A former colleague of President Obama’s, who worked with him at the University of Chicago, claims that Perfesser Obama once told him, “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”
(See here.)
These are the words of John Lott, Jr. in his new book, At The Brink.
Lott – a tireless defender of self-ownership – which he clearly understands is rendered moot when people are denied the right to defend themselves – met Obama shortly after finishing up the research that would find expression in his seminal work, More Guns, Less Crime. In this famous book, Lott established that the safest places to be – statistically, in terms of one’s odds of becoming the victim of a criminal wielding a gun – are places where citizens’ right to possess guns for self-defense has not been rescinded. And, conversely, that the least safe places – the places where a citizen is most likely to become a victim of “gun violence” – are areas where citizens have been rendered defenseless against criminals wielding guns.
Barry knows this too, of course. It is why you literally could not swing a dead cat in the orbit of the Dear Leader without striking a man with a gun. But these men (and some women, too) are not the “people” Barry doesn’t think “should be able to own a gun.”
“People” is synonymous in the mind of this creep with us – the lowing masses (as he regards us).
We should not be allowed to own guns.
“People” never means people vested with state power. They can be trusted.
We cannot be.
They have special rights. Such as the “right” of badged people – you know, cops – to carry guns almost anywhere, anytime – in bars and restaurants where alcohol is served, for example – even when not “on duty” and not wearing their sacred costumes. In “gun free” zones. In DC, Chicago. New York City.
We of course are not possessed of these special rights. Or of any rights at all, for that matter. At least no rights they are bound to respect.
That is the opinion of Barry Obama – who lives in the Emerald City, where he and his are armed to the proverbial teeth with automatic-fire machine guns (and much more) but no mere plebe may possess so much as an ancient Derringer. To merely walk within the near-orbit of Obama’s home and be found in possession of such is to risk a lifetime in prison – or summary execution. But our homes – and our selves – are unworthy of being defended. Indeed, we must be rendered defense-less. At their mercy.
That is the whole point, you see.
NYC Caudillo Michael Bloomberg is of the same opinion. Here is a video of one of us – the subhumans unworthy of self-ownership and thus, the right to defend ourselves – inquiring of Bloomberg why it is – if guns are bad and must be banned – he is surrounded by men with guns?
The journalist – Jason Mattera – asks: “In the spirit of gun control, will you disarm your entire security team?” Bloomberg’s armed thugs immediately form a cordon and loom menacingly. Bloomberg sneers, “I’ll get back to you on that” as he slinks backward into his armored limousine.
The arrogance, the contempt for us cattle is palpable – radiating off the reptilian skin of this creature like a malignant aura.
And that is the key thing to take away from all this. They despise us.
And, they fear us.
Which is why they wish so fervently to disarm us.
It is not about guns. Obama, Bloomberg, Feinstein – all of them – love guns. Their guns.
It is about control. Of us.
“Gun control” – as they style it – is merely an expression of Lenin’s pithy description of government as being all about Who Does What to Whom.
About what they intend to do to us.
Lenin – and Obama and Bloomberg and Feinstein – apparently never read Frederic Bastiat, who vaporized their pretensions with a handful of well-chosen words:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? ”
Yes, Barry and Michael and Diane do, indeed believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind.
If they did not so believe – if they really did believe in their nostrums – that “people” should not able to own guns, then they would include themselves in that number. But of course, they do not. Because they are not “people.” That’s us. They are special people – better people than we are. Wiser, smarter. Competent to possess arms – entitled to possess arms. To special rights – including the right to defend themselves.
Our selves don’t matter to them – other than as things for them to order about, control, regiment and dominate.
We are as cattle to them. We don’t have rights. How can cattle have rights?
Their law for us is simple: Do as we order. Submit. Obey.
It is why they cannot abide our having guns – while at the same time, knowing they must possess the only guns.
Throw it in the Woods?
Diesel fuel nozzles in Israel must be as thin as, or thinner than, gasoline nozzles or else they won’t fit through the gasoline tank filler.
Barack Obama’s Limousine was stranded after it was mistakenly filled with diesel by Barry’s People!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/20/obama-limousine-jordan-diesel-petrol
Americans all tensely wait in fear of their Dear Leader as another limo makes its way from Jordan to replace the fallen Hero Limousine, according to Ma’an News agency, citing Israel’s Channel 10, to replace one that was filled with diesel instead of gasoline.
Inside baseball:
One of the delivery companies that brings me cars took a big hit last year when one of the drivers managed to put half a tank of gas in an Audi diesel with “TDI” and “clean diesel” graphics billboarded on each side… They had to tow the thing to the dealer, drain and clean the tank and entire fuel system, partially disassemble the engine… major fiasco.
How many of you think this was NOT an accident?
And BTW–when talking about resistance, think logistics, not tactics.
An Abrams tank or an MRAP is only as strong as its supply chain. Without fuel, the former is a 70-ton hunk of steel, the latter 15 tons, equally useless.
A base has to feed, air condition, and shower the Exalted Ones within it. Why face force with force? Electrical distribution is fragile; transformers don’t work with .50 inch holes through them. Trucks don’t deliver food without fuel and willing people to supply the food.
Rave Party 1997
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8G8cdbPmp8
Here you see some proles. Our unemployed young Proles are agitated. Why?
Cause these Raves and all Parties are De Facto outlawed now. If a Rave like this is raided or even filmed and posted to YouTube, the PTB just impound the million dollar building it occurred in with impunity. Even if the owner is 5000 miles away and knows nothing about it because they forced open a door to get in.
Going to the Corporte Rave EDC, now relocated to Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ljg-6MXEJ4
The PTB still “let” them to go to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Electric Daisy Carnival. Good times, dancing with thousands of police and DHS bacon, good times.
House Parties too are raided. Multiple visits, forfeit your house. There are only corporate parties now, and $40 covercharge bars for kids to pack into and stand around drinking $15 cocktails like Neon Roach Motel Speakeasies. Look at the poor teeny & twentysomething schlubs payings 100s of dollars for a fake McParty!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plDRI7DCKUA
There are no Parties allowed outside the Corporate Parties.
If You’re A Corporate Shill And You’re In Marketing You Should Kill Yourself. – Bill Hicks.
Solid thinking meth. History, especially modern military history, shows that cutting off the supply line and let them whither on the vine is the most effective way to fight a stronger/well entrenched force. The only problem is that that strategy works both ways.
But if you really want to shut down the US military cut off its coffee supply!
I suspect the 2 billion-plus rounds they’ve bought and ordered was well calculated to coincide with the ammo-buying frenzy created by the gun-grab.
Cutting off our supply very effectively–but I still managed to stock up so suck on it you DHS stazi bastards! You’ll never guess what calibers either. Yeah, and that one, too.
You’re right though, skunkbear. First thing they’ll do is cut the power, then cut the water until you come, guns in hand, to the nice FEMA center for relocation to a camp. Want food? Bring your guns. Classic siege.
They seem to be doing everything in their power to make the Patriots fire the first shot. If they don’t, they’ll provocateur an event or, par for the course, false-flag one.
All the preparations and telegraphing are in place; demonizing white gun owners, flipping the script–have you noticed Al-CIAduh has dropped off the news cycle, and now it’s YOU, dear white bitter-clinger gun-owner? Yes–you in the back, with the pocket Constitution–YOU are the target now. DHS is finally coming into its own, its real “customers” exposed.
That radiation incident in the subway? You guys really think he’s the first patient still giving off alpha rays to go through the subway? They’re telegraphing something.
They will have to make it big and convincing. Sandy Hoax worked out very poorly for them; people are watching now. The games don’t work like they did.
Don’t make the first move. Let them show themselves, and be ready with the “I told you so” to your still-disbelieving friends.
I have a “friendly bet” with my workmates; that there will be a large terrorist attack blamed on “homegrown extremists” very soon. If it happens, I’ll have that much more credibility, and the false flag will have that much less effect.
Dear Tor,
Assuming it was not sabotage, it is a scenario straight out of “Atlas Shrugged,” only with an automobile instead of a train.
Apparently Barry is not in touch wiht his “Roots”
[FULL VERSION] Black conservative leaders discuss how the NRA was created to protect freed slaves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKMi023Ofro
Ahhhnold the shill from Kaleefornya has 6 mortgages totaling $14 million dollars and a monthly payment of $252,000. He can increase his debt by another $20 million if he wants to. The federal reserve system turns us all into pathetic banana republicans.
Mortgages 6 Balance $14,151,618 Available $34,286,114 Payment $252,397
Installment 2 Balance $91,159 Available $161,685 $5,905
Revolving 8 Balance $70,776 Available $225,000 Payment $952
Total Debt 16 Balance $14,313,553 Available $34,672,799 Payment$259,254 12
I was a fan of Arnold’s. I had great respect for him as a self-made man who worked his ass off to get rich and famous.
But then he became a politician.
And much worse, a Republican.
He got me, too. In the 70’s. Read his “Education of a Bodybuilder”. Saw his “docufiction” flick. Joined a gym. Read jim fixx’s book, too; did a lot of running. Like said: it was the 70’s.
By the time Arnie’s 60 Minutes interview confirmed it, his psychopathy was apparent. Some good material in the documentary “Bigger, Faster, Stronger”, too.
Arnie was a lance before Armstrong was born….
“Arnie was a lance before Armstrong was born….”
Now that’s a keeper!
I wonder: Do you suppose psychopathy is a necessary prerequisite to success in this culture?
I don’t think it’s a necessary prerequisite, per se. Definition of success is the hinge, tho. We’ve all read about the concentration of sociopathic traits in executive boardrooms. And we all experience that same concentration in/from the ‘political’ realm. Which does a lot of the explaining of the affinity the two “separate groups” share.
The breaking bad mixture, I think, in a lot of minds, is “power”, or authority, & “success”. Got into this, not for the first time, & still w/o progress, with my significant other just Sunday night. The 60 Minutes segment on Sheryl Sandberg. Mine is fascinated with “powerful women” (but in truth, power more generally, too…like a lot of people).
Decoupling those links often requires serious bolt-cutters…that have not been invented, yet. Or maybe Arnie’s arms, back in the day. ☻
Here’s my take – based on my experiences as someone who has been within grabbing range of the “fame/fortune” thing:
It’s damn helpful.
Because those circles are where you find the narcissistic type – and if you are not one yourself, it puts you at a competitive disadvantage. People tend to help those they like – and they tend to like those who are like themselves. Notice how little traction guys like Joe Sobran and Sam Francis – both brilliant writers and also very nice guys (I knew Sam) got vs. assholes of inferior ability but superior at glad-handing and “presenting” such as Tucker Carlson and the odious Anne Coulter. Notice the instinctive posing/posturing of those two – and others like them. Sam and Joe could not do that because they were not capable of it.
Sane people with empathy lack the narcissist/psychopath’s killer instinct – their capacity to do/say anything if it will further their careers – as well as their lust for celebrity (much more important to them than mere money).
This is not a sane culture.
So it’s not surprising that it very richly rewards the not-quite-sane.
Eric,
Precisely. That’s Krishnamurti’s “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
I have no desire for fame. I’d like a fortune, but for me “fortune” means a few toys, my kids educated, food on the table…not billions. I wouldn’t sell my soul for it; but it was quite reasonable to expect what would today feel like a “fortune” at the turn of the century, when engineers made (in gold prices) roughly 400,000/year…and paid almost zero income tax. It would sure feel like a fortune!
And those very average desires used to be with the reach of nearly anyone in America, with one job per household.
Until the Federal Reserve and Gunvernment stole us into poverty.
That thieving has been occult until now…now, it’s touched the margins, invaded, and metastasized into the heart of America–the dwindling middle class which used to be 50%, and is now 25% of America.
It’s that middle class that paid money for subscriptions to get quality. That had time for leisure reading…and would support the Eric Peters of the world. That spent 20%, or 100% more, for a tape measure Made In America.
Because they weren’t desperately clinging to the appearance of wealth…they HAD wealth, and it made everyone ELSE wealthy, too; some poor schlub could work at the Stanley factory making tape measures.
What’s at the heart of it all again? What’s that you say gentlemen?–YES–yes–you in the back…that’s right stand up please. “Gold and silver”, you say? Sir, you have simply quoted the Constitution whose writers surely understood that real money is anathema to tyranny.
Sure. Take the ‘success definition’ of sociopaths, sum it with the vicarious & sycophantic, & that leaves…some percentage. NAP is an anchor; sociopathy (& its apologists) cuts the line. “Success” then means successful predation.
Other than that, success is subjective & majoritarianism, or culture, of any kind, sick or not, does not, cannot, objectify it. Put another way, its no more on the table than any other inalienable. Put another way, usually not good to punch above one’s weight (adopt “definitions”, or “reality”): Lee should not have toe-to-toed with Grant.
I see the level you’re describing as “close, but not quite’s”, wannabe’s, to be sure, that, along with most everyone else, are wielded, herded, by worst of the worst who have vast fortunes, but little, if any, popular fame; they’re probably infamous within their milieu.
