One of my favourite authors is Thom Hartmann, who wrote the Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. He is a writer, former editor and reporter, entrepreneur, psychotherapist (and NLP Practitioner and NLP Trainer), and worldwide lecturer who lives in Vermont. His writings focus on the intersection of myth and stories - otherwise known as "culture" - and how those stories, when they become toxic, lead to problems with schools, democratic institutions, the environment, and even problems in life, relationships, and communities.

He has just written a new essay, a very important one, IMO, When Democracy Failed - The Warnings of History, which should be read by any and everyone who cares about our country and our world. You may access it by clicking HERE.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts...

...the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world... as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones...

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism...

Sound familiar? Please read the entire essay. It really is worth it.

Thanks,

kat