“
People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so that I attack my own culture out of self-hatred, because I want to be white. This is a tiresome argument. Tell me, is freedom then only for white people? Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors' traditions and mutilate my daughters? To agree to be humiliated and powerless? To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes? When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice?
”
”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)
“
We don't make bicycles anymore. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everyone to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening.
And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV.
”
”
Peter Hitchens
“
Even after centuries of human interacting, children still continue to rebel against their parents and siblings. Young marrieds look upon their in-laws and parents as obstacles to their independence and growth. Parents view their children as selfish ingrates. Husbands desert their wives and seek greener fields elsewhere. Wives form relationships with heroes of soap operas who vicariously bring excitement and romance into their empty lives. Workers often hate their bosses and co-workers and spend miserable hours with them, day after day. On a larger scale, management cannot relate with labour. Each accuses the other of unreasonable self-interests and narrow-mindedness. Religious groups often become entrapped, each in a provincial dogma resulting in hate and vindictiveness in the name of God. Nations battle blindly, under the shadow of the world annihilation, for the realization of their personal rights. Members of these groups blame rival groups for their continual sense of frustration, impotence, lack of progress and communication. We have obviously not learned much over the years. We have not paused long enough to consider the simple truth that we humans are not born with particular attitudinal sets regarding other persons, we are taught into them. We are the future generation's teachers. We are, therefore, the perpetrators of the confusion and alienation we abhor and which keeps us impotent in finding new alternatives. It is up to us to diligently discover new solutions and learn new patterns of relating, ways more conducive to growth, peace, hope and loving coexistence. Anything that is learned can be unlearned and relearned. In this process called change lies our real hope.
”
”
Leo F. Buscaglia (Loving Each Other: The Challenge of Human Relationships)
“
Christ, back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if someone does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
To all accusations of excessive development the administrators can reply, as they will if pressed hard enough, that they are giving the public what it wants, that their primary duty is to serve the public not preserve the wilds. "Parks are for people" is the public relations slogan, which decoded means that the parks are for people-in-automobiles. Behind the slogan is the assumption that the majority of Americans, exactly like the managers of the tourist industry, expect and demand to see their national parks from the comfort, security and convenience of their automobiles.
Is this assumption correct? Perhaps. Does that justify the continued and increasing erosion of the parks? It does not.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
“
He gasped in despair while he wrote to her knowing everything is going to end.
He: Why did you ruin my image in front of your mother and family though I wasn't the bad guy?
She replied Coldly: I acted childish and took revenge, I wanted to end this relation.
He kept asking all that she accused him of.
She kept admitting false allegations, something kept breaking inside him.
Silence kept creeping into him, sorrow enveloped his soul and tears fell of his eyes for he knew all had ended.
”
”
Anonymus Autor
“
We are accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. Yet to an obsessive his obsession always seems to be of the nature of things and so is not recognized for what it is. The relation between property and art in European culture appears natural to that culture, and consequently if somebody demonstrates the extent of the property interest in a given cultural field, it is said to be a demonstration of his obsession. And this allows the Cultural Establishment to project for a little longer its false rationalized image of itself.
”
”
John Berger
“
A culture that routinely downgrades the worth of victims in relation to perpetrators is a culture that muzzles accusations of abuse.
”
”
Deborah Tuerkheimer (Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers)
“
For one such: women positioned in relations of asymmetrical moral support with men have historically been required to show him moral respect, approval, admiration, sympathy, and concern. When she breaks character, and tries to level moral criticisms or accusations in his direction, she is withholding from him the good will he may be accustomed to receiving from her.
”
”
Kate Manne (Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny)
“
This development is possibly related to the fact that so much of "value" has been absorbed by technology itself. It is "good" to electrify a primitive area. Civilization and even morality are implicit in technological transformation...New techniques are in themselves bien pensant and represent not only rationality but benevolence...Romantic individuals (a mass of them by now) accuse this mass civilization of obstructing their attainment of beauty, nobility, integrity, intensity. I do not want to sneer at the term Romantic. Romanticism guarded the "inspired condition," preserved the poetic, philosophical, and religious teachings...during the greatest and most rapid of transformations, the most accelerated phase of modern scientific and technical transformation.
”
”
Saul Bellow (Herzog)
“
For one such: women positioned in relations of asymmetrical moral support with men have historically been required to show him moral respect, approval, admiration, sympathy, and concern. When she breaks character, and tries to level moral criticisms or accusations in his direction, she is withholding from him the good will he may be accustomed to receiving from her. He may even be in some sense reliant on her good will to maintain his tenuous sense of self-worth. Her resentment or blame may feel like a betrayal, a reversal of the proper moral relations between them, and this may make him seek payback, revenge, retribution.
”
”
Kate Manne (Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny)
“
trick, though. Treatment has always been more effective and cheaper than prison for true drug addicts. What’s changed, Norman said, is that no longer are most of the accused African American inner-city crack users and dealers. Most of the new Tennessee junkies come from the white middle and upper-middle classes, and from the state’s white rural heartland—people who vote for, donate to, live near, do business with, or are related to the majority of Tennessee legislators.
”
”
Sam Quinones (Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic)
“
The cost savings weren’t what did the trick, though. Treatment has always been more effective and cheaper than prison for true drug addicts. What’s changed, Norman said, is that no longer are most of the accused African American inner-city crack users and dealers. Most of the new Tennessee junkies come from the white middle and upper-middle classes, and from the state’s white rural heartland—people who vote for, donate to, live near, do business with, or are related to the majority of Tennessee legislators.
”
”
Sam Quinones (Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic)
“
Robyn: [narrating] Animal lovers, especially female ones, are often accused of being neurotic and unable to relate to other human beings. More often than not, those pointing the finger have never had a pet. It seems to me the universe gave us three things to make life bearable: hope, jokes, and dogs. But the greatest of these gifts was dogs.
”
”
Robin Davidson (Tracks)
“
Gene patents are the point of greatest concern in the debate over ownership of human biological materials, and how that ownership might interfere with science. As of 2005—the most recent year figures were available—the U.S. government had issued patents relating to the use of about 20 percent of known human genes, including genes for Alzheimer’s, asthma, colon cancer, and, most famously, breast cancer. This means pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and universities control what research can be done on those genes, and how much resulting therapies and diagnostic tests will cost. And some enforce their patents aggressively: Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes. Myriad has been accused of creating a monopoly, since no one else can offer the test, and researchers can’t develop cheaper tests or new therapies without getting permission from Myriad and paying steep licensing fees. Scientists who’ve gone ahead with research involving the breast-cancer genes without Myriad’s permission have found themselves on the receiving end of cease-and-desist letters and threats of litigation.
”
”
Rebecca Skloot
“
In terms of intergroup relations, the myth of the model minority has served to pit Asian Americans against other groups targeted by racism. the accusing message of the dominant society to Blacks, Latinxs, and Native Americans is, 'They overcame discrimination—why can't you?' Of course...any group comparisons that don't take into account differential starting points are inherently flawed.
”
”
Beverly Daniel Tatum (Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?)
“
Phil talked openly about his current life, but he closed up when I asked him about his early years. With some gentle probing, he told me that what he remembered most vividly about his childhood was his father’s constant teasing. The jokes were always at Phil’s expense and he often felt humiliated. When the rest of the family laughed, he felt all the more isolated. It was bad enough being teased, but sometimes he really scared me when he’d say things like: “This boy can’t be a son of ours, look at that face. I’ll bet they switched babies on us in the hospital. Why don’t we take him back and swap him for the right one.” I was only six, and I really thought I was going to get dropped off at the hospital. One day, I finally said to him, “Dad, why are you always picking on me?” He said, “I’m not picking on you. I’m just joking around. Can’t you see that?” Phil, like any young child, couldn’t distinguish the truth from a joke, a threat from a tease. Positive humor is one of our most valuable tools for strengthening family bonds. But humor that belittles can be extremely damaging within the family. Children take sarcasm and humorous exaggeration at face value. They are not worldly enough to understand that a parent is joking when he says something like, “We’re going to have to send you to preschool in China.” Instead, the child may have nightmares about being abandoned in some frightening, distant land. We have all been guilty of making jokes at someone else’s expense. Most of the time, such jokes can be relatively harmless. But, as in other forms of toxic parenting, it is the frequency, the cruelty, and the source of these jokes that make them abusive. Children believe and internalize what their parents say about them. It is sadistic and destructive for a parent to make repetitive jokes at the expense of a vulnerable child. Phil was constantly being humiliated and picked on. When he made an attempt to confront his father’s behavior, he was accused of being inadequate because he “couldn’t take a joke.” Phil had nowhere to go with all these feelings. As Phil described his feelings, I could see that he was still embarrassed—as if he believed that his complaints were silly.
”
”
Susan Forward (Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life)
“
I want to use this practice:
Whenever I express my views, thoughts or anything I deeply believe, I will welcome any opposing view or thought. I will listen with caring attention to what the other says, accepting it no matter how different or antagonistic it seems to be.
I will also deeply and sincerely thank them.
I will abstain from feeling accused or judged.
I will acknowledge the other as my shadow, an integral part of me who has accepted to relate with me.
I believe that a vision in order to manifest requires its opposite, the other polarity.
If my vision is truly holistic, I am not in a condition to oppose any alternative vision.
I intend to learn to accept what appears to be opposite, no matter how unpleasant or contrary it is. I believe that only in the paradox of this acceptance, in releasing the urge to be right, unity can be experienced and manifested.
I have tried all other options, and they have not worked, and this is the only I have left.
And for this purpose I am open to be patient, promoting the gestation of this healing process, for I know that all is one.
”
”
Franco Santoro
“
I have long stressed the Hegelian procedure at work in this reversal of positions of the beautiful soul in relation to the reality he accuses. The point is not to adapt him to it, but to show him that he is only too well adapted to it, since he assists in its very fabrication.
”
”
Jacques Lacan
“
Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that participants may lie or fantasise in interview, it has been suggested that adults who report severe child sexual abuse are particularly prone to such confabulation. Whilst all forms of research, whether qualitative or quantitative, may be impacted upon by memory error or false reporting. there is no evidence that qualitative research is particularly vulnerable to this, nor is there any evidence that a fantasy— or lie—prone individual would be particularly likely to volunteer for research into child sexual abuse. Research has consistently found that child abuse histories, including severe and sadistic abuse, are accurate and can be corroborated (Ross 2009, Otnow et al. 1997, Chu et al. 1999). Survivors of child abuse may struggle with amnesia and other forms of memory disturbance but the notion that they are particularly prone to suggestion and confabulation has yet to find a scientific basis. It is interesting to note that questions about the veracity of eyewitness evidence appear to be asked far more frequently in relation to sexual abuse and rape than in relation to other crimes. The research on which this book is based has been conducted with an ethical commitment to taking the lives and voices of survivors of organised abuse seriously.
