[Buddha-l] the 22 vows

[Richard Hayes]

On Friday 22 June 2007 11:09, jkirk wrote:

> As dilatory but persistent enforcementof civil rights began to affect most
> (if not all of) their lives, the extreme anger has dissipated, many became
> open to Dr. King's emulation of Gandhi by excercising passive resistance,
> and today a huge number are Republicans--(you will be pleased to notice,
> Richard)--a signal developement of a political party that to me has
> represented oppression of all but the rich for at least a hundred years.

I think the Republicans have been favoring oppression for at most 45 years.
As I remember it, the Democrats were the party most associated with racism and 
opposition to progress towards racial integration. (Remember the line in the 
John Prine's song about his grandpa: "He voted for Eisenhower, 'cause Lincoln 
won the war." It was the Republican Lincoln who got the credit for freeing 
the slaves, thus delivering the defeated Southern states to the Democrats.) 
The Progressive Party grew not out of the Democrats but out of the 
Republicans, the party associated with conservation of resources, breaking up 
monopolies, promoting racial integration, getting rid of political corruption 
and so on. It was the Republican Eisenhower who first warned us of the 
military-industrial complex. Most of my ancestors of the 20th century were 
simultaneously socialists and Republicans. Hell, even I was a Republican 
until 1964. The big shift occurred when 1) Goldwater delivered the Republican 
party to anti-progressive libertarians, and 2) Johnson delivered the formerly 
Democratic South to the Republicans by backing racial integration.

Our next president will be Dennis Kucinich, a closet Buddhist. (He is a 
vegetarian who meditates and opposes war; how much more Buddhist can a guy 
get?)

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico