There comes a point when working within the system to change the system becomes futile, and something more must be done.
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, et alia knew it.
Thoreau, Brown, Gandhi, and King knew it.
Ubi sunt? Where are they now?
I feel abandoned and alone, like a man lost in the desert searching for water, pleading for rain, but dying in the sand despite my efforts.
None are ignored faster or shunned more vigorously than those who speak even a kernel of the truth. Plato saw it in his Allegory of the Cave. Thoreau observed it in "Civil Disobedience."
The only innocent man since Adam before the Fall--and no less than the Son of God Himself--was nailed to a dogwood cross and left to die amongst thieves.
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, et alia were pronounced traitors and faced certain death in defeat. It was Franklin who, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, said something close to "Now we must hang together, or assuredly we will hang separately."
A man who spoke of peace and justice was murdered at a motel in Memphis.
And yet Jesus, while he wished that the cup might pass him over, stood and accepted his fate for the good that it would bring mankind.
And yet Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams signed the Declaration of Independence; and Washington led a ragtag, underfunded, under-equipped, and under-trained army in opposition to the world's most powerful military.
And yet King, who saw the promised land but knew that he wouldn't get there, marched and spoke out in the heart of Dixie.
They risked all, and some lost all; but they stood for ideals that mattered and did not with them perish.
We have no such men active today. We are not a broken society. A broken society can be repaired.
We are a rotten society, and we have only the rubbish heap for which to look forward.
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