The words do not create the rights. The rights create the words. This is parallel (though certainly not equivalent) to scripture. The words of scripture or belief in them do not create God. God is the Word, the root of identity and meaning without the distance of symbols. The words on the page are but an indirect means to understand and perceive that meaning. Which is to say, one must allow God to dwell within before the meaning of scripture can be understood. Similarly with our laws, one must understand one’s own sovereignty over one’s self, the free will given to us, before one can understand the law that protects rights.

Those who do not, in either case, only mouth utterances at a superstitious level to manipulate people in service of base and crude instincts like power and lust. The best strategy I have found is to go on saying what you believe is true and just and ignore those naysayers and accusers. It is frightening to see that conflict at play in our country, and to realize the burden and responsibility placed on us by the founders– that the laws of the United States stand between us and oblivion, warding off the darkness of ignorance and oppression. They only succeed in that as much as we commit to the struggle to uphold the rights they protect.

No one will do it for us. It is a difficult task. If, however, God gave us each our own sovereignty of will over ourselves, then God will watch over us in our struggle to protect them for all.

I know that when his father pushed the button for war, Mr. Jong Un saw the light of reason, because deep down he really does care about the Korean people, and he does not live in a fantasy world in which he pretends to be a God. Mr. Jong Un has a great opportunity now to lead North Korea into a time of prosperity, peace, and justice– not with arms, not with secrets, not with clandestine plots too bizarre even for Hollywood movies, but with honest and principled leadership. North Korea can be an ally with the United States to work against slavery of all people in the world.

We have found that economic liberalism sees to it that people are fed. There are inequalities, to be sure, but more than any other nation we protect the freedom for the poor to prosper by their own ingenuity and hard work. That freedom is under attack by imperial forces who try to subvert what our nation stands for– by people who think in archaic ways about how to enslave the masses, whether by capitalism or by communism. I believe the struggle for freedom and equality is something Mr. Jong Un can identify with, and eventually, support.

We don’t want to face the very real possibility that the Nazis’ long-term plan included many terrorist cells. They set up the “obvious villain” of the fascist governments of the middle East in the first place, which supported the overt, media-centric terrorism of the 20th century, and they re-masked with it under a façade of Islam while blaming the United States. We don’t want to face the possib…ility that they orchestrated 9/11, and have many of these cells as part of the long-term “Phoenix Project” plan. The people of the middle east are realizing that their leaders will sell them out in a heartbeat, sacrificing cities or nations to start a war, which they themselves believe will result in the death of Islam and the rise of a ruthless, world-wide national socialist state. We don’t want to face the possibility that cells like these, even long-term stealth operations to wreak individual stories of terror, are sacrifices to distract well-meaning law enforcement and military people from seeing the bigger picture, that other, more skilled liars have infiltrated our fortresses and plan to orchestrate an incomprehensible scale of death to purge the world of all whom they see as inferior. We don’t want to face that possibility, but it is very real.

It seems like we are being provoked into “class struggle.” What it really is, though, in the terms of Marxism itself, is a war of the bourgeois against the rich, not the poor against the rich. The middle class bears a large share of responsibility for the situation, we cannot assign blame wholly on the rich. People borrowed more than they could afford. They gave their money to the banker thieves, the banks didn’t require them to hand it over. Now they want a bailout. Meanwhile, the lower class people who are truly desperately poor and can never make ends meet even though they work themselves to the bone are forgotten.

These protests aren’t about the poor at all. They don’t do anything to fix the actual problem. Yes, banks and economic regulation played a large part in the economic crisis. However, the people protesting also played a large part, and we cannot deny our responsibility for that.

There should have been no bailout of corrupt banks. Neither should there be any bailout of middle-class people who borrowed more than they can afford and are now upset that they can no longer live the luxurious, debt-funded life to which they have become accustomed. We can’t solve this problem top-down. We have to take responsibility for our own part and work for a solution from the bottom up.

A fan writes:

I thought going to a credit union was a protest. Thats why our whole family took our money over to a credit union where weve been happy since.

That’s awesome and I’m in a union too, where I could go debate and vote if I felt compelled, and use free network ATMs, but by saying credit unions are a “protest,” you give banks the power to say that banks are “normal” and unions are not. Isn’t a non-profit union the better personal choice than handing over your money to someone in it for their own profit, in terms of Smith’s and Hamilton’s ideas about economic self-interest? Self interest is not incompatible with common interest, in banking. Unions seem like the “normal” choice, by the numbers. Yet, banks and their players delude people into paying huge amounts, which they give to projects for small private interests, steal in the name of bailouts and continuity when they crash the market, and then cash out some more personally.

Then, arguably, the same forces behind the 20th century economic melodramas provoke the rage of gullible people who lost money, conning them a second time into protests against something they could choose to do without. So the idea of a proletariat revolution is laughable, when all us proletariats have the free choice not to hand over our money to thieves. Self interest also means taking some responsibility for looking out for yourself, but common interest coincides, so we form unions in cities, counties, states and the Congress, appointing a VP to chart the course and a President to steer the wheel. Our entire government is based on the same idea of free unions. Banks are trying to tell you that America is un-American.

Banks want to be King of America… or they serve people who do. Monarchy or oligarchy, the Hansa were not democratic just because their authority was dispersed under a veil of commerce. The ones who play both sides want to advance either fascism or communism, they don’t care which, because it’s not about the money to them at all, it’s about the control, which leads them to atrocious behavior, always framed for them in terms of what other people think and how to evade or spurn judgment by their own thoughts at the edges of their selves which become infinite, the “problem of lawlessness” that Paul spoke of, but did not understand, whose adherents sometimes try to mitigate with violence. (Maybe none of us understand.)

The lawless only gaze into a mirror, a mirror which they can choose to smash at any time and join the real world… laws would be unnecessary in a world in which everyone freely chooses to do the best by God and love one another.

Note that this theory does NOT imply that the government acted in concert with the terrorists, as many conspiracy propagandists assert. It only implies that insurance, re-insurance and government were responsible for the second part of the… disaster, the collapse, and colluded after the fact to keep the public in the dark to cover their own liability, and to keep secret the constant vulnerability and threat to our safety in large cities due to rigging of all skyscrapers with permanently installed demolition charges. Their own pocketbooks became a shield for the terrorists.

As to whether bin Laden’s fascist puppet masters knew of the charges and predicted the outcome, I purport that they did, simply because it would suit their interests to force American authorities and powerful Jewish financiers like Silverstein into a position of making a utilitarian decision to kill innocent people to protect their financial interests. Then they have the biggest political propaganda case to say that Jews have become the new Nazis… when in fact the Nazis orchestrated the whole thing— it’s the classic case of the bully saying “stop hitting yourself” while wrenching your arm to punch yourself in the nose.

However, I think it is perfectly valid to question whether some of those insurance and re-insurance people, especially those affiliated with the “Church of England in America,” in fact relayed such information to those fascist puppet masters of the terrorists. World War II started in part due to collusion of British royals with Nazi powers, the same old gambit dating back to George III who colluded with Hessian armies to suppress the freedom of America. Is it so difficult to conceive that they might try to do so again? That they were so enamored of their own disproportionate power, that they orchestrated a long-term plan to manipulate the United States into being the military muscle for their agenda in global politics and finance? Then we go bankrupt, and they swoop in to buy up our assets, and buy up our politicians who can no longer afford to run for office. I think we would be doing a disservice to the founding fathers and everything our country stands for if we do not consider this possibility.

The President cannot lead Congress because that’s not the President’s job. It’s the Vice President’s job to lead and unify Congress, and the Vice President cannot do so when he’s been picked as the servant of the President’s party, rather than as a servant of the People. The separate ballots were intended to offer the Electors the choice of the best person for each job at the time they were in. Parties hijacked state law in the name of the popular vote to consolidate power in the Presidency, to make the President a temporary King rather than an administrator and military chief who would serve for a time at the behest of Congress. Congress holds the reins, Congress holds the power, but cannot exercise it when divided.

We need only one simple amendment in plain language to unify Congress: “The People shall be the Electors.” We the People are capable of that role. Clearly, the parties are not the better answer, because the parties, with consolidated power, create inherent corruption and division. They are the problem, not the solution.

The problem with separate lists, say the authoritarians, is that the President wouldn’t be “in charge.” But, as nearly every administration demonstrates, the President with a divided Congress isn’t in charge anyway. A united Congress is the only way out of the government’s gridlock, without buying into the authoritarians’ sneaky, insidious argument that we ought to consolidate power in the Executive and weaken Congress because they are ineffective. When it is precisely the consolidation of power that has made Congress weak, rather than the strong, diverse representative forum it was intended to be. The only way out is to allow the People to choose who they think can best lead Congress– to choose, independently of the Executive, who should be Vice President, who can best wrangle the Senate.

It’s precisely the contrarians’ argument that is weakening Congress. If Congress were united, they might make better financial decisions, rather than passing the buck and the blame across the aisle as they do now.

The “less government” argument makes a gross over-simplification that “government is the problem.” If they succeed in making government so limited that it becomes non-responsive to the needs of the People, the People will become angry, then they think they’ll send in some authoritarian psychopath to tell them all the things they want to hear and rise to power like Hitler, destroying our Republic in his wake. An authoritarian military hierarchy, they will argue, would be the only thing that can take control, to bring order to the chaos– the chaos they brought to pass in the first place. Don’t believe them. Authoritarian power hierarchies breed much more corruption than democratic government with checks and balances.

The Founders instituted a structure of government different from hierarchy, different from every other form of government that had existed before, even those with some democratic/republican elements like Rome and Athens. These brilliant, deeply caring people created a structure with balances to channel natural competition toward fairness, rather than corruption that happens in hierarchies, which they witnessed in the British Crown.

It’s ironic that today, the puppet masters of conservatism seek more hierarchy in smaller government, rather than giving you the People enough credit to believe you’re capable of running a fair, responsive government, with rotating leadership and no central authority.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, consider what terrorists and their masters, the fascists, really hate about this country. It’s not our military might. It does have a lot to do with anger over actions taken by covert operatives in our name, but we the People can judge that those people, who hurt the innocent were not acting with our approval or in the best interests of our nation. (Case in point, the close relationship revealed recently between CIA, MI6, and Qaddafi’s terror state— atrocious.) However, the real reason that terrorists, fascists within our own military and espionage institutions, and political saboteurs hate America and want to destroy her, is that no one is in charge.

Their minds are all too small to comprehend that no one is in charge, that the source of our success and our optimism does not come from any hierarchy, but from the opposite. Everything good about America comes from the independent, freely expressed opinions and choices of every American citizen, going about their daily business making the best choices they are able to make given their many diverse circumstances. The system the Founders envisioned cultivates all the best results of those efforts without spinning its wheels trying to figure it out or manage it too closely.

The Founders had something that the terrorists and fascists severely lack: faith. Only faith will see us through, and it will, but it takes faith and right action. It takes you having the guts to take a stand. Take charge of your own thoughts, of your own government. Power is the problem. Democracy is the solution.

We also must be careful we don’t confuse insistence on balanced budgets with the divisve for “smaller government.” Those are separate agendas. Some on the right are extreme, so extreme on the left bash everyone on the right, including those who voted against debt increase for honest, productive goals of reducing government debt. Extremes on both sides contribute to the “fog of war” in politics. Answer: think for yourself.

It is more complicated than simply Islamic terrorists who are “crazy.” Anonymous characters on fringe mailing lists were priming the pump of “inside job” propaganda as early as 1996… propaganda perpetuated to this day to provoke distrust and apathy among Americans. Our democracy requires mass participation to be effective and defend our common interests against tyranny. Why would anyone participate, if they believe 9/11 was an inside job and our government is out to get us? Our democracy was the real target of 9/11.

We must not allow ourselves to be taken up by the adrenaline of victory into celebrating the killing of human beings, even if you think they deserved to die. If we go down that road, we’ll be no better than the remorseless Romans were, who used the cross to inflict death and torture on any who stood in their way and many who did not deserve it, while they worshiped empty statues and made-up gods in orgies of debauchery.

That sounds absurd and remote, but the slide from normal, healthy thoughts to malevolent, evil thoughts is really not very far. Hannah Arendt observed the same in pre-war Germany, when seemingly normal, kind, everyday people suddenly became a mass of cruel murderers who felt they were justified in any violence on behalf of the state. We must be eternally vigilant against that state of mind.

Can we say with any certainty who deserves life or death in God’s sight, in an objective view? Our view on the world is always subjective. Our challenge is to open our minds enough to see ourselves in the other. Often times that is difficult, even repugnant to the mind insulted by the others’ actions or grieved by the loss of love and friends from their attacks. Yet, it is the challenge given to us, because our minds have the capacity to rise above our own individual experience.

I hope you will say a prayer for Osama Bin Laden, for his son, and for Qaddafi’s son, and everyone else who stood with them or was caught in the crossfire.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” -Matthew 5:43-48

DC v. Heller observes that the natural right to defend one’s self in a state of nature belongs to you irrespective of duty to serve in a militia, but that does not preclude conscription based on voluntary gun ownership as an expression of responsibilities in the free state, for which the founders granted Congress the power to regulate all civil and military defense of the states. It would achieve better gun control than the current paradigm: democratic self-control– people who can’t handle discipline wouldn’t buy guns, people who do buy guns would be required to take a training class, can be evaluated better in the process, and could be drafted, which would also discourage crime. After all, they’ve drafted everyone before. There’s nothing in DC v. Heller or anywhere that precludes drafting only gun owners if Congress decides to. That was the reality the founders lived with: your gun was your draft card. They intended the civic militia drafted from gun owners to self-regulate without a dictatorial policy: people feel anxious, more guns, more police and army/navy; people feel safe, fewer guns, and the ranks shrink. That was meant to ensure that citizens serving in police and military roles remain citizens and human beings, that all courts remain tried by a jury of peers, so they not be tempted to extort the privileges of nobility as did Britain’s nobles, or be transformed by war into monsters, granting unrestrained violence and rape as reward like ancient Rome. These are unfortunate human tendencies, and a badge or rifle don’t make a person pure. If we went with the founders’ wise combined intent on the 2nd instead of arguing one side or another, both of which are irrational in some way, the actual problem would get better.

DC v. Heller states “the activities [the Amendment] protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.” I disagree with that. In the revolution your enjoyment of the right was causally contingent upon your enrollment in the militia, and if you didn’t want to join, the militia appropriated your guns for the cause.

DC v. Heller splits the politics of the revolution between crude boxes of federalism and anti-federalism– this a sneak attack on the equivalence of the people with the government of our free state. The court purports that denying Congress power to abridge the natural right to keep arms was to preserve the ideal of the citizen militia against the government. But in a “free state,” the citizens are the government, so that division is false. The militia that protects the free state is of citizens whether they are ranked or not. This ruling does not reinforce the peoples’ control over our government, it reinforces the separation by assuming that we do not live in the “free state” that the founders envisioned. The ideal of a citizen militia is not some abstract thing that we cannot achieve; it is what they intended to practice on a daily basis.

The US has realized that it cannot continue a policy of support of dictators who “support our interests.” We are realizing that a democratic world with fair and open civic mechanisms for solving disputes without violence is in our interest, as it is in the interest of the entire world.

The authoritarian rulers in the Islamic countries are threatened by democracy. They are up to their usual tricks. They believe they can turn the swell of popular support for democracy against itself– by assaulting women in Egypt, by turning the protestors into a mob against the US, or by provoking conflict between Israel and Palestinians to point the finger at the Jews. They are losing their battle against history, and they are scared.

Israel must step up to the challenge of democracy, by equalizing the status of Palestinians in their legal system. Israel has been baited, over the years, into oppressing the Palestinians, and the Palestinians have been baited into attacking Israeli citizens. Religion is not a valid excuse on either side to treat people on the other side as less than human beings. It is not an excuse, on either side, to retaliate against groups of innocent people associated only by geographical proximity or physical similarity.

Ancient democracies like Athens, Rome, even the Norse Althing, fell apart because a central group of people who formed the government insisted on clinging to power, even when their insistence caused the people they ruled to suffer. The Athenian Forum would not share with their commoners or set up the same system in cities they conquered. Rome tried to manage everything from the Senate, which was impossible, so the military grew frustrated and took over, which resulted in destructive civil conflict.

Modern democracies must have local forums for local issues, where local people can decide how they want to run things as long as they’re following general guidelines and principles of the law, and each local area can elect and send representatives to negotiate larger domains of law like national or foreign policy. They must empower local people and respect differences, or they fall apart.

The common people demand their own rule, self-organize, and elect representatives to craft a law which they commit to live by, and they can elect different people to modify the law if it does not work for them. Either they do, or they don’t. Human law is not an idol to be worshiped. Human law is not sacred. If people cannot participate civilly to change the law to allow each person to fully realize their own potential, by their own choices and their own God-given personal power, only chaos will result.

In order to save itself from the chaos erupting around the area, Israel must back down on the issue of settlements on land owned by the Palestinians. Palestinians must step up and conduct their affairs like civilized people, commit to leaving violence behind them, and commit to democracy themselves. However, that will never happen as long as Israel continues to use religion and ethnicity as an excuse to steal land.

It may not be feasible to fix the mistakes of the distant past. Reparation for annexations that occurred long ago should be considered, but there is probably no way to make everyone happy. However, Israel can offer to stop razing and building, and to return recently settled land to its owners, provided Palestinians commit to transparent democracy tolerant of internal dissent.

It takes two to tango. Palestinians need to show they want a liberal democracy for themselves. Israelis need to wise up and stop letting themselves be provoked by attacks into fascist responses. That is exactly what the fascist backers of Palestinian terrorism want– to provoke Israelis into behaving like Nazis. Then the Nazis really would win– they would destroy all faith the Israelis have in God, by provoking them into putting their faith in weapons and war.

Israelis must show that they respect the will of the people, that they respect universal human rights for all people. If they take the moral high ground, and refrain from being provoked into conflict, they will soon find themselves with many democratic Arab allies on their borders. That will be a happy world, God willing.

They should even consider granting citizenship to all Palestinians. I am a Christian, and I support Israel, but growing up with liberal ideas I simply don’t understand how an ethno-religious group who suffered great loss from state violence based on racial superiority can then turn around and say that they deny rights to other human beings simply because they don’t belong to the same racial heritage and religion. Israelis could trust God, and the liberty that God gives all human beings, and change their policy to defend and support the Palestinians.

People talk about a “two state solution,” but that has never worked. There really seems like only one solution: one state, one people, one vote per person. Would policies change? Would there be some political blowback for the hurts of the past? Yes… but it would be political, and monetary, not violent. That is the key. Do you want to get sued, or do you want to get shot at?

Freedom is a choice. Nothing the Nazis did to the Jews can touch who they are, as individuals or as people, nor the love God has for them. Nothing can break their spirit: God has already tested them in that forge. Nothing Israel does to the Palestinians can touch who the Palestinians are, or break their spirit, and God loves the Palestinians too. God loves all His creation, even people who do not respect it or His will that we all get along. Everyone has the capacity for love, whether they use it or not. Because everyone has the capacity for love, everyone is worthy of love, even those people who seem bad.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” -Matthew 5:43-48

I’m concerned about media interpretation of the recent climate model study at NASA by climate researcher Luke Oman.

His study indicates that climate cooling from even a limited regional exchange would have disastrous effects world-wide, causing crop failures and famine. That effect would be caused by carbon soot, rather than sulfates from a volcanic winter, so the recovery period would be faster than a severe volcanic event, because carbon traps more heat. Seems like that would increase global warming in the long run.

However, a lot of the headlines were the complete opposite:

“The Cure For Global Warming: A ‘Small’ Nuclear War?” -
http://entertainment.silobreaker.com/luke-oman-11_12826557

“The liberal argument for nuclear war” -
http://www.wonderfulpessimist.com/tag/luke-oman/

… and so on. Google doesn’t have the editorial expertise to know how to filter this crap out. It used to be more obvious, but they are getting craftier. I found one that suggested India and Pakistan would be the most promising place to have such a regional nuclear exchange, that it would be good to stop global warming. Bogus.

The real report said even in a limited regional exchange, the effects from the cooling would be terrible for the whole world.

Is NASA going to argue that in order to reverse global warming, we ought to start an even larger nuclear war? I wouldn’t think so… but it sounds like someone is getting snowed, that’s for sure.

I am immensely confused. You should be too, and concerned. Nothing in the model talks about the political and strategic reality, that any use of nuclear weapons is likely to escalate global conflict. That is what we want to avoid.

Why are these so-called “news” sites mis-interpreting the truth to promote nuclear war?

Because they want to start a nuclear war?

Or because they use any excuse to point an accusing finger at the US government, even if they have to lie?

“As when a prowling Wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where Shepherds pen their Flocks at eve
In hurdl’d Cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the Fold:
Or as a Thief bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich Burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barr’d and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles;
So clomb this first grand Thief into God’s Fold:
So since into his Church lewd Hirelings climb.”
-Paradise Lost IV.183.

Freedom allows people to recognize when they have been led astray, and to turn back toward the better self whom they had the capacity to be when they were born. Without that freedom, which works both ways, someone who makes mistakes will not feel free to repent, to acknowledge they were wrong, to change and turn back to higher ideals. In a non-free system of enforced religious thought, admitting imperfection is an invitation for others to lord it over you and play the intellectual dominance game, a wordy expression of a rather apish instinct. In a free society, it is much easier to look past those annoying people and to reconcile yourself with God and your fellow human beings, which makes it easier to leave the past behind and be a better person in the future.

Since we all possess freedom of thought regardless of what law, religion or culture may dictate, we know that it is always possible to turn back toward good. Freedom to choose religion, or no religion, enables each person in their own circumstance to choose morality unfettered by the expectations of others.

Some will cry foul here and say freedom of religion, or liberty in general, then justifies evil. It does not. Those people usually interpret liberty to mean their liberty to do anything they want, regardless of how it affects other people. We still have a right to set community standards, and to judge and punish evil deeds like murder or child abuse, although our propensity for error means the death penalty puts innocent blood on our hands, and should be abolished.

In fact the opposite is usually true: non-free religion is easily used to cover up evil intentions. You might even say it breeds evil intentions, because it gives people power over others with symbols and concepts that resonate deeply with the universal human experience, our desire to understand the world around us and to find meaning in events we do not understand. Shame is a powerful tool of oppression and dominance. Non-free religion enables evil people to abuse the benevolent desire for good that most people have. If free, most people will pursue that desire for good, and overall the results are good.

1. “Democracy put Hitler into power.”
• The international community will never tolerate another expansionist dictator who threatens his neighbors.
• The dictators and oligarchs in these countries are already comparable to Hitler– conformist, ruthless, punishing, fascist.
• Modern democracy cannot function without constitutional guarantees of individual liberty. Without liberty, the slide into populism is too fast, and the end result is yet another dictatorship, with a different set of leaders. People creating these new democracies are smart enough (hopefully) to see that. Otherwise, they will not change their situation. There is no middle ground anymore.
2. “People are too stupid to run their own lives.”
• Freedom of information and speech helps people learn.
• People make mistakes. Let them. People learn from mistakes.
3. “Freedom leads to sinful behavior.”
• Fascism already implies sinful behavior.
• If you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors of authority, it’s probably bad.
• All human beings are sinners– let the sinless among you cast the first stone.
• Most people generally lead themselves in the right direction. God is in that direction, whether people believe in Him or not.
4. “We will lose our profits.”
• Freedom to think and innovate leads to new, unplanned, unexpected and profitable development.
• The total amount of wealth in the economy will increase.
• In a country where neighbors are suspicious and constantly under threat, if your neighbor does well, he will not share. When people are tolerant of dissenting views and still form a free community, when one person does well, it creates opportunity for others.

I will update this page later with more.

Fear is used to control. If you are afraid of nature, and someone tells you God is in control of nature and doing these things, then would you tend to believe that the person saying that has some line to God, some special knowledge of His will that the rest of us do not possess?

What if that person were in on the game, that the event was engineered?

Suggesting such an idea falls into the standard definition of “paranoia,” to be sure, especially given a lack of evidence. It’s a big what-if, and if they’re manipulating our fears of God and nature, then fear of people who would do that could also be used to manipulate, just another layer of the onion, and each one making us cry.

Japan — punished for godlessness and sin, as certain commentators suggest? If there is some force of will behind the Godzilla tsunami, with an intention of punishment, is it not more likely that the will is of human origin, and that Japan is being punished for turning against its former allies, the Nazis? If there is a force of will behind the event, isn’t that a more reasonable explanation?

It may be there is no force of will behind the act, that this is merely the horrendous force of our natural world. It takes a lot of energy to sustain life on this planet. That energy cannot remain static. Such is the nature of existence: life is not safe.

However, if there is a will behind it, don’t let people with political and monetary interests convince you that they know what that will is, or that it is just. Nuking a fault line could easily start an earthquake. Wait, isn’t that the plot of the 1978 Superman movie? Well, it sure is. Maybe someone was trying to tell us something.

“But of that day and hour no one has knowledge, not even the angels in heaven, or the Son, but the Father only.” -Matthew 24:36

This passage in Jesus’ prophetic statements of the end of the age are often ignored– most often by the power-brokers of symbol and information in our modern media. We really don’t know the mind of God. None of us know the schedule for God’s plans, or whether these acts are God’s direct will, or just natural events.

However, we do know the mind of man, pretty well. Thus, people with minds open to the possibilities of God’s infinite universe must ask difficult and disturbing questions. If we allow our minds to run down a single track, others will lay that track into a brick wall, and we will crash headlong into it.

We must be extremely wary of anyone who says they know that hour of Judgment day, who says they know it will come this May or next year in 2012, because of the Mayan calendar, Terrence McKenna, blah blah blah. There may be catastrophic events, but anyone telling you that they know God caused these things, or that they are fate, or karma, or random coincidence, is not looking at the big picture. Or, they know the big picture, but they want to manipulate you.

We’d like to believe World War II is over. However, it’s not. We’d like to believe the Communists and Islamists are the last attackers of freedom. However, they’re not.

I cannot call to join the fray. War is hell. That is exactly what this alien mentality wants, to create more and more conflict until the world decays into chaos, because the Nazis believe a “superman” will arise from the ashes of that death and destruction, and then they can claim that they are like God. They create events and perceptions that make us think God is acting, when in fact it is them, then they believe this disproves the existence of God, but that is a false argument.

The solution is not more violence in the world. Even a suppression of violence, such as a no-fly zone in Libya, will only be a stop-gap, not a solution. The solution to the human condition will only come when all humanity opens our hearts to change. That is not something that people can achieve through manipulation, financial incentives, political control, or force.

War will not create a superman or force the evolution of humanity in the way the war-makers intend. If we do change, it will not be in the direction of “survival of the fittest,” that archaic, immature and limited interpretation of the complexity of life. If war has any effect, it will be to make humanity so tired of war that we stop waging war, and become peaceful, simply because we wake up and realize it would be better that way. It will not be a conquest of a “will to power.” That direction is certain doom for all.

We must not be afraid to look for the enemy within the gates. We must not fall prey to the one-track mind of political propaganda. We are smarter than that. We are better than that. We are Americans, we recognize lies when we see them, and we have something in our hearts, freedom, that the rest of the world either desires to realize for themselves, or envies and wants to destroy out of pure spite.

So spake the false dissembler unperceiv’d;
For neither Man nor Angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heav’n and Earth:
And oft though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom’s Gate, and to simplicity
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems: Which now for once beguil’d
Uriel, though Regent of the Sun, and held
The sharpest-sighted Spirit of all in Heav’n….”
- Paradise Lost III.681

Qaddafi seeks to prove that he can be a bully. Well, that is not hard to do. If he sought to prove that he can be a wise, kind leader who cares about his people, the situation would be much different. He has also proved that his claims about the West’s interference in Libya’s affairs are lies. Europe and the U.S. did not orchestrate the Libyan revolution, nor do we have any desire for his oil, which we believe will have little value in the future, because of our innovation in bio-fuel, renewable and nuclear energy. The Libyan people came together to confront him, because he is unfair and cruel.

Qaddafi’s paranoid rants against the west may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The leaders of Europe and Africa, and even the dictators and oligarchs of the Arab states, may recognize that he is dangerously insane, and, like Saddam Hussein, his extreme policies and repression of his own people constitute an inherent danger to their own countries, because he is so deceitful and so unpredictable.

Another fact that many other Arab leaders are beginning to realize, that caring about their people and allowing them freedom does not endanger their power, it protects it. The leaders who are big enough to allow dissent and freedom will profit and retire as happy old men loved by their people. The ones who do not, will cause wars and needless suffering, and will be remembered not for their good deeds, but for their infamy and evil.

People need to be free, and they need to be able to come together to resolve their problems on their own, without direction from authority, in a stable system that lets them change the laws they live by with measured reason which protects all dissenting voices. That is the nature of information. Democracy is the only such system. It is not perfect, but it is better than the alternatives.

Such is the nature of information. It multiplies, it grows organically, and it becomes something in our minds that cannot be fully comprehended. When the mind is fully active, the Word takes on a life of its own. No one can explain how the Word and the spirit act in our lives, but they do.

Something that may come of the events in Libya: the Libyan people will recognize that they are on Qaddafi’s cross. Dictators who use force on their people to crush dissent are mentally damaged. They know not what they do. I pray for the Libyans, but I also pray for Qaddafi, that God may be merciful to him, though he has not shown mercy for his people.

The Libyan people may recognize that war is not enough, that war in and of itself only creates more suffering. They must have their own revolution, in their own minds, against the old ideas of violence and hate that no longer work for them. When that revolution happens in peoples’ minds on a massive scale, then no dictator can stand in the way of a happy future.

In Wisconsin: people are not slaves. Everyone has a right to walk off the job. I hope the government workers will not walk off the job even if they don’t get everything they want, but it’s their choice to freely associate in a union, as it is each individual’s choice to work or not work at any particular job. If they all decide to stay home together, they are still choosing that freely for themselves.

This is why both Nazis and Communists hate labor unions. Ronald Reagan was a progressive liberal and a union boss, in case anyone forgot. He argued for measured reason, sure, but a political liberal nonetheless. We often forget that we lead a charmed life.

Would it not give aid and comfort to our government’s enemies to shut down the government, one way or another? If the communists succeed in “controlling” labor to shut down the government by popular walkout, the USA is weakened. If the fascists succeed in shutting down the government by refusing to agree on a budget, the USA is weakened. (They try to while ignoring the elephant in the room, Defense, which is bankrupting us like Reagan bankrupted the Soviets.)

Either way, the American people lose. Divide and conquer? Or, are you smarter than all of that crap that we’re supposed to believe about the “official” debate? What nonsense.

The leap to democracy and freedom for a nation does not have to be bloody. It does not have to hurt at all. People simply acknowledge that it’s time to move forward, and begin conducting their own affairs, organizing their own procedures, with open debate and a codified law that can be changed. Then the People work out our own equilibrium, regardless of our beliefs on metaphysics or God. There is no reason to fight.

God doesn’t want us to fight. God wants us to get on with glorifying Him by seeding creation into the darkness of outer space. God wants us to write the book of life, not the book of death.

A fascist state like Gaddafi’s Libya tries to say that those who question his wisdom as a human being are guilty of a crime worth death. Are you smart enough to see through his lie? He does not think so.

A war crime is an act of violence against those who have done no wrong. The protestors in Libya, Bahrain, Iran and China are not under the direction of the United States. Expressing the opinion that these rights are unalienable to human beings everywhere does not mean the United States interferes in the affairs of other countries. We’ve all got a right to have an opinion. What we do with that is what counts. What we do determines the future.

Looters? A looting mob can be difficult to control. Asserting control with force over a looting, violent mob is an assertion of the people’s right to live together in civil safety, but if that is the reason a dictator says he’s fighting, he’s clearly lying. The mass of fellow citizens in any country will naturally set up neighborhood watches if they need to do so, and most people live in peace with each other because it’s in our best interest and in our nature. Suppressing a violent mob is an assertion of principle. To be justified in suppressing a violent mob, the civil defense organizations must operate mostly on principle, not authority. Strict adherence to authority over principles results in a state that ignores principles.

When people come out of their doors peacefully, together, simply to express their best principles for how they want to run their common government, and organize themselves to do so freely, the result is generally pretty good. “Free” has to include all people, else instead of tyranny of a minority, the result is tyranny of a majority, where the minority or majority enforce their wills without regard to the will of the people they oppress.

When people come out of their doors peacefully, together, to express themselves peacefully, and others use weapons to kill them because they do not agree on principle, the oppressors are the real mob. When a vast majority of people demonstrate that they demand change and accountability in government, freedom and security, no more oppression, no more tricks, no more torture, no more devilry nor lies, I for one think, well, that all seems right, so why are people dying? “Rivers of blood,” Mr. Gaddafi? In scripture, God turned the Nile to blood, transmitting His power directly through Moses in a mystical, mystifying way. Mr. Gaddafi has death machines and some mindless slaves to his authority, so he thinks he is like Moses? I think not.

Democracy only functions when people lead themselves. All across the world, the sea is changing. People are waking up to the fact that people who declare themselves “leaders” of men reveal themselves in that act to be corrupt. The corrupt dictators imprison people whom they perceive to have authority over protestors, which only proves that they do not understand what is happening. “Leadership” in the sense promoted in non-democracies is a lie– they only mean the leadership of force and fear.

Leadership in a democracy comes from the hearts of each individual person leading themselves as best they can figure out. The leadership of democracy does not come from any authority, but the authority of free will over one’s own self, which is a gift bestowed directly by our creator without any interference from any other human being. The fascists can imprison every democratic “leader” with the courage to voice their own opinion until the walls of the jails burst open. If they shoot us, they will drown in our blood. There are too many people in the world, and cultures are too complex, to “lead” them with force and authority. It is impossible. The success of the future depends on people in the streets courageous enough to lead themselves, and on people in authority humble enough to get out of their way.

Democracy cannot be forced on anyone: people choose it for themselves, as they are choosing today all across the world. Democracy cannot be forced, but it is inevitable, because with knowledge, and freedom, all human hearts will lead themselves toward a brighter tomorrow.

Paranoid people all around the world should take note that the United States was not Egypt’s puppet master. Dictators are not servants of U.S. interests. The USA recognizes the supreme right of the people to march in the streets and form a free state where they live, with integrity and to the benefit of all.

Prussia, Italy and the nations which formed late, which had been loose federations of economic interests and feudal city-states, were concerned about Taft’s arbitration agreements with Britain and France in the “league to enforce peace.” They saw the idea of a Pax Americana much like that of the Pax Romana, a false peace of the Roman Empire enforced with the sword and the cross. (“You cry ‘peace, peace,’ but there is no peace.”) I do not think that was the intent of the States, but certainly it must have looked to some like America and France had bowed to the British Monarchy.

The Germans sped Lenin on his way to Russia to start a “proletariat revolution” and then to poison the logic so that lies, oppression, control and torture became the new “opiate of the masses.” Since British at the time claimed colonial authority over India, and exploited Hindu and other religions to turn the Indians against the Muslims on the frontier, the Prussian-Italian cabal made friends with the enemy of their enemy. Later, Nazi spy Klaus Fuchs gave the atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets, spurring on the cold war. This extremist terrorism group possibly started the Vietnam war by hacking the ship radar systems in the Gulf of Tonkin just days after the Vietnamese gave them an excuse by testing the waters with a skirmish, which Hanoi saw as a limited strategy to determine the strength of our response.

In the late 1990′s, there was anonymous propaganda on fringe Internet lists about rumors from “sources in the intelligence community” pointing toward an impending attack on U.S. soil, which would be an inside job used as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. This was crap, planted ahead of time to get us to distrust our own leaders and democratic process. GWB knew he was being provoked into the same economic strategy that ruined the Soviets in Afghanistan, but they decided to go anyway, to spring the trap, to protect Russia’s infant democracy and keep control of the situation, and brokered a deal with China to finance the operation.

Today, some of the same people are going on about 2012. So maybe Wikileaks should get the Nobel Peace Prize, for alerting us that al-Qaeda may already have a nuclear bomb. But we know that the former Nazi industrialists propped up many of the brutal dictatorships of post-Israel Africa and the east, manipulating people with their religion and a culture of fear and betrayal. So, we can assume that al-Qaeda and the Nazis go way back… it’s their style. I bet they are using advanced “hashishim” drugs to hypnotize suicide bombers and religious cult members with feelings of euphoria, superiority and divine impunity for their terrible crimes against God and humanity.

We know they’ve got some evil plan in store, and we know that we should remain calm and rational, figure things out as they actually are to the best of our ability, and act in the most loving way we can to respond with grace. One thing we must do is keep an open mind to ideas and experiences that sound “strange.” For instance, have you ever met someone who says they experienced being abducted by aliens? Maybe they were just drugged and raped by really nasty people with really nasty drugs. Would you shut that person out of your life, pushing them out onto the street, just because your own mind and experience is too limited to understand it? Or, because you are afraid? We must find the courage to conquer fear and love one another, or we will perish.

They reacted with insane fear and violent anarchy to the idea of a “Pax Americana,” and set in motion bizarre plans steeped in lies and symbolic propaganda in an attempt to provoke free people to destroy themselves and invalidate democracy, paving the way to global dictatorship. However, the entire hatred of Taft’s plan, and hatred of the ensuing attempts of Wilson and Roosevelt to form the League of Nations and the United Nations, is based on a misconception. Federalized democracy born in the United States is not at all the same as Roman democracy, because we recognize the fact that people anywhere can march in the streets demand accountable, functional and public representation in their government. The Roman Senate wanted to rule the world as much as Caesar did; they refused to represent the interests of the lands they conquered and wanted to run everything from Rome, so it fell apart. Global dictatorship simply would never function. It would take an ocean of blood to sail there, and would quickly wither and die. Every student of history sees that pattern in every culture.

Modern democracy is not like ancient Greek democracy, either, because to continue to function, it must allow for freedom of speech, religion, association, and personal choices inasmuch as those choices do not hurt others or the commonwealth. If the people who march and form a new government do not voluntarily restrict their power to dictate peoples’ lives, and agree to routinely give up authority, it will turn into yet another oligarchy or dictatorship, and that group’s interests will split from the peoples’ interests just like it did before. I pray the Egyptians are smart enough to see that.

A free state is the only solution. Does that mean it is vulnerable to destruction from within and without? Yes. Does that mean that people will always try to destroy it, for all time, and thus democracy is doomed? Absolutely not. We are still here, and the world is still here. They could blow up Yellowstone, destroying half the USA, and we would still be here, and we would still play rock and roll and march in the streets and fight for freedom, because that is our style. One day, all people will be free, and we will rejoice.

In the current conflicts with the Islamo-fascist pseudo-republics of the east, journalists in the west often point the finger at corrupt officials who take bribes, but corruption is not unique to muslims, communists, capitalists, anarchists or anyone. It’s human nature. As they say, love of money is the root of all evil. Not money itself per se, but the love of it, love of an invented abstraction of power, rather than being decent and good to others as an end in itself for the betterment of self and all at the same time.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Italian people will have to decide whether they want to give a free pass to their prime minister for having sex with under-age girls. Will they accept a world of lax moral standards for their leaders, where abuse of money and power set an example that those without make up for with violence?

I don’t doubt Mr. Berlusconi ought to be forgiven, though it’s not apparent he repents for his chosen lifestyle as a modern conqueror. Forgiveness does not mean that his actions should have no consequences– if a jury finds him guilty, then he ought to have consequences in proportion to his specific crime, which might not be judged that harshly, since the girl in question was almost an adult, had completed most of her education and was mostly capable of making her own decisions.

So should Mohammed be forgiven for succumbing to sin with a nine year old girl whom he married by force under a pretense of piety at the age of six… by our standards, and by any standard of human decency, a more severe crime against a child whom God entrusted to her parents to protect her until she grew up. It’s difficult to tell the difference between a 17 and an 18 year old girl, and it may be the girl’s madame covered up the truth, maybe to get leverage over Mr. Berlusconi. If he hadn’t been partying with prostitutes, he never would have had this problem. But it is difficult to know how one could have illusions about a nine-year-old girl, or how someone’s mind could get turned inside-out to bow to that person with the worship of an armed cult, as they did once to emperors in Rome. Yet all is not lost. There is hope in freedom and the Word.

Forgiveness is difficult sometimes, but it is what the world needs. However, forgiveness does not mean justifying sin. If people decide to glorify sin, then they will reap the offspring of sin, which is death. That is not a threat, or even a moral judgment of anti-social behavior, it is simply a fact of human history, in every culture and every religion.

The healthcare reform laws that the GOP wants to repeal this Wednesday are not socialist. They are wise and nice. They save money, but accomplish the same humanitarian obligations of the current system and common decency to treat people in need. They do not dictate your choices to buy insurance, they do not force you into a transaction with a private company, they do not centralize responsibility, in fact, they devolve responsibility, federating it to states and the people. The law does not even mandate that you buy insurance, it only gives tax incentives to do so. To solve the problem, we must face it as a nation, as states, as counties and towns, and as individuals. Repealing the attempt to solve the problem will not make the problem go away.

Most people will go to the doctor when they get sick or injured because that seems like the best thing to do. Should individuals be allowed to opt out of insurance coverage on religious grounds, because they choose not to go to the doctor? Knowing yourself, if you broke your leg, would you possibly change your mind and ask a practiced physician to set it well? “Don’t put God to the test.” It would seem God has other priorities than our physical well-being a lot of the time. You, on the other hand, are a human being, mortal, not subject to death in the grand scheme of things perhaps, but since we value life, we want to do our best to take care of each other and ourselves. The Affordable Health Care act does not require you to buy insurance, but you should.

You are still free to join a 501(c)(15) non-profit healthcare insurance union, a mutual insurance company in which you can participate democratically to set the rules. There is room in the market for a number of these organizations with different sets of self-selected rules that satisfy the basic requirements. In a free market competition, it’s hard to see how profit-driven private corporations can compete with non-profit cooperative unions.

The reform laws encourage us to take personal responsibility for our own health. States, counties and cities are still free to provide their own healthcare systems to satisfy coverage responsibility, at whatever level of organization they deem appropriate, or none. A county health system in California gets money from the state fund allotted by patient load, and runs this locally in whatever manner seems most efficient and equitable for the local region, such as sliding scale payments. That doesn’t seem socialist– it’s responsibility at the local level.

Citizens are still free to participate in another solution as they choose, and can still choose to cover their asses through a private corporation, or out of pocket. If that is what the free market works out as the most efficient way to cover our community costs, which we have always had to cover somehow, then those choices will become more popular. Overall it balances out the costs as efficiently as people can figure out how to do so given their local spheres of responsibility. That doesn’t sound like socialism to me. It sounds like encouraging personal responsibility so individuals don’t burden the commonwealth.

