1920s and 30s America, When We Were Censored and Prohibited For Our Own Safety

"The first week of December 1933 will go down in history for two repeals, that of Prohibition and that of the legal compulsion for squeamishness in literature. It is not inconceivable that these two have been closely interlinked in the recent past, and that sex repressions found vent in intemperance. At any rate, we may now imbibe freely of the contents of bottles and forthright books. It may well be that in the future the repeal of the sex taboo in letters will prove to be of greater importance. Perhaps the intolerance which closed our distilleries was the intolerance which decreed that basic human functions had to be treated in books in a furtive, leering, roundabout manner. Happily, both of these have now been repudiated." (Morris L. Ernst, New York, December, 11, 1933 on Judge John Woolsey's decision to lift the U.S. ban upon James Joyce's Ulysses)

Why You Should Read Lolita Before Traveling In the U.S.A.: American Travelers Are Lolita, and The TSA Is Humbert Humbert

In 1955 Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian emigre to the United States, published Lolita, a tale of a linguistically and aesthetically talented pedophile who runs off with his 12 year old step daughter, "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta" (first lines of Lolita).

Lolita was not published in the U.S. until 1958 due to its pornographic subject matter. Nabokov intensely hated cruelty to others and sexual deviants. So why did he write a book from the viewpoint of the pedophile, Humbert Humbert, who has conned several generations of readers and academics with the beautiful account of his love and "protection" of a 12 year old girl?

Nabokov hated evil. He had escaped the Bolsheviks in Russia, then later, escaped the Nazis with his wife of Jewish descent and their young son. They arrived in America and fell in love with it. Nabokov's wife, Vera, promptly purchased a gun to replace the one she had left behind in Europe, and learned to drive.

Nabokov, a seemingly absent-minded butterfly-chasing professor with an innocence about him that relied upon his wife's ferocity and protection liked to look at things from a very detailed and scientific perspective. He hated evil and studied it, dissected it, and understood its minutest detail. He climbed into the mind of evil when he wrote Lolita, shocking readers and enchanting millions with the beauty of his language.

Lolita was a triumph and proved how easily a population can be tricked into accepting evil, calling it beautiful, spending entire lifetimes studying its details without ever getting to its ultimate meaning. Anyone can tear apart an engine, or dissect a body and name the parts and figure out how they operate, but most cannot figure out the ultimate meaning -- why was this human body created, what is its purpose? How does one get into the mind of the creator via the act of dissection and cataloguing of the parts? It is impossible if one has no love or passion driving them. Creators and inventors generally have more love and passion which compels them to work harder and longer at something, creating a thing that changes the world for better.

Most inventions and creations were initially designed for the betterment of mankind or to add beauty or freedom. But many inventions are corrupted and used for evil purposes. The written word was made to better the world, but evil tries to corrupt it. The same goes for all art. We see technology abused, being used to make life harder rather than easier. Even Lolita, meant to show us evil from its own perspective, has been corrupted and adopted as a wonderful and dreamy tale by many gullible girls and joking young men, none of whom are aware that they have been artfully conned and that Nabokov proves his case of how evil survives and is accepted into the world.

Nabokov, the great enchanter and magician deceives many with his artistic slight of hand, keeping our focus upon the aesthetic, causing us to accept Humbert Humbert's defence because it is merely art and has no ultimate meaning or moral. If art is only aesthetic, then beauty has no meaning, thus what is the point of creating it?

Nabokov, a talented lepidopterist, studied butterflies and moths and was fascinated by their beauty. These creatures are patterned in ways that attract and enchant us, but also hide them from evil. Some butterflies blend in with their surroundings while others mimic dangerous animals to avoid being eaten. Nabokov learned that a butterfly's patterning is not merely aesthetic, but also enhances its survival. And this is what art's purpose is. Art is not merely aesthetic, but driven by truth and survival. If we cannot learn from art how to be wiser, better, kinder, and more graceful to others; to have pity, then art has no purpose, much as a shiny car has no meaning or purpose without an engine. A car is nice to look at, but without an engine it gets us nowhere.

The reason I expound upon Nabokov's Lolita and art is that more than ever America is deceived by the Humbert Humberts who claim they love us and want to protect us, while molesting us in various ways. We are made to pass through Naked Body Scanners, which undress us and expose us to dangerous mutagenic radiation. We are searched and groped by TSA officials as we travel the country, much as Lolita was groped by Humbert Humbert along the highways and byways of America. The stories now include "enhanced" searches that have left many feeling sexually violated after having had their penises, anuses, labia, and breasts felt by TSA screeners.

Now, does Humbert's love for Lolita feel nice and beautiful? Sure, he attacked the pornographic movie maker that ran off with Lolita, because that kind of art is immoral and degrading; but what of Humbert's protective and fatherly love for her? More than ever Nabokov's Lolita is important, for we all are her.

Was Lolita clean and innocent as the wind-driven snow? Was she faultless? No. But was that any excuse for Humbert Humbert to molest her? Was Lolita a kind and sweet child? No. She was obnoxious and sometimes crude. Was she more deserving of Humbert's sexual predation because of this? No. Americans are like this 12 year old girl and even though we are annoying and obnoxious and immoral it does not mean that we deserve to be treated by our states, by our fellows that work at TSA, as criminals in need of being stripped down or molested as we travel. Humbert Humbert protected Lolita as much as our airports are protecting us.

This is not beautiful, this is not America. This isn't even Nazi Germany. This is worse. This is worse for numerous reasons. Firstly, it's far worse and more abusive passing through United States airport security than in the rest of the world. America is supposed to be less abusive than the rest of the world. Second, the atrocities of the Nazis and American eugenicists and corporations in the first part of the 20th century are not so far removed from memory that we have forgotten them and what they looked like -- and what is going on in the United States right now resembles these past times.

The TSA's arrogance is only a small, yet extremely visible HINT as to what period of history we have regressed to. If a Naked Body Scanner, a long line in which one is divested of their possessions and shoes, hurried along, and subjected to physical searches which involve humble and silent endurance while one's anal and sexual reproduction areas are touched by uniformed employees of the government before being boarded upon crowded vehicles traveling somewhere doesn't wake us up and cause deja vu; then far worse than what happened in Nazi-controlled areas of Europe awaits us.

Rather than humbly lining up like the Jews, believing they'd eventually return home, we should stop cowering in embarrassment and start saying to hell with the "law," which breaks every law written into our soul. American travelers aren't terrorists and neither are visitors from other countries. The terrorists are the ones that apply for TSA jobs, and willingly carry out the orders of their superiors. If TSA employees were intelligent Americans they'd go on strike until they no longer were made to mistreat their fellow Americans. The terrorists are the ones groping for your wallet and now, your genitals. Soon, the women and children will be divided from the men, then the children from the women as enhanced airport security. It's already happening on an individual level. What next? Confiscation of Passport and Citizenship? Child sacrifice? When will their appetite be filled?

Wake up, America. Don't let the lives lost of the millions of Jews and others be for nothing. It's time to wake up out of our self-righteous and false morals. We are imperfect, we are obnoxious, we are all sinners, and we're not afraid of it. The Nazis were afraid of sin and imperfection and tried to hide it and eradicate it. We don't have to fall for that lie.

America wasn't founded as a utopia away from imperfection, but a place that would toughen up and accept it. That First Amendment isn't for the perfect or the safe people, but to protect the imperfect and those that speak unsafe things even if they are the truth and offend others. Our entire Constitution was designed to protect the so-called "impure," the "unsafe," the "sinful," the obnoxious, the rude, and the human. If the Constitution was only for the perfect and the moral, then our Founding Fathers would not have had any rights.

According, to Britain the American Revolutionaries were a bunch of terrorists, criminals, and tax evaders. And, according to our side of history they were brave, courageous, educated lovers of freedom. It all depends on who is writing history as to what the words "terrorist," "art," "pedophile," and "free" mean. We want to be on the right side of history. The trick is figuring out what the "right" side is. Usually, it's the side that is willing to break the law to show pity and hospitality to others when they are traveling in an inhospitable world.

America, this is not ancient Sodom where travelers were subjected to rape when visiting that town. Why are we forcing ourselves upon travelers? How does it protect us to treat citizens and visitors to this country this way? We are not Nazis, not Humbert Humbert, not Sodomites -- are we?

image: George Washington, Commander of the Terrorist Americans who threatened Britain's safety and health, also known as The Father Of Our Country, The United States Of America.

A Guide To Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody

Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody is like a piece of great literature and needs to be "read" like one. This means that the viewer needs to have an ability to make connections with other literature and with their heart. If the reader is able only to make superficial connections they will come away with the impression that there is no ultimate meaning to life at the end of the movie.

Back in my university days it was very common for the students to forget that "Every great writer is a great deceiver" as well as a "storyteller, teacher, enchanter--but [that] it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer" (Vladimir Nabokov "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors").