We live in a society where the key institutions, the way things work, are designed and run by sociopaths for sociopaths.
So yes, psychopathy is all but a necessary trait for success if we measure it by the standard of a CEO or movie star.
It can still happen on skill alone. can. However without the underlying psychopathy it is far less likely.
Who amongst us would not be further along down that road if we had no principles, if we had just done what it took, instead of doing what we felt was right?
See Moochelle & Kim Kardashian’s hacked credit reports.
http://www.exposed.su/
Is the Wizard of Oz greater & subtler than Atlas Shrugged?
It is known in academia that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum in 1900 is loaded with powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the Populist movements of 1896 and 1900.
http://archive.org/stream/wonderfulwizardo00baumiala#page/34/mode/2up/search/silver
The yellow brick road (gold standard), the Scarecrow (farmers), the Tin Man (industrial workers), the Wicked Witch of the West (OH banker J.D. Rockefeller) and the Wicked Witch of the East (NY banker J.P.Morgan), the Emerald City of Oz (greenback money), the illusory power of the Wizard in the capitol city (who monopolized power through deceit), even Dorothy’s silver slippers* were symbols of Baum’s belief that adding silver coin to gold coin would provide much needed money to a depression-strapped, 1890s America).
Oz is a virtual forest of monetary reform symbolism, done by someone extremely well versed in the Populist monetary reform goals of the period (Baum was a newspaperman and author) – goals which have never changed – they are still valid today, they are needed now more than then.
Do you know that only one zip code in the USSA spends nearly half of all the special interest lobbying money used to influence Congress? Guess what that zip code is? It’s 10036, the upper east side of Manhattan. That’s where Mayor Bloomberg of New York City lives. That’s where the Wall Street bankers live. They control the money, they control the mass media, they control Congress. They get the bailouts – other Americans get the bill (in higher taxes to pay the ever-growing interest on the National debt, and in fewer services).
Some will say – the bankers’ shills – that these solutions are something radical like perhaps socialism or worse. They are not. This is the most basic historic struggle for human freedom running back to the beginnings of societies – the struggle for widely disbursed private property and a fair and just economic system. Without that, individual freedom has no solid foundation.
If we value the Founding Father’s dream of freedom — an escape from serfdom by political self-determination – we ultimately have to conclude that creating our money is too important a function to be put into private hands where it can and is being used to corrupt our political system. History has shown time and time again that concentration of wealth leads to nothing but plutocracy: rule by the rich; then to plutarchy: rule by the very few, very rich, and ultimately slavery for the rest.
*changed to ruby slippers by the banksters who funded the movie.
Glenn Beck Goes Deep Into Oz(oz means ounces of gold)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSI_aOl6Rn0
Wizard of Oz – Fu11 Audio Book
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYIaUmnGLj4
Dear Tor,
“The yellow brick road (gold standard), the Scarecrow (farmers), the Tin Man (industrial workers), the Wicked Witch of the West (OH banker J.D. Rockefeller) and the Wicked Witch of the East (NY banker J.P.Morgan), the Emerald City of Oz (greenback money), the illusory power of the Wizard in the capitol city (who monopolized power through deceit), even Dorothy’s silver slippers* were symbols of Baum’s belief that adding silver coin to gold coin would provide much needed money to a depression-strapped, 1890s America).”
Holy bill of rights, Batman!
All that time I had no idea “The Wizard of Oz” was political allegory.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
IN Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
“The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
– Horace Smith
internal contradictions are one moral of the story. external misapprehension of internal contradictions is the other.
Damn, I’m hook’d on sonnets agin.
Masque of Anarchy – P.B.S.
On the British Massacre at Manchester 1819
…All were fat ; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Lord Eldon, an ermined gown ;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, and spies.
Last came Anarchy : he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood ;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.
And he wore a kingly crown ;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone ;
On his brow this mark I saw—
‘I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!’
Lawyers and priests a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed ;
Like a bad prayer not over loud,
Whispering—‘Thou art Law and God.’—
Then all cried with one accord,
‘Thou art King, and God, and Lord ;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!’…
– – – –
Live the Vicarious Good Life – Watch Internet Vids
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c79_1362433753
Yeah, that’s a good one, too. Except for the mis-identification/definition of “anarchy”.
Political tags — such as …, liberal, conservative, … are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Robert A. Heinlein
“– but I regard the desire to control another person as the real “original sin.” It is the root of every artificially created human misery there is. It is the one thing which, if eradicated somehow, would usher in a golden age for humanity.”
Eric — The best definition of evil that I have ever heard is forceing another human being against their will which is the same as your statement if the “desire to control” is replaced with the “attempt to control”. Of course, a person does not attempt to do wrong unless he first desires to do so. But, it is possible for a person to think about engaging in some rape, pillage, and plunder without ever attempting to do so.
P.S. I love your site and your uncompromising defense of human freedom.
Thanks, Rick – and, good to have you with us, too!
Don’t worry the republicants will go the way of the whigs. The idiocracy is here and there won’t be any going back so enjoy what you enjoy in the short time that is left.
Nope. The Gang of Plunderers will be kept alive, on life support if that’s what it takes. The Establishment needs to keep up the appearance of a two-party system at all costs and will do anything necessary to ensure that that happens. It wouldn’t matter if only six of us “little people” in the entire country were registered Republicans. That would be enough for TPTB to keep the facade going.
Oh hi, I know everyone is excited about esteemed party member Comrade Rand Paul saving the republic but did you know the house approved a trillion dollar budget increase while he ran interference?
Hi Fletcher,
Many here – including me – are very suspicious of Rand Paul. He has done several things that strongly suggest he’s unprincipled, a sellout and an opportunist.
In other words, a Republican.
Rand Paul is an opportunistic scumbag who should be trusted about as far as he can be thrown. His track record –which goes back to well before he was even elected to his current office– proves that.
Sadly, some influential people who should definitely know better think that his latest piece of pseudo-libertarian showmanship is enough to wash away ALL of his past sins. (By the way, the author’s statement in the attached link that “Rand Paul, it turns out, truly is his father‘s son,” was enough to make my hurl not only the contents of my stomach, but the lining along with it, all over my monitor).
Hi LIb,
Yup – that’s my take also. Rand Paul is not his father’s son. But he sure seems determined to ride his coattails to fame and fortune.
I was talking to someone just recently about the “con”-stitution and how it was held in secret, etc. When they responded about how it had something to do with the revolutionary war. To which I said, “But the war was long over… Why the secrecy?”
It’s a fraud that’s become now myth and near religion.
When they responded about how it had something to do with the revolutionary war. To which I said, “But the war was long over… Why the secrecy?”
I can only imagine the stupid look on their face when you brought up that little piece of obvious historical reality.
Yet further evidence that what I scoop up out of my dog run every morning is smarter than the average Amoricon on the street.
A fun tidbit about shrubya, I was at one of the drugstores on every corner and had my worst president ever shirt with shrubya on it and the black clerk said aww poor bush. The disco dancing bush page was pretty funny it is probably long gone. It was flash animation of the sulphur chimp on a disco floor clapping and doing his best saturday night fever moves. The lampooning and parody of bush can’t be tried on the immaculate affirmative action hire currently occuyping the crack house in dc because that be raycisss.
“The disco dancing bush page was pretty funny it is probably long gone.”
Remember the pics of W, drunk at the Olympics? Google “Bush drunk as a monkey”. It was a webpage of some pretty convincing pics of W, apparently drunk as a dirty dog and kind of mildly showing his ass.
One of the reasons we have dingle Barry and historic Team Indonesia is due to busy body suburban soccer mom scrunts who think Oprah is their imaginary black best friend. They love to channel their inner Mussolini and snout in on other people’s lives because their own lives are just a miserable pile of corn studded turds. Loser traitor commie rat POS Juan McCain is another reason we have Kaptain Kenya the Magnicificent at the helm.
Right on, Carry On –
But, don’t forget The Chimp. Without whom, Barry would have never happened.
Both the Chimptard and Barry Soetero were groomed for their role as Sock Puppet-in-Chief LONG BEFORE their predecessors every held the position. I’m willing to bet that TPTB already have chosen the next SPIC for 2016 (they almost tipped their hand in the last electoral farce, a hand ineptly played, as is so typical of them, by the Republiclowns. In any event, that buffoonish fiasco should’ve exposed the voting farce for what it is even to the densest of the Clover majority). Of course that won’t stop tens of millions of Clover votards from going out and pulling a lever on the second Tuesday in November of that year, as if the process actually signified something.
Of course.
And you’re right. “Good Republicans” will obediently line up and salute when the party anoints that bloated thug Chris Christie or that buffoon “Bobby” Brady Bunch Jindal its next SPIC. Or maybe it’ll be a new Chimp. After all, we haven’t had a member of that family as our Dear Leader for awhile.
Pumpkin-head Kartika Calls For Gender Eradication
http://www.youtu.be/utKZSem889I
Pumpkin-head Kartika Liotard Banning All Sexualized Female Images In All Media For 500 Million Euro-Slaves
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57572947-93/eu-to-vote-on-porn-ban-calls-for-internet-enforcement/
2 Minute Hate – Waterhead Women of the World Unite
http://www.youtu.be/WufjSyE_rK8
Robert Redford – Shill
Robert Redford is a shill. Barry is a shill. Most anyone earning a living is pressured to be a shill in one way or another. It may not be pretty, who we really are beneath our shill shells, but at least we begin to act authentically and humanly, when we stop shilling.
Who is a shill? A shill is a cashier, waiter, bartender, pretender, actor, entertainer, hostess, an unhappy wife or child, sales clerk, salesman, marketing associate, actor, wolf in sheeps clothing, politician, and bureaucrat.
Shills are plants, stooges, hype people. Anyone who inserts themselves between an actual provider of a good and service and the person who wants to obtain the good or service. Lying middlemen that run up the cost of everything and provide little or nothing in return.
Their character is one of fundamental and pervasive dishonesty. They are every lying brat kid. Ever dishonest wife pretending orgasms, interest in what you say, happiness with her oppression and societal burden. Every friend who says he can get you a good deal on whatever it is his business sells.
Every one who answers their phone with a happy hello, everyone who says good morning because they are made to do so, or they have some hidden agenda. Shills of consumption, for charity, for Jesus, their are shills for everything. Giving in to shills destroys our ability to make rational decisions.
Catcher In The Rye was about the shills, the phonys who are everywhere. Fake smiles, false greetings, the glad handed back slappers. A good shill acts without thinking. Always polite and pleasant. They make you feel good about yourself, no matter how rotten and bad you are. Now that you feel good, buy this do that, go act as a shill towards someone else, pass it on.
Nothing is ever going to get better until we all stop acting like shills.
Tor, you’re right.
One of the most subtle, pernicious evils of our era is the necessity (for most people) of maintaining perpetual employment as opposed to achieving self-sufficiency. The need to perpetually earn money forces you – inevitably – to compromise every value. To conform. To “get along.”
I am convinced this is the true reason behind the tax on real estate and personal property. Because it all but eliminates the possibility that a man will ever truly be free – free to do as he likes with his life and time. Free to really speak his mind.
Just think, as example, how we are all forced to keep in check the things we say – and write. Not because we are embarrassed by what we believe – but because we know that if we give utterance to these things, it could very well mean the loss of employment – and with that, the loss of our ability to keep housed/fed/clothed, etc.
We must dress a certain way. We must shave (good luck trying to find a job – other than a menial job – with a ZZ Top beard). We must almost necessarily drive a certain type of car. Most of us have to live in a certain area.
The list of constraints imposed by the treadmill of employment – which amounts to shilling – is almost endless.
I have partially escaped – but even I am still beholden. Because even though my house and land are “paid for,” I must pay the government to continue to be allowed to use them. Hence, employment. My constraints are less – but nonetheless still there.
The Jeffersonian notion of the free landowner has been eradicated.
Lately I am finding myself in debates about ‘science’. I am told how pure it is. I am insulted because I make the argument that those in science conform because it is their livelihood. That the political process which funds most of science taints it. That those who go against the established views risk their careers.
People just love their illusions. Someone told them science was pure when they were in grade school so now they accept this intellectual class telling them why they must obey the ruling class.
The scientific method tool in the hands of flinty flint knappers. Pure…tribalism. Versus Galileos & Duesbergs.
Edged tools work at the…edges. The rest is just mass.
Laser sabers. More edge, no mas mass.
You nailed it, Eric. They’ve managed to engineer the socioeconomic system, incrementally (isn’t that the way it’s ALWAYS done, to keep the Clovers anesthetized?) over the course of a century, to enslave everyone as a “wage earner.” They certainly must have done this in the hope that economic enslavement would ultimately preclude them from having to tear their mask off and resort to imposing full-blown slavery at the point of a gun. Whether their assumptions were correct (and whether there is any hope that the majority of potential slaves wake up to see reality) will be borne out in the next few months and years.
if you can’t do the hustle, don’t do the crime.☻
“That rifle on the wall of the laborer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy, and it is our job to see that it stays there.”
