Liberty Liberally - Vol I Issue V - May 2021

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Liberty, Liberally Volume I - Issue V

May, 2021

Stems & Stalks

Alaska

Music As Culture

Cultivating cannabis for hemp fiber can be traced back throughout recorded history, and has only stopped under coercive threats from government agencies, empowered to arbitrarily prohibit this otherwise fundamental cultivar crop .

Hemp grows high, but it won’t get you high.

Hemp is not a cousin to cannabis, it is the same plant. The only real and natural variations of that plant are Cannabis Sativa, Cannabis Indica, and Cannabis Ruderalis.

Cannabis Sativa is used for hemp production, and is native to hotter, equatorial regions of the earth.

Cannabis Indica is a shorter plant that is native to the more moderate climates of the planet. Cannabis Ruderalis is a rare plant that is found in mountainous regions.

Cannabis Ruderalis is rarely involved in any human consumption, for two reasons, two lacking attributes that make the Indica and Sativa plants practical for human consumption.

Cultivation Is Not Natural

grows taller. That’s why Cannabis Sativa was cultivated, because taller stalks meant longer, stronger strings of hemp fiber with which to make sails and ropes. Cannabis Sativa can also be cultivated for psychoactive effect, but to cultivate longer hemp fibers, the plant must be cultivated to vegetate rather than flower, which reduces potential potency. It is the flower of the Cannabis plant that contains the preponderance of psychoactive cannabinoids.

The Cannabis Indica plant, however, is not preferable for hemp fiber production. Short stalks equal short fibers, which yields less of that long, strong fiber to with which to weave. In short, short fiber makes shotty fabric.

But it’s great for flowering purposes.

It naturally flowers lower to the ground, making it easier for small-scale cultivation. Cannabis Indica and Sativa both have the potential for psychoactive and medicinal potency through their flowers, but original strains of either plant are much less potent than the multitude of artificial variations that have been shaped by human hands.

Cannabis Indica was traditionally developed and distilled as a medicine, until it was outlawed and replaced with patentable , profitable pharmaceuticals.

This 1914 $10 dollar bill was made of 100t hemp fiber, and even memorialized the importance of the cannabis plant to pre-industrial society, depicting hemp cultivation and industry on the back.

Humanity cultivates certain plants into more useful crops, increasing the yield through horticulture and agriculture.

The cultivation of the Cannabis plant is no different. Humanity hasn’t found much use for the Cannabis Ruderalis plant, but for the Indica and Sativa plants we’ve discovered their worth.

Canvas = Cannabis canvas (n.) "sturdy cloth made from hemp or flax," mid-14c., from Anglo-French canevaz, Old North French canevach, Old French chanevaz "canvas," literally "made of hemp, hempen," noun use of Vulgar Latin adjective *cannapaceus"made of hemp," from Latin cannabis, from Greek kannabis "hemp," a Scythian or Thracian word (see cannabis).

Seriously, hemp made world travel possible. Those huge sails, that first made trans-Atlantic travel possible what do you think those were made of?

Right. Hemp.

The word ‘cannabis’ and the word ‘canvas’ are simply separate pronunciations of the same linguistic root. The canvas sails that captured the wind and cruised the waves were woven of hemp fiber - the strongest and most abundant fiber in the ancient world.

The Cannabis Sativa plant has been artificially cultivated, building on it’s natural attributes of growing tall and stalky. The stem of the plant, as compared to Cannabis Indica variety,

The list of possible combinations and cultivations that have been (and might be) attempted by horticulturalists is endless - both amateur and professional.

All in pursuit of a more potent flower, with which to treat various ailments or to create the desired psychoactive effect. Putting aside the controversy surrounding cannabis consumption for so-called ‘recreational’ use, the reality is that cannabis can and has been cultivated to that end with great success.

Just as the Cannabis Sativa plant once was widely used to explore the world, the Indica plant along with Sativa have been widely used to explore inner worlds - physical and metaphysical.

This is not to stoke controversy that this information is included in this essay, but to acknowledge how this plant has been utilized by humanity in the past.

