The end of the Age of Terror does not signal the end of terror itself, but rather a passing of center stage to another key human issue. What that issue will be has yet to come to light, but for a time, the pressing issue of our day was keenly represented by one man.

Make no mistake, the War on Terror was about capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden, and in so doing dismantling his hateful image and the clones it inspired.

It was always Bin Laden America was after. He alone had personal accountability for what happened to the country on 9/11, and so he alone represented the chance for justice, and with it some peace.

Like the fall of the Berlin Wall marking the decline of Soviet communism or the bursting of the Dot-Com bubble signalling the end of 1990′s prosperity, every ten years or so a singular event punctuates the end of a chapter in the world’s story.

Osama Bin Laden showed the United States how awful terrorism can be. With Bin Laden dead, America’s 9/11 fallen avenged once and for all, our trauma – our terror – can finally find closure and heal.

For most of our lives, Americans have taken for granted the availability of plentiful food, clean water, and public protection for our lives and property. Our country has been exceedingly blessed in this sense. However, as a result of our prosperity, Americans have come to almost fully rely on a complex web of interconnected systems for the most basic necessities.

Take for example your local grocery store. Modern grocery stores rely on a system of constant resupply to function. Most stores have on hand about 72 hours worth of food at any given time. In the event of a major supply interruption due to natural disaster, nuclear attack, disease outbreak or financial collapse, stores will sell out of basic necessities almost immediately. Resupply may not happen for weeks or even months. How would you get food during one of those scenarios?

During periods of extreme unrest, when basic functions like running water, electricity, and food are unavailable, lawlessness follows. The result is widespread looting and vandalism, such as was seen during disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake. Police forces are quickly overwhelmed and are unable to respond with basic protection for the public. How would you defend yourself at times like these?

Most Americans do not have their bases covered, from this point of view. In fact, most Americans are woefully unprepared to feed themselves or provide for their own defense for any period of time, leaving themselves and their families at the mercy of circumstances.

There are steps that Americans can take to cover their bases, over the short and long term. The first involves putting in place adequate resources and planning to provide for necessities during brief to moderate interruptions in goods, water, and critical services. The latter involves long-range planning that addresses areas of critical risks.

Covering Your Bases in the Short Term

- Get the right mindset. Having a “hands-off” attitude toward your own personal survival, or assuming somebody else will take care of you, are both recipes for disaster. Spend time acclimating to the notion that life is not always going to be easy or fun, and that emergencies do not only happen to “other people” in other countries. We have been lucky in America so far, but no society in history has been spared the ordeal of serious calamity. We are not special.

- Get a firearms license. It is your right as guaranteed by the Constitution to keep and bear arms. Start the process by enrolling in a firearms safety course, and registering for a license to carry. Become proficient in a range of weapons, to include handguns, shotguns, and rifles.

- Own a handgun. Handguns are portable, concealable, and relatively easy to use. You can keep yourself armed without others knowing, in case tensions start to rise while you still go about your daily business.

- Own a shotgun. Handguns are useful for personal carry, but they do not compete with the stopping power of a properly configured shotgun against a determined attacker. Whether for home defense or on the move, a shotgun yields a wealth of advantages over handguns in an emergency, to include longer range, wider shot spread, and being easier to control under stress.

- Pack a bag ahead of time. You should have in your home a sturdy backpack full of necessities, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Sometimes, disaster strikes too quickly to have time to pack, so be ready ahead of time by devoting spare clothes, food, and weapons to a dedicated pack. Make sure it’s small enough to hike with, in case major roads are disabled or too congested for car travel, forcing you to “walk out” to safety.

- Get out of the city. During a serious emergency, cities traditionally degenerate into lawlessness fastest, and the results are the most dramatic. Avoid the peril of being trapped in high-density areas where food and water will be rarest, and where people will be pressed to do the most extreme things to get them. Also, cities have become havens for poor morals and character, so it is best to plan on getting to a lower-density area as quickly as possible during the first signs of a large-scale emergency.

- Have a retreat. If you do not already live in the country with a source of fresh water and a well-stocked food cellar, make plans with family or friends who do. This will be your destination should things get out of control. Make plans ahead of time to get there quickly in the event of a disaster, as roads and bridges will quickly congest and make it difficult to reach your retreat location.

- Store 6 months of food. Each person in your family should have a supply of food good for six months of living. This may sound extreme, but in the event of a truly large-scale collapse of the American economy, food may be so hard to come by or expensive that this will be the only way to eat until supplies come back online. Obviously, storing this food supply at your retreat location is your best bet, rather than trying to carry it all with you in the event that you need to leave your primary home.

- Have a source of fresh water. Water is the most precious resource for human beings, because we can’t last long without it. If grocery stores are out of bottled water, and electricity is unable to pump water to people’s homes, another source of fresh water is going to become extremely important, quickly. Locate someone with a private well, and speak to them about ensuring it works absent electricity.

- Get alternative “currency.” In the event that the American dollar becomes worthless due to inflation or other economic collapse, having an alternative store of wealth becomes critical. Silver and gold will always be worth something in the eyes of those looking to trade. You can procure pre-1964 silver coins to act as a hedge against the dollar’s economic decline and to use as currency in the event that the dollar fails entirely.

- Find other people. If these ideas speak to you, it’s a good idea to find other people who are of a similar mindset, and to coordinate your planning in the event of a serious catastrophe. Strength is found in numbers, both in terms of personal security and in pooling material resources.

