just to proov my point.

[NiKo]

 

 

Matthew Arnold

 

 

Although remembered now for his elegantly argued critical essays, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) began his career as a poet, winning early recognition as a student at the Rugby School where his father, Thomas Arnold, had earned national acclaim as a strict and innovative headmaster. Arnold also studied at Balliol College, Oxford University. In 1844, after completing his undergraduate degree at Oxford, he returned to Rugby as a teacher of classics. After marrying in 1851, Arnold began work as a government school inspector, a grueling position which nonetheless afforded him the opportunity to travel throughout England and the Continent. Throughout his thirty-five years in this position Arnold developed an interest in education, an interest which fed into both his critical works and his poetry. Empedocles on Etna (1852) and Poems (1853) established Arnold's reputation as a poet and in 1857 he was offered a position, which he accepted and held until 1867, as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Arnold became the first professor to lecture in English rather than Latin. During this time Arnold wrote the bulk of his most famous critical works, Essays in Criticism (1865) and Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he sets forth ideas that greatly reflect the predominant values of the Victorian era.

 

Meditative and rhetorical, Arnold's poetry often wrestles with problems of psychological isolation. In "To Marguerite--Continued," for example, Arnold revises Donne's assertion that "No man is an island," suggesting that we "mortals" are indeed "in the sea of life enisled." Other well-known poems, such as "Dover Beach," link the problem of isolation with what Arnold saw as the dwindling faith of his time. Despite his own religious doubts, a source of great anxiety for him, in several essays Arnold sought to establish the essential truth of Christianity. His most influential essays, however, were those on literary topics. In "The Function of Criticism" (1865) and "The Study of Poetry" (1880) Arnold called for a new epic poetry: a poetry that would address the moral needs of his readers, "to animate and ennoble them." Arnold's arguments, for a renewed religious faith and an adoption of classical aesthetics and morals, are particularly representative of mainstream Victorian intellectual concerns. His approach--his gentlemanly and subtle style--to these issues, however, established criticism as an art form, and has influenced almost every major English critic since, including T. S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling, and Harold Bloom. Though perhaps less obvious, the tremendous influence of his poetry, which addresses the poet's most innermost feelings with complete transparency, can easily be seen in writers as different from each other as W. B. Yeats, James Wright, Sylvia Plath, and Sharon Olds. Late in life, in 1883 and 1886, Arnold made two lecturing tours of the United States. Matthew Arnold died in Liverpool in 1888.

 

 

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[This message has been edited by NiKo (edited May 03, 2001).]

[NiKo]

as for the whole regan and the drugs:

 

"War on Drugs."

What there is is a cynical program of political duplicity; the intent of which is not to prevent drug abuse (which it encourages), but to create a climate of distrust, fear, hostility, alienation, divisiveness, and violence within our society. The so called "War on Drugs" is in reality a war of cultural prejudice waged primarily against the young, the poor, the non-white and the socially disaffected to the advantage of the Elected, the Corporate, the Privileged and the Few.

 

President Nixon launched this war against American citizens in 1968, at a time of extreme political and social unrest. For Nixon, it was a method of "getting even" with "uppity blacks," "radical leftists" and "dirty" hippies" that he and the nefarious interests he represented (especially those who benefited economically from the war in Vietnam) regarded as "second class citizens" and "traitors" to the American way of life.

 

On the contrary: What we were doing then, and what we are doing now, is trying to liberate America from a reign of political and economic tyranny that is sustained by rhetorical propaganda and misinformation. We love America and the Constitution and wish nothing more than to see her succeed in her Great Promise of providing Freedom and Justice for All. Those who oppose this very High Aim, whether out of ignorance, greed or bigotry, are the true enemies of our nation and its Constitution.

 

Dividing Americans against themselves, making them mistrust, fear and wage war against their fellow citizens: This is what the so called "War on Drugs" was meant to do--and that is precisely what it has done and is doing--far more successfully than even Richard Nixon could have hoped. What better way to destroy the gains blacks were making through the Civil Rights movement than to flood the ghettos with drugs which addict thousands of users, offering the allure for "quick" money and escape from poverty, while simultaneously creating divisions and violent "turf wars" between ghetto gangs? All this while creating the political justifications and judicial sanctions for increasingly militaristic police "crack downs," arresting, incarcerating (killing when necessary) and ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of black men, their families and their communities.

 

After Nixon, both Ronald Regan and George Bush found their own uses for the "War on Drugs." Besides the political advantages of "getting tough" on the very crime and violence that prohibition inevitably engenders, drug smuggling by covert factions within the federal system itself created vast sums of unregulated money to fund illegal military operations outside our nations boarders. What began as a cynical attitude of social malice quickly turned into a bad habit of deception and corruption. Nothing, my friends, is more addictive than power.

 

At this point in our history--the election year of 1996--this insidious and increasingly malignant and militaristic policy is still with us. And to judge by President Clinton's appointment of General Barry McCaffrey as "Drug Czar," it may be about to get much worse. This so called "policy" has become such a part of our media conditioned perception of reality that it is difficult to imagine an America without it. Anyone who publicly opposes the inflamed rhetoric or tries to bring rational, informed discussion to the issue, is branded a "traitor," characterized as a "drug pusher" or worse--in precisely the same way leftists were branded as "communists" in the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Witness the forced resignation of Surgeon General Jocylin Elders after she took an informed and reasoned position of leadership on this issue. She understood, as more and more Americans are coming to understand, that making criminals of drug users not only does not solve the problems associated with drug abuse, it exacerbates them far beyond the harms of the drugs. Indeed, with forfeiture laws and the kinds of invasions of our privacy that it allows, the "War on Drugs" has put the civil liberties of all citizens in jeopardy.

 

 

 

 

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[Rufio]

neato, u can use www.altavista.com

 

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STILL

~What could this be, too much MTV? Chalk another fad up for its fall into infamy.

What is in a standard if it changes all the time? You’re still having trouble in defining your own kind.-Kling

~Stop pretending that you don't want me.

[Natty]

NiKo? I'm from Australia, I have no need for American history

 

Awwww lets talk about Australian history, did you know that this year is the Cenetenary of Federation? That's when 6colonies joined to make one country, Australia. pffft, well I thought it was interesting

 

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Check Out My New Homepage, And Sign The Guestbook, Otherwise I'll Be Upset!

[Guest Brighteyesmonkey]

Niko for a blue haired kid your actually pretty smart ain't ya?

 

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[Johnny Walker]

Hello?

[NiKo]

Originally posted by Brighteyesmonkey:

Niko for a blue haired kid your actually pretty smart ain't ya?

 

 

 

ooooh yeeeahh....

copy & paste ARE the abbility of a genius arent they

 

 

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[storken]

It was for Masterb8....

 

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[Natty]

I miss masterB8, he provided some hilarious entertainment, I wish he was on this forum, I still dunno if he should have been banned, coz I missed his comments, but full on he was a crackup

 

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Check Out My New Homepage, And Sign The Guestbook, Otherwise I'll Be Upset!

[Guest Brighteyesmonkey]

You do realise Mr/Miss Fellas (a.k.a Matthew Arnold/Kate Fellas/Johnny Walker/Reagan/(NFGB j/k) is now gonna go get him.

 

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[storken]

Can never forget "I trai copy and past"

 

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[Guest grannen]

And I can:

 

Speek Engliss viffout annu trase ov axxent!

 

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and Grannen

 

 

[This message has been edited by Grannen (edited May 05, 2001).]

[NiKo]

hehe.... i can still remember : "wai u tokkin to nimo he is in israel"

 

meeeemoriiiiieeees

 

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