Let’s Get Our Boys Back from Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan TODAY!

    
      If we leave it to politicians to decide when and where the flower of our youth must die and be buried, we are putting ourselves in the devil’s hands.  For they are not guided by reason or moral compunction; they are motivated by their moneyed donors and voter pressure.  But we as voters are, unhappily, guided and moved by the slick tongues of our respected politicians, who promise much but deliver little, when not actually gouging us.

     We have heard the argument that if we leave too soon these barbaric countries will pounce on their neighbor’s jugular in civil war, and we’ll have a holocaust on our hands.  Unfortunately, whenever we leave whether today or ten years from now, they are going to do exactly that anyway.  With those countries overflowing with any number of different religions and sects, and each hating and having hated the others for centuries, because their absolute truths clash with each other, there will be no peace so long as there isn’t a “higher power” [not God but a military force imposed by a “savior,” a strongman dictator as per custom, including the American military] to control them.

     We [gullible Americans] were sold a phony bill of goods, which told us that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and was on the verge of launching them all over the neighboring vicinity and even landing on our shores, like on the Twin Towers.  We were lied to, as per custom, and the quick easy pickings that was to end in no more than a fortnight is still very much with us after about a decade as the body bags and flag-covered coffins attest to as they arrive “back home” regularly from that (coveted) oil-filled land where many of our “missing-in-action” boys will lie under the sands for as long as there are sands there.

     When our president said, “It was worth it” after he was caught in his lie – that there were no WMD – the new plan was to bring peace, democracy, and Christ to all these primitive savages with bombs, missiles, and nuclear power, as we have done in bringing peace, democracy, and Christ to Iraq after a decade of Christian love and diplomacy.  One of our current president’s major mistakes was to continue the war started by his predecessor in Afghanistan.  Rather than set an example for our future policies in that area of the world, we have gotten deeper into the morass, by sending even more troops and imposing our will on Pakistan.  As if our meddling stopped there, we are angling for more entanglements in Iran and North Korea with the same fear tactics of disallowing nuclear power in foreign hands.  After all, how can we trust anyone but ourselves, since we are the only reasonable and honest people?

     Now, it is clear that neither Bush nor Cheney, or Obama is going to send his own children to the front lines.  For anyone who believes in the tales being preached by our political leaders and wants to delay returning our boys immediately, he should volunteer his sons and daughters tomorrow morning to carry on this holy crusade.  We know only too well that talk is cheap.  Let’s put our blood (children) where our mouth is.  It would seem the Christian (and truly American) thing to do is “love our neighbor as ourselves” and let him decide what he wants to do with his life.  In the case where our neighbor (country) is governed by a dictator, we work with him, not destroy him because we don’t agree with him.  After all, would we like to have any country to meddle in our internal affairs, or control us [supposing it had the power to do so], just because it didn’t agree with us or like how we live?  Well, where is the Golden Rule we give so much lip service to?

     In short, every day we prolong these highly costly and fruitless wars even one day longer, whatever our self-serving politicians say, every dead American [and if we were truly human, we would count every Arab killed as well] will be on our alleged conscience.  Or have we forgotten that we’ve been saying for so long that we have one?

Dialectic Dialog The Website!

We are pleased to announce Dr. David Hernandez's personal website highlighting his Works and Words.  Currently, the site is in English, though we are working to get the rest of it translated!  Stop by and see the new look for Dialectic Dialog!  Visit www.dialecticdialog.com!

What’s the Secret, Ben?

What’s the Secret, Ben?

This play is a take-off on Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman.  It does not deal with Willy Loman and his family.  Rather it is the development of Willy’s brother Ben and his life in Africa before his death.  In Miller’s play, Ben, who has been dead, appears as a ghost in Willy’s desperate hallucinations.  In Willy’s conversation with his neighbor Charley, the audience learns that Ben had seven sons, thus Willy does not expect to get any of the inheritance his brother, who had left home at the age of nineteen to search for diamonds in the mines of Africa and came out hugely rich at the age of twenty-one, is likely to leave his family.

We see at the opening of this play Ben contemplating death, because he is dying of cancer.  He is particularly disturbed because he is expecting his sons with their wives to come swooping down from their different perches like vultures to see what they can get out of the old man before he dies.  Little interested in coming to visit Ben while he was robust and younger, now after years of absence they “suddenly” show an interest in his wellbeing.  They do not fool Ben, however, for he is well prepared for their necrophagous visit.

