To borrow a phrase from Yeats, these are the times when the best lack

[KlatooBNikto]

all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.Look at the silence of all the Democratic "leaders",our true religious leaders,our academic establishment,their silence is deafening;while the yahoos who have no qualms about attacking science, manufacturing whole cockamamie theories like Intelleigent Design out of whole cloth,working up a frenzy over a woman who is brain dead.Yeats's words were tailor made for these times.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Yeats had it right....

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[KlatooBNikto]

2. Thanks for the full poem.The very best there is.

[H2O Man]

11. Oh, yes!

A great work.

[Riverman]

3. Don't wait for the Democrats!

They are enmeshed in the immoral, corrupt system and so will not speak out against it! Only when good people, free of such entanglements act individually and together will this rotten system be brought down!

[KlatooBNikto]

5. Welcome Riverman!I agree with you that we have only a one party system

with two wings.Look at the so called DLC calling for an open war against any critics of Bush's illegal and fraudulent war on terror. That says it all for me.

[seabeyond]

4. did you see on the media today about the s.f. protest of

schnortie, or did you see media tlak about kerry's ad, or did you see the press conference reid had today on the steps, or the nation wide march a couple weeks ago

no

easy to blame the dems not speaking up, when they speak up, but it doesnt get out

[Riverman]

10. NEWS FLASH! Dems Speak Truth to Power!

If the dems actually spoke out against the stinkin' corruption that would make news! And, I'd bet even the corporate media would cover that. If all the dems in Congress - Senators and Congressmen, stood in front of the Capitol Building and condemned DeLay and read articles of impeachment of President George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people about WMDs as the reason for invading Iraq - now that would make news.

Don't hold your breath!


The Repugs impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job! Yet, the Dems have no courage in condeming the repugs for sending over 1,500 American men and woman to their deaths in an immoral war (Per the now dead Pope). Let alone causing the horrific deaths of over 100,000 men, women and children. The Dems are morally bankrupt!

[SharonAnn]

6. What rough beast, ready to be born, is slouching towards Bethlehem?

[KlatooBNikto]

7. Ariel Sharon? Bush's mentor?

[Withywindle]

8. All are changed, changed utterly--a terrible beauty is born.

I know, different poem, different context. But it could happen.

[KlatooBNikto]

9. Beautiful and appropriate words just the same.Thanks.

[markus]

12. We Aren't There Yet (Thankfully)

as Yeats was writing in part about the Irish Civil War. Fortunately, we are not all shooting each other. Yet. As much as the Freepers think it would be fun.

[Bridget Burke]

13. But Yeats was also a mystic who took the larger view....

And some of his writings deal with the cycles of history.