Our recent vacation found Polly and me in downtown Lexington, Kentucky. We were amazed (and disheartened) by how many downtown churches there were — mainly Baptist — and the seemingly ubiquitous homeless and panhandlers. I told Polly, “look at all these big, fancy, rich churches, yet hungry, out-of-work, homeless people abound. So much for taking care of and ministering to the least of these.”
While poking around — one of our favorite pastimes — we came upon a rolling advertisement for the anti-abortion gospel. I say anti-abortion and not pro-life because most Evangelical “pro-lifers” are not actually pro-life. These zealots are pro-unborn, but once babies are out of the womb, these preachers of the anti-abortion gospel are quite callous and indifferent to virtually everything that materially affects the babies – and indeed, the lives of their fellow humans. A perfect example of this is the recent Congressional battle over healthcare. The “pro-life,” God’s Only Party Republicans have made it clear that the only lives that matter are theirs and those of the unborn. Until Republicans start truly caring about we who have successfully exited our mother’s wombs, they are not really “pro-life.” As long as Republicans want to take away our healthcare, cut food stamps and other poverty reducing programs, do away with Social Security, do away with the minimum wage, increase Defense spending, and support the never-ending war against terrorism, they most certainly are NOT pro-life.
Pastor Trewhella has been a passionate leader and laborer within the body of Christ since his conversion at age 17 in the inner city of Detroit. His integrity and innovative leadership within the pro-life movement [and now within the abolitionist movement] have inspired a generation to “love their neighbor as themselves”.
Though much maligned in the liberal media for his effective pro-life work, Pastor Trewhella’s reputation as a man of principle and great courage shine brightly to a generation so desperately in need of godly leadership. He and his wife Clara live in the Milwaukee, WI area. They have eleven children.
The driver of the rolling anti-abortion advertisement is also a missionary to the pre-born.
Religion is a tradition and a part of life across the entire globe, appearing in virtually all cultures. It comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors, and advocates both peace and violence. People may change their religious ideas over time. Across all of these variations, a single variable is shared: faith based not on objective fact, but on belief.
By itself, that isn’t a problem per se—religious beliefs don’t necessarily need to conflict or interact with secular ideas. But when they do, we get problems. Historically, civilizations ruled by religious ideology inevitably face challenges when it comes to making rational decisions about the greater good of society.
At the center of America’s founding principles, we have the separation of church and state. There’s a very good reason for that foundation and it isn’t because the founders were faithless heathens or that they hated religion. It was because, in their time, religious institutions wielded tremendous power over governments and interfered with progress and prosperity.
Fast forward to today, and there are a number of fascinating examples of yesterday’s problems causing today’s problems. Where then do schools fall into this argument?
Socialization
Our schools teach us many things—the liberal arts, sciences, arithmetic, and sometimes even life skills such as those taught in the rapidly disappearing home economics classes. Yet regardless of the grade level or subject, the central tenant of all schools is socializing our children.
Socialization teaches them how to interact with others, what’s expected of them in the world, and how they must interact with rules and authority. Foundations begin at home but are molded by the social experience.
What then for students who are taught that it’s expected of them to follow certain religious tenets? Even if we ignore that religious ideas taught at schools can conflict with the beliefs acquired at home, we must acknowledge that institutional teaching of religious ideas limits the freedom of choice. It robs individuals of the privilege to choose their own beliefs, by spiking the proverbial thought pool with predispositions.
Furthermore, schools that push religion absolutely influence how tomorrow’s adults will interact with the rest of the world. Being taught that a single idea is right and familiar makes foreign religions and ideologies appear strange and at times threatening. It plays perfectly into fear-mongering of the “other” where one religious belief is backed by the power of the state.
Objectivity
Religion becomes an issue in schools not when attendees practice their own beliefs, but when the institution itself favors any form of “belief.” Schools must be objective; they need to teach skills and facts based on the best available evidence, and religion simply doesn’t fit into that category because it is inherently not evidence-based.
That doesn’t mean religion is inherently good or bad; it simply falls into a different category from what schools are intended to teach. Truthfully, there should never be room to argue about material taught in schools because the information ought to be undeniable.
For instance, one can argue whether stories in the Bible, Quran, etc. are true, but absolutely no one will disprove grammatical rules, mathematical formulas or basic scientific laws. The last comes with some caveat, as scientific theories are continually rewritten based on new information.
Admittedly one might argue that cultural identity and historic events are open to interpretation, but the underlying facts don’t change. The president during World War II is not a point of debate any more than whether or not the Civil Rights Movement actually happened.
A Balanced Viewpoint
Most information we’re given as adults comes with a major slant or agenda. Even this piece has an agenda, which you’ve no doubt assumed at some point from the title. Pushing a single religious ideology as “right” is simply not something that belongs in our schools.
Yet we see it all the time. It’s not the little vestiges such as the pledge of allegiance, but the general favoring of certain religious ideas as being more correct. For instance, the ancient religion of the Greeks is taught in most schools as “mythology.” That title assumes the ideas and stories are fictitious—something never directly linked with the world’s major religions.
Think to yourself and ask if you’ve ever seen primary or secondary school offering a class on “Islamic Mythology.” You won’t ever see this class title because it pre-supposes that one of the world’s current “top” religions is based on fiction. It becomes inappropriate to do so because it might offend someone, yet the former class on the Greeks is acceptable because there’s scarcely anyone left to be offended.
This is a double standard and truly violates the spirit of an institution built on fostering creative free thinkers, though the former point is somewhat of a “liberty” to be taken with modern schools.
But inevitably, balance would dictate that schools either teach all religions or none. The sheer number of beliefs makes the first option unreasonable, leaving only one serious choice.
For a moment, however, we need to return to reality from the land of fair and hypothetical ideas, because the real world works quite the opposite in practice.
Politics and Religion
Returning to one of our original points, we have the idea that religion and politics should be separated. It’s a founding principle in America, but that doesn’t mean it’s practiced or accepted by everyone everywhere.
Even in the United States, where religion is legally separate from the state, we constantly see the use of religion to steer politics one way or the other. Pastors, priests, rabbis, and all other sorts of religious leaders seek to use their influence to steer voters or public policy.
Those raised on an education where religion is omnipresent are far less likely to object to making decisions based on religion because such a thing is already a standard in their lives since childhood. And it wasn’t just mom or dad pushing those ideas.
Of course, there are other extremes that demonstrate our point much more clearly. Religious states such as Iran are the talk of the world, not because of their unbridled prosperity, but because of the threat they perceive to those with differing beliefs. The same could be said of Israel, who despite a secular slant, is dominated by a single religious faith system that very much impacts public policy.
One last form of state-sponsored religion is the unorthodox practice of a dictatorship backed by a “cult of personality.” Like the Hitler youth groups of World War II Germany, countries such as North Korea and China practice devotion not to an otherworldly deity, but to a person. These beliefs are communicated in school in a manner no different from in a devout Christian or Islamic state.
It should be noted that in either case — secular or spiritual religion — both institutions seek to repress information on a massive scale. Without the use of specialty programs such as VPNs, those in many of the aforementioned countries have severely limited access to information online, as their governments prevent access to the outside.
Obscuring dissenting ideas is just one of many tactics used by state-sponsored religion, and schools make it easier by issuing textbooks that only contain information in support of the dominating ideology.
Secular Religion
The last point we’d like to discuss is with regards to the above points on what may as well be termed “atheist religions.” Though traditional spiritual religions have no place in schools, their absence shouldn’t be taken as permission for similar secular dogmas to step in.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in today’s cult of science. It quietly invades our classrooms, pushing singular ideas as being the one and only correct explanation for phenomenon when insufficient data exists to support a certain conclusion. And it can have dire consequences.
For the last half century, schools taught a generation of students that butter was somehow inferior to margarine. That in itself wasn’t a problem because the research seemed to support it; the problem is that today many institutions still teach these same, incorrect ideas because the established professors cling to old “facts” like a religious ideology.
These are the people – part of the “science is never wrong” group – who selectively ignore information that is detrimental to their own beliefs. These beliefs are the unintentional replacement for spiritual belief systems that need to be rooted out all the same.
If and when religion is removed from our schools, then we can truly create the most open and creative minds. These students will be the leaders of tomorrow who help to end meaningless conflicts based solely on beliefs.
Do you think religion has a place in school? Why or why not?
About the Author: Carla is a thinker and rational debater with a major focus on modern issues ranging from education to politics. With a background in cybersecurity and freedom of information activism, she brings a unique perspective into arguments, always with a hope of opening minds to new perspectives.
