tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81114702025-05-30T11:59:19.997-07:00"The Christian must discover in contemplation, and in the giving of his life, those symbolic actions which will ignite the people's faith to resist injustice with their whole lives, lives coming together as a united force of truth and thus releasing the liberating power of the God within them." - James Douglass, Contemplation and Resistance.Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.comBlogger491125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-22816436784176949352017-12-09T17:48:00.004-08:002019-03-20T20:19:03.287-07:00

As a long-time anti-war activist, I no longer believe that the traditional means of resistance, such as mass protests, demonstrations, or even creative resistance such as practiced by the Yes Men (http://theyesmen.org/), entertaining as it might be, can make a significant impact on the powers that rule this world. Instead, I have come to understand that "... our part is not to fight

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-71707044908780457352017-12-02T12:44:00.001-08:002019-03-20T20:21:35.284-07:00

Those of you who have followed by my blog since the early 2000's need to be aware of a fundamental change in perspective that I have undergone since the time of the Iraq War. As a long-time anti-war activist, I delved deeply in the social and political forces that animated that war. Gradually, around the year 2011, it dawned on me that the forces at work in that war were more than social and

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-36032392231059761092011-01-16T14:27:00.000-08:002011-01-16T14:28:13.379-08:00

Obama's Tucson speech achieved its purpose superbly, as has his Presidency so far. That purpose is to render the effects of the current corporate takeover of democracy acceptable to the American public. What made the speech so effective is that it appealed to our innate desire for reconciliation at such a time. But, like his entire "reach-across-the-aisle" strategy, it hides a more important

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-71217797647545024982010-12-05T13:12:00.000-08:002010-12-05T13:15:42.514-08:00

Aurelius Augustinus is widely considered the most substantial Christian thinker of the earlyChurch and many, both Catholic and Protestant, consider him the greatest Christian theologianof all time. So it is significant that so little attention has been given to his economic philosophywhile his thoughts on war and other political topics have been so exhaustively examined.As with so much of

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-26482139721570083242010-12-05T13:09:00.000-08:002010-12-05T13:12:47.549-08:00

"These are people who believe in entitlement. These are arrogant elites who believe the rest of us don't need to know what they're doing with and to our lives. These are people see truth as a danger." David Michael Green, "What WikiLeaks Really Reveals" Common Dreams, 12/5/10 (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/05#comment-1686473) The key word here is not "truth", which they do indeed hate

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-74627204069285367562010-11-23T21:34:00.001-08:002010-11-23T21:34:38.799-08:00

“Sojourners is fundamentally mistaken, though, in their reading of our times. At this horrible juncture in history when crimes against humanity are committed daily by our government and in our names, it is not a lack of civility but the absence of outrage on the part of Christians and the Church that ‘is a sign of moral danger’ to our nation.” Brian Terrell, “A Convenant for Outrage”, 11/23/10.

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-13066765973826511472010-11-06T14:41:00.000-07:002010-11-06T14:44:08.849-07:00

“French riot police tear-gassed workers trying to block a fuel depot and broke up a picket at a key refinery serving Paris on Friday, hours before the Senate votes on fiercely-contested pension reforms.” - “French Unions: We Won't Pay For 'Failures of Global Finance'”, Agence France-Presse, 10/22/10. Why are the French rioting? Many of the governments of Europe now demand that severe austerity

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-12858899381291728602010-10-31T09:03:00.000-07:002010-10-31T09:06:23.115-07:00

Most of the left/liberal media seems to miss the growing irrelevance of our two-party political circus. We need ask a basic question about our political system: Why does it not seem to matter that candidates for public office don't even to pretend to engage the real issues such as global warming, the worst health care in the developed world, the catastrophe-prone nature of our financial system?

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-59126881946766518372010-10-26T18:13:00.001-07:002010-10-26T18:13:51.329-07:00

"The liberal class, despite becoming an object of public scorn, still prefers the choreographed charade. Liberals decry, for example, the refusal of the Democratic Party to restore habeas corpus or halt the looting of the U.S. Treasury on behalf of Wall Street speculators, but continue to support a president who cravenly serves the interests of the corporate state. As long as the charade of

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-37062801433932879382010-09-03T21:57:00.001-07:002010-09-04T06:56:03.293-07:00

So often I hear the despairing words, "Leave it to God! He will bring all to the light!" Yet I wonder, and I cry, "What if we are the light that He is calling and we cannot hear his voice?"

