>
> The Sandy Foundation of the White House
>
> Jeff Taylor, CounterPunch
> "Every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like
> a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the
> floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell;
> and great was the fall of it."
> --Jesus Christ (Mt. 7:26-27)
> It's easy to ridicule and condemn Bush Republicans for their "crazy
> religious fanaticism" if you do not share their theology. It's harder to
> take these Americans seriously on their own terms, but it is more fair and
> less snobbish to do so. You also have more of a chance to engage the minds
> of Bush admirers if you treat them with respect and share their biblical
> perspective. Unfortunately, they are likely to dismiss out-of-hand any
> criticism of Bush coming from someone who is an atheist, agnostic, new ager,
> or mushy mainstream Protestant. By definition, such critics are spiritually
> and intellectually untrustworthy. I don't fall into any of those categories.
> I am an evangelical: a Bible-believing Christian who accepts the Garden of
> Eden, Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Fish, Water into Wine, the Empty Tomb,
> and the Second Coming.
>
> I became a "born-again Christian" in 1978 while in high school. This was
> several years after becoming a conservative Republican activist. Conversion
> changed my life dramatically, but, at first, my politics did not seem to be
> affected. Imitating the evangelical teachers I listened to at the time, I
> used the Bible to "prove" divine sanction of conservative policy positions.
> Christianity and conservatism seemed to be natural allies. But it wasn't too
> long before I began having doubts about changing the world through political
> means and about the Christianness of conservatism.
>
>
>
> I began thinking that the world could best be changed by converting
> individuals rather than by electing candidates or passing legislation. And I
> could see that the materialism and militarism of conservatism were not
> compatible with pure Christianity. Ironically, I was getting out of politics
> about the time Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority were plunging in. In
> 1984, I was still in my dispensationalist-flavored anarchist mode and I did
> not vote to reelect Reagan. Soon after, I discovered William Jennings Bryan,
> Robert La Follette, the Populist Party, the New Left, and the Green Party.
> Such moralistic politics were compatible with--although not identical to--my
> deepest beliefs. At the same time, I've never lost my respect for a certain
> sort of American conservatism or my conviction that electoral politics is
> not the only way or even the best way to make a difference in life.
>
> The White House has been under the titular leadership of George W. Bush
> since January 2001. Bush entered office with a reputation as a
> Bible-believing Christian, an honest man, and an opponent of overseas
> nation-building, so many conservatives in the Taft-Goldwater-Reagan
> tradition had some hope for his administration even if he had not been their
> first choice for president. Unfortunately, the political, ethical, and human
> consequences of this White House have been catastrophic. In some ways, they
> have been far more harmful than any tsunami or hurricane. Ironically, most
> of this harm comes from a faulty spiritual foundation. It is ironic because
> Bush's spirituality is seen by many of his admirers as his greatest
> strength. In fact, it is a major weakness.
>
> Faulty understanding of Scripture is sometimes worse than no knowledge at
> all. In the words of Henry Wheeler Shaw, "It is better to know nothing than
> to know what ain't so." Used incorrectly, religion can be the last refuge of
> scoundrels and even well-meaning zealots have been known to do great harm to
> their neighbors (not to mention to the reputation of God). The example of
> the Pharisees comes to mind. President Bush and his strongest supporters are
> confident of their own righteousness as they pray on street corners and
> invoke the name of God amid even the basest political endeavors. It does not
> stretch the imagination very far to hear them on Judgment Day saying, "Lord,
> Lord, did we not serve the corporate sector in your name, and wage war in
> your name, and do many mighty works in your name?" But self-deluded claims
> do not make it so and we can assume that these acts have been committed
> without any divine sanction. Given the spiritual necessity of bearing good
> fruit and given Christ's opposition to greed and war, it is likely that some
> of these professing Christians will be told, "I never knew you; depart from
> me, you evildoers" (Mt. 7:15-23).
