How addled is the electorate?
I think a good measure is the extent to which office-seekers bray about “creating jobs.” In the first place, a politician no more creates jobs than a mule creates new mules. Politicians redistribute other people’s property. Qua Dr. Evil, it’s what they do.
It’s all they do.
A politician creates or expands an existing bureaucracy. He panders to the make-workers therein employed by using the coercive power of the state to increase their wages or their benefits. In this way, he shifts resources – other people’s resources. But he does not create anything. He takes from the creators – without whom he’d have nothing to redistribute. It’s a zero sum game. For every winner, there is always a loser. Predation, nothing more.
In the second place, since when did it become the job (accepting the false premise for discussion’s sake) of elected officials to create jobs? Err. Pardon me – but I thought we lived in a constitutional republic, not a bad rehash of Mussolini’s Italy. In a constitutional republic, the job of elected officials is (so we were once told) to make sure people’s rights are protected. That the provisions within the Constitution are preserved and protected to the best of one’s ability. 
I’ve read the Constitution quite closely more than a couple of times and for the life of me, I cannot find a single reference to “job creation” anywhere. I suppose it has emanated from penumbras. Or perhaps it is implied . . .
Whatever its source, it makes the bile rise in my throat.
Politicians today have become contestants for the role of paterfamilias – a kind of Santa-Claus-meets-Stalin who knows what’s best for you – and you’d better damn well do as he says.
The odious ex-Clintonista Terry McAuliffe, for example. This piano-toothed carpetbagger is running for Dear Leader of Virginia, my home state. His campaign slogan is “Putting Jobs First.” No comment as to where he puts your rights. Lots of chatter about “investing” – that is, stealing other people’s money to be used in ways Terry deems more pressing. Ditto “incentives” for (favored/connected) businesses with (to use Ayn Rand’s excellent term) pull.
See his platform here.
Terry, like virtually all politicos, speaks in the plural. It sounds better, you see. Instead of “I will take your money to finance the education of your neighbor’s kid,” it is: “We will invest in our childrens’ future.” No one bothers to ask who “we” is, of course. And “our” children? I guess I never realized I’d had any. Thought they were yours.
Of course, the opposition is no better – because of course it is not opposition. It is echo.
Well, usually.
Republican contender Ken Cuccinelli (see here) does not claim he will create jobs if elected. The crazy bastard actually wrote, in a public forum, that “The government does not create jobs.” Ye gods! I spilled coffee all over my keyboard. However, the next line – “our people do” – is less encouraging, being a reversion to the pluralisms of the great collective. He then wades, inevitably, into the “family values” swamp. Conservative Republicans may not be out to “create jobs,” but they are just as determined to stick their noses in our business as the other side of the American Political Janus is about sticking its hands in our wallets.
But it’s not the fault of these office-seekers, these people who want to lead – that is, to direct the lives of others according to their whim, sanctifying it by claiming that they are channeling the vox of the populi. No, friends – the problem lies with us. With those among us who continue to be afflicted by the delusion – the sickness – that some guy prattling on about “jobs” is actually someone who can “create” them. That the government is a kind of bottomless (and benevolent) piggy bank – as opposed to a machine that takes from some in order to reward others. A mechanism for making the odious and unthinkable palatable and acceptable.
Even today, after decades of immersion in the miasma of collectivism and authoritarianism, very few people – including the most ardent “progressive” Democrat, the most fervid right-wing Republican – would ever walk over to their neighbor’s place and say: “Hey, my kid needs a new computer. Can you help?” Much less insist on such “help” by producing a gun. Yet, somehow, exactly the same thing is washed clean by the transfigurative power of the ballot box. By the ethical evasion of that darkened booth. So much easier to pull a lever (or tap a touchscreen) than it is to confront a fellow flesh and blood human being and threaten to kill him or place him in a cage if he does not agree to “help” the children.
Or “create” jobs.
It’s been almost 100 years now since the Sage of Baltimore laid it all out in plain, honest English:
“An election is nothing more than a kind of advance auction of stolen goods.”
So wrote H.L. Mencken – who even then was considered something of an oddball for his strange insistence on self-ownership and its essential corollary: leaving other people be. Such notions are even stranger today, of course. One might as well walk around in a toga and speak Greek.
The response you’ll get is largely the same.
Throw it in the Woods?
PS:This site is almost entirely reader supported now. No Google. (They blacklisted us – so we dumped them. See here for the full story about that.)
So, please: We need your support to make a go of it and keep EPautos rolling. If you like what you see, consider supporting this site. The link to our “donate” button is here. You can also mail stuff our way – if you prefer to avoid PayPal and all that.
Most of us here would agree that government doesn’t create jobs: it kills jobs, even as it spreads a culture of dependency to increase its control. Concerning federal and state employees, the percentage of truly “essential” government jobs out of all of them is small. The shutdown affected few privately employed Americans.
But government is good at what it does when you consider bad laws, mandates, entitlements, monitoring, and control. The problem is that we are reaching limits, and entitlement programs including the sacred Social Security are about to implode.
Recently, while I still can, I got a pistol suitable for concealed carry and soon will get a permit. When that 47% who pay no income taxes but instead rely on government for gimmes—and I don’t doubt Romney’s estimate is close—lose their entitlements, they’re going to look to those of us in the other 53% to make up what they aren’t getting any more. By force if necessary. Be ready.
Glenn Beck, by the way, has blamed the Left for the preponderence of shady advertisers on radio shows such as his. He has commented along the lines that liberals have persuaded legit advertisers that he, Sean Hannity, et al., are all extremist, racist, homophobic, you name it; and in a classic Alinsky tactic, that leaves the penile enhancement companies, gold shills, and ubiquitous identity-theft/data protectors and shady tax audit fighters as replacement advertisers. Such ads are sneakily meant to further put off listeners from shows like his, but these are the main firms left available to advertise.
from Eric………………….
“One of the things that really turned me against Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity (I mean, besides their neo-con political shilling and Billy Graham channeling) is their relentless, over-the-top product (and service) shilling, not infrequently for stuff that strikes me as shady on top of it all. Both those guys are extremely wealthy, so the shilling ought not to be necessary – unless the object is not to spread the word, not to try to enlighten people, but rather to pile up the dough.”
in this case the above is something I can agree upon without reservation………though I would add Rush Limbaugh to the list.
Lynn, this site is candy for my brain. I learn something, many things often, every day. With rare exception, the people here are most accepting of new views, new everything, yet still have the same morals and respect for their fellow man. The only thing written in stone here is respect for every man/woman and their right to do as they please as long as they don’t harm anyone else, fairly much what every sovereign person desires. I feel as though hundreds, thousands of people have my back philosophically every minute of every day. To fellow posters I say FREEDOM!!
http://youtu.be/lLCEUpIg8rE
Eric, Please write another article on the points you are covering for Mike . I would say the majority of people are very confused about this issue. Note recent article in ADH re: the greatness of MADD. Mike may not realize it but if he would simply study Eric Peters and friends it would be worth more than an Economic and Philosophy degree, with automotive, gun, survival, investment ideas and “human relations” thrown in too.
Thanks for the update on Mom with Concealed Carry.
Thanks also for the good reference to Larken Rose. One of my favorite people. Sure wish Mike from Wichita would listen, if he has not, to a few of the videos. Also some of my life long friends who proudly call them selves socialists. We have been debating since about 5th grade. Do ya suppose it is genetic? It seems that they who say they want liberty only want it when their own Ox is gored. One is only a true friend of liberty when they desire it for others as much as for themselves.
Lynn, he should read this and watch this video. This is very serious coming from a SS agent, one who up until recently put his life on the line for several presidents including BO. I could barely get my wife to stick around for me to read it to her and then just left like it’s nothing. She doesn’t type….and my friends who are clueless about the things we all know here don’t type either. That’s a shame since there seems to be a disconnect about computers to those who don’t use them to communicate. The wife…gets her news from Yahoo, ABC for god’s sakes and calls herself informed. When I try to tell her of things that I know, not speculation but fact, documented fact, she looks at me and says “now where did you hear this?’ as if it’s just innuendo, hearsay from some “kooks” as she would say. Well, dammit, here’s something from a “kook” that’s been right there hearing it all and seeing it up close. https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/obama-secret-service-agent-its-worse-than-you-know-and-im-not-trying-to-scare-you-either_11052013
I listened and read the accompanying commentary. Scanned the last 100 or so of the comments, as there were so many. Cannot say he is not an ‘authority” on what is going on. HE was up to his elbows in “gators” for sure.
Reading the comments brought home to me how with so much is going on it is difficult for people to process it all. I fear a lot of people are looking for a scapegoat, an ethnic group to blame for our problems. I hope not as that is certainly a dead end.
I noted a lot of the comments blamed the Jewish but I would rather say (tho I hope not) we might be like the Jewish pre WWII who waited way too long as all was so ordinary “most” of the time they refused to see their personal liberties eroding.
One thing I have found is that some people need to be encouraged on what they enjoy most; a reader begin with simple basic reading material, an audio person with basic videos etc.
Although I am not an expert on getting people to think as I have friends I have talked futility to since about 5th grade. A group of us were talking the other night and decided some people will never awaken, others are ready and we think we did a brilliant persuasive job when actually they were already almost there, and others simply seem destined to worship authoritarianism. Still some people can be given something to read or listen to and suddenly snap around and “get it.”
Must run. more later Thanks
In response to the comments on shtfplan.com:
I plan on doing a youtube video on them, because that site is just bathing in the mentally ill, and government shills. I have been following that website for about a year now, and I always read through the hundreds of comments below the articles that I like. There are a handful of people there who post meaningful things, but there are a ton of mentally ill people. For example, the people that constantly talk about earthquakes around the world as if knowing nature is going to fuck us all makes any difference. The point is, if you don’t live on a farm, or know a farm where you can buy food from if the “shit hits the fan”, you are fucked. Constantly talking about bullshit like earthquakes, or the Zionist jews (whom I personally despise), does nothing but turn “normal” people away from the site and the ideas the writers there try to share. The writers there, for the most part, are pretty awesome. But the people typing the comments, for the most part, are a bunch of retards and government shills. No offense to retarded people, I’m just giving my 2 cents on that website.
That might be an interesting video, Jacob.
I hope I get to see it.
I wonder how you’ll cover the term “engage” and those who hold fast to empire, and everything about empire?
I think the people who say “engage” there are just trying to use keywords to help push people to actually do something. Whether that be positive or negative, it’s just their way of telling people “you better do something yourself, and do it your way, not expect someone else to do it”. That said, “Durango Kidd” is the main one I see saying that, and I think he is a weirdo. Probably not mentally ill, and probably not a government shill, but he constantly posts underneath almost every article, and he just comes across as a smug weirdo. In my highly opinionated opinion, of course.
He seems like a shill to me. But then, I’ve been reading (and poking them with a stick) longer than you, maybe that’s why?
It’s certainly not, “do it your way” oh no, that’s like, ‘mega-verbotten’ to the lovers of empire there. Way mega.
I only read the articles on that website maybe once every two weeks, so I don’t doubt there is a lot that I’m missing from the comments section. Before I do a youtube video on it, I’ll try to spend a few weeks consistently reading through the comments.
All that said, you should register to the forums here (email Eric or Dom to get registered) and you or I could start a thread on this subject to further talk about it. Not that I don’t like discussing it here, but I think there is a lot more info we could share and I don’t want to have a huge back and forth conversation on these main page articles because it’s a pain in the ass to properly reply to each post.
Ah yeah. I don’t do lists.
Maybe someday though. It’s tempting.
Plus, I’m gonna pay for these few comments tomorrow, it’s way the heck past my bedtime and I can barely keep up with this blog as it is.
As a parting thought, I do like Mac’s website, and he seems orientated towards freedom and liberty.
The peanut gallery there, that’s a whole nother thing.
Just try using the phrase ‘Opt Out’ in a sentence there during prime time, or say how you think there’s a path to success that does not involve state sanctioned college while including a bit about the student loan bubble bursting, and see what happens.
A former mortgage broker there might just jump your ass and never let up. Kind of like how clover does (did) here, only more vicious.
Hi Rothbardian,
I’m not sure what to make of the SHTF site. I kinda sorta know its owner/publisher (Mac Salvo) in that I’ve exchanged a few e-mails with him and he has run some of my articles. I understand he’s got to make a living, just as I do. But he seems to take every opportunity to use the articles on his site to pitch buying gold or some other product – stuff I am not comfortable doing and won’t do. To be clear: I’ve got no problem with advertising – provided it’s not intermixed with editorial.
One of the things that really turned me against Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity (I mean, besides their neo-con political shilling and Billy Graham channeling) is their relentless, over-the-top product (and service) shilling, not infrequently for stuff that strikes me as shady on top of it all. Both those guys are extremely wealthy, so the shilling ought not to be necessary – unless the point of the object is not to spread the world, not to try to enlighten people, but rather to pile up the dough.
“But the people typing the comments, for the most part, are a bunch of retards and government shills. ”
Yes, you’re right about that. Several of them are about nine different kinds of wierd, and those are the least retarded of the lot. The rest are fuuuuuucked up.
I’ve read only a few articles there in the past year since I kind of gave up on that site.
Oh shit. I just read the linked article and a few comments. It’s way worse than the last time I looked. They really need to stop allowing comments until that group of retards dies off.
Man, once a site becomes infested with a mob like that one, all a site owner can do it take off and nuke the fuckin site from orbit. It’s like they put out fucktard bait and advertised it on network TV for a year or so. Every dimbulb in ‘Merka has done migrated there and started families.
If that ain’t a mess, it’ll do till the mess gets there.
Ditto all that, Jacob.
I may be a kook, but I like to think I’m not a stupid kook.
Therefore, no harangues about shape-shifting reptiles – or rants about “Jewish bankers.” Etc.
The object – my object, at any rate – is to attract people to ideas about liberty they may never have encountered before. Coming across as a candidate for the Nut Hut doesn’t do much to further that agenda.
People can criticize me (and the others here) for being unapologetic Libertarian-anarchists who brook no exception to the NAP and self-ownership. But those are logical expressions of an intellectually and ethically consistent and coherent philosophy – and therefore by definition not crazy.
It’s the difference between stating – however stridently – that red is red (or that 1 plus 1 equals 2) and, on the other hand, insisting that red is delicious while 1 plus 1 is tall.
Ed, it is a mess, TL.
Lynn, can you tell me where that thread is? I’m missing a great deal.
I am, obviously, not Lynn, but I think the thread you are referring to is the link to the shtfplan article about the ex-secret service agent that you linked to in a previous comment (the past few comments from me, above this comment, have been ranting about the “comments” below that article). If not, I’m a beer and a half too deep, and will go back to cooking my dinner…
(scroll down below this article, and witness the miracle that is the “comments” on shtfplan.com articles)
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/obama-secret-service-agent-its-worse-than-you-know-and-im-not-trying-to-scare-you-either_11052013
I am trying to multi task and not good at it anymore. Thanks Jacob! Yes that was the one.
@8 – “You give the government information and it will be abused. It is not a matter of if it’ll be abused, it’s only a matter of when…
When the line between the personal self and the public self… when that line is determined by the government that keeps your information in a trove for release any time they need it, how are you free?”
@8, You don’t even need to give it, they take it weather you like it or not.
Garysco, take it from an experienced victim, they don’t even need to get it, just make it up. Want to prove them wrong? You can languish in one of their “facilities” till you make that happen….ha ha ha ha No bail from them. Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution.
Bradley Manning was in solitary confinement for 2 years until they finally decided to make him “Chelsea Manning”. Personally that makes me believe he is still holding stead fast on to his beliefs. Case in point, has anyone actually heard “Chelsea Manning” come out about how “she” is really a “woman” or have you only heard it through typed/spoken words of the propaganda machine of America (mainstream media)?
Hmmmm…….
Dear Jacob,
Good point.