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
Christ, back in Chicago, we don’t make bicycles any more. It’s all
human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new
ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what;
and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses
us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the
bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.”
“And you think things will be better in San Lorenzo?”
“I know damn well they will be. The people down there are poor
enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some
common sense!
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
Irwin Silber, the editor of the folk magazine Sing Out! was there, too. In a few years’ time he would castigate me publicly in his magazine for turning my back on the folk community. It was an angry letter. I liked Irwin, but I couldn’t relate to it. Miles Davis would be accused of something similar when he made the album Bitches Brew, a piece of music that didn’t follow the rules of modern jazz, which had been on the verge of breaking into the popular marketplace, until Miles’s record came along and killed its chances. Miles was put down by the jazz community. I couldn’t imagine Miles being too upset.
”
”
Bob Dylan (Chronicles: Volume One (Bob Dylan Chronicles Book 1))
“
Do not forgive. Forgiveness accuses before it forgives. By accusing, by stating the injury, it makes the wrong irredeemable. It carries the blow all the way to culpability. Thus, all becomes irrepairable; giving and forgiving cease to be possible.
For nothing saves innocence.
Forgive me for forgiving you.
The sole fault would be one of position: the one and only fault is to be "I,", for it is not identity that the Self in myself brings me. This self is merely a formal necessity: it simply serves to allow the infinite relation of Self to Other. Whence the temptation (the sole temptation) to become a subject again, instead of being exposed to subjectivity without any subject, the nudity of dying space.
I cannot forgive -- forgiveness comes from others -- but I cannot be forgiven either, if forgiveness is what calls the "I" into question and demands that I give myself, that I subject myself to the lack of subjectivity. And if forgiveness comes from others, it only comes; there is never any certitude that it can arrive, because in it there is nothing of the (sacramental) power to determine. It can only delay in the element of indecision. In The Trail, one might think that the death scene constitutes the pardon, the end of the interminable; but there is no end, since Kafka specifies that shame survives, which is to say, the infinite itself, a mockery of life as life's beyond.
”
”
Maurice Blanchot (The Writing of the Disaster)
“
The next time you make a donation to charity, don’t just think about the good turn you’re doing, but take a moment to consider that one day you may need to receive charity yourself. As far as we know, Seneca truly lived these words. Just a year or so after writing this letter, he was falsely accused of plotting against Nero. The price? Seneca was sentenced to commit suicide. As the historian Tacitus relates the scene, Seneca’s closest friends wept and protested the verdict. “Where,” Seneca asked them repeatedly, “are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparations of so many years’ study against evils to come? Who knew not Nero’s cruelty?” That is: he knew it could happen to him too, and so he was prepared for it.
”
”
Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living)
“
Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed but treatable, whereas their black counterparts were presumed to be biologically hypersexual and deviant. Historian Rickie Solinger demonstrates that in the 1950s an unwed white girl who became pregnant could go to a maternity home before her pregnancy showed, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, and return home to her community with no one the wiser. (White parents concocted stories of their daughters being given the opportunity to study for a semester with relatives.) She could then resume the role of the "nice" girl.
Unwed pregnant black girls, on the other hand, were barred from maternity homes; they were threatened with jail or termination of welfare; and they were accused of using their sexuality in order to be eligible for larger welfare checks. Politicians regarded unwed pregnant black girls as a societal problem, declaring--as they continue to declare today--that they did not want taxpayers to support black illegitimate babies, and sought to control black female sexuality through sterilization legislation.
”
”
Leora Tanenbaum (Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation)
“
Chapter 4,‘Organised abuse and the pleasures of disbelief’, uses Zizek’s (1991) insights into cite political role of enjoyment to analyse the hyperbole and scorn that has characterised the sceptical account of organised and ritualistic abuse. The central argument of this chapter is that organised abuse has come to public attention primarily as a subject of ridicule within the highly partisan writings of journalists, academics and activists aligned with advocacy groups for people accused of sexual abuse. Whilst highlighting the pervasive misrepresentations that characterise these accounts, the chapter also implicates media consumers in the production of ignorance and disdain in relation to organised abuse and women’s and children’s accounts of sexual abuse more generally.
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
As we have explained, so easily when we have a difficulty in any kind of relationship, the mind falls into a view that it is ‘your fault’ or ‘my fault’ – in the language of blame. But such a limited perspective is rarely completely true, or helpful. In relating, our reactions, interpretations, communications, and subtle signals, intended and unintended, feed off and impact each other all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. Thankfully though, if we can acknowledge this and become interested in it, the possibilities of reconciliation open up. If it becomes our shared basis for understanding, then two people having a difficulty can become two looking together at the dynamics of their relating, on the same team untangling the dependent arising of a problem, rather than two accusing, two at war.
”
”
Rob Burbea (Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising)
“
Christ, back in Chicago, we don’t make bicycles any more. It’s all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat's Cradle)
“
As political tensions rose the sudden shift in the Chinese government’s position led to accusations of Chinese infiltrators among those early Wabaling Khaches allowed to leave for India. In India, concern centered on several pro-Chinese Wapaling Khaches who were suspiciously, some felt, included among the Barkor Khaches approved by the Chinese government’s Foreign Bureau in Lhasa to be allowed to emigrate to India.
”
”
David G. Atwill (Islamic Shangri-La: Inter-Asian Relations and Lhasa's Muslim Communities, 1600 to 1960)
“
Today, acknowledgement of the prevalence and harms of child sexual abuse is counterbalanced with cautionary tales about children and women who, under pressure from social workers and therapists, produce false allegations of ‘paedophile rings’, ‘cult abuse’ and ‘ritual abuse’. Child protection investigations or legal cases involving allegations of organised child sexual abuse are regularly invoked to illustrate the dangers of ‘false memories’, ‘moral panic’ and ‘community hysteria’. These cautionary tales effectively delimit the bounds of acceptable knowledge in relation to sexual abuse. They are circulated by those who locate themselves firmly within those bounds, characterising those beyond as ideologues and conspiracy theorists.
However firmly these boundaries have been drawn, they have been persistently transgressed by substantiated disclosures of organised abuse that have led to child protection interventions and prosecutions. Throughout the 1990s, in a sustained effort to redraw these boundaries, investigations and prosecutions for organised abuse were widely labelled ‘miscarriages of justice’ and workers and therapists confronted with incidents of organised abuse were accused of fabricating or exaggerating the available evidence. These accusations have faded over time as evidence of organised abuse has accumulated, while investigatory procedures have become more standardised and less vulnerable to discrediting attacks. However, as the opening quotes to this introduction illustrate, the contemporary situation in relation to organised abuse is one of considerable ambiguity in which journalists and academics claim that organised abuse is a discredited ‘moral panic’ even as cases are being investigated and prosecuted.
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
Laughter may not be nearly as expressive as language, but it has two properties that make it ideal for navigating sensitive topics. First, it’s relatively honest. With words, it’s too easy to pay lip service to rules we don’t really care about, or values that we don’t genuinely feel in our gut. But laughter, because it’s involuntary, doesn’t lie—at least not as much. “In risu veritas,” said James Joyce; “In laughter, there is truth.”51 Second, laughter is deniable. In this way, it gives us safe harbor, an easy out. When someone accuses us of laughing inappropriately, it’s easy to brush off. “Oh, I didn’t really understand what she meant,” we might demur. Or, “Come on, lighten up! It was only a joke!” And we can deliver these denials with great conviction because we really don’t have a clear understanding of what our laughter means or why we find funny things funny. Our brains just figure it out, without burdening “us” with too many damning details.
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
Robert Daley, who at one time was the public relations and publicity director for the New York City Police Department, had written the book Target Blue. An excerpt from the book was “coincidentally” printed in New York magazine on almost the exact day our trial was to begin. One or two chapters were about the Black Liberation Army. The book was a collection of sensationalism, groundless accusations, and outright lies. The few facts that were in those two chapters were distorted beyond recognition.
”
”
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
“
Yet, we must remember that even White privilege is not distributed evenly among Whites. Many White people never get a piece of the pie. This fact, sadly, instead of making them unite with other marginalized and oppressed American employees, it makes them unload their rage and disappointment on the already suffering low-income, refugee, or poor ethnicities, accusing them of ‘stealing our jobs’, or ‘destroying our country and values’. In doing so, they miss the chance of working together with a significant number of allies for real change. Furthermore, they vote for and side with their oppressors thinking that voting for racist and supremacist candidates will change this ugly reality. What they fail to realize is that politics is literally a nasty business that is fed by the masses’ hatred and, once in power, that business never thrives by changing the way the business is done. If all these supposed problems are solved, where will future politicians get their fodder to feed hatred to masses who will bring them to power?
”
”
Louis Yako
“
You know, of course, that as prophesied by Moroni, there are those whose research relating to Joseph Smith is not for the purpose of gaining added light and knowledge but to undermine his character, magnify his flaws, and if possible destroy his influence. Their work product can sometimes be jarring, and so can issues raised at times by honest historians and researchers with no “axe to grind.” But I would offer you this advice in your own study: Be patient, don’t be superficial, and don’t ignore the Spirit.
In counseling patience, I simply mean that while some answers come quickly or with little effort, others are simply not available for the moment because information or evidence is lacking. Don’t suppose, however, that a lack of evidence about something today means that evidence doesn’t exist or that it will not be forthcoming in the future. The absence of evidence is not proof. . . .
When I say don’t be superficial, I mean don’t form conclusions based on unexamined assertions or incomplete research, and don’t be influenced by insincere seekers. I would offer you the advice of our Assistant Church Historian, Rick Turley, an intellectually gifted researcher and author whose recent works include the definitive history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He says simply, “Don’t study Church history too little.” While some honestly pursue truth and real understanding, others are intent on finding or creating doubts. Their interpretations may come from projecting 21st Century concepts and culture backward onto 19th Century people. If there are differing interpretations possible, they will pick the most negative. They sometimes accuse the Church of hiding something because they only recently found or heard about it—an interesting accusation for a Church that’s publishing 24 volumes of all it can find of Joseph Smith’s papers. They may share their assumptions and speculations with some glee, but either can’t or won’t search further to find contradictory information. . . .
A complete understanding can never be attained by scholarly research alone, especially since much of what is needed is either lost or never existed. There is no benefit in imposing artificial limits on ourselves that cut off the light of Christ and the revelations of the Holy Spirit. Remember, “By the power of the Holy Ghost, ye may know the truth of all things.” . . .
If you determine to sit still, paralyzed until every question is answered and every whisper of doubt resolved, you will never move because in this life there will always be some issue pending or something yet unexplained.
”
”
D. Todd Christofferson
“
A good-for-America immigration policy would not accept people with no job skills. It would not accept immigrants’ elderly relatives, arriving in wheelchairs. It would not accept people accused of terrorism by their own countries. It would not accept pregnant women whose premature babies will cost taxpayers $50,000 a pop,1 before even embarking on a lifetime of government support. It would not accept Somalis who spent their adult lives in a Kenyan refugee camp and then showed up with five children in a Minnesota homeless shelter.
”
”
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
“
One criticism of Freud still sometimes heard on the political Left is that his thinking is individualist — that he substitutes ‘private’ psychological causes and explanations for social and historical ones. This accusation reflects a radical misunderstanding of Freudian theory. There is indeed a real problem about how social and historical factors are related to the unconscious; but one point of Freud’s work is that it makes it possible for us to think of the development of the human individual in social and historical terms. What Freud produces, indeed, is nothing less than a materialist theory of the making of the human subject. We come to be what we are by an interrelation of bodies — by the complex transactions which take place during infancy between our bodies and those which surround us. This is not a biological reductionism: Freud does not of course believe that we are nothing but our bodies, or that our minds are mere reflexes of them. Nor is it an asocial model of life, since the bodies which surround us, and our relations with them, are always socially specific.
”
”
Terry Eagleton (Literary Theory: An Introduction)
“
What interested these gnostics far more than past events attributed to the “historical Jesus” was the possibility of encountering the risen Christ in the present.49 The Gospel of Mary illustrates the contrast between orthodox and gnostic viewpoints. The account recalls what Mark relates: Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene … She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.50 As the Gospel of Mary opens, the disciples are mourning Jesus’ death and terrified for their own lives. Then Mary Magdalene stands up to encourage them, recalling Christ’s continual presence with them: “Do not weep, and do not grieve, and do not doubt; for his grace will be with you completely, and will protect you.”51 Peter invites Mary to “tell us the words of the Savior which you remember.”52 But to Peter’s surprise, Mary does not tell anecdotes from the past; instead, she explains that she has just seen the Lord in a vision received through the mind, and she goes on to tell what he revealed to her. When Mary finishes, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken with her. But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, “Say what you will about what she has said. I, at least, do not believe that the Savior has said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas!”53 Peter agrees with Andrew, ridiculing the idea that Mary actually saw the Lord in her vision. Then, the story continues, Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart? Do you think I am lying about the Savior?” Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered … If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?”54 Finally Mary, vindicated, joins the other apostles as they go out to preach. Peter, apparently representing the orthodox position, looks to past events, suspicious of those who “see the Lord” in visions: Mary, representing the gnostic, claims to experience his continuing presence.55 These gnostics recognized that their theory, like the orthodox one, bore political implications. It suggests that whoever “sees the Lord” through inner vision can claim that his or her own authority equals, or surpasses, that of the Twelve—and of their successors. Consider the political implications of the Gospel of Mary: Peter and Andrew, here representing the leaders of the orthodox group, accuse Mary—the gnostic—of pretending to have seen the Lord in order to justify the strange ideas, fictions, and lies she invents and attributes to divine inspiration. Mary lacks the proper credentials for leadership, from the orthodox viewpoint: she is not one of the “twelve.” But as Mary stands up to Peter, so the gnostics who take her as their prototype challenge the authority of those priests and bishops who claim to be Peter’s successors.
”
”
The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books)
“
The brutality of the regime knows no bounds. It does not remain neutral towards the people here; it creates beasts in its own image out of ordinary people who might have been neighbors instead. Even more dangerous was the fact that the fundamentals of humanity and the ABCs of life have been eviscerated from the hearts of many people here. State television destroys human compassion, the sort of fundamental empathy that is not contingent upon a political or even a cultural orientation, and through which one human being can relate to another. The al-Dunya channel stirs up hatred, broadcasts fake news and maligns any opposing viewpoint. I wasn't the only one subjected to internet attacks by the security services and the Ba'thists, even if the campaign against me may be fiercer because I come from the Alawite community and have a lot of family connections to them -- because I am a woman and it's supposedly easier to break me with rumors and character assassinations and insults. Some of my actress friends who expressed sympathy for the children of Dar'a and called for an end to the siege of the city were subjected to a campaign of character assassinations and called traitors, then forced to appear on state television in order to clarify their position. Friends who expressed sympathy for the families of the martyrs would get insulted, they would be called traitors and accused of being foreign spies. People became afraid to show even a little bit of sympathy for one another, going against the basic facts of life, the slightest element of what could be called the laws of human nature -- that is, if we indeed agree that sympathy is part of human nature in the first place. Moral and metaphorical murder is being carried out as part of a foolproof plan, idiotic but targeted, stupid yet leaving a mark on people's souls.
”
”
Samar Yazbek
“
When accused of misogynistic behavior, men often respond by invoking their recognition of the humanity of their wives, sisters, mothers, or other female relatives.
Far better that a man realize that no woman belongs to him—and that he is not entitled to have any woman’s love, care, and admiration in an asymmetrical moral relationship.
It is not hard, upon reflection, to recognize the obvious fact that a woman is fully human. The real challenge may be in recognizing that she is fully a human being, and not just a human giver of love, sex, and moral succor. She is allowed to be her own person, and to be with other people.
”
”
Kate Manne (Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women)
“
Augustine, as bishop of Hippo, appointed his monk Antoninus in the 410s to be bishop of a subordinate diocese at Fussala, one of Africa’s relatively few villages, in the hills of what is now eastern Algeria. Antoninus turned out to be a bad man - he was young and from a poor family, he was promoted too fast - and he terrorized his village, extorting money, clothing, produce and building materials. He was also accused of sexual assault. Augustine removed him, but did not depose him, and tried to transfer him to the nearby estate of Thogonoetum. Here, the tenants told Augustine and their landowner that they would leave if he came.
”
”
Chris Wickham (The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe Book 2))
“
One of the distinctive features of Christian Mindfulness is that it does have moral content. In other words, the moral content is not relativistic. It is based on an imitation of the character of Christ and the ways of God as revealed in Christian Scripture. Christian Mindfulness which is non-judgemental in its quality seeks to avoid harsh, critical and condemning approaches to self and to others. The accusing and condemning tongue can be destructive. Mindful awareness creates space where we can step back and step away from judgementalism. The new environment in which we are invited to relate to ourselves and others is one of kindness.
”
”
Richard H.H. Johnston (Introducing Christian Mindfulness)
“
suddenly hit with waves of guilt. My friends, even some relatives and my own mother often accused me of not being selfish enough. The charge was that I was guilty of sacrificing my own wishes and desires for the wishes and desires of my husband and daughter. Their needs always came first. However, no matter what was said to me about it, I didn’t change. Frankly, when it came to friends and relatives, even my own mother, I thought I was selfish enough; it was they who were too selfish. Many of my friends had broken or fragile marriages because of this attitude, and most had much bigger and more serious problems with their children than Ronnie and I had with Kelly.
”
”
Andrew Neiderman (Lost in His Eyes: Romantic suspense)
“
One of the accusations made against the Pope is that he did not give a public and obvious denunciation of anti-Semitism during the Holocaust. It's a valid issue but one that is often discussed with too little understanding of the reality of 1940s Europe. Such explicit condemnations of Nazi anti-Semitism were not really made in London, Washington, or Moscow, but it's always assumed that Rome should somehow have been different, in spite of the fact that the Vatican was surrounded by Nazi or pro-Nazi troops and that millions of Roman Catholics lived under Nazi occupation whereas London, Washington, and even Moscow were relatively cocooned and the latter even comparatively safe.
”
”
Michael Coren (Why Catholics are Right)
“
When we penetrate the smokescreen of controversies regarding false accusations, ‘recovered memories’, ‘recanters’, references to ‘satanic ritual abuse’ and the incorporation of elements of cultural myths into some accounts, we are left with the reality that in the vast majority of cases it is not the over-reporting or exaggeration of trauma that is the principal problem. Rather it is society’s unwillingness to know, the perpetrators’ strongly motivated efforts to hide their criminal acts, and the relative ease they are often afforded by societal institutions and practices in doing so. - The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Viewpoint)
”
”
Warwick Middleton
“
In 1231, Pope Gregory ordered the Dominicans to take charge of papal courts and decisions and so prevent mob rule and guarantee that the accused received a fair trial and the right of defence. This was the foundation of the Inquisition, and it was a move to organize, control, and limit violence, disruption, and division. Of course, it often failed and even achieved the opposite of its stated and original purpose, but it's surprising how often in an age of casual and brutal violence a relative moderation and legality was achieved. Civil law was far harsher than canon law, demanding confiscation of a heretic's property and usually death, something the Church had tried to prevent for generations.
”
”
Michael Coren (Why Catholics are Right)
“
Frequently I have heard criticism and even accusations directed against me for my policy towards the countries of Eastern Europe. Some say that Gorbachev did not defend socialism in those countries, that he more or less 'betrayed his friends'. Others, on the contrary, accuse me for having been too patient with Ceaușescu, Honecker, Zhivkov and Husák, who had brought their states to the brink of catastrophe. I firmly reject these accusations. They derive from outdated notions about the nature of relations between our countries. We had no right to interfere in the affairs of our 'satellites', to defend and preserve some and punish and 'excommunicate' others without reckoning with the people's will.
”
”
Mikhail Gorbachev (Memoirs)
“
In her book claiming that allegations of ritualistic abuse are mostly confabulations, La Fontaine’s (1998) comparison of social workers to ‘nazis’ shows the depth of feeling evident amongst many sceptics. However, this raises an important question: Why did academics and journalists feel so strongly about allegations of ritualistic abuse, to the point of pervasively misrepresenting the available evidence and treating women disclosing ritualistic abuse, and those workers who support them, with barely concealed contempt? It is of course true that there are fringe practitioners in the field of organised abuse, just as there are fringe practitioners in many other health-related fields. However, the contrast between the measured tone of the majority of therapists and social workers writing on ritualistic abuse, and the over-blown sensationalism of their critics, could not be starker. Indeed, Scott (2001) notes with irony that the writings of those who claimed that ‘satanic ritual abuse’ is a ‘moral panic’ had many of the features of a moral panic: scapegoating therapists, social workers and sexual abuse victims whilst warning of an impending social catastrophe brought on by an epidemic of false allegations of sexual abuse. It is perhaps unsurprising that social movements for people accused of sexual abuse would engage in such hyperbole, but why did this rhetoric find so many champions in academia and the media?
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
After relating these things concerning John, he makes mention of our Saviour in the same work, in the following words: And there lived at that time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be proper to call him a man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, and a teacher of such men as receive the truth in gladness. And he attached to himself many of the Jews, and many also of the Greeks. He was the Christ. 8. When Pilate, on the accusation of our principal men, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him in the beginning did not cease loving him. For he appeared unto them again alive on the third day, the divine prophets having told these and countless other wonderful things concerning him. Moreover, the race of Christians, named after him, continues down to the present day.
”
”
Eusebius (History of the Church)
“
Batley insisted that no cult existed but the jury found him guilty of 35 offences including 11 rapes. three indecent assaults, causing prostitution for personal gain, causing a child to have sex and inciting a child to have sex. The three women, who got Egyptian Eye of Horus tattoos apparently to show their allegiance to their organisation, were found guilty of sex-related charges.
