NHTSA and the insurance Mafia want to see fines for not buckling-up jacked up to as much as $100 in order to “encourage” higher compliance with mandatory seatbelt laws.
Apparently, the $25 hit imposed at gunpoint that’s the current national average fine just isn’t sufficient. Neither are the DMV demerit points some states and (of course) the District of Columbia) assign if you’re found unbuckled and which the insurance Mafia uses as the basis for “adjustments” to your can’t-say-no-thanks, enforced-at-gunpoint insurance policy
Higher fines would improve “compliance” by 6 to 7 percent, according to (yet another) taxpayer-financed study of the obvious.
Threaten people with violence and – surprise – they’ll do what you say.
But the question more people ought to be asking is whether it’s right to threaten anyone with violence for such things as not wearing a seatbelt. And if that’s ok, then shouldn’t the system at least be consistent and hit people who don’t exercise – or who are grossly overweight – with fines as a well? Call it it the Tubby Tax. After all, the same reasoning applies.
Or at least, it ought to.
NHTSA and other buckle-up-at-gunpoint advocates argue that wearing a seat belt is “safer.” True enough. Just as it is also true that it’s safer to exercise regularly – and to not be grossly overweight. Why, then, aren’t couch potatoes and fat slobs threatened with violence by costumed goons? Is their “safety” of less importance than the unbuckled driver’s?
The beefy impose higher actual costs on society, too – in the form of major health problems such as early-onset diabetes, arteriosclerosis, degenerative joint diseases and so on than do unbuckled drivers – most of whom never impose any costs on anyone at all. Because most people don’t get into major wrecks, buckled or unbuckled. Which means, their seatbelt usage is irrelevant. Or at least, not necessarily “unsafe.” Being grossly overweight, on the other hand, all-but-guarantees premature death and significant health problems.
According to the Society of Actuaries, the add-on cost of obesity is nearly $300 billion annually: $127 for medical care, $49 billion for productivity losses, and another $72 billion for disability payments. Hasn’t society got a “right” to insist that Large Marges and Sloppy Sams behave more responsibly? That they be encouraged – at gunpoint – to behave in a less “risky” fashion?
Meanwhile, a mere $8.8 billion might be saved if everyone buckled-up.
Chump change. It’s time for a War on Fat. A Crusade to the Gym. Daily physical jerks for all. Lower, Smith! You’re not trying hard enough! Anyone under the age of 40 is perfectly capable of touching his toes! Try harder, please!
Well, why not?
It’d be funny, except people – most people – miss the underlying point. This Piers Morgan-like, un-American notion of collective everything, always to be imposed at gunpoint. You’re not an individual, responsible for your own life – and so, free to decide how best to live it. You’re part of the collective. It owns you – and you own it. No one is allowed to own themselves. Your actions affect others – even though this “affecting” is only possible as a result of coercive collective policies that cause us all to prey on one another like a pack of hyenas.
A pack of intellectually dishonest hyenas.
Because – hyenas who revel in selective persecution based on arbitrary criteria.
There’s no reason, for instance, that fat people shouldn’t feel the full force of the state – if the reasoning used to persecute seatbelt-avoiders applies generally rather than subjectively and arbitrarily. Anything the individual chooses to do that can be convincingly argued increases his “risk” – or which might “impose costs on society” – must be forbidden at gunpoint.
But of course, the system doesn’t do that – not yet. Instead, it selectively targets some people. 
And only certain personal choices.
The juggernaut is usually preceded by a propaganda campaign worthy of Dr. Goebbels – whose purpose is to marginalize and anathematize the new pariah group so that they may be shoved out from under the protective umbrella of “responsible” society. And then, targeted for special enforcement.
It happened to cigarette smokers – and with such vindictive ferocity that to light up today is sufficient, almost, to be treated as a pedophile.
Next came seatbelt scofflaws. Same tactics, too. Portray the unbuckled as reckless and stupid – people apart from the “law abiding” and “responsible.” It thus becomes so much easier for the average non-thinking American to feel no empathy for the person who is waylaid with heavy fines for having failed to “buckle up for safety” (even though it’s his safety, and so no one else’s business).
Much less anger toward the system that threatens a fellow citizen who has caused no one any harm with lethal violence.
The unthinking American only sees a non-person, different from himself, who has become an outlier for having failed to Do as He Has Been Told.
It almost never occurs to the unthinking American that perhaps some day, he, too, will become the object of some hairshirt crusade based on the “risk” his actions present – and hypothetical, generalized and utterly arbitrary assertions about the “costs” such actions may impose on “society.” He contents himself, instead, with a sort of low-wattage moral busybodyism that selectively focuses on actions he personally doesn’t approve of – or which he has been taught not to approve of – never grasping that there is nothing preventing the same mechanism being deployed against himself. That it is only a matter of some other busybody taking interest in his “risky” actions – and demanding that they, too, be outlawed or banned or fined into oblivion.
Once, a long time ago, America was about the freedom to choose for yourself – and to be responsible for yourself. And to not be made responsible for other people’s choices.
It was a not-bad place to live.
“Smith” has every right to be a fat slob – to eat whatever he likes and as much as he likes. What he doesn’t have is the right to force others to pay for the consequences of his choices. If he agrees to that, we agree to leave him to his triple angus Thickburgers.
Same thing as regards seat belts. Let people choose for themselves – and be personally accountable for any negative consequences.
That’s freedom – the opposite of this insufferably henpecky, busybody society congealing all around us, in which everything you do is everyone’s else’s business. And vice versa.
Where there’s no real choice, there’s no freedom. Your individualism is drowned in a sea of We.
That’s Option A.
Option B is what America used to be. You do your thing, I do mine. And we agree to leave one another alone. Our lives intersect on a voluntary basis only. I can’t force you to pay my medical bills – and you can’t force me to “buckle-up for safety.”
Which one sounds more appealing to you?
Throw it in the Woods?
Latest crackdown from UK:
http://www.westsussextoday.co.uk/news/county-news/police-
crackdown-on-vehicle-seatbelt-use-1-4881503
http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/update/2013-03-11/seatbelt-law-30th-anniversary/
http://www.thisisthewestcountry.co.uk/news/somerset_news/10278050._/
“Experts estimate that the increased wearing of seatbelts due to national legislation and police enforcement has reduced fatalities by more than 20%. Research has also shown that a child under four is ten times more likely to be killed if unrestrained. ”
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/community/community-news/cambridgeshire-police-seatbelt-campaign-starts-1-4881931
Motorists who risk their lives and the lives of their passengers by failing to wear a seatbelt are the target of a Cambridgeshire police campaign during March.
Throughout the month officers in Cambridgeshire will be doing targeted stop checks to catch those motorists failing to wear a seatbelt.
The campaign in March is part of a national ‘Think’ campaign to raise awareness of the importance of wearing a seatbelt.
PC Stephen Gedny, casualty reduction officer, said: “A seatbelt is a life-saving piece of equipment and it astonishes me that there are still people out there who failure to buckle up.
“Over the next few weeks officers will be carrying out targeted patrols to catch those failing to wear a seatbelt.”
Seatbelt use not rising despite ‘Click It or Ticket’ campaign:
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20130223/GPG0198/302230125/Seatbelt-use-not-rising-despite-Click-Ticket-campaign?nclick_check=1
My local Gannet rag – The Roanoke Times – devoted most of the Sunday front page to a “news” story about the “problem” of unbuckled drivers … especially in rural areas and especially truck drivers… and the “need” to pass “stricter” seat belt laws and punishments.
Fuck ’em.
This is another line in the sand for me. I will not be submit. They can cart me off to jail, if it comes to that.
My “safety” is my business.
Totally agree.
Celebrity saying he regrets not wearing one:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2276857/Dean-Gaffney-reveals-close-injury-wearing-seat-belt.html#axzz2Kgh4FEWl
Seatbelts mentionned:
http://www.fire-magazine.com/iam_criticise_15_million_cut_in_road_safety_campaigns_31127.aspx
And here:
http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/blackburn/10204788._/
More here- usual garbage being spouted:
Council marks three decades of seatbelt law
http://www.berwickshirenews.co.uk/news/local-headlines/council-marks-three-decades-of-seatbelt-law-1-2774737
Well apparently more needs to be done:
http://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/2013/2/1/action-still-needed-to-save-lives-30-years-after-seatbelt-law-warns-rospa/46089/
This is a belated reply, but the anniversary was something I was very conscious of and I made a point not to read any news articles or watch any programmes where it might be mentioned (I knew it would be lauded as a triumph and would just get me upset). Even the title of the abovementioned article is aggrevating: it’s never enough so it seems. I wish these people would just back off and let individuals decide how to live their own lives. But, of course, that’s the wider issue – according to this socialist mindset there’s no such thing as one’s own life.
Hi Blue,
That’s it exactly – the eradication of the very concept of self-ownership. Because everything hinges on that. If it is accepted that each of us owns our literal persons – our bodies, our minds – it follows that it is an affront for any other person or entity to assert ownership (via control). All such assertions of ownership by others – from mandatory “buckle up” laws to laws demanding – at gunpoint- that we surrender wealth or property our minds and bodies created – are attacks on self-ownership – and an assertion of its opposite.
The authoritarian must be a collectivist. His philosophy is impossible without group coercion – justified on the absolute denial of self-ownership.
This is key to understanding what we are up against.
Hi Blue and eric,
I too was very conscious of the anniversary but it seems in terms of media it could have been much worse- i.e. it wasn’t exactly on the headlines and frontpages of every newspaper and news website as feared. Yes the article is aggravating – but then with these what is one supposed to expect??
But individaul choice is a no-no for such people.
As you both say coercion is what they need as otherwise(they think) no one will follow their guidlines/advice(dictats). This can be said for several issues.
Charles
Squeegee man talking on TV, puttin’ down the rock and roll
Wants me to send a donation, ’cause he’s worried about my soul
He said, “Jesus walked on the water.”, and I know that it’s true. But sometimes I think that squeegee man, would like to do a little walkin’ too
But I ain’t askin’ nobody for nothin’
If I can’t get it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
You just leave this long haired country boy alone
Lindsay
Charlie
Kid
Sad celebration from the UK- hope it doesn’t get too much coverage:
http://www.theaa.com/newsroom/news-2013/seat-belt-law-30th-anniversary.html
Latest on what’s going on in the legislatures:
http://www.fiberpipe.net/~tiktin/
We are still free enough. Free enough to write our own language. To write our own reality. To emerge as a new elite, one bound by the VRP.(Violence reduction/renunciation principle)
It is a good thing, that they are 10 minutes away. Never summon them, so they remain at such a distance. They have wounded us. They have made us fragile. They have rigged the game in their favor. The rules are abhorent to us. But they have not defeated us.
They could just as well make a speech about the American Canines. That all dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals are all part of some grand plan of theirs. But making their words a reality is a different matter. They are known to settle for the mere appearance of their words being a reality.
They will write many words. Produce much media. Pay for many studies. All claiming the American Canines and “the free world” are uniformly neutered and obedient in accord with their latest decrees.
But those claims will not make it so. Don’t lose heart or give up. Every canine has its day, it’s been said since long ago. Long before these talkers and actors came to power even.
A new canine eventually emerges, why not let it be us? A canine having new tricks that can’t be learned by the old canines. New canines who come to power without violence, while the old canines lose their grips on power and become irrelevant and forgotten.
And Tor says: They are known to settle for the mere appearance of their words being a reality.
They will write many words. Produce much media. Pay for many studies. All claiming the American Canines and “the free world” are uniformly neutered and obedient in accord with their latest decrees.
So it goes….on and on. There are so many ways to do just what he says I can only agree with him and applaud him for his ability to ferret out the duplicitousness of the entire cabal. I give you a short article, replete in its own duplicitousness, from start to middle to end, involving everyone weighing in on it. Just prove me wrong and I’ll actquiesce.
http://activistpost.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=3ac8bebe085f73ea3503bbda3&id=7d980ec24b&e=94bab761ad
Increasing resources are funneled to keep up the “Great Lie” of state effectiveness, until finally, it collapses. The resources are then used to find the evil men responsible, instead of admitting it’s a corrupt system, no matter who runs it.
That part of Wisconsin is a sitting duck for every
Federally Connected Chicago Machine pickpocket that blows through town. David does the bidding of DC with no questions asked. He is a “good soldier” which of course means a terrible human being.
I mean look at comical Putin-esque picture of Sheriff David Clark.
Or look at Milwaukee’s Crime Reports.
A city with a population of 600,000 people. Has 23,000 arrests this year.
Most Frequent Charges This Year
Top 10 criminal charges responsible for most arrests in Milwaukee County.
1 Charges Pending [8684]
2 Vop(felony) Order To Detain (probation) [3331]
3 Disorderly Conduct [1753]
4 Contact Ccf-c [1692]
5 Vop(misd) Order To Detain (probation) [996]
6 Battery [646]
7 Loitering Or Prowling [645]
8 Operate While Suspended [636]
9 Resisting Or Obstructing Officer [617]
10 Oper While Revoked (alc/cont Subs/ref) [580]
Vop is violation of probation. Ccf is county correctional facility.
There are 646 arrests for Battery. All the rest of these are thought/crime & administrative police state crimes.
The number one reason for arrest is “charges pending.” That means arrested for whatever reason the DC crime gang tells him to arrest people for, no public explanation necessary.
Sheriff Dave has no power. He is like a disc jockey in a station where the playlist is set by international corporations thousands of miles away. He is just a point-of-the-sword empty-uniform in a vast pyramid heirarchy-of-empty-uniforms. Obama is lower in the heirarchy than the UN. The UN is lower than Federal Banks and Secret Sovereign Power Groups.
Litany of Bogus Charges of the Police State in Milwaukee.
http://www.whosarrested.com/wisconsin/milwaukee-county/crime-cloud/1
There are Infinite Bogus Legal Reasons why the “Freed” slaves are still not free, and never will be until they leave the corrupt system.
Here’s the captured slaves of one day.
http://www.whosarrested.com/wisconsin/milwaukee-county/arrests/2012/11/13
Where there’s no real choice, there’s no freedom. Your individualism is drowned in a sea of We.
Just out of curiosity I did a word count on Obomber’s second coronation speech.
2106 words
167 occurrences of the word “we”
21 occurrences of the word “us”
76 occurrences of the word “our”
Does these statistics misrepresent Obama’s agenda?