And thus, I had to sit through many a class while my fellow students destroyed literature with their ignorance and cruelty. The youngest and most beautiful girls would swoon at Nabokov and Wallace Stevens and say it was so beautiful and wonderful, drooling sick and sugary syrup from their mouths, but never understanding exactly why the literature was beautiful. I once, heard a beautiful girl, accustomed to being thought intelligent in high school, tell the professor that she loved T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland because it was dreamy and had mermaids.

And then, there is the intellectual student. These are the ones with dour faces and black-rimmed glasses and mouths that know big words. These never understand anything and all great literature is nihilistic and nothing to them. They drone on, explaining why the literature was great -- because it means nothing and has no meaning (actually, they're too blind to know meaning when they run into it). These go on to power positions in politics or universities where they attempt steal the joy and meaning of learning and living from the rest of us.

These two types of "readers," the sugary girls and the educated idiots are bad readers and will not understand Mr. Nobody, but will shape nearly all opinion about it.

"the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense"(Vladimir Nabokov "Kindness to Authors").

Here are a few connections I've noticed upon completing a first viewing. There must be much more:

Literature:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
The Odyssey by Homer
Bible

Movies:
Groundhog Day with Bill Murry
It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart
The Matrix with Keanu Reeves
Dead Man with Johnny Depp
The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland

Symbolism:
Water
Muses
Trains
Tunnels
Colors

And ultimately, these connections to the wider universe are only road markers, pointing us to the meaning of Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which is about the most important connection of all.

Mr. Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael's Sublime Universe

In the year 2092 Nemo Nobody is 118 years old and the last mortal human. A journalist asks Nemo what life was like back when humans were mortal and Nemo replies:

"There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful."

I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody in years. It's like Vladimir Nabokov on screen. Brilliant, provoking, intelligent, playful, beautiful, pitiful, awful and awesome -- Sublime.

Graceful Choices and the Freedom to Make Them

"We cannot go back. That's why it's hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible" (Nemo in the film Mr. Nobody)

I haven't had the opportunity to view Mr. Nobody, as it hasn't been released in my part of the world, but it seems to be about the many choices a person is faced with and the ramifications of those choices which in turn leads to the many possible lives a person can or could live.

It seems that this film has left some with the feeling that life is beautiful eye candy with no absolute meaning.

"As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible." If we don't choose, then another will choose for us, and often it is the opportunists and power-hungry that take advantage of our inability to make a choice. Not making a choice is a choice -- the choice to be powerless and allow others to make choices for us -- to remain a helpless and dependant child.

"As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible" for evil to succeed unhindered.

This is the problem with most societies and groups of people. They think that choosing a certain leader will be an easier choice than having to take personal responsibility for the choices they make. The leader will make the choices and pass the laws, which always end up limiting choice, even banning certain choices.

We see this with laws and with certain fundamentalist religions. The law gets carried away and says "Thou Shalt Not," rather than allowing a person the freedom to make a choice for themselves based upon the knowledge they possess and the risks they are willing to take.

And because we cannot go back in time and make the "right" choice it is very important that a society is free to make choices. A society where there is no freedom is one in which one is trapped in the choices they have made and cannot move forward or improve their situation with new choices. A free society must rely upon Grace as a crutch to hold it up when parts of it fail.

When there is no freedom to choose we see situations such as the recently publicised case in Iran in which a woman was sentenced to be stoned to death for having affairs with two men after her husband was murdered. In Iran this woman's choice leads to death. In a free society in which one is allowed the choice to make what may seem immoral decisions, this woman would be allowed the choice to mend her ways and get on with life and Grace would overlook her past mistakes if it saw that she was making healthier and wiser choices. If Grace couldn't cover her, she could make the choice to move to a place where no one knew of her past.

In societies where choice has been given over to a few elites there is no freedom to move about freely, travel where one chooses, move up in the world, leave bad relationships, eat what one chooses, work where one chooses, worship how one chooses, smoke where one chooses, wear what one chooses, etc., etc...

These are Disgraced societies.

In order for a movie such as Mr. Nobody to even come to fruition there must still be free choice alive and well in the world. This movie is about personal choice and love, but there is no personal choice or pursuit of true love unless one lives in a society in which the possibilities are endless.

My personal belief is that each of us has been chosen for the moment in time that we live in. If we don't make a choice to seize hold of the moment and the role we've been handed, another will step in and fill the role; but will another do it as well us us? The trick is taking that incredible role and doing the best with it that we possibly can. We've each been prepared for those great pivotal moments of choice and can bring unique passion and knowledge to the role we play.

We cannot go back, but we can move forward.

Russia Says Smoke More For Healthy Economy, While U.S. and E.U. Tell People To Chew Coal Tar Candy To Help Weaken Economy

That's it, I'm going to Russia.

Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin is telling "people to smoke and drink more, explaining that higher consumption would help lift tax revenues for spending on social services" ("'People Should Smoke and Drink More,' Says Russian Finance Minister," Telegraph, 1 Sep 2010).

According to the Telegraph article Kudrin says, "People should understand: Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state."

Really? Tell that to Europe and the Unites States of America, land of pharmaceutical phascism.

Those dumb Russians. They must be stuck in the Stone Age. Don't they know that the Western world all chews or sucks scabs of coal tar now? Haven't they heard of Chantix, which boosts the health of society and the economy by turning sane people into suicidal maniacs and diabetics? Jeepers, where's Nikon and his anti-tobacco league of nose-slitters when you need them?

I hear that tobacco use is popular in China too. China's government grows the stuff since they don't like importing it or relying upon the U.S. for their supplies.

If Russia's finance minister says that buying tobacco and alcohol helps the economy and even "[upholds] birthrates" (Telegraph), then conversely not buying these must harm the state coffers and the economy.

Kudrin would say that a ban upon these items and others is harmful and unpatriotic.

Hypothetically speaking, if you wanted to undermine another country's morale, economy and peace what would you do? You'd send out the agents of dissent and fear to propagandize and create confusion and panic so as to immobilize, paralyze, and silence.

Hypothetically speaking, how would you invade another country and move in right under their noses and never let them know what was happening so that they would not retaliate against you because they had no idea that they were even under attack, instead pointing fingers at each other?

Instead of openly invading the enemy country, instead of sending hundreds of thousands of troops across the ocean to attempt a new Normandy invasion, instead of dropping bombs and other expensive and finite devices you would buy people. You'd pay out several million, or billion dollars to a few experts and highly respectable personalities and let them spread ideas and false beliefs. These false beliefs would spread across the land and many would fall in line spreading the lies and hate, never realizing that they were helping the enemy agenda, never getting paid for their work.

This has occurred before, especially within Communist movements. There are a few paid subversives and many unpaid and ignorant adherents that spread the ideas until they become mainstream and no longer recognizable as dangerous. This is why joining any mass movement, be it religious or political is highly dangerous, perhaps nearly suicidal.

What I am trying to get at is that hypothetically speaking, smoking bans may actually be propaganda campaigns planted by foreign states to undermine the strength and stability of Europe's and America's economies as well as unity of their peoples.

No smoking ban has ever benefited a city, state, or country. Billions of dollars in revenue and taxes have been lost, unemployment increased, guilt increased, and hatred of fellow citizens increased.

A tobacco or alcohol ban keeps the populace busy blaming each other, wasting millions of dollars in enforcement, and divides them against each other. A tobacco or alcohol ban causes large segments of society from gathering together, removes them from benefiting society with money, ideas, or courage. The enemy wants us afraid of each other, separated, hidden, and guilt-ridden.

If smoking tobacco is healthy for Russia, then why nowhere else?

Do Europe, the United States and Canada really believe that undermining their own morale and economies with tobacco and alcohol prohibitions is healthy or wise? Do we really believe that forcing at least 25% of the population into hiding is good for the economy and for health? Do we really believe that forcing 25% of the population onto toxic and foreign coal tar-derived gums, candies, and patches is good for society? Do we really believe the delusion that prescribing varenicline to war veterans with shell shock, making them into homicidal maniacs at home is better for health and family than using tobacco products?

We know that most Nicotine Replacement "Therapy" is produced in foreign countries. We know that states, such as Ohio are spending 3 million dollars to collect 1 million in fines. We know that the states are pushing million dollar add campaigns to force people onto toxic NRT products and drugs. We know that children are being recruited in schools to spread the campaign of hate and fear. We know that tobacco farmers are being reduced to poverty, and millions have lost their jobs due to the trickle-down affect of tobacco bans.

What we know is that to "save" lives and money lost to tobacco use, our states are spending even more on enforcement and dangerous NRT promotions. How many of our state and federal representatives are agents of foreign governments? Who is paying them? Where is the money coming from? It makes no sense to undermine E.U. or American stability unless one is working specifically to do so with the purposeful intention of destroying us. I.G. Farbenindustries worked to subvert American strength throughout the 1920s and 30s in preparation for war.

