quote

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."--Ayn Rand

love this quote

"If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier."--Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress

great quote

"I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

--Al Gore

quote

"Success can eliminate as many options as failure"

--Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

great quote

"Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the earth"

--John Adams

painful John McCain quote

From Political Wire:

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need... I don't e-mail, I've never felt the particular need to e-mail."

-- Sen. John McCain, in an interview with the New York Times

Uhhh...if McCain cannot adapt to changes in technology and communication, I am wondering how he can be flexible enough to adapt to an ever-changing political climate. If you are too old and set in your ways to comprehend email, I don't want you in the Oval Office.

Climate quote

"Some people think that cutting carbon means denying ourselves the things that make life enjoyable - no shopping, no fun - but I see it differently.

Tackling climate change isn't about self-denial, it's about reinvention; reinventing towns and cities, redesigning the way they work, and changing the way we all manage our lives." (source)

could schizophrenia be entirely genetic?

Interesting read...but I still like to think of an old quote I once read that was used in reference to eating disorders, but applies wonderfully to all mental illnesses:

Genetics may load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.

great quote

"Truth is not a democratic construct, so the fact that the majority of Americans believe in something like angels has no bearing on whether angels actually exist."--Atheist Revolution

Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

I am going to quote Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (again) because, despite his flagrant sexism, he touches on core concepts that I believe:

The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth...An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, [s/]he does not have a fixed truth--truth to [her/]him is relative and changing; everything to [her/]him is relative and changing. [S/]he is a political relativist. [S/]he accepts the late Justice Learned Hand's statement that "the mark of a free [wo/]man is that ever-gnawing uncertainty as to whether or not [s/]he is right"...[S/]he must constantly examine life, including [her/]his own, to get some idea of what it is all about, and [s/]he must challenge and test [her/]his findings. Irreverence, essential to questioning, is a requisite. Curiosity becomes compulsive.
pg 10-11

Let me repeat my favorite part: the mark of a free [wo/]man is that ever-gnawing uncertainty as to whether or not [s/]he is right.

Similarly, Alinsky also talks about the well-integrated political schizoid:

What I am saying is that the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts--one part in the arena of action where [s/]he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead [her/]his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations, that is really is only a 10 per cent difference--and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well-organized person can split and stay together. But this is what an organizer must do. pg 78-79

I really appreciate the term political schizoid--this is exactly how I have felt about myself for quite some time. It is seemingly conflicting to know that you have strong beliefs, but at the same time to understand that there is no such thing as absolute truth. I believe the only way diversity can exist is if each individual and/or group recognizes that it does not hold the absolute truth, and in knowing this, dialogue replaces enforcement...progress replaces bigotry.

Again, although seemingly contradictory, I cannot engage respectfully with bigots...and in the haste with which I dismiss "possessors of truth," I myself become some sort of bigot.

So if there is no absolute truth, what the hell is the point of the discussion? I will quote another favorite passage:

If we think of the struggle as a climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the "real" top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.

Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, "Why struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?" Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when [s/]he is asked why [s/]he does what [s/]he does. "Because it's there." Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself to its challenges or huddles in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people do, fearing the adventure into the unknown. pg 21-22

The all-too-prevalent fear of uncertainty is upsetting to me--fear of uncertainty leads to God. Uncertainty must be re-framed; instead of frightening, it should be exciting. The mindset that the unknown forsakes preparation, stability and ultimately safety must be replaced with understandings that living life day-to-day promotes adventure, growth, and the countless opportunities that come with having no clear vision of the future.

Quote

"I know that all revolutions must have ideologies that spur them. That in the heat of conflict those ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth, and the keys to paradise, is tragic."

--Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Quote

"Gaining weight and pulling my head out of the toilet was the most political act I ever committed"--Abra Fortune Chernik

Impeachment

One of my boyfriend's favorite posters at a recent anti-war demonstration:

"Someone give Bush a bj so we can impeach him"

Sunglasses

To loosely quote Larry David,

Only two kinds of people wear sunglasses indoors: blind people and assholes

Quote

"It is not the consciousness of [wo/]men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness"--Karl Marx