Middletown, Ohio Republican councilman Dan Picard wants to teach drug addicts a real-life lesson about drug abuse — overdose in Middletown and we are going to let you die. This story is a perfect example of what Republicans want to do when it comes to healthcare. Are you overweight? Diabetic? Do you have high blood pressure? Why should anyone pay for your medical care? Take care of it yourself – and if you can’t? Die. It is beyond me how anyone who cares about human welfare can continue to support Republicans, both at the state and federal levels. What we have is a clash of worldviews, one which puts people first, another which only concerns itself with money and bottom line. Perhaps Narcan is too expensive. Is it within the power of local, state, and federal officials to force drug companies to reduce the cost of the drug? According to Wikipedia, Narcan (Naloxone) costs less than $5 per dose. In the United States, the “price for a package of two auto-injectors in the US, however, has increased from $690 in 2014 to $4,500 in 2016.” Welcome to the perverseness of American capitalism and greed. Congress has the power to put an end to immoral price increases such as this one. Unfortunately, as long as drug companies are doling out millions of dollars in campaign donations to our elected officials, it is highly unlikely that anything will be done about the price of not only Narcan but drug prices in general.
An Ohio city is considering whether dispatchers should send ambulances to every overdose call they get, after the number of overdoses this year has already exceeded last year’s total.
Dan Picard, a Middletown city councilman, proposed a “three strikes” limit for opioid addicts after the number of overdoses jumped from 532 last year to 577 so far this year, including 51 deaths, compared to 74 in all of 2016, reported the Journal-News.
“I want to send a message to the world that you don’t want to come to Middletown to overdose because someone might not come with Narcan and save your life,” Picard said. “We need to put a fear about overdosing in Middletown.”
The 61-year-old Picard, who isn’t seeking re-election, suggested issuing a court summons to overdose victims and requiring them to complete community service to work off the cost of their emergency medical services call and a dose of the life-saving Narcan drug.
If they fail to do so following two overdoses, 911 dispatchers could refuse to send help on their third call.
“If the dispatcher determines that the person who’s overdosed is someone who’s been part of the program for two previous overdoses and has not completed the community service and has not cooperated in the program, then we wouldn’t dispatch,” Picard told WLWT-TV.
The city councilman pointed out that cancer patients don’t get free chemotherapy, and he said patients suffering heart attacks don’t get free bypass surgery on an EMS run.
Congressional Republicans are waging a full-scale war against the health of poor and working-class Americans. Their battle plan is quite simple:
Do away with the federal funding of Medicaid.
Force states to either raise taxes to fund Medicaid or drastically cut services.
Enrich the medical industry by ignoring the runway cost of healthcare, wrongly suggesting the market forces with correct the current excesses.
Raise insurance premiums for the sick and elderly.
Do away with Obamacare regulations that forced insurance companies to cover preëxisting conditions and provide basic preventative healthcare.
Give businesses huge tax cuts.
Give the wealthy huge text cuts.
The Republicans who oppose the current Senate healthcare bill do not object because they want Americans to have better healthcare. What they want is a complete dismantling of the federal government, including any laws and regulations that govern healthcare. These Ayn Rand-loving Libertarians don’t care one whit about whether Americans live or die or whether any of us has affordable insurance. Left to their own devices, these Republicans will destroy the social progress of the past sixty years, remolding America into a fiefdom where the rich and major corporations rule the land. The difference between people such as I and these Republicans is that we actually care about the welfare of the American people and these Republicans don’t. Their concern begins and ends with their wallets. Ironically, most of these Republican are Christians, people who supposedly follow Jesus and keep his commandments. Evidently, these human-hating Republicans have never read Jesus’ words about riches and how those of means should treat the poor.
The solution, of course, is to raise taxes, and provide single-payer health insurance for all Americans — rich, poor, and working class. It is time we take the profit out of healthcare. People should not have to look at their bank balances before deciding to seek medical treatment. As it stands now, even those of us who have healthcare are facing astronomical rises in insurance premiums, deductibles, and drug costs. The only sure way to make certain that all Americans have comprehensive, affordable healthcare is to burn to the ground the current system. This means, first, voting out of office any Republican or Democrat who continues to suckle at the teat of the healthcare industry. These “leaders” of ours cannot, as Jesus said, serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other. And as it hands now, it sure looks like the ruling class hates poor and working-class people.
Last Saturday, Polly and I drove to Ontario, Ohio (near Mansfield) to meet her parents for a late lunch. While driving to Texas Roadhouse, we came upon a Donald Trump rally. The pictures that follow will clearly show that there is a symbiotic connection between Evangelical Christianity and the Trump presidency. These Evangelicals are certain that Donald Trump is God’s man, and only he can lead America to the Promised Land.
Last Saturday, Polly and I drove to Ontario, Ohio (near Mansfield) to meet her parents for a late lunch. While driving to Texas Roadhouse, we came upon a Donald Trump rally. The pictures that follow will clearly show that there is a symbiotic connection between Evangelical Christianity and the Trump presidency. These Evangelicals are certain that Donald Trump is God’s man, and only he can lead America to the Promised Land.
