TWO FROM ALTERNET

Never Enough

Another aspect of how our lifestyle tends to erode our culture is that people are trying extremely hard to keep up -- not only with their neighbors, but also just the two jobs they have.

There's an amazing outbreak of amphetamines across the country that you've probably heard of. It's rampant across the country now. Everybody talks about marijuana being the problem. That's not the problem -- it's individuals who are essentially hijacking their pleasure centers, trying to stay awake.

Those types of erosions will, within a generation or two, have a massive effect upon what I consider to be the crucible of the culture: the stable family and community structures, which enable people to grow up and learn how it is to behave in a normal, balanced civil society. When you begin to get large numbers of people who are addicted to amphetamines or to material goods, this fragments families.

And once the family is fragmented and the community is fragmented, the next generation grows up with no real awareness of what it is that they need to do in order to be happy. So you get onto this strange treadmill situation -- it's even a slippery slope really -- where they fall into something without even realizing it's a genuine addiction.

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This is from an interview with an author of a book about rampant American consumerism, and the above excerpt illustrates but one of the many problems associated with it. Consumer debt, social alienation, anxiety, obesity, and depression are a few more. We've got to face the fact that the accumlation of things is simply not a desirable goal: getting off of the parental teat years ago and realizing that I was poor was probably one of the best things that's ever happened to me--once I could no longer afford them, I realized that I didn't really care about all the crap I had been buying at the mall for years on my folks' credit card. Happiness is about family, community, and friends, and you just can't buy stuff like that.

Investigating Pat Robertson

Despite his apology, Pat Robertson should still be investigated -- and potentially prosecuted -- for calling for the murder of a democratically elected head of state. Under Title 18 of US Code Section 1116, "whoever kills or attempts to kill a foreign official, official guest, or internationally protected person shall be punished." Section 878 of the same title makes it a crime to "knowingly and willingly threaten" to commit the above crime.

The US government is also obligated under international law to prevent and punish acts of terrorism against foreign heads of state, if those acts are conceived of or planned on US territory. The 1973 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons makes it a crime to commit a "murder, kidnapping, or other attack upon on the liberty of an internationally protected person;" [including] a "threat to commit any such attack."

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That's good enough for me. Lock the murderous bastard up and throw away the key. Any moral American would agree.

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