Covering Your Bases in the Long-Term

- Move to the country. Cities tend to implode during periods of social unrest. No sane person should want to be a part of that, so strongly consider the benefits of owning your own land away from the potential tumult of America’s urban centers.

- Grow your own food. In the long-run, Americans need to be growing their own food. Today’s food travels thousands of miles to reach us, which is both costly and unsustainable. It also creates a critical risk in our personal supply chains, as any interruption to food production, energy transportation, electricity, or the nation’s highways and railways means that people start to go hungry. We can avoid this by growing food locally, and having our own food stores right on our property to save costs and potential hardship.

- Learn basic, critical skills. If and when a serious catastrophe hits the United States, college degrees will mean very little. Skills that will be important will likely include carpentry, auto repair, farming, defense/security, electrical and radio repair, emergency medicine and dentistry, cooking and baking, and metal working. To the extent that Americans are able to perform basic skills – regardless of their “day job” – the better prepared they will be in the event that modern amenities disappear for a period of time.

- Build personal character. Americans are quickly becoming a morally bankrupt people. Our sense of right and wrong is heavily influenced by corrupt laws and unscrupulous entertainment media. Unplug your TV and video games and pursue morally reinforcing endeavors like faith and spirituality, philosophy, and community service. Learn to know how to do what is right, even when nobody is looking over your shoulder. This way, when left to your own devices in an emergency, your good character will guide you through periods of uncertainty and hardship. This, in turn, will aid your survival.

—

Today’s world is rife with more uncertainty than any of us alive today can remember. In part, that’s just the nature of life. But also too, a number of poor decisions have left this country vulnerable to risks that weren’t around a generation or two before. As a result, there are risks today that we must confront as Americans. One of those is ensuring the safety and survival of our families in the event that the worst happens.

For this reason, I encourage you to cover your bases.

Start with a pyramid of needs. Understand what your family needs to survive, and then put a plan in place to provide those things whether or not grocery stores are open, police and fire are on duty, or electricity and water are flowing. If you had to go 6-months without those things being available starting today, how well would you and yours fare?

God bless you,

Andy

To understand the biblical meaning of being born again, it’s important to understand the concept of clean and unclean.

When God made people, he made them clean. He also made them with free will – having the ability to choose for themselves. Through a trick of the devil, the first people made the choice to be exposed to evil.

Imagine that our nature, as originally made by God, was like a nice clean white bed sheet. God said to our ancestors, “To keep your sheet clean, do not get any dirt on it. If you do, it will be stained.” But then the Devil said to our ancestors, “It will not surely be stained,” and the first people dirtied their sheets.

Thus, the nature of our ancestors became stained. Except, it was not simply soil that stained them, but evil itself. This was contrary to God’s own nature – love.

Imagine for a moment that God’s love is so brilliant, that none but with a pure nature can stand before it. Any stain or impurity, being contrary to God’s nature, is consumed by the fire of his pure love. This represents a risk to the person with a nature tainted by evil – the whole being would be at risk.

Because God created people to be his family, obviously the issue of impurities is important. If human nature was stained with impurities from being exposed to evil, and evil is anathema to the nature of God… it makes it really difficult to get close to someone if your natures are mutually opposed.

So God had to have a plan to “clean up” humanity.

In the old days, God instituted a number of rituals in the Hebrew culture that would ceremonially cleanse people from the evil in them, for a time; sacrifices. Also, God gave instruction on how to avoid evil; commandments.

However, these measures never really solved the problem of the “stain” that was on humanity, being passed down genetically and spiritually from generation to generation. As people “did laundry together,” the dirt kept spreading.

God’s ultimate plan to clean humanity from the stain of evil was a single person, called the “Messiah.” People knew he was coming, because God promised a solution from the start.

As the cleaning agent for humanity, the Messiah’s life needed to accomplish a few key things in order to work. Interestingly, they all make sense.

The Messiah would have to start out with a clean sheet. Since there was no one alive with a clean piece of fabric from which to copy and make a new sheet, God had to give his own unstained nature directly to a woman. The result was a human man with God’s own nature – blameless and unstained.

Next, the Messiah would have to live an unstained life. He couldn’t much clean others if he was only adding more dirt.

Then, the Messiah would have to be killed. He wasn’t going to die from old age, because his nature was unspoiled. But there was evil in the world, and plenty of volunteers who would be willing to kill him unjustly.

And yet, dying without any stain on him – no evil in him at all – God would bring him back to life. Because what power has dirt over cleanliness if no dirt is to be found?

Lastly, being brought back from death, if anybody else came to believe what God had done through this sequence of events, their own stain would be cleansed.

When a person believes, making a spiritual connection between their own nature and the nature of God through this intermediary, God gives that person a new, clean nature, which dwells in them.

This new clean nature, which comes directly from God, is tantamount to receiving a new birth. Indeed, it is a new spiritual creation, living inside.

People refer to this as being “born again.”

The whole reason why being “born again” is necessary – as in, it’s not just “nice to have” – is because our unclean nature prevents us from being able to approach God as family, the way he intended.

It’s kind of like if your mother has just washed the kitchen floor, and you come into the house with mud all over your shoes. She’s waiting on the other side of the clean floor, wanting to give you a hug.

But you can’t just run to her, because then you would get mud all over the clean floor, and she would be very upset. So, you must do something first, to make yourself presentable before your mother, so that she can hug you.

Being born again is like taking off your muddy shoes, and putting on a nice pair of clean shoes with which to cross that clean floor to get to your mother.

So while being born again does not automatically make you clean from all things evil, it does present you as being spiritually clean before God. From this relationship, the fruit of the spirit is made manifest in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

In addition, those who are born again are promised everlasting life in the kingdom to come here on Earth, for once the spirit of God is born inside, it cannot die as does the flesh.