– George Orwell
Although he was a socialist, I love me some George Orwell…
Authoritarians, of the socialist stripe, with guns might be a due process issue. ☻
I certainly do not agree with authoritarians of any stripe. But that does not mean I cannot appreciate and enjoy reading thought provoking books even if they are written by those whose politics I do not agree with.
Continuing word play, sb. I like (s)wordplay, running with (s)words, etc.
He fought in the Spanish Civil War and had first hand experience with goof-ball socialists and was pretty fed up with the hypocrisy. Not that it necessarily changed his belief in socialism but it didn’t make him friends with the Reds.
Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia supports your argument and it is a good read too.
Dear bear,
At one time I took a very hard line. That was when I was more hardcore “Randian.”
But later I saw the folly of that sort of purism. Allowances should be made for minor disagreements.
This principle is not applicable to Republicans of course. The disagreements with them are far too egregious to set aside.
I don’t know if you noticed Eric, but South Dakota just armed the wardens in their public schools.
The clover media are wailing the end is near as a result. As usual, the more lurid authoritarian outlets began gobbling about guns in the hands of “people” at schools without for a moment remembering those “people” are actually employees of the State who are now authorized to use deadly force against unarmed citizens. Clover seems to have missed that part. Whoa be to the parent who gets grumpy with the Dean from now on. Time to assume the position (again).
I’m not against arming teachers or school administrators or grocery clerks for that matter. I’m against selectively arming teachers, school administrators and grocery clerks. That seems to be a point lost on the clover media.
Every human being should be armed.* Peace through universal armament.
*Let me point out the obvious for the “gotcha” media trolls: this excludes the demonstrably – through the due process system – criminal, violent, incompetent, etc.
“gotcha”, indeed.
Inalienable. Natural law. “From god” (whichever,whatever) versus…”due process”.
There’s a clipper chip on your principle…..
oz, Yes it is a very dangerous line to cross and it can get fuzzy with logic favoring both sides of the argument. “Due process” can be and often is subjective and corruptible. But I do not think arming inmates in prison is a good idea either, to use an extreme example. (Although I think most human beings in prison do not belong there – even if they were put there by “due process”.)
Except many cons are armed. As above, so below. As skinny & pretty as i am, no way i’m being thrown in with those shankers (phallic & otherwise) w/o a colt equalizer. ☻
Joking aside. Ex-cons. Domestic abuse. Ad infinitum ad nauseum. “dp”, the civic god in the authoritarian machine, arrogates disarmament.
Due process…or double penetration?
Hi Badger,
The other day we had some people over for dinner and I got into a chat with the husband of one woman. He was all for “safety officers” having guns in schools but adamantly against any mere teacher carrying a firearm – even if concealed, even if no one knew or would know unless it became necessary for the teacher to bring forth said firearm.
I queried the guy: So, you are afraid of “people” coming to a school armed – but are ok with costumed people coming to school armed? Yes, he said – because they are “trained.” Well, I responded, what if the mere civilian is also “trained”? What if he is an expert shot and has a sterling record/reputation as a citizen? Opposed. So, I continued, you favor denying a person who has done nothing to warrant it his right to self defense? On the basis of what someone else has done? And more – and worse – on the basis that a non-specific theoretical “someone” might do something? And this excludes the costumed person – who apparently is exempt from even the theoretical possibility of “might” cause harm?
This is the sort of thing we’re up against.
Leave us hanging there, eric… what was his reply to that?
I’m guessing the subject got changed?
Eric you and I agree on what we’re up against; in summary it’s the idea that only people sanctioned by the State are allowed self-defense.
If I forget to put on my costume, or if I never had one, or if I once had one but retired from public service, I’m suspect. I can’t be trusted. This disease manifests in so many ways it’s impossible to itemize but the real point is that we don’t trust each other. It might be ok for me to have a gun but it’s never ok for you to have one.
This strange dichotomy haunts us. We don’t trust each other and until that changes nothing else will. Just my opinion of course, but I’ve been thinking about it for awhile
Dear Eric,
Is that maddening, or what?
The mentality of these clover/sheeple boggles the mind.
Magical thinking that confers superhuman virtue onto anyone anointed with “official status.”
How different is this from grade school children judging whether the people on the screen are “good guys” or “bad guys” by whether they wear white or black cowboy hats?
Infantile clinging to hollow reassurances of “security” utterly inappropriate for grown men and women.
It’s maddening – and depressing!
This guy I was having the conversation with about armed “safety officers” in schools (he liked that idea, but recoiled in horror at the suggestion that any teacher or adult who wishes to ought to have their right to self defense honored as well) got progressively huffier – almost hysterical – like a woman, in the worst sense of that term.
Logic – reason – it just doesn’t penetrate their two inch thick brain armor.
Q: So, it’s ok for a “security officer” to carry a gun, but not me – even if I am demonstrably proficient with a handgun and known to you personally (unlike the “security officer”) as a responsible man who has never given you or anyone else reason to suspect I might be “dangerous”?
A: I just don’t like the idea of guns in school (he literally said this in reply to the above).
Dear Eric,
That attitude, that considers badges and costumes “official” makes me so frustrated I just want to say:
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ
Dear Eric,
Now that I’ve calmed down a little, I think the problem is that the clover/sheeple we are discussing weren’t thinking at all.
They were emoting. They were overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety. They were panicking. And in their panic, they were demanding instant, magical reassurances of security.
From whom?
Why the paternalistic/nanny state of course!
What else?
That is always where emotionally and psychologically unevolved children in adult bodies seek empty emotional reassurances.
They know they can no longer seek comfort from their biological parents. So they seek it from “The Matrix.”
Matrix [UPDATED] in the dictionary refers to “a situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained. The womb.” Additionally, the concept of the Matrix as an illusion or a ‘construct’ that humans are unaware of resembles the idea of Samsara in Buddhism and Hinduism. Samsara teaches that the world we consider ‘real’ is actually a projection of our own desires.
http://thematrix101.com/matrix/symbolism.php
They seek security from an illusory “womb” that is actually a projection of their unconscious need to be taken care of.
Indeed.
And of course (it’s an axiom) this guy has no personal experience with guns. Doesn’t own any, doesn’t shoot.
So naturally, he is scared of them. Regards them as animate objects, capable of all sorts of mayhem. Unless they’re in the “right” hands, of course.
Which means, not your hands or mine.
Bevin,
Classic movie. Very good as well. I do not like what became of Bogart’s character at the end of the film. The film did an excellent job portraying what could happen to a man’s psyche.
You can keep your badges. I prefer my own. 😉
“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges. Vamanos!”
(Of course Mel paid homage to “Treasure of the Sierra Madré”.)
Dear mith, Eric,
Yeah.
The “official” badges and “official” costumes provide sheeple with emotional reassurances that they are safe in an unsafe world.
Never mind that the worst excuses for human beings seek out those very same official positions that enable them to flash those “official” badges and strut about in those “official” costumes.
Example: porcine TSA perverts
Just as long as the sheeple feel safe. Isn’t that what really matters?
costumes seem to mean a lot to the masses. To them, a person is his costume. From the mechanic to the businessman to the president. People are their costumes to these well I won’t be insulting.
Maybe this whole world is a simulation and it’s a game with a lot of idiot newbie players who think the costumes mean something.
A costume can do amazing things for you – ask a pedophile priest (or the hit men who dress as plumbers and so on to avoid being noticed and gain easy entry into people’s homes).
Dear Brent,
Yeah. It’s basically a sociopath’s literally minded form of “cosplay.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay
Cosplay is harmless fun when engaged in by civilians who do not violate the NAP.
It is not so much fun when sociopathic clovers decide to form gangs, refer to themselves as “The Government,” think of their badges and costumes are “official” and start shooting people who don’t obey them (“laws”) or pay them money (“taxes”).
“ask a pedophile priest or the hit men who dress as plumbers”
Or TSA costumes for perverts looking to get paid for doing what they love — molest people.
Yup –
If some middle-aged fat slob walked up to you on the street and ordered you to “freeze,” hold your hands over your head in the “I surrender” pose and proceeded to fondle your crotch, probably most people would not put up with it. But dress the same guy in a blue suit….
Merely make public the home addresses of Feinstein, Schumer, Steinberg, Bloomberg, Blankfein, Grant (Monsanto) etc. These cuckoo birds should be living in constant fear of not knowing when the next “phsst” is splattering their wretched brain matter all over the pavement or merely an angry fly buzzing around.
When millions know where destroyers of liberty live, you think not .001% will fail to dole out death and destruction as needed?
Assassination isn’t civilized. Never mind that what these people are doing to us is also uncivilized, the murder of a murderer simply adds to the number of murders in the world. Do you want to murder someone and become the same kind of person you killed?
There’s no way to bring about good by doing evil. The fatal conceit of acting on a belief that any one person knows what’s best for everyone is what made these people the evil scum that they are. Aggressive violence is a trap. It doesn’t have to be the trap that we set for ourselves, then step into on our own.
Dear Ed,
“Aggressive violence is a trap.”
Correct. Aggressive violence IS a trap.
But legitimate self-defense is not. It is not a violation of the NAP. What Brent is talking about is morally and ethically fully consistent with the NAP.
That’s not to say it’s necessarily the option of choice at this point in time.
As underscored by many before, the real groundwork is “hearts and minds.” It’s getting new generations of young people to not become clovers and sheeple in the first place.
Ron Paul, for one, is doing that. One high profile young free market anarchist vblogger was saying how Ron Paul was akin to a “gateway drug” to free market anarchism.
That’s our real priority.
“Correct. Aggressive violence IS a trap.
But legitimate self-defense is not. It is not a violation of the NAP. What Brent is talking about is morally and ethically fully consistent with the NAP. ”
No, Bevin. I didn’t say that self defense is a trap. I said that aggressive violence is a trap. Brent seemed to be openly wishing for the murder of some evil people. Unless you’re splitting hairs and saying that listing their addresses publicly is cool (which it may be), he was advocating murder, in a roundabout way. Or maybe he was just expressing a wish that someone else murder those scoundrels. I could have taken it either way.
Murdering anyone constitutes aggressive violence in my book. As much as I despise Bloomberg, I would never shoot him unless he was trying to shoot me. That oughta clear up my position on the whole head-shooting thing that Brent posted.
Yes, I know you really like Ron Paul. I don’t see what he has to do with what I was saying. Do you need to type his name a certain number of times per day to be happy or something like that? 😉
Not saying you’re weird or anything, you know. Whatever makes you happy, but I didn’t mention Ron Paul. I also didn’t say that self defense equals aggressive violence. I guess nobody told me that this is non-sequitor day around here.
Y’all should let me know when it’s non-sequitor day so I’m not taken by surprise.
Dear Ed,
My response to you was straightforward. It was not snide or contemptuous.
I addressed you as a fellow libertarian.
I’d like to ask you to look over your response to me, and ask yourself whether it was really called for and proportionate.
Bevin, are you saying that you didn’t mean to post a non sequitor in response to my post? Your post took issue with a statement that I never made.
I apologize for having offended you.
Dear Ed,
My reference to Paul was not about “rebutting” you.
I never implied that you said anything about Paul.
I was merely making an observation. I was merely noting that there are hopeful developments in the pipeline.
I was merely taking comfort in the fact that young people are seeing through the myth of “good government.”
No need to slam me over it.
Bevin, take it easy. I was playing, OK? That’s what the smiley wink was for. The remark about RP was in jest. I know you like him, and you know I don’t care for him , so I thought we were just digging at each other in a friendly way.
Damn, son. I had no idea you’d take it as a personal attack. Look, I’m an old coot, and I’ve been in flamewars online since ’95. My sense of humor is weird and rough, I know, but I like your posts and thought you’d take it as a joke.
Believe me, I wasn’t slamming you, just kind of doing the dozens. No insult was intended. Please forgive me. Please. Please.
Dear Ed,
Okay, we’re cool.
Just wanted to avoid a pissing contest with someone on the same side.
I have no problem engaging in rhetorical “cage fights.”
But I really don’t want to do it with allies, only with statist clovers.
“Just wanted to avoid a pissing contest”
Well, now that you bring it up….I bet you a $2 bill that I can piss further uphill than you can downhill. 2 to 1 odds, whaddayasay?
Ed, “…the murder of a murderer simply adds to the number of murders in the world.”
There is a difference between murder and self defense. Murder is the immoral taking of a human life (and therefore should be illegal – although that which is immoral is not always also illegal, and, more importantly, vice-versa).
“There’s no way to bring about good by doing evil.”
Very true but defending yourself from evil is not doing evil. Indeed, it is the very essence of doing good by standing up against evil. Unfortunately, evil only understands one thing: violence.
It is a very fine line that we are forced to walk now and it is only getting thinner by the minute. But we are not the ones making it thinner and thinner.
