Violence Protects the State

By: Top Pun - February 23rd, 2012  Filed under: News, Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Stephanie N. Van Hook, Executive Director of Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California, has written a commentary in Znet on How Violence Protects the State.  Here is an excerpt:

“Violence in opposition to the State relieves the State and the citizenry of any guilt for a brutal response to all protesters—and it refocuses from the nominal issue to the issue of violence by protesters. Thus any violence by protesters serves the state well (just ask anyone employed by the government who has hired an agent provocateur). It is a weapon of mass distraction. Stop worrying about the uptick in home foreclosures, the dead being shipped back from Afghanistan, and the new increases in the Pentagon’s proposed budget—look at the violent window-breakers from Occupy who threaten us all!

…Nonviolence is not just protest, it is not simply occupying space and it is not just about adversarial confrontations; it’s about our humanity…

In short, in order to delegitimize a violent system, we have to delegitimize violence. This change requires us to adopt a principle about human beings and human dignity: we will not use violence against others because we want to create a vibrant culture, a merciful culture, a generous culture because we as human beings have the potential to nurture these qualities within ourselves and each other. We will not degrade human dignity because it is not worthy of ourselves as people; let this be the motivation for our long-term struggle. The power of the violent State system would stand much less chance against a movement committed to this nonviolent, compassionate spirit of unity.”

The debate between violence and nonviolence is age-old.  Though, nonviolence has sort of come of age in the modern period, particularly with history proving nonviolence’s effectiveness in domestic regime change.  The current relevance of this topic is related largely to the occupy movement captures a lot of popular unrest with our own domestic regime.  With great injustices, anger is a natural and healthy response.  Unfortunately, violence is not a natural and healthy response to anger.  We need to channel the energy of our anger and rage against injustice into ways of living that will actually result in a new and better way of living together as humanity.  I believe that nonviolence represents that way of living.  If you want something different from violence we are going to have to do something different and violence.  Violence begets violence.  Love begets love.  Respect begets respect.  You get the picture.  It seems that lectures on means and ends have become a common theme in my life and in my blogs recently.  I love the logic of the means producing the ends.  I just wish this approach got more respect. I guess that when it comes to violence, it is very hard to overcome old habits and venture into territory that presents a lots of personal uncertainty and risk (by disarming).  While controlling others through propaganda, terror and violence, seems to be able to go a long way, controlling others ultimately short-circuits our ability to live in peace and harmony with one another.  I believe it is worth a lot of risk to make living in peace and harmony possible.  Let’s not allow the state to divide us through violence, either its own, or through provoking violence in us.

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Religious Liberty, Conscience Exemptions for Everything

By: Top Pun - February 22nd, 2012  Filed under: Health, News, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

With the Obama administration’s recent rules requiring organizations owned by religious groups to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their employees’ health insurance, conservative groups and the Roman Catholic Church have gotten all their panties in a bunch, which is particularly interesting since most of them are men.  I like the take on religious exemptions for everything by Jonathan Zasloff and conscience clauses by Mark Kleiman in the reality-based community blogs.   The most obvious religious exemptions would be for Quakers, Mennonites, and other pacifist religious groups, to have to pay for anything related to war.  The more interesting suggestion was by Mr. Zasloff:

Why not include immigration law in the picture?

“You shall love the stranger, for you were a stranger in the land of Egypt.”  This is not an isolated Biblical line: it is repeated no less than 36 times (really) in the Bible.  So synagogues, churches, and mosques (musn’t forget mosques) should just make it clear that they should not have to obey immigration law: they will hire or provide services to anyone and everyone regardless of immigration status.  Any attempts by any law enforcement agency to prosecute them or in any way harass or deport immigrants who are part of their religious communities violates their freedom of conscience to include them (not to mention their rights to freely associate).

I think that both of these authors are offering these suggestions more as tongue-in-cheek parodies than as serious policy considerations.  This is not to denigrate in any way the importance our depths of the religious beliefs of any of these groups, including the anti-contraceptive crowd.  I believe that what is being legitimately mocked is an immature insistence that religious liberty, at least for their own particular group, requires absolute unchecked freedom.  This is a fiction in the real world.  The legitimate questions asked by these bloggers have taken us just far enough down the road of logic to see the absurd conclusions that must be drawn if such logic is taken to its nth degree.

As with all freedoms, religious freedoms must be balanced with other freedoms.  This will never make everybody completely happy, and fortunately, will not make anybody all-powerful, with infinite, absolute, unchecked freedom.  That sounds like the kind of freedom reserved for God anyways, and you’d think that religious folks could respect that, even insist upon it.

I have commented elsewhere on this issue, particularly in the context of the current birth control insurance mandate debate (see Birth Control as a Human Right – Toledo Protest).

I think this issue to be resolved in the real world, religious groups, claiming a particular bastion of truth, need to vote with the existential force of their lives, to make these beliefs real in the world, not just words, particularly words to control other people.  In the 1980s and 90s the Roman Catholic Church provided strong leadership in the sanctuary movement which protected persons who are in this country of illegal status due to economic or political violence.  The Roman Catholic Church took real risks and paid a price for incarnating their beliefs.  Pacifist religious groups have refused to go to war and pay more taxes for generations.  As a religious pacifist myself, I was convicted by the United States of America for refusing to register for the military draft, and I was incarcerated for a few months.  I think I made my point.

