James Rozoff's Blog, page 20

An Argument On The Free Market and The Function Of Government

I had a little discussion on YouTube and have culled these words from it. It is not especially well said or unique but I think it was worth saying and perhaps worth reading.


     Seen through our own paradigm, we are the perfect society, because we use our own gauges in determining exactly what the best society is. Likewise in the Soviet Union the Communist Party saw their society as superior, because they could more or less feed their people and everyone was more or less equal. Our perception of freedom here is the ability to own a Harley Davidson, at least in my neck of the woods. It represents to many the lure of the open road as well as their ability to own something they truly love. But the image is a finely crafted one and the poor saps who own one often work 6-7 days a week at a job they hate in order to have their little chunk of paradise. I think owning stuff is a very good thing, up to a point. But beyond that point it becomes a sort of fetishism, a mass hysteria and a very limited view of what makes life worth living. I see our society as one that is unhealthy and that is hurtling along like a runaway train towards an inevitable crash. We have divorced ourselves from every ethical belief of the past so that now we consider greed to be a good, discipline bad, and caring for others as a weakness. We view age as a sickness rather than a part of the life-cycle, and few of us ever really continue to grow emotionally past the teenage years. Middle-aged men pop Viagra when perhaps they should accept the calming of their urges in order to fulfill the much needed role of guiding figures rather that randy old men. A quarter of our society takes psychotropic drugs in order to cope with their existence rather than take the journey towards making their lives meaningful, Almost everyone is suffering under crippling debt, as is their local, state, and federal government. And if you look at it fairly, you could make a good case that each of these problems has at the root of it our consumer culture to blame. 
I don't believe in a perfect system, just a workable one. A consumer society is one that tells us we shouldn't wait to save money for something we should buy it now. It is a society in which we don't actually ask if we need something, but rather base our purchases on an emotional rather than a rational decision making process. I don't blame the consumers so much as those who propagate such a system, who believe that their sole purpose in life is to make a profit and if we all just do our job of selling and consuming we will achieve the best possible of worlds. We are inundated with countless messages from every source of media, all of them trying to sell us something. Even churches have let in televisions, giving to them an elevated place. Count how many times today you are prompted to buy something, be it from Facebook, television, your phone, radio, or billboards. Then think of how often you are prompted to quiet introspection, work in the garden, or visit an aging relative. I don't think any society in the world has ever been asked to view life on a purely economic level as we are, except perhaps the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union could not dream of the propaganda machine we have created.

I would like to see a workable system that maximizes human happiness. I know happiness is something hard to define, but so is freedom and nobody is afraid to mention that as a necessary goal. I think we can both agree that it is not a fear of starvation that drives a Warren Buffet or a Donald Trump, so why do we think the best way to motivate people is to work or die? Yes, it motivates, but it is the motivation of the stick rather than the carrot. It is the kind of motivation that causes some to become drug dealers or thieves, corporate or otherwise. The market, like fire,is a wonderful invention but we should treat it as a tool to be used rather than a mysterious force too powerful to control. To suggest that the market should be responsible for society is to suggest that we are not active agents in the process, it is a way of surrendering our humanity to outside forces. In primitive cultures, when a man mistreated his worker or his slave he was apt to be kept up all night with the cries of anguish. In other words, employer and employee had a closer association and the actions of either were more closely felt by the other. Nowadays we have distanced owner from employee so that a worker in Thailand can be beaten and worked 12 hours a day without the person who gets the stock dividend even being aware of how they earned their money. We need to maintain our humanity in our business practices rather than seeing humans as merely numbers on a spreadsheet. Man is an inherently tribal and social creature: if we isolate ourselves from one another and from the community we live in, we will become dysfunctional. I'm not saying the solution to our alienation from our own humanness has an easy solution, but if we do not accept the reality of the situation, it will be impossible. We cannot expect what is a simplistic economic theory to solve the complexity that is the human situation. Government is a tool, and in the hands of an educated electorate, a pretty efficient and powerful tool. To simply abandon it would not only mean that we would not benefit from it, it would mean that others would pick it up and use it as they saw fit. 

