From reading about this article and Vonnegut’s quotes, it’s my understanding that at one point he was paraphrasing a quote from an old poem about the horrors of WW1 called The Old Lie.

If that’s the case, then his remark about it being sweet and honourable to die for what you believe in was a sarcastic remark. And the point would be that it’s actually horrific and pointless to do it.

In any case, I have to believe that there’s missing context to Vonnegut’s quotes in that article.

FOR THE past month or so it’s been said and repeated that my father supports terrorism. The desire to have it be true is almost palpable. If novelist Kurt Vonnegut supports terrorism, then maybe all critics of the war are on some level proterrorist.

It’s my fervent hope that if I’m alive at 83, I’ll have enough left in my tank to make people this angry.

My father cares not a fig about the Middle East. He’s never been there, doesn’t think about their art or writing, may or may not be able to pick out some of their capitals and important rivers on a map. His true heroes are Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

He doesn’t listen to me. When he was going to go on national television he told me he was going to call for the impeachment of President Bush. I told him he’d do better talking about growing up in Indiana in the Depression, how people took care of each other, how much he has loved and celebrated freedom. Kurt Vonnegut calling for the impeachment of Bush is not news.

Like most people, my father can be wrong. I’ll bet you can take most 83-year-olds out to lunch and they’ll say one or two stupid things. It wouldn’t be that surprising if he had said something outrageous and unforgivable, but the plain fact of it is that he didn’t.*snip*

Next time, please post a snippet from the article (not the entire piece) and then a link to the article itself, for copyright considerations. Thank you. –ST

EMPATHY… whats that?

Edited your username …. to insert the “o” .. c’mon, now! –ST

- And yes Pam…. Where is McCarthy now that we really need him. Moore shuffles around spouting anti-American garbage while he leafs through his Halliburton stocks… Hanoy Jane continues to aid and comfort the enemies of our country while running her production company in Canada to avoid taxes, and Soros uses his billions to attack the system that feeds him, hiding his wealth in off shore banks. Ideologs like Mapes produce lie-filled non-stories, aimed at manipulating an election, while others of her kind infest the MSM Media. Small minded closet traitors like Wilson attack our administration using the same leftwing media. Men like Kerry, whose wife is the daughter of one of the founders of the Frelimo Communist party in Mozambique, sports a dishonorable discharge, while he sits as a Senator in congress…. Yes….. where is McCarthy indeed…

The rabid left has raised the meaning of hypocracy to a new level…..

This pathology becomes intellectually fatal when one has no family to anchor them in reality, and lives surrounded by like-minded mush-brains.

That’s what one gets from an ideologically closed world view.

I responded with an essay as to why Vonnegut was unworthy of attention in an American Lit class, and suggested he be replaced on our reading list by a substantial American author who had actually contributed something original to American thought, as opposed to a hack like Vonnegut who had no thoughts of his own and was simply playing the game of re-hashing European ideological garbage.

I suggested Isabel Paterson’s **The God of the Machine.**

She had never heard of Isabel Paterson!!! :^D :^D :^D :^D :^D

And she was teaching American Lit!

And Vonnegut isn’t trying to “analyze” anything. He hates Bush and the USA more than he hates someone who blows up innocent people in the name of Allah. He is making excuses for terrorists, nothing more.