Paper presented at the “International Forum On The Daodejing”, April 22-29, Xi’an and Hong Kong, jointly sponsored by the China Religious Culture Communication Association and the China Daoist Association.

Managing Democracy By The Application Of Daodejing

By Alice Chung-Chau Tang, Ph.D.

 

Introduction and summary: Daodejing as Management Tool for Global Democracy

In the past 60 years, the majority of the member nations in the United Nation have adopted Constitutional Democracy, whether they are of the socialistic or the democratic types.  Modern Democracy had been mankind’s hope for a world of peace with justice when WWII ended.  People yearned for peace amidst a burnt out landscape.  Democracy was believed to be the best safeguard against nations ever going to wars wantonly again. Yet in the past 60 years, America, the first modern democracy, initiated over 100 military actions all over the globe.  Since 2000, it has launched a perpetual war, as “War on Terror” can only be, that is now viewed by all nations to be threatening to the very survival of mankind. America’s 60 years-long official policy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) has accumulated enough fire power to destroy the world many times over.

Not until the democracy of the world rescues American democracy, can there be hope for mankind’s future.  To do so, all the democratic nations of the world need to critically evaluate how can democracy be managed better in order to fulfill its most important goals.

This paper present, I hope, first a compelling history of why and how we got here. Through that understanding, in the words of Nobel Scientist Madame Currie “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” and psychiatrist Judith Lewis Harman “Like traumatized people, we need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and the future.”, I believe mankind can find its way back to the world of “Da Tong” (The Great Harmony) in the east and “Christian commune” (Heaven on this earth) in the west.

We may best begin from the end:  Reclaiming our future of global peace with justice as humanity’s birthright.  For without that, nothing we do may matter any more after another generation.  The only way to achieve that, I believe, will be through the teachings of Daodejing to all citizens under democracy today.  Daodejing has been proven, with 2500 years of historical success in China as the only super power nation that never engaged in first strike war against another nation, to be best at instilling simplicity and harmony into both the individual citizen’s and community’s way of lives. Without the foundation of simplicity and harmony as a way of life, there can be no true democratic voters, hence no true democracy.

This is actually not new insight at all.  In our collective past, over 600,000 polities all over the planet earth have been known to have lived that way of life over hundreds of thousands of years as an ancient democratic way of life of the hunter-gatherers (Ref. 6).  Mankind began to lose that from about eight to ten thousand years ago as food resource became inadequate.  Thanks to China’s Lao Zi and Confucius, they wrote down our past to ensure that ancient memory be kept alive.  With the progress in science and technology in modern times, mankind again achieved food sufficiency.  That condition enabled the Founding Fathers of America in a new land to create the modern Constitutional Democracy as a governing form to ensure life, liberty, and happiness for all.  They are mostly deist Christians of their time and Thomas Jefferson originally wrote that most famous sentence in modern democracy as: ”We hold these truths sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. …”  It was the much older Benjamin Franklin who argued for the unfortunate change to “We hold these truths to be self-evident. …”

I say “unfortunate” because in today’s hindsight, Jefferson’s original sentence would have carried the spirit of democracy through together with its form.  American democracy might even have been properly named as “Deist Christian Democracy”.  It would then have had a much better spiritual foundation to ensure its success.  The following two facts I believe support my thesis amply: (1) the fast deterioration of democracy in America to the point of near demise today. (2) The desperate attempt by Americans to revive their democracy through the rise and dominance of the “Christian Nation” movement by born-again Christians in recent decade. At over 85% surveyed believers, America is now the most Christian nation on earth in history.

The closest translation of the “Deist Christian Democracy” in universal spiritual context, as well as in the context of China’s advanced ancient democratic political traditions by her religious leaders Lao Zi and Confucius, would be “Daoist Democracy”.  It is that simple.

More Extended Essay on “Daoist Democracy”

Now that democracy has become global with both socialist and capitalist stripes and every shade in between, might not “Daoist Democracy” be 21st century’s political model to succeed the missed opportunity of “Deist Christian Democracy”?

