Jack Heald

The world that boys inhabit is utterly unlike the one adults live in, especially the adults of the species “Mother”. I used to be a ten year old boy so I know this; my mother – thank my lucky stars – was never a boy of any age. Of course, her lack of experience in “being a boy” likely explains why she so completely failed to comprehend the sheer brilliance her oldest son displayed almost daily.

Among my most brilliant creations was a game that – for lack of a more poetic name – I shall call “Run Into The Other Guy As Hard As You Can”. Let’s just call it RITOGAHAYC.

The rules of  RITOGAHAYC were fairly complex, so pay attention:

Four of us neighborhood Einsteins would gather in my front yard. Each of us would go to separate corners of the yard, and – at a signal – run towards the middle of the yard as fast as we could. The only purpose and goal of the game was to run into one another at great speed. We would play this game for hours on end, day after day.

We were very good at this game.

I got so good at the game that I bruised my humerus. And no, that is not funny. The humerus is the bone of the upper arm and a bone bruise can have dire consequences. MD-Health.com has quite a bit to say about a bone bruise; it’s pretty icky.

RightDiagnosis.Com lists the possible causes of a bruised humerus as:

• Blunt injury
• Fall on outstretched hand
• Mechanical trauma

Yeah. Probably all three. Over and over and over again.

Can you imagine how brain dead a boy would have to be to inflict “blunt injury” and “mechanical trauma” upon himself? Intentionally? For fun?

–====–

At the end of the block I lived on, just across the cross-street, was a big mulberry tree. Mulberry trees are awesome trees if you are a ten year old boy, because they beg to be climbed. Boys will attempt to climb anything, climbable or not, simply because it is there. (This is why – once they become men – boys climb mountains.) But when the tree is imminently climbable and – better – when the branches of said tree  are heavy with the delicious, juicy, purple fruit of the mulberry, a mother must know that when her ten year old boy comes home from school during the springtime ripening of the mulberries, that boy is going to be a little later than normal, his belly will be full and his face and clothes will be purple, regardless of what color they may have been when you sent him off to school that morning.

Boys don’t think about climbing the mulberry tree in the morning on the way to school. I don’t know why. (Actually, boys don’t think at all. Thinking doesn’t develop until puberty and generally involves trying to figure out how to get a girl’s blouse unbuttoned.) But when they are on the home stretch during the return from school, the mulberry tree and fruit calls them. If the boy in question had thought in the morning that he might climb the mulberry tree in the afternoon, and if he imagined that he might pick some mulberries to bring home to mom, then he might have the foresight to equip himself with a small bucket, or even a plastic or paper bag to drop those luscious berries into so he could bring them home to mom.

But ten year old boys are barely sentient. They are mostly bone and nerve endings. Foresight is a skill that is simply beyond them. And it is for this reason – lack of forethought I mean – that the urge to bring some mulberries home to mom generally didn’t strike until I was sitting in the tree, face stuffed with mulberries and completely lacking anything resembling a bucket or a bag. But I had a shirt, and a shirt could be turned into a bag of sorts, right?

Mulberry stains are likely the reason Tide got so popular.

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike through Bluestem Park on the way to school. A creek ran through the park, and in the springtime the crawdads would be thick in the creek. We’d stop our bikes on the way home from school, dink around in the creek and catch crawdads. I brought home – and let die – hundreds of crawdads over the years. Too bad my mom didn’t know how to cook ‘em.  

It was maybe four blocks to school from my house, but of course it felt a lot longer to a kid. The last block before I got to school was  a pretty normal-looking Dick-and-Jane sort of neighborhood. Nice, modest, middle class homes. Green lawns. Big trees. I normally rode my bike to and from school down that block. But there was a slightly faster way to the school from my house: Dog Alley. Back behind the houses on the east side of that street was an alley where rabid, ravenous, howling dogs inhabited every yard. It was a terrifying place to be, and only the bravest of the brave, (or the most foolhardy – like me), would dare to venture down Dog Alley.

As a 1st, 2nd or 3rd grader, you avoided Dog Alley even though it was a shortcut. But by the time you hit 4th grade, a boy became aware that the gauntlet of Dog Alley loomed in his future. Those who had made the trip and lived to tell about it could boast of their own adventure and courage and rest secure in their place in that special group. (…he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother…) Those of us who knew we must eventually prove ourselves shrank to the back of the crowd whenever a challenge to go down Dog Alley was issued by one those happy few who had already survived it.

