let's all hope it was a learning experience for them...
Posted on 08/18/2018 5:09:45 PM PDT by daniel1212
Asked why they had quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes.
“There’s magic out there, in this great big beautiful world,” wrote Jay Austin who, along with his partner, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa...
Then came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern Tajikistan. It was there, on July 29, that a carload of men who are believed to have recorded a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State spotted them....
In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill “disbelievers.”
It was a worldview as diametrically opposed as imaginable to the one Mr. Austin and Ms. Geoghegan were trying to live by. ...
After earning a master’s degree from Georgetown University, he began working at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development...
In 2012, he met Lauren Anne Geoghegan, a native of Southern California, who like him had graduated from Georgetown and was now working in the college’s admissions office...
they had embraced the notion that the world was overwhelmingly good, the dozens of annotated photographs and the thousands of words they left behind show.
“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” Mr. Austin wrote. “People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.
“I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own … By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”
The man, Mr. Austin, earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University, and later began working at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Lauren Anne Geoghegan was a native of Southern California, who had graduated from Georgetown and was now working in the college’s admissions office.
Both had character as regards commitment, generosity and good will, yet a couple acting out of the liberal fantasy, that of the denial of the fall of man, and his sin nature, and the nature of the world, and what is required because of it. Which means you do not treat lions as if they were Golden Retrievers, or mankind as if they were basically good, or would be if only we did not treat them as if they were prone to sin .
Though we are to seek and can have good relations with many people to varying degrees, who can be kind and generous insomuch as they are ruled from within by God and conscience, yet unlike God, at best man is not to be unconditionally trusted, and in reality can do exceedingly wicked things. Which is not because they were treated as having a sinful nature, as liberals imagine.
Liberalism fosters the idea that evil men are not evil but victims of of those who uphold Biblical values, such as benefits earned by merit, and of showing mercy and grace to others, but which is not a right. Once they have convinced souls to see themselves as victims, liberals then obtain power by presenting themselves as saviors. But the result of their ethos actually bondage or death. And eternal damnation
In short, liberalism is a rebellion against God, and as such it seeks to live in denial of reality and fantasy. In the 60's era liberal fantasy this was much achieved mainly thru drugs, but now indoctrination from early age attains even worse degree of fantasy.
Ping
There is no law against stupidity.
Otherwise no liberals would be out on the street.
Ignorance can be cured but stupid is forever.
Timothy Treadwell Syndrome
Now you know........RIP Mr. stupid
They became conservatives but it was too late.
They should have gone with “Gravity is a make-believe concept” as they jumped off a 500 foot cliff. It would have been quicker (and equally nuts).
I heard about this story. The liberal couple who worked in the Obama administration and wanted to bike around the world thinking evil didn’t exist, and that they wanted to prove it. Someone should have told ISIS that in the area they wanted to travel.
See President Trump’s repeated tellings of the scorpion and the frog story from his campaign and post-election rallies.
Hey, don’t be too hard on them. Had they done that on the moon, they would have landed without mishap. Liberalism does work at times, if only in parallel universes. [/sarcasm off]
The source, link, date and author is wrong in this story. I changed the content after finding the NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/world/asia/islamic-state-tajikistan-bike-attack.html) had more info, but forgot to change the above.
Rukmini Callimachi is the author, and Aug. 7, 2018 is the date. It is also 60 words over the 300 word excerpt limit.
Sorry.
This reminds me somewhat of the man who raised a lion from the bottle and cared for him, but the lion still killed him . There is another story of a man who tried living among lions as friends, until one killed him.
________________________________________________
...or Grizzly Man, who filmed bears in Alaska and slapped them around until one ate him...
Liberalism killed them.
I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own …” The male of the two couple advocated there was no set guideline to behavior. He was visited in his last few minutes the resulting conclusion... He choose not to believe there was evil; he only believed in levels of good. Sad his mate held to the same belief system.
let's all hope it was a learning experience for them...
Darwinism at work. It never seems to fail.
I don’t recall that, unless you mean the poem (or Al Wilson song) The Snake.
LOL! I hadn't considered that angle.
There should be a hall of fame for these people. Rachel "Caterpillar" Corrie is another one. And I can't even remember the name of that white girl who went hiking through South Africa to prove what a beautiful paradise post-apartheid South Africa had become. Within days she had been raped, tortured, and murdered by the locals.
There is more than enough liberal roadkill to start a "Hall of Fame".
Stupidity can prove to be fatal ... no “do overs” like in video games!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.