Had a new phrase “Daoist Democracy” been coined, its honorary founder would have to be Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, father of the Republic of China of 1911 and the first constitutional democracy of the East. That is properly so because he is the only political leader who was truly bicultural, of both East and West, having grown up in Hawaii during his formative teenager years, yet thoroughly versed in his native Chinese culture.  A life-long devout Christian, his Christianity is at once also Chinese and universal. His most extraordinary visionary experience on top of a sacred mountain recorded by him can only be described as vintage Zhuang Zi.  In a list of “Daoist Christians” who have contributed most to democratic traditions of mankind, both across the global divide and the historical timelines, Dr. Sun would be in good company with Emperors Huang Di, Yao, Shun, Yu, Teachers Confucius, Menfucius, Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Jesus, Wang Yang Ming, Father Matteo Ricci, Leibniz, Rousseau, Locke, Montesquieu, Hume,... as well as modern democracy’s George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, Gandhi, Simon Bolivar, President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Tutu, President Mandela, ...  And that list can go on and on with worthy representatives from every race, culture, and nation in the human family, many famous, even more unknown. 

The introduction of Daoist tradition into the modern democratic tradition would instantly both broaden modern democracy to all cultures and deepen its roots back to humanity’s pre-historical shared past, yet still preserve the best of the modern western democratic tradition much adopted by the world in form already.

It is interesting to point out that President Kennedy was reported to have only three books by his bedside, and one of them was Dr. Sun’s “Three People’s Principles”, a systemized and expanded version of Lincoln’s democracy of “Of the People, By the People, For the People”.

Democracy and Dao are really two words that need to be used as a compound word before either can truly benefit mankind; much like a coin with either side left blank is but a useless entity. Democracy is the form, the vehicle; Dao is its moral foundation and guiding spirit. Only when the form (the hardware) and the operating manual (the software) are used together can we have a well managed social and political system that benefits mankind through first achieving global peace with justice, then enable people to live simply, harmoniously, and sustainably.  Only then can mankind’s awesome ingenuity give us hope eternal to enable us to solve all the seemingly unsolvable problems with ease.

As the Mayan Elder who came down from his mountain cave to deliver the keynote speech at the international peace conference in 2003 said: “Global peace is possible. However, only if you keep it simple.” -- Words that could have been taken straight out of Daodejing.

Let us be reminded what democracy guided by Dao would be like.  It is the great fortune of mankind that China’s Confucius not only insisted on recording his famous “Chapter of Great Harmony (Da Tong)” in the Book of Rites, but also admonished all future Confucian scholars to commit that chapter both to memory and to heart, as they aspire to men’s highest purpose in life – that of public service to all the people.  It is his further great wisdom that he prominently pointed out, as the first sentence in the Chapter, that Dao guides the world of Great Harmony: "When the Great Dao prevails, the world belongs to all.  Men of great virtue and talent are elected who will cultivate mutual trust and promote universal understanding.  Thus, men do not regard as their parents only their own parents, nor treat as their children only their own children.  Sufficient provision is secured for the aged till their final hours, employment assured for the able-bodied, and funds provided for the loving care of the young.  The widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, and those who are disabled by diseases or mishaps are all adequately cared for.  Each man has his duty and each woman her man.  While they detest those who throw away things wastefully, they do not hoard things for their own self-gratification.  Disliking idleness they labor, but not alone with a view to their own advantage.  In this way, selfish acts of cheating and profiteering are discouraged and find no way to arise.  Robbers, burglars and the undesirables of society have disappeared.  Therefore, the front doors remain open and need not be locked.  This is the state of what I shall call Universal Harmony and Peace (Da Tong)." (Richard Low Translation)

The reason that humanity has this shared undying vision of global peace with justice is exactly because that vision had been both mankind’s birthright and original state of socialization.  It is also still preserved in every good family, as in Tolstoy’s famous edict that “All good families are alike”.  The human race lived under a Leaver culture/ Kinship religion system that was the norm for the estimated over 600,000 polities covering all corners of the earth that archeologists ever studied, for at least couple hundreds of thousands of years until as late as eight to ten thousand years ago.  Theirs, not surprisingly, is a form of consensual decision making with direct interpersonal interactions.  Again, that form of social organization was very much like what Lao Zi described in his ideal community.  It is not merely coincidental that all the great masters emphasized that Daoism is a uniquely “Orthopractice” religion rather than an “Orthodoxy” religion that more aptly describes organized Christianity and Islamism.  Deist Christianity and Daoism are compatible to all other religions, hence are more suited as unifying guide to global democracy.

Daodejing as Management Tool to Save Mankind in the 21st Century

I begin with a quote by Dr. Ben Franklin:” Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.... Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."  By that, he pointed out that “democracy” is the second most difficult word for mankind to define.  The first, of course, is the word “Dao”, made famous by China’s Lao Zi more than 2500 years ago, with his opening sentence: “Dao that can be defined is not the constant Dao” in The Book of Dao (Daodejing).