The imagination of a child is a weird and wonderful thing.  I imagined the journey down Dog Alley to be slightly  more terrifying than a trip through Dante’s Seventh Level of Hell. Of course, looking back on it with adult eyes, it was just an alley with some dogs in the backyards. But children have a tremendous ability to construct fantasy worlds at once more wonderful and more terrifying than the mundane and predictable world we adults inhabit. I’m certain my friends’ wildly exaggerated accounts of the terrors contained therein also contributed to the image of Dog Alley that loomed in my mind.

Sometime in 4th grade, I knew the time had come to prove myself. I must brave the terrors of Dog Alley. At school, I announced – with way more confidence than I actually felt – that I would be running Dog Alley after school. The word spread; as always, there would be an audience to witness my attempt and probable bloody demise.

The final bell rang much too quickly. I retrieved my bike from the rack, and rode it slowly across the crosswalk to the head of Dog Alley. I laid my bike on the ground. One of the unwritten rules of Dog Alley was that you always made your first trip through it on foot, never on a bike. Once you were a Dog Alley veteran, bikes were allowed, but the first time through, you had to survive on wits and skill alone – no mechanical aids allowed. I peered to the  end of the alley, mentally calculating whether or not I was fast enough to make it out the other side at the end of the block before those horrible hounds snapped their chains, leapt their fences and tore me shreds.

My friends gathered around me on their bikes, ready to fly around the block and meet me – or what remained of me – at the other side.

Imagine the terrors a little boy can construct in his mind out of vague stories and a dozen barking hounds. Imagine the plucky courage that would drive this little boy out of the safety of his well-traveled and well-known paths, down into the gullet of the unknown. I think it may have been the bravest thing I ever did, because I don’t ever remember facing – let alone overcoming – that kind of fear since.

I ran the alley as fast as I could, and of course the sound of my passing drove the beasts to madness. Barking dogs create a feedback loop that gets louder and crazier the longer it goes on. They howled, they yelped, they whined, they barked and called for blood – my blood – the very blood pounding in my ears and racing through my chest. As I passed yard after yard, I was certain that any instant would be my last and that I would be pulled to the ground and torn limb from limb. But then…

…it was over. I emerged unscathed at the end of Dog Alley. My friends met me there, gave me the kind of reserved congratulations boys offer one another. For my part, I feigned indifference, as any boy who has just done something very brave must. I even half believed that what I had just done was No Big Deal.

But it was a very big deal.  The day I conquered my fears and conquered Dog Alley was one of the best days of my life.

From my journal: March 2, 2012

I think a lot about the difference between the way the world is and the way we humans think it should be. We all – mostly – agree about how it should be: people should treat others the way they want to be treated. But the reality is very different. And we all have expectations of one another that are not always right or fair or just. Sometimes the way we want people to treat us is as if we were the center of the universe, and that just won’t work. Or as if our needs are more important than theirs, and that just won’t work.

I lived a good bit of my life with the belief that everyone else’s needs were more important than mine, and the reality is that mine are just as important as yours. The truth is that to have a peaceful and fulfilling society, we need to help those who cannot help themselves, but we also need to help ourselves whenever and wherever we can. It’s a dynamic tension between doing for someone and letting them succeed or fail on their own. We cripple our children by doing too much for them as surely as we cripple them by doing too little.

After 6000 years of human history, you’d think that the “real” answer would have emerged by now; the one that will put an end to the problems that plague humanity. Christianity – the religion I was raised in – claims to have those answers, but it doesn’t. Islam claims it, Judaism claims it, atheism claims it – but the evidence says none of them have it. If the past is any indication, there is never going to be a golden age of humanity where the answers all become clear to us. We are going to go on and on, fighting, loving, losing, winning, living and dying until we extinguish ourselves or the sun goes supernova. Until that time, the best we can do is treat others the way we want to be treated, and to carry our own burdens if we are able.

Last week I wrote about my complaints against Faith. Now I take the other side. I have a few complaints against Athiesmm which is kinda “the Thing” in the crowds I run with.

“A Priestess” by John William Godward
Completed 1893

My frustration with religion in general and Xianity in particular has its locus in the fact that I find Reason to be dependable and the invisible god frankly undependable. I think it silly to believe in a god who allegedly gives me the gift of Reason and then chides me for making use of it.

But my complaint against Atheism is also rooted in Reason.

