Revolution 2.0

Introduction Where does the practice of diversity and inclusion add to the desired results in any endeavor e.g., business, sports, education, etc.? In choosing the players for your favorite NFL team? What about in choosing the doctor for your grandmother who just tested positive for COVID? Should you include residents from the very different neighborhood three city blocks away from you in your block party? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing There is a lot of talk these days about diversity and inclusion. And it is not just politicians and activists who are trying to make points with their audience. I was looking at an advertising video for a popular, somewhat high-end restaurant chain with a location here in Colorado Springs. It pointed out that they offered an “inclusive experience.” Other than meaningless virtue signalling, what could that possibly mean? That they have beers from third world countries? Or that they have finally come around to serving blacks and other minoritie

Introduction Life is 10% what happens to us, and 90% how we react to it. That’s the principle; we are going to talk about specifics, illustrating the delights that can be had in the simplest things, and the peace that comes from overlooking idiocy, errors and insults. That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing In the 70s, after the Army and graduating college in Boulder, I set out to start my first business. By today’s standards, I was broke, but since I was not aware of that definition, I was ignorant of my “problem.” My $100 per month G.I Bill ended with graduation, and my $2.87 per hour job driving a school bus had ended for the summer.  Now, what should I do? Well, start a business, of course.  I had about $100, and borrowed another $500. I lived in a two-bedroom cabin deep in the mountains West of town. The rent was $90 per month, accurately reflecting the market value of the cabin. On cold nights, you had to get into a freezing bed, thrashing about using friction to warm things

Producing Revolution 2.0 is an absolute labor of love for me to do. But it is in fact a labor. So as we prepare to celebrate the holidays I thought it might be good to unplug and share with you some episodes from the archives.  Stay well, stay healthy, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving. Introduction This is an open letter to anyone who has ever asked questions like “What am I supposed to do?” Or, “Do I matter?” Or, “Is this all there is?” That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Life is hard. Let’s start with a foundational truth: Life is hard, as it must be. And once you latch onto that truth, life instantly starts getting better and better. You grow and stretch, and you can teach and be a model for others to do the same, so that they too can grow and stretch. Observing that life is hard is not “tough love.” It is pure caring. The truth is always pure caring. Today’s Key Point: There are people, groups and political parties telling you that life is designed to be easy, and

Introduction The scariest part of our increasingly regulated society are the people who implement those regulations. That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing When regulators regulate, bureaucrats are used to implement those regulations. Years ago, in 1998 to be exact, my wife and I were in the process of adopting a 10-year-old boy, who eventually became our much loved son. No thanks to our assigned clipboard holder. One of the myriad rules, hurdles mostly, that we had to comply with in order to complete the adoption, had to do with the temperature of our hot water. No, the rule was not in place to make sure there was sufficient hot water for everyone with an additional family member. The rule limited the max temperature after the hot water had run long enough to hit its high. After checking off other boxes on her forms, and, yes, she had a clipboard, she announced that she was going to check the water temperature. Withdrawing a thermometer that was at least a foot long from its case,

Introduction Cheap Grace is the selling of or wanting forgiveness and salvation from God without discipline or responsibility. A thought from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Cheap Citizenship is the selling of or wanting freedoms and benefits from government without discipline or responsibility. A thought from Will Luden. That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing All con games, where a grifter, a con artist, cheats a mark rely in no small part on the mark’s desire to get something for nothing. For example, a “pigeon drop” is a con game in which a mark or “pigeon” is convinced to give up a sum of good-faith money in order to secure the promise of sharing a larger amount of “found money”. Ultimately, the scammers disappear with the good-faith money and “drop” the mark who is left holding a worthless bag filled with news clippings cut into the shape of previously observed currency. When either pastors or politicians sell us on the idea of something f

Introduction As governments become bigger, they become disproportionately less accountable.  “The intensity of the sound is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the signal source.” -My Junior year high school physics teacher. (He stole it from Newton.) “Government accountability to the people is inversely proportional to the square of the increasing size of that government.” -Will Luden That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Newton’s inverse square law as applied to sound explains why sounds quickly become quieter as the distance increases from the sound source. For example, if you want to get someone’s attention in the living room, speaking in a normal voice will work. If that same person is across the street, you might have to shout. If they are 2 or 3 blocks away, you will need another method of communication.  Luden’s inverse square law as applied to governments explains why as governments get bigger, they become much less accountable. It is obvious that

Introduction Much of what is being sold to us by the media, and taught to us by politicians at all levels, is that we are deeply divided because the people on the other side are idiots at best, and evil at worst.  Don’t believe a syllable. The “Divide and Conquer” approach to defeating your enemies is as old as politics and war. Win by getting your enemies to fight each other. That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing The Latin phrase “Divide et impera” is as old as politics and war. The divide your enemy so you can rule both sides tactic is attributed to Julius Cesar–he successfully applied it to conquer Gaul twenty-two centuries ago. But he wasn’t the first, nor the last, to implement it. It is being done to us today, and quite effectively, I might add. Let’s test my claim. We are being told all day, every day, that we are, “A deeply divided nation.” In the various attempts to prove it, some of what we are shown are scenes where large crowds of Trump supporters are en

Introduction In 2016, the Mainstream Media/Pollsters cabal predicted a Clinton landslide. In 2020, the same pairing predicted an even bigger landslide for Biden.  With their thousands of professionals, powerful analytic tools and decades of experience, are they that bad at their jobs, or is there something else going on? And do they have partners? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Let’s hear from Meghan McCain, anti-Trump Republican and daughter of the late Republican Senator John McCain. “Modern American polling is dead and modern American pollsters should find another vocation so they stop wasting all of our collective time and helping to gaslight the media and American public.” Did the pollsters get it wrong, did they learn nothing new after embarrassing themselves in 2016? I posit that the pollsters, Mainstream Media (MSM) and blue state authorities have formed a loosely organized, yet powerfully effective, coalition, a cabal, really, designed to make America permanently l

Introduction Politics is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of religion. If we want to understand what is happening in our nation–in our world–work this “equation” backwards.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Running this observation backwards, religion influences culture, and culture influences politics. This seems so simple and clear, but very few people are talking about it, and this truth gets no play at all in the media. And here we are fixing that. All of the major religions in the world share at least two of the same core teachings: Love God, and Love your neighbor. None of them teach belittling or attacking others if they have the wrong thoughts or opinions. Instead, they teach love and forgiveness. And if we are going to do the truly hard work of loving in this way, we need the influence, the pull, the encouragement and discipline of a religion, or another sufficiently influential https://revolution2-0.org/we-all-need-a-moral-compass-e

Introduction If we want to get our country back on track, and keep it there, the best possible education, starting early, is vital. That makes school choice my No. 1 political issue in 2020. Real school choice means that the national average of $15+K per year per student spent on public school K-12 education would follow the student, to be spent as the parents see fit. Parents would choose amongst freely available and equally funded traditional public, public charter and private schools.  Only one party supports school choice.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing “The caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf who keeps the caribou strong.” Keewations (Inuit) proverb.  One of the signature environmental books of the 70’s was “Never Cry Wolf” by Farley Mowat (how’s that for a name?). A wonderful book with many intriguing, fun, and memorable anecdotes, with the core message being that wolves had been getting a bad rap. Until the publication of Mowat’s book, wolves were broadly se

Introduction The world long ago lost hope for a lasting peace in the Middle East. The frequent wars often had a religious basis, starting with the Romans in Judea, dramatically escalating the bitterness of the conflicts.  Donald Trump is on his way to establishing peace in that deeply dangerous hotspot, where three of the world’s most influential religions confront each other face-to-face.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Modern history in the Middle East began with the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. They had sided with the Kaiser, and the Ottomans suffered fatally when Germany lost. Post WWI, Jews began to immigrate, in small numbers, from various countries to their ancestral homeland, Palestine, then a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine (British Mandate) territory. After almost thirty years in control with some serious waffling about the right of Jews to come to Palestine, the British Mandate in Palestine ended in 1948. In 1

Introduction This is an open letter to anyone who has ever asked questions like “What am I supposed to do?” Or, “Do I matter?” Or, “Is this all there is?” That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Life is hard. Let’s start with a foundational truth: Life is hard, as it must be. And once you latch onto that truth, life instantly starts getting better and better. You grow and stretch, and you can teach and be a model for others to do the same, so that they too can grow and stretch. Observing that life is hard is not “tough love.” It is pure caring. The truth is always pure caring. Today’s Key Point: There are people, groups and political parties telling you that life is designed to be easy, and that if life is not easy for you, that is proof you are a victim. They compound this self-serving and completely misleading claim by adding that you are therefore owed compensation, in the form of money, school or job preferences, and other unearned advantages. All to come at the expense o

Introduction Employees of two downtown Colorado Springs restaurants recently protested tip sharing, the required dispersal of their tips among the whole staff.  Both restaurants display liberal political signs, and have invited liberal groups to hold events at those restaurants. Not surprising in that the city itself is liberal. My money says that a good number of the employees who are protesting to keep their tips to themselves are in full support of the Democratic Socialist agenda which includes Medicare For All and free college.   That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Stories can paint pictures and make points in memorable ways; this story is a case in point. Here we have a tourist from America, travelling in an Eastern European socialist country engaged in a conversation with a local. They are involved in a discussion about socialism, with the European touting how devoted he is to the concept. The American asks, “So, if you had 1,000 horses, you’d give away 500?” “Of course,”

Introduction Senate Democrats are aggressively interviewing Judge Barrett as if she is a candidate for Congress. But even they know that is silly, because legislators are elected by the people, not approved by the Senate. Why are they doing this? A. 1. They want the US Supreme court to violate its Constitutional charter and be a second Legislature and 2. They are grandstanding, playing to the voters who do not understand the elegant balance of power our Constitution set up with the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Senate Democrats are asking very little about the actual law or Judge Barrett’s jurisprudential thinking. Instead, one after another, they have used their time to focus on a parade of policy horribles if she is confirmed. And for emotional effect, they brought along photo displays of children and women who would supposedly be her victims on health care, abortion, gun violence and more. The picture they are painting

Introduction Few of us fall for the overt and outrageous lies, e. g., “Trump is a Nazi” or “Obama is a citizen of Kenya.” The most dangerous lies are the subtle ones, the ones disguised as honest reporting.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Here are two immediate examples of those dangerously subtle lies from the front page of Sunday’s Colorado Springs Gazette, my home newspaper on 11 October 2020; tell me if you see what the authors are up to in these multi-page article lead ins:  “A mostly peaceful afternoon of opposing demonstrations in Denver’s Civic Center park suddenly turned deadly on Saturday when a man was fatally shot.” -Julia Cardi writing for The Denver Gazette printed in the Colorado Springs Gazette, 11 Oct 2020. “With few bridges left connecting rural and urban life, the region’s two largest counties split along party lines: one with the intent to preserve the past, the other pushing for progress.” -Alayna Alvarez writing for Colorado Politics; both articles a

Introduction “If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s gonna stop ’em.” -Yogi Berra, Baseball Hall of Fame catcher. “If people do not want to change, nobody’s going to stop ‘em.” -Will Luden, Host, Revolution 2.0™ That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing In the 1960s in Boulder, Colorado, I was peripherally involved in a group that opened a “Free Store” in downtown Boulder. The noble, naive and unstudied motive was to provide free clothing, and eventually, medical services, to people living on the streets, as a way of changing their lives. With high hopes and the sense of being on a breakthrough, anti-capitalist mission, the store was stocked with a good starting quantity of clean, used clothing displayed on the usual retail racks and shelves. There was even a starter amount of medical supplies. The buzz started when the first street people came in. There was disappointment when the first “shoppers” took off the clothes they were wearing, dropped t

Introduction Christopher Columbus: Hero, brutal conqueror, or both? Today we look at Columbus, and a lot more; statues, movies, and teaching American History. This is an exercise in seeing ourselves and others as we and they really are. Isn’t that kind of honesty fundamental to any kind of development; individual, societal, financial, physical or spiritual? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing The 1969 movie “Goodbye Columbus”, adapted from a Philip Roth novel of the same name, focuses on the differences in the main characters in this boy meets girl story. We are looking at the differences between those of us who want to remember and learn from, grow from, our past as it truly was, the warts and the horrors along with the heroic and miraculous, and those of us who want to denounce and erase everyone and everything that does not meet their current standards of approval. Much has been written and said about various statutes, and we’ll get to those. But let’s start with a coup

Introduction As the most powerful person on the planet, the President of the United States is often referred to as the leader of the Free World. Either Donald Trump will continue in that role, or Joe Biden will step into the role.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing Neither candidate came across as anything like Presidential, much less like the leader of the Free World. I have heard reactions ranging from “Clownshow” to “World Wrestling Entertainment”, including “Embarrassing”, “Kanye was the winner” and “The US lost.” The most telling reaction from several sources was, “After that performance, just don’t vote.” I agree that America lost, but likely for a different reason that the others with this reaction. The vital discussion of today’s key issues is what we as Americans lost.  The first and most important issue is how we choose our leaders. The two-party system is no longer producing leaders capable of engaging in stimulating discussions like the Lincoln/Douglas live and on

Introduction We have not seen anything close to the truth with the vast majority of the Breonna Taylor agenda-driven images, soundbites and analyses that wash over us multiple times a day. Truth is the most marginalized voice of all. The vast majority of us want true justice, and a permanent, united peace. In order to know that peace, we need to have the facts–all the facts and nothing but the facts–facts will lead us to the truth. Only the truth can lead us to true justice.  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing How many of us have been told that Breonna Taylor was murdered in her bed while sleeping? And then told that a systemically racist police force could do that to any random Black person at any time?  That is a lie, intentionally designed to increase the fear and anger among Blacks, and anybody who believes that lie, toward the police specifically and White society in general. And people understandably believe that lie because they want to trust their news sou

Introduction Is the Supreme Court’s function to, “Do the right thing,” as dictated by the nine individual Justice’s consciences, or is it to determine if a law or other enforceable rule is constitutional?  That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.  Continuing A key part of the genius of the founding documents is the separation of powers amongst the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches. The checks and balances with the three branches of government were put in place to avoid having one branch dominate the others. Aided and abetted by many of the Justices themselves, there continues to be a destructive push to make SCOTUS the second legislative branch; the backup branch if the duly elected representatives in the legislature are deemed to have gotten it “wrong”. A group of lifetime political appointees can right that “error” by the people’s representatives through judicial legislation, lawmaking from the bench. And judicial legislation should be an oxymoron. Let me support the answer to the o