Young boys and girls were procured by cult members to take part in sex sessions, the trial heard. The group preyed on vulnerable youngsters, impelling them to join with veiled death threats. Batley was accused of forcing a number of his victims into prostitution.
(Morris 2011)
There are, after all, no paedophile rings; there is no ritual abuse; recovered memories cannot he trusted; not all victimization claims are legitimate.
(Pratt 2009: 70)
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
In Europe, on the other hand, Muslims find themselves in the opposite position: they are the minority, but they are offered the equality of citizens. The acceptance of reason-based knowledge by Muslims would for them smooth the way to secular democracy, human rights, peace among democratic nations and above all cultural-religious pluralism. If Muslim migrants embrace these values and the related rules, it matters little whether Muslims constitute a minority or a majority. Some leaders of the Islamic diaspora are not favorable to this embracing and make the accusation of Islamophobia every time the shari’a is rejected. This accusation becomes an instrument for deterring any call for change and for incriminating any rational criticism. A call for an embracing of cultural modernity as a platform of peace between civilizations becomes in this perception an expression of Islamophobia.
”
”
Bassam Tibi (Political Islam, World Politics and Europe: From Jihadist to Institutional Islamism)
“
Too often, out of the best of intentions, we do the very thing guaranteed to make matters worse: We hector, lecture, bully, plead, or threaten. Anthony Pratkanis, a social psychologist who investigated how scammers prey on old people, collected heartbreaking stories of family members pleading with relatives who had been defrauded: “Can’t you see the guy is a thief and the offer is a scam? You’re being ripped off!” “Ironically, this natural tendency to lecture may be one of the worst things a family member or friend can do,” Pratkanis says. “A lecture just makes the victim feel more defensive and pushes him or her further into the clutches of the fraud criminal.” Anyone who understands dissonance knows why. Shouting “What were you thinking?” will backfire because it means “Boy, are you stupid.” Such accusations cause already embarrassed victims to withdraw further into themselves and clam up, refusing to tell anyone what they are doing.
”
”
Carol Tavris (Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts)
“
Sam swallowed as she saw the fury in those precious blue eyes she'd never thought to see again. "I don't want to bury you, Dev. I don't. I love you and it terrifies me."
Those words hit him like a vicious punch to his gut. "What did you say?"
"I love you."
He cupped her cheek in his hand as he stared at her in disbelief. Those were the three words he'd never expected to hear from someone he wasn't related to. "I don't want to live without you, Sam."
Tears glistened in her eyes. "I haven't been alive in over five thousand years. Not until some bear made a smart-ass comment about my bad driving and followed me home."
He bristled under her accusation. "You invited me."
Her smile blinded him. "And I'm inviting you in again."
"Are you sure?"
She nodded. "I know this is fast, but--"
A loud knock on the door interrupted her. "Clothes on, people, quick," Nick said from the other side of the door. "Buckle up, buttercups. We have incoming and it's about to get bloody.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (No Mercy (Dark-Hunter, #18; Were-Hunter, #5))
“
[Refers to 121 children taken into care in Cleveland due to suspected abuse (1987) and later returned to their parents]
Sue Richardson, the child abuse consultant at the heart of the crisis, watched as cases began to unravel:
“All the focus started to fall on the medical findings; other supportive evidence, mainly which we held in the social services department, started to be screened out. A situation developed where the cases either were proven or fell on the basis of medical evidence alone. Other evidence that was available to the court, very often then, never got put. We would have had statement from the child, the social workers and the child psychologist’s evidence from interviewing. We would have evidence of prior concerns, either from social workers or teachers, about the child’s behaviour or other symptoms that they might have been showing, which were completely aside from the medical findings. (Channel 4 1997)
Ten years after the Cleveland crisis, Sue Richardson was adamant that evidence relating to children’s safety was not presented to the courts which subsequently returned those children to their parents:
“I am saying that very clearly. In some cases, evidence was not put in the court. In other cases, agreements were made between lawyers not to put the case to the court at all, particularly as the crisis developed. Latterly, that children were sent home subject to informal agreements or agreements between lawyers. The cases never even got as far as the court. (Channel 4, 1997)”
Nor is Richardson alone. Jayne Wynne, one of the Leeds paediatricians who had pioneered the use of RAD as an indicator of sexual abuse and who subsequently had detailed knowledge of many of the Cleveland children, remains concerned by the haphazard approach of the courts to their protection.
I think the implication is that the children were left unprotected. The children who were being abused unfortunately returned to homes and the abuse may well have been ongoing. (Channel 4 1997)
”
”
Heather Bacon (Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas)
“
But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
Those who nowadays see inconveniences to living in this laboratory often come up against the incomprehension and disapproval of their peers. They are accused of opposing the technological society on which they are nonetheless dependent and the comforts of which they enjoy—even if this argument is losing credence as the effects of the ecological crisis become ever more direct and flagrant. This logic follows the same pattern as attempts to silence patients criticizing the medical system on the pretext that their health and sometimes their lives depend on it. We are thus to be neutralized by guilt and condemned to submission and resignation. Can we be held responsible for the society into which we were born and in relation to which our room for maneuver is inevitably limited? To use this as grounds to ban all critique of our society amounts to tying our hands in the face of disaster, hamstringing thought and, more broadly, stifling imagination, desire and the capacity to recall that things are not doomed to be as they currently are.
”
”
Mona Chollet (In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial)
“
Corruption has become a short-cut accusation, a term used by those who are angry at the system to express dissatisfaction and cast aspersions. It is a (rhetorical) weapon of the weak – all the more credible as there indeed is a lot of corruption in Burundi. This is related to what we ended the previous section with, where we said that Burundians desire ‘better people’ rather than ‘better structures.’ Corruption as described by Burundians is a ‘bad person’s’ fault – not a structural issue. Corruption, then, is in part to the masses what human rights are to the well educated. Both are ways to ‘stick it to the man,’ terms whose currency in protest and dissatisfaction is useful. Hence, more than simply accurate descriptions of a social fact, talking about these things is a political act – a way the jargon of the international community has become reappropriated in local political struggles. Given that in Burundi both corruption and human rights violations are indeed prevalent, this makes understanding these discourses very complicated.
”
”
Peter Uvin (Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi (African Arguments))
“
In 2011 in Swansea, Wales, Colin Batley was found guilty of 35 charges relating to his role as the leader of a 'satanic cult' that sexually abused children and women, manufactured child abuse images and forced children and women into prostitution (de Bruxelles 2011).
His partner and two other women were also convicted on related charges, with one man convicted of paying to abuse a victim of the group. The groups' ritualistic activities were based on the doctrine of Aleister Crowley, an occult figure whose writing includes references to ritual sex with children. Crowley's literature has been widely linked to the practice of ritualistic abuse by survivors and their advocates, who in turn have been accused by occult groups of religious persecution. During Batley's trial, the prosecution claimed that Crowley's writings formed the basis of Batley's organisation and he read from a copy of it during sexually abusive incidents. It seems that alternative as well as mainstream religious traditions can be misused by sexually abusive groups. p38
”
”
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
People today associate rivalry with boundless aggression and find
it difficult to conceive of competition that does not lead directly to
thoughts of murder. Kohut writes of one of his patients: "Even as
a child he had become afraid of emotionally cathected competitiveness
for fear of the underlying (near delusional) fantasies of
exerting absolute, sadistic power." Herbert Hendin says of the
students he analyzed and interviewed at Columbia that "they
could conceive of no competition that did not result in someone's
annihilation." The prevalence of such fears helps to explain why Americans
have become uneasy about rivalry unless it is accompanied by the
disclaimer that winning and losing don't matter or that games are
unimportant anyway. The identification of competition with the
wish to annihilate opponents inspires Dorcas Butt's accusation
that competitive sports have made us a nation of militarists, fascists,
and predatory egoists; have encouraged "poor sportsmanship
" in all social relations; and have extinguished cooperation
and compassion.
”
”
Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
“
Out on the northwest side of Nashville, Tennessee, Judge Seth Norman has come to expect phone calls to start pouring in around late January every year. “The legislature comes back in session in January,” Norman said. The calls come from state legislators, each with the same problem: an addicted son, a daughter, a brother-in-law. “‘Um, uh, my nephew down in Camden, you think maybe you might be able to help?’ I get those kinds of calls,” he told me while we sat in the office adjacent to his courtroom. Most of the country’s twenty-eight hundred drug courts are set up to divert drug abusers away from jail and prison and into treatment somewhere. Seth Norman runs the only drug court in America that is physically attached to a long-term residential treatment center. He takes addicts accused of drug-related nonviolent felonies—theft, burglary, possession of stolen property, drug possession—and puts them in treatment for as long as two years as an alternative to prison. Down the hall from his court are dorms with beds for a hundred people—sixty men and forty women. I
”
”
Sam Quinones (Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic)
“
The Fifth Congress had recessed in July 1798 without declaring war against France, but in the last days before adjourning it did approve other measures championed by Abigail Adams that aided in the undoing of her husband—the Alien and Sedition Acts. Worried about French agents in their midst, the lawmakers passed punitive measures changing the rules for naturalized citizenship and making it legal for the U.S. to round up and detain as “alien enemies” any men over the age of fourteen from an enemy nation after a declaration of war. Abigail heartily approved. But it was the Sedition Act that she especially cheered. It imposed fines and imprisonment for any person who “shall write, print, utter, or publish…any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States” with the intent to defame them. Finally! The hated press would be punished. To Abigail’s way of thinking, the law was long overdue. (Of course she was ready to use the press when it served her purposes, regularly sending information to relatives and asking them to get it published in friendly gazettes.) Back in April she had predicted to her sister Mary that the journalists “will provoke measures that will silence them e’er long.” Abigail kept up her drumbeat against newspapers in letter after letter, grumbling, “Nothing will have an effect until Congress pass a Sedition Bill, which I presume they will do before they rise.” Congress could not act fast enough for the First Lady: “I wish the laws of our country were competent to punish the stirrer up of sedition, the writer and printer of base and unfounded calumny.” She accused Congress of “dilly dallying” about the Alien Acts as well. If she had had her way, every newspaperman who criticized her husband would be thrown in jail, so when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed and signed, Abigail still wasn’t satisfied. Grumping that they “were shaved and pared to almost nothing,” she told John Quincy that “weak as they are” they were still better than nothing. They would prove to be a great deal worse than nothing for John Adams’s political future, but the damage was done. Congress went home. So did Abigail and John Adams.
”
”
Cokie Roberts (Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation)
“
What happened to factual, down-the-middle reporting? That’s hard to even define anymore, as the line between fact and fiction, between truth and lies, gets murkier every day. We can’t survive without a free press, dedicated to preserving that fine line and secure enough to follow the facts where they lead. But the current environment imposes serious pressures on our journalists, at least those who cover politics, to do just the reverse—to exercise their own power and to, in the words of one wise columnist, “abnormalize” all politicians, even honest, able ones, often because of relatively insignificant issues. Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.
