Catholic Yoga: Confession and the Lost Art of Spiritual Gastroenterology

Like most postmodern Catholics of a certain age, I hate going to Confession – really and truly dislike it. It’s worse than going to the dentist or the gastroenterologist. Like the gastroenterologist or dentist, confession is inherently embarrassing. It probes for decay and disease and often finds it. It’s uncomfortable. It can be painful.

Priests today, like modern dentists, do everything they can to make you feel at ease. They offer analgesics. They try to be as non-threatening and encouraging as possible. Some even offer the equivalent of nitrous oxide. I was told recently that when the actor Mickey Rourke goes to confession, he and his priest drink wine and smoke cigars. That is the way it should be. But as much as he might sugar coat it, a good confessor is still poking around deep down in your soul, scraping here, probing there, noting the presence of unusual growths that should probably be cut out. Many times, it’s just routine. A quick in and out. Like a quarterly teeth cleaning. No big deal. But every once and a while, it becomes a disgusting, uncomfortable process, involving blood and pus.

For people today, it’s particularly uncomfortable because we have been led to believe, since we were young, that we’re all “okay.” I’m okay, you’re okay. It’s all good! As I’ve said before, the only Immaculate Conception we children of the Sixties believe in is our own. There are no more sins, only neuroses. The only sexual sin is failure to orgasm. But it hasn’t always been so. As late as my own childhood, confession was once quite popular. The lines for confession often extended out of churches into the street. Perhaps people in an earlier time accepted their own sinfulness as a matter of course and embraced the relief that comes with confession. It’s been said that confession is a kind of Catholic yoga, free psychotherapy for the masses – and people in previous eras took advantage of it. In earlier times, people accepted both the reality of sin (violent, real, soul-withering sin) and the fact that they are inherently flawed, given to taking short cuts, repeat offenders in every sense of the word.

For about a century now, we’ve been telling ourselves that such a worldview is too pessimistic, even vaguely neurotic, and so have cultivated an image of ourselves as merely earnest strivers out to better the world. Perhaps some of this was necessary… because there is a heterodox strain of Calvinistic dualism in U.S. Catholicism. It may have come from Jansenism or from our Puritan neighbors but it’s there. Yet, like many correctives, this attempt to remove shame from our lives has gone too far. We now are literally shameless. Activities and attitudes that once required penance are now entertainment, celebrated on reality TV shows. Why go to confession when the activities you need to confess can, if broadcast to millions, make you rich? Don’t we all want to cheat our best friends out of fortunes and, like Mark Zuckerberg, found Internet empires? Don’t we all want to “hook up” with really “hot” guys and/or gals? Isn’t fame – bragging about our own wonderfulness — the path to wealth and happiness?

Catholics have a duty to go to confession at least once a year. It’s called the Easter Duty. Most ignore it. My friends in Opus Dei , which has as one of its “missions” the revival of confession among Catholics, like to say most Catholics haven’t been to confession since high school. I know that’s probably true. The only reason I go to confession as often as I do, which isn’t all that often, is because I occasionally attend an Opus Dei “evening of recollection” at a local high school. I’m not a member of Opus Dei but have a few friends who are… and I admire a lot about them. Unfortunately, some Opus Dei priests can be creepy, traditionalists in a bad sense. Our local parish priests are a lot better confessors because they function in the real world of single moms and scheming corporate lawyers. (The last time I went to Confession, right before Easter, I had the priest snorting in mild derision at my pathetic sins.)

Now, my evangelical in-laws, in occasional outbursts of anti-Catholicism after a few glasses of wine, will complain that they “don’t need some Catholic priest” to forgive their sins, that they can go “directly to God.” Of course, that’s true enough. That’s true even in Catholic theology… although I won’t bore you with the details and talk about mortal versus venial sins and acts of perfect contrition and all that. I also won’t bore you with the historical and scriptural evidence for sacramental confession. But saying you don’t need a Catholic priest to forgive your sins is a lot like saying you don’t need your dentist to clean your teeth or your gastroenterologist to clean your bowels: good luck with that! We go to confession for the same reason we go to the dentist: precisely because we don’t clean our teeth regularly or floss sufficiently and precisely because we don’t examine our conscience regularly and ask God for forgiveness. No, you don’t “have to” go see your gastroenterologist. You can take your chances. You can skip that checkup at age 50. After all, who wants to get a colonoscopy? But every once in a while, one of those intestinal polyps can get a little dicey and, if left unattended, can gradually grow into a nasty tumor that will kill you. So, no, you don’t “have” to go to Confession. But it’s a good idea.

One last thing. Like many healthy practices, like hot yoga, you can get used to Confession. It takes a while, but you can even get to like it eventually once you’re in the habit. Here’s why. There is something inherently powerful about someone listening to the deepest, darkest secrets of your soul – or at least to the deepest, darkest secrets you can bring yourself to talk about – and then saying that, by the power and authority invested in him by God Almighty, your sins are forgiven, truly and really forgiven. It can be truly transformative. That’s because many people, deep down, harbor a profound sense of shame despite all the best propaganda of our culture that there is no such thing as sin. When that sense of shame is brought into the open, like a bowel obstruction, and cut out, there is a real sense of relief and even of well being. You feel a lot better. If sin ages you, as it does, the forgiveness of sin is God’s anti-aging medicine, his way of keeping you young.

How to Muddle Through in Life

In the end, life is about muddling through as best you can. Most self-help books (and I read a lot of them) will advise you to find your “life’s purpose and passion,” but that’s like telling you the secret to success in business is to found a good company and make lots of money. The devil is in the details.

If I had to summarize all that I have learned about making your way on the path of life, however, I think it would come down to just a few core principles.