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-56993495015276868902010-08-08T08:02:00.000-07:002010-08-08T09:10:30.112-07:00

Mike Ely wrote the following concerning Abbie Hoffman, "And that’s the way you have to understand Abby. He wasn’t so much 'promoting drugs' (though obviously he was), but he was arguing that the new communities of youth and youth culture should actively work to politicize themselves even more — to see themselves as a oppressed by the society and the empire, and should more and more integrate

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-90515020970200086962010-04-25T11:06:00.001-07:002010-04-25T13:54:40.688-07:00

"For this revolution is not, in fact, concerned with liberating us from our poverty and misery, but rather from our wealth and our totally excessive prosperity. It is not a liberation from what we lack, but from our consumerism in which we are ultimately consuming our very selves. It is not a liberation from our state of oppression, but from the untransformed praxis of our own wishes and

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-64981871759484059232010-03-20T10:48:00.000-07:002010-03-20T10:49:32.233-07:00

We need the courage to make a break with the current U.S. political system. However, I have sympathy with Dennis Kucinich, who seems trapped, as many of us are, by choices made at an earlier time when conditions were less barbaric than now. When Dennis started his political career, unions were still strong and a liberal could take on powerful corporations and actually win, as Dennis did long

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-10387996228633932782010-02-19T22:16:00.000-08:002010-02-21T12:38:05.579-08:00

Raya Dunayevskaya - the founder of Marxist Humanism and a guiding light for those who dream of a rational and humane world.Our intention is to help build a revolutionary movement that will end the current corporatist domination of all aspects of modern life. In particular, the government's role as handmaid to the corporate agenda must end. There are many current models that we can look toward

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-90172726014055160222010-02-03T13:56:00.000-08:002010-02-07T17:45:05.359-08:00

One of the most widespread illusions propagated by media left and right is that politicians have a great deal of actual power to make changes. This illusion serves many useful purposes. It hides, however, the truth that at the very least several decades, politicians, including Presidents, have become mid-level functionaries in the power elite, essentially go-fers, not go-tos for that elite.It's

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-41137730432038261472010-01-23T10:58:00.000-08:002010-01-23T11:01:36.325-08:00

David Michael Green's recent article "How to Squander the Presidency in One Year" portrayed Obama as follows: "It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within."The truth is that there was no need for a Manchurian candidate - the Democratic Party had already

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-33209028160922618222010-01-17T12:08:00.000-08:002010-01-17T12:08:59.915-08:00

"True generosity consist precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the 'rejects of life,' to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands-whether of individuals or entire peoples-need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-5494552143724647382010-01-12T21:05:00.000-08:002010-01-12T21:05:45.531-08:00

Frank Rich's article belongs to the category of "Backhanded Apologias for Current Capitalism". It's a classic example of the genre, in fact. While seemingly a powerful denunciation of current Wall Street practice, it is in fact a subtly designed propaganda piece that supports the ruling economic class much more effectively than right-wing screeds.   Let's start with real perspective. "

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-91293804441698582212010-01-10T12:55:00.000-08:002010-01-10T12:55:16.633-08:00

"Who narrates governs" - this key insight deserves development. As David Michael Green rightly points out in his recent article, "The Implosion of the American Political Consciousness", Orwell understands how power gains control over narrative. The most effective way is to "... just remove the possibility of imagining alternatives from the public's consciousness. Much easier. Much cheaper."

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-34320962110122893712009-12-25T12:23:00.000-08:002009-12-25T14:36:21.347-08:00

The primary weakness in most of the current movements for social change is their inability to form a coherent systematic analysis of the fundamental causes of the injustices we fight. This weakness is telegraphed in the very word "activist". Mark Rudd just published an excellent article in CounterPunch where he characterized the difference between "activism" and "organizing" as follows: "'...

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-68099860223805030112009-12-13T13:36:00.000-08:002009-12-13T13:43:49.461-08:00

"For myself, I have come in my time in college to an understanding of the beauty of MLK's philosophy of world peace. That violent force cannot ever be justified --that two wrongs don't make a right-- seems like second nature now. Obama's twisted pseudo-intellectual rationalization of war-mongering stands in strict opposition to the teachings of Jesus Christ (love thy neighbor, turn the other

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-55971031396764123552009-12-08T21:13:00.000-08:002009-12-08T21:19:49.272-08:00

Over and over, we hear the same bemusement from liberal writers over the hypocrisy and sheer irrationality of Obama's war strategy. And their analysis is often devastatingly accurate. But they rarely examine the material motivations for this deception, preferring psychological explanations. As in this quote: "...this is 'the way we prefer to see ourselves and, therefore, the narrative that we

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-59208200043909213282009-12-05T22:07:00.000-08:002009-12-06T13:07:46.874-08:00

"The war is not supposed to be winnable, it is supposed to be continuous… all for the hierarchy of society… The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-60801513757901346172009-11-15T15:05:00.000-08:002009-11-21T20:56:45.022-08:00

History is constructed from the building blocks of material fact, not "hope" or "change". But those blocks can be moved by the human mind and the human spirit and their triumph will be eternal. One of the fantasies that currently dominates the debate on climate change is that of "green capitalism". The idea is essentially that we can keep the current economic system and maintain its growth

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111470.post-28145562196669312702009-11-10T20:16:00.000-08:002009-11-13T23:02:24.408-08:00

Why would the very countries who originated ecological science, who make their plans according to best scientific advice be so slow to deal with the latest findings of the world's leading researchers? Surely the irrationality of a Beck or Palin doesn't reach into the highest levels of the Western powers? According to the most widespread faith today, global capitalism, market mechanisms should

Boyd Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01919570539643599204noreply@blogger.com0