[Zeno]

Good post. I recalled about Andrew Jackson and his lust for Florida after I posted and thought, "I bet he will catch that one". You did.

I disagree that men, in general, are rational beings and submit that en masse or collectively as interacting separate groups and tribes, or individually, he can act quite mad and believe a host of imbecilic notions. See for example Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Since we disagree on so fundamental an issue we are at loggerheads. The rest is silence.

I take it from your comment "name one" that it is your contention that all people in power have nothing but self-serving interests and act on that principle alone. Correct me if I am wrong in this assumption.

The abuse of power, whether by state or private institutions all the way down to the intentional and/or unintentional abuse of power a father can hold over his children is well known and quite common and there is no known workable cure. For example Confucius thought ritual would work (among other concepts), but his tenants where misunderstood and/or abused by successive generations and formulated into orthodoxy, which deadens and destroys.

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Blah blah blah. The world is crystal clear when you bother to learn to look through the right lenses.


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These certainly are not the golden lenses of Joseph Smith - So which lenses are they?

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War is the health of the state

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And it gives people something to do with their lives that they believe gives life some meaning. Eminently useful indeed.

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They still seem like apologies and excuses to me.

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Perhaps purely from self-interest?

Beware of orthodoxy.

-Zeno