Danton

Georges Danton (1759-1794) was a French revolutionary and a colleague of the notorious Robespierre, the man who instituted the infamous Reign of Terror. The stated purpose of the Reign of Terror was to snuff out (literally) all traitors to the revolution. But in the end, even Danton fell victim.

We like to make Polish jokes in this country but the truth is the Polish are as rabid about freedom as we are. They were the first to weaken and then break the communist yoke of Russia. Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda was run out of his homeland for making films deemed too disrespectful to the communist regime. It was during his stay in France he filmed Danton, a timeless essay on the pursuit of freedom.

The French Revolution was supposed to be about the people freeing themselves from the tyranny of an unjust monarch, but it failed. Why? Because in the final analysis it wasn't about freedom after all. There are two types of people who fight the tyrant: those who wish to bring freedom and those who seek to become the tyrant. It was the latter group that prevailed in the first French Revolution, causing the movement to implode.

"You will show my head to the people, it is worth seeing."
-Final words of Danton
It was on the orders of his onetime compatriot Robespierre that Danton was tried and executed. All politics are an extension of one's own life. Danton was a gregarious sort with a capacity to enjoy life. A man who grants himself freedom seeks it for others. Robespierre on the other hand was a self-serving asshole and implemented policies reflecting as much. So much for political principle.

These situations exist even to this day. The anti-war movement is a good example. There are some who join it because they don't want a family member killed, some who simply think war is wrong and some only against the war as long as we're losing it. Both the Iraqi and the French Revolution toppled unjust dicatators, but as history has shown us, the right thing done for the wrong reason inevitably ends up in disaster.

All You Need is Love

Now, can that be a serious statement? I mean, come on! Just love? I asked my fellow Texans what all a man needs and they came up with this list:

• Beer
• Shotgun
• Nooky
• Truck
• Football
• More Beer

Do you see wimpy ass love anywhere on that list? Ain't no real man worried about that. And even if he wuz, it sure as shootin' ain't gonna be all he needs! Try taking out a terrorist with love! Take a look at what them unrealistic, pansy ass, commie pinko pie-in-the-sky dreamers sez:

Love, love, love.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.

There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Of course, the kicker is no one who doesn't believe that will see the kingdom of Heaven. (God is love, but you knew that)

The Copper Mines

"Joshua? We thought you dead."

"In the copper mines of Geber, the living are dead."

Joshua woke with a start. In his dream, giant cockroach beings in the thousands preyed upon human flesh. For years the humans had tried to stamp out the cockroaches but now the roaches had grown strong and they wanted their revenge. Humans were taken, dragged among them and eaten alive. But waking from this nightmare wasn't much better - for the mines were a place that ate men's souls.

The tyranny of the morning whistle sounded dread in every miner's heart. But this planet was a mining colony. Don't want to mine? Get off the planet. The workers were considered free men, for you see, if you didn't like your job in one mine, you could simply mine in another. A slave by any other name.

Work was God. It was holy and unquestionable. God help the man who spoke against work. To even speak out against the conditions of work was heresy. Of all things known and unknown, it could be assured work was good. They clung to that precept, built their worth and their lives around it and were fanatical in its defense - most especially the ones who did no work.


The walk to the mine was as walking through an ancient battlefield. The land was stripped of all vegetation, shards of stumps the only reminders of life once existing. Corpses, some still dying, could be seen strewn in the distance. The worst were the Cripples, the great lepers of the Geber world. Men too deformed to work - some only in the mind. They probably got hurt on purpose it was supposed. There is no good reason to defy the Work God. A few sympathetic miners threw them scraps of food.

Sadist Guards ran the mines. They watched the faces of the miners coming in, enjoying the hollowed out looks, the expressions of terror, or those too defeated to even see. These faces were the Sadist Guards' dreams. They fed off the horror in the miner's lives knowing that to rebuke the Guards was the same as rebuking the Work God. With glee they handed out their punishment. If the Sadist Guards could bring a worker to tears, they high-fived one another in victory.

