Glen Allport's Columns
"It isn't pleasant contemplating diminished wealth and living standards for the nation you call home, but living in a fantasy world is more expensive and dangerous than seeing things clearly." Column by Glen Allport.
"The
news about
Shield and Strength: The Power of Love
"You can make use of this strength yourself, and can to some extent give it to those around you, including especially to your children. As with a financial shield, this one requires time and effort to create. This strength, this shield against the hardships and sorrows of life, is rooted in an ancient and profound biological ability: love." Column by Glen Allport.
"Love for others, compassionate treatment and respect for children, and the understanding that this world (including the experience within each one of us) is important regardless of any world beyond these things would seem undeniably healthy and positive." Column by Glen Allport.
"Dogs and other animals are a reminder of the importance of feeling and of living in the present when we can." Column by Glen Allport.
The Unmasking of the Corporate Media
"The propaganda is working, to some extent propaganda always has some effect but I sense a race in progress between the corporate media's desire to keep the idea of freedom from getting loose in the world again, versus the spreading awareness among the public that the corporate media absolutely cannot be trusted." Column by Glen Allport.
Summerhill and the Central Thread of Life
"The academic disaster of our government school system is only part of the story. Constant coercion, relentless boredom, and other mistreatment of children in public schools cause emotional damage and the stunting of intelligent, independent thought pretty much what government schooling is designed for...." Column by Glen Allport.
Initiating Force Is Out, Even When You Think It's a Good Idea
"If there is one thing history shows clearly, it is that use of force against others, even with the best intentions, soon grows into an ever-larger use of force that eventually becomes a nightmare." Column by Glen Allport.
"To the extent
the public is convinced that only Rudy 'freedom
is about authority' Giuliani or one of his clones can save us
from the various problems (real or otherwise) in life, we are headed for a
new Dark Age.
"Looking at these problems as a group, it doesn't feel like 'opportunity' or 'luck' ahead so much as 'disaster.' But the largest opportunities sometimes do arrive in the form of disasters or crises." Column by Glen Allport.
"How to increase the love and freedom in your own life? One way is to help others increase theirs. Unlike material wealth, giving love and freedom to others does not diminish your own stock quite the opposite." Column by Glen Allport.
"The most dangerous and violent institution in all of history the tool with more blood dripping from it than any other the only institution other than organized crime based explicitly on violence and coercion, and which has been used to plunder the wealth and extinguish the lives of innocents by the hundreds of millions is believed by many atheists to be an essentially supernatural power (not that most atheists would put it that way) required by humanity because the State, and only the State, can do important things which mere people cannot." Column by Glen Allport.
Danger Is My Middle Name--And So Is Yours
MUST READ "Nothing is completely safe, including eating and breathing. And if nothing is safe, then throwing people in prison for doing something that endangers them is insane, even without considering the dangers of arrest and imprisonment, which are substantial. Using coercion to "save people" from their own choices is a huge, horrifying mistake that can only lead to ever-larger disaster, because the list of dangerous activities includes everything that people might ever do." Column by Glen Allport.
Government and the Process of Design Change
"Those in control of government are using the same methods to advance and otherwise improve government power over citizens as corporations such as Apple Computer or Honda Motors use to advance and otherwise improve their products. Broadly speaking, these methods are intelligently applied iterative and incremental design change. That is not a comforting thought, because such methods are extremely powerful, well-understood, and have a long history of getting the job done." Column by Glen Allport.
"Government is an organization built on systematic coercion. For that reason, coercive government is by far the gravest possible threat to love and freedom. It is inevitable that those who wish to use coercion against others strive to capture government power and to increase that power. Government thus tends to grow, at the expense of love and freedom, and to fall into the hands of people who are especially interested in pushing others around by force." Column by Glen Allport.
The End of the American Empire
"So: twenty dollars for a one-ounce gold coin has now become well, $832.10 for an ounce of gold....Thank heavens the Fed has been working to 'stabilize the value of the dollar' all these years! Imagine how bad things would be if the Fed hadn't been on the job!" Column by Glen Allport.
Remember, Remember This Fifth of November
"Yet something must be done to advance the cause of love and freedom something with a real chance of success, and of at least partial success in the near term. The exponential growth of technological power, combined with our traditional plagues of widespread emotional damage and systematic use of coercion by the State, could lead to conditions of greatly enhanced tyranny (or something worse, including extinction) that cannot be undone." Column by Glen Allport.
Capitalism Is Not Freedom, and Socialism Is Not Love
"The memes of capitalism and socialism are but faint, unfocused images of the love and freedom we truly want and will need for survival in the coming years." Column by Glen Allport.
Recommended
"Without the
Glen Allport is on the Ron Paul bandwagon.
We Are All the Same; We Are All Different
Column by Glen Allport.
Subtext Versus Jackhammer: Emotional Health and Ultraviolence in Pathfinder
Glen Allport reviews the movie Pathfinder.
Top 10 Reasons for a New 9/11 Investigation
Column 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
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.
Column 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
"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.
Recommended "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
How Republicans Can Save America (and Perhaps the World)
"Frankly,
the idea that torture would be sanctioned and used by the
"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.
The Road to Compassion and Freedom
Column by Glen Allport.
No Humans Were Harmed in the Making of This War
"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.
"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.
"The one proof I find truly persuasive against an omnipotent, loving god (or against intelligent design, by anything but a race of alien sociopaths) is this widespread, basic use of murder to obtain food." Column by Glen Allport.
Opening Up to Paradise: My Journey to an Optimistic View of the Future
"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' Crucifixion
Recommended "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.
"The
"Love, compassion, and freedom are what bring out the best in usand 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
"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.
The Root Evil of Widespread Emotional Damage
" How could tyranny be the norm in this world without a widespread lack of empathy for ones 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 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. Its a clever gambit, but does nothing to change the nature of the state: submit or die." Column by Glen Allport.
"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 camels 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?
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
Thoughts on STR's 5th Anniversary, and On the Path to Compassion and Freedom
"STRs direct, unabashed focus on ending evil in this world check out the Thoreau quotation at the top of this page is the sites signature quality." Column by Glen Allport.
"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 youve 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.