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In the land of Calambria, southeast of Parygodia, a giantess named Cholumga lived in a wide green valley in the mountains. She was as old as the earth, and as far as she could recall, she had always lived alone. Her only companions were the grass and the trees and the small wild creatures that flourished in the valley without disturbing her in any way.

Cholumga was ten times taller than the tallest tree, with eyes as luminous green as sunlight through summer leaves, and hair as red as tongues of fire dancing in the breeze. Everywhere she went, life flourished; the grass grew greener and bright flowers bloomed, and she was as carefree as the white puffs of cloud afloat in the deep blue sky.

Everything Cholumga did, she did on a grand scale. She ate whole forests and drank rivers dry, but new forests and new rivers sprang up in her wake. She roamed all through the mountains, taking pleasure in everything that she saw, and laughing so loudly that the white peaks laughed along with her. Sometimes she would just sit and watch an acorn grow into a giant oak, serenading it all the while, for her days were longer than other creature’s lives, and to her the span of time from their first to their last breath was but a fleeting moment. But her long days took their toll, and when she grew tired, she grew very tired indeed. Whenever she laid herself down to rest, she would sleep for hundreds of years.

Her bed was at one end of the valley, where she could place her head in a dark, cool cave so as to be undisturbed by the impatient sun, which rose and set to a rhythm no giantess could bear. She would pull back the green mantle of the earth and lay herself down on the smooth stone beneath, drawing the blanket of sod back over her body to stay warm and safe throughout her long night.

Once, not long after she had gone to bed, some of the little people who lived far away in Parygodia began to wander into her valley in search of land, for they had grown too numerous for their own country to support them all. The first adventurers who came over the mountain pass and gazed upon Cholumga’s lush green home rejoiced at what they saw, for they beheld a country that was rich and fertile and would provide many people with abundant food. So these first settlers came down into the valley to build their homes, without knowing that a giantess slept beneath the blanket of the land, and a bustling little village sprouted from the earth right on top of Cholumga’s belly. Fields were tilled and crops grew and sheep grazed and the people prospered. Word reached Parygodia of the rich green land nestled high among the mountain peaks, and more people came, and many children were born and thrived in the colony, and new villages spread throughout Cholumga’s valley and beyond, and a civilization sprang up while Cholumga slept.

It was a rich civilization, for even while she slept Cholumga enriched the land in every way. The crops and livestock grew so eagerly that little work was required, and many people found time to pursue other crafts and to ponder the wonders of their world. Thus they developed new skills and new arts and an ever greater ability to transform the world around them in ways which gave them pleasure and gratified their pride. Villages became cities and paths became roads, and huge monuments of stone rose on every horizon. And people practiced the art of magic, which flourished in Cholumga’s valley as it had never flourished before.

The people established an order of wizards, who were revered above all others, and whose only occupation was to ponder the mysteries of nature and to master its myriad forces. Cholumga’s breath was as fertile for the imagination as it was for maize, and so the wizards came to manipulate the elements in profound new ways. They learned to create illusions with the power of their mind, so that others would see what they chose for them to see rather than what was truly before their eyes. And they learned to cleave matter by a mere force of will, to rend it and mend it as they saw fit. And so wizards were in high demand, the favorites of princes and the true leaders of this brave new world spilling forth from Cholumga’s lush green valley.

And all this happened while Cholumga slept. The people did not know that a giant slept beneath the blanket of the land, though they might have guessed had they not become so self-absorbed. For sometimes Cholumga snored, and they could hear the rumbling of her breath rolling forth from the cave at the end of the valley, and could see its dark mist filling the once clear sky. And though Cholumga usually slept very peacefully, sometimes she would become restless and turn in her sleep, and when she did so, the world would heave and the people and their buildings would be tossed about. But the wizards said that these sounds and sights and upheavals of the earth were omens from the gods, not the indifferent breaths and restless movements of a sleeping giant, for by doing so the wizards could more easily control the people, who were eager to please and appease the heavenly powers, and so to obey the wizards who alone could fathom their will. The wizards felt wise in this deception, though they themselves did not know the truth, for through it they were able to align the disparate wills of the many people as though they were one, and thus to make their civilization ever stronger and ever more formidable, and the people ever richer, especially the richest among them, the wizards themselves. And this progress was the only truth that the wizards allowed.

