Many years ago, I was in the coal-mining business, in West Virginia. It was there that I had an interesting conversation with a grizzled old coal-miner, who had once been trapped deep underground, after a cave-in.

“When I heard the rumblings of that cave-in getting closer to me,” he said, “well … that put me to thinking.”

When suddenly assaulted by an intemperate crisis, most of us are thrown into a state of fear, which inhibits any thinking. But perhaps, the old miner was simply calling the fear he must have felt – “thinking.”

Today, historic dangers are at hand for Americans, from almost every quarter, from our federal government to the pharmaceutical/medical combine, throwing some of us into a paralytic fear, with still fewer of us able to give our precarious situation much thought at all. The despotic triumvirate of the federal government, international banks, and multi-national corporations have made life much like trying to transverse a mine-field, without many of us knowing where the land mines are, and many more not even knowing they are in a mine field; such is their desire to avoid being fearful or inconvenienced with thinking. Read the rest of this entry »