Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Bill Ayers to university students: America's ’game' is over and 'another world’ is coming

History tends to repeat itself, but only if the young are barred from the truth. I disliked history in school, but am glad to have absorbed what I could and lived through some tough times. Many of our young, who have grown up in an age where communication and learning opportunities are abundant, have developed social skills by communicating, but have sorely neglected the learning that is so necessary to identify those who would dazzle them with words. What Ayers and many others in our universities and schools are teaching, sounds great. Those of us who know the past, recognize that they are just words; words that when put in practice have, not only failed to produce the desired result, but have destroyed freedom, enslaved and ended millions of lives.


It is not too late, but we are in danger of losing generations of our young. 


 Excerpt: The great challenge for our generation [is] to find a way not just to live differently as individuals, but to find a way to think differently about what work means, to think differently about citizenship means, to think differently about what it means to be a ‘citizen of the world.’ One of the great dangers that we live in right now, is I don‘t think there’s any question, and I don’t think any of you would question, that the American Empire is in decline–that economically, and politically, and in some ways culturally, that we are in decline. And yet, the United States remains the most powerful, weaponized military system the Earth has ever known. 


That’s a treacherous combination. A declining economic power, and an expanding military power. And we are going to have to find ways to re-imagine what it means to live in this coun–in this world. And here we are 4% of the world’s population, 4.5% of the world’s population, consuming vast amounts of natural resources, consuming vast amounts of finished goods, and no politician will say that the empire is declining and that the game is over. 


It’s over. Now what? Perhaps we will transform into a Euro-style state, though that was not a peaceful transition for Europeans, Ayers noted.

Read full article here.

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