Crimes Against the Soul of America
Caroline Myss, 09.05.2009, Author of "Sacred Contracts"
The soul of America is exhausted, wounded, mistrusting, suspicious, fearful -- and compromised. This is not a soul that can rebuild a country.
There is such a thing as a crime against the soul of a nation. A person or a political party can deliberately incite actions that diminish the strength, the integrity, and the overall well-being of a nation's inner core. America's soul is in a fragile state. It has suffered severe violations over the course of this past decade and to lesser degrees, in previous decades.....
The consequences of puncturing the soul of a nation are witnessed in countless ways. For example, there is a decline in the integrity of leadership and a growing apathy on the part of the public to care about keeping watch over its leaders. The nation ceases to produce statesmen or stateswomen. The best the public can do is to send semi-qualified individuals to Washington whose capacity to hold to their promises collapse within minutes of unpacking in their new offices. ..... Any truly positive ideas for change baffle the Congress. What could this be, they wonder? But of all the crimes covertly and overtly committed by the Bush administration against the soul of America, none is as vile as the deliberate efforts they poured into turning American against American. We see that in the near hatred between the Republicans and Democrats, between liberals and conservatives, between free-thinkers and evangelicals that continues to fester. This crime was a strategic one, a well thought out plan to fragment the people of this nation in a type of contemporary replay of the Civil War. And sadly, the Republicans succeeded. Thank you, Karl Rove. The result is that the soul of America is exhausted, wounded, mistrusting, suspicious, fearful -- and compromised. This is not a soul that can rebuild a country, not if you know anything about the laws of nature and the fundamentals of healing.....
So let's apply this to the Republicans present attack on Obama and his plan to address the children in the classrooms of our schools. First, a comment on how education is respected in general by our Congress -- it isn't. And this crime against the soul of America is a travesty for which both Republicans and Democrats should hang their heads in shame. Consider, for example, how the education system through the years has corroded into little more than a mindless competition for grades. And the "No Child Left Behind" program (which should be left far, far behind) is nothing more than an insult to a true educational system that holds in high regard the passing on of knowledge and wisdom ...
.... Is it any wonder that as a result of the horrendous decision of the American Congress to "dumb down" our educational system, we now have a public that cannot discern lies from truth? Are we really surprised that we are now living in a society in which the news media saturates us with entertainment instead of actual news and that most of America was too asleep at the wheel to even notice?
A conscious effort to "dumb down" the education of this nation qualifies as a crime against the soul of America.
read the rest:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-myss/crimes-against-the-soul-o_b_278188.html