I for one, have yet to see a YouTube video with Manning personally declaring that he is a she.
Given the ruthlessness of the PTB, the ruling premise ought to be intense skepticism.
For that matter, we must never forget the potential for Monarch Mind Control.
Has anyone gotten more information re: Mother who posted a picture of herself with her concealed carry permit. Her child’s school then barred her from coming inside the school. Been away from computer and TV and just wondering.
I am willing to bet money, and all of my integrity, on the fact that this website is on the government’s list of “disrupt these places”. People like Mikefromwichita and other trolls, if they’re not just incredibly immature random people, are most likely paid government shills. They will continue to come here, and every time they get shot down or banned it will only make this website’s “status” on the government’s list go up, so next time they’ll send in more efficient shills. The first wave of shills, from what I see, try to go for easy stuff like getting people to admit the illegal things they may do online, or get them to promote violence. If that doesn’t work they’ll simply try to disrupt as many conversations as they can. Doing so will possibly turn away more genuine fans of the type of talk that this website is about, much to the smiles of the government douchebags doing the shilling (and their bosses).
Just sayin’
P.S. Where can I find the address to send in donation money? I don’t want to use paypal to donate. Feel free to e-mail me the address if you don’t want to publicly post it. I would prefer an e-mail just in case I forget to look up any replies to this post. Thanks.
Dear Jacob,
“The first wave of shills, from what I see, try to go for easy stuff like getting people to admit the illegal things they may do online, or get them to promote violence. If that doesn’t work they’ll simply try to disrupt as many conversations as they can. Doing so will possibly turn away more genuine fans of the type of talk that this website is about, much to the smiles of the government douchebags doing the shilling (and their bosses). ”
I concur.
As always, when concrete evidence is difficult to obtain, look to MOTIVATION.
Qui bono?
One. They are surely looking for pretexts to classify EPA as a “terrorist” website.
Two. Failing that, their motive is surely to turn sympathetic elements away from exposure to the powerfully persuasive moral arguments against government per se.
Dear Jacob,
The thing with Google was almost surely at the behest of “The Government.”
Yep. Google is hand in hand with the government, like every other major corporation is. How can I say that with no “actual” proof? Hmm…maybe the thought that if they weren’t hand in hand with the government, the government would demonize them and at the very least, not allow them to become a “major” corporation.
Sorry, kind of ranting, but it just kills me that more people can’t comprehend this stuff.
Also, here’s this:
I used to do maintenance for two different, major corporate gas stations. I saw, first hand, how the EPA, FDA, department of weights and measures, and other alphabet agencies would selectively enforce their rules. Maybe they’d turn a blind eye to something (“oops, sorry, I truly just forgot to check that” they’d say if they were exposed…of course they never get exposed because they’re damn good at doing what they do… they wouldn’t exist if they weren’t). Why didn’t I expose them? Because I pick my battles and that is surely a losing battle. At the very least, life would be ten times the living hell it currently is if I so much even barely succeeded.
It is said that most people commit at least 3 crimes a day, without even realizing it. Anyone who attempts to expose the corrupt government, and does a good job of it, will be put under a microscope so those “3 crimes a day” will turn into “3 prosecuted crimes a day”… much to the applause of the unawakened public. Fucking sheep.
The ideas shared on this website, and the select few other places left where these ideas are shared, is the only reason I am able to stay sane.
Thank you so much to everyone here for doing what you do. (except the douchebags, lol).
Morning, Jacob –
Me too.
Truth is, if I were in my young 20s today I’d probably just split. Maybe Russia – the tax rate there is only 13 percent and they seem to respect individual rights in practice more than this government does even in theory. The only reason I’m staying – knowing full well where everything is probably headed – is simply because it’s too much to just walk away from everything I spent the past 25 years building and try to start over. Out of spitefulness as much as practicality I’m determined to try to protect my “six feet of ground.” I realize, of course, that could leave me six feet under. But, death comes for us all. Like anyone else, I’d like to live a long, happy – and peaceful – life. I hope that is still possible. But I recognize it may not be.
I want to kind of change something I just typed. If people go after the MAJOR MONEY MAKERS OF THE GOVERNMENT and even barely succeed, the government will go ape shit on them. People who peacefully try to expose the government (like most people here) will simply be victim of government shills because the government knows “we” are in the huge minority of society.
Good job sheeple. Keep believing what you’re told because there aren’t facts presented to you on a golden platter to back up what the conspiracy theorists say. (And by the friggin’ way, I would argue that a lot of “conspiracy theorists” out there, not here, but out there like on youtube, are either mentally ill or just government shills). Educate yourselves!
Dear Jacob,
Right.
There is no substitute for independent, rational thought.
For example, the 9/11 truth movement is correct about 9/11 being a massive false flag operation.
Most elements within the movement are AOK.
But there are some elements which are either 1. wack jobs, or 2. government shills posing as wack jobs to divide and conquer the 9/11 truth movement.
Which are they? That’s the hard part. So much material evidence was immediately destroyed it is probably impossible to prove in a court of law.
Fortunately the court of public opinion is the real battlefield. The real issue, as always, is how to debunk the Myth of Authority.
That does not require empirical evidence. That merely requires a priori logic.
Right on, Jacob.
The root of their power is money; specifically, the Federal Reserve and its private collection agency, the IRS.
And as you point out, strike at that and they go ape-shit. Not because they need our tax money; but because it’s the root of their control mechanism.
I’ve gone down the “1933 the US declared bankruptcy and the SSN is your bill of attainder…” rabbit hole. Thing is, it’s true; you’re collateral for the loan. The US did go into receivership.
The UCC/Sovereign Citizen thing I’ve abandoned; it all sounds good, it’s immensely appealing to us conspiracy theorists…but it’s just not all there.
And besides, it’s irrelevant; the Crown does what it will. There are no magic incantations to shield against it.
Absolutely, Bevin.
In fact you don’t have to go far at all on the Google trail. Initial funding came from a little company called In-Q-Tel–the CIA’s venture capital front company.
Interestingly, In-Q-Tel also funded Syncrata–the datamining company responsible for storing the sensitive HealthCare.gov records!
It’s all so open now you have to actively work to remain in denial. Maybe THAT’S what the asshole meant by the most “transparent” government ever; transparently fucking evil!
Dear meth,
“Maybe THAT’S what the asshole meant by the most “transparent” government ever; transparently fucking evil!”
Laughing my ass off.
(I thought that deserved the unabbreviated version.)
@Bevin – Tonight national radio shows are accusing him of lying about his lies, and playing numerous audio clips to prove their point. Have to say O-man is the first president to achieve that distinction in my lifetime.
Dear Gary,
Maybe this is what was meant by “change you can believe in?”
I.e., “you can believe that things are going to change.”
Not for the better, mind you.
@Garysco:
As much as I’m enjoying it, I’m not sure how to interpret it. Just as I was thrilling at the spectacular failure of HealthCare.gov–I realize it’s achieving what it’s meant to achieve–the destruction of the health system and the implosion of the economy.
Bath-House Barry’s demise? Is it another carefully planned implosion, like demolishing a skyscraper?
He’s been so useful to the globalists. He’s put in place machinery for tyranny that would have Hitler green with envy. The economy’s nearly destroyed; Cloward-Piven is in full effect and Alinsky’s rules are in place.
So why not demolish him now–in preparation for the next phase? Are they planning to have a “right wing” knight in shining armor ride onto the set, and fool us into trusting the next puppet?
Or are they actually crazy, and their hubris and isolation led them to overplay their hand?
Rubbing my hands together with glee…
@meth – All in the plan on the road to the serf-police state my fellow cow. I learned long ago that nothing big in politics happens by chance. It is never allowed.
Just like last night in VA. A billionaire O-man supporter funded a third “Libertarian” spoiler candidate and placed phoney telephone calls just before and on election day to dilute the vote. The democrat won by 1 or 2 points. That was all they needed.
@Bevin – “I.e., “you can believe that things are going to change.”
Right out of the most recent Newspeak dictionary from the Ministry of Truth don’t you think?
Evey time I see that guy talk (not often) his body language and word twisting just reeks of Svengali talking. All good psychopaths have that ability.
methylamine, I’m glad you’re enjoying this. I’m afraid I don’t share your joy?confidence? Is Barry going down? or is he simply rolling along increasing tyranny by leaps and bounds to continue unchecked till Hil takes over and makes him look like a wannabe? Are they over-playing their hand? I’m not so sure. I just don’t hear enough people who are paying attention…..or even understand for that matter. My wife and I have been through enough we don’t poke that dog, don’t test it’s chain because we know it’s all an illusion. That big bad dog will come after you whenever it’s ready. The illusory chain is just there to keep the masses calm, so they don’t panic, and damned if it doesn’t work well too. Just give them the meagerest hope the chain will hold “for them” since “they” haven’t done anything, they don’t poke that dog, so “they” think it’s only going for the people who piss it off, which is true, but you don’t always know what pisses that bad dog off. And once it’s bitten you and taken what you have will it be satisfied? I don’t have that illusion. I think it operates like anything else does, it goes back to where it’s been fed before, sorta like fishermen. They don’t call it a honeyhole because a fish was caught from it once.
Dear meth, Gary,
“… nothing big in politics happens by chance. It is never allowed.”
The shooting of the TSA perv. Was it really a false flag op to justify this?
Friday’s slaying of a Transportation Security Administration officer at Los Angeles International Airport is fueling calls from union leaders to give some of the agency’s employees guns, handcuffs and the power to make arrests.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/arming-tsa-officers-hits-resistance-on-the-hill-99345.html
Wouldn’t be too quick to rule it out.
@Bevin – Well over one billion dollars (yes – 1 BILLION) spent at LAX since 9/11 on security.
All totally useless against one man with a long gun in a bag. That is the mentality of the no-common-sense Federal government bureaucrats in charge of spending other peoples money. The same ones who gave us the 3 Stooges movie called Katrina. Without the IRS to steal money and force compliance they would have trouble running the island state of Tonga.
Yup, they will give those low IQ rubes guns, no doubt about it, and those rubes will end up doing more damage out of stupidity and arrogance then any bad guys.
Bevin, don’t rule anything out these days. As I saw the story break I had to ask why an east coast young man would go to LA to do this? How does someone that young already become so jaded of the system? Sounds like psyop to me so I ask myself “what for” and of course immediately I think, so they can use one single case to greatly expand not only their power but the entire agency itself. If it’s govt., it has to grow, the only thing these entities know how to do, eat, shit, eat, shit, eat, shit……Seymour, I’m hungry!!! FEEEEEED MEEEEEE!!!!
Dear 8sm,
My immediate thought was Tor’s take on Monarch Mind Control.
I’ve become a believer.
Hi Jacob,
In re the Shills:
The common thread (other than their authoritarianism) is an obstinate refusal to ever acknowledge a factual rebuttal – and to continue to repeat the same tired talking point(s) over and over and over. This is not just disagreement – which I have no problem with.
It is dishonest.
And it makes having a discussion impossible.
For example, I have pointed out to “Mike” several times that Libertarians do not advocate unlimited “do as you please,” that in fact, Libertarians demand personal responsibility as much as they insist upon individual liberty.
“Mike” simply ignores this – because of course it is devastating to his critique (the tired old smear that Libertarians simply want to run amok and damn the consequences – a refrain that’s as shopworn as it is outright libelous).
PS: I sent you an e-mail on the mailing address, but here it is again –
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
Thanks for the address, I’ll you some dough in the next day or two, for keeping my sanity. At least in this point in my life, there is no way I could keep a place like this open. I would flip my shit, over what I would later admit to be a petty political difference, and shut the place down in a very rage filled temper tantrum. heh
In response to you staying in America. Me too (two?). I’ve never been outside of America (well, I went to Canada once when I was 2 years old…) and at this point have too much stuff here that I’ve already worked for. Plus, this is the only nation where I can own a bunch of guns/ammo, especially here in AZ (no concealed carry permit required to conceal carry a gun, woot!). To be able to leave this country would take me at least another year and a half of preparation, and that’s longer than it will take me to sell my current suburban house and “run for the hills” by starting a little farm in a not-so-populated part of this state. That said, it won’t stop me from fantasizing about Russia, where there is some smoking hot, “I hate the American government” girl with a very thick russian accent, begging me to move there. MMmmm… Excuse me while I go think deeper about that.
“For example, I have pointed out to “Mike” several times that Libertarians do not advocate unlimited “do as you please,” that in fact, Libertarians demand personal responsibility as much as they insist upon individual liberty.”
Sure Eric you keep SAYING the above, but………. you and your loyal minions here once the conversation gets into specifics keep insisting that no one especially the State has leave to question or interfere with your driving impaired or in a reckless manner ignoring traffic law and signs…..UNTIL you kill/maim Persons or smash Property . Then of course there is your other insistence that insurance requirements which would at least replace the Property you destroy if not the Lives you ruin violate your ‘rights’. Logic dictates the conclusion that YOU are all about your to do as you damn well please regardless of the trail of bodies you leave in your wake.
lapse of attention
Even the very best driver has the occasional ‘aw shit’ moment of poor decision or lapse of attention (such a moment made vastly more likely by driving while texting, under the influence of adult substances, etc) which routinely result in damage to Persons and Property in amounts that were you or one of your minions to be the guilty party your every asset would not cover. Responsible people know everyone makes mistakes- that is why we carry insurance and insist that the irresponsible do the same. Don’t want to insure? Stay off the public roads & drive ONLY on your private property.
Mike,
“Impaired” is so subjective as to be meaningless. My mother in law is more impaired – in terms of her ability to control a car – when completely sober than I am with three beers in me. Yet who does the law subjectively go after? And, mind: “impairment” does not equal harm caused. For instance, the guy who knows he’s had a few too many and simply parks to sleep it off. He is subject to legal assault, too – even though he’s harmed nothing and no one.
I have pointed all of this out to you already – and again, you simply pretend the fact was not pointed out to you.
The bottom line remains: You believe in prior restraint. In controlling/punishing people not for what they’ve done but for what might be done.
Harm caused is real – objective and irrefutable. Therefore, it is fair (right) to hold a person accountable for what he has done.
“Might” is not real. It is a hypothetical. It is wrong to hold a person accountable for things he has not done.
This gets tedious.
I won’t explain it to you again.
The very idea of this troll mentioning anyone but himself being impaired is funny as shit. Ain’t that kind of like a politician mentioning people being liars, or a cop mentioning people being dumbasses, or a shrink mentioning others being frauds? ahaha
“The bottom line remains: You believe in prior restraint. In controlling/punishing people not for what they’ve done but for what might be done. “
That is because prior restraint is needed in the case of irresponsible fools such as yourself to create as much as is possible fear of consequence to keep you from driving shit faced drunk- at a significant risk to all who cross your path.
Prior restraint goes unnoticed by those who have the self-restraint /good judgement to not endanger others. You reek of the sort of person who ALWAYS has an excuse as to why the mayhem which follows in their wake is never ever their fault- ‘It was that stupid guy in the middle of the street’s fault. He should have seen that I was doing 80mph exercising my right to ignore a stupid prior restraining 20 mph speed limit and red light. Everybody ought to know I have a need for speed after the third beer.’
That is why the State forces your sort to carry insurance to at least partially cover the damage that your net worth likely does not come close addressing when your oopsies finally catch up with ya.
Mike,
I rarely drink at all – and never drink and drive. Ever.
Yet I am subject to being forced to endure a probable cause-free “checkpoint” on the basis of… what, exactly?
Because a hypothetical “someone” might be drinking and driving. My right to be left in peace is shat upon because of what someone else might be doing – and irrespective of any evidence that I have done a got-damned thing!
That is your position – the sine qua non of the Clover mindset.
I’m a guy in my mid-40s. Married. Responsibly employed. Own my house (paid for). Haven’t so much as bent a fender in almost 30 years (and the fender I did bent back in college was mine – no damage or harm was caused to anyone else or anything else). So much for “mayhem.” The automakers send me their new cars to test drive every week – everything from 556 hp CTS-V Caddies to 120 hp Hyundai Accents. I have managed not to abuse their trust for the past 20-plus years.
I guess I fit your profile of “You reek of the sort of person who ALWAYS has an excuse as to why the mayhem which follows in their wake is never ever their fault..”
You, on the other hand, don’t merely “reek” of authoritarian control-freakism.
Your are its apotheosis!
Mike,
To pursue this a little further:
You support mandatory insurance for car drivers on the basis that even though “Smith” hasn’t caused any harm, he might – and therefore “society” (the great collective, whatever you want to call it) has the right – the moral right – to force him to buy insurance to cover the cost of potential damages, to make potential victims whole (and so on).
You must therefore also support mandatory gun insurance. And mandatory insurance for knives, power tools (and hand tools)… indeed, mandatory insurance for anything that might be used irresponsibly, negligently or criminally by “someone.” Everyone must be forced to buy insurance to “cover” anything at all that could conceivably impose costs on “society.”
The logic is inexorable – is it not?
Do you begin to see?
The principle, once accepted, opens up Pandora’s box. It provides the pretext for limitless prior restraint. Or rather, the only limit being the subjective feelings of enough people to be politically determinative. If enough people feel that the “danger” posed by the uninsured possession of whatever thing (or action, or failure to act) is “too great,” new laws – new mandates – will be passed. Before you know it, not only has your freedom to choose been dramatically limited (if not taken away entirely) you are also bankrupt. That’s what happens – is happening – when people live to pay insurance.
$2,000 a year for car insurance
$8,000 a year for health insurance
$1,500 a year for home insurance*
$900 a year for life insurance*
(* Not yet mandatory, but probably soon will be.)
Now add insurance to own a gun; insurance to partake of “risky” (as judged by other people’s feelings) sports or hobbies… .
Where does it end? It doesn’t end.
The antidote is simple – and the logic of it just as inexorable:
Hold individual people individually responsible for any harm they cause.
This is moral hazard. It is a natural corrective – one that also happens to accord with justice because it accords with human rights.
What you advocate is unjust – and in a very real way, erodes moral hazard.
Think about it. Am I (speaking hypothetically) more – or less – likely to behave responsibly knowing that I (not insurance) will be personally accountable for my actions?
The answer ought to be obvious.
Insurance waters down moral hazard. It shifts costs – and this encourages rather than discourages irresponsible, reckless action.
Mike:
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
-Albert Einstein
Fear based systems simply do not work. They are in a constant state of ever greater punishments for ever more petty things as the number of problem people grows and grows. If the only reason not to do something is because punishment is feared then many people will do it, because random dictates and threats have no moral backing, no empathy behind them. Furthermore the people who aren’t a problem end up withdrawing. Thus the entire society decays. More the fist tightens the worse things become.
I’m pleased you’ve dropped your faux condescension-from-on-high and have reverted to the authoritarian’s more natural voice–shrill hysteria.
Several of us have quoted Bastiat’s “seen vs. unseen” theme as well as his “broken window fallacy”.
Both relate to the mandatory insurance scam and its manifest unintended consequences.
But one need not be even that subtle to see the innate foolishness of prior restraint. The “progressive” and other brands of modern authoritarian imagine a billiard-table of cause and effect, a simple Newtonian action/reaction dipole. Thus, they believe in cause-effect relationships like:
The Law requires insurance EQUALS All people now carry insurance. (queue Obama…”period!”)
The Law requires gun registration EQUALS All guns are now registered, even criminals’ guns. (“period!”)
The Law prohibits passing in this zone EQUALS Nobody passes in this zone. (“period!”)
Or my favorite:
We’ll tax expensive yachts that only the filthy rich buy EQUALS $100 million in tax revenue. (Except the rich stopped buying those yachts domestically, thousands of jobs were lost, and it cost millions in revenue)
And this is where the billiard-table physics break down. People adapt; and criminals remain criminals. Thus prior restraint punishes everyone, to nudge a few marginal cases into compliance, but leave the majority of “offenders” untouched. People still drive uninsured; in fact MORE people are left uninsured because surprise! mandatory insurance costs more–it’s a captive market, see, and Guido here’s got a deal you can’t refuse!
Oh wait–does that sound like Obamacare? But again, the billiard-table-mentality useful idiots will parrot the same collectivist mantra–“By forcing everyone to be insured, we won’t have to subsidize all Those People (subtext: unwashed masses) going to the ER.”
It works again, and again, and again. The economically and historically ignorant fooled by the same blatantly obvious collectivist schemes. Schemes which, it should be noted, are NOT failures; they succeed brilliantly in their true aim, the consolidation of power and wealth to the oligarchy.
But MikeFromWherever will huff, and puff, and stamp his pudgy little feet “See?? WE NEED LAWS!” Because those laws have worked so well.
Except we didn’t have them even sixty years ago. What we had was personal responsibility and a minarchy, a government that protected people’s property rights. So if Budweiser Billy wrote off your Edsel, he was liable–not some faceless insurance company. And Bud Billy being who he was probably couldn’t make you whole; so YOU bought insurance…which cost about 1/5 as much in a free, competitive, non-coercive market.
I write these things not to convince you, MikeFromWherever. Your beliefs are religious, immune to logical persuasion. The State is your god–regardless of the lip service you pay to private property and individual rights, those are a smoke screen–your real faith is in authority.
Fortunately there are lapsed Statists; nobody is beyond redemption.
I write this for practice, like reproving a well-worn calculus theorem just to keep the mind sharp. I write this so some other reader, a reforming Statist, can read Bastiat, can realize he’s been lied to and manipulated…and begin the journey of awakening.
The luxury tax under the guise that only the rich bought these things was also false. Many boats were bought by people who saved up for the purchase. The tax took away their ability to buy. The domestic boat building industry collapsed.
@BrentP:
Precisely. Statists simply cannot imagine dynamic equilibria; to them, it’s billiard-balls and Newton only. They’re surprised when their simple arithmetic–100 yachts sold * $10million each * 10% tax = $100million “revenue”–breaks down.
What? The serfs refused to pay??
And to your later point, I wish I’d emphasized it better: you called it out exactly. Mandatory insurance punishes everyone, pushes only a few marginal cases into “correct” behavior, and leaves the criminal underclass untouched. Those who would go without insurance, continue to do so.
Only now, the more-expensive insurance is less affordable to the marginal cases…who now try to skate by without…while we’ve destroyed the personal responsibility that kept us all in check before the coercion. So the un-insured bum feels no obligation to make right his wrongs; after all the State is Santa Claus.
It’s amazing these effects aren’t understood by more people. It’s all Le Chatelier’s Principle; so simple but so profound.
BTW I’m in a death-battle at my daughter’s private school to reduce the amount of homework…currently 1.5 hours/day in second grade. How are kids supposed to become auto-didacts if they’re academic beasts of burden?
I’ve never had a day’s formal schooling in computer science…but it’s my profession. Never would have happened if I hadn’t had hours to myself every day starting in 2nd grade when I learned about circuits, to fifth grade when I learned programming.
Would I be a better person today if I’d instead “drilled” more in trivial math and spelling?
Sorry. Off topic rant. The whole educational system is a Prussian hell-hole. I’m interviewing at a Montessori school tomorrow and an academically lax but freedom-loving Lutheran school later. I won’t have my kids transformed into bleating sheep like MikeFromWherever.
P.S.:
Why is it that authoritarians always assume their audience are
a) destitute
b) stupid
c) irresponsible
??
Again, you assume so much while trotting out Mr. Straw Man. Why would you assume I don’t have the means to make whole damage I cause–or not wish to do so?
I suspect it’s the same phenomenon that makes hoplophobes–those who fear guns and wish them confiscated. It’s because at a deep level they know themselves to be incapable of safely owning and handling them–and they project that fear and incompetence onto others. It’s an inability to imagine that someone, somewhere, might be smarter and more moral than oneself. Or better-heeled.
So Mike I’m betting it gives you cold sweats to know people like me own powerful black semi-automatic rifles! You cannot imagine living with such a responsibility–because you couldn’t deal with it. Just as you can’t imagine private individuals making their own contingency plans for automotive accidents–without State coercion.
Because you couldn’t.
“So Mike I’m betting it gives you cold sweats to know people like me own powerful black semi-automatic rifles! You cannot imagine living with such a responsibility–because you couldn’t deal with it. Just as you can’t imagine private individuals making their own contingency plans for automotive accidents–without State coercion.
Because you couldn’t.”
Wrong on all particulars methman. I have had the responsibility of firearms for more years than you can imagine. The thing I question is the level of ‘responsibility’ among sorts such as yourself who sooooo deeply resent any restraint which would block them from dodging true responsibility. BTW, I have yet to see any individual who dodges auto insurance requirements who has a contingency plans for automotive accidents beyond hit and run. Insurance is not perfect but it does work better for decent folks than does your trust me to do the right thing alternative. I kinda think that YOUR contingency plans for automotive accidents is in fact hit and run.
Mike,
Your back must be tired from propping up the same straw man over and over and over…
“The thing I question is the level of ‘responsibility’ among sorts such as yourself who sooooo deeply resent any restraint which would block them from dodging true responsibility.”
You put the cart before the horse. How can you possibly justify “restraining” people who haven’t done anything?
And – again – no one here defends dodging responsibility. Quite the opposite. As has been repeatedly explained to you.
What we object to is being held responsible for things we have not done. On the basis that “someone” might “do” them.
You’ve trotted out Soviet communism as your beaux ideals… I think that’s ’nuff said.
When you hear Obomba say “If you like your gun you can keep it,” you know what he means and what to expect.
Why do you think that a law makes the irresponsible, responsible? What happens under your system when someone is hit by a person without insurance and cannot or refuses to pay for the damages? The term is SOL. The government will not use its monopoly on legal violence to collect what is owed. It will fine the other driver and collect that for itself, but that is about it. The victim will need to go to court. However, the government will not enforce the judgment either. So… please explain how your mandatory insurance changes anything except forcing responsible people to be responsible in the way that you want while enriching the insurance cartel?
‘You put the cart before the horse. How can you possibly justify “restraining” people who haven’t done anything? ‘
But Eric getting behind the wheel totally sh*tfaced and entering a public road IS in fact ‘doing something’, driving 100 mph down a residential street IS in fact ‘doing something’, pointing your firearm at me IS in fact ‘doing something’. That you are unable to see this causes me to believe that the take on the non-aggression principle advocated here is really not up to dealing with human populations at a density much over one to the square mile. You might do fine in Alaska but your ideas blindly applied would make LA/NYC worse than they are now.
Mike,
Who ever said “get shitfaced and drive 100 mph”?
Not me.
I argued against treating every single person on a given road as presumptively “drunk” until they prove they’re not – and defining “drunk” according to an arbitrary, dumbed-down standard that by no means necessarily correlates with meaningful impairment for every individual.
I’ve now explained this to you at least half a dozen times. And yet, you continue to prop up the same straw man.
Therefore, I conclude you’re either a sloppy thinker – or you’re simply here to be deliberately disruptive.
Mike writes (with great turgidity):
“pointing your firearm at me IS in fact ‘doing something’”
Who here ever argued in defense of pointing a gun at someone (except in self defense)?
Not me.
You’re simply making things up – and then arguing against them.
Mike, you’re not addressing the point I made.
Exactly how do your laws make irresponsible people responsible?
They simply don’t.
You can babble on and on accusing responsible who want to be left alone of being irresponsible, but that’s just being nonresponsive. It’s emotional blather, not an argument. The fact is irresponsible people that actually hurt people other than themselves aren’t all that common, even with the government breaking society down to make more of them. They are simply used as an excuse to project power over responsible people. The government wants as many irresponsible people out and about as possible, just the way it releases violent criminals and keeps pot smokers in prison. It needs problem people as a reason to crack down on everyone else.
Thanks Linda! I am a big fan of the “Black Market” From garage sales to trading expertise and skills with a neighbor (which of course the IRS insists should be declared) The benefits of a Black Market are an excellent point. Also need to remember that many of the ordinary people were persecuted terribly in order for the police to intimidate and keep the fear factor for obedience going.
To Mike. Your comment about rabid libertarians. Take a poll on here and ask the readers and Eric how many try to live up to the Non Agression Principle. Yes, live in Liberty doing what I wish to do…as long as I do not infringe on another’s liberty. Even when I disagree I try to recognize their right to their personal and economic activities.
collectivism, the political principle of social and economic control, esp. of all means of production. Close enough for the gals I go out with.
Sorry Meth, I am anything but a progressive.
BTW, is meth your business or hobby?
Mike,
Your comments reveal you to be an authoritarian collectivist. The subspecies doesn’t interest me much.
More straw men, Mike. It’s sad, really.
When did I ever advocate “unlimited license?”
(Italics added)
That’s your dishonest characterization. The typical – hysterical – Cloveritic eructation that “Libertarians just want to do whatever they feel like…” except they always forget the qualifier.
I have always qualified my support for every expression of liberty with the caveat, provided it causes no harm to other people’s persons or their property.
This is the essence of the no-first-use of force (NAP) principle that is the ethical core of Libertarian thought.
Where we differ is that you believe it’s ok to take away other people’s liberties on the basis of hypothetical harm. Because “someone” might conceivably cause harm.
Or because someone else did something.
I admit that most Americans now share this unfortunate philosophy.
It’s why we have a police state – erected in the name of “security” and “keeping us safe.”
Thanks to people like you.
PS: Right and wrong are not determined by percentages (even accepting your “99.9 percent”).
A given action is either right – or it’s not.
On the subject of percentages, I’m 99.999% sure that MIW is Gil.
Ed, I’m not certain MFW is Gil. Dom can tell us based on his IP address though. No, Wichita is in the “Free Soil” state. The state of Jayhawkers and other lowlife rent seeking unprincipled varmints. It’s no stretch that Mike is from the same state where the artifical city (created by moneyed interests back east) of Lawrence yet resides. This is also the state that wasn’t actuallly too concerned about being a slave vs. free state as much as they were about keeping all that “free” land the gun-vernment was giving away solely in the hands of white people. They didn’t want any slaves there because they didn’t want any negroes at all in Kansas; that’s their dirty little “Free State” (and historically accurate) secret. By his cloveritic ruminations here, MFW proves that William Clarke Quantrill didn’t manage to burn enough of Kansas.
Boothe, I’m not sure either….only 99.999% sure. Same overfamiliar way of addressing the site owner, same snotty, condescending attitude from the lofty heights of a 9th grade public school level intellect (if you can actually call what he has an intellect), and a very similar style of attempted writing.
True about Kansas. The bushwhackers knew full well what the “free Soil” terrorists were about. BTW, I bought a dvd copy of “Ride With the Devil” based on Daniel Woodrell’s “Woe to Live on”. What a great film.
“PS: Right and wrong are not determined by percentages (even accepting your “99.9 percent”).
A given action is either right – or it’s not.”
True enough Eric, in an absolute sense. Of course that reality says nothing about YOUR ability to discern truth from error. You may well make the bad choice 99% or more of the time.
Well, Mike – how about a direct answer (without tergiversation) to the issue you’ve been avoiding:
Is it right to restrain/punish “Smith” because “Jones” acted irresponsibly? Or because “Jones” might act irresponsibly (and therefore, by implication, so might “Smith”)?
Naw, he is not Gil or Clover.
Right on Dom – I strongly suspected MFW is just another troll possessed by the same unclean spirit that manifests itself as clover and gil. It’s like the pedophile spirit or slunt spirit: You can talk to one of them in Wichita, another one in Pensacola or a different one in Richmond and it’s like they all grew up in the same household and went to the same schools. That’s why I see it as a permeating spirit, much like a strong current in the ocean or a particular frequency in the radio spectrum. It’s pretty freaky really.
IP addresses are different for Gil and MFW. That does not mean it’s not the same person though. There are many ways to visit sites using different ip addresses and the same computer.
Dear Eric,
Thank you so much for this interesting interchange.
Not mentioned by anyone on this topic is the fact that right now in USSA the “black” market is carrying the country and providing wealth, which the over-seers can’t easily control, and therefore they have no idea of how trruly important the black market truly is.
Much in the area of service industry and consumer goods are not on the official books.
In the USSR the black market also kept alive many who would have perished without it.
More power to the little people, who know instinctively how to survive.
My pleasure, Linda!
The newest Clover (“Mike” from Wichita – via the UK or New Zealand) is providing me with yet another opportunity to perform a real-time intellectual-ethical dissection of the control-freak/authoritarian mindset.
“The newest Clover (“Mike” from Wichita – via the UK or New Zealand) ”
Wrong again Eric. LMAO
Actually, I’ve proved you wrong several times now. Whereas you’ve failed to prove me wrong even once!
Hey Ed, I am a bit more than 99.999% sure that you are as big a fool in the real world as you are in this tiny pond.
So which are ya a Texas scale idiot or a pathetic Okie trying to pass as a Texan.
Petty insults, Mike.
Is that all you’ve got?
“BTW, is meth your business or hobby?”
Why can’t it be both?
And again, an evasion; is this a game of 20 questions to elucidate your agenda? Now we know you’ve denied being progressive.
Shall we then traverse the taxonomic tree to precisely categorize your sub-type of collectivism?
Liberty and Property coupled with non-aggression are a good way to live properly understood. I simply question the understanding of ggression byfolks who claim a ‘liberty’ to drive high, setup a hog farm or a methlab in the middle of a residential neighborhood or otherwise scratch their own itch while dumping any portion of the costs/consequences on non-consenting others.
A Regime of Liberty and Property coupled with non-aggression which might be quite straight forward at 1 person to the square mile or less becomes much more complicated in a megacity of 10000 or more folks to the square mile where every step will have someone’s toes beneath your boots. Thats Reality. Here there is a lot of rather immature getting pissy because the slightest jot or tittle of a dogma which is ‘understood’ but dimly only as talking points is questioned.
Then you’ve brought spaghetti to a rifle-fight, Mike.
The nuance, education, and erudition on this site rival and exceed anything you’d find on LewRockwell, Mises, and certainly Reason.
But to discover that you’d have to have read it, understood it, and evaluated the various contributors.
Have you any technique other than Straw Man™? Where have we advocated the three activities you mention?
The “immature getting pissy” is purely projection on your part, Oh Seagull Flapping In and Crapping About. I challenge you to go through the comments over time and see the extent to which we’ve dissected privatizing roads, drug legalization with harm minimization, cost externalities, monetary policy…
You laziness to find the gestalt of this site does not constitute deficient debate on our part.
And your oozing superiority, I assure you, is undeserved in this company.
TO ALL PARK VISITORS:
**** WARNING ****
Well-fed, angry bears have been spotted in the area.
We ask all visitors to refrain from feeding the bears until they’ve starved.
This includes the park ranger who wrote this sign!
Thank you for visiting EP Parks.
Mike,
You write:
“Liberty and Property coupled with non-aggression are a good way to live properly understood.”
Which is great. But then, you eruct this congeries of package dealing and question begging:
“I simply question the understanding of ggression byfolks who claim a ‘liberty’ to drive high, setup a hog farm or a methlab in the middle of a residential neighborhood or otherwise scratch their own itch while dumping any portion of the costs/consequences on non-consenting others.”
What constitutes “high,” Mike? Some arbitrary standard? Today, “high” (legally defined) is a minuscule BAC threshold that in no way necessarily correlates with meaningful impairment, much less amounts to actual harm caused.
Why would anyone set up a hog farm in the middle of a residential neighborhood – where the cost of land is several times that in the country?
I don’t even know what to make of “or otherwise scratch their own itch while dumping any portion of the costs/consequences on non-consenting others” because it’s incoherent babbling. You appear (once again) to be arguing against that which no one here defends: i.e., harming others or their property. No Libertarian I’ve ever met or read or heard speak ever advocated such a thing. Quite the opposite. We believe in liberty – and its essential corollary, responsibility.
What we do not believe in is prior restraint – punishing/controlling/restricting people not for anything they’ve done as individuals to cause actual harm, but because people like you worry that a hypothetical/abstract “someone” might – might! – cause a harm.
“What we do not believe in is prior restraint”
Yeah well Eric I will do all in my power to make it impossible for you and your sort to play nascar on the streets of my residential neighborhood (and other sorts of aggressibe behaviour) which of course includes encouraging the State to cause you intense physical pain and fiscal anguish should you do something so reckless. Of course since you are so you say a good guy you would never do such a thing and therefore the hand of external restraint would never be laid upon you in any case……………right. No cause for concern on your part it would seem………EXCEPT I suspect deep down you want and need to do that kind of reckless shit- damn the consequences to those who get in your way. THAT is your problem with what you call ‘prior restraint’. You have no intention of acting in a responsible manner unless forced to do so.
More with the violent language – which I expected.
You’re a thug, Mike – wherever you come from.
Okay Mr. MikeFromWhichever how do you reconcile the following with your support for prior restraint? http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/what-began-as-a-mans-simple-traffic-stop-ended-in-an-unfathomable-12-hour-ordeal-that-is-almost-too-horrific-to-believe/ Will it be okay with you when they pull you or your loved one over for a “routine traffic stop” and you end up going through the hell this man went through or worse so you can feel some pseudo safety from drunk drivers? Will it take getting a colonoscope shoved up your ass, for the safety of “the children” of course, for you to understand why prior restraint is not only morally and ethically wrong, but it is illegal in this Constitutional Republic. Search and seizure without probable cause is a violation of the Supreme Law of the Land whether you and your ilk of petty tyrants like it or not. So by doing things like this all too often these days, those that are sworn to protect and serve have become very real violent criminals.
And with your brand of tyranny come absolutes such as “zero tolerance.” I saw this in the military. We had a body builder with about a 32″ waste, 48″ chest and at less than 7% body fat, but he was “overweight” for his height. So they put him in the “fat boy program.” Why? Because the program went by a height – weight chart, not BMI. Even though this young man was the epitome of physical fitness and good health, they had him in a program to control his diet and make him exercise! What the hell did these MFWs in the Air Farce think he was already doing. Finally, like pulling teeth, he was able to get a “medical waiver” due to his “condition.” More prior restraint stupidity at its finest. You should be proud, because after all if someone eats right, exercises and builds muscle, at some point in the future they “might” use their physical superiority against you.
Or how about this poor devil: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57603766/beer-belly-man-becomes-drunk-when-stomach-turns-into-brewery/ Imagine that you had a potato, a couple of slices of bread and some grape juice and all of a sudden you could blow a 0.4 BAC. Not 0.04, but 0.4! All because you had an unusual health condition. Do you think Officer Friendly is going to consider that possibility when he’s yanking you out of your car, slamming your head into the fender and slapping the cuffs on you? Prior restraint, buddy; zero tolerance. You should have known the antibiotics your doctor put you on killed most of the flora in your gut and let the yeast take over. Too bad; you’ve got a DUI on your record now. And it even if you can prove your condition, it will still take thousands in legal bills to straighten out a mess like this and expunge your record. In the meantime you may find yourself jobless, divorced and “riding shanks mare.” All because your spiritual kith and kin are so concerned about everyone else’s business…errr…I mean “safety” (yeah, right).
Mr. Mike, what you are is a nosey busybody that probably has a hard enough time controlling himself. But nonetheless, you want to control everyone else so you can falsely feel safe and secure. Wake up. Life is risky. The more you try to control others around you, the closer you push this nation to the brink of collapse. This nation was once great because of its true freedom and the self-restraint that necessarily goes along with that. But you and your kindred have turned this country into a fascist nanny state and that never ends well. You sir are the one with a closed mind, a false belief system and Okay Mr. MikeFromWhichever how do you reconcile the following with your support for prior restraint? http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/what-began-as-a-mans-simple-traffic-stop-ended-in-an-unfathomable-12-hour-ordeal-that-is-almost-too-horrific-to-believe/ Will it be okay with you when they pull you or your loved one over for a “routine traffic stop” and you end up going through the hell this man went through or worse so you can feel some pseudo safety from drunk drivers? Will it take getting a colonoscope shoved up your ass, for the safety of “the children” of course, for you to understand why prior restraint is not only morally and ethically wrong, but it is illegal in this Constitutional Republic. Search and seizure without probable cause is a violation of the Supreme Law of the Land whether you and your ilk of petty tyrants like it or not. So by doing things like this all too often these days, those that are sworn to protect and serve have become very real violent criminals.
And with your brand of tyranny come absolutes such as “zero tolerance.” I saw this in the military. We had a body builder with about a 32″ waste, 48″ chest and at less than 7% body fat, but he was “overweight” for his height. So they put him in the “fat boy program.” Why? Because the program went by a height – weight chart, not BMI. Even though this young man was the epitome of physical fitness and good health, they had him in a program to control his diet and make him exercise! What the hell did these MFWs in the Air Farce think he was already doing. Finally, like pulling teeth, he was able to get a “medical waiver” due to his “condition.” More prior restraint stupidity at its finest. You should be proud, because after all if someone eats right, exercises and builds muscle, at some point in the future they “might” use their physical superiority against you.
Or how about this poor devil: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57603766/beer-belly-man-becomes-drunk-when-stomach-turns-into-brewery/ Imagine that you had a potato, a couple of slices of bread and some grape juice and all of a sudden you could blow a 0.4 BAC. Not 0.04, but 0.4! All because you had an unusual health condition. Do you think Officer Friendly is going to consider that possibility when he’s yanking you out of your car, slamming your head into the fender and slapping the cuffs on you? Prior restraint, buddy; zero tolerance. You should have known the antibiotics your doctor put you on killed most of the flora in your gut and let the yeast take over. Too bad; you’ve got a DUI on your record now. And it even if you can prove your condition, it will still take thousands in legal bills to straighten out a mess like this and expunge your record. In the meantime you may find yourself jobless, divorced and “riding shanks mare.” All because your spiritual kith and kin are so concerned about everyone else’s business…errr…I mean “safety” (yeah, right).
Mr. Mike, what you are is a nosey busybody that probably has a hard enough time controlling himself. But nonetheless, you want to control everyone else so you can falsely feel safe and secure. Wake up. Life is risky. The more you try to control others around you, the closer you push this nation to the brink of collapse. This nation was once great because of its true freedom and the self-restraint that necessarily goes along with that. But you and your kindred have turned this country into a fascist nanny state and that never ends well. You sir are the one with a closed mind, a false belief system and a dogma problem.
The subject of nuisance and other details you bring up have been dealt with at length by libertarian authors over the decades. I would suggest you seek out their writings on lrc and mises.
“More with the violent language – which I expected.
You’re a thug, Mike – wherever you come from.”
Just keep telling yourself that Eric. Truth is you play the victim card better than most diversity whore progressives I know. EVERYTHING is about YOU having EVERYTHING your way at the expense of the rest of us………all in the name of freedom of course
No, “Mike” – it’s simply a question of rights. And, wrongs.
If I or any other person have not violated your rights – that is, caused you or your property harm – then you have no right to use force against us.
Simple.
You disagree – just as Tony Soprano disagrees.
Like him, you’re a spittle-spewing fountain of aggression and violence.
It’s characteristic of your type.
” Here there is a lot of rather immature getting pissy because the slightest jot or tittle of a dogma which is ‘understood’ but dimly only as talking points is questioned.”
God damn, boy. What the fuck are you trying to say? Are you using a Martian to English translator designed by DHS geniuses? That is one of the most incoherent attempts at writing a sentence that I have ever seen.
Why don’t you just sit over there and suck your thumb while the adults are talking?
Editor’s Note:
Gil/Clover/”Mike’s” latest pointless post (just insults and curses) has been flushed in the interests of public sanitation.
Thank gawd. Please put his ass on the “pay per reply” program like Gil and Clover. Good riddance MikeTheBitch-ita!
Thanks so much
Dear Everyone,
“MikeFromWichita” kept demanding real world examples of the distinction between prior restraint and “innocent until proven guilty.”
Well, he got it.
MFW was not “presumed guilty until proven innocent,” but instead given the benefit of the doubt, well past the point of “beyond any reasonable doubt.”
Then, and only then was he shunned.
His natural rights and individual liberty have not been violated. Others have merely chosen to ignore him. He is free to live his own life and go his own way without interference from others.
The only difference is that others who no longer wish to endure his logical non sequiturs and thuggish insults, have decided they no longer wish to associate with him.
MFW wanted a real life demonstration of the difference between himself and libertarians?
Well, he got it.
@Bevin – Could you please arrange that same treatment to our welfare class? We have not been successful at doing it ourselves, so It would be much appreciated.
Dear Gary,
You know, like others here, I have given the issue of HOW to achieve a genuinely free society decades of thought.
The only answer I have been able to come up with, is “transform peoples’ consciousness.”
Specifically, disabuse them of the Myth of Authority.
In this respect, Larkin Rose, a fairly young yet very politically savvy individual, is perhaps the most plainspoken yet eloquent advocate.
This four minute clip, which I extracted from an online talk show between him and a minarchist, speaks volumes. It pretty much tells the whole story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYbpICtfFwo
Morning, Bevin!
I often return to the bleary conclusion that fleeing may be the only realistic option. To – per Tom Sawyer – light out for the territories.
Problem is, there’s no more territory to light out to.
Not on this planet, that is.
However, according to the latest calculations, there are minimally 8 billion earth-type worlds orbiting earth-type suns in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
And there are billions of galaxies.
Imagine that.
It is a near mathematical certainty that a not-small percentage of those worlds are very much like this world, but – fingers crossed – without the Clovers. Perhaps without anything, except verdant land, vast seas, magnificent vistas…
If only we could get there.
Dear Eric,
It is a near mathematical certainty that a not-small percentage of those worlds are very much like this world, but – fingers crossed – without the Clovers. Perhaps without anything, except verdant land, vast seas, magnificent vistas…
If only we could get there.
I know. Every time I think about that, I think about Eric Frank Russell’s gleefully satirical SF novel, “The Great Explosion.”
Plot
The Blieder drive, a faster-than-light drive system, has permitted the population of Earth to colonize the galaxy. Each planet has become the home for a particular social group. Four hundred years after the diaspora, a spaceship from Earth visits three of the planets, the first steps to unifying the galaxy under a new Empire. Things do not go entirely as hoped, as the incompetent military authoritarians of the ship encounter three very different societies.
The first planet was a penal colony; it is now many independent kleptocratic despotisms preying on each other. The second planet, Hygeia, is populated by health and fitness fanatic nudists. The third planet, Kassim, was colonized by a religious group, but when the ship arrives, they can’t find any human life, only empty villages overgrown by jungle. They decide not to land on the planet, because the captain fears that the colonists could have been killed by a disease and he doesn’t want to endanger the crew. The final planet, K22g, has developed an unusual social system. The population call themselves Gands (after Gandhi) and practise a form of classless, philosophically anarchic libertarianism, based on passive resistance (“Freedom – I won’t!” and “Myob!”); and a moneyless gift economy based on barter and favor-exchange, using “obs” (obligations). To perform a service for somebody “lays an ob” on them; they can then “kill the ob” by returning the favor.[1]
If only.
I rarely write “ROFLMAO” but in this case it’s fully accurate, my workmates are looking at me like I’m demented because I’m almost on the floor.
Your true colors came out–the crypto-authoritarian reveals his political wet dream, ultimate collectivization.
Accompanied, of course, by the inconvenient but oh-so-necessary democide; because there are those pesky people who just won’t listen and, well…ya just gotta kill’em. For the Greater Good.