Violence is very rarely the answer. But when it is, it is the only answer.
I only hope that we who follow the NAP will not be forced to have to defend ourselves from the very aggression we despise.
That is our wish but it is not our call…
Yes, skunkbear. I know the difference between murder and killing in self defense. I was responding to Brent’s statement about murder of guilty parties.
“Very true but defending yourself from evil is not doing evil.”
I didn’t say that it was. I still say that murdering one of the murderous assholes that Brent listed is an act of evil. Shooting Bloomberg is murder unless he’s trying to shoot you.
Are you just refusing to read what I wrote, or am I really that bad at writing clearly?
Ed, “‘Very true but defending yourself from evil is not doing evil.’
I didn’t say that it was. I still say that murdering one of the murderous assholes that Brent listed is an act of evil. Shooting Bloomberg is murder unless he’s trying to shoot you.”
Again, defending yourself from someone who is a “murderous asshole…”is not murder. It is fully justified as an act of self defense.
“Shooting Bloomberg is murder unless he’s trying to shoot you.”
Good Lord and butter! Do I really have to go down this path?!
There is no historical evidence that Hitler himself actually killed one single Jew. Or homosexual. Or Gypsy. Or anyone else, including during his well documented bravery in WWI.
There is no evidence that Charlie Manson ever killed anyone. So why is he in jail?
Even the great boogyman of the twenty-first century, Osama Bin Laden never actually killed one American himself. (Not that I believe the OBL fairy tale).
My point is, that even though the “Brains” of the outfit never actually commit the dastardly deeds they provoke, they are still very much culpable and need to be dealt with as such.
And as such, even though those who claim power over us may not have ever actually committed murder they are just as responsible as those that pulled the trigger in their name/their policies.
Therefore Bloomberg is just as guilty of murder as is the thug who pulls the trigger which kills an innocent human being during a robbery who, thanks to Herr Bloomberg, was denied his/her natural born right of self defense.
That is indeed murder. And for which Der Bloomberg must be held responsible for.
“Do I really have to go down this path?! ”
Yes, I’m afraid you do, sorry for the inconvenience. My position remains the same: Assassination/Murder is uncivilized. Murder is aggressive violence. I won’t become a sniper for that reason.
The old debate on this subject usually starts with the idea that it would have been moral and right to assassinate Hitler while he was making a speech. Shooting Hitler from a sniper’s position would have saved millions of lives, is the way it usually goes. How do we know that this is so? Hitler was one single asshole. He was surrounded by like minded assholes, any of which may have been willing to take his place. His replacement could use the murder of Hitler to justify further outrages.
Nobody knows what would follow the assassination of a tyrant. One thing is sure, though: the person who did the shooting became a murderer once he did the deed.
Here’s my position again, with a little further clarification:
I will not assassinate anyone. It goes against my moral principles. You may do whatever you like, according to your principles.
Is that better?
Neigh, Mr. Ed, its no better.
Self-defensive violence, by “assassination” at long range, or blade, up close & personal, or anything in between, does not violate nap. The civilized defensively killing the uncivilized does not violate nap. Killing murderers, esp mass murderers, is subtractive of murder, not additive. And elevating “civility”, which is a side-effect, to a moral principle, above nap, which proceeds from the first moral principle – self-ownership – is, at best, Clever Hans sophistry.
I’m no horse whisperer, but if you could tap a hoof, or whinny, the audience probably won’t be amazed, but chuckles & laughter are still good.
Have boots, & spurs, will travel…..
Ed, ” Murder is aggressive violence.”
I understand your stance and it is noble. What we disagree about is the meaning of “murder”.
I contend that once someone initiates aggression on me I have every right to defend myself and that includes killing (if the threat is of life or death). Again, self defense is not murder. It all comes down to who initiates the aggression.
I understand too and yet disagree with your argument that killing someone who is not actually physically attacking you is not self defense.
That is generally a fair argument except for when the aggression is initiated by the State.
People talk about killing the LEOs and military personnel when they come for our guns and that would indeed be justifiable killing and not murder. But it also would be justifiable to kill the athoritahs who gave the order to grab the guns.
The giving of the orders is the very beginning of the aggression. And once the aggression is initiated then those who started it are to be specifically held accountable by any means necessary.
Being an “elected” – or otherwise – “official” does not give one immunity from their actions. Indeed it means that they are very much responsible for their deeds while wielding power in office.
No, Hitler should not have been shot while giving speeches but once he ordered his troops into other countries – an obvious act of aggression – then he should have been killed as soon as possible. Generally, killing the head causes the body to die too. And even if another nazi faithful was to take his place to lead the aggression then he too is justifiably marked for death. Such killings are not “murder”.
“Self-defensive violence, by “assassination” at long range, or blade, up close & personal, or anything in between, does not violate nap”
So you say. The problem with your reasoning is that you’re attempting a shortcut to your conclusion by claiming that an unprovoked murder is “self defensive violence”. It doesn’t wash, old boy. It misses by a mile.
BTW, who are you, anyway? Sites like this are targeted by paid trolls who like to incite the sort of declarations of violence that you’re making.
Your supposedly humorous remarks are insulting, presuming a familiarity with me that you can’t claim. I’m not interested in any further exchange with you.
“Such killings are not “murder”.”
To me they are. I’m going to wait until ol’ Bloomie shows up at my house with a gun before I shoot him, OK? In the meantime, I’ll also defend myself and my family to the best of my ability. That won’t include going out looking for people to shoot.
You’re free to defend yourself and your family as you see fit. I wouldn’t dream of interfering.
Here’s one thing to think about; this site is a valuable resource for a lot of us. Talking about shooting people, even tyrants or other criminals, can cause trouble for the site owner. I don’t want to contribute to that. OK?
Dear skunkbear, oz,
I agree.
TPTB are already guilty of gross violations of the NAP.
Morally and ethically they should not be surprised when somebody acts out in self defense.
Most of us on this forum choose not to, because we are taking the “hearts and minds” approach.
But philosophically speaking, a victim who chose to fight back physically would be well within his rights.
Ed, “That won’t include going out looking for people to shoot.”
Who said anything about going out looking for people to shoot?! In fact everyone on this site, including me, are fervent defenders of NAP. We do not want violence, we want reason and logic. But mostly we want to just be left the hell alone.
But we have a right to self defense when attacked, which you and I can agree. What we differ on is who is the attacker. I say the one who gives the order for the attack is just as guilty of initiating the aggression as is the military/LEO who physically carries out the act of aggression.
“Why, Ed Bailey, you like just ‘bout ready to burst…well, I ‘spose I’m deranged, but I guess I’ll just have to call (your expansive, to the point of non-definition, “unprovoked” & your “who are you, anyway?” appeal to authority) …Why, Ed Bailey…we cross? Ed, what an ugly thing to say…abhor ugliness…does this mean we’re not friends anymore? You know, Ed, if I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.” ~ written word doesn’t do it justice: listen to Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday, effeminate-yet-menacing lispy-swishy southern drawl.
I did say. And I do say. In same vein, probably vain, as in futile, shocking as it may be to your “sensibilities”, 2+2=4. Or, a horse is a horse, of course, of course. What may be a tinge less concrete – as said, I’m not a whisperer – is that a horse’s ass is unknown to itself until saddle & rider are mounted, & spurs are applied….In other words, “so you say” does not apply: that the relatively tiny ‘train of abuses’ that poetically helped justify action once upon a midnight dreary has metastasized to cars beyond counting is not a matter of opinion. Yet you shelter in “unprovoked”. Or are you actually saying nap, self-ownership, is merely opinion? Because that is what necessarily cabooses your “reasoning”.
Evey Hammond: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I’m not questioning your powers of observation; I’m merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey Hammond: Oh. Right.
I’m “ozymandias”, Ed. Who do I need to be? To cast stones, or bread, upon the blog (or stone-weighted bread-wrapped hooks into it), in an open forum, I mean? Agent provocateur…well, yes, I guess I am, sometimes. I do enjoy it. Breaks up the day. That’s my reward, how I’m “paid”. It’s also said that virtue is its own reward, which makes me think there’s similar coin in calling out false virtue. Fiat currencies are properly disparaged, what’s improper about fiat modesty, virtue, disparagement? Nothing.
“Familiarity” with “you” is a highly unlikely prospect. How many virtual encounters manifest into actual encounters? Familiarity with the perspective you’ve expressed is another matter – not my first rodeo, hoss, so I can claim that familiarity. You’ve explained your humor, elsewhere within this same thicket, & apologized for it, too (a pattern coalesces…). The explanation of my humor is that its mine. Whether anyone else is amused, or not, is irrelevant. And, no apologies. Engage/exchange, or don’t; works either way.
Old dogs, horses & coots; new tricks are the tricky part – because tricks are for kids, & once they’ve memorized ‘em, & their wet little sponges dry out, they often can’t un-memorize ‘em. Saddlebags, tricked out with “self-esteem” or “identity”: “I’m not a horse”, the dray animal insists to himself, & those within earshot who may help with validation. Flame on? Flame out. As in pilot light. No light, no heat, & the gas/air ratio is lopsiding towards a spark-boom. Natgas has an unnatural odorant added. Mild tho, compared to a “noble” gasser relativizing natlaw. Seeping noble gas radon is colorless, odorless, carcinogenic….beep-beep-beep (radon detector warning – ignore at your own peril). As for politically correct speech “insurance” you should assume that all sites such as this one, & every contribution, & even every pair of eyeballs that’s ever logged in just to read, has been & is being cataloged for future reference/action.
Generally, forum at large….
I hear quite a bit of ukulele. And falsetto denials, assertions, while precipice-peering. See a lot of tip-toeing thru the tulips, in the graveyard. There’s also some martial tunes wafting thru, now & again. About the only one I can recall having significant bead on target is Don Cooper (middle initial “b”, by any chance? Lol). But I’m not regularly here, not an archivist of pulse readings. I come over now & then when I see an ep piece over at lrc. Good writing by the proprietor, better than average blog contributors, in terms of content, or polish, or both, & one rorshachian stream of consciousness synthesizer (tor).
Folks,
This is the battle of the bulge. The bad guys are broke and have grabbed at too much. Wait them out. Laugh at them. Don’t pay their taxes. The appropriate reply is “Nuts!” some of us will die in the weeks, months, and years to come. Some will die anyway. That is exclusively in the hands of God. How we live is all that matters. Ignore their laws. If they put you in their jails you will be in mostly good company and you’ll be consuming resources they don’t have. No more defeatism!
Ernie P
Ernie’s comment reminded me of this quote:
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison … the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”
Henry David Thoreau
You obviously have never been incarcerated. Trust me, you want to do everything possible to avoid their prisons.
Prison Planet.
Any person who has a gun and doesn’t want you to have one is a bad person and is your enemy. And the more power that person has over you the more evil that person is.
Well said!
This is the essence of guns. Guns are about power.
If you have a gun and I do not then you have 100% power over me.
If I have a gun and you do not then I have 100% power over you.
If we both have guns then neither of us has power over the other. There is a balance.
Which of these three scenarios is least likely to cause human suffering?
Of what possible good could there be in the intent of the one seeking to take away the other’s power?
This government like all governments was born with the seeds of it’s destruction sown into itself. Those seeds are germinating right now. With each power grab, with each new tax, with each gun grab, with each imperial grasp they are pouring more water on those seeds.
People are the seeds sprouting one by one, most are still dormant but for how long? One more lost job, one more lost house, one last right taken and the seed starts it’s journey towards the light.
Liberty is that light. Freedom from government is that light. Absolute undeniable human rights are that light.
So go ahead big government pour that water, germinate those seeds, help us grow deep roots and strong stalks.
Eric:
You’re quite right about the difficulty of earning a living with your pen (or your platform.) Unless and until you’re of independent means, if you’d really like to take six months to a year to write, knowing that you won’t get paid — or paid much — you’d need a patron, much like the artists and writers of times past. You probably wouldn’t want to apply for government grants (they’d hardly tolerate you) but there may be private sources of funding that would back you. If you have access to Tom Woods, you might ask him how he does it.
Consider the career of Anthony Trollope. Though Trollope has never gotten the recognition that some of the other Victorian novelists have gotten, his works are masterful: the prose, the plotting, the characters, the wisdom. He was up at five each morning, wrote for two hours, had his breakfast and went to his day job at the post office, working at dull tasks for a man of his nature and ability, in order to support his family. Not everyone can do that. Life was less distracting then. The Empire was at its zenith and everyone loved the Queen. We don’t have that kind of serenity today.
Since writing seems to be in your blood, you’ll keep on, I’m sure. If nothing else, you’ll know that you have readers who value what you have to say and wish you a wider audience.
Hi Lee. I love Trollope’s novels, especially the Palliser series. That was a brilliant exposition of Victorian politics. ok, except for the first book in the series, which was fairly boring. The next five, though are worth reading more than once.
