America is broke, so why are funding fantasy wars at the Pentagon?
Is Rahm Emmanuel behind sabotage of Caroline Kennedy?
Do you want your friends and family to always know where you are?
Despite reports that Rove may be cooperating int he probe of political use of US Attorneys, is Rove and the U.S. Attorney for Northern Alabama, Alice Martin, in concert with the Obama Justice Department, engaged in a fishing expedition against chief Rove accuser, former Alabama GOP research assistant Dana Jill Simpson?
Are states really broke or are they hiding assets?
Is it treason to sabotage the Obama administration from within the government?
Does the government oversee ANYTHING (aside from our phone calls)?
Are Palestinians descendants from the "children of Israel" described in the Old Testament?
Did anyone in the US government assist the hijackers on 9/11?
Why does the media glorify torture?
Is New Hampshire declaring civil war against the Federal Government?
The Pentagon asks Obama: Will you reconsider Afghanistan?
Comments:“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever” (Chinese Proverb)
“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” (Nancy Willard)
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” (Albert Einstein)
“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” (Naguib Mahfouz)
“If you judge, investigate” (Seneca)
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"" (Martin Luther King Jr)
Your Job:
Ask a good question.
We used to pride ourselves on being an open society unafraid of asking any question. Is that still the case? Some questions, albeit during the Bush administration years, no matter how simple or obvious, were marginalized.
Too often we are satisfied with answers that may not be accurate. We often don't have time to find out the real answer, so it's easier to simply find out what other people think and go with that.
Why did Cheney and Bush seek to obstruct an investigation of 9/11? Why did Obama select as advisors the same people that got us into this mess? The answer to the first question might be because they didn't want to focus on their failures and the answer to the second question might be that Obama wants to appease everyone, including the financial elite. But are these 100% accurate answers? When we're satisfied with easy answers, when we let the TV talking heads drive what we believe to be true, we become overly susceptible to suggestion and manipulation.
We must continue to ask questions, to break the taboo that asking these questions may entail, and to constantly seek to refine our view of what the answers are. This is the science that understanding truth is. Ask questions. Test hypotheses. Understand and isolate variables. Questions sources. Let the new information you acquire modify the paradigm in which you view the subject.
The question is so powerful that it is also used, especially in politics, to cast doubt upon something. The question can be used for good and it can be used for evil.
Have a great day? :)
Posts
When I was in 7th grade, the neighborhood hippie gave me a button that said "Question Authority." I believe today's blog is probably the most important one you've written so far. Things are moving so fast right now that it is imperative we question every move that every politician makes. That is the only way we'll achieve a truly "transparent" government.
ReplyDeleteIs it likely that the old-guard liberal establishment will begin to misread and mistrust President Obama as it becomes apparent that he is not following scrupulously in their footsteps?
ReplyDeleteIf his policies continue to approximate a more networked, distributed and collaborative model borrowed from extremely efficient and successfully evolving technology-based projects (such as Wiki*, "open source" platforms, etc.) will it be up to those whom experience has taught the superiority of those models to defend the President from mere top-down Liberal criticism?
Will the world be safer when everyone builds it?
Can President Obama continue in this direction without the vociferous support of partisans of these methods?
Is this, even, what he's attempting? Or has he made it clear in message after message that we who imagine a shared future must begin to take part in creating it?
Hypothetical Question: It's known that the NSA had intelligence, that, if shared with other agencies, might have warned or even averted the 911 attacks; What would happen if we shared intelligence about terrorist objectives, movements and communications - all of it that wouldn't compromise its source and scoured of security sensitive details - with all ally, or even demonstrably neutral governments, much less among our own agencies?
This is only a thought experiment, not a suggestion - could imagining exactly how and why such a plan might succeed of fail in the real world shed any light on ways in which sharing of information might be of advantage to ourselves and the factions of peace - even those who would see the iron domination of the US lessened in the world?
As the structures protected and in some sense founded on bullying, might, superior technology, wealth and power, all of these, collapse, can we imagine a scenario in which we share our way to success?
Where wisdom, information and communication become the common coin, what happens to the doctrine of scarcity on which our old world, now dying, was founded?