It matters not how strait the gate,
  How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
  I am the captain of my soul.

    -- "Invictus", William Ernest Henley

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Conservatism gets "a bad rap". . . . . mostly because of the kind of egotistic motivations that go behind "clinging to a hard-core creed", without the mass of pretenders looking in the mirror and seeing what kind of inglorious, compromised individuals they are. A real, honest philosophy of that stripe does not delight in others' suffering, because they realize, there but for fortune-- the guns can be trained on them-- a harsh and fearful symmetry. Rather, a true conservative would seek to lead others up to "right-thinking" and "right action" through quiet mindfulness that does not need to loudly bring attention to itself, because the silence speaks for all.

The universe dances with harmonious spheres-- with cycles of birth and death and replenishment-- and when a facet is in error, something cries out. When, in this vale of tears, there are realists and pretenders, when conflict and self-correction is "smothered down" in the name of harmony. Unhealthy relationships that overly defy nature's laws with the wayward decadence of "civilization gone soft" can form and the human waves, grid-locked in traffic, are overly worse for it.

Life, like freedom, springs everywhere. . . . . like lichens in a cave; because wherever there is a niche, the unstoppable life impulse will assert itself. A humorous sketch of this phenomenon is a jukebox owner making the rounds of the city, like the "giddyaup" man at the front end of a shit wagon. And you can bet that there's even life in that shit wagon's contents. Not all of life is pretty, but one must have the hardiness to break into the ecosystem or else they will either be eaten or enslaved in the course of things. A trick played on the mind of humanity is living in such a cloud of abstraction, rooted in the fear of consequences, that they are afraid to exert their true Creator-given freedom and break away from a bad situation, the mental chains molding their brain pulp into thinking "they can't be anything else" and "break free". Ruts are easy to fall into so long as one is marginally comfortable enough to keep sliding into a deeper and deeper descent.

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"Dear Winona" &  Other Stories from St. Louis!

(Major Credit for this Undertaking Given to
"Captain Jesse", my Brother-at-Arms)