Finally Meeting Our Waterloo?

Let's face it.  Not much encouragement is required to get us to click on a short Simpson's clip or an attractive Abba music video.

Hopefully you watched the video above, and if you happened to read my most recent blog post, "Here We Go Again," you may have even watched the clip from the Abba movie.

I highly encourage you to also watch the video at the end of that last article.  It is a dramatization of the trial of Socrates that admittedly has considerably less visual appeal.

As a Cruise Planner, I should probably be calling attention to the embedded cruise videos, in hopes of inspiring you to book a dream vacation without coming out and pleading with a super-liminal message --- that term is why I hope you watched Lisa Simpson's clip --- to contact Wes@CruisePlanners1.com to book your next great vacation!!!

In any case, all those videos make me want to return to Greece. Hopefully they'll encourage you to make the trip of a lifetime, possibly an amazing Journey to the Holy Lands.



Every American should make a goal of taking a similar pilgrimage.

This is the region where Western Civilization was born.  From that cradle, the United States has emerged over the last century to be the leader of the free world, and since World War II, Western Civilization has spread to the far east, including Japan and South Korea.

Perhaps like me, you were raised to be proud of our shared heritage.  Growing up, I thought my love of the USA in particular was universally shared.

In recent years, however, my outlook seems to put me at odds with many others who, beyond thinking all cultures are equal, now say the United States has never been great or worse yet, has always been evil and oppressive.  This post-modernism seems particularly prevalent among young, often college-educated Americans, whom I would think should understand the historically rare privileges we have today.



The more I learn about the world and its history, the more I appreciate Western Civilization.  Certainly, no civilization has ever been perfect, but it's impossible to judge past generations by the standards of today.

Perhaps you disagree, and if you are a free citizen of the United States of America, you are free to believe anything you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone.

We can enjoy heated debates without fear of being executed, and that wasn't always the case even in Western Civilization, as evidenced in the trial of Socrates.

Our system encourages the exchange of ideas in order to arrive at consensus where hopefully the best proposals win. If it proves to not be the correct solution, it can be re-evaluated and adapted as long as we never lose our cherished freedoms in exchange for false security.

In such a diverse world, there doesn't always need to be just one solution. Freedom of choice often comes in the form of competing products and services, like the unique marketing propositions of cruise lines to attract your business based on what you deem important for you.

In the end, we can still get together to enjoy an amazing cruise vacation through history's greatest hits...or an engaging musical performance.



By the way, if you watch "Waterloo" closely, you'll note the piano player is Abba's Benny Andersson.