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Joined: 2009-08-30
Columns on STR: 35

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Craig Russell
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Craig Russell is a writer and musician in upstate New York.

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Columns by Craig Russell

Taking Responsibility for Freedom
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Craig Russell 2003-12-01 17:00
But pick and choose. Robot or Man. Machine- or hand-made, You cannot have both. Greed, I keep reminding you, Is the failure to choose. The unwillingness to pick one thing over Another. Wealth or simplicity; you cannot have both. ~Diane Wakoski, 'Greed: Part 8'
Homogenizing America
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Craig Russell 2003-11-13 17:00
Behind that which is seen, lies something which is not seen. ~ Frederic Bastiat
Re-thinking the Renaissance
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Craig Russell 2003-10-30 17:00
The cheap, commercial luridness of October 31 here in the United States almost totally obscures an event of immense proportions, an event that quite literally changed the world ' an event that should never go unnoticed on its anniversary because it marked the beginning, both for better and for worse, of the individual consciousness.
Re-thinking the Renaissance
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Craig Russell 2003-10-28 17:00
Sometimes our very words help to confound and thus to enslave us.
The Rainbow of Knowledge
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Craig Russell 2003-09-25 16:00
To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. ~Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching I have spent most of my life institutionalized. For more than ' of my life ' 39 of my 50 years ' I have either studied or taught in a school or a college in upstate New York .
Defining Freedom
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Craig Russell 2003-09-16 16:00
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. ~ Goethe George Orwell warned us more than 50 years ago about the political consequences of lazy and sloppy thinking in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. Our language, he wrote, 'becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us...
Thoughts on September 11
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Craig Russell 2003-09-10 16:00
Rule your mind or it will rule you. ~ Horace
Our American Nonage
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Craig Russell 2003-09-03 16:00
The American Heritage Dictionary defines nonage (non-age) as 'the period during which one is legally underage' or 'a period of immaturity.' The great philosopher Immanuel Kant, however, offered a slightly different definition of that word in his 1784 essay What is Enlightenment? 'Enlightenment,' he said, 'is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage,' with nonage being 'the inability to use...
Embracing Chance
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Craig Russell 2003-08-28 16:00
My birth, like yours, came about by accident. My mother just happened to be sitting in a soda shop one day when my father walked in and saw her. He was three years older than her; they went to different schools and lived ten miles apart. Some might call their meeting mere coincidence. Others, like Carl Jung perhaps, might call it synchronicity. Maybe if my father had run into a friend and...
On the Clock
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Craig Russell 2003-08-21 16:00
I'm hip about time. ~ 'Captain America ' in Easy Rider We assume so much in life.
The Significance of Herb Brooks
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Craig Russell 2003-08-14 16:00
A certain event this past week made me think about the amazing multitude of small, seemingly insignificant, ways in which the State manipulates us mentally to its enduring advantage. The event: 'Herb Brooks,' who coached the American hockey team which improbably won the 1980 Olympic gold medal in Lake Placid , died Monday in an automobile accident. Seems simple and straightforward enough. Seems...
Within You Without You
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Craig Russell 2003-08-07 16:00
To live outside the law, you must be honest. ~ Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie You never know where, when, why, or even if a bolt of enlightenment might strike you. You never know what you might be doing when, suddenly, you experience an epiphany, when a veil that you didn't even know you had on suddenly lifts and you can, for the first time, see.
Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em
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Craig Russell 2003-07-30 16:00
Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar, dancing on the light from star to star . . . . ~ Neil Young, 'Like a Hurricane' This Friday night I will be singing and playing bass with our band in yet another bar. In most ways, it will differ very little from any other gig we've ever played ' except, of course, for one thing:
E-Prime and Freedom
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Craig Russell 2003-07-23 16:00
To be or not to be ' that is the question. ~ Shakespeare, Hamlet Let's think for a moment about thought.
Is Judgment Day Inevitable?
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Craig Russell 2003-07-16 16:00
When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, one of our greatest fears, the one that disturbed our waking hours and gave us nightmares, was of nuclear holocaust. We were told in school and on television that the Bomb could fall literally any second. We might have warning. There might be an alarm. But then again, there might not be. Our teachers told us if we saw that flash in the sky we...
Free the Slaves
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Craig Russell 2003-07-14 16:00
Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything. ~ Bruce Springsteen, ' Badlands '
John D. Rockefeller and the Magnificent Bribe
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Craig Russell 2003-07-08 16:00
To the extent that men have escaped the control of nature they must submit to the control of society. ~ Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization
Art, the Individual and the State
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Craig Russell 2003-07-02 16:00
