Self worth for Blue Monday
145 Self-Esteem Quotes Below
We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light. ~Mary Dunbar
When people believe in themselves they have the first secret of success. ~Norman Vincent Peale
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Don’t you dare, for one more second, surround yourself with people who are not aware of the greatness that you are. ~Jo Blackwell-Preston
There is a Divine and Infinite potential within every soul, an intimate access to the mind of God and the passion of the Universe ~K. Allen Kay
Yours is the energy that makes your world. There are no limitations to the self except those you believe in. ~Jane Roberts
Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself. ~Robert Collier
I wish I could show you, When you are lonely or in darkness, The astonishing light of your own being. ~Hafiz
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. ~Thich Nhat Hanh
You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.
~Yogi Bhajan
Building Self Esteem Quotes – You Matter!
Tell me how a person judges his or her self-esteem and I will tell you how that person operates at work, in love, in sex, in parenting, in every important aspect of existence – and how high he or she is likely to rise. The reputation you have with yourself – your self-esteem – is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life. ~Nathaniel Branden
Having a low opinion of yourself is not "modesty". It’s self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not "egotism". It’s a necessary precondition to happiness and success. ~Bobbe Sommer
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection. ~Buddha
Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves. ~Nathaniel Branden
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Appreciation and self-love are the most important tools that you could ever nurture. Appreciation of others, and the appreciation of yourself is the closest vibrational match to your Source Energy of anything that we’ve ever witnessed anywhere in the Universe. ~Abraham
Everybody is unique. Compare not yourself with anybody else lest you spoil God’s curriculum. ~Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer
All things splendid have been achieved by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. ~Bruce Barton
By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before. ~Edwin Elliot
Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. ~Malcolm S. Forbes
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid. ~Albert Einstein
Building Self Esteem Quotes –
You Are Unique!Wouldn’t it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out. ~Alan Cohen
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you will ever own. ~Mary Schmich
There is so much love in your heart that you could heal the planet.~Louise Hay
Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it. ~Thaddeus Golas
You are as amazing as you let yourself be. Let me repeat that. You are as amazing as you let yourself be. ~Elizabeth Alraune
Twitter index: Twitterers recount sad moments on the ‘most depressing day of the year’ – Yahoo! News
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The Essence of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
To simplify, Ellis also talks about the three main irrational beliefs:
1. "I must be outstandingly competent, or I am worthless."
2. "Others must treat me considerately, or they are absolutely rotten."
3. "The world should always give me happiness, or I will die."
The therapist uses his or her skills to argue against these irrational ideas in therapy, or, even better, leads the client to make the arguments. For example, the therapist may ask…
1. Is there any evidence for this belief?
2. What is the evidence against this belief?
3. What is the worst that can happen if you give up this belief?
4. And what is the best that can happen?
In addition to argument, the REBT therapist uses any other techniques that assist the client in changing their beliefs. They might use group therapy, use unconditional positive regard, provide risk-taking activities, assertiveness training, empathy training, perhaps using role playing techniques to do so, encourage self-management through behavior modification techniques, use systematic desensitization, and so on.
Unconditional self-acceptance
Ellis has come to emphasize more and more the importance of what he calls "unconditional self-acceptance." He says that, in REBT, no one is damned, no matter how awful their actions, and we should accept ourselves for what we are rather than for what we have achieved.
One approach he mentions is to convince the client of the intrinsic value of him or herself as a human being. Just being alive provides you with value.
He notes that most theories make a great deal out of self-esteem and ego-strength and similar concepts. We are naturally evaluating creatures, and that is fine. But we go from evaluating our traits and our actions to evaluating this vague holistic entity called "self." How can we do this? And what good does it do? Only harm, he believes.
There are, he says, legitimate reasons for promoting one’s self or ego: We want to stay alive and be healthy, we want to enjoy life, and so on. But there are far more ways in which promoting the self or ego does harm, as exemplified by these irrational beliefs:
I am special or I am damned.
I must be loved or cared for.
I must be immortal.
I am either good or bad.
