Flashback: Six Simple Words

They seem so harmless, so non-menacing, and yet they are the root of so much of the present evil that mankind is facing today. Just six simple words that carry the weight of the world upon them, six simple words that act as the engine for so much turmoil and unrest.

For the individual who sells his soul by saying them reverently, it is a ticket to the amusement park. It is a pass to a life of luxury and no worries. For the individual who refuses to say them reverently, it is a ticket to impoverishment, persecution and possibly even prosecution. Six simple words that act as a puppetmaster for the most powerful nation in the history of mankind’s stay on earth and which have thrust the world into what is sure to be the war to end all wars. Six simple words that are like an iron fist in a velvet glove and which can squash uncooperative nations as if they were mere ants. Six simple words that have effectively reversed 2,000 years of cultural progress for the West, particularly since the bedrock upon which modern Western Civilization was to be based resided in what was the very contradiction to these six simple words. The tree planted some 20 centuries past that has fed a good portion of humanity with the fruits of equality, justice, personal liberty and of individual human rights... the tree that stood in opposition to this totalitarian agenda is all but finished now, effectively hacked down by the hatchet of acquiescence to the poison of these six simple words.

Of course, few there are to be found who recognize this fact, save for those who presently find themselves (and those whom they love) between the crosshairs of these six simple words. For the most part, those in the West who have tasted neither war nor want do not see anything troublesome or problematic in them, that is, if they are even aware that these six simple words exist.

And who would expect otherwise? After all, they are only words. What harm can they really do? Is it not a childhood taunt that all have learned and used at sometime during the early years of playground politics? Have not all been taught by wise elders time and again that words are only harmless expressions, mere sounds and noises that have no real power in them? More