Amen & Right On, Brother!

I didn't write this. A guy by the name of Tom Lidbury did. But the sentiment is all mine. I signed it. Will you?

IN AMERICA, JULY 4, 2010

The unanimous Declaration of we the freedom loving people in the land called the United States of America

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to reject the government that prevails in their land, and to reassert among the powers of the earth their natural and unalienable liberties, a decent respect for peace requires that they should first declare the causes that impel them to reject the status quo.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings are created equals; that they posses unalienable rights that are inextricably intertwined with their humanity; that among these are freedom from infringements on their life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness; that governments derive their just powers only to the extent of the consent of the governed; that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the oppressed to resist and, if able, to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the security of the unalienable liberties.

Prudence will dictate that governments will not be rejected for light and transient causes, as rational beings are disposed to acquiesce to evils lesser than those incident to resistance. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations tends invariably toward intolerable despotism, rational beings will come to a point where even death be preferred to the status quo and they will risk all to overthrow tyrannical government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these citizens in the lands once freed by the founding fathers of the United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to rise up and reject the transmogrified government that is the status quo today and to restore freedom in this land. The history of the present system of government in the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny, however benevolent the tyrants claim to be. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

1. The government has plundered our economy and set itself up as a leviathan that consumes an obscene portion of our productivity and has destroyed the spirit of our people.

2. The government has taxed so onerously at the federal level and so dominated and meddled in the affairs properly reserved to our state and local governments as to leave vanishingly little sovereignty in them, and has declared itself invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever, contrary to our Constitution.

3. The government has subverted representative government by taxing citizens unequally in myriad, convoluted ways and otherwise using gimmicks and tricks to impose hidden taxes, thereby creating large segments of people who are substantially immune to the direct and obvious consequences of taxation and others who actually receive more than they pay, and has thus obliterated the only real check against massive taxation and government growth, a system desirable to tyrants only.

4. The government has spent profligately and borrowed obscene sums of money, so much so as to have essentially hocked our future for generations to come.

5. The government has erected a multitude of administrative offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

6. The government has created a plethora of useless government employees and showered them with obscene salaries and benefits that scant few of those of us who must pay for these extravagances will ever enjoy ourselves.

7. The government has taken ownership or control over businesses, or subsidized politically connected industries and businesses, contrary to basic limits on appropriate government, including automobile manufacturers, the home loan industry, the agricultural industry, the “green” industry, and many others.

8. The government has refused to abide by the rule of law, including for example subverting bankruptcy laws and property rights retroactively to the benefit of favored constituencies such as labor unions like the United Auto Workers.

9. The government has purported to establish affirmative entitlements owed by some people to others, contrary to our Constitution and our unalienable rights to liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

10. The government has forbidden the sovereign states from passing laws as they see fit, including for example by confiscating their citizens’ property and then offering some of it back to the states only upon conditions, ranging from seemingly trivial matters such as speed limits to very serious matters such as Medicare.

11. The government has set up laws and regulatory schemes that are so pervasive and intrusive as to require people to regularly lay open all of their most private affairs to bureaucrats, making a mockery of the right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search, including for example imposing a federal income tax and other taxes that can be assessed only by such invasive intrusions on privacy.

12. The government has taxed the people to fund arts, media and community organizers, each of which is an unnecessary and inappropriate object of government and is prone to being abused for purposes of government propaganda and mischief, including for example National Pubic Radio, the National Endowment of the Arts, and ACORN.

13. The government has aided and abetted the states in erecting a socialized school system by taxing the people and reserving the funds exclusively to the government schools, thereby leaving most of us little or no viable economic alternative to enrolling our children in the government schools, which not only violates our immediate freedom of choice but also: (a) insidiously undermines the foundations of liberty by allowing the government to indoctrinate our children and corrupt their spirits; and (b) creates otherwise unnecessary conflicts over the government’s role in matters of religion, discipline, dress codes, politics, and many other controversial issues, none of which would have involved the government at all but for the establishment of socialized schools.

14. The government has enabled organized labor groups to undermine our liberty and economy by, for example, forcing employees to join a union against their will at the whim of their coworkers, forcing employers to employ people who join unions, precluding employers from terminating the employment of union members who refuse to work, forcing employers to bargain with unions against their will, and in countless other ways turning upside down the proper relationship between employer and employee.

15. The government has encouraged illegal immigration by providing and inducing the states to provide entitlements and benefits to illegal aliens at the expense of citizens.

16. The government has forced people to pay into government programs for retirement and health against their will, and, adding injury to insult, pillaged the funds paid into these programs and conducted them as a Ponzi scheme that will come crashing down on most of us and our children.

17. The government has acted as the world’s insurer without collecting a premium or requiring repayment, even though we are already deeply in debt and cannot afford even the domestic spending and entitlements that have been erected.

18. The government has proposed to combine with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving its assent to their acts of pretended legislation including, for example, conspiring to redistribute our wealth to foreign nations on the pretense of an imaginary and/or wildly exaggerated climate crisis.

19. The government has impaired our right to trade freely with all peaceful parts of the world including by imposing tariffs and other trade restrictions with respect to such places.

20. The government has placed unnecessary, dangerous and frequently misused power in the Federal Reserve, which has caused and worsened economic calamities since its inception; rather than provide for a stable currency.

21. The government has impaired the freedom of people to enter into contracts on terms agreeable to them including imposing minimum wage laws (which, apart from the wrongful government interference in private affairs, serve only to reduce employment of those most in need of jobs and employers’ ability to compete in the global markets), setting the terms on which people can purchase various goods and services such as credit cards, and myriad other interferences in private affairs of free people.

22. The government has taken away our Constitution, abolishing its most valuable restraints on the growth of the federal government, and altering fundamentally the forms of our government.

23. The government has established two dominant political parties that have, through various laws, set themselves up as perpetual rulers that can scarcely be challenged by independents.

24. The government has prevented the exploration and use of our natural energy resources.

25. The government has enacted paternalistic and oppressive laws that infringe on our freedoms without regard to any conduct that proximately causes real injury to others, which is the only legitimate justification for incursions against individual liberty, ranging from annoying little meddling like seat belt laws to egregious power grabs like so-called “health care reform” that essentially nationalizes an entire sector of our economy and private lives.

In every stage of these oppressions, and still others, we have elected politicians who have promised integrity and faithful service. Our repeated elections have resulted only in repeated injury. A form of government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit for the government of a free people.

We, the oppressed American people, therefore reassert our unalienable rights as free people and declare that though we who are aggrieved may be forced to acquiesce in this tyranny, we do not consent. Take notice, you in the political class and whatever number stands with you, whether a majority or a minority, that you rule over us through force alone, and not by the consent of the governed, and therefore, your rule is illegitimate. We now stand in resistance, peacefully. We are now at work to reform or replace the present system of government, the likes of which our founding fathers raised an army to defeat. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm resolve, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

4 Quick Points

Tori Amos says, "If Palin runs again, I'm going to run on a Republican ticket. What I know about Middle Eastern policy could fit on a thumbnail, but I still know more than she does. You have to ask, how could a nation nearly vote in somebody who isn't qualified for the job?"

Firstly, sweetheart, let us just say that we find your claim about what little you know of Middle Eastern policy completely credible.

Secondly, we feel certain that what Sarah Palin knows about the subject would dwarf your tiny brain.

Thirdly, we wonder what business someone who admits to knowing almost nothing on a particular subject has qualifying the extent of someone else's knowledge?

Fourthly, we believe that you should run for some office in a Republican primary if you so desire and strongly urge you to do so. Not only because we defend individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness whenever given the chance, but primarily because we'd be very much amused if you did so.

[Bonus Question: Whose voice do I summon? Justine knows!]

by C. C. Kurzeja

2009 All Rights Reserved

A Pleasantly Irrational Christmas

“Christmas An Irrational Season”, by the amazingly prolific singer/songwriter, Carolyn Arends, is a CD collection of Christmas tunes and the joyful object of my happy obsession lately.

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild

For if Mary had been filled with reason

There’d have been no room for the child

Thus begins the album with a poem by Madeline L’engle and music by Carolyn Arends, a prelude that lays the thesis every song builds on. Not just in this glorious album, but also in the four others with which I’m familiar, deep and weighty theological truths are the intellectual hook of every song. Like a finely faceted trinket she turns this way and that in the light; here a rainbow, there a laser beam, she examines the abstracts. This is signature to her songs, equal to her woodwind voice and gentle rock-and-roll rhythm. So often the lament rises from the pews, “I wish modern worship can be as meaty and theologically deep as the hymns of yore. Modern worship music is so trivial by comparison.” At last, in Carolyn Arends songs we finally have both.

This is no more apparent than in one of my current favorites, “Is Bethlehem Too Far Away”. This song has a kind of smokey, soft country feel to it. It evokes lonely cowboys on the range under a night sky. As an artist she tends to move fluidly between a folksy soft rock and country with blues and Dixieland jazz influences, a style she is very good at and comfortable in. At first this song appears to be a simple question about faith, succinctly put, beautifully painted, as in the refrain:

Can we find our way to the baby king?

Can we worship him now in the hay?

And can we believe he can change everything?

Or is Bethlehem to far away

But then she veers into a tight change up musically and theologically. She pulls back the scope of the question and masterfully touches upon God’s magnificent, irrational I might add, condescension towards man.

O little town of Bethlehem

How far it must have been

From heaven’s throne of glory

To your humble manger scene

But if God saw fit to travel there

Should not also we

She proves with this one song what a shining poet she is. And she proves it more over with every new song she writes. However, she is not just a great poet, but a really fantastic storyteller also. To me, she brings to mind McCartney in her ability to tell story through song. This skill she demonstrates well in, “Now in Flesh Appearing” and in, “My First Christmas”. The first song has to do with the true meaning of Christmas, the second with experiencing Christmas for the first time. In the case of the latter, this simple reflection has many layers. In the first song she sings of two separate people working two separate ministries. In the second she follows a woman through stages of her life; infancy, the day she’s born again in Christ, and the day she’s called home to eternity. In both songs she paints such a vivid picture that one almost looks for these people at church on Sunday, forgetting that they aren’t real friends. She uses simple words, and yet they manage to sink deep into the psyche. She employs her (not too) folksy side for these songs; Her guitar sound brings to mind Patty Griffin, her voice a bit of Carol King and, as in all her songs, they have a very intuitive build to the melody. Indeed, there aren’t too many songwriters who can match her grasp of melody, of how to stretch it over a song, to soar through its natural rise and fall. I think this is the thing that most astounds me about her: She has a fabulous grasp of language, an equally fabulous grasp of the ebb and flow of melody, also a fabulous, almost guttural, feel for how to build a song, and can use all these things to deftly express deep, theological truths. She’s just so suited for what she does. But, I digress.

“Come and See”, is another of my current favorites and the second track on the CD. I love how much fun she has with it. This song is about as “big worship” as she gets and is infused with a really cool “island” sound that makes you just want to tap your toes and boogie. It’s perfectly celebratory. To paraphrase Chesterton: The chief aim of order is to allow good things to run wild. And that’s what I sense in this song, a wild appreciation for God. She approaches profound truths not piously, but joyously.

Come and see, come and see…

He’s a new baby boy

Who’s the hope of us all…

It’s the great love of God

In the cry of a babe

It’s the paradox, the whole irrationality of it all, that strikes us as most true in these brilliant lyrics. In our heart, we know that salvation could not come any other way. And instead of exhorting us to pay obeisance, she entices us to dance! I love it.

If you long for original Christmas music, you can’t do better than this album. It’s a compilation of seven original tunes (all of them better than the last), three covers and then the prelude/postlude which she wrote the music for. If you aren’t familiar with Carolyn Arends, you’d be doing yourself a favor by getting to know her. If you are lucky enough to give this album a listen, then you’ll fully understand why I wish you all very irrational Christmas this year.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2009 All Rights Reserved

A Damnable Lampoon

Adam Lambert’s burlesque performance at the AMA’s will prove, I believe, much more unfortunate for him than it was for the poor saps who tuned in to watch him. Having the golden opportunity to establish himself as a world class artist destined to shape and define pop music and pop culture into the next generation – as I once believed he had the chops, vision and confidence to do - he instead chose to reduce his number down to the base standard of a float in a gay pride parade, complete with simulated sex acts, whips and men crawling around the stage on all fours being led around on dog leashes.

Here’s how he’s defended the two most ballyhooed of his onstage antics, the one where he engaged in a raunchy same-sex kiss and the one where he simulated fellatio with a male dancer for what seemed like an eternity: “Adrenaline is crazy and sometimes things just happen."

Really, Adam? Really? You have this problem with adrenaline often? Kinda’ like The Hulk, but instead of going all green and raging you go all rainbow and oversexed? What was that then, a performance or some anguished cry for help? Because, spontaneous public outbursts of simulated sex is decidedly not normal and you may be qualified for government assistance. We expect adults to be in total command of their sexual urges and not to demonstrate their foibles to the world at the slightest provocation. To do otherwise is indecent and there are laws against it. If this is true, you are a danger to society. Certainly, at the very least, our children need to be protected from you.