—

To learn more about being born again, the Bible’s book of Romans is a soup-to-nuts appraisal of the spiritual condition.

In particular, Romans Chapter 10 describes the process of being born again, summed thusly: “That if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

The rest is done by God, as grace.

Classical liberal policies, which share many similarities with modern libertarianism, some elements of economic conservatism, and a smattering of social liberalism, are good for economic growth, social freedom, and international peace. However, they come with the burden of individual accountability and true equality.

Are Americans ready for the responsibility of their own success or failure? Does the average American know his own natural powers, and what to do with them?

Power is the authority derived from the consent of the will of the people. In the American democratic republic, power is entrusted to the government for the protection and upholding of our natural rights. To the extent that the government has any power at all, it is given by the people, for the people.

However, as time goes by, our government has tended to secure more rights for itself, rather than leaving natural powers in the hands of the people for their use. This has been accomplished by the regulation of agriculture and education, levying new taxes or increasing taxes, state ownership of land and utilities, and concentrating power at the federal level, rather than at the state level as enumerated by the United States Constitution.

Particularly of late, the federal government has consolidated economic powers by taking ownership of private corporations, subsidizing financial institutions, and allocating vast sums of tax levy and public debt for the purposes of stimulating private sector economies. All of these activities have, in the rawest terms, vested powers normally reserved for the citizenry in the hands of elected officials.

The deceit has been that the government needs to take control of these powers to ensure the safety and security of the country. In fact, by conglomerating these powers, the government is doing a disservice; it cannot, nor has it ever been able to, manage the economy as effectively as the forces of the free market. Also, on the issues of retirement and healthcare, government mismanagement threatens the very citizens it would attempt to protect.

Yet, many Americans seem eager to lend these powers indefinitely, and it prompts the question of why.

Governments have ever sought to consolidate power in the hands of a few. Ruling classes naturally arise at the trough of power when those who thirst for prosperity and justice entreat custody of their rights with an elite few.

In today’s day and age, crises in national security and in the financial sector, coupled with perceived crises to the environment, have led to sweeping acts of “reform” aimed at consolidating power in the name of securing safety and economic prosperity. However, these acts have actually served to retard safety and prosperity, by encouraging a climate of fear and desperation, which has in turn led to further reliance on the government for solutions – solutions which are neither as effective nor as economical as if the citizens relied on their own private initiative for the same.

Yet, many Americans feel content to give away their rights to solving their own problems in exchange for a relief from the burden of actually solving those problems. Many feel, it seems, that it’s preferable to hire the government to do a mediocre job at a high premium than to accept private responsibility en large. In truth, many in this country have been sold a false bill of goods in the form of promises made by individuals seeking power. At some point, we must accept that these promises are ultimately destructive.

The alternative to vast government expansion, consolidation by the federal government of powers rightful to the states and the citizenry, is dramatic reform. While no political entity has yet proposed a perfect solution, and the nature of man precludes a Utopian state from arising from his ranks, there are many answers floating about the political spectrum which offer a vastly preferable government condition from the one that has evolved in America over the past two generations.

These policies, generally, favor the free market, embrace the natural rights of the citizenry, seek to privatize social functions away from government oversight wherever possible, seek to avoid military entanglements abroad, and break down barriers to blind individual equality within the legal and tax systems.

Right now, in this election year, there are people who stand for these things on the ballots across the country. Many times, the media is hostile toward them, and seeks to paint them in a negative light using ad hominem and fallacious attacks because these policies represent a threat to their consolidated power. But we should not be fooled, looking instead at substantive issues and positions, rather than emotional productions.

The gospel of Luke says that to whom much is given, much is expected. For those who are given freedom, accountability is expected. Many people say they want freedom, but when confronted by freedom’s reality, they are really content to stay in hibernation under tyranny; less is asked.

It takes guts to be free. Freedom is about taking risks, of not knowing the outcome. It’s about daring and courage, and being an active participant in life and refusing to stay down when circumstances put one there. Freedom takes energy and audacity, and it’s not for the lazy, the timid, or the foolish. It means telling the truth, and being man or woman enough to acknowledge the truth even when it’s not convenient. Hard work and humility; growing up. Freedom is the life everyone said they wanted.

When confronted by the choice to select freedom – with a ballot – do Americans really want to be a free and prosperous people? I think the question is legitimate. For a long time, we’ve assumed the answer is yes. When presented with the option, however, what will Americans choose?

What will you choose?

“I don’t fully understand movements in the gold price,” Bernanke once admitted, observing an unrestrained rise in the price of gold as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

It’s not that Ben Bernanke isn’t smart, it’s just that Ben Bernanke is a devout monetarist who manages the U.S. money supply, and gold is fast becoming the chief competitor to his product. Many have made the mistake of thinking about gold as a commodity. Gold is not a commodity. In fact, gold is real currency.

Once upon a time in 1971, the United States switched from a gold-backed U.S. dollar to the fiat currency of today. Instead of backing each dollar with a claim on the national gold repository in Fort Knox, KY, the dollar was backed by “the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury.” Or, nothing.

The break to fiat currency in the 1970′s finally gave the Fed the capability to manage the number of dollars flowing into the U.S. economy without the limitation of holding gold in reserve. This naturally gave rise to a more aggressive monetary policy, where the Federal Reserve liberally financed U.S. economic expansion by flooding the market with cheap debt.

