Dark Forces

Of course there are dark forces at work in the Arab world right now, but we're seeing that here, too. Thankfully we got rid of some of it with the death of Jerry Falwell, but there's still a lot of darkness. We've got politicians running on pro-torture and anti-science stands. I never imagined I'd see that happen in this country. You don't go to the moon and cure diseases by embracing and idealizing ignorance. But the Republican Party is now taking those stances, and vaingloriously so.

We should give the Arabs a great deal of credit for preserving our own culture back when the West was under the thumb of a dark, oppressive church and all learning was suppressed and our classical heritage was being obliterated. The enlightened Arabs saw the value in our culture and helped rescue our heritage by preserving our ancient writings. Of course, we should also give them credit for their own accomplishments, such as creating the decimal system, which is used worldwide (they gave us the zero (the word itself being derived from Arabic)), astronomy, art, etc. I'm not versed in Arab studies so I'm sure there's much more to appreciate that I'm even aware of.

At any rate, when you dig under the surface, you find that different peoples often have more in common than they have differences. Then you build on those commonalities to achieve peace and progress.

Unfortunately, the present administration in this country has been inept at working to achieve these goals. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people have died for its ineptitude.