Letters to the Editor
Retired Military Patriot
Published Letters: 2275 Editor's Choice: 11
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Paul Rosenberg
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul Rosenberg, thanks for your constructive, informative posts. I especially like your concluding thought in your last post, “Satisfying our own sense of moral superiority, and thereby alienating the vast majority of people who would otherwise agree with us is neither very smart, nor, in the end, very moral, either.”
Far too many American politicians have used moral tricksterism to confuse voters. Candidates who claim ownership of morality at the exclusion of others, just as religions that claim they have the only real God or gods, don’t truly understand morality or why the only just outcome is doing what is best for the total community not the most powerful.
What we need in our next president, his staff and cabinet are citizens who have exhibited the kind of morality in their lives where humility and humanity are far more important than power. The life of politicians today, especially in a fish bowl world, makes this choice far from easy. While the MSM and authors are busy trying to show us the so called dark side of a candidate, the more details we learn about the character of a candidate, the better. The more times we watch them on c-span or shorter bursts on MSM, the better. The more we talk about candidate character on the Internet or in person with our friends and associates, especially those of opposing views, the better.
We have seen the signal importance of character when we erred in the 2000 and 2004 elections and in the presidents we have elected throughout our history. As important as the issues are in the 2008 election, character and morality by far, trumps issues.
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The Canadian
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“When and why this decline in standing has occurred seems to be a rather trivial matter. The point is that the shepherds aren't tending to the flock. Not very moral, and not very Christian either. The rest of the world simply see the sheep being ignored.”
Your vantage point to view our barnyard mess from outside the gate is enviable. From the first time I visited my grandfather’s North Dakota farm that was adjacent to the border, and tasted some of your fine food products and slept under one of your horse-hide wool blankets in a very cold, converted grainery, I knew you Canadians had something on the ball. I did wonder why you would live in an even colder place than my state.
Keep alerting us to our blind spots and not boasting of your advantages. I could use the all too popular tactic of bloggers and tell you things wrong with Canada, but that would only be childish.
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The hidden culprits
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul Rosenberg
As I watched the ‘70s shift taking place, I kept muttering to myself, we are giving lawyers and accountants in and outside the government way too much room to screw up our entire system. With the kind of mindset these professions attract, they found too many ways around ethics, morals and natural consequences. Look what this kind of thinking did to Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War and how much he regretted it since he realized the extent of the damage his staff wrought. In the ‘70s, there were quite a few morally conscious CEOs who looked out for their employees and community rather than quarterly financial reports. They almost totally disappeared.
That reminds me to include all the players in the stocks and funds game. When you focus on money over product, you devastate a lot of communities where factories and jobs used to exist. Globalization became more a money game than survival of the most fit companies. The obscene executive salaries and worker’s wages gap might not have boomed, if the lawyers and accountants had not made it so easy.
W. Edwards Demming had a very sound management concept that when things go wrong, blame the system and not the people. In our democratic desire to be legally fair, we let people take advantage of the system and created leaders who have led us to our sorry present state in the image we give to the world. We should ask our future leaders to look at changes in our system like taking money out of elections, to bring about any real change.
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had_enough
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“Deeply neurotic people who border on sociopathic are sometimes quite dangerous and unpredictable. It's better to keep them well away from anything with which they can hurt themselves and others...like political power. Would that we can keep them from that power from now on.”
Unfortunately we didn’t keep them away from the fine men and women fighting and dying in Iraq. These warriors have had to convince themselves that their mission is right and just even though the leaders who sent them there, in the congress and executive branch, rationalized and politicized the need to put them there. In our desire to denounce the scoundrels you have so well analyzed, we have to remember the terrible dilemma our warriors find themselves in. They had no choice on whether they wanted to go there. Now that they are finding it harder to keep buying the scoundrels rhetoric, their need for therapy grows just as it did for our Vietnam warriors.
The extent of the scarring this kind of dilemma can inflict was never more evident than in how hard they wanted to believe the myths about John Kerry’s war experiences. This time around the scars may be even deeper. The need to support them grows greater and greater. If you think you’ve had enough, think of what it would be like to return for the third or fourth time.