I must prove myself.
I must have everything that I want.
He believes very strongly that self-evaluation leads to depression and repression, and avoidance of change. The best thing for human health is that we should stop evaluating ourselves altogether!
But perhaps this idea of a self or an ego is overdrawn. Ellis is quite skeptical about the existence of a "true" or "real" self, ala Horney or Rogers. He especially dislikes the idea that there is a conflict between a self promoted by actualization versus one promoted by society. In fact, he says, one’s nature and one’s society are more likely to be mutually supporting than antagonistic.
He certainly sees no evidence for a transpersonal self or soul. Buddhism, for example, does quite well without it! And he is skeptical about the altered states of consciousness mystical traditions and transpersonal psychology recommend. In fact, he sees these states as being more inauthentic than transcendent!
On the other hand, he sees his approach as coming out of the ancient Stoic tradition, and supported by such philosophers as Spinoza. He sees additional similarities in existentialism and existential psychology. Any approach that puts the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the individual and his or her beliefs is likely to have commonalities with Ellis’s REBT.
OCAL: "recovery from mental illness" support consumers of mental health services, advocate for the improvement of area mental health services.
A touching story
Last week, I took my grandchildren to a restaurant. My six-year-old grandson
asked if he could say grace. As we bowed our heads he said, "God is good,
God is great. Thank you for the food, and I would even thank you more if Nana
gets us ice cream for dessert and liberty and justice for all! Amen!"
Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, I heard a woman
remark, "That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know
how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why, I never!"
Hearing this, my grandson burst into tears and asked me, "Did I do it wrong? Is
God mad at me?"
As I held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job, and God was
certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table. He winked
at my grandson and said, "I happen to know that God thought that was a
great prayer."
"Really?" my grandson asked. "Cross my heart," the man replied. Then, in a
theatrical whisper, he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started
this whole thing), "Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream
is good for the soul sometimes."
Naturally, I bought my grandchildren ice cream at the end of the meal. My grandson
stared at his for a moment, and then did something I will remember the rest
of my life.
He picked up his sundae and without a word, walked over and placed it in
front of the woman. With a big smile he told her, "Here, this is for you.
Shove it up your ass, you grouchy old bitch! "
The End
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9 Things The Rich Don’t Want You To Know About Taxes
9 Things The Rich Don’t Want You To Know About Taxes
Illustration by Justin Rose (Metro Times)
By David Cay Johnston
Association of Alternative Newsmedia | April 14, 2011
For three decades we have conducted a massive economic experiment, testing a theory known as supply-side economics. The theory goes like this: Lower tax rates will encourage more investment, which in turn will mean more jobs and greater prosperity — so much so that tax revenues will go up, despite lower rates. The late Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist who wanted to shut down public parks because he considered them socialism, promoted this strategy. Ronald Reagan embraced Friedman’s ideas and made them into policy when he was elected president in 1980.
For the past decade, we have doubled down on this theory of supply-side economics with the tax cuts sponsored by President George W Bush in 2001 and 2003, which President Obama has agreed to continue for two years. You would think that whether this grand experiment worked would be settled after three decades. You would think the practitioners of the dismal science of economics would look at their demand curves and the data on incomes and taxes and pronounce a verdict, the way Galileo and Copernicus did when they showed that geocentrism was a fantasy because Earth revolves around the sun (known as heliocentrism). But economics is not like that. It is not like physics with its laws and arithmetic with its absolute values.
Tax policy is something the Framers left to politics. And in politics, the facts often matter less then who has the biggest bullhorn.
The Mad Men who once ran campaigns featuring doctors extolling the health benefits of smoking are now busy marketing the dogma that tax cuts mean broad prosperity, no matter what the facts show.
As millions of Americans prepare to file their annual taxes, they do so in an environment of media-perpetuated tax myths. Here are a few points about taxes and the economy that you may not know, to consider as you prepare to file your taxes. (All figures are inflation adjusted.)
1: Poor Americans do pay taxes.
Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year “47 percent of Americans don’t pay any taxes.” John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.
Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said “50 percent of the country gets benefits without paying for them.”
Actually, they pay lots of taxes — just not lots of federal income taxes.
Data from the Tax Foundation shows that, in 2008, the average income for the bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.
This year, the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and $18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax free in America.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent for those who make $229,000 or more.
2: The wealthiest Americans don’t carry the burden.
This is one of those oft-used canards. US Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party favorite from Kentucky, told David Letterman recently that “the wealthy do pay most of the taxes in this country.”
The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.
It’s true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.
Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That’s because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who earns $106,800.
3: In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service issues an annual report on the 400 highest income-tax payers. In 1961, there were 398 taxpayers who made $1 million or more, so I compared their income tax burdens from that year to 2007.
Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.
Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent in 2007.
(By the way, during seven of the eight Bush years, the IRS report on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that Obama overturned almost instantly after his inauguration.)
4: Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.
John Paulson, the most successful hedge fund manager of all, bet against the mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero.
Congress lets hedge fund managers earn all they can now and pay their taxes years from now.
In 2007, Congress debated whether hedge fund managers should pay the top tax rate that applies to wages, bonuses and other compensation for their labors, which is 35 percent. That tax rate starts at about $300,000 of taxable income; not even pocket change to Paulson, but almost 12 years of gross pay to the median-wage worker.
The Republicans and a key Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, fought to keep the tax rate on hedge fund managers at 15 percent, arguing that the profits from hedge funds should be considered capital gains, not ordinary income, which got a lot of attention in the news.
What the news media missed is that hedge fund managers don’t even pay 15 percent. At least, not currently. So long as they leave their money, known as “carried interest,” in the hedge fund, their taxes are deferred. They only pay taxes when they cash out, which could be decades from now for younger managers. How do these hedge fund managers get money in the meantime? By borrowing against the carried interest, often at absurdly low rates — currently about 2 percent.
Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump’s tax records for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years. Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President Clinton signed. It lets “professional” real-estate investors use paper losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if they end up with negative incomes like Trump.
Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.
In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for US Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14 million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his living tax-free while working people pay taxes, he had a simple response: Everyone should pay less.
5: And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant income.
The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and similar conservative marketing organizations tell us relentlessly that lower tax rates will make us all better off.
“When tax rates are reduced, the economy’s growth rate improves and living standards increase,” according to Daniel J Mitchell, an economist at Heritage until he joined Cato. He says that supply-side economics is “the simple notion that lower tax rates will boost work, saving, investment and entrepreneurship.”
When Reagan was elected president, the marginal tax rate for income was 70 percent. He cut it to 50 percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George HW Bush and Clinton and then cut by George W Bush. The top rate is now 35 percent.
Since 1980, when President Reagan won election promising prosperity through tax cuts, the average income of the vast majority — the bottom 90 percent of Americans — has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income was up to $1.01.
Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent’s average income more than doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top 10th of 1 percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.
The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150 million, the data show.
6: When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same — less taxes.
Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data is available, were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 in 2000. Yet even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion—an 8 percent decline, thanks to a number of loopholes. The official 2010 profit numbers are not added up and released by the government, but the amount paid in corporate taxes is: In 2010 they fell further, to $191 billion — a decline of more than 23 percent compared with 2000.
7: Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.
Despite all the noise that America has the world’s second highest corporate tax rate, the actual taxes paid by corporations are falling because of the growing number of loopholes and companies shifting profits to tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
And right now, America’s corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything else, but act as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.
A corporate tax rate that is too low actually destroys jobs. That’s because a higher tax rate encourages businesses (who don’t want to pay taxes) to keep the profits in the business and reinvest, rather than pull them out as profits and have to pay high taxes.
The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act, which passed with bipartisan support, allowed more than 800 companies to bring profits that were untaxed but overseas back to the United States. Instead of paying the usual 35 percent tax, the companies paid just 5.25 percent.
The companies said bringing the money home — “repatriating” it, they called it — would mean lots of jobs. Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican, put the figure at 660,000 new jobs.
