CONFUSION

Okay, I'm confused.  So, is he going to burn the books or is he not going to burn the books.  Was he lied to or was he not.  Even the radio talk shows are confused.  I understand that his associate minister (and this is a very strange church) and his wife are packing heat because this is probably going to get worse instead of better.  My bet is there is already a contract out on this man's head and some radical is going to get rid of him.  I think burning the books is wrong.  I think burning bibles is wrong.  I think cursing another man/woman's religion is wrong.  But I truly fear radicalized followers of any religion.

Two Loves

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. "   William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)

 
How many people hide behind the concept of loving others when, in fact, they really love themselvs?  The most dangerous person on the planet is the person who has it in their mind that only they know what is the right thing for the rest of us because they will do all that is possible to prevent you and me from being secure in our own right to live as we believe we should without hinderance from a governmental body or any one person who will tell us we are not intelligent enough to make decisions ourselves.  The second most dangerous person on the planet is the one which blindly supports the first and tells the rest of us to shut up.  The third most dangerous person on the planet is the one that shuts up. 
         Every law, every amendment, is nothing more than an incursion into your and my freedoms.  Support those who create them and you support slavery of yourselves and the rest of us.  Speak nothing and you aid those who support slavery.  Rise up and speak your mind and you can prevent the loss of not only your freedom, my freedom but the freedom of future generations.   If you fear standing up for your freedom and my freedom and future generations' freedoms then you are, in my estimation, not worthy of being free at all.

An Individual Struggle

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

We are surrounded by tribes, manufactured by them, identified by being a part of each with labels that speak to our being a part of the collective consciousness of the tribe itself, not a separate and distinct unit but one part identical to the other parts, a cog, a wheel, a piece of metal, wood, liquid which lives and breathes but is considered to be that which must fit within the realm of the whole or be lost. Yet we go about thinking to ourselves that we are somehow different, but how can one be different when one identifies with the tribe and how difficult, how dangerous is it for us to be separate from the others, the other members of the tribe to dare stand out alone and differ from the mass. Frightening, yes? But we must if we are truly to live, to be alive. We must at all levels be ready to challenge to think outside the reality which seeks to enslave us. To never allow the others to compress us into a statement of what the tribe believes to be true for itself and for its members. No. We must dare the arrows to be shot at us else we are nothing but shadows of the hand that could and should write of lives greater than the dust covered grouping of what once was made up of individuals now is a book with a blank cover and the pages are empty without a drop of ink spilt on them to say that any man or woman had crossed that way. Dare to be different. Dare to stand alone. Dare to bear the pain and the scars and the world will be a better place for all of us.