Editors From The United States

"Tony Davis, an environmental writer for nearly thirty years, first broke the story that put an end to the myth of 's inexhaustible aquifer. data showed that it was not the size of Lake Superior, but far smaller and more complex than suspected. His handling of the USGS report in the ' gave credibility to the need to create a water conservation program in the city. Davis now writes for the ' in Tucson."

"The with rapture behold, Overshadow our realm with his plumage of gold! The flood-gates of glory are open on high, And Warren and Mercer descend from the sky! They come from above With a message of love, To bid us be firm and decided; "For you conquer, unless you're divided. Unite, and the foes to your freedom defy, Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry!""

"Should Buonapart' come with his sans culotte band, And a new sort of freedom we don't understand, And make us an offer to give us as much As France has bestow'd on the Swiss and the Dutch, His fraud and his force Will be futile of course; We wish for no Frenchified Freedom."

"There's little question, in my mind, that development in the West is digging its own grave. Societies, even technologically sophisticated ones, cannot grow and build against basic conditions of and forever. Sooner or later the character of the land will catch up with them. , forced usually by climate change as well as factional disputes and design miscalculations, make that clear."

"Like other emerging towns and cities in the and in the developing world, 's vulnerability to mainstream cultural backwash and population flooding puts it on the list of endangered places. And because it is geographically set in the middle of a true natural wilderness—riverine, high desert plateau of central New Mexico—Albuquerque is particularly defenseless against the fast-paced flow of the mainstream world. The attraction of its emptiness seems as irresistible as gravity. Its image is not only that of an impoverished, charm-ridden hick town eager for tourist jobs and glitz, but its "wilderness" status makes it seem ripe for the picking, like certain portions of the or what used to be the deserted beaches of the ."

"Ye sons of Columbia, unite in the cause Of liberty, justice, religion, and laws."

"How, why, did I sit with some of these characters long enough to not only obtain quotes, but glean their reptilian essence? Easy. My mind was on the payoff: thousands of people receiving an antidote to the Hallmark Card reality of America. Consider this book an emetic for the soul."

"I hear that politically correct forces are hounding Irving on all ends of the earth, making it very difficult for him to earn a living. You cannot express revisionist views in public, or else you're made a pariah. You’re going against very powerful interests with big museums, big money, and a very dependent Zionist state."

"In this environment, the intellectual with the greatest freak show wins. Think of Parfrey as equal parts P.T. Barnum, Rod Serling and Hegel. The man can’t be beat when it comes to collecting outré oddities."

"Yeah, the Jews got pissed at that magazine I sent you. None of them want to see my friend Hitler get his due... [Hitler] lifted the pride of the white people up and tried to get rid of the commies and exile the Jews where they wouldn’t hassle anyone but themselves…But of course "society" is making an “example” of Charles Manson in the same way they made an example of the Germans at Nuremburg."

"I get a thrill out of being a professional pariah."

"I want people to question things—that not everything is in The New York Times, which, as they say, is "All the news that's fit to print." I wanted to include the unfit."

"I realized that if I went the grant route, my interests would have to coincide with material that was less penetrating of people's emotions. I couldn't have people saying, "Oh, God, what's that horrible thing?" I'd rather have the bottom line question be, "Will enough people buy that book?" rather than, "Will a few people in the ascendancy of academic culture be offended by it?""

"I do not try and shock people. That's never been my intent, but rather to share aspects of culture that I find interesting."

"God help me, I'm a pot-smoking libertarian."

"Upsetting people is a beautiful thing, because it gets people to think beyond their last visit to 7-Eleven."

"I shall assume that Eve was merely the domestic servant of Adam — that she rose in the morning, careful not to disturb his slumbers — that she cooked his breakfast, called him affectionately when it was quite ready, waited upon him at table, arranged his shaving implements ready to his hand, saw him properly dressed — after which she washed the dishes, and amused herself darning his torn fig leaves till the time arrived to prepare dinner, and so on till nightfall, after which time she improved her mind, and, before master Cain was born, slept. She did not even keep a kitchen girl; at least I find no record of anything of the kind. Probably at that time the emigration from Ireland was setting in other directions, and help was hard to get. That she was a good wife and a contented one I do not doubt. I find no record in the Scriptures of her throwing tea-pots, or chairs, or brooms, or anything of the sort at Adam’s head, nor is it put down that at any time she intimated a desire for a divorce, which proves conclusively that the Garden of Eden was not located in the State of Indiana."

