With the Host of the Spiritual Politician
Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Friday, June 2, 2006 4pm PDT
This Week's Show
Our Guest: W. Leon Smith
Leon Smith, This Friday's guest on the Spiritual Politician, is the editor of the Lone Star Iconoclast, the home town paper for Crawford, Texas, the vacation home of President George W. Bush.
The Iconoclast endorsed John Kerry for President in 2004, resulting in the loss of many of its advertisers. Half of its subscribers canceled their subscriptions and the paper was pulled from local stands and businesses.
The Iconoclast, named for the earlier paper started and edited by William Cowper Brann in the early 1890s exemplifies parallels to that earlier era. The earlier Iconoclast, also controversial, ceased publication when Brann was shot in the back by an unhappy reader enraged over the paper's contents.
Leon Smith is determined to keep this Iconoclast printing.
Instead of falling back Editor Smith has moved forward to a larger mission. His subscriber base is now international and growing.
Listeners to the Spiritual Politician will hear Leon Smith on the spiritual nature of the Bush Presidency, the health and welfare of freedom in today's America, and how it feels to be the spiritual son of a man like William Cowper Brann, whose tomb stone bears one word, “TRUTH” as its sole comment.
Smith's family has been Texan since there was a Republic of Texas.
Pillsbury-Foster said of the coming show, “ Leon Smith is the kind of editor who demands transparency in government. That is an essential component in changing government as it is today into what it should be.”
What the Show is about and being a Spiritual Politician
Bringing government into alignment with the Lessons of Jesus:
The focus of our show is how to bring government into alignment with truth of our spiritual nature. So
America started with the idea we are all, inherently free. We are free to choose, free to live, to breath, and to live our lives as we see fit. Government does not own us; government is just a contractor, providing service.
That framework is in alignment with the spiritual truth that each of us connects to God directly, needing no agency as an intermediary. To be free is to be free in the spirit ans so in the flesh that temporarily holds the spirit.
When Thomas Jefferson said we were all possessed of inherent rights, existing before government he was extending a spiritual truth into a civic form. It is that Mission Statement from the Declaration of Independence we need to keep in mind.
Because we are free and reject, as did Christ, the use of deceit, manipulation or violence we need to be conscious about our relationships with others and find ways to grow into the sense of connection and community that makes us One in Him.
This is especially true for Christians but it is true for everyone else as well.
Nearly every major spiritual viewpoint enunciates the idea that we are connected to each other and should be good to each other. Christians just have an even more exacting mission. Christians are to love every one, treating them as they would Jesus.
Jesus was very clear about how we were to treat others. He did not say that it was alright to be abusive, deceitful, and violent if we used government as our tool and agent. There was no exception, He wanted all of our hearts, minds and souls. Christ did not lay out any plan of government, but left it to the conscience of the individual, the same way He connects to each of us.
We are Americans but we are also members of a human family that connects us to something truly wonderful and immense.
So our job here at the Spiritual Politician is to look at Government as a human tool we use every day. We need to consider if government is working in a way that speaks that common understanding about our connections to each other and, if it is not, we need to change it.
Americans have had many successes over the last 231 years since our founding and, learning from both mistakes and successes we can consider that question. So here at the Spiritual Politician we look at the truth behind of rhetoric.
Given what is going on today in Government what we may decide to do is reboot the whole system.
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