omg why did I do this
I posted this, um, 'life' update on Facebook, which I know I am going to get hostile responses for. I know most of you don't use Facebook, so I'm also posting it here, knowing this crowd is more... understanding. I won't lie, it's hellu long, hits on religion and politics, and is extremely personal, but I'm just gonna go ahead and put myself out there.
This is a long time coming. It’s a partial tale of my political affiliation, spiritual beliefs, and personal convictions. I know I probably shouldn't be writing this. My heart keeps telling me that it will only hurt me in the end-- that trusting and being open and assertive enough will only get me crushed and force me to close down all my walls completely. But I need to do this. Fred would want me, to do this.
Many of you in my life may be aware that I haven't been around Church for quite some time. It started with apathy in college, simply enough. But after a while I still felt like God was reaching out to me, it caused me to rethink a lot of things and for a while, I even considered joining the Priesthood. But then something pretty extreme happened in my life. Part of it was my fault (all of it if you consider my lack of self-assertiveness), and I continue to wonder where I might be if I had just taken a stand. But I'm a firm believer in Destiny and in God pulling the strings, so I know I'm where I should be.
Point being, this event changed everything. It's one of those brick walls you can hit in your life and depending on if you let it crush you or if you crush it, can determine everything that will happen in your life. I began to see a counselor who was one of the greatest people I ever met. He taught me to not be afraid of who I am or how I live. To stand up for myself even if it means upsetting the balance.
You see, I was a pushover. I didn't look it, no, but I certainly was. If any real arguing or negative consequences were swung my way I would duck out and play submissive. I hated conflict-- I still do. I hate myself when I cause conflicts or issues. It's the opposite of who I am. I am Loyalty. I stand steadfast for my friends even when the whole world is against them, and I will never stand down when they are at risk, or hurting, or doubtful. Even in the face of abandonment by them I will still stand by their side or wait for their call, even if it hurts me to do so. Because that's who I am. All I care about in life is to make other people happy, because that makes me happy. I don't want money or fame or power. I don't even need to be comfortable. All I want is to love.
So I lived a lie. For the most part, unknowingly, but I was lying to myself. For years, I thought that if I just continued to be who people wanted me to be then they would be happy. And I was ok with not being myself. Atleast, in person. See the other end to this is that the only way I was able to cope was to be able to live out who I was through the internet. The place where people assume masks to hide their true identities. Only mine was the real me. For all the crap a lot of us get about people on the internet being 'fake' or not 'real', it sure is ironic that they felt more real to me than anyone in my actual life did. My greatest mentors came from there. And to Kala and Paddy, you two are the best mentors anyone could ask for.
So there came a time when one force hit the other, and that's where the brick wall comes in. I was forced to choose between the reclusive real me, or the full-on bravado obedient false me. Tail between my legs, I came back home. And though it was the worst moment in my life emotionally-- it was the best thing to ever happen to me. It was the catalyst for who I am. It gave me the emotional surge I needed to rip the brick wall apart and to never go back the way I was. And it started with Dr Fred.
He was someone I could tell all my problems to, and I could receive a neutral answer from. He wasn't one of my friends or allies, and he wasn't a family member. He could give me professional non-biased answers. And he was religious (something I kept feeling myself pull farther away from, more on that later). He told me that there was nothing wrong with what I experienced. That the wrong thing was to keep the real me locked inside, away from the world. That the wrong thing was feeling hopeless because I wanted to please the world instead of myself. That the wrong thing was not asserting myself when I was tread on. And all this time I was led to believe the opposite.
Flash back to Ohio State, freshman year, 2009. All over the globe the world is in turmoil over the economic collapses and breakdowns of public ‘civility’. I was raised a neo-con. In the culture of “Fox News” and religious dominance in America. Through high school and into the beginning of my college life, I was a pretty staunch totalitarian ‘Father-Knows-Best’. If only we could control everyone and tell them how to live, the world would be at peace. How foolish I was. I was completely lost at this point, though I didn’t know it. I was a sheep, ready for the slaughter like a zombie. My rebellion came from the last place I thought it would-my blood.
