Meme Dump

A Month In and How's The GOP Doin' So Far?

Just like Missouri did last week, this week members of Florida House staff leadership, who are appointed by Republicans, have posted flyers throughout the Capitol showing what to wear; women are being asked to never show their shoulders when House members are present in the building.

Now, to be fair, the Florida Legislature—majority GOP—has had its fair share of sex scandals. In the past but are they suggesting women are to blame because of bare shoulders?

This may seem minor, but it’s another case on GOP men not taking responsibility for their actions and requiring other people to adjust to fix the problem.

Hey, GOP men of the Florida Legislature, stop bein’ so rape-y.

 

I find it funny the GOP calls themselves the Party of the Working Class when one of the first things the new Congress does is offer up tax breaks to the rich, but this explains everything.

Last week Republicans gathered in Florida to elect the chair of the RNC and the bitching and complaining began at once.

Oh, not about the chair, or the election, but at the cost of everything. Rooms at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach resort where the RNC met start $1,283 for Wednesday night—with a AAA discount—and $881 for Thursday; also included is a mandatory $55 a night resort fee. Parking your car is another $75, per day,

The GOP ran on high gas prices, inflation, and are now railing about the cost of eggs, but choose a luxury resort that most of their constituents could never afford to hold their little meeting.

Out of touch, much?

 

North Dakota has a new proposed bill which reads:

“A board of a school district, a public or private school, or a teacher in a public or private school may not adopt a policy establishing or providing a place, facility, school program, or accommodation that caters to a student’s perception of being any animal species other than human.”

Yes,. The furries are back and are in North Dakota, according to rightwingnuts in the state GOP.

One of the bill’s sponsors, loon and GOP Representative Lori VanWinkle said her state does indeed have students who don’t identify as human, but as “cats and dogs.”

In addition to going after bathroom litter boxes, the bill also bans accommodations for transgender students.

Like all the other GOP morons who  ranted about furries and litter boxes, VanWinkle has offered no proof, not a  photograph, not a witness statement, nothing, to prove her newest cause even exists.

 

Karma is a fun bitch, you know? I mean, it was just a couple of weeks back that former Vice President Michael Elizabeth Pence demanded, with a foot stomp and  a head snap, that a special counsel be appointed to look into President Biden‘s handling of classified documents, after a small number had been found in his former office and then at his home.

On the other hand Michael Elizabeth Pence has said nary a word about appointing a special counsel to investigate the classified documents found at his private residence.

Pence, who is expected to launch a 2024 presidential run, had taken to the right-wing media talk circuit, demanding “equal treatment” by the DOJ for President Biden, after AG Merrick Garland had appointed a special counsel in November to investigate Thing 45’s possibly criminal handling of classified documents.

What goes around, Mike? Amirite?

 

Fewer than one-third of Americans believe that House GOP leaders are prioritizing the country’s most critical issues.

Just 27% of Americans believe that GOP leaders in the House have had the right priorities, 73% say they haven’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.

Border? Fentanyl? Inflation? Guns?

Nope, Hunter Biden’s laptop.

But it’s not just Democrats and liberals who are annoyed; 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents disapprove of the GOP leadership.

Not a good look for the Party of Traitors.

Marco Rubio Vows To Erase All Same-Sex Marriages

Marco Rubio has gotten his Grand Old Panties in a twist because folks call him a bigot because of his religious belief that The Gays should not be allowed marriage rights, or kept free from discrimination; well, that’s not entirely true. He’s not called a bigot because of his faith; he’s called a bigot because he wants to impose his faith, and his beliefs on the entire country.

But, I guess because some folks call him a bigot and a hater, Marco has decided to double down on his faith-based homophobia by trying to reverse last year’s marriage equality ruling if he’s elected president. In fact, he’s formed a Marriage & Family Advisory Board devoted to “rebuilding a vibrant culture of marriage and family.”

That’s GOP-speak for denying The Gays the right to marry.

In announcing Rubio's new Marriage & Family Advisory Board, Eric Teetsel, Rubio’s Director of Faith Outreach — seriously? Faith outreach in a political campaign? — chose to attack same-sex marriage:

“The Supreme Court’s decisions in Windsor and Obergefell are only the most recent example of our failure as a society to understand what marriage is and why it matters. For decades, we have taken for granted the unique and necessary contributions of moms and dads in the lives of their children, from lax divorce laws to marriage penalties in the tax code and the failure of husbands and wives to live up to their marriage vows. Marco understands the many causes of family breakdown and the consequences. He has pulled together a board of experts who understand the same and have devoted themselves to rebuilding a vibrant culture of marriage and family."

