I have long lived my life under the auspicious assumption that the government can see everything I do. I smoked a lot of pot in the years between 19 and 22 (I am thirty now and the worst thing I put into my body is the result of making poor choices in fast food lines).

But for those of you squares out there who never indulged in this psychotropic flower bud which grows naturally from the earth and is processed naturally through the body; let me tell you that the worst you've heard about it is true; extended use is likely to lead to social and pyschological disengagement where anything can happen.

If I were to register a guess about human tragedies and travesties, I would be prone to believe that some sort of psychotropic substance was involved in the Columbine Massacre of 1999.

But I digress.

Prolonged use of any body chemistry-altering substance can cause a character type insanity. I believe this is because eventually the mind has to either turn and see itself in the moment or turn away and float from reality completely.

What it basically comes down to is partial disengagement followed by observation, extrapolation, interpretation, theorization, and a gut check followed by a choice. The choice is either between re-engagement or complete and total disengagement.

The mind that chooses disengagement is gone forever. There is a spiritual door that opens once within each of us, at the level of the Third Eye, and which cannot be reopened once shut out of ignorance.

The Man in Black only comes knocking twice; and I'm not talking about Johnny Cash here. It's gonna go much easier on you if you open the door the first time he knocks because it makes the time between knocks much more pleasant to your soul.

It's the Hero's Journey that we're talking about here, the one that Brad Pitt spends years in the gym working out the vein in his left ass check to step inside the role of for two hours to make you forget that he abandoned his Hollywood marriage of convenience to Jennier Aniston for what appears to me to be a shot at true love with Angelina Jolie.

I made a conscious choice in my mind to reengage, to open the door at the first knock and face the Man in Black who is just standing there with his ash white hand out letting you know that he'll be back to collect someday all too soon.

It truly is a gift that this moment offers, the ability to be able to step out of the moment (an ability which indeed creates the Mind itself). The Mind is just a repository of emotional flashbacks which somehow get assembled into a personality that erroneously mistakes itself for something as real as the flower sprouting from a branch on a willow tree riding the wind that gently blows its petals in all directions. The Mind isn't even a whisp of matter but yet feels heavier than the known universe.

So when one makes to choice to re-engage from this point of understanding, one doesn't tend to fuck around with the little stupid things that only waste the moments between knocks.

It's balls to the wall or none at all after this point.

The biggest lesson from studying the history of our species is this: There is nothing that human beings, having lost their mind to a governing body, are not capable of doing or conceding to. Why do you think that Patrick Henry was so adamently opposed to a Federal Constitution? Because what is going on the world today is a result of government run amuck. And for a brief chance, our country had a choice to make about individual liberty; Patrick Henry knew that the choice we made, to consolidate under a Fedearal Constitution, would lead us into the global situation we are mired in today.

But there is, however, always a flip side to history--that without that choice we would have fought no civil war. Without that choice, one of the most brutal institutions of humanity would never have been stopped so early in our social evolution as a species. There would still be too many heavy chains in America if it it weren't for the the spiritual values in the hearts and minds of the good people of Western civliization, particularly those in the United States who fought a viscious color war so that the rest of the world wouldn't have to.

And I will now please the liberals in my audience by openly admitting that while the Nazi's killed twelve million enslaved human beings in the gas chambers of Europe in a four year period; The Portuguese, Spanish, and English enslaved and milked an entire race of human beings for almost six hundred years. That's a lot of ghosts in chains and those chains continue to stretch into our world today and weight it down with burdensome emotion.

This doesn't even take into account what we did to the American Indians.

Make no mistake about it, the history of the American people has been written in blood, but also know that it is the blood of all colors which brought our particular full flavor of democracy to its powerful perk today.

But I'll also please my conservative audience members by saying, "Big deal! Get over it! Pay attention to the problems of today because tomorrow's problems can worry for themselves and yesterday's problems are as worthless as owning a planet incapable of sustaining human life."

Remember that the mind is a repository of emotional flashbacks and that history is even less than that. History is second-hand knowledge of emotional flashbacks, and whether it is being typed into an Apple PowerBook on a Gulstream G450 or in buffalo blood on a cave wall in France fifteen thousand years ago; the words we write and most of the things we say are utter inconsolable bullshit which should be disregarded and filtered out on a regular basis.