>
> George W. Bush has routinely thrown around the word "evil" to describe
> everything that stands in opposition to his will. By the standards of Jesus
> Christ's words recorded in the book of Matthew, a case could be made that
> Bush himself is an evildoer. The problem with Bush is not that he is too
> Christian but rather not Christian enough. An historical comparison helps to
> make this clear. One hundred years ago, William Jennings Bryan was the
> leader of the national Democratic Party. The year 2008 will mark the
> centennial of the last of his three campaigns for the White House as the
> Democratic nominee. Bryan was an interesting blend of liberal ideology and
> conservative theology. Following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, Bryan
> was a populist who promoted democracy above all other American values. As a
> Christian, he practiced moralistic politics, with biblical references and
> spiritual emphases. Bryan's serious embrace of Christianity meant that he
> was out-of-step with the political and economic elites of his day. This was
> true both within his own party and also with Republicans of the William
> McKinley sort. Incidentally, McKinley was also a professing Christian, but
> he relied on ruthlessly practical advisors and his faith played out in the
> public sphere in ways very different from that of Bryan. Karl Rove has
> correctly compared Bush to McKinley and himself to Mark Hanna.
>
> The social and moral "wedge issues" so hotly debated today were largely
> absent a century ago because there was greater cultural homogeneity. We know
> that Bryan was a supporter of creationism and an opponent of teaching
> evolution as fact in public schools. There is no reason to think he would be
> any different if he were alive today. His position was grounded not only in
> theology, but also in ideology and social ethics. He was committed to
> democracy and decentralization so he would likely support the right of
> parents in local school districts to decide what is taught to their
> children. As Stephen Jay Gould points out in his perceptive November 1987
> article in Natural History, Bryan disliked the survival-of-the-fittest
> concomitant of Darwinism, which he linked to Nietzsche and militarism. With
> his populist instincts and near-pacifism, Bryan would probably be pro-life
> on the abortion issue today. He would likely support traditional marriage
> and oppose same-sex marriage. Most modern progressives object to these
> stances but it must be acknowledged that populists tend to hold traditional
> views on such questions. It was true of most Bryan Democrats, La Follette
> Republicans, and Debs Socialists a century ago and it remains true today for
> millions of "otherwise-progressive" working-class and African American
> Democrats. Secularism, abortion rights, and gay rights are relatively recent
> additions to the canon of the Left.
>
> In terms of his stance on latter-day cultural issues, his Christian
> reputation, and the snobbish attitude toward his supporters by academic and
> journalistic elites, W.J. Bryan bears some resemblance to G.W. Bush. There
> are some crucial differences, however. Bryan's campaign speeches were
> translated into actual policy within reach of the Democratic Party. Under
> Bush, the Republican Party gives social conservatives promises while it
> gives economic conservatives action. Rhetoric is not reality, but with no
> modern-day Bryan in the Democratic Party and with smaller parties having
> little chance to win, grassroots Republicans have contented themselves with
> lip service and crumbs from the table. The Religious Right acts as a
> handmaiden for Wall Street even though the dominant wing of the GOP has
> never had any intention of fulfilling the "wish list" of conservative
> Christians (e.g., school prayer, overturning Roe, federal marriage
> amendment). It is a case of cynical exploitation and it is facilitated by
> unprincipled religious leaders.
>
> Bryan's vision of Christian statesmanship was more robust than is Bush's
> vision. Following the words of Christ and the writings of Jefferson, Bryan
> stood squarely against the idolatrous worship of Mammon so predominant
> during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. In practical terms, this meant he
> opposed materialistic philosophy, monopolistic corporations, and
> international investment banks. The Rockefellers of his day were political
> enemies, as they successively sponsored McKinley, W.H. Taft, Hughes, and
> Harding (business rival J.P. Morgan & Co. had its hand in both parties). The
> Rockefellers of our era have been closely allied with the House of Bush,
> from the days of international banker Prescott Bush to our own day with
> Secretary of State Rice, who is a protégé of Standard Oil heir George Pratt
> Shultz and a director of Rockefeller-dominated Chevron Oil. It is for good
> reason that Bush is known as a virtual puppet of Wall Street and the Fortune
> 500. Again, following the example and thought of Christ and Jefferson, Bryan
> was an advocate of peace. His preference for nonviolence and his patriotic
> nationalism largely inoculated him against the jingoistic and messianic
> appeal of imperialists-cum-internationalists. As a colonel in command of a
> regiment, Bryan turned against the Spanish-American War while it was still
> occurring, telling President McKinley to his face that Nebraskans "did not
> volunteer to attempt to subjugate other peoples, or establish United States
> sovereignty elsewhere." As Secretary of State in the Wilson administration,
> he resigned to protest the machinations that eventually pulled the U.S. into
> World War I. In contrast, Bush admires lover-of-war Theodore Roosevelt and
> uses Orwellian "war is peace" language, thereby setting aside not only the
> Jeffersonian tradition but also the Sermon on the Mount.