A Snippet From Perchance To Dream

Here's a little something from my second novel in The Amazing Morse series, Perchance To Dream. There is nothing supernatural going on here, it is merely a description of a Halloween show put on by the magic show that magician Dave Morse works at. The illusions are fairly standard ones, but I attempt to put my own spin on them:

Located on a side street off of the main street of Wisconsin Dells, almost directly across from the Museum of Historic Torture Devices, Douglas Slattery’s House of Magic was a rather fitting place for Halloween festivities. It had a cultivated air of mystery and shadow about it. It was difficult to achieve such an atmosphere on a sunny day when the street was crowded with tourists, but the autumn night lent credibility to the props and less than authentic items that the store contained. Through the store’s display window, a chair could be seen, made of ornately carved wood and covered with rich red velvet. Two swords spanned the gap between the arms of the chair and upon the sharp edges of the swords sat a severed head. Not your normal everyday severed head, either, but one covered with tattoos. So many tattoos that the head was shaved in order to display them all. Nor was this severed head an inanimate prop, but a very active and curious thing that looked back at those who gawked at it through the window. When a couple who were walking past happened to gaze upon the spectacle, the tattooed head opened its mouth and stuck out its forked tongue at them like a snake giving warning. There was a defiance in its eyes, as though hatred was what kept it from the death it deserved. The woman leapt back as the thing’s eyes suddenly met her own and stared a challenge at her. The couple continued on their way. A moment later, several others had gathered outside the window. A sign in the window’s lower left corner read: “Enter if you would dare to see more.” The people soon entered the building.They entered into a small room with a closed curtain at the far end of it, just in time for the next presentation to begin. The curtain was pulled back by some unseen source, revealing the body of a woman with the glaringly obvious lack of a head. Into the neck poured metal pipes, apparently to bring nutrients to the body in order for it to maintain a semblance of life. Various equipment that looked to belong to a hospital were around the body, one of them showing the vital stats. There were also two clear plastic vats filled with crimson fluids which intermittently bubbled as the fluid was pushed into or out of the body via tubes connected at the woman’s throat. Before long, the pre-recorded voice of an overly-clinical man could be heard through speakers located somewhere in the ceiling of the room: “What we see here is a recent development in health and beauty aids. In front of you is the body of a woman who was evidently born with good genes, but unfortunately without the material means to maximize their potential. She was forced through economic necessity to work in an industrial setting that made use of some rather dangerous heavy machinery. A moment of carelessness on her part resulted in a complete decapitation, the head being damaged beyond the opportunity for reattachment. Fortunately, modern medicine has been able to maintain the life in her body even though she is, sadly, no longer able to hold down a steady job. But her misfortune shall work in the favor of some other woman who is able to afford this magnificent physique. In the future, tummy tucks and other such painful, inconvenient operations will no longer be necessary, as bodies such as this will be available to women who simply do not have the time for exercise. Already, scientists are hard at work, busily trying to replicate the genes that have made this attractive physique uniquely suitable to matching and not rejecting another’s head.“If one of you would like to step toward the computer screen, we will demonstrate to you that this body, while not technically ‘alive’, is still fully functional.”
At the railing that discouraged the crowd from getting closer to the exhibit was a touch screen with simple commands displayed. One simply had to touch “lift right hand” in order to make the body in front of them obey, if rather awkwardly. Another square had the command “cross legs”. When pushed, the woman’s attractive nylon-clad legs moved in a rather lady-like manner, crossing from one direction to the other. The audience was given the opportunity to press every button, or at least enough to get the point across. Once this was done, the crowd was instructed to exit the door on their left, allowing the room to fill up again with the next crowd of onlookers.

