Virtue

Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury

What is the bitter truth?  America, my adopted country that I love so much, is facing a terrible crisis.  In the history of global civilization, this is the greatest country that ever existed.  During the last 200 years, you have built the best educated system, the best medical and scientific communities, the most impressive economy, and have created more advances in technology than any other modern society.  So wouldn't it be logical to assume that here you would also have the best life in the world?

Instead I see far too many problems, and I hear too much unhappiness.  Statistically, the United States makes up only about 5 percent of the world's population, but its people seem to complain more than the rest of the world combined!  How can this be?  Swami Salami

All good things in life, you should endure mental or physical pain to earn.   Bikram's Beginning Yoga

When I think about 'What makes America?' my answer is:

The truth.

The truth of life is, you own nothing that you haven't earned.  It's worse than that: you cannot enjoy anything you haven't earned.

"The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." --Greek historian Plutarch (c. 46-120 A.D.)

It's the shits, and God is cruel that way.  Far more a republican like Bill Cosby than a snaky operator like Rahm Emanuel.

The truth is that you can do anything, have anything, be anything, for which you have the consciousness -- but not otherwise.

I am a Republican because I am descended from Democrats.  In my grandparents' time you did not 'lean' on folks.  You made your own way.

The old virtue is the most loving: human consciousness cannot grow, cannot advance, unless those muscles are exercised, is how Ann Davies put it.  Someone telling you otherwise is not your friend, as Plutarch said.   Thank God for the Devil, else we would all be Democrat: whiny, sniveling blobs without a life purpose.  Or else snobs, as so many of them are.  I choose to be neither.  I have far too wonderful a personality to be a Democrat!

How about you?

How did the United States elect a Man-Boy to the White House?

Through chronic childishness, and an empty focus on empty dreams.

We are dying.

Earn This

Comments

[Terry Fuchs]

We must suffer the humility of our own failures if we are ever to grow. Don't even get me started on self esteem. I live on the Coeur d' Alene Reservation. These kids are taught to wear Native Pride as a badge of honor without ever earning any distinction. They never learn what oxygen thieves they have become, most drop out of school when they turn 16. The teacher are frustrated, how do you motivate someone who gets checks from several sources to even try to be educated.The scholarships and grants offered as carrots are underutilized and rarely appreciated.

[Irish Cicero]

You talk like a logger.