If you haven't seen Food, Inc. and still eat at fast food restaurants, you might want to ignore this blog or skip the trailer as neither will make that McBurger sit any easier. The film was almost enough to make...
In 1795, just before being tossed into a French prison for not supporting the execution of Louis the XVI, Thomas Paine wrote the book that would be his downfall. The Age of Reason was a critical look at The Bible...
Revisiting the Age of Reason
From 1919 to 1933, we conducted a national experiment in drug prohibition. The drug of choice at that time (besides marijuana and opium) was alcohol. The 18th Amendment made it illegal and sparked off a bloody war that only the...
Another Unconstitutional War
The Constitution is quite clear on matters of war. We were not meant to have an enormous, world-straddling military hegemony. What military we did possess was meant as a defense mechanism only and not a tool of global dominance. The...
An American Renaissance
In my previous post, I explored the notion that we live in a shared illusionary state that keeps us from truly understanding the reality of our situation. Americans have convinced ourselves that we have zero control over our country much...
Use Your Illusion II
In a country raised on blood and reared on myth, the notion that we are victims of a shared illusionary reality seems clear to me. America only likes mirrors when we are forcing other regimes to look into them at...
Use Your Illusion
29 One of my favorite quotes from Thomas Paine's Common Sense involves the notion of societal blessings weighed against the necessary evil of government to deliver those ends. Yet what happens when government becomes antithetical, or in our case inimical, to the...
Bread and Circus
The problem with using the Government Hammer to pound down every lingering social or civic problem is that sometimes it is actually the head of a screw sticking up and requires different tools than are currently being offered by the...