The Voice of Reason

Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Haditha and Mahmudiyah, and on and on.

It was Goya, who living in the convulsive time of the Spanish Independence War, tried to give us a feeling for the monsters created by what he called the Sleep of Reason. His images, terrible as they are, pale in comparison to our daily diet of the atrocities committed against humanity, not by savage tribes, but by well fed and trained soldiers and mercenaries that follow the orders of those whose reason is not asleep but simply denied.

Last night, out of the darkness of our time, millions of hearts and minds were lit up by the hope that perhaps this once we can overcome the tide of fear that war, imposed on our brothers and sisters across the world by the weapon merchants and their servants, voted into power by people like you and me, who decide that our own comfort and way of life is more important than the life of others, that become obese while others starve because of our refusal to share the "wealth" that we assume belongs to us, the conquistadores.

"I am only following orders..."

To awaken from the nightmare where we have been trapped for so long requires an effort that seems beyond our strength, or so we are constantly told, and now that we are half awake we must, like the previous writer says, fight, but we must choose our fight guided by our reason and recognizing that fighting some times requires sacrificing that which in our dream state seemed like worthy of living the lie.