”
”
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
“
I think it would be true to say that every boy in the school hated and feared her. Yet we all fawned on her in the most abject way, and the top layer of our feelings towards her was a sort of guilt-stricken loyalty. Bingo, although the discipline of the school depended more on her than on Sim, hardly pretended to dispense justice. She was frankly capricious. An act which might get you a caning one day, might next day be laughed off as a boyish prank, or even commended because it “showed you had guts.” There were days when everyone cowered before those deepset, accusing eyes, and there were days when she was like a flirtatious queen surrounded by courtier-lovers, laughing and joking, scattering largesse, or the promise of largesse (“And if you win the Harrow History Prize I’ll give you a new case for your camera!”), and occasionally even packing three or four favoured boys into her Ford car and carrying them off to a teashop in town, where they were allowed to buy coffee and cakes. Bingo was inextricably mixed up in my mind with Queen Elizabeth, whose relations with Leicester and Essex and Raleigh were intelligible to me from a very early age. A word we all constantly used in speaking of Bingo was “favour.
”
”
George Orwell (A Collection Of Essays: (Authorized Orwell Edition): A Mariner Books Classic (Harvest Book))
“
Understanding is clearly a subjective process. It may be very one-sided, in that the physician understands while the patient does not. In such a case the doctor sometimes feels it his duty to convince the patient, and if the latter will not allow himself to be convinced, the doctor accuses him of resistance. When the understanding is all on my side, I find it advisable to stress my lack of understanding. It is relatively unimportant whether the doctor understands or not, but everything hangs on the patient's doing so. What is really needed is a mutual agreement which is the fruit of joint reflection. It is one-sided, and therefore dangerous, understanding for the doctor to prejudge the dream from the standpoint of a certain doctrine and to make a pronouncement which may be theoretically sound, but does not win the patient's assent. In so far as the pronouncement fails in this respect, it is incorrect in the practical sense; and it may also be incorrect in the sense that it anticipates and thereby cripples the actual development of the patient. We appeal only to the patient's brain if we try to inculcate a truth; but if we help him to grow up to this truth in the course of his own development, we have reached his heart, and this appeal goes deeper and acts with greater force.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)
“
One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain.
As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public.
The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hedworth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’.
The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corroborating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital.
~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43
”
”
Trouble and Strife
“
A man who is the head of his wife is preaching all day about Christ and the Church—his obedience or disobedience will determine whether his preaching is full of lies or not, but the very nature of his relation to his wife means that he is preaching, like it or not. Picture Christ murmuring against His wife to the Father, “The woman Thou gavest . . .” Imagine Christ blaming the Church, pointing an accusing finger. Try to picture Christ wishing that He were with someone else. Every situation we might come up with piles absurdity on absurdity. When a man learns this and begins to treat his wife in a manner consistent with that insight, he soon sees the difference between sentimental attachments and covenantal identity. Christ loved His bride with an efficacious love; He loved the Church in a way which transformed her. In the same way a husband is to assume responsibility for his wife’s increasing loveliness. One man marries a pretty woman and hopes, fingers crossed, that she will manage to stay that way. But a federal husband marries a beautiful woman and vows before God and witnesses that he will nourish and cherish her in such a way that she flourishes in that beauty. Christ bestowed loveliness on His Church through His love. A Christian man is called to do the same. Covenant loving bestows loveliness. Federal commitment imparts beauty.
”
”
Douglas Wilson (Federal Husband)
“
Mysterious death, yes, you suspected something even then, I knew it!” With a wave of his hand, he overrode her hasty attempt to interject an accidental in place of that ill-chosen mysterious. “Believe me, I understand your hideous dilemma perfectly. You don’t dare accuse the all-powerful Vorkosigan, the mutie lord.” Vormoncrief scowled at the name. “God knows what retaliation he could inflict on you. But Ekaterin, I have powerful relatives too! I came to offer you—and Nikki—my protection. Take my hand—trust me”—he opened his arms, reaching for her—“and together, I swear we can bring this little monster to justice!” Ekaterin sputtered, momentarily beyond words, and looked around frantically for a weapon. The only one that suggested itself was the fireplace poker, but whether to whap it on his skull or jam it up his ass . . . ? Nikki was crying openly now, thin strained sobs, and Vormoncrief stood between them. She began to dodge around him; ill-advisedly, Vormoncrief tried to wrap her lovingly in his arms. “Ow!” he cried, as the heel of her hand crunched into his nose, with all the strength of her arm behind it. It didn’t drive his nasal bone up into his brain and kill him on the spot the way the books said—she hadn’t really thought it would—but at least his nose began to swell and bleed. He grabbed both her wrists before she could muster aim and power for a second try. He was forced to hold them tight, and apart, as she struggled against his grip.
”
”
Lois McMaster Bujold
“
It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above all, a hot media story. The Daily Mail, for example, had seven reporters, plus its northern editor, based in Middlesbrough full time. Most other news papers and television news teams followed suit.
What were all the reporters looking for? Not children at risk. Not abusing adults. Aggrieved parents were the mother lode sought by these prospecting journalists. Many of these parents were only too happy to tell — and in some cases, it would appear, sell— their stories. Those stories are truly extraordinary.
In many cases they bore almost no relation to the facts. Parents were allowed - encouraged to portray themselves as the innocent victims of a runaway witch-hunt and these accounts were duly fed to the public. Nowhere in any of the reporting is there any sign of counterbalancing information from child protection workers or the organisations that employed them. Throughout the summer of 1987 newspapers ‘reported’ what they termed a national scandal of innocent families torn apart. The claims were repeated in Parliament and then recycled as established ‘facts’ by the media. The result was that the courts themselves began to be paralysed by the power of this juggernaut of press reporting — ‘journalism’ which created and painstakingly fed a public mood which brooked no other version of the story. (p21)
”
”
Sue Richardson (Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas)
“
My faults according to the calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps these offences might have been overlooked, had your pride not been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I with greater policy concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?"
"You are mistaken, Mr Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentle-man-like manner. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any way possible that would have attempted me to accept it. From the very beginning, from the very first moment I must almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish distain for the feelings of others, which such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt you were the last man on earth whom I could ever marry.
”
”
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
“
The government has a great need to restore its credibility, to make people forget its history and rewrite it. The intelligentsia have to a remarkable degree undertaken this task. It is also necessary to establish the "lessons" that have to be drawn from the war, to ensure that these are conceived on the narrowest grounds, in terms of such socially neutral categories as "stupidity" or "error" or "ignorance" or perhaps "cost."
Why? Because soon it will be necessary to justify other confrontations, perhaps other U.S. interventions in the world, other Vietnams.
But this time, these will have to be successful intervention, which don't slip out of control. Chile, for example. It is even possible for the press to criticize successful interventions - the Dominican Republic, Chile, etc. - as long as these criticisms don't exceed "civilized limits," that is to say, as long as they don't serve to arouse popular movements capable of hindering these enterprises, and are not accompanied by any rational analysis of the motives of U.S. imperialism, something which is complete anathema, intolerable to liberal ideology.
How is the liberal press proceeding with regard to Vietnam, that sector which supported the "doves"? By stressing the "stupidity" of the U.S. intervention; that's a politically neutral term. It would have been sufficient to find an "intelligent" policy. The war was thus a tragic error in which good intentions were transmuted into bad policies, because of a generation of incompetent and arrogant officials. The war's savagery is also denounced, but that too, is used as a neutral category...Presumably the goals were legitimate - it would have been all right to do the same thing, but more humanely...
The "responsible" doves were opposed to the war - on a pragmatic basis. Now it is necessary to reconstruct the system of beliefs according to which the United States is the benefactor of humanity, historically committed to freedom, self-determination, and human rights. With regard to this doctrine, the "responsible" doves share the same presuppositions as the hawks. They do not question the right of the United States to intervene in other countries. Their criticism is actually very convenient for the state, which is quite willing to be chided for its errors, as long as the fundamental right of forceful intervention is not brought into question.
...
The resources of imperialist ideology are quite vast. It tolerates - indeed, encourages - a variety of forms of opposition, such as those I have just illustrated. It is permissible to criticize the lapses of the intellectuals and of government advisers, and even to accuse them of an abstract desire for "domination," again a socially neutral category not linked in any way to concrete social and economic structures. But to relate that abstract "desire for domination" to the employment of force by the United States government in order to preserve a certain system of world order, specifically, to ensure that the countries of the world remain open insofar as possible to exploitation by U.S.-based corporations - that is extremely impolite, that is to argue in an unacceptable way.
”
”
Noam Chomsky (The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature)
“
Obama’s narrative culminates in his month-long journey to Africa, where he talks to various relatives about who his dad really was, and then weeps at the man’s grave. It’s powerful stuff. But at first glance it’s a little hard for the reader to understand Obama’s depth of allegiance. His dad was, after all, a complete jerk. He married Kezia in Kenya and had two children with her. Before the second child was born, he abandoned his family to come to America. There he met Obama’s mother Ann, got her pregnant, and then married her, but without telling her he was already married. When Obama was two, his father abandoned him and his mother to go to Harvard; there he moved in with a teacher, Ruth Nidesand. Eventually he took Nidesand back to Africa, married her, and had two children with her. But he also rejoined his African wife, Kezia, and had two more children with her. Later in life he took up with still another woman, Jael Otieno, and impregnated her. The two of them planned to get married after the child was born, but the marriage never took place. By the time he was done, Barack Sr. managed a grand total of three wives, one wife-to-be, and eight children. He was a terrible husband and a worse father; he neglected virtually all his offspring, and one of his sons has accused him of domestic violence. In the words of Mark Ndesandjo, who is the son of Obama Sr. and Nidesand, “I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn’t know where to go.”11
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (The Roots of Obama's Rage)
“
The crime was discovered when Trina became pregnant. As is often the case, the correctional officer was fired but not criminally prosecuted. Trina remained imprisoned and gave birth to a son. Like hundreds of women who give birth while in prison, Trina was completely unprepared for the stress of childbirth. She delivered her baby while handcuffed to a bed. It wasn’t until 2008 that most states abandoned the practice of shackling or handcuffing incarcerated women during delivery. Trina’s baby boy was taken away from her and placed in foster care. After this series of events—the fire, the imprisonment, the rape, the traumatic birth, and then the seizure of her son—Trina’s mental health deteriorated further. Over the years, she became less functional and more mentally disabled. Her body began to spasm and quiver uncontrollably, until she required a cane and then a wheelchair. By the time she had turned thirty, prison doctors diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis, intellectual disability, and mental illness related to trauma. Trina had filed a civil suit against the officer who raped her, and the jury awarded her a judgment of $62,000. The guard appealed, and the Court reversed the verdict because the correctional officer had not been permitted to tell the jury that Trina was in prison for murder. Consequently, Trina never received any financial aid or services from the state to compensate her for being violently raped by one of its “correctional” officers. In 2014, Trina turned fifty-two. She has been in prison for thirty-eight years. She is one of nearly five hundred people in Pennsylvania who have been condemned to mandatory life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of committing when they were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. It is the largest population of child offenders condemned to die in prison in any single jurisdiction in the world.