So Mike how many millions died during this period of Soviet Utopia?
And during this period of “prosperity”–during which the remnant wealth of an earlier age was squandered–did they build the infrastructure and economy to carry it forward?
What’s that? You there, in the back–did you say they then descended into poverty and misery for another fifty years? LIAR! Mike here says it was Utopia! Richer than America! Those god-damned contrarian Ukrainians starved of their own accord! If they’d just cooperated and shut the fuck up we would’na hadda kill’em!
That’s the problem with you people. You have no vision. You just don’t see how great Collectivism can be if only it were done COMPLETELY and PERFECTLY
Ignorant peasants. We’ll show you! We’re intellectuals!
@ Mike – Right. So did a little fellow in Gemany in the 30’s. All with borrowed money from US & British bankers. Full employment. Unless your religion or politics was not approved, or you were a farmer in the Ukrane.
“@ Mike – Right. So did a little fellow in Gemany in the 30′s. All with borrowed money from US & British bankers. Full employment. Unless your religion or politics was not approved, or you were a farmer in the Ukrane.”
Garysco- I should point out that Ukraine has never been part of Germany.
And no the little fellow in Germany was not on the hook to USA and Brit banksters. Certain financial innovations by the Germans which were cutting the anglosphere banksters out of the financial pie in middle europe constituted the principal reason for hostility to the Reich by USA/Brit politicians.
“Certain financial innovations by the Germans…”
I wasn’t aware that fiat currency and wholesale expropriation of private capital constituted “innovations.”
Same old trick. Been there/done that.
It fuels a burst of false “prosperity” . . . for some (at the expense of others).
No – you just implied it.
And, of course, you left out key facts – such as the fact that Western oligarchical banksters bankrolled Lenin and then Stalin, infusing the Soviet economy with cash … cash stolen from other people. Without this aid, the Soviet system would have collapsed. The “growth” was artificial – a flim-flam.
Again: No new wealth was created. Existing wealth was redistributed.
Mikey,
What’s your source? Pravda? The mouthpiece of the Party?
Why, if the Party made a mistake, OF COURSE the propaganda arm would call them out!
Stop trolling and go back to Sesame Street. The adults are talking here.
Just admit that the government never creates jobs does not even pass muster as a factoid.
Ya wanna argue which system works best for the individual and if THAT should be the prime concern fine………….but libertarians would be better off without the ignorant to be dismissed out of hand factoid talking points.
Mike,
Created – at someone else’s expense. Net negative.
If I steal your money, have I “created” new wealth? For myself, perhaps. But no new wealth has been created. Only redistributed.
You’re going to have to do better than the tergiversation and ad homimen you’ve relied on to date
BTW, the ‘ad homimen’ is all coming from your side.
More tergiversation, Mike.
I pointed out to you that wealth from external sources flooded into the USSR, which was used to build the Soviet state (including infrastructure and so on).
And of course, wealth created internally was simply taken and redistributed, too.
Whatever was “created” was first taken from some other source.
For instance, from the Kulaks – who were then exterminated by your idol, Stalin.
What’s next?
Talking up Hitler because he “created” the Autobahn?
Gove’t creates WORK.
Not JOBS.
Produces NOTHING.
Takes at point of gun to give to whomever it wishes.
That’s NOT you, EVER.
People ate what they could scrounge: Paychecks were delivered in CASH, and transported by WHEELBARROW, to get a fucking loaf of bread.
But I suppose those political prisoners in Siberia were all set for life, as they all had jobs?
Perhaps the people I know form Ukraine and Russia are all in on a big scam, telling us how bad things were? Maybe the post-cold war films are still “propaganda” (I’m thinking of K-19, Widowmaker, specifically: Chemical suits to protect against radiation. It seems that’s the NORM, BTW: The Party is NEVER wrong. But I reference post-Cold War to limit the propaganda streak.) I guess the people who LIVE under these systems are all just angry, ungrateful shmucks?
Please tell me where you live, I need to do some recycling in that neck of the woods.
Fed up with dealing with worthless shits. Can’t get the stink out of my country.
Alright alright alright, folks, the bear’s been well-fed and may lumber off to sleep now.
But it’ll wake up hungrier than ever and come roaring right back.
Let’s stop feeding the damn thing or it’ll never go away.
I want a bearskin rug, dammit.
Or would that be “bare skin” rug?
meth, took the words right out of my mouth. Leave food out for the varmints you’ll never be rid of ’em…..and worse, they’ll reproduce.
@8south–
Yeah…I couldn’t be sure he was a bear, until the Soviet thing came up and removed all doubt. Powerful symbolism there; takes me a while to catch onto things, but when I do well it just plumb lights up m’head!
Jean- That was Weimar Germany not Lenin’s/Stalin’s Russia. Try getting your facts of history straight before you start your rant. Ya might be more effective that way. BTW, the f-word causes you to come across as rather coarse and ignorant.
You’re right, Mike.
In Lenin (and Stalin’s) Russia, they didn’t buy food with wheelbarrow loads of fiat currency; they just starved to death by the millions.
@MFW:
“BTW, the f-word causes you to come across as rather coarse and ignorant.”
Well sometimes, Mike (god how it galls me you share my first name), that’s what it takes to get the point across to you fucking mealy-mouthed would-be progressives but in actual fact passive-aggressive little authoritarians.
And since you’re so well-steeped in history, Mike, perhaps you could outline for us rednecks on this board exactly where we lie on the historical continuum of tyranny. Compare and contrast; the Jacobin French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, Red Terror, National Socialism, Great Leap Forward…Hope and Change.
Because while you’re performing a DOS (denial of service) attack against the thinkers on this board, diddling about trivia, we’ve entered a white-hot tyranny.
Ideas have consequences. What you seem to espouse–though you’ve been incredibly coy about actually revealing your agenda–forms the kernel of that tyranny.
But interestingly–and typically for a “progressive”–you’re not up-front about your ideals. Only critically nit-picking others.
“I pointed out to you that wealth from external sources flooded into the USSR, which was used to build the Soviet state (including infrastructure and so on). ”
yawn………………………………….same was true of America during its early industrialisation. Soooooooo, yer point would be?
My point, Mike, is that your assertion wealth was “created” is simply wrong.
It was transferred and redistributed.
Whether the same was done in the US is irrelevant to the point. Can you do anything other than misdirect and quibble?
PS: I’ve caught you in yet another British-ism – industrialisation.
From Wichita, huh?
And how about the coffin comment? Are you still going to deny you used that word – and that I merely commented on your choice of words?
Interesting that you reference coffins, Mike.
I’ll leave it to the 30 million (conservatively estimated) Russians murdered (many of them deliberately starved to death) by the Stalinist state to answer this one. Most of them never even got a coffin, by the way. Just a mass grave.
Once again:
res ipsa loquitur
“Interesting that you reference coffins, Mike. ”
Except that I didn’t Eric. Your dishonest attempt to put words in my mouth speaks poorly of you and of libertarianism to any who foolishly might see you as a trusted promoter of the Cause.
Excuse me?
“Nail in the coffin” – your words, not mine!
Who’s the dishonest one, Mike?
“Just to finally nail shut the coffin on the idea that ‘government never creates a single productive job’- Please explain the USSR. A large Nation was fed, clothed, housed and armed in an economy which grew at a far faster rate between 1917 and 1941 than the USA managed in its heyday of industrialization between the end of the States War and entry into WW1. An economy which was 100% State owned.”
Eric- ya got me there- I did ref coffins. My bad, my apology.
Thank you for acknowledging that.
MFW wrote,
Just to finally nail shut the coffin on the idea that ‘government never creates a single productive job’- Please explain the USSR.
Wow. Talk about trotting long discredited economic fallacies! This one was discredited in the mid 19th century, and refuted repeatedly since then.
Note: I offer this information for the benefit of third parties who may be undecided and open to logical persuasion, not to “MFW” who clearly has no interest in economic reality or the truth in general. No response is required from “MFW.”
That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen
by Frederic Bastiat, 1850
V. PUBLIC WORKS
The State opens a road, builds a palace, straightens a street, cuts a canal; and so gives work to certain workmen – this is what is seen: but it deprives certain other workmen of work, and this is what is not seen.
The road is begun. A thousand workmen come every morning, leave every evening, and take their wages – this is certain. If the road had not been decreed, if the supplies had not been voted, these good people would have had neither work nor salary there; this also is certain.
But is this all? does not the operation, as a whole, contain something else? …must not the State organise the receipts as well as the expenditure? must it not set its tax-gatherers and tax-payers to work, the former to gather, and the latter to pay? Study the question, now, in both its elements. While you state the destination given by the State to the millions voted, do not neglect to state also the destination which the taxpayer would have given, but cannot now give, to the same. Then you will understand that a public enterprise is a coin with two sides. Upon one is engraved a labourer at work, with this device, that which is seen; on the other is a labourer out of work, with the device, that which is not seen.
As a permanent, general, systematic measure, it is nothing else than a ruinous mystification, an impossibility…
The Soviet government, like every other government that has ever existed, never “created wealth.” Every penny it and every other government ever had in its coffers was not “created.”
It was robbed from others at gunpoint. Governments have a special name for government robbery — “taxation.”
Since robbery is not creation, since robbery of wealth is not creation of wealth, no government has ever “created wealth.”
I usually do not comment but there have been so many excellent comments (well most of them) that I have to thank you all. As my husband is blind I read to him and he really got a kick out of some of the satire. We are also having some great discussions over at LinkedIn on the Mises site. One of the fellows , Brian, has written several excellent articles on Anarcho Cap and another, Daniel, on Bit coins carried by American Daily Herald…the editors are brave enough to stir up their conservative readership, so you might want to check those out.
And Mike, more and more libertarians are becoming increasingly consistent with their thinking and trying to match their actions to the non aggression principle. Eric was on the front van guard “fringe” just a short while ago, but now libertarians are catching up with him, particularly the young Ron Paulians. many of them “get it”.
A strange phenomenon I have noticed is that even former Dems and Tea Party types are re-thinking and digging deeper. As more people set a good example of non aggression and consistency on all fronts , it is being noticed. Subtle education is working.
Things they are a changing. It might not be too late. Just think of the authors we have at our finger tip with a click that only a few years ago we had to send off for and wait a week or two for delivery.
So hang in there. Obama may be the best salesman we have had, not just for gun sales but as irrefutable example of the foolishness of central planning. Might not be back for awhile as have a commitment but just wanted to tell you all thanks!
Dear Lynn,
Yes!
If I’ve learned anything from decades of political observation, it is this.
The Conventional Wisdom within any given society, whatever that may be, invariably becomes implemented in its most extreme, i.e., consistent form.
In case that sounds too vague, here is what I mean.
If a society believes that government officials must be obeyed because they represent something “above and beyond the individual,” then that society is already a police state. Over time, it will eventually manifest all the features of what is already was.
Case in point, Amerika/USSA.
That is why anyone who seeks to be truly free, must remain uncompromising in his or her defense of individual sovereignty, and rejection of “government authority.”
Minarchism: Great Start, Horrible Finish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvHvW-GrvY
Good morning, Lynn!
One of the things that drew me to Libertarian ideals is consistency. Republicans and Democrats are forced to employ all sorts of clumsy rationalizations and euphemisms (as well as outcry hypocrisy) defending their particular forms of collectivism, their “ok” assertions of ownership of other people’s lives.
Libertarians never have to do that.
Because self-ownership and the NAP neatly cut through all of that. Best tools in my kit.
If we can get enough people to understand these concepts – and apply them (which most will begin to do the moment they do understand them) then we’ve won.
It’s an easy – and a very hard – thing.
“It’s an easy – and a very hard – thing.”
Hold up, it’s a hard easy thing,,,no, wait, it’s an easy hard thing, hold up….it’s easily the hardest thing….no. Shit Hold up….. it’s hardly an easy thing…….
Easy peasey lemon squeezie…..no, difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.
Eric, you did that on purpose.
Lynn,
If you hven’t been, go to FredOnEverything.NET and read some of his columns to your husband – I’m sure he’ll laugh.
Not because they’re FUNNY, mind – they’re more sardonic and sarcastic.
It’s the tone that makes them funny. 🙂
Oh, I do. Lew carries them a lot of times too. I try to read him funny things. I give him “honey do” projects he can manage, tho the bad eyesight and non existent coordination is making many things almost impossible. He went from being able to do almost anything to having a difficult time feeding himself. But still, life is good. For example since most of the people on here are into cars, if one googles Roger Bloxham, Talbot Lago you can see some of the things he did in car racing and working on race cars. (He began as a midget racer and finally raced a Ferrari in the Calif. Grand Prix in 1959. So he enjoys the car talk also. This was long before I knew him.
Lynn Atherton Bloxham wrote, “if one googles Roger Bloxham, Talbot Lago”
That’s some very cool stuff.
Your guy is lucky to have played with those toys, imho.
I always liked those one seaters.
I can’t believe I’m still awake, but what I read and saw here and elsewhere was worth the drag I’ll feel tomorrow.
Lynn, Fred is as Jean said and often ROTFLMAO funny.
Great comment Lynn–and I fully agree, the Great Awakening is quickening at a fantastic rate.
I’m especially pleased at the growing cooperation between former “enemies”–reforming lefties/progressives and righties/neocons who are catching on that everyone’s freedom is at stake. And that, perhaps, their common interests are best served by returning to good old ‘Murrikan “live and let live”.
Speaking of the incompetence of central planning–
My libertarian programmer (almost redundant, seems almost all programmers have a libertarian streak) friends and I have been passing around bits of HealthCare.gov javascript. In itself it’s a crap language; but the bastardization in that site is EPIC FAIL quality. Beyond embarrassing; a piece of shit would be ashamed in the company of this code.
Combine that with the ongoing failures at the NSA’s new Utah facility…and throw in Keith Alexander, Clapper, Sebelius et al embarrassing themselves with transparently, comically foolish lies and denials.
NOW we’re seeing the State as it really is; a violent, incompetent blustering bully too stupid to get out of his own way as he falls.
I’m heartened too, Meth. One of my relatives, who’s always been Rush Limbaugh’s biggest fan, sent me the following Republican/Democrat “flow chart.” I think people are finally beginning to understand that the two-party system is, for the average guy, simply a guaranteed lose-lose proposition. The only winners are the overlords and those upon whom they bestow their grace$.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NAFyXbWWrSA/TjhIfsa2_QI/AAAAAAAAGh0/ZG3tg8hP20c/s640/PoliticalFlowChart.bmp
Love your analysis., And even though I would not know good code from bad, suspected that even before other techies here in San Antonio had mentioned it also. I had a friend (now deceased) who constantly delved into conspiracies…some later proved to be true others a tad far fetched, and she would then want my opinion. My comeback was always, well it could be…. or…maybe they are just stooopid! Looks like we usually get both evil and stupid.
I expect that the Constitutional Powers listed below do in fact create more than a few jobs which serve useful purposes that all but the purist libertarian .01% fringe are able to recognize as such.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;–And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Useful to whom, Mike?
Rights are not subject to utilitarian end-runs.
If you think “x” is useful, then by all means, finance it, purchase it – and so on.
Yourself.
But don’t try to tell me you’ve got the right to shove a gun under my chin and threaten me with violence in order to make me “help” finance it, or purchase… and so on.
Same argument as before. You know – the one you’ve studiously avoided dealing with.
Right on, Eric. I’m sure the guards at Bergen-Belsen were “useful” to Hitler and the Nazis. but the rest of the German people shouldn’t have been forced to pay their salaries.
Eric I fully understand that you are a purist libertarian of the .010% fringe. That means that however much you may enjoy whining about Government you will at the end of the Day tamely comply. I doubt very much you have the stones to go out Rambo Style. You could possibly leave the USA or certainly find somewhere rural and remote where you could live free off the grid IF you were willing to forego the nifty gizmos of modern civilization. But nah rather than get on with life you choose to stamp your feet and hold your breath because virtually no one shares your purist fantasy of what it is to be libertarian. Foolish and frankly rather immature. Your choice though. Carry on.
@Mike- Interesting statist leap you make from living the good life to government being responsible for it. Not in my book pal.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me
Martin Niemöller
Mike,
You’re babbling – literally.
And you accuse me of being immature.
At least I’m not violent.
The fact is more and more people are awakening to the “fringe” view that human interaction ought to be based on voluntary free exchange, not collectivism and coercion.
You and yours are the past, Mike.
Enjoy your moment in the sun – because it’s fading.
And even if not: You might stop to think, sometime, about the basic difference between us. You may not like me, you might think I’m “immature” – a dick, even. But I am a dick who respects your right to do as you wish with your life, your money, your family. To pursue happiness as you define it. I might not agree with how you choose to live your life or what you do with your time or your money – but so long as you are peaceful, so long as you don’t harm me or my property, I will always defend and respect your right to be left the hell alone.
It’s too bad you can’t say the same. . .
Dear Eric,
Did you get that?
MFW laid it out pretty clearly:
“Maturity is resignation to slavery.”
I think I saw that emblazoned on a government building somewhere.
Yeah, here it is:
http://waithinktank.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/wai-think-tank_project-1984_2_sm.jpg
Morning, Bevin!
Yup.
As Brent (and you) so succinctly put it, for people like Mike, “maturity” is synonymous with obedience.
Of course, Mike makes a distinction – his personal, subjective and utterly arbitrary – distinction between Good and Bad authority that must be obeyed.
How do we determine when authority is good and must be obeyed? Why, when Mike (et al) tell us so!
Typically americans equate obedience with maturity. The mainstream defines maturity as being like a well behaved child.
Furthermore a good idea should never require violence. A good idea works on its own merits, by voluntary action. If people are too stupid to see that it is a good idea then you have a lot of work to do or maybe it just isn’t a good idea.
Yup – they always said I was mature for my age, until probably mid-teens, when suddenly I wasn’t mature enough, no matter what I did.
All I wanted to do was have my own life, be my own person.
However, good ideas DO sometimes require violence. People hold on to their existing “paradigms” and violently refuse any change – even a blatantly positive one – because (a) it’s change, and that can hurt; and (b) they’ve invested in things: Bought into the Hopey-Changey delusion, or learned the obsolete technologies, or made a political statement based on facts that we now know are not facts, not true.
Sometimes, the only way forward is a violent ascension or violent, forward course – a career, if you will.
Think of it in terms of Social Security: the elderly don’t want it to go away – they paid into it and they want their money’ worth! (And would want that system even if you could give them a lump-sum payout equal to all they’d paid in.) The young don’t care, or are taught by their elders that it’s the way things are – so they’re not going to be bothered, and why should they? It’s only a few dollars, barely even beer money… So they’ll deal with it later.
The middle-aged are on the hook, and they know it: Old enough to look forward and see the checks coming back, and young enough to see it as a minor cost. Also, there’s a certain malaise or ennui of, “Can’t change the system.”
Unfortunately, freedom is like pregnancy: you are, or you aren’t, there’s no such thing as, “a little bit ____.”
NO COMPROMISE. There’s only one rule about making a deal with the Devil: DON’T.
And even saying that, I’ll acknowledge that in a perfect world, people would automatically adopt the better ideas.
Unfortunately, we live here. A place where people want to harm you just because they can. Where people use your politeness and manners against you, and play the victim when they’ve engineered the problems.
Better to be brutally honest: Gnoll-like, if you will. (The Gnoll Credo, good read, cheap book. Interesting philosophical treatise though it wasn’t mean to be philosophical.)
Morning, Jean!
I’d venture to say – based on conversations I’ve had with others in my age group (Gen X) that most of us realize it’s a loser and would be happy to simply accept as a write-off what’s been taken from us so far in exchange for being free of any requirement to make further “contributions.”
As a self-employed person, I get double-tapped: 15 percent off the gross of everything I earn. On top of federal and state taxes, etc.
You’re a nasty little man aren’t you Mike?
I take umbrage at your comments to Eric, because I share 99.99% of his philosophy…
…a philosophy clearly on an exponential rise, while the statist’s credo is rotting from its inherent contradictions and authoritarian corruption.
Who’s “stamping their feet and holding their breath”? Certainly not I; like Eric, I’m prospering while spreading the Good News.
By using my brain and talents I’ve been able to avoid most statist incursions; still paying taxes but I’m working on that. Meanwhile I’ve consistently increased my income from honest work every year for the last ten years running. My latest venture is a completely secure end-to-end online communication system for lawyers and their clients that sidesteps encryption providers known to be compromised.
Is that “Rambo style”? Not in the sense of lead flying; but I’m sure the fuckers don’t enjoy 4096-bit RSA-encrypted passwords from a 10^20 permutation key space flying around.
Do we have the “stones” to go out Rambo-style? I’ll continue to avoid doing it stupidly, and especially provoking it.
I can’t speak for everyone here–but as for me, there are concrete lines that won’t be crossed. We’ll find out then what happens to tyrants; historically, they’ve fared poorly in similar circumstances.
Why forgo the “nifty gizmos”? The market always moves faster than the central-planning control-freak statists. Cheap, fast encryption, darknets, custom private OS on my smart phone…these are a few of my favorite things.
The statists’ problem is their lack of imagination. In fact it’s endemic to their pathology; as sociopaths, their chief advantage over Normals is their ability to manipulate. But their libidum dominandi is also their downfall; it’s accompanied by a crippling lack of empathy and creativity.
So their only option, like the tapeworm, is parasitism.
When the host stops feeding them, they die.
And as far as your proposition–“…virtually no one shares your purist fantasy…”–7 percent in a recent poll self-identified as libertarian, with another 15 percent sympathetic, making 22 percent of us fantasists.
From personal experience, it takes a couple of short years to go from classical liberal, to libertarian minarchist, to anarcho-capitalist. That is, for those of us with the intellect and intellectual honesty to keep re-evaluating our beliefs as logic and knowledge expand.
At one time, Disco music and polyester pants were Very popular, then, all of a sudden, they weren’t.
I imagine it’ll be like that with gooberment whoreship someday too.
Everybody who does it now will be all like, “I can’t believe I was like that then!”
Obviously, mikey is a fucking troll. Remember what happens when you feed trolls.
I know, Ed.. I know… and therefore, I ought to know better!
eric & Gary. I know, but they’re such easy targets. 😉
@Ed – Trolls think they are part of the team, but never look at history. They and the other quislings always get executited.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.
eric,Ed, Garysco, been a long day, long day. My mama got out of prison this morning so I went by and picked Goodman up who was drunk too, probably in self defense, luckily he was at the mailbox so I didn’t have to try that turn where I always wipe it out in my truck, what I always drive. So we get to the station in a big rain after some fairly exotic road trip events only to find out mama got run over by the damned old train. Now the leg’s mad so I’m takin me a whiskey trip. Gary sends his best. Like Vince said, “It’s hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long” so I guess me and CJ will go find the softest spot we can, he’s wiped out too.
Dear 8sm,
Holy shit.
I swear to god, your day sounds like the ultimate Country & Western song.
@8 – Aren’t you glad now that you built that dog house with a good roof, a door & insulation? Been there, done that. Now I just rent. Owning is too expensive.
8, I too was drunk the day my mama got out of prison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWyx0n682Dg
And it’s the little things …..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdnP4XsfUzI
….that piss me off. 😉
Bevin, Garysco, Ed, it was all that and more as the salesman said. About 25 years ago my best friend lived with us, had a pit bull and we had two and then adopted a third(ripped my door liner off on the top and even curled some of the spot-welded metal apart while I got out, walked a few feet into the vet’s office and asked him if he had time to look at a dog). We built two 10’X20′ kennels with u-rib hide for tops and a dog house that had some ungodly amount of lumber in it. It was double walled plywood with insulation between, one entire end folds up and has a place for an oil filled heater with heavy welded wire on each side, a top that flips open(heavy), a place for a small swamp cooler and a molded(had this specially made)galvanized metal cap on the top. Beany promptly removed the $65 dog door in tiny pieces(couldn’t see I guess), even removed some of the outer frame made of aluminum(Brits would have been out of luck with him), pulled it past the screws. Later in deep winter I used some 1/2″ belting off a conveyor to make a new door, disappeared too. Beany and others spent many a day with blowing sleet and ice snug as a bug in a rug and others lying on top of it even though the door was up on the end for air circulation. I never could figure out how to install the swamp cooler without making a jail type affair around it, Beany was hell on anything in there. Dog house is still in good shape and big enough for me and CJ in a pinch.
@8 – My old Siberian Husky, aside from having an evil “I’ll get even with you tomorrow for doing that to me” streak in him, would sleep outside his nice factory made igloo dog house in the snow. At times I really did see the “stupid human” look on his face.
*”Perfect C&W Song,” not “Ultimate C&W Song.”
Hey, it was a long time ago.
Ah dammit Ed, you’re right!
But when he puts his dick on the chopping block like that, I just can’t help myself taking a swing at it.
I’ll stop I promise unless he shows some logical progression…not just “nanny-nanny-boo-boo”.
Garysco, we had a half St. Bernard who was the same way, sleep in the yard and let snow cover him completely, nice and cozy….with a garage a few feet away. My wife would be under all these covers sleeping and I’d be on top of the covers under a fan, each to their own.
I know it, Meth. The fucker is trying to pretend that he isn’t Gil. He’s got himself fooled anyway. 😉
“The fucker is trying to pretend that he isn’t Gil.”
A possibility that should not be automatically ruled out!
Bevin, I knew what you meant and it was long ago….and I still live there cause it beats hell out of anything since then. Going to the store today I switched the radio from my wife’s old rock(just a very narrow bunch of music you’ve heard too manytimes already)to an old country station. While I could have made a list of songs on a daily basis that are better, it did have couple of good songs, one surprising since you rarely hear it on radio Amazing Rhythm Aces doing Amazing Grace(Used to be her favorite song), and they could have done plenty ARA that was better but for radio fare, it was outstanding.
Dear 8sm,
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. A lot of things have gone downhill in ‘Murca over the past few decades.
Why should music be exempt?
Case in point “(C)Rap music.” A contradiction in terms if there ever was one.
Interesting how diverse we hardcore libertarians can be though. I myself am a pointy-headed intellechewal and an opera lover. I even take voice lessons in Bel Canto singing technique. But believe it or not, I actually like C&W. Some C&W. I lived in Houston for a decade and a half between the 60s and 70s.
One of the golden oldies:
Waylon Jennings Luckenbach Texas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvZeYDBY4fw
When black C&W star Charlie Pride and Hispanic C&W star Johnny Rodriguez became famous, known, I joked to my coworkers that I was going to the first Asian Country and Western singer.
Bevin, I was in a new business back then, something no one had heard of, fiber optics and the crowd was fast and furious so to speak. One minute shit kicking and in the next few, someplace with a disco ball. It was a “grab life by the balls” type of thing. I was young and full of it and so was everybody else. Some of that old music, no matter what category is still meaningful to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRr2kf84V2M
KC did this too and I had a soft spot for him since he almost didn’t survive.
Dear 8sm,
Usually I’m an “opera snob.” We opera snobs usually look down our noses at most other forms of vocal music.
But how can one beat either the melody and lyrics here?
“Between Hank Williams pain songs
And Newbury’s train songs
And blue eyes cryin’ in the rain
Out in Luckenbach, Texas
Ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain”
Truly poignant.
Bevin, that’s so good and not uncommon either. I have some famous/infamous play lists, white soul music I call it. It’s old country that’s so poignant it will literally make you cry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R2F9f2Cl6Y
And another of the same I think he did a great job on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbjpbqowX3Y
I have countless songs like this and they’re soul music, straight from the heart. I like every type of music and have quite a bit of classical although not much of opera but I am a fan of but I haven’t been exposed to a great deal of it. I do like this though, and better than Pavarotti :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbGKQ8YASCY
Dear 8sm,
Interesting coincidence.
Nessun Dorma is an aria from Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Turandot,” which just happens to be set in ancient China and which even includes Chinese music in the score.
The opera’s story is set in China and involves Prince Calàf, who falls in love with the cold Princess Turandot. To obtain permission to marry her, a suitor has to solve three riddles; any wrong answer results in death. Calàf passes the test, but Turandot still refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to learn his name before dawn the next day, then at daybreak he will die.
— Wikipedia
Small world.
Bevin, I have another and the gone. A week ago or so my cousin on another forum emailed this out and said if you can hear this and not shed a tear you’re a better man than I and I was surprised to hear him say it. I used to live about 2 blocks from Joe, both of us had upstairs apts. and then kept up with him during the old Austin outlaw scene along with the Geezenslaw bros. and lot of other great Lubbock musicians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5zbUuxo-jU …..and of course slightly before my time, Waylon. and now the old dog house calls…..eh? yeah, me and CJ be right there.
Bevin, thanks for that. Now I have something to research. Proof positive you can lead a man a lot further than you can Push him. I just need a little direction. We all get on tangents and now and again need to slew offcourse a bit to find some new waters…..Good night, look forward to the morn. peace b
Dear 8sm,
“I’m gonna live forever
I’m gonna cross that river
I’m gonna catch tomorrow now
You’re gonna wanna hold me
Just like I’ve always told you
You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
Amen to that.
Contrast that realistic world view with the megalomaniacal worldview of Noah Cross in “Chinatown.”
Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
Noah Cross, a sociopathic Illuminati preoccupied with “control,” who meet annually at Bilderberg to decide “The future, Mr. Gittes!”
Dear MFW,
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States… ”
Have you ever really thought about what the above actually boils down to?
It’s nothing more than a unilateral declaration that “I’m allowed to rob you.”
MikeFromWichita,
There’s a brilliant 4-minute video on YouTube that explains most clearly and succinctly the wrongness of “taxation”–the euphemism for politically enabled theft.
George Ought To Help
Please watch it and see if you’re still convinced of the “necessity” of taxation armed robbery by politically-sanctioned thugs.
MFW, where do you get your .1%? Sure as hell isn’t from this site as if there’s a Constitutionalist in the crowd. The A of C weren’t to the liking of those who wished to use the new Republic for their own gain and that’s always that crowd that goes overboard to convince everyone to go for their brand. I’d suspect a huge majority of the settlers in this country when the Constitution was written wanted no part of it, just like the people who were killed and robbed for a whiskey tax. No doubt the NE seaboard benefits like a thief as you can tell by the wealthiest counties in the country while everyone else pays for it, a huge chunk of which comes from Texas. Texans never had any use for the federal govt. if you can read history. We have guns. We’re not too hot on having them pointed at us.
Friend go study the history of your own State- Texas on its hands & knees begged to be allowed into the USA. On its own Texas was flat assed bankrupt.
You’re so full of shit. Texas made the best of a situation it couldn’t avoid, a situation every other state that aligned itself to the Confederacy had to deal with. No single state was big enough to take on the Great Liar’s army. The pols in Austin didn’t speak for many there and none in the rest of the state, just like today. Texas has never been broke because what it possesses you can’t take away. Now it supports something like 15 yankee states. Even with our bigass govt. we’d be better off without the feds by a long shot.
In the fall of 1835 many Texans, both Anglo-American colonists and Tejanos, concluded that liberalism and republicanism in Mexico, as reflected in its Constitution of 1824, were dead.
The dictatorship of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, supported by rich landowners, had seized control of the governments and subverted the constitution.(like the USSA)
As dissension and discord mounted in Texas, both on the military front and at the seat of the provisional government of the Consultation at San Felipe, the colonists agreed that another popular assembly was needed to chart a course of action.
