Ryan's Journal

I went to Park Street Church today, mostly because I was up late thinking about too much. Park Street wasn't too remarkable except that I actually worshipped during their musical worship time, which I sometimes find I can't do because of the way they play... They had the most awesome offering music that I've heard in awhile, a trio with a guitar. I'll have to find it somewhere. But I think their evening pastor was reading from his notes on his sermon about John Calvin, which was pretty much just plain quoting John Calvin. I usually get to thinking about predestination and free will after hearing something about it, but there wasn't much to dwell on today. I like history. Maybe not the way it was presented in today's sermon.

So I was up late thinking last night. It's fun, sometimes, to be kept awake because the thoughts are just running through your mind, but it's particularly poor for both physical health and waking up on time for service.

I was thinking about laissez-faire and how the US government generally allows the free market to be free, only really intervening in the case of monopolies, whether preventing their formation or breaking existing ones up. Why isn't it in effect in the reverse? Laissez-faire should go both ways. Separate church and state? Separate market and state, the vested interests corporations have in getting laws passed favorable to themselves and only themselves can have the most negative of impacts on the rest of the citizenry. It's sick what Hollywood can do - I think [insert current pop star favorite]'s latest album won't go into the public domain for something like 70 years after they die. Because hey, 100 years of profiteering is better than 50 is better than 30 is better than whatever copyright law said before. The MPAA (movies) and RIAA (music) are making it the law to pursue their own customers as criminals, whom they consider pirates and bootleggers. It's sick, and it's mostly the truth because the entertainment industry is worth billions.

I'm planning on writing some more, coherently, accessible to people who aren't familiar with the current threats to liberty, its erosion beginning with our loss of digital rights. Don't read the journals too closely. You'll get sick of hearing this broken record.

I was thinking that the American Revolution had some key components to it (maybe I'll write something wtih more of the following in it). The first was outrage, passion; people really cared that they were being royally screwed out of their money (literally). The second was good, coherent distribution of ideas (cf. Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlet). The third was a good slogan ("Taxation without representation"). There you go, I've completely distilled American history and the fundamentals of revolution, all in one paragraph. Anybody have any thoughts on what it takes to get a population enraged about loss of liberty? I mean, I'd love to see our country's people passionate over things that matter even more, like poverty, disease, and starvation (and Jesus, but I don't know that that fits into this picture well...hm), but Sally Fields and Salvation Army 'scandals' seem to have made those topics uninteresting to the general population. Maybe the passion could be carried over to the things that matter if the flame could only be ignited under the right banner. And then there's the whole threat-of-terrorism deal that people seem to be willing to give up their rights to fight. I'm incoherent. Time to stop when I lose sense.

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