The U.S. war in Afghanistan is well into its 16th year. In 2014 President Obama declared it over, but it will remain a political, financial, security, legal, and moral problem unless you actually end it.
The U.S. military now has approximately 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan , plus 6,000 other NATO troops, 1,000 mercenaries, and another 26,000 contractors (of whom about 8,000 are from the United States). That’s 41,000 people engaged in a foreign occupation of a country 15 years after the accomplishment of their stated mission to overthrow the Taliban government.
During each of the past 15 years, our government in Washington has informed us that success was imminent. During each of the past 15 years, Afghanistan has continued its descent into poverty, violence, environmental degradation, and instability. The withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops would send a signal to the world, and to the people of Afghanistan, that the time has come to try a different approach, something other than more troops and weaponry.
The ambassador from the U.S.-brokered and funded Afghan Unity government has reportedly told you that maintaining U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is “as urgent as it was on Sept. 11, 2001.” There’s no reason to believe he won’t tell you that for the next four years, even though John Kerry tells us “Afghanistan now has a well-trained armed force …meeting the challenge posed by the Taliban and other terrorists groups.” But involvement need not take its current form.
The United States is spending $4 million an hour on planes, drones, bombs, guns, and over-priced contractors in a country that needs food and agricultural equipment, much of which could be provided by U.S. businesses. Thus far, the United States has spent an outrageous $783 billion with virtually nothing to show for it except the death of thousands of U.S. soldiers , and the death, injury and displacement of millions of Afghans. The Afghanistan War has been and will continue to be, as long as it lasts, a steady source of scandalous stories of fraud and waste. Even as an investment in the U.S. economy this war has been a bust.
But the war has had a substantial impact on our security: it has endangered us. Before Faisal Shahzad tried to blow up a car in Times Square, he had tried to join the war against the United States in Afghanistan. In numerous other incidents, terrorists targeting the United States have stated their motives as including revenge for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, along with other U.S. wars in the region. There is no reason to imagine this will change.
In addition, Afghanistan is the one nation where the United States is engaged in major warfare with a country that is a member of the International Criminal Court. That body has now announced that it is investigating possible prosecutions for U.S. crimes in Afghanistan. Over the past 15 years, we have been treated to an almost routine repetition of scandals: hunting children from helicopters, blowing up hospitals with drones, urinating on corpses — all fueling anti-U.S. propaganda, all brutalizing and shaming the United States.
Ordering young American men and women into a kill-or-die mission that was accomplished 15 years ago is a lot to ask. Expecting them to believe in that mission is too much. That fact may help explain this one: the top killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is suicide. The second highest killer of American military is green on blue, or the Afghan youth who the U.S. is training are turning their weapons on their trainers! You yourself recognized this, saying: “Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghans we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.”
The withdrawal of U.S. troops would also be good for the Afghan people, as the presence of foreign soldiers has been an obstacle to peace talks. The Afghans themselves have to determine their future, and will only be able to do so once there is an end to foreign intervention.
We urge you to turn the page on this catastrophic military intervention. Bring all U.S. troops home from Afghanistan. Cease U.S. airstrikes and instead, for a fraction of the cost, help the Afghans with food, shelter, and agricultural equipment.
If you are so inclined, please add your name to the open letter here.
As I pulled into our driveway, I noticed a strange circular mark on the sidewalk in front of our home.
What’s that mark on the sidewalk? I said to my wife. She replied, I have no idea.
We carefully examined the circle, noticing that it had what looks like an arrow pointing to our front door.
We stood for a moment on the sidewalk, contemplating what the mark could be.
Hell if I know, I said to Polly, and nodding her head she said, Yep.
During the wee hours of the morning, I abruptly woke, said something to Polly — neither of us knows what — and ran from the bedroom, only to return moments later. Come morning, Polly remembered nothing from the night before, but I remember exactly what happened during my frightful dream.
Polly took a vacation day, so we decided to drive to Findlay and eat dinner at Texas Roadhouse. We had planned to attend the Cincinnati Reds vs. Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, but nonstop rain and cold temperatures forced us to change our plans.
During dinner I asked Polly, Do you remember me running from the room last night? She replies, Nope.
I had a bad dream — a dream I have had on and off for years. According to my dream, there is a secret group of people living in Florida who are out to make life miserable for me, threatening to expose to the world the “real” Bruce Gerencser. In some versions of this dream, this secretive group opts to kill me, causing my head to explode. Last night, they caused my head to explode, and this is why I bolted from the bedroom.
We talked about dreams in general for a few minutes, and then it was time to pay our bill and return home to the teeming metropolis of Ney. An hour or so later, as we pulled into our flooded driveway, I noticed that the torrential downpour had washed away from the sidewalk the circle with an arrow that pointed to the front door.
