The Time I almost Ran for Congress

A long, long time ago -- Saturday, April 22, 1989 at 5:30 pm -- in a place very far away -- Holiday Inn -Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas-- I almost ran for Congress. The problem: I didn't know how to raise a thousand dollars to pay for the filing fee. So we had a fundraiser. Here is what happened there. People you will see in this video, besides me: Jimmy Morgan, Janet Kollmeier, Jack and Jacqui Estes. Piano accompaniment is by Pat Brown. I never raised the thousand dollars I needed to file, and that is why I never ran. But almost running is something I will never forget. The district I was almost running for was the 24th Congressional District in Texas. The incumbent was Martin Frost. People at the Grand Prairie Memorial Library would not let me post anything about this on their bulletin board, even though they always posted flyers by Martin Frost. At the time, there was no world wide web, and nobody I knew had a cell phone. If you want to see what I was like when I started writing Vacuum County, this is a good place to start. Here is a link to Vacuum County. Buy it. Read it. https://www.amazon.com/Vacuum-County-... Yes, I was always a libertarian. But I was pretending to be a Republican. Also, notice the accent! I never really had a Texas accent, but I was trying to blend in. And don't ask about the gigantic glasses -- that was what people wore back then.

Austin Petersen Comes to Texas County

Austin Petersen and Aya Katz in Licking, MO
April 21, 2018
Photo Credit: Marie Lasater

When I heard that Austin Petersen would be speaking at the Texas County Lincoln Day event held by the local Republican Party, I was determined to go. I got an invitation by email from Petersen's campaign, and I immediately RSVP'ed hat I was coming. For years I have been asking Austin to come and speak to the people of our county, and now it was finally happening. There was just one problem: I couldn't find a chimp sitter. While the event started at 4:00 pm, I could not leave the house until Bow had his dinner and was put to bed. So I was going to be very late.

This was not my first Lincoln Day event. In years past, my friend Marie Lasater invited me to attend and introduced me to Sheriff Mack, who was the keynote speaker that year.

Brad North, Marie Lasater. Sheriff Mack, another lady and myself.
April 14, 2014

At the time, back in 2014, I was a volunteer for the Sheriff Mack team, and I received a free ticket to the  Lincoln Day event. This time I was going there on my own, and I was not even sure I would be able to catch up to Austin before he had to leave for his other event scheduled for that evening, Lincoln Day in Wright County.

Feeling that the odds were against me, on my way to Licking I sang part of Filk of Felix to myself.

I had written the lyrics to this filk song back in 1984 soon after the publication of John Steakley's Armor. I had had to crash a party at a science fiction con to show it to him. But Steakley is dead now. He passed away in 2010. And the fight continues. And luckily, I could tell right away when I arrived at the Licking High School parking lot that Austin Petersen was still there.

In fact, while most of the people were sitting at tables in the high school gymnasium and waiting for the ceremonies to begin, I spotted Austin on the sidelines, standing by bleachers. He recognized me at once as I approached. "Oh, hi, Aya!" I let him know that I had just now arrived, and he led me to one of the tables and said: "Let's sit here." And he sat right beside me, introducing me to Matthew Mahler, who was serving as his driver this week. Mahler offered me an Austin Petersen shirt, which I gladly accepted.

Austin and I talked a little about the current situation. Governor Eric Greitens was slated to make an appearance at this event, but would be leaving for Wright County as soon as his speech was over. As long as all the speeches proceeded either right before or right after the Governor's speech, each of the candidates could afford to stay and make them. They were all going to be late for the Wright County event, but if they kept the same schedule as the Governor, they could all be able to make both events.
"We're all going to be late to the Wright County Lincoln Day, but it's okay, as long as we arrive at the same time."

Clipping from the Licking News

About then, Marie Lasater came by our table and offered to take our picture together. She was working the room with a big, professional camera. I introduced Marie to Austin as our County Coroner and the Editor-in-Chief of the Licking News.  Austin thanked her publishing that piece the I wrote endorsing him. Marie said she was glad to, and that he had her support. Then we reminisced about the campaign of 2012 when both Marie and I were fighting for Ron Paul's candidacy at the County Convention.

Marie noted that the other candidate hoping for the Senate nomination, Attorney General  Josh Hawley, was not there at our event.

"Oh, he can't come," Austin said with a smile. "Greitens has a restraining order against him. So as long as the Governor attends this event, Hawley can't."

The Missouri Republican Party is embroiled in a number of bizarre scandals at the moment, and even though the Attorney General and the Governor are both Republican, you would not know that they were allies from the current situation.