Pfizer, the drug company, was the biggest beneficiary. It brought home $37 billion, saving $11 billion in taxes. Almost immediately, it started firing people. Since the law took effect, it has let 40,000 workers go. In all, it appears that at least 100,000 jobs were destroyed.
Now Congressional Republicans and some Democrats are gearing up again to pass another tax holiday, promoting a new Jobs Creation Act. It would affect 10 times as much money as the 2004 law.
8: Republicans like taxes too.
President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called the increases “revenue enhancers.” Among other things, Reagan hiked Social Security taxes so high that, by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2 trillion in surplus tax. George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written ironclad pledge to never raise taxes on anyone.
It raised taxes on teenagers by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their parents’ tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they would otherwise pay. It was a story that ran buried inside The New York Times one Sunday, but nowhere else.
In fact, thanks to Republicans, one in three Americans will pay higher taxes this year than they did last year.
First, some history. In 2009, President Obama pushed his own tax cut — for the working class. He persuaded Congress to enact the Making Work Pay tax credit. Over the two years 2009 and 2010, it saved single workers up to $800 and married heterosexual couples up to $1,600, even if only one spouse worked. The top 5 percent or so of taxpayers were denied this tax break.
The Obama administration called it “the biggest middle-class tax cut” ever. Yet last December, the Republicans, poised to regain control of the House of Representatives, killed Obama’s Making Work Pay credit while extending the Bush tax cuts for two more years — a policy Obama agreed to.
By doing so, Congressional Republican leaders increased taxes on a third of Americans, virtually all of them the working poor, this year.
As a result, of the 155 million households in the tax system, 51 million will pay an average of $129 more this year. That is $6.6 billion in higher taxes for the working poor, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated.
In addition, the Republicans changed the rate of workers’ FICA contributions, which finances half of Social Security. The result:
If you are single and make less than $20,000, or married and make less than $40,000, you lose under this plan.
But the top 5 percent, people who make more than $106,800, will save $2,136 ($4,272 for two-career couples).
9: Other countries do it better.
We measure our economic progress, and our elected leaders debate tax policy, in terms of a crude measure known as gross domestic product. The way the official statistics are put together, each dollar spent buying solar energy equipment counts the same as each dollar spent investigating murders.
We do not give any measure of value to time spent rearing children or growing our own vegetables or to time off for leisure and community service.
And we do not measure the economic damage done by shocks, such as losing a job, which means not only loss of income and depletion of savings, but loss of health insurance, which a Harvard Medical School study found results in 45,000 unnecessary deaths each year.
Compare this to Germany, one of many countries with a smarter tax system and smarter spending policies.
Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care, pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures, the vast majority live better in Germany than in America.
To achieve this, German singles on average pay 52 percent of their income in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organizations for Economic Cooperation and Development.
At first blush the German tax burden seems horrendous. But in Germany (as well as Britain, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and Japan), tax-supported institutions provide many of the things Americans pay for with after-tax dollars. Buying wholesale rather than retail saves money.
A proper comparison would take the 30 percent average tax on American workers and add their out-of-pocket spending on health care, college tuition and fees for services and compare that with taxes that the average German pays. Add it all up and the combination of tax and personal spending is roughly equal in both countries, but with a large risk of catastrophic loss in America, and a tiny risk in Germany.
Americans take on $85 billion of debt each year for higher education, while college is financed by taxes in Germany and tuition is cheap to free in other modern countries. While soaring medical costs are a key reason that, since 1980, bankruptcy in America has increased 15 times faster than population growth, no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes broke because of accident or illness. And child poverty in America is the highest among modern countries — almost twice the rate in Germany, which is close to the average of modern countries.
On the corporate tax side, the Germans encourage reinvestment at home and the outsourcing of low-value work, like auto assembly, and German rules tightly control accounting so that profits earned at home cannot be made to appear as profits earned in tax havens.
Adopting the German system is not the answer for America. But crafting a tax system that benefits the vast majority, reduces risks, provides universal health care and focuses on diplomacy rather than militarism abroad (and at home) would be a lot smarter than what we have now.
