Our only actual guilt lies in accepting any guilt.

Innocence Discovered

By Steven Brockerman (December 13, 2001)

[CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] Americans, we’ve been told by postmodern academes and a neutrally biased media, lost their innocence on September 11. Before that, we’d been told we’d lost our innocence during the Viet Nam War; before that, after the Kennedy assassination; before that, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; before that, after World War I; and before that, during the Gilded Age. One could probably dig into Civil War archives – even Revolutionary records, perhaps – and read in some cynical writer’s essay how we had lost our innocence then, too. Certainly we can read of man’s innate guilt in writings thousands of years old set down by superstitious savages who felt guilty for being alive.

Frankly, prior to 911, we’d been told we’d lost our innocence so many times that I have always marveled at our capacity to still feel guilty about anything, which, over the past few decades, we seemed to have honed to a science.

Perhaps that’s when we lost it, our innocence I mean: when we began to believe the superstitious savages and, more recently, the moral relativists and the sanctimonious cynics.

Perhaps, then, our only actual guilt lies in accepting any guilt whenever they told us that newborn infants are stained with evil at birth.

whenever they told us we practiced cultural genocide for having established a nation based on capitalism – on individual rights and liberty – amidst a continental swamp of tribal superstition, tribal warfare, tribal slavery, tribal primitivism and tribal tyranny.

whenever they told us capitalism led to slavery, even though a capitalist England outlawed the slave trade; even though a Civil War was fought and won by a capitalist North, which then wiped out slavery in America; and even though slavery now thrives in a tribalist, racist Africa and Middle East.

whenever they told us to denounce our capacity to produce, which far surpasses what we consume and without which the rest of the world would be that much poorer, hungrier or deader.

whenever they to told us that our right to self-defense was a desire for vengeful conquest – we who could conquer the world but who, unique to history, have not only not tried, but have, many times stupidly, defended the freedom of other nations.

Perhaps, then, our only guilt is that we’ve allowed ourselves to accept an unearned guilt.

The fact is that Americans have never achieved a sense of their own innocence. That would require possessing moral certainty in the virtuousness of individualism, capitalism, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, pride and achievement. That would require the absolute certain realization that rational selfishness is a life achieving virtue and that self-sacrifice is a death worshipping vice.

We’re not wholly to blame, though. We’ve had plenty of help from those already mentioned who, incidentally, while damning us, have also demanded from us a selfless forgiveness for tribal butchers, religious killers, fascist dictators, serial murderers, environmental terrorists, communist tyrants – anyone, in short, who didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

Perhaps, then, in the twisted minds of such priests and intellectuals of self-abnegation, that is our guilt – that we neither need nor seek a selfless forgiveness; that all we have ever sought, or asked for, or deserved is: justice.

However, since 911 Americans appear to be wising up – and rather swiftly, it seems – to the two thousand year old fraud of unearned guilt. Indeed, not only are Americans beginning to discover their innocence, they are beginning to discover the nature of the knowledge that innocence brings: the moral certainty that we have earned our liberty and our happiness; that we have a right to defend them; and that we owe no one – neither superstitious savages from this or any other age nor their brain brothers in a relativist, fascist academe and in a sanctimonious, disingenuous media – any apology for that.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 14, 2001

Answers

Perhaps, then, our only actual guilt lies in accepting any guilt whenever they told us that newborn infants are stained with evil at birth.

I have never been able to find any justification for this idea. One of the things that has turned me away from so many formal religions

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), December 14, 2001.

I can absorb guilt about ANYTHING. If I do it, I'm GUILTY. If I don't do it, I'm GUILTY. It's all my mother's fault. Trust me, all Jewish mothers aren't Jewish.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 14, 2001.

You sure you're not Catholic? Maybe went to a catholic school? Catholic boyfriend in your life?

It's contagious you know.

-- Jack Booted Thug (governmentconspiracy@NWO.com), December 14, 2001.

There is no guilt about 911, at least in my eyes. There is though, a silent rage that built from that incident that could eventually disrupt what it brought together at first. There are countries of people out there extremely unhappy with us, be it from jealousy, sanctimonious beliefs, or just pissed off at our government's arrogance. The world we knew prior to 911 is no more. And we will get no apology for that.

Jumpin' off the soap box...

The Dog

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), December 14, 2001.

Guilt? TELL me about it! And I've just quit my psychoanalyst. I mean the salad bar he put in was bad enough, but when he mentioned to me on the side that he sees a psychic -- it really was the last straw. ("Eve, just between you and me" -- (he whispers, then looks around, in an office where there's just the two of us) -- "I'm a little suspicious -- crystal balls don't have three finger holes in them -- do they?")

I'm sorry -- I'm just in a punch-drunk mood -- I'll try to get a serious post in soon...

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 14, 2001.

A few weeks ago I was helping Sam (11) with her homework. She had her own ideas of what was to be done, I had mine. She was in a bad mood and tired. I was tired and in pain. I snapped at her, she said something rude to me. I sat there with tears running down my face, waiting for her to look and see them. (Easy to cry these days).

She looked and exclaimed in frustration "Oh MOM! I didn't mean to make you cry". I stared at her for about a minute and broke out in a grin "It's my job as your Mother to make you feel guilty".

I had realized I was using one of my own Mother's tricks on my own Daughter! ***GASP***

That is every woman's nightmare...to end up being just like your Mother. And I try sooo hard to be different.

Although I have to admit, some of her tricks do come in handy with my Daughters *evil grin*

I don't accept guilt I haven't earned, I had watched my Mom use it and I ignored it.

I did learn a lesson about guilt and making mistakes. When I was working on the B-52 Flt Sim, I had to solder something. As this "computer was analog and had hundreds of vacuum tubes, motor- generators and I was new I thought I knew what I was doing since I had been soldering since I was a kid. I powered down the equipment (I thought) and was soldering away when SNAP!! Arching electricity! And RRRRrrrrrnnnn, all the background noise died away. I was freaked, shaking, knowing I had destroyed this huge, expensive piece of equipment and would probably get court marshaled for it.

My mentor stood their laughing at me, explained I had not turned off the filaments to the tubes and shorted power to ground which simply blew the fuses which were in place for such things.

I expressed how badly I felt and he told me, "You made a mistake, you did not do it on purpose, no damage was done, so don't feel bad about it, but learn from what happened so you don't do it again.

Those words helped me throughout the years when I did dumb things like dumping 200 gallons of hydraulic fluid under a raised computer floor, where all the cabling for the computers was laid out.

After facilities came over and I helped them sop it all up (with those things they sop up oil spills with). I had been trying to transfer the hydraulic fluid from the 727 to the 737 and went by the book, it wasn't set up like it said in the book.

So what happens? I did the exact same thing the next day! The "updated" instructions I had been given didn't work correctly either. I still didn't feel guilty the second time, but had fresh hydraulic fluid brought in to fill the 737 rather than trying to transfer it again.

I do feel guilty when I say something rude to someone and realize it has hurt them.I don't think hurting a persons feelings is necessary, and try to avoid it. But then there are some real deserving people who need to be insulted, and I don't feel the least bit of guilt for giving them what they deserve.

The odd thing is, when there is a situation like where something is missing and everyone is looking around for it, and at each other....I always feel guilty like I took it, even when I know I didn't.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), December 14, 2001.