>
> It has become increasingly clear that the war in Iraq was built on deceit.
> Overestimating the threat posed by the Iraqi regime was not a result of
> "faulty intelligence." It was a result of "cooked intelligence," Democratic
> complicity, and Republican lying. Specifically, Bush, Cheney, and others
> lied about Saddam Hussein's link to al-Qaida and about his ability to
> destroy American cities with WMDs. As a result of disclosures during the
> past two years, Bush's reputation for integrity has taken a hit. Even among
> those who voted to reelect him, he is widely seen as just another dishonest
> politician. From persisting in his support for free-silver after it proved
> to be a losing issue to serving grape juice at State Department functions to
> going to Dayton, Tennessee, to stand up for the "yokels" at the Scopes
> trial, Bryan was a man with a well-deserved reputation for saying what he
> believed to be true and for being true to those beliefs, in season and out.
>
> It is interesting to compare the personal demeanor of Bryan and Bush.
> Despite his status as a congressman, three-time presidential nominee, and
> highest cabinet officer, Bryan was known even by his opponents as a polite
> and modest man. Bush, on the other hand, is known for his frat-boy smirk,
> his arrogant swagger, and his ill-tempered inability to admit any mistake or
> hear any criticism. Deep in his heart, Bush may be a genuine Christian, but
> if so he appears to be an immature and worldly Christian hardly worthy of
> emulation by brothers and sisters in Christ. A tree is known by its fruits.
> Bush is not a deep thinker, nor is he a hands-on executive. He has delegated
> great responsibility to three men in his administration: Karl Rove, Richard
> Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. None of the three are known to be devout
> Christians and none of the three have deep roots in the conservative
> movement of Taft, Goldwater, Ashbrook, Reagan, Schlafly, Helms, and
> Buchanan. In a chronicle of the 1968 presidential election, Congressman
> Rumsfeld is identified as the only "liberal" in a room of 22 Republicans
> gathered to help Nixon choose a running mate (Chester, Hodgson, and Page, An
> American Melodrama, 486). Congressman Cheney was invited to join the elite
> Council on Foreign Relations, something he did not mention to his
> unsophisticated constituents back in Wyoming. Rumsfeld and Cheney were top
> aides in the Ford-Rockefeller administration that was challenged by Governor
> Reagan in 1976. They have never been "Reagan Republicans" and they have
> never cared about the issues that motivate those who are. Rove seems to be a
> practitioner of power with secular concerns and methods having little in
> common--and much in opposition--to the teachings of the New Testament.
>
> The practical men of the Bush administration heavily rely on the thinking of
> neoconservatives. Neoconservatism is like a bad penny that keeps showing up
> at the most inopportune moments or a deadly virus that spreads from host to
> host. As "New Deal statism" and "Cold War liberalism," it was the enemy of
> Senator Robert Taft and his conservative allies (many of whom were old-style
> liberals in the Bryan-La Follette tradition). In 1964, it undergirded the
> Johnson-Humphrey ticket as it crushed Senator Barry Goldwater's
> anti-establishment campaign. Supporters of Humphrey (D-MN) and Senator Henry
> Jackson (D-WA) helped to sink the general election campaign of Senator
> George McGovern (D-SD) partly because his isolationist "Come Home, America"
> appeal clashed with their imperialism. Hubert H. Humphrey died in 1978, but,
> strangely enough, he lives again through George W. Bush. Bush's policies,
> both domestic and foreign, have a distinctly Humphreyite flavor to them. No
> domestic issue is too remote from Washington's reach. No budget is too
> large. No violent international crusade is too expensive (in dollars or
> lives). This is "neoconservatism"...although it is as old as Woodrow Wilson
> and as un-conservative as Leon Trotsky. Neoconservatives who did not migrate
> to the Republican Party in the 1980s became known as "New Democrats." The
> Humphrey tradition is going strong within its original party as demonstrated
> by the Clintons, Gore, Lieberman, and the Democratic Leadership Council.