1. Put a priority on education. No one ever got very far, or became very happy, by being dumb. Stupidity is not a virtue, no matter what Hollywood tells you. Of course, by education I don’t necessarily mean college… although for most people, that is what it means. If you want to be an actor, fine… but learn everything you can about acting and about everything else you’re interested in. Read every acting book there is. Get the best training you can find. Ask questions constantly. Be curious. Be the geek who stays after class, asking followup questions. If you’re a mechanic, get advanced training. Sign up for courses. Take distance learning courses. Go to graduate school. Keep learning, keep studying. Become a perpetual student. Fill your home with books… and read them. Subscribe to as many magazines and journals in your field as you can afford. Take notes. Get a journal and write in it. If you’re in high school or college, make it your mission to learn everything you can… whatever it takes. If you’re already in the work force, make it your mission to learn everything you can about your profession, or your job, or your business. Become the “go to” guy or gal in your office, the expert the boss looks to for answers. Don’t be a smart ass about, don’t show off, just be knowledgeable – in your own quiet, unassuming way.

2. Try a lot of different things… especially things you don’t think you’ll be good at. I think this is good advice for young people but even better advice for old people. The infinite power that created galaxies and us gave us all talents and magic powers we don’t even know we have so the purpose of life, and especially when we’re young, is to experiment to discover what they are. The only way to do that is to try different things. In high school, if you’re a chemistry whiz and the math geek, try out for the football team. You might be surprised. You might, to your amazement, find you actually like tackling people. Similarly, if you’re a jock and a natural athlete, show you really have guts and try out for the school musical. Learn to play an instrument. Take up a new foreign language – like Chinese, perhaps. A few years back, there was a wonderful movie with Jim Carey called “Yes Man.” It was about a man whose life was utterly transformed when he went from saying “no” all the time to automatically saying “yes” – yes to volunteering, yes to learning Korean. Remember the old proverb: Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. It doesn’t matter if you’re lousy at something or don’t really know what you’re doing. If you were good at it, it wouldn’t be something new… and therefore wouldn’t test or stretch your abilities. I’m not particularly good at taking my own advice but I have tried to do this a little. I worked at a lot of different menial jobs when I was younger – fry cook, delivery boy, warehouse man. I learned a lot from all of them. When I was forty, I took up Aikido – a strange Japanese martial art that is derived from jujitsu. Change is good. Do different things. Never stop experimenting.

3. Make a solemn, lifelong vow of kindness. In Mahayana Buddhism, this is called the Bodhisattva Vow, the commitment to work for the salvation of all sentient beings. In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, this is choosing the standard of Christ. In essence, you make a lifelong and solemn commitment to be kind – to your family, your friends, strangers you meet, animals, the earth. If it’s not kind, you don’t do it. It’s that simple. Be the one kid in class who sticks up for the underdogs, the new kids, the kids who get taunted and mocked. Be a decent human being. Make it a conscious choice. Decide to become a Knight of the Round Table. Defend the innocent. Stand for justice. Be courteous to all, especially to people who don’t deserve it. I don’t really believe in karma, but when it comes to “random acts of kindness” I’ve always found that it’s true. Even from a selfish, self-interested perspective, kindness almost always pays off in unexpected ways. It’s something we never think about but it’s a foundational principle for a successful life and general happiness.

4. Serve a higher purpose. One of the tasks we are actually performing, as we flop about in our twenties, thirties and forties, looking for something to do with our lives, is searching for a cause or mission worthy of our commitment. To be truly happy in life, we have to serve something bigger than our own bellies, we have to work for a noble cause. For many, if not most of us, that cause can be something as simple as our own families. To raise and educate children in modern society, and keep them safe and strong and thriving, requires sacrifices and work most people have no clue about – until they actually face it themselves. Oftentimes, service to the higher purpose of our children requires us to work in hum-drum jobs just to earn money – even hum-drum jobs like law or medicine. As a result, we should realize that is what we are doing and make it a conscious choice rather than something we drift into by default. I am deliberately trying to sell more life insurance than any other salesman in my town because I have three children to get through college. Of course, it helps if we can combine our high purpose and our work, if our work serves our higher purpose… and that is the subject for another chapter. But even if we haven’t figured out how to pull that off, even if we have to work as a house cleaner or a computer programmer, we can still serve a higher purpose. This is essential to our happiness. Find that higher purpose in your life. Keep thinking about it, refining it. Read books on mission. Find a “failure is not an option” mission and commit to seeing it through.

5. Be flexible. Precisely because I’m not a particularly flexible person, in both a physical and a psychological sense, I know something about flexibility and its importance. I’m naturally rather stiff. It’s kind of a running joke in my Aikido classes. My ironic nickname is Gumby because I move like Frankenstein’s monster. But flexibility is something you have to consciously work on. You have to stretch regularly. You have to breathe, bend, get out of the way. This is why Aikido is so good for you. The essence of ukemi, the Aikido practice of “welcoming” attacks, is flexibility. Say someone throws a punch at you or tries to kick you. In karate, you would typically just block the attack, hard. In Aikido, you move out of the way and “blend” with the attack, actually trying to ride it the way a surfer rides a wave. This requires great flexibility as well as balance, timing and lightness on your feet – all great attributes to have when facing the blows that life throws at you. It’s helpful throughout life to remain flexible. You have a plan but you have to adapt. You take advantage of opportunities you didn’t expect and you recover from setbacks you didn’t see coming. Of course, you can’t be so flexible you just fall down. That doesn’t help you, either. Someone who “goes with the flow” too much ends up over the waterfall. In Aikido, the trick is to be flexible yet “buoyant,” maintaining contact with your attacker with an ongoing energy. You don’t just collapse. It’s the same thing in life. You have a direction, an energy, an intention. You have ideals and moral principles. You’re more flexible about means than ends. You know approximately where you want to go but realize there are a variety of ways of getting there.

6. Have a plan. It helps to have a plan, to think a few moves ahead. Most people don’t. You can overdue it, of course. There was a character in the old Australian TV series McLeod’s Daughters who had this elaborate flow chart of her life, with every contingency anticipated, every step outlined. It filled an entire wall of her room. The Master Plan both fascinated and horrified her friends… as well as viewers. But all things being equal, having a plan is better than not. You can have a plan for getting through college and/or graduate school… for landing a job… for your career… for meeting and marrying the love of your life… for your business… for retirement. They say that the single reason why most businesses fail is because the owners didn’t take the time to write up a business plan. Whenever I’ve struggled in my life, usually in business, I’ve written up a Plan for how I am going to get through things… and then tried to follow it. Things usually work out. Without a plan, I flop around like a fish on a dock, desperate and in a panic. I even try to plan my day a little – not too much, but enough so I know what I want to accomplish. I also find it’s very helpful to write things down. I buy expensive leather-bound Italian journals, fill them with my plans, and take them with me everywhere for constant review.

7. Have fun. These “macro” imperatives for life reflect my own values, of course, but I think they are fairly universal. What’s the point if you don’t have fun? That applies to every stage of your life – high school, college, your jobs, your marriage, raising kids, your business, retirement. One of the things I most admire about the late conservative writer and publisher William F. Buckley, Jr., was his enormous capacity for and dedication to having fun. Unlike many conservative political activists, Buckley believed in having a good time. He and his wife hosted dinner parties, cocktail parties and receptions. They spent a full two months every year in Switzerland, skiing and writing. Buckley was a passionate sailor and was constantly organizing expeditions and trips. He enjoyed life, good friends, his wife and son. I think we should all strive to have more fun. As the saying has it, we should work hard and play harder. By all means, go to medical school… just make sure you take spring break off and head to the Bahamas. That’s my advice for my overachieving children.

8. Realize the path is the goal. That’s the title of a book by Chogyam Trungpa, the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and founder of the Naropa University in Colorado. He was talking about Buddhist meditation but I think it applies equally to life. You know what they say, life is what happens while we’re making other plans. It’s human nature, I think, to have big goals… big plans… and to assume that once we reach them, we’ll have it made, be happy. But we should all be mystical enough to realize that, in a very real sense, we’re already there, life itself is the goal. The kingdom of God is among us, right now. Everything we could want in the universe is already ours. “Everything I have is yours,” the father tells the prodigal son, who never realized the gifts he had right under his nose. We should make big plans, struggle hard to achieve our goals, suffer the disappointments of failure, and yet maintain what the Mormons call an “eternal perspective” and realize that the path is the goal.

Robert Hutchinson is an writer and essayist. He latest book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible.

Bonhoeffer Biographer: Creeping Authoritarianism of the Obama Administration Against Churches Similar to Nazi Germany

People without moral principles are baffled when they confront people who actually have them… which is the sad lesson that Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Kathleen Sebelius, Patty Murray and other turn-coat pretend Catholics are about to learn the hard way.

That’s because, in the past two weeks, Barack Obama just lost the 2012 election.  With his decision to force Catholic institutions to provide free condoms, sterilization procedures, abortifacient drugs  and birth control pills to all of its employees — in clear violation of centuries-old Catholic moral teachings — the Obama Administration has revealed for all to see its fundamentally authoritarian character.  I guess people who don’t think twice about assassinating American citizens with drone aircraft and without due process of law wouldn’t bat an eye against using stormtrooper tactics against churches… but now the sleeping masses can see that with their own eyes.

The political geniuses in the Administration are telling themselves, and the media, that playing hard-ball with the Catholic Church is a political winner… because there are a lot more women using birth control pills than there are Catholic bishops.  But they have miscalculated big time.  That’s because everyone who isn’t a Democrat Party hack like Nancy Pelosi or Patty Murray understands that this is merely the entering wedge, the first salvo, in an escalating campaign against religious institutions that is breathtaking in its totalitarian overreach.

Today it’s birth control; tomorrow abortion; the day after that, gay marriage and euthanasia.  Everyone will be forced to comply.  Everyone must obey.  Or else.

This Administration is hell-bent (literally) on forcing its ultra-liberal policy prescriptions on everyone it can, the Constitution be damned.  And it is precisely the revelation of this creeping totalitarianism that makes this stupid decision the nail in Obama’s reelection coffin.

Obama and the political hacks who service him have indeed awakened a sleeping giant… but that sleeping giant is not merely the 70 million Catholics in the United States.  It’s the 165 million people of faith who don’t like the idea of the government, any government, issuing edicts to religious institutions that violate their fundamental moral principles.

In other words:  The Obama Administration’s moral tone deafness just cost it the election.  To get their way, they will have to send out their Federal stormtroopers and arrest everyone, Catholic university presidents, the heads of Catholic Charities, the people who run orphanages, the bishops… and they will spark such a massive movement of civil disobedience it will make their heads spin.

If you have any doubt that non-Catholics and people who use contraceptives can sense the totalitarian character of the Obama Administration’s policies, watch the YouTube video below from the bestselling biographer of the great anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And this author is correct: The Nazis started small… first by demanding in the early 1930s that sterilization procedures by used against “unfit” patients… and then, with each moral compromise, gradually forcing more and more reprehensible acts on hospitals, universities and churches.

The Feds Want to Censor the Internet

The list below is taken from a website called TheoriesofConspiracy.com about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill going through Congress that would put America behind its own Chinese firewall.

While the bill is being sponsored by a particularly odious Republican, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, it has the enthuasiastic backing of liberal Democrats who love the idea of the government taking control of the Internet at last — including many from California who have been paid off by the entertainment conglomerates pushing for this bill.

Among the Democrats trying to ram SOPA and its companion bill in the Senate,the PROTECT IP Act down the throat of the American public are  Howard Berman (D-CA), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA).

The most troubling aspect of the legislation, revealed in a live video posted on YouTube.com, is the wholesale technical ignorance of the hack politicians presuming to reinvent the Internet.  In the hearing on SOPA, the politicians revealed themselves to have a computer knowledge of three-year-olds — yet they don’t hesitate to pass legislation that would shut down entire sections of the Internet without due process.  AMong the proposed laws most odious features:

Website Blocking

With this bill, government can order Internet service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users. Websites like Reddit, Tumblr, and even Youtube, are fair targets to be shutdown.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

How to Fight Back

If this law passes, you’ll wake up to find sites you love blocked by the US government.

Tell your parasite in Congress to vote “no” on SOPA — or start looking for a new job.

Contact your congressman and senator and tell them you are against the bill — either by calling their office, writing a letter, or sending a prepared message though americancensorship.org.

It is also useful to know who the enemy is. The following major companies support SOPA. You can write or call the companies to let them know you are boycotting their services and products unless they end their support for the dangerous bill.

Companies Supporting SOPA:

