Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Friday, October 27, 2006 4 pm PDT
This Week's Show
Our Guest: Joseph Dauben
Joseph Glen Dauben is a 25-year-old "current events consultant." Or in other words a political activist who is trying to awaken people of his generation to the political reality that now confronts Americans of all ages but which promises to exact its costs from his and younger generations. Dauben a six-year veteran newspaper reporter and a college student. He is a freshman at Southwestern Assemblies of God University, majoring in Business Admin/Marketing. Dauben has watched the story of Philip Smart, whistle-blower, unfold since the plucky CPA decided that those in charge in Ellis County needed to be brought to book.
Philip Smart has been targeted by the powers that be in Ellis County Texas for three years because he stepped up to the plate to blow the whistle on the corruption and graft that is taking place in that small, quiet part of Texas. Now he has been accused of being a terrorist and given the fact that Americans no longer have the protection of the 4th Amendment he may end up in one of the internal prison camps set up across the country to hold political dissidents.
Smart has been incarcerated for three weeks. His crime? Not having his prescription medicines in the bottles issued by the pharmacy. Like most of us for his convenience he put then in the smaller plastic pill minder he purchased for that purpose.
Today on our show we will hear from Joey Dauben, a journalist who knows Philip Smart personally and who has seen the virulence of the harassment aimed to shut Smart up mount over the last years.
You need to know because you could be next.
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 it reboot the whole system.
To provide the examples of what has gone right and what has gone very wrong we here at the Spiritual Politician have put together several different kinds of segments you will hear on our show from time to time.
Founder and president of the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation
Books by Melinda: Links to Melinda's sites:
How the NeoCons Stole Freedom
Shards of Verse Melinda's Poetry
Greed: The NeoConning of America