Friday, January 4, 2019

Tulsi Gabbard: The Deep Aloha Presidential Candidate

Tulsi Gabbard 
Ok, first you need to understand that the word aloha is much more than a term of greeting amongst Hawaiians. 

Wikipedia appears to provide a decent explanation:
Aloha is the Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy, that is commonly used as a simple greeting but has a deeper cultural and spiritual significance to native Hawaiians.


A greeting of love and compassion; also means "to be in the presence of the divinity" or in the presence of (alo) the "divine breath of life".

Hawaiians believe the concept to be unique, with no English equivalent.
With this background, here is part of a speech Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard delivered on Wednesday in Hawaii to the Honolulu City Council before heading off to Washington D.C.:
Aloha is what our country and the world needs most, now more than ever, because it is aloha that enables us to overcome the darkness, overcome those forces of greed that seek to tear us apart. Aloha enables us to overcome the differences we may have with each other.
Aloha has the power to heal this nation, to bring us together and remind us that it is aloha that calls on us to fulfill our kuleana, every one of us. Aloha aina for our land, aloha kai for our ocean and the waterways that lead to it, and aloha kanaka for our families, friends and neighbors.
Admittedly, her comments here are a bit short on specific policy and it sounds like this could go in some very scary domestic policy directions but. then again, I don't think you would ever catch a neocon ever saying anything like this. And it seems to be something that could at least be stretched into a foreign policy of peace and trade.

With that in mind,

Aloha, Tulsi!

-RW 

6 comments:

  1. “The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes (or Aloha!), is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or…ideologies…all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”

    -CS Lewis, The Abolition Of Man

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  2. I was going to comment the other day on Pocahontas's statement on Syria et al; that she was getting to Tulsi's left on peace and all that, but Tulsi is the real deal. Her credentials (Afhgan service etc) are impeccable, she is drop dead gorgeous, and she is RIGHT.
    Actually, her good looks might be a problem with the left wingers, but on the other hand....

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    1. Well if being "gorgeous" doesn't qualify you for public office and verify how truthful and genuine you are, I dont know what does. If only Mao was a hot babe.

      And left wingers (and others as well) will always nitpick appearances of those they don't like. Orange hair... Lizard-like... scary eyes.... etc.

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  3. It is hard to argue with a value system that says of itself, as the Tao does, "if it is rejected all value is rejected." In fact Marxism, Fascism, Nazism, and all the major religions say pretty much the same thing about their value systems. Reading the Tao is like reading poetry which has a beauty of its own. But its actual prescriptions about life are vague and can be used to support many value systems as CS Lewis points out. A value system appropriate for humans requires the absence of initiated coercion in all human interactions. Aloha doesn't offer this.

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  4. What the world needs is someone as beautiful as Tulsi Gabbard who thinks like Murray Rothbard. I fear we have to wait awhile longer.

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