1-800 Contacts, Inc.
1-800-PetMeds
2b1 Inc
3M Company
ABRO Industries, Inc.
Acushnet Company
adidas America
Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed)
Allen Russell Photography
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
Alliance of Visual Artists (AVA)
Altria Client Services
American Apparel and Footwear Association
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Board of Internal Medicine
American Federation of Musicians
American Gramaphone LLC
American Made Alliance
American Mental Health Counselors Association
American Photographic Artists
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers
American Society of Picture Professionals
American Watch Association
Anatoly Pronin Photography
Andrea Rugg Photography
Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Initiative (ACAPI)
Applied DNA Sciences
Art Holeman Photography
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Association of Equipment Manufacturers
Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP)
Association of Test Publishers
AstraZeneca plc
Australian Medical Council
Autodesk, Inc.
Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association
Baker & Taylor Ent.
Bay State Psychological Associates
Beachbody, LLC
Beam Global Spirits & Wine
Blue Sky Studios, Inc.
Bose Corporation
Braasch Biotech LLC
Brian Stevenson Photography
Brigid Collins Family Support Center
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
Burberry
C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.
Callaway Golf Company
Cascade Designs Incorporated
Caterpillar Inc.
Caveon, LLC
CBS Corporation
Cengage Learning
Center for Credentialing & Education
Center Stage Photography
CFA Institute
Chanel USA
Christopher Semmes Photography
Church Music Publishers Association
CMH Images
Coach
Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP)
Columbia Sportswear Company
Comcast Corporation
Commercial Photo Design
Commercial Photographers International
Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System
Consumer Healthcare Products Association
Copyright Alliance
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC)
Coty Inc.
Council of Fashion Designers of America
Country Music Association
CropLife America
Cross-Entertainment LLC
CSA Group
CVS Caremark
D’Addario & Company, Inc.
Dan Sherwood Photography
Danita Delimont Stock Photography
Dayco Products, LLC
Deluxe Entertainment Services Group
Dennyfoto
Derek DiLuzio Photography
DeVaul Photography
Direct Selling Association (DSA)
Directional Insight
Distefano Enterprises Inc.
Doriguzzi Photographic Artistry
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
Dolce & Gabbana USA, INC.
Dollar General Corporation
Don Grall Photography
Dunford Architectural Photography
Eagle Rock Entertainment
Ed McDonald Photography
Educational & Industrial Testing Service
Electronic Arts, Inc.
Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA)
Eli Lilly and Company
Englebert Photography
Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
ERAI, Inc.
Eric Meola Studio Inc
Evidence Photographers International Council
Ex Officio
Exxel Outdoors
FAME Publishing Co., LLC.
FAME Recording Studios
Far Bank Enterprises
Fashion Business Incorporated
Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy
Fender Musical Instrument Company
Footwear Distributors & Retailers of America (FDRA)
Ford Motor Company
Fortune Brands, Inc.
Fred J. Lord Photography
GAR Associates
Gelderland Productions, L.L.C.
Gemvision Corporation
Gibson Guitar Corp.
GlaxoSmithKline
Gospel Music Association
Governors America Corp.
Graduate Management Admission Council
Graphic Artists Guild
Greeting Card Association (GCA)
Greg Nikas Photography
Guru Denim
H.S. Marketing & Design, Inc.
Harley-Davidson Motor Company
HarperCollins Publishers
Harry Fox Agency
Hastings Entertainment, Inc.
ICM Distributing Company, Inc.
IDS Publishing
IEC Electronics corp.
Images Plus
Imaging Supplies Coalition (ISC)
Independent Distributors of Electronics Association (IDEA)
INgrooves
Innate-gear
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC)
International Trademark Association (INTA)
IPC-Association Connecting Electronics Industries
Ira Montgomery Photography
J.S. Grove Photography
James Drug Inc.
Jaynes Gallery
JCPage Photography
Jean Poland Photography
Jeff Stevensen Photography
John Fulton Photography
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Johnson & Johnson
Juicy Couture, Inc
Julien McRoberts Photography
K&R Photographics
kate spade
Kekepana International Services
Kenneth Garrett, photographer for National Geographic
Killing Jar Productions LLC
Lacoste USA
Leatherman Tool Group, Inc.
Lexmark International, Inc.
Light Perspectives
Linda Olsen Photography
Little Dog Records
Liz Claiborne, Inc
L’Oréal USA
Lucky Brand Jeans
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton
Macmillan
Major League Baseball
Marcia Andberg Associates LLC
Mark Niederman Photography
Marmot
Marona Photography
McLain Photography Inc
Merck & Co., Inc.
Messy Face Designs, Inc.
Michael Stern Photography
MicroRam Electronics, Inc.
Minter Works of Art
Mira Images
Monster Cable Products, Inc.
Moose’s Photos
Morningstar Films LLC
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
MotionMasters
Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association
MPA – The Association of Magazine Media
Mr. Theodor Feibel (sole proprietor)
Music Managers Forum-U.S.
Nashville Songwriters Association International
Natalie Neckyfarow Actor/Dancer/Singer
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM)
National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO)
National Basketball Association (NBA)
National Board for Certified Counselors
National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation
National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA)
National Football League (NFL)
National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA)
National Retail Federation (NRF)
NBCUniversal
Nervous Tattoo Inc., dba Ed Hardy
New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.
New Era Cap Co Inc
New Levels Ent. Co. LLC
News Corporation
Next Decade Entertainment, Inc.
NHL Enterprises, L.P.
Nicholas Petrucci, Artist, LLC
Nike, Inc.
Nintendo of America Inc.
Nissle Fine Art Photography
North Dakota Pharmacists Association
North Dakota Pharmacy Service Corporation
Oakley, Inc.
One Voice Recordings
OpSec Security, Inc.
Outdoor Industry Association
Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI)
Outdoor Research, Inc
Pacific Component Xchange, Inc.
Party Killer Films LLC
Pearson Clinical Assessment
Peavey Electronics Corporation
Perry Ellis International
Personal Care Products Council
Peter C. Brandt, Architectural and Fine Art Photography
Peter Hawkins Photography, Inc.
Petzl America
Pfizer Inc.
PGA of America
Philip Morris International
Photojournalist Dave Bartruff
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Pigfactory Music
PING
PNW Images
Premier League
Production Music Association (PMA)
Professional Photographers of America
Quality Float Works, Inc.
Raging Waters Music
Ralph Lauren Corporation
Ramsay Corporation
Rebel Photo
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Red4 Music/Doogs Rock Inc
Red Wing Shoe Company
Reebok International Ltd.
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA)
Revlon
Richard Flutie Photography
Rite Aid
Robin Davis Photography, Inc.
Rodger Scott Craig, a member of Liverpool Express, The Merseybeats, Fortune, Harlan
Cage, 101 South, and Mtunz Media
Roger Smith Photography Services
Rolex Watch USA Inc.
Romance Writers of America (RWA)
Rosetta Stone Inc.
Saddle Creek
Sage Studios LLC
Sam D’Amico Photography
Schneider Electric
Sean McGinty Photography
Secret Sea Visions (Photography)
SESAC, Inc.
SG Industries, Inc.
Shure Incorporated
SIGMA Assessment Systems
Six Degrees Records
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
SMC Entertainment
SMT Corp.
SoBe Entertainment
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Sony Electronics Inc.
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Soul Appeal Records and Music
SoundExchange
Southern Gothic LLC
Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA)
SPI (The Plastics Industry Trade Association)
Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association
Sports Rights Owners Coalition
Spring Fever Productions LLC
Spyder Active Sports, Inc
Stenbakken Photography
Stephen Dantzig Photography
Stock Artist Alliance
Stuart Weitzman Holdings, LLC
Student Photographic Society
Studio 404
SunRise Solar Inc.
Taylor Glenn Photographs
Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc.
Tednologies, Inc.
The Cambridge Don
The Collegiate Licensing Company/IMG College
The Donath Group, Inc.
The Dow Chemical Company
The Estee Lauder Companies
The McGraw-Hill Companies
The Music People! Inc.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
The Recording Academy (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences)
The Timberland Company
The Walt Disney Company
Tiffany & Co.
Time Warner Inc.
Tony Bullard Photography
Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc.
TRA Global
Tricoast Worldwide
Trio Productions, Inc. / Songscape Music,
Twist & Shout, Inc.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Ultimate Fighting Championship
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Universal Music Group
Uniweld Products Inc.
VF Corporation
Viacom
Vibram USA, Inc
Virtual Chip Exchange USA, Inc.
Voltage Pictures, LLC
W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co.
Walcott Studio, LLC
Wal-Mart
Warner Music Group
Wendy Kaveney Photography
Western Psychological Services
Westmorland Images, LLC
Wild & Associates, Inc.
Wild Eye Photos LLC
William Sutton Photography
Willis Music
WindLegends Ink LLC
Winestem Company
Winslow Research Institute
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Fred Reed on Chickenhawks…

One of my favorite expat columnists, Fred Reed who lives down Mexico way, spent some time as a military affairs reporter and police reporter. Unlike many anti-war conservatives and liberals, therefore, Fred has a healthy respect for the military — at least, as much respect as someone who has actually spent a lot of time with soldiers can have. In other words, he’s a realist. His problem with the Republican chickenhawks like Newt Gingrich is that their ignorance and arrogance can get a lot of good people (mostly teenagers) killed. Here’s what he says we need to ask all the candidates urging quick military action against Iran…

To begin, I will ask the following questions of the candidates, and for that matter of Mr. Obama, and of the Secretary of Defense, a generic bureaucrat.