And so the people called Cholumga’s valley their own, and carefully surveyed its length and breadth so as better to exploit its riches. Had they ever stumbled upon the cave where Cholumga rested her head, they would have in their fear killed her while she slept, unwittingly destroying their own magic and glory along with her. But the blanket of the land was pulled so close to the upper lip of the cave that only a narrow crack was left, and this they never found. However, not far away, at the base of a mountain rising from the boundaries of Cholumga’s valley, a team of explorers discovered another cave whose yawning mouth beckoned them to enter. And as they delved ever deeper, and the cavern opened ever wider, they felt Cholumga’s hot breath growing ever thicker upon them, for hidden passages linked these caves to the one where she rested her head. They did not know what this warm wind was, but their minds reeled from its potency, and they knew they had found a sacred place. So they returned to the capitol sprawled across Cholumga’s belly to tell the Council of Wizards of their discovery.

The Prime Mage and his ministers themselves went to see this hollow mountain wherein a hot wind which made men’s minds spin blew, and as they entered they could feel the magic of Cholumga’s breath upon them. They continued on, choosing from among the forking passageways, until one finally opened onto a huge chamber in the very center of the mountain, a chamber larger across than their largest city, and more than ten times taller than the tallest of trees. Here Cholumga’s hot, dark breath swirled like a storm captured in a crucible, and its power filled the wizards’ veins with a throbbing excitement such as they had never before known. They threw back their heads and spread open their arms, letting the fertile wind blow through them, letting its power become their own. They felt they had found the very source of the earth’s magic, and now could tap it as never before, and become the gods themselves.

But just then Cholumga’s long night ended. Whether it was that she had felt the presence of intruders too close to her lair, or simply that it was time to arise, she began to stir in her bed beneath the blanket of the land. Slowly she roused herself, her body stretching and flexing in anticipation of another ages-long carefree day. And so the earth heaved, as it sometimes did, and the people ran in all directions, like a colony of ants stirred by a stick. But then panic turned into a terror beyond anything they had known before when they saw in the direction of the cave what appeared at first glance to be an explosion of fire leaping into the sky, but resolved itself, as Cholumga’s flaming locks fell away from her face, into the enormous head of a waking giant! Looming above them like the resurrected wrath of the earth itself, Cholumga sat up in her bed, rising swiftly from prone to upright in a matter of mere hours. And even as the earth was lifted up with her, and fell away in folds upon itself, crushing the capitol and hurling the tiny people and their tiny monuments through the air, the onlookers from all through the valley were frozen in awe. As Cholumga came to her senses, her eyes clearing of their dreamy clouds, some among the people came to their senses as well, and ran in search of places to hide. But many cowered where they stood, and awaited certain doom.

For as Cholumga awoke and gazed upon the world around her, she saw that her sweet, clean home had been infested by a horde of tiny pests while she slept, and that the green carpet of the land that stretched to every mountain wall had been marred by their destructive industry. A large patch on the blanket on her bed had been stripped bare, and horrible barren growths were spreading throughout her once pristine abode. Cholumga grew enraged at this intrusion upon her home, and her shining green eyes turned a fiery red as she let out a scream which shook the mountains to their very roots. Then she cast her burning gaze upon any of the parasites she could see, and upon their towns and their fields, and such was the power of her rage that all upon which she glanced burst into flames. Standing up to her full height, her terrible beauty towering over the valley that was her home, she went on a rampage of frenzied anger, seeking out all the damage that these little bugs had done. Most of the people themselves, being so small, were able to hide, though those that hid in the towns chose poorly. For Cholumga ran about the valley incinerating all the towns and fields with her furious glare. And when she had finished, and had cleansed the valley of its infestation, she went running off over one of the mountain passes to weed out this blight upon her land.

