their lofty
positions of power. 

If the Herbert Read you quoted was the English writer and poet Sir Herbert
Read, he had an example of idiocy to consider that transcends even the Iraq
war. He served in WWI. 

As much as I cringe at the destruction we've wreaked in Iraq and as much as
I've advocated success over failure, being reminded of WWI beings to mind
another possibility. If we had instituted a draft, if we had committed
millions of men to the effort, if we had insisted on limiting the engagement
to conventional weapons in the hands of conventional soldiers, we might have
drawn more Muslim states into the fight to defend their faith. We might have
repeated the scale, destruction and horrible waste of WWI.

We may have done so in any case but, by withdrawing from an open field of
battle in which millions might die in brutal but swift combat, we have
resigned ourselves to the same result spread out over decades of hatred,
terrorism and chaos in our future. In that respect the President and his
advisors may be right: if we don't spill the blood in the sands of Iraq, we
may spill it in the streets of America.

That is, unless we stop and accept that our whole means of protecting our
country over the past century is outdated and ineffective. There is no
longer any security in the way we pursue security for our nation. That was
the great lesson of 9/11.

Perhaps future generations of Americans, both our leaders and our voters,
finally will understand that war solves nothing. Einstein hoped that was the
lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It wasn't. Perhaps this is enough to tip
the balance and make people realize that no war is a success. War is nothing
more than a slicing open the body of humanity, hopefully to save lives over
time. Unless even greater effort is made to close and heal that wound, the
illness and infection will spread. 

We were smart enough to invest decades healing the wounds of WWII with
efforts like the Marshall plan and the formation of the United Nations. 

I wonder of we'll do that again.

Ron D'Eau Claire 



-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Steele, Mike
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 12:48 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: [Grovenet] Interesting quotation



Preparing for my class on Romantic Poetry today, I came across this line by
Herbert Read, in his essay on "Surrealism and the Romantic
Principle":

"...the exaltation of conforming mediocrities in every age into a position
of authority is a melancholy farce."

He wrote these words in 1936, before most members of the current
administration were born.

--Mike

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