”
”
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption)
“
Aristotle, who lived after the downfall of Sparta, gives a very hostile account of its constitution.5 What he says is so different from what other people say that it is difficult to believe he is speaking of the same place, e.g. 'The legislator wanted to make the whole State hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his intention in the case of men, but he has neglected the women, who live in every sort of intemperance and luxury. The consequence is that in such a State wealth is too highly valued, especially if the citizens fall under the dominion of their wives, after the manner of most warlike races…. Even in regard to courage, which is of no use in daily life, and is needed only in war, the influence of the Lacedaemonian women has been most mischievous…. This license of the Lacedaemonian women existed from the earliest times, and was only what might be expected. For ... when Lycurgus, as tradition says, wanted to bring the women under his laws, they resisted, and he gave up the attempt.' He goes on to accuse Spartans of avarice, which he attributes to the unequal distribution of property. Although lots cannot be sold, he says, they can be given or bequeathed. Two-fifths of all the land, he adds, belongs to women. The consequence is a great diminution in the number of citizens: it is said that once there were ten thousand, but at the time of the defeat by Thebes there were less than one thousand. Aristotle criticizes every point of the Spartan constitution. He says that the ephors are often very poor, and therefore easy to bribe; and their power is so great that even kings are compelled to court them, so that the constitution has been turned into a democracy. The ephors, we are told, have too much licence, and live in a manner contrary to the spirit of the constitution, while the strictness in relation to ordinary citizens is so intolerable that they take refuge in the secret illegal indulgence of sensual pleasures.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)
“
It turns out that in that terrible year Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is yes and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence—for evidence is always relative—or unchallengeable witnesses—for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces” (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well fed, and has not been beaten up) “and on his character” (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty!). In only one respect did Vyshinsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner’s bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute. . . . Thus it was that the conclusions of advanced Soviet jurisprudence, proceeding in a spiral, returned to barbaric or medieval standards. Like medieval torturers, our interrogators, prosecutors, and judges agreed to accept the confession of the accused as the chief proof of guilt.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement)
“
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.
"There are besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., they exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
”
”
Karl Marx (The Communist Manifesto)
“
Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33
Freyd: You were also looking for some operational criteria for false memory syndrome: what a clinician could look for or test for, and so on. I spoke with several of our scientific advisory board members and I have some information for you that isn't really in writing at this point but I think it's a direction you want us to go in. So if I can read some of these notes . . .
TAT: Please do.
Freyd: One would look for false memory syndrome:
1. If a patient reports having been sexually abused by a parent, relative or someone in very early childhood, but then claims that she or he had complete amnesia about it for a decade or more;
2. If the patient attributes his or her current reason for being in therapy to delayed-memories. And this is where one would want to look for evidence suggesting that the abuse did not occur as demonstrated by a list of things, including firm, confident denials by the alleged perpetrators;
3. If there is denial by the entire family;
4. In the absence of evidence of familial disturbances or psychiatric illnesses. For example, if there's no evidence that the perpetrator had alcohol dependency or bipolar disorder or tendencies to pedophilia;
5. If some of the accusations are preposterous or impossible or they contain impossible or implausible elements such as a person being made pregnant prior to menarche, being forced to engage in sex with animals, or participating in the ritual killing of animals, and;
6. In the absence of evidence of distress surrounding the putative abuse. That is, despite alleged abuse going from age two to 27 or from three to 16, the child displayed normal social and academic functioning and that there was no evidence of any kind of psychopathology.
Are these the kind of things you were asking for?
TAT: Yeah, it's a little bit more specific. I take issue with several, but at least it gives us more of a sense of what you all mean when you say "false memory syndrome."
Freyd: Right. Well, you know I think that things are moving in that direction since that seems to be what people are requesting. Nobody's denying that people are abused and there's no one denying that someone who was abused a decade ago or two decades ago probably would not have talked about it to anybody. I think I mentioned to you that somebody who works in this office had that very experience of having been abused when she was a young teenager-not extremely abused, but made very uncomfortable by an uncle who was older-and she dealt with it for about three days at the time and then it got pushed to the back of her mind and she completely forgot about it until she was in therapy.
TAT: There you go. That's how dissociation works!
Freyd: That's how it worked. And after this came up and she had discussed and dealt with it in therapy, she could again put it to one side and go on with her life. Certainly confronting her uncle and doing all these other things was not a part of what she had to do. Interestingly, though, at the same time, she has a daughter who went into therapy and came up with memories of having been abused by her parents. This daughter ran away and is cutoff from the family-hasn't spoken to anyone for three years. And there has never been any meeting between the therapist and the whole family to try to find out what was involved.
TAT: If we take the first example -- that of her own abuse -- and follow the criteria you gave, we would have a very strong disbelief in the truth of what she told.
”
”
David L. Calof
“
Here we introduce the nation's first great communications monopolist, whose reign provides history's first lesson in the power and peril of concentrated control over the flow of information. Western Union's man was one Rutherford B. Hates, an obscure Ohio politician described by a contemporary journalist as "a third rate nonentity." But the firm and its partner newswire, the Associated Press, wanted Hayes in office, for several reasons. Hayes was a close friend of William Henry Smith, a former politician who was now the key political operator at the Associated Press. More generally, since the Civil War, the Republican Party and the telegraph industry had enjoyed a special relationship, in part because much of what were eventually Western Union's lines were built by the Union Army.
So making Hayes president was the goal, but how was the telegram in Reid's hand key to achieving it?
The media and communications industries are regularly accused of trying to influence politics, but what went on in the 1870s was of a wholly different order from anything we could imagine today. At the time, Western Union was the exclusive owner of the nationwide telegraph network, and the sizable Associated Press was the unique source for "instant" national or European news. (It's later competitor, the United Press, which would be founded on the U.S. Post Office's new telegraph lines, did not yet exist.) The Associated Press took advantage of its economies of scale to produce millions of lines of copy a year and, apart from local news, its product was the mainstay of many American newspapers.
With the common law notion of "common carriage" deemed inapplicable, and the latter day concept of "net neutrality" not yet imagined, Western Union carried Associated Press reports exclusively. Working closely with the Republican Party and avowedly Republican papers like The New York Times (the ideal of an unbiased press would not be established for some time, and the minting of the Time's liberal bona fides would take longer still), they did what they could to throw the election to Hayes. It was easy: the AP ran story after story about what an honest man Hayes was, what a good governor he had been, or just whatever he happened to be doing that day. It omitted any scandals related to Hayes, and it declined to run positive stories about his rivals (James Blaine in the primary, Samuel Tilden in the general). But beyond routine favoritism, late that Election Day Western Union offered the Hayes campaign a secret weapon that would come to light only much later.
Hayes, far from being the front-runner, had gained the Republican nomination only on the seventh ballot. But as the polls closed his persistence appeared a waste of time, for Tilden, the Democrat, held a clear advantage in the popular vote (by a margin of over 250,000) and seemed headed for victory according to most early returns; by some accounts Hayes privately conceded defeat. But late that night, Reid, the New York Times editor, alerted the Republican Party that the Democrats, despite extensive intimidation of Republican supporters, remained unsure of their victory in the South. The GOP sent some telegrams of its own to the Republican governors in the South with special instructions for manipulating state electoral commissions. As a result the Hayes campaign abruptly claimed victory, resulting in an electoral dispute that would make Bush v. Gore seem a garden party. After a few brutal months, the Democrats relented, allowing Hayes the presidency — in exchange, most historians believe, for the removal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.
The full history of the 1876 election is complex, and the power of th
”
”
Tim Wu
“
My grandmother accused me of hurting my mother. Other relatives accused me of being an ungrateful child. Mom said I was mean and cruel and had hurt her deeply. Still impressionable and my spirits tottering under the load of the pain from the past, I accepted the notion that I was that selfish and ungrateful daughter, careless of my mother’s feelings.
”
”
Nancy Richards (Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing)
“
We are quite ready to accuse others of ‘narcissism' in particular those whom we desire, with the aim of reassuring ourselves and relating their indifference, not to the very minor interest that we hold in their eyes or even perhaps in absolute terms […] but to a kind of weakness that afflicts others. When we do this, we credit them with an excessive and pathological concentration on themselves— with a kind of illness that makes them more sick than we are and consequently incapable of breaking out of their over-protected ego and meeting us half-way as they should.
”
”
René Girard
“
Dans l’intemporel, la liberté prêtée aux êtres individuels retourne à sa source divine ; en « ce jour-là », Dieu seul est le « Roi absolu » : l’essence même du libre arbitre », son fond inconditionné, s’identifie dès lors à l’Acte divin. C’est en Dieu seul que la liberté, l’acte et la vérité coïncident, et c’est pour cela que certains Soufis disent que les êtres, au jugement dernier, se jugeront eux-mêmes en Dieu, conformément d’ailleurs à un texte coranique selon lequel ce sont les membres de l’homme qui accusent ce dernier.
L’homme est jugé d’après sa tendance essentielle ; celle-ci peut être conforme à l’attraction divine, elle peut être opposée à elle ou encore indécise entre les deux directions ; ce sont là respectivement les voies de « ceux sur lesquels est Ta grâce », de « ceux qui subissent Ta colère », et de « ceux qui errent », c’est-à-dire qui se dispersent dans l’indéfinité de l’existence, où ils tournent pour ainsi dire en rond. En parlant de ces trois tendances, le Prophète dessina une croix : la « voie droite » est la verticale ascendante ; la « colère divine » agit en sens inverse ; la dispersion de ceux qui « errent » est dans l’horizontale. Les mêmes tendances fondamentales se retrouvent dans tout l’univers ; elles constituent les dimensions ontologiques de la « hauteur » (at-tûl), de la « profondeur » (al-’umq) et de l’« ampleur » (al-’urd). L’Hindouisme désigne ces trois tendances cosmiques (gûnas) par les noms de sattva, rajas et tamas, sattva exprimant la conformité au Principe, rajas la dispersion centrifuge et tamas la chute, non seulement dans un sens dynamique et cyclique, bien entendu, mais aussi dans un sens statique et existentiel.
On peut dire également qu’il n’y a, pour l’homme, qu’une seule tendance essentielle, celle qui le ramène vers sa propre Essence éternelle ; toutes les autres tendances ne sont que l’expression de l’ignorance créaturielle, aussi seront-elles retranchées, jugées. La demande que Dieu nous conduise sur la voie droite n’est donc rien d’autre que l’aspiration vers notre propre Essence prétemporelle. Selon l’exégèse ésotérique, la « voie droite » (aç-çirât al-mustaqîm) est l’Essence unique des êtres, comme l’indique ce verset de la sourate Hûd : « Il n’y a pas d’être vivant que Lui (Dieu) ne tienne par la mèche de son front ; en vérité, mon Seigneur est sur une voie droite ». Ainsi cette prière correspond à la demande essentielle et foncière de toute créature ; elle est exaucée par là même qu’elle est proférée.