Capitalism Needs Competition

     I’m just a sheet metal worker, but today I got to listen to an hour-long discussion of Cervantes’ Don Quixote while at work. It was preceded by an hour long discussion on the refugee crisis in Europe. When I say discussion, I mean a respectful, thoughtful discussion of ideas rather than a couple of guys hurling abuse at each other.     I Shouldn’t have to tell you it was on public radio, it’s sort of a given. I have heard a thousand other such instances of elevated hour-long discussions on issues ranging from John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme to the accomplishments of John Quincy Adams. And what did I hear on commercial radio when I turned the dial? Well, commercials, mainly. An astounding string of them. In fact I hit three in a row.     To make a similar comparison, I flipped through the channels on TV tonight to see what was playing. Not on the normal channels but on the elevated ones that some cable salesman once tried to impress me with. I thought I might have to fudge the schedule a little just to make it seem more extreme, but such exaggeration was unnecessary. Here is the list of actual programs on the channels I deemed most highbrow:                History Channel—American Pickers                Arts & Entertainment—Duck Dynasty                American Movie Classics (Note the word “Classics”)—Gone In 60 Seconds w/Nicholas Cage                The Learning Channel—My Big Fat Fabulous Life                VH1—Dating Naked     Let’s face it, corporate media is a cesspool.     It wasn’t always that way, though. Check out this interview from 1958, it’s an example of what television was once capable of producing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40. You can also find Erich Fromm on 60 minutes, and Phil Donahue interviewing Ayn Rand. On a daytime talk show!You see, back then the corporate model had competition. They were afraid if they didn’t provide for the citizenry that the citizenry might choose some other kind of model to provide not only their news and entertainment but their other needs as well. The U.S.S.R. still existed and there was a battle for the hearts and minds of humanity.     But now there is no longer any competition and corporate media has grown fat, lazy, arrogant and stupid. It throws an entire day of the same reality program on a channel the way a farmer would throw slop in a trough for the consumption of pigs. Even Public Radio is far more dependent on corporate underwriters than it should be.     It seems that a lack of competition has made corporations soft. Competition has always been the redeeming feature of capitalism, the check upon the greed that drives it. Knowing someone can come along and do your job better makes a guy or a corporation work harder and act smarter. But the idea that competition between corporations will do the job is demonstrably false (keep in mind the examples I gave you were from those channels that were most likely to supply adult programming).
     Perhaps capitalism itself needs honest competition from another form of production, another way of providing for the needs and wants of society. Maybe corporations need to face a real threat to their existence before they can show what they’re capable of. It’s time to start thinking outside of the box. Viewers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but Honey Boo Boo.

Our Preference For A Small World, A Simplistic Understanding

     Grow up in a certain time and place and the oddest things will seem normal to you. Mood rings and pet rocks, earth shoes and bell bottoms were things we never really questioned in the 70’s. And if you grew up in a society where they cut the heart out of a virgin in order to appease the volcano god, well, that seemed like a perfectly rational thing to do at the time.     Of course, you see the absurdity of it all, don’t you? You see the madness of a society that advocated slavery or wearing powdered wigs in order to look important, right? That’s the thing; when you’re outside of it it’s easy to see what is wrong with a given era. But when you’re trapped inside of it, it’s almost impossible to see the absurdity that takes place right under your nose. There is some fundamental flaw in the human intellect that leaves a person blind to the obvious if those around him are similarly unaware. We are tied to a greater communal mind in ways we cannot understand and are unlikely to admit. We are less the rugged individualists we see ourselves as and more like the sheep we tend to mock. We tend to rebel in more or less the same way. Hence tattoos as a symbol of self-expression, because a Maori design on your shoulder so marks you as an individual.     You see, a given mindset is a hard thing to shake. We all want to believe we are free from biases, but the evidence suggests otherwise. But as much as mindsets are quick to come and go, there is one bias common to the sun worshippers of primitive times and modern day hipsters: we all believe that we were born in the one place and time that got it right.     This is not to blame those who are unable to see past their own backyards, as it seems to be something universal in our nature. But by realizing our penchant for group-think we should arm ourselves against it. We can do this by deliberately stepping beyond the borders of the here and now, and perhaps the best way to do this is through reading. By reading we can visit other lands and times, can permit another’s mind to guide us through a different train of thought. But do not read a book about Victorian England written by a contemporary writer for this purpose as it will contain contemporary biases. Read a book written in a different age. It doesn’t so much matter if it is a classic, a romance, or a comic, you will know it for what it is. If a child’s story, you will see how an adult spoke to a child in a different era.     Read an old magazine and glance through the advertisement as well as the articles. Immerse yourself in a different environment. When you return from it you will see things differently.     That is what troubles me about libraries is that they are quickly replacing those testaments of ages passed with new interpretations of them. But like a photograph, anything that is copied loses some fidelity with each copy that is made. Go back to the original, back to the source, the real thing, or at least as close as possible. The powers that be of any given age wish to keep you blind to other perspectives, wish to have you see the world in the way they are trying to paint it. They want to purge the world of historical perspective, which is why The History Channel has day-long blocks of Pawn Stars and Car Wars or whatever the hell they are showing nowadays. Step outside of the cage others would make for you, or else the heart that is sacrificed to the volcano god might just be yours.