Hardly.
This passage, explicitly denigrating the right of the individual to act independently, and rationalizing collectivist coercion, is typical.
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.
Translation: “You didn’t build that!”
Therefore “we” must hold a gun to your head and force you to “do these things together.”
*Do these statistics…
Shoulda used a text editor.
One statement was especially ironic.
For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets…
Sounds like the American people really do “need” assault rifles and semi-automatic battle rifles after all.
Bevin, did you count I’s, you’s, and yours? I’d be interested how many of those words were there also. Not that I have any doubt as to what he’s saying basically since he’s on record too many times, just be interested in knowing the instances of first person….if any other than speaking of himself.
Dear Eight,
I did after you mentioned it.
But before I could hit “reply” my PC crashed and the numbers I looked up were lost.
There were only between zero and five instances of the other terms.
But as you and I know, the terms must be read in context. When totalitarian clovers say “We must do… ” what they really mean is “You must do what I say we must do.”
Bevin, I feel your pain. Yesterday I spent an hour digging up links and texts to support a position I took on a private forum only to have the browser crash after I had hit “send”. This isn’t a one-off thing. Sometimes I wonder.
Dear Eight,
I gotta tell ya, I didn’t used to believe in “conspiracies.”
I mostly attributed the creeping collectivism as an unconscious, unplanned historical current.
I still feel that for the most part it is. But after 9/11, I make a bit more room for the whole “New World Order” thesis.
As one critic of the NWO argued, ordinary folk make coordinated plans to realize their everyday goals.
it’s unrealistic to imagine that those who want a NWO order wouldn’t consciously, actively plan, i.e. “conspire” to make it happen.
The UN gun grab is a good example.
Bevin, I was a conspiracy guy by my mid teens. Why? I couldn’t believe anyone could do what Oswald was supposed to. I was young but experienced enough in firearms to know what he was supposed to do was virtually impossible. A couple friends and I bought a Carcano rifle(without the scope that would have rendered it useless)and did our own tests Since I was the best shot of the bunch and actually quite good by anyone’s opinion, I was named shooter and we did many tests…and none as difficult as shooting from several stories high at a moving target. We slicked that gun up, tweaking the trigger, slicking the bolt and zeroing it to the nth. No matter what I or anyone else did, we could not make that rifle cycle that fast since it had a fairly powerful round and hence, recoil(and I was larger and much stronger than Oswald). I knew I wasn’t a Marine sniper quality but felt I wasn’t a great deal off. My buddies all referred to me as “eagle eye” and I was known to make those incredible shots, those “sticking it out the pickup window, holding it with my hands extended, and aiming from beside the rifle that was outside the cab and me inside with the butt at a 90° to my body and still hit a moving target(rabbits). I did this enough to have everybody quit ribbing me for a lucky shot. My friends weren’t slouches either and we tried every way in the world to duplicate a rapid fire sequence to be just close enough and it wasn’t possible in the amount of time. Eventually the Warren Commission even admitted this and later on the next congressional commission to readdress the assassination admitted there had to be more than one shooter. I never looked back after that and everything I’ve read since has been suspect.
My friends and I started on the JFK bs story because we had shot enough in our lives to know it couldn’t be true and proved it to ourselves. It’s not hard to look askance at everything else after that. Just do a search for 9/11, bldg 7, “pull” and you’ll get more bs than you can stand. I have a list of 33 conpiracies that have been proved false(not conspiracy but fact) and I’d post them if I could figure how to turn the results back into the URL or origin. I’ll do my best to rectify this since I have a new add-on that does just that. I haven’t used it yet and don’t know just exactly how it works. I think it’s called URL finder or something similar. Several years ago, one of the big 3 tv networks address this with a guy taking a Carcano and holding as you would shooting it, pulling the trigger on an empty chamber, cycling the bolt and doing it three times and then turning to the camera and saying, Yeh it can be done. What bs. Oh, I could do that as anyone could with any coordination. what does pulling a trigger and cycling a bolt have to do with shooting a gun? It was one of those things that afterward made me just leave the room and go reload or play my guitar(you’re playing too loud, I can’t hear….good, then you won’t be believing some bs, turn the knob up instead of down)when my wife had to watch crap like that.
Morning, HR!
The Kennedy assassinations (both of them) were moments of clarity for those willing to see – and think a little. Moments when the real government’s true face was revealed. As to the why behind November, 1963: Countless specific possibilities suggest themselves, but here’s one that’s always resonated with me… but first, a caveat: The following should not be taken to mean I endorse JFK’s politics. Ok.
He was a very sick man. He knew he was not going to live a long life. This, in a way, liberated him. Because he didn’t fear them. Therefore, he was a “loose cannon,” not under their control. He might do something unpredictable. Therefore, he had to go.
RFK, I suspect, was eliminated as part of a necessary (to them) mopping up operation.
Now, again, I am no fan of RFK’s politics. But, imagine:
An almost certain RFK victory in ’68. No Nixon. No Kaiser/HMOs. No Watergate. No Ford… no Carter… no Reagan… probably, no Chimp.
In 1968 a president could still find out who killed his brother. That is why RFK had to be killed. If RFK had been elected the entire scam could have fallen apart. Of course JFK was most likely killed because he started acting like a president instead of a politician.
Sadly now I think the CIA could come right out publicly with the truth and few would care or notice. It will come out eventually as everything else has and many a kook will be vindicated again. But the official story will live on as the ‘truth’.
Dear Eight,
Sorry I didn’t see your reply until now. It’s the time difference. I’m over here in GMT +8.
That’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing that independent test of yours. You’re a regular Jim Garrison!
I used to be skeptical of the alternative JFK assassination theories. No longer. Since 9/11 I’ve retroactively upgraded the credibility of most “conspiracy theories.” Now the presumption for me is that they are true until proven false!
Re: the Italian Carcano.
The 6.5 Carcano was a pretty crappy rifle if I recall. At the time it was only 30 something dollars, mail order.
Not everything cheap is crappy of course. I remember the surplus .303 British Lee Enfields available at the time were also pretty inexpensive, but quite good.
Even today, you can get a new, late model Soviet Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle like the one the legendary Vasily Zaytsev used, for a measly 100 bucks.
I don’t know if you know it, but on March 19, 2004, Chen Shui-bian staged a false flag “assassination attempt” on himself, to ensure his re-election
People here were doing their own Jim Garrison, “CSI” style investigations.
Taiwan’s Stolen Election, Part IV
The Truth Behind Bulletgate
Bevin Chu
September 26, 2004
http://thechinadesk.blogspot.tw/2004/09/taiwans-stolen-election-part-iv.html
This reinforced my belief that conspiracies were all too real. I got to see one played out in real time, right in front of me.
The origins of our idiocracy:
Seven Deadly Principles of Secondary Education
http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfrnb/cardprin.html
1. Health
2. Command Of Fundamental Processes
3. Worthy Home Membership
4. Vocation
5. Civic Education
6. Worthy Use Of Leisure
7. Ethical Character
The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education were issued in 1918 by the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education. The focus of this commission was to form objectives for secondary education. It was decided that segmented subjects and their subject matter were a way to achieve the decided goals.
John Taylor Gatto – Cardinal Principles
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/5l.htm
These 7 deadly principles are the reason schoolbooks are superficial and mindless, that they deliberately leave out important ideas, that they refuse to deal with conflict.
The changeover came in 1918 when scholarly determinations of the blue-ribbon “Committee of Ten” report of 1893 was replaced. That committee had laid down a rigorous academic program for all schools and for all children, giving particular emphasis to history. It asserted, “The purpose of all education is to train the mind.”
The NEA report of 1918 denotes a conscious abandonment of this intellectual imperative and the substitution of some very different guiding principles. These statements savagely attack “the bookish curricula” which are “responsible for leading tens of thousands of boys and girls away from pursuits for which they are adapted,” toward pursuits for which they are not — like starting independent businesses, invention, white collar work, or the professions.
Children would now be taught to accept the inevitability of their assigned fates in the greatest laboratory of true belief ever devised: the Compulsory American Schoolhouse.
The Leaning Tower of Babel – R. Mitchell
http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/leaning-tower-of-babel/index.html
Just curious Tor, what schools did you attend? Public? Private?
Private Catholic.
It’s sobering to me to see how far back the conspiracy to dumb down Americans goes. Only the elite are taught to think.
Dumbing Down of the World – Charlotte Iserbyt
http://www.youtu.be/DDyDtYy2I0M
Here Charlotte Iserbyt former Dept of Miseducation adviser to Reagan explains the Secret Societies. Chimp’s skull/bone name is “temporary.” George H W Bush’s skull/bones name is “magog”
http://www.youtu.be/cFQD1bAsUlw
Here’s a map of laws in the US:
http://saferoads.org/files/FINAL%20ROADMAP%20REPORT_0.pdf
Wow! Heiligen verdammten Albtraum, Batman, & Captain Kirk!
Jacqueline S. Gillan, I wonder what it would be like to kiss her?
Futuristic Soul Sucking Vampires – Life Force 1985(R for Nudity)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/400078/lifeforce/
Well said- couldn’t resist googling her up.
Dear Tor,
Hey, I saw that movie in the theater, first run, way back when.
It was disturbing. I read it as Jung’s “Dark Feminine.”
Charles, this report is wrong. Wyoming has seat belt laws and also requires helmets for motorcycle riders under the age of 18. Whoever wrote it is out of touch with reality.
Most likely deliberately written to shock the clover.
Meth, we’re talking Jeb’s boy, George P. Bush. He’s a veteran you know. Well, in the Bush tradition that is. Get this: On March 21, 2007, the United States Navy Reserve announced the selection of Bush for training as an intelligence officer through the direct commission officer program, a Navy initiative whereby applicants in specialized civilian fields forgo the eight-week boot camp and – instead – attend a 90-hour class on military history and customs.[18] Once commissioned as an Ensign for eight years of reserve service, he was expected to attend a year of intelligence training, initially assigned to duty near his home. Bush told The Politico that attending the October 2006 launch of the aircraft carrier named for his grandfather—the USS George H.W. Bush—inspired him to join the service. He also called the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player and Army Ranger who was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2004, “a wake-up call”. When asked to comment, Bush’s senior assistant, Kyle Hoskinson, stated: “the Pat Tillman case is one of the saddest in U.S. Army history.”[19][20] Bush served in the War in Afghanistan for six months under the United States Special Operations Command and returned to the United States in 2011.[21][22] During that deployment, he was given a different name for security purposes. Not even those he was serving alongside knew his real identity.[10]
So, he fucked up and spoke of the “wake up call” as far as military service so he had to have a “senior assistant” to speak up for him. Damn, they just went on and on about how they really wanted me to come play with them after the TET offensive and I was completely out of “senior assistants”. It must be a hard life for a guy who says he was “destined” for “public service”. Gee, how did Texans ever get so lucky as to inherit the Bush’s?
Eat you veggies. Don’t smoke. Drink small sodas, if at all. Ride a bike to work. No hate speech. No protective weapons. Such generous Jews as Bloomberg & Koch. What a couple of swell guys.
Mayor Magic-Mike Mandates Bikes For You % Limo For Himself
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycmg/nyctvod/html/home/sotc2012_liverycabride.html
Julius Streicher’s scriptural quotations and history seem to be fairly inaccurate at times. His advocating punishment of only the Jewish Oppressors and also the many innocent Jews was surely demanded by the Nazi state looking to scapegoat the financiers of their fiat currency boondoggle.
But just maybe he was onto something about Jewish culprits like Mike Bloomberg & Ed Koch. Just bear in mind, there are may Catholic, Protestant, Bankster, Monarchy Oppressors we must expose and remove from power as well. Andrew Cuomo & The Queen of England come to mind. No force needs be brought by us, we only need expose their two-faced criminality, and the awakened hoi-polloi will take care of the rest.
http://www.stormfront.org/truth_at_last/archives/julius.htm
(Caution- Not a NAP compliant source of information. Streicher
missed that TPTB is composed of TJPTB(Jewish), TCPTB(Catholic), TPPTB(Protestant), TBPTB(Bankster), TMPTB(Monarchy), as well as many other Oligarchies. Perhaps I should better call them TOTB(The Oligarchies That Be)
Tor, while you’re naming names, don’t forget the Bush’s. And now they have a new one, a virtual caricurature of himself, Jeb’s boy, half Mexican, vowed to run for Tx office just as soon as he knows the best one open to run for(Tx. Land Commissioner, very powerful, next to Gov. or it was for Slick Rick). I don’t have a link handy for him but check him out if you haven’t already. He will run this year, probably for LC or maybe Att. Gen. if Abbott is going to run for Gov. depending if Slick Rick(in Abbott’s own words)is going to run again or not. I suspect SR will run again since he failed in the run for Pres.
And don’t ever think any of these so called people will give an inch without bringing up every storm trooper they can amass.
Ah, but I wonder if he’s “passed the test” yet?
Pappy Bush and the Idiot Son W both had to jerk off in a coffin surrounded by two dozen of their closest friends; has Junior choked the coffin chicken yet?
Or has he not yet been inducted into Chapter 322 of the Illuminati, also known as “Skull and Bones”?
On another note: I wonder if Pappy’s going to expire under Rockefeller medical care or if the old bastard will continue to cost us secret service protection money?
Dear Eightsouthman & methylamine,
Here is some recent footage of Barbara Bush at a Maine truckstop that was captured by an infowarrior. It’s time to see the Bush’s for what they really are, and not what the MSM wants us to think they are.
Barbara Bush – Raw Footage
http://www.youtu.be/QD5ynoOyDcA
That’s why I’ll never relinquish my firearms. I’m not going to go through that ordeal with nothing more than harsh words and a frantic call to 911.
Like many of brave minds here assembled, it’s all I can do to read and write while trying valiantly to remain awake and cognizant.
What’s putting us all to sleep you ask? “Insubstantial words, hazy and disembodied, that have fled utterly from things and ideas.” Only a brain dead zombie can comprehend even one sentence of any Bush or Obama speech, there is nothing intelligible there, but only verbal toxic sludge, poisoning our reason.
There is such rampant misuse of English, and only the voices of the many perverters like Bush, Obama, teachers, deans, politicians, and bureaucrats, and their consistently overblown prose which offers endless inanity in the guise of wisdom and clarity.
