Now The Conservatives Are Killing Our Teenagers

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The killing of this teenager in Florida is really affecting me perhaps because I see so much of myself as a teen in his last moments.  Remember being a teenager on a spring like day just walking in the rain smelling the sweet air celebrating life a life and future that stood before you like a shining city of hope where the whole world was your oyster.  There you are just walking in the rain with a bag of candy and an ice tea when suddenly a vigilante attacks you.  You screa

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Parade or Religious Procession

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The St. Patrick’s Day Parade took a new turn this week when this year’s grand marshal stated that the parade was about Irish culture “and religion,” making the parade into some type of religious procession throwing into doubt the legality of having public institutions march in a country where there is a separation of church and state.

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Of the Many, One

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I write these blogs not as the citizen of a world superpower but as an ordinary citizen of the world.  I don’t see a world mired in war but a future of peace and prosperity where national borders are seamless with all people sharing one roof.

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Direct Democracy Now

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The Capitol Building in Washington should be dismantled and a park filled with flowers built in its place.  Its halls are filled mostly with the moral misfits of the nation who without their jobs in Congress would be mopping floors in their local prison.

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We Will Fight No More Forever

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Thomas Cahill explains in Sailing the Wine Dark-Sea that in classical times there was a tension between the Greeks and their Roman overlords with the Greeks embittered by their lower status when compared to the Romans who were of an inferior culture.  On the other hand the Romans, though proud of their status as conquerors, tried to sooth the Greeks by adopting their culture wholesale.  It was sort of like the dichotomy that exists between Americans and the French and other Europeans.

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Our Swerve

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Reading The Swerve with spring still in the distance brings tears to my eyes.  The book is about the discovery of Lucretius’ poem, On the Nature of Things, and how it resulted in part in a swerve in the trajectory of history and the spring like birth of the Renaissance which one can experience with a trip to Florence where the dull minds of the Dark Ages fell to the power of human creativity and achievement.

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