Then came the pledge and the invocation and the singing of the National Anthem, and we were told in what order we should go and claim our dinner At this Austin go up and hurried to stand in the reception line. All the candidates who there stood en route to the food, and they shook the hands of each person passing through, engaging them in a cursory political pitch.  Those candidates who could not be there -- say, because there was a restraining order keeping them away -- were represented by an attractive proxy. The governor had not yet arrived, but was expected later.

When my turn came to go through the reception line, I was a little oblivious to what the goal was. I told the pretty lady canvassing for another senate candidate that I was voting for Austin Petersen, and she smiled and nodded. I was expecting to see Jason Smith, our congressman, but he did not seem to be there at the moment. There were a number of people who were running for state offices. One of them was very enthusiastic and wanted to talk.

"Hi, my name is Paul Curtman, I am running for Missouri State Auditor. Can I count on yout vote?" He shook my hand.

"Well, what does a state auditor do?"

"We just go through the books of every state agency, and if we find any discrepancies, then we will try to get new laws passed to correct the problem."

"You mean, every time you find that somebody has made an error in arithmetic, you'll pass a new law?

"Well, no. Not every time. I mean, if it was a genuine mistake, and, yes, sometimes people make honest mistakes, then no. But if we find it was part of a scheme to commit fraud..."

"But aren't there enough laws about fraud?"

Curtman started to answer, but just then Austin swooped in and gave me a big hug, so big that I could see nothing more, I was so engulfed in his embrace. "Aya, you're great! You're the best," he said and gently moved me along down the chow line.

Apparently, we had been holding up the reception line, and Austin very tactfully repaired that. He did this so gently that nobody's feelings were hurt. I was glad to be out of that discussion, anyway. The only reason I was talking to Curtman was that he was talking to me, but I just did not know how to stop. Reception lines confuse me at weddings and funerals, too.

After I finished eating, I noticed that all the important people were leaving the gymnasium and going out into the parking lot, as were some obvious plain clothes security, who had earphones connected to wires that led into their suits.

I saw Austin standing with Matt by their bus, but just then Marie came out and engaged me in conversation. "Everyone is waiting for the governor to arrive," she said. "Don't worry, we won't miss anything, because nothing is going to happen until he gets here. And we'll see him when he comes in." So we kept talking about county politics and local gossip, until I started to notice that all the other people who had been standing in the parking lot weren't there, anymore. There was an unusual hush in the air.  It was like that moment in the forest when all the birds stop chirping.

"Marie, are you sure the governor doesn't have some other way into the building? Because I have a feeling he's already here."

"Let me check," she said and asked a couple of police officers who were still out there. "Yeah, he's inside," she confirmed.

So in we went. I took out my phone and asked Austin if he would like me to livestream his talk. He said "yes, but wait," because the governor would be talking first. So I kept it on standby. The governor's speech was very upbeat. It was mostly about how the economy of Missouri had improved since regulations had been cut down. He barely mentioned anything at all about the controversy surrounding him, except to say he had to remain strong despite any attacks that may come. He received great applause  and a standing ovation.

And then one by one, other people spoke. Our state representative Robert Ross gave a talk. Another candidate for State Auditor, Saundra McDowell, said she was the right person for the job because she was better than the Democratic incumbent, Nicole Galloway, in every way: by her auditing experience working in the Attorney General's Office,  by her military service as a medic,  and by the fact that she had five children, while her  Democratic opponent only had three. Whatever her opponent did, McDowell could do better, including producing children faster -- two sets of twins in three pregnancies. She said that since the incumbent was a woman, it would be good to run another woman against her who could best her at everything. I was trying to wrap my mind around this argument.

"What time is it, Aya?" Austin, sitting beside me asked. I flicked on my cell phone so he could see. It was around 6:30. The event was supposed to be over at seven,

One by one, various candidates, some of them quite local, were asked to speak, but not Austin Petersen. And then there was going to be some entertainment.

"Let's go!" Austin said, and he and  Matt bounded off toward the exit. They went out into the parking lot. I followed them at a run.

"Austin! Aren't you going to speak?'

"Not this time," he said. "But it doesn't matter. We've accomplished the greater goal."

I was disappointed and upset, but I asked if I could take a picture with him by the bus. Even though he was obviously in a rush to get to Wright County, he graciously took the time to pose with me.

I watched the freedom bus pull away, and I wondered whether I should just go home, but I decided to stick it out. I went back inside, and there was a ballet in progress. And then there was some singing. And after that the political speeches resumed. They even called Austin up to speak, mispronouncing his name, and when I told them he had left, the announcer said: "Austin has left the building."

If they had only been willing to schedule Austin's speech before the ballet, he could have addressed the Republican Party of Texas County. But somebody thought the ballet should come first -- somebody high up in the local party.

Marie Lasater with Governor Eric Greitens

Watching Eric Greitens from a distance, it seemed to me that he looks a lot like John Steakley, back when I was crashing parties at science fiction conventions. But that was  in a different millenium.