When my plans for the Navy broke down and I was left in a major I knew I didn’t really want, I found myself in an introductory Linguistics class. I only took it because I knew we had to have a foreign language and I was terrible at learning them. The course promised to help you learn language better, so why the hell not. Within the first /WEEK/, I knew more about language than I had ever learned in 13 years of English classes. I loved it. I never felt this way about any other subject of education. It just made sense to me. It was full of puzzles and unanswered questions. Our major project was analyzing a language we hadn’t been in contact with. Since there were only a handful of languages I liked the idea of learning, and I had already learned about them partially, I was stuck. So I decided I would try something completely out of the box-I wanted to learn about Irish Gaeilge, my main ancestral heritage. It was the beginning of an adventure that I would dive into and never look back. At that moment I was completely transformed, immersed in not only a new language but a new culture, a new way of life.
As I learned more and more about my family’s past and the tragedies of my blood I developed a strong bond with many people from Ireland. They became a third family to me, and they were tough. It was hard to get used to at first-Celts are not the most… ‘considerate’, people. If you’ve ever met a few and seen how they interacted, you know what I’m talking about. It’s perfectly fine, it’s the culture. It was just very different. And it was good for me. It helped me to develop thicker skin and it instilled in me that fierce Loyalty which I now guard with my life. The Irish have a stigma of being hot-headed. I see it more as having lots of passion. And I’ll never forget what my second mentor said of me those 2 years ago-“He has the Heart of a Lion, and I’m glad that he fights in my corner.” It was the proudest moment of my life.
It was at this time that my political affiliation shifted. I became something of a socialist at this point. I grew to hate the Imperialism that my forefathers suffered and the ‘Father-Knows-Best’ style of government that I had praised before. I placed heavy importance on community resistance and building a ‘State within a State’, making the dependence on a National Government unnecessary. It is also at this point that I came to question my religion. All of my engineering still told me that my faith was solid, and that everything I had learned about Roman Catholicism was pure and true. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I knew better than to judge my beliefs by the actions of a few men, and I still know this. But the orchestration of the system in place for the Church makes it very difficult to object to the humanity of the Church while respecting the divinity of it. So I decided I would do something about it. I would be an agent for Truth and join the Priesthood to act as a representative of our true faith, what Jesus personally taught, and not the strict enforcements of a system that cannot understand its base. A System whose enforcers have become slowly corrupted in greater and greater numbers.
Because at the end of the day no system can teach you love. It cannot teach you happiness or caring. No system can teach you honesty, or kindness, or generosity, or loyalty. Only your Heart and your Conscience can do that. And at the end of the day, when you break it all down, that’s what Jesus tried to tell us all along. That’s what I saw in a Priest. A representative of Christ. That’s all the job asks for. It’s simple but not easy. To stand up and be a beacon of light. To be an Apostle of Truth and Justice in a world where neither is taught or valued anymore. But in the end it isn’t just about being the Light that Jesus was. No. You also have to be the Sacrifice. Because the world will reject the Truth as false prophecy, and the world will label Justice as chaos. Religion, meet Politics. Enter the Libertarian movement and the Ron Paul Revolution.
In 2008 I wasn’t old enough to vote, but I got pretty involved. For the wrong person, of course. I was still pretty blind back then. It doesn’t matter because he didn’t win anyway. What does matter is that I finally realized that since I wanted to get involved in politics, I might as well learn something about them.
I never wanted to be a Democrat, that much I knew. I can lay all the blame on social engineering but I know that there is a part of me that was conservative. Limited. I still knew that (even if it’s a bold-faced lie now) that the idea of a Party that wanted limited government was a good enough one for me. I was also very emphatic about remaining an ‘Independent’ officially, however, because I didn’t want to be aligned to a set of platform ideas if I didn’t agree. It’s work alright so far.
So at a time when my life was going through tons of spins and crashes and I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore, one man showed me what I’d been missing. All of the unanswered questions, the doubts, the misconceptions, it would all make since almost at the sight of him. I’m talking about the guy you often see criticized on the news of being a crazy old man. He’s a Doctor. A Veteran. A Statesman. He’s my friend, my neighbor, my mentor. He’s everything a model of Christ is. He’s my hope. He’s my sacrifice. He’s my Father, and he’s me. My ‘Uncle Ron’.