Childhood In Three Generations

     My wife and I walked the dog tonight, up past the water park/mini-golf course that was recently built eight blocks away from my home. It was built to give kids something to do since there isn’t a lot of open space nearby. As we walked by the eight foot tall gate that barricaded the amenities against those who might not have the money to pay, I couldn’t help noticing the domed piece of darkened glass that covered the camera that was observing us as we walked by. Surely it was there to keep the peace, surely it wasn’t bothering anyone who was obeying the laws. And yet I couldn’t help thinking that our world has changed lately, changed with both a speed and extremity that has never been witnessed before.     I think about my own childhood and I think of endless hours of play outdoors, whether it be on the streets or in the field a couple of blocks away from my home. Either way it was play far from the eyes of the adults. The field I’m talking about was no nature preserve, rather it was a bit of land that had been cleared in order to make it just another piece of the suburban puzzle of square plots of land. But for whatever reason, the project was halted halfway through and abandoned. The result was not too different from a sandbox where a child had been playing with Tonka trucks before getting bored and moving on to some other endeavor, just on a grander scale. But it was a place where we learned how to negotiate both an external reality and our relationships with our fellow man (or boy, as the case may be).     But kids don’t explore the real world while figuring out how to get along with others nowadays. It’s bad enough with the waterpark example, where they are constantly monitored by not only the lifeguards but by video cameras. They are not discovering anything, rather they are caged in like animals at a zoo, free to play in an artificial environment that might amuse but does not instruct them how to live in the wild. And this is when kids are at physical play, burning off the energy nature has given them. More often they are busy exploring artificial worlds with artificial people. I refer, of course, to video games, where adults construct reality to which the children respond. It’s like play, only nothing ever useful is learned. Instead, children are taught how to steal cars and kill a bunch of people and if the game stops going your way you can just hit the reset button.
     This is the point where you say, “Aw, just an old man talking about how hard his childhood was and how easy kids have it today.” Not at all. I loved my childhood. I feel sorry for kids nowadays who will never get away from the world adults have fashioned for them. Of course, even in my day I knew there was something artificial about my life that made my experiences feel a little less than legitimate. See, my dad had grown up during the Great Depression and he exited that straight into the greatest war the world had ever seen. His generation had a connection to reality very similar to every other generation that had come before. Prior to the last 70 years or so, you would had to have been a very rich and alienated aristocrat if you wanted to be able to escape the laws of nature and the fundamental lessons that life teaches. When my dad wanted to go swimming, he and the other kids in the neighborhood would dam up a stream until they had a pool. Imagine what that taught them about working with others and getting along in order to accomplish a goal. Now a kid just has to have parents with the money to get past the iron gate. Of course, maybe they’ll come out with a swimming game for PlayStation and save them the hassle. They could cliff dive in Australia, bodysurf at Waikiki or compete in the 400 meter freestyle against Michael Phelps. I’m sure it will teach them good hand/eye coordination. 

The Game Of Monopoly

     The reason the game of Monopoly does not permit borrowing is that the game would never end. Not only would it never end, it would soon become intolerable. Those with all the property would only become richer, while those without would only go further into debt. There would be no joy to be derived from the game by the losers and no joy either for the winners unless they had some pathological need to acquire money and property beyond measure. Even so, they would require a little bit of sadism in order to derive any measure of enjoyment from such a game.     Now imagine that each time you were to play Monopoly that you carried your previous score with you. And not you only but your score would be passed down to your children and grandchildren so that if you were a loser your children would be forced to move their thimble across a board where all the property is already owned (the winner’s kid would have the racecar, which was bargained away from you when you landed on Boardwalk with a hotel on it).     Who would call such a game fair? Who would wish to play such a game? And for those in perpetual debt, who would blame them if they overturned the board, scattering houses and hotels everywhere?     Of course the Chance cards would be rigged too, so that the one in debt would have to shoulder the burden of the taxes. The card would read “Pay $500 in taxes” but it would have an asterisk next to it stating that property owners could deduct $50 for upkeep for each building owned.     The loser would spend a lot of time in jail. Indeed, that might be a place of safety for him, a place where for a brief span of time they wouldn’t have to worry about racking up further debt. The loser wouldn’t really care about keeping out, wouldn’t worry about landing on the Go Directly To Jail square. Free Parking would be his only hope. The property owner, of course, would never have to worry about spending any real time in jail. Sure, he could get sent there, but he’d always have enough to buy his way out the next roll.     Every lap around the board, the loser would be reminded of the time when he was just starting out with a little house on Baltic Avenue. Sure, it didn’t seem like much at the time but it was all he really ever needed. Of course, there’s a motel on there now, but it’s not his own, and the price is rather steep. Still, one has to rest somewhere eventually, even if it drives him further in debt.
     Happily, those are not the rules of the game of Monopoly. If they were, nobody would want to play. It would be the dumbest game ever.