Can you explain: Convergence zones, base bleed, Kursk, range-gate pull-off, artillery at Dien Bien Phu, IR cross-over, Tet and queen sacrifice, Brahmos 2, CIWIS, supercruise, side-lobe penetration, seven-eighty-twice gear, super-cavitating torpedoes, phased arrays, pulse Doppler, the width of Hormuz versus the range of Iranian cruise missiles, DU, discarding sabot, frequency agility, Chobham armor, and pseudo-random PRF?

These, gentlemen, are the small talk of serious students of the military. Here I mean men like David Isby, author of such books as Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army for Jane’s, which you likely have never heard of, or William S. Lind, probably the best military mind (though, or because, not a soldier), that I have encountered. If you are unfamiliar with them, and with the things listed above, you are unfamiliar with the military. Yet you campaign for possession of the trigger.

Perhaps a little humility, perish the thought, and a little self-examination might be in order.

Peering into your own depths, you will probably find that the humility does not come easily. In my decades of covering the armed services, I noticed among men a belief in their innate jockstrap competency regarding wars. Men who would readily admit ignorance of petroleum geology, ophthalmology, or ancient Sumerian grammar nonetheless believe that they grasp matters military. Usually they do not. In particular, they have an utterly unexamined belief in America’s military invincibility.

You know the old expression that to a hammer all things look like a nail? Well, according to Reed, to a general all things are military threats. Unfortunately, they almost always overestimate the threats and underestimate their army’s own abilities. Saying that “the Pentagon hasn’t won a war since 1945,” unless you count Grenada, Reed adds that “career officers live in a mental world not well adapted to winning today’s wars.” They can win battles, for sure… just not the wars. The generals can bomb countries back to the stone age, as in Vietnam, but still be forced to withdraw their forces when the ugly realities of occupation become too burdensome… as in Iraq and soon in Afghanistan. Then the people they “defeated” rush back in and take over the country again, as they did in Vietnam and probably will do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a result, Reed concludes, presidents (and the public) should be skeptical of all generals, and certainly all chickenhawks, who are in a hurry to go to war. Unfortunately, presidents are more easily fooled than the general public — which explains how an unregenerate lefty like Obama could quickly be seduced by his generals and the CIA and come to embrace everything he opposed as a candidate — such as the waging of undeclared wars on his sole authority, the assassination of American citizens without trial, the widespread use of illegal electronic surveillance against American citizens, and the abrogation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by signing a law that allows the military to detain U.S. citizens without trial in secret prisons overseas without access to court review.

Once a candidate from the relative bushes gets elected, as may happen, he becomes a captive of Washington in about ten minutes. This too you should bear in mind. You will be briefed by the CIA, which will spin things so that you believe what it wants you to believe. The spooks will radiate lethal charm and speak with the assurance of a higher order of being. This will give you a sense of admission to a special tree house where everyone has a Captain Marvel secret decoder ring (two box tops and a dollar fifty). And, in Washington, you will have access to no other view. Gotcha.

You will be briefed by the Pentagon by generals with firm handshakes, steely gaze, obvious intelligence, and a convincing understanding of the world as consisting chiefly of threats. They are very good at this. You do not become a general without expertise with Power Point and the slick gab of a confidence man. Generals too are politicians. They will carry you along like a wood chip in a spring flood. And you will pay the price.

Fun stuff. You can read the rest of his column here…

How to Be Happy in Life

There are many different ways of life, of course, and each person has to choose the way that fits his or her personality and intuitions about what life is all about and how to be happy. There is the way of the adventurer. The way of the businessman. The way of the scholar or priest. There is the way of the artist or mystic. There is even Gurdjieff’s Way of the Sly Man, the secret mystic who lives like an ordinary business man. But because I studied Aristotle at a young age, I’ve always been persuaded that, when considering how to “structure” your life, you should consider how best to use whatever God-given talents you’ve been given. In his Nicomachian Ethics (1095a15–22), Aristotle said that happiness (eudaimonia) comes from the full exercise of your powers… from using your gifts… and I’ve always thought that is true. And that is why, for me personally, one of the dominant themes of my life has always been what I call balance – the attempt to arrange your life, in so far as its possible, so that you have some balance in life and are able to use as many abilities as possible. Perhaps this is actually the Way of the Dilettante but I prefer to think of it as the Way of the Renaissance. In other words, I wanted a life in which I could marry, raise a family, think, create, study, make money, travel, play sports, stay in shape, play music, read books, and, in general pursue my interests and passions. I tried to make choices, as life went on in its haphazard way, that created conditions in which this multi-faceted, balanced life would be possible.

For example, I knew early on that I wanted to be my own boss – both because I would probably make more money with my own businesses but also because it meant I would have more free time, the ability to travel, the ability to see my children growing up, and so on. As a result, I never really pursued any sort of corporate job or career. This has its disadvantages, of course. We’ve always had to pay for our own health insurance and medical costs, for example – and to this day marvel when friends complain about their $30 “co-pays” and rising insurance costs. We paid for each of our children’s deliveries, about $5,000 each, almost literally in cash. We’ve also had to create our own Defined Benefit Pension Plan with its myriad federal regulations, its mandatory reporting requirementss, its frequent demands for cash, and what I like to call the “adult supervision” of a professional pension fund administrator – a delightful woman, the “dragon lady,” who is an Orthodox Jew and who does her best to keep us out of trouble with the Feds.

But overall, being self-employed, in my opinion, gives you many more opportunities for the “full exercise of your powers” and be happy than working in a nine-to-five corporate job. I am revisiting all these issues afresh because, as I write these words, my eldest son is plotting his own career trajectory in the corporate world of high finance – and I marvel both at his ambitious determination and at the assumptions that underlying his plotting. It is so utterly alien to my own way of life – trying to fashion a career in a corporate setting – that I am only now appreciating the stubborn but quite deliberate choices that went into our way of life.

