WORLD SYSTEM
INCLUDES: U.S.A.
RELATED INDEX TOPICS: Churchianity, Communism, War, Worldliness, Relationship to the World, Use It.
1. The weakness of nice people without faith is that they have nothing to offer the "not nice" people.
2. Democracy is not an infallible way for getting things right. The democratic vote among the Israelites in the wilderness was to go back to Egypt.
3. Numbers can never turn evil into good or error into truth.
4. In 1917 there were only 80,000 followers of communism. But in 1925, their leaders met to formulate plans for the conquest of the world. In an address, Lenin said:
"First, we shall take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia. After that, we shall surround and undermine the United States which will fall into our hands without a struggle--like an overripe fruit!"
At various times, Khrushchev boasted: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. WE WILL BURY YOU." And on American television in 1957, he declared: "I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism."
It is estimated that in one year, three million young Communist missionaries are sent out from Russia to indoctrinate the youths of the world.
5. Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1879. Twenty-two years later, in 1901, one of the newfangled gadgets was hung and turned on in the Livermore, California, Fire Department. It's still there, and still on. The old bulb has been turned off almost never in 71 years.
By today's standards it should have burned out 852 times by now. The bulb, hand-blown, with a thick carbon filament, was made, it is said, by the Shelby Electric Company, Which did not become one of the giants of the nation, for an obvious reason. The Shelby Company made light bulbs to last, and nobody ever re-ordered.
The bulb is accorded an awesome respect by Fire Captain Kirby Slate and his men. In a time of planted and planned obsolescence, when gadgets are forever falling apart or burning out or breaking up, it's reassuring to watch a dusty 71-year-old light bulb shine on and on and on.
6. Public opinion does not decide whether things are good or bad.
7. Man spends his life reasoning with the past, complaining about the present, & trembling for the future.
8. We are all earthlings, but only those who reject Christ are worldlings.
9. It is becoming more & more obvious that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is mankind's greatest danger.--Carl Gustav Jung
10. Guy Wright, columnist for the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin wonders whether automobile names, which used to appeal to our love of posh places (Saratoga, Newport) and Status (Ambassador, President), aren't now appealing to our lust for blood and ferocity. "While driving down the road I saw a Wildcat stalking a Mustang," he writes. "The Mustang was trying to trample a Cobra, which was about to strike a Sting Ray, which was sneaking up on a Barracuda, which was waiting to feed on the loser in a duel between a Cutlass and LeSabre, while a woman driver in a positive Fury hurled Darts at a Marauder defying a Tempest."
11. Many people look ahead, some look back, but most look confused.
12. World problems are so confusing that even computers are asking questions.
13. In our generation the popular religion is CONFUSIONISM.
14. Much trouble is caused by our yearnings getting ahead of our earnings.
15. Responsibility for a considerable portion of the World's troubles rests upon two people of the past. One of them invented credit; the other, taxes.
16. God made man of the dust of the Earth & man makes a god of the dust of the Earth.
17. Nothing depreciates a car faster than having a neighbour buy a new one.
18. This life is all the Heaven the worldling has, & all the Hell the saint ever sees.
19. The World is filled with rootless people. So many cannot say the lovely, necessary little phrase 'I belong.'
20. No oriental monarch ever ruled his cowering subjects with any more cruel tyranny than things, visible things, audible things, tangible things, rule mankind.
21. Once the great Roman Empire was more powerful than any nation of our own time. No nation could stand up against Roman legions. Yet that great Empire sank down to failure. What were the causes?
Historian Edward Gibbon in his story of The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire gives these five reasons for that failure:
1) The rapid increase of divorce; the undermining of the dignity & sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.
2) Higher & higher taxes & the spending of public monies for free bread & circuses.
3) The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting & more brutal.
4) The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy was within--the decadence of the people.
5) The decay of religion--fading into mere from, losing touch with life & becoming impotent to warn & guide the people.
Are we following in the footsteps of the Romans? Upon each of us rests the responsibility of making our nation stronger.
22. Pessimism is contagious--you can get it by listening attentively to the six o'clock news.
23. What the nations of the World need is a peace conference with the "Prince Of Peace."
24. Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side & it tumbles over on the other.--Martin Luther
25. A philanthropist is one who returns to the people publicly a small amount of the wealth he has stolen from them privately.
26. Dr. Koger said, "If you knew doctors like I do, you'd never go near one or take a single prescription from them! It's nothing but experimentation! Most of the time they don't know what's wrong with you either, & they just try this & try that & charge you for it to make money off it!"--Dad.