There’s another possible contractual solution that can be freely chosen by individuals under the reform law– non-profit no-fee mutual insurance. Besides a minor monthly fee to cover administrative costs for IT, investigators and attorneys, there would be no risk charge assessed to the member. Instead, actual costs would be split evenly and billed directly to the members dynamically as they occur. Members would be contracted for a longer period of time to ameliorate dropouts. The web site would organize members to take care of each other, requiring them to visit each other, matching the fittest with the unwell to encourage them to exercise, eat right and adopt healthy habits. Nothing forced, just friendly visits from fellow members. Members have every incentive to make it work for each other however they personally determine that one on one, and by and large they will figure it out, because it’s in their self-interest to try. This also does not sound like socialism. It sounds like the most competitive solution to an economic problem.

The no-fee common contract could also make a much better system of hospice care, requiring members to make hospital visits personally to other members instead of paying away that responsibility. Life hurts. It hurts less when we are there for each other. I think this kind of contract would be the most competitive. I think that’s what the insurance corporations are really scared of, that they will be out-competed by people joining together to solve their healthcare problems without a profit motive.

The insurance corporations are the “death panels” to worry about. The health care reform laws put power back into your hands and save money by giving responsibility back to the people where it belongs. The corporations are against it because they realize that their scam is transparent, that the people are realizing they are not beholden to them, because they are free market consumers and can take care of their own responsibilities.

Instead the Republicans have become as twisted as Nazis or Bolsheviks in their application of propaganda to confuse everything about the issue. They get the people angry and trick the people into shooting themselves in the foot. Then you have to go pay them a bundle more to see the doctor for the bullet wound in your foot, and they laugh all the way to the bank.

However, once the people organize form a government to protect them from bears, other hostile people, etc., the Constitution says that the right is needed in the context of such a government in order to form a “well-regulated militia” to provide security for a free state.

“Militia” does not mean anti-government independent militia. As the founders intended the term, “militia” includes local and state police, federal armed agencies, and all armed forces, where ever they go. (Then land and sea, now also air and outer space.)

So in a free state, not a state of nature, the right is hinged on participation in the “well regulated militia.” This has several implications that no party currently in Congress takes seriously:

1. We do not live in a state of nature, but in a free state of common government in which all are free to speak and participate, so the primary reason to bear arms is for participation in the “well-regulated militia.”
2. Since all the People are the free state, picking up a gun to defend from any threat to self is the same as defending the free state from a threat, be it from nature or people.
3. Picking up a gun means you are in the militia: your gun is your draft card. This is the reality the founders lived through.
4. The right can and should be regulated, and regulated “well,” by the government of a free state.
5. Congress and the States can deny the right to individuals whom the people judge might threaten the security of the free state, even without 100% definite surety of the threat, provided the militia will try its darndest to protect the people equitably if war strikes at home.
6. The right of the people to bear arms is not infringed by denying the right to specific individuals based on reasonable and equitable criteria that show they are a threat to the security of the people and our free state.
7. All gun owners are obliged to participate in the “well regulated militia” when called to duty.
8. All people who do not own guns are not obliged to participate in the militia, unless the Congress should declare war and the primary pool of gun-owning militia draftees be exhausted.
9. Whether it was justified by circumstances or not, public conscription for the Vietnam war was illegal. Gun owners should have been selected first.
10. The founders intended that all military should be comprised of citizens, with no special rights or privileges and no exemption from the common law, not an elite soldiery class who would be tempted to extort privileges of nobility.
11. Equality under the law was later enumerated as one of the core principles of the constitution. Separate military courts not subject to the Supreme Court are illegal, because military personnel are equal citizens.

Gun ownership conscription would balance the military’s divergence from society, and they could still have different rules and procedures, and secrecy where necessary, because they would be a jury of peers, of common citizens, not people who believe their lives are more valuable than anyone else’s, like England’s nobility did in 1776.

Since you are an equal part of the free state, picking up a gun to defend from a threat to self is equivalent to defending the state or any other citizen. Therefore, if you choose to pick up a gun, you’re in the militia.

Since all gun owners are the militia, all gun owners should be subject to draft. This doesn’t necessarily mean the military though. We can celebrate our freedom to make responsible individual choices as citizens of the USA, by enabling each gun owner to make a choice of what “well regulated militia” they want to be drafted for, be that local or state police, federal law enforcement or military service. The regulation could even include draft for un-armed agencies like fire defense services. My money would be on the U.S. Marshals getting the biggest self-selecting draft pool of citizens. Then Congress knows where to put money where the People believe our common efforts are well spent.

The founders entwined the right to bear arms with the security in a free state provided by a “well regulated militia” because they saw the effects first-hand of not sharing structured power with the common citizenry– an elite, callous privileged class in Britain who placed no value on human life of their victims or their own soldiers. Due only to disproportionate wealth and power, they lost sight of their humanity and worshiped themselves and their supposed divine order. They profaned the name of God to justify such a vicious and arbitrary state. They lost sight of reason.

We risk the same in America now with our “professional” military service, which creates a mind-set in its service members that is incompatible with the life of conscience and equality needed for successful civic life in a free state. Over time, this results in a cultural desire in entrenched hierarchical authority structures to simplify society by eliminating the “chaos” of freedom. Most individual soldiers inculcated by the military system with that idea do not even realize how it affects their outlook and how dangerous that idea is for society. The founders wanted men on the battlefield, thinking, caring men, fathers of children, human beings: not remorseless Terminator robots who kill innocent people with impunity. Those were the British Redcoats and their Hessian mercenaries– those were the bad guys. Our forces were not supposed to end up resembling our enemy, because we’re free people, and we’re better than that.

It is only through freedom that the diverse wealth of creativity and acumen emerges which makes America great. Without it, we, and perhaps the world, would perish. If individual citizens believe that owning a gun is necessary to defend freedom, then they must participate in the defense of that freedom in a well regulated militia. That is the law.

I think there is a role for the Democratic party in “regulating the militia,” as the 2nd amendment clearly gives Congress the right to do. I wonder where the gun-totin’ freedom-lovin’ Arizonans were during the crisis, and if that would have helped them restrain this guy any more than what the brave people did who tackled him. I re-iterate that all gun owners should be required to take firearm safety classes and register for a draft pool with their choice of local or state police or civil services, federal agencies or military services, to satisfy the 2nd amendment mandate for a “well regulated militia.”

I am concerned about the Tea Party symbolism and rhetoric. So-called “conservatives” rile people up and stoke their anger, and of course some whackos are going to blow it all out of proportion. I think that they know full well that will happen, then they get on the radio with a bunch of double-talk saying how much they deplore the man who took the symbolism of revolution literally.

They forget that the actual Boston Tea Party was an act of civil disobedience and was intended to be peaceful protest against the economic domination of the British Crown and to an outlandish ploy to sell America short that resulted only in the destruction of some property. It was a symbolic act of non-violent liberalism. As usual, people who claim to be better than others and have some legend, claim or excuse for the application of absolute power reacted like spoiled brats and threw a temper tantrum and started sending in armed troops. That was exactly what the Honorable Representative Giffords was NOT doing– she was just a good American doing her job to the best of her ability as an equal among the people.

I am also concerned about the backlash of conformity against people who dissent from mainstream opinion, like myself. Like the shooter, I’ve read the Communist Manifesto, and Ayn Rand. (Uhh, I studied philosophy, so, uhh, I read words and stuff.) I am a nutter with a hothead brain and few people take this political opinion stuff seriously, as far as I can tell, even though it is right and consistent with the actual words of the Constitution. I believe in “crazy” things like angels. People have accused me of being “crazy” because they are inconvenienced and/or scared by my opinions or my art. That is why I like Jesus so much. All he ever did was speak his heart and express the love of God that was in him… and because society thought he was “weird” and his opinions too far outside the imagination of the authorities of the day, they killed him for it. Well I never hurt anyone and I’m trying my best to be a good person and speak from the heart, so anyone who suggests I’m “unstable” can shove it.

It’s time for discontent America to wake up to the fact that they will reap what they sow with the rancor and disunity of the “Tea Party,” and that our situation in America is not hopeless– we can’t give into the urge for a “quick fix” with some kind of revolution or worship of fascist ideals, like electing the right person and giving them all the power will make everything work perfectly. It won’t. A revolution would be bloody awful and we would be far worse off and every sane person knows that. The ballot is the American revolution. We’ve got to keep that revolution going and stick with the results, even if the people who win aren’t perfect like we hoped for. We’re all in this endeavor together– as equals.

Rest in peace John Roll, Gabe Zimmerman, Christina Taylor Green, Dorothy Murray, Dorwin Stoddard, Phyllis Scheck.

It seems unbelievable that Christina Green was born on 9/11/2001 and represented Maryland in a picture of babies born that day. Is that what’s needed to get America to realize that we should “pull the plank out of our own eye before we help our neighbor with the splinter in his.”

That leap may be explained or justified in many ways, involving spiritual or theistic precepts, or none, but is a necessary component of any person’s ethics.

Ethics are necessary for the continuation of life on earth. Why? This is not certain. Many argue from faith. Others do not. However, it appears to be true in recorded experience of every society. Those societies who have a sense of equitable justice and personal ethics thrive, and those who do not, fall apart. Nuclear weapons force us to examine our own faults and to take steps to ensure other people behave ethically, because society teeters on the edge of fire. It isn’t easy. It takes a lot of work, some of which involves emotionally painful self-examination. That, however, is preferable, to a world ruled by force, which would self-destruct.

Ethics are necessary, and require some form of equitable valuation of human life. No scientific or rational criteria can determine when “life” begins in a fetus, other than to say it begins at conception, at the moment the genetic material is in the same cell and meiosis begins. That is the beginning of the new organism. That organism is not the same organism as its mother. That is the scientific definition of the beginning of the life of a multi-cellular organism that reproduces by meiosis. Even the clones of a jellyfish hydra are all offspring of a litter of sorts, they just have an additional, interesting process. As a cross-product of having different DNA and separation by physical space, it has the same definition. There are various stages of embryonic development in humans, but as a whole, there is no definition but being a separate creature with unique DNA. For example, two twin term prenatal babies would be taken as two distinct deaths in the adjudication of a drunk driving accident. There is no scientific criteria which the law can apply to say that a fetus of an earlier stage would not count as a death in a drunk driving accident.

Neither can ethics justify a state empowered to invade the details of personal relationships; it would become pernicious and arbitrary. That was the decision of Roe v. Wade. I wish people would teach the law for what it is, instead of dividing students into camps to exploit the law (and the unborn) for the political donation and public office gravy train. It would go a long way to eliminating abortion, and at the same time empowering women to care for themselves and their children, to teach the full thinking of the law instead of exploiting women in difficult situations for their assessed value as voters and vote-getters.

Made legal for indirect reasons, not by direct principle, some people then step in to fill the “power vacuum” promoting abortion as a moral solution to the inconvenience of life’s consequences for sex, the time-consuming social obligations to feed, clothe and care for one’s own children. The people promoting abortion believe in no principled basis for law based in equality, but only in brute force, be that by a mother over her unborn child or by a state over the people. They believe in no vibrancy for civilization in its myriad forms, but only mute obedience to authoritarian hierarchy, and blind action in every which way that it does not bind, which is as much assent to the fascist state of mind by complacency and failure to live a principled life.

That state of mind will lead to ruin. The devaluation of the other necessary to choose abortion is the same devaluation of humanity inherent to a fascist state empowered to prevent people from making their own reproductive and medical choices. You go down the same road either way the second you allow in your mind the idea there might be some way to justify abortion, that there could be any justified disagreement by any sane person.

It’s in our human nature to convince ourselves when under pressure that the ends justify the means, that we can go ahead and do whatever it is we are tempted to do, if we can get away with it and not suffer immediate consequences from other people. We are tempted to allow those impulses to overwhelm our sense of what is in our best interest down the road. That’s what happens with life in the first place, in any situation where abortion might be considered as an option. However, giving into the same temptation with the violent power of death over another human being is an infinitely worse violation of any sense of ethics than creating that life.

Yet, freedom is the working answer that seems to allow the world to go on, and thank God that includes the freedom to learn why abortion is wrong by any ethical theory involving deities or not. It can be difficult to accept. If you got an abortion, and now you wonder if you can keep your mind together with the idea that it was morally equivalent to murder, even though it was legal, ask yourself if you can forgive yourself because you were deceived. God seems inclined to forgive a lot when you turn toward the light, if you’re worried about that, and if you’re not, don’t be afraid to see things in different ways. Don’t be afraid to work in a positive way to make life the better choice for other women finding themselves in a similar situation.

Some news sources that keep this in your face with blinky lights and adrenaline-raising rabble rousing demand you be constantly on the edge of your seat, terrified that someone is there just around the corner waiting to get you.

While it’s always prudent to be cautious out in the world, and there are people out there who have lost sight of their humility before God and time, history and the future, lost sight of that big picture view that we all can develop, being constantly on edge is not a good way to protect one’s self.

What other possible conclusions can we take from the TSA sneakthroughs? Well, there hasn’t been a terrorist attack for a while, so we might think,

• People in other departments of DHS and other agencies are doing their jobs.
• Trotsky was wrong; terrorism does not work.

But mostly,

• There actually are not that many people out there who are out to get us.

When GWB consolidated the various agencies into the Department of Homeland Security, I was really impressed. One mission, one process, one ledger, and one purpose– a principled abstraction of the functions of each of the departments, and hopefully a way to save money.

If I’m impatient in lines, like at the airport, I think it helps to recognize that all the people in the way, standing in line and screening, are doing the best job they possibly can for where they are at, and always try to thank them and be on my way. I got ticked at the post-man a few months ago for sending me every which way but done… not sure how to make it up to him. There really was no point in being angry– he was doing the best he could for the best intentions. That’s actually the way most people around the world are, if we have the courage to relax and see that for what it is. Even some people you might interpret as “bad apples” are doing the best they can for whatever troubles they have to deal with.

Encouraging one another and helping those in need is the best medicine for an angry society. Such is the case with health care. Many lines to stand in while awaiting uncertain doom. Then there are a crowd of “news sources” saying “Obamacare is fascist” and predicting a Stalinist gulag of doctors executing old ladies.

Does it force a profit-based transaction with a business? Does it force a transaction at all? One seems free to join a voluntary non-profit health care union that only collects dues based on subscriber risk factors, plus what had to be paid out in benefits, plus limited administrative overhead. As a subscriber I’d be free to participate democratically in the process defining those risk factors and payout amounts. It seems open whether it mandates personal health coverage in a corporate or cooperative transaction. You have to wonder why countries with free health care for everyone manage to restrain costs more efficiently and also treat a higher percentage of people.

Multitudes of non-profit health care unions… no corporations. Still legal. Responsible, but not fascist. Or state public health, if your state rocks. Still not fascist… or even republican. “Federalist” in the sense that it federates responsibility to the states and the people. Corporations are free to offer private products, though I don’t see how they can compete with unions in the sum game. Still not fascist there either. Ummm… can I go to the doctor now? Thank you California… I’ll try to make it up to you.

The point is, there are some people out there whose only goal seems to be to make the American people afraid so that we will stampede and do ourselves in. Ain’t gonna happen, because like the rest of the world, most people in America are actually doing the best that they can, irrespective of traits, religion, how much money they have, or what they believe. Which is to say, that terrorism is pointless.

What we ought to be asking, is how we can help and encourage Iraqis and people in all islamo-fascist countries make the transition to a free society. I don’t care what religion you are, or if you are atheist; murderous acts like this link are immoral. Regardless of what crimes or sins this elderly couple may have committed in their lives; they were killed for professing their faith, and that is wrong. Other peoples’ ideas, words and beliefs do not oppress you in any way. Disagreement is not an act of violence. Punishment of disagreement with violence cannot be justified by any ethical system, involving spiritual forces or not, because all justified ethical systems involve a transition from valuing self to valuing other that includes generalities by definition, and must be equitable to be self-consistent. Self-consistent ethics are necessary as a basis of law, else large-scale government and interdependent socio-cultural relationships break down, and the result is chaos and death.

There are some really bad apples out there, who have lost their souls to a mind-virus of hate, but everyone in the world will lose if the citizens of the USA persist in seeing them around every corner. Look for them around every corner, but don’t presuppose that they are there. Such is the nature of reality, that contempt before investigation creates contempt, and the second we delude ourselves into believing we can have it both ways by spinning the facts, our lives as well as all on earth will be in jeopardy. That is where we find ourselves, a nation inheriting a legacy of force, wondering if there is any way to regain peace in the world, to use the force responsibly or to abdicate power peacefully to a world of allies… to regain the kind of peace many people in the USA’s history have been privileged to experience. Until we assert our free wills in agreement to change the way we use media to interpret the word, we’ll find ourselves in never-ending conflict.

Instead of the Tea Party “gripe, moan and get angry” strategy, consider what you can do to encourage the world to a better situation for everyone. Perhaps you will find the courage to attend an Iraqi or other muslim social event open to the public, and go not with any ulterior motive, but just to be friendly. Thank God we have the opportunity to meet such interesting and (for the large part) well-meaning people! There are crazies everywhere, but most people actually want to get along. Not anything “official” for anyone but you and however you freely worship God, or don’t, but just to be a friendly American citizen who values helping others. It might be a shade better strategy, for what you’re able and free to do as a private citizen, than secret teams using robot airplanes to drop bombs on remote villages without accountability.

Together the world can see a way out of the predicament, see our way out of authoritarianism of any form, official or terrorist. It takes billions to tango, however, but do your best as a human being in the situation you find yourself, for whatever reasons you can find to do so, and we’ll probably be okay.

Direct divine intervention could save us, of course, by God and only God, not djinn, not angels, not aliens, not religious zealots, and not fascists. As far as people seem to be able to figure out without the pillar of fire and smoke literally leading their way, democracy that enables universal participation and promotes and protects individual liberty based on reason, not majority opinion, is more successful and less violent internally and with other democracies than any other form of government. A world of self-governed sovereign democracies seems on the whole more balanced than any choice of authorities that depend absolutely on the selflessness of official or dynastic leaders. Ain’t gonna happen without the Lord Jesus himself in the flesh. Don’t let any “guru” tell you otherwise as he leads you down the garden path to Hell. Atheists and Christians can agree, where they share common moral principles such as ethical valuation of others through some leap of faith or logic, that politicians lie, and that chances are, power corrupts; therefore we all bear the burden for our common welfare to see that official political power is shared and applied evenly, is open to participation, cannot be used to retaliate for personal agendas or to persecute criticism, satire or any free non-violent expression, and requires stricter adherence to law, not less. If people don’t do all of those difficult things for themselves (all around the world), peaceful life will fall apart for the vast majority of people who generally mind their own business and try to enjoy life the best they can. We can both agree that we had all better wake up, or what we enjoy here in the United States could drastically change for the worse.

The dictators and oligarchs of the non-democratic middle-eastern states keep the Palestinians perpetually nailed to a cross by supporting anyone who wants to violently attack Israel, and by oppressing Palestinians who do not. That way, the fascists always have the Israeli bogeyman to point to, in order to distract the people of their own countries from their own crimes and excesses as a class of privileged authoritarian leaders. And, by manipulating the Palestinian Islamic religious establishment to oppress everyone except those who vote for a backward, violent agenda, and diverting foreign aid intended for general education, they try to make democracy look like a failure.

The Palestinians should “rise up” — at the polls, to vote for people to run their government who will not attack their neighbors and who will refuse corruption by the authoritarian states of the middle east. That’s the only way they will be embraced by the rest of the world as equals. Seizing their democratic power is also the only way the Palestinians will be embraced by the fascists who support the Palestinian terror groups– once the majority of Palestinians realize they have been played and manipulated by fascist engineers of mass psychosis, the Palestinian people will understand that in order to hold onto peace, everyone in the world must embrace each other as we were created equal in the sight of the infinite. People may be different, but what are any of us compared to the grandeur of the universe around us? Until majorities of Palestinian non-citizens and Israeli citizens realize that, there can be no progress.

“If you love me you will obey my commands; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to be your advocate, who will be with you for ever– the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because the world neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he dwells with you and will be in you.” -John 14:15-17

If we claim to be sinless, we are self-deceived and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is just and may be trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us from every kind of wrongdoing. If we say we have committed no sin, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in us. – 1st John 1:8-10

End “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Our armed forces need the spirit of truth, perhaps more than in any other sphere of civic life in the United States. Men and women need to be able to count on each other telling the truth. Create an environment in which people are encouraged to lie, and they will. Lies encouraged about one aspect of their lives, such as their sex lives, will have an effect on every other, aspect, even in people who have “nothing to hide” in that regard, because the general policy is inconsistent. Then, the authority of command is useless, because from the get-go commanders know that their subordinates are lying and acting in secret, creating a culture of secrecy and mistrust. How can you trust someone whom you give an incentive to lie? You can’t. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy must end.

Supporting an end to DADT does not mean that you consider homosexuality to meet with God’s approval. The one has nothing to do with the other. Perhaps you think it is okay. Perhaps you do not. Either way, consider this– that the human mind is such that when it acts in secret, in isolation, especially when forced there by shame, it tends to become pathologically anti-social, to the point of endangering its owner and other people. How many people, priests or not, continue to molest children because they are too afraid and ashamed to confess their sins and get help for their compulsion? Driving people into secrecy and dishonesty is more likely to increase the power sin has over their actions.

In our military, at such a critical time, this is far more dangerous to us than the risks from homophobic and intolerant soldiers. Naysayers said the same thing about racially integrated ranks, that people could never work together. Well, when the shit hit the fan, America proved them wrong. We are brothers and sisters in liberty.

Asking someone to die for their country and lie about the desires of their nature is the real travesty. Letting people come out into the light of truth will have better results than not on the whole. It’s not a question of what impulses you may or may not have. It’s a question of what you do with them.

Think of broken families created as “cover” by gay men to protect their careers, who go out in secret and bring home HIV to their wives and children. (Anyone can fake it with Viagra.) Shoving such impulses down into the subconscious, which people must do in order to maintain the illusion of big lies, will only turn them into monsters.

Does that mean it’s okay for openly gay men to get a stiffie in the shower with the other guys? Absolutely not– such people are adolescent and need discipline and counseling. Does it mean gay men raping young male cadets is okay? Absolutely not, and I submit that if such instances occurred and were prosecuted as crimes as they should be, they would be forced into pursuing justice for all the heterosexual rapes of female cadets that go unprosecuted and unpunished.

However, if you drive peoples’ natural sexual impulses into secrecy and shame by fear, their sexual identities will remain in that state of adolescence, never maturing into responsible adults who can conceive of those impulses as more than just animal pleasure, and as belonging to them, rather than being the monster in the closet that comes out in confusing, angry ways. That leads to a secret double-life, which is not something we want to encourage in the people we entrust with our public safety.

It’s a bad idea to give heavy weapons and a license to kill to adolescents whom we encourage to lie to us, their commanders, each other and themselves. Forcing gay people with shame to fragment their minds into darkness is the complete opposite of the light of truth. Accepting our whole being, flawed as it is, we can turn to approach truth– and we are all flawed, in ways we are not always aware of.

What if we didn’t know what forgiveness is? What if we had never seen an example? Would there be any gay people? All gay people? Would there be any people at all? What is it they’re supposed to be fighting for, if the United States are the good guys?

If you morally disapprove of being gay, ask yourself, can you forgive, especially someone who puts themselves in great danger to fight for your right to pursue your personal, individual dreams as you see fit?

With the DREAM act, it’s not difficult to know what the ulterior motive– and any group of people who think they’re in charge always have an ulterior motive. They intend to drive young, impoverished, angry, disinterested or not-so-smart minority children into military service.

We don’t punish children for the decisions of their parents to break the law, but children have to live with their parents’ decisions insofar as they are not harmed. Would they be harmed by sending them home with their parents to their countries of origin? Other sovereign countries in the world are free to turn away immigrants. Refugees facing immanent harm are generally taken in, and most countries entreat each other to do so. For everyone else, who wouldn’t suffer any grave harm if deported, if it weren’t in the United States’ interest economically to grant asylum, we wouldn’t consider it. The United States is our democracy; the country belongs to the citizens, not to the world, though neither belongs to our leaders, which is why immigrants still flock to Lady Liberty’s beacon. The young people given a break in the DREAM act would seem to have developed their voices and talents to contribute, so why not let them participate?

However, it may be unconstitutional, in the sense of human liberty expressed as principles in our laws, to require a minor brought here in disregard to their will to choose between passing an entrance exam or conscription. For the same reason, literacy or economic status are not conditions for voting. There’s no poll test or poll tax to set off the balance of what the People, all of them as equals, wish to enact.

I don’t see how an act can fairly define a class of minors who are entitled to citizenship and a class who are not, especially when the end result is to encourage less scholastic young ethnic minorities to join the military, at a time when they’re forced to do so or give up the life they managed to make for themselves.

If the immigration reform act grants amnesty, it must grant amnesty equally, to those who choose not to pursue higher education, without requiring military service. If a young person brought here by parents can keep a job and pay their way without pursuing a higher education degree, they should be allowed to choose that path for themselves.

Suppose an enterprising high-schooler turns a food cart business into a successful restaurant franchise– should the minor give up on the business because they have to choose between college or the military?

Suppose a hard-working high-schooler happens to be really, really good at turning a lathe, has a steady job, and needs to support his sick grandma? Forced to quit and join the Navy?

Is a third-grader supposed to decide whether to go to state college or join the Marines?

Military service may be an avenue for citizenship, but God forbid it becomes the only way to attain the American dream– through a state-endorsed path of debt-service or blood-service rather than as the fruit of one’s own free choices. It seems like the Constitution demands more from the Congress– a higher standard of thought to ensure the equal application of justice.

On the subject of resurrection, angels, and such, why not? There is a lot of energy in the universe. If God moves through hidden dimensions beyond the Planck limits to exercise direct power in those limited circumstances when He has been observed by those he allows to observe him, what of it? Uncertainty may apply to macro scales in ways we don’t yet have the capacity to comprehend. If a quasar beyond the light horizon is extinguished, would it ever have any effect through “normal” spacetime on our world? No. But, it might have just brought someone’s pattern back from the dead in a restored and perfected form that can move through those hidden dimensions as well. Considering how alien the conclusions of quantum physics are to our minds as they are trained on everyday observations of our physical world, is it really scientific to shut out the possibilities of a much more magnificent existence than what some people and forces would lead us to believe?

Both scientific and religious people should remember humility. The real world is always one step beyond logic. Science routinely undergoes upheavals in which the models of the day, though they have matched observations for a while, are suddenly turned on their heads, and a new understanding must be attained to make sense of it all. Even for we who are open-minded enough to look at the world through all lenses we can find which yield a clear picture, we must remember that those are only pictures, and not the substance of the existence we observe… whatever that may actually be, and we probably can never contain it with our understanding. In faith, we have only a few hints to go on, scriptures from the prophets and the sayings of our Lord. Even instances of direct revelatory experience leave us wondering, “what was that?” Retaining the humility of that wonder is of vital importance.

If you’re looking for proof of God’s existence, you’ll have to ask God for that proof. But in order to ask God for anything, you must believe. Chickens and eggs– a “bootstrap” problem of belief. That’s why they call it a “leap of faith.” Give those bootstraps a tug… but don’t panic if you find yourself flying.

One interesting thing about the video of the incident is that the CIA officers expressed remorse as the events unfolded for what they were doing, as they did it. Yet, the CIA program had operated in violation of their own procedures “from the first shootdown” according to the report, and continued to do so for years afterward. So, you see a situation in which the consciences of these men are active, they even acknowledge they are making a mistake in violation of their own rules, and they feel bad about it. Yet, the incident still occurred. They still gave the green light, as if they were not in control of their own actions.

This illustrates all too well the problem inherent to hierarchical systems of authority and power among human beings. The people entrusted to wield violence on behalf of the state and the citizens are apparently powerless even over their own actions. This is not just because these particular people suffered no consequences and were protected from investigation or punishment; it is a deeper, psychological and metaphysical problem. Though some part of their minds is actively disgusted by what they do, they continue to do what they do in spite of themselves and that part of them that is still human. They continue to do what they do, in spite of the agency’s own rules and procedures that are intended to keep incidents like this from happening. They act like powerless robots trapped by a sequence of unfolding events that seems to occur regardless of their intentions. It almost seems like they are possessed by some demonic force.

In a certain, very real sense, they are possessed. This is what we American people, and the world, have the potential to learn, but have not yet wrapped our minds around. The dogs of war, once unleashed, cannot be controlled, will attack anything that comes within their sight, friend or foe, and that they can never be leashed again– they can only be put down. That is what war is, in any case: allowing our animal instinct for destruction to rule over us. Our politicians can talk all they want about “tactical strikes,” “projection of power,” and “the rule of law.” For that matter, Kim Jong-il can talk all he wants about “democracy,” “peoples’ power,” or “popular uprisings.” It is all the same. It is all crap. War is hell, and when war happens, demons are unleashed that take over the actions of people who you would otherwise say are perfectly normal, nice, even honorable human beings.

We could draw some limited conclusions about the “war on drugs,” though they seem trite. Anyone in America can get drugs, thanks to the money provided to our economy by politicians who borrow at high interest and give it away to foreign countries and Wall Street for free. Interdiction efforts do not make a difference in any way. Being illegal does not make a difference either, it just puts money in the hands of criminal gangs to buy guns and wage war on themselves. Were the lives of Veronica Bowers and her baby worth it? I think, definitely not. People can and will choose to use drugs regardless of the law, and people can and will choose to seek recovery from drugs and alcohol regardless of any legal punishment– they choose to seek recovery when they hit bottom. That is human nature.

I personally think we can draw larger conclusions about our place in the world. However, we have to fight our own instincts to be self-defeatist, to say that we are powerless to affect history, that we are powerless to make the world a better place.

Imagine if Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had thrown up their hands and said, well, too bad, we’re powerless over the decisions that Adolph Hitler and the Germans have made for themselves, gosh, there’s nothing we can do about it. Luckily, in the face of that kind of horror, that loss of connection with their humanity that the Germans suffered from during that period of time, many people had the courage to stand up and say that it was wrong.

In fact, we do have a lot of power without violence, when we realize it, just by speaking up, by speaking the truth, and by being honest in our own lives and with others. Violence is not necessarily the only way to exert power in the world; in fact, it is often counter-productive because it brings out another fact of human nature, the spirit of rebellion. If we stand up for what is good and right first, then, when someone belligerent attacks us, repeatedly, and refuses to listen to reason, we are justified in “shaking the dust off our sandals” and leaving them behind in history, perhaps even as leaving them behind in history as dead people while we move on and go forward.

I’m not sure. It seems like treading a thin line to me, and it’s difficult to see. Jesus, I think, has seen a new world beyond this one, beyond death, so would possibly argue that it makes no difference whether we are killed, whether we suffer, because in the world to come, God will restore the faithful, and death will be powerless. Perhaps that is already so. I can’t speak for Jesus. I can only speak for myself. Certainly I feel the logic of the argument that if someone tries to hit me, that I should hit back, but perhaps that is flawed logic that appeals to the high I get from adrenaline while thinking through that hypothetical violent situation. Perhaps we should take a lesson from aikido, that when someone tries to hit me, by blending with that energy I can redirect the attacker to a place of non-conflict in which we can have a reasonable conversation. It takes a lot of chutzpah to figure out how to do that when someone is threatening you with a terrorist attack or a nuclear bomb.

In any case, if we take the attitude that we are entitled to wage pre-emptive violence against those whom we suspect maybe want to hurt us, even though we don’t know for sure, then the people whom we give the means for violence will do so, without reason, without law, without even the force of their own wills, as we see in the case of Veronica Bowers and her baby. I would guess that the expanded use of Predator drones by the CIA in their secret campaigns against the Taliban and other terrorist suspects has incurred more than its fair share of innocent victims. After all, if the target-acquisition agent chooses a target of innocent victims, and the bomb or missiles destroy everything in the vicinity, then the agent can simply declare that there were terrorists there, and no one will ever be the wiser. They can have procedures to ensure “two-person integrity,” administrative review, and all that, but they had those procedures in the Airbridge Denial Program, and they didn’t save Veronica Bowers or her baby. How are those procedures any more effective in the heat of an active, widespread multi-national conflict? They are not, especially when not enforced. They might be more effective when enforced by real discipline and severe punishment of the agents and soldiers who are violating the President’s orders, but even then, the incidents would still occur, because human nature is still flawed.

There are no easy solutions. Innocent people die at the hands of people whose hearts feel remorse even as they are mindlessly killing, at the hands of the people who are supposed to be “the good guys.” Yet it happens. But if we stand by and do nothing while terrorist groups and rogue authoritarian nations like North Korea attack innocent neighbors and their own citizens, the world will descend into chaos.

As Americans, we traditionally value personal responsibility, and are extremely reluctant to retaliate against groups for the actions of a few people. Our own civil laws have special punishment for that motivation in the commission of crimes that would otherwise be lesser offenses; we call that a “hate crime.” We must resist the temptation to issue blanket judgments or apply blame in all cases with similarities based on the facts of one specific case.

However, the report on the specific cases of the CIA’s drug plane shootdown program makes one thing abundantly clear– these officers were not disciplined. They are not Central, meaning they disobeyed the authority of the rules and procedures laid out by the agency. They are not Intelligent, which needs no explanation. And they are not Agents, in the sense that an “agent” is that which performs an act of will. Listening to them as they gave the clearance for the Peruvian air force to shoot down the missionaries’ plane, it’s clear that they were taking action in contradiction to their own conscience. They felt they were bound by the course of events to its worst possible outcome, instead of taking charge of themselves and taking responsibility for their own actions. That is not what a human being does, it’s what an animal does.

If our nation is to succeed in our destiny to be the light of hope and freedom for the world, the President must discipline these officers, and others like them, for their failure to obey their own rules. Unfortunately, it means the current President must take responsibility for the mistakes and omissions of his predecessor, who let arbitrary violence within the ranks spiral out of control. It may not be a popular course of action to punish those under his authority, but it is the right one, and the necessary one. If we do not do that, in this program, in the Predator drone program, and in all our affairs, then the administration and representatives of the United States will justify the nation’s enemies, which would make them traitors.

Innumerable other actions were available to these CIA agents. How was a single-propeller plane going to outmatch or out-run a surveillance jet and two jet fighters? It wasn’t. The program could have been to fire warning shots and escort planes back to airports, where they could be investigated and prosecuted if carrying drugs. Yet, the operating procedure was to shoot down any plane with an unregistered flight plan, and the operating practice was to shoot down any plane that they encountered at all. If you learned about this program, and this incident, and were not outraged, disgusted and horrified by the actions of our government agents, then you are not a functional human being.

We live in dangerous and troubled times. Many people are frustrated with the growing sense of that the people running our government are completely irrational, if not dangerously insane. Certainly these particular agents display all the hallmarks of clinical psychosis– acting contrary to their own thoughts and wills in a way that is dangerous to others. If they did not have the rubber stamp of the CIA, they would be locked up and subjected to medication or shock treatment.

Yet, many of the media sources on the “conservative” side are calling for exactly the wrong kind of change, for a revolution that would lead to fascism, which would be worse than the limited amount of control we have over our government now. They are deceivers, and they are also deceived by their own lies and lust for power.

Regardless of the vocal minorities in the extremes, the American people are, for the most part common-sense people with good hearts. Besides the threats from abroad, they are the more important reason why the government must bring all its agents and soldiers in line with common-sense reason and common decency as human beings. If pushed to their breaking point, the American people will take charge of their country again by violent means, and it will not go the way that anyone planned. In that event, everyone will lose.

That outcome is not desirable, and it is not necessary. We are not inexorably bound to the worst possible outcome by the sequence of events. We can direct our own actions to a better outcome, if we each take a step back and think about what it means to be a good person, to be a person period, instead of rushing to judgment and death with no information like these witless CIA agents did. If these agents had committed themselves to their own personal higher ideals, and their own consciences, which they expressed even as they were giving the clearance to shoot down the innocent missionaries, the incident would not have happened.

All it takes is a brief moment to step outside of your impulses and remember your whole self and your higher ideals. Whatever those higher ideals may be, if we all practiced that, the world would be a much happier, more peaceful, and safer place.

Yet there are many in the United States, who are so afraid and cowardly, that when Imams in Pakistan– religious leaders with followers and state-sanctioned authority– call for the death of converts to Christianity, and someone says “Islam is a religion of violence” in response to that religious call for violence, the person speaking out is scorned, ridiculed, and oppressed.

Do you see how twisted we have allowed our culture to become? Do you see how we are being manipulated? Open your eyes.

The only hope for the Muslim world is Christianity. The belligerent spirit of Islamic religious leaders who call for violence, and of the followers who heed that call, cannot be tamed by more violence inflicted by armies and bombs. Violence is useless, no matter who wields it. Death is powerless, no matter who commands it. The only thing that will result is more death and violence– never control. Going that way, the world will spiral into chaos until it destroys itself.

Love is the only answer, Christ is the way to love, and freedom is the way to Christ. That belligerent spirit can only be tamed by the person whom it infects, by giving one’s life up to the mercy of God in service to others.

Muslims must summon the personal courage, as Rev. Khan did, to convert, and profess belief in love, peace and redemption, despite the threats, despite the violence.

Americans must summon the personal courage to speak out against violence endorsed by religion, no matter what religion might call for it, and to offer a hand of peace and support to all those who want to break the cycle of violence, no matter what side they are on or what religion they belong to.

Else, there will be no end to war.

Fascists prefer authority– authority of a hierarchy, authority of a collective, authority of an oligarchy or institution– because they think it’s easier. Or rather, because they don’t want to think. They are tired of thinking and trying to stretch their brains to figure out those difficult questions, so they give up. They give up, time and again, because they are cowards. They may be deluded into thinking that when their team “wins” they will be rewarded– but face the facts– if our democracy falls apart you would quite likely be cut out and cut down, regardless of who “wins.”

A prime strategy of fascists, of generals, kings and caesars, of tactical destruction in general, is “divide and conquer.” United, we stand, but divided, if we turn against each other first, and fight each other, we will do most of the work ourselves, then tired of chaos we would more willingly turn our freedom over to a fascist government.

This was, perhaps, the desire of the British Crown prior to the American civil war, but we delayed it so long that Britain was transformed by its own democratic movement and rightly abandoned slavery before our internal conflict over the issue. So the point of the legacy strategy was moot for them– Victoria preferred a civil ally in liberty over a belligerent fascist opponent. It was not moot, however, for us, and both “sides” paid dearly with the blood of their sons.

Division was Hitler’s tactic in Poland. Hitler thought that if he could satisfy Stalin with a prize of expanding Russia’s borders, and then give him a spectre of something to worry about by prodding Japan’s vicious attacks on China, that he could play Russia against the West, or at least keep Russia out of the war long enough to build up forces. (Thank God Hitler was not as smart as he made himself out to be in the mirror.)

So, since the term “gerrymandering” has lost the hard G of Elbridge Gerry’s name, we might think, perhaps the soft ‘g’ that we pronounce it with now connotes an origin of the division that is now used to create. “Jerry” – the term for Germans in World War II.

I use the term “Jerry” with some concern. A lot of Germans are genuine. Many are Christians; many are nice people. However, there were a lot of Germans from WWII who escaped, who went into hiding, constructed fake identities, and entered a life of even deeper lies and hatred than they lived before– all the more psychotic because they learned to act like “regular people.” And I believe they recruited people around the world into lives of sin and evil, just as they snaked into the Church, as worms within the wood of the cross. Though they may be confused, fortunately we don’t worship the cross itself, but only the living God and man thrown upon the cross.

Most Congressional districts in the US are totally safe for politicians, except for occasional upstarts. 90% for one party, 10% for the other, and you can bet the 90% give the 10% a hard time– because in the neighboring district where the parties are reversed, the minority is getting a hard time and the majority here sympathizes with them and wants to take it out on someone. Get the picture? And as a result, congressional elections become more of an exercise in futility, really only a large-scale scam for collecting donor money and spending it on the real “parties” in the hotels after the donors have left the gala dinners.

So, smarmy politicians aside– which American are you? “Liberal” or “Conservative?” As if those terms make any sense anymore, and are not just labels assigned to groups of people who, for the most part, recite the words handed down to them, but do not understand what they mean. You are free to say that sounds snooty; I am free to say it is honest. Grow up, and realize how we’re being scammed.

What if the filibustering and the stalling and the contrarian rancor levied by both sides of the divided Congress got so bad that we never get our act together, never pay off our staggering debt for Bush’s wars and failed policies, and default on our creditors? Our economy would collapse. Banks would fail, but taxpayers could not bail them out because taxpayers would have lost all their money in the failed banks. Guess who they’d blame– the black guy who they handed a lit stick of dynamite.

Would it come to blows? To shots? To war?

If it did, are you going to allow yourself to get riled up by political pundits on one side or another? One of Hitler’s strategies was to get everyone in a bar drunk, stand on the table and get them angry about their financial worries. The result was insanity and death on a grand scale. If you are liberal, would you start riots and burn down upscale neighborhoods? If you are conservative, would you lynch poor people and burn urban neighborhoods? Do we want that here? Or, are you smarter than that?

Are you “liberal” or “conservative” first, or are you an American first?

Meanwhile, around the globe, that line in the sand is used politically to divide people into groups that are angry with each other. That effect is called “Balkanization” because it is what was done in the Balkans (eastern Europe) by the major world powers before World War One. Despots of the middle east like Bashar al-Assad think they can control their own people by supporting the “underdog” Palestinians, and despots of the religious right in America think they can control our people by supporting the “holy” state of Israel, in this religious football game.

Why can’t I be for Israel and for Palestine? Most people think the question does not make sense. But that is precisely what political power brokers around the world want us to think. These despots, of one kind or another, do not really care about the welfare of the Palestinians or the Israelis. Their collective conflict, and their collective suffering, is only a convenient distraction from the dishonesty of politicians in every other part of the globe. The terror of Israelis expecting the next bus bomb, and the terror of Palestinians expecting the next bombardment, is only a tool for politicians in the so-called “pious” Islamic fascist states and in the so-called “just” Western democracies, measured by its utility for driving people into one or another manageable political camp, to be sucked dry of their enthusiasm and money.

I want to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine at the same time.