The incredible, yet undeniable, fact is: Those two words have gone on to become the most invoked today, translated and spoken almost daily in every language.

That fact offers as good a proof as any long dissertations can: That ultimately human beings are ruled by our subconscious. We may not be able to define those two words, but we still “know” that they are the most important two words for all of us.

Verse 60 of Daodejing offers us the best wisdom for “the affairs of the public” -- Dr. Sun’s definition of politics. This verse is at once the eerily prophetic history of mankind during the past 60 years, as well as a recipe to cure what ails American democracy today:

“Governing a large state is like cooking a small fish,

(Frequent stirring crumbles and ruins it).

When large state is ruled in accordance with The Way (The Dao),

Evil supernatural (Devil) cannot assume the disguise of good supernatural (God).

Then the Supernatural does not harm the people.

Not only does the Supernatural not harm the people,

The wise leader, in accordance, also does not harm the people.

As neither does harm, virtue blooms abundant in mutuality.”

American leaders at the crucial junction of becoming the leader of a multicultural world in 1945 when WWII ended did not heed the advice in Verse 60. In fact, they did everything that the verse had warned against. They tragically ignored the plea by the nation’s religious leaders in 1946 to attune its “grievous sin against God” by using the atomic bombs wantonly and deliberately on “an already defeated nation”.  In order to cover up that crime, President Truman entered into a devil’s pack with Japanese Emperor and secretly split the trillions that Japan looted from the 12 Asian nations it invaded instead of returning it. Since the only cover for crimes of that magnitude is war abroad, Truman knew that the only war he could possibly sell in 1947 would have to be a religious war based on massive deception.  He used the black gold to manufacture that “religious war” against Communism, itself not even a religion.  Aided by the secret trillions in the hands of a secret agency formed in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with an orchestrated Red-Scare and atomic-paranoia McCarthyism, the war was successfully disguised as the “Cold War”.  The past 60 years’ history of America has been one of killing fields abroad and destruction of democracy and economics at home. (References 1-11, appendix 

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America’s industrial production capacity dropped from the over 80% global share in 1945 to 20% today.  America has turned from the world’s largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation.  The Self-appointed winner of the Cold War obviously cannot back up that claim on basis of economics.  Deceit has to be maintained by pathological control that has to be maintained by complicated legal systems devoid of common sense.  Complicated legal systems without common sense can only lead to the productive population escaping abroad or giving up. America becomes a nation of victims without victors.  All activities that improve the well being of people domestically suffer as consequences – healthcare, income equality, infrastructure, education, the list goes on and is only too familiar to most Americans.

Since year 2000, that the American Constitution has finally been visibly destroyed is a fact for all to see.

One of the reasons that so many Americans, post Korean War and Vietnam War, have been joining the born-again Christian movement in the past couple of decades is because they sensed the fast destruction of their own democracy, and intuited correctly that they needed to take actions of a religious nature to restore it.  Unfortunately, too many of them no longer know that critical differences exist between a “Christian Nation” dogma and the “Deist Christian Nation” of their Founding Fathers’.  Most intellectuals in America have thus been deeply concerned that fundamental Christian influence in American politics, a trend of growing force in the past two decades or more, will be the death nail, rather than the intended cure, of the demise of democracy in America.  The introduction of new cultural element is most likely essential before the gridlock can be broken.  Daoism should be that ideal new cultural element and can do much to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable cultural divide that has held America hostage today.

America’s most respected political thinker/writer Bill Moyers, in his 2007 graduating key note speech at the Occidental College, pleaded passionately for youth in America to follow Jefferson’s advice of having a new revolution every 25 years, and to begin its third revolution so that the 21st century will bring about a democracy that “leaves no one out”, saving democracy in America from the present “melt down”.

Lest we think history 60 years ago is unimportant, I quote Tom Ridge, President Bush’s first 911-created Homeland Security Chief, when asked on national television in 2003 why the task force drafting the Patriot Act One had worked in such secrecy and demanded such immediate Congressional passage of the bill: “We went back to study our history.  We learned our lessons well from President Truman who decided to get tough with the Communists after WWII ended. …”

Yet it is all the more important that mankind does not lose faith in democracy as a form of governance in this new century. We need to take to heart that until the destruction of American democracy became sufficiently complete, its war perpetrators did have to wage wars under the cover of “Cold War” through secrecy and deceits. None of those wars thus was declared by Congress, with its accompanied oversight, until the present Iraq war II. That alone proves that Democracy, when in full form, works to a degree in preventing wars. Therefore, ironically, it is from the spectacular failure of American democracy that we actually can, and should, derive appreciation for it as a political system of choice by mankind.