In 1835, the provisional government issued a call for an election on February 1, 1836, to choose delegates to assemble on at Washington-on-the-Brazos. These delegates represented the seventeen Texas municipalities and the small settlement at Pecan Point on the Red River. The idea of independence from Mexico was growing.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Texas was annexed as a slave state rather than as a territory. She kept her public lands and paid her own public debts.
She could divide herself into as many as four additional states. The terms of annexation had to be accepted by January 1, 1846. In May 1845, the United States dispatched a fleet of warships to protect the Texas coast.(sure, for protection!)
The British chargé d’affaires and the French minister asked President Jones to postpone action on the annexation agreement for ninety days because they wanted to arrange a settlement of matters between Mexico and Texas. Jones agreed to do so on March 29.
The British and French emissaries reached Mexico City in mid-April. Luis G. Cuevas, minister of foreign relations, placed their proposals before the Mexican Congress, and in late April Mexico recognized Texas independence.
The British minister handed a copy of the document to Jones on June 4, and he immediately announced a preliminary peace with Mexico. On the same day Jones signed a peace treaty with the last Comanche chief whose tribe had been at war with Texas, thus ending Indian hostilities for the republic.
Mirabeau Lamar tried to keep Texas independent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabeau_B._Lamar
Modest Petition Of a Newspaper Editor.
by Mirabeau Lamar
to Samuel Houston, President
Chieftain, Statesman, Patriot, Sage!
Thou bright effulgence of this age,
Recalled once more by public voice,
To guide the State against my choice;
I come great Chief of sanjacinto,
A disappointed, ruined printer,
And humbly beg to lay before ye,
A very sad, but honest story.
No case presented to your Highness
Is half so sorrowful as mine is;
And you will see, when facts are stated,
How wrong’d I’ve been and underrated.
Within the town that bears your name,
And borrows thence its greatest fame,
I’ve published long, a weekly paper,
As great as any man’s or greater.
You may, perhaps, have read its pages,
Fraught with the learning of all ages,
And just as free from base traduction,
As if it were your own production.
I am not of that class of men,
Who scribble with a venal pen,
And turning from the truly great,
Court favor from the knaves of State.
An honest instinct never lies;
It leads me to the good and wise,
And teaches how to shun the base
And selfish portion of our race.
Hence, mighty Chieftain, tis to you
I now appeal for justice due,
And humbly hope, by this petition,
To mitigate my sad condition.
I am no Judas, or Iago;
I follow friends wherever they go;
And when they meet with sad disaster,
I always stick to them the faster.
What tho’ I’ve said you were no hero,
And hold you up a modern Nero,
Have I not dealt still harder blows
Upon the folks I deem’d your foes;
Which goes to prove as plain as Euclid,
I hated them as much as you did,
And likewise proves as clear as day,
You were a favorite more than they.
There is no character so bright,
That cunning falsehood cannot blight,
And if you have a foe – just name him—
My pen, as dark as hell, shall stain him.
Whene’er I pledge to do a thing,
I never stickle at the sin;
My word is true as Mark or Luke,
The Apocalypse or Pentateuch.
Then if to favor, you’ll restore me,
I will revive the love I bore thee,
And prove myself, henceforth your brother,
By sparing you, to stab some other.
Republic of Texas – Handbook of Texas
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mzr02
Republic of Texas: 1836–1845
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Texas#Republic_of_Texas:_1836.E2.80.931845
Fool- go study the history of your own State- Texas on its hands & knees begged to be allowed into the USA. On its own Texas was flat assed bankrupt.
Mike,
You’ve been reduced to hurling insults and screeching like a frustrated child.
Mikey,
Are you still wasting air?
Texas CHOSE to join the US. They were turned down once, and decided to petition again.
There’s a REASON the Texas flag is flown at the same level as the US flag.
“on Hands and Knees”?
The men there would’ve died first.
Men HERE still will…
paul wheaton – evil tyrant of JavaRanch
http://www.javaranch.com/paul-wheaton.jsp
sepp holzer – innovator in the hard science of polis – the building of human habitat.
– politics is ineffectual, and unnecessary if you live harmoniously within the natural order and with other beings in the first place.
Regenerating the landscape in accordance with nature provides a great abundance with minimal effort. Wildlife also benefits as there is plenty for all living beings.
Human beings and nature are not separate. Human systems do not, and cannot, exist outside of natural systems.
Indigenous groups learned how to tend the landscape in a manner that both provided a bounty for themselves, and improved the health and fertility of the Earth. This was the logical approach. To destroy the land which supports you is to destroy yourself.
Reclaim the indigenous wisdom, and there is no excuse for Agenda 21. Political environmentalism seeks to replace an evil system with an eviler system. Ignore it. Regenerate your surrounding landscapes. Renature your mind.
http://www.richsoil.com/sepp-holzer/sepp-holzer-permaculture.jsp
http://www.holzeragroecology.com/
Skills and knowledge a likeminded phyle will need to become free:
Agroforestry – Foundations of forest management and agroforestry
Aquaculture – Ponds, water gardens, and fish and crab breeding
Crops – Alternative cropping systems, alternative gardens, fruit and wild fruit growing, and mushroom cultivation
Animal Husbandry – Appropriate handling of livestock
Landscaping – Terraces/soil reservoirs, dry and wet biomes, herb spirals, hugelkulturs, krater gardens, and raised beds.
Botany – Identification of native trees, shrubs, and herbs, and basic properties, features, and characteristics
Food and Nutrition – Self-sufficiency, preparing and preserving your own harvest
Old and Proven Farming Techniques – Diverse traditional harvesting and processing techniques (such as Scythe mowing)
Start a garden – Start working with nature and gaining experience of your own. Plant a seed, watch it grow. Put yourself in the plant’s shoes, ask yourself what it needs, how it lives. Take time to observe the wisdom of nature that always surrounds us. Let these experiences be your mentor.
The ultimate prep is to live on productive, bountiful land, surrounded by neighbors who also own productive, bountiful land.
Cities in America are especially unproductive and artificially barren. This need not be the case.
Rebel and bring improvements today. Reclaim and restore urban land without using force. Don’t bother to ask permission, it is the natural right of all humanity and other beings.
Dude, you are the shizzle! All the info in your post I’m “replying” to are spot on, but I also want to thank you for one of your other posts where you linked to a few Christopher Cantwell articles. Before today, I had never heard of Christopher Cantwell, I now have his website in my favorites…. his tagline of “Anarchist, Atheist, Asshole” is right up my alley. Keep on with the keepin’ on.
No problem. Be a medicine man of mind, body, and soil.
Here’s an open letter to Chris
http://therightstuff.biz/2013/10/29/an-open-letter-to-christopher-cantwell/
“Despite being nothing more than a reinvention of the wheel, the Non-Aggression Principle is being argued by Cantwell as a rational guideline, and not a pathetic attempt by sub-par men to deny reality.
Cantwell recognizes that man has, and will always be capable of some nasty things. All of the facebook posturing and turgid bowtie books on gold coins and time preference will never succeed in making man less likely to commit vile and capricious acts.
If one truly desires to achieve a new society in this reality, there has to be a compromise between ideal and action.
Hate the Soviets all you want for bad economics, they at least knew what to do when democracy became an impediment.
What has the liberty movement done in response to an entrenched democracy, the dildocracy? It has disintegrated into pathetic cults of personality.”
Free State Project Reaches 75% of its Goal
http://www.nhinsider.com/press-releases/2013/10/26/free-state-project-reaches-75-of-its-goal-15000-activists-no.html
– I like his style, and I differ with him on many issues. But engaging in cognitively dissonant deconstructive criticism seems to build a solid foundation and a strong mind.
– I make declarative statements, often with errors. Defend the statements for a time, even as I foresee I will soon be making corrections.
– I’m interested in being on a path to something that works, not on being “more right” than the next guy.
Libertopia Fi1m – Fu11 Movie
I just read through that “open letter to chris cantwell” link and also read through all the comments. Holy crap, that link is now in my favorites (rightstuff.biz) and I am still laughing at how funny some of those comments are. Funny in a “hell yes, I completely agree and could not have possibly said it any better in my wildest dreams” sort of way. So good. Thanks for sharing that.
Another site:
http://fringeelements.tumblr.com/
The government has “created” a lot of jobs for the firearms industry….
I was at my favorite little sushi joint a few months back and after sitting at the bar for a few minutes a group of 4 or 5 guys came up… I had to scoot down to make room for them and we started talking… They do machining for (I think) Winchester and Remington at some machine shop up the road. As they got drunker and drunker they kept toasting drinks to “Obama: best gun salesmen of all time” and “Four more years of Obama!” … Good times.
site:ericpetersautos,com 41,500 results
site:epautos,com 1,150 results
the above results look like you’re okay. but how can this be right?
search for the word “the” and “epautos(.)com”
About 26,600 results
search for the word “the” and “ericpetersautos(.)com”
About 36,900 results
even filtering for current year makes no difference. search results of the same content are showing up in the results, which looks to be a “no-no”
Two Websites. Duplicate Content.
The very nature of a website is that it must have original content unique to that website. Search engines are looking for distinct information. Setting up more than one website with the same content as another is really not a good idea.
To be safe, if your site has a ‘regular page’ page and a ‘print version’ of the same page be sure to use a ‘no-index meta tag’ so only the ‘regular’ page shows up in the search.
I don’t think it’s a problem to have multiple website addresses that go to the same content. But to the extent the same content is indexed twice by google, that seems bad,
Alex Jones has these four domains, you also have four,
prisonplanet,tv infowars,com infowars,net jonesreport,com
All four have different content which seems ideal.
I don’t know logistically how you could pull this off, probably need a second writer/editor like Bevin, Brent, etc. to manually apportion your commentary into 4 related yet separate domains of unique content.
Simpler thing is to better execute the status quo. If epautos is supposed to only be an additional path to ericpetersautos, are there further changes to make so it doesn’t generate its own duplicative results on google?
The first strike against this blog is “blogspam.” The big internet powers claim any content a blog mirrors beyond a few sentences is “spam” and any site that has this should receive no revenue because of it. That is strike one.
Strike two is hosting content that would be banned in Europe and elsewhere for being “hate speech.” Especially when you hate Obama and other powerful figures. Strike three is being associated with lewrockwell vdare and other blogspam/hatespeech websites in an illicit “content farm”.
Strike four is google’s indexing problems, which of course are your problems not theirs. Strike four part two is all the other sites that mirror your articles completely. I don’t think google approves of your same article showing up a dozen times on various websites.
I’m sure many sites have indexing irregularities, but whatever is going on with your search results is just one more excuse to delist you and shut you up. These are all anecdotal miseducated guesses, but might be something worth investigating to be sure they’re not the problem.
Google uses humpty dumpty law, where his rules mean exactly what he says they mean.
Why has my site been delisted by google?
http://www.wpuniversity.com/wordpress-tips/why-has-my-site-been-delisted-from-google-and-other-less-important-search-engines-like-bing-and-yahoo/
Been a long time reader of Eric’s articles and also see him on Lew Rockwell and American Daily Herald (where I write as one of their few libertarian/anarcho-caps) trying to reach out to conservatives and neo cons ;-).
Eric is amazing as he packs so much info in a short space and always leaves the reader questioning a statist idea that most people have blindly accepted.
I greatly enjoy and feel assured by the commentary here as it is a relief to hear so many reasonable people. We (my husband and I) have been in the “fight” now for many years, since the mid 1950’s. Tired but still optimistic.
Hi Eric, et al,
Nice comments. I would simply point out that by definition politicians, bureaucrats and government employees cannot create anything. Because government entities’ existence is based on coercion, rather than free exchange, it can create nothing of value. No measure of the value of government is possible because of that coercion. On the other hand, those same entities seem quite capable of consuming real resources created by the hard work of the real producers.
As an aside, all governments are the same in this respect. I’ve been reading Shelby Foote’s excellent Civil War narrative and while it’s evident that the CSA was less evil than the USA, it was in fact plenty evil. I’m struck by the fact that throughout human history some small percentage have managed to somehow convince the majority to give up lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness to support the goals of a powerful 1%. It applies across political philosophy too. How can people be so frelling gullible generation by generation? As that famous Fugs line went “Was George Washington the lesser of two evils? Sometimes I wonder.”.
and we got a man in the white house sayin “we need to be better to each other” while he’s spendin fifty thousands dollars….a second……snuffin gooks…………River of ……….
Jaysus, I never thought I’d get a memory hit on that one…..”flow on, flow on river of…..” And by the way, do you remember Johnny Pissoff?
I don’t have much memory of that. It was one on, It just crawled into my hands album, something like that, fairly hilarious in itself of being what I always thought was a take-off on it just followed me home. I know Lou Reed wasn’t as famous as he should have been but the Fugs get the all time award for that, even more than…say…..”goin to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon”. can you name that tune?
Hell yeah,
One of my favorite FZ & tMoI albums. The Fugs album was “It Crawled in My Hand, Honest”. Ed Sanders is a twisted, brilliant deviant too. Yeah, I was bummed to hear about Lou Reed’s death. I first heard Zappa in 1966….Freakout was the album…my best friend’s older, geeky brother bought the album and I was blown away. Zappa had little love for the kind of coercive action of governments. Sanders was primarily anti-war, which is a great thing. Lou Reed was just brilliant at times. Probably a screaming collectivist though…..BTW, where in TX are you? I spent most of 32 years in Austin, with a couple of years in Houston. The heat and the sovietization of Austin finally drove me away….
Well, GC, what a deal. I’m in west tx., between Abilene and Lubbock(right on the flight pattern evidently….wave when you go by or just piss out the winder). I once lived in Cedar Park, sure you know where that is. Well, it wasn’t “in” Cedar Park but near. Now there’s a group in Austin that wants to secede with about 20 miles of the surrounding country. Good luck with that. Land owners would raise hell having to pay money to those commies but the rest of Tx. would be rejoicing. Meet you at the “Buckboard” for a beer. Coyotes been raising hell all evening but I keep hearing the strangest noise…..I think it may be a BIG cat.
Indeed, Giuseppe –
Arguably, George III was a benevolent tyrant – and less of one than George Washington. The King imposed a trivial tax on legal documents (the Stamp Act) that mostly affected a small portion of the elites in colonial America. Washington – via Hamilton – imposed a vicious tax on alcohol (the first “sin” tax) that was devastating to low-income rural people who made whiskey for barter and to survive.
Was the average American better off after the war? It’s very hard to say so.
As I see it, the revolution was in fact a civil war for control of the governing authority of the colonies. The vying parties were the ruling class of Britain vs. the ruling class of the colonies, with the canon fodder on both sides duped into believing they were fighting for something else.
Even Jefferson – whom, I admire – was guilty of rank hypocrisy. He didn’t repeal the odious taxes imposed by Hamilton and his Federalists. He did not get rid of Hamilton’s debt-bubble banking system. And he grossly violated his own stated principles by, on his own initiative, “purchasing” Louisiana from Napoleon. In doing so, he, like Hamilton, set yet another odious precedent vastly increasing federal (and executive) authority. Owning other human beings, as he did to the end of his life, is another blot on his record – and evidence of his internal contradictions.
I’ve checked with multiple sites including mxtoolbox, blacklistalert, whatismyipaddress and get ip.
You’re not blacklisted, in fact if you google ‘throw it in the woods’ you’re site is at least the first two results. I don’t think “blacklisted” means what you think it means.
We’re still indexed with Google yes, but our revenue from their ads dropped to almost zero. We received a few nasty grams saying they were going to do it too. We’re averaging over 6,000 hits a day and spiking over 12,000 on some days. Then making zero for their ads all over our site there’s a problem.
I’ve got no evidence to back this up, other than the facts you just stated, but to me this is pretty obvious that google (the company that was founded to “control the internet”) was told by the government to stop funding this site because this site is a danger to the government’s (and google’s) power.