It will be shown in future years that the tobacco bans along with the pushing of dangerous NRT products was a deliberate attack upon America and Europe. It will be shown that these bans were enacted to waste our money, to stop the flow of money, and to divide the people. All tobacco and alcohol restrictions benefit the enemy, whoever they may be. All tobacco and other bans are deliberate distractions and propaganda campaigns.

There is only one way to protect one's self from being duped by any kind of propaganda campaign, be it foreign, religious, or political -- Grace.

Because one can never know what the truth is at any one time, because one can never have all the information or knowledge, there is only one way to prevent one's self from being used against their own country and friends. Grace.

When we stand back and look objectively at things we can see a larger picture and see that those who incite us to hate others or fear them are the true enemies. It is un American to live in fear of food, tobacco, alcohol and other common parts of life. If a society is paralyzed by fear of the common, noncriminal, the ordinary parts of life how will it ever stand against real enemies and evils?

If a cigarette makes a "strong" Christian quake, if a chubby child is repulsive to the First Lady, if a stumbling drunk has the power to endanger a town's safety then we must be the most spineless and softest people that has ever walked the face of the earth. I'm embarrassed.

I'll be visiting Russia before I visit California. If Russia's not afraid of me, then I'll be boosting their economy and sunbathing in Red Square on a beach of snow and slathered in a heavy coat and hat as I watch the waves of tanks roll past on their way out towards the sea of Western arrogance and atrophied muscle. C'mon America, spit out the coal tar candy. Man up and light up before it's too late.

"Creativity Class," A New Oxymoron?

A few weeks ago Newsweek printed an article entitled "The Creativity Crisis" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, which detailed the decline of creativity in America. I laughed my way through the article because one of the ideas for fixing this problem was "creativity training" in the classroom--Creativity Class.

If ever there was an oxymoron Creativity Class is one. So is Creativity Training.

"[A]merican teachers warn there's no room in the day for creativity class" (Bronson and Merryman). Actually, there's no room in the classroom, a structured and controlled and biased environment for any creativity, unless you're one of the lucky little children with parents willing to fight the ADHD label and the pharmaceutical monopoly's terrorism on brains. Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign needs to make a come back, this time to save children from mind-altering and damaging pharma fascism.

According to James C. Kaufman, quoted in the Newsweek article, "Creativity can be taught" (Bronson and Merryman). By who?

If creativity can be taught and learned within a classroom setting then why hasn't the State school system used some creative thinking to come up with better ways of dealing with children, other than labelling and drugging them? Obviously, there is no creativity amongst those operating the State school system, and to deal with their inability and laziness they have turned to drugs, blaming the victim and their parents.

And then, to contradict the first article, the following article, "Forget Brainstorming," also by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman tells the reader that "[P]eople generate more and better ideas separately than together," and "Don't tell someone to 'be creative,'" Hmm.

The closing paragraph of "The Creativity Crisis" shows how ignorant and unable to make sublime connections we have become with an insult upon the very thing that has inspired all great thinkers, inventors, artists, and scientists: the Muse at the well, sprinkling inspiration and love:

"Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it's never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying to a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors."

And so, the great wells have been covered over while we continue un creatively to look to the gods in white lab coats to inject us with creativity, herd us into Creativity Class and subject us to yet another standardized assessment of who is creative and who is not.

Creativity is born of love, of freedom, and yearning. It cannot be synthesized by science, the State, or by pharmaceutical candies, pills, and patches.

"Now these two Kings and two Queens governed Narnia well, and long and happy was their reign. At first much of their time was spent in seeking out the remnants of the White Witch's army and destroying them, and indeed for a long time there would be news of evil things lurking in the wilder parts of the forest--a haunting here and a killing there, a glimpse of a werewolf one month and a rumor of a hag the next. But in the end all that foul brood was stamped out. And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live" (C.S. Lewis, "The Hunting of the White Stag," The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, emphasis added).

Rangel's H.R. 5741 Universal National Servitude Act

On July 15, 2010 Charlie Rangel introduced in Congress the Universal National Slavery Act, or H.R. 5741 Universal National Service Act:

"To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes"

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-5741

H.R. 5741, The Universal National Slavery Act, will require every man and woman to give up all rights and freedoms for a bare minimum of two years and if they do not perform their services satisfactorily they will be penalized. Isn't being forced into servitude penalty enough? They'd have to come up with some kind of torture to penalize me, because I'd be pretty numb and unable to feel punished if I was a walking dead person anyway.

Supposedly, America needs more homeland security and reserve power for when we go to war. We've been at war since I was born. It's like Brave New World and I have grown almost apathetic towards it. We're always in some little podunk country, fighting drug cartels or religious extremists. Supposedly, they're always uncivilized and living in the Stone Age, yet seem to wreak havoc and put our technology and enlightenment to the test. And we always think we have a moral perrogative to discipline these dirty little children for fear of their Weapons of Mass Destruction and fundamentalist religions.

Are we officially the home of the New Nazi Germany? Who the heck are we planning on invading and going to war with in the near future that requires forced national servitude to Homeland Security and the Armed Forces? Why does America see a need for increased Homeland Security?

The fact is that the U.S. is slowly being turned into a giant continental prison. We are tracked, scanned, told what we can and can't ingest, and controlled for our own "protection," exactly the same way prison inmates are treated. Often, when a prisoner is let loose they don't know how to function in the free world and end up back in prison. Americans are inmates and have no idea how to function outside its dirty walls.

America doesn't need Universal National Slavery. We need people to have a country that makes them proud and protective and loving enough to volunteer of their own free will. We need hearts, not mere bodies in the Armed Forces. I want the best and the best comes from the heart and freedom, not from forced servitude. Slaves don't put pride into their work. Free people do.

image: Arch of Titus

Shakespeare's Retelling of an Old Tale: Romeo and Juliet

"When good manners shall lie in one or two men's hands, and they unwash't too, 'tis a foul thing" (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, I.V)

"Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his
own fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his
fingers goes not with me" (Romeo and Juliet, IV.II)

I have finished reading William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for the first time. For years I have deliberately avoided reading it due to its overly quoted sap. Lines such as "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"(II.I) have made it into something that cloys the senses.

But, of course, Romeo and Juliet is not at all the thing that the masses have made it into and the serving people always have something intelligent to say. In Romeo and Juliet the servants often let us know what they think about those, like our politicians and others who can cook up a feast to serve to others, but don't dare take a taste of it themselves.

And, of course, Romeo and Juliet is about love, love that knows no boundaries and defies earthly confines. A love that does not parade itself and is secret and gives no material gain to anyone. It is the story of Passover and Easter and of breaking Time's grip.

Shakespeare is always about Time and of a world most of us don't even know how to dream of. I have found it nearly impossible to understand Shakespeare until one has actually experienced a transformative or eye-opening time in one's life. Until one has actually lived the words of Shakespeare they cannot understand him on anything other than the superficial level.

And it is no wonder that Romeo and Juliet has been made into something cheap and vain. I never would have understood this play a few years ago. This is not merely a tale of two "star-cross'd" lovers or feuding families who would not approve of their marriage. This is about a love that most of us, even those that think they have been loved or in love, will never understand. I can think of only two comparable and secret love stories: Abraham and Sarah and that of Jesus and His Father.

image: Thisbe by John William Waterhouse

Carry A. Nation: Addicted To Spirits

"Ignorance is not innocence, but it is the promoter of crime" (Carry A. Nation, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation).

And darling Carry, "your loving home defender," would know all about the way ignorance promotes crime.

Carry A. Nation was as drunk as they come, a violent whiskey drinker at heart. She was so obsessed with spirits, and with "dives" that she made a career and reputation out of finding every hole-in-the-wall bar, then tearing up the town, leaving the business owners to clean up and pay for her barroom brawls, and intoxications. She was as intemperate as they came and damn proud of it. She'd think about going to town for days before setting out on one of her binges which she called "hatchetations."

Sometimes, the urge would begin as a soft voice telling her to "Go to Kiowa," rip it up girl! And she'd quietly begin collecting bits of brick and stone, wrapping them in paper and placing them in a box. These were her "smashers." Without them she couldn't have a proper good time. Then, when she could stand it no longer, she'd hitch up the wagon and head to town and get higher than a kite. As time went on, she found that the hatchet worked as good, or better than the "smashers." But the best tools of all were the Bible, the female body, hymns, and sobbing.

"I have never had so light a heart or felt so well satisfied as since I smashed those murder mills," Carry declares in chapter 7 of her autobiography, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation.

The first time she painted the town red was June 7, 1900 at Dobson's and two other "dives" in Kiowa, Kansas. It was wonderful. She broke as many windows, and mirrors as she found glaring at her. When she was finished there was beer running in the streets. After that, she was addicted and no man was going to stop her. If there was any alcohol to be had, she was entitled to every last drop, and as God was her witness, she'd prevent those greedy men from drinking it all.