You can see through the republicrat vs. demopublican ruse quite easily. Witness those republicants enjoying their 20,000$ dinner with dear leader while Rand Paul saved the republic (not really). The 47% comment is about people who love their chains and teats from uncle sugar and want the rest of us to love them as well. The more I read about libertarians the more I like them. There are two kinds of people, those who want to control others and those who want to leave people alone.
I thought is was Dumobrat and Repulsican. Counterfeit money and divide-and-conquer gimme-gimme Democracy is how the political/counterfeiter terrorist apes control us.
The halfbreed bastard of a communist gangbang whore is wrecking the golden das Homeland. Still laughing 47% percent? Get all you can while you can the party is about to end.
All true – but the same’s just as true of the beady-eyed inbred scion of Hitler-snuggling war profiteers who preceded him. Don’t fall for the false left-right, Democrat-Republican con.
It’s authoritarian collectivists – vs. us.
That’s all.
You nailed it, Eric. The GOP dominated Congress coninually provides generous funds to the DEA, BATFE, DEA, IRS,BLM, DHS, TSA and EPA. Those funds enable the purchase of Drones,flak jackets, JHPs, AR15s, APCs, shotguns, donuts and bowling shoes (just kidding, Ms Napolitano!). The purse strings are controlled by the House Of ill-Repute. When Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell go on FOX News to rail against the unconstitutional edicts of El Presidente, it is like the WWF feuds between Doink the Clown and Sgt Slaughter! They eat together, golf together, and possibly play SoComm3 with each other!
Eric and folks. I’m a long-time reader of Eric’s essays but have never commented. Eric’s Essays, has a ring to it doesn’t it. A compilation in book form maybe? Quien sabe?
The poster above reminds me of an old John Birch society poster that had the photos of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and, I think, Lenin, with a caption that read: ‘Experts agree, gun control works.’
Hi Ralph – thanks!
And, good to have you with us and out in the open!
Dawson’s Law from the Book of Common Misery: Government only does four things well: tell lies, waste money, start wars and keep secrets.
Great piece Eric! The film clip adder is a real plus! Again the grey matter of many on your site reflects itself very eloquently in defense of Liberty! Drop me an e-mail, have an event I would like you to act as an instructor for. It is paid, not God & Country, lol!
There is a simple solution. We have to upset the aggregation of sycophants to the power brokers. This may be done by writing a whole lot of laws or by writing one. “No elected official at any level may serve more than 8 years in an office subsidized by taxation”. Term limits. If the pompous elite know they have to return to private lives, they will become more sympathetic to being a private citizen.
A nice idea in theory, but I think we’ve all seen more than enough evidence of just how (in)effective “laws” (i.e., legislative statutes or executive fiats) are at controlling the behavior of the kleptoligarchs who issue them.
Dear CATI,
Liberranter is right.
The “political process” itself is like any game in a Las Vegas casino.
Every one of them is rigged in favor of the house.
The only way to win is not to play.
Yes, there is a simple solution:
For the next election, advertise that all those who wish to be candidates to govern the people must sign up personally at the nearest courthouse to their house on a given date. Then when all these wannabe tyrants show up, the locals should beat them to death. Repeat every election year.
I know this violates the NAP but you gotta admit it would be a simple way to identify the psychos who seek to rule us and finally eliminate gubment once and for all without harming any innocents.
Dear skunkbear,
You know… that would probably work.
It is horrifying to think about but how the hell else do we who merely want to be left the hell alone stop our tormentors?!
There is something really wrong – deeply wrong – within the souls of those who wish to rule over their fellow human beings.
Every time I talk to Eric our conversations boil down to EXACTLY that second part you just said. They are very sick people that get off on controlling others. They have all the money they want and the means to cheat and make more. They are looking for something else. The worst part is the clovers that ask for more of it. They are the true problem because they enable it!
On mere money – vs. the lust to control people:
I’m not at all religious – in the sense of believing in any organized religion’s dogmas – but I regard the desire to control another person as the real “original sin.” It is the root of every artificially created human misery there is. It is the one thing which, if eradicated somehow, would usher in a golden age for humanity.
Imagine it: A world full of people who discuss and persuade and freely cooperate (or not) but never act to control other people. In which the desire (let alone the act) is regarded as much worse than child sexual abuse. (And child sexual abuse is just one of many manifestations of this ur sickness of humanity.)
It would be a paradise.
People free to live their lives. A technicolor explosion of individuality free – for the first time in history – to elaborate itself in countless currently inconceivable ways. The genius, great and small, of humanity would be unchained. And the misery of humanity bound in chains forever.
Ever notice how the controllers and their followers and the clovers make it out to be people like us that have the problems?
For what? wanting to be left alone and not sharing their illusions.
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis Quote
“For what? wanting to be left alone and not sharing their illusions. ”
That’s because they need us – and we don’t need them.
It starts with parasitic human trash like Gil that vote for violent psychopaths to steal for them. It is scumbags like Gil who refuse to leave you alone…And retarded effeminate brats and tapeworms like him are now the majority. Welcome to Democracy…You were probably told to think that Democracy and freedom are the same.
Hi Glenn,
I once read a Cloveritic parsing of stealing that defined it as the taking of that which you are not legally entitled to. Thus, in Clover’s mind, it is not stealing if you receive a government transfer payment – or support forcing others to “fund” such things as “our children’s schools” – because the “funds” have been “appropriated” by “legal” means.
A person who fails to pay taxes is – in this view – defrauding the government; the government is not stealing his money.
This is how they – Clovers – view the world. The bright ones, anyhow. The not-so-bright-ones just say: Gibs me dat.
Dear Glenn,
Economist Thomas Sowell is not a true libertarian in my book. Nevertheless I like what he said about democracy’s relationship to freedom.
“To include freedom in the very definition of democracy is to define a process not by its actual characteristics… but by its hoped for results. This is not only intellectually invalid, it is… blinding oneself in advance to… the unwanted consequences… “
— Thomas Sowell
Amerika had one law: the Constitution. And flawed it may be, but as long as the people forced the PTB to at least pay lip service to it, individual Liberty remained intact…for the most part. But with the advent of the income tax (first imposed on Amerika in 1862 by king Lincoln) and the nationalization of the formerly federal government, the PTB believed the game was essentially over. In their minds it was just a matter of making the final moves over the next century to declare an outright checkmate.
Those moves were stealing the people’s real money, gold and silver, and replacing it with debt based paper; gutting the Second Amendment so that the citizens’ unorganized militia does not have weaponry equivalent to the (long and illegally established) standing army; mandatory attendance for the serfs’ offspring in government schools; the war on some drugs; the faux war on poverty; interminable international intrigue and imperial expeditionary warfare; and, finally a near total surveillance based police state.
Sounds bad, huh? Hopeless you say? I’ll bet there were a lot of folks that hung their heads on April 19, 1775 and groaned “We’re doomed!” But that wasn’t the case. Oh it was difficult. People suffered harsh field conditions, bitter cold, disease, maiming and death…just like so many more before them. Were their leaders all decent and upright men, bent on a Classical Liberal ideal of Liberty and Justice for all? Hardly! At best mankind’s works are as dirty rags. But it was the best experiment in government to date. It just went to seed a whole quicker than anyone would have liked to believe. I you figure it from 1775 to 1860 you have that long human life span that Strauss and Howe theorize as being the typical cycle of a society’s spring, summer, fall and winter.
Fellows, we are in late fall / early winter. If you haven’t stocked your root cellar, canned your vegetables, stored enough salt and sugar and put up plenty of firewood figuratively speaking, the next few years are probably going to be a tad bit rough for you. And if you are in the process of preparing for what is to come, it would be a good idea to put up a little extra for your family, friends and neighbors too. People with an empty stomach will listen to your ideology and plans for the future more intently when you are offering those along with a bag of rice, a cup of beans and a pinch of salt. And it might not be a bad idea to have an extra rifle and some cartridges for it laying around too. A lone family may have a hard time time mounting an adequate defense 24/7. Having an armed house guest or two hanging around that you can trust, may be worth their weight in hard red wheat. Let those with ears hear and those with eyes see.
America had the articles of confederation. The konstitution made amerika…..
If it was an “experiment”, then it was as Frankenstein’s.
In reality, “experiment” continues to over-grant benefit of doubt. A coup, as philly was, as supplanting of the old boss-king was, is a gambit, not an experiment.
“We’re doomed!” Hilarious pvt. Hudson snips….
Mogambo guru also cries doom to fun effect.
Or the one sentence summation:
“Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_licet_Iovi,_non_licet_bovi
I’m afraid that the problem is simple, i.e. mere power to elect your dictators is not “government by consent of the governed,” nor does it confer the right of the people to alter or abolish it. As clearly stated from the outset, each state is a free, sovereign and independent nation, and thus they adopted an international Constitution among such– not national, with the people of each state doing so by popular vote within it, overruling their state delegates to form a new and more perfect Union than the one beforeit.
Thus, Lincoln’s brutal suppression of these nations through mass-murder and censorship, created a singular dictatorship in which the people have no rights– only the privileges which allows.
This is the truth, and the only solution is secession.
You’re correct, Brian – but let’s take it a step further.
Why not secede as individuals from being party to any coercive collective? Yes, the centralized government is Washington is oppressive. But are we any better off if we swap being oppressed by tyrants in DC for tyrants “down home”?
State’s rights is a start.
The real epiphany comes when you realize that no state – no government – has any rights.
Only individuals do.
Yes, the centralized government is Washington is oppressive. But are we any better off if we swap being oppressed by tyrants in DC for tyrants “down home”?
EXACTLY. This is the OBVIOUS point that too many people who whine about Washington, D.C. just don’t get. Despite the fact that clearly the most oppressive, expensive, and petty restrictions, regulations, and edicts come from their state and local (i.e., city and county) governments –governments which, incidentally, they are just as powerless to influence and control as they are powerless to influence and control Rome-on-the-Potomac– they still have this pie-in-the-sky belief that the flowers of liberty will bloom as soon as all power is transferred to the State Capitol and to the Podunkville city council, despite a lifetime of evidence that such optimism is childish bullshit. It’s yet more evidence that Cloverism is more widespread than we’re willing to admit and that this is why real liberty is nigh on impossible to achieve.
State’s rights is a start.
The real epiphany comes when you realize that no state – no government – has any rights.
Only individuals do.
It needs to go a big step farther. People need to wake up and realize that “government,” “state,” or whatever name you wish to call it, at ANY level, is a violence-based, COLLECTIVIST concept that is anathema to the concept of RIGHTS or FREEDOM. Until Clovers grow brains, recognize this fact, and adjust their behavior and expectations accordingly, “liberty” is a non-starter.
lib, the key word here is violence. It is the ONLY power of gubment. Therefore the counter force must be the constant promotion of the Non Aggressive Principle.
In every political discussion with family, friends, co-workers etc, stress the difference between peaceable citizens living within the NAP and the gun-to-the-head power of gubment. Ask them if they believe in and promote aggressive violence.
NAP is the key to a true liberty.
Dear Brian,
Actually, the Big Lie is pretty transparent once one has taken the red pill.
Just one example: The “consent of the governed.” What a joke!
Did any of us hardcore libertarians here ever actually consent to be governed by the assclowns in DC?
Does being born in a particular patch of ground on the planet earth, really mean that one is automatically subject to a bunch of rules that a bunch of total strangers made up without asking you?
The motivations of the elite political ruling class are becoming increasingly transparent. Rifles or assault weapons are rarely used in the commission of gun crimes. This leads one to conclude that the real purpose of rifle and assault weapon bans is to keep the political class safe. A skilled marksman with a good rifle can hit a target from nearly a mile away. As the elite political ruling class continues to trample the rights of the mundane and pilfer their pocketbooks, it becomes increasingly likely that a mundane will take up arms against them. The elite political ruling class is terrified of this.
If one guy–a poorly trained ex-cop–can paralyze the entire LAPD and whip them into frothing-spittle madness…
Imagine how the political class would react if one of their Exalted Ones’ heads disappeared in a misty cloud?
Perhaps they’d begin personally answering emails. That would be a start.
Repeat after me: Half MOA. Half MOA.
Dear meth,
Caliber 7.62mm Special Ball, Long Range, MK 316 MOD 0 175-grain round specifically designed for long-range sniping consisting of Sierra MatchKing Hollow Point Boat Tail projectiles, Federal Cartridge Company match cartridge cases and Gold Medal Match primers.
A drop of good ol’ mercury inside the point works wonders too.
Sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music:
7.62 and 50 cal Barretts,
556 chambered in Wylde for both bullets,
Heckler and Koch and LaRue Tactical,
These are a few of my favorite things!
I do love 7.62/308Win. A great blend of performance, reasonable recoil, and long barrel life; with deadly deadly accuracy at unbelievable ranges.
I’ve heard great things about 338 Lapua, 416 Barrett, etc. But for a measly three grand, you could set up with a Remington 700 and a Leupold scope and get 90% there.