Outside of my two mentors, there stand 3 men who have had the largest impact on my life. My Father, Dr. John Ferns Benage; My God, Jesus Christ; and My Hero, Rep. Ron Paul. When my father died a part of his memory took over my life. I tried to live on as his representative on Earth. I know now that partially that wasn’t a good thing. But regardless of that, he was my guide for some time. Through college I found my dependence falling more on Christ as my father’s visage faded. And in Ron Paul I have found a physical representative of Christ on Earth. A messenger of Truth and a guardian of Justice. That man has sacrificed more strife and grief at the hands of the world than anyone could imagine. He has stood up for all of us for decades, and it’s time we stood up for him. Through his works and his words he has taught me the practical ideals of how to be Christ-like. That our Life and Liberty are granted us by our God, and not by our Government.
So when the world came crashing down around me and I found myself hopeless and lost, I found a friend in Ron Paul. And I haven’t looked back. I’ve transformed a lot over the years, and I have never been so sure of something in my life as this man and his message. I realized that Freedom is the most important thing in the politics of the world. It is something so vital that even God, at the risk of his creations turning their back on him and rejecting his love, gave this gift to humanity. He wanted us to make up our own minds. He didn’t want a System to force us to believe in him or to turn to him. He wanted us to become educated and to choose him over everything else presented to us.
So when people tell me that they’d rather be Safe than Free? It hurts. “Be Not Afraid”. Do we really have such a lack of faith that we must place our bets on the shoulders of man to rule our lives so that we don’t have to take responsibility for our OWN ACTIONS?
So now I’m a Libertarian. I believe in the most ‘radical’ platforms of the two ‘parties’ in this country. I believe Government has no place in your home. They do not get to tell you how to act or how to feel or what to say. If God doesn’t do it, what right does GOVERNMENT have?! None. I also believe Government has no right to your livelihood. I know how to research a product and a company and decide for myself what I want to buy, and so long as this does not cause harm to others, then the Government has no place in it. It’s a very simple idea-if God doesn’t believe in interfering, he probably has a good reason. The audacity that a few fat cats at the top know better than our creator is both enraging and laughable.
The problem is that in these situations there is always an ‘us’ vs ‘them’. But we’re all human. We all feel, we all love, we all bleed. Jesus taught us to love one another as we do ourselves, and to take care of and protect one another. It was not his teaching to prosecute, or harm, or detest. And yet billions do it in his name. When asked about his faith, Ghandi once said “I think I would be a Christian, but I have never met one.” We must always stand fast in our convictions, but never lash out in spite of them.
Volumes of books have been written on the subject of our enslavement by corrupt authority, and I haven’t the time nor full knowledge to explain them all. But I have experienced first hand what misguided authority can do. Whether intentional or unintentional, the misuse of power is the greatest crime in this world. And the betrayal of trust in an authority figure is the most vile of these circumstances. So back to the religious topic again.
I eventually lost the urge to become a Priest. Not because I didn’t believe in trying to be like Christ, or I lost faith in God or anything like that. I suffered a massive loss in my faith in men. I realized that as much as I wanted to be a beacon of my faith, that the very system I would have to conform to would force me to break my conscience, and that is when self-corruption would set in. I refuse to become an influence that could mislead others, and I can guarantee I wouldn’t last long wearing the Black if I didn’t keep quiet about my beliefs and convictions.
So I do the only thing I can do anymore-I educate. Through words and actions. I’ve joined the Communications field and I can live out my potential of mass communication. Trying to rewrite the social engineering of an entire species is not easy, but there is an enlightenment happening. People are waking up to Truth and the realities of our world and they are not one bit happy with the people who kept them asleep all these years.
So back to the original topic of the Church. I still love her. I love God and Jesus Christ his son and Mary his mother. I still worship God and pray that he protects me. I’m a realist, I know the things I’m saying can get me ostracized, imprisoned, and killed. I’ve come to terms with that. I also respect the teachings of the Church enough to not spit in her face while I kneel at her altar. I know the dogma. I can’t go to Confession anymore because it jeopardizes my Free Will and my Conscience. And Confession, being one of the building blocks of the Church, is required to ‘belong’ to the Faith. So that’s why you don’t see me anymore. I don’t hate the Church, I respect it. And the Church says “If you don’t do ‘x’, you can’t be ‘y’.” I guess it’s ironic that the very social engineering embedded in me by my religion, led me to step down from my religion.
I hope there comes a day when my faith in man is restored. It has happened to a large degree in politics. But religion reacts much more slowly than government, and there is a long ways to go. Until that time, I will continue to live my life as close as I can to the way Jesus taught us. I’m not perfect, and it certainly isn’t easy, but it is very simple.
The largest step I’ve made recently was the decision to end my ‘college career’. I only went back to school to get a degree so I could make more money, but you know what? Money isn’t everything. I finally realized that (as the Beatles poetically put it) ‘All You Need is Love’. And it’s true.
The hardest part is being an activist. I know that most of my family does not agree with my activism or my beliefs, and that’s fine. I didn’t choose to believe what I believe to be agreeable with anyone. But I do know they still love me, and I love them. I also love all my friends (most of which seem to be on my side in terms of my ideals, which is a huge boon), even if they don’t always agree either. It’s not the lack of acceptance that is hard-it’s the failure to make them understand, and the potential for danger that comes with it.
As most liberty activists, anarchists, or Ron Paul supporters will tell you-Our ‘beliefs’ are not appreciated by people in power. Our actions and our ideals are a direct threat to the control monopolies have over our society (whether those are monetary monopolies from Corporatism or the monopoly of force that the Government holds). Both of these sectors pose a serious threat to personal safety and welfare. The issue is they know most of us aren’t afraid to lay down our lives for our cause. So what can they do? They can go after the people we love who still believe in the system. It is a tragedy that has been told in all the great epics of time. The invulnerable Hero, brought down by their compassion for humanity.
There is an answer to this. A way to save those we love from the hardships we face. To distance ourselves from those we love and live a life of solitude to protect them. I’ve tried to do this. But every time I feel like I’ve struck a balance between lonely activism and family support, I find myself being reigned back in. I don’t blame them. I’ve wanted to, sure. But I do truly love them, no matter what happens. They don’t understand that I’m not doing it to be a prick, or because I hate them. I’m doing it because it hurts me not to do it. We’re reaching the end of this tale, and it’s story time.
Fast forward to 2:30 AM CDT this morning, May 21st, 2012. A middle-aged African American man calls my house, waking up my mother, telling her I owe him $5000 in Meth money. He is adamant that “Andrew Benage of 1600 Clairmont, Ft Scott, KS” owes him his money, and that his ‘boys’ will be there within the hour to collect. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t do drugs. (Plus let’s be honest, Meth heads are horrible people to be around). I’m an activist for the legalization of Marijuana and for bringing to light the hypocrisy of the Pharmacy Industry and the FDA, but I do not do drugs. I don’t even think I’ve managed to hold onto $5g of money at any one time in my life. When my mom woke me up to tell me about this horrifying phone call, I started laughing in disbelief. Surely she was pulling my leg, but she looked serious. I put on an uncomfortable smirk and told her to call the cops.
My friends and I can defend ourselves. We know how and we are equipped to do so. But our families are /not/. As much as I believe in convincing them to realize that shit is going to hit the fan in America very soon, I know they will either A) Disbelieve or B) Refuse to take action. So what happens? What happens when I’m not around to protect them or to guide their actions when bad things like this happen? Sure, the random guy calling in the middle of the night was a fluke. It was probably even a prank, considering nothing happened. But it is a threat none-the-less. And it is only the beginning of what will happen should our society collapse. And I am at the forefront of the movement that may lead that to happen should things not change.
I will not violate my Conscience. I believe in this movement and its people. My Loyalty lies within. But I only have the right to sacrifice myself for it, I have no right to sacrifice the happiness or lives of anyone else. So what am I to do? If I’m held to blame for these reactions (as I have already been accused, today), then what am I to do? If given the ultimatum of choosing what is right, and what is safe, what do I choose? This is the second time this question was posed to me. Before it was whether I should live my life as I truly am, or as who people wanted me to be. I chose to be safe that time. I was wrong.
So what did Jesus choose, when the world was against him? When his life and the lives of his friends and family were threatened by a society gone wrong? He was only telling the Truth after all. He was standing up for Justice. And he paid for it with his life.