Greitens posing for photos

As the event wound down, I saw my friend Doug Allen Ashby, with his father, leaving the hall. We both agreed it was a real shame that Austin Petersen had not been afforded the opportunity to speak before he had to leave for the next county.

I picked up my mail, bought groceries, and all the way home, I sang Filk of Felix. 

 RELATED

If you would like to learn more about Austin Petersen and contribute to his campaign, check out this link:

https://www.austinpetersen.com/about

Conjuring Up Memory and Imagination

Do you remember your past, and if so, how do you remember it? Can you smell the cookies baking, or see the flies buzzing on the manure? Do you hear the voices of people who are long gone or feel your mother's touch as she fed you your oatmeal or soup before you were allowed to wield a spoon? Can you remember word for word an entire conversation that happened decades ago? And even if you don't actually remember, can you dig deeper into something that happened a long time ago and bring back dormant memories? Is it like re-watching an old episode of a favorite TV show, which you had forgotten all about, but now recall vividly?

My grandmother Klara, myself, and my grandfather Benzion Katz

Not all people have that kind of memory. Some can know things from the past, the same way we know historical facts, without having access to an image or a sound or a sequence of events that led to the conclusions that were drawn from the experience. Without access to the life event that led to a particular belief, it is not even possible to go back and reassess our conclusions.

Today, I posted an old memory of an interaction with my grandfather many years ago.

Without an episodic memory, I could still have told you about how old I was when I started reading, or where I learned English, but I could not have described the vivid experience of knowing how to read and being told not to read out loud what was clearly written on the page. I could not have remembered the pointer, or my grandfather's voice.

Today I came across an article about how some people can't see pictures in their imagination.  As a result, they might not enjoy reading fiction, and they might not be able to visualize objects at will. But I think this is not strictly an issue of visualizing. I think some people cannot re-experience any sensory memories in the sequence in which they happened. They can remember what an apple looks and tastes like well enough to recognize an apple the next time they see it, but they have no memories of specific apples, and how they felt and tasted, and who gave them those apples.

I know there are some people who enjoy nonfiction, because they feel it is factual and that they gain knowledge from it, but they get nothing whatever out of fiction. If the facts in the books are all made up, why even bother to memorize them, they think. But we don't set out to memorize fiction. The whole point is to experience it as raw events in the making. Then we are free to draw our own conclusions. We don't have to agree with the narrator, who may or may not be reliable

While it's true that nonfiction has an authoritative voice, it often presents us with fewer facts from which we may draw our own conclusions. Every news source is biased, and unless we learn to read between the lines, accounting for the idiosyncrasies of the unreliable narrator, then we are stuck with all our thinking done for us by somebody else.

I have never liked that. That's why I am not going to sit around watching the news, whether the source is CNN or Fox. I would much rather ferret out the truth for myself, by paying attention to the tell-tale facts that show up in my peripheral vision while I am experiencing life. And since I have great episodic memory, I can replay old episodes in my mind's eye years after they happened, until I can get a detail that escaped me before to come into focus.

The virtue of Vacuum County is that we can experience the story from multiple points of view. All of them are biased, but together they help us to build a consistent image of the truth that each narrator cannot help but also share. All people lie. But all people also tell the truth, if you know how to listen. Vacuum County is good training. Listen to Kelly  Clear tell you the story, and close your eyes to see what images your mind conjures up.

Neither Populism Nor Elitism

The people who disagree with my proposal to change the Libertarian Party Bylaws have trouble classifying me and my motives. Half the time they accuse me of being a populist. The other half of the time, the accusation is that I am an elitist. I am neither. I wish everybody could have a veto on everything that affects himself and no say at all on anything that affects only others. In the free market, each person does get a vote on precisely those things that pertain to himself. I wish we had a free market for government, too. But barring that, I want to make sure that representation, when representation is meted out, does not all go to the majority. Why? Because the closest thing to freedom, under any form of government, is checks and balances to make sure that one group of people cannot victimize another group of people just because they outnumber them. Which is why I keep bringing up the Constitution of the United States as an example of limited government. I don't do this because I think the constitution is divinely inspired or the most perfect document imaginable. I do it because it is an example we all know about, and it seemed to work for a short while, before it was so altered that it stopped working.

Populism is letting everyone vote on everything, and allowing the majority to decide all things for everybody else. Elitism would be allowing a small number of select people to have the only votes and to decide everything for everybody else. What I want to do with my proposal is to allow the majority to elect the presidential nominee, but then let the next highest minority choose the vice presidential nominee.