27. Some people have been dead for several years, but they just prefer not to have it known.
28. As the lawyer said to the hippie in "Easy Rider": "They have to kill you because you're free, & it proves they're not, & they can't stand being reminded that they're slaves of the chains of conformity forged by their own hands!"--Dad.
29. Man was created a little lower than the angels & has been getting lower ever since.
30. This will be a better World when the power of love replaces the love of power.
31. It owns more than a third of the United States' land mass, spends more than $91 million an hour--that's around the clock, of course--& purchases more than $130 billion a year in goods & services. The behemoth is none other than the Federal Government, & recent calculations by the President's private-sector survey on cost control underscore just how big it is. Each year, for example, the Federal Government handles more than $1.7 trillion in receipts & outlays. Its work force numbers 2.8 million people & the office space it occupies totals 2.6 billion square feet (240 million square meters), the equivalent of four times all the office space in the ten largest American cities. Its more than 17,000 computers presumably help keep track of it all.
32. There's one consolation about life & taxes--when you finish the former, you're through with the latter.
33. Dr. Franz Pick, World-renowned currency authority says: "Those who manage our currency system are embarked on a deliberate policy of deceit. The Federal Reserve System excels at one thing & one thing only--printing paper money. Not one person there is able to cope with the monetary crisis, deficits, or the Central Bank emergencies that follow. If any private individual or corporation were to falsify the figures & lie the way the government does, they would be in jail for fraud.
"The most disastrous lie of all is the myth of the healthy U.S. Dollar. Since 1940, the Dollar has unofficially lost 95% of its purchasing power. Indeed, the newly minted Susan B. Anthony 'Dollar' has an intrinsic value of about 4% what the Dollar is really worth in unofficial constant 1940 U.S. Dollar terms. The American Dollar is doomed! It has been doomed since 1940 when inflation began to get a grip on this country. And our government is powerless to prevent the fall of our currency."
34. Our trouble today is that we have our heads filled with knowledge, but our hearts are empty.
35. A professor at a Peking University said, "If you are not overly ambitious & don't have any political troubles, life in China is pleasant, like living on a slow-moving conveyor belt. Everything is provided for you, you don't have to worry & there is little pressure to make you hurry."
36. God pity eyes that have not seen the dawn,
Twilight, or shadow, or a wind-blown tree,
But pity more the eyes that look upon
All loveliness, and yet can never see;
God pity ears that have not caught the notes
Of wind or wave, of violin or bird,
But pity more that, daily, music floats
To ears that hear and yet have never heard.
God pity hearts that have not known the gift
Of love requited, comfort and caress,
But, O God, pity more the hearts that drift
From love's high moment to forgetfulness.
This is the tragedy of common sense:
To dim all wonder by indifference.
--Helen Frazee-Bower
37. Peace is not made in documents, but in the hearts of men.
38. Notes from a Psychiatric Worker
I never get mad, I get hostile.
I never feel sad, I'm depressed.
If I sew or I knit & enjoy it a bit,
I'm not handy, I'm merely obsessed!
I never regret, I feel guilty;
And if I should vacuum the hall,
Wash the woodwork & such & not mind it too much,
Am I tidy?--Compulsive is all!
If I can't choose a hat, I have conflicts,
With ambivalent feelings toward it.
I never get worried, or nervous or hurried,
Anxiety, that's what I get!
If I'm happy, I must be euphoric,
If I go to a Stork Club or Ritz,
And have a good time making puns or a rhyme,
I'm a manic--or maybe a schiz!
If I tell you you're right, I'm submissive,
Repressing aggressiveness, too.
And when I disagree, I'm defensive, you see,
And projecting my symptoms on you!
I love you, but that's just transference,
With Oedipus rearing his head.
My breathing asthmatic is psychosomatic,
A fear of exclaiming, "Drop dead!"
I'm not lonely, I'm simply dependent.
My dog has no fleas, just a tic.
So if I'm a cad, never mind, just be glad,
That I'm not a stinker--I'm sick!