>
> During a televised GOP debate in 1999, Governor Bush declared that Christ is
> his "favorite political philosopher." Media pundits guffawed, but Bush's
> intended audience heard the message and liked it. Politically naive, they
> took the candidate's words at face value even though Bush was saying what he
> knew many Iowa Republicans wanted to hear. President Bush has been guided by
> those whose thought bears little resemblance to the philosophy of Christ as
> expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Bryan's biggest contemporary influence
> when it came to foreign policy was philosopher Leo Tolstoy (an advocate of
> Christian anarcho-pacifism). For Humphrey, it was political scientists Evron
> Kirkpatrick and Max Kampelman (incipient neoconservatives). In the case of
> Bush or his handlers, it might be historian Michael Ledeen, a
> neoconservative whose influence in Washington far exceeds his national fame.
> Like Kirkpatrick, Ledeen has been a resident scholar at the American
> Enterprise Institute (the intellectual voice of Corporate America). He is an
> expert on, and appears to be an aficionado of, Italian power-politics.
> Ledeen admires Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli had a cynical, dishonest
> approach to statecraft. It was realistic but un-Christlike. He championed
> the virtues of ancient paganism: power, militarism, and fame. He possessed a
> utilitarian view of religion. For him, Christianity was to be put into
> service of the state for military might and earthly glory.
>
> Ledeen is scholar of Italian fascism. A line of ideological descent can be
> traced from the Jacobins of France to the Carbonari of Italy to the League
> of the Just in France to the Communist League in England to the Bolsheviks
> of Russia and the Fascists of Italy. They shared a materialistic, elitist,
> violent, and revolutionary mindset. Ledeen has written, "Change--above all
> violent change--is the essence of human history" (Machiavelli on Modern
> Leadership, 3). He apparently sees this as a good thing. This philosophy is
> the antithesis of Taftian conservatism and the pacifism of Jesus. Following
> Machiavelli, Ledeen paints a dark picture of human nature but glorifies that
> ethical and moral darkness. Natural drives for power, wealth, and violence
> are to be harnessed for good ends--not denounced as evil.
>
> Referring to the United States of America, Ledeen writes,
> Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and
> abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science,
> literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our
> enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which
> menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their
> inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear
> us, for they do not wish to be undone....They must attack us in order to
> survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. (The
> War Against the Terror Masters, 212-13)
> Ledeen's philosophy appears to be neither traditionally American nor
> Christian. It is principally Italian and pagan. This is not conservatism. It
> is a variety of Jacobinism or "scientific" Socialism. It has little to do
> with national defense or even the American people per se. Instead, there are
> forces of history driving our government inexorably forward toward violent
> global revolution.
>
> Ledeen does not claim to be an orthodox Christian, but it is strange that
> his intellectual influence is so great within the administration of a man
> who does. In the Christian tradition, human beings are not pieces on a
> chessboard or in a Risk game. Individual human lives created by God are more
> important than abstractions. In the U2 song "Peace on Earth," after listing
> some names of those killed through political violence in Ireland, Bono
> concludes, "Their lives are bigger than any big idea" (All That You Can't
> Leave Behind). He does not identify the dead as Catholic or Protestant. It
> doesn't matter what "side" they were on. The point is, Individuals are are
> ultimately more valuable than any abstraction, no matter how noble in
> theory. When it comes to human conflict, this is the Christian perspective.
> Jesus tells us that not one sparrow falls to the ground without being
> noticed by God and that each human is of far more value than a sparrow (Mt.
> 10:29-31; Lk. 12:6-7). He teaches that the Sabbath was made for Man, not Man
> for the Sabbath (Mk. 2:23-28). If we wish to follow Christ, we must turn the
> other cheek and love our enemies (Mt. 5:38-48). When one of Jesus' disciples
> cut off the ear of an enemy in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord told him
> to put away his sword, warned that those who live by the sword will die by
> the sword, and healed the ear (Mt. 26:51-52; Lk. 22:49-51). Paul reinforces
> the synoptic Gospels by writing that the weapons of our warfare are
> spiritual not worldly (II Cor. 10:3-4; Eph. 6:10-18).
>
> Individuals have inherent worth because despite their fallen nature and the
> guilt coming from personal sins they have been created by God in His image,
> they have free wills, they are eternal souls, and each is unique. As C.S.
> Lewis has commented in regard to literature, "...[T]he Christian knows from
> the outset that the salvation of a single soul is more important than the
> production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world"
> (Christian Reflections, 10). William Law, a much earlier Anglican, touches
> on this while addressing the evils of war:
> Look now at warring Christendom, what smallest drop of pity towards
> sinners is to be found in it? Or how could a spirit all hellish more fully
> contrive and hasten their destruction? It stirs up and kindles every passion
> of fallen nature that is contrary to the all-humble, all-meek, all-loving,
> all-forgiving, all-saving Spirit of Christ. It unites, it drives and compels
> nameless numbers of unconverted sinners to fall, murdering and murdered
> among flashes of fire with the wrath and swiftness of lightning, into a fire
> infinitely worse than that in which they died. (Stephen Hobhouse, William
> Law and Eighteenth Century Quakerism, 338-39)
> When Bush listens to Christian thinkers, he turns to men like historian
> Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition executive director-turned-political
> consultant and Georgia politician. Reed advised Bush's 2000 campaign and was
> a regional chair in 2004. Reed is the kind of Christian whose company
> receives millions of dollars from gambling interests but claims he did not
> know the source of the money when it becomes public knowledge. He has
> recently been revealed as a co-star in the corrupt political constellation
> of the notorious Jack Abramoff. Rev. Pat Robertson, Reed's former patron at
> the Christian Coalition, was quoted by the New York Times as making a
> surprisingly astute comment: "You know that song about the Rhinestone
> Cowboy, 'There's been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.' The
> Bible says you can't serve God and Mammon" (Kirkpatrick and Shenon, "Ralph
> Reed's Zeal for Lobbying is Shaking His Political Faithful," New York Times,
> April 18, 2005, 1).
>
> Abramoff's partner in the lobbying firm that subcontracted Reed privately
> referred to the God-fearing people Reed was reaching with his anti-gambling
> message--in order to preserve it as a monopoly for the tribal-casino
> client--as "wackos." This lobbyist is also a former top aide to crooked
> House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Such cynical manipulation and disparaging
> remarks are suggestive of the real attitude of many Republican leaders
> toward conservative Americans who take their Christian faith seriously. From
> the perspective of the politically powerful, they comprise a religious
> rabble that is ripe for exploitation. As a lobbyist, Reed discreetly worked
> to defeat the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act in 2000. As an ambitious
> politician, Reed now openly supports the Georgia state lottery. As a
> hireling of the Business Roundtable, Reed worked to ensure Most Favored
> Nation status for Communist China in 1998, despite that regime's policy of
> forced abortion and persecution of Christians who refuse to join
> state-sponsored churches. Michael Ledeen and Ralph Reed represent two
> distinct but allied intellectual groupings within the GOP: "conservatives"
> of the Humphrey-Jackson variety and evangelical Christians of a compromised
> variety. They are united by a thirst for political power and a subservience
> to big money.
>
> Indulging in a bit of fantasy, can we imagine more wholesome spiritual and
> intellectual influences for Bush? The quick answer is: Pick anybody at
> random on the street and she or he would be a big improvement over the
> status quo. Being more serious, there's no point in thinking about Gore
> Vidal, Noam Chomsky, or Gabriel Kolko because Bush is a self-proclaimed
> "conservative Christian" and the trust of his religious admirers can be
> stretched only so far. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist and
> chronicler of Soviet gulags, is living back home but presumably he's still
> available for consultation so let's consider him for a moment. Solzhenitsyn
> is no pacifist or anarchist. He is closer to Dostoyevsky than Tolstoy in his
> political philosophy. If the Bush administration were guided by someone like
> Solzhenitsyn rather than Ledeen and Reed, it would be more genuinely
> Christian and truly conservative. Like Bryan, Solzhenitsyn favors moralistic
> politics and he rejects materialism and atheistic humanism.