Of course when you absolutely positively have to reach out and touch someone:
The 50 BMG Barrett M107. Accept no substitutes.
Dear meth,
I love the 7.62 Nato round too.
I especially like the availability of inexpensive military ball.
But I’ve been away from the US for many years now, so I hear prices have skyrocketed.
Dear meth,
Just saw “The Bourne Legacy.”
Excellent flick!
That the Bourne film was playing in theaters around the same time the Dorne debacle was playing in the real world outside is unmistakable Jungian synchronicity.
The Bourne film was especially interesting because it depicted TPTB going after Bourne with UAVs! Highly prophetic.
Highly recommended!
Also, it depicted a lab worker with deliberately induced psychosis shoot his colleagues dead with a 9mm H&K USP Compact.
A lot of parallels with what is actually happening in Amerika under the Abteilung der Heimatssicherheit.
Nice catch on the H&K Bevin–I should have seen that!
Dear meth,
Confession time!
I tried to make it out on screen, but it was moving around too much. Couldn’t see it clearly enough to make a confident ID.
So I resorted to my old friend, the Internet Movie Firearms Database!
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Bourne_Legacy,_The
Ah, confession is good for the soul Bevin!
Funny coincidence…just watched a movie (“The Mechanic”, not particularly good) with my father-in-law that had a brief scene with a Barrett.
Dear meth,
I saw that too. It was a passable remake.
“The Mechanic is a 2011 American action thriller film starring Jason Statham as the title character. Directed by Simon West, it is a remake of the 1972 film of the same name, directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent.”
I’d say that the original was better.
It’s interesting how much the pace of films has been amped over the past several decades.
If you watch many older “action” flicks, they had relatively little actual action. The pace was astonishingly leisurely compared to today’s action flicks.
Think: Michael Bay. Therefore, not necessarily a good thing.
I just watched “Bullitt” again on video. Relatively leisurely pace, except for the famous Mustang vs. Charger chase through SF.
Re: Bourne 4
I don’t know why the writer/director felt compelled to fake the sniper rifle used though.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Bourne_Legacy,_The
Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) uses what appears to be a custom rifle based on a Nemesis Arms Vanquish takedown sniper rifle during a training mission in Alaska.
Though the actual Vanquish rifle is bolt action, this rifle has this action removed and is depicted as being semi automatic.
There was no reason he couldn’t have shot down the UAV with a bolt action. He only fired two or three rounds.
The Vanquish has been tested by Marine Scout Snipers at the High Altitude Shooting Course where they were able to hold 3 inch groups at 600 yards and 6.5 inch groups at 905 yards.
Superb accuracy. Expensive though. 4500 USD.
Holy crap Batman–3 inch groups at 600 yards? That’s what…1/2 MOA. Why are the bolt actions more accurate than semi-auto? Or is that coincidental, and semi-auto can be made as accurate?
Hi Meth. My guess is that the accuracy of a semi-auto is infinitessimally disturbed by the bolt movement during the nanosecond that extraction is beginning and the round hasn’t yet cleared the barrel. No such problem with a bolt action.
Dear meth,
Yeah. I was impressed too!
Half a minute of angle, not just at one or two hundred yards, but all the way out to 600 yards. Not too shabby.
All else being equal, my understanding is that bolt guns will always be more accurate than semi-autos. The bolt can be made to lock up more precisely, seating the cartridge more precisely.
I think the free-floated barrel has a lot to do with it too. Notice how it’s attached only to the receiver, not to any forearm. There is no forearm.
Way too expensive though. A Savage sniper rifle with the same capability is only 1/4 the price.
Dear Mike, meth,
The Savage website has several videos that plug their accuracy features.
They also end up explaining how accuracy is achieved in general. Very useful.
In case you guys hadn’t already stumbled across this info, by all means, check it out.
http://www.savagearms.com/accuracy/
Check out the video on “headspace” in particular.
Thank you, Bevin. My conjecture sounded good to me, but reality is so much more convincing.
Bevin, thanks for the Savage link.
I noted on there they use “button-rifled” barrels. Most of the Evil Black Rifles are made with cold hammer-forged barrels; the hammering work-hardens the steel for longer life, but they’re less accurate. Still–my AR despite the CHF chromed barrel is pretty accurate…but certainly not 1/2 MOA @600!
@Mike: I wonder how much of it is the bolt, and how much is the different barrels and free-floating of the barrels.
That said–I suspect my guns are more accurate than I am 🙂
Dear Mike,
Your instincts were right!
I should have mentioned the “floating bolt head” video as well. But obviously you watched it already.
I really like the way Savage gun designers took the time to figure out how they could mass produce rifles with custom rifle tolerances, hence accuracy.
This is the way industrial designers ought to think. This makes precision something that is repeatable on an assembly line, instead of something that is only painstakingly (and expensively) achieved by a custom gunsmith through hours of hand labor.
Dear meth,
Me neither. I’m sure I’m not making full use of my rifle’s accuracy at all.
I’ve never had the opportunity to shoot on a 600 or 1000 yard range.
I would love to try.
Just thinking about it inspired me to watch the “Sniper” series of films again last week.
Sniper 4, a reboot, wasn’t bad.
Bevin, the headspace video was the most interesting…and it was the first time I have heard “zero tolerance” in a good context, and therefore without wanting to puke. lol
Dear Mike,
I agree. Such an ingenious solution. Makes you wonder why Winchester or Remington, the Big Boys in the industry, didn’t think of it first.
These problems have been around for such a long time. Especially the stock bedding problem.
The standard custom gunsmith “solution” of glass bedding by hand struck me as utterly asinine the very first time I read about it decades ago.
It was just so sloppy, so pre-industrial, so “ghetto.”
My immediate reaction was “Surely this can’t be the best solution Yankee ingenuity can come up with???”
Thank god somebody finally put their thinking caps on and started thinking outside the box.
1/2 moa shooters do require 1/2 moa shooters…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKUMUPcR7k
Dear oz,
Quigley Down Under!
Now that was a great sniper flick! One of the best. Right up there with “Shooter.”
Of course a falling block action is not, strictly speaking, a “lever action,” as the script made Tom Selleck describe it.
But otherwise, the movie was surprisingly authentic for Hollywood.
Amen on Bourne, Bevin!
There is more than a little evidence that Sirhan Sirhan was similarly programmed – like the scientist in the lab in the movie. RFK’s assassination was as “interesting” as JFK’s.
Now, mind, I am not a fan of RFK’s – but consider:
Had he lived, it is almost certain he would have won the nomination – and the presidency. He – unlike the current brown-skinned fraud – seemed sincere about ending the Vietnam atrocity. And perhaps more relevant, no Nixon. No Kaiser Permanente. No HMOs.
No Ronald Reagan.
No George Bush – either of them… .
Today’s America would have been profoundly different.
Perhaps, better.
Dear Eric,
Right!
I was amazed at what a good job the screenwriters did in seamlessly integrating real world developments into the storyline.
Back then I dismissed most conspiracy theories, including the “inside job” JFK and RFK assassination theories.
Not any more!
Looking back I wonder how I could have ever thought otherwise.
As they say, “Cui bono?” Who benefits?
Ask yourself that, and you have your culprits.
You’ll have your answer, even if you can’t prove it in a court of law.
RFK had to be killed for one thing and one thing only, as president he would have likely found out who really killed his brother. That would have, at that time, broken the illusions people live under.
Illusion is the most important thing. Break the illusion and it all falls down.
Policy wise RFK was probably not much of a threat. He was IMO a threat because he would have gone after those who killed his brother and through that brought the whole sticking system into the light for the people to see.
“as president he would have likely found out who really killed his brother…brought the whole sticking system into the light for the people to see.”
Except, the presidency had already been shown to no particular impediment to tptb…. He was hit sooner, rather than later, is all.
Yup –
I also am inclined to the idea that TPTB desired a Nixon presidency. That piece of shit was a precursor – a proto-Chimp, if you like. It is because of him that the medical profession was turned into a corporate-government cartel via HMOs – which led directly to Obamacare.
Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qpLVTbVHnU
The Ape-In-Pants Johnson destroyed the US with his welfare maggotry…No JFK…No Johnson. Things might have been better today but I doubt it. The Global Counterfeit Money Terrorists have been planning the destruction of America for a long time.
BrentP,
“RFK had to be killed for one thing and one thing only, as president he would have likely found out who really killed his brother.”
Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed JFK. (And by alone I mean of course with the exception of his spotter, the Easter Bunny.)
“That would have, at that time, broken the illusions people live under.
Illusion is the most important thing. Break the illusion and it all falls down.”
Correctomundo, Brent. And the biggest illusion of them all is the “value of the dollar”.
Illusions…of legitimacy. That includes the dollar, but deeper in the wound are such things as American exceptionalism, noble, demigodly “founding fathers”….
Agreed! I just watched it last night with my nice-but-completely-clueless father in law. I felt like pausing every five minutes to tell him what they were up to!
The “LARX” assassin in Thailand? The one they mentioned had “lessened empathy”? Yeah…they’re working on that in a vaccine–a viral lobotomy!
They’re calling it a preventative for PTSD. Sure–nuke the area of the brain responsible for empathy, creating a psychopath, and whammo! No more regrets, no more PTSD.
Aren’t they all wonderful people?
Great movie. Did anyone read the book? Ludlum must have sources. I’m going to indulge myself in some reading…
Ludlum died in ’01. He wrote the first 3 installments. This last, 4th, one came from a writer who licensed the recipe from Ludlum’s estate. Since I read most of Ludlum’s catalog back in the day – uniformly good work – I almost bought this one too, when it showed up at Costco. But decided to check reviews first, which is when I realized someone else had written it (didn’t know Ludlum was gone). I didn’t buy/read the book.
Dear meth, oz,
Apparently the later Bourne novels were written by Eric van Lustbader, whom Ludlum’s estate authorized to write them.
Something similar happened with the Bond novels.
“Six other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelizations since Fleming’s death in 1964: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, and Jeffery Deaver.”
Some were crap. The inappropriately campy ones Roger Moore starred in.
Others are terrific. The appropriately intense ones Daniel Craig starred in.
Personally I think von Lustbader did a crack up job that respects the universe and mythology, and very important, tone of the original.
Bevin…….I saw, liked the movie. According to wikipedia, Gilroy co-screen wrote the first 3 installments; can see the continuity in the 4th. But, “the screenplay bears no resemblance to the novel which features Jason Bourne as the principal character.” The actual novel, basis amazon reviews, looks iffy. Did you read it?
Dear oz,
You may be right.
I assumed Bourne 4, aka “The Bourne Legacy,” was largely based on the von Lustbader novel of the same name.
But if what you say is true, then the differences between the novel and screenplay are significant, and speak poorly of the novel.
I’ll check it out. I didn’t bother to because it didn’t seem like an issue to me.
I do think Tony Gilroy did a great job on the screenplay for the film version.
Matt Damon complained about the meds angle undermining the mythology.
But he said he was out. Those charged with continuing the enterprise had to come up with another angle. They should not be faulted for doing what they had to to make it work. I think they were very respectful.
For truly disrespectful filmizations, look at the later “tongue in cheek” Superman and Batman films, prior to their reboots as serious-minded drama.
Those “send ups” really made me sick.
Eric, You are certainly correct. And I guess it’s possible that your repetition of this message may be reaching some new readers, who have not pondered the issue before.
So often though, when I read your exclamations, I feel like I’m Bill Murray, caught in the infinite deja vue of yet another morning in “Groundhog Day.” I can even hear the opining bars of “I Got You Babe,” by Sonny and Cher on that alarm clock radio.
You have definitely established your premise that our government is filled with diabolical hypocrites who are dedicated to crushing our liberties.
Could you please consider progressing to the next point?
MikePizzo, take a look at Eric’s writings as works of art. For example, lokk at this little ditty: “The arrogance, the contempt for us cattle is palpable – radiating off the reptilian skin of this creature like a malignant aura.”
Man, I wish I could write like that. Eric – you should write a book.
Thanks, Larry!
On the book: I’ve written two (published) car books; had a third almost done before the deal fell through. I’d like to do a “political” book – perhaps several. The problem – for me – is the old dilemma of time (and money). Writing books for the pure enjoyment of doing so is wonderful – if you have the luxury of the time (and money) to do so. But, like most people, I still have to earn a living. And it has become very, very hard to make any kind of living writing books – or anything else, for that matter. (We had a lively discussion here a few days ago on this very subject.)
Still, I do intend to do it; I have several concepts knocking around in my head. I just need a clone – and an eight-day week!
“Writing books for the pure enjoyment of doing so is wonderful – if you have the luxury of the time (and money) to do so.”
Do what you love and the money will follow.
Not any more!
I think I can speak with some authority, as a guy who has been at this (writing) for 25-something years now. Things have changed. It is virtually impossible to find a full-time, salaried job as a journalist or (even more so) an editorial writer. Virtually all the small and medium-sized papers have a skeleton staff and get most of their copy (editorial content) from the major wire services and syndicates, which transmit the work of a relative handful of writers to hundreds – thousands – of “shell” papers all around the country.