It is not an easy decision. It never was and never will be. A coward hides behind the masses and does what is accepted. A Courageous man stands in front and does what is Right. I know who I want to emulate.
Do you?
This is a long time coming. It’s a partial tale of my political affiliation, spiritual beliefs, and personal convictions. I know I probably shouldn't be writing this. My heart keeps telling me that it will only hurt me in the end-- that trusting and being open and assertive enough will only get me crushed and force me to close down all my walls completely. But I need to do this. Fred would want me, to do this.
Many of you in my life may be aware that I haven't been around Church for quite some time. It started with apathy in college, simply enough. But after a while I still felt like God was reaching out to me, it caused me to rethink a lot of things and for a while, I even considered joining the Priesthood. But then something pretty extreme happened in my life. Part of it was my fault (all of it if you consider my lack of self-assertiveness), and I continue to wonder where I might be if I had just taken a stand. But I'm a firm believer in Destiny and in God pulling the strings, so I know I'm where I should be.
Point being, this event changed everything. It's one of those brick walls you can hit in your life and depending on if you let it crush you or if you crush it, can determine everything that will happen in your life. I began to see a counselor who was one of the greatest people I ever met. He taught me to not be afraid of who I am or how I live. To stand up for myself even if it means upsetting the balance.
You see, I was a pushover. I didn't look it, no, but I certainly was. If any real arguing or negative consequences were swung my way I would duck out and play submissive. I hated conflict-- I still do. I hate myself when I cause conflicts or issues. It's the opposite of who I am. I am Loyalty. I stand steadfast for my friends even when the whole world is against them, and I will never stand down when they are at risk, or hurting, or doubtful. Even in the face of abandonment by them I will still stand by their side or wait for their call, even if it hurts me to do so. Because that's who I am. All I care about in life is to make other people happy, because that makes me happy. I don't want money or fame or power. I don't even need to be comfortable. All I want is to love.
So I lived a lie. For the most part, unknowingly, but I was lying to myself. For years, I thought that if I just continued to be who people wanted me to be then they would be happy. And I was ok with not being myself. Atleast, in person. See the other end to this is that the only way I was able to cope was to be able to live out who I was through the internet. The place where people assume masks to hide their true identities. Only mine was the real me. For all the crap a lot of us get about people on the internet being 'fake' or not 'real', it sure is ironic that they felt more real to me than anyone in my actual life did. My greatest mentors came from there. And to Kala and Paddy, you two are the best mentors anyone could ask for.
So there came a time when one force hit the other, and that's where the brick wall comes in. I was forced to choose between the reclusive real me, or the full-on bravado obedient false me. Tail between my legs, I came back home. And though it was the worst moment in my life emotionally-- it was the best thing to ever happen to me. It was the catalyst for who I am. It gave me the emotional surge I needed to rip the brick wall apart and to never go back the way I was. And it started with Dr Fred.
He was someone I could tell all my problems to, and I could receive a neutral answer from. He wasn't one of my friends or allies, and he wasn't a family member. He could give me professional non-biased answers. And he was religious (something I kept feeling myself pull farther away from, more on that later). He told me that there was nothing wrong with what I experienced. That the wrong thing was to keep the real me locked inside, away from the world. That the wrong thing was feeling hopeless because I wanted to please the world instead of myself. That the wrong thing was not asserting myself when I was tread on. And all this time I was led to believe the opposite.
Flash back to Ohio State, freshman year, 2009. All over the globe the world is in turmoil over the economic collapses and breakdowns of public ‘civility’. I was raised a neo-con. In the culture of “Fox News” and religious dominance in America. Through high school and into the beginning of my college life, I was a pretty staunch totalitarian ‘Father-Knows-Best’. If only we could control everyone and tell them how to live, the world would be at peace. How foolish I was. I was completely lost at this point, though I didn’t know it. I was a sheep, ready for the slaughter like a zombie. My rebellion came from the last place I thought it would-my blood.