39. There will be no peace as long as God remains unseated at the conference table.
40. A politician is a gent who works up his gums before election & gums up the works afterward.
41. Mr. Paul Gibbons, former president of the Optimist Club of Philadelphia, opened an address on Crime with these arresting statements:
The American people are the worst criminals in the world. Astounding as that assertion is, it is true. Cleveland, Ohio, has six times as many murders as all London. It has one hundred and seventy times as many robberies, according to its population, as has London. More people are robbed every year, or assaulted with intent to rob, in Cleveland than in all England, Scotland and Wales combined. More people are murdered every year in St. Louis than in all England and Wales. There are more murders in New York City than in all France or Germany or Italy or the British Isles. The sad truth of the matter is that the criminal is not punished. If you commit a murder, there is less than one chance in a hundred that you will ever be executed for it. You, as a peaceful citizen, are ten times as liable to die from cancer as you would be to be hanged if you shot a man.
42. Day by day, America's all too familiar crime clock ticks faster & faster. Every 24 minutes a murder is committed somewhere in the U.S. Every ten seconds a house is burgled, every seven minutes a woman is raped. There is some truth in the aphorism of Charles Silbermann, author of Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice, that "Crime is as American as Jesse James."
43. The nation's top jurist, Chief Justice Warren Burger, warned about the "reign of terror in American cities" & bitingly asked: "Are we not hostages within the borders of our own self-styled, enlightened, civilised country?" Some criminologists answer that the fear of becoming a victim of crime is greater than the actual risk, but no one denies that the fear is real. Proclaimed the "Figgie Report," a privately funded study of crime in the U.S.: "The fear of crime is slowly paralysing American society."
44. Observes Houston Police Chief B. K. Johnson: "We have allowed ourselves to degenerate to the point where we're living like animals. We live behind burglar bars & throw a collection of door locks at night & set an alarm & lay down with a loaded shotgun beside the bed & then try to get some rest. It's ridiculous!"
45. Drunken drivers in the U.S. cause more deaths, injuries & destruction than do murderers, muggers & robbers. In the last ten years, 250,000 Americans have died because of drunken drivers--an average of 25,000 a year or 68 a day--more than five times the number of U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam!
46. While two-third of Americans are members of churches & synagogues, America's rate of crime is vastly higher than Japan or Europe, where church attendance is a small fraction of the U.S. rate. "Our astonishing crime rate is largely due to lack of ethics, which in turn, is due to lack of ethical instruction in the schools & other opinion-forming institutions. The schools & churches are well situated to teach individual ethical responsibility, but do not do so," says "Amoral America", a study of George C. S. Benson & Thomas Engeman. As Chief Justice Warren Burger has said, "We have virtually eliminated from public schools & higher education, any effort to teach values of integrity, truth, personal accountability & respect for others' rights." (Dad: ACs!)
47. Affectionately, Venetians called her Peggy la Pazza--crazy Peggy--& she smiled at the nickname. Just as intensely as she loved Venice, Mrs. Guggenheim hated her native United States which, she said, gave her an unhappy childhood & a distressing adolescence. "I hate America," she once said, "I find everything there most to my dislike. They have all those robberies & muggings. ... It's inhumane. Everything's so impersonal ... all those towns in the Middle West, all exactly alike. I think people in America are terribly unhappy. Art started going to Hell with pop," she once declared. "It's vulgar & boring. There's nothing of importance any more."
48. "Put Dracula six months in the dining room of some American restaurants & his sharp teeth will fall out & he will know nothing more than how to suck yogurt through a straw." Such is the verdict of Henry Gault & Christian Millau, France's best-known writers of restaurant reviews & guidebooks. Their first book on the New York food scene, Guide New York, advises French tourists arriving in the U.S. to "go out on the streets to see the fat people, stuffed from infancy with sugar, gassy drinks, flour & superfluous vitamins. It is not by chance that American dentists are the best in the World. From ketchup to cake mix, from Jell-O to peanut butter, sauces of white glue, trembling gelatins, fish croquettes--is it possible that 225 million humans among the most talented in the World accept daily to eat such horrors?" (Dad: How about TV dinners, Burger King & McDonald's?--Ha!--With Coke!)
49. At the American Pet Motel in Prairie View, Illinois, the pampered dog can bask in a private room with brass bed, stereo music, a water supply that automatically refills itself, & a Snoopy telephone on which to receive calls from anxious owners. A Garden Grove, California, veterinary insurance firm offers comprehensive health insurance for pets, & a Gladstone, Michigan pet casket company offers plastic models ranging from the austere to the lace-lined. (Dad: While millions starve!) All are part of the $8-billion-a-year industry devoted to the sales, care & feeding of America's dogs, cats & other domestic animals. Americans own 92 million cats & dogs--a jump of 32 million since 1972--& more than half the country's households have pets. Feeding them doesn't come cheap--the bill for 9 billion pounds of food for dogs & cats comes to an estimated $4.5 billion a year, pets' medical bills come to $2 billion more a year.
50. Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blessed in the sermon on the mount.
51. Diplomat: A person who can be disarming even though his country isn't.
52. A diplomat is a fellow that lets you do all the talking while he gets what he wants.
53. Civilisation is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.--Elton J. Sheen
54. Five years after establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Puritans started in Boston the first elementary school supported by tax money. In 1647, they passed an ordinance which marked the beginning of the U.S. Public School system.
Among other things, the ordinance required at least 1 qualified teacher for every 50 householders, and a grammar school in every town of more than 100 families. It also put the Bible in the center of its curriculum, asserting that it is "one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures."
55. U.S. institutions of higher educations:
PRINCETON in its early days insisted that the faculty be "convinced of the necessity of religious experience for salvation."
John Witherspoon, first president of Princeton, said:
"Cursed be all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.
"Cursed be all learning that is not coincident with the cross of Christ.
"Cursed be all learning that is not subservient to the cross of Christ."
WILLIAM AND MARY was established "that the Christian faith might be propagated."
DARTMOUTH was founded to train men as missionaries to the Indians.
HARVARD permitted freedom in matters of theology and made no religious requirement of college officers;
YALE drifted partly in concern for academic excellence amidst an environment of agnosticism and unitarianism;
DARTMOUTH and COLUMBIA only had a statement in its charter about the great principles of Christianity and morality in which true Christians of each denomination are generally agreed. It had no strong statement of faith.
PRINCETON yielded because of pressure from alumni. Princeton's charter insisted on a saved faculty, but did not require this of its students. As it turned out more and more non-Christian alumni who could give or withhold donations, it finally succumbed to their demand for a voice in the management and educational policies.
56. May 1 is this year's "Tax Freedom Day," according to the private Tax Foundation. This is the date when average taxpayers will have earned enough money to pay their Federal, State & Local taxes for the year, & will begin working for themselves. (Dad: Most of if for war! Americans pay a third of their income to government!--Slaves!)
57. The country with the most psychiatrists is the United States, with 25,440 registered in the American Psychiatric Association during 1979.
58. U.S. News & World Report asked some 500 business, government and professional leaders to rate, in terms of their influence, 18 of the nation's principal organizations and institutions. Television came in first. It was ranked ahead of the White House and the Supreme Court and the Congress; ahead of education and religion and political parties and all competing media.
A Southern Baptist radio and television official agrees with a recent report which held that television is possibly the most powerful social force in American culture today.
Paul M. Steven, president of the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, referred to a survey in U.S. News & World Report showing that television ranks first--and organized religion eighteenth--among influences on daily living.
59. Senator Mark Hatfield, the Oregon Republican who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, has said that the cost overrun on the Sparrow Missile System alone is enough to fund the WIC (women, infants & children) Nutrition Program. This country is doomed if it tries to continue letting arms merchants profiteer while hungry children & pregnant women suffer.
60. Rock star Elton John said in London that he would not live in the United States "if they paid me 100 Pounds ($150) a minute" because the country is too violent. "I really believe that violence on television is the root of the evil. A lot of it could be cut out," John said.
61. A recent poll in the New York Times found that about 60% of New Yorkers, or someone close to them, have been robbed within the last two years.
62. Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron.--Joseph Stalin
63. Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!"--Till you can find a rock.
64. Who but Americans can afford chairs that vibrate and cars that don't?
65. We Americans seem to have an excess of everything except parking space and Christianity.
66. Why is it that our kids can't read a Bible in school, but they can in prison?
67. While three-fifths of the World's population worries about hunger and survival, we anxiously wrestle with overweight and boredom. Every newspaper supplies increasing evidence that in terms of gross national product, comfort, and personal income, we are superior, yet, in personal relationships and inner peace, we are revealing that we do not know how to live. We are artists at having and failures at being.
68. What is still called Western civilisation is in an advanced stage of decomposition.
69. We live in a World of invertebrate theology, jellyfish morality, see-saw religion, India-rubber convictions, somersault philosophy, & a psychology that tells us what we already know in words we don't understand.
70. There is an active prejudice in America against old people that causes a great deal of cruelty and unnecessary loss to the community.
71. It is right to submit to higher authority whenever a command of God would not be violated.--St. Basil