Huh, marriage is about children, y’all, so any of you married couples out there without children better get busy and start reproducing lest Marco come after you. And those of you who are thinking of divorce? You best think again, because President Rubio doesn’t want that for you.

And so, to get all up in the marriage business, and deciding who can and cannot marry, and who can and cannot divorce, Rubio has recruited some of the most anti-gay activists out there, like Ken Blackwell, Senior Fellow at the Hate Group, the Family Research Council, and Ryan T. Anderson — who advocates conversion therapy and says being gay is like being an alcoholic or a pedophile — a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

But the best part of all of this is that Marco Rubio, who has never done a thing for the LGBT community, says he does not discriminate against us:

"It's not about discrimination. It is about the definition of a very specific, traditional, and age-old institution."

Marco should read up on marriage and realize how much it has changed in the last two thousand years, in the last fifty-five years, before he calls it some age-old institution. And he should understand that when you try to change the laws to erase the legal marriages of hundreds of thousands of people just because you don’t like their sexual orientation, then you are discriminating.

He can say it however he wants, and he can say it over and over and over and over and over again, but he’s a bigot and a hater who wants to rule this country based on his faith.

And that ain’t America.

NCRM

#MuslimsAreNotTerrorists: I Am Your Protector Remembers

Muslims are terrorists, right? I mean, we all know that; the ones who are here already are just plotting and waiting to kill us so we need to get Them out of the country and keep the Others from coming in; it’s the only way we’ll be safe.

And Muslims hate Jews, right? It says so in the Qur’an where Muslims are instructed to attack Jews who refuse to convert to Islam, and yet the Qur’an also teaches Muslims to treat Jews as brothers.

It’s all very confusing; Muslims are terrorists; Muslims hate Jews. And then there’s this …

a new campaign, organized by I Am Your Protector [IAYP] seeks to honor Muslims who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, like Islamic diplomat, Abdol Hossein Sardari, also known as the “Iranian Schindler”, who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazi regime by confusing the fascist group with their own propaganda.

When the Nazis began implementing anti-Jewish laws in occupied France, Sardari, head of the Iranian Consulate in Paris, used the Nazis’ own racial purity laws to convince them that Iranian Jews were actually Aryan and not subject to the Reich’s racial laws. And he then issued Iranian passports to over 2,000 Jews, without the consent of his superiors which enabled them to leave Europe and flee to safety.

IAYP describe themselves as “a community of people who speak up and stand up for each other across religion, race, gender and beliefs” and are spreading the stories, oftentimes forgotten, of Muslims who helped Jews escape the genocide.

As with the story of British Muslim war heroine — yes, a Muslim woman — Noor Inayat Khan, who served as a wireless operator during World War II and was recruited to spy for the Allied forces in Nazi-occupied France until her arrest. 

Noor Inayat Khan was executed at the Dachau Concentration Camp for her “crimes”.

And we are learning of Selahattin Ulkumen who was a Turkish diplomat in Greece; Ulkumen organized a series of boats to carry Jews to safety in Turkey.

Ulkumen is credited with saving at least fifty lives.

Kaddour Benghabrit was the founder of the Muslim Institute at the Great Mosque of Paris but he was more than that.

Benghabrit was also a very good forger, and would forge travel documents and passports for Jews to certify them as Muslims and save them from deportation during the war.

Si Ali Sakkat was both a former mayor in Tunisia and a descendant of Prophet Mohammed.

He protected 60 Jewish escapees from a labor camp by hiding them on his estate.

And Khaled Abdul Wahab is remembered for saving two Jewish families by sheltering them in stables on his farm in Tunisia.

These are just a few stories, and there are many others, that were commemorated last week on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Memorial. Remembrance. Remember. 

Muslims are not terrorists.

Independent

Muslims Launch Social Media Campaign Against ISIS With #NotInMyName

Almost instantly after the terror attacks in Paris I heard that old refrain … Muslims.

You know, because Muslims are terrorists; all Muslims. They want us dead, our buildings destroyed, our way of life extinguished. All Muslims. Just the way that all Christians are like the ‘God Hates Fags’ Westboro Baptist Church; all Christians want fags to die, right?

