I found your blog by google searching Frank Buckman while doing research on a book bashing AA. Yes, AA IS a cult and if you continue to attend, you will see this more clearly. You will see that it is mandatory to do the 12 steps and that these are just a path to follow for brainwashing into the cult. Have you not yet noticed that the 12 steps say absolutely NOTHING about stopping drinking (drugging...whatever)?

You want to be happy. That's why you drink. You should try happiness through goal directed action. Also, QUIT relying on OTHER people. Only YOU can keep yourself sober. If you fall off the wagon and get drunk for a few days...no big deal. Just sober yourself up and be productive for a few days before doing it again. You will find it very rewarding. That's what I do.

You say you are secular so you might try to learn a little Objectivism. However, be careful here too because there are those who know of this and worship Ayn Rand in a pseudo-cult based, presently, around Leonard Peikoff.

If you want a structured environment, check ou Rational Recovery's online website featuring Jack Trimpey. If you are interested in learning more about the hideous nature of AA, I suggest you check out the Orange Papers online. (It looks like you may have already.)

As for World War IV, you might try reading The Creature from Jekyll Island (not for everyone) as this explains how the American Civil War was actually WWI.

I'll bookmark this blog and check back in a few days to see what is going on then.

Yes, I"m using Objectivism. Already did all that research and found all the same stuff. Didn't include it though because the post was a gazillion words long already.

17 year olds in Baltimore must think more of themselves than 17 year olds in Indiana. We never thought we had any grasp on the problems of the world. That must be nice for the adults in a red state.

Yeah, what's wrong with these kids, wasting time talkin' about world events in stuff.

They should be at the local Hot Topic, shopping!

Huh? All right, Benn, I’ll accept your dressing down for me being insensitive towards a couple of children and their game of uninformed Socratic discourse. Still, it would have been nice if one or two of the facts of their sweeping manifesto had some foundation in informed reality.

I think I went out of my way to point out that when I was their age, I was every bit as much of an ignorant blowhard as they are today. Luckily, I had a family that had the good sense to give me a good mocking when I convinced myself that I had all the worlds answers when I in fact knew nothing. “Hey, Che,” my father would say to me with the entire family biting their tongues, “I hope you finished that copy of the Communist Manifesto your mother and I gave you. There’s a new revolution in Uganda. We bought you a plane ticket and your mother just washed all your berets. We would hate for our little Trotsky to be unprepared.”

Valuable lesion learned. And that lesion was not to avoid intellectual discourse. It was to actually read a book or two before I tried to engage in it.