In fact, mental bullshit is the primary by-product of all human civlizations throughout history--followed closely by plastic.

It's what you do with memory that counts and I choose not to engage with emotional bullshit that doesn't apply to the present moment and the challenges it brings.

The NSA is spying on us because it has to. It has to because we as individuals are responsible for making personal choices in our lives which demand a totalitarian government presence in every aspect of them in order to keep society in some form of working order.

We are responsible for Jack Abramoff and his ilk being able to manipulate and stroke the strings of our government.

We are responsible for surrendering our invaluable individual liberties to state power run amuck and we must also be responsible enough to understand that this poor choice against individual liberty has created the loss of humanity on a grand scale and the worthless global internal security of our species which has come along with it. Not to mention the lower standard of living for all which results when individual choice in the pursuit of happiness is stifled under the auspices of the common good.

We have done that. We are responsible. The buck stops here and if you pick up one end of the stick you inevitably pick up the other end as well.

Our goal, now that we are aware of this spying as well as the ovewhelming need for it, and in full consideration of the current state of affairs in the world, should be to start making choices right now, this moment, that will create trust in the minds and hearts of those around us and hence in ourselves. Only from this point, can we begin healing locally that which cannot be touched globally--the human heart and its eternal struggle with power, love, and death.

If a concentrated mass of human beings begin making the right choices in their relationships toward one another in the same place at the same time, we will have another human rennaissance on our hands and one more Great Awakening in the heart of the greatest civilization that mankind has ever produced. Call it America, but the truth behind it is so fragile that to even whisper its name could cause it to shatter into a million pieces like the Roman Empire.

I say, keep it up my NSA friends. Keep reading my emails, my instant messages, catching satellite photos of me scratching my ass while I'm walking in a crisp, bathrobe winter morning, getting the Sunday paper with its ads that will no doubt make me want to buy more shiny rudders of convenience than I could ever need.

Keep tracking my IP logs, subpenoing my Google records, and my cell phone statements.

You people keep doing whatever it is you need to do to make sure that some fanatical lunatic supporting whatever god doesn't detonate a biological, chemical, or nuclear weapon and I'll just be right here, on Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers, telling you what I think about things. I'll be going to work and taking care of my family and friends in the hopes that if I ever need it, they will take care of me.

This is, after all, how society works best--right?

TAGS: Alexandra's "Enemy of the State" Post, NSA, Spying, Psychology, Philosophy, History, America, The United States of America, The War on Terror, Joseph Campbell, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Patrick Henry, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie,Jennifer Aniston, Individual Liberty, Libertarian, Socialism, History

I was deeply saddened at the death of the young man who was shot by police when he pulled a pellet pistol from his shirt in an armed confrontation.

When are we Americans going to finally accept that firearms are needed only to murder another human being and that there are times when the murder of another human being (protection of one's life and property or those of another) is an unfortunate necessity in a civlized society?

Guns should not be romanticized and worshipped like golden idols on a shelf full of incense. Those who have made it to the end of Stephen King's The Dark Tower Series know where a life of a love of the gun got Roland in the end.

In fact, it is lunatics like this who stand as testament to the value of an armed populace.

In support of the Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers originally posted at Truth Laid Bear, I am publishing a speech from the protagonist in a novel I am currently writing titled "Dead Speaks."

World War II affects me in a way that no period in history rivals. The only other period that catches me in the gut is the Revolutionary period in American history, when a convergence of ideas and actions took place which related to the freedom of the individual acting in concert with other individuals for the greater good of society.

Whereas, when you look at World War II, you start studying a convergence of ideas and gestures centered on stripping the individual of their liberties and placing them into the mechanisms of government and war, both of which (in America at least) keep mandate through law and the threat of force which supports it.

These two polar opposites of history stand as concrete testaments of the social results of the choices human beings make in the moment.

It was the choice of human beings to stand up together and place their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors on the table because, having whiffed the aroma of personal freedom and the pursuit of happiness, they could not see themselves licking the boots of their masters one second longer.

And don't forget that the British were civilized compared to what the Jews lived like in Europe during the twelve year reign of the National Socialist Party in Germany 1933-1945; or how Kurds lived in Iraq during the twenty plus year reign of Saddam Hussein (supported with American tax dollars and intelligence as well military-industrial resources provided by every person who files a 1040).