L’aspiration de l’homme vers Dieu comporte les deux aspects qu’exprime le verset: « C’est Toi que nous adorons [ou servons], et c’est auprès de Toi que nous cherchons refuge [ou aide] » ; l’adoration, c’est l’effacement de la volonté individuelle devant la Volonté divine, qui se révèle extérieurement par la Loi sacrée et intérieurement par les mouvements de la Grâce ; le recours à l’aide divine, c’est la participation à la Réalité divine par la Grâce et, plus directement, par la Connaissance. En dernière analyse, les mots : « C’est Toi que nous adorons » correspondent à l’« extinction » (al-fanâ), et les mots « c’est auprès de Toi que nous cherchons refuge » à la « subsistance » (al-baqâ) dans l’Être pur. Le verset que nous venons de mentionner est ainsi l’« isthme » (al-barzakh) entre les deux « océans » de l’Être (absolu) et de l’existence (relative).
”
”
Titus Burckhardt (Introduction to Sufi Doctrine (Spiritual Classics))
“
When admitting you are wrong, you gain back the control others took away from you when making you lose it. That's why you must say sorry. It represents a change of attitude but not really a change of personality; The changes on the personality come later on, when, by controlling yourself better, you don't express anger. Because saying sorry means nothing but anger means a lot. You should not want to be an angry person. When you get angry, those who make you angry, win; They win control over your emotional state, your thoughts, your words and your behaviors. They may then accuse you of always being angry and never apologizing, but that's not where you should focus your attention. The main point here, is that you’re living on the basis of instinctive reaction and not awareness or consciousness. So, when you say sorry, you are acknowledging that there is no excuse for losing control over yourself. You should not be sorry for being angry. That's an emotion; and you can't feel sorry for feeling. When you’re angry, you are feeling. When you insult, however, you are losing, yourself, your self-control, your self-respect, and even your capacity to use what you know. More knowledge, makes you more aware, more frustrated, having more and higher expectations on others, and more angry too, more often as well. But that's your problem! No other people's problem! They are just being themselves. Most people really think they are perfect as they are, and that the problems they experience are all outside themselves. And by realizing that, you say sorry as if saying sorry for not being who you really are. And when doing it, you get back the control another person took away from you. It is actually not good when someone needs to say sorry too often to someone else, especially if it’s always the same individual. But that someone else often likes it, as it makes them feel superior. That’s because their ego needs that. They have low self-esteem. Most people do! And that’s why most people's behavior is wired to their ego. Their likes and dislikes are connected to a sense of self-importance and a desperate need to feel important, which they project on their idols, the famous and most popular among them. They admire what they seek the most. When they think they are not important, they offend, to get aggression, which is a desperate need for attention; and to feel like victims of life, which is a deeper state of need, in this case, related to sympathy; and they then blame the other for what he does, for his reactions; and when that other says sorry, they think they have power over that insane cycle in which they now live, and in which they incorporate anyone else, and which they now perfectly master. Their pride is built on arrogance, an arrogance emerged out of ignorance, ignorance composed from delusional cycles within a big illusion; but an illusion that makes sense to them, as if they were succeeding at merging truth with lie, darkness with light. Because the arrogant, the abusive and the violent are desperate. God made them blind after witnessing their crimes against moral and ethics - His own laws. And they want to see again, and feel the same pleasure they once felt when witnessing the true colors of the world during childhood. The arrogant want to reaffirm their sanity by acting insanely because they know no other way. And when you say sorry, you are saying to them that you don't belong there, to their world, and that you are sorry for playing their games. That drama belongs to them only, and not you. And yet, people interpret the same paradox as they choose. That is their experience of truth and how they put sense on a life without any. And when so much nonsense becomes popular, we call it common sense. When common sense becomes a reality, we call it science. And when science is able to theorize common sense, we call it wisdom. Then, we wonder why the wisdom of those we name wise, does not help.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
Trump is hardly the first president to promise a crackdown on illegal immigration. But he has tried to erase the political distinction between illegal and legal immigration, the former in the interest of law and order and the latter in the interest of national security. Of course, reality is very different than the one Trump portrays. He dismisses the socio-economic importance of immigration, keeping our working population younger as the baby boomers retire. And he ignores the push and pull behind global migration. The push relates to the disintegration of fragile countries due to conflict and climate change. The pull involves the unmet need for low skill work within the United States at a time of effective full employment, which existing immigration quotas can’t meet due to political paralysis. Given the political polarization, the parties talk past one another. Calls for comprehensive immigration reform are blunted by accusations of amnesty. Thus, there is no reasoned debate and little room for compromise.
”
”
April Ryan (Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House)
“
Feelings of suspicion—sometimes rising to the level of paranoia—can be a symptom of many types of mental illness, including Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s patients may accuse their romantic partners of cheating on them or their caretakers of stealing property or trying to harm or even kill them. While neuroscientists don’t really understand the networks or parts of the brain related to paranoia, in some cases this condition is attributed to temporal lobe damage.
”
”
Barbara K. Lipska (The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery)
“
The punishment of shaving a woman's head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths. During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment for adultery. Shaving women's heads as a mark of retribution and humiliation was reintroduced in the 20th century. After French troops occupied the Rhineland in 1923, German women who had relations with them later suffered the same fate. And during the second world war, the Nazi state issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should also be publicly punished in this way. Also during the Spanish civil war, Falangists had shaved the heads of women from republican families, treating them as if they were prostitutes. Those on the extreme right had convinced themselves that the left believed in free love. (The most famous victim in fiction is Maria, the lover of Robert Jordan in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.)
”
”
Antony Beevor
“
Is there something I should know?” “It’s not my place to tell you the details,” I said. “But I will tell you your son needs you. As badly as I need my family right now.” She blinked. “But…but he knows we’re here for him. We always have been.” I forced my voice to stay gentle and not accusing. “And what if he needs you for something that’s related to him being gay?” Her
”
”
L.A. Witt (From Out in the Cold)
“
Most of the country’s twenty-eight hundred drug courts are set up to divert drug abusers away from jail and prison and into treatment somewhere. Seth Norman runs the only drug court in America that is physically attached to a long-term residential treatment center. He takes addicts accused of drug-related nonviolent felonies—theft, burglary, possession of stolen property, drug possession—and puts them in treatment for as long as two years as an alternative to prison.
”
”
Sam Quinones (Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic)
“
But, however," added he, "when this Venetian Count (I have forgot his name) marries you, your present disagreeable state of dependence will cease. As a relation to you I rejoice in the circumstance, which is so fortunate for you, and, I may add, so unexpected by your friends." For some moments Emily was chilled into silence by this speech; and, when she attempted to undeceive him, concerning the purport of the note she had enclosed in Montoni's letter, he appeared to have some private reason for disbelieving her assertion, and, for a considerable time, persevered in accusing her of capricious conduct. Being, at length, however, convinced that she really disliked Morano and had positively rejected his suit, his resentment was extravagant, and he expressed it in terms equally pointed and inhuman; for, secretly flattered by the prospect of a connexion with a nobleman, whose title he had affected to forget, he was incapable of feeling pity for whatever sufferings of his niece might stand in the way of his ambition. Emily
”
”
Eliza Parsons (The Complete Northanger Horrid Novel Collection (9 Books of Gothic Romance and Horror))
“
Being accused of microaggression can be a harrowing experience. Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather Mac Donald relates in City Journal how an incident got out of hand at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2013. Professor Emeritus Val Rust taught a dissertation preparation seminar in which arguments often erupted among students, such as over which victim ideologies deserved precedence. In one such discussion, white feminists were criticized for making "testimonial-style" claims of oppression to which Chicana feminists felt they were not entitled. In another, arguments over the political implications of word capitalization got out of hand. In a paper he returned to a student, Rust had changed the capitalization of "indigenous" to lowercase as called for in the Chicago Manual Style. The student felt this showed disrespect for her point of view. During the heated discussion that followed, Professor Rust leaned over and touched an agitated student's arm in a manner, Rust claims, that was meant to reassure and calm him down. It ignited a firestorm instead. The student, Kenjus Watston, jerked his arm away from Rust as if highly offended. Later, he and other "students of color", accompanied by reporters and photographers from UCLA's campus newspaper, made a surprise visit to Rust's classroom and confronted him with a "collective statement of Resistance by Graduate Students of Color". Then the college administration got involved. Dean Marcelo Suarez-Orozco sent out an e-mail citing "a series of troubling racial climate incidents" on campus, "most recently associated with [Rust's class]".
Administrative justice was swift. Professor Rust was forced to teach the remainder of his class with three other professors, signaling that he was no longer trusted to teach "students of color". When Rust tried to smooth things over with another student who had criticized him for not apologizing to Watson, he reached out and touched him in a gesture of reconciliation. Again it backfired. That student filed criminal charges against Rust, who was suspended for the remainder of the academic year. As if to punctuate the students' victory and seal the professor's humiliation, UCLA appointed Watson as a "student researcher" to the committee investigating the incident. Watson turned the publicity from these events into a career, going on to codirect the Intergroup Dialogue Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles. As for the committee report, it recommended that UCLA create a new associate dean for equity and enhance the faculty's diversity training program.
It was a total victory for the few students who had acted like bullies and the humiliating end of a career for a highly respected professor. It happened because the university could not appear to be unsympathetic to students who were, in the administration's worldview, merely following the university's official policies of diversity and multiculturalism.
”
”
Kim R. Holmes (The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left)
“
The cost savings weren’t what did the trick, though. Treatment has always been more effective and cheaper than prison for true drug addicts. What’s changed, Norman said, is that no longer are most of the accused African American inner-city crack users and dealers. Most of the new Tennessee junkies come from the white middle and upper-middle classes, and from the state’s white rural heartland—people who vote for, donate to, live near, do business with, or are related to the majority of Tennessee legislators. As
”
”
Sam Quinones (Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic)
“
Double-Standard Bigotry. It is not uncommon within progressive circles to find the assumption that certain kinds of people are less equal than others. White people are assumed to be racist, for example, and they must be watched closely lest they abuse their position of power at the expense of people of color. This viewpoint is so common today that even mainstream liberals like Hillary Clinton buy into it. It is most often true for black-white relations, but the double standard extends into other areas as well. Jews, for example, are often accused of bias on matters in the Middle East, while Arabs and Muslims, occupying the morally advantageous position of victimhood, are not. It is so natural to slice the world into privileged and underprivileged groups that no one longer gives a second thought to the fact that a man would never be invited to lead a woman's organization. By the same token, a black caucus in Congress is welcome but a white caucus would be dismissed out of hand as racist. The double standard is tolerated because it is seen in and of itself as a form of corrective justice. But the fact remains that it is validating a double standard of bigotry, no matter how benign the intentions may be.