The state cannot be trusted to strike a balance between religious liberty and other liberties.  This is precisely why religious groups need to be about the difficult and real work of living out their beliefs in such a way that their importance is manifest to the rest of the world.  Since the US made a federal case of it, my resistance of draft registration, I learned that according to the US Supreme Court, that the US has the absolute power to conscript anybody for any reason, and there is no constitutional right, religious or otherwise, to refuse military conscription.  The US government could conscript your grandmother if they wanted to.  The specific language cited in my case, which was used to reject a claim of religious liberty, was that conscientious objection was by “legislative grace” alone.  I for one, do not by the grace of Congress go.

The bottom line:  if we are going to live by God’s grace, we will need to fight for our liberties and rights, and real grace is not cheap, it has a cost; if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be worth much now would it?

 

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Every Revolutionary Ends Up Oppressor or Heretic

By: Top Pun - February 21st, 2012  Filed under: Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Oppressor or Heretic–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

Peace Quote 33 Violence Protects the State

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Oppressor or Heretic–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

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For those of you who aspire to being a revolutionary, or wake up one day and learn that you are revolutionary, this Albert Camus quote is for you.  Camus presages the results of revolutionary means by pointing out that all revolutionaries either end up as oppressors or heretics.  I don’t know about you but I’m a proud member of the national heretics society.  In terms of means and ends, I believe that this quote speaks to the issue of violence versus nonviolence.  Violent revolutionaries may change or even upgrade the oppressors, but ultimately, they do not defeat oppression, just other oppressors.  I believe that violence is inherently oppressive.  Now, I am willing to argue what constitutes violence, particularly since I define violence and nonviolence quite broadly.  In fact, it may be better to say that I believe that oppression is violence and that nonviolence is liberation.  In the end, I see violence is reinforcing the status quo, the powers that be.  Thus, violence is not really revolutionary, even though it may bring a lot of outward change.  To be truly revolutionary I believe that there must be an inward change that is consistent with any outward change.  I think that this is where the heretics come in.  Most people will settle for an outward world that advantages themselves, even if it means disadvantaging others.  For violent revolutionaries, this typically means disadvantaging one’s defeated foes as some sort of punishment or retributive justice. This is generally accepted as a practical reality, the conventional wisdom and practice of our world.  I believe that this type of approach is extremely dangerous since history seems to prove that the turning of the tables simply means new oppressors.  However, if one wishes to overthrow conventional wisdom, it is likely necessary to practice unconventional wisdom.  If the endgame is equality, an egalitarian society for all of its members, then treating former oppressors punitively becomes a poor foundation for egalitarianism.  I think that this gets to the heretical nature of nonviolence.  Nonviolence is a way of life, not just a tactic or a means.  It means and the ends are inextricably intertwined.  More simply put, the means determine the ends.  How could it be otherwise?  I find it quite ironic that hard-nosed revolutionaries advocating violence somehow think that violence will lead to nonviolence, or perhaps more depressingly, cynically accept that violence is unavoidable.  Perhaps Camus recognized the intractable nature of the struggle between violence and nonviolence, thus he laid out the dichotomy of either becoming an oppressor or becoming a heretic.  I find myself attracted to the iconoclastic, because it seems the most apt attitude to create revolutionary change.  This may be simply tied to the definition of what revolution is: a paradigm shift from the status quo, a change in the nature of the powers that be.  You can’t defeat the status quo by the means of the status quo.  You can’t defeat the powers that be, by simply wielding authority over others in some better fashion.  I think the point is that we should not even be wielding authority over others, and this never quite seems fashionable.  As long as people want to lord over one another, then nonviolence will be unfashionable.  So, join the unfashionable heretics.  Be free to ignore conventional wisdom when it seeks to enslave us, and when it asks us to enslave others.  Be free, because being free is the best way to teach others about being free.  Be the change.  This is a revolutionary.

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POEM: Getting Your Ducks in a Row

By: Top Pun - February 20th, 2012  Filed under: Health, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

I once put all my ducks in a row
Only then realizing
What am I doing with all these ducks?!

Getting one’s ducks in a row is an idiom or metaphor that most people are familiar with, meaning that we should get our business in order.  The twist in this poem is a reversal of the typical order that my poetry takes.  In this short poem, I take a common phrase that is not intended to be taken literally, and then take it literally.  Predictably, this leads to absurdity, and the ensuing absurd question of what am I doing with all of these ducks.  Of course, the absurd question is actually a question intended to jar one into a realization that getting one’s business in order is not always the most important thing in the world, though it often seems so.

Perhaps ironically, the pervasive idea of getting one’s ducks in a row, getting one’s business in order, can be a stagnant or deadening proposition that actually kills a higher order in our lives.  Life is messy.  Like John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when we’re busy doing other things.”