But this is where I get really flamed. Of course! it’s not true. We’d have to be dumb as a lump of mud to believe that. And just because Adam takes us for imbeciles doesn’t mean we have to play along for his entertainment. If it were true, what Adam did on that stage that night would constitute hard-core sexual harassment on his subordinates. Let me tell you something, I was a dancer way back when. And if a lead had deviated from the choreography, without my knowledge or consent, and had taken my head in both his hands shoving it deep into his groin while gyrating his hips like a stud in heat, especially during a performance when I would have been helpless to object, I would have felt deeply humiliated and violated. Indeed, every professional watching or participating would have immediately realized the serious, criminal nature of the offense that had just been committed on me. I would be suing him in my mind while it happened. I would be counting my money from the lawsuit on the way back to the dressing room. ABC, Dick Clarke Productions, and Lambert’s manager would have a diamond necklace, Mercedes, and a fat checking account waiting for me at the flop I shared with four or five other struggling dancers before I got home in an effort to assuage the trauma of the event. If it were true Adam Lambert’s career would be in grave danger. And the very last thing – and by “last” I mean, “wouldn’t happen in a zillion years” – his handlers would allow him to do would be to go on the record admitting those acts were essentially entirely unilateral in nature.

So my question is: Where’s the lawsuits? Are we to believe that his band mates were much obliged for the experience? What? They felt loved and honored by his generous sex gifts to them? “Doing sex to”, as SNL recently put it, your band mates during a performance is bizarre and deviant behavior. If this is Adam’s normal he needs to pull back the black velvet curtains on the group orgy room he’s living in and venture out into the bright sunlight for some fresh air.

But, of course, this foray into soft porn was a calculated strategy to drum up the maximum amount of cheap publicity he could the week before his CD hits the stands and the “spontaneous” story is a ruse to inoculate ABC and Dick Clarke Productions from the short and feckless arm of the FCC. As for Adam, it’s clear that he plans to run behind his twelve-inch platforms and scream, “homophobe” at anyone who objects. And so far it seems to be working.

I say seems, because in my opinion, this has already begun his undoing. It’s sad that Adam chose the path he did. Yes, he’s the most talked about performer today, but only in the same way that Kate Gosselin was the most talked about personality yesterday. They are both empty and eager for exploitation. And that’s where the rub comes in. One can’t claim artistic altruism while prostituting himself for the scandal gristmill. (Oh, and by that analogy take it to mean that I’m calling ABC and Dick Clarke out for being his pimps.)

Adam can claim that he believes in artistic expression but that’s not what occurred on that stage that night. He was given the golden opportunity to reach deep into his tool bag and slay us. We were waiting for it. We thought he just might be that kind of artist. We were hoping to see something that would reach us, linger with us, make us love him. Instead of picking a fantastic song to present to the world on his debut performance as a single artist, he picks a middling to annoying song, something that can hardly be distinguished from the noise of an already crowded, increasingly – by orders of magnitude- irrelevant industry. Instead of moving us with a revelatory interpretation he lambasted us with a performance that was, ironically, a tragic satire of all the worst of homosexual stereotypes. Instead of singing he screeched. His nerves were distinctly audible in his shaky voice. He was pitchy dawg. On top of all that, fell hard and magnificently. He did a stop, drop and roll fire drill in the middle of the song. It was rank amateur night. Here’s a hint, Adam. If you’re going to go to the trouble of putting on a million dollar production: dazzle me. Or, at the very least, don’t trip.

I went into that performance liking Adam as a performer and as a person. What kind of dupe am I, right? I came out of that performance believing him to be a sexual deviant and a cad. He’s a cad because he betrayed the people who brought him to national prominence and soiled the aesthetic of American Idol. American mothers and their teenage children did not vote this man to the next round in order to eventually see what he might look like having sex on stage. This is a man who was given a tremendous gift and owes something to the people who gave it to him. Also, someone needs to tell that spoiled brat that coming in number two on a game show doesn’t entitle one to redefine what’s appropriate material for public airwaves. Those airwaves belong to us all. And he used them like a toy for his own personal monetary gain at the expense of our children's innocence, our nation's culture and our right to safe public entertainment. What a jerk.

His CD debuts next week. We’ll see how he does. My guess is his fans aren’t going to be nearly as grateful for Adam doing sex to them as his band mates seemed to be.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2009 All Rights Reserved

You're Stucked, Lady!

My dear friend Alexander Luvin showed great concern when he wrote, "I just got scared when I found out about Flicka finishing a book and being stuck with it."

But, I'm not stucked. Far from it. And, even if I were, no writer should ever be afraid of the same.

I do suppose that writers write for many different reasons. But I think it's fair to assume all want an audience and money, to some extent. But why a writer writes will directly influence how he goes about seeking those two trophies. If I wanted an audience, I could post a whole bunch of pictures of myself in various states of undress on the internet. And I'd have an audience. If I wanted money I could get a job. (Shudder.)

Any writer can attain audience and money much faster and less painfully apart from writing than by it. Continuing to pursue those bad twins through writing exposes them for the impostor objectives that they are.

So then, do I not want those things for Rainmaker? I do. But, I'm in no hurry. And that's the direct result of what interests me and why I write.

Commercial fiction, does not hold my attention. Especially, ESPECIALLY, Christian Fiction. At least not in it's current Genre + Gospel manifestation, anyway. If it did, I would go about writing a story in exactly the opposite way that I do. I would, first of all, relish commercial fiction and greedily devour every new title the publishers released. Then, I would learn everything I could about what my favorite publishers in my favorite genre liked in a writer and were looking for in a book. Then I would ape it until I became it and I would sell them exactly what they were asking for.

As it is, I find reading most commercial fiction to be such a tedious task that it is almost too much for me. I can not do the research necessary to discover what publisher's want because, very often, I can not stand to read what they sell. Even now, I'm slogging my way through a Christian Best Seller by an author who has had one of his books adapted into a major motion picture and I find it about as captivating as a sink full of dirty dishes.

It is The Same. It's a story that's mostly about the Twist, or Angle, or Catch. That is to say, it is a plot driven story with a broken down plot and all energy being directed towards bearing up the clever twist that is so meant to carry the reader on bedazzled wings. It's a beast of burden breaking under too heavy a load, I find.

The narrative is elementary. It is punch, punch, punchy. With lots of fragmented sentences. For emphasis.

It's guilty of gross misconduct with one-sentence paragraphs. If it is offset by itself, it is weighty, wise or witty, right? In fact, it only serves to highlight inanities.

It's characters are dumb and act in unnatural ways. But they are beautiful.

The only reason I'm reading it is because my mother informed me that this author was rejected by most Christian publishers as being too edgy. Perhaps, she reasoned, his publisher would be interested in Rainmaker.

But the book is not edgy like Rainmaker is.

Don't get me wrong, this author is highly skilled and accomplished. His attempts to explain Christianity and God through metaphor are very good. He knows his craft. It's just not my cup of tea, is all. And I have no desire - none, nadda, zilch- to remake myself in his or anyone else's image.

So, why do I write?

Primarily I write because I have something I need to say. I have a broad concept or idea I need to explore and demonstrate. And I have these people in my head that only I know. And I think they have done something or overcome something that deserves to be told. It is their story. And I find them worthy and feel obligated to make them known, to let them live apart from me. I start where I need to start in order to be able to tell what I need to tell. And once my character's have all done what they did that made me start the story in the first place, my story is finished. That's how and why I write.

As for Rainmaker, he desperately needs editing. I'm getting help along those lines from generous friends. And I will rewrite the denouement because I have never been satisfied with that. But, other than that the story is Done. I've said what I set out to and I've given my characters a fair shake. There may be things wrong with the story on many different levels. There may be ten thousand things wrong with the story. But it will not be belabored. I gave it life but I refuse to nurse it.

As for holding on to it: I guess I just can't stand the process of selling it. My dream would be to self publish and self promote my books one day anyway. And I"m very, very busy right now. I don't want to spend my precious spare time doing something I hate, like sending out inquiry letters.

I'm getting ready to have my fourth child. I'm getting a real estate license at my husbands request. I'm going to get licensed to teach Yoga. I'm decorating my kids' bedrooms. I'm carpooling. Life is too full with good things to exchange them for a bad job I can't stand.

I'm going to start another book in the Fall. It will not fit neatly into any genre. It will be about Christ's redemption but it won't be suitable for the Christian market. It'll be a horror story of sorts.

That's what I like to do. That's what holds my interest.

And besides, I have tremendous faith in the universe altering force of creative energy. I'm no more "stuck" with this book than a farmer is stuck with seed for harvest. Latent in every act of creation is a power that works on its own behalf seeking self expression, freedom and fellowship. This is true of my stories as well. I can not be stuck with something that exists apart from myself but only with something I never delineate from my own thoughts. My thoughts belong to me. Rainmaker's Wrestling no longer does.

In short, write for your own reasons, but know what they are. And never be afraid of what you finish. Be afraid of what you never start.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved