This is a very old Chinese curse. Prosperous and peaceful times are not interesting. Interesting times are awful.

While other people were doing productive things I spent my life fighting wars. With a background which could, with extreme charity, be called “checkered,” I got the most amazing security clearances.

That was because I would never betray my own.

I know I bore you to death by repeating that I am a redneck from Pontiac, South Carolina. But you cannot imagine what relief that was to people for whom my simple, basic, uncompromising loyalties were vital.

If you are looking to subvert your enemy the most promising traitors on both sides would never think of themselves as traitors. They are loyal but they are loyal to their PRINCIPLES.

They are above it all. They are objective thinkers. They are Idealists. Their loyalty is to ideals, not to mere human beings.

When it comes to a country that is the enemy of mine, my version of that old Chinese curse is “May you have many idealists, may you have many objective thinkers, people who are above it all. My you be blessed with hordes of Idealists who loyalty is to ideas and not to mere human beings.”

If you have been in the wars I have been in, those are the people who can be “turned.” They can be convinced that there is something more than mere loyalty.

This article was inspired by a qu0te I read in a book I was reading. The writer says, “Christians, since theirs is a religion of faith not of race, should be citizens of the world.”

Now that is somebody I, as an enemy of his country, can “turn.” You just have to use the right language to reel him in.

The intelligence services of the United States were riddles with WASPs named Stansfield Turner or George Bush. They could never imagine that they were ever “turned,” that is, used to the destruction of everything they think they are loyal to.

These New England WASPs thought of themselves as Ivy Leaguers, people who were above the squalid mass of Americans. They see beyond the horizons of tribalism and provincialism.

If you really know how to “turn” somebody, they will never know they were turned. They will forever think that they were merely being objective. But I know that a person who is trying to be both patriotic and objective is in an impossible situation.

In the real world of power politics, you can’t be both.

Finding people like that was our business. And it was the business of professionals on the other side.

You would think that someone who says, “Christians, since theirs is a religion of faith not of race, should be citizens of the world” is the LAST person an atheistic Communist would go after.

You are being VERY naive. You are not trying to get him to face the fact that he has an excuse to be disloyal to his own people. As a Communist, you need him to help you in specific ways.

For the enemy, the phrase, “Christians, since theirs is a religion of faith not of race, should be citizens of the world” is like raw meat.

http://www.wilk4.com/humor/humore10.htm

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
— Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
— Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
— Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
— The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

“But what … is it good for?”
— Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,commenting on the microchip.

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
— Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
— Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”
— David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”
— A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face not Gary Cooper.”
— Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”

“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.”
— Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’Cookies.

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
— Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
— Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.”
— Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.'”
— Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
— 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.

“You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training.”
— Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the “unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”
— Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
— Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
— Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction”.
— Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

“The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon”.
— Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
— Bill Gates, 1981

“$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft.”
— IBM, 1982

“Who the h_ll wants to hear actors talk?”
— H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.