Today, the United States owes more than $13.4 Trillion as the result of borrowing to pay its financial obligations. The Gross Domestic Product for the United States is about $14.59 Trillion.

The American dollar, as a representation of the American financial and political system, is beleaguered by debt. This debt is only projected to grow in the future, as political, economic, and social challenges accumulate. Every new dollar comes with strings attached – money owed, and lots of it.

As the entire U.S. economy struggles under the weight of recovery, the value of the dollar has sagged. Moreover, hiding beneath the surface of most investments is the reality that their worth is based on the viability of the current economic paradigm. Systemic risk to the world economy represents investment risk to everything from stock values to bond values to cash values. Values have fluctuated accordingly.

Gold, however, that most simple and ancient of metal, once considered just a defensive hedge by stock investors, has increased in value 14% this year, 25% in the past year, and 177% over the last five. Contrast that with the S&P 500, a key stock performance indicator, which has lost almost 2% of its value this year, is up 8% in the past year, and is down close to 10% in total over the last five.

Why are people buying so much gold?

My theory, of which I am neither the originator nor the sole proponent, is that gold represents a baseline form of value exchange in an increasingly risky and uncertain world. In simple terms, gold is the base currency for the world. It’s value is universally understood, and gold has a tendency to resist pressure to inflate or deflate as economic systems fluctuate. For investors seeking a place to put money to withstand rapid devaluation in the event of a major shakedown in world events, gold is a terrific instrument.

While the world has worked hard to segue out of gold as a “standard” for currency, an ironic phenomenon has emerged. Since gold is itself a form of currency – a material of little natural worth, but high intrinsic economic value – it basically acts as a shadow currency to the world economies.

Men like Ben Barnanke resent this reality, because they have worked hard to make fiat currency the de facto standard around the world, subject to their monetary policies. In effect, they have tried to control economic reality through their policy decisions, even as gold itself reflects true economic value with greater accuracy.

Or put another way, as the economic systems of the world fray from misuse, gold as a vehicle rises in value because investors recognize it will remain what it’s always been – a natural human standard by which value can be measured. The gold standard never really left us.

—

If you’re looking for a way to protect some of your hard-earned assets, my opinion is that gold is a good place to put some money right now. While it’s price is high in relative historical terms, gold has appreciated because other investments have become riskier. Looking forward, we see no shortage of economic and systemic risks around the world, which makes investment in cash, stocks, and bonds a bit tricky.

Gold, on the other hand, will always be valuable, and many investors predict that it’s value could increase many times over its current numbers. Will this happen? Nobody knows. But the fundamental principle of securing your assets in a natural currency which is resistant to abuse by political and socio-economic pressures is reassuring.

There are a number of ways to invest in gold, from buying physical gold bullion in the form of coins or plates, to purchasing exchange-traded funds which buy and hold physical gold themselves. Likewise, investment in gold-related corporations can be a strong move, as their stock prices are tied directly to the demand for gold.

Obviously, these are my opinions, and I’m not selling anything or looking to profit from this information. In a crazy world, I just like to share things that may be a bit more sane than average.

As I’ve talked with people over the years, an almost universal sentiment seems to be that life just flies by. And as one gets older, it seems to get faster.

Obviously, this is a little disconcerting. When we think about how fast this past year has gone, it’s none too comforting to think that this next year is going to go faster. Or that if the last ten years flew by, the next ten are going to seem even quicker.

When we consider this in the context of life, I think this phenomenon creates a sense of urgency. When we count the years we have on earth, it’s breath-taking to know that each successive year is going to feel more fleeting than the last.

But if time has a sense of being relative in life, what’s up with that?

I came up with a way of explaining this phenomenon in a way that sums up the experience of life-time. If you will:

When, as a baby, you’re one year-old, the sum total of your existence is one year. That means, all of your memories and experiences fit within the context of that one year during which your mind, body, and soul were living and recording time. For a one year-old, a single year has the sense of being everything.

At five years old, the passage of one year is different. Because a person at five years now has five times as much experience with time as a one year-old, to include memories and other artifacts with which to reference the passage of time, the passing of one year seems different. While time has not changed, the relative importance of one year against the sum total has.

Therefore, whereas a one year old experiences the significance of time as 1 year of life over 1 year of total existence, the five year-old experiences the significance of time as 1 year of life over 5 years of total existence. Hence, for the baby one year is 1/1, while the five year-old is 1/5.

Perceptively, this makes all the difference in the world. For although the one year-old probably doesn’t reflect on the significance of time, if he or she did that one year would seem “like an eternity.” Likewise, at five years old, a single year still seems like a long time, but in reality it probably feels about 1/5 as long as to the baby.

When we’re young, time seems to take forever. We measure time mostly by special events throughout the year, like for example the Christmas holiday. When we’re young, Christmas seems to take forever to arrive. Indeed, we have to wait an entire year! When we’re older, however, a year can seem to go by in the blink of an eye, and just like that, “It’s Christmas time again.”

By the time a person reaches their twentieth year, the perception of time has probably changed drastically for them. That is, one year of living measures against 20 years of total existence. To their perception, that means the significance of a year is now 1/20 what it was when they were a baby at one year-old.

What’s more, for the person at 20, the next year of their life is going to go by quicker, such that the impression of time in that successive year actually feels faster. Of course, time is not really moving faster. Albert Einstein defined the speed of time in his theory of relativity, where the physical speed of an object approaches the speed of light, the actual passage of time slows to zero.

In our human perception, however, where we measure the passage of time against the sum total of the continuum of our existence, time appears to shrink as we get older.