President Obama wants to be the leader who can achieve this, as other US Presidents before him have tried. However, it is not our land, so we really cannot take responsibility for their problems, just as Presidents al-Assad of Syria or Ahmadinejad of Iran cannot take responsibility for them. The more that the competing powers of the world try to use Israel and Palestine as their political poker chips, the more we place the Holy Land at risk of total destruction – just like the world powers did in eastern Europe before World War One.

Only the Palestinians and Israelis can take responsibility for their own peace. What they need, in order to stop the terror and death, is truth, not politics. Both parties to the conflict must recognize in the full light of truth how the rest of the world has used and manipulated them for political gains. If the Palestinians and Israelis wake up to the fact that both peoples are being used and manipulated by the rest of the world, there is some chance that they might find a way to forgive each other and live in peace.

It is impossible to restrict what I believe, since law has no causal power to get inside my mind, because I have free will. So law would be useless anyway even if it did proscribe the limits of my expression, because it can never take away the fundamental ember of will and belief that is the gift of mind.

Similar practical considerations constrain how effective law can be at limiting expression of our wills. Law that grips too tightly, or is not created by the people it governs, simply creates resentment. When resentment is created, then people will distrust the government and will think independently and express themselves secretly anyway. Because people in government who see themselves having such power over other peoples’ beliefs, thoughts and words, they will naturally become corrupt, because power corrupts. None of us mere mortals can handle power for long without being corrupted, which creates a downward psychological spiral with destructive effects on individuals and society.

Effective law must be defined on the basis of general principles that can be applied by the agents of government to specific situations using their own best judgment, independent of procedural thinking. Otherwise, A) the law becomes too complex to be enacted and B) the law becomes contradictory, so pieces of it in isolation can be used capriciously by corrupt agents of authority.

Suppose we limit our rules to the scope of Christian thought. We don’t understand everything Jesus taught, so we talk about the scriptures and stories that we know and try to figure it all out and how to apply that knowledge to our lives to become better people. So, to better serve those goals for us, we have to be free to speak our minds about what we think it all means.

And, the nature of human language is to refer to thought through symbols. But the thoughts by association can only be referred to through other symbols. Sometimes we can communicate thought through common context. Sometimes we lack the common context. That is why we have to “open our hearts” so that our imagination can make up the difference, to understand common context of others.

About the only thing that symbolic referential language can express that is “true” in its own terms is an identity statement: An apple is an apple. But language is so miraculous and complicated, one can then say “Fruit is fruit.” This is true in and of itself, but, an apple is fruit, and an orange is fruit. Does that mean that apples are oranges?

This is the dilemma of law that attempts to restrict thought and speech. The mind can easily switch thoughts to other sets of symbols, for instance, a fish drawn in the sand, and washed over by the sea. There is simply no way for law to proscribe thought.

Any large society will naturally diversify in thought and speech. I expect that conformity is not even possible to maintain through force in a small group of people. Attempting to maintain conformity results in wolf-pack behaviors. But there are always members of the pack who go out and start their own packs. And, we are not wolves. It simply cannot be done with human beings.

For law to be effective in any large society, it needs to be defined in a way that allows it to be applied equally and fairly to all members of that society, balancing their individual natural freedom against compelling interests of our common welfare. Those compelling interests must be defined in extremely narrow terms to justify impinging on the natural freedom of individuals, otherwise, law becomes a progressively destructive force against the common welfare that it is instituted to protect.

Because law must be equitably applied and strictly construed, effective law cannot attempt to limit freedom of thought and expression except where dire and immediate consequences result – yelling fire in a theater, etc.

As a sidebar, what about speech to start a riot – or a revolution? Our country would not be what it is today without Thomas Paine or Frederick Douglass.

What about the slaves of today’s societies, children and adults forced to labor in abusive conditions without pay, or forced into sexual slavery? I submit, that these are the new revolutionaries, that a new, world-wide slave revolt may be inevitable, and may be impending. It’s the wisest course simply to repent now and free the slaves. “The meek will inherit the earth.”

Since law cannot restrict belief or expression except in the most extreme and egregious conditions, and must be applied equally and rationally, this unfortunately means that many disagreeable beliefs and expressions will be legally allowed.

For instance, in the United States you are free to worship Satan. I don’t recommend doing so.

You are also free to worship a thieving warlord who married a six-year-old girl and had sex with her when she was nine.

Luckily, the freedom which is necessary for law to be effective and fair also means that I am free to state plainly and simply that marrying a six-year-old girl and having sex with her when she is nine is a sick, evil crime against nature and human dignity. I am free to state, for that reason, “Muhammad was a pedophile, a false prophet, and an evil man who was not of God.”

This does not mean that I am pushing my beliefs on others, as some would claim. (My belief that pedophilia is evil and wrong, and that worshiping a pedophile is an offense against God, humankind and nature.) No one compels anyone to read this website. (If you do, please stop.)

Also, fortunately, you have no right to imitate that false prophet in regards to his sexual abuse of a child, and if you do, many others have the right to take extraordinary action to stop you from doing so, just as they should be empowered to stop Satanists from conducting human sacrifices.

If we succumb to fear, and give up our right to declare such simple and obvious statements like “pedophilia is wrong and should not be worshiped,” then we might as well be giving up our lives and our country to the Satanists.

Hold fast to your beliefs, and do not be afraid to express them! By expressing them freely, they will flower and take root in the hearts of others. God has given us more than language, more than symbols and associations and references. Beneath that all is something very mysterious and magical that cannot be explained, because it would take an infinite number of words in infinite combinations to do so.

Or, it can simply be summed up in two words, which were uttered by the Creator long ago: “I AM.” In our hearts we know this, whether we deny it or not. Connecting hearts to minds and expressing that connection in the spirit of truth is of vital importance to the continuance of life on the globe.

I don’t have to tell you what to believe. I have enough faith in God to know that He will show us all the way to our new life. I pray that you will seek the truth, and will speak plainly of what you see. Don’t take my word for it, or anyone else’s. Ask God yourself. You are free to do so. Jesus was the intermediary. You are now free to talk to God directly. “Seek and you shall find. Ask, and you shall receive.”

It’s important to keep a sense of humor. And a sense of humility. If we didn’t have freedom, how could we laugh? We’d end up burning a lot of witches. Instead, we can make fun of them on TV! That is SO MUCH BETTER, in my opinion.

Is she a witch and ruled by Satan? Not if she’s renounced her sins and accepted Jesus.

Is she lying when she says she’s done that? Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know her.

Is she going to burn in Hell? I don’t know, I’m not God, I couldn’t tell you. Thank God that is not my decision! If I had to decide who burned in Hell and who didn’t, I’d go crazy.

Would I vote for her? “Not my cup of tea.”

The paranoid “Great Leader” of North Korea has endangered his country, yet we do not give into his psychotic baiting – we have not obliterated North Korea from the map as he says we intend to do, and we have no desire to do so.

People in South Korea, and the United States honestly want North Koreans to prosper in peace, liberty and wealth.  It is time for the North Koreans, as a people, to take the destiny of their country into their own hands, and recognize that their crazy leader’s authority depends upon their consent.  They have the power to think for themselves, and they have the power to lead themselves into a peaceful future in partnership with the rest of the world.

I am extremely grateful to our President and to every patriot in the United States of America for looking out for us.  I am extremely grateful to be alive.  It is my hope that the majority of North Koreans share the same gratitude toward whatever higher power of the universe that they may understand.

God bless America, and God bless the world.

To do so seems very un-Christian, in contradiction to the message of love and forgiveness that is everywhere in the bible, even (especially) in Revelation:

Meanwhile, let the evildoers persist in doing evil and the filty-minded continue in their filth, but let the good persevere in their goodness and the holy continue in holiness.  (Rev. 22:11)

However, he has a right to do so.  America recognizes that individuals can choose their own paths and their own means of expressing themselves, provided that the act does not cause direct harm to others.

Politicians, soldiers, and the rest of the world are upset and scared because of threats by the Taliban and other Muslim extremists that they will target innocent Christians because of this crazy person’s defiance of their symbols.  All of this seems to seek to blame this Rev. Jones for other people’s actions pulling the triggers of guns and bombs.

We are smarter than that.  The Taliban who pull the triggers are the ones responsible for those acts, and they are at fault for those murders.  An act of free expression does not directly cause those actions, because those people who pull the triggers also have independent minds capable of making independent choices.

Our soldiers are ready to face down any threat by ignorant savages who believe otherwise.  And, any peaceful Christian doing good in the world for others does so with the knowledge that they place themselves at risk of persecution and death by the violent and ignorant, because that is how Christ spreads peace in the world.  Those who lose their lives for Christ will find their reward after death in the resurrection.  That is the essential tenet of our faith, that we can face that fear and see beyond it.

That is the message of America, and of freedom, which is being lost in the noise of meanness and fear promoted by both “sides” of this particular issue.  It is challenging to cast off those conceptions, to realize that we are in fact powerless over what other people choose to do.  No action of law can restrict Rev. Jones’ choice of expression to burn the Koran, else such a law would be mis-used to restrict others’ choices of expression that might advance progress and peace when those causes come into conflict with future politicians.

All that being true, Rev. Jones is incredibly stupid, and his actual intent is to provoke the ignorant and violent extremists into violence.  While those extremists are responsible for their own actions, Rev. Jones’ mentality is very much the Accuser, i.e. Satan.  Rev. Jones accuses Islam of apostasy, burning the Koran for a message of hate, intolerance and provocation of violence.  That’s not the way Jesus approached those who hated him.  Jesus did not respond to hate with more hate.  He responded with love.  Only love will save the world, and this is not an act of love.

This is what freedom means, truly, that we are free to believe those mysteries that appear “crazy” to the rational mind and our limited history of intellectual thought.  The realm of spirit is limitless, and surrounds us all.  Besides which, if you really wrap your head around quantum physics, you’ll find that we know very little about what “reality” actually is, and that the potentials are far more than we can perceive.

At a personal level, I’ve undergone my own “quantum shift” recently.  I’ve realized I’m powerless over the world.  I can speak what I see as the truth, but I can’t actually force anyone to do anything, or to open their minds to that fundamental change of perception and reality that Jesus teaches us.  I’m trying to get that “attitude of gratitude” about my life.  For example, the axle support on my putt-putt car broke the other day.  Thank God I was not on the freeway, or I would have lost control and potentially lost my life!  Thank God I was only a quarter mile from my mechanic and that I could wobble it well enough to get there!  Even though I still don’t know how I’ll pay off the bill, the orientation of my mind helped me see the positive side of what might have been a calamity for me before.  But suppose I lost the car altogether.  Thank God I live in a city with a good bus system, and thank God I have a job where I can work at home!  Many things seem terrible – crime, abuse, death, war, the malevolent machinations of economics and terror – but if we see the positive things in our own lives, those negative things cease to have control over us.  That is freedom.

This change in the world goes deeper, and depends on your willingness to open your mind to it.  For example, have you ever had the experience of not being able to find a lid to fit the container for putting your food away?  You had it once, because it matched the container, and it was in the drawer at one time – how is it possible that it could have been lost?  That is focusing on the negative.  The other day I was putting away my clean dishes from the dish rack.  I am certain I removed all of the lids, all of the dishes entirely, from the top level of the rack.  Yet, when I turned back from the cabinet to get the silverware, there was another stack of lids on the top of the rack. Now I am sure that I have more lids than I need.

I know I put them all in the drawer, yet there were more.  I believe this was a small miracle, akin to the stories of the loaves and the fishes.  It depended entirely on my attitude and my willingness to have a positive relationship with the Lord who is present underneath all of reality.

Suppose I look at it from the perspective of quantum physics.  I had some number of lids, but I had not kept any certain account of them; I do not waste energy keeping an inventory checklist of the number of lids and their sizes.   I don’t buy any, I just keep yogurt containers and other ones like that.  Do I know how many containers of yogurt I’ve bought in the last six months, or how many of those I recycled?  No, I don’t have any idea.  From the time I closed the cabinet to the moment I turned back to the dish rack, it was equally likely, from my observation perspective, that I had 20 lids, as it was likely that I had 25.  Lo and behold, there were 5 more lids of various sizes.

That may sound “crazy” to people who are such control freaks that they think their certainty and knowledge of the world creates reality itself, who believe at a certain level that they as human beings are God.  But, it is one of the inescapable conclusions of quantum physics, that such shifts in probability may occur.  If I were so neurotic that I kept an inventory of every container and every lid, this never would have happened, because I would have convinced myself that it could not.  And, it works both ways – I could not have created more lids myself simply because I wrote down on my inventory that I had more.  “O unbelieving generation,” as the man cried out.

So, the next time you cannot find a lid to match your container, or a sock to match the one you want to wear, are hungry, poor, or are disappointed or frustrated about anything, ask yourself if you can change your attitude.  Better yet, pray to God to change your attitude for you.  You may find yourself suddenly with a choice of fitting lids, or more socks than you thought you had, with enough bread and fish to eat.  If you are grateful for what you have, you may suddenly find yourself with more than you need, through no doing of your own.

It’s easy to be trapped in Job’s mentality, when, having lost everything good in his life, and then some, he gave up hope, and expected to die, though he did not give up on his relationship with the Lord.  Job’s friends tried to console him, “hey buddy, hey, cheer up, it’s all for the greater good,” etc., which came across as trite and uncaring, an opinion that God shared.  But God was also angry with Job for giving up hope.  What did any of them know, including Job?  A whole lot of nothing.  But because Job kept his faith in his relationship with the Lord, he was rewarded.  For those of us who suffer real calamity, it’s possible your reward will not come before your death, but if you keep your faith, it will come.

So, when all the pundits keep harping about how bad the economy is, about how the job numbers or the Dow Jones or Fed rate or the pork belly sales are looking bad, consider how much our attitude has to do with that.  I am not suggesting that we deny the problems that we have to cope with, but if we adopt a different attitude, we may find that the solutions to those problems come easier than we thought they might.  The only way that we can do that is to have a little faith that a higher power is looking out for us.

Whether you think of that higher power as human ingenuity, or God, or the Tooth Fairy, or Keith Richards, or quantum physics, it doesn’t matter, as long as you have a relationship to that higher power in your mind, and the courage to take a leap of faith.  I happen to believe there is only one God, and He loves us all, and wants to take care of us all if we let Him.  And I think there’s a little bit of God in all those other things, even the Tooth Fairy and Keith Richards.