Of course not, the WBC is a wingnut fringe group that dares to call itself a church when they are nothing more than a Hate Group. So why then, since we know that, do we automatically assume that all Muslims are terrorists, and anyone from the Middle East is a Muslim? How stupid are we?

I’ll say it once more: Muslims aren’t terrorists, terrorists are terrorists, and some terrorists are Muslim and some are Christian and some are atheist.

I read a story on line this weekend that broke my heart. The story of a man in New York City who hailed a cab and when he opened the door, the voice inside said, ‘Thank you.’ The driver, a Middle Eastern looking man said Thank you because he’d been driving around for two hours without a fare because every time he tried to pick someone up, as soon as they saw him behind the wheel, they’d get out of the cab. How stupid are we?

Well, it’s time to stand up and fight back and hashtag ourselves out of thinking that what happened in Paris is the fault of every single Muslim person on the planet, and so the London-based organization Active Change Foundation created the #NotInMyName hashtag to remind people that ISIS does not represent their religion.

"These terrorists ISIS are not true Muslims, they do not practice the true teachings of Islam; peace, mercy and compassion and they are the enemy of all mankind.” — Hanif Qadir, founder of the Active Change Foundation

Let’s stop being stupid and scared and frightened of anyone who looks differently or speaks differently or acts or loves differently, and understand that your faith doesn’t make you evil; that’s on you, without your God or Allah or Buddha or whomever.

Let’s make sure that everyone understands that acts of terrorism — in skyscrapers, or restaurants, concert halls, airplanes, funerals — are not a sign of faith in anything but hate.

 Mashable

Jake Midura Challenged Homophobic Catholic School Test Question

I get it Catholic Church; you think gay people are bad, and pedophiles are just confused, but do you have to make being gay a test question?

Jake Midura is seventeen and gay, and like most gay folks he struggled with the idea that he was gay, but has accepted it, loves himself, and came out to his family and friends.

Jake also goes to a Catholic high school, and, amazingly enough, he says it has always been a safe haven for him, and he’s never felt any kind of bigotry or homophobia at school … until The Test.

See, Catholic schools are still teaching that homosexuality is bad, and on one of his end of the year exams, Jake came upon this multiple choice question:

Homosexual sex acts are immoral because

A. a homosexual orientation is evil.

B. God disapproves of gay people.

C. they are not open to life.

D. none of these.

Jake correctly answered "D" and was given an incorrect since the "correct" answer is that The Gays are “not open to life;” whatever the hell that means.

And when Jake and his mother suggested to the school that maybe these kinds of questions can be revised, and made a "little more tactful" the school principal, Denis Mailloux, issued this statement:

"This was a question on a test administered to students in a high school junior level class called "Life in Jesus Christ," which is a Christian Morality course. The question was taken verbatim from the textbook: "Your Life in Christ: Foundations in Catholic Morality," which is in conformity with USCCB guidelines. The correct answer is C.

Our faculty and staff strive to be sensitive to the needs of all of our students, and we have no desire to be hurtful or coarse in presenting Catholic teaching on this or any other topic. However, as a Catholic school, we also have a responsibility to teach authentic Catholic doctrine, or to 'teach the truth in love' as Ephesians 4:15 so well puts it."

They don’t wanna be hurtful or coarse, but they do wanna make sure they teach their studenst that The Gays are not open to life … and, again, still wondering what in the hell that means.

And then Father John Fortin, Superintendent of New Hampshire H Catholic Schools said this:

"Church teaching on homosexuality is complex, and this particular test question should not be taken as representing the fullness of the Church's teaching on it. The Church teaches that persons who experience same-sex attraction should be welcomed into full participation in their local faith community, and explicitly rejects unjust discrimination and harassment of any persons, including those with a homosexual inclination.

The Church also teaches that all persons are called to live a chaste life in keeping with the particular states of life. In particular, the Church teaches that sexual activity is reserved for married couples."

The teaching isn’t complex; the teaching is that being gay is bad. And, if the question is mot representative of Catholic teachings then why is it on a test and why is it in a text book?

And, since being gay is bad, I wonder where the questions about straight kids were? The Masturbation Is Bad quiz? Or the Premarital Sex Means You’ll Burn In Hell exam?

I think Jake had the right answer all along and that, big surprise, it’s the Catholic Church that’s gotten it wrong.