The person who is 20 can actually predict, based on this model, how fast the next year is going to “seem” relative to the previous year. If the twentieth year felt like X, then the twenty-first year is going to feel like 95.2% of X. Why? Because (1/21)/(1/20) = .952. The next year is going to seem like it was only about 95% of the last year. Hey, my year is shrinking!

What gets really freaky is that you can actually predict how fast years are going to “seem” in the future by measuring the passage of one year against the entire volume of your life. Whereas an infant experiences his year as being 2000% of that of the person who is twenty years-old, the person who is 50 years old experiences his year as being 40% of that of the person who is twenty.

The good news is that as a person ages, the marginal drop between each successive year decreases. That’s a nice way of saying that as you get older, years still go by faster, but they go by less faster than the year before. Yes, the twenty-first year only seems like 95.2% of the twentieth year, but year twenty-two will seem like 95.4% of the twenty first year. Hooray!

Anyway, no matter who you talk to, chances are that person is going to report that time seems to be going by so fast these days. And it’s not a local phenomenon, confined to just the very young or the very old. Everybody is doing it. In that, we’re all alike in the diminishing perception of each consecutive year. That’s just how things seem to be setup, where we have a finite beginning to our lives, and then a continuum of experience which is the sum total of all the years we’ve had to date.

As people, we don’t know how many years we have in life, or even if we’ll get another year at all. But even along the path, it seems our very nature constantly reminds us that time is eternally fleeting, as we’re confronted by the specter of its end at some point in our future.

If nothing else, perhaps this is just another reason to make the time we do have count.

In our modern world, the realm of ideas has exploded and increasingly dominates a huge part of our existence. From the concept of free and representative government, to the financial system with its symbolic currency, even to the economy of ideas that trades in morality and ethics, our world has become largely intangible and relies on intellectual and moral faith to function. The creation space has been moving inward more and more, to where ideas sometimes appear to be as important as the physical resources around us.

It’s at this point that I feel it’s important to acknowledge that while the nature of the ideas that govern our world is largely abstract and intangible, it does not mean that ideas are at liberty to function unrestrained by certain natural forces. Specifically we cannot just “make up” a new reality for ourselves and hope it will function over the reality that is naturally in place.

Why does any of this matter?

Beneath everything man has ever created – all ideas and concepts – lies the very nature of the universe. Our universe, being a creation of order and systematic laws rather than chaos and chance, is the undergirding on which every new thing is based. That means all subsequent creation done by mankind needs to conform at its most basic level with the reality on which it exists. Even thoughts. If man’s creation is to be accepted rather than destroyed by the universe itself, our creation needs to respect that which is there already.

Where many people in the modern world get this wrong is in thinking that ideas need not be grounded in moral or logical congruence with the universe. Put another way, that there is no moral government to the universe; all things are as valid as another, and anything works if you can think of it. Unfortunately, this thinking is entirely wrong, a moral falsehood in itself. When we create our own reality divorced from natural law, our reality is what breaks. The universe, it seems, was designed this way.

If any of this seems complicated, I assure you it’s not. The fundamental point here is as simple as simplicity itself, requiring only a direct logical argument to strike through the morass of modern ideation and get back to that which we know in our hearts to be true already.

Some things are real and true, and when we go against them, we get hurt in a lie.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ said that anybody who hears his words will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. Unlike the unwise man who builds his house on sand, when disaster comes, the house on rock will be able to withstand shifting sands and flood, and remain standing.

In this parable, Jesus was advising the world to find the deepest truths through wisdom (which he offered freely), and to set its creations on these things so they would remain strong in the day of testing.

In effect, the natural laws of the universe have been set, and we ignore them at our peril. While it is the right of mankind to create, as we have been granted as being in the image of our own creator, we must remember that there are laws which govern the creative process. Through ignorance or deception, we are not entitled to create laws and morals over and above those laid down by the creator of this universe. We simply do not have that right; we simply cannot do it and expect them to work.

Right now, America is confronted by a number of perils that have resulted from building our house on sand. Many of the disasters, both natural and man-made, are the direct result of unwise decisions which were made by people who opted to innovate and create where they were unwarranted to do so. Unjust laws in our government, laws which go against the natural order set down by the creator of the universe, serve to promulgate and propagate discord, which ultimately reveal themselves as crises in our systems.

As we search for solutions to the challenges confronting our country, it is important to bear these things in mind, and to remember that the answer to a problem is not to create another problem. The fix is not to further fabricate lies on top of the corrupt system we already have in place, but to strike what we know is false and unjust, and replace it with truth and justice.

We see now that our house is built on sand. As responsible builders, Americans must reacquaint themselves with the actual reality of the universe as handed-down by our creator. We need to really get at the heart of what works, and return to those things, instead of handing-off to the next guy who says, “Hey, I have an idea…” No. It’s time to get back to what works.

God bless you.

It succeeds, based on those points.

For its 2 hrs. and 28 mins. Inception is a masterpiece. Its layered reality is so effectively realized that the story never seemed unbelievable, and the subject matter (the unconscious, the power of thoughts, how people stay with us) is so deftly treated that at times it seems like a stylish modern expose on psychology. Along with that, the cast is terrific, ranging from one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s more transparent performances to the solidification of Ellen Paige (Juno) as a legitimate team-player. And, there’s just a bunch of little things that are done right that you don’t have a right to expect, but which are always pleasing to see as a movie-goer.

