flattop - your article is certainly thought-provoking, and quite disturbing. The thing that saddens me about it is that Ian Angell seemingly has no conception of humanity as having a spiritual nature, or any form of spiritual purpose or any spiritual destiny whatsoever. If that were indeed the case, then all hope of humans achieving a decent and humane social order on this planet would indeed be in vain, and it would just be natural selection that drove events.

That is...survival of the most ruthless, the most greedy, the most vicious, the most well armed, the most wealthy, and the most empty.

Life in such a reality would not be worth living in any case, and I would say to those who envision themselves at the top of such a social order:

"Fine. You can have it. I would much sooner be dead than live in your pitiless notion of a new world order, and I pity you for imagining that being wealthy is what life is really about. Go ahead and pretend you have won. You too shall die, and in a really quite small span of years...just the way us poor folks do who are not on the inside track. Who will mourn your passing? Do the peasants mourn when a tyrant dies? The gravediggers will spit on your grave."

We are all going to die anyway in due time. So why die as a rich tyrant when the opportunity is there to die as a decent human being who treated other human beings as equals, not as serfs? Those who will not share are not fit to rule.

I believe Patrick Henry had a point after all. There may come a time when quite a few people echo his words "Give me liberty or give me death!" Wait for 200,000 in the streets. Wait for 500,000. Wait until the cops and soldiers see their own family members on the other side of the lines. It happened in the Warsaw Pact, it darned near happened in China, and it may yet happen here.

- LH

p.s. This may be an emotional response, but it's an honest one. And, you may say that I'm a hopeless idealist...but the so-called "realists" will be just as dead as me in a mere few decades, won't they? He who dies with the most toys doesn't win anything.