Listening to bureaucratic jargon has turned us into a nation of baffled, inept, frustrated, and violent people; and the public schools and the public sector is wholly to blame.
For the past 50 years, they have taught children to socialize rather than to read, write, and cipher – the only disciplines that foster clear language and logical thought.
The inescapable and alarming conclusion is that our schools have churned out savage illiterates who will never manage their lives – because, lacking “the power of language,” they can’t even think.
Drive around your “homeland”, you will discover there are no longer libraries to be found, but only learning resource centers, filled with DVDs and periodical pulp.
We live in an age where sloppy thought is equated with democratic virtue. Eric Peters Autos may be our last chance to relearn how to hone the prose which illustrates the qualities and habits of mind. The minds which our controllers and educationists don’t want our us or our children to develop. Minds with wit, clarity, precision, mastery of detail, intellectual self-respect, and seething contempt for ravings of charlatans.
Less Than Words Can Say – R. Mitchell
http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/less-than-words-can-say/index.html
Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellow men bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of our thought, if we don’t take action now.
1. The Worm in the Brain “The next step is not taken until you learn to see a world in which worms are eaten and decisions made and all responsible agency has disappeared. Now you are ready to be an administrator.”
2. The Two Tribes “There is a curious thing about the way they use their verbs. They have, of course, both passive and active forms, but they consider it a serious breach of etiquette amounting almost to sacrilege to use the active form when speaking of persons.”
3. A Bunch of Marks “An education that does not teach clear, coherent writing cannot provide our world with thoughtful adults; it gives us instead, at the best, clever children of all ages.”
4. The Voice of Sisera “Jefferson must have imagined an America in which all citizens would be able, when they felt like it, to address one another as members of the same class. That we cannot do so is a sore impediment to equality, but, of course, a great advantage to those who can use the English of power and wealth.”
5. “Let’s face it Fellows” “The questions are good ones. Who does hire teachers who can’t spell? Where do they come from? The questions grow more ominous the more we think about them. Just as we suspect that this teacher’s ineptitude in spelling is not limited to those two words, so we must suspect that she has other ineptitudes as well.”
6. Trifles “Our educators, panting after professionalism, are little interested in being known for a picayune concern with trifles like spelling and punctuation. They would much rather make the world a better place. They have tried on the gowns of philosophers, psychologists, and priests.”
7. The Columbus Gap “American public education is a remarkable enterprise; it succeeds best where it fails. Imagine an industry that consistently fails to do what it sets out to do, a factory where this year’s product is invariably sleazier than last year’s but, nevertheless, better than next year’s.”
8. The Pill “Thought control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the fact. Many grown-ups will obstinately persist, if only now and then, in composing small strings of sentences in their heads and achieving at least a momentary logic. This probably cannot be prevented, but we have learned how to minimize its consequences by arranging that such grown-ups will be unable to pursue that logic very far.”
9. A Handout of Material “The propensity for borrowed jargon is always a mark of limited ability in the technique of discursive thought. It comes from a poor education. A poor education is not simply a matter of thinking that components and elements might just as well be called factors; it is the inability to manipulate that elaborate symbol system that permits us to make fine distinctions among such things.”
10. Grant Us, O Lord “One of the most important uses of language in all cultures is the performance of magic. Since language deals easily with invisible worlds, it’s natural that it provide whatever access we think we have to the world of the spirits.”
11. Spirits from the Vasty Deep “Bad writing is like any other form of crime; most of it is unimaginative and tiresomely predictable. The professor of education seeking a grant and the neighborhood lout looking for a score simply go and do as their predecessors have done. The one litanizes about carefully unspecified developments in philosophy, psychology, and communications theory, and the other sticks up the candy store.”
12. Darkling Plain English “The bureaucrats who have produced most of our dismal official English will, at first, be instructed to fix it. They will try, but nihil ex nihilo. That English is the mess it is because they did it in the first place and they’ll never be able to fix it.”
13. Hydra “At one time I thought that I was the victim of a conspiracy myself. I was certain that the Admissions Office had salted my classes with carefully selected students, students who had no native tongue.”
14. The Turkeys that Lay the Golden Eggs “The minimum competence school of education is nothing new. We’ve had it for many years, but we didn’t talk about it until we discovered that we could make a virtue of it.”
15. Devices and Desires “If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave. If you cannot examine your thoughts, you have no choice but to think them, however silly they may be.”
16. Naming and Telling “Two things, then, are necessary for intelligent discourse: an array of names, and a conventional system for telling. The power of a language is related, therefore, to the size and subtlety of its lexicon, its bank of names, and the flexibility and accuracy of its telling system, its grammar.”
17. Sentimental Education “The history of mankind hasn’t yet provided any examples of a decrease in stupidity and ignorance and their presumably attendant evils, but we have hope. After all, history hasn’t provided anything like us, either, until pretty recently.”
Dear Tor,
“An education that does not teach clear, coherent writing cannot provide our world with thoughtful adults; it gives us instead, at the best, clever children of all ages.”
There is much truth to this. As I noted in a PowerPoint presentation I once did on “How to Write Clearly,” I explained that one cannot expect to write clearly unless one first thinks clearly.
Nor can one expect to think clearly unless one first writes clearly.
That’s because writing is thinking, and thinking is writing.
Absent a clear and consistent conceptual framework, one can do neither.
Dear Tor,
Here is some recent footage of Barbara Bush at a Maine truckstop that was captured by an infowarrior.
LOL.
You had me going for a moment or so. Until I realized I’d seen that movie before on cable.
Hi Tor,
To paraphrase Orwell, the object of political speech is not edification – it is obfuscation. Stalin put it more prosaically: He called it “in depth” language (see Radzinsky’s excellent biography).
The things advocated cannot, even now, be discussed openly. They must be euphemized and non sequitured so that they sound like something else – often, the opposite of what is intended.
Freedom literally has become slavery – and war peace.
Dear Eric,
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
One of the finest essays ever penned.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. [Such] things … can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright,
“I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.”
Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”
As champions of the NAP, one of our central tasks is to expose these examples of “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
What an insightful thread! Thanks for kicking it off Tor.
I can’t add anything; ya’ll have hit every angle.
The Elites know they must destroy language, to destroy discourse; and destroying discourse, they destroy thought.
Thereby they fulfill their prophecy for us by making us “dumb, stupid animals” as Kissinger said.
It’s the single feature I find most despicable about the “Elite”; that they achieve superiority not by excellence, but by destruction, by tearing down what’s beautiful and noble in man and making it ugly, degraded, and corrupt.
Tor, it wasn’t until I was introduced to Wittgenstein by a book Hanna Pitkin wrote that I even considered the way language effected not just how I thought but what I was able to think about. At the time I considered the idea interesting, but I was much more interested in skirts, knee high boots and the frilly undergarments of my objects of desire, so the revelations of Ms. Pitkin (and Ludwig) took a backseat for many years.
I was fluent in English (my native language) and German. The differences between the two were so slight as to be irrelevant. They didn’t prove out Wittgenstein’s theory in practice. It was only later after I’d achieved fluency in several formal machine languages (FORTRAN, Pascal and various assemblers) then forced by circumstance to become fluent in LISP that the full impact of Wittgenstein’s work struck me; and when it did it struck me hard.
It’s my opinion that the Germanic languages are essentially procedural and remind me very much of FORTRAN, Pascal, etc. while the Romance languages are functional, as is LISP. I haven’t spent much time on this idea yet because I only began speaking Spanish a few months ago, but I think it may be true.
In English I say “I would like” but in Spanish I say “Would like I”. It’s a very different way of thinking.
That our US educational system is so poor at teaching language is a tragedy, but do you honestly believe it’s done by intention? An old friend used to say “Never assume malice when ignorance will suffice”. I hold most “teachers” engaged by the public school system in very low regard; I honestly believe them incapable of executing a plan as complex as the one you allude to, just as a hold Shrub incapable of executing the plans ascribed to him by theorists.
@Scott–
Funny how much our technical history overlaps. I grew up speaking Afrikaans and English; and to this day I wish I could use some Afrikaans phrases with my friends because they’re just different…the meanings carry nuances that just aren’t expressible in English.
Same thing with LISP–it’s an epiphany that forever ruins most other languages.
C# is coming along very nicely toward a functional paradigm…but it misses in important ways.
Anyway the point is: language creates our world, much like observing a quantum system chooses its outcome. Without language the world is “void and without form”.
meth….
“language creates”
Understand, but a mite strong. Language symbolizes, not literalizes. Maps & territories & all that.
Except now i’m thinking about the language that goes in one end of a 3D printer…hmmm
@ozy–
And I never make statements that are too strong! 🙂
True enough. Though, I’m starting to wonder; with all the bizarre weirdness going in cosmology re: holographic universe, multiverse theory etc. who says we don’t “manifest” the universe as we go?
All speculation of course; fun to think about.
Perhaps what I should have said is “language creates the world in our minds”; and since we rely on the world’s representation in our minds, without language it remains “formless and void” to us, internally–so it might as well be that physically.
There’s the Matrix again. That movie captured so many powerful ideas.
@methyl:
“who says we don’t “manifest” the universe as we go?”
I would be among those, not because I don’t believe it’s true, but because I’m too much a coward to take responsibility for my own actions.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
Cue Grace Slick…….
@Scott–
LOL! “Dammit Scott stop manifesting!” 🙂
Reminds me of the Michael Crichton book Sphere–very good sci-fi. I miss him. I’ve been saving State of Fear for a long holiday.
@Methyl:
Dr. Crichton’s “State of Fear” is a very insightful work, I read it many years ago unfortunately, well before the global warming/cooling/changing/”hell we never did know what was going on” movement began.
He cuts a fairly deep slice. Worth the read but don’t expect to hear anything you don’t already know.
George Prescott Bush(Naturalized Mexican) has raised 1.3 million in eight weeks to run for political office(hasn’t decided which one yet)
George Herbert Walker(Father of Prescott Bush’s Wife)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert_Walker
Story of Prescott Bush, Dorothy Walker’s Father, how he helped Hitler rise to power.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
In 1920, Walker became the President of the W.A. Harriman & Co. investment firm.(BBH) He was the silent director of large numbers of Shell Organizations that consisted of Nazi property nationalized by the US under the Trading With The Enemy Act. Harriman(BBH)is now the oldest and largest private bank in the United States. 1.3 Trillion in Revenue per year.
Unauthorized Biography of George H. W. Bush. (Head of the CIA & Putin of America)
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-2-the-hitler-project/
BluRoses I was well aware of this article- truly shocking indeed though I dont think they represent the masses- this survey was probably carried out amongst people in Westminster or in political circles. The vast majority of people probably dont even have a clue what they are- I mean those more likely to vote on Big Brother or the X-Factor than in General Elections. Nonetheless nothing to be expected from the UK population.
That’s certainly true about the vast majority – if you used the term ‘libertarian’ on the street here most people wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about. I don’t know if it’s slightly more recognised in America (I get the impression that, though undoubtedly a minority position, there’s a greater awareness of libertarianism across the pond).
They certainly don’t know unless they are into politics. I think in America it is more recognized for historical reasons such as the constitution and the minority is quite sizable though still such.
On a general note, I read an article recently called ‘At the Margins of Politics: The Prevalence (and Irrelevance?) of Libertarian Attitudes in the UK’, which I think sums up perfectly the general attitude – and not just in the UK – towards libertarianism. It was featured in ‘The Individual’, which is a journal published by the Society for Individual Freedom (there’s lots of back issues on the site featuring some really interesting material). There’s nothing unexpected in this article but you only have to look at the graphs showing to what extent the general populace class themselves as liberal / illiberal (‘liberal’ here being used in the sense of classical liberalism) to see what a niche thing libertarianism is. That most people class themselves as moderately illiberal is hardly surprising, but it’s especially interesting (though still unsurprising to me) that there’s a far greater number of people who class themselves as actively illiberal than there are people at the other end of the scale – especially when it comes to the personal (as opposed to economic) dimension. To quote from the article:
‘Only a risible 2% of respondents can be described as Personal Liberals against 49% who can be described as Personal Illiberals…But it gets worse. I also created categories for Authoritarians and Near-Authoritarians…Well over one-third (37.5%) of the population can be described as Near-Authoritarians and over one-fifth (21.6%) can be described as Authoritarians. For them, Orwell’s 1984 was a blueprint, not a warning.’
So, pretty bleak stuff. If anyone’s interested, it’s page 2 of this issue:
http://www.individualist.org.uk/app/download/5785155476/2010augustindiv.pdf
Munkov this will soon come to the UK enforced by CCTVs.
Brutal. It seems at times that the masterminds are concentrated in greater London. America seems to be more for muscle and technological enabling of the UK’s & the UN’s plans.
When You Eat Your Veggies Use Your Hapifork
This Nanny-fork vibrates and lights up to program you to eat at a slower and healthier eating pace.
Hapifork9000: “What are you eating, Dave, that food has been outlawed by the USDA! You have eaten your recommended daily allowance of sustenance. Please exit the kitchen bay doors.”
Dear Tor,
Yup.
The future, if the Clovers have their way, is going to look like a cross between the future depicted in “WALL-E” and “Idiocracy.”
Ice cubes with embedded LEDs warn you when you’ve had too much to drink; send a text to a friend to come to your rescue.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-01/glowing-ice-cubes-warn-you-when-you-drink-too-much
Unbelievable indeed the story about Newtown- yet Ive read somewhere quoting an officer that enforcing such laws “can help reduce crime”- yeah right………….
UN-F*CKING-BELIEVABLE NEWTOWN CONNECTICUT NEWS FLASH
Newtown CT Police Release ‘Click It Or Ticket’ Results:
The holiday traffic enforcement effort has wrapped up and the results are in.
[See original By Gary Jeanfaivre on January 2, 2013 below]
Newtown Police made a total of 229 stops during the 2012 “Click It Or Ticket” campaign.
The effort, which took place from Dec. 3 through Dec. 16, was part of a nationwide crackdown designed to increase safety during the holiday season.
Here are the results for the various types of violations:
Seat belt: 33 citations, 13 warnings
Child restraint: 0
DUI: 1
Speeding: 11 tickets, 66 warnings
Other: 17 citations, 88 warnings
Connecticut State Police also participated in the campaign.