So, you work as a freelancer – emphasis on free.
Newspapers and mags may still pay you – but they pay next to nothing. You’re very lucky to get $150 for 1,000 words. In the’90s, the going rate was $1,000 for the same article.
Books: For the most part, publishers no longer pay advances. That means, you work for nothing – in most cases, for the several months it typically takes to write/organize a manuscript. That would be ok, if there were some recompense once the thing was actually written. Nope. You get a percentage (a very small percentage) of the net receipts. In the days when a hardcover sold for $20 or $30, that was still not so bad. But now, the “e” book sells for $4.99 – and the writer’s share is not even pizza money.
The only reason I’m still doing this is because I was lucky enough to have started doing this when one could still make a living doing this. I lived modestly – below my means – during the ’90s. I saved, I made some decent investments. I was paranoid enough to cash out my overpriced house in the DC area – before the market crapped out – and used the proceeds to buy us a less expensive place outright, in a much less expensive area. Thus, my current living expenses are only about a fourth of what they were circa 1999. It’s a damn good thing, too – or else I’d probably be pissing my life away as a debt-slave in a cubicle farm like most people are stuck doing.
Read over your reply. You aren’t describing the writing, you’re describing the frustration of being dependent on publishers.
Which do you love, the writing or the pursuit of an old model that once paid your way and no longer does? If the game changes, you change up, that’s a basic move.
If the model you once used is no longer productive, make your own model.
“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.”
Richard Bach. From “Illusions”
The new landscape for writers includes such modern improvements as Creative Commons for licensing, Amazon Kindle editions for self publishing, and other new ways of getting your writing out before the public.
You’ve said you hate Kindle, but you’re not your target market, are you? There could be many more people who love Kindle and would buy the Kindle edition of your latest book, than you’d ever reach with a ripoff, dead-tree publisher whose business model is currently circling the bowl.
You can try something new, unless you would rather go down the pipe with your former publisher. Looks to me as though you’re going to be changing up anyway. Would you rather just change the way you publish, or change professions?
I’ll buy your first Kindle edition without even reading a review or previewing a single line of it. Probably a lot of people reading this thread would do the same.
Ed,
Do you have any experience in publishing? Writing? (I mean professionally.) I do. Extensive experience. It’s easy to armchair quarterback – and offer advice such as “Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.” Unless you’ve got some experience – and had some success – as a writer or publisher or editor – then (no offense meant) you’re just tossing out opinions about a subject and business you know very little about.
Publishers, editors, writers – we’re all caught up in the same synergistic maelstrom.
Let me give you just one small example: Copy editing.
Every newspaper, every magazine, used to have a staff of full-time copy editors. They read over a writer’s column, fact-checking it as well as “cleaning up” the copy – that is, fixing grammar and spelling errors and – when necessary – clearing up garbled/unclear language and so on. The result of this was valuable: a finished product – the article you read – that was (generally) free of obvious or numerous spelling and grammar errors, lucid – and (again, generally) free of errors of fact.
Today – because of cost-cutting pressures and time pressures (get it out now) the profession of copy editing has largely disappeared – with the exception of peer reviewed journals. Writers now edit their own copy (sometimes, even doing the headline writing and the insertion of graphics). In effect, they have assumed the full-time jobs of two other people, in addition to their own – and believe me, they are not being paid more. Cui bono? Not the readers – who get sloppier copy, with more errors small and large. Certainly not the writers – much less the (ex) copy editors.
We’re not talking about work made irrelevant by advances in technology and process. We are talking about making fewer people do the same work for less money.
It’s a downward spiraling vortex – a bum’s rush to the bottom. To get more and more work out of people for less and less compensation.
At some point, it will no longer be possible to get work out of them. Or the work will continue to decline in quality. (Speaking of which, have you noticed how commonplace it has become to see embarrassing – juvenile – spelling and grammar errors on placards, billboards and so on? Idiocracy wasn’t a moview – it was prophecy.)
Would you spend six months of full-time work (to write a book) if you knew ahead of time you’d almost certainly make less in the end than you could earn working at McDonald’s full-time for a month?
That’s the situation, my friend.
“The new landscape for writers includes such modern improvements as Creative Commons for licensing, Amazon Kindle editions for self publishing, and other new ways of getting your writing out before the public.”
Italics added.
Yes, it’s easier – much easier – to publish.
The issue is getting paid to publish. Paid for your work.
That’s what’s been made much, much harder.
Consider a web site that has 250k readers. That’s comparable, circulation-wise, to a successful medium-sized city paper or national magazine. How much do you suppose it would cost you to place a quarter-page ad in such a paper or magazine? One that ran every issue, every day, for a month? Several thousand dollars, I assure you.
Now consider the web site – same or comparable “reach.” It has Google ADsense, which peppers the site with multiple ads – which pay nickles and dimes per day, maybe a couple of bucks, if you’re lucky – pennies per day, more often. A dozen such ads – that appear 24/7 for a month – might generate a few hundred bucks combined.
Result? Few web sites can afford to pay writers anything – let alone a salary. Conventional media, on the other hand, is under pressure to be cost-competitive with online media – with the same result as far as the livelihoods of the people who produce the work that makes the whole damn thing possible – and without whom it would not be possible to produce the thing.
But, because there are plenty of writers – just as there are plenty of Chinese coolies – there’s no way out. You either work for next to nothing or you work for nothing or you don’t work at all.
Meanwhile, Google makes another billion today.
“you’re just tossing out opinions about a subject and business you know very little about.”
Yep, that’s what I’m doing. My reason for doing it is that I like your writing and don’t want you to just give up.
I had to change up myself about 10 years ago. It wasn’t in the writing profession, true, but it was the same thing. The game I had been devoted to had changed, and so had I. Unfortunately, I had to change trades (I didn’t have a profession), and it was tough.
I guess you don’t need my encouragement. That’s fine. Whatever.
Just added something to my previous comment; please see –
Eric, in engineering there used to be all sorts of draftspeople and techs and office assistants and the like. There also used to be purchasing and sourcing people for new product development…. all these people are largely gone now.
Engineers, usually mechanical engineers, now have to do all this work themselves. In the last big product development project I was a part of our engineering group even had to do the accounting.
tweleve years ago my then co-workers came up with ‘DDE’ development does everything. It hasn’t gotten any better. It just gets worse. There’s more to do for less pay in real terms.
But where does all this increased productivity go then?
It’s a rigged game. We produce more and get less. For who? Those who ultimately run the game.
If it weren’t a rigged game we would be able to use the increased productivity from tools, distribution methods, etc and so forth to cut out parasites on the creative process and make more for ourselves. Copying I feel is a non-issue. That’s something the system is concerned about for reasons I stated earlier. The problem is that the system wants all the productivity gains for itself. Those who run that system don’t want the creators to take over and work independently. If that happens there would be a lot more wealthy people, people they would have to deal with as equals and they don’t want that.
My mind isn’t working too well this morning, hope that is clear enough.
Hi Brent,
Yup – and, it is!
re: Advancing technologies in communications are changing what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.
We are all writers and journalists now.
Which is to say that Life, Liberty, Property, Peace, and Prosperity are closer to the grasp of EVERY human on the planet…than they have EVER been before.
Write your books, self-publish, self-distribute…have people pay you in various and innovative ways…evolve…grow…adapt…manipulate the world…or let the world manipulate you…meh…
If you’ve got “political” books printed and ready to go just let us know where to send the gold/silver/guns/ammo/food/water/toiletries/tampons/etc.
Throw it in the woods!
Hi J&D,
That all sounds very nice, but the reality is not so nice – I assure you.
The reality is this: Work like a coolie to earn next to nothing. For all practical purposes, give your work away.
The system is rigged. It’s not a “free” market – unless you mean work for free.
Mind, the same work is expected. It is not like work product rendered obsolete by technology, for which there is no longer any demand – or declining demand. There is more demand than ever, in fact. Just less pay in return.
I explained in a previous post the way writers have been forced to assume the additional (and necessary) work of copy editing, as well as formatting (graphics and so on). No additional pay. But more work. The same product is produced (though necessarily of lesser quality because of the effect of one guy trying to do too many things, several of which he may not be as adept at doing as the people who formerly did the work were), often more of it – yet the person producing it is expected to accept less and less remuneration.
But there is more remuneration – more wealth being created – only it’s going to other parties. The parties who did not do the work – but who control and leverage the system for their benefit at the expense of the people who do the work.
No one – not me, at any rate – is demanding a subsidy or artificially inflated wages/profits. The objection is to artificially deflated wages – to the ever-accelerating impoverishment of workers for the benefit of grifters.
Eric, you just described the american business model.
re: journalists/reporters/writers/etc
Out with the OLD and in with the NEW!
Eric, this is the wave of the future.
The internet that is smashing old paradigms, including journalism/writing/reporting/researching/etc, is also opening up new frontiers and solutions!
Fifteen Year Old Researcher/Scientist Creates New Cancer Test!
http://teapartyeconomist.com/2013/03/06/video-a-15-year-old-invents-a-test-for-pancreatic-cancer-cost-3-cents/
The Internet, brought to you by Lew Rockwell, Eric Peters, Jack Andraka, and billions of others!
THROW IT IN THE WOODS!
Boy, what a great (sub) thread! Eric, I feel your pain. This is exactly the situation all “creators” are placed in by the dominant economy of corporate giants and the enormous collectivist State that has evolved on this planet to serve them.
Just a kudo on your writing, which is among the very best I’ve ever encountered in the arena of expressing the truth about freedom’s role in all of life. I also really enjoyed hearing the audio interview you had with Lew – very well spoken and open, honest, concise communication!
Thanks for being here! Wish you the best making it “pay.” Really! – maybe put a “contribute” tab on the site. (Is there one already – did I miss it?)
Hi DR,
Thanks – and yes, good idea in re having a “donate” button on the main page. I’ll see what can be done!
Eric, can you move this sub-thread to it’s own thread somewhere?
Otherwise we might need to duplicate postings in this sub-thread and as a stand-alone comment as well?
Anywho…
Here is another good article about the new journalist/writer/self-publisher paradigm.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324678604578340752088305668.html
Also check out Cory Doctorow’s wonderful works:
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/
.
John and Dagny
Amen! Most of the ass kicking administered by the Internet is well deserved. When did the Media and so-called “experts” ever make the WHOLE truth available like the Internet does? All I have to say to America’s pre-Internet editors and oped writers is, “Die you arrogant motherfuckers,DIE”.
The Internet gives Man an opportunity to realize his potential in a way that Newspapers, magazines, television, and even books never could.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Whats next is agorism http://mikezentz.com/agorism/
Dear Mike,
What do you suggest the next point should be? Secession?
Secession: Step 1) – Form a Militia Step 2) – Create a Currency
http://www.youtu.be/VDSQ_ucMd3g
The world is well stocked with outliers ready, willing, and able to “do something.” They are easily subdued by the common men who demand you “do as they do.”
Cooperating sociopaths easily thwart the freedom seeker. Any genius can be outsmarted by 4 or 5 average men acting without ethics and in collusion.
Any wealthy, productive, and self-sufficient man is easily overwhelmed and left destitute by 4 or 5 average men who degenerate into desperate ruthless looters who act in collusion.
Eric is taking the slow and noble path for long-term success, not falling for short-term feel-good chimp-outs and score-settlings that result in no situational improvements.
The cognitive dissonance displayed by these scum is truly disgusting. Yes, they DO feel they are made of finer clay than the rest of us. However, their speeches, written words and deeds show clearly that they are sub human and should not be trusted with the power to decide what’s for lunch.
Two words for these vermin to chew on: Nicolae Ceausescu.
Ah, delicious!
sic semper tyrannis!
“I have the right to do what I want.”
Did you catch that?
This thug – who spent decades pleasuring himself by denying millions of helpless people their right to do what they want is upset that his destiny is out of his hands, under the control of power he is helpless to combat.
Priceless.
The saddest thing about the execution of these two pieces of excrement was that it was done so quickly and without any real suffering on their part.
Maybe this says something less than admirable about me, but I have come to believe over the years that the term “cruel and unusual punishment” is not as black and white in meaning as we’ve been conditioned to accept. For example, would it really be “cruel and unusual” punishment to castrate and bleed out someone proven guilty of, say, child rape? (I’m setting aside, for the sake of argument in this particular case, the legitimate doubt as to whether the corrupt, immoral, and inept institution called “government” is either capable of accurately determining the guilt of or morally justified in punishing a person for this crime). Similarly, would it have truly been “cruel and unusual” for the Romanian provisional government at the time to have turned over both Ceausescus to a crowd of oppressed citizens who suffered hideously under their regime and allowed said crowd to literally tear them both limb from limb?
