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Can you, or should you, read national characters from the respective country's anthem? If you try, the pictures that come out of many won't be flattering to the respective countries- nor to mankind, for to various degrees of fixation, the almost universal theme is blood letting and mayhem, and claims of being the underdog, clobbered over the head by some phantom oppressor. But the scale of that psychosis is wide, of which these 2 samples are at the opposite extremes:
Let morning shine on the rivers and mountains of this land,
Three thousand ri abundant with natural wealth.
This is my beautiful fatherland
With a history of five millennia,
The glory of a wise people
Brought up in a brilliant culture.
Devoting our bodies and minds to this Korea,
Let the Way be obeyed.
Embracing the atmosphere of Baekdu Mountain,
Nest for the spirit of labour,
The firm will, bonded with truth,
Will go forth to all the world.
The country established by the will of the people,
Breasting the raging waves with soaring strength.
Glorifying forever this Korea, limitlessly rich and strong,
Let the Way be shone.
'
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Mexicans, at the cry of war,
prepare the steel and the steed,
and may the earth shake at its core
to the resounding roar of the cannon.
Gird, oh country, your brow with olive
the divine archangel of peace,
for your eternal destiny was written
in the heavens by the hand of God.
But if a strange enemy should dare
to profane your ground with his step,
think, oh beloved country, that heaven
has given you a soldier in every son.
War, without truce to any who dare
to tarnish the country’s coat-of-arms!
War, war! Take the national pennants
and soak them in waves of blood.
War, war! In the mountain and valley,
thunder the cannons in horrid unison
And the resonant echoes
with the voices of
Union,
Liberty!
Oh country, ‘ere your children
defenseless bow to the yoke,
May your fields be watered with blood,
may they trod upon blood.
May your temples, palaces & towers
collapse with horrid clamor,
and their ruins live on to say:
This land belonged to a thousand heroes
Chorus
Oh, country, country, your children swear
to breathe their last in your honor,
if the trumpet with warlike accent
should call them to fight with courage.
For you the olive branches!
A reminder for them of glory!
A laurel of victory for you!
For them a tomb with honor!
Mexicans, at the cry of war,
prepare the steel and the steed,
and may the earth shake at its core
to the resounding roar of the cannon.
John W. Campbell, Jr., wrote an essay on what we should expect when we make First Contact with an alien species. He made an compelling argument that they will be warriors, having reached the top of their evolutionary ladders by killing off the “less fit”.
The fundamentalist xenophobes proclaim that the Quran tells that infidels must be destroyed, but the Roman Catholics proclaim the Eucharist is not pseudo-cannibalism but the real thing. Fundamentalists believe every word of the Bible, which says after the Last Trump, the saved will engage in cannibalism. I presume that means vegetarians and vegans go to hell, which, considering the way many of them treat omnivores, might be justice.
Idi Amin used to issue the threat that he'd eat an enemy's liver, and some think he actually did engage in this ritual when he'd killed an enemy.
To have a tongue recognized as a language, rather than a dialect, you need to have an army, a navy, and a flag. That's not unimportant thing, the flag. The Bush administration argued that the prisoners at Gitmo were not entitled to Geneva Convention protection from abuse because they weren't fighting under color of a flag. Not having a navy or a flag, Palestine was considered fair game in 1948, and Palestinians were not only denied citizenship and property, but such ordinary freedoms as marriage.
It was legal for the aboriginal people of Australia to be enslaved or to be killed by snipers. The same happened in the US, and if you killed them by biological warfare – blankets, anyone? - well, that was just a way to avoid getting killed while fighting them.
Pope Francis will be in the US in a few days, and he plans to canonize Junipero Serra while he is here, to the outrage of Native Americans who point out that Serra enslaved Nartive Americans and committed cultural genocide.