In some ways, we can't totally fault the Third World people for how easily they embrace dictatorships. After all, they're only learning from watching how we in the West have behaved for hundred of years.

It is an unfortunate culturally endemic trait for Westerners to presuppose the Third World to be our children. And if this is so, then can we really be that surprised to find the children of Mohammed in utter disarray? After all, this is the culture which invented the zero and ruled for years in relative peace prior to the religious crusades which brought both Christianity and Muhammadism crashing to the ground and halting all forward progress of our species.

And can we truly be that surprised to discover that it was the rebirth of the human spirit through art and the free exchange of ideas which brought the Western mind back to full bloom while the Eastern mind withered on history's stem in a spiritual cess pool of disdain and mad revenge?

As a species, we are still children. Alligators have been present on this planet for millions of years. Mankind has only walked upright and spoke the name of false gods for a few dozen thousand now.

We are still children.

And as children we must continually be redirected towards good behavior. But in order for this process of growth to occur, there must be a good mechanism of identifying behavior that is detrimental to the overall good of the species. This means immediately recognizing the behavior, calling it out, and then redirecting it to better behavior. This process is to be repeated time and again until it is endemic in the system.

And this redirection should be the primary function of a free press, not profit soaked in blood.

Unfortunately, we are living at the tail-end of the Age of Cultural Hegemony, where the special-interest group has control over the methods and substance of our press and has therefore set the course of our reaction for well over fifty years now with its penultimate message of absolute fear wrapped in sex and conquest.

That being said, there is a corpuscle of hope when one considers the online community who are each building cyber-personalities and communing thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears online right now, as we speak.

I look at the Internet as the physical and ethereal construction of the collective mind of the human species. In fact, I'll take it one step further and call the Internet the most important front of the Third Great War we now find ourselves in the midst of.

The Internet is not the place where soldiers and terrorists are dying on daily basis but it is the place which will decide what victory looks like and what price is too high to pay to liberate the individuals of nations outside of the United States of America.

And I believe the Internet (meaning the collective mind of humanity in the present moment), when left unregulated and free to express itself, will be the only tool of solution that will be effective in sewing the spirit, mind, and body of our species back together finally so that we can get back to the business of conquering the space inside and outside ourselves (which I would philosophically and theologically argue is actually the same space).

But none of this will happen if we do not recognize the destructive behavior of our addiction to war and corporate special interest support of our communications and entertainment as the primary drivers of our economy and affluence.

There must be a better way of building a society which works and it is the task of tasks for all generations alive on earth at this moment to marshall their resources towards this most beneficent and just goal.

As this book is stil lin the creation phase, I welcome any comments or suggestions for revisions.

©2006, Joshua Minton

This story is too sick to be fake:

Johannas Pope, 61, died Aug. 29, 2003, and she didn't want to be buried, Hamilton County Coroner Dr. O'dell Owens said today.

He said she told family members her wishes were:

“Don’t show my body when I’m dead. Don’t bury me.

“I’m coming back.”

So, what happened? Her corpse was dressed in a white gown by a friend, sat in a rocking chair in her upstairs attic and sat there watching a television that was never turned off. Her body eventually mummified while her caretaker's family continued the business of their lives downstairs.

This sick but true story is the perfect metaphor for what is happening to our country and our Constitution. We have continued the business of our ever-increasingly busy lives while the ideals and precepts which founded this country slowly rot and languish in front of the television. And I'm not just talking about the NSA surveillance of our communications or the little pieces of autonomy we passively allow power whore politicians to eek out of us one vial at a time; I mean the basic issues of individual autonomy such as controlling our own wealth and then paying the government a fair share as determined by the elected representatives of the people on behalf of the people's best interest. I'm talking about developing a decent immigration policy that doesn't put all of our lives and property at risk. I'm talking about a government concerned only with protecting the boundaries keeping people from harming each other in the business of moving about in life and pursuing some type of happiness.

Because that's the thing about happiness--it's all relative. Me, I'm happy maxin' and relaxin' in front of an HDTV playing the best video game around. Others are happy dunking their heads, mullet and all, into a bucket of ice water to retrieve raw pig's feet with their mouths. And some people are happy knowing that their bodies will rot away above ground to the endless cycles of Survivor, Big Brother, American Idol and 24.