And all this time the Council of Wizards were safe within the hollow mountain. They felt the earth shake and heard Cholumga roar, but knew not what manner of disaster had struck their realm. When they ventured out from the cave and looked across the valley, they saw it in ruins, the towns and cities burnt to the ground, the monuments crushed beneath the giant’s angry strides. People, confused and disoriented, were emerging from their hiding places, and wandering helplessly through the rubble of their once great civilization. The wizards ran to the nearest cluster of such folk and asked what had happened, and when all was told the wizards gave commands and set about spreading word throughout the valley that all survivors should come to the hollow mountain, that there they would regroup and find a way to reclaim their land.

And so the refugees staggered in haggard rivulets in the direction that the messengers had pointed out to them, bringing what stores and livestock they could, and trickled into the cave, gathering together in the great chamber in the center of the hollow mountain. And the wizards stood on a ledge above them all, and looked calm and shouted firm but reassuring slogans rich in the magic which controls men’s minds, and the crowd became subdued gladly awaiting guidance from those upon whom they depended.

At last the flow of refugees came to a halt, and all who had lived in the valley and had survived Cholumga’s first assault stood shoulder to shoulder in this great chamber in the mountain’s heart. The wizards had firm control over their minds, for though Cholumga had left the valley her breath long lingered in these caves, and its magic remained strong. So the people possessed a defiant calm and confidence in the face of this immeasurable holocaust which had befallen them, and listened eagerly to the plan the wizards had devised.

Relying on the horrible hope that Cholumga would be long occupied with the eradication of distant villages and cities, and shored up by the courage the wizards had instilled, teams of workers set out to build a trail of mock villages leading from the pass over which Cholumga had fled the valley to the face of the hollow mountain. When this work was done, all the wizards of the land gathered at the foot of the hollow mountain and cast a concerted spell upon it, such that the thick wall of stone facing the valley fractured along a latticework of cracks but did not fall. Then they moved all the people to distant caves, and told them to wait until word came that it was safe to emerge again.

And then the wizards held their long vigil, neither resting nor taking their eyes off the distant pass over which they knew Cholumga must return. Days and weeks passed, but the wizards stood their watch, until one day they felt the earth tremble, and saw the flaming red hair of the giant rising into the pass. Then, before her head was high enough that she might gaze down into the valley, they joined their forces again and cast another spell, this time creating an illusion before the hollow mountain that there was no mountain there, and that the valley, speckled with the haphazard scattering of villages, sprawled on.

Soon Cholumga’s head stood framed between two mountain peaks, and her anger, which had cooled somewhat in the course of her morning, flared again, for she saw that new sores had sprouted upon the land where she thought she had obliterated them all. Ferociously fuming she strode down into the valley and frantically set about to annihilate the growths that had sprung up in her absence. And so blind with rage was she that she did not notice that they formed a trail, nor that the valley with which she was so familiar was now longer at one end than it had ever been before. No, addled by her own fury she did not see through the wizards’ ruse, and with the full force of her forward stride she crashed into the unseen mountainside. The weakened face fell apart, huge boulders flying in all directions, as Cholumga, stunned and thrown off balance, stumbled into the great cavern within. Before she could turn around and escape, the wizards summoned all their strength, and sent the flying boulders back along their very same arcs, fusing them together again and sealing Cholumga inside the hollow mountain.

Cholumga pounded on the walls from inside her stony cage, but the walls held and she could not escape. She let loose with all of her terrible wrath, shooting fire from her eyes and dark smoke from her nose, but it could not break through the wall of thick rock. Instead it swirled upward and expelled the single boulder with which the wizards had corked the mountaintop, sending burnt rock and fire and black smoke high into the air. But she could not lift herself up through the opening she had made. For countless years she tried unceasingly to escape, pounding relentlessly on the mountainside, spitting fire and smoke through its shattered peak. But it was to no avail. Cholumga was trapped inside the hollow mountain.