"I adore woman. I recognize the importance of the sex, and lay at its feet my humble tribute. But for woman, where would we have been? Who in our infancy washed our faces, fed us soothing syrup, and taught us "How doth the little busy bee?" Woman! To whom did we give red apples in our boyhood? for whom did we part our hair behind, and wear No. 7 boots when No. 10’s would have been more comfortable? and did we sit up nights, in the hair-oil period of our existence? And finally, whom did we marry? But for woman what would the novelists have done? What would have become of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., if he had had no women to make heroines of? And without Sylvanus Cobb, Bonner could not have made the Ledger a success; Everett would be remembered not as the man who wrote for the Ledger, but merely as an orator and statesman; Beecher never would have written Norwood, and Dexter might to-day have been chafing under the collar in a dray! But for woman George Washington would not have been the father of his country, the Sunday school teachers would have been short the affecting story of the little hatchet and the cherry tree, and half the babies in the country would have been named after some one else. Possibly they might have all been Smiths. But for woman Andrew Johnson never would have been, and future generations would have lost the most awful example of depravity the world has ever seen. I adore woman, but I want her to keep her place. I don’t want woman to be the coming man!"

"I hope that, in reading this volume, the reader too will bear in mind Santayana's cautionary dictum: that we are here neither to laugh, nor to cry, but to understand."

"It is the duty of Christian controversialists to enter the provinces over which skeptical scientists usurp dominion, to point out their mistakes, and thus re-conquer, for truth and for God. the territories in which these scientists claim supremacy."

"It is an accepted truth that in every age and in every corner of the globe, small groups of people have become unalterably convinced that the processes of history are coming to an end. Although such groups of seekers invariably adopt an oppositional stance to the perceived pattern of changes in their respective societies, seldom are these movements catalyzed from the typical response of selective withdrawal from the dominant culture to a violent determination to act on the belief that the final drama has begun."

"But I found something else as well, and it took a considerable amount of time before I was able to fully understand it's import. What I found most puzzling was that the monsters of terra incognita, upon closer examination, were not really monsters at all. They held political views which were repugnant, and religious views based on fantastically eccentric interpretations of sacred text. But whatever their belief structure, these were not monsters. They were not the violent and hate filled people I had expected to find. [...] Far from monsters, these strange and isolated people seemed, if anything, to feel too much and understand too little. In their words and deeds they harmed mainly themselves and their families."

"Before considering these real world consequences however, it is important to note at this point that none of this is said to condone racism as "just another idea" or, more subtlety, to rationalize evil. Rather, this is to suggest that all human beings can be approached on a human level. That contact can be made. This human contact will in turn invariably neutralize the caricatures which skew scholarly analysis and distort the historical record. [...] The demonization of the radical right ill serves us when now, more than ever before, it is vitally important to know all we can about this esoteric milieu's nature and potentialities."

"Radical right-wing groups — from the survivalists to the neo-Nazis, the Klan — tend to draw people who don't fit well into organizations. They would never make it in the Middle Eastern terrorism game. They are constantly arguing with each other, constantly splitting and forming new groups and changing ideologies."

"Apocalyptic millenarianism starts with a dream. It is a dream of a past that never was and of a future that may never be—a dream, in a word, of perfection. This dream, moreover, seeks to link a past golden age with a future promise of a world governed by a sinless elect under the benevolent rule of the Savior himself. The millennial dream has for two thousand years served as a beacon of hope to all, and as a call to action to a few."

"Christian Identity eschatology is clearly no "pie in the sky" set of speculations. Rather, it is closely matched to the everyday lives of its adherents, who in turn live each day as if it were their last. How could it be otherwise when proofs of the End are so abundant?"

"One reason for the astonishing growth of science and technology in this century has been, of course, war; but another, and perhaps a more important one, is simply that science has created the conditions—in western society at least—under which it best flourishes: these are affluence, leisure, and a high regard for education."

"The history of the Church is full of examples, to prove that no austerity of life, no detachment from worldly goods, is a safeguard against spiritual pride."

"One of things you have to have, if you're going to be a voice in this dilemma, is you have to have a core of knowledge, I guess, or a core of something. And my core is, historically speaking, there are no two sides to this history of the United States and its relationship to people who have lived here for thousands of years. There are no two sides to that story. You have no right to displace people, to steal their resources, and steal their lives. No human right, no human being has the right to do that to another human being. That's my core resistance. I don't do that to you or to you or to you. I very often go back to that. What directs a lot of my writing is: there are no two sides to this story. That's not very scholarly. It's not acceptable because there are two sides to everything, maybe this and maybe that. Part of the empirical evidence that history tells you is that for a while this was true and now that's true, and so on. That's the empirical evidence. That's not the evidence that I use. I say, there are no two sides to this story. What America has done is criminal. And they're still doing it. Sooner or later, a capitalistic democracy is going to be seen for what it is. It's simply not going to be sustainable."

"Anthropology has always been the handmaiden of colonialism all over the world. Not just here. Not just in Indian Country. Everywhere."

"I like to use language to try to explain who I am and what I think of the world...That's the purpose of writing, to find out what you know in order to think."

"...myth, mythology, is the body of knowledge a people possess. That's not a very satisfactory explanation. But a myth is not a story. Mythology is the body of knowledge. It's usually expressed in symbols. One of the most important ones is language. Our mythology is embedded in our language. Okay? The way we express it, however, is kind of a literary thing. We express it through ceremony. We express it through, which is the way you say, "I am a Lakota." Or, "I am a Dakota." Or we express it in ritual, which is the way you talk to God. Or you express it in storytelling. Or you express it in dance, art, and music, and so on."

"Mendoza was a little man; puny, you might say. But that was not the reason he took two Dilantin every day. Nor was it the reason that he carried with him quantities of multivitamins, which he ate like candy throughout the tedious days and sleepless nights. The puniness may have been the effect, rather than the cause. In any case, you noticed the smallness of the man right away. What you didn't notice at first was the other thing...the indefinable thing that made you forget about him as soon as he passed out of your field of vision. It was as though you saw him but that he wasn't really there amidst the bus passengers when you looked away, and it wasn't your eyes fell upon him later that he became real. That thing, whatever it was, Mendoza knew. And he tolerated it."

"At the time when descendants of Goethe had begun their massive, secret march through Belgium, in those years before the United States entered World War I, there lived near Fort Pierre, South Dakota, one Joseph Shields, a fifty-year-old Sioux Indian who in his own way knew something of the rise of brutal doctrines, something of the destruction of ancient civilizations, something of a change of worlds."

"the truth is democracy has failed. In Indian Country, we've known it a long time. America hasn't come to that conclusion yet. But I'm not talking about the kind of democracy that has been imposed on Indian nations, which in itself is fairly criminal. When you put democracy in a broader sense, capitalist democracy is not going to proceed as it has in its exploitative way because it is not sustainable."

"I had this grandmother who said this to me earlier, "You don't even own your own life, my dear. You're only taking care of it for the next generation." That's fairly profound when you think about it. It is really what the Dakotas think about themselves and the world. It has, on the one hand, been their weakness because it's been exploited. But on the other hand, it is also their strength. It is what will make them, in the end, the winners in this conflagration. We're not protesting so much as we are saying: we have the right to our place in this universe. Maybe I'm the last generation of people who talks like that. The young people ought to think about it once in a while."

"Not long after I entered the Army, I had just completed IOBLC, the Infantry Officers Basic Leadership Course, when a sergeant major who is white comes up to me. "What are you doing here?" he asks. It's been fourteen years since President Truman desegregated our military, but Black people are still looked upon as less than people- less than Americans. Sitting at a lunch counter, getting a book from the library, walking a picket line to support the right to vote and integrate schools and public transportation- these actions can get Black people arrested, beaten, or killed. I straighten a bit. "I'm waiting to be assigned, sir." He looks at me, thinking. "I have an Airborne slot," he says. "You want it?" "Yes, sir." "Do you know what 'Airborne' means?" "No, sir." "Good. You'll find out once you get there.""

"Back home, the United States is engaged in another kind of war. It's a battle over segregation. In 1964, President Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law the Civil Rights Act, which ended segregation in public places and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Not everyone is happy about it. Some white people cross to the other side of the street when they see me. Some white soldiers I know, too."

"I address my men. "If you call me anything besides 'sir,' I'm not going to waste time reporting you. I'll just knock you to the ground." We get along splendidly. I think one of the good things about a war or any other type of crisis like Vietnam is the fact that people are committed to it like gel. There's no race here. In the dark, brown is just as black or white as anybody else."

"The Vietcong tries to overrun us. I see five coming over the trench line. I kill all five when I hear firing from the left flank. I run down there and see about six Vietcong moving toward our position. I throw a grenade and kill all four of them. My M16 jams, so I shoot one with my pistol and hit the other with the butt of my M16 again and again until he's dead. That's when it hits me. I'm the last American standing."

"A Medal of Honor packet requires substantial paperwork- eyewitness statements, map, a unit report of the action, and other documentation. It's not something that gets lost. The chances of it being lost not once but twice are nearly impossible. Race, I believe, is a factor."

"When you're out there fightig, everybody's your friend, and you're everybody's friend. The bullets have no color, no names."

"Captain Paris D. Davis, Commander, Detachment A-321, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving as an advisor to the 883d Regional Force Company, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, during combat operations against an armed enemy in the vicinity of Bong Son, Republic of Vietnam, on June 17-18, 1965. Captain Davis and three other U.S. Special Forces advisors accompanied the Vietnamese 883d Regional Force Company on its first combat mission, a daring nighttime raid against a Viet Cong Regional Headquarters housing a superior enemy force. Captain Davis’ advice and leadership allowed the company to gain the tactical advantage, allowing it to surprise the unsuspecting enemy force and kill approximately 100 enemy soldiers. While returning from the successful raid, the Regional Force Company was ambushed and sustained several casualties. Captain Davis constantly exposed himself to hostile small arms fire to rally the inexperienced and disorganized company. He expertly directed both artillery and small arms fire, enabling other elements of the company to reach his position. Although wounded in the leg, he aided in the evacuation of other wounded men of his unit, but refused medical evacuation himself. Following the arrival of air support, Captain Davis directed artillery fire within 30 meters of his own position in an attempt to halt the enemy’s advance. Then, with complete disregard for his own life, he braved intense enemy fire to cross an open field to rescue his seriously wounded and immobilized team sergeant. While carrying the sergeant up a hill to a position of relative safety, Captain Davis was again wounded by enemy fire. Despite two painful wounds, Captain Davis again refused medical evacuation, remained with the troops, fought bravely, and provided pivotal leadership and inspiration to the Regional Force Company as they repelled several Viet Cong assaults on their position over a period of several hours. When friendly reinforcements finally arrived, Captain Davis again refused medical evacuation until he had recovered a U.S. advisor under his command who had been wounded during the initial ambush and presumed dead. While personally recovering the wounded soldier he found him severely wounded but still clinging to life. Captain Davis directed the helicopter extraction of his wounded colleague, not leaving the battlefield himself until after all friendly forces were recovered or medically evacuated. Captain Davis’ heroism and selflessness, above and beyond the call of duty at the risk of his own life, are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army."

"For the next two years, CBS's ongoing reporting and our team help keep the story in front of high-level decision-makers. As their efforts go on, they begin to get quiet, encouraging signs from the Pentagon. Then, in early 2023, more than fifty-seven years after that battle in Vietnam, I get a call at home from President Biden. He tells me I will be awarded the Medal of Honor and to prepare for a White House ceremony. Speaking with the President prompts a wave of memories of the men and women I served with in Vietnam- from the members of the 5th Special Forces Group and other US military units to the doctors and nurses who cared for our wounded. I remain so very grateful to the support of my family and friends within the military and outside it. Their work, the White House ceremony, and many events at the Pentagon and elsewhere in America keep alive the story of A-team, A-321 at Camp Bong Son. Most of all, I want to share the medal with my Special Forces troops- the other soldiers I worked with and fought with that day. Somehow, they need to touch that medal. It ain't all mine. It's for America, too."

"I retire from the Army in 1985. I start a small newspaper in Virginia called The Metro Herald and, for the next thirty years, publish stories about the accomplishments of Black people. I'm often asked about my thoughts on why my medal nomination kept getting lost or why I kept running into enemy fire to save my men. I always answer the same way. Life suddens upon you, it just suddens upon you. Every day, something comes up that you don't expect."

"Ambition, enterprise, effort and success are largely states of mind; happiness is the United States."

"In the United States today, the government performs many of its functions more or less effectively. The mail is delivered (sometimes); the population, or at least part of it, is counted (sort of); and taxes are collected (you bet). You can accuse the federal leviathan of many things—corruption, incompetence, waste, bureaucratic strangulation—but mere anarchy, the lack of effective government, is not one of them. Yet at the same time, the state does not perform effectively or justly its basic duty of enforcing order and punishing criminals, and in this respect its failures do bring the country, or important parts of it, close to a state of anarchy. But that semblance of anarchy is coupled with many of the characteristics of tyranny, under which innocent and law-abiding citizens are punished by the state or suffer gross violations of their rights and liberty at the hands of the state. The result is what seems to be the first society in history in which elements of both anarchy and tyranny pertain at the same time and seem to be closely connected with each other and to constitute, more or less, opposite sides of the same coin."

"The Republican party has been, the most powerful champion of freedom and equal rights in the world. The feeble and scattered elements that fifty years ago began to combine, here and there, were all lovers of human equality. Under various names, led by a purer patriotism far in advance of the different political organizations to which they had belonged, they continued to grow in numbers and influence, until, composing a majority of their respective communities in this Republic, they were, in response to an inexorable law, drawn into one great spirited army, with a common purpose—equal and perpetual freedom for all—and a common name, ."

"This is the Land we love, our heritage, Strange mixture of the gross and fine, yet sage And full of promise,—destined to be great. Drink to Our Native Land! God Bless the State!"

"The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn."