This theological insight gets to the root of it. It is the very antithesis of the “I-thou” relationship in which individuals cherish their own and each other’s uniqueness as bearers of the imago Dei.

Demonic possession is the condition in which individuals gives themselves entirely over to being completely managed and utilized by an outside entity. Totalitarian ideologies aim for this end on an industrial scale.

I never intended that what I wrote should apply to you personally. You strike me very much as one who does his own thinking and could not care less about the herd.

By the way, referring to “Over the last 5 years it is obvious that we are no longer a republic,” I (reluctantly) agree!

It is the banal evil that can live next door looking like everyone else at the supermarket.

As I’ve said before, it’s a sobering thought that 52% of the people I see at the supermarket would just as soon kill me and confiscate my property, and think nothing of it. It’s only fair, since I have more then they do.

I can only speak for me, not anyone else ‘right or left’. I stand with me and mine; brothers, sister, my children, grandchildren, cousins, nieces, nephews, and my close friends and a few of my neighbors. I do not look beyond this ‘clan’ for affirmation. I care not for anything that issues forth from DC, Des Moines, Sacramento, Albany, Tehran, London, Berlin, Moscow or elsewhere.

We are islands attempting to communicate, successfully or not with other islands. Over the last 5 years it is obvious that we are no longer a republic. RIP Ben Franklin.

If they teach people to call a circle something else; it didn’t change much. The problem is if people no longer see a circle (ah la 2+2=?)…

Ahmadinejad hasn’t yet earned his deserved place in pantheon of evil. Not for lack of trying though.A procession of Islamic leaders before him, have frankly admitted desire to wipe Israel off the map.Ahmadinejad is only the latest, but not the last of them.

A qualified Muslim jurist,Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who doubled as president and armed forces boss of the IRI, in a patrimonial comment aimed at global Muslim community once intoned:fulfill your destiny! actively reach for the know how, the manufacture, and the means of delivering the A-Bomb.

The Ayatollah then gave a surreal calculus reminiscent of one delivered by George C Scott’s SAC general Buck Turgidson in the movie Dr. Strangelove:

“If Israel should attack the Muslim community using her nuclear arsenal, she may kill 50 million Muslim, 75 million tops!. The numbers favor Muslim community which will survive the trauma. But if we Muslims successfully nuke Israel only once, Israel and the Jews cannot survive the outcome, Allah Be Praised.”

The movie and the general were fantasy. Rafsanjani then and Ahmadinejad now are reality.

Many Americans would protest with an Awwwww, Come on!. If you are one of those Americans who chooses to laugh off the absurd scenario of a similar “Islamic bomb” attack on the great Satan USA, here is food for thought. True, we Americans can, in a blink of an eye, turn Iranian plateau into a sea of radioactive glass and true, the Mullahs are well aware of what we can do to them.But keep this in mind: The Messianic Muslim preachers would welcome that possibility.Mutual death and destruction for Muslim preachers are incentives not deterrents.

Evil?!

Sez M J R, what you describe is an ^attribute^ of evil (there are others, no?) rather than a ^definition^ of evil. But who’s counting? [smile]

parker, 8:24 pm — “This is the heart and soul of the left, they do not want to be independent of the herd. The herd is everything to them. As long as they are surrounded by the herd they know they are ‘right’ with Gaia. They are incapable of independent thought.”

I just hope and pray that nothing analogous applies to my (our) side. ‘Cause I’ve known right-leaning people who never struck me as people who ^really^ thought for themselves, but who did have a favored world-view (rightie) and needed emotional support from other righties. Not that that’s evil [so to speak — see above [smile]], but I do not see that righties are uniformly given to independent thought.

This is the heart and soul of the left, they do not want to be independent of the herd. The herd is everything to them. As long as they are surrounded by the herd they know they are ‘right’ with Gaia. They are incapable of independent thought. They are the ones who mindlessly, via the barrel of a gun, herd the ‘others” into the cattle cars destined to the ovens.