My Novel, Seven Stones Available (Sort Of)

My new novel, Seven Stones, is now available for pre-order for Kindle. So what’s it all about and why should you care? Because I’ve made a very conscious decision to bring you action from the get go while providing a portrait of life a century ago. The story begins a year before the start of World War I, touching upon many of the events and people of the day. It will take you to a Louisiana plantation where the owner still believes he has the right to own his workers, not only in life but also in death. The main character, Doug Slattery, encounters séances and acquaintances of Harry Houdini. Sister ships Mauretania and Lusitania cross The Atlantic with speed and in style, while The Trans Siberian Railway brings prisoners East to populate a bleak and ungiving land, where Joseph Stalin sits in exile. The South Pole has just been reached, and in the process, evidence is found in The Antarctic of a time when all the continents were united in a single Urcontinent. Physician Max Planck and novelist Jack London are using science to reinterpret the world in which they live. And through it all, the status quo is being threatened by those who would hurl bombs in order to advance their agenda. The old world is dying. What will survive, and what will come from the ashes? And what happens when mankind plays with powers beyond its reckoning?

Magic And Science Part 2

     As I’ve mentioned in my last post, magic is a major theme in the four books I have written. And like yesterday’s post, I hope to be able describe exactly what I mean by magic. At least that is the aim, to attempt once again to point at a target that is allusive and multi-faceted.     The word magic is simply a label I put on an idea that is a little too abstract for easy understanding. Perhaps religion or spirituality might fit better, but any word is apt to be misunderstood. Please bear with me as I try to explain some of the ideas without getting hung up on the words that are used. As Chuang Tzu said, “The Tao that can be described is not the real Tao.” In other words, don’t worship the statue that represents God, don’t stare at the finger that points at the moon, they are merely ways of getting one to see the unseeable.     Magic is the ability to cook a perfect steak without knowing the scientific principles involved. It is knowing that certain actions can produce a given result without knowing why. Science is a wonderful thing, no doubt, but so is magic. Jimi Hendrix did not have to know the science behind sound in order to make music.     Sometimes in searching for explanations we end up killing the magic. Not because truths disprove magic but an insufficient understanding of it does. We never are really able to understand the deeper truths, it is too much for our little minds, but quite often we convince ourselves that we actually do know something. And in believing ourselves capable of understanding in any real sense, we permit our delusions of knowledge to destroy something wonderful.     Magic is the sizzle of the steak: you could explain it, but why? Magic is elusive and should be. Magic is that thing that resides in the soul of the scientist that makes him question in the first place. It flits at the edge of our consciousness but is never clearly seen.     Magic does not always jibe with our intellect, and so the intellect attempts to deny it. But if we keep our intellect humble, we can admit something exists without understanding why. After all, if a certain ritual permits a pitcher to pitch a perfect game, or a certain belief enables a forty year old boxer to become the heavyweight champion of the world, who are we to ridicule? It worked! Perhaps the reasoning they used does not fit in with reality as we perceived it, but IT WORKED. And the fact that such beliefs are passed on to others with similar results, it is not unreasonable to assume there is something to it.
     There are truths our intellects will never grasp, the intellect is simply not made for some things. The intellect is akin to a sixth sense, another way for the human animal to perceive the outside world. It is quite good at a great many things, but it has its own blind spots, a great many of them, I would say. Even our sense of smell is better equipped to judge the outside world than our intellect, but the intellect is better at convincing us it is right. Think about it, if something does not seem right but our mind cannot find a reason against it, we say that “something smells rotten” or “it doesn’t pass the smell test”. And if we allow our reason to veto what our nose is telling us, we usually end up paying the price for it. For one day, abandon reason for scent and see if it does not make you happier. And in experiencing the world without believing you understand it, then perhaps you will gain some appreciation of what I allude to when I use the word magic. It is something not to be understood, merely experienced. And in experience, you will find understanding deeper and truer than anything the human intellect can ever hope to attain.