Another part of living a balanced life is making money – not a lot of money, perhaps, but enough to provide a safe and comfortable home, in a quiet and secure neighborhood, and so that you can afford such luxuries as sports teams, music and language lessons, health care, good schools and so on. If you want to marry and raise children – which, for most people, is the most realistic path to becoming a decent human being and whatever enlightenment is granted us on this earth — a minimum amount of money is a requirement. The practical upshot of this, for me, was that I didn’t want to choose businesses or jobs that would make me too poor. I’ve never really been all that materialistic (as anyone who sees the old truck I drive or my clothes would confirm) but I do like to travel, buy books, study Aikido and philosophy in my spare time, and provide educational opportunities for my children. This meant that my wife and I had to figure out how to make money – and thus becoming a starving artist wasn’t a choice I was prepared to make. I admire artists for their single-minded dedication to their art… and I actually would encourage anyone with serious talented to pursue art or music as a career choice… but you still have to earn a living, artist or no.

When young people call me up, as some do, and ask me if they should become writers, I always say the same thing: Absolutely! It’s the best way of life in the world! My only caveat is that, to be happy, most people will want to marry and have children, to exercise all of their powers – not just their artistic ones – and that you therefore have to balance your artistic pursuits with the need to make money and provide a comfortable home. You want to enjoy your body and stay in shape. Play tennis or softball. Go to yoga classes. This is self-evident to many people but not to all, especially not to all of my children. When you are young and idealistic, you want to give yourself over to a great artistic passion or project – to spend years working on plays that never get produced, or a great novel, or painting, or a rock band. In your early twenties, that’s what you should do – test out your abilities and explore different ways of making a living. But if you want to have a happy life, you need to know that you have to balance the desire for creative pursuits with the need to make a decent living – not to “sell out” but in order that you can “exercise your full powers,” so you’re able to become a full human being.

Again, I am only thinking about these issues because I have so many children. But I really do believe balance in life is essential, perhaps even a key to happiness – even if you decide that your talents lie in science, or engineering, or medicine. For example, my eldest daughter is thinking about becoming a doctor. My wife likes this idea because her sister is a doctor and she likes the economic security that being a doctor can provide to women, especially in an increasingly competitive global economy. I think that’s great, of course, and will do everything I can to help my daughter through medical school, if she decides to pursue that course. My only caution to her would be to strive for balance – to think about how to balance the demands of a medical career with the needs and expectations of family life, her musical talents, her passion for swimming and athletics. Medicine is a fairly demanding and monomaniacal profession… but I know it’s possible to build a balanced life as a doctor, as my younger brother and my sister-in-law have proven. But it takes effort and deliberate choices.

None of the Above

The word “politics” is derived from the word “poly,” meaning “many,”
and the word “ticks,” meaning “blood sucking parasites.”
– Larry Hardiman

The world needs a political and economic alternative.

The obsolete ideas and ideals of Big Government collectivism … and the equally bankrupt ideas and ideals of Big Business collectivism… have run their course.

Now all that is left, in most developed countries, is a political stalemate that is increasingly acrimonious, even dangerous.

The only sane alternative for fair-minded humanists everywhere is to abandon the siren song of politics altogether… to flee the plantation of government rules and regulations… and channel their energies into social and economic projects that lie outside the realm of politics.

What sorts of projects?

Anything that is based on voluntary cooperation, not force. Any individual initiative or social effort that invites participation, not demands it. That would include new businesses, voluntary organizations, neighborhood groups, food and medical co-ops, charities, churches and temples, social outreach enterprises.

For thousands of years, this was how people served the common good: voluntarily.

Someone saw a need that wasn’t being met, thought of a way that need could be met, and then either created a solution that could be sold, or, alternatively, persuaded neighbors and friends to join in a collective effort to provide a solution. Thus, Benjamin Franklin and the early American colonists created the first fire departments and libraries. Politics had nothing to do with it. Everything was done on a voluntary basis, by subscription.

It is increasingly obvious that politics is the domain of losers and leeches, parasites and gangsters; the place where talentless drones go to obtain jobs they could never get in the real world of business or art. It is the realm of ambulance-chasing lawyers and toadying bureaucrats, nepotism and connections, paybacks and bribes. In most developed countries today, politics is a method of career advancement for talentless hacks.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy,” said Ernest Benn.

H.L. Mencken agreed. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Indeed. When you think about it, the kind of people who go into politics are, by definition, people who like telling other people what to do. They are at best professional busybodies; at worst, authoritarian thugs and gangsters.

In the past, politicians could at least be voted out of office; but in the past 50 years, the political class has discovered a way to protect itself: It has created a vast, self-perpetuating army of government workers who are 100% dependent upon the politicians for their jobs. In exchange for the government workers’ reliable votes every election, the politicians create make-work that come with bloated salaries and absurd pensions.

This vast army of government workers remains even when the politicians lose their jobs or a government changes. It is easy to fire an individual politician; it takes much longer, and is virtually impossible, to eliminate government bureaucracies.

Fortunately, there is a long and well-developed tradition in the Western world, at least, of ignoring politics and government altogether. It is a centuries-old movement of anti-politics – not anarchism exactly but more polite refusal to participate.

It is the Way of Just Saying No – no to politics, no to politicians, no to voting, no to force, no to imposing your policy prescriptions on other people. In the past, it was called “minding your own business” but today is often called “anarchism.”

Studying Philosphy at the Catholic University of Leuven

Why Newt Gingrich is a False Messiah

Like most people who enjoy frank and intelligent conversation, I like Newt Gingrich. He is smart, knowledgeable, intelligent to a fault, every bit the history professor he once was. I first saw him, more than 18 years ago, at a gathering of conservative activists in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. He mesmerized the audience then just as he mesmerizes growing numbers of Republicans today.

