The need for intelligence

By Naman Crowe
January 02, 2006
I’d like to address the asylum for a moment. The head nuts keep harping about the need for intelligence, good human intelligence, as our most important weapon in the War on Terror. I couldn’t agree more.

But not the kind of intelligence that is so expensive and comes from spying and eavesdropping and listening in on our phone conversations. What we need is the kind of good human intelligence that comes from the brain for free.

That’s why we’re in this asylum. We don’t have any intelligence! We’re nuts! The sooner we can get that through our heads, the sooner we’ll be able to break loose from this crazy nuthouse and wake up from this terrible nightmare.

For all the nuts that don’t believe they’re nuts, here are a few examples that show how to tell a nut from a person of sound mind and reasoning ability.

If you still trust the U.S. Government, under the leadership of the present administration, to tell the American people the honest truth behind its plans and schemes, including the true reasons for the attack on Iraq and the War on Terror, you may be a nut.

If you have accepted everything the Bush administration has said and done as being truthful and above board, soundly reasoned and thoroughly in line with the proper defense of America, you may be a nut.

If you have ever in your life trusted the government to do the right thing and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you may be a nut.

If you believe the government is always right and should be supported without question, regardless of the lies it tells or the unnecessary blood that it spills, you may be a nut.

If you believed the Bush administration’s false claims that Iraq had to be attacked because of its weapons of mass destruction, its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, its attempt to build a nuclear weapon, its close ties with Al-Quida, its connection to 9/11 and the imminent threat it constantly posed to its neighbors and America, you may be a nut.

If you believe that none of that was true but that we did the right thing anyway by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, its murderous president, and that America and the world has been made safer because of it, and it’s all been worth it and that we’re fighting over there so we don’t have to fight them over here and all we have to do is stay the course and complete the mission, and keep doing what we’re doing, fighting off the devil for the Lord, you may be a nut.

If you believe that it was right for America to break International Law and disregard the authority and purpose of the United Nations (which we signed an oath to) while claiming that we were merely forcing a rogue nation to comply with a United Nations Resolution when we attacked Iraq, you may be a nut.

I’m not talking to the sane here. I’m only talking to the nuts. It takes a nut to talk to a nut and I’m just the kind of nut that doesn’t have any better sense.

I have to keep trying to ram home the point, “It’s all about thinking, you crazy nuts!!”

Can you imagine talking like this day in and day out to a bunch of nuts that think that you are the only nut in the room? It’s enough to drive you nuts!

One of the methods I like to use at times is to try and get a nut to pretend for a moment that he actually is a nut, to his amazement.

You can’t learn without first being ignorant. You can’t stop being a nut unless you realize that you are a nut.

In all my talks with nuts I have never been able to get one of them to come out of their shell and admit that they are nuts.

I don’t know why I keep trying a method that never works, unless it is that I am myself a nut. But at least I’m not a stupid nut.

Another method I like to try is to get them to pretend for a few moments that they are ignorant of necessary greater understandings, through no fault of their own.

They are like first-graders. They can’t help their ignorance. They’ve never been taught. Their attention span is too short.

Their little minds have to almost be continually stimulated in order for them to experience learning and to understand the idea that it requires them to think.

At times there is no choice except to speak to them in an authoritative voice, for their own sake, in order to awaken them to reality and the world of reason and enlightenment.

That’s why I begin all my talks this way: “We’re here for two reasons. For me to talk and you to listen. If you get through before I do, please raise your hand.”

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How can it be made more clear than that?

It was in order to secure those top three inalienable rights that America declared its independence from her mother country, England, and constructed a government of her own; and then labored and fought for it until it was delivered.

Although our forefathers may have been lacking in some necessary greater understandings - as demonstrated by their belief in those three inalienable rights while at the same time believing in the right of a man to own as many slaves as he wanted and for women to have no rights – they got close enough for government work and laid a foundation that we’ve been able to build on.

We abolished slavery and eventually agreed that “all men” meant blacks as well as whites, and all other races and religions, and women as well as men.

It seems that as we’ve moved into the 21st Century, the building has been sliding off that foundation of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” at a faster rate than we’ve been used to.

The building has tilted too far to the right and needs to be jacked up and leveled and put back in proper balance before it becomes a structure like Lincoln was worried about – a house divided against itself.

How can it be that America has forgotten the meaning and importance of those inalienable rights?

How can the people not know that if they don’t exercise those rights they will lose them?

How can they not know that those rights have to be fought for continuously?

How can you explain to a nut that you can never fully trust those in authority to make sure those rights are secure and protected?

