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I have some close libertarian/atheist friends who are quite fond of Sagan - his baloney detector is supposed to be wonderful.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot."

In this scenario, the rivers of blood are far tinier than the dot, and just as insignificant. He's arguing that people are important and unimportant in the same breath.

"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience."

Yes, I think that was said thousands of years earlier by the Psalmist - Psalm 8:3-5 in my personal preference, NKJV - "3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
4 What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
5 For You have made him a little lower than the angels,[b]
And You have crowned him with glory and honor."

Psalm 19:1 - " 1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork."

115:16 - "16 The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s;
But the earth He has given to the children of men."

Indeed gazing upon the vastness of the stars is humbling and character-building.

"Please, don’t give me the Tea Party run around, just say either YES (Tea Party should put their tail between their legs), or NO (Tea Party should not accept the deaths of protesters). It’s an easy question."

It's not so easy, as I only know that they vow to defend themselves and one another from enemies both foreign and domestic, but what should happen and what could happen and what will happen are not for me to know until they DO happen. If the government shoots first they will have started a civil war, and I am not familiar with all the rules of engagement. The government *did* commit such a slaughter on an armed population at Waco and the results were as expected - they went down fighting and they were murdered, almost to the last. The government IS armed with bigger toys, after all, and when they can stop the cameras from seeing what they do out back...such as gassing those hiding in the bunker - the women and children - to death, while punching holes in the walls to create an optimum breeze for the fire which they then start, all the while piping out the soothing strains of "This is not an attack - BAM, holepunch. Come out with your hands up - BAM. We will not attack you - BAM" after the women and children are dead...then comes the fire that rages through the building and kills *almost* all the rest except a couple eyewitnesses...if it comes to the worst they have only said they will go down fighting. By the time it goes that far, though, as you can see from the footage in Waco: Rules of Engagement (and read about in the legislative investigation papers), the people were *trying* to give up; all they wanted was press available so they wouldn't be shot on the way out the door...but it was too late; the government had no intention of allowing cameras to see their slaughter (though some caught it anyway.) One of the leaders of the blue sniper teams had shot Linda Weaver in cold blood as she held her baby not long before, and the legal stuff was being sorted out as Waco happened. Now why the hell am I being forced to relive and reimagine these violent scenarios because of Bill Ayers exactly? This is the very sh** we're trying to PREVENT with limited government. Yet if it has to come to it we are willing to fight the fight so that our children will not have to (even if it is now coming to be my children's time now - they're TPers too though.) But the Waco people had not advocated or committed any such acts as Ayers had - they kept to themselves. (Lest you tell me how bad David Koresh was, or how he was stockpiling weapons for the collective defense, he had been openly visible in town several times just prior to the attack, and could have been arrested at any time without bloodshed or wholesale murder.)

By the way, factoid - the investigation papers include a letter by Vince Foster. He was not, as some conservatives claim, murdered - he killed himself because he did not stop the Waco slaughter, which he had the power to do. The local guy/sherriff or whatever the hell he was (look it up again later) had a single name to contact in case shit went down and it needed to be stopped; that was Foster. Foster never could take the guilt of what he had done and expressed this in a letter to his wife IIRC. Hence his death. Which had Hillary and Co. tearing through his office and shredding papers before condoling his wife, I might mention. Ugly business, that.

" · 28 video tapes from the repositories show that in the final onslaught on the Waco compound were members of the US military in special assault gear and with name tags obscured. As noted above, Clinton's revocation of the Posse Comitatus Act made this presence legal. McNulty isolates Vince Foster as the White House point man for the Waco operation.

McNulty cites Foster's widow as saying that the depression that prompted the White House lawyer's death was fueled by horror at the carnage at Waco for which the White House had given the ultimate green light. Foster was writing a Waco report when he died. McNulty says that some documents about Foster and Waco were among those removed from his office after his death, later to surface in a White house store room sheltering archives of the First Lady."

Link

I'm not going to commit textwall again; this is going to the blog and linked.