THE ADVENTURE OF EMPATHY VS. THE FAILURE OF CURIOSITY
Within each of us exists a deeply personal, subjective inner experience. We each have our own DNA, our own history and our own very personal experiences.
We have the stories we’ve created that hold the meaning of our experiences and the feelings that flow from those stories.
We have the choices and actions that have formed our character – and the people, opportunities and relationships that have influenced us, blessed us and challenged us.
Within every person is a world, and our personal worlds are more unique, strange and magnificent than most of us realize. Grasping this can turn our relationships from stale melodramas into rich adventures.
In my work with couples, the most common source of trouble is not grasping this, the cause of which I call a failure of curiosity.
THE HILLARY CHALLENGE
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/22/16
Back in the HFR saddle again. I can’t thank Jack Kelly enough for his great HFRs while I’ve been gone. Thanks, Jack!
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One takeaway from the GOP convention – Donald’s speechwriter sure is a lot better than Melania’s. It was delivered strongly with every word clearly articulated, and hit a lot of good notes. The best line was contrasting Hillary’s slogan for her followers, “I’m with her,” with his “I’m with you.”
Here’s the full text as prepared for delivery.
The trillion-dollar question is, Can we trust him to keep all the promises he made – especially when he provides no specifics on just how he’s going to achieve them?
Reuters is reporting that Trump is considering Harold Hamm as his Energy Secretary. Finally, a positive reason and a very good one to vote for Trump, rather than just as a vote against Hillary. Trouble is, there are almost no others. Here are two immediate examples…
Thus it should come as no surprise to you who the HFR Hero of the Week is…
The 2016 Republican Party Platform is 66 pages and worth reading. It even says the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are “the foundations of personal liberty” (p. 22). What Trump needs to pay laser-focus attention to is “Honest Elections and the Right to Vote” (p. 23)…
Libtards never cease to amaze with yet another example of looney tunes fascism. On Wednesday (7/20), we saw the emergence of their latest cause: use government guns to force us to eat less meat, with the audacity to blame our obesity epidemic on it instead of garbage sugar foods…
We close with the Question of November millions of voters must answer for themselves. And then, an enjoyable Best News of the Week.
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
This is the Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone. It’s not in some exotic remote place in the world, but right here in America.
You don’t get this view of it from the walkway along side. I was able to take it from a helicopter. Such a view helps you realize how beautifully spectacular America is. It’s that view I’d like to give you now, away from being flat on the ground surrounded by all the garbage of the latest newspaper headlines.
I’ve been asked by a friend whose kids have been raised in Europe to show them the American West, about which they know next to nothing. Their view of the US has been limited to places like downtown Manhattan and Palm Beach. My friend wanted them to experience the staggering grandeur of the West, its extraordinary history – plus the thrilling patriotism and cheerful friendliness of the people who live there.
The kids had the time of their lives, with an appreciation and love for America they’ll never forget. I’d like to share what we saw with you. It will refocus on what America really is – as beautiful, as glorious, as historical, with as decent a people, as any country that has ever existed in human history.
We have every right to be proud of our country, to be proud to be Americans. Let’s experience this together. Enjoy.
WAS W THE LAST REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT?
George W. Bush fears he’ll be the last Republican president. Ever. He has reason to worry, given the circus this week in Cleveland. Imagine the Marx brothers and the Keystone Kops running a convention of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
At a breakfast Monday (7/18), campaign chairman Paul Manafort took a shot at Ohio Gov. John Kasich, for skipping the convention. Kasich has a 60 percent approval rating – about 20 points higher than Trump in the Buckeye state. No Republican has been elected president without carrying Ohio.
The convention secretary actually went into hiding Monday afternoon so anti-Trump Republicans couldn’t present her with petitions from 11 delegations (7 were needed) to force a roll call vote on the Rules Committee report.
Once they found her, Obersturmgruppenführer Reince Priebus, armed now with the names of the rebels, sent bullies to browbeat them to recant. When not enough did, Priebus ignored the rules.
“This is a meeting of Brownshirts,” former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-NH, told MSNBC.
ROGUE TRUCKS KILL
“Scores die in Nice, France as Truck Plows into Bastille Day Crowd,” said the headline in the New York Times. “Tune in to MSNBC for continued live coverage of the deadly truck crash in Nice, France,” the network tweeted.
I hadn’t been aware trucks drove themselves, or any had gone rogue.
There was someone at the wheel of the truck, a “Tunisian born Frenchman” said the New York Daily News, a “Frenchman of Tunisian origin,” said the New York Times.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, ate pork, smoked, and drank alcohol, his relatives said. He couldn’t have been a Muslim.
THE RAPE OF GERMANY
The UN Commission of Experts identified 1,600 actual cases of rape in the Bosnian War that took place in the former Yugoslavia over a period of years. In Germany, 2,000 Moslem migrants sexually assaulted 1,200 women in a single night in cities across Germany.
The former was considered one of the worst war crimes of the decade. Its perpetrators were bombed and then faced war crimes trials. The perpetrators of the latter received a slap on the wrist. In Cologne, Hassan and Hussein were handed suspended sentences. Hassan, who had demanded that a man hand over two women to him by bellowing, “Give me the girls, give me the girls - or you're dead” was tried as a juvenile offender and was sentenced to community service and an integration course.
That’s because, given a choice between protecting women and sexual predators, the left chooses rapists – if they are Moslem.
THEY WIN WE LOSE
As I have been saying for quite a while, the terrorists are in a hurry. They know that their free run at their enemies will not last much longer, and so they are eager to grab whatever they can as fast as they can. They expect things will get tougher when the next president takes over in January.
For the moment they expect the Obama administration to make nice to Iran and Russia, Cuba and China, and the other members of the global alliance arrayed against us.
Ergo Nice. And Baton Rouge. And Milwaukee.
There will be more, and I will be surprised if there are not more attacks here in the United States. We are still not fighting to win the war. We are on defense, which is a sucker’s game.
As General Flynn and I wrote in our book “The Field of Fight,” you can’t devise a winning strategy if you can’t define your enemy and his mission. We can’t, because the censors forbid it.
FASCISTS SET SIGHTS ON FIRST AND SECOND AMENDMENTS
Environmental zealots and the politically correct have become modern-day book burners in their attempts to criminalize and repress the speech of those who disagree with them. The Nazis and other dictatorial regimes used the old practice of book burnings and gun seizures as a way of maintaining control and intimidation. Burning books is most often done to censor materials that the authorities consider to be offensive to the cultural, religious or political order.
In the digital age, it becomes almost technologically impossible to destroy information, even though restrictions on its legal possession and dissemination can be imposed and people can be prosecuted.
In the modern world, those who have power, but not the ability to convince others, often resort to censorship, or attempt to legally or forcibly ban ideas, products, like guns and sugary drinks, or practices that they disapprove of.