My proposal is not more populist than the current provisions in the Bylaws, because it takes power away from the majority to decide everything. But it is also not more elitist than the current provision in the Bylaws, because the minority who gets to elect the vice presidential nominee is not defined in advance. It is not an elite group of people who know they are the elite. It is not going to be the same group of people each time. It is not based on financial status or skin color or gender or even belonging to a particular faction of the party. It is just the next most numerous group who happen to agree on their choice of a presidential nominee after the winning group. In all likelihood, just like the winning group, the second group will consist of a diverse part of the Libertarian Party membership who just happened to support the VP nominee as a better presidential nominee than the one chosen by the majority. Every time we go in to vote as delegates, we will not even know in advance which group we belong in: majority or minority.And that is the beauty of the proposition. The Silver Rule we all should follow is: When you are in the majority, treat the minority the way you would have them treat you if you were in the minority and they were in the majority. Isn't that a great rule? Wouldn't you like to see it implemented in our party's bylaws?

People have asked me: Why can't we just have a second election where the vice presidential nominee is chosen? Because the same majority that chose the presidential nominee will be able to choose the vice presidential nominee, if majority rule is what we are going by. So it really does not matter if they run as a ticket or are chosen separately: if the same people are choosing them, the same choice will be made as if they had been running as a ticket, so long as this is what that faction wants to do. Only if a Presidential nominee supported by the majority does not choose a running mate will the practice of having two separate votes for POTUS and VP nominee make any difference at all.

When I patiently explain this to opponents of my proposition, some retort that it would be like handing out trophies to losing contestants out of a desire to spare their hurt feelings. They speak about it as if a political race were like a physical race to determine who can run the fastest, or a beauty contest to see who is the fairest of them all. And by fairest, I don't mean who has lily white skin like snow white. What then is "fair"?

People argue that fairness in such a competition is to award the prize to the fastest runner or the most beautiful contestant. Handing out a trophy to a loser would be unfair and smacks of political correctness or worse, SJW shenanigans. Letting the VP be a person not supported by the majority would be like handing out prizes for participation, they say. But in an actual race to see who can run the fastest, the second and third best do get trophies routinely, and even Miss Universe has a first runner up who will replace her in the unlikely event that she is disqualified or otherwise unable to serve. Even when casting parts in a play,  a producer will select an  understudy, who is usually someone deemed less desirable than the person cast, but still good enough to step into the part in the case of an emergency. Choosing the second-best person as spare in the event of a disaster is actually a very normal practice in real world selection processes not involving politics. The Vice President of the United Stares was originally intended to be the second runner up or understudy to the President. It's only through a convoluted series of historical events that that was ever changed.

But besides all of that, there is this: Our choice of Libertarian Party nominees for President and Vice President is not a reward to the candidates for a job well done in running such a nice campaign prior to the national convention. Those people are chosen to represent us. And they will -- whoever they are -- in all likelihood represent precisely the interests, not of everybody, but of those delegates who selected them.

That's why voting for the "best man" is almost beside the point in politics. "Best" is only meaningful in relation to what it is you hope to achieve. As libertarians, what we should all hope to achieve is minimal involvement by government in our lives. But for some reason, individual libertarians tend to have pet areas of non-intervention by government, while looking the other way when it comes to other forms of intervention. If we want to have an honest libertarian campaign, we need people on the ticket who represent a wide spectrum of areas in which we do not want the government to intervene in people's lives, ranging from economic issues, to religion, to personal choices of lifestyle to freedom of speech and association. This is important to each of us, and it is important to the Libertarian Party as a whole.

I am not a "typical" libertarian, nor a typical "conservative" nor a typical "radical"
When I joined the LP and supported AP my biggest immediate concern was US Fish & Wildlife confiscating chimpanzees
I am a minority of one -- and so are you!

When the Founders decided that we should have checks and balances built in to the government they were organizing, they could have just divided the Federal government into three branches and then let all the people vote en masse for each office holder in each of the branches. But they understood that if the same majority got to elect all the office holders, then it would not matter that there were different individuals in each of those offices -- they would all still serve only those special interests who had been able to cobble together a majority, leaving the minority unrepresented.  That's why they chose for Congress to have two houses, the lower one to represent the people and the upper one to represent each State. That is also why there is an electoral college, and the people do not elect the President and Vice President directly. It is why Federal Judges are appointed and not elected at all. It is why the Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed for life. All of this is done in order to divide the power of those who rule over us, so that no one will be able to run roughshod over anyone else, just because they happen to command a majority at the moment. And this is why one man, one vote was never a slogan of the Founders. By the time we got to one man one vote as the ideal, our Republic was already well on its way to becoming a democracy. And a democracy is the least libertarian of all forms of government for one simple reason: in a democracy the "people" never vote not to hurt others and not to take their stuff. They vote to only hurt the minority and only take the stuff belonging to the minority. And even though it always turns out the people they voted for do hurt them and do take their stuff, the "people" always persist in trying to vote in new representatives who will only hurt others and only take away other people's stuff. To put an end to this cycle, we need to get away from the illusions and delusions of majority rule. We need to get to a point where everyone realizes that if they vote to take away stuff, it will be their own stuff that is taken. And if they vote to hurt people, they are the ones who will get hurt.