Predictably, the sons, with their wives, begin to arrive faithfully little by little.  It does not take long for them to reveal their true colors and motives, biting each other in the back, each claiming to deserve a hefty chunk of Ben’s estate with passionate and logical justification.  As time begins to drag for their impatience, they begin to plot his murder, since “he was going to die anyway.”  Among them are Ben’s faithful doctor, Harrison, and Rebecca, one of the wives, who has been accustomed to high living but now begins to fall under the spell of unexpected love.  Her new personality begins to insinuate itself in bachelor Harrison’s romantic sensibilities.  There is also the Benjamin of the family, Ben Junior, jazz musician recently discharged from the Army.  His hipster life and bohemian attitude toward life carries a certain sense of justice and genuine love for his “pop.”

The intrigue of the other members of the family pressures Junior into participating in Ben’s murder – passionately against his better judgment and feelings.  The date is set for Ben’s murder: death by poisoning.  Junior and June, one of the wives who has fallen in love with him, are to carry out the nefarious deed by poisoning his dessert.  With so many dishes and servings looking alike, the inevitable happens: they poison the wrong person, Joe.  Unbeknownst to everyone, except his latest wife, Miriam, Ben has been listening to all their secretive plotting conversations with hidden mikes throughout the house.  But Ben was not going to wait to be poisoned “by another hand.”  Because of his unbearable pain, Ben had arranged for Harrison to give him a pill that would relieve his pain permanently.  While Joe is dying from the poison intended for Ben, the shrewd Ben is also dying from the pill he has just swallowed, saying to his dead son, “Don’t fret, son, I’ll be right behind you.”

Under the mistaken [misled] belief that Ben had not yet made out his last testament, the scheming sons had wanted him dead before he could cut them out of his will.  But the last testament has most surprising but revealing contents and conditions.

For more information about this play click here

Standing Room Only

      

What frightens us most today?  Most of us are not always certain what we are frightened most about, just that we feel fear about something, whether it be a fatal disease like Alzheimer’s, a nuclear attack, another 9/11, having a Republican win the next national election – or perhaps something a little less frightening, like a stroke.  Any of these can be more than a little terrifying.  But what is perhaps worse and more pressing than any of these or even all of them combined is something we give little or no thought to: over population.

     Was that a misprint?  No, that was not a misprint.  We need give the matter only a little thought, like never before, and we may come to a speedy agreement that over population will eat us up sooner than AIDS will engulf us.  Let’s consider a simple law of nature: barring a sudden epidemic Black Death to sweep across the world overnight or rigorous intelligent birth control, human growth is exponential.  If we look at a few numbers [statistics], we can see how this has worked since ancient times, no farther back than Greek and Roman times.  World human population was still only considerably less than 100 million people.  In spite of man-made wars and plagues, we are now in the billions.  [We tend to pooh-pooh such numbers when we refer to people but bellow bloody murder if it refers to the national deficit.]

     Today [April 2011] the world population is, specifically, at 6.91 billion.  We were barely over a billion in 1800.  By the year 2050 [within the lifetime of those born in the last 25 years and their children], scientific predictions have us at over 7.5 billion and more likely flirting with 10.5 billion.  [That is still only pocket change for what Bernard Madoff ran off with to rent for himself a nice place in federal prison.]  Well, no doubt, as far as most people are concerned, these are still only numbers, nothing to worry about.  It might do well, though, to look at the matter from another angle.

     Not very long ago, there was a fellow by name Adolph Hitler, and he complained that Germany needed more lebensraum.  Very patriotically, he led his country and went out to obtain that extra “room” or space.  We call that noble effort World War II.  Not enough space, he said.  A few years before Hitler, there was another war.  We have proudly called it The War of Independence, the making of the American nation.  At that time there were only “thirteen colonies” settled in the far Northeast, Yankee land.  To the west was a nearly “boundless” land, totally unexplored by the white man but inhabited by a few million [handful of] “savages” [whom we kindly set aside to make room for the white folk.]  It was long said that from that Northeast corner, there were such thick forests that a monkey [not the Yankee, of course] could swing from tree to tree across the entire land right up to the Pacific Ocean.  How many of us, or at least a good, athletic African monkey, would be able to swing on trees today from coast to coast without our feet touching ground?