“Marijuana” Is Made Up It’s important to note that the word ‘marijuana’ is a made up word. It’s a propaganda term, used to describe just the flowers of what was likely the Cannabis Sativa plant. The Cannabis Sativa plant was equatorial, and likely did exist in North America long before anyone called it North America. The newspapers of 80 years ago - which were likely made of hemp, mind you - began to propagate this new word - which sounded very... Mexican. It served twofold purpose, this propaganda.

One, the word ‘marijuana’ wasn’t in the English dictionary at the time. It wasn’t a synonym for Cannabis, it wasn’t commonly associated with Cannabis like Hemp. By referring to the flowers of the Cannabis plant by this new name, ‘marijuana’, they effectively hid that word from the populace, who likely used hemp products daily. Hell, the

Auditus (Hearing), Cornelius Cort after Frans Floris, 1561.

It’s new, really. The idea that we have about how music works, in a financial, professional sense.

Technological developments, like electricity, and broadcast - and now the internet - have made music easily available to people.

The click of a button, or opening an app on your phone, will lend instant access to the world of music, spanning across time and space. It is truly magnificent.

But we’ve also lost something, and that something is quite the important something, too.

The musician.

Before all this technology gave us music on demand, we had to have a real musician provide music. There was no way around it, music required musicians. In this way, there was a cultural connection to the people in a community. All music was local music, even if they were playing compositions from other musicians who lived elsewhere. The musicians in a community created the sound of that community’s culture.

They created the feeling of that place.

Going back to the beginning of time, music and musicians always went hand in hand, and as a result, musicians were an integral part of any community. They weren’t ‘wannabes’ trying to ‘make it’ out of their communities. They were valued culture creators, within their own community. And it was good.

I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy the music that I have access to; I’m a glutton for music, any way I can get it. I soak in it, I let it pour into my soul. I use this modern tech to create a constant flow of music in my life. Blue tooth speakers are probably the most used technology in my home, next to the phone that connects to them.

However, what we’ve lost in our community is an appreciation for the musicians’ role as culture creators in our community. I’m not lamenting or complaining. This is simply a reminder. Musicians can put their hands on an inanimate object and change the chemicals in your brain, so that you

feel... different. That is a valuable skill set. That is how culture sounds.

It never hurts to stop and consider this.

Where would music be, and how would musicians function, in a world that wasn’t connected by technology?

We would be in a central location somewhere, surrounded by our community, making music for them to enjoy - that they couldn’t get elsewhere.

If they recognized the songs, it would be because the local musicians had made them familiar - not because some corporation piped it into the community over the radio or mass media. That norm, of corporate influence over local cultures, local communities, is a one-way street.

It’s not reciprocal, it’s not communal.

How can it be? They aren’t here, how could they play our soundtrack? How could they possibly?

The question is, how do we re-establish that? How do we get musicians and the communities they live in to work together, organically? It won’t be through a rejection of technology or convenience, that’s for sure. People aren’t giving up music streaming, radio, or electricity. I’m not suggesting that we live like the Amish. But I am wondering, and thinking a lot lately, about how music fits into our culture minus all the professional and financial ambition that is directed at the corporate music industry. I’m thinking a lot about how, as a musician, I can create music without it becoming the means to an end.

Music is a completion of culture. It is the background, and sometimes the foreground of our lives - even now because culturally that’s what it’s always been. The reason we like music so much is because music has been an inherent part of our culture for millennia. We all would benefit by keeping in mind that the musicians in our community are valuable to that community, making us feel how the community feels. They are masters of empathy, empaths absorbing the emotions of others, and creating a sound that communicates that consensus.

Music, when culturally considered, makes us act as one, tapping our feet

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From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Volume I - Issue V

Liberty, Liberally

MUSIC AS CULTURE CONTINUED to the same rhythm, even dancing in unison, singing and harmonizing...

This alludes to so much more about humanity than corporate, canned music could ever reveal. That music, from elsewhere, it’s not a barometer of our local reality. It’s a carefully crafted and skillful illusion. As a musician, I admire the craft of it, but as a community member, it doesn’t reflect my world.

Another effect of corporate music’s prominence in our local communities, following our willful ignorance of our own musicians, is that our own musicians lose their power. They start becoming imitators of that corporate culture, rather than innovators of our local culture. I’m not bashing those people, because I am certainly one of them. As a musician, I have been constantly pulled in two directions: creativity, or mimicry.