The question here is not whether one is for order or against order.  The question here is one for a higher order or a lower order.  Increasingly, my experiences in life lead me to believe that one of the most fundamental issues is achieving some clarity about following a higher order over a lower order.  Again, this does not negate the value of lower order stuff, it simply puts it in its proper place, puts it in its proper perspective.  Given that lower order stuff is typically more clear, concrete, and easy to see, it is little surprise that we give an inordinate focus to such things – they capture our attention (and us).  After experiencing many dis-orders in my life, I have come to the realization that the best way to reorder my life around those things which are most important, those higher order things, is to practice simplicity.  What I mean by this is that I need to be aware of those relatively few things in life that are most important to me.  Combined with an actual commitment to these things, then I can use these few important things to better order the many lower things.  More simply put, the higher should lower the order, and a few more important things should order the many less important things.

Another major reason that I see lesser things getting a disproportionate amount of attention versus greater things, is a common confusion regarding what is urgent versus what is important.  Our culture value busyness.  Busyness is seen as an indicator of productivity.  Also, busyness is a way to avoid being seen as engaging in a cardinal sin of our culture, which is laziness.  I think this confusion leads to a systematic bias that often runs over truly important things in our lives.  Given the attachment to busyness, busyness actually becomes a surrogate for urgency.  Thus, the confusion between urgency and importance.

Now, actually, there are many things in life that are both urgent and important.  These are the most important things to which we should attend.  However, there are many, many things that seem urgent that are not really that important.  Likewise, there are many things that are very important but do not seem very urgent.  I believe it is in these very important things that do not seem very urgent that we get lost.  The Achilles heel here is that attention to these most important things that don’t seem very urgent, requires a more relaxed perspective, a broader perspective in relation to time.  Most great things in life require a substantial investment of time.  Also, most things worthwhile require some effort on our part.  But let me deal first with the time issue (the most important thing here).  This gets back to the laziness issue.  Our culture reinforces the notion that relaxing our views about urgency is somehow lazy.  If you are not dealing with the commonly accepted stuff that is seen is urgent, then you are viewed as lazy.  This is not necessarily true.  Now, while truly lazy people don’t deal with what’s in front of them, whether it is urgent or not, important or not, to deal with the important but not urgent things requires some way of being that is neither characterized by mere busyness nor laziness.  This is the difficult counter-cultural work of dealing with the most important and often most overlooked stuff in our lives.  It takes a great amount of discipline and work to slough off the avalanche of seemingly urgent stuff in our life in order to attend to the most important things.  In fact, it is this lack of developing such discipline and boundary setting that is the more important and urgent form of laziness to address.

Laziness is definitely an issue.  This gets back to the issue that most things worthwhile in our life require effort on our part.  Being fully human requires a lot of effort.  This reality requires that we overcome a certain lazy inertia in our lives.  The status quo, the way things are, has a certain stability, momentum and inertia to it.

If we keep going the direction we are headed in, we will probably end up where we are going.  However, equally true, the past is the best predictor of the future, but if you use the past to predict the future, you will always be wrong.  Or more eloquently put, by Yogi Berra, “Prediction is very hard, especially when about the future.”  This is because people are not billiard balls.  People are not simply determined being.  People possess freedom.  People are subjects, not objects.  Certainly, as long as people are involved, predicting the future with complete accuracy will be impossible (actually, this is true for so-called “things” as well; this involves a discussion of the inherent probabilities necessary to understand quantum physics, which I will gracefully save for another day).  This is the way it’s supposed to be.  This is not chaos; this is simply uncertainty.  This is the way the universe is ordered.  This is a higher order, not to be subjected to a lower order.  This takes us full circle, back to our zealous clinging to stuff that is more concrete, seemingly certain.  Our felt need to substitute certainty for uncertainty plays neatly into the hands of confusing the urgent and the important.  Life is uncertain.  If life were not uncertain, it would not be life.  If life were not uncertain, then life would simply be a quest of learning everything and then being ordered (notice the use of the passive voice, and the same language that we reject often from the bosses in our lives) by the ultimately determinable (that which can be reduced to certainty).  This would inescapably lead us to our endgame of being all-knowing and totally impotent (not free).  If this strikes you as a concept of God that is rejected by the vast majority of humanity on this planet, then you must be paying attention.  This so-called God that so many people legitimately reject, is not God, but the vain and enslaving-ourselves project of trying to be God ourselves.  Neither can God be reduced to simply “everything.”  God is more than “everything.”  This concept arises out of the paradox of subjectivity and objectivity, the difference between subject and object.  In this case, the difference between people and things, and between God and “everything.”  I hope that I’m not getting too far off course by getting straight to the heart of the matter.  If you want some additional commentary on these matters, and subjects, I would suggest browsing scientific reductionism.

So, now that I have put all of my ducks in order, I can get beyond the whole “duck” thing. In the end, for all this to work well, this means having our lives ordered in a way that is consistent with what we consider to be the most important, then we must actually know what is the most important stuff in our lives.  Do you know what the most important things in your life are?  If so, I would suggest that you make a list of such things, and while doing this may be of the utmost importance, I would recommend that you take your time to get it right.

Now, if you really want to blow your mind, and perhaps blow the lid off your heart, I recommend meditating upon this poem from the Sufi poet Rumi:

A good gauge of spiritual health is to write down
the three things you want most.
If they in any way differ
you are in trouble.