Magic And Science

     Magic is a theme that has played a dominant role in all four of my novels. I’m not sure how the idea of magic has woven its way into my thinking but it has, and I continue to find new ways to interpret it. I’ve seen many of my favorite artists latch upon a single idea and go back to it again and again. A good idea, a unique paradigm, is worthy of being mined again and again.     My main characters are magicians but my books aren’t so much about the performing of tricks on stage. Nor are they the kind of magicians that go to Hogwarts and turn people into animals. No, they are quite human people without any special powers. Except, perhaps, perception. They are able to see life in a way few people take the time to, are able to see beyond the accepted realities that have been built by a sort of group think. They walk paths off the beaten trail and so are able to see the things other people are too busy, too herded, to see. After all, being a magician is not a normal profession. It is perhaps something we think of doing when we’re young, but eventually we grow up and get real jobs.     But there is something to the illusion, the sleight of hand. We want to know how the trick is done but we also want to believe that there’s something more than a trick involved. Sure, we know it’s not real, but it’s not really about reality, is it? There is something beyond the reality, or something that is real but not conforming to what we generally agree upon as “real”. What is truly magical, miraculous, is what takes place within us as we observe a trick being performed. That is where magic exists, within us, in our hearts and in our minds when we are able to observe things with un-jaded eyes. And that area where magic exists is an area quite foreign from science or objective observation. It has its own reality that can run concurrent to what we can quantify but exists slightly apart from it. It is a world of belief and faith just as it is a place that permits doubt and questioning of what the rest of the world accepts as solid fact. You see, when we believe, when we have faith, we are able to achieve many things that the outside world may say is impossible. And when we doubt what is accepted fact, we are able to overcome barriers that others never try to overcome. Indeed, many of us are never even aware that the barriers are there. I have noticed a growing idea that there is no such thing as free will. And for those who do not believe in free will it truly does not exist. You have to be able to see beyond the existing paradigms in order to overcome them.      Hundreds of years ago religion was misused in order to restrict people’s reality. All of the advances of science would have then been considered impossible given the limits that were placed upon free thought. But scientists pushed bravely onwards and built an entirely new world beyond the imagining of anyone living a few centuries ago.
     But now ironically science itself is often used as a bludgeon to try to prevent us from seeing beyond the walls that have been constructed around us. Science has constructed rules and laws in the same fashion as religion once did. You see, no matter how enlightened we may believe ourselves to be, we cannot remove humans from the equation, their imperfections and unpredictability. Which is bad as far as science is concerned, but it’s where magic is able to flourish.

Random Thoughts Part 12

If you are afraid to discuss your beliefs, they are not beliefs but prejudices.
How did we end up a society that pays someone to walk our dogs so we can drive our SUVs to the gym to hit the treadmill for an hour?
When I was growing up in the 70's we didn't have things like Facebook and Texting. If you wanted to send a message back then you had to knock on ceilings or pipes or tie ribbons to trees.
Give a man genetically modified food and he will eat for a day. Teach him to grow genetically modified crops and you will own his food supply for life.
Isn't blaming government for the abuses it sometimes enables kind of the same thing as blaming guns for the uses criminals put them to?
Life is like a box of chocolates: You get through what little actual good stuff there is right away, then you constantly fool yourself into believing there's still something good in whatever's left.
My dog has never done a useful thing in her 14 years on this planet, and yet I would jump in front of a car without a second's hesitation to try to save her. What can I learn from this? Perhaps that while being useful may help us and others to continue to live, to bring joy into other's lives makes life worth living. While she has never put food on the table, she is always happy to see me and in all the years I have known her, she has never once passed judgment on me, never once made me feel bad about who I am. But more than anything she has helped me to see through her eyes, to see the joy and soon forget the pain. Perhaps the ones we most appreciate, the ones we are willing to do the most for, are those who enable us to see the most of the miraculous in life.  Who you are and what you do today is most likely who you will be and what you will do tomorrow. You have it within your grasp now to be the person you wish to be, do the things you wish to do.
With all the money the government keeps taking from rich people, how come they keep getting richer?
The fact that the media is overwhelmingly liberal is proof the free market doesn't work.
The thing is, once the word liberal or conservative is mentioned, once the name of a certain person you don’t like is used, your mind rebels and rejects out of hand whatever is said, whether it is true or not. In choosing a side you automatically reject half the world, can no longer see colors but only black and white.
 We are not raising children to be free but to conform. When they are told rather than asked they are taught to obey rather than question. What kind of freedom can come from such teaching?