Jim Bouton, who 40 years ago won 20 games for the New York Yankees, wrote in the New York Times last weekend about his recent visit to the American Museum of Folk Art where he saw an exhibition called 'The Perfect Game.' Reading his account made me think not only about the effect of mass produced art on the individual and its relationship to binding him to the State but also about how creating...
Goodbye to Tiny Town
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Craig Russell 2003-06-26 16:00
The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. ~ Gandhi Driving down the Parkway yesterday I saw what our greed, our pride, our arrogance, and our overwhelming self-centeredness has done to us and the world we live...
A Good Day Indeed
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Craig Russell 2003-06-22 16:00
Sometimes you learn from books. Sometimes you learn from other people. Sometimes you learn directly, sometimes indirectly. Other times you learn just by watching, by noticing things, by asking yourself questions about them and trying as best you can to answer them . . . . It was, as Vito Corleone might have said, an offer I couldn't refuse: free tickets to see Steve Winwood and the Dead at...
Adelaide's Whooping Cough, the Annihilation of Space, and You
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Craig Russell 2003-06-18 16:00
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph'but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. ~Thoreau, Walden Why are you reading this?
Character and Freedom
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Craig Russell 2003-06-09 16:00
People should be beautiful in every way--in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts, and in their innermost selves. ~ Anton Chekhov
Character and Freedom
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Craig Russell 2003-06-04 16:00
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. ~ Benjamin Franklin Baseball fans received a surprise the other day when Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs broke a bat during a game and the umpire saw that it had been corked. Earlier this year, Sosa hit his 500th homerun, thus ensuring, so many thought, a future spot in the Hall...
Watch What You Watch
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Craig Russell 2003-05-29 16:00
'The response to television may be fairly described as passive . . . . Television is a communication medium that effortlessly transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of exposure.' ~ Herbert Krugman (1969), quoted in Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television
The Bicycle Mind
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Craig Russell 2003-05-27 16:00
I spent a little money at the bike shop last week to get my old bicycle in shape for the summer. In fact, I just got back from riding my bicycle to campus and back ' the first time I've done that in the twelve years I've worked there. It got me thinking because, when I was a student, I always biked to campus. After all, when I was a student, I didn't have either a car or a driver's license.
Memorial Day 2003: Remember Why They Died
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Craig Russell 2003-05-21 16:00
The State has many ways to impress itself upon our consciousness. One of these is through granting us days off from work on what we quaintly call 'holidays.'
The Two-Edged Sword of Power
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Craig Russell 2003-05-18 16:00
You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal. ~Leonard Cohen In the spring of 1903, most people in upstate New York woke up in the cold. Their stoves were downstairs in the kitchen, and not much heat made it upstairs into the bedrooms.
Grammar and the Passive American
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Craig Russell 2003-05-13 16:00
Modern English . . . is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration. ~ George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Elections and the Lesson of Frodo
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Craig Russell 2003-05-08 16:00
Nine people who wish to become the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States recently 'debated' in South Carolina . The election, of course, is not for another year and a half, but the political drumbeat has already started ' a quiet, faint rumble in the background that will only grow in intensity over the next 18 months. Those in the employ of the Great American...
Liberate Literacy
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Craig Russell 2003-05-04 16:00
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' ~ John 1:1
Television and the State
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Craig Russell 2003-04-29 16:00
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ~ Exodus 20:4
Turn It Off
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Craig Russell 2003-04-23 16:00
Chances are you have one of the most insidiously dangerous objects ever created--and one of the State's most powerful tools of domination--in your living room right now. You may very well have one in your bedroom, too, and in your basement. It's insidious because most Americans don't think of them as dangerous, nor do they think of them as tools of State domination; otherwise they...
Hard, Hard Questions
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Craig Russell 2003-04-21 16:00
'We got department stores and toilet paper . . . got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. Keep on rocking in the free world . . . .' ~ Neil Young It's easy for those of us who oppose the Government's immoral slaughtering of Iraqis to blame George W. Bush & Co. But perhaps this war is not as 'cut and dried' as we might want it to be. Each of us has to ask himself if he doesn't bear some...
Remember Waco
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Craig Russell 2003-04-15 16:00
'You could have arrested me jogging as I jogged up and down the road. You could have arrested me at Wal-Mart . . . this ain't America anymore when the ATF has that kind of power to come into anybody's home and kick doors down.' ~ David Koresh (1959-1993)
On Tim Robbins, the Hall of Fame, and First Amendment
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Craig Russell 2003-04-13 16:00
While they certainly use the word a lot, liberals just don't seem to really understand the meaning of 'freedom.'
E-Prime and Freedom
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Craig Russell 2003-07-23 16:00
To be or not to be ' that is the question. ~ Shakespeare, Hamlet Let's think for a moment about thought.