Carry admitted she was a bit of a nuisance, leaving steaming piles of refuse in the wake of her hatchetations, saying she was "a bulldog running around about the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like," but that didn't stop her. As far as she could tell, from her readings, Jesus doesn't mind wiping feet, and even enjoys this task. She was doing Him a favor, giving Him something to do.

"I would rather have my son sold to a slave-driver than to be a victim of a saloon. I could, in the first case, hope to see him in heaven; but no drunkard can inherit eternal life" (Nation, ch.1). That's why Jesus made wine at the wedding and served it up at Passover--to prevent them from eternal life, since they wouldn't submit to slavery on earth.

Carry A. Nation, had a daughter (not a son) that she dearly loved. Of Charlien she writes endearingly:

"My precious child seemed to have taken a perfect dislike to Christianity. This was a great grief to me, and I prayed to God to save her soul at any cost; I often prayed for bodily affliction on her, if that was what would make her love and serve God. Anything for her eternal salvation.

"Her [Charlien] right cheek was very much swollen, and on examination we found there was an eating sore inside her cheek. This kept up in spite of all remedies, and at last the whole of her right cheek fell out, leaving the teeth bare. My friends and boarders were very angry at the physician, saying she was salivated. From the first something told me this is an answer to prayer" (Nation, ch. 4).

Evidently, Charlien's cheek falling off when she was 12, leaving her deformed and with a jaw locked shut was a wonderful sign of God's mercies upon the "infidel" little creature. Really, Charlien's problem was her father, Charles Gloyd, who passed down a curse: "Oh, the curse that comes through heredity, and this liquor evil, a disease that entails more depravity on children unborn, than all else, unless it be tobacco" (Nation, ch. 4).

Somehow, and modern geneticists will agree because science has advanced so much since the late 1800's, Charlien's suffering and dislike of Christianity was due to her deceased father's liquor drinking, which contaminated her DNA. If only he had lived long enough to experience real intemperance with Carry. But alas, he left that to another, David A. Nation.

Carry A. Nation had a real soft spot in her heart for black citizens, a "kindly feeling":

"The race question is serious one. The kindly feeling between black and white is giving place to bitterness with the rising generations. One reason of this seems to be jealousy of the whites for fear the negroes will presume to be socially equal with them. The negro race should avoid this, should not desire it, it would be of no real value to them. They are a distinct race with characteristics which they need not wish to exchange. When a negro tries to imitate white folks, he is a mongrel. I will say to my colored brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus; Never depart from your race lines and bearings, keep true to your nature, your simplicity, and happy disposition--and above all come back to the 'Oldtime' religion, you will never strand on that rock" (Nation, ch 2).

That's right. Whenever anyone tries to "imitate" the freedoms that others have, when one forgets their place and forgets to fake a "happy disposition" to their superiors, rises above "simplicity" and irks the jealousy of another they are "a mongrel," not a bulldog.

Carry A. Nation right into hell and intemperance on a level never seen before. Thanks to women like her, unafraid to tear up the town, America got the Mafia and the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Now, that's what I call real intemperance.

Americans Prefer the Taste of Corporatism (Fascism) to Communism

"Generally, fascism has come to mean a military dictatorship built on racist and powerfully nationalistic foundations, generally with the broad support of the business class (distinguishing it from the collectivism of Communism.)" (Kenneth C. Davis, "Boom to Bust to Big Boom," Don't Know Much About History:Everything You Need to Know about American History but Never Learned).

"It was rather easy, especially in the case of Germany and Italy, for demagogues to point to the smoldering ruins of their countries and the economic disaster of the worldwide depression and blame their woes on foreigners" (Kenneth C. Davis, Don't Know Much About History).

I see a very interesting repeat of history occurring in the United States of America, which has been steadily growing in size and becoming clearer in shape. The U.S. is steadily moving towards fascism, but the parties doing the moving don't see it that way, and most often believe they are fighting against fascism.

America's ruling classes have nearly always divided themselves into two factions: the liberal-progressive Marxist/Communist; and the conservative-right Socialist/Fascist. The rest of us, down on the ground are neither one or the other, but are easily and often gulled into leaning one way or the other and labelling ourselves as such and arguing all of the points of what we've been taught to say honestly and passionately, believing we are right and everyone else is wrong.

It cannot be helped that, generally, we are ignorant and unaware pawns. We're all guilty and have no idea of having ever committed a crime because we're told that we are on the correct side of things and that we are righteous and care for others. And we do, but those who lead us don't really give a damn about anyone other than themselves and their position of power. Because we are ignorant, and most of all, because we do care about others; these two qualities are used to guide us to think, say, and do things we would never have thought of left to our own devices. We only want to be free.

America has gone right of right. We have gone far right and are in the land of fascism. A liberal, Marxist movement only goes so far in the United States. It burns bras, protests on colleges campuses, has free love, and works in communes and fights for equal rights, then fizzles out for lack of substance. And one day, the equal rights Communist wakes up and looks in the mirror and sees they are old, bitter, and tired of free love. In fact, it's rather annoying that the free love turns into a free for all with all kinds of people wanting a piece of your love. The kids, the ex, the state, the gas pump, the church offering plate and everyone else wants a piece and it feels as if one is being taken advantage of.

Someone, something must be blamed for all of this giving away of one's self, which increasingly feels like taking, grabbing, and stealing.

And this is when the tough love fascist voice steps in and tells the people that the cure is found in limiting everything. All of that free love and pleasure must be replaced with good solid child-bearing wives, good religion, lots of kids, cleanliness, order, discipline, genetic purity, and ridding the government of poorly run programs that waste money on trying to help those that are burdens upon society.

In essence, fascism is a change from spineless political correctness to the opposite: harsh cruelty. It becomes a harsh, Spartan-like world, where only the fittest are deemed worthy of life, where babies are laid out in the elements after birth, where a mother's love is weakness, and men worship men. Fascism loves to use hard-core, fundamentalist religions. It doesn't care what the religion is: Islam, Christian, Jew, Mormon, etc, etc. Fascism hates all religions, and will bend them and twist them to serve its purposes. It has no regard for them other than as tools twisted into righteous skewers for disseminating austerity and hate.

Truthfully, neither Fascism or Marxism love anyone, and neither is able to operate responsibly with our money or time. They each fail on different levels. The Marxists go overboard with their political correctness and over complications, while the Fascists go overboard on their oversimplification and exterminations. Both are sure they're right. Both are wrong and harmful to the happiness and dignity of a people. They travel down different paths which always end up intersecting at the same place: Death and destruction.

Somehow, people forget that an earthly utopia is not a place where everyone thinks, looks and acts alike, or perfectly, or correctly. Ah, if only everyone would get along with us. What's wrong with everyone else? Why are they so dumb and blind to the "truth"? Why are they making my life so hard? Why are they so irresponsible, and why don't they work as hard as me? Why must I foot the bill for them?

It is easy to get angry at another group when one is unable to accrue any kind of wealth or happiness due to a government demanding more and more of an individual. This leads to jealousy when it is perceived or pointed out that another individual or group seems to never work while they receive welfare or, conversely, are very wealthy. If we were not so burdened by our governments we could not be made to hate others as easily. We may even say, "Ah, who cares if they're getting handouts. I've got plenty to go around."

And so, the United States is having a dramatic pendulum swing due to the years of allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of. We are swinging right. So far right that if events don't alter the movement we may knock ourselves out, sending the works out of the casing.

The thing about Fascism in America is that it has more power and popularity as a force than Communism. America considers itself a Christian country, although it is often decried from the pulpits that it is godless and needs saving. America is not godless. We have many gods, all claimed by their adherents as the ONE, the right one. If anyone seriously studied their Bible, rather than listening to others, they would find that the One God is nothing like what they've been told and doesn't very often go to church. If we knew this God, we wouldn't be so easily moved by Fascist leaders or Communist leaders, nor be so arrogant as to believe we can make the earth a utopia, free from evil.

But we don't often know this God, and so believe in angry and self-righteous movements against other angry and self-righteous movements, or against the defenseless. And this makes those at the top of the power class laugh in delight as they pull our strings and make us hop across the stage where we collide in violence against another puppet. Rather than looking up and getting angry at the person holding the strings, we focus on the other puppet and want to destroy or ban them for hitting us, when it is not their fault that they are being manipulated against us.

Another interesting sign that America is moving far right, mirroring Germany of the 1930's and 1940's is our fear of foreigners, our fear that they are invading our lands and taking our livelihoods, and will cover the land with their children, "tainting" our culture. America, along with most of the Western industrialized world, is at a zero or less population growth. We simply aren't reproducing, and many populations are predicted to decline dramatically in the next hundred years. This is also what was occurring in Germany when the Nazi Party took power. Somehow, subconsciously, we are aware of this and feel threatened by those of different races, cultures, and socioeconomic status who are having children.