Yes, the Libertarian Party is a private club. Yes, we can make up whatever rules we damn well please. The rules do not have to be fair at all, and anyone who does not like the rules can leave. But if our aim is to take over the government so we can leave everyone alone, shouldn't we start by showing a little more wisdom in how we run our own house? Shouldn't we serve as a shining example to everyone else that our party is not like the others?

RELATED

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2017/09/proposed-libertarian-party-bylaws-change.html

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2017/03/representation-without-taxation.html

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-presidential-election-of-1800.html

2017 Appearance, Review and Bio

I will be a featured speaker, along with Will Coley and Bill Redpath at the 2017 Missouri Libertarian State Convention on July 22, 2017 in Jefferson City. My topic will be "Show Me What You want to Tax and I Will Show You What You Will Destroy."

I am very excited about this opportunity, Meanwhile, though we did not get a public celebration of the 200th anniversary of the  founding of Galveston this April, a new review of Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain has come out this year by a Top 100 Amazon Reviewer.

There is also an new biographical entry in the LPedia about me as a libertarian author.

For me, 2017 will be a year not for writing new books, but for speaking out about the books I have already written. The new audio version of Vacuum County as read by Kelly Clear should be out in late August. And perhaps for the first time, my writings will have a clear genre designation in which they legitimately belong: libertarian.

The Internet is like Quicksand

I'm a big believer in Immortality. No, not the kind where you go to heaven or Valhalla or Nirvana. I mean the kind where your works and your name outlive your body. I even believed for a while that the internet would help me get there. But every day now, with reminders from Facebook of things that I posted a year, three years or five years ago, I am forced to face my own mortality and the mortality of others on the web. Links that I posted lead to dead ends. Articles that I edited with care thinking they would be there for people to read long after I am gone, are full of holes where I linked to images instead of copying them into my own site. The internet is like quicksand!

Today, I was reminded by Facebook of an article about Mary Dolan that I published four years ago and then shared on social media three years ago. The images had all disappeared! Why? Because respecting the work that another person put into copying pages from Marie Dolan's passport onto the web, I linked to that site for the images, rather than copying them outright. Now that site is no longer there, and the only image I was able to save was the one I had copied onto Pinterest.

Mary Dolan's passport

Why? What ever happened to that thing that they told us on Hubpages: that we would get residual income forever off the work we did today? Was that all a scam?

I look at my books on Amazon, and whereas they were supposed to be just like any other books, now they are showing a delay of four days to order them. What will happen when Amazon goes bankrupt someday in the not so near future, after I am dead? Can I seriously expect that my books will not be permanently out of print?

By all means trust the internet for the short term, but in the long run, you want to have a hard copy of everything. Hardcopies outlive the publishers and the civilizations that spawned them. The internet is way too flimsy to trust our immortality to.

While my new year's resolution is to write and publish less and publicize more, I do plan to publish more of my articles and other minor contributions, so there is a hardcopy to refer to in the future, even as the internet fails us. If you want immortality, you do the same!

The Ratio of Reviews to Books

My new year's resolution when it comes to publishing is to improve my reviews-to-books-published ratio. This means writing and publishing fewer books and expending more time and energy in getting people to review the books that are already out there,

I am actually thrilled with the reviews I did get this year, so I compiled them into a video and am sharing it here.

"You must be really disciplined," one friend told me, "to keep writing so many books year after year." No, actually it's a lack of self-discipline that makes something like that happen. It's unbridled passion that compels a person to start writing one book in the middle of writing another one. The two Theodosia and the Pirates books happened to me when I had not even finished writing the second half of Our Lady of Kaifeng. How embarrassing!

As an author,  you want to have many more readers than books to your credit, and I think that requires discipline. So in the future I will write less and work harder to recruit readers for the books I have already written.

Why just a few moments ago, I put this New Year's resolution to work when the dogs made a commotion and Bow alerted me to the fact that a car had pulled into my driveway. It was two older Jehovah's witnesses, a man and a woman, and they were lugging Bibles and pamphlets as they walked up to the door.

Lickety-split I went and fetched my own books. Three of them were easiest to get hold of: Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, Theodosia and the Pirates: The Battle Against Britain, and Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain. I've written other books, of course. Those were just the ones that came readily to hand.

