An opening greeting, though not very merry.

I have no agenda, but I begin at a time when our civilization is being challenged. That sounds like the sort of hysterical thing everyone is saying these days, but I mean something quite specific by it; nothing hyperbolic.

Civilization depends on the powers of language, such as discussion, including the consideration of actions that may not yet have happened, sharing our expectations and fears, pooling our partial wisdoms, seeking to avoid dangers before they actually occur.

In passionate pre-civilization, it was a fight to the death: competing tribes and warriors, armies fighting for supremacy, wild beasts fighting to the death, Darwinian struggles to survive. But, as Popper puts it, with civilization we "let our ideas die in our stead". By parliamentary democracy we put forth our ideas, preferences, and requests, even our most deeply cherished beliefs, and let the IDEAS compete. If our own beloved idea is defeated by debate and election, we accept the loss of power, but walk away unscathed, with no physical injury, and all our faculties intact to consider how our opponents may have been right in ways we had previously not understood, and how we may change and enhance our own understanding of the world, so as to be able to present stronger, more robust ideas, next time the democratic question is asked.

This was a great advance: no longer defining who is right by seeing who is left after a slaughter, but acknowledging, from the beginning, that WE MAY BE WRONG, choosing life, and increased, unexpected, wisdom, rather than 'death with honor.' Certainty is no virtue. It is the nectar of evil.

With the full flowering of the Bush administration, the USA is now under the control of people for whom such ideas are either unknown, forgotten, or despised. They only accept, as a sign of greatness, wisdom, and moral courage, complete refusal to change one's mind. Refusal to learn. Refusal to explore the divergence between reality and our naive ideas. Far greater than the danger from any particular stupid decision or ignorant pronouncement or dishonest act, is the danger of the belief that it is better to let our people die than to back down in an argument we have lost, or even simply to admit changing our minds.

Bush announces, as he did in Canada yesterday, that he stands firm and is resolute and has never made any wrong decisions. He believes this is a sign of his greatness. It is not. Meanwhile, Iraqis and American Troops and others are dying by the thousands - sacrificial victims on the altar of Bush's "unwavering faith."