Thanks for the visit. Appreciate the comments.

When I said …

(That’s funny … didn’t Capitalism give us all the opportunity to have a podium to lambaste Capitalism?)

I was actually being sarcastic and by all rights should have worded it differently to bring out my point more clearly. Dr. Judith Rich may or may not have been paid to contribute to The Huffington Post, but the Post is a business. Websites of that magnitude are there to make money, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. Capitalism gave her a platform — certainly that platform.

Likewise with my quip:

(Have you noticed that most of the transformational crowd just hates the Right?)

Just because someone thinks a particular political philosophy is more to their liking than another does not mean they are incapable of growing as a human being.

I based my little comment on a recent visit to a transformational (maybe I should just say “new age”) organization here in Vegas, where a group conversation made it clear the majority of folks in the room dismissed the (lame-duck) President and Vice-President as not part of the whole of which we are all. If we are One, the Right is part of the One.

This is my point. If I had piped up and said “Isn’t the Right part of the One?” I would have been judged by that group.

You and I know each other, and I know you wouldn’t do that to me.

(I do know you relish the debate, you you you.)

What that group was doing was operating at a level of bigotry … the same kind of bigotry the Hippie counter-culture showed toward anyone who wanted to operate within what was categorized by them as “the Establishment.”

One more point. I met Dr. Richard Alpert — also known as Ram Dass — many years ago. I wanted to give him my business card, and he dismissed me as a human being because I did this. I do not dismiss the man or his work (I in fact helped the process of recording his Journey of Awakening for the Library of the Blind), but he compartmentalized me into something beneath his respect, for whatever reason.

We are all One, or we are not.

We are all deserving of Love or we are not.

All I can say to the transformational set is walk the talk, or shut up.

No it did not. Capitalism is NOT a precondition to democracy, freedom and liberty.

Freedom, liberty and democracy CANNOT be created by capitalism especially the laissez faire “free market” capitalism that we purport to have.

Capitalism can further the cause of democracy, can fan the flames of democracy, but democratic ideals are not the purview of money!

>>(Have you noticed that most of the transformational crowd just hates the Right?)

Transformation and Right (conservatism) do not, by definition go hand in hand. Conservatism is all about conservation, conserving the status quo. Sometimes the status quo is good and should be continued, but most of the time, something becomes “status quo” because it has become entrenched in society! That Yin perforce gives rise to the yang of wanting to overthrow the yin. Transformation and the transformational “crowd” seek to overturn status quo especially those that do not work any more. Even on a personal note, transformational workshops, books, seminars etc. do not ask yo uto throw away the baby with the bath water, they only urge you to transform that which is not working! i.e. status quo.

The conservative philosophy has resisted just about EVERY bit of change that has benefited society in the past. In the American example, emancipation of slaves, women’s right to vote, inter-racial marriage, you name it, conservatism has been against it. By the way, capitalism or free market society did not play a hand in it, the value of “majority cannot bully the minority in a free country” hardly a capitalistic ideal, was responsible for each of the above mentioned societal transformations. In the current elections (Proposition 8 in California), who has been mostly against gay marriage and who has been mostly for it? Which position is transformational?

I, for one, am happy that the yang of transformational efforts is usually tempered by the yin of conservatism.