Forum Post: To all of those out there who consider yourselves libertarians or conservatives, THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU.

To all the conservatives and libertarians out there: Please tell me your definition of "successful". Is successful to you being walled up in some gated community with a couple of Cadillacs in your cul de sac? Real success is taking care of yourself but also taking care of others, being responsible to them too and better yet living in community with them. As soon as you so-called conservatives wake the fuck up and realize that only half a life can be had on your own, you'll be a lot happier and the rest of the country won't have to suffer from your delusion of "separate but successful".

What is success? Everytime we try to get at the heart of this, conservative and libertarians keep measuring life by what the computer screen says under the word "balance" when you punch in your bank account number or investment account number. They're just blips on a screen in the end. Blips on a screen.

It matters. It matters to take care of you and your own. It matters to work hard and be responsible. I couldn't agree more. But why do you stop there? Why?

Life could be so much larger if we unseated the hijackers and UNrigged the game so we could live full lives and engage as citizens instead of frittering away this precious gift of life as consumers, consumers measuring our lives by what the blips on the screen say.

How long would you keep playing blackjack at a table with marked cards where only the house could read the markings. Face it. The macro trends of declining income, increasing wealth inequality and dwindling middle class show clearly that the game is rigged. And make no mistake, it's only rigged because we allow it to be. As soon as we, the 99% realize we have more in common than we do separating us, we can begin to make decisions from a position of unified strength rather than demands from a position of divided weakness.

I believe measure of a person is what's in their heart. And that heart only grows whole when its goodness is shared, not hoarded.

Oddly enough, the Occupiers are the True conservatives here as Chris Hedges out it so well. It's the Occupiers that want to restore the rule of law and remove the radical corporatists who have hijacked our great republic.

This interview on national network news pretty much sums it up. The kicker comes at the end if you're brave enough to watch all the way through. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhHPIuTQ5k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Albert Einstein said it best:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Dostoevsky said it pretty well too:

"Today, everyone asserts his own personality and strives to live a full life as an individual. But these efforts lead not to a full life but to suicide, because instead of realizing his personality, man only slips into total isolation. For in our age, man has been broken up into self-contained individuals, each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay away from the rest, hiding himself and his belongings from the rest of mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and people from him.

And while he accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because he is mad and cannot see that the more goods he accumulates, the deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence. The reason for this is that he has become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul not to rely on human help, not to believe in man and mankind, and only to worry that the wealth and privileges he has accumulated may get lost.

Everywhere men today are turning scornfully away from the truth that the security of the individual cannot be achieved by his isolated efforts but only by mankind as a whole.

BUT AN END to this fearful isolation is bound to come and all men will understand how unnatural it was for them to have isolated themselves from one another. This will be the spirit of the new era and people will look in amazement at the past when they sat in darkness and refused to see the light. . . . . . Until that day, we must keep hope alive, and now and then a man must set an example, even if only an isolated one, by trying to lift his soul out of its isolation and offering it up in an act of brotherly communion, even if he is taken for one of God's fools.

This is necessary to keep the great idea alive."

The great idea. Sleep on that. Seriously. Give it some thought.