Even a Two-Ended Candle Isn't Endless

Sorry for the silence on this Blog over the past week and a half. I just started a new job on Monday, and right now it sort of has me swamped.

Hard to believe I could have gone from having had so much time -- too much, most days -- to having hardly any time at all. But that (fortunately, among other things) is what gainful employment does for you.

What's even harder to believe is that it's so hard to arrange to carpool with anybody -- especially in an office of about 400 people.

Amazing, that even three years into this war, people still haven't figured out that decorating their gas-guzzling vehicles with bumper-stickers that say "Support the Troops" doesn't do jack. Or that maybe doing their bit to lessen our dependence on foreign oil might do a great deal more.

Back in World War II, we rationed everything from gasoline to nylon stockings. Now, we're not willing to forego even the most fleeting and frivolous of pleasures.

It's the little things that indicate our country's chances for survival. I'm beginning to be very, very afraid.

Peanut Butter, Meet Chocolate...

There's an increasing amount of energy coming from the more-progressive wing of Christianity. Though I frequently wish it were less reactionary (what we react most strongly against is, after all, what controls us), I nonetheless find it heartening. The Religious Right is the closest thing to an Antichrist the world has ever known. Godless secularism can offer us no better hope than can the Religious Right. Revulsion against wrong, moving in the right direction, is humanity's only hope.

It's all right to use our anger against the Falwell-Robertson-Dobson Right to blast us off of the launching-pad, but once we're in the air, we've got to fly for ourselves. We need to get past the "I'm-damn-mad-and-I'm-not-gonna-take-it-anymore" stage, in order to contribute something better.

At the threshold between adolescence and adulthood, most of us come to realize that simply rebelling won't cut it. We must figure out for ourselves not only what's wrong, but also what's right. Some people get stuck in a sort of perpetual rebellious adolescence. I'm sometimes afraid the Christian Left will suffer this fate.

Okay, so we know that the leaders and minions of the Religious Right are kooks and jerks. Got it. Can we move on now? We know that they have bad ideas, but do we really have better ones?

The pulpits of progressive churches are ringing with great ideas -- ideas whose time has come. As long as they don't screw it up by telling people how to vote, or let the Democratic Party hijack their integrity to satisfy their hunger for political power (a course that would render them no better than the Religious Right), they can help to inspire a new awakening in this nation. Social justice was one of the principal concerns of the Bible. We, as a people, cannot afford to let the Religious Right push it aside or trample it underfoot.

If the battle for the soul of Christianity is not won by those dedicated to social justice, a libertarian revival in politics will never happen. If the administration of social justice is left to the Religious Right, it will die a slow and horrible starvation death. We dare not entrust the care of those less fortunate to Christian conservatives, because they simply do not give a shit.

I'm going to say this once, and if I have to, I'll say it a thousand times more. The libertarian vision for this country will not succeed unless progressive Christianity succeeds.

Learn it. Live it. Let it sink in.

The libertarian vision for this country will not succeed unless progressive Christianity succeeds. Though the proponents of these two movements seldom seem to understand that, the fate of one is inextricably tied to that of the other.

The hardest task may be getting progressive Christians to realize that big government can never be their friend, and that the unfortunate will be cruelly cheated and exploited by any scheme for social justice that is entrusted to big government. And all the Religious Right can do is pour new fuel on the secularist, big-government liberal fire.

True social justice cannot come from big government. But libertarianism cannot succeed without true social justice. True social justice can come only out of the work of people of faith who are committed to it.

For those whose heads are still mired in the previous century, I would like to remind you of a TV commercial you may well remember and love:

"What's your chocolate doing in my peanut butter?!"

"Well, what's your peanut butter doing on my chocolate?!"

Thus was the public introduced to one of the smartest, and most enduring, ideas to come out of the Twentieth Century: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

We're living in a brand new century. The old, Left-versus-Right paradigm no longer accurately represents reality. We need to begin thinking in bold, new ways, and combining good ideas that complement each other, even if we aren't used to seeing them together. People who continue to cling to limited, Twentieth-Century notions are living in a dream world, and real life will pass them by.

Wah-Hoo! The Constitution Dodges Another Bullet!

Those traitors to our country in the Senate couldn't get enough Benedict Arnolds to join them in their treason, so the amendment to ban same-sex marriage -- that potential ice-pick in the heart of the U.S. Constitution -- has been deflected yet again.

Benedict Arnolds? How about Judas Iscariots? Their hateful agenda is a betrayal of everything Jesus Christ ever stood for. And their hijacking of the word "Christian" to describe themselves and their anti-human, anti-love agenda serves not Christ but Antichrist.