     The fact is that we have cut down millions of acres of trees in scarcely over two hundred years.  Why?  To house millions of people who have covered our erstwhile virgin lands.  How about the asphalt and concrete we have poured on them to build our streets, highways, and parking spaces for our cars and trucks?  At the beginning of the 20^th century we had less than 100 million population.  Today we are climbing at 311,191,000 and counting, what with our practically open immigration policies. Where will we be in 2050, especially if we continue to let all the Asian peoples, who are dying to come to the “land of opportunity,” come rushing through our well-oiled revolving door?  China is bulging at 1,343,520,000; India 1,210,193,422; Indonesia 238,400,000; Pakistan 175,791,000, Bangladesh 164,425,000; as well as Africa with Nigeria enjoying 158,259,000 [only one of the countries in Africa] and Ethiopia [the poorest country in the world] with some 60,500,000.  Already the face of America has darkened considerably since the Civil Rights bills of the ‘60s, which allowed for our nearly open-door immigration policies.  Who or what is going to put the brakes on the free flow of poor countries from flooding what remains of our diminishing spaces?  Logic tells us that with our current fiscal deficits and rampant immigration of the world’s poor, it will not take many more generations to qualify as one of the “third world” nations.  And we, too, like Hitler, will be screaming our lungs out for more lebensraum.  Unthinkable?  What odds are you laying on your bet?

     For those who have not kept up with foreign news might want to know that Brazil [population 194,529,000] has been cutting down millions of acres of its Amazon jungles for years for building roads, infrastructure, industries, and homes.  Sound familiar?  The Amazon jungle once provided vital oxygen to our atmosphere, but it is now being transformed into carbon dioxide and other pollutants.  Let us not forget that they and we are only getting warmed up in our mad determination to destroy our world, which includes not only our air but also our waters [oil spills contribute marvelously to the madness; after all, we do need more oil for more people, do we not?], marine life, animals, vegetation, etc.

     Communist China, whatever else we may think or say about it, adopted a policy to control excessive population growth a few years ago: reward those who participate in birth control and ignore the others.  Couples having no children reap the greatest tax and financial benefits; those with one child a little less; those with two even less; and so on.  Preaching never produces positive results.  Money always does.  As soon as possible, we should seriously invest in such a practical program here as well as in poor countries, and close the door to free immigration into this country.  [We can already anticipate interested parties reacting vehemently against such a policy, but it is not a matter of permitting any and all relatives and friends to come live with us, but a matter of survival for legal tax-paying Americans.]  As our worthy politicians say in their political charades “let’s take back our country,” we should take back our land, the natural world around us, and our future before we reach the point of no return.  The handwriting on the wall is writ large enough for a blind man to see.  When are WE going to see it, read it, and act on it sensibly?

   

Celestina

Celestina

Taken from the Tragedia de Calisto y Melibea [published in 1499], which is believed to be the model for Shakespeare’s Rome and Juliet, this play plucks out the minor but one of the most memorable characters in literature, Celestina.  In the earlier work this character appears as an old crone once a successful prostitute, who now serves as a tutor to young girls seeking [“in the life” – prostitution] a means of feeding themselves and perhaps their young families, and is also a mender of hymens for young wayward ladies who are willing and able to pay to have their pure virginity restored.  This play, however, presents a beautiful, intelligent, well-educated girl “in the life,” whose clientele includes successful businessmen, a renowned Archbishop, and politicians.

Opening the play is a scene of Celestina and her mother discussing the merits and demerits of prostitution, the mother wishing that her daughter could have a more respectable career but accepting Celestina’s position: except for our prudery about sex, why is prostitution any less respectable than any other commercial business that sells a valuable product in great demand, especially if the clientele is doubtless respectable?

Celestina has won a respectable place in the community because she does not flaunt her beauty or success, but is obviously appreciated, especially by the men, and also because as a brilliant fundraiser for the Church she has been accepted as a respected member of the Board.  In a meeting with the Board, despite Celestina’s admirable efforts at diplomacy, when the Archbishop feels “attacked” by the subject of the clergy abuse of its young and female parishioners, he explodes in anger a storms out of the meeting.  To divert attention from the growing discontent of the community in the negative publicity about the abuse of young boys, girls, and women in the confessional, the Archbishop publicly announces a campaign to clean the city of all prostitution by closing all brothels and arresting any and all streetwalkers.

