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by Georgie Márquez-André August 22, 2005
LOG'IC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning justly. Logic is the art of using reason well in our inquiries after truth, and the communication of it to others. RA'TIONAL, a. Having reason or the faculty of reasoning; endowed with reason; opposed to irrational; as, man is a rational being; brutes are not rational animals.
(Definitions from Webster's 1828 Dictionary.
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The United States of America is an amazing country. I consider myself blessed to be able to live here.
Watch the evening news on TV, read any newspaper, and again and again, you will see people exercising the freedoms guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Young men and women, mostly conservative, swear allegiance to it, and willingly die, to defend the right of people whose views they don't believe in. In America today, leftist liberals mock conservatives who are fighting in foreign lands against an enemy that hates the code of conduct not of the soldier in the war front, but of the liberals at home. World events force us to take sides in arguments we would rather not have and many would like to ignore; issues of ethics, death, abortion, war...
And then there is the whole issue of OUR freedom, vs. THEIR freedom. What are our expectations of leaders in other countries? How about those who live in those countries? Does democracy give ethnic majorities the right to oppress, to steal, to destroy? Where do our freedoms end and theirs begin? And in a country based on a republican form of governemnt, what happens when those in power to represent us betray us/fall from grace/sin/lie...? Do we truly trust that the men and women in power today should have the power to define our tomorrow?
In Israel this week, the democratically elected government has ordered the native military forces to evict its own citizens from land many of their brothers and sisters have shed their blood to possess. They are being told to leave homes, gardens, community centers, neighborhoods and go to temporary shelters in an ever shrinking country. People who fled to this small strip of land on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean from a world that sought to annihilate them are now being dispossessed out of this very land by their own government. And in Iraq and Afghanistan, a small democracy struggles to rise up from the ashes, mired and burdened by centuries of mistrust (much of it warranted). All these different scenarios, events, conflicts are presented here not to start a discussion or debate but to challenge ALL of us to the reality that it is easy to take a stand on how we would solve these problems right now... but the real question needs to be: And then what?
Have a blessed week.
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