Saturday, December 15, 2007

Ron Paul

I haven't been posting as much as a few months ago, even then I wasn't posting as much as compared to a few years ago.

So there...poof...or perhaps whoomp there it is. Is that it?

Ron Paul, a beautiful man of eloquence, knowledge, and a mind which can handle more than one thought at a time is saying all of the right things, running a sweet campaign, and I could sit here and simply cheer him on, but of course we all know what happens to men of liberty in the ring. The political noose awaits almost anyone who seriously advocates the genius of our forefathers.

They lose. And have to carry home all of the luggage they acquired on the trip heard around the world.

But Ron Paul will leave a legacy not seen since Barry Goldwater, and rarely seen in the years since Grover Cleveland breathed his last. The latter a man who saw the lights of true liberalism turned off, and the former, a man who tried mightily to turn them on again.

He leaves with us the old ideas of our founders who set down in black and white a basis for a country whose government was so small it would have fit inside Alexander Hamilton's brain. And Hamilton, seen as the man of big government of his day, and rightly feared by the republicans of Jefferson's stripe, would have been equally horrified what has become of the republic.

Ron Paul will leave with us the memory of a man UNWILLING in even the smallest of ways (almost...) to compromise his principles to achieve election. The man is only 72 (today's 53 1/2) and we hope he will continue to speak on the side of free men for a long time to come.

The only compromise Ron Paul and libertarians true and blue engage in, is the compromise of the ballot box. For you see, democracy itself is a compromise that we enter into to avoid anarchy. The values of the individual are not open for debate. But debate them we must, unless the mob grab hold of not only the machinery of the state (of which they have a firm grasp) but also of the future of man's mind (of which the grasp is getting firmer, always, but is being fought for by men like Ron Paul with nuclear intellectual ammunition). The battle for the mind is not lost until every one of us is beaten.

And so, Dr Paul carries on, not in hopelessness so much, but with the ideas of liberty in the arena of democracy which free men fear so much, and the hope of these great ideas catching fire once again.

For real, this time.

Joe Postove


Saturday, December 08, 2007

The Tears

I was 24, almost 25, when John Lennon was murdered on December 8th, 1980. It was the suckerpunch felt around the world.

It was that day that I purchased a new record player and two albums (what the hell are those?) one of which was John's "Double Fantasy" with Yoko Ono. I got home about 11:30pm, after work, and turned on Monday Night Football to hear Howard Cosell talking about John being shot.

And then within minutes came the confirmation that he was dead.I looked directly at the television and said "fuck you"! Fuck you, you Goddamn bastard. It is impossible, unearthly, that John Lennon could be dead. I felt, for a moment, that I was dead too. That I might as well be dead, in a world without John Lennon.I continued to watch, until the man on tv made it official. That John Lennon was dead of gunshot wounds. It was the only time I ever cried over the death of someone I didn't know.

A world without John? A world without John? I believed that nothing would ever be the same, that everything would change and I was no longer young. I don't know what those feelings really meant. I just understood that I was mad, helpless, and heaving with grief. This thing, that had never entered my mind, that a Beatle could be assassinated, was true. It was true and the world was fucked.

Perhaps you've forgotten that John Lennon, besides being an authentic hero, a promoter for peace and love when all he really had to do was go to the mail box now and then to pick up royalty checks, was at last, a human being. And sometimes a real bastard. He could be bad, and he could be difficult. Ask his family. They knew the everyday man, who like us all, carries around the weight we all must. John was that.

When I was a kid, guys would ask; "who's your favorite group? Besides the Beatles?" The scales of eternal justice ride heavy on the side of John Lennon. His promotion of peace, of controversial causes, and peace, peace, peace, was not a good career move.

But he understood that he was in a unique position to place the cause center square, to make enough noise and use his influence, that of a man who helped change the face of modern music, to work for peace, unceasingly, unstintingly, until it came.But violence came to him first. And God Almightly, I miss you John. The world was thrown off it's moral axis, and there is no one like you today.

War Is Over...If You Want It.

Joe Postove

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Dottie Postove Is 90 Years Old Today

My Mom would have been 90 today. She was born December 1st, 1917. A Sagittarius, like me.

Mom died in 2004, on November 7th.

I think, now, she is in her happiest place. She is 12 and in Suffolk, Virginia spending the summer with her Grandmother.

I wish I was there.

I love you more than mere mortal words can say, Mom.

I'm going to play our song tonight.

For us.

I love you Mom.

Joey