Check Your Context By Art Houston I have found that when explaining political and socio-economic realities to younger people, my first impression is that I have wasted my breath. At the risk of a similar conclusion before an adult audience, I feel I must once again set an example for those who may have agreed with the recent assessment of our coun- try, our corporations, and our direction in the July “Plain Talk” column. While I am slow to anger when compared to my younger days, when I worked as an idealistic young writer railing against the “oppressive imperi- alist regime that keeps the proletariat from owning the means of production” and other similar rants, and while I have made great strides in maintaining a gracious attitude toward those with whom I disagree in areas of spiritual and political belief, I must admit I was left almost dumbfounded by Rob Buskar’s recent column. Following that, I was simply agape at the tone and substance before me on the page. I wasn’t surprised that there are people in America who fail to grasp the continuing greatness of our country or the good that we do on behalf of people around the world; after all, we have Michael Moore’s exercise in creative editing, and what might be accurately termed ‘contextual disobedience,” a nice way of saying that if you were to cut and paste the words of Our Lord, you could make it appear that He had been responsible for the rise of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. No surprises there, since evil seeks to blind us and befuddle us every day. Moore’s work has a unique perspective that requires ignorance of facts in order to be believed, and can only exist as a “‘docu- mentary” in the minds of those who harbor a hatred of America. Or perhaps, the minds of the blind and befuddled. Instead, I was surprised that America is so widely misunderstood that a piece like Buskar’s might appear in a grass- roots paper like the ERE instead of something being handed out on a street corner by the Socialist Workers Party. Why? Because businesses, whether you are rebuilding an alternator, flying a jet, or selling a piece of real property all require you to deal with facts on a daily basis; facts about tolerances, flying precise approaches, or the meaning of restrictive covenants. These facts are considered in context in order to have meaning. Without the context and its associated meaning, a fact can be altered to mean what you want it to mean, very much like arguing the meaning of the word “is.” The times we are living in are very much like all of the other times in which people have lived. As I mentioned in my previous article, we are all owners of the “multi-billion and trillion dollar compa- nies.” Those companies and our country exist as they do because we, the people, see it as in our best interests that they do so. So, when someone mentions these companies “are determining the direc- tion of our country,’ it can sound pretty scary. Scary, that is, until you realize that these companies are in large part our companies, and the billions and trillions are irrelevant to questions of direction since we, by our votes and purchases, empower political leaders and direct investment dollars where we choose. As a proud capitalist nation, we are the last vestige of responsibility and civility on the planet who is willing to stand before evil and say “no farther!” Rather than take the position that some- one else will take care of it, we have risen to take responsibility again and again. When I see someone write that there is “nothing better than taking someone else’s wealth by force, and paying for it with other people’s money and blood,’ I am sickened. Not by the reference to blood, mind you, but by the lack of understanding that one must have in order to share such a misguided idea. If we had taken someone’s wealth by force, I doubt if we would be paying $2 for a gallon of gas over a year later. If we had made other choices, easier choices than sacrificing our soldiers yet again, large areas of the Middle East would be a sheet of glass. That day is yet to come. While war can indeed stimulate economic activity, its cost is far greater, and no one seeks to give up lives for prosperity. There is nothing, not one iota of evidence to support the assertion that it is an aim of anyone to undertake mili- tary action to generate profit. (Timothy Leary once told me that during an interview, but he was high at the time.) The greatest cost is often exacted by a failure to act, by relying on further discussion, and by seeking the largest agreement among nations while a country disperses weapons to other neighboring nations. By our timely acts, we not only protect our country and other countries by fighting the war on terror on someone else’s property, but we insist that the buck stops here, regardless of what the French, the Germans, or the Russians have to say in defense of the investments they had made with a dictator, and who all had previously agreed had WMDs. In our ze