[My Incredulous Reaction]
Congratulations you moronic Connecticut Clovers who can never connect the dots. In the midst of your “Click It or Ticket” “crime” stopping melodrama which ran from Dec 3rd to Dec 16th…
In the middle of your massive PsyOp Winter Carnival, on Dec 14th, many of your own children of Sandy Hook Elementary became victims of real honest to goodness crime and violence and not the make believe kind of Police Theater Crime.
So please, Gary Jeanfaivre, do correct this story, and do include all those Sandy Hook deaths in your safety reportings.
If I had in any way been a part of that criminal misallocation of protection resources, I, would immediately hang myself from the nearest police station rafters with a well buckled and securely attached seatbelt.
Imagine men with guns away from their posts harassing rank and file drivers instead of patrolling and protecting the citizens within their jurisdiction.
I’d like to read an article about everyone of them being arrested and summarily lined up and executed before a citizen militia firing squad.
http://newtown.patch.com/articles/newtown-police-release-click-it-or-ticket-results
Just wanted to say thanks for the positive replies in this thread as it took a lot of guts to post and even more to check back again. I’d hate to be slated on any site (contrary to the idea that libertarians are unfeeling, belligerent types) but it would have been so much worse on a site that I hold in such high regard, so thanks again – it means a lot.
Welcome back and hopefully the next posts will be much easier. I too had the same problem originally on another somewhat related issue a few years back. But Im glad to have just gone for it initially. I guess the hardest is “breaking the ice” as they say.
You bet, BlueRoses!
I hope you’ll stick around…
BlueRoses, just so you understand men want enlightened women and will embrace them as like-minded people, I hope you’ll read this blog that probably says it all for libertarians everywhere.
New post on Bleeding Heart Libertarians
No Girls Allowed!
by Steve Horwitz
(Co-authored with Sarah Skwire)
no-girls-allowed1
This morning Julie Borowski, who makes videos as “Token Libertarian Girl,” shared her answer to the question “Why aren’t there more female libertarians?” While we certainly agree with Borowski that this is a question worth asking, and while we also agree that in the long run her video answers the question, we think just about everything else she says in her two minute video is wrong.
Borowski argues that because libertarianism and liberty issues are not thoroughly integrated into popular culture, women—who are slaves to being “socially acceptable and fitting in with their peers”—find libertarianism unappealing. She excoriates popular culture and women’s magazines in particular as left-wing feminist (!?) programmers of women’s minds, and damns women as passive recipients of everything the culture hands out.
Borowski then slut shames women who engage in casual sex, off-handedly dismisses the possibility that a libertarian could be pro-choice, and spirals off into an unfocused critique of the luxury goods market. Every single one of these things that she criticizes women for doing should be seen not as causes for shame, but as complex choices that smart, thoughtful women can and do make, without destroying their lives in the process. In addition, Borowski is making arguments that conservatives hurl at women all the time. If we want to pull young women away from liberalism and toward libertarianism, repeating the very same intellectually patronizing conservative arguments that pushed women to liberalism in the first place doesn’t seem to be the way to go.
Telling women that they aren’t libertarians because they are too stupid to choose something better for themselves isn’t great advertising for liberty. Claiming that women are passive, easily programmed, and incapable of critical interaction with political and cultural ideas is simply wrong—as centuries of history of women fighting against the state and decades of critiques from the left and the right of women’s magazines and popular culture have shown.
What Borowski does get right is that libertarianism does need to move into the popular culture. We do need more, and more vocal, libertarian authors, actors, musicians and so on—with the talent to produce good work that addresses themes of liberty without being dogmatically and annoyingly ideological.
But the way that Borowski’s video answers the question, “Why aren’t there more female libertarians?” is, sadly, just by being itself. There aren’t more female libertarians because libertarians say things exactly like this. Nearly every female libertarian we know can tell stories about being told, “Women aren’t really equipped to understand libertarianism. It’s a biological thing.” Or “Of course women are statists. They all just want to be taken care of.” Or “Women’s brains just can’t do economics.” Or “Women’s right to vote ruined the country.” Now Borowski has added yet another insult to the pile.
We are convinced that if a bright college-aged woman considering libertarianism saw this video, she’d think “I don’t want to be part of that movement if that’s what libertarians think women are like. And Borowski is one of the women! I can only imagine what libertarian men think…” Borowski might want to ask herself what the reception of that video would be at something like an Institute for Humane Studies introductory seminar. How would a several dozen smart, interested-but-not-yet-libertarian college-aged women respond to it? We shudder to find out the answer.
The result is that female libertarians continue to look over their shoulders and wonder which of their fellow travelers thinks they don’t really belong in the movement.
Videos like this are yet another “No Girls Allowed” sign on the treehouse of the libertarian movement and the nodding heads and “likes” by libertarians on Facebook and YouTube just add a few exclamation points and a larger font to that sign.
We’re libertarians. One of us is even a female one. And we’re going to spend yet another day being just a little embarrassed to admit it.
I think that the problem is due to a confusion caused by how the mass-media, government, politicians, and so forth target women for manipulation. Women are more targeted IMO because most men will conform to, will do anything, will publicly hold any opinion which is seen as socially necessary to attract women and have sex. Thus if women are targeted effectively one gets almost all the men free of charge.
It’s an efficient means of controlling society with the least effort. It’s social manipulation. How to get a big effect for little effort.
Just my observational view… worth the price of admission… zero 🙂
Very powerful statement so true. Many are too scared to come out on certain issues.
Dear BlueRoses,
“… the idea that libertarians are unfeeling, belligerent types”
You raise a very worthwhile point. My take?
Libertarians have for many decades been forced to endure insult added to injury.
A good example is the debate Eric and methylamine had with one “rj pare.” Here they were, championing scrupulous respect for the inviolable right of every human being to be free from brute force physical coercion.
Yet they were the ones who had to endure clearly absurd accusations of “indifference,” from a thug with no moral qualms about killing anyone who refuses to subsidize his “compassion.”
This has resulted in understandable belligerence among many libertarians — but only because libertarians are deeply feeling.
Libertarians’ deep feelings are reflected in their scrupulous respect for other individuals’ right to life, liberty, and property, and their scrupulous observance of the Non Aggression Principle.
As far as your concerns about finding yourself “swimming among sharks,” is concerned, not to worry.
Libertarians are not going to pounce on anyone who champions the NAP. Those who get pounced upon are collectivists/statists who advocate brute force physical coercion to impose their agendas on other human beings.
I earnestly hope you stick around and chime in. Speaking only for myself, talking only to other men can get monotonous.
The term “men” in the statement “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” must never be construed to mean “men as opposed to women.”
The Chinese have an expression, “Women hold up half the sky.”
George Clemenceau said “War is too important to be left to the generals.”
I say “The struggle for human freedom is too important to be left to men alone.”
Meetups…
http://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=libertarian&userFreeform=&mcId=&mcName=&categories=&view=masonry&sort=member_count&radius=Infinity&offset=0&psize=30¤tpage=1
NYC Ron Paul for President 1,490 Freedom Fighters. Last Meeting Was Monday, 114 Freedom Fighters attended
NYC LIBERTY NEW YEAR’S EVE 2013. 178 Mott St. SoHo;
Ron Paul R3VOLUTION – PHOENIX 1,334 RON PAUL Patriots
Next Meetup: Saturday January 5;
Seattle Campaign for Liberty 717 liberty campaigners
Next Meetup: Tomorrow
And might I add what a great man once said: “Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone.”
— John Quincy Adams
And another more contemporary:”The first people totalitarians destroy or silence
are men of ideas and free minds.”
— Isaiah Berlin
Or perhaps one more(I love quotes of Liberty):”These are the days when men of all social disciplines and
all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted;
when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence;
when originality is taken to be a mark of instability;
and when, in minor modification of the original parable,
the bland lead the bland.”
— John Kenneth Galbraith
Dear Eightsouthman,
Agree with you.
But disagree with Galbraith.
Not what he said, but the fact that he said it.
He is the last person qualified to make such a ringing declaration!
Eric I have to say that what you have just said is exactly what I was meaning to say. I have to say that I too have been lonely at times but what you have said is so true about the state of company.
Blue- That said I too live in the UK but haven’t yet come across any such clubs. There may be though and if there’d be any they’d probably be based around Westminster.
I’ve been reading your articles for some time now, and it’s fitting that you’ve expanded upon this one, as the earlier version was the first post that I read on this blog & I was staggered to find that there’s someone out there who seems to perceive things in the same way I do (your post re: ‘The Chiiiiiiiiiilllllllllldren’ was also uncannily similar to my own views). I find living under this busybody socialist regime tortuous but what’s most disturbing is that no one else seems to see it that way – everyone seems to think that society has ‘progressed’ yet what seems right and normal to other people is, to me, like a dystopian nightmare. I have major problems with collectivism and compulsion, and I find it ironic that socialism masquerades as being benevolent, as viewing people as a collectivist mass who have to obey the law of the state ‘or else’ is hardly my definition of empathy. Yet I’m the odd one out and feel as though there’s something wrong with me (I sometimes wish that I felt the same as everyone else – ignorance must be bliss). Your views on seatbelt laws, in particular, strike a cord with me. Honestly, I could write an essay on the effect that this wretched law has had on my life or lack thereof. In another irony, I was born the year that it was introduced here (1983 in England) but I never have and never will accept it & it’s made my life unbelievably difficult; specifically, because everyone else has accepted it. The compliance rate must be nearly 100% & everyone seems to either think it’s a good, ‘progressive’ thing or just accepts it because ‘it’s the law’, which is completely contrary to my nature. I strongly believe that it should be personal choice and I refuse to contribute to the compliance / success statistics of a law that I’m utterly opposed to. Unfortunately I’ve never met another person like myself & feel like I’m surrounded by pod people (‘Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’ is one of the only books/films that I find truly scary). Suffice to say trying to live a day to day life without obeying a law that it’s virtually impossible to avoid is extremely difficult on both a practical and psychological level &, as I’m nearing the age of 30, the continuous effect on my life is really starting to weigh down on me eg I’m single by necessity because I’d rather be alone than be with someone who’s going to force me to do something against my will. Anyway, I felt this article was an opportune time to post a response here – I’m generally nervous about posting on the net because I’m too sensitive to deal with online insults & nastiness but I wanted to say that I appreciate this blog in the same way that I cherish Harry Browne’s ‘Freedom in an Unfree World’. Given previous posts re: gender and collectivism, I should probably also mention that I’m a woman. Unfortunately for me, I seem to have been cursed with the most staunch libertarian views imaginable & all it’s done is made me feel like a freak (p.s. sorry for rambling).
The more freaky females, the better…plus, have you any idea the lopsidedness of m/f ratios in libertarian-land? You can pick/choose, or collect even! lol…..
Great comment, BlueRoses.
Have you seen this photo yet? You might like it, or it might not fit for you exactly. Your post reminded me of it:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/ClaireWolfe/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ToAchieveGreatness.jpg
BlueRoses, I love raising roses…and the colour blue. I’m so sorry to tell you there is something wrong with you, a backbone, not acceptable any longer. I keep apologizing to my renters(30-33 years old)for the way things are now. Texas is one hell of a lot better than most other places but a far cry from what it was 50 years ago when I was young. I was also an “outsider”, couldn’t bring myself to perform all those one trick pony shows of statism or religiousisms….and paid dearly for it. I’m amazed every day at how alone I am with my views of anti-establishmentarianism, what I used to think of as my corpus delicti, the reason I have been persecuted and prosecuted my whole life. You are not alone. And please don’t think seat belt compliance is as bad as you think. I have been wearing one since 1964, the first time I ever had one to wear. I did it because I was a rabid road racer and had seen countless of my heroes(and friends) die due to nothing more than being thrown out of a car. I don’t like to ride without one but would defend to my death your right to not wear one. I recently had my belt save me from being thrown out in a roll-over since everything else was ejected my side except my dog thankfully. I keep asking him to tell me what happened but he’s staying mum on the subject. Good boy. It’s a subject with mixed emotions for me since I had more than one good friend who died for no other reason than being ejected. I, on the other hand, wore one for many reasons, one of being able to stay under the steering wheel under high cornering G’s. I’m not sure many people appreciate how hard a car can sling you and still be catchable. Of course I grew up with bench seats but buckets can let you migrate to the other side under high cornering loads so I’ll keep my belt thank you. I always drove like a bat out of hell so staying put was always a problem. When you get tired of tilting at mundane windmills come to Texas and you can tilt at more serious ones with me. I don’t wish to make light of this thread but there are way more serious causes than seat belt laws although they are a start. As Ozy points out, you will definitely be able to pick and choose from the young guys around who believe like you do. I have been uplifted by the Ron Paul people the last ten years or so. It give me hope.
Hi BlueRoses and a warm welcome and happy New Year from another Brit and who was born little more than two years after the sad event of the law coming into force and can tell you you are NOT alone in having those views. I know we are few and far between but there are like-minded folk. I too am bitterly opposed by what you describe and resent the fact that in the UK and other Nordic/Anglophone countries compliance is high- thankfully elsewhere it isn’t and this includes many other countries and not those that people would make you believe as “basket cases”. Anyway heres some blogs:
http://order-order.com/2012/12/30/on-the-dole-because-he-didnt-want-to-get-up-at-800-a-m/
http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/
http://devilsknife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/8am-is-too-early-for-work.html
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1879/140mph_speed_limit_on_motorways_why_stop_there_
These bloggers are just some examples who are UK based who also share similar Libertarian views on this and indeed many other nannying issues. But one thing- please don’t feel like a freak for having those staunch Libertarian views- however I too know how hard it feels at times.
Kind regards
Charles
Hi Blue,
First, welcome! And second – you are not alone. Social pressure enforces conformity – or at least, the general appearance thereof – in almost every society. Most people want to be seen as “normal” – however that happens to be defined – and so accepted as part of the majority group. Thus, in Soviet Russia during the 1930s (as an example) you’d have found most people feigning approval of (and many believing in the greatness – and worse, the normality of) the Stalinist system.
