Mr. Clinton’s restless, lifelong, passion to be loved.~

Posted on March 26, 2014 by John Daniel Begg under Society

A Young Bill Clinton meets a young Jack Kennedy.

Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Kennedy were driven by ambitions they could not control, and, very likely, did not spend much time trying to sort out, either.

Mr. Kennedy’s burning ambition was to fulfill:

Ambition Herself.

Mr. Clinton had a more complex ambition: the burning desire to be:

Loved.

Of the two men, Jack Kennedy had, far and away, the easier ambition to gratify.

Mr. Clinton’s ambition was, by comparison, much more difficult to gratify.

For how does one man contrive to have other men love him?

Jack simply wanted to be elected, a comparatively simple to do.

Mr. Clinton wanted to be loved.

Very tough business, that, getting other men to love you.

Of course, both men reasoned to themselves that the rainbows that they chased would lead to the only pot of gold any man really wants to find:

Which is say, to unearth, not merely Gold, but rather:

Happiness Herself.

I hear that there are those who have a burning desire to possess the physical element called:

Gold Herself.

For myself, I will say that, I find this desire to stock up tonne upon tonne of gold herself, peculiar.

I am however cautioned that there are famous men of history who do love the physical element of gold herself.

One such man, I understand, was:

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, beyond dispute, well into the very top-tier of, the greatest artists of all time.

I must ask:

Why would a man who could paint this:

The Creation of Adam:

Care a tinker’s damn about this?

I do wish that I shared Michelangelo’s:

Talents as an artist.

As those made him immortal, which would be a swell thing to be, provided of course, that one is made immortal, meaning never to be forgotten, for the proper reasons.

Other men are immortal, meaning never to be forgotten, for very much the wrong reasons.

In our century, Mr Hitler, Mr Stalin and Mr Mao of the Chinese, have made themselves immortal, meaning, never to be forgotten, but we do not envy them, at least, I hope that we do not envy them.

Do you envy them?

I hope you don’t and if you do, I’d hope this note will make you re-consider what affections you might hold for these awful little men of our century.

As, while they have made themselves immortal and never to be forgotten, I certainly do not envy them.

As Lovey says herself:

“Envy is a very touchy thing in the best of cases, John Begg, because if you think about it, you really cannot say if Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, or for that matter, anyone else, is happy or not.”

Brilliant girl, Lovey, top shelf.

La Crema y Nata.

I cannot think what I could ever do without her.

This side of God Jesus, Lovey is the only indispensable figure in my life.

Lovey is my sunlight in the morning, my candle in the night.

It is of course possible that I have met a happy man, but I can’t remember doing it.

Holy Priests say that man is not supposed to be happy of this earth.

In fact, the Holy Priests tell me that man is on this earth to suffer and in so doing, gain salvation.

I am not a Holy Theologian and I will demure to comment on all that, but to say this:

If Our Saviour in Heaven desires that His Children suffer upon this Earth so that they may wash away the stain of Adam’s Sin:

I can remark, on having traveled widely about His Globe down here and seen for myself the terrible suffering of His Children, that, we can all expect that Heaven will be a very, very crowded Garden when we all arrive there.

He has said that He has gone ahead to prepare a place for us and I am very happy of that thought.

I hope he builds, as He says:

Many Mansions in His Father’s House as:

If suffering upon the earth is the key to Salvation with Him in the Garden above later on, many of His Children are praying here principally for their own, private, Mansion in His Garden above.

I’ll leave, of course, the details to Him and His Construction Men.

I am quite sure that I am not alone in saying that there are certain conversations and comments one takes with him through this life that remain ever with us and ever startling.

From the very first day of the very first grade of school, I detested school and never stopped detesting it.

So, Saint’s forgive, before I leave Jesus and His construction men to building our Mansions in Heaven, have a think about this:

I must recall for you a remarkable comment made to me by Mr. Eugene O’Neill, Senior, whose property bordered my father’s own when we were but wee ones.

Mr. O’Neill, Senior, was a man of his Era:

He had tasted both the Depression and the War, in the European theater, and, after the War, he had come home to the most remarkable, most giddily happy, most glorious, two decades in the history, not merely of America, but of:

The Entire World.

Mr Eugene O’Neill loved to cook steaks for all on his backyard bar-bee-que and drink as much National Bohemian Beer as was possibly imaginable to do without just floating away.

Some of my father’s contemporaries disliked Mr. O’Neill very much indeed and reckoned that he would not live to an advanced age.

He lives to this day and he has buried the lot of them–all of those who felt themselves his moral betters.

As I’d no fondness for my Daddy, I had conversations with Mr. O’Neill that boys in happier households might well have had with their own Daddies.

Somehow, of hot summer’s day with the beer flowing freely, in a time now, very sadly, lost to Lady History, Mr. O’Neill and I discussed Heaven and Hell and he said something to me that I’ll never forget, that I found at first hearing it and have thought ever after was, a simply remarkable thought.

As we are all friends here, in our clubhouse, and do not stand on ceremony here, as good friends do not, I will share this thought with you now.

Mr. O’Neill said:”Young Beggs, in the end, God let’s us all His Children into Heaven.”

I couldn’t believe it.

I was nonplussed, startled.

Flabbergasted.

I recall saying,

“But, Sir, what about the really evil, really bad, men of History?”

“For example Mr Hitler, against whom you personally fought so bravely and at great risk–do you mean to say Mr Hitler will go to Heaven?”

He said:

“Yes, John, God will in the end let everybody into heaven and the men we call very bad and terrible, God will consider as insane and forgive them.”

Remarkable.

Simply remarkable.

It is, of course, very difficult to say how it is that a man carries with him throughout his life a vivid memory of something early said to him, that to others, may well have been, very quickly, forgotten.

I couldn’t say why, but I do know that conversation of Heaven and Hell, on that hot summer day now many year’s gone, amidst beer and bar-bee-que, rang some sort of bell in my brain that I most certainly would never have had rung at any school.

We will, likewise now, leave Holy Priests in their Churches to ponder if that tenet of theirs concerning worldly sorrow leading to Eternal Happiness be true or no.

In the world, away from the Church and Her Holy Priests, all men are desperate for happiness.

Consider:

Advertising men sell only one thing to us:

HAPPINESS.

The Communists say that advertising men create false desire, but the Communists have never been right about anything, so why should they ruin their unblemished batting average here–in my clubhouse?

No risk of trouble there: as man desires, independent of advertising men, who simply attempt to sell specific rainbows and pots of gold to a world already quite thirsty for both:

I’m so sorry:

Mr. Karl Heinrich Marx.

The French say that the only thing more important in a man’s life, over and above his valet, is his barber.

I suppose that, had life’s circumstances forced upon me the need to share Mr. Marx’s valet and barber, I too, in righteous anger and fury, might have written to you today, not this note of sweet reminiscences, but rather, something as horrid as Mr. Marx’s Capital.

A subject about which Mr.Marx knew:

Absolutely…

Nothing at all.

My review of Mr. Marx’s, Capital, ended with my very brief, but somehow appearing to me, odious long, review.

As is my custom, I then hurled Mr Marx’s merry novella, Capital, at somebody in the room who very much annoyed me and, in so doing, accomplished two, very gratifying, things:

Annoying my present day irritant and consigning Mr. Marx and his Capital to well-deserved oblivion.

I had occasion to have a talk, or rather a listen, as he talked and I pretended to listen, with the diminutive, Mr. Perot, who does, indisputably, know something about capital.

Mr Perot startled me to say that he hated other people because “they haven’t any money and money is so easy to make if you want some.”

Mr. Perot, at center, has a pleasant word or two with my boss and Mr. Perot’s old pal, Mr. Bush, as Mr. Clinton, impatiently, obsessively, looks for love.

Mr Perot is neither tall nor, I think, very intelligent, but he does, indubitably, have a head for figures or whatever else it is that goes into the making of a capitalist.

And, so it is Mr. Marx, that you and I, who know nothing about being a capitalist, ought be polite and attend closely when, somebody who does know about these things, speaks to us about it.

Mr Perot didn’t annoy me near at all as much as did Mr Marx and his Capital, but I was taken to note that Mr Perot fidgets.

Fidgets quite a bit actually, when he speaks:

Fidgets as though he found it necessary to be ever in motion in order to call up to his head what his heart was trying to get him to say.

Many have handed me books to read and review over the years and I early developed, of my own account, a very frugal manner of review.

I read the first paragraph, close my eyes and open the book to a page somewhere near its center and:

Read another paragraph there, and:

Then turn to the last page and read the closing paragraph.

To those of you who are students, or are grown men who are forced, by the demands of making a living, to read immense documents of seemingly endless gibberish, I recommend you try this technique.

If you do, I can assure you that you will find out far more than you ever needed or desired to know about the topic at hand, and to have a swell lunch lasting a couple of hours in a cute French restaurant in the bargain~even while your co-workers try to, somehow, muddle through, the entire document.

As for advertising men and their role in all this:

Consider:

As the buyer, I ask you, have you paid the price the advertising man demands for HAPPINESS, and if you have, was the price worth the product, that is:

Are you:

HAPPY?