Any musician who has attempted to ‘make it’ will tell you, we are all challenged to pass through the gauntlet of the bar scene - and in the bar scene, you have to play songs that everyone already knows. Familiar tunes make people comfortable, and when people are comfortable, they eat, and drink.

outside for validation of our music, and start looking to the community around us. That community has had more influence over our creativity than many of us realize. It’s ubiquitous influence is inescapable. Yet, for many musicians, escaping Alaska is all they think about.

I’ve taken a few years off from music, but that’s already changing. I’m playing more, and enjoying it more than ever.

It’s coming back to me, why I loved music way back when. This essay is just my own effort to express how I’m feeling, and what I’m thinking. Trying to keep those bad thoughts out of my mind, that my musical efforts should somehow reflect what is the norm, rather than affect it.

It should not be about making money. It should be about making sense of things.

Making a difference in our community, making people move together, make love, make memories...

When it comes to creativity and familiarity in local music, it shouldn’t be an either/or scenario. It should be that the people in our community, who practice the craft of music, should retain the power to introduce new songs, and over time, make those songs familiar. It is this power that is lost.

“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”

- Pythagoras

I’m not exactly sure how we can reclaim our place, as musicians, in our communities, here in Alaska. But one thing I’m sure of - and I’ve always been sure of this... Alaska is a perfect place to try. Because of our local pride, and geographic separation, we are in a better position than other contiguous states in the Union to reclaim our culture creator status.

I think perhaps it starts with a change of mindset, a change of perception. We musicians need to stop looking to the

Civics Vs. Politics Written on May 14, 2018

Liberty As Disruption

Seeing how Alaskans ignore our musicians, I understand. Musicians want to be appreciated for their culture creation. But our community only hears what the corporate record companies tell us is ‘music’. Our community tells us to escape, go elsewhere for validation, let the corporate music industry shape your sound, so that there is no trace of Alaska in it. Then, and only then, do Alaskans at large give credence to our creativity.

However, this brings us back to the core idea of this essay. That comfort that is familiarity, the power to make us familiar with certain music, (which is traditionally the role of local musicians in a community), has been usurped by outside interests.

Musicians are still practicing, and performing, but the power they once had, to create a song and make it familiar to their neighbors - that’s all but lost.

Replaced with corporate culture, now we sing along to more and more music made by people we will never know who will never know us.

Make a scene. (Written 12-18-2018)

”Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

- Plato ”The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain... music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

- Freidrich Nietzsche “Philosophy is the highest music.”

- Plato “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”

- Plato

Goddess of Liberty, by J.L. Mott Iron Works, 1875, depicts Libertas, the original lady of liberty. This Roman personification of Liberty was used by freed slaves and the assassins of Julius Caesar.

Notice the Phrygian cap, or Liberty cap, a symbol in Roman society of freed slaves.

Many years ago, there was a disruption in the force and coercion model of governance. Those age-old powers of the world had utilized hierarchy as a structure, reimagining over and over again these strict structures, these kings and pharaohs made it up as they went.

The resulting cruelties and indignities visited upon the people of the world are as unimaginable as they are unrecorded.

After all, Liberty had yet to become...

The idea of writing, and of being free, bound together like a book in their Latin roots, Liber, had yet to ascend in the consciousness of the people. Liberty of the individual was the greatest disruption of top-down tyranny in all of history, and if not for those freethinkers, willing to write what was otherwise whispered, there would be no story to tell.

These liberals told their own stories, each one deciding how to best use their limited supplies of writing materials - a luxurious possession not to be wasted in those times.

The powers-that-were, they had all the Authority, to author the official narrative, the one story that all individuals had to share under penalty of death. These brave souls, these earliest liberals, took their lives, and their pens, into their own hands as they wrote.

And because they did, they disrupted

“Yeah, we just finished civics!”

Proud to tell me he was familiar, I asked him to define it.

“Uh, government, and uh, politics and stuff...”

I googled the definition for him, and showed him what civics actually is: “the study of the rights and duties of citizenship.”

Liberty, Liberally

Words in print.

When the individual is freed from within, when the soul is illuminated with the light by which to write their own destiny, they leave behind a record of behavior and belief that is, collectively, our history.

Humble, simple, each individual’s life is a set of circumstances that serves as a check on any narrative-building authority that might seek to subvert our experiment in Liberty.

Things we take for granted Ideas that we just use Daily without thinking These we do abuse Like freedom of expression We use it, too, to silence Those with whom we disagree Leading us to violence

He was silent as he searched his memory for the right answer. I gave him a moment, but not so long to make him feel awkward.

The right to face accusers We know it in our minds

“You contact your representative.

They represent you. Thus the name ‘representative’.”

But most of us will stand accused Of victimless crimes

He gets it, I can tell by the relief on his face. He knew that, it just didn’t immediately come to mind.

Now, I’m sure that my son has been taught this by his teachers. In fact, I know he has. However, the schools teach this in theory, but in practice, there are all sorts of political mechanisms at play in the political world that obscure this simple system. Private Political Parties are the foremost opponent of a civic life.

The new philosophy of Liberalism sought to empower each individual, not by making a lawless society, but by entrusting each individual with their own moral obligations. Right and wrong, as the holy books had all said, must be decided within the individual, indivisible soul. This was because free will was self-evident, above and beyond the jurisdiction of any worldly power.

No government could truly contain free will without doing harm. The legitimacy of such abuse of power had always been challenged... But the early liberals were the first to challenge that old-world power in words they could understand.

By Joshua Fryfogle

I asked him, “Isn’t it strange that you were confident that you knew what civics was, but then when I asked you to tell me, you didn’t know? I’m not trying to shame you, this is a big problem in our country, you’re not the only one.”

I continued, “We have a representative government, you’ve heard that, right?”he nods - “So what’s the first step for you to engage your government?”

I was talking with my 15 year old son recently, and I asked him if he knew about ‘civics’. He spoke up quickly:

top-down tyranny. They told different stories, from their own perspectives they authored with authority of their own.

The authoritarian model of governance was being replaced by new model of self-governance.

And Money Is For Sale

Simple enough, but he seemed intrigued.

He studied the sentence a bit, taking it in.

This is something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

Photograph of Frederick William MacMonnies statue “Civic Virtue” outside Manhattan’s City Hall circa 1922

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Or freedom of the market To try and win or fail But tax attacks and breaks our backs And money is for sale

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CONTINUES ON PAGE 4 www.LibertyLiberally.com

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Volume I - Issue V

Liberty, Liberally

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Approaching Truth...

Truth So Elusive

By Joshua Fryfogle The truth is elusive It cannot be kept If you want to know truth You first must accept That the truth is beyond you That you are inept That time is upon you And you have but slept While truth has passed by you Too fast, as you’ve crept Too fast for mere mortals Who would intercept The truth so expansive That those most adept When catching a glimpse Have sat down and wept

Time Unveiling Truth, 1740-1745, by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” - Plato

When you engage in a power struggle, where truth is not the object of debate, but domination, then you’ve already conceded the fight for Liberty.

“Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.” - Kurt Vonnegut

The history of Western society is built upon a daring premise: that objective truth exists, even if our ability to ascertain it is limited by our senses.

We’ve built a culture that assumes that truth exists, and we assume that if we ‘argue for truth’, then the outcome will be inherently more fair than it would be by weaponizing language in order to gain power.

STEMS & STALKS CONTINUED

From Google Books Ngram Viewer, which tracks word usage over time by searching online databases of historical writings, shows that there was a sharp uptick in usage of the word ‘marijuana’, corresponding to the Hearst newspaper empire propagating the term. newspaper itself was likely hemp paper.

Two, it was during this time that migrant workers from Mexico represented a highly contentious political issue. By falsely re-naming, deceptively re-branding, what was otherwise a daily-use plant for most people in the U.S., they were able to remove and replace that plant covertly from the economy. These same powerplayers had maneuvered themselves into greater power by removing from the people this renewable resource that they couldn’t control, and replacing it with equivalent, but industrial products that were controlled by big business.

Agriculture Is Culture Liberty is the freedom to do what we desire, like our Liberty to cultivate crops - a human activity that led to culture and society. If we can’t control the crops, we can’t control our destiny. By removing cannabis - through a concerted propaganda campaign - the industrialists after the turn of that century became more powerful and profitable.

Our individual rights have been infringed, in order to transfer power to wealthy industrialists who established our corporate institutions. They are the captains of industry, who took control of the ship of state, and pulled down the sails of society. The used chemistry and petrochemicals to create new, patentable (read that ‘profitable’) drugs that didn’t make use of any plant medicine that couldn’t be captured by copyright.

Through controlling the narrative,

Liberty, Liberally

coining new words, false association, exploiting racial tensions, people who have been dead for decades killed our localized, decentralized economies. They centralized authority for themselves, and created corporate giants that are not mortal, but potentially immortal. These same conjured corporate entities live on under the letter of the law, declared to exist through contract, and continue to repress this cultivar crop.

Even new legislation that has ‘legalized’ the plant seems to perpetuate those original lies. Cannabis was never seen as dangerous until the yellow journalists re-branded it as marijuana. And to this day, we see government using that same misinformation, to perpetuate control over a plant that they couldn’t control before.

The powers-that-be prefer that we continue to believe that this plant, that was completely unregulated until 80 years ago, is as dangerous as they said it was, 80 years ago. They say they are legalizing it, but they are refusing to decriminalize it. They still want control, and they want you to only think of it as a way to catch a buzz.

They want to falsely associate it with alcohol, which is an intoxicant. But cannabis is non-toxic, and therefore not an ‘intoxicant’.

They still want you to focus on the flower, and throw out the stems and stalks. But that’s where the real power of the plant is - in the stalk!

However, when you study the philosophies of the Totalitarians (philosophies that have most obviously embedded themselves into the American political left, but are oppositional to Liberalism), you see quickly that they have a different view on the function of discourse.

For the Totalitarian philosophers, who have opposed Liberal philosophers on almost every point, argumentation is a means of attaining power - not truth.

From their philosophical position, they see truth as relative, and as being decided through power and control systems, i.e., government. Therefore, total control of government would allow for this power over what is and isn’t to be disseminated more efficiently. To the Totalitarian, this is success of government, to have total authority to author reality... or more accurately, our perception of it.

From the classic, Liberal perspective, this is an affront to all that is right and good. How can anyone be free if they cannot hear or speak freely?

So those on the American political right and left, conservative and liberal alike, who have decided that ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’, engaging in this dialectical sophistry... that’s literally how they lose the larger cultural battle. Simply by playing the game as the Totalitarians define it, by engaging in misinformation, crafty, subtle argumentation, you’re ultimately conceding to the Totalitarian view that truth is merely something to be conjectured in order to achieve your own pre-determined political goals.

Western society is built on the exact opposite idea about truth.

Our culture of individual Liberty is intrinsically tied to this idea that truth is, in reality, true. Their totalitarian ideology mocks this very fundamental idea, and seeks to undermine it by exploiting it as a weakness. When you argue with a Totalitarian, if you engage in the same type of manipulative tactics to achieve your own political

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goals, without regard for the fact that there might be a better, more truthful solution so society’s concerns than what is expedient to one partisan or another, you are giving up on the core tenet of Western society.

The idea of actually attaining total truth was not the goal of the Western philosophers, because they knew that truth was above and beyond their own limited perception. They were aware that they were largely unaware. But through the Liberal Arts, they knew that they could approach truth, through art and science, as long as the goal of that pursuit was true, and without ulterior motive. As long as everyone was free to critique and speak to that end, then liberty and justice would be secured for the individual in perpetuity. Our founders knew that a perfect union couldn’t be achieved, but that a ‘more perfect union’ could be approached, as long as objective reality exists and individuals are free to pursue that truth without restriction from hierarchical power structures.

Our culture has been affected by the Totalitarian worldview for many decades, with academia being the source of dissemination. So much so has this been the case that today, arguing for power has become normalized in our society. The average individual in our culture still believes in truth as an objective reality, and as such, we yearn for fairness and equality, being determined by our search for truth.

To know what is fair, we must first know what is true. In the not too distant past, some political elect would earnestly search for that truth, and would sincerely seek to find objective reality with which to inform their own leadership positions.

Cycle of Abuse

It’s easy for the average individual to take this for granted, because average individuals’ own interpersonal relationships are based on this principle of truth and trust. In fact, if you would like to see the Totalitarian power dynamic scaled down to the individual experience, look no further than the abuser/victim scenario that sometimes arises between people. When objective truth is not honored in a relationship, and power and control are the object of one or more people, then we call that a dysfunctional and abusive relationship.