”
”
Kim R. Holmes (The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left)
“
Hawaii DUI attorney
Hawaii DUI Legislation
As part of the Hawaii DUI is taken to manage OVUII provisions relating "to the job without having to do, under the influence of narcotics." At any time, arrested me with this design crime, two different scenarios are part of the action. Individual courses in prison behind the lower through life, and the management can unforeseen consequences for you are behind the privileges. While it has an address that is protected effectively only two scenarios and the services of a DUI attorney in Hawaii will have to use, is the perfect solution. Take a Hawaii DUI lawyer as well as a symbol of crimes and administrative conditions in order simply because a knowledgeable attorney composed of a selection of tools and consultants from personal experience what is a second has been selected to represent the country.
Team Hawaii DUI
North Carolina, which do not contain a large number of other closely how the situation further. Two scenarios can be supplied to the defendant standards. In particular, it depends on the devaluation of the accused, even if it makes the work of the unit. This usually means that the defendant was the less able, of course, the direction of action of motor vehicles and motor vehicles that the liquid does not eat before experiencing again. Fiscal policy scenarios on how to warn this routine, the incredible strength, the smell of alcohol on his breath of the accused, chemical tests are successful, the driver's actual appearance. When you are ready to have to effectively protect against cross phase of the project, I recommend Hawaii DUI lawyer trained to drive during treatment and can demonstrate an adequate protection.
Delgado was of the view that it is "per se". This means that the prosecutor have not been included in the exhibition show the method or the driver looked in the direction under the influence of alcohol behind the negative cable. These types of circumstances, mostly on the same chemical research and the prosecution on the basis must prove that the defendant to reduce the crime in Hawaii in March for chemical research in the blood of 0.08% or more, is in the liquid phase summarized exposed. Hawaii DUI lawyer to eat properly trained is reflected in this model can help each scenario to ensure that the legs yourselfer difference in the fighting.
Hawaii is a place, a time of "natural Look Back", contains to return to the effects of the crime. Search again, it's time the crime is alleged for the first act, when the perpetrator of a lack of experience composed only other offense again. If a particular offense known author and has only should recognize this period as an impending crime or offense. Exhibition Dates countries Hawaii is five years. This suggests that the accused has no criminal DUI during the last five calendar years; the first violation would be appreciated.
Administrative Results
Concession withdrawal of the Office of Management reliable care for administrative purposes on drunken driving offense in Hawaii leaders together. Hawaii is the player under Tiny Interstate. This little machine is comparable towards alternative requirements for the content of teaching, the DUI offense. This means that if someone is breaking the law is arrested by driving under the influence of alcohol in the country that the players informed of their offensive in the direction of your region and the country at home, the home to protect the rights of accessories to suspend. This may be necessary, for depression itself could protect live in Hawaii. Hawaii DUI attorney, these values and work to be able to move to an adequate safety system hard, suspended to keep the license point home.
”
”
Jon Royals
“
And what is consensus? It means a majority of the individuals in a society coming together and agreeing to make their values into laws, or 'society's standards.' A law is enforced only by force. So your 'consensus' really means that some individuals - the lawmakers, whoever they are - the majority of democracy - impose their personal values, their will, on the other's. That's 'judgementalism,' that's imposition. The relativist is accusing the absolutist of exactly the moral fault he's guilty of. It's not just bad philosophy. It's bad morality; it's hypocrisy; it's dishonest. The very people who say, 'Don't impose your values on me because they're relative and subjective' then go on to create a society that they say is only man-mad, not based on God or natural law, and they say that all values come from man, so a society is then nothing but some men imposing their values on others.
”
”
Peter Kreeft (A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist)
“
The historical record also shows that attitudes toward homosexuality have little to do with whether people believe it occurs in animals or not, and consequently, in its "naturalness". True, throughout much of recorded history, the charge of "unnaturalness" - including the claim that homosexuality did not occur in animals - was used to justify every imaginable form of sanction, control, and repression against homosexuality. But many other interpretations of "naturalness" were also prevalent at various times. Indeed, the very fact that homosexuality was thought to be "unnatural" - that is, not found in nature - was sometimes used to justify its *superiority* to heterosexuality. In ancient Greece, for example, same-sex love was thought to be purer than opposite-sex love because it did not involve procreation or "animal-like" passions. On the other hand, homosexuality was sometimes condemned precisely because it was considered *closer* to "nature", reflecting the base, uncontrolled sexual instincts of the animal world. The Nazis used this reasoning (in part) to target homosexuals and other "subhumans" for the concentration camps (where homosexual men subjected to medical experiments were referred to as test animals), while sexual relations between women were disparaginly characterized as "animal love" in late eighteenth-century New England . The irrationality of such beliefs is highlighted in cases where charges of "unnaturalness" were combined, paradoxically, with accusations of animalistic behavior. Some early Latin texts, for instance, simultaneously condemned homosexuals for exhibiting behavior unknown in animals while also denouncing them for imitating particular species (such as the hyena or hare) that were believed to indulge in homosexuality.
In our own time, the fact that a given characteristic of a minority human population is biologically determined has little to do with whether that population should be - or is - discriminated against. Racial minorities, for example, can claim a biological basis for their difference, yet this has done little to eliminate racial prejudice. Religious groups, on the other hand, can claim no such biological prerogative, and yet this does not invalidate the entitlement of such groups to freedom from discrimination. It should be clear, then, that whether homosexuality is biologically determined or not - none of these things guarantee the acceptance or rejection of homosexuality or in itself renders homosexuality "valid" or "illegitimate".
”
”
Bruce Bagemihl (Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity)
“
Guide Note: Zaphod Beeblebrox’s two heads and three arms have become as much a part of Galaxy lore as the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast’s cranial spigot, or Eccentrica Gallumbits’s third breast. And though Zaphod claims to have had his third arm fitted to improve his chances at ski-boxing, many media pundits believe that the arm was actually fitted so that the President could simultaneously fondle all of Eccentrica’s mammaries. This attention to erotic detail resulted in Miss Gallumbits referring to Zaphod in Street Walkie-Talkie Weekly as the “best bang since the Big One.” A quote which was worth at least half a billion votes in the presidential election and twice as many daily hits on the private members section of the Zaphod Confidential Sub-Etha site. The origin of Zaphod’s second head is shrouded in mystery and seems to be the one thing the President is reluctant to discuss with the media, other than claim that two heads are better than none. A comment which was taken as a direct jibe by Councillor Spinalé Trunco of the Headless Horsemen tribe of Jaglan Beta. Zaphod’s response to this accusation was “Of course it’s a jibe, baby. Dude’s got zero heads. Come on!” Early images do represent Zaphod with two heads, but in many shots they do not appear to be identical. In fact, in one vidcap, which has famously come to be known as the “I’m With Stupid” shot, Zaphod’s left head appears to be that of a sallow female, attempting to bite the right head’s ear. A Betelgeusean woman later surfaced claiming to be the original owner of the “sallow female” head. Loolu Softhands told Beebelblog that “Zaphod wanted us to be together, like all the time, so we conjoined. After a couple of months he found out that he liked the two-headed thing more than he liked me. So we went out for a few Blasters one night and I woke up back on my own body. Bastard.” Zaphod has never refuted Miss Softhands’s story, leading to speculation that his second head is a narcissistic affectation, an allegation President Beeblebrox claims not to understand. Related
”
”
Eoin Colfer (And Another Thing... (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #6))
“
The ability to talk about sensitive areas of our lives with each other has greatly enhanced our marriage. We are able to relate to each other as best friends, to confess sin, or to reveal deep feelings without being accused or mistrusted.
”
”
Jimmy Evans (The Four Laws of Love: Guaranteed Success for Every Married Couple)
“
tell people not to be scared to put conditions on a financial gift. You could give them money only if they agree to go through Financial Peace University. You could give them a copy of this book or another one of my books, The Total Money Makeover, and “pay” them to write you a book report. You could require that they submit three monthly budgets to you as you continue to help them through a transitional time. If they accuse you of butting in, just remind them that they are ASKING you to butt in by giving them money. If they want your help, they need to take all of your help, not just your money. Third, I remind people that they can only help others if they have the cash on hand themselves. Never cosign a loan to “help” someone else, and never loan money to a friend or relative. That just keeps them in debt longer, strains the relationship, and keeps the cycle of destruction going.
”
”
Dave Ramsey (Dave Ramsey's Complete Guide To Money: The Handbook of Financial Peace University)
“
Like many post-Soviet countries, during its first years of independence Ukraine underwent a major political crisis caused by economic decline and social dislocation and focused on relations between the presidency and parliament, both institutions having been created in the political turmoil of the last years of the Soviet Union. Russia resolved the conflict in September 1993 when President Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the Russian parliament building and the Russian authorities arrested Russia’s vice president and the head of parliament, both accused of instigating a coup against the president. Yeltsin’s advisers rewrote the constitution to limit the power of parliament, turning it into something more of a rubber stamp than an active agent in the Russian political scene. Ukraine resolved the emerging conflict between the president and parliament with a compromise. President Kravchuk agreed to call early presidential elections, which he lost, and in the summer of 1994 he peacefully transferred power to his successor, Leonid Kuchma, the former prime minister and erstwhile rocket designer heading Europe’s largest missile factory. Throughout the tumultuous 1990s, Ukraine not only managed its first transfer of power between two rivals for the presidency but also maintained competitive politics and created legal foundations for a viable democracy. In 1996, President Kuchma rewrote the Soviet-era constitution, but he did so together with parliament, which secured a major role for itself in the Ukrainian political process. One of the main reasons for Ukraine’s success as a democracy was its regional diversity—a legacy of both distant and more recent history that translated into political, economic, and cultural differences articulated in parliament and settled by negotiation in the political arena. The industrialized east became a stronghold of the revived Communist Party.
”
”
Serhii Plokhy (The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine)
“
question of the need for Jews (or in any case, such a large number of Jews) became a recurring motif in Christian discussions, and in several cases, the Christian authorities reached the conclusion that it would be better to expel them. This process took place simultaneously with an increase in the gravity of the accusations directed at Jews as a consequence of various developments within the faith of the Christian community.
”
”
Karma Ben-Johanan (Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II)
“
It’s all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat's Cradle)
“
Great though it is, however, the power of the tourist business would not in itself be sufficient to shape Park Service policy. To all accusations of excessive development the administrators can reply, as they will if pressed hard enough, that they are giving the public what it wants, that their primary duty is to serve the public not preserve the wilds. “Parks are for people” is the public-relations slogan, which decoded means that the parks are for people-in-automobiles. Behind the slogan is the assumption that the majority of Americans, exactly like the managers of the tourist industry, expect and demand to see their national parks from the comfort, security, and convenience of their automobiles
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)