If yes, do you know why?

If no, do you know why?

Some men desire more than anything else of this earth to be loved.

As with any desire, there is a price to pay for gratification.

Bill Clinton desired above all to be loved.

Mr. Clinton was successful at getting many to love him.

But, Mr. Clinton didn’t recollect, or reconcile in his mind, the price that must be paid for love.

The price for love is not of money.

OH, No.

Nobody who desires to be loved ever anticipates the price he must pay for love.

You see, it is well and good to desire above all else to be loved.

The trouble with making the desire to be loved of paramount importance is that..so sorry to say,

It simply doesn’t work.

People say all sorts of things in life, Mr. Clinton, most in particular about LOVE.

“I love you”

Is very likely, they most shop-worn, the most hackneyed, phrase in the American English language.

A language that, of Herself, already is, absent considerations of Love, the most cliché ridden mode of expression in world history.

Very likely, neither Mr Clinton nor any others like him, who desire so much to be loved above all else in life, know why they are driven by the need to gratify that burning desire.

But, as the desire is the soul of the man himself, it is pointless to consider why he desires what he does.

He has no control over the desire.

It is his in-born passion.

His life is spent, chasing gratification of, his desire.

Our clubhouse is very thankful of having many, and diverse, friends stopping in and today, as love is on all our minds, we are indeed charmed to have with us:

Mr. Roman Krznaric, who has sent us this very useful note about the many types of Love, six types to be sure, identified by the Ancient Greeks, who so molded our minds, be we aware of that formative molding, or no, that we can all have, with our fellow Children of God, while we await a better life in the New Garden.

And now, our guest, Mr. Roman Krznaric, whom we quote as noted until further noted, cease quote:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today’s coffee culture has an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary. Do you want a cappuccino, an espresso, a skinny latte, or maybe an iced caramel macchiato?

Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks.

The ancient Greeks were just as sophisticated in the way they talked about love, recognizing six different varieties. They would have been shocked by our crudeness in using a single word both to whisper “l love you” over a candlelit meal and to casually sign an email “lots of love.”

So what were the six loves known to the Greeks? And how can they inspire us to move beyond our current addiction to romantic love, which has 94 percent of young people hoping—but often failing—to find a unique soul mate who can satisfy all their emotional needs?

1. Eros, or sexual passion

The first kind of love was eros, named after the Greek god of fertility, and it represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. But the Greeks didn’t always think of it as something positive, as we tend to do today. In fact, eros was viewed as a dangerous, fiery, and irrational form of love that could take hold of you and possess you—an attitude shared by many later spiritual thinkers, such as the Christian writer C.S. Lewis.

Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks. Which is odd, because losing control is precisely what many people now seek in a relationship. Don’t we all hope to fall “madly” in love?

2. Philia, or deep friendship

The second variety of love was philia or friendship, which the Greeks valued far more than the base sexuality of eros. Philia concerned the deep comradely friendship that developed between brothers in arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield. It was about showing loyalty to your friends, sacrificing for them, as well as sharing your emotions with them. (Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, embodied the love between parents and their children.)

We can all ask ourselves how much of this comradely philia we have in our lives. It’s an important question in an age when we attempt to amass “friends” on Facebook or “followers” on Twitter—achievements that would have hardly impressed the Greeks.

Like what you’re reading? YES! is nonprofit and relies on reader support.
Click here to chip in $5 or more to help us keep the inspiration coming.

3. Ludus, or playful love

This was the Greeks’ idea of playful love, which referred to the affection between children or young lovers. We’ve all had a taste of it in the flirting and teasing in the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our ludus when we sit around in a bar bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go out dancing.

Dancing with strangers may be the ultimate ludic activity, almost a playful substitute for sex itself. Social norms may frown on this kind of adult frivolity, but a little more ludus might be just what we need to spice up our love lives.

4. Agape, or love for everyone

The fourth love, and perhaps the most radical, was agape or selfless love. This was a love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. Agape was later translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our word “charity.”

C.S. Lewis referred to it as “gift love,” the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mettā or “universal loving kindness” in Theravāda Buddhism.

There is growing evidence that agape is in a dangerous decline in many countries. Empathy levels in the U.S. have declined sharply over the past 40 years, with the steepest fall occurring in the past decade. We urgently need to revive our capacity to care about strangers.

5. Pragma, or longstanding love

Another Greek love was the mature love known as pragma. This was the deep understanding that developed between long-married couples.

Pragma was about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance.