We don’t even realize that we, the People, are in an ever increasingly abusive relationship with our elected leaders. Each time they lie (as we’ve come to expect), and each time we accept lies and deception as an inherent part of the political power struggle, we lose the moral high ground of Western

CONTINUES ON PAGE 4 From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Volume I - Issue V CIVICS vs POLITICS cont’d: Private Political Parties The reality of the political world is that the parties have overtaken the system.

Their voices are so loud, and so powerful, that the single voice of a citizen is barely audible. The media ignores the citizen, the parties ignore the citizen, and as a result the representative does as well. Even if they try not to, they still must respond to the booming voice of the political parties that never stop talking (and the media that amplifies them).

The citizens’ responsibility isn’t removed, but the effectiveness of their effort is diffused. Call your representative all you want, but at the end of the day, they can’t even get elected without the support of a private political party.

They can’t even get on the ballot!

The reality is, the candidate must swear allegiance to a party before the average citizen will ever hear about them.

And where does the political party fit in to our representative Republic? They don’t.

They just sort of elbowed their way in.

There is nothing in our government structure that demands that we form these other allegiances to private institutions to leverage more power over the outcome of our government. In fact, they directly undo what our representative system is supposed to do.

So much pretense, pomp and circumstance, surrounding our nation’s political system - and it’s all nonsense. No wonder my son isn’t sure of his civic responsibility.

The political parties, primarily two of them, have taken over the government.

Liberty, Liberally Our civic responsibilities impotent as a result.

are

made

Our children don’t get it, and most of us adults don’t either. And those adults who are engaged in the system almost always throw their support behind one political party or the other. It’s a damn shame, because it only perpetuates the problem.

“Son, you understand that a lot of people blame the government for our problems, but really, we are the government, so the blame is ours. We have to speak up, and the best way to do that is to engage the system directly. Don’t give the power of your voice over to anyone who isn’t elected. Go directly to your elected representatives, not to a political party.

Use your first amendment rights.”

That’s very similar to what I told him.

That’s very similar to what I truly believe, too. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s it in a nutshell.

Privately-Owned Corporate Media The media is another self-appointed proxy that takes our voice away. For (fourteen) years I’ve devoted myself to facilitating a newspaper that allows local people to utilize their freedom of the press. But most people simply don’t understand that, just as the political parties imitate our political system, the corporate media imitates our freedom of the press.

Really, freedom of the press belongs to the individual first. Some individuals who would take that right and leverage it to affect the public process in an artificial way, well, to hell with them. They aren’t representing you, or me, they are representing themselves - and no one else.

Like the political parties, the corporate media is privately-controlled.

They

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don’t answer to the government (by the people for the people) any more that the Democrat or Republican Parties answer to the public.

of our great republic. It’s the stealing of our humanity, to be used to affect the outcome in a way that specifically does not represent us, the People.

Sure, we have representatives that are supposed to proxy for the people, but they are elected. Elected. By the people, for the people. The media and the political parties are not elected. They’ve taken over the system, and it’s up to the individual to take it back.

Still, no matter, we have to consider that definition of civics that I shared with my son:

dialectical materialism noun a form of materialism, developed chiefly

by Karl Marx, noted especially for the application of the Hegelian dialectic in its philosophy of history. : the Marxist theory that maintains the material basis of a reality constantly changing in a dialectical process and the priority of matter over mind First Known Use of dialectical materialism 1898, in the meaning defined above Totalitarian philosophers see the average individual’s desire for objective truth as rooted in religious delusion. And they see the average individual as incapable of freedom - yet another foolish idea that they don’t believe in. Political leaders on the right and the left have commonly subscribed to this notion, that the average people are not capable of truth, and should therefore be kept in the dark as to the inner workings of realpolitik.

realpolitik

Privately-Controlled Special Interests Well, the lobbyists are a natural result of the media and the political parties that have run amok in our republic.

The lobbyists work for special interests, swaying the political parties and media employees, who are really nothing more than special interests themselves. The lobbyists believe that they are justified in their existence, too. They think that this is the only way to change the system. But they make that same mistake we all make, thinking that what they are engaged in is, in fact, the civic process. It is not.

[ rey-ahl-poh-li-teek ] noun political realism or practical politics, especially policy based on power rather than on ideals. : politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives, suggests a pragmatic view and a disregard for ethical considerations

The political parties and the corporate media have enacted war games into our process. We are pitted against each other, on two sides, constantly. But we are one nation, right? The war strategies of Sun Tzu have more in common with our modern political ethos than does our own system of self-governance.

I hope that as time progresses, people will become more disaffected from the private parties, the corporate media, and the paid lobbyists, and actually engage their own government in the way it was designed.

I have hope that if we simply teach our kids and remind ourselves of the great system we have, we will stop allowing imitations of that system to suck up all of our efforts.

What we have today is a bunch of private institutions - juridical persons - that imitate our system, and absorb all of our civic response. They capture the power of our voices, our human voices, and redirect that power in a way that their private interests are served. And we are told that this is the only way the system works, and that without them, we don’t stand a chance at being heard.

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

- Benjamin Franklin

And that is true... sort of.

“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” - Bob Dylan

It’s only true because they exist, because they do what they do. It’s circular logic.

It’s a pattern of abuse. It’s an undermining

A Peaceful Continuum

While it is true that truth cannot be fully attained (on this the Liberals and Totalitarians might agree), the Totalitarians see the inherent human desire for truth in order to achieve fairness as deluded.

However, the classic, Liberal philosophers, who put individual Liberty at the very center of their moral, social philosophy, saw the act of approaching truth as the only moral pursuit. They pushed back on the authoritarian tyranny of monarchs, while the Totalitarians leaned into it.

Our founding documents are philosophically Liberal documents, not to be confused with the common usage of the the word ‘liberal’ today, being nothing more than a tribal designation.

Our founding documents describe and prescribe, simultaneously, the moral and political worldview of Liberalism. The individual, being free, is free to pursue truth, and expect that our systems of justice and governance be predicated upon that same noble cause. Any failures of that system have been departures from the same.

By Joshua Fryfogle

Written on May 14, 2020 Those who don’t accomplish much and some of those who do Think their only turn of luck is to somehow turn the screw On some undeserving schmuck So they too should pay their dues And learn to not accomplish much But somehow think they do Bitter unrequited will, undone by their desires Stop to taste the berries but get caught up in the briars Too much too soon can burn the ground Like too much fertilizer And when there is no fruit to bear These are none the wiser: Those who do not plant the ground or plan around the seasons Will always come up short except for being long on reasons As to why their ground is dry No hive to keep the bees in...

Who’s around to till the ground But he who puts the seed in?

These days, whether right or left, our elected politicians have become completely comfortable with the assumption that they’ve been elected to be in power. They do not see themselves as servants, but as prestigious and pragmatic rulers. They believe that the vote is a concession of the People to that power, and they recite their oaths to uphold the constitution without any semblance of contemplation or understanding.

The quickest path from a to b is always a straight line And if you want to plow a row you must learn to set your eyes On the other side, something distant As your guide Yet all that you’ve accomplished Was only moving towards the prize

And we, the People, have come to expect as much.

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.” - Oscar Wilde

Some who don’t accomplish much and also those who do Both find out that all their doubts can turn out to be true Still the ones who do much more But know before they do Are less let down, into the ground When their days are through

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” - Socrates

or Re·al·po·li·tik

Many people will say that they don’t get involved in politics. They don’t like to discuss politics. However, civics is not politics. Civics is the responsibility of every individual. It is not really optional, if you have any sense of patriotism or responsibility for the future.

And finally, the lobbyists...

APPROACHING TRUTH CONTINUED society - exactly the goal of Totalitarian thought. Each time anyone attempts to force their own will, without regard for the will of the People, and without care for actual, observable reality, we prove the Totalitarians right. We prove that the search for truth is a fool’s errand, and that reality is whatever the powerful people tell us it is. We see this dynamic arise especially among political parties, where team players argue for the party line without ever questioning the party line. That is institutionalized dialectical materialism, disrupting our Constitutional Republican form of government, displacing the foundation a philosophical Liberalism.

“the study of the rights and duties of citizenship.”

“I am aware that a philosopher’s ideas are not subject to the judgement of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.” - Nicolaus Copernicus “Who are the true philosophers? Those whose passion is to love the truth.”

- Plato

You can respond to what you’ve read, or write what matters to you.

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Liberty, Liberally

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From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle