the faith in human goodness

...the liberal faith is not merely unsupported by the available facts but inconsistent with them as well. The facts are that evil is prevalent in all human societies; the vices of selfishness, greed, malevolence, envy, aggression, prejudice, cruelty, and suspicion motivate people just as the contrary virtues do; and both virtues and vices may be autonomous or nonautonomous, natural and basic, or the products of external influences. It would be as implausible to claim that these facts testify to human wickedness as it is to base the faith in human goodness on them. If the facts warrant any inference, it is that human beings are morally ambivalent.

The liberal faith, however, flatters humanity by painting a rosy picture of wonderful possibilities, while neglecting the hard facts that it cannot accommodate. It is a sentimental falsification that substitues illusion for reality....

- John Kekes, Against Liberalism, 40.

Any full analysis of patriarchy

Any full analysis of patriarchy should take into account the veiling, sequestering, and regimentation of women in Muslim societies; the tradition of foot binding in China; the suttee tradition of the Indian subcontinent; the deeply institutionalized practice of clitoridectomy among many cultures in 26 different nations across the African continent, a mutilation affecting 2 million girls each year; the near ubiquitousness of wife beating around the world; and the fact that polygyny - multiple wives - is an accepted practice in far more cultures than not. It ought to examine the fact that 67 percent of married women in Papua New Guinea describe themselves as battered, with at least one in five hurt severely enough to require hospitalization at least once. It should note that in Pakistan the mortality rate for girls is half again as high as that for boys, who are better fed; and that in many parts of Africa and the Middle East women cannot visit health clinics without their husbands' permission. We might hear more about the problem of patriarchy outside the West if more non-Western women were freer from grinding poverty and, in some instances, rigid cultural restrictions against expressing themselves. In Bangladesh, one must remember, feminist poet Taslima Nasrin has been placed under fatwah, the Muslim death sentence, for writing the wrong thing.

- from Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham, 1996

Do you really think a God who created the universe, billions of galaxies, stars, billions of planets- would promise to reward some little things in a pale blue dot (i.e Earth) for repeatedly saying that he is the greatest and kindest and for fasting? Such a great creator can't be so narcissist!

-Taslima Nasrin

The peculiarity of the whole affair was its needlessness

The peculiarity of the whole affair was its needlessness, and this underlines two characteristics of folly: it often does not spring from a great design, and its consequences are frequently a suprise. The folly lies in persisting thereafter. With acute if unwitting significance, a French historian wrote of the Revocation that "Great designs are rare in politics; the King proceeded empirically and sometimes impulsively." His point is reinforced from an unexpected source in a perceptive comment by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who cautioned, "In analyzing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial." This is a factor usually overlooked by political scientists who, in discussing the nature of power, always treat it, even when negatively, with immense respect. They fail to see it as sometimes a matter of ordinary men walking into water over their heads, acting unwisely or foolishly or perversely as people in ordinary circumstances frequently do. The trappings and impact of power deceive us, endowing the possessors with a quality larger than life. Shorn of his tremendous curled peruke, high heels and ermine, the Sun King was a man subject to misjudgment, error and impulse - like you and me.

- Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly. 

A cheering section

Women have very rarely engaged in combat, but have often played auxiliary roles in mobilization and logistics. Before hostilities commenced, they might shame cowards, taunt the hesitant, and participate in dances of incitement. Among some groups, women have accompanied war parties to carry weapons and food. During combat, they might serve as a cheering section, supply first aid, or collect spent enemy missiles to resupply their own warriors....

from War Before Civilization, Lawrence Keeley, 35.