When you believe – as atheists do – that the universe is the accidental result of random forces then it is just silly to consider “Reason” to be dependable. You have no reason to believe that your Reason is anything more than the random collision of atoms inside your skull. Protesting that the existence of God violates your “rationality” is a prime example of sawing off the branch you are sitting on. Asserting that God cannot exist because it is irrational is like using logic to disprove the validity of logic. It’s nonsense.

Another common reason given by atheists against the existence of God is – again – the problem of evil. “If God is so powerful and loving”, they say, “why does he allow such evil?” While I certainly sympathize with this perspective, it is an irrational one. To declare something “evil”, you must have something else in mind to which you compare it – something that is “good”. But where did this idea of “good” come from? If the universe is nothing but a random accident in a chemical factory, then your idea of “good” is just molecules bumping in your head. This “goodness” you imagine does not exist outside your head. Just because lots of us have the same sort of “idea” doesn’t mean it exists anywhere outside of ourselves. (Unless, of course, you admit some sort of supra-human hive-mind or genetic memory into the equation, and that is something even less rational than believing in god.)

One final observation” many atheists – good people all – seem to share the belief that proper education is the key to solving society ills. “The reason we have all this trouble is because parents do a lousy job raising their kids and schools do a lousy job teaching them.”

This particular point of view holds that children are tabula rosa and the only reason they screw up is because of bad external influences. But this belief is crazy for a couple of reasons. First, if there is no external, objective standard of “good behavior” then a child who grows up to murder his parents and prostitute his sisters is no more “evil” or less “good” than a child who grows up to create a business that saves lives and employs thousands. Perhaps you and I prefer hospitals to concentration camps, but that is all it is – our preferences. Perhaps some other people prefer a drug-addled, crazed, murderous existence to a more benign alternative. Who am I – or you – to gainsay such preferences?

If the universe exists because of a chemical accident, then our ideas of “good” and “evil” have no objective existence outside our own heads. There can be no “good” and there can be no “evil” – there is only preferences. And it is silly to argue otherwise.

Secondly, in my experience, the people who hold this view seem to be - more often than not – childless themselves. Although this strange fact is neither proof for or against the existence of god, it is curious that people with the strongest opinions about the benefits of “proper” parenting and education are the people with the least experience at the job. Anyone who has actually raised children knows that they come into the world with their own pre-existing traits, many of which you as a parent have absolutely no control over whatsoever.

————–

One other thing – tangentially related but not precisely on subject: I think atheists who protest against the existence of God because “a good God wouldn’t allow such evil” actually demonstrate more faith in the kind of God the Xians proclaim than most Xian apologists do. These atheists respect the idea of “Good” so strongly, that they refuse to acknowledge anything like “God” could countenance the evil we see in our world. Frankly, I think that is pretty damn admirable.

————–

I was taught in Bible class that faith was a gift from God. That means, “if you have faith, it is because God gave it to you, not because you did something to create it in yourself.” Ergo, people of faith have faith because it was given to them; nor is it given to everyone.

I don’t have the gift of faith. Many of the people I love do.

People who do not have the gift of faith can either pretend we do, which would make us liars but accepted by those with the gift, or else we can be honest about lacking that gift and be reviled by the believers for our lack of faith. It’s a lousy choice. Why do those with the gift look down on those without? Is not their faith a gift from God?

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

One of my main complaints against Xianity is that it requires me to ignore the evidence of my senses. Paul in Romans says that nature clearly tells us about God, and I agree. My experience of nature confirms the existence of a Creator. Paul also  says that God’s nature is most clearly revealed to us in the man Jesus. That’s something I cannot experience directly. Instead, I must simply accept it and believe it. But without the gift of faith, how am I to believe it? I am forced to depend on what I can know using the only tools available to me: my mind, my intuition and my experience.

The guys who actually knew Jesus in the flesh – Matthew, Mark, John, Peter, Paul and the writer of Hebrews – wrote a good bit about him. How do I know that they wrote the truth?

I can’t.I have to trust that what is written in my New Testament is true. But the New Testament contains internal contradictions and makes claims that stretch credulity and defy experience. In other words, the New Testament gives every evidence of being the work of several men over a number of decades who might have engaged in some wishful fiction. Without the gift of faith, how can I overlook all these very real problems?