Immense pressure is placed on Celestina when she discovers that word has gone out of her abominable “business” and that the Archbishop has broken his appointments with her, however much he craved his masochistic flagellation “therapy.”  Forced to decide whether to allow herself to be run out of town, Celestina elected to go public and name names of her clientele, arguing that if she is guilty, so must her clients who pay for her services.

Not one to take such public disgrace lying down, the Archbishop calls on a couple of his more able henchmen to go teach her a less she will never forget and put her out of business permanently.  They mutilate her so that she will never again be able to sell her wares in the open market.

To get "Celestina" by Dr. David Hernandez, click here!

Seeing Illegal Immigration Right Side Up

How many more wetbacks do we need invading our shores?  Is “illegal” really legal?

     The answer to these questions may not come by so easily because it seems much depends on our various interests and different views.  For example, if we asked the first thousand people we came across in the street what they meant by justice, we would be sure to get a thousand thumbnail definitions as assured as the slick first-rate, highly paid shyster.  Yet it took arguably the greatest philosopher of all time, Plato, a whole book, The Republic, to answer that very question.  Just shows how little we can trust less knowledgeable “experts” trying to answer difficult questions with simple answers.

     While we all have the right of opinion, it hardly means that we all have the right opinion.  Many are bound to clash with others.  And when we are so adamant about clinging to our pet interests, they, too, will clash with those held by others.  In the instant case, we see todAay how our state laws differ and our Congress does little to soften the obduracy of the differing sides in trying to reach a reasonable solution to the benefit of the entire nation, while each side wants and expects to prevail.

     To complicate matters, the exploding numbers of illegals and the numbers of their interested legal advisers, who see gold in defending them and find places in the political system now have more power in determining legislation that favors the illegals and the definition of what is “legal” itself, rendering the question we asked at the start all but moot.

     On the side of the illegals, we hear and can empathize with them in part, when they say, “this nation was founded by and is a nation of immigrants,” “this nation has been made strong and great by its diversity of immigrants,” “we seek a better life, like anyone else – and willing to work for it,” “we pay taxes, like any other American and are not a burden on the State,” “we love this country and will be good American citizens,” “we are human beings who don’t deserve to be discriminated against or to be profiled anymore than any other person,” etc.

     There are many who defend the employer and our country as beneficiary of the work the illegals contribute to our economy.  Among the employers there are the landowners, farmers, restaurants, salons, hotels, resorts, parks, zoos, garbage collection, and construction industries: homes, commercial, streets, expressways, sweat shops that fill our department stores, etc.  Their chief argument is that “it is work that no one else will do,” which means invariably legal [especially “white”] Americans, and it is indispensable work to our economy.

     The first white man who set foot upon the western hemisphere [as unwelcome as he may have been] was surely an immigrant, as were the millions of Europeans who continued flowing upon these shores.  And there was a time when immigrants were in fact greatly needed to work the land and build our infrastructure.  But then came a time when the flow of immigrants had to be stopped, because it was no longer desirable to have endless immigrants bulking our population, for we had reached the point of diminishing returns.  In short, the unneeded, unwanted immigrant was no longer welcome.  The fact that this land was founded by and is made of up immigrants is totally irrelevant to today’s issue of illegal immigration.

     Lawyers who defend illegals do our country a disservice, since they should know better, however much they argue for the “inhuman” hardships the illegals suffer because they are not given the benefits of legal Americans.  They may be human beings, but they are illegal ones.  A murderer is a human being, but that doesn’t make him innocent of crime and eligible for rewards and special privileges.  That they should make good American citizens is more than slightly dubious, since they were ready to abandon their country for “a better life.”  It seems rather that their eagerness to abandon their country makes them opportunists, hardly material for loyal American citizens.

     To say that we need 12-13 million illegals to do the work that “no one else wants to do” is pretty much putting the cart before the horse, is it not?  According to latest figures, there are millions of American citizens out of work and some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, considered “homeless.”  Now, supposing we eliminated those 12-13 million illegals AND closed all the havens for the homeless, would we still have jobs that “no one else wants to do?”  [There would always be some kind of haven for the proven infirm.]  Forgive me if I can’t hear for the deafening silence.