Orwell wrote in 1984 that “sanity is not statistical.” Exactly so. You might find yourself surrounded by conceptually impaired compliance zombies who accept implicitly that their lot in life is to do as they are told – and that they are morally obliged to obey any law simply because it is the law. It doesn’t mean they’re right – and you’re wrong. Much less that you’re crazy and they’re not. Quite the opposite! Somehow, for whatever reason, you escaped the mental prison they set up for you – for us all. Take pride in that; be grateful about that. The condition of servility and passivity you see all around you is profoundly at odds with everything worthwhile about being a human being endowed with the capacity to reason and with the ability to exercise free will. The people you describe are two-dimensional. They exist – but do not really live. Because their lives are not theirs. Yours, on the other hand, is. Even though you’re constrained by “the law” and all the rest of it, your mind has rejected its rightness to rule over you. You feel contempt – even hate. Properly so. Just as any prisoner or slave feels toward his jailer or the person who asserts ownership over him – or her!
You’ll find many others here who share your views. And there are more such people around than you might believe right now. More and more are coming around – or at least, coming into the open. We are by no means a majority – and probably never will be. But we can be a critically effective minority. That is the goal. And we are making progress!
So, again – welcome to our little corner of the Net. I think you’ll find that just knowing there are some other “kooks” out there – and being able to discuss these issues with them – will do a lot toward making you feel better.
Hopefully, soon!
PS: On dating –
I second what others have already posted; i.e., a woman with a mind – who isn’t a control freak authoritarian – is a hot commodity in Liberty-minded circles. I would have remained single had I not found my wife, Jill. For exactly the same reason you mentioned. There’s an old saying: “Tis better to be alone than in poor company.” That said, it can be lonely. But it is far from being a necessarily permanent condition. Trust me – there are guys out there who would be ecstatic to find someone such as yourself. They are a smaller pool – and so (like you) harder to find. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be found.
I don’t know much about the UK, but imagine there are Libertarian clubs – even dating services. Have you looked into that?
“Maybe this is more evidence in favor of a premise I’ve long suspected is true: libertarianism is actually a genetic mutation.
L: It certainly feels that way. Frequently.
Doug: It does, doesn’t it? Even when people recognize and intellectually understand the philosophy of personal freedom and responsibility, most just can’t integrate it into themselves emotionally. And others simply refuse to grasp it intellectually. I’m afraid libertarianism is fated to appeal to only a small minority.
L: Marshall Fritz used to administer Myers-Briggs tests to people at Advocates for Self-Government meetings. I remember him saying that 90% of the time, they’d come up INTJ. And I don’t think people are distributed evenly among the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types – INTJs are rare, so 90% is quite extraordinary.
Doug: David Galland is a fan of Myers-Briggs tests. He had me take it once, but I don’t remember what it said I was… Do you know what you are?
L: Well, I object to the idea that human beings all come in one of 16 personality types, but as a sort of shorthand, the system is useful. I tested as an INTJ – Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging – though I was borderline between introverted and extroverted.
Many people think I’m extroverted, because they see me on stage, teaching, lecturing, or on TV. I’m not afraid of such performances, but I find them draining. I think real extroverts get a charge out of that sort of attention. I’m usually happier alone with a good book, or with my close friends and loved ones.
Doug: That sounds like me too – I totally agree with you, and frequently prefer my own company. I’ve often thought that if I were the last person left alive on the planet, I’d probably get along just fine. But that’s getting way off topic.”
~ excerpt from a recent Doug Casey interview on Russell Means
Wikipedia indicates “INTJs are one of the rarest of the sixteen personality types, and account for about 1–4% of the population.”
1% of the world is still a lot of people….
Ozy, thanks for posting that. I try to keep up with Doug. Was that Lew interviewing him? I remember first feeling this way as a child and it never got any easier. I got harassed a lot growing up and even more afterward. I think what turned me off to all the statist ideas was the sheer hypocrisy of it all. As a for instance, how do “good Christians” wrap their thoughts around “snuffing gooks”? and think it’s good? Why do they think cops beating up unarmed people who can’t fight back(although not always)is a good thing? I could go on. I won’t.
http://www.caseyresearch.com
casey does regular interviews with one of his people – louis james. free sign up. this particular one also happened to show up at lrc.
INTJ’s & the INTerNet…look out….lol
Hi Ozy,
I took the test – and scored INTJ also!
One of my greatest deficits – as per Lew – is that I find doing interviews and so on extremely taxing. I, too, much prefer to be alone with a good book (or in the garage, working on something).
It is however this very characteristic – the thing that inclines us to non-herd behaviors and attitudes – that puts us at a disadvantage relative to collectivists. Who, of course, thrive in the throng – and revel in the adulation of a mob!
I’ve taken these sort of tests a number of times… short ones, fun ones, longer ones…. I recall different result. I think the INTJ result happened couple times. Perhaps I should do it again…
Anyway the social systems these other people set up are very stressful for me. I hate them. It takes considerable energy to deal with them. Everything has to be routed through stupid social and political rituals. The difference between making it through the airport and having a life changing event is some arbitrary social reaction by the government employees to how one handles the ritual. It’s absurd.
I often think the rise of autism is (in part) a direct result of the expansion of these social-political rituals. Of animal like dominance and submission activities. An autistic person who can communicate will describe mechanical, logical, thought processes. An increasing irrational world to a rational child is terrifying. Throw in some chemical attack and I can see the tipping over the edge into being unable to function, to retreating inside.
Well…I mentioned “deframing” in another post. Could also refer to that as “perspective”, versus the tar pit of “a perspective” – the elephant rather than its isolated, & consequently misidentified, parts.
The usual objections are “perception is reality” & “omniscience belongs to god”, which is to say egalitarian solipsism (all perspectives are valid) & supernaturalism, which I’d say is heads & tails of the same wooden nickle.
Contrast Gulliver’s perspective on liliputions from a standing position to a supine, napping, position. Elevation, & plain sight (honest eyes) – not egalitarianism, or omniscience. Don’t neglect to calc windage, tho…lol.
Butler Shaffer says civilizations are created by individuals & that they are destroyed by collectives – “which are good for little more than the destruction of what others have created.”
Just so. And it seems to me that much hinges on the introversion / extroversion continuum. Life consumes life to energize itself – to live. People eat plant & animal calories to feed bodily function. From there, intro’s generate their own psychic energy…but extra’s get psychic energy from other people. Sounds like cannibalism doesn’t it?
Too many cannibals on the heavy end of the teeter-totter leads to epidemic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (mad cow disease, democracy, etc…). Prius drivers make me think of prions*, & not just because of the alliteration…lol.
*Prions are brain-boring misfolded proteins, & in action sound a lot like “the borg”….
so…”when outnumbered, don’t count heads – weigh them.” ~ Dr. Petr Beckmann
Probably the same Beckmann also said, “where there is no patrol car, there is no speed limit.”
With regard to seatbelt laws… I’ve seen them a number of ways over the years. My initial view was that seatbelts were equipment to keep the driver at the wheel, in his seat and thus enforcement should be along the lines of having a headlamp out. However at that time I didn’t fully understand the nature of the state.
It is still my opinion that driving without a seatbelt on or being a passenger without one is like having a headlamp out or unsecured heavy cargo in the car. What has changed is where government comes in and its selective enforcement. It doesn’t care if someone drives with a headlamp out, it’s about finding an excuse to enter the lives of people its employees decide to harass. That’s what seatbelt laws have become. Just another avenue of intrusion by the state’s employees when they desire to intrude.
I still wear seatbelts, always have. That decision was made long before the government got involved with it.
Beside the point- unsecured heavy cargo may cause a crash depending on the circumstances. Seatbelt or no seatbelt makes no difference.
The theory is that being buckled in enhances car control during high lateral force abrupt/emergency maneuvering. And I suppose it’s true enough – assuming a highly skilled driver who has the ability to control a car during high lateral force/abrupt/emergency maneuvering. Few such drivers have those skills, though. For probably 99 out of 100, seat belt use is irrelevant as far as car control is concerned. And for the 1 out of 100 who do have the skills, it’s still largely irrelevant because of the seats in modern cars. Which aren’t bench seats. You’d have to be experiencing track-level extremes of lateral acceleration for a seat belt to come into play. That almost never occurs during normal/legal (remotely. legal) street driving.
I buckle up when I’m on a track. But on the street? Almost never. And I drive literally everything – and drive everything pretty hard!
eric, I guess that depends on the seat. I slung myself out from under the wheel(kept hold but just made things worse since my hands made the wheel turn even more)when I was about 14-15. I was a really good driver then, been driving since I was 12 and raced a friend nearly every day on a twisty FM road. My inattention to new sticky tires, perfect sticky road and the absolute worst speed I guess I could have been going(prob. 45 on a 20mph corner)left me hanging on on a slick bench seat. I suppose no cars are made that way any longer but pickups are and have better traction than that old car back then. I hate seat belt laws but always wear one. You can generate some really high side loads at relatively low speed although those side loads aren’t quite possible for most cars at speed.
Hi Eight –
Been there/done that, too!
But almost exclusively in old stuff. Bench seats are extinct in new cars and many new trucks have “sporty buckets” (and center consoles). Also, they don’t use the slick (and slippery) vinyl coverings that were typical back in the day.
I refuse to buckle up on principle – and would take up smoking for the same reason if I could make myself do it!
Dear Brent,
I second what you said. I too like using seatbelts when I drive.
But I detest being ordered to do so by dictatorial clovers.
Seatbelts probably saved my life at least twice. I might have gone through the windshield had I not been buckled in.
But I will decide when and if I use them. Not some damned clover.
If I’m just making a five minute trip to the market at 25mph, I might not buckle up. If on the other hand, I’m going to be barreling down the highway at 75mph, I probably will. But it will be my call.
It’s the same with smoking. I don’t smoke because I don’t like the smell and taste of cigarettes.
But even though it doesn’t impact me directly, I detest clovers telling people they can’t smoke in a “public place” (Orwellian Newspeak for private place), but must cower outside in the alley as if they were engaged in some unspeakable perversion.
Everybody talks about freedom. But vanishingly few of the 6 billion people on earth have the foggiest notion of what freedom actually is.
Self-styled “champions of democracy” in the USSA lecture China about “freedom.” Meanwhile they perpetrate false flag operations to justify depriving Americans of the freedom to own firearms.
Bevin and Brent Im exactly like you but not at all times like the “dictatorial clovers” want. I do smoke however and have seen the whole “private/public” thing regarding smoking bans as just as bad if not worse infringement on civil liberties- probably worse as the economy has suffered due to mom and pop venues, sports clubs, veteran’s clubs, etc. going broke due to the ban.
The smoking ban is a classic of the clover passive aggressive society.
There are many rude smokers. Because courtesy in the USA is assbackwards this is what happens… I am in public place where smoking is allowed, I find a corner where there aren’t any smokers. I don’t like it. It negatively effects me in a very measurable way. When it’s the time of year for the allergies I have it sets them off or makes them worse. What happens as I enjoy the music or a play game of pinball or whatever? Some smoker, who doesn’t want to be in the smoke comes over by me and exhausts his/her smoke at me.
Because courtesy is ass-backwards in this country I have to request this person to stop being rude, except to request a smoker to stop being rude means I could very well be looking at a fight with the smoker or her husband/boyfriend. Thus I try to find another non-smoked area…. rinse repeat.
Because american society is backwards and passive aggressive the result has been these laws. Remember, one person can’t smoke politely means all smoking is to be banned, just like if one person uses a gun badly or one person can’t make sure it’s clear to turn when driving…. Government school conditioning. Limits for all. Slowest ship in the fleet…
Just another proof that we are no longer a free people.
I seriously starting to get fed up with the illusion of choice and freedom we have in this country. Specifically the mentality that our “freedom loving” citizens have when it comes to issues like this.
I read an article on a major news website about Washington state implementing a new $100 annual tax for Tesla, Volt and Leaf owners because they pay no gasoline taxes. This additional tax is going to make up for lost revenue. ALL of the comments from readers SUPPORTED the idea with most people ranting and raving about how great it was going to be for the state!
The ideas of individual liberty and personal responsibility have been brainwashed out of the general public. At this point it seems like a completely lost cause to fight for liberty because the Clovers are too far gone to see to stupidity of all these laws, taxes and big government.
Is there a way to take the Red Pill and plug myself back into the Matrix? Ignorance is bliss! **Chews on Juicy Steak**
The Surplus Human Labor Extraction Matrix – S. Molyneux
Why Gun Control Increases Violence – S. Molyneux
I first watched the Matrix movie when it came out. Just around the same time I was starting on the path to free thought. Time and again I’ve said that what we have in this so-called “country” is a Federal Farm. Funny how Molyneux says essentially the same thing.
Keanu’s Required Reading Prior to the Script for the Matrix…
Jean Baudrillard – Simulcra & Simulation
Kevin Kelly – Out of Control
Dylan Evans – Introducing Evolutionary Psychology
Baudrillard:
the society of production is passing over to simulation and seduction; the panoptic and repressive power previously feared has arisen and turning into a cynical and seductive power of a media and information society;
the liberation championed in the 1960s has become a form of voluntary servitude; sovereignty has passed from the side of the subject to the object; revolution and emancipation have turned into their opposites, trapping individuals in an order of simulation and virtuality.
thus “immanent reversal” provides a perverse form of “dialectic of Enlightenment”, where everything becomes its opposite. within the transformations of organized and hi-tech capitalism, modes of Enlightenment become domination, culture becomes culture industry, democracy becomes a form of mass manipulation, science and technology form a crucial part of an apparatus of social domination.
Wachowski/Baudrillard “theory fiction,” or “simulation theory” & “anticipatory theory.” intend to simulate, grasp, and anticipate historical events that are continually outstripping all contemporary theory.
the current situation, is more fantastic than the most fanciful science fiction, or theoretical projections of a futurist society.”
“globalization is fundamentally a process of homogenization and standardization that crushes “the singular” and heterogeneity.” the West’s great undertaking is the commercialization of the whole world, the hitching of the fate of everything to the fate of the commodity.
http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/baudrillard/
Dear MoT,
The Matrix was definitely an eye-opener.
The image of the “human battery” energy farm was a terrific metaphor for the individual’s role within the conventional nation state.
Good point- films like this and v for vendetta do have a meaning.
Dear Tor,
The YouTube interview “Why Gun Control Increases Violence – S. Molyneux” is masterful.
Molyneux explains how the clovers are not actually for “gun control.” What they’re actually for is the monopolization of guns in the hands of the State.
He doesn’t say anything we hardcore libertarians didn’t already know. But he words it in in just the right way.