The Nazi Party encouraged good, "pure" men and women to have more children and was obsessed with the health of mothers, and that they not contaminate their unborn children's lives (Utah, earlier this year tried to make it murder if a woman miscarries and is a tobacco user). There is most definitely an undercurrent in America that is pushing for women to live as nothing more than breeders, and that castigates them if they don't spend every moment serving this higher purpose. This idea of the woman, born brainless and only to serve the man and the breeding program is everywhere in pop culture.

The vampirism of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books and movies is born of an odd spiritualist fundamentalism usually seen in fringe cults. These books are touted as a return to good morals and purity. The idea behind them is that a woman is nothing until she is impregnated by a good vampire male, thus gaining eternal life, apotheosis through male worship. When vampires and morality are mixed and sold as good for young women, a culture is sick, no matter how polite the vampire is. When a culture adopts fundamental fringe cult beliefs, making them mainstream, they have become fascist.

There is a growing obsession with reality T.V. programing that features mega families with perpetually pregnant, smiling, over-achieving mothers and fathers. Notice, these are all very wealthy and often "perfect" Americans. But if a less wealthy person, a less perfect person has too many children it is a grave sin against the country and should be outlawed. Sure, it may be irresponsible for some to have more children than they can care for, but our media attacks them, as inferior genetic stock, while fawning over the perfect and good-looking wealthy that help replenish good American stock.

Another sign that we are going far right is our obsession with food and health rules, and penalizing as a crime all who don't live like religious fanatics under sharia law. Again, Utah, comes up, here with its mandatory electronic scanning of I.D.s at bars and clubs. It's as if they're collecting a list of who and where the sinners are. This also means, that a person that went out to a club can be accused of D.U.I. even before they get into their car. This means that a patron that only drank water is guilty by association.

We are nearly back at Prohibition where it was legal to drink alcohol, but not to procure it or have it anywhere on one's property. It is technically, illegal, in my state to even have one's car keys on their person if they have had a beer. It is even possible to get a D.U.I. while walking home or sleeping in one's car. It doesn't matter if one is a public nuisance or not, it only matters who is on duty and what kind of mood they're in when they cross a person's path. Where I live, every driver is actually considered guilty of being drunk the moment they get into their car. One must prove they are not. It's the law.

In my state, they want to put those who have harmed no one, but have been caught for multiple D.U.I into the state mental institution. Do you know what this means? It means an expensive, fascist pharma experimentation program that will only grow, requiring more money and more souls. A country has moved far right when it ships downtrodden alcoholics to the infamous state mental institution, in the middle of a desolate part of the state, away from friends, family, and anyone able to defend them from strange crimes. I don't understand alcoholism, but I also don't believe these people are expendable, or that they should be sent to the insane asylum. If they've committed a crime against the community, such as violence, murder, theft put them in prison; which is an excellent rehab program.

Thank goodness, most are ignorant of the laws. Even laying a pack of cigarettes on the bar or smelling strongly of tobacco smoke is enough to levy a large fine upon a bar around here. But most aren't aware of this and haven't snitched on offenders yet. Soon, it will be illegal to smoke outside. First, the Pharmaceutical industry gods are implementing outdoor bans at the Holy Shrine of Our Hospital, then the Pharma Seminary/University, then they will move into town. It's nice to see the women standing on the street, looking like hookers, because they can't smoke in the parking lot for fear of contaminating the holy asphalt and hygienic air.

America is moving far right. It's in the air. I've been sniffing it for a few years now, but the odor of it has grown stronger and quite foul. It was more difficult to smell it before the smoking bans and near Prohibition took place because the smoke covered up the smell and the alcohol made one too tipsy to notice or care.

Arizona's strict law that targets illegal immigrants has helped to expose the growing fears and ignorance of Americans and illegals. Whether the law is right or wrong, it is laying bare the battle between Communism and Fascism. Those that are not legal citizens of the U.S. are being controlled by the Communist power faction, while those that fear them are being controlled by the Fascist power faction. Both are wrong and so busy hating each other that they will cause death before they fix anything. Summer is nearly here. And historically, heat, cities, media, and racial tensions don't mix when that tried-and-true rumor of the woman being brutally raped spreads amongst the masses.

Are Mexicans really threatening American stability, or is it our version of the Taliban, the drug cartels that are the danger? Are Mexicans threatening us, or is it the dealers in human bondage that hold them prisoner in countless houses across the country? Are Mexicans a danger to our way of life, or is it the giant foreign-owned corporations that use them like disposable labor because Americans are still free enough to turn our noses up in disgust at such slavery?

Remember, the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's economic problems. We're doing the same to the Mexicans. It's claimed they don't pay taxes and send all their money back to Mexico. It seems nearly impossible not to pay taxes in America unless one has an expensive attorney or accountant. Everything we do in this country is taxed. And how do they send all their money back to Mexico? How do they send their money back when they don't make any? The average American doesn't have money left over after paying the bills to send anywhere. If a Mexican can figure out how to get past the American system, then U.S. citizens must be idiots, because we haven't figured out how to beat the system after all these years. Maybe, we need more Mexican accountants and legal professionals to help us.

If a mass of Mexicans can really topple the American economy, close hospitals, and slip past taxes and surveillance; then it means that a mass of Americans can topple the dishonest corporations funding our government into fascism, that we too can shut down hospitals and universities that become arms of Big Pharma, rather than places of healing and learning; that we too can cut down on over taxation, and surveillance. If the Mexicans have so much power, then we do too.

If Americans would take the same fear and hatred of Mexican illegals and turn it against the giant monopoly corporations that influence our governments, universities, scientists, and non-profits nearly every problem we have with illegal immigrants would be solved. And our problems with employment in general would automatically go away. And the MexAmerican Taliban drug cartels would disappear, because there is no profit in crime, drugs, or people when a culture is content, happy, and FREE. Drug abuse decreases of its own when the people are intoxicated on freedom and liberty. When a people are free they have fewer health and mental problems and have no desire to numb themselves, or to induce sensations because they have been numbed by a fascist culture. When people are free they work harder, they produce more, they employ more, pay more, and are free enough to forgive others.

If we'd let Lady Liberty loose to trample out the grapes of wrath and pour her cup of indignation upon the fascist corporations, most of whom descend from Nazi Germany's IG Farbenindustries or are joined by "marriage," we'd have more than enough room in our land and in our hearts for as many immigrants as we could seat at our Thanksgiving table.

Fascism is also called Corporatism. This is what happens when a government and a few giant corporations unite to dictate to a country. Communism is when everything is owned and operated by the government.

This time, rather than a lone Hitler preaching over the country, America has many voices of Hitler. We are being dictated to by very charismatic and seemingly religious and patriotic people on a daily basis. They spout Samuel Adams and Ben Franklin. They spout the Bible and other trusted sources. Lest we forget, a great deal of Nazi literature and preaching also espoused Christian ideals, and supported Christian morals, using the word "Christian" all the time. If something was "Christian," then it was a good thing and the reason for cleaning up the country. Communism is godless, Fascism appeals to every god fearing person it can. A Corporatist state has to appeal to religious rightness in order to sell itself and motivate the masses into buying its product of mass death in order to save itself. Fascism thinks "Christian," "Muslim," and "Jew" are brand names to slap onto a product. Fundamentalist religion loves the idea of sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. Money must be sacrificed, freedom must be sacrificed, lives must be sacrificed. Everything must be sacrificed to redeem the country and save its soul.

American talk radio has taken the opportunity of the dissatisfaction and corruption of our political system to begin a daily seminar of fear and religion. Glenn Beck, in particular is a dangerous orator. He cries, he talks religion, he has revivals, he's had revelations and messages from God. He pretends he speaks to the American Christian ideal. He talks revolution, yet says he doesn't. He authors poorly written books and paints. All faux intellectuals delve into art. This fact has fascinated me for years. Dictator types are jealous of artists and writers. They can't understand them and wish they could be them. They write horrible books and paint. It's a time-worn pattern.

Glenn Beck is what could be called "White Propaganda." This is when a person seems to be on the same side as the target audience and says what they think, or what they think they think. "Black Propaganda" is when it's obvious to the audience that the message is from the enemy. "Grey Propaganda" is exactly that, a bit blurry as to who it comes from and what the audience is supposed to think.

Glenn Beck is anti-Christian and warps the Bible every time he talks about it. For several years he has aired an Easter special with Pink Floyd's agonies screaming in the background while Beck narrates the crucifixion of Christ. Over and over he has crucified Christ, always stopping short of what happens after the crucifixion. The Romans and the Jews only crucified Jesus once. Beck does it every year and never lets Him conquer death. This is because it is a belief within his religion that one must pay for their own sins with sacrifice, and must work their own way to Heaven, and if they are good enough they will get to Heaven and be made a god. In Beck's world, in his religion Corporatism is a good thing.