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HAPPY DEAD PRESIDENTS DAY – Work, Buy, Consume, Die

By: Top Pun - February 19th, 2012  Filed under: Free Stuff, Gay Add Comment

Happy Dead Presidents Day Sale Work But Consume Die POSTER 400 Violence Protects the State

HAPPY DEAD PRESIDENTS DAY – Work, Buy, Consume, Die!
Download a free 8.5″ X 11″ poster size of “HAPPY DEAD PRESIDENTS DAY – Work, Buy, Consume, Die.”  Remember, the best things in life are free, and the best things in life are not things!

Dead Presidents, live Presidents — it’s all about the cash, money, moola, dinero, you know the drill.  I guess that it’s part of the job description of presiding over the largest and most powerful imperial superpower in human history.  Enjoy your Monday, and most importantly, don’t buy everything you see, hear, or read!

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POLITICAL CARTOON: Free Market Jesus – Blessed Are The Amoral

By: Top Pun - February 19th, 2012  Filed under: Political Cartoons Add Comment

Free Market Jesus Speaks!

Free Market Jesus Blessed Let Market Decide Your Morals Violence Protects the State

Welcome to Free Market Jesus!  This is a new Top Pun series of comics that will run on Sundays, featuring Free Market Jesus, Country Club Jesus, Gen. Jesus, Comedian Jesus, and who knows what other incarnations!

This week’s comic captures the amorality and sociopathy of the free market.  People are moral agents, or least people should be moral agents.  Free markets are not moral agents.  Unfortunately, though, people who function with the amoral boundaries of the so-called free market relinquish their moral agency to other human beings, or worse yet, to inert matter.  Further, moral agents really don’t get the choice of being amoral.  The vain hope of amorality distinctly falls into the category of immorality.  I see the near religious attachment to the idea of a free market primarily as a way to avoid personal responsibility for one’s actions and how they may affect others.  Part of being a human being is taking responsibility for one’s actions.  You can’t outsource your personal responsibility, no matter how hard you try, or how little you try, as the case may be.  This lack of free choice in whether we are responsible for our own actions, is what Jean-Paul Sartre termed “condemned to be free.”  Free will is a part of human existence; though, free will is subject to much debate, mostly running along the lines of either how mysterious free will is, or how absurd free will is.  Either way we seem to be stuck with free will, however ironic that maybe.  Of course, you run across the occasional person who doesn’t believe in free will.  Though, apparently, they are forced to believe this, so don’t be too hard on them.  Some days it’s difficult to be complicated dirt, especially when another mistakes us for human!

The Jesus graphic is modified from the famous Sacred Heart painting that will be recognized by many, particularly those who are Roman Catholic.  Please note that the inscription on Jesus’ heart, “Greed is God,” is a slight takeoff on the proverbial “greed is good.”  While this is technically a pun, the root word for God and good are so close that it barely counts.  Hopefully, this elicits what I would consider a simple definition of God which would be that which is of the good.  This doesn’t necessarily require a traditional view of God, but may provide some common ground between more traditionally religious people and those who have trouble with the word or concept of God.  I hope that those readers who are more traditionally religious will not find my parodying of Jesus offensive.  My parodies are actually intended to cut through the bull shit of what passes for conventional wisdom, morality, or religious truth these days, and reveal the seed of truth that is often overlooked or under-appreciated.  I think Jesus would approve.  Any honest reading of what words are attributed to Jesus, and you have to admit that Jesus had a sense of humor.  For those of you who aren’t really big on God, I hope that these Jesus parodies make some truths more accessible.

We can’t afford the free market!  The free market is the bane of Western Civilization and the nadir of scientific reductionism.

So, until next Sunday, with the next edition of Free Market Jesus, talk amongst yourselves or let me know what you think.

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How Much is Enough? Enough is Enough

By: Top Pun - February 18th, 2012  Filed under: News, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

David Sirota writes in In These Times about Embracing Enough.  How much is enough?  I consider this one of the most important questions for humans to answer both for themselves and to work out a reasonable relationship with the other people on this planet.  He writes:

Of all the no-no’s in contemporary America–and there are many–none has proven more taboo than the ancient doctrine of dayenu. Translated from the original Hebrew, the word roughly means “It would have been enough.” The principle is that a certain amount of a finite resource should satisfy even the gluttons among us.

I know, I know–to even mention that notion is jarring in a nation whose consumer, epicurean and economic cultures have been respectively defined by the megastore, the Big Mac and the worship of the billionaire. Considering that, it’s amazing the word “enough” still exists in the American vernacular at all. But exist it does, and more than that–the term’s morality is actually starting to suffuse the highest-profile debates in the public square.

Observers of politics in almost any era, have probably exclaimed, “Enough is enough!”  Politics and power are prone to excess.  Resisting the ability to acquire something when someone has the power to acquire it is perhaps the most difficult human challenge.  In fact, that is the whole business of ethics.  Ethics by its very nature is about restraint, not doing something that we could do.  Thus the concept of “enough” is integral to defining the boundaries of one’s ethics.  I agree with the author of this article that somehow the concept of enough is viewed as anti-American.  This probably goes a long way to explain why many people are critical of America’s behavior, i.e., the immorality of it.  In political discourse, I usually see the term freedom as a code word for overrunning moral boundaries.  Ironically, it is often people of the traditionally conservative bent, who view themselves as particularly moral, that seem to espouse so-called freedom.  On close inspection, you will likely note that when they are espousing freedom, it is typically their own freedom.  This sets up a certain hypocritical aspect of freedom lovers, demanding a change or restraint in behavior in others and expecting that their own desires for freedom be respected.  It is this freedom derived from overblown individualism that eats away at the social fabric.  Certainly, a just balance of freedom requires a just balance of freedom between oneself and others.  Unfortunately, it is all too convenient to demand morality of another in lieu of the difficult task of restraining their own desires and abilities, i.e., behaving morally and ethically ourselves.  Of course, this takes us back to the concept of power.  Perhaps the great privilege of power is the ability to enforce an unjust balance of freedom.  In other words, in having greater power we have a greater ability to act unjustly, immorally, and unethically.  Thus, the truism that with greater power comes greater responsibility, being legitimately held to a higher standard.  Unfortunately, and perhaps ironically, having greater power gives a greater ability to enforce a different standard for other people than ourselves.  I suspect this is why politics, the way we deal with power between people, is routinely and authentically observed as hypocritical much of the time.

Ultimately, to be free and moral, we need to define how much is enough.  We cannot outsource this responsibility to the free market.  We cannot blame it on others.  At some point we need to declare, and act in accordance with, enough is enough!

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Homosexual Agenda

By: Top Pun - February 16th, 2012  Filed under: Gay, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Homosexual Agenda – Spend Time with Family – Be Treated Equally – Buy Milk

Homosexual Agenda Spend Time with Family Be Treated Equally Buy Milk Violence Protects the State


Homosexual Agenda – Spend Time with Family – Be Treated Equally – Buy Milk–Gay
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Gay Civil Rights Buttons.

This gay civil rights design is a parody of the right-wing fixation on some nefarious homosexual agenda.  If you want to get right-wing religious conservatives all hyped up, talk about homosexuality.  Somehow, the idea that LGBTQA persons are normal people who desire the same civil rights as everyone else is a foreign concept to them.  This long-standing religious bigotry is hugely disproportional even if you were to buy the Scriptural reasoning by religious conservatives.  Homosexuality is one of those touchstone issues that acts as a lightning rod for many darker aspects of religious conservatism.  Of course, they are plenty of issues with sexuality itself.  Role in issues of controlling moralism and imperial exclusivism, and the oppression train is ready to roll!  While you may hear language about welcoming and loving the sinner not the sin from the more moderate bigots, the bottom line is always that homosexuality is always viewed as wrong and deviant.  So much for that grand diversity.  The Bible talks very little about homosexuality, though, granted, what it would seem to say about homosexuality is not very good.  This strikes me as eerily similar to the biblical basis for racism.  Back to the issue of disproportionality. When religious folks overwhelm and overlook other obviously more important issues like poverty and violence with less clear issues, I don’t think this represents some kind of cutting-edge discernment; rather, an honest reading of church history, shows that this is people hanging onto an age-old bigotry not some eternal truth.  While racism is present in the Church, just like it is present in most institutions to some degree, the Church has at least agreed that racism is wrong.  While there is much of the Christian church that does not view women as equals, most prominently, the Roman Catholic Church, the overall social norm has tipped to female equality.  If you think that the Roman Catholic Church is that they hold out, just speak to a lot of Catholics; but times are changing.  I believe that homosexuality is in the inevitable queue for growing awarenesses around age-old bigotries that will fall when true religion is manifest.  Our sexuality, including sexual orientation, is a gift from God.  This should be celebrated, not despised.

The other thing I really like about this design is that it focuses on the normality of gay aspirations.  Of course LGBTQA people want to be treated equally – duh!  But this equality is a prerequisite for going about living a normal life.  I will pray and work for the day when discrimination against LGBTQA persons is only a subject in the history books that baffles people why it ever happened in the first place.  Let’s make it so!

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Hope: Real People Fighting for Democracy and Workers

By: Top Pun - February 15th, 2012  Filed under: News, Political Action Add Comment

John Nichols of The Nation offers a hopeful look at real people making a real difference in fighting against impersonal political powers, non-person corporations, and real ingrate politicians, such as Gov. Walker of Wisconsin, in his article Twenty-Five Faces of an American Uprising.  Mr. Nichols writes:

The governor’s attempt to intimidate Wisconsinites into accepting an austerity agenda that assaulted not just labor rights but the state’s open government and small-“d” democratic traditions was a failure from the start. Instead of scaring citizens into submission, Walker provoked an uprising that continues to this day.

The courage, optimism and steady determination of Wisconsinites, many of whom had never engaged in public protest or political action before, is what undid Walker’s best-laid plans. Even as he succeeded in enacting elements of his program, the push-back was so intense that two of his key legislative allies were defeated in the state Senate recall elections of last summer. And, now, he and his lieutenant governor face a similar fate.

Mr. Nichols tells the stories of 25 individuals and groups in Wisconsin that have fought back to attacks on democracy and workers.  It’s great to have a reporter that takes the time to tell the stories of real people making a real difference.  Despite the best propaganda efforts by the 1%, the powers that be, we are not helpless!  Power is derived from consent, the consent of the people.  When the people decide to withdraw their consent from illegitimate powers and claim through direct action of the people a more just solution, we are all better off.  Let the stories be told that the legends be born, and may the powers of this world tremble in their boots, even to the point of examining their bankrupt consciences, seeing the light, and joining their rightful place alongside the peoples of the world, not lording over them.  Let’s make it so!

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Anarchism: Cooperation, Decentralization, Social Cohesion

By: Top Pun - February 15th, 2012  Filed under: News, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

David Morris writes in On the Commons, regarding the anniversary of the death of the Russian Petr  Kropotkin, an article: Anarchism Is Not What You Think It Is — And There’s a Whole Lot We Can Learn from It:  The word anarchism has been so stripped of substance that it has come to be equated with chaos and nihilism. That’s not what it means:

I am astonished Hollywood has yet to discover Kropotkin. For his life is the stuff of great movies.  Born to privilege he spent his life fighting poverty and injustice.  A lifelong revolutionary, he was also a world-renowned geographer and zoologist.  Indeed, the intersection of politics and science characterized much of his life.

His struggles against tyranny resulted in years in Russian and French jails.  The first time he was imprisoned in Russia an outcry by many of the world’s best-known scholars led to his release.  The second time he engineered a spectacular escape and fled the country.  At the end of his life, back in his native Russia, he enthusiastically supported the overthrow of the Tsar but equally strongly condemned Lenin’s increasingly authoritarian and violent methods.      

In the 1920s Roger N. Baldwin summed up Kropotkin this way.

“Kropotkin is referred to by scores of people who knew him in all walks of life as “the noblest man” they ever knew. Oscar Wilde called him one of the two really happy men he had ever met…In the anarchist movement he was held in the deepest affection by thousands–”notre Pierre” the French workers called him. Never assuming position of leadership, he nevertheless led by the moral force of his personality and the breadth of his intellect. He combined in extraordinary measure high qualities of character with a fine mind and passionate social feeling. His life made a deep impression on a great range of classes–the whole scientific world, the Russian revolutionary movement, the radical movements of all schools, and in the literary world which cared little or nothing for science or revolution.” 

Kropotkin took on the social Darwinists of the day.  As a leading scientist, he countered the often accepted notion that competition is the primary driving force in nature and natural selection.  We need spokesmen like this today as the social Darwinists of our day tear at the fabric of society with the destructive notions that inequality and concentrations of wealth are somehow ordained or inevitable.  Kropotkin enlightened those of his day on the advantages of cooperation, decentralization, and social cohesion.  The evidence from his scientific study showed that these factors drove natural selection.  Furthermore, these factors actually enhance not degrade what most people would accept as behaving humanely.  Darwinism is one of the nominally understood religions of our day.  Unfortunately, Darwin’s groundbreaking work has been co-opted, ironically, by statist forces, who have little interest in the elevation or evolution of humanity.

David Morris’ article is a clarion call for all to learn more or revisit what anarchism means.  Anarchism is not about chaos.  Anarchism is about order, a humane order. Kropotkin was a leading advocate of how we must relate to one another in order to achieve a humane order.  I’ll give my proverbial vote to this leaderless leader!

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Valentine’s Day: Show The World Your Love of Justice

By: Top Pun - February 14th, 2012  Filed under: News Add Comment

Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones magazine has a wake-up call for Valentine’s Day celebrants:  Think You’re a Virtuous Valentine? Think Again.  She writes:

Cut flowers: That bouquet you may be planning to gift today was most likely not grown in the United States. The floriculture industry taps out at $32.8 billion, and about $14 billion of that comes from the sale of fresh flowers. Around 63 percent of those blooms are imports from Colombia, and another 23 percent from Ecuador.

The labor rights facts of this industry are truly depressing. In 2005, the International Labor Rights Forum found that 55 percent of women working in the Ecuadorian flower production trade (they constitute half the flower workforce) had been victim to sexual harassment in the workplace. Nineteen percent were forced to have sex with a supervisor or coworker. Compulsory pregnancy testing is also a serious industry issue. In Colombia, where women make up about 65 percent of flower workers, a survey conducted by the nation’s flower industry union, Untraflores, found that about 80 percent of companies required women to take a pregnancy test as part of their job application process—presumably because they’d like to avoid providing paid maternity leave (required in Colombia). Another problem: In 2000, upwards of 48,000 children were found working in Ecuador’s flower industry. Colombia wasn’t much better. There have since been a number of hefty efforts at reform, and while Colombia’s been improving, the US Department of Labor still confirms extensive child labor use in Ecuador.

So, is the $17.6 billion that we will spend in the United States this year on Valentine’s Day a boon for love?  Ms. Lentinova goes on to outline other issues related to environmental impacts and other labor issues related to flowers, chocolate, and greeting cards.  I doubt that there is a conspiracy to make Valentines day an anti-love venture.  Unfortunately, this is a particularly ironic example of how our economy is deeply intertwined with poor environmental stewardship and poor treatment of labor. I would suggest that the first line of defense would be to consume no more than needed, to live simply.  The next line of defense, a close second, would be to educate oneself about how what we buy affects the rest of the world; then, to act responsibly based on that information.

Buy the way, happy Valentine’s Day!

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All Wars are Wholly Wars

By: Top Pun - February 14th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

All Wars are Wholly Wars-ANTI-WAR BUTTON

All Wars are Wholly Wars Violence Protects the State

All Wars are Wholly Wars-ANTI-WAR BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

View more Anti-War Buttons.

This anti-war design utilizes a relatively simple pun to convey a relatively simple message.  War is war is war.  Every time a new war comes along we are told that is a new kind of war, with new more evil and nefarious enemy, etc. etc.  This is a lie.  The inescapable means of war are death and destruction.  The rest is details.  Of course, being antiwar is often seen as being unpatriotic.  Thus the pun, allusion to “holy” wars.  War is the ultimate instrument of nationalism.  Nationalism is a form of worship.  So-called patriots are expected to participate in this worship.  Thus, those who oppose war are often considered unpatriotic.  The idea of a holy war is so repugnant that I hardly even know where to begin critiquing it.  Nominally, religion has been used as the guise for justifying wars for centuries.  However, true religion has no place for war.  Hopefully, this design helps de-link religion from wars, and puts religion into its proper role, that of opposing war, not just some wars, or an occasional war, but all wars.

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Ultra-Rich Mitt Romney in 1% of the 1%

By: Top Pun - February 13th, 2012  Filed under: News, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Wall Street Bankruptcy Violence Protects the StateAccording to the Wall Street Journal, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had an income of $21.7 million last year.  This puts Mr. Romney in the category of the ultra rich, the super rich, the mega rich, the 1% of the 1%.  In fact, Mr. Romney is in the top 0.0025% of Americans in income.  He makes the 1% look like the 99%.  His earnings are over 800 times that of the median American wage earner.  Scientists and political philosophers alike speculate that it may be existentially impossible for Mr. Romney to be anything other than a Republican.  Poor Mitt, so much for the freedom to choose.

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Post Office Not Broke

By: Top Pun - February 12th, 2012  Filed under: About Top Pun, Health, News, Political Action Add Comment

Nation magazine blogger John Nichols (a former Toledoan for my Toledo friends) reports in The Post Office Is Not Broke about all of the hype about the post office and how it is supposedly going bankrupt, an antiquated institution, etc.  I personally and professionally have an interest in the state of the post office, since I run a mail-order business, and I have a local branch of the post office only about a mile from my house, which is walking distance in nice weather.  My local branch of the post office is on the chopping block to be eliminated, along with several others in Toledo.  It would be a sad day for our inner city neighborhood to lose its post office.  I am more than willing to deal with changes that might be necessary, even if that means closing some branches or reducing mail delivery to five days a week.  However, such changes, at least at the scale that is being proposed, are unnecessary.  The U.S. Postal Service has had a requirement to fully pre-fund its retirees health care benefits.  No other government agency or private company bears the same burden, which costs over $5 billion each year, roughly the amount that the post office is in financial trouble over.  The U.S. Postal Service cannot compete, or run well, with this onerous burden.  The U.S. Postal Service should be relieved of this burden.  This will not endanger retirees, and will assure continued excellent service to the American people. Go here to help America’s postal employees press Congress to Save America’s Postal Service.  Long live the U.S Postal Service!

 

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Black Bloc Anarchists Play into Hands of State Control

By: Top Pun - February 12th, 2012  Filed under: News, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Chris Hedges of Znet reports on the The Cancer in Occupy as the Black Bloc Anarchists who typically are the small number in the Occupy movement protesters who behave violently, attacking police, and destroying property.  While the Occupy movement as a whole is overwhelmingly committed to nonviolence, the use of violence that occurs occasionally plays neatly into the hands of statist forces.  Acts of violence invariably capture the focus of the media and reinforces negative stereotypes of many Americans who have concerns with the Occupy movement.  Most importantly, the State knows how to deal with violence.  It is better equipped for violence.  It is better trained for violence.  Police and military forces vastly outnumber violent protesters.  All Weapons Are Boomerangs Violence Protects the StateThis is a losing formula.  Personally, as a pacifist, I find violence intrinsically offensive. However, in this case, it seems that using violence is clearly a losing formula from purely a tactical point of view.  Violence creates great confusion in the minds of onlookers, regarding what is the cause and who is responsible.  Also, the vast majority of Americans would presume that the police typically have some legitimate reason for using force when confronted with violence.  A key part of the power of nonviolence is in exposing the injustice and dis-proportionality of violence, particularly state violence in terms of police or military action.  By not confusing who is perpetuating the violence, onlookers can clearly attribute where the violence is coming from, and when unjust or disproportional, the perpetrators of violence lose legitimacy and the consent of the governed atrophies.  This greatly aids revolution and evolution.

Here is a more detailed critique of recent protests and a response to comments on the above cited article: Violence Begets Defeat or Too Much Pacifism?

 

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Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology Adds Top Pun’s Epic Poem

By: Top Pun - February 11th, 2012  Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems Add Comment

The eleventh update of the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology now includes Top Pun’s epic poem: Christmas on Wall Street – Occupying Humanity.  Top Pun made the cut, thanks to the rule that all poetry is accepted!  You have to love such a movement, the people’s movement.  You can download this mammoth anthology here: Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (WARNING: this is a large file, 12.59 Mb).  You don’t necessarily have to read the first 795 pages before you read my poem, although you are welcome too!  Would like to submit an Occupy Wall Street related poem?  Poets of the world unite!

 

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Dennis Kucinich versus Marcy Kaptur Congressional Race

By: Top Pun - February 10th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, News, Political Action Add Comment

War is a Crime blogger David Swanson recommends that the election that we should be watching is the congressional district nine race pitting Democratic incumbents Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur.  For those of us in this congressional district that stretches all the way from Toledo to Cleveland along Lake Erie, this race is all the more important.  This heavily Democratic district is a bizarre child of Republican driven redistricting.  Is it any surprise that the Republicans have created a district that looks like a snake!  Rep. Marcy Kaptur has been my congressional representative as long as I have lived in Toledo, about 25 years.  Having a hundred more representatives like Marcy Kaptur in Congress would be an improvement, a vast improvement.  However, this is even more so true for Dennis Kucinich.  While I would characterize Marcy captor as a liberal, I would characterize Dennis Kucinich as a radical, that is with being a radical as a great thing.  Unfortunately, the Republicans have intentionally set up these incumbents, so that one of them will lose.  Ms. Kaptur has served her district well.  However, I believe that Dennis Kucinich is distinctly a better choice.  I submit that the issue raised in the above cited article, opposition to war, profoundly favors Dennis Kucinich, that is, of course, if you are opposed to war like I am.  The courage and conviction to truly oppose war is a rare thing, even among liberal Democrats.  Dennis Kucinich has this courage!  Also, Mr. Kucinich has the know-how and courage on a wide range of issues.  No one could fairly characterize him as a single issue candidate or narrow in his scope.  One issue that strikes very close to home for me, quite literally, is nuclear power.  The Davis Bessie nuclear power plant nearby Toledo has arguably the worst safety record of any nuclear power plant in operation in the world today.  Dennis Kucinich has been a leading advocate in Congress to close this dangerous and unneeded nuclear power plant.  Unfortunately, Rep. Kaptur has couched this issue in terms of jobs, even though they would be dangerous and unsustainable jobs.  While losing Ms. Kaptur to the House would definitely be a loss, losing Dennis Kucinich would be an even much greater loss.  May Dennis Kucinich prevail!

 

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POEM: Commercial Interruption

By: Top Pun - February 10th, 2012  Filed under: Poems Add Comment

We interrupt this commercial
Now that wasn’t so hard
Or was it?

How many times a day is our consciousness breached by some form of commercial interruption?  Way too many times!  I consider this commercial assault a major form of violence in our culture.  This short poem is geared to get the reader to think about taking back these interruptions and reclaiming our consciousness.  Rather than the commercial interrupting us, we interrupt this commercial.  Initially, this may not be difficult.  A momentary victory is not difficult to achieve.  However, the assault of commercial interruptions is so pervasive and penetrating that keeping them out of our consciousness requires constant discipline.  In the long run, avoiding those settings where commercial interruptions are prevalent is probably the best strategy.  Like any kind of mindfulness or meditation practice, maintaining complete control over where the mind goes is probably impossible.  Nevertheless, we can train our minds to let go the commercial interruptions and build associations in our mental state that eventually rate these commercial interruptions as not worth paying attention to.  Live Simply So Others May Simply Live Violence Protects the StateAnother suggestion on the social front would be not to buy any of the crap that’s advertised. This is not really that difficult since most of the crap that’s advertised is crap.  Questioning consumption and consumerism, as well as living a simple life, are long-term strategies to interrupt the violent assaults of commercials.  Also, given the sloganeering and design work that I do, I like to parody and satirize the vanity and absurdity of many commercial endeavors.  I find this method of fighting back both cathartic and joy producing.  May the farce be with you as well!

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Attack on Press Freedoms in Occupy Movement

By: Top Pun - February 9th, 2012  Filed under: News, Political Action Add Comment

Nation Magazine blogger Peter Rothberg has reported on attacks on press freedoms in the Occupy movement.  Over 50 journalists have been arrested since the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement last September.  You can sign a petition to support journalists who are fighting back for the First Amendment.  Take action to protect democracy and freedom of the press.  The Occupy movement, and all social movements, need freedom of the press so that the public can be better informed.

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NEWS: Exploding Pig Poop

By: Top Pun - February 9th, 2012  Filed under: Health, News Add Comment

Mother Jones magazine blogger Tom Philpott has reported on Exploding Pig Poop.  Well, agribusiness is moving us one step closer to that mythic day when pigs fly!   What is to be concerned about?  How about exploding barns, thousands of pigs killed, millions of dollars of damages, cesspools of waste laced with pharmaceuticals, novel antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains, industrial residues, toxic molds, and smell for miles around!  I think that at least for today, I won’t ham it up!

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