The problems go away if I treat the Bible as a magic book, delivered in toto and from the hand of God and flawlessly transcribed and transmitted by the hand of men. But to believe that, I have to ignore the evidence of my senses and my experience. I also have to accept without question an awful lot of flatly contradictory stuff in the Bible. The New Testament is more consistent than the Old, but it still has weird shit like James and Philemon and Paul’s apparent misogyny. (Oh, and the Revelation of St. John? Can anyone say “hallucinogenics”?)

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

Most branches of Xianity teach that all people are important to God. Let’s examine that belief against the evidence: Hmmm, according to history, terrible things happen to good people all the time and evil people get away with unspeakable evil all the time. This has been true for all of recorded history. If I treated the people I love the way God treats the people whom He allegedly loves, my loved ones would have every reason to question the truth of my love.  I see no way around this problem. (And yes, I realize “the problem of evil” is not a new issue.)

The only way to believe that  ”all people are important to God” is to push rewards and punishment out to some place and time where we cannot observe them. In other words: “No matter how sucky life is now, everything will be made right after death.” So again, we are forced to just take it on faith that – regardless of what our experience teaches us – God cares for us. That’s pretty hard to do without the gift of faith.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

If I were a Seriously Bad Guy with designs on getting and keeping power, I would create a religion for my subjects that promised them eternal happiness as long as they tolerated an unlimited amount of earthly mistreatment. Unsurprisingly, that describes most religions and is how Xianity in fact functions.

And if I were some poor shmuck who knew my life was never gonna get any better, and that the people in power who oppressed me were always gonna be in power and always gonna get away with everything, I would comfort myself with the belief that “they’d get theirs in the end” and perhaps that I might be rewarded for my “faith”. Again, this is a pretty accurate description of how most religions – Xianity in particular – actually works.

Good deal for the powerful. Sucky deal for the oppressed.

Frankly, that’s a lot easier to believe.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

But what if not all people are important? That would explain God’s lack of care, but would also shoot a big hole in most Xian doctrine.

If only some individuals are important, then the odds are that I am one of the unimportant people. Intellectual honesty requires me to admit that.

Maybe there are only a few people in the world who are truly “important” and everyone else is just filler – bit players in the giant drama called “Life”  - completely interchangeable and completely dispensable.

If that is true, then what the unimportant people do is also unimportant.

It is a dilemma, for either everyone is important, in which case God’s clear lack of care belies the doctrine that He is all loving, or else only a few are important, which belies the doctrine that what we do matters to Him.

(There is a third way: hard-core Calvinism, in which God is a dick. I reject that just because I’m not interested in worshiping a God who is a dick.)

The only other option I can see is to believe in something which is impossible to observe or verify: we get rewarded or punished after death. Which leads us back to the gift of faith, which I don’t have.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

One of the things James Altucher advocates as a means of becoming a better person is The Daily Practice: a discipline you impose on yourself to address 4 areas of life every single day: spiritual, physical, mental and emotional.

I know from experience how hard it is to change from a sedentary to an active lifestyle. I started many “get-in-shape” goals with grand plans only to see those plans crash on the rocks of reality and every day life. I wanted this time to be different. So I reviewed my list of “daily goals” and threw out anything that I didn’t know I could do every single day. It sounds great to commit to an hour or 30 minutes of exercise every day, but that is a radical lifestyle change. I knew I wouldn’t stick with it.

Something Altucher said about meditation resonated with me here. In addressing people’s questions about meditation, he told them, “if you can’t meditate for an hour, then do 30 minutes. If not 30 minutes, then do 15. If not 15, then 10. If not 10, then do five. Anyone can sit and be silent for five minutes.”

That did it. I knew I could do almost anything for five minutes a day. So I committed to myself that I would exercise for 5 minutes every day. I started this practice on December 28.

There’ve been many nights the last three weeks when I was ready for bed but hadn’t done my exercise. Now if my plan was to exercise 30 minutes every day, and I was ready for bed, it would be so easy to put it off; 30 minutes is a big commitment when you are tired. But since my commitment was only five minutes, I’ve been able to keep that promise to myself. Rather than crawling into bed without exercising that day, I will do five minutes of something – crunches, squats, shoulder or tricep work, stretching, planks – something or anything – for five minutes. And I always am so satisfied when I get done.

So — why do I write about this?

Because it is working. I have objective proof that I am getting stronger, fitter and better with only 5 minutes of exercise a day. Here’s an example:

For most of my life, I loved playing basketball even more than eating. But about 10 years ago I had to quit because the pain in my knees exceeded the pleasure in my heart from playing. Ten Years. This past Wednesday night, after working out only 5 minutes a day for 3 weeks, I played my first competitive game of basketball in more than 10 years. And I played well. And I woke up Thursday morning without pain.

