is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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Jilly in Philly. And… The Four Freedoms: A Clarification.

I’m back in Philly! The cicadas are in full force right now. They sound great but man are they creepy when you have to look at them. Hans Blix is fluffy and fine though he seems to have gained some catweight. He also destroyed roughly $800 worth of textiles with his short-lived campaign of urine destruction. Today I threw away a quilt, a blanket, a comforter and a couch cover. My housesitter already threw out my floor pillows. Luckily the couch has been saved by the thickness of my (previously) lovely midnight blue with khaki trim couch cover. And, after hours of searching all over the web for a suitable dark blue couch cover (not so easy to find, I find) I just found my very same couch-cover on eBay, used by someone else for only three months! And I am bidding on it… wish me luck. Then, some time between now and winter I’ll have to replace my primaloft (down substitute) comforter. Because not only did he ruin my warm warm comforter, he also peed on my other two warm blankets. (Actually, I don’t even really understand why they were all within pee-reach. I seem to remember at least two of them being way up high when I left town. Oh well.) He peed on one of my nice Persian rugs, too, but I am going to see if I can buy something extra powerful to save it, or perhaps take it to a professional cleaner. The quilt et al. couldn’t really be saved because in addition to smelliness the colors had become splotchy, and then while waiting for me to return home the blankets had also begun to grow mold. You know what’s better than cat piss smell? Moldy cat piss smell! Yay!

Also, my car will not engage in any gear. At all. I have to have it towed to a mechanic. I’m hoping it’s just a cable that has snapped, because if I need a whole new transmission, it might mean that I simply can no longer have a car. Cookies crumble sometimes.

Anyway, I’m glad to be home (though Beattymatt feels like home to me, too, so saying ‘home’ about this apartment feels funny and yet also accurate, just like it feels funny but also somehow accurate to call Beattymatt ‘home.’ O! my divided existence).

When I got here I had an email message from my dad waiting. He pointed out that the “four freedoms” used by the Blue Stars as the foundation of their lame-ass drum corps routine are not to be credited to the founding fathers but to FDR, in an address he gave to Congress in 1941. Here’s the text. If the Blue Stars had said all this, I would have been pleased to tears.

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

“The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

“The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

“The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

“That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

“To that new order we oppose the greater conception—the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

“Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change—in a perpetual peaceful revolution—a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions—without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

“This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

“To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”

(From Congressional Record, 1941, Vol. 87, Pt. I.)

So, most of that I feel pretty good about. Like I said, if the Blue Stars had said all that, I would have been pleased to tears. Instead they translated it into Bush-speak, aka the current intolerant coercion that fancies itself as liberating others (especially when reporters are listening), “everywhere in the world.” Those poor young kids, all proud and patriotic, thinking that freedom from fear means protecting yourself at the expense of everyone else. But do you know what Hobbes called that? He called it THE STATE OF NATURE. The state of nature is political philosophy’s major metaphor for a time or place when people haven’t yet learned how to live together. And even Hobbes, no champion of world justice, realized that the state of nature is no way to live, because all it breeds is more violence and insecurity. Sound familiar?

10:44 p.m. - August 21, 2006
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