It's the goal of happiness that is the end to justify all means, but that happiness must not come at the expense of the property or lives of others.

...because I want to keep peace between my family and friends who are public school teachers. But I think this snippet from Neil Boortz just about says it all. Neil is referring to a Wall Street Journal article about the recent "tragedy" which forced the NEA to finally reveal which leftist-wacko groups they've been donating their money to.

The NEA gave away more than $65 million dollars last year, virtually all of it to leftist, liberal groups. We're talking groups like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Amnesty International. There was a donation of $15,000 (chump change to the NEA) to the Human Rights Campaign, This group, you may remember, lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights". How special. The Fund to Protect Social Security got $400,000. There was also money spent to fight charter schools in Florida and to help "redirect Florida politics in a more progressive, Democratic direction."

Oh ... and then there's this. The WSJ article also reminds us of just what these union officials earn. The NEA has about 600 employees. Their payroll is $58 million. That makes the average NEA salary about $96,670 a year. How many teachers make this much? Not many. The average teacher salary is $48,000. Reg Weaver, the president of the NEA, makes $439,000 a year. Over one-half of the NEA employees make over $100,000 a year.

Disgusted? Sure you are. And you can rest assured that there are thousands of government school teachers out there who will be just as outraged as you when they learn how their dues money is being spent. Remember --- the most effective first step we could possibly take to improve the quality of government education in this country would be to eliminate the teacher's unions. Tomorrow wouldn't be too early.

Disgusting isn't the right word. I feel like painting my face like an Indian, going to Washington, and throwing Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and Nancy Pelosi right off the nearest clipper ship.

Tony Pierce brought up a good point today when he said, “it looks like Jack Abramoff is about to shed some light on the darkness in DC in what could be the biggest congressional scandal... Ever.”

Personally, I hope they string him up and every person he managed to roll into his web—even if that includes the President (who apparently will be donating the money Abramoff donated to him, but what do you want to bet that this is only the traceable money).

This slinky prick was able to get by all the obstacles Congress supposedly set in place to keep the system level. People, you can’t play pool on a slanted table and our Republican Democracy is about to hit the 90 degree angle and all the balls are rolling to the same black hole which is Jack Abramoff.

So let’s make sure we get our enemies straight—Saddam Hussein hated America, probably even planned on attacking it one day. Osama bin Laden did attack America and, if he’s still even alive, is probably planning on attacking it in the future.

But this prick, Jack Abramoff, did something far worse. He killed America with his bare hands and our elected representatives, including the office of the President, all collectively dropped to their knees and bared their necks for his blade. They were entranced, eyes closed, by the sweet promises he whispered while he raised the blade to make the change to rearrange us till we were sane.

There is a cancer at the heart of our Democracy and this man is just a large cyst that will let us see how deep and terminal the case may be. Mayhap it’s not worth saving at all and if this be the case, I say throw away the politicians and keep the Declaration of Independence (politicians and judges haven’t obeyed the Constitution for over a hundred years anyway).

Sic Semper Tyrannis…

I wasn't quite a Libertarian yet, but I definitely became conservative the day I was forced by the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, to get my first E-Check on a car I had just purchased a year prior.

For those that don't know, an E-Check is a liberal weigh station sign off that one must obtain on their vehicle in order to renew annual license tags. You drive into what looks like a garage and they hook a big hose up to the exhaust of your car.

Your car is then driven forward onto a set of rollers whereby some douche gets in your car and stomps on the gas for several minutes, burning a quarter tank of your fuel in the hopes that their special "machine" can read how much pollution your car is putting off and they either sign off on your car or they send you off to get massive exhaust work done.

Meanwhile, filthy disgusting dump trucks and school buses are pouring black smoke out of their rotten hulls as you drive to the mechanic for a $700 tag renewal.

I simply can't express how disgusted I was with this practice. I can't imagine the Founding Fathers having been more disheartened and equally pissed when they first heard about the British taxation acts that would come to be called The Intolerable Acts having been passed.

But right always wins in the end, at least in the movies and sometimes even in life. I say this because the E-Check is officially dead in Cincinnati and good riddance to this Clinton-Era Drakkonian bullcheet do-gooder really do-badder law.

Thanks to you Cincinnati liberals who actually forced this ridiculous measure upon your citizenry, I voted twice for Bush!