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on “falling in love” and need to learn more how to “stand in love.” Pragma is precisely about standing in love—making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. Withabout a third of first marriages in the U.S. ending through divorce or separation in the first 10 years, the Greeks would surely think we should bring a serious dose ofpragma into our relationships.

6. Philautia, or love of the self

The Greek’s sixth variety of love was philautia or self-love. And the clever Greeks realized there were two types. One was an unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, where you became self-obsessed and focused on personal fame and fortune. A healthier version enhanced your wider capacity to love.

: This article is based on the author’s new book, How Should We Live? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life.

The idea was that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (as is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of “self-compassion”). Or, as Aristotle put it, “All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man’s feelings for himself.”

The ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people—friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate. The message from the Greeks is to nurture the varieties of love and tap into its many sources. Don’t just seek eros, but cultivate philia by spending more time with old friends, or developludus by dancing the night away.

Moreover, we should abandon our obsession with perfection. Don’t expect your partner to offer you all the varieties of love, all of the time (with the danger that you may toss aside a partner who fails to live up to your desires). Recognize that a relationship may begin with plenty of eros and ludus, then evolve toward embodying more pragmaor agape.

The diverse Greek system of loves can also provide consolation. By mapping out the extent to which all six loves are present in your life, you might discover you’ve got a lot more love than you had ever imagined—even if you feel an absence of a physical lover.

It’s time we introduced the six varieties of Greek love into our everyday way of speaking and thinking. If the art of coffee deserves its own sophisticated vocabulary, then why not the art of love?

Roman Krznaric is an Australian cultural thinker and cofounder of The School of Life in London. This article is based on his new book, How Should We Live? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life (BlueBridge). His website is http://www.romankrznaric.com and he tweets @romankrznaric.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

WE are, truly charmed to have had Mr. Roman Krznaric join us in our clubhouse toady. We will all, I am very sure, attend appropriately to Mr. Krznaric’s words. At this point, we here cease to quote Mr. Krznaric and thank him so much for coming to the club house today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the instant case under review by us here today:

The sad truth of the matter is that if you desire, above all else in life, to be loved:

You will find out that:

It simply can’t work out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The rich man ought not be taxed at all~~Instead, the rich man ought be compelled to employ and train the poor man~~directly~~personally~~man to man~~
~~

The principal need in America today is~~financial and industrial De-Globalization~~to facilitate the promotion of the possibility for the average man to get and keep a good job with good benefits paid by the employer~~as was done not very long ago.~~

~~Bene Nati, Bene Vestiti, Et Mediocriter Docti~~

~

~~La crema y nata~~

~

~~Artista de la conquista~

~~In sunshine and in shadow~~I hold tight to the Republican view of time and money~~I write night and day~~yet~~while impecunious~~I am vastly overpaid~~in that taking pay to do what I love is unfair~~to my employer~~in a fair system~~under such circumstances~~I should pay him~~not he me~~I am far, far too old a man to be sexually confused~~praise Jesus~~but I am yet young enough to be politically confused~~is anyone not~~in an absolute sense~~I am a Catholic Royalist~~in a practical sense~~I am a Classical Liberal~~a Gaullist~~a Bonapartist~~an American Nationalist Republican~~in either sense~~my head is soon for the chopping block~~to hasten my interlude with Madame La Guillotine~~I write without fear~and without favor of~any man~~

~
Non Sibi~~

Finis Origine Pendet~

~~Κύριε ἐλέησον~~

Rejoice and Glad!!

Amen~~
~The Original Angry Bird~~The Catholic University of America Screaming Red Cardinal Mascot~~

~~EX LIBRIS~~

~~THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS~~
```
Thursday, 27th March, Now In Our Quadragesima,~Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2014

Website: http://johndanielbegg.wordpress.com
```
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=122865699&trk=tab_pro
```
 http://www.facebook.com/JohnDanielBeggPublicAffairs

 http://www.tumblr.com/blog/theoldsoldiershome1952
```
http://www.facebook.com/john.begg.33

http://www.pinterest.com/johnbegg33/boards/

http://independent.academia.edu/johnbegg/Papers?s=nav#add

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/jtdbegg

Tweets: @jtdbegg
```
 http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=122865699&trk=hb_tab_pro_top

"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own."~~
French actor~~Alain Delon
```
CONCEPT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ROYAL ARMY OF AMERICA (CRAA)

The Catholic University of America

Seal of The Catholic University of America

Motto~~Deus Lux Mea Est~~
```
 ~~
```
~~Our Ubiquitous Presence~~

The Queen~~

In office now 62 years on~~

Simply the best President we could ever hope to have~~