Every day was the same and every tomorrow. No one cared who you were, they already knew. Dreams turned to screams. Your mind remained locked into the work by the ever present fear of becoming a Cripple. No thoughts of having a life. Some men were so broken they got off on their own death. If you chose to actually look up, you could see the Sadist Guards honored as keepers of the Great Society. And above them were the Fat Rats, beings that only took from others, calling themselves Men of God.

Osaka Castle

I heard a story once about David Marshall Williams, inventor of the carbine rifle. He was imprisoned (rightly or wrongly) for moonshining and the death of a federal officer. Supposedly at one point he was punished in one of those infamous sweat boxes, like the one used in Cool Hand Luke. These boxes are at best draining and at worst, lethal. But the story goes that "Carbine" Williams came out unscathed. Why? Because the whole time in there his mind was preoccupied on inventing his new, revolutionary rifle.

I do not expect to leave my prison alive. Too many mistakes, too wounding to overcome, have left me with all the hope of a lottery ticket. But I remember the story of Carbine Williams and how to endure. In the Poseiden Adventure the passengers had to make their way to the hull of the boat. How they would get out after that, who knew. It was a journey of blind faith - as is my endurance.

So to keep my mind from going insane (or at least to slow it) I have Osaka castle. There is a piece of land in Arlington that I have seen. About 900 acres or so, it's across the street from the city dump and is bordered on the north by ugly industrial facilities. It's low lying land with permanent ponds of standing water. Just miserable. But I have a vision. The Japans!


Osaka castle was Toyotomi Hideyoshi's grand fortress. As the most powerful man in Japan, he wanted an impregnable haven in what was the most violent time of Japanese history. Able to garrison tens of thousands of troops, surrounded by moats and a maze of walls, Hideyoshi succeeded. Were it not for the imported cannons, it would have never been defeated. And it is this castle I propose to build here in the heart of the DFW metroplex.


The water is not a problem because it will be used to feed the moat and run through the Japanese gardens. The castle itself will be isolated and all things in its compound will be exactly as in 16th century Japan. Its authenticity is what feeds all the other sections of The Japans complex. In full armor, samurai will parade daily through the castle grounds. It will be a step back in time, as if looking through a window 500 years ago.


To the east will be gardens complete with re-creations of famous temples and even ruins. To the north will be the hotel featuring traditional Japanese service (a maid for every room!). Beside it will be the retail district. Near the street will be an open area with a permanent stage for performances and festivals. This will be free of an entry charge. A Samurai Cinema to show Japanese films will also have free entry.

The spot does have problems. A high, ancient style stone wall will surround the entire complex to isolate it from traffic. The ugly industrial sites to the north will be hidden by very well disguised parking garages (you would have to be told they were garages). But the flip side is that the ancient castles were the center of town life and this too would be dead center of all activity.

Each Monday morning the complex would be closed, ostensibly for maintenance but in reality so I could walk the grounds undisturbed and imagine myself back in a different time and space. I've thought of the armor I would display in the hotel lobby, the books to sell, the films to show, even the Samurai Bike I would commission from the American Chopper guys. Hey, bud, can you spare $200,000,000?

The Doctrine of Life

He sat hunched over the open magazine, three more waiting for perusal in a stack nearby. He felt very studious there in the high school library, though this was a study of his own volition. His previous passions had also consumed him: Dumas and 19th century French authors, economic theories and the stock market, the life of Napolean. Now it was the Beatles and their legend upon which he grazed. These first breaking stories of Beatlemania fascinated him.

Just around the corner was the hallway leading to the gymnasium. The Coke machine there was a gathering point and a giggling gaggle of girls arrived. The sound of the girls' voices tripped the boy's radar and he looked up to listen. They were cheerleaders. And they were excited.

The talk was of boyz. It was not the words but the sound of their voices that heralded a hope and an eagerness for life. Life was to be seized and its treasures were not to be denied. They were discovering themselves, moving forward. The world is many things but life is always a social game in the end. Face it - or be left behind.

At that moment, the boy's folly was undeniable. He considered all the false refuges: how men had created money to buy off their loneliness, how wars were waged to create a sense of purpose, to create any world where women did not matter. But no treehouse was safe. Oh, he and his ilk would try to convince themselves of their happiness, but each secretly wished to escape.

The world - he saw now - was nothing more than the extension of the personal lives of its inhabitants. To straighten that out, to make that a success, was the only true path. He could create all the outward achievements he wanted, none would matter. Only pyrrhic victories lay ahead for the boy - and he knew that. A few empty pats on the back were better than nothing. Maybe some would even think he was somebody.


But in this moment, with the enthusiastic clamor of the girls ringing in his ears, the scorching pain and anguished regret was unbearable. It was a nightmare from which he could not wake. He had chosen wrong. And on that path, nothing could be salvaged. In his prison of shame, the bitter lyrics of the song most feared came back to him:

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
An endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
And you it's only seed.

It's the heart, afraid of breaking,
That never learns to dance.
It's the dream, afraid of waking,
That never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
Who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dyin',
That never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely,
And the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love,
In the spring becomes The Rose.

"There are three of them, and Alleline."

Those were the words of Control, head of the Circus (British Secret Service, so named because of its address), speaking of a new power clique formed around a mysterious new Russian source of "gold dust". But there was a mole in the Circus! Five possible suspects were outlined and aliased with occupations in the children's poem "Tinker, Tailor". But now Control was dead and with him went any pursuit of the mole. Until one day, a "scalp hunter" returns from the field with a story that could "change all their lives"... "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is John Le Carre's masterpiece of spy fiction. Only it doesn't read like fiction. A former member of the intelligence community, Le Carre brings no 'Bondian' exploits here but a messy web of psychological intrigues to be deciphered with research, deduction and wits. Little pieces of information are assimilated until finally a clear picture emerges. But it's not just the realism that makes this so great. It's because Le Carre asks why. Why does one become a spy? What things in a person's make up draws him into a secretive world? Where is the line drawn to where the end no longer justifies the means? Le Carre mulls all these things as he takes us on a tour of the "secret world". Nothing is black and white, there is heroism and villainy on both sides - as is in the real world. There are some moments in film you never forget. One of mine was watching what was to be the trapping of the mole and his revelation. I too was nervous as they made the final preparations to flush him out. As if I were truly there, a million things were running through my mind on what could go wrong. The tension was overwhelming and I was wringing my hands...and then it all happened. I also have a spot in my heart for the romantic side of the spy game. I spoke of Sidney Reilly in a previous post, the inspiration for James Bond. Reilly was a man with the vain hope of manipulating the world to his satisfaction. But being such a master of intrigue he thought he could make it happen. Ian Fleming mythologized Reilly into a person who walked among us but lived in a different world. With the dull, boring lives most of us lead, the idea of life being filled with excitement and adventure is intoxicatingly alluring. "Who on earth do you think you are? A superstar? Well, right you are!"-John Lennon, "Instant Karma"

A Treatise on Treason

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty."
- Abraham Lincoln

That quote alone greatly raised my esteem for our 16th President. It's also a great starting point for describing the decay of our country. Many people use the same words in their arguments, but the meanings are opposite. Both the sheep and the wolf cry out for liberty but the first wants the freedom to live and the second the freedom to kill.

You can see struggles like these in our political battles. There are those who want freedom from religion and those who want to be free to force their religion. There are those who want to be free from pollution and those who want to be free to pollute. And there are those who seek equity in our workplace with rules for safety and wages and those who wish to be free of those safeguards.

As I've stated before, you cannot serve your country if cannot serve the truth. When the greatest ship in the world has its hull pierced, the passengers fall into two groups. The loyal group loves the ship truly and speaks out, calling for its repair. The selfish group loves riding on the ship only and decries anything that takes from their enjoyment. They call the first group "traitors" for saying their ship is anything but perfect.

The countries that have risen to greatness did so by serving the truth. Ancient Rome disdained the tyranny of an emperor and rose to great power. And then backslid into the corruption of an all-ruling power. Had they kept serving the ideals of a free republic, who knows what may have happened. And as we now turn our backs on our freedoms, that same question will be asked of us.

Today we stand with a President as a traitor. How can a man lie to his country, spill the blood of his fellow citizens, bring terror to the world, and call himself loyal? These are dark times indeed. To fix this we must come clean. Admitting we are wrong will not destroy us, it will heal us. But to not do so is fatal - and treasonous.