"Their View" Archives:

April 4, 2004

• The Governor is a Harsh Mistress
• Hanoi John and Mutha Theresa
  (Benedict Arnold Takes Aim at Benedict Arnold)

March 28, 2004

• 9/11: Blood On Bush's Hands?
• Entangling Alliances (Not On My Tires, You Don't!

March 21, 2004

• Creating Iraq In Our Image
• The New Face of America
  (Ranting Sheep Are But A Tempest In A Tea Pot)

March 14, 2004

• To Rock the Vote, Knock It, or Block It
• Why I Still Like Bush (A Word to the Pseudo Cons)

What They Thought April 11, 2004

R.A. Hawkins
Jonathan David Morris

Click here for columnist bios

Jonathan David Morris:
Look, Boys! Now You Can Fight Like Real Men!

My editor at The Aquarian requested I gear this week's column towards the under-18 crowd. Hey, no problem.

So first things first, young ones, let me say there's one golden rule in life, and it's a rule they don't always teach you in high school. Don't cut in line? Raise your hand before speaking? "I" before "E" except after "C"? No, no, and no -- though those are all good rules to follow. But the golden rule is much simpler than that. It is: Ask Questions.

Whatever you do, and wherever you go, you should always, always, always ask questions.

"But why?" you say.

Good start!

Now let me explain:

Once upon a time, there was a man named Thomas Jefferson. I don't know if they still teach about him; last time I checked, some school boards didn't want to. At any rate, you might know him as our third president, or the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But he was more than that. He was a rebel -- like 50 Cent, or Burt Bacharach, or whoever it is you kids listen to these days. In fact, Jefferson believed in challenging authority, and he proved it when he said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Yet this radical's presidential victory was called a bloodless revolution. Go figure.

The moral of the story is you'll only have to draw blood in defense of your liberty when you let others wrap their hands around it first. So guard your freedom like you'd guard your gym locker. And keep the establishment on its toes. You'll find in life, after all, that the status quo often suppresses youth and innovation, and failing that it tries to swallow them.

Case in point: Bill O'Reilly's rap music obsession and the TV ratings that go along with it.

Or take MP3s, for example, which supposedly take food off Lars Ulrich's table. The recording industry says file-sharing on programs like Kazaa "undermines the creative future of music itself." These people are so full of crap it's coming out their mouths. Music is older than both Kazaa and the RIAA. In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut puts "all music" in a league with Armistice Day and Romeo & Juliet as one of those rare "sacred things." Music isn't going anywhere. Ever. And the RIAA knows this.

So kids, don't be afraid to ask if the gatekeepers are protecting the future of music, or just their place in it. Do your own research and draw your own conclusions, but don't be afraid to ask if "corporate personhood" is, in fact, what's stealing food off Lars Ulrich's table. Don't be afraid to ask if MIT professor Henry Jenkins is right when he says, "As currently understood, the First Amendment protects media producers, but not media consumers" -- and don't be afraid to ask how the assault on our participatory culture "contradict[s] everything we know about human creativity and storytelling."

You're going to hear a lot about voting over the course of this year. People are going to say you have no right to an opinion if you're 18 and don't vote. But whereas the right to vote is government-given, the right to an opinion is given by God. Don't be afraid to ask how ignoring the first right voids the second, or why you're only allowed to participate in your culture when you're choosing between two presidential candidates from the same secret fraternity. And, while we're at it, don't be afraid to question the Oprah/Geraldo/Sally Jesse school-of-thought on fraternities -- they're a lot more fun than the talk show hosts let on.

Above all else, my friends, feel free to question widely-held opinions. Not because the fact that they're widely-held means they're wrong, but because you'll never know for sure until you find out for yourself. Let me give you one for-instance and then I'll let you go.

My hero when I was a kid was Abe Lincoln. Actually, let me correct that: My hero when I was a kid was Hulk Hogan, but my hero when I was your age was Abe Lincoln. So anyway, back in the day, I used to write research papers with help from a set of 1989 World Book encyclopedias, which I still own. Their Lincoln entry sums up everything I ever learned about this fair and noble man. It begins like this: "Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), was one of the truly great men of all time." His greatness, you see, wasn't just an opinion. It was talked about as absolute fact.

Eventually, though, I went to college and minored in history, and one of my senior-year professors told me the Civil War wasn't "about slavery," as I'd always been taught. Slavery was a part of it, sure, but freeing black folks wasn't even Lincoln's goal. Indeed, as Lincoln put it: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

I later learned -- especially through the writings of Thomas DiLorenzo -- that slavery ended peacefully in many countries just years before our Civil War. I also learned that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free the slaves. And that's just the tip of Honest Abe's top hat; his government also silenced anti-war papers and imprisoned Northern protestors.

So are these the markings of a "truly great" man? For me, it shifted my entire political perspective, but what it does for you is something you'll have to decide on your own. The point, though, is many facts and conflicting opinions were downplayed or hidden in my education experience, and no doubt a lot has been downplayed or hidden in yours. It's all a part of the public record, but we'll never learn it unless we think to ask.

Of course, no one asks questions like this in high school, and believe me: No one asks in the "real world," either. They don't want to sound stupid. My advice? Dismiss this fear. Albert Einstein started off asking the silliest questions he could think of. Things worked out for him. Now imagine the impact you can have if you start asking questions young.

So get in the habit of critiquing the old guard. Respect the status quo, but then make 'em earn it (except for your parents, who more often than not deserve the benefit of the doubt). John Ashcroft is famous for saying we should "be vigilant," and asking questions -- more so than duct tape -- is just that. There's comfort in going where the herd takes you, and that's fine if you want it, but keep in mind teamwork's a useless virtue when teammates bring the same thing to the table. Even teams work better when members aren't afraid to think for themselves.

Jonathan David Morris      Web Site       Contact

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Lady Liberty's "Their View" Contributors:

R.A. Hawkins
Richard Hawkins was born in Aurora, Colorado and grew up in Littleton, Colorado in a quiet little neighborhood nobody has ever heard of called Columbine Knolls. He has been married to the same woman for twenty-six years, and worked for the same aerospace company for twenty-eight. His primary interests over the years have been his family, sociology, mastering his survival skills, windsurfing, music, politics, raising wolves, art of all types, mycology, perma-culture, archeological anomalies, geo-politics and staying gainfully employed; not necessarily in that order. He often describes himself as a separate subspecies of human – ‘Eclecticus-Iconoclastimus’. His primary driving force is his unwavering belief that as sovereign citizens we are each responsible not only for our own beliefs and actions, but where those beliefs and actions take us in life: That the truly intelligent person learns to determine what the consequences might be for our beliefs and actions and then acts accordingly. Our individual actions always affect far more than we can imagine. R.A. Hawkins is the author of "Through Eyes of Shiva," available via Amazon.com. More of Mr. Hawkins' commentaries can be found on his web site, Entropical Paradise.

Jonathan David Morris
Jonathan David Morris is a political writer based in New Jersey. A strong believer in small government, JDM often takes aim at oppressive taxes, entitlements, and laws, writing about incompetence at the highest levels of culture and government. Catch his weekly ramblings on his web site.

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R.A. Hawkins
Benighted Brains
(It Only Makes Sense To ‘Thems’ and ‘Dems’)

To understand the recent actions of al-Sadr one only needs to look at the first war in Iraq. Most of us in the western world don’t realize it, but Saddam won round one. He was declared the victor far and wide - over there. The reason for this is that we didn’t go to Baghdad. Never mind the fact that we had no intention of doing so in the first place; that we were forcing him out of Kuwait and nothing more.

Now that you understand that in their minds Saddam actually won the first Gulf War, you might be able to see more clearly as you peer into those same murky emotion laden minds over there. Now I didn’t say you would fully understand or agree, because that isn’t really possible. But you can see possibly what al-Sadr is doing here. Mostly it is a play on the emotions, all propaganda, and devoid of logic. Logic has no place when one is lying.

al-Sadr has placed himself firmly on the side of Hamas and Hezbollah and has openly stated his intentions of running us out of there so that they can run their own country. There you go. You see it. We were going to turn it all over to them at the end of June anyway, but he is doing this so he can be seen as the new Saladin for having thrown us out of their government right when we said we would turn it fully over to them. The sad part is that many of them would actually think he did it. He is attempting, just like Saddam did in Gulf War One, to take credit for our clearly stated policy so that he can claim victory.

Many people will claim that the reason al-Sadr did what he did was because Bremer shut down his mouthpiece of a newspaper, which was being used to insight violence against our troops. There are a lot of people over here that will cry out for their freedom of speech. Personally I think the correct thing to do is to give Iraq back to Saddam and then remove him in another couple of months. That would help the Shiites brush up on their recent history, which they have clearly forgotten. Even al-Sadr has a very short memory. Saddam had his father killed.  We have removed Saddam and this is his thanks. He is simply an ignorant ingrate with a very short memory and strong sense of ‘I want power at all costs’. (He reminds me of Kerry in a way)

In his sermons he has warned that we are out to destroy Islam. To my knowledge we haven’t flattened one of their Mosques yet, and have gone so far as to order our troops to take special care not to harm them. I would suggest flattening his but he probably won’t be speaking there anymore so that would be pointless.

Fortunately the Sunni hardliners fought the Al-Mahdi, or Shi’ite militia, back when they tried to take over their neighborhoods this last weekend and this brings me to a point. We need to let them have their weapons and ammo in spite of the brand spanking new Constitution they created over there. We shouldn’t disarm anyone but the Shiites.

For those who want to talk about human rights… Talk to al-Sadr and those like him in the region, especially the tribal clans in Fallujah. I find it very difficult to even refer to them as humans. It would probably help them to experience a little of what they attempted to dish out. They often speak in lofty terms about what they are and aren’t allowed to do. Some of them say it is acceptable to mutilate the bodies of their enemies. Mohammed scolded some of his followers for having mutilated the bodies of Quraish kuffar at the battle of Badr. They lecture and rant about our immorality and can’t even follow their own rules. They treat their wives like dirt and use them strictly for the purposes of making more terrorists. I am of course only speaking of the al-Sadr types. They need to save their morality lectures for their own people. I know a few real Moslems and they don’t treat their wives like dirt. They actually know the difference between love and hate.

I have a suggestion for the final disposition of al-Sadr. Why don’t we have a lottery among the Sunni children? Whoever wins, gets to control the wheelchair he is strapped into. The contest can be called the Sheikh Yassin Part Deux. The kids will be given an opportunity to either enter him in a battle bots game or strap explosives onto his chair and run him into the nearest Al-Jazeera building and let him paint the town red. Since he wants to be the arm of Hamas and Hezbollah I think it would be a fitting end to see him die at the hands of a bunch of children.           

All al-Sadr is really trying to do is appear to be the hero and the wise one, just like Saddam did and just like the liberals here are doing. When we turn everything over to the Iraqis and a problem erupts the liberals will say Bush should have had the troops in there longer. Their words are as hollow as their craniums.

R.A. Hawkins       Web Site       Contact