"Merry Christmas," I greeted the white haired man and woman opening wide the door, before they even had a chance to knock. "I see you have a lot of information to share with me," I said, eyeing their literature. "But I have a lot of information to share with you, too. I have written these books, and I want to give them to you as a Christmas present."

The man glanced down at the volumes I was proffering. The picture of Theodosia and Jean on board ship did not seem to appeal to him on the cover of the top book. "I don't think I want them right now," he said with a look of displeasure, as if I were offering him something not quite kosher.

"Oh." There was a very brief silence when I considered telling him that I did not want his literature, either, But I decided that would not be polite. So then I just said: "Well, then you have a merry Christmas, anyway." And they said merry Christmas, too, in a half-hearted way, and turned and walked back to their car, dejected.

In terms of handling solicitors, I think that went rather well. But as a seller of books, I have a long, long way to go. Like any other gospel, you just can't give it away!

The books I offered the Jehovah's Witnesses

My New Fling with Journalism

"If he studies the news in the papers.
     "While you are preparing the tea,
"If he talks of the damps or the vapors,
      "While moonlight lies soft o'er the sea,
"If he's sleepy while you are capricious,
       "If he hasn't a musical O,
"If he doesn't think Werther delicious,
       "My own Araminta, say no!"

                                               from A Letter of Advice, by Winthrop Mackworth Praed.

I have always despised the press. And by the press, I don't mean Benjamin Franklin or any other small owner of the press. I think what I mean is what they call the mainstream media today -- MSM -- but I was born long ago and far away, and it all started with the news on the radio in Israel.  My grandparents all listened, some of them many times a day. Or they kept the radio on all day long, and it kept repeating the same dry phrases over and over again. There was more than one channel, but the news seemed to be the same, no matter which channel you were on, and it was not just that the events described were the same. The words they used were exactly the same, It was monotonous and boring,

"Why do you keep listening to that? It's so boring."

"Because we want to know what's going on in the world."

There must be a better way to find out what is going on in the world than this! I thought. My parents watched the news on TV when I was little. I had to be very quiet. I did not like it, not because it was the news, but because it used dry language that seemed to imply it was the absolute truth they were telling us, and there was no bias. It wasn't that I suspected they were lying. It's just that I wanted there to be a bias! Without a point of view, dry facts are so boring. I needed them to tell a story. Stories always have a point of view.

An Excerpt from Ping & the Snirkelly People
Buy it on Amazon

That's why when I grew up, and people knew I liked to write, I rejected out of hand the possibility of being a journalist that they suggested. I wanted to be an advocate, not a reporter. I wanted to actually say something that might make a difference. That's what I thought I was doing with my fiction, but I ran into that whole problem of genre.

Unless the reader is actually open to the possibility that a book is not going to just repeat what he already knows and expects to hear, you are never going to get through to them.  It's as if the average reader has been programmed by MSM to know what is good, what is right and what is possible, and so has a completely closed mind to any alternative possibilities. They will read fantasy or romance or adventure, but they won't reconsider anything they have already internalized about good and evil. The unbiased journalism with the unspoken, between-the-lines message about right and wrong might be exactly the thing that makes it so. And only those of us too bored by the indoctrination to actually read, listen to or watch that stuff may be immune to the propaganda.

This year, after the Libertarian National Convention, I threw myself into the Libertarian Press. I am writing for two online publications.

http://libertybuzz.us/story/author/ayakatz/

and

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/author/aya-katz/

Do I have a  bias there? Definitely. The reason I enjoy writing for the Libertarian Press is that I am allowed to be right up front with my point of view. I don't have to be cagey and try to hide my opinions -- they are as evident as the facts that I share. What I am saying is, if you beieve X, then Y which is happening, is bad (or good), depending on what it is.

Some people have accused me of going after Gary Johnson, but nothing could be further from the truth. When Gary Johnson takes a pro-liberty stance, such as wanting to do away with Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, I am right there, reporting on this and cheering him on! When on the other hand, Gary Johnson wants to make something mandatory -- going against individual choice -- then I point out that this departs from libertarian principles.

The last time I pointed that out, Gary Johnson actually changed his position  and the Libertarian Party Chair, Nicholas Sarwark,  came out with a statement against mandating personal choice. For the first time in a long time, I feel as if my writing is having an effect.

Let's face it. We all have a bias. It's just that some people are hiding theirs and calling their opinions "facts" or "science". What I hope will happen for the future of our Republic is that more and more people will learn to read through the bias to get to the facts and decide for themselves.

A New, Bilingual Version of "In Case There's a Fox"

In Case There's a Fox is a children's book in verse. Nevertheless, I think it should be part of the canon of my more serious works, for reasons that are explained in the link below.

http://www.pubwages.com/41/in-case-theres-a-fox

This week, the work was reissued in a new bilingual, full color bleed edition. 

