Gut Poem by gershon hepner

“The gut is not the seat of wisdom but
it is the bottom line, ” declares the gut.
“What happens in the brain may not be felt
in lower areas below the belt, ”
declares the brain. Though many people trust
their gut, and therefore put their brain on hold,
and with their intuition go for bust,
they risk the pot and may collapse, potholed.
As a guide, the gut is very fallible;
and those who aren’t extremely hesitant
about its intuitions far too gullible
to be elected U.S. President.


Commenting on John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin, Governor of New York, as his Vice-Presidential candidate, George Will writes in the Washington Post on September 3,2008:
The word 'experience' appears 91 times in the Federalist Papers, those distillations of conservative sense and sensibility. Madison, Hamilton and Jay said that truths are 'taught' and 'corroborated' by experience. These writers were eager to 'consult' and be 'led' by experience. They spoke of 'indubitable' and 'unequivocal' lessons from experience, the 'testimony' of experience and 'the accumulated experience of ages.' 'Accumulating' experience is 'the parent of wisdom' and a 'guide' that 'justifies, ' 'confirms' and can 'admonish.' America's Founders were empiricists and students of history who trusted 'that best oracle of wisdom, experience, ' which is humanity's 'least fallible guide.'
A telling touch, that 'least fallible.' The Founders represented the sober side of the Enlightenment. They knew, as conservatives do, that all guides are fallible. Hence conservatism's inclination to discern prescriptions in traditions, which are mankind's slow adjustments to the accretion of experiences. So, Sarah Palin. The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience. Any cook can run the state, said Lenin, who was wrong about that, too. America's gentle populists and other sentimental egalitarians postulate that wisdom is easily acquired and hence broadly diffused; therefore anyone with a good heart can deliver good government, which is whatever the public desires. 'The people of Nebraska, ' said the archetypal populist William Jennings Bryan, 'are for free silver, and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.'



9/3/08