[quote]pushharder wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Nominal Prospect, thank you for standing up.
There are quite a few guys here who believe just that, black can be white, night is day etc. The more outrageous the claim the better.
You’re a hero just for getting your ass tortured in a dirty cell.
Dying in a foreign land, competely without sense or higher reason means serving your country and will make your parents proud.
A fictional person died thousands of years ago “for” your sins.
…
the list goes on and on
See the pattern?
Your ignorance is staggering.
They’re having a socialist tea party, Zap. A leninist and a fascist. They are simply adorable trying to hold their pinkies just right while gripping their cups and playing footsie under the table, aren’t they?[/quote]
Wrong. You are looking at the issue emotionally, whereas I’m looking at it rationally.
Statements such as, “John McCain has spent more time serving his country in Hanoi then Barack Obama has in the U.S. Senate”, with the attached implication of McCain being a better candidate than Obama, are naked emotional appeals.
One could hardly find a better example of how politicians attempt to influence the hearts and minds of the ignorant masses.
What is a rational person to make of such a statement? That should Barack Obama voluntarily spend some time in prison to “even the score?” A moment’s reflection should be enough to reveal the idiocy inherent to this line of thinking.
I’ve always believed that man’s tendency to attach reverential significance to certain groups merely for the circumstances of their birth is one of his greatest follies.
For instance, if you were born in this country in the 1920’s, odds are high that you played a role in the global conflict known as World War II. Some people seem to think that any member of this, so-called, “Greatest Generation”, is a hero merely due to having been born at that time.
They don’t express their admiration in those terms, but that’s what it boils down to, at the core.
The above is NOT what true heroism is about. Heroism has nothing to do with blind luck or fate, but the opposite, in fact.
The “greatest generation” no doubt had its share of cowards, pedophiles, swindlers, traitors, liars, and criminals…just the same as every other generation. To believe otherwise is to abandon all reason in favor of fervent mythology.
There are true heroes and then there are “public heroes”. The latter are far more common while the former are usually maligned, mistreated and misunderstood by their contemporaries. Their extraordinary achievements are, far more often than not, left to be discovered by future generations.
Public Heroes must be cheap because they need to be conjured at will to satisfy the emotional whims of the vulgar masses. This has been true throughout the ages. The movie Gladiator comes to mind.
Awards like the Purple Heart are given out so non-discriminately that they have lost all distinction. I shake my head in disgust when I read about the supposed “heroic deeds” of recipients of such awards.
The real test of McCain’s achievements is whether anyone will still be talking about them after he and the remainder of his generation have died out.
The answer is, of course, no. He’s a completely unremarkable man in the greater context of history. For as long as there has been war, there have been - and will continue to be - prisoners of war.
Nor is there anything noteworthy about the nature of his ordeal - the concept torture is hardly new to the history books. In the final analysis, his “story” and others like it will be completely irrelevant once the emotional strings that tie him to members of his own generation have been severed by the hand of time.
There is the age old question: To be well known and loved in life, only to be forgotten in death…or the opposite?
John McCain choose to make a personal sacrifice for a cause. This action cannot be considered valiant because it is so commonplace. For his sake, I hope he thought it was worth it. For better or worse, everyone has their own cause. You only have one life to give away, so you’d better choose well.
Even in darkest Africa, one must assume that each village of primitives carries with it its own traditions, rites and heroes. The area encompassing John McCain’s “village” is far larger than that of any an African tribesman, but each of them will be irrelevant 150 years from now.
Leaving a mark on posterity often requires one to renounce the petty squabbles of his contemporaries, to rebel against the “Tyranny of the Living”.
And so, that is why only dead men can be called saints.
The study of history is regarded as a cold, rigorous discipline because few people are able to get worked up over events which transpired long before they were born.
But what is the present if not history in the making?
Consequently, the same logical analysis must be applied to the present as to the past.
That is where most people fail. They are too weak to do it. It takes a lot of courage to give up one’s emotional attachments and embrace cold, harsh reality.
Lastly, you greatly diminish the credibility of your argument by labeling me a socialist. I’m the most conservative member of this board. My brand of conservatism pre-dates the French Revolution and embraces the old European aristocracy. I’m a self-avowed monarchist. One cannot possibly get any more conservative than that.