Order it on Amazon

A video trailer is available for the Hebrew portion of the book.

This is the second book I have published this year, the first one being  Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way. 

For a list of all my books, you can check out my Amazon Profile. 

Autoism versus Altruism

[This is a Vlog post, so the text below is a transcript of the video.]

A lot of times when people talk about the virtue of selfishness, they do it in the context of having to defend themselves from people who say that there's an unequal earning capacity and maybe this person does not deserve to earn as much as they do, and maybe, in fact, they should contribute more or give back more or give back to society. And it's the Ayn Randian concept of the virtue of selfishness that says: "No, We don't have to give back. I mean, after all, we haven't taken anything away from anyone. This is what I earned, and so it's okay."

All right, then. Yes, there is that aspect of the virtue of selfishness, but there's a lot more to it, and if you read The Fountainhead, and you see how Roark stands up for his architectural ideals, and how he turns down good, paying jobs just because he does not want to alter his design, then you see that there is a great deal more to the virtue of selfishness than just doing that which pays the bills or earns you a lot of money. It has to do with integrity. And if it's okay to turn down work that you really need in order to pay your rent, then aren't you being, perhaps, what other people might consider a saint?

So what is a saint? Is a saint an unselfish person, because he doesn't consider his own profit on the marketplace? Is a saint somebody who throws his life away -- somebody who ends up on the cross, maybe, for his beliefs? Or is a saint someone who looks inwardly to determine what is valuable, rather than outwardly?

In Our Lady of Kaifeng, Father Horvath has this idea of autoism rather than altruism. Now, of course, the term autism had not yet been coined or was in the process of being coined, and he wasn't aware of it, so he called it autoism, because he simply etymologically deduced that the opposite of an altruist would be an autoist. And he tells Marah that she's a saint because she's an autoist -- because she listens to her inner voice rather than to the voice of society. And that's where sainthood comes into play.

Order on Amazon

Forgiveness

Lately, there has been a lot of misuse of the term "forgiveness." People say things like "I am forgiving for my own sake, so that I can know peace. But I want nothing to do with the person I forgive, and no benefit need come to the wrongdoer from my forgiveness."

While it is true that a catharsis can occur when we forgive, forgiveness is not something we can do without focusing on the other person. By its very nature, forgiveness cannot be all about us. It has to involve our true feelings for and about another.

Just as revenge is different from karma, forgiveness, the most extreme  alternative to revenge, is different from writing someone off and shunning them. Yet today, people conflate all the non-revenge reactions together, as if to fail to take revenge is the same as forgiveness.

All of these are legitimate reactions to being wronged:

• Revenge
• Retribution
• Payment and release
• A lawsuit
• Shunning
• The Cold Shoulder
• The Silent Treatment
• Forgiveness

There are degrees of anger that we feel for a wrong committed against us. There are degrees of reaction that are possible. All of these are acceptable. Just because you have been wronged, that does not mean you must seek revenge. Just because you have been wronged, that does not mean you must forgive. 

While both revenge and forgiveness are the most extreme reactions possible -- and each of them offers a greater emotional catharsis and release than the less extreme possibilities in the middle -- they are certainly not the only choices available, 

Most of the time we will choose neither revenge nor forgiveness for serious wrongs committed against us. Revenge can be too costly. We might be too entangled with a person in  our business or family life to be able to take full retribution, a lawsuit drags on forever, but still we cannot forgive. So most times, we just have to let it go. We move on. We stop feeling angry, we lose the need to act on the feeling, but still we do not forgive. Letting it go does not mean forgiveness. And we are fooling no one if we call it that.

In the video embedded below, I discuss what forgiveness is and why people try to fake it. 

Related Posts

How to Apologize

Videos About Theodosia and the Pirates

Today I am promoting videos on my blogs. So I am going to share with you again some of the videos about Theodosia and the Pirates that I have accumulated over the past two years.

Above is embedded the trailer for the first Theodosia and the Pirates book, "The Battle Against Britain." It contains important historical information, along with fictional story, giving details of the financial arrangement for the Louisiana Purchase that eventually left the United States in debt to Britain and helped to precipitate the War of 1812. Most people today still think we owed that money to France. If only they had watched this book trailer, their horizons would be greatly expanded.

In the trailer for the second Theodosia and the Pirates novel, "The War Against Spain" the many ways in which the United States government  let Jean Laffite down are explored. No matter how badly he was treated, he was always in love with this country, and his love needed no reciprocation. That's what a true patriot is like.

The first talk I gave about Theodosia and the Pirates was at the Texas County Museum of Art and History. It was well received.

Some people had problems accepting the sexual part of the Theodosia and the Pirates books. In the above video, I discuss the Sack of Hampton, and how it relates to why I chose to portray Captain Lockyer in the way that I did.

