The Folly of Pride

Pride is an elevator that never stops to let you off, but always waits for you to get in. It takes you to the highest level of achievement, then lowers you to the highest level of self-deception. Case in point, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The audacity of his corruption and lack of his self-restraint will become infamous in the annals of political idiots.

Charles W. Colson, a former aide to President Nixon, was also once a passenger on the elevator of pride, until he realized that he had to escape through the ceiling trap, and jump off.

In a revealing CNN.com editorial, (highly recommended reading) Charles W. Colson, exposes the folly of pride that took him down with the Watergate scandal and landed him in Prison. In his editorial, Mr. Colson does an amazing job in identifying the spiritual corruption that is often the negative side effect of personal pride.

One of my favorite quotes in the editorial, is a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote from the gulag, "Bless you, prison, bless you for being in my life, for there, lying on the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity, as we are made to believe, but the maturing of the human soul.

No, you don't have to be a politician to ride the elevator of pride, trust me, I know. You just have to invest in the "culture of self" to such a degree that you no longer recognize the self in selflessness.

The Rhetoric of Madness

Last night I watch the Republican Party debate and came away with a feeling that the only true debate taking place was a brief, yet, heated exchange over the war in Iraq between Texas Congressman, Ron Paul, and former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee.

Then today, I received an email from a friend who sent me a link to another video making some noise on YouTube. The video is a hard-biting, poignant and unequivocal damnation of Bush’s strategy and policy in Iraq. Watch it here.

Agree or disagree, it is hard to ignore the quotable facts behind Keith Olbermann’s recent commentary on MSNBC.

There’s a lot to think about before next year’s election, but there’s nothing, outside of one’s own health and family, that’s more important. I have two children now. I don’t want to even imagine what awaits them in tomorrow’s world. I guess that’s what all parents have said, generation after generation, but it seems that few generations have raised the stakes as high as ours has.

I don’t care about Republicans or Democrats anymore. I just crave truth and honesty, and frankly, I don’t even know where to start looking for that. So, I am going to just pray for the end of madness and hope someone hears me. Please feel free to join in.

Restore the Republic

I grew up in a libertarian family. I am sure that I was educated in constitutional law long before I knew anything about the birds and the bees. Yes, it's kind of sad to note that while other boys my age were transfixed by naked tribeswomen in National Geographic, I was totally engrossed in the papers of Jefferson and Adams.

An amusing side note to my family's deeply involved political dogma, was that at one point, at least 75% of the members of my family were on a ballot somewhere in the State of Texas. Even I was dragged into the political arena, though a bit begrudgingly.

When I turned 18, my older brother submitted my name as a candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner. He was too busy running for another High office post. When I informed my brother that I was going to college and had no intention of being Railroad Commissioner, he said, "don't worry, you are going to abolish the position the first week you are in office."

In college, I became more "progressive" or "liberal", and I rebelled against what I perceived as the outdated and old-fashioned theories of the Libertarian Party. When I started doing stand-up comedy, digging into my family's "let's go back to 1776" mentality was a good source of humor for my act. Let's face it, Libertarians are not the coolest cats in the alley.

In 1988, my family, and the whole Libertarian world, was all gaga over a new political hopeful. Ron Paul became the Libertarian Presidential candidate and made quite a showing on election night - better than anything the Libertarians had ever experienced nationally before.

Flash forward 20 years later, and Ron Paul is aiming his sights on the big house once again. Some things have changed, though. This time around, Ron Paul is a Republican Congressman, not a Libertarian dark horse. Like last time, his campaign is still focused on the idea that government power is born from individual rights, not he other way around.

I would like to think the work I do as a medium has a similar message to it. After all, I am of the belief that God comes from individual consciousness, not the other way around.

Would I vote for Ron Paul given that he win his party's primary? I'm not sure. He does possess that one quality we all wish we could possess - selfless integrity. As a person, I trust him more than Hillary or Obama. Stranger than that, I'm beginning to think my crazy family might have been right all those years ago. Sometimes I even wonder how different life would have been as the Texas Railroad Commissioner instead of a guy who talks to the dead. Ah, the wonder of it all.