An abbreviated video. I don’t know if the original is still floating around out there on the net but I remember seeing it. In that one they’re arguing and in complete denial up to the very moment the bullets fly and they drop like sacks of potatoes. You can bet your bottom dollar that this nations tyrants are no different and hence the old saying “talk is cheap” except when YOU are the one paying the bills.
Barry-cuda
So this ain’t the end, you’re elected again
Today, I had to hide my guns away
Smile like the sun, kisses for everyone, and tales it never fails
You lying so low in the weeds, I bet you gonna ambush me
You’d have me down, down, down, down on my knees, now wouldn’t you? Barry-cuda! Ohh
Back over time, we were all trying, for free
You met the porpoise and me, aha
No right, no wrong, selling a song, a name, whisper game
And if the real thing don’t do the trick
You better make up something quick
You gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn into the wick
Ooh, Barry-cuda! Oh yeah
“Sell me sell you,” the porpoise said
Dive down, deep down, “save my head, You!”
“I think that you got the blues, too”
All that night and all the next
Swam without looking back
Made out for western pools, silly, silly fools
The real thing don’t do the trick, no
You better make up something quick
You gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn it to the wick
Oh, Barry, Barry-cuda! Yeah. Ooh!
http://www.youtu.be/4bt_-R5LInU
You may want to clean up the 2nd amendment supporters poster. Hamilton was against the Bill of Rights in general (Federalist Papers, no. 84). Washington used the army to collect taxes (Whiskey rebellion).
It is true that Hamilton was an imperialistic scumbag who (along with George Washington) also proposed a select militia which is essentially no different than a standing army (witness the modern “National Guard”). But he also assumed an armed populace (see The Federalist, No. 29). Hamilton also stated “Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them propery armed and equipped;…This will not only lessen the call for military establishments; but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens.”
In his (and Madison’s) efforts to quell objections to ratifying the Constitution, Hamilton argued that (a) the right to appoint militia officers would remain in state, not federal hands, (b) the local nature of the militia would ensure its loyalty to the people, and (c) nothing in the document conveyed any power to Congress to forbid or otherwise regulate the the people’s right to keep and bear arms.
So the real problem is that the feral…er…federal gun-vernment has ignored the “Supreme Law of the Land” establishing a standing army, select militias, wresting the appointment of officers out of the states’ hands and beseiging us with hoards of federal bureaucrats. Now that the heat is getting turned up to the point that the frogs are getting restless in the pot, they are doing their level best to complete the infringement process before armed frogs start shooting up the kitchen. I’d say the next few years will be very interesting here in the USSA.
In his (and Madison’s) efforts to quell objections to ratifying the Constitution…
It would be a fascinating historical discovery to uncover just exactly what clandestine coercive means (and there is no doubt that they were just that) were employed against those state delegates to the constitutional convention who objected to not only the very obvious loopholes in the new governing document that enabled the newly-created federal government to accrue almost unlimited power unto itself, but also to the suspicious and unwarranted secrecy surrounding the convention itself. After all, as Gary North, among others covering the subject, points out in his Conspiracy in Philadelphia, those at the head of the convention blatantly and illegitimately exceeded its mandate (which was modification, NOT replacement of the Articles of Confederation) and imposed an oath of secrecy upon the various state delegations (WHY? What on earth about a convention to modify a governing document would possibly require an oath of secrecy?).
Many historians and political commentators over the last two centuries have drawn attention to the fact that many of the founders were masons. So too are many of today’s front men for the current reigning kleptoligarchy that is the direct descendant of the original “shadow government” that corrupted the American republic in its cradle. Dare we ask, even at the risk of being labeled “nutty conspiracy theorists” (an appellation, minus the modifying adjective, that I admit to wearing like a badge of honor) the following question. Were the behind-the-scenes threats used to cow the original constitutional convention delegates into acquiescing to the destruction of the ideals behind which the Revolution was fought the direct ancestors of those used by the CIA today to coerce and blackmail those of the political class not part of the “Inner Circle” into toeing the line? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Dear lib,
those at the head of the convention blatantly and illegitimately exceeded its mandate (which was modification, NOT replacement of the Articles of Confederation) and imposed an oath of secrecy upon the various state delegations (WHY? What on earth about a convention to modify a governing document would possibly require an oath of secrecy?).
Why indeed?
It’s amazing.
At first I thought the American Revolution was betrayed during the 20th century, by the New Deal and Great Society.
Later I thought the American Revolution was betrayed at the turn of the century, during the Progressive Era.
Still later I thought the American Revolution was betrayed in the mid-19th century, during the “Civil War.” Strike that — the War of Northern Aggression.
Now I am being forced to conclude that the American Revolution may have been betrayed in the late 18th century, during the American Revolution itself!
“Limited government?” Fuggedaboutit!
From Conspiracy in Philadelphia, pages 155-156:
The delegates were in sworn to secrecy in advance. Every member honored this oath. Even those participants who soon opposed the whole procedure as illegal never revealed what had gone on inside those walls, not even in their old age. Why not? In a modern world filled with “leaks” to the press and everyone else, we can hardly imagine what it might have been that persuaded these men to keep their silence. I have read no history book that has even raised the question. But of this we can be confident: they all feared some kind
of negative sanctions, either internal or external for breaking this oath of secrecy. So tight was the lid on leaks that the debates were conducted on the second floor of the State House. No one could listen in. Throughout the summer, the sidewalk outside the State House was covered with dirt. This reduced traffic. This was done, according to one observer, to reduce noise.
When the Convention ended, they took the final step. They handed all the minutes over to George Washington to take back to Mount Vernon. They knew that no one in the nation would have the audacity to tell George Washington that he had to hand over the evidence of what was in fact a coup. Madison’s notes state specifically that “The president, having asked what the Convention meant should be done with the Journals, &c., whether copies were to be allowed to the members, if applied for, it was resolved, nem. con., ‘that he retain the Journal and other papers, subject to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution.’ The members then proceeded to sign the Constitution. . .”
In short, if the coup was successful, then the new Congress could gain access to the records. If not, no one would have any written evidence to prove anything except the untouchable General Washington. On that basis, they signed.
Historian Jack Rakove argues that this element of secrecy was the result of years of near-secrecy by the Continental Congress itself. To this extent, he implies, the secrecy of the Convention was a fitting end to the old Congress. This is a strange argument. Nothing in Congress’ history rivaled the degree of secrecy that was imposed in Philadelphia.
Rakove is nevertheless correct about the degree of secrecy at the Convention: “For the most remarkable aspect of the Convention’s four-month inquiry was that it was conducted in virtual absolute secrecy, uninfluenced by external pressures of any kind. . . . Except for occasional rumors – many of them inaccurate – that American newspapers published, the general public knew nothing of the Convention’s deliberations.”
All any sane, honest individual can really offer in response to such a revelation is an inelegant What the FUCK?!
Dear lib,
WTF indeed.
The root of the problem, the why, is of course the nature of government itself.
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
“惡政猛於虎” (“A tyrannical government is more fearsome than tigers”)
By forming any sort of conventional government, they were already violating the NAP.
The individual is like that girl in California – the collective, like the lion that ate her.
As in all matters, follow the money…
Who financed the Revolutionary War? Who stood to gain from an “independent” country?
That was then, this is now. Who stands to gain in Libya, Syria, Iran, Africa etc?
Follow the money to catch the wicked ones.
The Witness of Patrick Henry
“Patrick Henry, for example, refused to take part in the first Constitutional Convention, because he did not trust what was going on. Henry seemed to think that what they were doing was subversive. We read:
‘… he declined to serve at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The public reason he gave for not attending was, as he so eloquently put it, ‘I smell a rat!’ … He stood in direct opposition to ratification (of the Constitution) because he felt that the document created too strong a central government which would inevitably usurp the powers of the states. Henry contended, to adopt the new Constitution was akin to a new revolution.’ (Patrick Henry: America’s Radical Dissenter, by Thomas Jewett)
To the surprise of many believers today, Patrick Henry (along with Samuel Adams apparently) believed the U.S. Constitution, as it was written, would ruin the country.”
http://worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=7180
Dear Eric,
“The individual is like that girl in California – the collective, like the lion that ate her.”
Yup.
It’s the Aesop’s Fable, “The Scorpion and the Frog.”
“It’s my nature.”
Never mind that absent government even those who would have been “high ranking government officials” would be better off.
It’s the parasitical nature of government to kill its own host and destroy the means of its own survival.
As Madison and Jefferson clearly state in the Resolutions, the Constitution was never intended to be enforced by elections, but by the national authority of each state’s people to alter or abolish them, and OVERRULE government; for this is how each state RATIFIED the Constitution, with each state being a sovereign nation unto itself, i.e. a People operating in their highest sovereign capacity.
This fact was suppressed under Lincoln, who predated Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf that “as far as the states of the American Union are concerned, we cannot speak of their state sovereignty, but only of their constitutionally established and guaranteed rights, or better, perhaps, privileges.”
Or as Lincoln put it, “no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status.”
Of course they are equal liars, twisting the facts of history to confer legal propriety to their imperial dictatorships; for the words of the intentions of the state were clear to establish separate sovereign nations, as was their global recognition as such by the 1783 Treaty of Paris which officially MADE them sovereign nations.
Thus as this context reveals, tyranny is INEVITABLE under the current order, which suppresses these plain facts of history via sheer brute-force pragmatism, continued by rational ignorance; and thus it is as futile to argue for freedom post-Lincoln without restoring our sovereignty, as to attempt to sail the the Titanic post-iceberg… and therefore current attempts to rectify problems are simply rearranging deck-chairs.
ONLY restoring sovereignty will suffice.
“Or as Lincoln put it, “no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty”
And let’s never forget that Lincoln was the first GOP president. His war was the first ‘republican revolution’.
The GOP has been a pox on this country since its inception. The fact that the democrat’s old party merged openly with the GOP long ago should have illustrated to the American people that the pretense of opposition between the “two” parties is so threadbare that it can’t be taken seriously by anyone with eyes to see or with ears to hear.
The GOP has been a pox on this country since its inception.
An especially virulent –indeed, almost incurable– pox, given that those gullible creatures who drink deeply of its ridiculous lies are almost pathologically incapable of seeing the light of truth. They continue to lap up the excrement the party’s leadership spews forth, as if it was gourmet cocoa, even after all of it is exposed as self-evident lies and deception.
GOP = party of zombies
Or as Lincoln put it, “no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the land.
It would be equally intriguing to see what kind of coercive skullduggery and mechinations were employed to force Texas into the union. It’s simply IMPOSSIBLE for me to believe that a majority of Texans, having fought a bloody revolution against Mexico for their independence and having sacrificed so much for the ideals that made them unique, wanted anything whatsoever to do with the American union.
It didn’t require a majority of Texians. Only 10% of the population had to approve of Texas entering the union for it to happen.
“Texians”? I always thought they were all Texicans. The word seems to fit everyone better, imho.
Brian, “ONLY restoring sovereignty will suffice.”
Correct. But we need to go beyond restoring state sovereignty – we must insist on individual sovereignty as well.
It all comes down to a matter of scale. Charlie Reese pointed this out years ago and Mike Church stays on message with it as well.
It is utterly absurd to think that a nation of 310 million diverse peoples spread out over a vast landscape can be or should be ruled by 545 narcissists.
Take for example NYC. It has enough people and its own culture to be its own sovereign nation. I have absolutely nothing in common with the people of NYC (who voted thrice for their little Hitler 2.0). But I say live and let live. If that is how they want to have themselves be governed then have at it. Just leave the rest of us to also decide for ourselves how we want to be governed – or not governed.
Yet Clover cannot grasp this simple idea…
Yet Clover cannot grasp this simple idea…
The group that runs Clover seeks economies of scale. If Clover is governed thus, so shall all be governed. This leader also seeks a franchise that grants power over others. I don’t think it’s a new idea.
It’s very dangerous to underestimate the forces acting on Clover and it’s even more dangerous to confuse those forces with Clover; they are not the same. Clover may lack wit, but the regime he follows doesn’t.
Badger, “It’s very dangerous to underestimate the forces acting on Clover and it’s even more dangerous to confuse those forces with Clover; they are not the same. Clover may lack wit, but the regime he follows doesn’t.”
If “know thy enemy” teaches one thing it is to never underestimate your enemy.
The regime’s wit is nothing to fear; it is their weaponized Clovers which need to be considered formidable. Clovers have no reasoning and therefore have no empathy.
And without empathy a man becomes but a machine to be used as the operators choose.
Yep, the poster looks like something done by a GOPT partier dimwit. It lists the mass murderers by their last names, except for Mao, whose first name is used.
I can almost guarantee you that this poster is the product of a brainless GOP propagandist. Notice how, in his/her hypocritical arrogance and sanctimony, the originator fails to list any Amerikan politicos, of either artificial faction of the State Party, that have done just as much as the foreign mass murderers to disarm the Amerikan population.
Lincoln should be represented in the bottom line up on the poster.