Every country has an army/navy to protect itself fopr foreigners, and an armed police force to protect itself from residents who would murder, rape, and plunder others. Crime is not an aberration. Taking a Kalashnikov to other folks watching Batman is uncommon in practice, but ask drivers in heavy traffic if they wouldn't like a turret atop their sedan with a 50mm cannon to punish bad drivers, and they won't rush to say no.
Psychologists say that the “rape fantasy” is common among women, apparently not because they want to be actually raped – the reality is NOT romantic! - but because they want to be desired by a manly man who has the ability to get what he wants.
Take a look at who we elect president. It's pretty uncommon for someone who wasn't in the military to be elected. JFK nearly sank his own PT boat by mounting a cannon that was too heavy, and GHWB flew a fighter, but even Dubya fought the Vietnam War from a cushy Reserve job in Texas before he got bored and wanted out.
Hugh Downs wrote a book, “Old Age Isn't For Sissies”, but in fact, at ANY age, it's the arrogant asshole who gets what he wants, and the sissy is fortunate to just survive. They wonder why Homo Sapiens displaced Neanderthal Man and some suggest Homo Sapiens was a more prolific breeder, but I think it was because Neanderthal Man was a species of Nice Guys. Sometimes they finish last; often, they don't finish at all.
Revelation 19:17-18
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
I can't imagine preachers inflicting those verses on a congregation right before they head home for Sunday dinner. If it ruins appetites, Mpomma ain't gonna be happy, and if Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. You could lose a lot of members....
deaconB said
....Fundamentalists believe every word of the Bible, which says after the Last Trump, the saved will engage in cannibalism....
In scholarly dissertations on the Eucharist, the word cannibalism will be found here and there for various reasons, various purposes. But your scripture quote above- well someone has this interpretation for that quote:
many carion birds are needed to clean up the carcasses of the wicked who will be destroyed in the final wars before the Second Coming
deaconB said
Revelation 19:17-18
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
I can't imagine preachers inflicting those verses on a congregation right before they head home for Sunday dinner. If it ruins appetites, Mpomma ain't gonna be happy, and if Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. You could lose a lot of members....
Fundamentalist or not, anyone who claims these verses indicate that the saved will perform cannibalism is taken in by very poor Biblical exegesis. The angel is explicitly speaking to the fowls of the air; he is not talking to the saved.
Concerning the preacher using these verses, they would not hurt my appetite. Beyond what the preacher says, I expect to see several animals dead along the road to and from church today. I might even see some buzzards or crows eating on them. The decaying animals do not hurt their appetite when they have their faces right in there. Why should it then hurt mine when I will be far from the decay when I eat my dinner?
Growing up in a Methodist Episcopal home - Methodists are not fundamentalists - I was given to understand that the unleavened bread and the grape juice were representations of the body and blood. When I attended a Catholic engineering school, I was taught in religion classes that the RC dogma of transubstantiation meant that the elements retained their visual appearance, but actually became the actual body and blood.
The Catholic Encyclopedia and the New Catholic Encyclopedia indicate that from the 9th through the 12th century, tghere was controversy over this and then they agreed that the elements transform.
As for Revelation, I read it that the bird would gather to watch the people do the eating. I now see it could be read that the birds are doing the eating, but I wonder why people would gather to watch birds eat corpses. And following judgment day, for who would the Earth need to be cleaned up for?
I'm a country boy. Road-kill doesn't bother me. In fact, if it's still warm when we happen upon it, we would butcher road-kill deer. Yum!
deaconB said
As for Revelation, I read it that the bird would gather to watch the people do the eating. I now see it could be read that the birds are doing the eating, but I wonder why people would gather to watch birds eat corpses. And following judgment day, for who would the Earth need to be cleaned up for?
I don't see anything about people gathering. I only see the birds gathering (as they have for millennia). As for the angel calling them, they seem called and quickly gather anytime there is a corpse to be found (well, anytime it is not frozen). The supper of the great God is only out of the ordinary and is announced by the angel in that it will be such a great amount of food for those birds.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
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