Polly, I think I have figured out what the circle was all about! Not stopping to hear her response, I said, the circle was put there by an advance party of aliens so the mother ship would know where to stop last night. My nightmare was the result of aliens probing my mind!!
Polly laughed, as did I.
Hey, I am serious!
In a Trumpian world of alternative facts where lies are truth and facts are opinions, who’s to say that my story is not true?
Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, recently wrote a short book detailing the threat of tyranny facing Americans (and the world) today. Snyder gives twenty important lessons we must learn from history if we are to avoid tyranny. History does not repeat, says Professor Snyder, but it does instruct.
What follows is a summary of Snyder’s Twenty Lessons. I have expanded the text on the points I found most thought-provoking.
Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
Defend institutions.
Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.
Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourselves and set an example for others to do so.
Remember professional ethics.
Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.
Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.
Stand out.
Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.
Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which comes from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.
Make eye contact and small talk.
Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
Establish a private life.
Contribute to good causes.
Learn from peers in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself.
Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attacks comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suppression of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.
Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.
Be as courageous as you can.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century can be read in one sitting. You can purchase the book here. Buying the book through the provided link will provide a few shekels for this site. Thank you!
This is not the case. Death and dismemberment are horrific regardless of the weapon. No weapon is being used legally, morally, humanely, or practically in Syria or Iraq. U.S. bombs are no less indiscriminate, no less immoral, and no less illegal than chemical weapons — or for that matter than the depleted uranium weapons with which the United States has been poisoning the area. The fact that a weapon has not been banned does not create a legal right to go into a country and kill people with it.
2. Chemical weapons use justifies the escalated use of other weapons.
Does shoplifting justify looting? If a Hatfield poisoned a McCoy, would another McCoy be justified in shooting a bunch of Hatfields? What barbarism is this? A crime does not sanction another crime. That’s a quick trip to hell.
3. Important people we should trust know who used chemical weapons.
No, they do not. At least they do not know that the Syrian government did it. If they knew this, they would offer evidence. As on every past occasion, they have not done so.
4. The enemy is pure evil and will answer only to force.
The U.S. government and its proxies have sabotaged peace negotiations numerous times over the past several years, maintaining that Assad would have to step down or — preferably — be overthrown by violence before anything could be negotiated. This does not make the U.S. government pure inhuman evil, much less does it make the Syrian government that.
5. If you don’t want to bomb Syria with one enemy’s name on your lips, you hold the firm belief that said enemy is actually a saint.
This piece of stupidity gets people accused of loving and holding blameless the Syrian government, the Russian government, the U.S. government, ISIS, and various other parties. In fact, the reasonable thing to do is to hold all killers responsible for their killing because of the crime, not because of who commits it.
6. U.S. war-making in Syria is defensive.
This is the opposite of reality-based thinking as war-making endangers us rather than protects us. Someone should ask Donald Trump to remember the Maine. You may remember that Spain wanted the matter brought to a neutral arbiter, but the United States wanted war, regardless of any evidence. That’s been the typical move over the centuries: careful maneuvering into war, not away from it. Trump, by the way, is already up to his bloody elbows in several wars inherited from Obama — wars no less immoral and illegal slaughters because of their connection to either of those presidents. The question of who blew up the Maine is, at this point a truly dumb one. The important point is that the U.S. didn’t want to know, wanted instead to rush into a war before anyone could find out. Typically, the desire to avoid information, and not some other consideration, is the reason for the urgency in war-making.
7. Peace was tried in 2013, and it failed.
No. What happened was that Obama and his administration tried to pull off the same stunt that Trump is trying now, and the public rose up and refused to allow it. So, instead of a massive bombing campaign, Syria got more weapons, more trainers, more troops, and a medium sized bombing campaign. That’s very different from actually shifting direction and offering Syria diplomacy, aid, and disarmament.
8. The U.S. government’s goal is peace.
The long openly stated goal of powerful players in the U.S. government is to overthrow Assad.
9. Syria is as boring and unconcerning as numerous other ongoing U.S. wars.
In reality, Syria is a war that risks fighting between the United States and Russia, while each is armed with far more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth. Creating a profitable conflict between the U.S. and Russia is a likely actual motivation of some hawks on Syria.
10. Making everything worse with yet more violence is the only option left.
That’s not an option at all. But these are: aid, reparations, negotiations, disarmament, the rule of law, truth and reconciliation.
— David Swanson, Let’s Try Democracy, Top 10 Lies, Damn Lies, and Lies About Syria, April 7, 2017