So the people rebuilt the civilization on the land that had been her home, and benefitted from her magic even while she stood captured by it. But every now and then Cholumga awoke within her mountain prison, and her heart and soul flared with a giant’s just rage, and she would shake the earth and set the darkened sky ablaze, spitting such fire that it would pour across the land, and the people would tremble, for they knew that Cholumga would one day be free again.

(See also Prelude to “A Conspiracy of Wizards”, The Wizards’ Eye, “Flesh Around A Whim”, The Cloud Gardener, The History of the Writing of “A Conspiracy of Wizards” and About “A Conspiracy of Wizards”.)

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Extreme Individualism was dead. Even Economics, the most individualistic of Social Sciences, knew that it was dead. But Abandoner Screwage didn’t. (“Abandoner´s” real name was “Abner,” a Tea Partier who attended Sarah Palin rallies in a Medicare-supplied “Hoverround,” along with hundreds of others similarly equipped, like a confused geriatric biker gang).

Abandoner saw the ghost of Extreme Individualism everywhere, as if it were alive and well. He saw it in a century-old non-empirical Austrian economic philosophy and in a century-old poorly written and conceived novel expressing an adolescent superiority complex. He saw it in his caricature of the American Constitution, and in fabricated economic principles that no living economist actually adhered to. He saw it in his door knocker, heard it ringing all his bells (like a drunken hunchback defecting from another novel of the same era), filling his dreams with the slack-jawed stupidity of blind fanaticism.

But Abandoner didn’t realize that Extreme Individualism itself knew that it was dead, and that it wanted Abandoner to know it as well. For the Ghost of Extreme Individualism was ashamed of itself, and longed only for peaceful oblivion.

Extreme Individualism’s Ghost clanked its chains in Abandoner’s 3000 square feet of well-apportioned and larded living space that Abandoner knew he deserved by being born into an affluent family (or by being fortunate in other ways, but never primarily by the mythological “merit” with which he always rationalized the inequitable distribution of wealth and opportunity as inherently just, in much the same way that landed aristocracy had in centuries gone by). The Ghost passed through the door into Abandoner’s room, howling and rattling and moaning, and in general giving Abandoner that warm fuzzy feeling of being favored by a dead and discredited idea.

But the Ghost of Extreme Individualism was repentant, and introduced itself to Abandoner by declaring the error of its, and his, ways.

“Business!” the Ghost cried. “Mankind was my business! The common good was my business!” The Ghost looked out the window and saw the misery that it and its past adherents (now moaning specters floating through the air) had wrought, all tortured by their inability to work toward instituting the public policies that would help alleviate that suffering, the policies that they had all so rancorously opposed in life.

“You will be visited by three spirits,” Extreme Individualism’s Ghost told Abandoner. “The first will come when the clock strikes one. The second when the clock strikes two. And the third when the clock strikes three. Heed their lessons well, Abandoner!”

Abandoner fell asleep trembling at the thought that his beloved dead and discredited ideology had turned on him, and awoke at the stroke of one to find himself confronted by the Spirit of Reason and Goodwill Past. The spirit was simultaneously old and ageless, quiet and strong, unpresuming and relentlessly imposing. But it was filled with sorrow and regret, for it knew that ages of suffering that it had failed to prevent had cost so many so much.

“Touch my robe, Abandoner, and I will show you your predecessors in elitism and oppression, in indifference to the unjust suffering of others, in rationalized selfishness and implicit cruelty.” The spirit took Abandoner on a tour of human history, showing him how private property came into being and passed from hand to hand through military conquest and theft, how titles of “nobility” assumed by thugs and descendants of thugs sought to rationalize and justify that distribution of wealth, how the evolution of democracy and capitalism, though generally improvements on what had preceded them, still largely preserved the injustices of past distributions of wealth and opportunity, and how those who were left to suffer in poverty and despair were usually guilty primarily of “being born into the wrong womb,” as much in the present as in the past.

