Fairfax, VA, USA.I have never been a joiner and I’m certainly no sheep. Even when young I seemed to be aware that there might be a Judas Goat at the head of the parade.

So I’ve most always made my own decisions, at least the ones allowed to me. All the mistakes are mine and I work very hard to make sure I don’t repeat them. All my mistakes tend to be new ones.


It ain’t necessarily so out there in the real world where purity of intentions is everything and charlatans lead opportunistic political agendas and Elmer Gantry social preachers espouse Aimee Semple McPherson religious easy answers. Mistakes are repeated generation to generation. Losers lose because they are ignorant of history and too bound to their ideological assumptions to achieve anything near the goals they profess.

Then again, some of them just lie to achieve power. Tell their people what they want to hear. Make them feel special, unique like that special high school clique they never were a part of.

I make my own decisions and, while I will listen to Presidents and Popes, I discard 99 per cent of the political preaching as worthless, if not intellectually dishonest. [N1] The difference between a president and a pope is one of political structure: the people elect a president and the cardinals elect a pope. Both, however, often state the belief that God has chosen them to rule in his name. Your definition of Godmay vary.

Very few of our self-appointed leaders are what they appear to be. The list may start and end with Cesar Chavez. I met Cesar Chavez at the very beginning of his attempt to organize the migratory farm workers in California. I was very young but he appeared to be who he appeared to be. I might be wrong. People change. But in the beginning, he seemed to be the Cesar Chavez of myth and legend. He risked his life to form the United Farm Workers (UFW) union.

Trust no one who willing runs for office, for they will attempt to rule the world

Some of them just lie to achieve power. I hope this isn’t a surprise to you.

The Liberal Left, I mean The Progressives, have no stranglehold on truth and justice and some of them, at least, seem dead set opposed to the American Way, hell bent on a social agenda that gives preference to government ownership of business and capital and elimination of the independent, private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange of wealth. [N2] The Progressives assume, of course, that they will be the ones in power managing a government run economy. In their world view, Progressive intentions are pure, Capitalistic (read Republican) intentions are the work of the devil.

The liberal left has surrendered belief in one religious system (Christianity) and substituted another: State Capitalism where the government controls the economy and acts as a single, giant corporation. Big Brother knows best (as long as Big Brother is not Republican).

The Religious Right, I mean the Grass Roots Right, does not have an exclusive pipeline to the Gods, no matter what they may claim.. Jesus is not Republican, at least he never registered. Nor does his name appear on any of the documents signed by America’s founding fathers.

I suspect he would not vote any of the self-declared apostles who make America a rigidly Christian nation. Jesus the Nazarene has been widely quoted that we should

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. [N3]

Not to mention that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

meaning, of course, that our government does not recognize any religion as our national religion. Any flavor of Christianity is just one of many religions (Buddhist, Druidic, Islamic, Jain, Jewish, Pagan, Wicca, etc.) that are equal under (and unrecognized by) the American Constitution. Like Jesus, the U. S. legal system renders unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; but unlike Jesus, the Constitution is neutral on any specific religion or god.

As the Sharia cannot take precedence over U. S. Law, neither can the religious beliefs of Christian Activists on the right. Neither Allah nor the Christian God has legal standing in a U. S. court of law. Our form of democratic government may be a poorly functioning bureaucratic mess but it is not and never has been a theocracy.

Nor will the Ten Commandments ever supersede the U. S. Constitution except by force of arms, a Constitution that many of us are pledged to defend with our lives. We are a nation of laws not revelations. But that doesn’t stop those on the Christian Right from running for elected office on platforms based on suppressing our democratic freedoms in the name of their personal interpretation of their religion. They do not speak for God any more than does the Left.

Trust no one who willing runs for office, for they will attempt to rule the world

The basic rule remains the same. Caesar acts as Caesar must or he would not be Caesar: his nature, like the scorpion’s, never does change. Nothing an activist tells you, whether that activist is a Democrat, a Republican, some Academic Social or Gender Theorist or an Old School Communist, should be taken without a grain of salt. Their motives are suspect. Their actions seldom limit themselves to their stated purposes.

‘Tis far, far better to assume there is a Judas Goat in your midst all too ready to sacrifice your needs to his own private agenda than to blindly follow the mob of current activism. If something is important today, it will still be important down the road.



I'd never join any organization that would invite me to be a member.And the only person who loses out if you take six months or year to make your decision is the activist fool who stands in front of you demanding you join him at the ramparts to overthrow the current system.

Remember Arthur?

Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Groucho Marx said that, although he would probably deny he said it if he wasn’t already dead. If he had known I was going to quote him, he would have said something else. I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it, perhaps. Or even Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

But then, Groucho wasn’t much of a joiner either, was he?. As he also said: The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

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