I know I won’t see any radical body changes in a short time from such a small amount of exercise, but I want you to know that I have more energy, I feel better, my mood is better and I am getting fitter. Maybe not fast, but this is working.

Five minutes. You can do it too.

(Les Miserables is one of the most popular stage musicals ever and is by far my personal favorite. Keep that in mind as you read my review.)

At the start, let me say this: if you’ve never seen the stage musical, and you have a heart still beating in your chest, you will likely enjoy the movie version of Les Miserable. I don’t know if you will love it, but you will probably like it.

As for me? Meh.

Because I love this story and love this show so much, I guess my expectations were way out of line. But I left the movie non-plussed. It felt like director Tom Hooper decided to forego the things that make a movie special, and instead chose to film the things that make live theater special:

Lots of live singing.

Few special effects.

The movie was true to the musical. They added a bit of spoken dialogue to flesh out the story, but nothing to make a Les Mis fanboy cringe. But the singing…

Oh man.

The singing was by far the worst aspect of it all. Neither Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean nor Russell Crowe as Inspector Jauvert have the chops to carry those roles. And to be fair, very few trained singers in the world have the chops to carry those roles. They are among the most demanding in the repertoire. Jackman’s voice was a surprise. I’ve seen video of him on stage, and I thought his voice was much better. Crowe was as bad as I had feared. His style works with a rock band. It was grating as Jauvert.

The ensemble singing, which is the highlight of the stage show, felt somehow diminished – as if it was smaller than expected. I think perhaps it is partly because the dynamic range in a movie is narrower than the stage show, but also because the ensemble songs were (mostly) performed as cuts between characters, rather than allowing us to see everyone all in the same scene.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Thenardiers somehow felt smaller than the stage version of the characters. Where the film characters were utterly despicable, the stage versions act as much-needed comic relief in such an emotionally intense show. They were not particularly comic, nor was there even much need for relief.

In fact, that cuts to the heart of my disappointment with Les Miserable the Movie. The emotional intensity of the stage show was strangely lacking, as if the flatness of the movie screen had sucked the very life out of the show. It was bright and shiny and beautifully filmed and much, much smaller than the stage show.

Let us take, for example, the barricade scenes:

Although the barricade scenes were well done, we’ve seen much bigger, much more impressive things on movie screens. Hell, I’ve seen the freakin’ Death Star destroyed on screen. But barriacades in a street in Paris?

On the other hand, when you see the barricade scene in the theatre, it is staggering. It’s almost the biggest thing you have ever seen on stage. And when Gavroche climbs down from the barricade… [shudder] It was just so much smaller on screen.

It was not all disappointing, though. Anne Hathaway’s Fantine was every bit as good as advertised. This role will likely elevate her from “star” to ”superstar” status. She absolutely killed it. Eddie Redmayne’s Marius was spectacular. I’d never heard of the guy, but he was easily the best Marius I’ve seen anywhere, stage or screen.  Those two alone were worth the price of admission. Oh, I mustn’t forget Samantha Banks as Eponine. She was very good. Not great, but very good. (I think she’d be great on stage. This was once again a case where it felt as if the directing and editing flattened and enervated her performance, rather than enhancing it. )

As per the stage show, the young men of the ensemble “Drink With Me” are the strongest of the cast. The staging of “Do You Hear the People Sing” was chilling at the start but a bit anti-climactic at the end. One scene that actually worked much better on screen than on stage was “At The End of Day”. Sadly, that was the only scene that worked better than on stage. Oh, and I cannot forget the bit where Jauvert pins a medal on Gavroche. Does anyone know if that was scripted? It didn’t change the character of Jauvert, but it did serve to humanize him a little. I’d be interested to know where that little bit came from.

In summary, I am glad the movie was done. It was done competently if not brilliantly. The more people who are exposed to the story of Jean Valjean, the better our world will be. So kudos as due. But I am also sorry that director Tom Hooper made the choices that he did. I was hoping his film version would do for Les Miserable what Rob Marshall’s Chicago did for that show. Sadly, he missed it. This wasn’t a strike out, and it wasn’t a home run. More like an infield hit to advance the runners. Competent, but uninspiring.

In short, Les Miserable the Movie was a massive disappointment to this Les Mis lover. But if you’ve never seen the stage show, ignore this review and go see it. You’ll be glad you did.