     It’s more than high time that we stopped fooling ourselves and made some sense of the kinds of messes we are quite geniuses at consistently creating for ourselves.  Let’s go back to the “indispensable concept” we proposed for making a start at trying to solve our immigration crisis.  We mentioned the next thousand people we met would give us a thumbnail definition of “justice.”  Yet, arguably the greatest philosopher of all time, Plato, needed a whole book, The Republic, to define the term.  That’s how much we can depend upon slightly less enlightened people to present us with easy answers to such complex problems.  Without going into Plato’s book, as a working concept, we can at least say, what few would disagree with, that justice cannot make sense if we do not have at the same time reward and punishment: we reward those who obey the law and punish those who disobey [break] the law.  How very simple even if not so easy.  All we need now is to determine, as our Constitution enjoins us: a reward or punishment that fits the deed [the patriotic duty or the crime].  We also need honest [patriotic] judges, prosecutors, and legislators.  [Where might we find such creatures, or as we remember how Diogenes went around in daylight with his lamp looking for the honest man?]

     We can well empathize with anyone who is seeking the better life, like the rapist, holdup man, mugger, or white collar crooks who bilk people [associates, clients, friends, the company, and our nation] out of billions of dollars when they create a world financial crisis for their pleasure, that is, “seeking the better life.”  A wetback is not normally seen as either a rapist or white collar crook, fleecing the country of billions of dollars, chiefly because we picture him wading across the Rio Grande mostly in the evening or night alone or sometimes with a couple of family members. We even feel a tender sympathy for them when we hear of their hardships if they get caught, get raped or robbed by the coyote, or die from thirst and hunger trying to drag themselves across the burning deserts of Arizona.  And then we give them cyclical relief with legal amnesties, free medical attention, financial aid, food stamps, and educational benefits.  American humanitarianism and generosity.  No doubt most admirable.  But what does that do for our country when we ignore the basic principles of justice or rule by law?  We reward rather than punish them for a crime tantamount to rape.  That may sound outlandish and perhaps cruel.  That is because we equate rape with sex instead of force.  We take someone or something by force is rape for our benefit/pleasure [seeking the better life] – with or without sex.  It may still seem an exaggeration [for one thing we are hung up on sex, i.e., its avoidance], but let’s go back to the 1930-40s, long before we opened the doors to indiscriminate legal and illegal immigration.  [Americans were doing all the jobs that “no one else wants to do.”]  Now, what if the national alarm went off that 12-13 million Latinos were going to rush over the Rio Grand and invade us?  What would we do?  What would YOU do about it?  Sit back and enjoy being “raped” – as one fine candidate for Texas governor recently said that women should do when confronted by a rapist?  Would you then deign call it rape, or would you start handing out food stamps and lashing out for taxes to pay for the free medical care, education, etc. of 12-13 million illegals who have just swamped over your erstwhile rule-of-law country?

     If we are not entirely brain dead and decide that punishment should fit the crime – breaking our federal laws [if that means anything anymore] – we should consider the crime of illegal immigration as we do rape, or carrying a female across state lines for sex or prostitution.  What do we do in such cases, offer the rapist free education, medical care, food stamps, etc.?  Don’t we slam him in the hoosegow and hand him a hefty prison term?  Why haven’t we done that with the wetbacks?  One of our quickie solutions is to deport them.  Another is to offer them amnesty, as some lame-brained politicians have suggested more than once.  How much would it cost the tax-paying American to ship back 12-13 million illegals?  That’s unadulterated insanity.  Amnesty is tantamount to announcing to the world that it is perfectly correct to break our federal laws – at their pleasure.

     Sanity and reason would demand that all illegals, past, present, and future, be slammed into prison for the same amount of time a rapist would get.  Since he had no legal right to be here, he has no legal status.  Therefore he must pay as he goes in the same way as if he were living in Mexico, China, or Tierra de Fuego: he pays for his personal needs, heat, food, air conditioning, bedding, laundry, medical attention, etc.  To be able to do this, he must work FOR FREE, except for a voucher [no cash or currency of any kind] to credit his work at minimum wage at the moment he was arrested at the rate in that state, never to change until his release.  His work will be the kind of public service work needed in the local community “that no one else will do” until he has finished his term.  He will not be sitting idly in his cell.  AFTER his “debt to society” is paid in terms of time, he must now work to accumulate enough voucher credit to pay for his deportation.  No more free rides back home.