The spirit shamed Abandoner by showing him that even the thugs of the past were more convinced of their social responsibility than he was, the Roman and Medieval aristocrats who understood their “noblesse oblige” and paid for public works and public feasts and alms for the poor with their own money, not as a charitable whim to satisfy or not as they please, but as a sacred (quasi-legal) obligation that would have brought disgrace upon them to fail to fulfill.

The Spirit of Reason and Goodwill Past showed Abandoner the American Revolution, on which Abandoner based so much of his self-justification. The spirit showed both the ways in which that revolution served to defend the current and potential wealth and power of its mostly landed aristocratic perpetrators against the British attempts to protect the Indians of the newly acquired Ohio Valley, the captive African population, the Scotch-Irish rural poor (who sided with the crown), and the French Catholics of newly acquired Canada from the avarice of the colonial coastal landed gentry; and the ways in which its underlying ideals were far more committed to the common welfare and the ideal of equality (as well as a commitment to continuing political progress rather than enshrinement of that moment in history) than Abandoner’s self-serving parody of those ideals recognized.

The spirit showed Abandoner the struggles for justice and equality that followed, struggles often opposed by oppressors using precisely the same language and ideas as Abandoner himself; the struggle for abolition of slavery, which Southern slave owners ironically decried as an attack on their liberties; the struggles to respect the rights of the indigenous population, to secure for women the right to vote, to overcome the legacies of history which deprived some of rights and the most basic of freedoms in the name of service to the “liberty” of others.

Abandoner watched the slaughter of innocent indigenous women and children in the name of “liberty” but in service only to the theft of their land. He saw slaves whipped, husbands separated from wives and mothers from their small children in sales designed to increase the master’s wealth, all in the name of “liberty” (as argued, for instance, by John C. Calhoun in his tome Union and Liberty, using language and arguments identical to those used by Abandoner today). He watched the denial of real, lived, shared liberty in the name of his false, greedy, oppressive and destructive mockery of the word. And he couldn’t help but be moved, for his self-serving ignorance and avarice could not withstand the onslaught of reality presented by this Spirit of Reason and Goodwill Past, a spirit who showed the blaring absence of all that it stood for, a surging sea of ignorance and malice rationalized by the convenient idols of petty and shrivelled souls.

Abandoner awoke again in his own room at the stroke of two to find a bright light seeping through the cracks in his firmly closed door. He opened the door to find the robust and hearty Spirit of Reason and Goodwill Present sitting on a raised chair surrounded by bounty, raucous laughter on his face and on his lips.

“Come in, Abandoner!” the spirit bellowed with resonant good humor. “Come in, and partake of our shared feast! Plenty flows from my horn when more are more disposed to share with others, and even deprivations are borne more lightly when borne together!”

The spirit showed Abandoner the rest of the developed world, less diseased by Abandoner’s miserable and miserly ideology than America. In these countries that share many of the same values and ideals, but have been spared the misfortune of enshrining them and thus reducing them to parodies of themselves, poverty has been virtually eradicated, there is less violence and more personal security, health care is universal and less expensive to provide and health outcomes are better by almost every single statistical measure (including public satisfaction), self-reported happiness is higher, and there is greater rather than lesser ability to prosper by virtue of one’s own efforts.

“The folly of condemning THAT, while embracing THIS…,” cried the spirit, showing Abandoner his own hyper-individualistic society, the one that Abandoner himself had helped to shackle with the rotting corpse of Extreme Individualism, with higher rates of poverty and all the social ills that accompany it: Higher infant mortality rates, poorer health, less happiness, poorer educational performance, more violence, more suffering. “This is what you are fighting to enshrine as the perfection of human genius! Clinging to a fictionalized past to impose greater suffering and less joy on a population ridiculed and pitied by all others of comparable economic power! Shame on you, you shrivelled little excuse for humanity! That poor child you’ve abandoned to your false idols is worth more in the eyes of God than all you self-satisfied misanthropes combined, who claim that the suffering of others is no concern of yours!”

The spirit showed Abandoner the other America, the one which Abandoner did not define, filled with many who accepted salaries far lower than they were capable of earning in order to do good works for others’ benefit, the teachers with advanced degrees, the public interest lawyers earning a fraction of what their peers in private firms did, the workers in non-profits and social services struggling to stem the tide of social indifference that Abandoner, with his every word and breath, struggled to preserve and perpetuate.

“Join them, you petty little parasite!” intoned the spirit. “Join them in the shared feast which you choose instead to horde and call your own!”

Abandoner saw joy; joy in the faces of a teacher who inspired a child to learn rather than despair, to aspire rather than prey on others; of the social worker who helped another child find safety and love; of those who fought to govern themselves with compassion and empathy for one another rather than with individual avarice and mutual indifference; of those who were blessed by the Spirit of Reason and Goodwill and appalled by the specter of Extreme Individualism which so smugly and callously opposed it.

Abandoner couldn’t help but feel their joy, the celebration of humanity’s shared existence, the knowledge of belonging to something larger than himself and lovingly shared rather than being the covetous hoarder of something smaller and jealously guarded. He fell asleep with that joy dancing in his heart, truly light-spirited for the first time for as long as he could recall. He fell asleep knowing what it means to thrive, something that requires generosity of spirit, something that is the fount of true liberty.

He awoke at the stroke of three to see the Spirit of Reason and Goodwill Yet to Come standing beside his bed, a lithe form and beatific face, but human rather than ethereal; a mild satisfied glow in its eyes and a slight knowing smile on its lips, unburdened wisdom and contentment dancing across its features and flowing through its every movement and gesture. It was filled with passion but not anger, knowledge but not arrogance, reason but not certainty, imagination but not superstition, humility but not fear. It was what Abandoner would have dreamt of being, were Abandoner wise enough to understand the meaning of human potential.

The spirit stood before Abandoner saying nothing, piercing him with its gaze. Abandoner felt profoundly naked, trasparent, revealed. He felt foolish and small, which, of course, was precisely what he was.

“Are you the Spirit of Reason and Goodwill Yet to Come, whose appearance was foretold to me?” Abandoner asked, having wanted to invoke his customary bombast, but finding himself unable to, knowing now what a farce it had always been and would always be.

The spirit didn’t move, didn’t answer, didn’t even nod, but its smile seemed just a bit more intent, and its eyes to sparkle just a bit more brightly.

As Abandoner gazed into that face, he saw a future he had been unable to imagine, a future in which liberty and mutual responsibility were inseparable ideals, in which the interdependence of all was understood and acknowledged, in which freedom was heightened and enriched by transcending the shallow pretense that its exercise by each occurred in a vacuum, and recognizing instead that no one has the inalienable right to (for instance) contaminate another’s air and water any more than one has the inalienable right to put a bullet in another’s chest.

The spirit took Abandoner on a tour of a future devoid of both ostentatious wealth and abject poverty, a world of mutual care and support, a world not cleansed of human foibles but rather adapted to them. People lived to celebrate life, to discover and expand and enjoy and assist others in doing the same. Their work was both more productive and more satisfying for the value and respect that others gave it. Entertainments were edifying and enriching rather than mindless distractions that sapped the soul. Robust and knowledgeable discussions were commonplace, sometimes heated debates, but almost always reverberating with reason and imagination and goodwill. There was greater joy, greater health, greater mental health, less suffering, less abuse, less neglect, less violence, more freedom –real freedom, the freedom born of nurtured human consciousness.

But then the spirit showed Abandoner a different future, or perhaps the inevitable road to the one he had just shown, a road whose length would be longer or shorter depending on the choices of those who comprise it. Abandoner saw all the Tiny Tims that would die because of his callous insistence that denying health care to those who can’t afford it is a requisite of “liberty.” Abandoner saw all of the violence and suffering and heartbreak that could have been prevented, that had been prevented to a far greater degree in places less in the thrall of his shallow and life-denying ideology. He saw that it was real, that the tormented howls of a parent who lost a child to violence that could have been prevented, to a disease that could have been cured, to abuse or neglect by another that a society that placed greater value on empathy would have avoided by investing in its avoidance, were all real, and he  knew that each and every instance was a crime against humanity, a crime for which Abandoner and all like him shared a portion of the guilt.

The spirit led Abandoner to a large book on a book stand, like a relic of a previous age. Abandoner’s trembling fingers reached out to trace the embossed letters that formed the title on its cover: “Humanity.”

The book suddenly flipped open, pages fluttering by as Abandoner recoiled in fear. Then the flurry ended and the book lay open, the spirit glancing suggestively at the revealed page.

Abandoner, quaking with fear, leaned over the book and read history’s judgment of the movement to which he belonged. He read how he and his kind would be as disdained by future generations as all others of similar disposition had been before, for just as those before had hidden behind distorted ideals, it was not “liberty” for which these shallow and selfish people were really fighting, but rather injustice and inequality.

History has always condemned the brutal, self-serving disregard for the welfare of others that litters its pages, and it condemned Abandoner. He was just another foolish adherent in another chapter of the long and tragic tale of Man’s Inhumanity To Man, and the false idols he gloriously cloaked himself in were just another swastika, another sickle-and-hammer, another white hood, another brown shirt, another tool of another Inquisition, another blind faith denouncing heretics while obstructing the less stagnant and reducible truths of Reason and Goodwill. He had wasted his life as just another dupe of ignorance and belligerence, and if he were remembered at all, that’s all he would ever be remembered for.

“Spirit!” cried Abandoner. “Are these the shadows of things that must be, or can I, if I change my ways, change what is written in that book?!”

The spirit looked into Abandoner’s eyes, and spoke for the first and last time. “What do you think Freedom really means?”

Abandoner awoke on Christmas morning, a white blanket of snow covering the Earth, and a weight lifted from his heart. He felt free, freer than he had ever felt before, free of a pettiness that had imprisoned him more securely than bars or chains ever could, free to work for the common good, free to be a part of something bigger than himself. He knew that individual generosity was a part of it, something that was as important as any other part, that he had to help others of all ideologies to understand that. But he knew also that it isn’t enough to express that generosity just as a bunch of atomized individuals, that it must also be expressed as a part of our shared existence, that we also each have a responsibility to work with all others so inclined, and to try to convince all others to become so inclined, to reach down into the systems that order our lives and refine them to better express that generosity of spirit that he had been shown by the three spirits who embodied it, not in defiance of individual liberty, but in the ultimate and most meaningful service to it.

Abandoner abandoned his old way of thinking, and gave his name new meaning, for he abandoned ignorance and belligerence; he abandoned extreme individualism; he abandoned fixed and inflexible, rigid and unsubtle ideas that do more to shackle otherwise free men and women than any other agent of oppression; he abandoned the struggle to impose injustice and suffering on the world, and joined instead the struggle to liberate ourselves from the constraints we have imposed on ourselves, together.

