Iraqi Police lectured

[costard]

Well...

I live in a clean, warm house with my wife and child, my disposable wealth is something like forty times that of an Afghani labourer. I am no-one special in my society, just an average working joe without a tertiary degree. I have the capability to reason and the singular advantage of the circumstances in which to develop that capability - that is, I'm not living at subsistance level and I don't have to cope with armed thugs dictating my actions down to the expression of my thoughts. In some ways I am the fortunate recipient of benefits that have taken hundreds of years to develop - medicine, scientific and political systems, financial systems; in other ways I work hard to maintain those systems - I don't indulge in deliberately hypocritical or dishonest behaviour for personal gain and I recognise an obligation to the society that I've been raised in. I also recognise the power and the right of that society to impose corrective and directing rules upon me. I have high expectations of my leaders and the opportunity to dispose of them when they fail to meet those expectations, provided I'm prepared to work with others to bring about that disposition.

I can recognise the truth and wry humour in the observation that democracy is the worst political system, with the exception of all the others; I suspect the same is true of capitalism as a financial system. Their strengths lie in their ability to suffer harm and privation and return to good health. The global economy isn''t wrecked so much as neglected - [rant] a rising market makes anyone look good and the ******* ***** scumbag ******-****** with their false smiles and false words and their overweening superiority have done no work to maintain it and should be plowed into the soil as the only possible benefit they could make [/rant] - the system has evolved to recover and there is hope to be found in the cleverness of our ancestors and the re-kindling of our admiration for their designs. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, we might do well to emulate their discipline: in observation, argument and behaviour.