Of goats and sheep and words better said.

Engaged in a political discussion in another forum. Sometimes, I find what I need to say has already been said, and said better, by someone else.

Today, I bring you the words of The Bard - I do not say Shakespeare because I am convinced Shakespeare did not pen these words, rather it was the work of a contemporary writer of the time who partnered with the businessman Shakespeare.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

Brilliance in it's simplicity and brilliant in the statement therein.

It is, to my thinking, the antithesis of the modern politician to whom party affiliation and loyalty means more than doing the right thing, to whom lying and double-dealing is a matter of course. Voters publicly abhor this, yet they continue to return the same people to office over and over again.

Why?

Consider the sheep, widely believed to be the most stupid of the typical domesticated herd animal. This is a reason the Bible refers to people as sheep.

Yet, among the sheep, the occasional goat will wander. Where a sheep will stand and accept indignities, a goat will fight back. There is a reason curmudgeons are often called goats.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Here's to  hoping 2011 makes me more a goat than ever before.