And he was forever loved and respected for having done so.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

(For more precise, analytical discussions of the logical and empirical errors of extreme Libertarian/Tea Party ideology, see the other essays in the fourth box at Catalogue of Selected Posts: “Political Fundamentalism”, “Constitutional Idolatry”, Liberty Idolatry, Small Government Idolatry, The Tea Party’s Mistaken Historical Analogy, The True Complexity of Property Rights, Liberty & Interdependence, Real Fiscal Conservativism, Social Institutional Luddites, The Inherent Contradiction of Extreme Individualism, Liberty & Society, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” American Political Edition (Parts I-V), An Open Letter To The American Far-RightA Frustrated Rant On A Right-Wing Facebook Thread, The Catastrophic Marriage of Extreme Individualism and Ultra-Nationalism, Dialogue With A Libertarian, More Dialogue With Libertarians, Yet Another Conversation With Libertarians, Response to a Right-Wing Myth, and The History of American Libertarianism. For an alternative vision, based on the realities of the complex dynamical systems of which we are a part and how we can most wisely and effectively articulate our own individual and collective aspirations within those systems, see the essays in the second box at Catalogue of Selected Posts. For some insight into the nature of those complex dynamical systems and our place in them, see the essays in the first box at  Catalogue of Selected Posts.)

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(See “It’s a Wonderful Life,” American Political Edition (Parts I-V) for all five parts combined and revised)

(Opening scene: Angels, represented by twinkling stars, are talking about a troubled soul on Earth. They review this soul’s life, and the circumstances that led to its present difficulties….)

It was conceived with great hopes in a simpler time, by a variety of generous parents, and a few original sins. England (via the British Empire), in which modern democracy developed; The Enlightenment, characterized by a fluorescence of rationalistic philosophy; a wide-open new land, with an easily displaced indigenous population; abundant imported and bred slave labor. It developed a grandiose vision for itself, one comprised of the somewhat incompatible “manifest destiny” and protection of liberty, and a faith in its own exceptionalism.

But, as often happens, life presented unforeseen challenges which diverted this soul, the sovereign American People, from its youthful dreams. It gradually was forced to confront its original sins, brutally divided by one of them. Innovations complicated the landscape in which its dreams had been formed. It had to cope with a world comprised of other people with interests of their own, people less convinced of the benevolence of this popular sovereignty than that populace itself was.

But despite this diversion from its original dreams, it was the same soul, peforming many good deeds, born of pragmatism rather than idealism, that were not part of the original plan. It grew to address a changing world, doing what needed to be done to increase the welfare of those who depended on it. It intervened in the home of its parents when brutality racked the latter’s fields and towns, and then watched those parents, unencumbered by youthful dreams, combine the best fruits of their child’s aspirations with the reduced purism that comes from maturity.

But something in the people clung to the purity of youthful dreams, sulking with resistance to adulthood’s demands, an error that sometimes characterizes youth. Just at the point when both the people and their government were on the verge of following the mature wisdom of moderation and adaptation, the dreamer within, childish and narcissistic rather than noble and generous, rebelled, and rent this soul in an internal conflict over whether mature moderation would prevail, or childish purism.

The childish purism rebelled in a moment of crisis, and a large faction of the people said, “Government is not the solution, it’s the problem! The world would be better off without this government we’ve allowed to grow and grow, displacing the purity we had believed in and tried to implement in our youth! We would be better off if we had not allowed the lessons of life to adapt those youthful dreams to the demands of reality!”

And so this soul’s guardian angel decided to show it what the world would have been like without that modern government it now wished dead….

(Continued in “Wonderful Life,” Part II)

The World At Dark

In the world at dark

The sky is lit with Time’s glow,

Each star a spark

In so long a moment

That there seems no start,

No end, no movement

That my eyes can know…,

But how much farther my mind can go!

To what avail? For what goal?

To lose myself and free my soul.

For I am nothing

And i am all.

 

The Crystal Ball

I saw a shadow

Drift across mountains,

A cloud afloat

In the beckoning sky;

The world, she danced,

Like sparkling clear fountains,

For all is as crystal

As time passes by.

I dreamt of an island

Where cascades are falling,

Where flowers are blooming

And nothing need try;

Surrounded by ocean,

Eternal waves calling,

My castaway spirit

Is free now to fly.

The sun gazes warmly

Upon the lush world,

Embracing Her gently

With patience and pride;

Life dances on,

Its wonders unfurl,

But all becomes crystal

Once Time has passed by.

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