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We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
--- Thomas Paine, 1776
Original columns for this site:
Three Teachings on CompassionLargely Ignored by Christians, Jesus’ Own Words on Key Subjects
Present an Insightful and Workable Approach
for Creating a More Compassionate World
Columns written for Strike-the-Root.com,
with the editor's description [or quote] as originally published at STR
(check http://www.strike-the-root.com/archive/allport.html for newer material that has not yet migrated to this page)
Grand Theft America: "All Your Wealth Are Belong to Us"
The roots of todays epic finacial crisis go back farther than you think Column by Glen Allport
Shield and Strength: The Power of Love (part 2)
A lifetime of inner strength and health begins right at the start
Column by Glen Allport
Top Ten Reasons for a New 9/11 InvestigationColumn by Glen Allport
What Even a Hoax Can Tell Us: The 'Kennebunkport Warning'"Millions of people around the world find it all-too-believable that the U.S. government might create a false-flag attack – abroad or even at home – to advance an agenda of martial law and aggressive war." Column by Glen Allport.
Health Care: Are Corporatist and Coercive-Socialist the Only Choices?"We broke the system by letting our politicians get involved, and now the system is at a crisis point. Fixing the problem requires undoing the damage." Column by Glen Allport.
The Enemies of Love and Freedom"Perkins' indictment of the corporatist system is staggering and detailed. I wrote a column only last month on corporatism, but Secret History took my breath away." Column by Glen Allport.
The Soul Is SoftwareColumn by Glen Allport.
The Bridges of Hennepin (and Every Other) County"This is an incredibly chilling story: our military-industrial complex is spending trillions of our tax dollars that it apparently refuses to even account for. What are they doing with all that money? How odd that this isn't an ongoing, major story with at least the level of coverage given to celebrity DUI arrests." Column by Glen Allport.
Ron Paul and the Path Back from the Brink"My stand on the issue is that Paul's candidacy is the best thing we could have hoped for at this moment in time, and that the dramatic growth in support for Dr. Paul's campaign is just about the only bright spot in our current situation." Column by Glen Allport. Note: the Editor disagrees with Glen's conclusion.
Compassion vs. Coercion: Good vs. Evil"How odd that government – an institution run entirely on the basis of coercion (which is to say, on the basis of violence, both threatened and real) – presents itself, whenever possible, as a tool of compassion." Column by Glen Allport.
How Liberals Created Our Neo-Con Nightmare"In short, liberals, even more than conservatives, have worked to destroy the rulebook for America 's government. They did this with the best of intentions, but the result is what we have today: a government nearly out of control, run by tyrants, corporations, and special interests; a government which has become famous and despised around the world for torture, aggressive war, and arrogance mixed with self-destructive stupidity...." Column by Glen Allport. (An excellent column, though I disagree with the conclusion. - Ed.)
The Key to the Future"The task of dramatically changing the world for the better – specifically, of replacing neurosis and tyranny with love and freedom – only seems impossible; change happens constantly and large shifts in the character of society have occurred repeatedly in history." Column by Glen Allport.
CorporateGovernment CorruptionSynergy"Your government – local, county, state, and national – takes money from its "customers" by force, so customer satisfaction is not much of an issue to those in the government. Any other organization or person taking money from others at gunpoint (or threat of gunpoint, which is enough to get the job done in most cases) would be seen as criminal and treated accordingly. But government not only gets away with using force, that's its job!" Column by Glen Allport.
The Worst Way to Do AnythingRecommended "What have we bought with all that money? Thousands of dead American soldiers, many thousands more injured, 655,000 (and counting) dead Iraqis, cancer-causing depleted uranium poisoning in Iraq (and DU particles are being spread around the planet on the winds), a ruined Iraqi infrastructure (which had already been wrecked in the first Gulf war and which a decade of sanctions kept in poor repair), millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing the mess we have made of their country, an increased threat of terrorism in America, widespread use of torture by our own government, a sharply lower opinion of America by people in other nations, and (on a separate invoice, for additional money) a police state here at home." Column by Glen Allport.
To Those Who Vote, and Those Who Don't"Democracy is the modern version of 'the divine right of kings': a scam designed to keep the elite in power, and rich, by getting the rubes to believe in the legitimacy of their own enslavement. Voting is the sleight-of-hand that provides an illusion of fairness for an inherently unfair system based on force and fraud." Column by Glen Allport.
How Democrats Can Save America
"How to deal with the betrayal of America by the Democrat and Republican parties? Walk away." Column by Glen Allport.
How Republicans Can Save America"Frankly, the idea that torture would be sanctioned and used by the United States even occasionally is appalling. But torture is being used widely and routinely, against people who in many cases clearly have no useful information to provide and who may not even be enemy combatants but rather victims of the U.S. bounty program – people sold into slavery, basically, to be tortured by U.S. interrogators." Column by Glen Allport.
Crystal Ball"Recall that by labeling someone a "terrorist," the government can now imprison that person indefinitely without trial, without habeas corpus, and without any consideration of their rights to humane treatment; the "terrorist" can be tortured or even executed on the flimsiest of evidence, including third-hand hearsay, without a civilian jury trial or any of the other niceties Americans (and their British ancestors, going back several hundred years) have always taken for granted." Column by Glen Allport."Where is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans? You know, the larger, better known, and better funded analog to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Where is the Humane Society – for humans?" Column by Glen Allport.
Dogs and Love, Part II
"By being so loving despite also being vicious carnivores, dogs offer hope that even a species as violent as our own can choose love and peace over hatred and violence." Column by Glen Allport.
Marooned in the Quantum Wrongness Field
"The idea that humans are somehow 'smarter' than other animals is, at the least, seriously called into question by the ongoing Wrongness of most humans. Indeed, I am working on research to support my hypothesis that certain breeds of small dogs are actually smarter than humans. For starters, dogs do not participate in massive wars, do not create WMDs, seldom believe what they see on television (other than the occasional Thing That Needs Barking At), and clearly understand that friendship is more important than, say, owning a fancy car." Column by Glen Allport.
Dogs and Love, Part I
"I knew, in short, and from an early age, that people in Germany, Japan, and in other nations, including my own, had planned and executed the gruesome deaths of millions, in massive firestorms, in orgies of mass-rape and mass-murder, in gas chambers, and in a hundred other ways. I knew that mass-murder was commonplace in history." Column by Glen Allport.
The Earthly Lesson of Jesus' CrucifixionRecommended "No: despite the famous 'washing of hands' by Pontius Pilate, this horrifying, gruesome murder was at least semi-official policy, like so many millions of other murders by empires and democracies and tin-pot dictatorships throughout history. Jesus was murdered by Roman soldiers, and in such a way as to drive the point home to all who saw it, or who even heard rumors about it: We can do this to anyone we want, anytime we choose, and talking about love is as good a reason to kill you as any – especially if others start taking you seriously. We are in charge of your life, and the penalty for forgetting that is death. Fear us and obey, or die." Column by Glen Allport.
Feeling, Emotion, Intellect: Why Rational Thought is Not Enough
"Love, compassion, and freedom are what bring out the best in us—and the lack of love, compassion and freedom are what bring out the worst." Column by Glen Allport.
The Yin and Yang of Love and Freedom"Neurosis has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, and bringing a halt to this ongoing disaster is of critical importance in the 21st Century." Column by Glen Allport.
How the Baby Boomers Almost Saved the World . . . and Why they Failed"So what happened? I believe the answer is surprisingly simple. With tragic consequences, Boomers failed to embrace non-coercion, at least where government was concerned – and that one mistake sabotaged everything positive the Boomers stood for, including peace, love, and freedom ." Column by Glen Allport.Free Societies in the Real World"Loving someone includes respecting their freedom; to coerce a person (including a child) is to treat that person with un-love. Coercion actually erodes and destroys love; more of one always means less of the other." Column by Glen Allport.
Womb, Birth, Infancy, Childhood "A world of loving, compassionate adults would not be a world of war, or crime, or secret mass graves filled on the order of madmen. It would not be a world where armies of emotionally-damaged soldiers would be available to madmen, or where centralized power over others generally would be seen as acceptable." Column by Glen Allport.
Roots and Branches, Part 2: Widespread Emotional Damage
"How could tyranny be the norm in this world without a widespread lack of empathy for one’s fellow human beings? How could war and death camps even be conceived, much less implemented, in a world where most people had been treated with love and respect in childhood?" Column by Glen Allport.
Roots and Branches (Part 1 of 2): Systematic Initiated Coercion "Systematic use of initiated coercion is everywhere the defining characteristic of the state as we have known it. To camouflage this and make it acceptable to the public, numerous strategies have been employed, with 'we are ruling you for reasons of compassion (socialism) and with your approval (voting)' having become the most successful. It’s a clever gambit, but does nothing to change the nature of the state: submit or die." Column by Glen Allport.
Blinding by Paradigm "The combination of widespread neurosis and coercive government has been an on-going disaster for thousands of years; the addition of advanced 21st Century technology will be the hay bale that breaks the camel’s back – unless we make real and appropriate change in time." Column by Glen Allport.
Saddam's Lesson for Us: Love and Freedom Require Each Other Recommended "Every new human being has the potential and the right to become a loving, emotionally healthy, and peaceful adult. It only requires the proper treatment early on for our later life to be positive rather than miserable or worse. Furthermore, without the tool of coercive government, even the worst sociopath has a very limited ability to wreak havoc; only coercive government allows for the epic level of mass-murder, torture, and other evil that men like Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, and so many others have been guilty of during thousands of years of history." The first of a weekly column by Glen Allport.
Call Me an Abolitionist, Please Recommended "Our opponents have successfully defined 'anarchy' in such a way that to merely say the word is to warn others against us. We are not merely foolish to allow ourselves to be described by this word; we are not only setting ourselves up for continued and total failure...." Column by Glen Allport.
An Open Letter to the Red Cross "Of course, the camps may have a more benign purpose. (What, then? Summer outings for disadvantaged youth?) But when has a large system of detention camps ever not been the start of a nightmare?" Column by Glen Allport
The Two Great Evils and the Hammer of Infinite Power Recommended "There is no doubt that the Hammer of Infinite Power is coming; the leading edge is already here. It smote Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If the power to vaporize a city with a single bomb is not sufficiently god-like for you, just wait." Column by Glen Allport.
Thoughts on STR's 5th Anniversary, and On the Path to Compassion and Freedom "STR’s direct, unabashed focus on ending evil in this world – check out the Thoreau quotation at the top of this page – is the site’s signature quality." Column by Glen Allport.
An Open Letter to Tom White "Given the size of the problem, alienating your natural allies seems counterproductive. You seem genuine in your desire for a better world, and I ask you to consider that 'Unbelievers' may in fact be decent human beings who are no more likely to support evil or tyranny than are members of your own church." Column by Glen Allport.
Six Books on Compassion and Freedom "These six do one thing more: they introduce perceptions of reality so different from the norm as to astonish, delight, shock, and sometimes horrify. Every one of these books demolishes entrenched assumptions. The world may never look the same after you’ve read them." Column by Glen Allport.
Government Is Not Compassion, Part 2
"Every argument in favor of government--any kind of coercive government--is utterly demolished by government's frequent mass murders and other crimes throughout history, which continue in the present day. Lesser reasons for turning from coercive government are powerful also; for example, whatever government does, it does badly, wastefully, and expensively. Coercive government is a centralized, top-down, authoritarian approach, fundamentally at odds with the decentralized, chaotic, bottom-up emergent system of human society. Still, the utilitarian argument pales to insignificance next to the stunning, irrefutable, jaw-dropping fact of repeated, epic mass murder. Nobody would support a system that even occasionally did that. Would they?" A sweeping, devastating, thoroughly researched and documented column by Glen Allport.
Government Is Not Compassion, Part 1 "The difference between not having a government to inflict power and having one, is literally the difference between Adolph Hitler as a nearly-insane, anti-Semitic housepainter, and Adolph Hitler as a nearly-insane, anti-Semitic German Chancellor. It's the difference between Charles Manson as the murderer of a handful, and Pol Pot as the murderer of perhaps two million." An outstanding column by new Root Striker Glen Allport. |
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This page is http://paradise-paradigm.net/columns.html
All contents © by Glen Allport, except as noted.
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