Here is a question to ask yourself: We started down this road with Reagan’s election in 1980 and upped the ante in this century with George W Bush.
How long does it take to conclude that a policy has failed to fulfill its promises? And as you think of that, keep in mind George Washington. When he fell ill, his doctors followed the common wisdom of the era. They cut him and bled him to remove bad blood. As Washington’s condition grew worse, they bled him more. And like the mantra of tax cuts for the rich, they kept applying the same treatment until they killed him.
Luckily, we don’t bleed the sick anymore, but we are bleeding our government to death.
A video everyone should watch
I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog , but not everything is important. I now have something I want to share with everyone. Please watch this video and add your comments:
Expanding Perception 2010
Help your Community!!
Help us feed the poor of our community by voting at this site :
Smoking gun for Republican fear campaigns
Fear again.
Not hope, nor patriotism, nor progress, nor any of the nobler emotions and impulses bywhich human beings are driven.
Nope. None of those.
Instead, fear. Again.
We’ve seen thismovie many times.
So there is little that is surprising about the Republican National Committee fundraising document recently reported by Politico, the one that offers strategies to get donors to part with their money. Donors can, it says, be persuaded to give by appealing to their egos, by offering them tchotchkes, or by promising them access. And some, the small donors, the five- and 10dollar Janes and Joes, can be persuaded if you play to their fears.
The sole surprise is that someone actually wrote it downas a PowerPoint presentation and was absent-minded enough to leave a hard copy in a hotel.
Here, then, is the smoking gun, concrete validation for those of uswho contend that since Sept. 11, 2001, fear has been the GOP’s leading export, that under the aegis of George W. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove, the party’s message boiled downto a single command: Be very afraid.
And some of us have eagerly complied, fearing Muslim terrorists, Muslim-Americans, Latino immigrants, gay people, black people, even “salespeople,” if they say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Some of us see socialists around every street corner.
The use of fear as a political expedient is neither newnor limited to theGOP. In the ’60s, Democrats ran an ad suggesting a nuclear holocaust would ensue if Americans elected Barry Goldwater. AGOPad fromthe ’80s suggested Willie Horton would kill you if you voted for Michael Dukakis.
But has the drumbeat of fear ever been as intense and unrelenting as it’s been since that awful morning in September?
“We’re Americans,” said Colin Powell just days after the terrorist attacks.“We don’t walk around terrified.”
Maybe you thought for a moment he was right. But of course, he wasn’t. We – the nation of moon explorers and frontier tamers, of Iwo Jima and San Juan Hill, of dreamers, makers and doers – have been “very” afraid since that selfsame morning. And this has been largely due to Powell’s own party, which, in almost every election of the last decade, exploited a simple truth: frightened people are not thinking people; if you can make someone scared enough, you canmake them do or believe anything.
And as winning a formula as that proved to be during the long, tiring decade just ended, it also left you wondering if they could not offer – and we did not “deserve” – better. It left you nostalgic for politicians left and rightwho sought tomove us by nobler expedients, who knewthat people are at their bestwhen they rally for, instead of always, and only, against.
Instead, we nowhad people who told us we actually had much more to fear than fear itself, who said morning in America had become high noon, a never-ending showdownbetween us and Them, a perpetual face-off against frightening, evil Others.
The document discovered by Politico proves, not that proof was needed, that this fear mongering has been neither incidental nor accidental. And that is inexcusable. That the party knows this can be seen in the stampede of pachydermsrushing to disavowthe document.
“I’m ashamed of that,” said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
We will be able to judge the sincerity of the party’s mortification bywhether it embraces or shuns fear mongering in the coming election. Forgivemeif I don’t holdmybreath.
Meantime, I leave you with a quote fromthe eminent philosopher Lucy Van Pelt, who once told her friend, Charlie Brown, “If we can find outwhat you’re afraid of, we can label it.”
Andwho knewLucy was a Republican?
Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readersmay contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
© 2010 The Miami Herald Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Leonard Pitts
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