LAST TIME, I used Liz Cheney's recent willingness to misrepresent—well, let's be frank—to lie about the motives and values of defense lawyers in a very unpatriotic way as a sort of morality tale, about the willingness to place the perfectly good value of loyalty above all others, and particularly above the value of truth.

But this isn't really about Liz Cheney, personally, even though spiritual issues are, of course, personal in the end.

She just happened to be born into the wrong crowd.

It's about a growing pattern among the leadership on the right—a willingness in general to lie for the good of the team.

Clinton lied, of course, about a personal affair, as have many on both sides of the aisle, but I'm not talking about lies concerning personal scandals, motivated by a desire to protect ones reputation.

I'm talking about an increasing and intentional desire to distort the American people's view of reality for political purposes.

Others on the right have told us that: [read more]

IT'S NOT UNUSUAL TO FIND A SPIRITUAL issue just under the surface of a political tactic.

There's nothing wrong with influencing others, or using language to do it.

In fact, if you consider yourself a spiritual person, you can learn a lot simply by observing politicians.

Take Liz Cheney, for example.

She's a perfect morality tale, in miniature.

We all have multiple values, and the way we live our lives depends, in part, on which values we give precedence to, and on how far we will allow one value to override another.

Often, it's not so much bad values which lead someone astray as an imbalance of values.

In Cheney's world—the world of professional right-wing politics—one of the values which tends to be inflated is loyalty: loyalty to the party, loyalty to the team, loyalty to the corporations your team plays for. [read more]

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT amaze me about the right is its consistent need to become the thing it claims to hate.

I grew up in the sixties—in a conservative household.

When JFK was running for president there were two things conservatives were taught to be afraid of—Communism and Catholics.

It may seem strange today, but JFK had to reassure Americans, during his campaign for the presidency, that when it came to matters of government he would not be taking orders from the Vatican.

The most frightening thing about the Communists was their desire to force everyone into the same mold, to have a government decreed set of beliefs and values which were mandated for everyone—and that idea is still driving all the fears of "socialism" being fueled by the right today.

In those days the right believed in freedom. [read more]

THE FIRST AND SECOND POSTS in this series outlined the following points:

1. The political struggle—and spiritual struggle—in this country is a continuation of a struggle which has been with us as long as there has been a human race.
2. In our early, hunter gatherer, days it was a struggle between the community as a whole and the occasional power-hungry freeloader.
   
   The community as a whole—early humanity—opted for equality, individual liberty, sharing, and democracy.
   
   The occasional freeloader, a bully who would run roughshod over the rest of the community if given half a chance, preferred a hierarchy, with himself at the top, cherry picking the wealth of the group.
   
   For over a million years we won that battle, establishing egalitarian communities which shared their power and wealth while preserving freedom and taking care of each other.
3. About the time of the agricultural revolution—a very short time ago compared to the amount of time we spent in our natural, hunter gatherer, state—the freeloaders managed to wrest control of the culture away from the democrats.
   
   They instituted kingdoms, and began calling themselves kings.
   
   This period lasted, with constant struggle between the freeloaders and the rest of us who do the work, for about the last twelve thousand years.
4. Recently, the democrats have been on the move again.
   
   Modern democracies began to replace kingdoms.
   
   The United States was created.
5. But we haven't rid ourselves of the freeloaders, or even brought them under any lasting control.
   
   They still exist.
   
   They don't wear crowns or make grand public appearances anymore.
   
   Instead, they work behind the scenes, disseminating misinformation, financing lobbyists, and generally continuing to make sure that the vast majority of the wealth created by working people ends up in their bank accounts.

One way they do this is with political rhetoric—by getting us to buy into a false picture of the world.

And this is where the constant talk of socialism comes in: [read more]

IN YESTERDAY'S POST I described the good old days—our natural human years as hunter gatherers in Eden, before the agricultural revolution.

In those days, in the time before kings and priests, we lived in community as the social creatures we are.

1. We took care of each other.
2. We shared our wealth, and the work which produced it.
3. And we carefully guarded our liberty—especially from the kind of freeloader who accumulates a community's wealth and power at the expense of his friends and neighbors.

But then something went wrong. [read more]

WE'VE BEEN HEARING A LOT ABOUT socialism lately, particularly from the right.

If we believed for one moment anything we heard from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or the average Republican politician, we would think that the country had ceased to be a democracy because health care reform was in danger of passing Congress by a majority vote.

I won't quibble about definitions—the word "socialism" has been used in such a wide variety of ways by such a wide variety of people that it's obvious fodder for the usual right-wing conflations.

But I do think that it's important to think about some of the basic assumptions behind the rhetoric—assumptions about what it means to be ordinary decent human beings.

We humans are a social species.

We are no more designed to live as islands unto ourselves than ants or bees.

We have always lived in communities. [read more]

THIS MORNING, ON MY WAY to a dentist appointment, I was listening to an NPR report on a video game—apparently one of the most popular of its kind.

We shared that we were both impressed by the natural empathy of children—by how they seemed to care from an early age about others.

The game, called America's Army, is actually a U.S. military recruiting tool aimed at 13 to 21 year olds.

In the game, they can learn to use a variety of weapons, and practice shooting non-Americans on the battlefield.

It turns out that the game, along with a set of graphic novels, has been surprisingly effective as a recruiting tool.

I arrived at the dentist's office, and was shot full of Novocaine, or whatever the modern equivalent is. [read more]