How can you explain to a nut that the ignorance and stupidity of the masses will always be trying to undermine and destroy those rights in order to push their own social and religious values on the rest of the country?

The nuts don’t understand that there never was a guarantee of those rights because human rights, especially the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has to be fought for every step of the way or else the well of freedom will run dry or become undrinkable and contaminated.

The well today needs cleaning. Nasty, unseemly things have piled up in it. Particularly religion. Religion has always been and always will be a threat to liberty.

Religion and democracy will always be a threat to each other because religion will always be trying to make democracy conform to its beliefs, and democracy will always fight against all threats to personal liberty and free, unchained thinking.

There’s that old problem about understanding the concept of liberty and the pursuit of happiness which America has been contending with from the beginning.

It’s a nut that is not easily cracked or understood by the political leaders and the great, grazing masses that follow them, often directing the energies of their leaders out of the sheer power of their massive dumb-to-the-bone ignorance and hypocrisy.

Look at them. Remember how quick they were to follow the shepherd into unprovoked and illegal war with Iraq?

As if they didn’t know that reasonable Americans should never trust their government to tell them the truth or to lead them in a wise and just way.

It was as if they didn’t realize that the idea of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is unsustainable if it does not apply to all the peoples and nations of the world.

It was as if they had never taken the time to realize that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were not all of our inalienable rights but “among” our inalienable rights.

It was as if they had never realized that justice is also an inalienable right of mankind and is just as important as any other inalienable right, and maybe even more important because it is what wins, protects and defends those rights against all comers who would deny them, and helps to support our backbone in the face of tyranny, danger, violence and slaughter.

But it is impossible for a nut to understand justice since he doesn’t comprehend or accept the obvious meaning of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as it relates even to the citizens of America, much less the peoples of the world.

Look at them now. A great many of them are beginning to think and say out loud that maybe the good shepherd led them astray when he led them to attack Iraq.

And many of them are ready for America to claim victory and remove our troops from this bloody war in Iraq, which we started, and let them fight the rest of it out among themselves; since, after all, we’ve done our part and didn’t take them to raise.

But never underestimate the ignorance and stupidity of the great, grazing masses and their leaders.

They never really understood the wrongness of our actions; only that the war has continued with no end in sight and has cost more American lives than expected.

Even lunatics can mock the phrase that without an understanding of history one is bound to repeat it.

But that doesn’t help anything if you are a lunatic or a follower of lunatics and have no understanding of the present moment, past moments or future moments in any kind of realistic understanding that could possibly make any reasonable sense out of the mystery of why you were born, what is the purpose of humanity and what can be done to insure its continued existence.

Now, without even waiting for Bush and his people to lay out the finishing touch of their propaganda, you have the grazing masses and their leaders – Democrats and Republicans – in agreement that Iran cannot be allowed to build its own nuclear energy program because we cannot chance the possibility of Iran being able to develop a nuclear weapon, and then, according to its desire, rain horror down on the world.

The American people and their leaders have still not grasped the concept of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that it must apply to all nations equally and cannot be reduced or restricted according to the dictates of America the Super Power and its ambition to rule the world by spreading democracy in the name of the Lord.

Even now the great, grazing masses and their leaders don’t seem to realize that Bush and his people are hard at work, trying to build up a good excuse to attack Iran and remove its leadership for the well-being of the Iranian people, peace in the world and in defense of America.

Instead of a War on Terror, which is just a stupid excuse that allows the president, as commander-in-chief, to assume powers in a time of war that he has no right to - under the Constitution - to assume, we are actually fighting a war against nations – particularly those nations that are led by what we in America love to call “the bad guys.”

The shepherd and his people have found it easy to convince the great, grazing masses that we are only carrying out the Lord’s will by planting democracy in nations where there were none, knowing that nations like us, that practice democracy, are peaceful nations that do not attack other nations (except in the cause of freedom and in the name of the Lord.)

They say that to do this and protect America from the terrorists, nothing is more important than intelligence – intelligence so secretive and important to national security that it has no limits and does not need warrants.

No matter that it carries with it the toxic odors of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, here in American today you have the great, grazing masses and their political leaders accepting whatever the government wants as a sweet smell of honeysuckle blooming in the fresh morning air to the delight of their open, patriotic nostrils.

Of course a lot more useful intelligence could be gathered by simply talking respectfully and in a friendly way to those nations we consider a threat to our national security and way of life, and coming up with a mutual respect and understanding that will satisfy them and us and allow us to live in peace.

But that requires the kind of intelligence that comes from the brain.

And how could we ever convince the great, grazing masses and their leaders of that? That it’s all about thinking.

And using the good, human intelligence that God gave us. The crazy nuts!


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