Daily Kos

"Pastor" Kevin Swanson's Gift To Gay Couples On Their Wedding Day? To Have Them Stoned

"Pastor" Kevin Jazz Hands Swanson

I don’t have a problem with religion, per se, though I do take issue with ‘the religious;’ I’m all for faith and spirituality and your belief system, no matter what it is, or how you practice it, as long as you keep it out of my life if I don’t want it.

That isn’t going to happen with folks like, ahem, ‘Christian’ radio host and ALLEGED "pastor", Kevin Swanson who says he would like the members of his so-called "faith" to attend same-sex weddings, but rather than bring a gift, he wants them to bring a sign citing, of course, Leviticus 20:13: 

" ... Attend the wedding and hold up the sign Leviticus 20:13 word for word: ‘If a man sleeps with a man as he sleeps with a woman the two of them have committed an abomination and they shall both be put to death.’ You could attend a wedding and hold up that sign [...] If you bake a cake for a homosexual wedding you can put Leviticus 20:13 on the cake."

That’s what passes for religion in Kevin Swanson's world, and that’s the kind of religion with which I have a problem. If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, don’t go to the wedding, I’m sure the happy couple would be pleased as punch not to have you there. But, to use your faith in such a misguided way as to think that suggesting that people should die because they’re gay and married is not my idea of religion or faith or spirituality. 

It’s hate.

Swanson has also spoken out about the Sweet Cakes bakery in Oregon — the one that recently closed up shop because they lost so much business after refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding — calling those who stood against the bakery gay “fascists” when, in fact, it was the state of Oregon who took umbrage by bakery owner Aaron Klein’s religious intolerance. 

Swanson has also taken to telling his minions “that the Nazi Party had their birth at a homosexual bar in Berlin…. This is what homosexuals do best and they will engage in their Pink Mafia effort to control and shut down businesses that do not cooperate with their agenda.”
Yes, again, this is religion. He doesn't think The Gays should be married and the fact we are, in some parts of the world, leads him to calling us Nazis in an effort to make us more hated within his religious community.

His spouting of the same nonsense as American Family Association asshat Bryan Fischer, in comparing The Gays to Nazis, grows out of the fear and desperation that more and more people are turning away from such ridiculous rhetoric.

His words are not the words of any God or any non-God; his words are hateful and demeaning and violence inciting. That isn’t faith, or religion, or spirituality, saying someone should be put to death, or trying to equate one group with one of the vilest hated groups that ever walked the Earth.

It’s hate, and it’s coming from these people who call themselves Christians but are the furthest thing from it, but the good news is that more and more people are refusing to listen to the likes of Swanson and Fischer, while the bad news is that, as they lose followers, their rhetoric becomes more disgusting.

Mostly because they blame it on God.

Dutch Catholics De-Baptize Themselves To Protest The Pope's Anti-Gay Stance

I understand 'faith,' that sort of untenable belief in some one or some thing, but I don't understand 'blind faith.' I don't understand the idea that, if you were raised one religion, then you must stay there and never question and never ask why and never demand explanations.

Of course, I'm talking mostly about the Catholic Church, and those who choose to follow a Pope and a church that allow children to be molested, a church that has worked hard to protect pedophiles, a church that, while masking it's message as one of love, continually denounced Gays and Lesbians. 

I don't understand how people can continue to follow that church and that pope, who has basically said, in his Christmas message of all places, that The Gays are destroying everything.

Of course, he failed to mention his own crimes of aiding and abetting child rapists.

But how do people justify, rationalize, or explain, their allegiance to a church like that? How can you attend Catholic Church services, knowing that any money donated will probably go to defending pedophiles, or paying off massive claims of child sexual abuse? How can you rationalize your faith with that crime?

And how do you rationalize the Pope's continuing messages of hate and fear-mongering of the LGBT community in his, alleged, messages of Peace and Love?

Well, a lot of Dutch Catholics have decided to stop rationalizing their faith with a body that protects sexual predators, to stop standing alongside those who preach hate and intolerance, and they have begun a process of leaving the Catholic Church over it's anti-gay, pro-pedophile policies.

are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.

Tom Roes created a website--ontdopen.nl, also known as de-baptize.nl--which allows people to download the documents necessary to leave the Church. Traffic on his site has soared from about ten visits a day to more than 10,000 a day, all in the last month since Pope Benny;s latest diatribe against The Gays and Marriage Equality.

Now, Roes makes it clear that a person cannot actually be ‘de-baptized’ because baptism is an event, but his website allows people the ability to publicly unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics.

Roes says he left the Church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the Church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries, but when he began hearing the Pope's "messages" of intolerance and hate for the LGBT community, he decided enough was enough and began to help others symbolically de-baptize themselves.

The question of faith, though, still remains. The faith of a Pope who expends so much time and energy denigrating a segment of society, turning his back on that group, and asking his "faithful" flock to do the same; who has the faith, upon finding out that a man of the cloth has betrayed his flock by sexually abusing a child, that helping the pedophile is the right choice. His faith is that hate will rule, that hate will win, but, at least in the Netherlands, it seems people are putting their faith in themselves, and one another, and not behind an angry man on a Golden Throne.

source

Two Faiths .... Two Views

One of the problems I think we have as a country is that we tend to lump all people into categories. I mean, all gay men aren’t sex pigs; all Black men aren’t deadbeat dads, all Mexicans aren’t illegal, and all religions aren’t the same. And that’s what we have here: a tale of two faiths.

It seems that, last week, the General Assembly of the nation's largest Presbyterian denomination voted against a proposal that would have paved the way toward the church allowing same-sex weddings in their midst.

The proposal would have changed the church's Book of Order to define marriage as between "two people" but after the vote—and the narrow victory—it will keep the definition of marriage as between "a man and a woman."

"God, we are a divided church," said the Reverend Neal Presa, a New Jersey pastor and the General Assembly moderator, said while guiding church members in prayer after the vote.

And, in light of thatvote by the General Assembly—which is made up of pastors and lay people—pro-same sex marriage activists must wait another two years until the church's next national meeting to make marriage-related proposals.

On the other hand,

On the other hand, the United Methodist Church in the Northwest has set itself at with its parent denomination by endorsing Referendum 74 and asking voters to make Washington the nation’s seventh state to enact same-sex marriage.

The issue of marriage equality has divided much of Washington's faith community. While Episcopalians, Methodists and the ecumenical Faith Action Network have come out for same-sex marriage, the state’s Catholic bishops and many fundamentalist churches opposed it.  Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, apparently unaware of that whole Separation of Church and State thingy, even asked his parishes to serve as collection centers for signatures on the referendum petition. Still, many Seattle and Tacoma parishes refused the Archbishop’s request and even sent contingents from Catholics for Marriage Equality and Mormons for Marriage Equality to march in the Seattle Pride Day parade.

And while the United Methodist Church in the Northwest has come down on the side of equality, all is not the same among all Methodists. The parent church, at its convention, rejected a change in church doctrine, which asserts that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  Gays and lesbians are officially not allowed to serve as clergy, and the celebration of holy unions is prohibited by church law.

But the Reverend Sandy Brown, at Seattle First United Methodist Church, will not be silent: “Our church will not be deterred by our denomination’s heartless stand on homosexuality. We are out and proud to stand with our LGBT families, friends and neighbors.”

So, while all gays are not alike, or all Black men, Mexicans, women, and people of faith, the simple fact remains that in this country all men are supposed to be created equal. And some churches, some people of faith, as well aware of that, and are doing something about it.

Presbyterians Vote Against Marriage Equality

Methodists Endorse Marriage Equality

Show Me 'The Way'

Who says you can't look to the past for answers to the riddles of life? Over 2500 years ago Lao Tzu, an historian in the royal Chinese court, penned his thoughts on government and life; it was his philosophy of how man ought to live with, and rule, one another. His Tao Te-Ching appears isolated and ethereal, much like a nursery rhyme or riddle, as it describes a utopia--the perfect world. On the surface its ideas seem almost too simple: Lao Tzu tells us how to live a life of innocence and peace, without want or fear; he tells how to govern such a world, and how to protect yourself and your people in that environment. And even though, in this era of materialism, the ideas in the Tao Te-Ching seem simplistic, and the notions that Lao Tzu wrote of ages ago appear out of our collective grasps, we need to take the concepts of the Tao Te-Ching and apply them to our own lives--each of us, one at a time, ought to adopt Lao Tzu's philosophy and see that governments follow suit. We need to understand strength and power and war in the ways of the Tao. Once we accomplish this staggering task we will have a world free from violence and fear, hate and injustices, want and desire. When we begin to act as the Tao instructs, treat others as Lao Tzu advises, we will no longer live in such a fearful state. In finding a way to adapt the Tao Te-Ching to our lives I find myself returning to the passge that I believe holds the core ideals ofr a Taoist existence. In discussing 'the way'--the path toward enlightenment--Lao Tzu writes:

There is now crime greater than having too many desires;

there is no disaster greater than not being content;

there is no misfortune greater than being covetous.

Hence in being content, one will always have enough.

A simple enough philosophy, and yet in this individualistic culture--this 'me first' society--it is the ideology that fails us first. We live on a planet fraught with jealousy and envy, teeming with mistrust and fear. We spend valuable time reaching for things that satisfy us temporarily, constantly yearning to take the things others possess because we feel they will bring us greater joy. But a Taoist would not desire what is not necessary to sustain life. A Taoist would only ask for the simple things: food, shelter, clothing and good health. If we could attain--and maintain--these central ideas we would have a world free of envy and desire and pain. A Taosit would not grow into a man like O.J. Simpson--men who seek to control and dominate others., who resort to murder when their attempts fail. A Taoist existence would not have bred the Menendez brothers or Dorothea Puente, so desirous of what others possessed that they deprived those individuals of the one thing each of us truly owns: life. The Taoist lifestyle could no more breed these individuals, than it could accept being ruled by such people. If the Tao Te-Ching were embraced by each of us, then the rulers of the world would be forced to accept and adopt these same beliefs.

A government run beneath a Taoist ideology would lead by example of modesty and humility, acting under the conditions of the norm of reciprocity--that we have a tendency to 'get back what we give out.' If the United States were ruled by a Taoist government there would have been no war in Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, no pretext about our reasons and means for controlling Central America or the Middle East; no lies. A Taoist America would not have accepted the Civil War or Vietnam; that America would not tolerate the history of racial tension, of inequality--for its own citizens and for those of the world--that has endured in this country since its inception. If the United Sates ruled with a Taoist sensibility--and the rest of the world would most assuredly follow suit--there would have been no war or mass graves in Bosnia, no Saddam Hussein; no al-Queda. A Taoist planet would neither find, nor turn a blind eye to, the human rights violations in China. It would dismantle the maquiladoras that line the borders of the US and Mexico, and it would feed the starving in Africa; it would treat those suffering from HIV and AIDS around the world. Countries ruled by the Tao would return to the simpler ideals of isolationism--where countries don't interact with their neighbors, choosing instead to care for their own. These Taoist countries would have no desire to dominate or posses what others may own--it is in not knowing what someone else possesses, that one does not suffer from want. In a world without want, envy, greed, mistrust or hatred, there would be no need for struggle, for petty acts of aggression, for war or warriors.

And yet a Taoist society would know of war--it may even suffer through it--but it would never feel the need to engage in acts of barbarism for the sake of power. In the Tao Te-Ching Lao Tzu acknowledges war, but teaches us how to achieve a safe world without it. He advocates a society that lives by the virtue of non-contention--a world that neither competes nor suffers competition. The Taoist society 'excels a s a warrior [yet] does not appear formidable...it is never roused in anger...[and does not] join issue.' But a Taoist world is not without power, for according to the Tao, strength is a virtue. But strength is about pride, not intimidation; it is integrity of character, not instigation. A Taoist world would not need war horses--which could then be relegated to plowing the fields, nor any use for ships or carts, or occasion for a show of arms. In a Taoist world the tools of war--and the warriors themselves--are used to give back to the culture, not take away from it. And yet in today's world these basic ideals, these fundamental concepts of the Tao Te-Ching seem far off and long forgotten.

What shouldn't be forgotten, however, no matter how far off it may appear, is the idea that we can alter the course of the world. Through the practice of Taoism, in spreading its teaching, we can stem the tide of ignorance and hatred, rid ourselves of want, and live in contentment. We would no longer desire material things to sustain our lives, to enrich our lives. And in being free of the strings that bind us to a material existence, we would no longer fear death, but rather embrace it. When we live without want and envy, we would live free from war. And in being free of war--which only brings reprisals that culminate in more atrocities--we would live without dread. When we accept the ides of the Tao--contentment of self, strength of character--we begin to live the life of simplicity and inner peace. Our differences, whether religious, intellectual, gender or racial, would merely dissolve; they would soon cease to exist and we would find ourselves on 'the way'--the path toward enlightenment. In reading the Tao Te-Ching I am drawn to the passage: "...in being content man will always have enough.' I realize that the chore of returning to a Taoist existence would be a monumental undertaking, but if the world--one person at a time--would put a foot down, it could happen. All it takes is one footstep to travel the oath toward enlightenment; one foot after another all along 'the way.'