When my plans for the Navy broke down and I was left in a major I knew I didn’t really want, I found myself in an introductory Linguistics class. I only took it because I knew we had to have a foreign language and I was terrible at learning them. The course promised to help you learn language better, so why the hell not. Within the first /WEEK/, I knew more about language than I had ever learned in 13 years of English classes. I loved it. I never felt this way about any other subject of education. It just made sense to me. It was full of puzzles and unanswered questions. Our major project was analyzing a language we hadn’t been in contact with. Since there were only a handful of languages I liked the idea of learning, and I had already learned about them partially, I was stuck. So I decided I would try something completely out of the box-I wanted to learn about Irish Gaeilge, my main ancestral heritage. It was the beginning of an adventure that I would dive into and never look back. At that moment I was completely transformed, immersed in not only a new language but a new culture, a new way of life.
As I learned more and more about my family’s past and the tragedies of my blood I developed a strong bond with many people from Ireland. They became a third family to me, and they were tough. It was hard to get used to at first-Celts are not the most… ‘considerate’, people. If you’ve ever met a few and seen how they interacted, you know what I’m talking about. It’s perfectly fine, it’s the culture. It was just very different. And it was good for me. It helped me to develop thicker skin and it instilled in me that fierce Loyalty which I now guard with my life. The Irish have a stigma of being hot-headed. I see it more as having lots of passion. And I’ll never forget what my second mentor said of me those 2 years ago-“He has the Heart of a Lion, and I’m glad that he fights in my corner.” It was the proudest moment of my life.
It was at this time that my political affiliation shifted. I became something of a socialist at this point. I grew to hate the Imperialism that my forefathers suffered and the ‘Father-Knows-Best’ style of government that I had praised before. I placed heavy importance on community resistance and building a ‘State within a State’, making the dependence on a National Government unnecessary. It is also at this point that I came to question my religion. All of my engineering still told me that my faith was solid, and that everything I had learned about Roman Catholicism was pure and true. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I knew better than to judge my beliefs by the actions of a few men, and I still know this. But the orchestration of the system in place for the Church makes it very difficult to object to the humanity of the Church while respecting the divinity of it. So I decided I would do something about it. I would be an agent for Truth and join the Priesthood to act as a representative of our true faith, what Jesus personally taught, and not the strict enforcements of a system that cannot understand its base. A System whose enforcers have become slowly corrupted in greater and greater numbers.
Because at the end of the day no system can teach you love. It cannot teach you happiness or caring. No system can teach you honesty, or kindness, or generosity, or loyalty. Only your Heart and your Conscience can do that. And at the end of the day, when you break it all down, that’s what Jesus tried to tell us all along. That’s what I saw in a Priest. A representative of Christ. That’s all the job asks for. It’s simple but not easy. To stand up and be a beacon of light. To be an Apostle of Truth and Justice in a world where neither is taught or valued anymore. But in the end it isn’t just about being the Light that Jesus was. No. You also have to be the Sacrifice. Because the world will reject the Truth as false prophecy, and the world will label Justice as chaos. Religion, meet Politics. Enter the Libertarian movement and the Ron Paul Revolution.
In 2008 I wasn’t old enough to vote, but I got pretty involved. For the wrong person, of course. I was still pretty blind back then. It doesn’t matter because he didn’t win anyway. What does matter is that I finally realized that since I wanted to get involved in politics, I might as well learn something about them.
I never wanted to be a Democrat, that much I knew. I can lay all the blame on social engineering but I know that there is a part of me that was conservative. Limited. I still knew that (even if it’s a bold-faced lie now) that the idea of a Party that wanted limited government was a good enough one for me. I was also very emphatic about remaining an ‘Independent’ officially, however, because I didn’t want to be aligned to a set of platform ideas if I didn’t agree. It’s work alright so far.
So at a time when my life was going through tons of spins and crashes and I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore, one man showed me what I’d been missing. All of the unanswered questions, the doubts, the misconceptions, it would all make since almost at the sight of him. I’m talking about the guy you often see criticized on the news of being a crazy old man. He’s a Doctor. A Veteran. A Statesman. He’s my friend, my neighbor, my mentor. He’s everything a model of Christ is. He’s my hope. He’s my sacrifice. He’s my Father, and he’s me. My ‘Uncle Ron’.
Outside of my two mentors, there stand 3 men who have had the largest impact on my life. My Father, Dr. John Ferns Benage; My God, Jesus Christ; and My Hero, Rep. Ron Paul. When my father died a part of his memory took over my life. I tried to live on as his representative on Earth. I know now that partially that wasn’t a good thing. But regardless of that, he was my guide for some time. Through college I found my dependence falling more on Christ as my father’s visage faded. And in Ron Paul I have found a physical representative of Christ on Earth. A messenger of Truth and a guardian of Justice. That man has sacrificed more strife and grief at the hands of the world than anyone could imagine. He has stood up for all of us for decades, and it’s time we stood up for him. Through his works and his words he has taught me the practical ideals of how to be Christ-like. That our Life and Liberty are granted us by our God, and not by our Government.
So when the world came crashing down around me and I found myself hopeless and lost, I found a friend in Ron Paul. And I haven’t looked back. I’ve transformed a lot over the years, and I have never been so sure of something in my life as this man and his message. I realized that Freedom is the most important thing in the politics of the world. It is something so vital that even God, at the risk of his creations turning their back on him and rejecting his love, gave this gift to humanity. He wanted us to make up our own minds. He didn’t want a System to force us to believe in him or to turn to him. He wanted us to become educated and to choose him over everything else presented to us.
So when people tell me that they’d rather be Safe than Free? It hurts. “Be Not Afraid”. Do we really have such a lack of faith that we must place our bets on the shoulders of man to rule our lives so that we don’t have to take responsibility for our OWN ACTIONS?
So now I’m a Libertarian. I believe in the most ‘radical’ platforms of the two ‘parties’ in this country. I believe Government has no place in your home. They do not get to tell you how to act or how to feel or what to say. If God doesn’t do it, what right does GOVERNMENT have?! None. I also believe Government has no right to your livelihood. I know how to research a product and a company and decide for myself what I want to buy, and so long as this does not cause harm to others, then the Government has no place in it. It’s a very simple idea-if God doesn’t believe in interfering, he probably has a good reason. The audacity that a few fat cats at the top know better than our creator is both enraging and laughable.
The problem is that in these situations there is always an ‘us’ vs ‘them’. But we’re all human. We all feel, we all love, we all bleed. Jesus taught us to love one another as we do ourselves, and to take care of and protect one another. It was not his teaching to prosecute, or harm, or detest. And yet billions do it in his name. When asked about his faith, Ghandi once said “I think I would be a Christian, but I have never met one.” We must always stand fast in our convictions, but never lash out in spite of them.
Volumes of books have been written on the subject of our enslavement by corrupt authority, and I haven’t the time nor full knowledge to explain them all. But I have experienced first hand what misguided authority can do. Whether intentional or unintentional, the misuse of power is the greatest crime in this world. And the betrayal of trust in an authority figure is the most vile of these circumstances. So back to the religious topic again.
I eventually lost the urge to become a Priest. Not because I didn’t believe in trying to be like Christ, or I lost faith in God or anything like that. I suffered a massive loss in my faith in men. I realized that as much as I wanted to be a beacon of my faith, that the very system I would have to conform to would force me to break my conscience, and that is when self-corruption would set in. I refuse to become an influence that could mislead others, and I can guarantee I wouldn’t last long wearing the Black if I didn’t keep quiet about my beliefs and convictions.
So I do the only thing I can do anymore-I educate. Through words and actions. I’ve joined the Communications field and I can live out my potential of mass communication. Trying to rewrite the social engineering of an entire species is not easy, but there is an enlightenment happening. People are waking up to Truth and the realities of our world and they are not one bit happy with the people who kept them asleep all these years.
So back to the original topic of the Church. I still love her. I love God and Jesus Christ his son and Mary his mother. I still worship God and pray that he protects me. I’m a realist, I know the things I’m saying can get me ostracized, imprisoned, and killed. I’ve come to terms with that. I also respect the teachings of the Church enough to not spit in her face while I kneel at her altar. I know the dogma. I can’t go to Confession anymore because it jeopardizes my Free Will and my Conscience. And Confession, being one of the building blocks of the Church, is required to ‘belong’ to the Faith. So that’s why you don’t see me anymore. I don’t hate the Church, I respect it. And the Church says “If you don’t do ‘x’, you can’t be ‘y’.” I guess it’s ironic that the very social engineering embedded in me by my religion, led me to step down from my religion.
I hope there comes a day when my faith in man is restored. It has happened to a large degree in politics. But religion reacts much more slowly than government, and there is a long ways to go. Until that time, I will continue to live my life as close as I can to the way Jesus taught us. I’m not perfect, and it certainly isn’t easy, but it is very simple.
The largest step I’ve made recently was the decision to end my ‘college career’. I only went back to school to get a degree so I could make more money, but you know what? Money isn’t everything. I finally realized that (as the Beatles poetically put it) ‘All You Need is Love’. And it’s true.
The hardest part is being an activist. I know that most of my family does not agree with my activism or my beliefs, and that’s fine. I didn’t choose to believe what I believe to be agreeable with anyone. But I do know they still love me, and I love them. I also love all my friends (most of which seem to be on my side in terms of my ideals, which is a huge boon), even if they don’t always agree either. It’s not the lack of acceptance that is hard-it’s the failure to make them understand, and the potential for danger that comes with it.
As most liberty activists, anarchists, or Ron Paul supporters will tell you-Our ‘beliefs’ are not appreciated by people in power. Our actions and our ideals are a direct threat to the control monopolies have over our society (whether those are monetary monopolies from Corporatism or the monopoly of force that the Government holds). Both of these sectors pose a serious threat to personal safety and welfare. The issue is they know most of us aren’t afraid to lay down our lives for our cause. So what can they do? They can go after the people we love who still believe in the system. It is a tragedy that has been told in all the great epics of time. The invulnerable Hero, brought down by their compassion for humanity.
There is an answer to this. A way to save those we love from the hardships we face. To distance ourselves from those we love and live a life of solitude to protect them. I’ve tried to do this. But every time I feel like I’ve struck a balance between lonely activism and family support, I find myself being reigned back in. I don’t blame them. I’ve wanted to, sure. But I do truly love them, no matter what happens. They don’t understand that I’m not doing it to be a prick, or because I hate them. I’m doing it because it hurts me not to do it. We’re reaching the end of this tale, and it’s story time.
Fast forward to 2:30 AM CDT this morning, May 21st, 2012. A middle-aged African American man calls my house, waking up my mother, telling her I owe him $5000 in Meth money. He is adamant that “Andrew Benage of 1600 Clairmont, Ft Scott, KS” owes him his money, and that his ‘boys’ will be there within the hour to collect. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t do drugs. (Plus let’s be honest, Meth heads are horrible people to be around). I’m an activist for the legalization of Marijuana and for bringing to light the hypocrisy of the Pharmacy Industry and the FDA, but I do not do drugs. I don’t even think I’ve managed to hold onto $5g of money at any one time in my life. When my mom woke me up to tell me about this horrifying phone call, I started laughing in disbelief. Surely she was pulling my leg, but she looked serious. I put on an uncomfortable smirk and told her to call the cops.
My friends and I can defend ourselves. We know how and we are equipped to do so. But our families are /not/. As much as I believe in convincing them to realize that shit is going to hit the fan in America very soon, I know they will either A) Disbelieve or B) Refuse to take action. So what happens? What happens when I’m not around to protect them or to guide their actions when bad things like this happen? Sure, the random guy calling in the middle of the night was a fluke. It was probably even a prank, considering nothing happened. But it is a threat none-the-less. And it is only the beginning of what will happen should our society collapse. And I am at the forefront of the movement that may lead that to happen should things not change.
I will not violate my Conscience. I believe in this movement and its people. My Loyalty lies within. But I only have the right to sacrifice myself for it, I have no right to sacrifice the happiness or lives of anyone else. So what am I to do? If I’m held to blame for these reactions (as I have already been accused, today), then what am I to do? If given the ultimatum of choosing what is right, and what is safe, what do I choose? This is the second time this question was posed to me. Before it was whether I should live my life as I truly am, or as who people wanted me to be. I chose to be safe that time. I was wrong.
So what did Jesus choose, when the world was against him? When his life and the lives of his friends and family were threatened by a society gone wrong? He was only telling the Truth after all. He was standing up for Justice. And he paid for it with his life.
It is not an easy decision. It never was and never will be. A coward hides behind the masses and does what is accepted. A Courageous man stands in front and does what is Right. I know who I want to emulate.
Do you?