I agree with Andrew Sullivan -- the current divide in American politics is not left versus right, but rather authoritarian militarism versus constitutional democracy.

Dobson on Fred Thompson:

"We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added. In other words, they only call Christians those who, unlike Jesus, would condemn 'unbelievers' (belief in what to be defined) to eternal punishment. Maybe they should call them up-is-down-ists.

That giant sucking sound is Democrats heaving a collective sigh of relief as Dobson gives Gingrich a thumbs-up.

Put simply: "consciousness" is a self-referential term we have invented to designate a unique manifestation of this process, but with which many have since been led astray by way of the captiousness of language that this chain of experience is separate from the process itself.

Perhaps, but under this highly reductive view, "neurology" and "biology" are equally "fictitious". The view is an acid that eats a hole in the floor on which it stands.

Someone who I admire just wrote the following in an email:

But enough with my human-celestial allegory.

Regardless of what the writer meant by it, this remark is profoundly edifying to me. It is a rare and deeply liberating insight to realize that one's story, which the masses in their murderous misery take to be all that will ever exist, is merely a story and that one's real existence lies elsewhere, namely, in silent abidance in the eternally present moment. Further, this story is an allegory --- a symbol, full of meaning.