Friday, March 20, 2009

Killing Palestinians

One of the most disturbing quotes from the article:

"When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up story by story... I call that murder. Each story, if we identify a person, we shoot them. I asked myself - how is this reasonable?", an Israeli soldier said.


For all those who made statements like "I don't know why HAMAS thinks they can launch missiles at Israel and not have any consequences" and others who have made similar claims of the murder that Israel has visited upon the Palestinians is self-defense. How do you explain the above quote?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Calvinism Changing the World?

Is Calvinism one of those ideas that is currently changing people's minds, attitude and behavior? I wouldn't have guessed so, but according to Time magazine it is one of the 10 ideas changing the world right now.

 

"Perhaps your grip on reality is not quite as firm as you might have hoped" - Todd Connelly


"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)

What does all of this do to the best minds among the students? Most of them endure their college years with the teeth-clenched determination of serving out a jail sentence. The psychological scars they acquire in the process are incalculable. But they struggle as best they can to preserve their capacity to think, sensing dimly that the essence of the torture is an assault on their mind. And what they feel toward their school ranges from mistrust to resentment to contempt to hatred – intertwined with a sense of exhaustion and excruciating boredom.

--Ayn Rand Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal