Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Sound Familiar?

    A quote:
            These days the chief executives in America move from
            company to company lightly, vote themselves bonuses
            just before bankruptcy, sell out the retirement fund,
            and so on.

Care to guess when this observation was made? Last week? Last year? Would you believe more than twenty years ago, say 1990? The quote was a passing comment in Robert Bly's seminal book, Iron John.

       Here's another:
               The best lack all conviction, while the worst
                      Are full of passionate intensity.

Sound familiar, like maybe Jon Stewart's analysis of our current political environment? Democrats fiddle away while Republicans rant about the deficit. Notice the poetic format? It's from a poem titled, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats, published in 1916.

       Yet another:
              Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
                                                              –Edmund Burke

Hmmm... I don't know when Burke wrote this, but he died in 1797. Get the picture?

Remember "Where have all the flowers gone?" The Kingston Trio, 1961. Pete Seeger's verse was about the futility of wars but could well have been about the abuse of power. The refrain at the end of each verse asked, "When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?"

When will we ever learn? The answer to this question has been blowing in the wind for fifty years. Isn't it time we finished forever with war? Isn't it time we insisted our leaders in business and government take the high road and do what's best for the country and its people rather than securing their own fortunes? Where are the "philosopher kings" of industry and government? Where are the true stewards of the country's welfare? They are sorely needed to shepherd us around the perils of the past.
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