Republicans are so grateful to have someone in their party who can string together more than two coherent sentences at a time — let alone someone who knows the specific details of policy and history — quite a few are falling all over themselves in support of Newt. But Newt is a false messiah. Like the greatest disaster to befall the Republican Party in a century, the faux cowboy George W. Bush, Newt is a “big government conservative.” He believes, like most of the Republican candidates with the exception of Ron Paul, in expanding government power, not limiting it. He wants to start new wars, not end the ones we’re already in.

Indeed, as the historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo has chronicled in painful detail, Newt’s proposed foreign policy is downright frightening — even granting that a lot of what he says is merely posturing for the Republican base.

According to Gingrich, the U.S. military should invade Lebanon with the purpose of “disarming Hezbollah.” This would effectively commence another war with Syria, says Gingrich, as it would be “the first direct defeat of Syria,” which supposedly pulls the strings of Hezbollah. It would also be an assault on Iran, says the former House speaker, and would therefore be an act of war against that country as well.

Next, full-scale warfare should be waged against North Korea, Iran and Syria with the objective of “replacing the repressive dictatorships” in those countries. All of this would somehow serve in “restoring American prestige in the region,” says Gingrich. Yes, murdering hundreds of thousands of Iranians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and destroying their cities and their infrastructure of civilization, which is what war does, would surely lead the people of those countries to think of Americans as “prestigious.”

Gingrich’s enthusiasm for expanding America’s “war on terror” — and his utter indifference to civil liberties — reflects the fact that he is, at bottom, a career politician who believes government is the solution, not the problem. He doesn’t fear an expansion of the police state because Newt and his friends are the police state. He doesn’t feel the TSA is an out-of-control federal bureaucracy that needs to be scraped because, like most government parasites and former government parasites, he never encounters the TSA. He flies on private jets and doesn’t have endure strip searches by illiterate TSA goons.

Worst of all, Gingrich is the epitome of a career politician who cashes in after his “service” and makes literally millions off of the taxpayers. For more on that, check on Ron Paul’s new ad below…

I like Newt. I eagerly watch him on TV. But he should remain a TV pundit, not become president of the United States. His warmongering and lack of respect for constitutional restraint on government disqualify him utterly. The only candidate who will at least try to change the corrupt status quo in Washington is Ron Paul.

Carl Levin and John McCain Repeal the Fifth Amendment

A bipartisan coalition of increasingly rabid U.S. senators, led by Carl “Jabba the Hut” Levin (a Democrat) and John McCain (a Republican), have quietly laid the legal groundwork for martial law in the United States. That sounds alarmist but it may be quite literally true. Their amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) repeals the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (“no person [not citizen] shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) and centuries of legal precedent regarding the doctrine of habeas corpus. At issue in the NDAA amendment is whether the U.S. military should have the power to arrest U.S. citizens, here on U.S. soil, and detain those citizens indefinitely in military prisons (here or overseas) without access to legal counsel or due process and without trial in civilian court.

Sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA, cooked up in secret by the corrupt lizard Levin and McCain and recently passed by the U.S. Senate after heated debate, say that the military can arrest and detain anybody “who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

Obviously anyone who is actively supporting terrorists or engaged in terrorism should be arrested. But what is troubling in this broad and undefined language (what constitutes “support” or what are “associated forces”?) is that the NDAA asserts that the U.S. military can do this, at their sole discretion and with zero oversight, and without supervision by a civilian court. This is de facto martial law and a de facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that forbids military personnel from enforcing the laws of the land on U.S. soil.

It’s true that the Fifth Amendment provides an exception to the general rule regarding due process: and that exception is precisely War or Public Danger. “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger… It was on this basis that Abraham Lincoln suspended habaes corpus during the Civil War (surely a case of war). But the dire need for such a sweeping suspension of U.S. Constitutional guarantees now, at this time, is far from evident. As much as the “hawks” in the government are continually trying to ratchet up fear of yet another impeding terrorist attack, the evidence that we are in a time of grave “public danger” has not been presented.

The only Republican in the Senate with the spine to stand up against this unprecedented attack on the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), son of U.S. presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul. Dianne Feinstein of California proposed an amendment that would have exempted U.S. citizens from the treatment described in Levin and McCain’s bill. “We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge, prosecution, and conviction,” Feinstein said during the debate, but a majority of her colleagues disagreed. Her amendment was rejected by a vote of 45-55, with quite a few Democrats joining the Republicans. The Senate did vote to accept another Feinstein amendment that purportedly “clarified” that the Levin-McCain Amendment, despite its brazen language, did not violate the rights of U.S. citizens:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”

Nevertheless, this issue… like that of the CIA’s new enthusiasm for targeted assassination… is not going away. I am cheered to say that a coalition of sane constitutionalists, on both the political left and right, are rising up to oppose this power grab. While the ACLU and Glenn Greenwald have predictably opposed this legislation, many on the libertarian Right have as well — including The American Spectator and libertarian firebrand Judge Andrew Napolitano (see video below). “Some of you may be willing to accept this as a necessary evil…the overhead cost of a living in a country that’s increasingly less free than we’d like to admit,” noted Spectator blogger Reid Smith. “Some of you may be comfortable being told this makes you safer. I happen to prefer the modest benefits of due process and that old chestnut habeas corpus.” President Obama has threatened to veto the legislation, but, given his track record on civil liberties and his groveling desire to appear tough on terrorism before the 2012 election, no one is holding their breath.

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