“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.
There remain many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.
And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.
Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong, and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute evil in the world."
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, Harvard University, 8 June 1978
"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us 'At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists — so too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize' I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says 'May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself — on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort."
Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation, Cape Town, 6 June 1966
The Fed raised rates as expected.
It will make little difference, Macro events are going to negate most of their standard tricks.
Stocks flopped and then rallied back. Gold and silver rallied and then fell back down,
There will be a quadruple witching stock option expiration on Friday.
There is a certain inevitability settling over the markets.
They are trying to hide it, talk about it, draw a fog around it, but it is there.
I imagine they would like to keep this up until after the midterm elections in November.
I seriously doubt they are going to make it.
They are running out of a number of implements of their warfare, including even mildly credible lies.
Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. As a man sows, so shall he reap.
Have a pleasant evening.