Yeah, Inception is a pretty special movie. It’s one of those features where the technical achievement is stupendous… but it’s not the effects that make the flick. The script is solid and locked-tight, but it doesn’t reach for the stars or beg comparison’s with great literature or cinema. And frankly, Inception is so original when compared with the movies playing side-by-side with it at the multiplex that it sort of leaves an independent film-quality in your mouth, without ranging (for a second) into low-budgetness or moral bankruptcy. It is that rare movie that is, at the end of the day, artful, if not exactly high art.

Personally, I think what’s special about Inception is how Christopher Nolan has written a movie that takes a fairly mature look at dynamic, sometimes uncomfortable, psychological forces without descending into the vulgar or idolatrous, combining it with a truly clever premise that not only makes good use of the subject matter, but utterly relies on it for all of its dips, twists, and tricks. It’s as though the entire setting of the human mind has been woefully untapped by Hollywood movie makers, and this movie comes out of nowhere to introduce a masterstroke on a subject with which there hasn’t even been a weaker, first-to-market offering. It breaks new ground, and does it with audacity. You are in going for a ride, and Nolan knows where he wants to take you. Who is this guy?

To me, Inception seems like a spiritual sequel to Memento. It seems like a return to the type of fiercely independent, psychologically driven concepts that fueled Nolan’s first picture. While I utterly love Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and have a place in my heart for The Prestige, it seems that Nolan is at his height while fictionalizing the type of existential questions that seem to emerge out of his own personal “limbo.” To say that this movie is intensely personal to him is probably an understatement – it seems obvious this material was mined from the ore of Nolan’s own deepest reaches, and then refined in the machinery that is his substantial gift for plot structure. It’s quite admirable; there are not a lot of commercial artists who are able to reach so deeply into themselves and then deliver on a technical level that which is speaking to them. Whatever the “inception” was that birthed this concept, it is authentic.

Whether or not it was planted… that’s another story.

To me, as good as Inception was as a movie, the questions inevitably followed: Is this actually a transcendent piece of art? Does this movie reveal something deeper about the human condition, or provide an insight into the being of man that had been heretofore concealed in darkness?

No, I don’t think it does.

Moreover, I think Inception suffers from being too clever by half. It is so deft in its execution, so fresh in its subject matter, and so mature in its offing, that it’s tempting to hail it as being a path to deeper understanding. But an understanding of what?

At the end of the day, Inception is a morally strange tale. It is, at its heart, about planting a lie so deep in a person’s mind, that the lie takes over their life and defines who they are from that point forward. To say that this is dishonest, the height of invasion, and indeed the perfect usurpation of free will is nearly to understate the point. In fact, Inception is about intellectual rape. That’s not good. The fact that the protagonists are the perpetrators of this crime makes the movie a highly questionable enterprise from the start. The fact that they succeed, and are seemingly rewarded for their work presents a myriad of ethical and moral quandaries the likes with which we rarely grapple in cinema-going. I mean, what the heck?

Also too, after all the too-ing and fro-ing, what are we left with from Inception? What was the deeper underlying point of the story? That we cannot exist solely on the memory of those we once cared about for the real, active love we need in our lives? Hmm, okay. That the human mind is incredibly complex and can be subject to the power of lies as well as truth? Yup, that’s true. That life inside our minds is like a world unto itself that begs exploration, and indeed can be learned and controlled to some extent? Interesting.

But really, for all the mental mining done by Chris Nolan for this movie, I can’t say that what he ultimately builds from the precious material he has found is earth-shattering or life-altering. I didn’t feel exceedingly changed for having watched this movie, though I imagine for college kids watching this movie while high there may be the potential for a few “Whoa, dude!” moments. I appreciated the means of the movie, but for a variety of reasons the ends – which are appreciated only after the conclusion – are fairly short. Even for how much I liked watching Inception, and how much I appreciated the movie-making skill on display, my simple opinion after the fact was that Inception was, underneath it all, a bit silly. It’s big, but it’s silly.

When I watched The Dark Knight, I came to appreciate just how amazing Chris Nolan is as a storyteller for weaving a complex tapestry of themes. I mean truly, this guy is unparalleled in Hollywood at the moment for being able to take one, two, three or four subtexts and building them to a satisfying maturity within the piece, while relating them back to one another and making their evolution dependent on the very change taking place within each. Chris Nolan is the consummate structuralist of our cinema day. Perhaps I have a lot of appreciation for his body of work because I can see a lot of my own thinking and personal aesthetic in his work. I appreciate his sensibilities, and find kinship in the very ideas with which he works. It’s cool.

So how did Inception compare with my expectations going in? Very well. I had a hunch it would be something special, and it is. The story, ideas, and technical achievements are stellar, and I hope Chris Nolan wins Best Director for this movie come Oscar season. But the moral calamity and lack of a true undergirding point invites one to treat the movie as an interesting foray into the unconscious mind – brilliant, interesting, but lacking a concrete point. For this reason, I don’t think Inception should earn Best Picture or Best Original Screenplay Oscars, even though I think technically it could. It lacks the purpose of great art.

And finally, some will be talking about Inception’s ending. I must say, I found Inception’s ending to be just this side of too much. It wasn’t necessary. After a great show, the ambiguity left by the final scene – if indeed it was ambiguous at all – seemed like a distraction. Like the last bite of a particularly great desert that makes you too full, it subtracted from the whole by its addition. In my opinion, ambiguous endings should serve a bigger point. The Sopranos ended with supposed ambiguity, though if you re-watch the ending of the series finale, you find that the skilled use of shot and story actually reveals a very concrete conclusion to the whole story – Tony was shot in the head by the guy in the Member’s Only jacket. Does Inception have an ending that truly serves the story? My initial reaction was no, but I am open to studying the ending a little to see if Chris Nolan indeed packed-in one last mind-bender. But at first pass, it seemed only to be a purely argumentative bit of ambiguity, the sort which does more to aggravate and annoy than to solidify and encapsulate. I wouldn’t have done it, but I might be wrong on the surface of things.