I know that many people from all across the world are reading this blog and gaining information not readily available about the history of the United States. However, it seems that fewer people have seen these videos than have read my blog posts. If you have not watched them yet, and you are interested in Jean Laffite and Theodosia Burr, The War of 1812, the political careers of Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, or even the history of the national debt, then you might want to explore these and other related videos.

Res Ipsa Locquitur

Today, I want to talk to you about the legal concept of res ipsa locquitur as it relates to the very common, ordinary conception of probability and odds. Now, probability is a mathematical topic, and I'm not talking about it rigorously here, but all people, inside them, have some kind of gut feeling about whether something is or is not probable. In the law, for instance, if somebody opens up a jar of jam that they bought and there's a human thumb in there, what the law would say is: "The thing speaks for itself" or Latin: "Res ipsa locquitur." Something is wrong. Somebody did something wrong. It's not likely that a human thumb fell from the sky and it wasn't anybody's fault, and it's in the jam. So the person selling the jam to the customer is responsible for there being a human thumb in the jam, even if we don't know how that thumb got in there.

 It's really the same thing that happens when your child has cookie crumbs all over his face and the cookies are missing from the cookie jar, but you don't know exactly how that happened. You could say: "Well, maybe the crumbs somehow fell on the child's face while the child was asleep, and the child didn't steal the cookies," but most would say the thing speaks for itself.

I had someone question whether I was really a person living in Missouri with a chimpanzee. You know, when we talk to people online, then we don't know everything about them, and certainly lots of other people hide behind masks, give themselves false names and pretend that they are something that they are not. But what are the odds that I am really faking all these videos with Bow and I really don't have a chimpanzee, or what are the odds that I don't live in Missouri and all the indications and all the pictures are false? I think that most people who have been following my blogs have a reasonable idea that, yes, Bow is real, and, yes. I am real.

The case for or against the authenticity of The Journal of Jean Laffite is likewise based on how likely it is that someone would want to go to the trouble to fake it to this extent. The man accused of forging the document was not a speaker of French. And the document itself is not simply in French, It's not Parisian French. It's not the kind of French you learn if you are studying French. It has Spanish words in it. And there seems to be evidence within the document that it was written by someone who was as fluent in Spanish as he was in French, who was probably brought up not in France, but in one of the French colonies,and who had the background that Jean Laffite had. So... Yes, it could be faked. But what are the odds that in the twentieth century someone was able to do that kind of faking?

Today, in the world of linguistics for someone to appeal to an argument of res ipsa locquitur is considered unscientific. But in the world of philology of Sir William Jones, who lived from 1746 to 1794. it was quite common to appeal to exactly that.

He is often quoted as saying:

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists

So what he is really saying is: The thing speaks for itself. Res ipsa locquitur.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the Neogrammarians were in fact correct, and the IndoEuropean languages did spring from some common source. But it could have been formalized a great deal more. And today when somebody presents the same kind of circumstantial evidence -- and that's all it is: circumstantial; they were not there, they didn't see the languages spring from some common source; they merely surmised that it could not have happened by chance that so many roots were the same in all of those languages... So, today, if I point out that all of the IndoEuropean languages have a common source for their copula and their pronoun, and I can go to specific languages such as Sanskrit or Latin to show this, or I can go to a reconstruction of ProtoIndoEuropean and show that the root for one of the copulas is very similar to the roots of many of the pronouns, I can do that, and I can show that to people, and they'll say: "You know, I think you're right. But how would you go about proving it?" Well, my goodness! How did William Jones prove it? How did the neogrammarians prove it?

Actually, I think we are all appealing to the same gut feeling of res ipsa locquitur,  which can in fact be formalized, because we've got a finite number of contrasts, and we've also got a finite number of combinations, and so then we can ask ourselves: What are the odds that these two forms would be this similar? Because this is really finite math.

Invitation to Attend a Talk about Jean Laffite and Privateering

If you happen to be in Galveston, Texas on October 14, 2014 at about six pm, you might like to attend my talk at the Meridian Towers.

The Cover Artwork is by Lanie Frick

The cover illustration for Theodosia and the Pirates is by Lanie Frick. It is a painting of Theodosia and Jean Laffite aboard a ship together.

Suzy Blackburn, the model, Lanie Frick, the artist and Aya Katz the author

You can find out more about the process by which the painting was commissioned and painted in this article:

Interview with Lanie Frick by Julia Hanna

To order the book on Amazon, click on the image of the cover below:

http://www.amazon.com/Theodosia-Pirates-Battle-Against-Britain/dp/1618790072

The Trailer

This is the trailer for the book Theodosia and the Pirates. 

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Theodosia-Pirates-Battle-Against-Britain/dp/1618790072