From that failure we also realize the importance of having good spiritual guiding foundation for democracy: President Truman knew  that the only war he could possibly sell in 1947, even with power of governmental secrecy and deceit, would be a religious war. It is not until 2007 after people finally see the Gulf War II as the religious war it has always been that one of the most astute columnist, Boston Globe’s James Carroll, finally wrote to call the 60 year war by its proper name –“a religious war” – on the 60th anniversary of the declaration of the “Truman Doctrine” on March 12, 1947, by quoting those exact words of one of Truman’s own advisors at the time! (Ref.5,7).

Similarly, it is not until 2007 that America’s best Cold War historian William Blum finally realized that the Cold War was a one nation war –- America fighting its own shadow of sins kept secret.  As psychiatrist Winnecott said: “Lies not discovered are disastrous for the liar”, America with its highest mental disorder rate in the world at a staggering 26.7% of the adult population, according to a 10 year long survey reported in 2006 by the United Nations, is arguably its own worst victim of the past 60 years’ religious war so long under disguise against itself.

These are hopeful signs that President Truman’s Weapon of Mass Deception (WMD), the only real weapon of mass destructions ever used since after the two atomic bombs were dropped, is finally no longer working well.  There are certainly an abundance of signs now that President Bush’s WMD is failing fast.  That is mankind’s real new hope.

As an encouraging companion front, there are indications that more people in leadership positions are coming to grip with this recognition.  In year 2000, the entire European Common Union (EU) proclaimed at its inaugurating ceremony: “We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. ...We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace....”  (Earth Charter Initiative, 2000)

That initiative has spawned a movement of “Great Turning”, gathering support around the globe through Internet communities.

Proposed Actions for Global Renewal Guided by Dao

2007, I hope, is both the first time a practical road map to global peace with justice can be drawn as well as having a chance to be made known to enough voters in the world to have effects on democratic representations.  Much encouraging signs has indeed appeared.

I outline one such road map below in three essential movements in the spirit of “casting bricks to induce jade”:

(1)“Global Truth and Reconciliation” fashioned after South Africa’s that was the brainchild of Nobel Peace Laureates, President Mandela and Bishop Tutu.  For almost 30 years now, I have believed this to be a crucial and essential first step. Mandela and Tutu gave proof to its practicality almost 20 years later.

Religious war can only be healed through spiritual reconciliation as South Africa has demonstrated.  American leaders must do the same to the world that it had turned into a killing field in the past 60 years 

However, it is still not until this year that I have real hope that such a spiritual healing can succeed at a global level.  That real hope comes from progresses in Internet technology to the present level, so that U-tube was able to give New York Times’ “only other new superpower on the block” of 2003 a real sword of peace that could win the necessary votes in 2006 to change democratic representation.

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The lambs of the world, finally, have the arms of liberty that makes for Franklin’s “well-armed lamb, contesting the vote”.  A global democracy, guided by Dao, or Deist Christianity, can begin to make America “safe for democracy” again, and become “A republic of virtue, if you can keep it” in Mr. Franklin’s most famous words spoken outside of the Independence Hall of Philadelphia some 250 years ago

To defeat a war that has been won, almost exclusively in the past 60 yeas, by “weapons of mass deception”, Internet is the obvious counter-weapon of choice.

(2)“Sustainable Community Transformation” that has seen flourishing writings in recent years. To begin, go to www.yesmagazine.org/greatturning, or many others like it. Daodejing is again its essential guide in the galaxy, and has indeed been much adopted by people in this movement already.