Anyway, we could use more movies like Inception, which are actually worth seeing and talking about.

As I write this, I’m kind of torn between two points of view. The first is that people have a right to grow up and find their dreams wherever they may, and enjoy the many wonderful places all around the world and choose the home that fits them best. The other is that I also think the sense I got earlier is not unfounded – that Franklin County feels abandoned by many of the great individuals it helped raise. If a region can have feelings, that is.

Growing up, through elementary and high school, there was always the excitement each year of meeting new students who moved into the area. Most of them soon became indistinguishable from the natives, and whereas in fourth grade you noted who had “only” been in the area for two years, now I don’t think it makes any difference at all.

For me, I never experienced the feeling of being the new kid. I grew up in Bernardston, started school in Kindergarten there, and graduated from Pioneer. Unlike many children who moved homes and schools during childhood, I never experienced leaving… or coming to a new school. For me, the Greenfield area is my home – always was, and really it always will be. It’s just how I think about it.

When I went to Babson College after high school, I got to experience being in a totally new environment and living in the eastern part of the state. When I graduated, I found a job and began to build a life and adulthood. But as time went by, it always seemed as though I was living temporarily in a different place, waiting for the chance to get back to my “real” home. I know some people experience this as a function of separating from their parents and learning to cope with independence, but for me I just yearned to get back to the area from which I was from. No desire to go back to the nest, so to speak (although I did that). To me, it was just about getting back to the Greenfield area, so that I could start putting down roots; buying a house, starting a career, and then a family.

The Greenfield area has always been my home, and when I was away from it, I felt a strong desire to return. Whether it was simply a case of “country mouse in the city,” or if there was a deeper loyalty to the area at work, I realized that after gaining my degree and a wealth of job experience, it was time to return to Franklin County with the purpose of settling my life.

I wonder how many of my classmates who have moved on from this area feel the same way. I guess I had never really considered that question until tonight, when suddenly it felt as though this area had been emptied of many of its native sons and daughters. I realize that these people took the opportunity to break away from the nest by going to college and getting jobs in economically prosperous areas like Boston, New York, or California. Some have even gone overseas.

Wherever these people have found themselves, I hope that individually they have found meaning and happiness – or are at least on the road to making that an ongoing reality soon. But to speak for just a moment for myself, I am surprised by how life has turned out. I guess I expected, growing up, that the people who were from this area would stay in this area. Perhaps it was a matter of seeing the world through my own particular prism, and regarding the Greenfield area as my home, win, lose or draw. I notice tonight that my heart hasn’t been prepared for the idea that the vast majority of people with whom I grew up would seek opportunity elsewhere. I guess in the scope of my life, I’m a little shocked by it. Not in a blaming way, but rather I just miss a lot of the people who are no longer here – and find a vacuum where once I knew their particular talents and gifts to fill the holes of the social fabric. Let it be known, nobody can remove themselves from the blanket of society without leaving a hole.

Also too, I think it’s not just me personally who may feel this way. I think on a broader scale, the Greenfield area – by which I mean Pioneer and other places, really – misses these people too. Growing up, a community puts a certain amount of blood, sweat, and treasure into the raising of young people, helping them to become educated and find their place in the world. It’s a big job, full of hardship and challenges that forge close relationships amongst the people who go through them together. But also it defines the character of a place. People naturally fill social roles – laborers, lawyers, business people, teachers, ministers and others naturally emerge as the gifts of young people are discovered. Everyone is gifted in some way. But a funny thing happens in a place like Greenfield. The “best and the brightest” tend to gravitate away from the rural/small city environment, seeking opportunities in bigger cities with better resources. In many ways, this is natural.

One of the best things I could have done with my life was leave the Greenfield area to attend college and work for a few years. It gave me a tremendous amount of perspective, and helped me to define what it was I truly wanted out of my life. In short, it led me right back where I came from, wiser than I was before. I can’t vouch for the fact that the act was entirely done out of loyalty, but I can certainly say that I felt as though I owed something to the community in which I grew up. And I wanted to come back so I could give back.

Economically speaking, I believe a great many of the native sons and daughters of the Greenfield and surrounding areas were drawn to bigger and better things on account of the very gifts that made them special. It’s just a natural fact in our country that there are better financial and different cultural opportunities to be found in the city. I certainly can’t begrudge anybody for finding their niche and gravitating toward a place that makes them happy. But at the same time, if I were to speak for a place like Franklin County, sometimes it seems as though, after spending years and years raising the young people, they have been quick to desert in search of better opportunities and greener pastures. Overwhelmingly, it seems that many talented natives have left this area.

I often think that a person should do what blesses them, and follow the path on which God is leading them. I also think that for many people, past experiences can tend to taint one’s perception of a given place, particularly if that place is associated with unfond childhood memories. For many people, an exodus from the Greenfield area is a chance at freedom from the very things that haunt them from youth. I wonder, as I reflect, if a lot of people have left this area in an attempt to distance themselves from painful memories or unsolved problems. In short, I don’t have a lot of opinions about this at all; it’s just a recognition that I think this phenomenon is at work.

Also, I know there are certain opportunities which are only available outside of Franklin County. For many people, getting away from Franklin County is important in their personal growth and development, and perhaps even their career or family life is being helped in some way that is simply unavailable in the Greenfield area. Among this group are people who, for having grown up in this area, simply do not care for it and are seeking life elsewhere.