Molyneux does what champions of liberty must always attempt to do — reframe key issues in a way that makes them see truth right under their noses.
I’ve always averse to “reframing”. The “wise” men of hindustan reframed their elephant 6 times – & never saw the pachyderm.
Frames & patsys go together.
Deframing is correct. There are no compartments. And specialization, as Heinlein said, is for insects.
As long as you know what I meant, I have no quibble.
And as long as you recognize the never-ending deficiency of the strategy, I have no quibble, either…but, in that case, you’d agree its time to scrap the term, yes?
Reframe vs reframe sums the entire refractory, rationalizing, history of the human race. The map isn’t the territory – & the neat pen-lines drawn on it even less so….
Dear Pedro,
Washington state implementing a new $100 annual tax for Tesla, Volt and Leaf owners because they pay no gasoline taxes.
The clovers even contradict themselves.
One of the key rationales for electric cars was to avoid the use of gasoline.
That’s why the clovers demanded green tax incentives for electric.
Now they want to reimpose taxes because electric cars don’t use “polluting fossil fuels?”
Their real agenda becomes clearer. Just as with “gun control” the issue is not really what they say it is.
The real agenda is extracting more electricity from the human Duracells in the Matrix’s energy farm.
The goal is always person control.
Electric cars were to be subsidized like wind and solar because they would be person limiting technologies. But when they start to work… start not to be person limiting… stop being quite as suitable for person control then they must be taxed and regulated.
Dear Brent,
You got it.
I Propose Option C – Operation Obamacare Clown Car Kiddies
If all the American females between the ages of 15-44 became Octomoms, the population of the United States would increase by 1/2 billion people in the next 9 months and the Nannies of the Nanny state would be overwhelmed with real Nanny work.
“Octomom” at home
Nadya Suleman, whose husband left her in 2000 for failing to produce children, now has 14 of them. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton.
Nearly triple the population with kids and welfare moms. That oughta do for this one trick pony country. Headlines: Forum members of ericpetersauto.com buy cruise ship, say they’ll spend the last of their days sailing the ocean blue.
If all the American females between the ages of 15-44 became Octomoms, the population of the United States would increase by 1/2 billion people in the next 9 months and the Nannies of the Nanny state would be overwhelmed with real Nanny work.
Gawd, Tor, that ain’t EVEN funny to contemplate. The very thought of the average Amoricon she-creature of childbearing age cranking out one, let alone eight-plus offspring, is enough to send my stomach into sufficient convulsions to rip it out of my intestinal tract and out of my mouth. I think I’d slit both wrists if I faced the prospect of being outnumbered by Marching Morons by such a ratio. Life would literally be unbearable!
It’s just as good as the other Giant Stone Cow stupid ideas such as Holy Empires, Unanimous Declarations, Founding Fathers, United Nations, Languages & Cultures of Statism…
The story of your Un-enslavement begins with the unlearning of violence and ceasing to be pygmies who kneel to the stone gods of statism.
Stop Kneeling Before the State
Schools are Prisons
Ancestor worship, institutionalism (unredeemed shawshankers), & “we’re not worthy” waynes-worlders…lol
I’ve mentioned this before, but I am now so paranoid about cops and seat belts (having paid the state of NY $100 for seat belt violations)that whenever I drive by a cop on my motorcycle I get the knee jerk reaction to check and see if I’m wearing one.
They have you conditioned and trained well. That is exactly the acknowledgement/reaction there looking for when you see authority. I know the feeling! Sucks..
I have another reaction entirely….!
Heh heh, me too. Fortunately, I’m still possessed of enough self-control not to actually act on it – for now, anyway.
Hey, where the hell did you get that pic of me eating my Cheetos????
Obviously not you, that is me..
They are Cheese Puffs!
Eightsouthman I know of some places in Europe that are even worse than Texas with this seatbelt thing. A friend of mine got fined for no belt on an inter-city bus in Spain.
Do you know what size fine it was? What shocked me those many years ago when the seat belt law was enacted in Texas was the sheer audacity of the size of the fine. I had two friends returning from fishing the day it went into effect who got tickets in Mitchell county, not a large population center or high paying but one that I-20 runs through. They paid $80 way back then and the last I knew of a DPS targeting people in this county 3-4 years ago the fines were in the $150 range. These are significant numbers when you multiply them by the 30-50 people they might target in a single day. All this in a county that’s received $M7+ in cash from people held up on Highway 180, money I might add that the Sheriff’s dept. got a significant amount they keep in a fund and don’t have to share with any other county entity in these times legitimate county expenses have doubled and tripled just to keep roads maintained and NO bridges repaired. Of course according to the main two people busted, they got significantly more money than that but that’s what was turned in. So why is the Sheriff’s dept in dire straights? It would seem those funds stolen went into the individual pockets the accusers said they did. And the dirty LEO’s try to put the onus on local drug users. Penny ante stuff.
Another thing that stikes me as incongruous is the fact that busses in this state have no seat belts. How does that work? Sure, the bus companies and more importantly, the school districts don’t want to be saddled with seat belts nor any of the ensuing enforcement or culpabiity suits that might arise.
The fine in Spain was 200 Euros- paid by credit card- the traffic police over there carry special credit card machines. Sadly I dont know how seatbelts for buses works in Texas.
200 Euros, that would be like, well, a tenth of a grain of gold woudn’t it? I have to wonder what the agents cut is. I have been held up on the road but it was always for cash, just tell me”you’ll be ok until you get out of the state” and put it in their pocket, cash money…
I don’t think anybody knows how seatbelts for buses works in Texas except your friend in Austin who contacts a few reps and tells them seatbelts on buses is a loaded question so take this swingset back to your kids and tell them buses are fine….and take this NM giftcard to your wife.
No idea but over there I think they get bonuses per busts or something like that.
At least you dont have that crazy bus thing over there.
Texas pols are some of the most corrupt around. They love to blather on about that ole “spirit of the Alamo” shit but the fact is you scratch them and they bleed totalitarian red. I-20 you say? I’ve driven from Midland to Dallas and back so many times I could probably do it in my sleep. And when they pushed for mandatory insurance with the lie that our rates would go down once everyone was covered I just knew them to be the lying shits that they pretend not to be. They also love to croon about the fact they have no state income tax but with the outrages property taxes and sales tax you’d be hard pressed to see the difference there or elsewhere. Now as far as speed traps are concerned I always kept my eyes peeled at the overpass in Stanton because the bastards love to sit parked on either side waiting for people to cross over either direction. Damn them all to hell.
Damn them all to hell
Would suit them well.
LOL… I mentioned that on purpose. Good catch.
No problem. Putting my memories to good use.
Happy New Year MoT.
The rumblings within Texas for independence have been going on probably since Texas first joined the federal union in 1845 and then again after having been forced back into it in 1870 after the failed War For Southern Independence. I used to get into conversations with my friends and neighbors when I lived in West Texas about this subject and even in those days (before my Born Again libertarian experience) I recall asking them what kind of post-independence government they envisioned for themselves. The standard answer was always essentially one of “we don’t care what kind of government we have as long as it’s a TEXAS government.” IOW, they’d have been fine with a miniature Rome-on-Potomac in Austin just as long as it was born-and-bred Texans running the show, robbing them blind, and stomping them into the ground. Creepy.
While I definitely met my share of friendly people while living in the Lone Star State, I am, in hindsight, quite glad to have made the decision to move out. There’s something just not right at all about that place.
I’ve heard the same thing about Texas asserting it’s “right” to secede because it supposedly entered the Union freely and with those conditions. But, and there is a BIG but here, is the fact that they took sides in the war of Northern aggression. Which side lost? Based on that fact I would argue that any clamoring for independence using the pre-war agreement would be slapped down by the Feds. Any moves for secession would have to be freshly fought and not based on over 150 years of long dead history. That so many are so conditioned to accept the same statist mindset just so long as it’s locally controlled is cold comfort.
So where did you live? I probably know your friends and neighbors. Texas is not the state it was. Of course this is true but it all happened so fast it was hard to realize. The Texas of the 50’s and 60’s was a place of freedom, almost no LEO’s, and even the ones there were didn’t think about enforcing more laws than transgression against another, and often, there were mitigating circumstances so it turned out to be mediating more than anything. There were criminals of course, cattle rustlers and horse thieves, a crime even back then that could cause a man to die(horse thieving). Cattle rustling was mainly a nuisance. Things began to turn a bit crazy in the 70’s but it was still a “wide open state”, although the DPS were beginning to be abusive in cases of “longhairs”. When Ronnie got into the white house and we had a concurrent oil boom, all of a sudden these big companies started hiring Yankees, just out of the military, which was divesting itself of an overabundance of what was mainly officers. For reasons I never could understand, the big oil companies begin to hiring these guys who knew nothing about the oil business instead of Texans who had grown up in it. There was a huge exodus of these people settling in Texas cities so you had a main population of native Texans and these people who seemed to breed like rabbits. Texas has never been the same since and is now the 2nd most populous state. In the 60’s the whole state population was virtually the same as Houston alone, a city we considered not really of Texas nor the residents. When I went to college in the 60’s we didn’t have much in common with the Houston boys since they were city slickers. Don’t get me wrong. I’d dearly love to have Texas back again but we’d need to get rid of 80% of the population to return to our roots, not gonna happen as GHWB would say. And there is a perfect example of what happened to Texas, Connecticut yankees who are interlopers in the Lone Star State. I have no illusions that if I want freedom, I’ll find it somewhere outside the borders of the U.S. including Texas. And no, I won’t be saluting any flag as my ancestors didn’t. They had little more regard for Texas govt. than Mexico or the US. When I grew up the state govt. was little more than a thought. Everybody was independent and gave no more thought to nationalism or statism than they would to a prarie dog, just another hole to be avoided so you didn’t hurt yourself, your horse or your neighbor or his horse. As far as you thinking about there’s something not quite right about Texas, it’s obvious you never lived here back when, when everything was right. You would have loved it then. I hang my head, I hang my head.
I “arrived” in tow with my parents back in 74. Midland was where I landed. For someone used to southern California and what that state once was, and no longer is, it came as quite a shock. Only about fifty thousand souls and absolutely no place to go. Lubbock? Just a bigger Midland at twice the size. Things have changed a lot and the slower lifestyle which I’d actually got accustomed to and really liked has been swept aside. Rules, damn rules, and rules on top of rules since then. I don’t recognize it anymore. And with my adult eyes I see things that a young person is blind to. Every time I travel back I’m stunned to believe I lived in that shit hole but money is the honey that draws me. There are good people, like diamonds, as everywhere, amongst all the dross.
Yep, and I lived there(Odessa) up till about 3 years ago for a while for the same reason everybody who USED to live there did, but not now. My nephews who don’t know any better don’t realize there are much better places to live than the oilfield. I quit saying I wouldn’t go back to the oilfield after being there the 3rd time back in the 70’s. I will say one thing for Midland/Odessa, you can still raise more hell there than any place I know of. I used to watch the drag races on the streets as well as wild bikes that would be gone out west on 42nd street in Odessa so fast you couldn’t say don’t. By the time I left though, that part of the country was like other parts, just an extension of Mexico. Go to Wally or HEB any day and there was no difference from a Soryana in Mexico except for the 1 T. Crewcab diesel pickups…full of wets. I was warned when I went to Mexico I’d stand out like a sore thumb and that was correct. And I did. I had the ONLY black, one ton ext. cab pickup in the entire country that I saw and which everyone said was true. There are gas, regular cab pickups that are the sole property of mainly oil companies and ag companies but no ext. cabs, dual cabs or anything other than white pickups. Too bad you weren’t older and got to experience Texas as it had been. No doubt it was oil that brought your family there, the only damned reason I can think of to go there. While you thought 50,000 people was nothing, we thought it was wayyyy too many in one spot as I did when attending TTU when Lubbock was 100,000. I hated the people(just the radical right wing), the dirtstorms(although I grew up in them but they didn’t originate so much where I lived, some, but mainly the high plains coming to us)the love it or leave it mentality and the college full of the most devout Republican bible thumpers you ever saw. I wanted to go to UT but in those days, you had no rights until you were 21 so you did what your parents wanted since you had no choice, that is, unless you wanted to have no draft deferment. Uncle Sam kept sending me mail telling me how much he wanted me to come stay with him and his buddies in Vietnam. I kept changing addresses. I had studied war since 1964 and knew I had, as one of the craziest warhawks to live, Donald Rumsfeld, said, “better things to do” to his draftboard. I wasn’t nearly so duplicitous though.
The old saying was you raised your kids in Midland and you raised hell in Odessa. In many ways still the same but many of the old timers don’t like it there anymore. Remember the old shopping mall and Monkey Wards off of 42nd and the Strike It Rich on 8th st. Heck! Going to Odessa was for shopping and to break the boredom of Midland. I graduated from Lee… Or as it was once politically incorrectly called Robert E. Lee high school. Seen the ups and down and been laid off enough times due to it. I remember just how much more laid back the simple business of getting beer and rolling around in the back of my friends pickup cruising the Sonic back in the day with no seat-belt wearing sissified nonsense. Not saying we did the “wisest” things but you at least had the freedom to make mistakes.
Funny you mention Tech. Now one of my daughters has this “thing” about TT and I give her this cockeyed look and say, “What? You want to go where?”
I didn’ go to Odessa till I was 19 and not for long that time. I do remember the Monkey Wards building but not the way you do. I just busted butt there and did what I had to do, no real social life for me. My social life was working 3 days on a job(night and day), go to the nearest bar and have it out with BJ or Haliburton hands(I was Tuboscope). I can’t say I enjoyed it but lived it anyway. The old shopping mall has been replaced. In fact, my nephew owns a business that’s located in the old Monkey Wards warehouse on Granview.
I’m not sure what your daughter wants at Tech but she probably takes after her dad and likes the idea of being an outlaw. Tech is fairly much that and always has been. It’s the black horse of Texas schools, gets nearly no state money so the people are highly independent there. And then high plains people are just another type, march to their own drummer. I understand her want to go there although I could think of nicer geographical country to be in. I guess it doesn’t matter when you’re young although it did with me. No doubt it’s a great college now, having many friends whose kids went there and have done mighty fine since. I’d send my kids there if that’s what they wanted with the cautionary to stay away from guys like me. I was actually a real straight-laced guy until I returned from a hiatus of oil field work and then trucking and came back when I was 21. Oh well, youth is wasted on the young. If I were going to school in Texas, as a naive young 18 year old, I might just go to Tech again and have a different experience. It’s definitely not the crowded, male dominated place it was back then. Tech has a new everything now, one of the premier places for geophysical engineering. Back in those days Jim Hall was my hero and I would have done well to go to work for him in Midland. I was a road racing fool, emphasis on fool. Did you return to Ca. or find a place less strange? That wouldn’t be hard to do ha ha.