(3)“A Globally Coordinated Youth Education Program” that incorporates (1) and (2) above, to teach a Daoist way of life which might be Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Indigenous, or simply New Age. It is well that we know the word “Commune” has its origin in early Christian history, and the most successful communes known to man had been the early Christian communes during the first three centuries after Christ’s birth, to large measures because they are very much like Daoist communities as exalted by Lao Zi.  Thankfully, some of the prominent left intellectuals are finally getting it. (Ref. 8)

The new global awareness of the limits of growth, depleting resources, and the importance of sustainable communities has brought Daoism into renewed focal attention no longer restricted to Chinese.  In the words of Professor Kristofer Schipper who has lived as a Daoist, not merely studied it, “Chinese culture is too serious to be left to the Chinese alone.” (Ref. 9)  However, at least from my 40 years of personal experience, it is the Chinese who have been too fearful to take Chinese culture seriously.  I feel that we do great spiritual disservice to ourselves and to our own children by that.  To all the young everywhere left with less and less resources, both material and spiritual, to be hopeful by, “A time comes when silence is betrayal” has never been more true and urgent than now.

It has always saddened me that to this day, I have not yet met one Chinese American leader who thinks, says, and acts as if he/she wants to help elect an American president of Chinese cultural descent.  They were invariably fearful of calamities, such as assassination, befallen upon them if they were to have such a dream.  To that I share with them the quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  Being fearful, thus keep silence, is not becoming of anybody over age 60.  Even Confucius warned us against that. (Lao Ehr Bu Shi She Wei Dzei).

At age 32, I left a “15 minutes of obligatory fame in New York Times” type of career in science and technology, and tenured professorship, almost thirty years ago to search for ways to global peace with justice. I felt that unless mankind can achieve that, nothing else might have mattered much for our children.  Mankind has finally been able to produce enough food to feed everybody again for the first time in 10,000 years, setting the physical pre-requisite to reclaim our birthright of peace with justice. Our generation, the sixties’ one, had truly believed in the personal to be the political and vise versa -- a rather Daoist “orthopractice” way of life in retrospect. Our generation thus must try to give up careerism in order to find ways for the awesome progress in science and technology to be used for the betterment, rather than the detriment, of mankind.  And it was not for lack of good science and technology that mankind does not have better lives, but for lack of better values and workable democracies.

My friend, the highest educated American Lama Surya Das, has expressed much hope that the sixties’ generation, coming to maturity with their bulging inherited / self-made wealth, and experiences gained through their idealistic multicultural youth, would put their money where their mouth is, and will make the Aquarian Age finally come true. Peace on earth and goodwill toward men will then be humanity’s shared destiny.  I hope he is right, for most of the time, I do feel the same way as two of the most influential spiritual teachers of my youth did: Karl Jung who said that he did not need to believe in Christianity because he “knew“; Joseph Campbell who said that he did not need to have faith in Christianity because he “had experience”.  They both spoke as true Daoist would have spoken.

One of the next-generation of the Kennedy family said something last year that I personally identify with even more.  Of his young life strewn with too many personal and family tragedies, he said: There are too many things in my life that others might call mere coincidences.  I choose to call them Grace.

Only after global spiritual healing can mankind hope that the spirit of Amazing Grace, which to me has always felt like the spirit of Dao, be the guiding force for humanity’s future again.  After that, if I may predict, the first three policy changes in America would be: (1) the establishment of Single payer national health care system. (2) National Sunshine law that enables Jefferson’s necessary peaceful revolution every 25 years to unfold.  (3) The establishment of a cabinet level Department of Peace campaigned for by Congressman Kucinich that had met with much more enthusiasm abroad than in America so far.  For too long, wars have been made too easy so that the Department of Defense has been in reality the Department of War.

Our grandchildren can no longer afford to wait for every 60-year-old American to become a sinner first, and then a successful member of the Alcoholic Anonymous (AA); or every retired general to write heart-felt books pleading for peace.

It is time that Chinese Americans speak up for all mankind even though the culture tradition that has always controlled the Chinese subconscious,  Daoism, has been used by the mainstream Chinese more as a personal retreat than social activism.  I pray for the spirit of “being independent together” to rule the next chapter of human history for the sake of my own beautiful grandchildren who can not vote yet.

Democracy can work – but only if we keep it simple. There is no tradition that is as good at keeping it simple as Daoism and the Book of Dao.

References:

(1)“Blow Back: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” by Chalmers Johnson, 2000.

(2)“Meeting At Potsdam” by Charles L. Mee, Jr., 1975.

(3)“The Decision To Use The Atomic Bomb: And The Architecture Of An American Myth” by Gar Alperovitz, 1995.

(4)“Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold” by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, 2003.  Chinese translation published in late 2005.

(5)“Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” by William Blum, Revised 1995.

(6)“Lifelines From Our Past: A New World History” by Dr. L. S. Stavrianos, (1989).