Propaganda never lies. It always tells the truth. It is the intention behind the propaganda that lies. Any Christian that doesn't get the creeps after listening to Beck, may need to reasses their understanding and knowledge of God. I listen to him now, only for "inside" information. I use to listen to him regularly, but now, I find him a symptom of America's sickness, and he's always sick, always spouting fear.

Fascism loves religion, it loves conservatism and it has twisted these things into barbed weapons. Religion isn't bad. But when it lets hate and fear run it it's dangerous. When a religion teaches that one can become a god and have many wives in heaven, then it's dangerous (Islam, Mormon, and others espouse the harem teaching). When a religion teaches that certain genetic groups are inferior and collects a massive database of ancestry and genetics history it needs to be questioned.

When we have orators like Glenn Beck preaching and crying for our souls then it's time to get real and wonder where we are in history and how easily duped we can be. And people sure do get angry when their Beck is threatened. Why would anyone get angry, unless they really do believe in a world in which freedom of speech only applies to them?

Sure, America has quite a few illustrious orators right now. President Obama is said to be one of them, but he's not on the radio for hours and hours every single day. Obama lets the radio talk, kicks back with Big Pharma nicotine gums and candies, listens, and laughs to himself. All he has to do is make a speech and let the media voices work it out and stir up the masses. Viva la revolucion! It doesn't matter to our elected officials and their corporate backers how many Tea Parties are held. It only matters that they vote hard right in the coming elections, rather than investigating the donors to the political campaign--all of the donors. It only matters that the Tea Partiers are riled up, distracted, and manipulated for the purposes of further destroying freedom. It only matters that there is a massive movement to bounce the far left movements off of, in order to create a "Big Bang," and create the ultimate fascist security state in which everyone is enslaved.

So far, the Tea Party movement hasn't followed in the footsteps of their namesake event. The Boston Tea Party wasn't aimed so much at the political system and government officials as at the corporate monopoly money behind them. The Boston Tea Partiers were a small group of men dressed as Iroquois Indians because they admired the ideas of self-governance that the Iroquois had been encouraging the colonists to pursue. The orginal Tea Party was an attack upon the trade monopoly of the British East India Company control, against corporatism. The colonists understood the root of the problem. It doesn't look so good for our modern Tea Party. They haven't tossed out one monopoly product yet.

And as an aside....And how long has it been since we've had a President in office that knew how to use tobacco properly? Clinton banned tobacco in the White House, and had no idea what a cigar was for. Bush inhaled Laura's 2nd hand, and Obama thinks it's all about the addiction to free-base nicotine, rather than for pleasure. He really likes the gum. That's for kids hiding from Mom and Dad! Why doesn't he be the adult President and light up? Does he think he'll get banned from the Oval Office?

If I were President....If I were President the Oval Office would look like the Inklings at the Eagle and Child tavern. Being President is like having the Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings. Good people with good intentions can be turned evil by such power. So, really, I'm not sure I could be trusted with such power. If the red phone rang at 3 in the morning would I answer it?

America and much of the world is moving far right into fascism. Fascism is Corporatism. Fascism is a religion. Fascism has many names and many hiding places, but it always has the same patterns. Fascism is like one of those multi-armed gods of the far East. It has one body, and many writhing arms. It is Sharia law, it is puritanical, it is Mormon, it is the Great Wall of China, it is the pater familias of Roman culture, it is the Spanish Inquisition, it is a ban upon everything that makes us human.

Fascism likes to remove citizenship from certain select groups of people, many of whom are native-born. Germany removed citizenship rights from the Jews and others. Many of the Jews in Germany were native-born. Many of Jewish ancestry had fled to Germany from other countries, such as Russia during its Bolshevik purges of Jews. There was a mix of native-born Jews and immigrant Jews, as well as many other groups of people displaced by the atrocities taking place around eastern Europe in the first years of the 20th century.

In America, we have in the past made certain native-born peoples into more or less non-citizens: Blacks, Indians, women, and others. Blacks, Indians, and women were not permitted to vote, freely travel, participate in business, own guns, go to schools and universities, and places of public gathering.

It must be wondered if the Mexican illegal issue is again going to create a way of making select groups of native-born Americans into non-citizens for the use and abuse of the fascist State. An identification system will have to be worked out in order to prove one's citizenship, to prove one is really an American citizen. It won't be adequate to prove one's family came over on the Mayflower and was the first to set foot on Plymouth Rock. No, the only way to prove one is a citizen will be to submit to being scanned, tracked, and branded. If one does not accept the identification system designed to keep non-citizens out, one will not be permitted to travel, work, shop, vote, or have legal representation.

And as in Nazi Germany, many native-born Americans will become non-citizens with no rights and will be the new slaves rounded up to work the jobs that citizens won't work. The German people rarely complained about this arrangement. I doubt American citizens will be any different.

America won't control the border or encourage Mexico to harness its resources to create wealth and jobs. America won't stop the MexAmerican Taliban drug cartel, nor the real foreign and native terrorist threats to security: Monsanto, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and others that love fascism and want us to use their products religiously.

America's great symbols: The Statue of Liberty, The Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution, tobacco (the American Revolution was also known as the Tobacco Wars), open roads for free travel, the automobile, the farmer, the rancher, the immigrant starting new from nothing, rock'n'roll, and Paul Bunyan the greatest of loggers have all been derided as sinful and outdated symbols. Liberty, Independence, basic Constitutions, Tobacco, Travel, Farmers, Ranchers, Immigrants, Joyful Music, and Loggers are only destructive and harmful to the environments and morals of evil despots. And as long as we remember and know of these symbols and the meaning behind them, as long as they run in our blood America will live.

We do not choose the time we are born in, but we can choose who we will be in the time we have been alloted. Look at history, at myth, at fiction and decide who the heros are and why. Very often, that hero is a small, single person. Often, that person has no name, such as the silent operators along the Underground Railroad.

"In Germany, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) made scapegoats not only of the Communists and foreign powers who he claimed had stripped Germany of its land and military abilities at Versailles, but also of the Jews, who he claimed were in control of the world's finances. The long history of anti-Semitism in Europe, going back for centuries, simply fed the easy acceptance of Hitler's argument" (Kenneth C. Davis, Don't Know Much About History)

"Prior to the American entry into the war, the Nazi treatment of Jews evoked little more than weak diplomatic condemnation. It is clear that Roosevelt knew about the treatment of Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and about the methodical, systematic destruction of the Jews during the Holocaust. Clearly, saving the Jews and other groups that Hitler was destroying en masse was not a critical issue for American war planners" (Davis, Don't Know Much About History)

Tolkien, Tobacco, Censorship, and Liberty

I recently received a very nice hard back edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a gift. I last read this work when I was 13 years old and have wanted to read it since the film versions came out, but never got around to it.

I like to do a little research upon an author following a reading of them. It is helpful to understand a little of the private interests and passions of an author to understand why they care so much about their literary creations, and work so hard upon them.

I found it interesting that Wikipedia's biography of J.R.R. Tolkien had to use a picture of him from 1916 in military uniform, when he was an unknown and only 24 years old. The only other picture of him on the Wikipedia bio was of Tolkien in 1911, when he was 19.

The probable reason that Wikipedia could not, or would not use a more appropriate picture of J.R.R. Tolkien, one that showed him during the time he became known to the world outside of the University of Oxford for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is because there aren't many close-up photos of him without a tobacco pipe in or near his mouth.

Usually, a Wikipedia entry displays, or should display the first defining photo as the one that shows the person as they are most known and recognized by the world, not as they looked in childhood or as a teen. The childhood photos, should be relegated to the section pertaining to childhood. If the bio is describing Bette Davis or some movie star known for her good looks, the defining picture should be one that shows her at her peak, not one that shows her as an old hag. A picture of the youthful Albert Einstein would not be the defining image the world has. It would look out of place and odd when we all know he had unkempt white hair. Perhaps, Einstein carried his pipe a bit lower than Tolkien which allowed for the illusion that he was a tobacco-free thinker.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892 and died in 1973, which means he lived to be 81 years old. If he hadn't smoked he would've lived forever and The Lord of the Rings would look quite different (although, in the literary world one's creation is considered to make one immortal). I wonder if writing about Hobbits smoking tobacco qualifies as 2nd or 3rd hand smoke? And why does he look so much happier with the pipe than without it? He's probably glad he's not stuck on a piece of our modern PhrankenPharma nicotine gum.

Unlike the film version, which depicts the victorious Hobbits returning to their peaceful and untouched home in the Shire, the book shows an entirely different picture. Tolkien shows that the last battle is the one closest to home.

In the final chapters of the book, the Hobbits; Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry return home to the Shire after having gone to Hell and back, saving the earth from the dark evil of Sauron by tossing the Ring of power into the depths, forever cutting Sauron off.

The Hobbits return home to find gates across the roads, Rules which dictate the lives of the Shire; preventing the inhabitants from lighting fires, freely travelling, sharing food or home with strangers; and that beer and tobacco are no longer allowed for use amongst the common folk, being reserved only for the few who lord over them. Anyone that breaks a rule or speaks up is confined in the Lockholes by the Shirriffs who enforce the Rules.

There is general poverty amongst the people and the land. The homes have been burned down and ugly row houses line the road where once beautiful trees grew. The gardens have gone to weed, and the new mill belches out dirt that pollutes the river and air. The wizard, Saruman, has decided to set up a monopoly over the lives of the Shire Hobbits, which began innocently enough with a prohibition upon beer, but escalated to every aspect of life.

Merry wonders "What's the matter with this place?" ("The Scouring of the Shire," The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien).

One of the native Hobbits explains: "We grows a lot of food, but we don't rightly know what becomes of it. It's all these 'gatherers' and 'sharers', I reckon, going round and counting and measuring and taking off to storage. They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"[O]n every wall there was a notice and a list of Rules. Pippin tore them down. There was no beer and very little food, but with what the travellers brought and shared out they had a fair meal; and Pippin broke Rule 4 by putting most of next day's allowance of wood on the fire.
"'Well now, what about a smoke, while you tell us what has been happening in the Shire?' he said.
"'There isn't no pipe-weed now,' said Hob; 'at least only for the Chief's men. All the stocks seem to have gone.....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"'No welcome, no beer, no smoke, and lots of rules....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

"'There's hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

Sounds a bit like my town and the rest of the country. The bigger the jails, the larger the police force the more criminals are invented. In the United States of America one is lucky if they have never been arrested or jailed. At least, 1 out of every 25 people is jailed in their lifetime, far exceeding Russia or China.

Many good people are sitting in our jails and prisons at this moment, some for traffic or parking tickets. In a jail not far from me sits a grandfather who loves his grandchildren and became their guardian when the children's mother (his daughter) became a neglectful drug addict. He protested Social Services constant and intrusive visits to his house to make sure he was taking care of the children and was arrested for standing up for his rights and family. He committed no crime other than doing the right thing and for telling Social Services to stop coming to his house.

"'So things went from bad to worse. There wasn't no smoke left, save for the Men; and the Chief didn't hold with beer, save for his Men, and closed all the inns; and everything except for Rules got shorter and shorter, unless one could hide a bit of one's own when the ruffians went round gathering stuff up 'for fair distribution': which meant they got it and we didn't....'" ("The Scouring of the Shire").

The four Hobbits, returned from battles, set about "raising the Shire," and waking the inhabitants from their sleep and powerless condition. They route out Saruman's thugs, although not without some loss of life. The Shire was ready to overthrow the Rules and those that forced them to live in a world "fair" only to the greedy. When we hear the words "fair" and "unfair" we need to ask what exactly is meant by these words, for most often they are employed by mean misfits of society.

After freeing the captives from the Lockholes, Frodo is appointed Deputy Mayor until the Mayor is properly recovered from his time in prison. Frodo promptly lays off the majority of Rule enforcement:

"The only thing that he did as Deputy Mayor was to reduce the Shirriffs to their proper functions and numbers" ("The Grey Havens," The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien).

Not only did the Hobbits save the earth from Sauron, an equivalent to our Satan, but they introduced Middle-Earth to tobacco smoking. The Prologue of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings details a bit of the history of this "art" in the section entitled "Concerning Pipe-weed":

"There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed, or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or 'art' as the Hobbits preferred to call it....

"And certainly it was from Bree that the art of smoking the genuine weed spread in recent centuries among Dwarves and such other folk, Rangers, Wizards, or wanderers, as still passed to and fro through that ancient road-meeting. The home and centre of the art is thus to be found in the old inn of Bree, The Prancing Pony....

"Hobbits first put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before we did. Though one Wizard that I knew took up the art long ago, and became as skilful in it as in all other things that he put his mind to."

How much longer before this book is banned for its universal message of liberty and of overcoming evil? How much longer before it is censored and conveniently forgotten, along with so many other great works of literature? Will our children and grandchildren find this book, complete and as its author wrote it? Already, its author's image is being censored, in a way typical of Soviet Russia, when it commonly erased images of those no longer politically correct. And pipe-weed is nearly banned in favor of Saruman's Phake Pharma Nicotine monopoly of patches, gums, lozenges, inhalers, and other patented "therapies" for those that enjoy life too much.

images: J.R.R. Tolkien

Why Taverns Are Dangerous To The United States of Pharma

If I had a church it would be Sheila Martin's Top Hat Tavern in Hutchinson, Kansas. And I'd get something in return for my tithes: Holy Communion with my brothers and sisters.

"Well, I'll tell you what you need to do if you think something's everywhere: start on your block. Start at your house. And spread out and get it stopped" (Sheila Martin).

Proving Citizenship In America

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.... He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands" (The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776).

Would you be able to prove that you are a legal citizen of the United States of America if asked to prove so while questioned by a police officer? Are you sure? Do you carry a birth certificate and a passport in your car or on your person?

Sure, you could pull out your driver's license, latest pay stub, show that you've paid taxes, served in the military, own a house, and countless other pieces of paper, but none of these would be sufficient.

Are you so very sure you have a birth certificate in the file cabinet? And even if you do, will you be allowed to go home and get it, or will you be locked up in the local jail? How long will you have to sit in jail, waiting for a birth certificate to arrive from the Vital Statistics office of the county you were born in?

Is that birth certificate any good? Most of us don't give this much thought.

I have a grandmother who could not receive social security benefits because her birth certificate didn't have her first name on it, only listing her as "Baby." It took quite awhile to prove she was that particular baby.

I haven't the foggiest idea where my birth certificate is. I hear rumours that it, along with the birth certificates of my siblings may have been tossed away with the turmoil and selfishness that occurs in family ruptures, not to mention a transient lifestyle.

And take a look at your child's birth certificate. Notice the past few years that, for some reason, the copy obtained these days is not always a certified birth certificate.

Really, it's amazing how much of life can be lived without ever having to think about one's birth certificate or the authenticity of it, although the latest presidential election and the anti-Mexican law recently passed in Arizona should cause us a bit more personal paper searching before we point fingers at others.

It would take quite awhile to prove myself a bona fide citizen. I have a family tree that goes back to Adam and Eve and dirt, but that wouldn't prove anything in front of a judge.

I wonder where I'd be deported to? Hopefully, New Zealand or Panama City, Panama.

Before one gets excited about Arizona's tough anti-immigration law, ask if it's a foot in the door to your house, under the guise of a boot to foreigners. Then, go look in the mirror, pull the log out of your eye, and use it to bare the door.

Albert Jay Nock: The State of Conquest

"Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little left to learn" (Albert Jay Nock, "The Criminality of the State," The American Mercury, March, 1939)

I have discovered that American prophet, that typical hermit in the desert, Albert Jay Nock. Reading him makes one understand why the prophets of old were hunted down and hated by the rulers and the masses. What he says is not what we want to hear because it's what we know is true, but would rather not put into words. We would rather continue blaming everything outside of ourselves, and think betterment comes from without too. We would rather finger-point, and find innocent scapegoats to lay upon the alter. Even quoting Nock feels dangerous, which makes me wonder if free speech really exists.

The following quotes are all from Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State, first published in 1935, which can be read online at Mises.org:

"What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is a steady progress in collectivism running off into military despotism of a severe type. Closer centralization; a steadily growing bureaucracy; State power and faith in State power increasing, social power and faith in social power diminishing; the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income; production languishing, the State in consequence taking over one 'essential industry' after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labour. Then at some point in this progress, a collision of State interests, at least as general and as violent as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic social structure to bear; and from this the State will be left to the 'rusty death of machinery,' and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution will be supreme" (206).

"[T]here is actually no such thing as a 'labour problem,' for no encroachment on the rights of either labour or capital can possibly take place until all natural resources within reach have been preempted. What we call the 'problem of the unemployed' is in no sense a problem, but a direct consequence of State-created monopoly" (107)

"expropriation must precede exploitation" (Nock).

"After the conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State" (104).

"This regime was established by a coup d'Etat of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country. It was effected, not by violence, like Louis-Napoleon's, or by terrorism, like Mussolini's, but by purchase. It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d'Etat. Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the French Assembly in 1851, but was bought out of its functions with public money; and as appeared most conspicuously in the elections of November, 1934, the consolidation of the coup d'Etat was effected by the same means; corresponding functions in the smaller units were reduced under the personal control of the Executive" (11-12).

The following is interesting, because things have changed a bit:

"Whenever economic exploitation has been for any reason either impracticable or unprofitable, the State has never come into existence; the government has existed, but the State, never. The American hunting tribes, for example, whose organization so puzzled our observers, never formed a State, for there is no way to reduce a hunter to economic dependence and make him hunt for you. Conquest and confiscation were no doubt practicable, but no economic gain would be got by it, for confiscation would give the aggressors but little beyond what they already had; the most that could come of it would be the satisfaction of some sort of feud" (57-58).

In the case of the native peoples of America, the State did an interesting thing. It placed the people on confined pieces of land, nearly forcing them to become little states which they became attached to. Then, in this weakened and prone condition, resting after being chased and massacred across the countryside, the state came in with its religious and scientific arms to take the only thing the native wanderers had left: family.

The children, for their own good (!), were taken from their parents and boarded in institutions which could provide for the children's upbringing "better" than their old fashioned and ignorant parents. In these State and religious institutions they were removed from their history and health. In Canada, they are still excavating the bone yards of the children accidentally killed by the wonderfully caring and effective authorities, then secretly buried around the grounds until fairly recently.

What Nock neglects is that the State can confiscate more than material property. It can confiscate souls, hold them prisoner, making it very difficult for the owner to free it and realize that they are a person.

And here we are, not seeing that what happened to those beautiful little children born of weary parents is happening right here every day to those off of the reservation too. And every day, the parents willingly, unquestioningly, submissively drop their children off at the institution. Nock has some words about American education too, which I haven't read, although it should be interesting as he was not formally educated, which explains a bit about his unformal beliefs.

Anyway, Nock has me thinking and musing on a few things these days.

Albert Jay Nock's Word To The Remnants

"Isaiah's Job" by Albert Jay Nock, The Atlantic Monthly, 1936:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe. Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind can not possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favourite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah.

It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers – the list is endless. I can not remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpast. I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from various sources; and inasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole new version of the Bible in the American vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the Sacred Scriptures.

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however – like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington – where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."


Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

II

Apparently, then, if the Lord’s word is good for anything – I do not offer any opinion about that, – the only element in Judean society that was particularly worth bothering about was the Remnant. Isaiah seems finally to have got it through his head that this was the case; that nothing was to be expected from the masses, but that if anything substantial were ever to be done in Judea, the Remnant would have to do it. This is a very striking and suggestive idea; but before going on to explore it, we need to be quite clear about our terms. What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant?

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, labouring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man – be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper – gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man’s untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible. The list of luxury-products that she patronized is interesting; it calls to mind the women’s page of a Sunday newspaper in 1928, or the display set forth in one of our professedly "smart" periodicals. In another place, Isaiah even recalls the affectations that we used to know by the name "flapper gait" and the "debutante slouch." It may be fair to discount Isaiah’s vivacity a little for prophetic fervour; after all, since his real job was not to convert the masses but to brace and reassure the Remnant, he probably felt that he might lay it on indiscriminately and as thick as he liked – in fact, that he was expected to do so. But even so, the Judean mass-man must have been a most objectionable individual, and the mass-woman utterly odious.


If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord’s word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah’s testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah’s fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts. Curiously, too, he applies Isaiah’s own word remnant to the worthier portion of Athenian society; "there is but a very small remnant," he says, of those who possess a saving force of intellect and force of character – too small, preciously as to Judea, to be of any avail against the ignorant and vicious preponderance of the masses.

But Isaiah was a preacher and Plato a philosopher; and we tend to regard preachers and philosophers rather as passive observers of the drama of life than as active participants. Hence in a matter of this kind their judgment might be suspected of being a little uncompromising, a little acrid, or as the French say, saugrenu. We may therefore bring forward another witness who was preeminently a man of affairs, and whose judgment can not lie under this suspicion. Marcus Aurelius was ruler of the greatest of empires, and in that capacity he not only had the Roman mass-man under observation, but he had him on his hands twenty-four hours a day for eighteen years. What he did not know about him was not worth knowing and what he thought of him is abundantly attested on almost every page of the little book of jottings which he scribbled offhand from day to day, and which he meant for no eye but his own ever to see.

This view of the masses is the one that we find prevailing at large among the ancient authorities whose writings have come down to us. In the eighteenth century, however, certain European philosophers spread the notion that the mass-man, in his natural state, is not at all the kind of person that earlier authorities made him out to be, but on the contrary, that he is a worthy object of interest. His untowardness is the effect of environment, an effect for which "society" is somehow responsible. If only his environment permitted him to live according to his lights, he would undoubtedly show himself to be quite a fellow; and the best way to secure a more favourable environment for him would be to let him arrange it for himself. The French Revolution acted powerfully as a springboard for this idea, projecting its influence in all directions throughout Europe.


On this side of the ocean a whole new continent stood ready for a large-scale experiment with this theory. It afforded every conceivable resource whereby the masses might develop a civilization made in their own likeness and after their own image. There was no force of tradition to disturb them in their preponderance, or to check them in a thoroughgoing disparagement of the Remnant. Immense natural wealth, unquestioned predominance, virtual isolation, freedom from external interference and the fear of it, and, finally, a century and a half of time – such are the advantages which the mass-man has had in bringing forth a civilization which should set the earlier preachers and philosophers at naught in their belief that nothing substantial can be expected from the masses, but only from the Remnant.

His success is unimpressive. On the evidence so far presented one must say, I think, that the mass-man’s conception of what life has to offer, and his choice of what to ask from life, seem now to be pretty well what they were in the times of Isaiah and Plato; and so too seem the catastrophic social conflicts and convulsions in which his views of life and his demands on life involve him. I do not wish to dwell on this, however, but merely to observe that the monstrously inflated importance of the masses has apparently put all thought of a possible mission to the Remnant out of the modern prophet’s head. This is obviously quite as it should be, provided that the earlier preachers and philosophers were actually wrong, and that all final hope of the human race is actually centred in the masses. If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the Lord and Isaiah and Plato and Marcus Aurelius were right in their estimate of the relative social value of the masses and the Remnant, the case is somewhat different. Moreover, since with everything in their favour the masses have so far given such an extremely discouraging account of themselves, it would seem that the question at issue between these two bodies of opinion might most profitably be reopened.

III

But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact that as things now stand Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favour, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.


The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.

If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste and character among 120,000,000 people; and this is a distressing task. The prophet of the Remnant, on the contrary, is in the enviable position of Papa Haydn in the household of Prince Esterhazy. All Haydn had to do was keep forking out the very best music he knew how to produce, knowing it would be understood and appreciated by those for whom he produced it, and caring not a button what anyone else thought of it; and that makes a good job.


In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job. If you can tough the fancy of the masses, and have the sagacity to keep always one jump ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving the masses, and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety:

Digito monstrari et dicier, Hic est!

We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

IV

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

The fascination and the despair of the historian, as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare the "substratum of right-thinking and well-doing" which he knows must have existed somewhere in those societies because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it. He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Ausonius, and in the brief and touching tribute, Bene merenti, bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs. But these are vague and fragmentary; they lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure on this substratum, but merely testify to what he already knew a priori – that the substratum did somewhere exist. Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance was – of all this they tell him nothing.

Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right-thinking and well-doing which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it. When he has assembled all he can and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness, vagueness, and confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply nothing. A Remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects; so much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and how many they were and what their work was like.

Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little as the historian of the future; and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me so profoundly interesting. One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt – the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe – to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; "and as for your figures on the Remnant," He said, "I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are."

At that time, probably the population of Israel could not run to much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modern prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time.

The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of "human interest." If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses; it is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man's ear – or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.

The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They did not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard – that is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with every thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter. This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there. Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them), where the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when nor from whom he got the message – or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.

Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. "It came to us afterward," as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full-grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewußtsein of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.

For these reasons it appears to me that Isaiah’s job is not only good but also extremely interesting; and especially so at the present time when nobody is doing it. If I were young and had the notion of embarking in the prophetical line, I would certainly take up this branch of the business; and therefore I have no hesitation about recommending it as a career for anyone in that position. It offers an open field, with no competition; our civilization so completely neglects and disallows the Remnant that anyone going in with an eye single to their service might pretty well count on getting all the trade there is.

Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have prophets enough and to spare. Even admitting that in the teeth of history that hope of the human race may not be quite exclusively centred in the Remnant, one must perceive that they have social value enough to entitle them to some measure of prophetic encouragement and consolation, and that our civilization allows them none whatever. Every prophetic voice is addressed to the masses, and to them alone; the voice of the pulpit, the voice of education, the voice of politics, of literature, drama, journalism – all these are directed towards the masses exclusively, and they marshal the masses in the way that they are going.

One might suggest, therefore, that aspiring prophetical talent may well turn to another field. Sat patriae Priamoque datum – whatever obligation of the kind may be due the masses is already monstrously overpaid. So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, and following the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way that leadeth to the More Abundant Life; and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the Remnant. It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses; and moreover it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers a virgin field.