But once again, they have failed. And soon, like dominoes, the un-Constitutional state laws against gay marriage will begin to fall.

Right-Wing idiocy always eventually brings about its own demise. I've never heard so much anger out there against conservatives -- both political and religious. People are fed up with this shit, and even a lot of Christians are embarrassed by it. Once again, the conservatives have grossly overplayed their hand.

This dragon will be slain not by old-style, Leftist liberalism, but by the surging libertarian tide. Let's drown these sumbitches' agenda, and drown it now.

We need to concentrate much of our energy on reeducating the American people about the principles upon which this country was founded. And certainly, we need to make sure that even those who think they know what the Constitution says really do understand it. The whole kerfuffle over same-sex marriage has made it painfully clear that a great many do not.

To swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution -- as our elected officials do -- and then turn around and try to destroy it, for the sake of their own, cynical, selfish career ambitions, ought to be defined as high treason and punishable by death. At the very least these charlatans should be arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for their crime. For them to attempt to rope the American people into it is so unspeakably evil that only in the hereafter can they receive a fitting punishment.

To Hell with the anti-gay bigots. And don't bother trying to tell me I'm not being "compassionate" toward them. They've made it very clear they would waste no time at all in sending me there. But somebody forgot to tell these self-idolatrous fools that nobody died and made them God. When they're up to their necks in the Lake of Fire, maybe they'll finally figure that out.

It's Treason Time!

This week, the President and his GOP minions will again attack the Constitution of the United States by peddling what they're now calling the "Marriage Protection Amendment."

This Amendment would violate the First, Ninth, Tenth and possibly also the Fourteenth Amendments to our Constitution. It ignores the framers' provision that existing amendments be changed or eliminated by the passage of new amendments THAT DEAL TRUTHFULLY AND STRAIGHTFORWARDLY WITH THE FACT THAT THE EXISTING AMENDMENTS DO EXIST.

What Bush & Company would do would undermine the authority of the Constitution by ignoring existing amendments. "It's only a piece of paper," the President snarls. Well, when he gets through with it, it will be a piece of paper fit for nothing more than lining a birdcage.

Let me tell you what this is. It is treason. President Bush, and the political quacks in Congress who support the MPA, are traitors to this country.

The Constitution is not a wall in some ratty old house that can be altered simply by slapping on a new coat of paint to cover wallpaper no longer considered fashionable. The framers did provide a means of altering it, but they made it difficult and time-consuming for a reason.

Congrats to our current self-indulgent, fast-food, me-first, neverending-nursery-school generation. We are going to destroy the supreme law of our land, and the nation along with it.

The hottest circle of Hell is too good for anybody who supports the MPA. God granted them the precious gift of having been born in the greatest country in the history of the world -- and they are now reciprocating by throwing it right back in "His" face.

Several people have tried to explain to me how ignoring and violating what's already in the Constitution does not undermine its authority. All they've actually done is prove to me they smoked a lot of good shit when they were younger. Too bad they blew out so many brain cells while they were doing it.

READ. THE. FUCKING. CONSTITUTION. Read it now, while we still have it. At the very bare-ass, bottom-of-the-barrel minimum, shouldn't you have enough basic human decency to read a document that affects the lives of millions of people before you vote to change it?

If you can't read well enough to understand the Constitution, there are adult remedial reading courses that can help to bring you up to speed.

I wish we could track down every last motherfucker who intends to vote for this piece of shit and send them to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or North Korea. You're traitors, and you ought to be treated like it. I won't even attempt to appeal to your sense of morality or religious faith, because by your very willingness to treat other people the way you do, you are demonstrating you have no real belief in Jesus or God.

A great many of my ancestors fought and died so that this country and its Constitution could survive. So their descendants could be Americans, and it would still mean, for us, what it meant to them. They -- along with every other American who ever gave his or her life for this nation -- must be spinning in their graves right now. As a supporter of the "Marriage Protection Amendment," you disgrace every one of them.

You might as well go out right now, get an American flag, douse it in lighter fluid and set it ablaze. You couldn't possibly do as much damage to it that way as you will be supporting the MPA.

No Stinky Girls or Queers?

We need to start asking some very hard questions about what we're doing in Iraq. That is becoming increasingly clear. More to the point, is killing innocent civilians helping our cause? That there are fewer strutting chickenhawks out there to call us "unpatriotic" for asking such questions is, I suppose, at least a somewhat hopeful sign.

The problem with this country is that we've been so infected with bigotry -- we're so stuck on stupid -- that we can't even see a logical argument through without shitting all over ourselves. A perfect example of this is an article in today's Lew Rockwell.com. Mark Brennan makes a wonderful case for questioning what we're doing to the people of Iraq -- how we're turning those we've tried to make into friends, instead, into enemies. But toward the end, he has to go and take a cheap swipe at Mary Cheney, calling her "sexually proud."

You can see for yourself at www.lewrockwell.com/brennan/brennan12.html. What does this stupid asswipe accomplish in trashing Mary Cheney? And how is she "sexually proud" for simply telling the fucking truth about herself? Mr. Brennan, by that same standard, since you obviously identify as heterosexual you yourself are "sexually proud."

Heather Poe happens to be Mary Cheney's partner in life -- exactly the same way Mrs. Brennan (if there is one) is Mr. Brennan's partner in life. Simply by not treating her like a dirty little secret and hiding her existence (something you are not prone to do, regardless of your sexual orientation, to the one you love most in all the world), Mary Cheney is being "sexually proud," and -- given the dirty little twist Brennan gives it -- is evidently a horrible human being.

What a load of horseshit. Mr. Brennan, get your head out of your ass.

He writes a perfectly good, very insightful article about the way the U.S. is making enemies out of those it is supposed to be befriending, and then can't keep his own little-gradeschool-boy petulance out of the picture.

Did Mary Cheney make an issue out of her sexual orientation, or have the Republicans made it one? Who started all this, anyway? The Republicans have made war on many people, not because of anything we've done but simply because of who we are. If, because I don't tell lies about myself and insult my partner by treating her as if she doesn't exist, you want to call me "sexually proud," then let me call you what you are. You are a stupid piece of shit, and by piling it on me now that, in our currrent political climate, you can so easily get away with it, you are a coward.

Thanks for the gratuitous slap, Mr. Brennan. I guess your head is too far up your ass for you to be aware of the fact that there are a lot of gay and lesbian Libertarians. And you're not running us out of the party. You and the other little boys in the party can put up all the "No Stinky Girls or Queers Allowed" signs you want to. Just stay the hell outta my way, or I'm gonna take your sign and break it over your petty, pointy, weak little head.

There is an attempt, right now, being made by people like this to drive gays out of the party and to make sure women are properly subservient. Bullshit. Libertarianism means the overthrow of tyranny of EVERY kind. It is the natural vehicle for the hellraisers who now seek to prop up the ruins of the Democratic Party. As soon as they become aware of this, the tinpot despots now bent on dominating it are gonna have to step aside.

The Libertarian Party isn't winning big elections? Just look at the morons in charge of it and you'll know why! Before there can be a Libertarian revolution in this country, there needs to be a Libertarian revolution in the very party that bears the movement's name.

Do the Vets Offer Hope at Home?

On Blogger.com, today's Blog of Note is Chasing Ghosts: www.paulrieckhoff.com. An Iraq War veteran, and still a member of the National Guard, Paul Rieckhoff is serving his country in a variety of ways.

This is someone who, like others of his generation, probably won't buy into the bullshit their elders are selling America. Read his blog. He's learned more about life in just a few years than many Americans learn their whole lives.

As he points out, more Americans are concerned about the day-to-day fluctuations of gas prices, or who's winning on American Idol, than they are about the thousands of youngsters we've sent over to Iraq and Afghanistan to be maimed or killed.

Not to mention the Iraqis and Afghanis we've "liberated" by slaughtering like animals.

Now, once again, a marriage amendment is being debated. We hang out our flags and pretend to cheer those serving our country even as we shit on the graves of those who have died defending our way of life. If this "amendment" passes, that is exactly what we will be doing.

I believe the current generation of vets will come home ready to kick ass and take names. They will not accept the "moral leadership" of cowards who talk macho to the public after having ditched combat duty themselves. Nor will they allow our Constitution to be shredded by the phonies peddling quack cures for all that ails us.

If we want to pinpoint who's really responsible for our country's moral decay, we need look no farther than the good, hetero moralists of Red America. These vile and filthy people can't keep their promises to each other, can't keep their pants on, can't keep their hands off of their own children and want to blame it all on gays. How disgusting.

Here's a suggestion to all the bigots infesting our otherwise-decent Red states: PHYSICIANS, HEAL THYSELVES. Get your own divorce-rate under control, stop molesting your kids (or ripping them, yet unborn, out of the womb), and THEN come wag your fingers in my face and lecture me about my "lifestyle."

I can't wait for the lot of you to die off so your kids can take over.