2012 was a rough year. It’ll be good to have this one behind me.

The year 2012 brought unbelievable blessings and unthinkable wounds. But – like every year before and every year since – the only thing I have control over is my attitude. More than ever, I am content to focus my attention on those things that are Good, that are True, that are Beautiful. Among the people and things who brought me Truth, Goodness and Beauty in 2012 are, (in no particular order):

Caroline, Noa Maloney & Liam Maloney, Chris Heald, Bryanne Heald, Logan & Eli, Patrick Poole, Ashley Collins-Beltran, Fredy and Bella, Matt & Nancy Freeman Halle, Dave & Kim & the Az Jazz Festival, Dave Specht, Cambrian James, Dorman Smith, Hale Center Theater, Amazon, New Egg, Zappos, Dr. Thomas Kruzel, Dr. Casey Johnston, Gavin and his gang at Vintage 95 Wine Bar, Honda, Kathy and Ray Bilinski, Mike Littau, Fedora Linux, Thomas Martinez, Laphroig and Ardbeg single malt scotches, Fernet, Nick and Crystal Coones, Craigslist, HTC phones, Google, David Heald (Jr. & Sr.), Krystina Lynn Mooneyham, Josh Strodtbeck, Roman & Cilette & Gypsy Soul, Jim Nicholson, my folks, my property management company, Martin Guitars, Alesis keyboards, Ghiradelli chocolate, Sprouts Markets, Flag Property Management, Bryant Stanton, Amanda Brumley Holtz, Brian Daniels, Brad & Kadi Strong, Dennis Daniel, Bill Reed, Michael Kielsky, cotton t-shirts, wool socks, linen shirts, sunshine, dry air, a swimming pool in my back yard, good health, opportunities to grow, pain that proves I am still alive, fears that never materialized and love that doesn’t die.

2012 was an awesome year. I’m sorry to see it go…

Come Wednesday morning, half the electorate is going hate the President and either the House or the Senate. That hating half believes the other half is the very embodiment of evil in our land.

A rational diagnosis of the situation should lead you to conclude that we don’t have one country anymore; we have at least two: Bluemerica and Rederica.

These are two very different countries with two very difference sets of people.

Bluemerica

Bluemericans believe:

• The government and rich people are responsible for your health, wealth and housing
• Big corporations are evil, big government is good
• The government should allow gays, lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals to marry just as it allows heterosexuals to marry
• White males are oppressors, women and people of color are oppressed.
• The more money you earn, the greater the percentage of your earnings belong to the government
• Guns are immoral
• Capital punishment is immoral; abortion is not
• God is irrelevant
• Most drugs should be legal

Rederica

Redericans believe:

• You are responsible for your own health, wealth and housing
• Big government is evil, big corporations are good
• The government should allow only heterosexuals to marry
• If you’re not a criminal, you have nothing to fear from increased police powers
• If you make a lot of money wearing a suit, you are probably not a criminal.
• If you are a black male, you are probably are a criminal.
• If you served time in the military, you are a hero, (especially if you killed a lot of non-white people in another country.)
• Gun-ownership is not merely a right, it is a requirement in a free society
• Abortion is immoral, capital punishment is not
• God is on our side
• Most drugs should be illegal

Freemerica

As for me, I’m kinda screwed, because I think both of those places are Crazyland. I want to live in Freemerica, where there are only two laws:

• Self-ownership: This means that each individual has the sole and exclusive right to decide what to do with his or her own life, time and property.
• Non-aggression: This means that if you commit an act of aggression against anyone else’s life, time and property, you are legally subject to a forceful and proportionate response.

In Freemerica:

• You are responsible for your own health, wealth, housing and food.
• You are free to enter into any contract of any kind to deliver any good or any service with any other people you wish, provided those contracts do not violate either of the two laws.
• You can create any organization of any size to do anything you want, as long as it doesn’t violate either of the two laws.
• The government has no say in marriage
• You can think or say anything about anyone, as long as you do not violate either of the two laws. (Saying something “mean” about someone is not an act of aggression.)
• You can think whatever you want about God, drugs, guns, gays or whatever, just as long as you do not violate either of the two laws.
• You can build and sell any product or service you wish, so long as you do not engage in fraud or extortion. (Fraud and extortion violate the Law of Non-aggression.)

So on Tuesday, will you vote for Rederica, Bluemerica or Freemerica. I want to know.

Rockonomics is where I write about things economic and financial. This is my latest.