I’d like to tell you it wasn’t this way in Texas but I’d be lying. Last year they passed this insane seat belt law making it illegal to ride in the back seat without a seat belt. That means you can’t even get in the back and go to sleep w/o running afoul of the DPS, for the main part. Once the Shrub and then Rick the prick got into the gov’s office it’s been one insane legislation after the other. The DPS look for the chrome seat belt fastener above your shoulder and stop anyone with that visible and stop anyone they think doesn’t have the seat belt crossed. We’ve(I use this term loosely)had this crap law for over 25 years now. Every time they think of another law, they’ll focus on it and wear it out. An example, failing to reduce speed when passing an “emergency vehicle” on the side of the road meaning basically, any LEO jacking up some innocent person who didn’t slow down the requisite 20mph to pass them on the shoulder or wasn’t in the far lane. Immediately after passing this law, they’d have two units hanging out together and one always stopping some one for some thing as that would constitute an “emergency vehicle” that everyone else on the road would have to do their dance for. The trend now is to sneak these laws into existence w/o giving the public notice of the law being passed.
You’re tooling down I-20 and barely going faster than a big rig in the outside lane. This goes on for miles and you don’t wish to take your own vehicle off cruise just to speed up and pass a rig on the right of you. You’re going along and never even see the DPS since you can’t see through the big rig on your right. The backup car is simply waiting for either or both of you to pass the “emergency vehicle”, some poor shmuck pulled over for nothing, so the other car can get you on radar going more than 20 mph less than the required speed to pass that “emergency vehicle” you never saw until after you had passed. What a sweet deal for revenooers. Scum!!! What a sweet deal for insurance companies too that can raise your rates because of that “moving violation”.
America is infested with a growing number of law parasites. Why Americans continue to acquiesce in extortion by law is a mystery to me.
tgsam
Legalized robbery is the national sport these days. If it’s not more taxes, it’s more fines. If it’s not more fines, it’s more taxes. The public are slapped around for the privilege of paying people to slap them around. Worse, everyone has “beaten wife” syndrome about it, where they think their costumed abuser actually cares about them! Even so-called “conservatives” find some reason or another not to abolish the various public albatrosses that hinder the honest and ignore the dishonest (anyone remember the pledge to abolish the DOT?). And now everyone is running around with the goofball expectation that banning guns will suddenly make the lion lay down with the lamb. Sadly, it’s never going to change as long as their is a public till to pay these clowns with, and all we can do is just try to stay out of their way as much as possible and not get hammered by the bureaucracy and its steroid-addled badge-toting minions.
“The public are slapped around for the privilege of paying people to slap them around.”
That’s awesome!
America is stuck in a positive feedback loop of self destruction. I genuinely hope the ones at the root of it all enjoy it as much as humanly possible. I sigh every time I think about the clovers that don’t even realize the damage they do with blind stupid obedience. Allegory of the Cave comes to mind.
And of course if enough Bad Law Prey manages to “stay out of their way” the lawmakers will even target the privacy of our homes. In fact, that has already been done to facilitate the unconstitutional Drug War.
H.G. Wells considered the following epitaph: God damn you all, I told you so.
Indeed he did.
Apply the Nuremberg Precedent and terminate the worst of the Bad Law Parasites.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
God damn you all, I told you so.
Wow, I hadn’t heard about that one. LOVE IT! I might just consider that for my own tombstone – minus the “I told you so” part.
My favorite epitath is:
“Told you I was sick”
Nuremberg was no precedent. It was victor’s spoils.
Preface: This is not in any way intended to be a defense of Nazis/Nazism.
I never understood why Streicher received a death sentence and ol’ Rudolf Hess got life (actually life sentence) in prison. As far as I know, Streicher, though a repellent race-baiter, never killed anyone – which means if he deserves death, then arguably so do (as an example) the members of the “god hates fags” church. And Hess? In prison before the launch of Barbarossa; at most a flunky before his flight to England. SS General Karl Wolff and numerous other high-ranking SS got nothing – or a handful of years. Speer got 20. I suspect there’s a very embarrassing reason why Hess was kept in prison until he died. To keep a very embarrassing secret.
Hess never flew to England. Look it up: he flew to Scotland.
If you are conflating the two, that is offensive to the large minority of us British who aren’t English.
Ah, point taken!
Aside from all the picking & choosing, who was executed/imprisoned, who was cross-pollinated / installed into amerikan intelligence & scientific structures, the synonymousness of “nurembergs” & hypocrisy is what i was getting at. Successful pillage & plunder is always a high-horse retroaction….
Do what is right, stay under the radar, barter when possible and flck them all.
Flying under the radar won’t bring respect for the Principles underpinning the Unanimous Declaration. The Bad Law Parasites will follow the money and pass whatever laws are necessary to get it.
tgsam
Yup! They will just keep passing laws to fine you for something else. I simply refuse to pay. Let them waste as much paper and time as they want writing me citations.
Virginia tried to extort $300 out of me for “Statutory Reckless Driving” and I told them to shove it. Still got my Georgia License.
If it ever came to my license being suspended I’d either continue driving anyway or just stop driving altogether depending on my needs.
I will never again give in to the states coersion.
I rarely ever wear my seatbelt and drive past cops all the time. The fact is if you have tinted windows and aren’t stopped somewhere where they can peer in through your front window and get a good look at you, they never know if you have your seatbelt on or not. And no one can see if someone has it on at night, its virtually impossible. Plus the few times I was pulled over and didn’t have it on, I put it on before the cop got my window and he was none the wiser. You can pretty much get away with not wearing it. I have seen cops trying to find people not wearing seatbelts hiding behind trees on the side of the road (no joke) with a pair of binoculars and a radio to let the cops up ahead at the gas station know what cars had occupants that didnt have their seatbelts on. However I’m pretty much always aware of what is around me and noticed what was going on before I got up to the point where he could see me and put it on and promptly took it off once I was past their little checkpoint. Your point is no one should have to worry about it and I agree, but its pretty much just another unenforceable law.
yeah but these newer vehicles have that never ending nannying chime that won’t quit until the belt is inserted.
Mot,
To diminish sound, just insert belt from passenger side or belt from salvage yard. 😉
Thanks to you and Eric for the tips. You really have to think outside the box and once more opened my eyes.
You can defeat the chime by just buckling up before you sit down! Then sit on the damn seat belt.
Or – better – like Mith said: Get a male end buckle from the junkyard and use that to shut the SOB up. Or just pull the buzzer.
Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety!
I found out how to disable the chime in my Jeep on the Internet.
I have seen cops trying to find people not wearing seatbelts hiding behind trees on the side of the road (no joke) with a pair of binoculars and a radio to let the cops up ahead at the gas station know what cars had occupants that didnt have their seatbelts on.
I just find it unimaginable that any human being with even a scintilla of self-respect could do such a “job.”
It would also LOVE for it to become common knowledge that on not just a few such occasions where Officer Oinky was out hunting revenue in some Rube Goldberg-esque way, serious crimes were committed, on his watch and in his patrol area, and the perps got off scot-free due to Oinky’s fixation on bringing in tribute for his bosses.
yeah man, it was insane, they were there for a few hours too and it helped that I drove past the area in the other direction a few hours beforehand and knew something was up because I saw cops pulling people over, it wasn’t until I approached the area again on my way back on the side they were “patrolling” that I noticed what exactly was going on, this dude was hiding behind a tree on the side of the road with binoculars to try and spot people without a seatbelt on. A completely ridiculous waste of time. I have seen them at the same spot pulling people over who “rolled” through the redlight turning right without coming to a complete stop. That one intersection must generate the city thousands upon thousands in fines for stupid crap like that.
Well said. Well Europe is even worse than America in a certain way in this sense. Much fewer people question the busybodies in government.
Low-wattage moral busybodyism, I had to smile. I recall a conversation when I was 21 with a guy of about 40 who took a group of us pot-smokers to task. He said “Why do you want to do that to yourself?. It’ll ruin your mind and your body.” to which I replied, Why do you want to do That to yourself?, pointing at 50 lbs. of unneeded guts and fat he was pushing around. He got a bit huffy and said at least he wasn’t polluting his mind to which I said “Oh Yeah?”. I then challenged him to a mental test of any sort he wanted to square off with me and I’d even spot him being as stoned as I could get. He didn’t answer right away so I told him we’d conclude the test with a physical test of any sort he chose also. He got huffy, turned and waddled away. My frieds and I sent derisive laughter after him. It was never mentioned again.
The paragraph comparing the add-on cost of obesity and the cost of unbuckled seat belts contains a typo: saying $300 million for the former, instead of $300 billion. The logic thereafter doesn’t make sense as a result. I had to click through the links to figure out that you were correct.
Thanks for the catch, anon –
I wish I had a copy editor, but unfortunately this is a one-man shop!
Oh do not worry, Eric. There will be a crack down on obesity coming very soon. That is the whole point of obamacare: getting complete control over everyone’s lives. There is nothing – NOTHING – that people do that cannot be tied into a health issue. And since the collective is paying for that healthcare then the collective will have the “authority” to regulate any and all behavior.
Raising the fine on a seat belt violation?! Since when have busybodies ever been satisfied?
Somewhat OT but still relatable, my state does not have motorcycle helmet laws but I wear a helmet on which I have a Helmet Laws Suck sticker. I cannot count the times I have been stopped at a light and have someone in a car yell at me Hey moron, Ohio doesn’t have a helmet law! I just flip up my face shield and calmly explain that even though I personally choose to wear a helmet I do not support the gubment putting a gun to others’ heads and making them wear one too. I like to think I am helping to get those morons into thinking a little bit more libertarian…
to paraphrase Seinfeld, if a head isn’t smart enough to protect itself, doesn’t it deserve to get the result?
I view seatbelt laws the same way, I don’t buckle up because of the laws of the state, I buckle up because of the laws of physics…and when those laws are applied there is no court of appeals.
The Nanny State is ALREADY wagging its finger at the “fatties”…NYC outlawed selling fountain soft drinks larger than 16 oz. Mayor Bloomberg (a RINO “Republicunt” if there ever was one) doesn’t want his beloved “New Yawkers” to wash down their pork-and-onions submarine sandwich with a 3 liter bottle of Jolt Cola.
Next they’ll come after Red Bulls and RockStars. Some kids with a weak heart will chug down a few at a rave and his mainspring will go on the fritz. So, for the sake of the “children”, either they’ll be prohibited to minors, OR, more likely, a tax will be levied to cover the costs of “rock and roll juice” to “society”.
Along with all the hoopla over the past few weeks in the wake of the hysteria over the Newtown, CT, shooting, the over-reaching of the statists and so-called “liberals” (is THAT ever a misnomer, they want to take away income, wealth, choices, weapons, possessions, and freedom in general…) is being made manifest. Hopefully the nation will wake up and realize that it’s high time to send these twits packing. Because hysteria is exactly what most liberalism is. Hysterial, whiney, unsatisfied females (for whom most just are in dire need of a thorough boning were they in fact attractive enough to warrant such attention, which many, frankly, aren’t) and beta, “Alan Alda” type male whom are mentally and emotionally neutered, so they may as well be done so in the flesh. These are the types that need a “healthy” (for the rest of us that are normal) dose of STFU.
Love it! Such a pithy saying, I shall borrow it 🙂
I’ve long since put the terms “liberal or conservative” out to pasture. There are no such beasts. What there IS are statists and non-statists and nothing else. The labels are only meant to keep the ignorant and conditioned hoi-poloi up in arms and thinking there is a difference when there isn’t. It’s all an evil illusion.
Today’s Tom Sawyer. He gets high on you
In the space he invades. He gets by on you
Exit the warrior. Today’s Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you. And the energy you trade
He gets right on to –
– the friction of the day
Our world is what we make it. We can thrive spiritually by exchanging love and energy with our phyle. Or we can live for archon rulers of fear and hate; destroying ourselves and our world.
We can allow the Tom Sawyers to infect us with the “frictions of the day” such as “liberal/conservative.” We can let the Archons thrive off the energy we generate for them in their matrix of lying rage.
…Or find our own new reality, closer to the heart.
Authoritarians. Or anarchists. That’s the division.
What a beautifully simple context and yet, I wonder how many people would need to have those words defined for them. I keep thinking of the congressman from Georgia who was worried Guam might capsize if we constructed a military base there. I mean, this island is only about, how many miles wide did you say…….and the general had to answer as if this were a legitimate question…just shoot me, I don’t wanna play anymore.
What startles, first time or two, is reaction even AFTER definitions are provided. Sticks, stones, broken bones – but words will never faze ’em…..
As a kid, I first encountered that distinction in the works of Bob Heinlein – who remains among my all-time favorite authors. Anyone out there not familiar with his stuff ought to remedy that ASAP. You won’t be sorry!
“Stranger in a Strange Land” is the only Heinlein I’ve read – the ’91 release of the full manuscript (220k words vs 160k the original edited version). Great book (& title many can relate to!).
I have been reading old Heinlein and A.C. Clarke for the umpteenth time recently. It never fails to be as good as always. I find different meanings after a decade or two in some ways.
That’s what mileage can do. If there’s comprehension in those miles.
Un-spun & over-spun odometers is a way of explaining the generation gap. But explaining the over-spun comprehension gap is a little longer story.
“Sodometers” has a ring to it, tho….lol
I’ll never forget the last time I was called for jury duty. For whatever reason, I was feeling a bit sassy and fed up with the “system”. So I got up on the stand when the two “sides” start asking questions trying to determine if you are going to “obey” and be easy to sway (I suppose?). I asked a simple question: can the jury judge the law? The lawyers (both sides) were sort of taken aback and asked me to clarify (geez…you’re a lawyer…you should know EXACTLY what I’m talking about). Anyway…I further explained that if I, as a juror, felt that the law was unjust or WRONG, couldn’t I simply choose to acquit and thus nullify bad law? One of the lawyers tried to wave it off with his hand and mumbled something about “well…it’s not like you’re going to get a mandate….” (whatever THAT means?). A few more jurors were asked questions and then within minutes I was asked to step down and NOT be on the jury. On that particular day, I was actually glad…but now that I’ve had more time to think about it, NEXT time, I will probably try to be purposefully vague and “obedient” so I can get ON the jury and then try to inform the other jurors concerning nullification (carefully it seems…just saw an article recently on Lew Rockwell where some former nun got in trouble when she practiced nullification…sheesh…are we not safe even in the jury room??). Anyway…those are my thoughts today.
Kevin, same thing happened to me. From now on, when on jury duty I will shut up and keep my answers to a minimum. If they produce no victim, no crime was committed. When they tell me “society” is the victim, then I should have heard testimony from “him”. The defense is not allowed to have “society” testify. When I return the “not guilty”, I am not required to say anything about my thinking on nullification, so as to not put myself at any risk. If pressured, I can simply state “the prosecution did not convince me of guilt”. I am not the one on trial. If more folks took this position we could get many bad laws overturned. Also judges will tell the jury that they cannot judge the law. Judges are not required to tell the truth. The jury indeed can, and must judge the law and its applicability. Clover will never do this, thus the system depends heavily on Clover.
Google: Laura Kriho
TGS,
Point noted: Keep your own opinions to yourself, but act according to your conscience. (Especially if one vote is enough to get a hung jury.) Those in the system can be vindictive.
I hope Laura won her appeal.
A jury should not be a rubber stamp for the prosecution. Otherwise, what is the point in having a jury?
It was eventually dismissed.
http://www.levellers.org/jrp/kriho.new.htm
Remember that group that I mentioned I have given up on? One of the reasons it took me so long is one of them introduced me to the Kriho case. Just one of many bright spots that showed hope… but at the end of the day they still believe in the system.
You affirm what I’ve overheard: Giving up control over one’s life to the state does give up part of a person’s life. The principle of self-ownership cannot be in operation with national healthcare and forced auto insurance. The collective state believes a benefit is made through these policies, and people fall for it.
This is all a drive for power. The seatbelt laws are enforced for the benefit of less injuries, but they have to wear the seatbelt whenever they drive now. This power to make less injuries may not even be working well, but they are enslaved by gunpoint of officers to now follow this policy.
It wasn’t surprising to me when a Clover told me “I don’t care what you ‘want,’ these guns are too dangerous.” Maybe he implied property rights are now unacceptable. Well, ok, I guess I could react reciprocally and start stealing from you since you’ve so destroyed the notion of property rights, but I’m better than that.
Is it any wonder why society gets worse thanks to these so-called improvements? The heck with property rights and you get more violence among the people and states. Obese people are not safe, especially when I overhear comments like “We face a national security issue with all these unfit people.” Besides, gay marriage is gaining acceptance, but why does that matter when property rights and self-ownership is selectivity cared about?
So which is it going to be? Maintain our world-class productivity or give us enough time off to maintain our “scientifically calculated ideal weight?”
I know if I worked a constant 8 hour shift, knowing that I won’t get a call for some “emergency” after hours, I’d have much more time to put in at the gym. As it works, this year our overtime budget was cut and I still ended up with OT on every paycheck. I’m sorry if my belly is getting larger, but I’ve got work to do.
Paris Hilton is in town. She’s got all week to maintain her girlish figure on the slopes. Maybe she’ll offset my 6 hrs of OT this week.
I’ve got an idea.
Since I’m somewhat underweight (6’2″,145lbs.) I can sell the obese Fat Credits.
Similar to Carbon Credits so beloved by corporations they would allow the “calorically challenged” to escape the financial consequences of their “lifestyle choices”.
I’ll bet there are some countries that could retire their debt in six months.
SKINNIES OF THE WORLD UNITE!
Freedom in Amerika, as defined by the archons, is having the freedom to shut up and do as you’re told.
It’s easy to understand why the state doesn’t crack down on people who physically debilitate themselves by horrible diets and lack of exercise. Who cares if they cost the collective more in health costs? That is partially offset by the fact that they die off much earlier.
The real reason the overlords encourage their slaves to be fat and weak is that is makes them Much Easier TO CONTROL.
Yep. Follow the money and power. The apparent inconsistencies melt away.
Of course. Fat people can’t outrun zombies.
Comrades the state needs us healthy and working so they can extract maximum taxes for the good of the glorious collective so please buckle up!
Eric, what we need is jury nullification. No one who has me as a juror will be convicted of this crap, I assure you.
Rich, I agree that is one way we can fight it. The “state” would not want me or you as a juror on any of these crimes that are nothing but infractions and have no definable “victim” whose rights were infringed upon.
Perhaps Fully Informed Grand Juries using their Fifth Amendment Presentment Power are needed even more.
tgsam
Have you seen Will Grigg’s latest contribution over at Pro Libertate? He sure does a great job at describing the legally sanctioned persecution that informed jurors suffer, especially as they attempt to inform and educate their fellow jurors during deliberations.
I served on a grand jury recently…..
One real surprising factoid was that, per the prosecutor / State fine collector, only about 1 case in 1000 goes to trial.
The rest of the charges are plea bargained out. i.e. Not presented to a Grand Jury for indictment (felonies only), and not taken to a jury for a decision. It’s a fine / money making mill for the state.
Folks, taking a plea means that you admit you are guilty. And, there are NO appeals to such an action.
Me, I’ll insist on a trial. Period. Even if the chances that a jury of Clovers will convict are against me, I will want to gum-up the works. And with all the laws on the books, if everyone insisted on a trial, the judicial system would collapse.
The other eye-opener was how often the cops would “testi-lie” to make a weak case. I tried to encourage a no-bill any case where the we,(the grand jury) determined that the cops were lying, just on principle…. It was the least we could do to reward such “honorable” behavior on the part of the cops.
I’d happily do grand jury again. Unfortunately, the women were the “clovers”, but the gun toting, freedom fighters were on the “other side” and hopefully the indictments were handed down only to the deserving.
Unfortunately, the women were the “clovers”
And in other earth-shattering news, the sun rose in the East this morning.
Sorry, ladies. I hate to stereotype, but…
“Yet the criminal justice system is crooked from the gitgo. Start with the idea of trial by a jury of your peers. It doesn’t exist, unless you are rich or a celebrity case. Some ninety-five percent of cases are settled by plea bargaining. If everybody asked for a jury trial, the entire system would stop. If you do insist, the judge in all likelihood will be so angry that he will do his best to get you convicted and then give you the max. You pay heavily for exercising imaginary constitutional rights.”
“The notion of a jury “of one’s peers” is similarly nonexistent in many cases. The usual reason is race. If you are white, and shoot a black intruder in your black neighborhood, you are road kill.
Remember when the LA cops beat Rodney King on video tape and they got off? White jury. Remember when OJ Simpson killed a white woman and got off? Black jury. Trayvon-Zimmerman? Same thing. White friends who have served on mixed juries complain that the blacks can’t understand words like “stipulate,” which makes things worse.”
“A major defect of what would be our system of justice if it were a system of justice is that it is not investigatory but gladiatorial. The idea is not to determine guilt or innocence, but to win. By no means always, but often, the cops will lie, the witnesses will lie, and prosecutor and defender will lie carefully within safe limits so as not to get disbarred. Public safety matters no more than truth.”
~ Some excerpts from Fred Reed’s essay (today), “squad car dreams”….
I’m with you, Ozymandias. The right to jury trial, old age pensions, food stamps, disaster relief… All these false “rights” are worse than worthless. They cheat & corrupt functioning independent men, and leave dependent dysfunctional bankrupted parasites in their place.
Power of the Parasite Class
http://www.youtu.be/L8zmKsaA6jA
The first time law was nullified by jury occurred in 1735 in the trial of John Peter Zenger.
http://www.nndb.com/people/626/000207005/
Wrong. Edmund Spenser records it (with disapproval) as having happened in Ireland in the 16th century, in his “View of the present state of Ireland”, and no doubt it had often happened before that in many places. It definitely happened in the 17th century in England, in the run up to James II being thrown out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when juries were first threatened to make them give the right answer and then prevailed when the regime fell. After all, the whole point of the jury system was originally to have a safety valve so that the justice system could stay within the bounds of community acceptance without losing prestige.
You weren’t being U.S.-centric and thinking that it all started in the U.S.A., are you?
> You weren’t being U.S.-centric and thinking that it all started in the U.S.A., are you?
Yes, I have to admit I was being US-centric. And, I wasn’t thinking about King James and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. You raise a valid point.
Maybe I should rephrase my statement as, “The first time law was nullified by jury in the North American continent was in 1735 with the trial of John Peter Zenger.” 😉
It truly is amazing that “freedom” is a word that most people don’t understand. They are like dogs, who don’t know the difference between being well fed and housed to being feral and free. The housed dog may eat better and live in comfort, but he will never experience true freedom and the animated struggles of life that come with it. Truly I say, give me liberty or give me death. I like to figure things out on my own and don’t need the help that tyrants provide. Fuck these assholes, I’m so sick of their shit. Wait till you car fellows won’t be allowed to drive without your chip and with out your monitors in your vehicles. Then what? This really sucks guys. Can you fucking believe that this is happening? It gets worse everyday and they keep manufacturing more bullshit thesis-antithesis propaganda. It’s like the twilight zone. I mean this is some crazy shit, what are we going to do ???
People still understand the word ‘Freedom’. Unfortunately to most folks, it’s the freedom to choose the color of your SUV and from which drive-thru to obtain tonight’s pink-slime-burger and hydrogenated oil-soaked fries.
Hi Ferret,
Exactly. George Carlin explained “choice” in America better than anyone. McDonald’s? Or Burger King? Coke? Or Pepsi? That’s the sort of “choice” Americans are permitted. The real choices are denied them – at gunpoint, if necessary.
We have the freedom of choice to either submit or obey. I myself am a hardcore obeyer because any right thinking person knows that it is the submitters who are ruining this country! USA! USA! USA!
“We have the freedom of choice to either submit or obey. I myself am a hardcore obeyer because any right thinking person knows that it is the submitters who are ruining this country! USA! USA! USA!”
Good one, skunkbear. That’s really funny. 😉
Dear Eric,
Or this classic scene from the political satire, “Moon over Parador.”
Clear example of Carlin’s “illusion of choice.”
Yup, we’re free to choose. Free to choose from among the options the govt gives us.
Freedom is to do like everyone else does or else.
Amerikan “freedom” is when the occupying soldiers have the same flags on their shirts that you have on yours.. Any desire for liberty beyond that makes you a bigot, of whatever flavor elicits the Pavlovian response most strongly that day.
We are out numbered by clovers. What can we do?
Secede. Until then we must disobey as best we can. And mock the hell outta the clovers…
If nothing else takes away freedom overpopulation will. U.S. Population is now 315,000,000 and growing fast. The promise envisioned by the Founders is no longer possible.
The naked ape will infest every foot of ground that can be infested and freedom will die with the increasing infestation. As the crowding worsens, people who do not already hate other people will eventually do so. Hell, I reached that point decades ago.
tgsam
Unlike us, Tinsley, you may have a way to escape your problem.
People Free Counties
1 Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska 0.0449 people per square mile
4 Loving County, Texas 0.0995 per square mile
10 Esmeralda County, Nevada 0.2706 people per square mile
11 Garfield County, Montana 0.2740 people per square mile
15 Harding County, New Mexico 0.3811 people per square mile
Enjoy the Silence
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1rfv_depeche-mode-enjoy-the-silence_music
Tor, as part of work I did in the past I had “opportunities” to pass through Loving county. Lets just say that only a masochist would WANT to live there but you can be certain nobody would bother looking for you either.
How are those areas fixed for arable land, fuel, and clean water?
I suppose much of the Sahara and Death Valley could be populated if enough necessities are imported to sustain the inhabitants. Unfortunately, the crew of the Lady Be Good died soon after the last of their water was gone.
What’s the population density of Antarctica now? And northern Canada?
Guess I’ll look for my copy of Soylent Green and watch it again.
tgsam
population density and…doom…is a spurious correlation.
Hi Tinsley,
I sort of agree with this… but would define it further. It’s not people or population per se that’s the problem. It’s that too many of the wrong type (Clovers) are increasing at what seems to be a geometric rate. I’d be fine with 315 million liberty-minded people in this country. But that’s not what we’ve got, unfortunately.
I often post on NOLA.com (Times-Picayune) and if you aren’t somewhat careful they silence you for 24 hours. You have to especially avoid anything that might cause you to be accused of racism. It sucks but it is THEIR establishment game. I post there under purgelies, mostly to comment on columnist Varney’s, and black racist DeBerry’s material.
It’s good practice outsmarting chickenshit, nut sack licking, hemorrhoid nibbling cock juice garglers*. If you run out of things to do check it out.
tgsam
*Excuse me for speaking so kindly of bad people. I’ll try to do better in the future.
Well, see that you do. I noticed a distinct lack of “cocksucker”. Now you can do better than that. Signed “Swearingen”
When I use the word “cocksucker” it is a figure of speech since I attach no more moral significance to homosexuality than I do to alcoholism. To each, his own . . . especially where genes and chromosomes are a powerful driving influence.
tgsam
Sorry tgsam, it was bit of “tongue-in-cheek humor there. I enjoyed Deadwood, moreso when there was no organized law enforcement. Cocksucker was Swearingen’s go-to word he used more than the, if, and or but.
Scandinavians are definitely underrepresented in the world.
tgsam
Actually the population is fairly stable and will actually begin falling over the next few years. That’s the big problem with the social security and medicare ponzi schemes: they require an ever increasing population of new blood to feed the oldsters.
“If nothing else takes away freedom overpopulation will.”
Not convincing, Tinsley. The main thing I can see wrong with US population increase is that more people are “represented” by the same number of politicians. As the number of subjects increases, the power of rulers increases. That has an effect of its own, distinct from what you’re seeing as overcrowding.
I do agree that this country is probably overpopulated by about 150,000,000 people. But even the current population level would be tolerable if it consisted in the majority of non-Clovers with IQs north of the zero mark. As things now stand (and as Dom so accurately pointed out), Clovers are the numerical majority. THAT is what makes the population issue so toxic.