Whatever the reason why people go somewhere else, I know everyone is different, and I respect and support whichever decision folks have made. But once again, I come back to the sense of this post, which is that I am surprised by how roundly people have left the Greenfield area, and for me how lonely it seems here without them. I’m not sure why I expected in my heart that certain people would stay, that they would always remain fixtures in my lives, staying that same reliable presence that I have known since childhood. In many ways, I suppose this is an emotional response to change, and confronting a world where people move away, run away, and pass away from us. In some ways it’s a helpless feeling, where one just wants to reach out and say, “Come back, we were together once.”

In the Bible, the prodigal son returns to his father and there is much rejoicing. I don’t know whether people are far afield and wasting their money on wild living and prostitutes, or if they are living content humble lives in exactly the manner that satisfies their souls. Either way, I just get a sense that Franklin County misses a lot of its special people. I know I miss them.

I will end this with one parting thought: A person is not made exceptional because they go to an exceptional area, an area is made exceptional by exceptional people who decide to make that area their own.

As she promotes her new memoir, Gone Rogue: An American Life, Palin has been all over the news. Just about everybody in journalism is weighing in on their thoughts about Alaska’s ex-governor. And why not? In a conservative climate largely devoid of interesting political options, Sarah Palin is at least… interesting.

I’ve written a bit about her before. In truth, when Palin first burst onto the scene late last August, I was unabashedly intrigued. A female governor, with beauty-pageant looks and a penchant for hunting and prayer? Of course I wanted to learn more. As I did, and saw the same Couric interview, debate performances, and even SNL skits you did – and my impression of Palin started to tarnish.

Palin is, in my opinion, very much a female version of George W. Bush. Governor of a large, somewhat quirky state. A mental makeup which thrives on hard work, brutal exercise, and a passion for God. At the same time, a spotted academic history, questionable grasp of policy details, and the ability to gaff huge when uncomfortable.

By mid-Summer 2009, I had started to seriously doubt her credibility, and had essentially written her off as another public freak-show, not unlike that which is produced regularly by reality TV. You may remember from a previous blog post by me: Sarah Palin, cookie in hand from the Vice Presidential nomination from the Republican Party, is going to want a glass of milk in the form of a run for President in 2012.

After reading media reactions to her book and watching her Oprah interview, however, my thoughts are once again swinging back toward admiration for Mrs. Palin. How could this be?

1. It’s been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Even if I don’t know Sarah Palin enough to call her a friend, I am watching the reaction she has been inciting amongst ideologues whom I would lump as intellectual “enemies,” and the sheer vitriol and fervor into which they have been whipped by Mrs. Palin suggests she is doing something right. I see how the “new” Newsweek (which I abhor for their moral dishonesty) has posted a re-run Runner’s World picture of Palin with the headline “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah?”

I notice that everyone from The Huffington Post to Salon to The Daily Beast has taken aim at Sarah Palin – not for her stands like being pro-life and anti-big government, but for her manner. When the conversation switches almost entirely to ad hominem attacks from people with whom you disagree with politically, chances are they have locked onto someone with whom you may actually have a lot in common.

2. Palin as Palin is not Palin as Running Mate. It’s become evident simply from observing Sarah Palin in recent interviews that she is not the same person who was packaged into the McCain campaign and ordered to stay on message. In fact, it would seem the woman who gave the Katie Couric interview was actually Sarah Palin playing the part of John McCain’s running mate. Like George W. Bush, Palin is near-useless when it comes to reciting a prepackaged spiel – especially if they’re someone else’s words. Palin, my guess would go, is a person who connects very deeply with her words and her beliefs, and when she is denied the ability to A) say what she’s really thinking, or B) adequately absorb another’s thoughts until they’re her own, she runs into the problem of sounding stilted, poorly rehearsed… or basically like she did in the Couric interview.

Consider for a moment that Sarah Palin, when she’s in command of the message, actually has a lot of interesting things to say, and has very little difficulty delivering them in a compelling and effectual manner if allowed to speak her mind. Everybody has a preferred style; that’s hers. When Sarah Palin runs the show, her leadership, enthusiasm, and natural gravitas has a tendency to pull the discourse in the direction of her comfort zone, and it’s a more positive thing than was witness during the ’08 campaign.

3. Palin may be the real deal. No, she is not intellectual equal of Barack Obama. No, she is not the statesman of Bill Clinton. No, she may not even be the reformer of Ronald Reagan. But she just might actually be a woman with real convictions, stemming from a real belief in God and Jesus Christ. In today’s day and age, that’s rare as hen’s teeth. To find someone like that in public life is rarer still.

I’m not completely certain yet, but it just may be that Sarah Palin is making an honest attempt to serve her country on God’s behalf. Like everyone else, she’s prone to weakness and mistakes – but what else is new? And she certainly has her shortcomings – but so does everyone else. What impresses me, and stands out, is that Sarah Palin is living her life by a morality that she believes, and seems empowered to speak truth (as it has revealed itself to her) in love.

There is one worldly indicator for godly authenticity, one thing you can’t really fake. When the world hates you – irrationally, passionately, without the truth – it’s likely you have confronted evil in some way, and its response will be a cacophony of hatred. Put it this way, most of the stuff you read about Sarah Palin in the news media – mocking, bitter, gross – isn’t coming from God.

Watch Sarah Palin. Watch how people are reacting to Sarah Palin. Palin has become a fascinating study in ugliness throughout the media, and it’s instructive in many ways.