     There has been a misplaced sympathy for the separation of families.  These are not our concern but that of the family involved.  They are the ones willing to take the risks; like any gambler, they must pay the consequences when they lose.  If he is dragged into jail and leaves his family behind because they are “not guilty,” they will not stay here only because they are not guilty.  They, too, have no legal status in this country, because they were not supposed to be here legally in the first place; hence, they will be taken back most economically in a bus to the border and left on the other side.  It is the concern of the affected parties to make preparations before they come to violate our laws as to the care of family if left at the border.

     With such inflexible procedure and expectations on the part of those anticipating an illegal venture across the border, there should be more contemplation by future adventurers before any attempt, because there will be no free ride back home, which they almost invariably take advantage of by making repeated attempts until they succeed – at the American taxpayer’s expense.  Rigorously sweeping them out of sweat shops, restaurants, salons, hotels, etc. will leave prospective lawbreakers scant opportunity for employment and be more than a little discouraging for future illegals, less burden on the American taxpayer, and more employment for Americans in need of work, even those who think today that they would not do that kind of work, because to fill that loop hole, we can save even more tax money by closing all havens and feed bags for the homeless, and then produce plenty of jobs available with 12-13 million less illegals on our premises, and reducing the unemployment rates within our borders.  (There would be havens for invalid homeless.)  [See a fuller discussion on this subject in my Missing in America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor and Boy, What I Could Do With Gates’ Billions!]

     Of course, if we can’t be bothered with doing things right because it’s too much trouble, too cruel, too much to think about, we can always leave things as they are.  Why not?  We love letting things “just happen.”  It’s easier that way, isn’t it?  But, then, would we have a right to complain?

David Hernandez, Ph. D.                                                    Labels: Illegal Immigration

Is there ever going to be a cap to these gas prices?

Is there ever going to be a cap to these gas prices?  How long are we going to remain hostage to Arab oil – and Hugo Chavez?

     How about a cap at $10 a gallon?  Will we be happy if prices stop at $10?  But, why should Exxon and the other Robber Barons stop gouging us there when we’re more than willing to keep lashing out to keep our cars running?  As for Arab oil and Chavez setting us free, that will be the day the wells run dry.  But, why complain when we so love the status quo?
     Of course, we keep hearing various voices from the gallery about electric cars, corn, and other clever means of running our cars without need of fossil-burning fuel.  Good old American ingenuity at work, and all is well.  The world will be saved.  Will the great American invention save us before gas is over $10 a gallon?  Forgive me if I’m just a wee bit skeptical.  After all, it’s just a bit dubious that Exxon and co-conspirators will be deliriously happy losing out on the record billions in profits they keep churning out each year that we cheerfully help them squeeze out of us.
     May I dare suggest the most obvious, rational, indeed, only sane alternative?  How about public transportation?  Oh, yes, I was prepared for your objections.  The first objection is always: it won’t work; it never has.  Such objections invariably insist that it has been tested many times, and it just doesn’t work.  Well, let’s see if what I’m proposing they have tested to the letter of the plan.  You tell me if they have.
     Let’s begin by making some simple, logical, necessary observations.  Some of the objections are: you can never find a bus when you need one; it takes forever to get to where you want to get, principally because there aren’t enough of them, requiring long waits between them and in making connections; they don’t go everywhere one needs to go; for weekly/monthly grocery shopping, there is too much to carry onto a bus and between transfers; the same problems for traveling by air; etc.  These are certainly valid complains as things are today and have been.
     Let’s consider the remedy.  Some simple undeniable facts: the average purchase of a car is roughly every five years; the average new car costs about $20-25K; if we are optimistic and give you at least 35 more years of driving, that amounts to about $175,000 we have paid to have the “freedom” of our car.  How about insurance?  How much does that cost, depending on age, accidents, and coverage?  If it is high now, do we expect it to come down any time soon?  How about betting that it will continue to keep climbing?  There is, of course, maintenance, repairs [something that is likely to become more frequent with the millions of additional new cars on the road [what with the countless legal and illegal immigrants and their numerous children, who will soon also be needing a car, that keep streaming into this country until we are bound to outstrip India and China in population in a few years the way this land of opportunity is going, where they are all going “to find a better life], time lost from work for repairs, hospitalization, and even death [a thing we think can never happen to us in the freedom of our cars]; etc.  That’s a chunk of change we’re pouring out just for the “freedom” of our cars.
     Why haven’t these so-called tests been legitimate, and thoroughly misleading?  The honest answer is that public transportation can never work so long as we have our roads cluttered with the millions of cars we have running on them.  To make a true test for public transportation, we must take ALL private vehicles that burn fossil fuel OFF the roads!  Now, if we can picture NO PRIVATE VEHICLES on our roads and freeways, can we not also imagine how quickly buses and cabs would be able to zip across town as fast and faster than a private car today, especially during rush hours?  That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?  One we have never seen in those so-called tests.  (For fuller discussion see my Missing in America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor and Boy, What I Could Do With Gates’ Billions!)
     Obama has earmarked billions of dollars for the repair and building of new roads.  What if instead of pouring those billions down the drain [since we shall never catch up with ourselves with the booming growth of our population and the need for millions of more cars and trucks each year, especially now that Mexican President Felipe Calderon has won the agreement from Obama to allow Mexican trucks onto our roads] we invested in a first-class public transportation system?  We would not have to keep building and repairing endless roads, and we wouldn’t be slaughtering the millions of people on our roads that we have since the first cars became lethal weapons.  [Food for thought for those people so concerned about the number of fetuses we “murder” in abortions.]  We get a lot of lip service about our concern for our environment, including its warming effects on our icebergs and rising seas, which are gobbling up our shorelines.  Could we make a difference by removing all fossil-burning private vehicles off our streets and expressways?  So, why aren’t we doing it, or do we really prefer just to listen to ourselves talk?
     We see in our major cities buses running virtually empty, and people complain because of high fares and poor service.  With everyone using the buses, the fares could be nominal and plenty of buses and cabs available at all hours and along all thoroughfares and most side streets.  Cabs, at nominal fares, would be the means of connecting buses and shuttle vehicles when necessary and convenient, especially to connect at airports.  Because the demand of oil would be reduced considerably the price of a barrel would plummet, and to run planes, buses, and cabs would also be reduced.  With the billions not wasted on new roads, they could be used to build “bullet” trains, so that not as many planes would be necessary.
     Obviously, if our proposal were taken seriously, we could expect the oil and car manufactures to wage implacable war against it.  Can we imagine seeing their top executives smiling and giggling while their billions of profits fly out the window?  We can also anticipate the loss of jobs, of course.  But did we mourn too much when the Pony Express was supplanted by the Stage Coach, the Stage Coach by the train, the train by the car and plane?  I dare say not very much or for very long.  We now have the Internet, practically making the Post Office and book publication obsolete.  It seems just about time for public transportation, if not to modernize, at least to save our necks – and spare us Hugo Chavez.

David Hernandez, Ph. D.


For More Information Check Out Boy, What I Could Do With Gates' Billions! and Missing In America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor.

Welcome to Dialectic Dialog

You are cordially invited to participate in a discussion on topics that are interesting to most people.  You may, of course, add your comments when you wish.  Thank you for your cooperation, and we hope you will find as much satisfaction in this kind of dialog, as you would like.  -- Dr. David Hernandez

Boy, What I Could Do With Gates’ Billions!

All manner of horrors bombard us every day from all quarters and their various facets, be it wars in the Middle East, fear of a nuclear holocaust, terrorism that may visit our shores or major cities [the next 9/11], violence in our homes and streets, saving ourselves from the current and next world financial crisis, sexual invasions by our clergy, pollution, discrimination, illegal immigration, etc.  Must we remain forever helpless against the inhumanity of man?  Can we do nothing to protect ourselves?

This book proposes not a correcting but a re-making of the world around us through an educational approach to civilize man not by trying to change him as he is but to re-make him as he should have been made in the first place.  What we have today is predicated on the selfishness and greed behind the actions that have brought us to this terrifying juncture in human history.  Selfishness and greed are not instinctual; proper child education can turn them into consideration, generosity, and respect.  Conduct based on such values can be the basis for an enlightened citizenry and a genuine humane society.

Such education is possible only if free of government (tax) control, hence “Gates’ billions.”  Neither would it be a dependency on Gates, but his charity efforts offer a comparative opportunity.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have united their billions in a charity designed to help the needy around the world buying technical equipment, health and educational programs, food, clothes, etc.  These are exemplary efforts to ease suffering and even save lives.  But, sadly, they achieve nothing in changing or preventing the man-made horrors above-mentioned.

Our proposed educational program will be designed with the independent voluntary billions that would compare favorably with the Gates/Buffet billions.  This program would be designed to teach values along with academic/technical/scientific topics: respect, ethics, kindness, generosity, and fair play [justice] through Talent Education [Suzuki Violin Method], the Golden Rule, and Patriotism, not as vaguely understood or scarcely practiced in general.  [Such values are taught in today’s schools, even by most parents.]  A strict parental requirement and commitment for entrance would be exacted, and only children under such oversight and guidance would be admitted into our unique educational system.

Missing in America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor

We as Americans go through our daily lives carrying with us the belief in such slogans that we live in a country of the free and the brave.  Yet practically every step we take in our daily routines belies what these mantras are supposed to mean.  Every day we Americans work diligently to rob ourselves of our freedoms.  We are supposed to be governed by our representatives.  Did our representatives vote for war in Iraq, or was it Bush and his coterie who took the vote away from us?  And who is paying for it, those who lied to America, or those who paid with their lives and the taxes for this mass suicide?  How were we free being dragged into such butchery?  Was it just?  Why do we keep voting for representatives who are in the hire of the very people who are bent upon controlling us?

When the rich control the oil and the public must be fettered to the relentless rise in prices at the pump, how free are we to choose otherwise?  When the stockbrokers and other white collar crooks scheme to create world economic crises in cycles, how free are we to defend ourselves from them?  Is it just?  Is it just that the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow relentlessly – to the poor? – to America?  How free are we to defend ourselves against the ravages of pollution caused by various big industries, whom our representatives [in their pay] defend at the expense of the public health?

These and many other subjects are discussed in an attempt to get at the causes, the disease, rather than their effects [or symptoms].  There is discrimination, illegal immigration, racism, the deadly effects of misunderstood patriotism, education or its lack thereof, the costly negative effects of the Civil Rights Movements, etc.

Ecstasy Celebrates Doomed Women in Ciudad Juarez - A Play By David Hernandez

For years now women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez and vicinity, and its causes remain a mystery to the general public, most of it because the American public has not taken the trouble to learn about its southern neighbor, its culture and history, much less its very different values than American ones.  This play presents characters little familiar in American life, though the male and female protagonists are an American (Barry) and a beautiful Chicana (Soledad).

The term “ecstasy” takes on a double meaning in this play: it refers to ecstasy, the deadly drug and the pleasure the drug dealers take in torturing, raping, and killing their victims.  The American is a businessman taking advantage of the two cultures on either side of the border, but his Mexican competitors, who have been outwitted by the American, are constantly vigilant in searching for some way to compete with him, especially if they can find a way of running him out of town.

Opening the play is a scene where Barry and Soledad have just enjoyed a sexual interlude and are expecting some of his business competitors.  But along comes a corrupt Mexican highly ranked cop who accuses Barry of spying for the CIA, which could mean nuisance meddling in Mexican commercial and police affairs.  The plot revolves around these accusations and denials and the unexpected plea by some Mexican women, seeking asylum in Barry’s home, because they believe that Soledad, known to be Barry’s “woman,” could be sympathetic and aid them.

As the police investigations come close to proving that Barry is the CIA spy, he gets Soledad’s confession that she is the spy as they both discover that their “fling” has developed into a deep mutual love.  The collusion between the cops and dealers produces the information that reveals that the fugitive women have been staying in Barry’s home.  It is also discovered that Soledad is the CIA spy and is dragged out with the other women, all sure to meet with the same fate of the known murdered women in Ciudad Juarez.  Out of love, Barry takes gun in hand to go rescue his Soledad with little hope of reaching her before his body is riddled with holes.

This play is available from digilibro.

About the Author

Certain turns in his life took David Hernandez from a professional musician to an academic career that led to teaching English and Spanish at various universities and colleges around the country and publishing articles, poetry, and plays. Among his books are "Missing In America: Freedom, Justice, and Honor", "Boy, What I Could Do With Gates' Billions!", and "The Greatest Story Ever Forged (Curse of the Christ Myth)"  He has been active in music, theatre, sports, and social, educational, and political affairs.  Dr. Hernandez currently lives in Carrollton, Texas.