>
> In his famous June 1978 commencement address at Harvard, he said some things
> that would resonate with Bush Republicans--notably his condemnation of
> terrorists and criticism of the press--but other parts of his speech might
> serve as a corrective to current public policy. He would likely disapprove
> of the ongoing coddling of the Chinese Communists for the sake of
> transnational corporations ("a doomed alliance with Evil"). He would likely
> disapprove of the neoconservative effort to forcibly remake the world in our
> own image ("...the [imperial] blindness of superiority continues in spite of
> all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should
> develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems..."). He
> would likely disapprove of the corporate subservience of Republican and
> Democratic leaders: "We have placed too much hope in political and social
> reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious
> possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings
> and machinations of the ruling [Communist] party. In the West, commercial
> interests tend to suffocate it." And in warning against "the abyss of human
> decadence" and "the revolting invasion of publicity," he almost could be
> speaking of Rupert Murdoch, the man behind Fox News, The Weekly Standard,
> and boatloads of vulgar television programs and pornographic newspaper
> pages.
>
> Solzhenitysn has labeled the Allied bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima as war
> crimes and criticized Anglo-American military intervention in the former
> Yugoslavia. He does not support a "hypocritical double standard" during
> wartime or a "reckless disregard for the human cost" of war. Solzhenitsyn's
> sense of Christian realism precludes faith in messianic crusades fueled by
> power politics and capitalist economics. Addressing the war policies of
> Clinton and Blair in 1997, he could just as well be speaking to Bush and
> Blair today:
> ... [T]heir plans to establish a 'final worldwide security' are ephemeral
> ...Given human nature we ought never to attain such security. It would be
> futile, at the very least, to march towards this goal armed with hypocrisy
> and scheming short-term calculations, as practiced by a revolving door of
> officials and by the powerful financial circles that back them....Only if
> the creative and active forces of mankind dedicate themselves to finding
> gradual and effective restraints against the evil facets of human nature to
> an elevation of our moral consciousness--only then will a faint distant hope
> exist. To embark upon this path, and to walk it, requires a penitent, pure
> heart and the wisdom and willingness to place constraints on one's own side,
> to limit oneself even before limiting others. (Solzhenitsyn, "The March of
> the Hypocrites," Times of London, August 21, 1997)
> It is not surprising that the Christian wisdom of Solzhenitsyn is not
> consulted by George W. Bush. Under the tutelage of top aides Kissinger,
> Rumsfeld, and Cheney, the détente-minded President Gerald Ford snubbed
> Solzhenitsyn when he came to the United States in July 1975. The
> philosophical underpinnings of such men are antithetical to the thought of
> Solzhenitsyn, J. Budziszewski, and other contemporary Christian
> intellectuals who place loyalty to the New Testament above transient
> political power.
>
> Spiritually and intellectually, the current administration is built upon
> sand. The foolish decision to do so may not bring down the White House in a
> political sense, but it has led to the hurt and ruin, the bloodshed and
> death, the prostituting and compromising, of an untold number of others.
> Considering the opportunities given to President Bush by birth, upbringing,
> conversion, and circumstance, it is nothing less than a tragedy...not only
> for him, but for us all.
>
> Jeff Taylor is a political scientist in Minnesota. His book Where Did the
> Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian
> Legacy has just been released by University of Missouri Press. For more
> information, see:
http://www.popcorn78.blogspot.com.
>
> Copyright © 2006 by Jeffrey Lee Taylor
>
> Source: CounterPunch
>
http://www.counterpunch.org/taylor07012006.html
>
>
>
>
> --
> NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
> always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
> available to advance understanding of
> political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
> believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
> provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
> Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
>
> "A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
> spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
> government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
> suffering deeply in spirit,
> and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
> debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
> patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
> back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
> stake."
> -Thomas Jefferson