(7)“60 Years of Faulty Logic” by James Carroll, March 12, 2007, Boston Globe.

(8)“When West Meets East- International Sinology and Sinologists” by Wang Jia Fong and Li Guao Dzin, 1991.

(9)“Left Hand of God, The: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis” by Michael Lerner (Paperback - Mar 13, 2007)

(10）Report by the Commission on the Relation of the Church to the War in the Light of Christian Faith, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, March 1, 1946.

(11)“James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age“by James Hershberg, 1995.

APPENDIX

“I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman...  He (uncle Will) does hate Chinese and Japs.  So do I.... I am strongly of the opinion that Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellowmen in Asia, and the white men in Europe and America. ... ”

---Harry S. Truman in Dear Bess, letter to his wife.

“His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all belligerent powers, desires with all his heart that it may be quickly terminated.”

--- Intercepted message from Japanese Foreign Minister Togo to Ambassador Sato in Moscow, July 12, 1945.

"We knew the world would not be the same. ...I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'”

--- July 16, 1945, Father of Atomic Bomb, Oppenheimer after witnessing the first explosion of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert, the Trinity Project.

“Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. ... It is an atomic bomb.  It is the harnessing of the basic power of the universe.”

--- Truman’s announcement read to press on Aug. 6, 1945.  Truman was at the Atlantic sea returning from Meeting at Potsdam that he delayed for months to wait for the Atomic bomb test result so that Japan might not surrender, and decided upon its use on civilian Japanese cities without consulting, even informing, the Congress; nor the two generals in charge, Eisenhower and MacArthur.

“My belief (was) that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the (atomic bomb) was completely unnecessary, ... and I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.  It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender.”

--- General Dwight Eisenhower, Commander Of WWII

“(General MacArthur) had not even been consulted (on the use of the atomic bomb). ...Moreover, he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bombs.  The war might have ended weeks earlier, (MacArthur) said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”

--- Norman Cousin, in 1946 Saturday Review interview with General MacArthur.

“The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of war at all.”

--- Air Force General Curtis LeMay, Interview, New York Herald Tribune, September 20, 1945

“The surprise bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible…Both bombings, moreover, must be judged to have been unnecessary for winning the war … As the power that first used the atomic bomb under these circumstances, we have sinned grievously against the laws of God …”

--- Commission on the relationship of the Churches to the War in the Light of Christian Faith, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, March 11, 1946

“The dropping of the atomic bomb was not so much the last military act of WWII, (but) as the major operation of the cold war with Russia.”

--- P. M. S. Blackett, British Nobel Physicist ,1949.

“The dropping of the bombs stopped the war, saved millions of lives.”

--- Harry S. Truman, 1959.

Arthur’s Note: To this day, repeated survey results indicate that the absolute majority of the American public still believes that the use of the atomic bombs had been necessary to end the Pacific war of WWII, and to save the lives of American soldiers. American public school teaching material is no less dis-informational than those in Japan that had been a continuous source of rancor in Asia. The myriads of injustice ranging from Japan’s refusal to give apology to the “comfort women”, to compensation to victims, including American’s own POWs, all expressly forbidden by the bilateral peace treaty between the U. S. and Japan signed in 1951, before Truman was to leave office in 1952.

“As a precaution, should anything odd happen, we have arranged for this book and all its documentation to be put up on the Internet at a number of sites.  If we are murdered, readers will have no difficulty figuring out who “they” are.”

--- Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, as preface to their book “Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold”, (2005), In “Authors’ Note: Slaying the Messenger”.

“The Seagraves have uncovered one of the biggest secrets of the twentieth century.”

---Book cover quote of Gold Warriors by Iris Chang, Author of the Rape of Nanking, Died November, 2005, at age 38.

“We went back and studied history.  We learned our lessons from President Truman when he decided to be tough with Communism at the end of WWII.”

--- Tom Ridge, Chief of newly created Homeland Security Department explaining on TV why they had worked under such secrecy in preparing for war and the passing of the Patriot Act in 2003.

“It (Iraq since Gulf War I of 1991) was like some sort of a 'social nuclear bomb”. .... During the times of Hitler, you would see Germans gathered in perfect cohesion, chanting slogans in fervour. Today, those who support fascist leaders do not make such an effort. They can simply show their support by going to the ballot and voting for them once every four years instead. What happens later, which could include genocide or torture, they would watch calmly on TV.”

---Ali Al-Sarraf, Middle East Online, March 23, 2007.