Thank God for America, where I am free to believe whatever “crazy” things I want to.  I believe there are also angels among us, spirits who take human form, and have much more understanding over these shifts of quantum probability than we do.  They are teaching us, one baby step at a time, to open our minds to that deeper understanding, so that we may escape our prison of this mortal coil and this earthly rock, and join the rest of the universe where we will be of service to God’s greater plan to spread life to where there is none.

There may be devils and demons too, who try to pull us back into nullity and nothingness, into despair and darkness, but I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that these are evil’s final days on earth.  Suppose tomorrow there is some big calamity, a terrorist attack, or a new war, an economic crash, or a plague, or even all of those things.  Those may be awful, and we will weep and mourn and grind our teeth in distress.  But if we keep right with the Lord, we will be saved.

There are angels among us, and many of the saints walk with us too, in the flesh, body and soul resurrected by the Lord.  For what is the resurrection of a human body compared to the energy of a quasar, of which there are an uncountable number?  A drop in the bucket.  If the universe loses one, it might just as easily gain three more, because it’s impossible to keep track of that, like the number of lids in my drawer.  It’s all a matter of attitude.

“Millions now living among us will never die.”

These things seem like a good idea at first thought, however, the President made a statement that I found to be alarming:  “The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.”

The Supreme Court struck down the previous campaign advertisement restrictions precisely because that statement stands teetering on the edge of a very slippery slope.  While I do happen to trust that Mr. Obama and his Attorney General would enforce such a rule with judicious restraint, I do not trust future Presidents to do so because they have not been elected and I do not know who they are, and I do not trust every politician or prosecutor in the country to use such a rule fairly.

In order for any rule restricting communication and expression of ideas to be enforced, there must be a compelling interest of the government to protect the lives and liberty of its citizens, and it must be strictly and narrowly defined.  However, the Court found that this was impossible to define a rule in this context within the boundaries of our Constitutional protection of free speech.

Anonymous free speech and free expression of ideas was the cornerstone of our American revolution; it was what made the United States to begin with.  Publius and the other authors of the Federalist Papers did not disclose the truth because they had something to hide. They had to hide their identities, or they would be killed by Tories or British forces.  This essential right has saved life, liberty and country.  In order to protect this essential right at all, the Court has found over the years that it must protect it equally.

Yes, that makes life difficult.  Yes, that means free speech can be abused by wrongdoers from pedophiles, to rebels, to hostile foreign governments and malevolent corporations acting without regard for common or future welfare.  But the alternative is far worse – a government run by politicians who see themselves as having the power to arbitrarily restrict the speech that does not suit their interests.  That leads to a system where the incumbents can exercise the power of the state to retain their advantage in elections.

Consider this – our ballots themselves are anonymous.  We have the right to go to a polling place, cast our ballot and deposit it in a big box with everyone else’s ballot.  There is no way for the government to track who voted for what.  (Or there should be no way, which is why it is essential to require makers of all electronic voting systems to disclose the details of how they work.)  Voting is a fundamental and vital form of free expression.  If we pass a law saying that some form of anonymous speech is prohibited, it’s difficult to see how that would not apply to ordinary citizens.  What if one rich citizen wanted to back a candidate anonymously on his or her own dime?  The rules that allow the rest of us poor people to express ourselves must be applied equally to everyone, or they will not be applied equally to us, in volume or content of the speech.  Besides things like religious tracts, anonymous fliers complaining about threatening neighbors or companies endangering our common wealth and environment, and this website, if we begin sliding down the slippery slope of restricting freedom of speech, we may place in jeopardy our right to cast a ballot without fear of reprisal from the government itself.

The President’s statement is more ironic for his efforts to enhance and broaden the cloak of secrecy surrounding anti-terrorism efforts.  While he personally may be doing so for just ends with just means, the next President may not be so principled.

There are no good solutions to the problem of campaign advertising.  Foreign and corporate influence is as or more destructive than incumbent control of campaign media.  Certainly no law curtailing freedom of speech for advertisements intended to influence our voting process can be balanced without parallel reform of campaign finance and lobbying influence over our representatives, otherwise they will buy them out directly.  Special interests have to spend a lot more money to influence the public than they do to influence a single individual in Congress once that person gets elected.

Any law curtailing or regulating freedom of speech for advertising intended to influence elections must be defined extremely narrowly, so that it cannot be misused to restrict the freedom of speech that Americans need to preserve our liberty and advance the cause of freedom envisioned by the Founders.

I do not see how such a law can be defined narrowly with any logic.  All that a financier would need to bypass any restriction would be to publish a general message, not oriented to any particular issue or candidate, using particular buzzwords or memetic images.  Then the candidate or actual issue promoters would parrot those phrases or images.  The result would be that the media audience would associate the general message to the candidate or issue that was promoted on a much smaller budget.  There is no way to narrowly define a law to connect abstract concepts to particular candidates or ballot issues.  Any such law would have to be broadly construed.  Any broadly construed law restricting freedom of speech – anonymous or not – would be misused, therefore it would fail the Court’s most basic tests of constitutionality.

The answer here does not come from law that would restrict speech.  The answer is to promote more intelligent speech by educating the public.  That does not mean pushing one or another message or point of view as if people are robots who can be programmed with a set of instructions.  It means enabling people to direct our own lives in a way that increases the diversity of our knowledge to the point that we are fully able to think for ourselves.

If we became a nation of people who think for ourselves, with a little time to spend studying the issues on the ballot and the candidates’ positions, then no amount of money spent by any corporation or foreign power would have much effect on the outcome of our votes.  Unfortunately, it’s not in the best interests of many politicians to have a thinking, educated constituency, so that’s not the solution they’re promoting.

That is why Christianity will “win” against false religions – because we are not fighting.  When a terrorist suicide bomber kills innocent people, few people actually believe that their religion is good, or that their action has made the world a better place.  Their names are forgotten.  When an innocent person helps others and is killed for their good actions, the world sees this and believes that the person who died was good.  They made the world a better place in their life.  Now that life is a permanent part of God’s memory.

By martyring these saints, the Taliban has brought Islam one step closer to collapse under the weight of its own contradiction.  The Taliban has spread Christianity, to all those in Afghanistan whose lives were touched by these peaceful healers, and to their relatives and friends who love them.  God is love, and love is the answer.

Followers of false religions are so insecure in their belief that they have to convert others under the threat of brutish, animal violence.  Those who have faith in the Lord feel no need to kill others to convince them.  We are sad for them, we pity them, and though it is difficult, we forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.  They do not know themselves, and they do not know the Lord.

By killing the innocent, unarmed women and doctors who have healed their sick children and relatives, the Taliban have shown their true cowardice.  People who abuse and kill women and children and those who have done no harm are the lowest form of coward.

They seek to bait us by these actions into violence.  Many Christians are doubtless shocked, and angry.  These ignorant hill people do not realize how much restraint the west has shown in this conflict.  We could kill them all with a word.  We could erase Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and any other troublesome country from the map with the push of a button.  Yet we do not.

The United States is not fighting in Afghanistan to convert people to Christianity. Muslims are tearing down and burning down Christian churches all over the world, but we will allow a mosque in Manhattan near the WTC site, because we are free to stand on the street outside and worship Jesus, and to say that Mohammad is the false prophet, and that violence and lies cannot be the basis for religion or personal identity without creating insanity.  That insanity has been demonstrated by the killing of these innocent people.

Perhaps some of you are Muslim who are reading this.  You are entitled to believe what you want to in the United States.  What if you disagree with your Imam over one tiny detail of scripture in the Koran?  You may still believe fully in all the major principles of Islam.  Yet you are in fear for your life if you try to assert your own opinion.  That is the tiny crack, in which the light of God’s love will flood into your mind in your dreams tonight.

In freedom, when anyone can speak and share their ideas without fear of violence from authority, Christianity sells itself – it needs no force to compel statements of belief.  Indeed, statements of faith made under compulsion by most Muslims across the world are likely false, because they only say the words out of fear of violence.  They say the words, but do not mean them.  They conform and appear perfect, but they are not.  They cannot prove their faith by acts, and are so threatened by disagreement that they become murderers – monsters – lower than animals.  Animals kill to eat, or to survive.  These people kill for no reason.

Jesus does not require us to be perfect people to be Christians.  We have many faults, and we make mistakes, and forgive, and love and live our lives the best we can.  We try to help people when we can and to be good to each other.

That is all there is to it.  Why should that scare anyone at all, let alone so much that they would kill someone?

Indeed, what have we to worry about, who believe?

Many people see the inside of their own mind as something remote.  Where thoughts are, they are only tools to utilize to achieve the goals of drive or impulse.  But that is fractured – the drive or impulse is a thought, so one is always a step remote from one’s self.  Yet when embraced into the self, drives and impulses are not enough.  The solution is not remoteness, it is depth.

Those fractured people will utilize symbols and words to achieve ends, but never grasp their meaning.  When it touches the deeper core, and they cry, they mask it over as sentiment or frivolity… further distancing their thought from their true selves, burying their selves under years of crusty, programmatic thought which they have convinced themselves is necessary to interact with the world of other crusty, programmatic thinkers.

Heidegger, Kant and others spoke of perceiving, and then taking that perception to heart.  They were also one step remote from themselves, because they never did.  By keeping that distance, they placed the Kingdom of Ends, where all people lead themselves naturally in what is right, into a future state that cannot be revealed, cannot be realized.  So, they felt – especially Heidegger – this justified wrong actions.  The result of that attitude was death.

Similarly, other religions place salvation in a remote heaven, in the afterlife, in an ever-elusive state of meditation or enlightenment, always fracturing the self, though often claiming to unify.  Christians really believe what they believe, crazy as it sounds, because it is true – the world is transforming, but not in the ways that men of power seek to change it.

That frightens the fractured people, so they have stepped up persecution of Christians, who worship non-violently and have harmed no one.  The persecutors are frightened, scared, and angry, angry because they have been lied to, and they know it, and because they have lied to themselves, but are too scared to let go of their lies and let God into their hearts.  Many people claiming to be Christians, talking the talk and walking the walk, also live a double life.

I believe God wants you to be yourself – your whole self.  That is far more than acknowledging your drives and impulses; that is not an excuse for lasciviousness, violence or sin.  Development of the integrated self must accept all parts of the natural being, and then move on from there out into the infinite spiritual being – after which those drives and impulses will simply lose their power, without having to consciously suppress them with a fractured mind.

Jesus is the answer.  There’s nothing remote about Heaven.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and Jesus is already there.  You are already here.  You are already saved.

The only obstacle that remains is your remoteness from yourself.

You can face the most insurmountable fear – of pain, death, of war, any amount of terror you can simply discard out of your heart, because you know the truth – that God is real, that God loves us very much, and God doesn’t want us to hurt each other.

If tomorrow the “abomination that causes desolation stands where it should not,” do not fear.  Nothing can take you from the love of God and Jesus – not even death.  You can bear all that, and more, even though none of it is necessary.  Allow the light of the Lord to shine in you.  That light is a gift for each one of us, and no one can keep it from you.  It does not belong to the “light bringer” who is the liar and accuser in the mind.  It belongs to God, and God has already given it to every one of his children.

Furthermore, those who terrorize you cannot claim credit for bringing you to that state of peace – such as a psychotic father who frightens his children because he has deluded himself to believe it will “build character” – the credit for that inner strength and peace belongs only to yourself, for your faith in the Lord.

If tomorrow war should break out, if the fire rises above the cities, if Death wields his scythe and cuts us all down, fear not – it is only temporary.  The world is small.  All the nuclear weapons in the world are nothing compared to the power God can wield in an instant, anywhere.

Yet instead of micro-managing our lives, God chooses to make fleeting sculptures in the clouds, and pretty flowers, and the sea and the stars.  Think about that.

Those who are about to die, we love you.

The Nazis plan to set off a cataclysmic attack in America, which they believe will be tricked into retaliating against Iran, who will spark a regional war destroying both Israel and the Islamic nations – they hate both equally, they just think the Muslims are stupider.  They think that if we destroy each other, their vision of a fourth Reich will rise from the ashes of destruction.  We ought to confront them at the source.  They are inside the gates, in America, and all over the world.  They doubtless have some leader who envisions himself the anti-christ.  Bollocks.

They’re the Nazis.  We don’t need proof to take action, because this is war.  We must go after them.  We should exercise restraint, because we are better than their coarse level of violence, but we cannot fear to seek and find them where they hide.  And, we cannot be distracted by their legions of nobody skinheads who have no connection to their leadership.  We have to go to the top, immediately – the bankers, industrialists and media moguls who are pulling the strings – the strings of the Islamic terrorists and of puppet socialist fall guys like Chavez and Castro.  (Remember, Nazi = “national socialist”… don’t be fooled by populist dictators like them into thinking they actually care about the poor, beyond their usefulness for the global agenda.)

Some of the Europeans and global capitalists whom we would naturally suspect may be stooges, patsies, who are just greedy capitalists who would never want to destroy the world.  Some under the label “Christian Democrats” may be honest Christians – others may be liars in the tradition of Goebbels.

And they are here in America – the scientists and engineers of Operation Paperclip who built America’s military might during the cold war, but wrote in their own “back doors” of control.  Like, I theorize, the “radar ghosts” of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that sparked the Vietnam war.  What other pieces of our technology will generate false signals that will start wars?  Why did we ever trust the Nazis?

Others may be hiding in plain sight, in media, producing big budget Hollywood endings that make us feel like we are the good guys, like we are winning, faking their heroism and faking their tears, while they wire the world to explode behind our backs.  Then they point the finger at the Jews for “controlling corporate media” when it is they themselves who are manipulating us, just as Goebbels manipulated Germany with the symbols of patriotism and religion.

There may even be others who have lived false lives as Jews, prodding the US and Israel down a path toward war.  They probably have infiltrated the Church, corrupting a few key people with pedophilia and protecting them to stain the faith.  Is this paranoia?  They were the Nazis, and many of them disappeared.  Paranoia?  No!  Prudence!

This task will be difficult, but it must be done.  We need to identify and paralyze their networks of information, industry and capital.

This is war, brought on us without choice, in which people must make the choice to respond or die.  They believe they have set up the common thinking about this war in media so that if we respond against the obvious enemy, their Islamic patsy, we also die.  This can change, if we all start to think for ourselves.

It’s the same war we fought in 1941, and it never stopped.  The Nazis failed to turn the Cold War into a global nuclear war, and they will fail to turn the middle east wars into one also.  They will fail, because they are failures.  They are history.  The truth will set us free.