Anyone who doesn’t think google is a bunch of pieces of crap, go look up a website called “scroogle”. Scroogle was an anonymous search engine that prided itself on making fun of google, and used google’s search engine but made their info anonymous, and it was shut down by google using backdoor reasons…. just like this website (and many others, I’m sure).
I doubt that is the case because startpage.com does the same thing and they have been up for a long tine.
I used Scroogle every day until it was finally shut down for good by google. I can only say what I read from the people behind Scroogle but they openly posted bulletins on their main page each time they were shut down (it happened a handful of times before the final one) and they explained it was because google was purposely changing their algorithms to block scroogle.
http://www.scroogled.com/ <— please go here and educate yourself on the evil that is google.
Google is evil.
Most here already know the story, but to recap:
One day, they simply informed us that we’d been “de-listed” – no reason given. Our ranking went from 2-3 out of five to five – effectively, zero. In turn, the income we’d been earning from Google ads literally disappeared.
Someone over there did not like EPautos.
It damn near killed us off.
After two-plus months trying to find out what the problem they had with us was (hopeless) one day, in exasperation and defeat, I wrote a public note explaining what had happened. That as a result of Google’s actions, we might have to close down because I could not afford to lose money doing this (servers cost money, Dom needs to get paid and I need to earn a living).
Then, something amazing happened. The readers stood up – and kept us from going under. We managed to end-run Google! Our traffic is now higher than it was before they de-listed us and we are completely independent of them, financially.
It’s pretty cool!
In addition to advocating for liberty, I am also determined to spread the word about Google.
Fuck ’em – and feed ’em fish heads!
Startpage.com didn’t (doesn’t) have a vendetta against google like Scroogle did/does.
I’d bet using Google search results had something to do with that. DDG seems to operate fine but they use other search engine results as did startpage. What has happened to both actually is that DDG has rendered them obsolete.
Hi Ethan,
See my earlier comment in reply to Jacob.
They kicked our ranking down to 5 – the lowest possible – literally overnight. We had been at 3 and sometimes 2.
As an immediate result of that, the income we’d been earning from Google Adsense fell almost 100 percent. Literally. We went from earning enough to cover our servers, pay Dom (and me) to … nothing. Just like that.
We cleansed this site of all Google ads. We now survive on voluntary reader support and direct deals (no middlemen) with advertisers such as Austin Coins (ad on the top of the main page).
Government only does four things well: tell lies, waste (stolen) money, start wars and keep secrets.
You forgot “commit murder” (although you could argue that this is a sub-function of “start wars”).
Make that five things.
Mama Liberty, Kudos on the article. It hit a nerve. More women are thinking positively on self defense and defense of their family, so we are making a little progress.
As far as Libertarian Political Party: I would guess many on this site are if not full, borderline anarchists. I see a dilemma in support as of the LP as morally I do not agree with voting and government. A point of view is that it is less dangerous as it supports NAP and hopefully when a Libertarian gets elected, others will hold the elected person’s feet to the fire. Best case scenario, the libertarian will dismantle his area of government. Worrisome is that the elected will be corrupted and then more harm than good is done. under the banner of liberty.
Also libertarians are a great circle of friends to have as they are usually way ahead of the curve on economics, science, technology and philosophy .
Lastly, When people become disgusted they still look first to politics. I see the LP as the “Gateway Drug” to the study of liberty. With the abundance of great liberty material on the internet, this is our greatest advantage.
Thanks for all your good efforts to both Eric and MamaLiberty! Lynn
Dear LAB,
I hope you and other women will join the men here on the EPA ramparts.
I for one have never seen any reason why the fight for liberty should be an exclusively male endeavor.
Case in point, Ayn Rand.
When I think of the fight for liberty, I’m often reminded of Delacroix’s iconic painting, “Liberty leading the People.”
http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/july-28-liberty-leading-people
The allegory of Liberty is personified by a young woman of the people wearing the Phrygian cap, her curls escaping onto her neck. Vibrant, fiery, rebellious, and victorious, she evokes the Revolution of 1789, the sans-culotte, and popular sovereignty. In her raised right hand is the red, white, and blue flag, a symbol of struggle that unfurls toward the light like a flame.
Liberty wears a yellow dress reminiscent of classical drapery, held in at the waist by a belt whose ends float at her side… Her Greek profile, straight nose, generous mouth, delicate chin, and smoldering gaze are reminiscent of the woman who posed for the Women of Algiers in their Apartment. She stands noble and resolute, her body illuminated on the right, cutting a distinct figure among the men as she turns her head to spur them on to final victory. Her dark left side stands out against a plume of smoke. Her weight is on her bare left foot, visible below her dress. She may be an allegory, but this is a real battle, and she is caught up in the heat of the moment. The infantry gun with bayonet (1816 model) in her left hand gives her a contemporary look and a certain credibility.
And thank you, Lynn. 🙂
Thank you for this article. Being a fellow resident of virginia i want to tear my hair out when i reviewed both of these guys. like most democrats mcaulife has no ideas, rverything he says is rehashed socialist garbage that has consistently been shown just doesn’t work. but then we have my cucinelli on the other side who’d you’d figure as a repub would try to stay out of the economy instead he starts going down the family values track. give me a break. youare here ti protect my rights not infringe on them. so now he has alienated a life long republican who is convincing other repubs to not vote but instead go. vote thirf party. i wpuld love to see the msm and the main two parties explain how third parties got ten to twenty percent of the vote. i already have convinced abput 5 people to vote third party.
The only problem with that, John, is that no matter who you vote for, “government” always wins. What third party does NOT have a wonderful plan for your life and your money? How would any political party function without theft and coercion? If everything were voluntary, they would have nothing to do, and nothing to do it with.
And so, you are left with the “lesser evil,” which is ALWAYS evil after all. 🙂
Dear ML,
Agree. I used to vote for the “lesser of evils.”
No more. Voting merely lends the appearance of legitimacy to something that is fundamentally illegitimate.
I personally think it’s time to vote with LEad, but – everyone here knows that already. :-/
What third party does NOT have a wonderful plan for your life and your money?
And that was always the irony of the Libertarian Party, as well as its Achilles Heel: the abysmal gulf between the simple principles of libertarianism and the idea than any political party could implement them. Eventually even the party’s founder, Dave Nolan (may he rest in peace) realized this, even though it was only after he had walked away from his own creation when it became too corrupted by not-so-former neocons to be any longer tolerable. The rest of the people still trying to breath life into this unsustainable corpse still don’t get it.
” cucinelli on the other side who’d you’d figure as a repub would try to stay out of the economy”
Uhhhh….what would make anyone think that? There’s no difference I can discern between the “two” parties. We should make them wear uniforms so we can tell which party they belong to.
I don’t try to convince anyone to do as I do, but I don’t vote. That would be like admitting that they have any rightful authority over me.
You bet, John.
I feel exactly the same way. The good news is we do have the option of voting Libertarian in the VA governor’s race.
eric, we have a really large libertarian movement in Tx. but you’d never know it by the people who run for office. A woman in Abilene recently ran for some local office. She stood there and grasped for something to say, the old ‘deer in the headlights’ thing. ML casts aspersions on voting at all but thinking either party will go away because tens of millions of voters don’t vote is wishful thinking of the highest degree. We’ve seen already what that accomplished. I was conflicted last election but I voted anyway and yes, my candidate Gary Johnson didn’t win but at least I didn’t vote for Fric or Frac and he or some other libertarian might win one day. To think there will ever come a time in our lives where there is NO govt. is a real stretch of the imagination but a “limited” govt. which libertarians are trying to create beats hell out of anything we’ve had in my lifetime and even govt. like the 50’s would be a rock off everybody’s back in every way. If I’m able to get there, I’m gonna vote and vote Libertarian across the board. Even if a big douchebag gets an office, at least his/her party will be holding their feet much nearer the fire than the Republocrats.
Well, eight… we each must follow our own conscience in this as with anything else. 🙂
I spent at least 20 years active with the Libertarian Party, and the result was zero. Evil won, every single time – and has every time since then. I don’t see any difference.
Seems to me that if everyone who cared about liberty and justice would simply withdraw their consent and participation, we’d be a lot farther along.
Did you see this? By What Legitimate Authority? http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/?page_id=1294
But each to his/her own, of course.
ML. yes, I read that post….and agree with it. I have voted and not voted, both with seemingly no effect on the outcome or the process. Now I seem to have vacillated back to voting. My entire life has been an experiment so voting is just an extension.
Again, no reply button to your post, 8. Yes, I’ve voted, worked hard for the LP and was good friends with many candidates. Watched most of them turn into politicians. sigh
Thing is, that I finally realized that if I participate, I am giving at least part of my personal authority over myself to someone else. In a voluntary society, that wouldn’t be a big problem because I could take it back any time. Nobody would come hunt me down or throw me out of my home because I refused to pay “taxes” I never agreed to.
Unfortunately, the idea of ever finding the “right people” to control my life and take my property for uses they find more appropriate than my own plans just won’t ever resound with me again. As it is, the game is rigged, and it won’t make any real difference until the fat lady sings… sigh
I spent at least 20 years active with the Libertarian Party, and the result was zero. Evil won, every single time – and has every time since then. I don’t see any difference.
Seems to me that if everyone who cared about liberty and justice would simply withdraw their consent and participation, we’d be a lot farther along.
Yep. This goes back to what I said upthread. Trying to combat institutional evil (i.e., political government) with an equivalent brand of evil (i.e., politics-as-usual packaged in libertarian wrapper) is just plain self-defeating.
Seems to me that if everyone who cared about liberty and justice would simply withdraw their consent and participation, we’d be a lot farther along.
The problem is that we are a very small percentage of the population and we are scattered across the country. Thus individually when one of us withdraws consent we are easily dealt with by the powers who be and our neighbors cheer them on.
I don’t know if it is being cowardly or realistic. Ending up dead or in a prison cell as a good number of people have doesn’t seem like it would do much good in the long run. Not one of the federal government’s or even state government’s political prisoners has made anything better. Those who have died were simply kooks as far as the public is concerned.
I think it is just a slow process of planting seeds and as the system destroys itself people may remember what one of us said or wrote. That growing snowball is the only way I think things can change for the better. The system’s own failure can be the energy used to move liberty forward.
Dear Brent,
“Seems to me that if everyone who cared about liberty and justice would simply withdraw their consent and participation, we’d be a lot farther along. ”
It’s sort of a “belling the cat” problem.
The problem is that the those who care are currently vastly outnumbered by those who remained under the spell of “Authoritay.”
I hate the fact that it’s a numbers game. But it is. Therefore the only root cure is the deprogramming of a sufficient number of fellow citizens.
When that has been achieved, the “revolution” has already succeeded. No further action will is required.
The Capitol Building, White House, Supreme Court buildings can be auctioned off to private enterprise, and the money returned to the public.
What Brent P. wrote is spot on.
Dang, I’ve refused to take a drug test to get a job for nigh on twelve years now, with the thought that maybe the senseless war on Some drugs would end by now, or five years ago, that maybe managers talking to employees would win out, that even hand eye hand coordination tests before work would be a way, but, no.
I’ve made ends meet (not in the best of ways) and last week I gave in and I took a drug test. [You don’t pee in a cup anymore, as if a dog is sniffing your butt. As the pretty girl told me, “You suck on it until it’s gross and then stick it in the vial.” It was still just as revolting.]
I feel (see that HJ?) I feel like society has failed me. They went along to get along. And now that’s what I’m doing too. Regulations, taxes and a failure to innovate have funneled me into this avenue.
Fuck, and now I’m no better than them.?
Bevin wrote, “It’s sort of a “belling the cat” problem.”
Now that would be an interesting article, imho.
Problem is, those who wear the bells now, would pay no heed.
But the birds are damn happy.
Crap! I’ve got a bell around my neck!
“Get it off me!”
– Subject thrashes –
This is my worst day. …So far.
Hi RB,
No pee test for me, either.
These were just beginning to proliferate when I entered the work force in the ’80s. By the mid-90s, I was on my own (self-employed) and – so far – so good.
I mentioned once before that I wanted to volunteer for the local all-volunteer fire department. Not a paid job. I was offering to give them my time. A pee test was required. I said sorry, won’t do it. Just about everything that gets my back up about what America has become is embodied by the pee test:
Prior restraint/presumption of guilt/poor judgment/recklessness.
I’m a guy in my 40s, married, no criminal record, responsibly employed, own my home, resided in the community (a small one, where people know one another personally) for ten years.
I have given them no reason to suspect me of being “on drugs” or addled for any reason. Hell, looking at most of the guys at the station, I am pretty sure I’m in a lot better condition, physically, to carry a man out of a burning building or haul a fire hose – etc.
Yet they want me to pee n a cup just like a person in rehab – or in prison. To prove to them that I do not “do” drugs.
It is an incredibly degrading thing to ask a grown man – a man not an inmate of a prison or rehab clinic – to do as a condition of employment (to say nothing of having one’s time/work accepted on a volunteer basis).
And more:
Even if I did “do” drugs on my own time, what business is that of theirs?
They don’t demand I refrain from having a beer when I am in my own got-damned home. Not yet, anyhow.
Pot (and so on) are “illegal” and alcohol is not?
So?
Utterly immaterial as far as my on-job (or volunteer) performance is concerned.
It is also “illegal” to cheat on one’s taxes, to put an addition on one’s home without the requisite permission. Yet they do not demand proof of not doing these things (yet) as a condition of employment.
Now I’m all upset, dammit….
Replying to Eric et al, re Pee tests.
I’ve never cared, really.
But it’s mostly for lawsuits, I believe. A CYA for the PTB. And an excuse to keep certain people (“those evil druggies”) as modern niggers. (Race should obviously be irrelevant there, the term is used for THEIR view of US. Including those who pee and pass the test, BTW.)
Good thing they don’t yet mandate psych tests…. I’d pass the one for Police, probably, but fail for any civilized job. 😉
We ARE shaping up quite nicely for a French-style revolution. I fear the problem will be that _I_ will be “one of the rich”, “while” Poor Paris Hilton will be in the lynch mob. I’ll have an appointment with Madame Guillotine, and people like Gene Simmons, Bono (U2), Lars Ulrich / James Hetfield, Joan Rivers, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, etc, etc, etc – they’ll be kept safe one way or another. They’ll suddenly decalre bankruptcy, claim their lifestyle was too expensive, and “bond” with the “common man” – and get away.
Whereas, most of the people here, who work and produce – will be “the wealthy,” “oppressors of the people,” “the new aristocrats.”
Seriously, It’s “The world turned upside down.”
If ponies rode men and grass ate cows,
And cats were chased into holes by the mouse . . .
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside down.
In the factories, they use the threat of a drug test over Everyone. It hangs in the air like a hangman’s noose, everyday.
Years ago (in the 90’s) it was that way, and it’s still that way today.
If a person fucks up while working in a factory, what’s the first thing most people there say?
“They’re going to be sent off to get drug tested.”
People say that as if they were witch hunters in Salem, or something.
Spill something at work? “Ohp, it’s off to the drug testers, for you!” That’s THE first thing many people in factories say.
Get sloppy with your work? “Ohp, it’s off to the drug testers, for you!”
Act as if you might have made an error somewhere along the line? “Ohp, it’s off to the drug testers, for you!”
An accident of some kind occurs? Even if there’s no injuries involved, what’s the first thing the other employees say? “He got popped for a drug test.” and then shake their heads.
They don’t begin by asking why, or what happened, it’s just, “Ohp, it’s off to the drug testers, for you!” That! Must be THE reason.
It’s gone far beyond being about liability concerns from an insurance perspective.
It’s more like scapegoating.
It’s amazing to me how drug tests now dominate the conversations and attitudes about the workplace.
Years ago (in the 80’s) when drug tests were first implemented, I worked around chains and cranes and flatbed semis of steel.
The guys I worked with would spend their lunch breaks toking it up.
In spite of that, I felt completely secure with their abilities to do the job.
When drug tests were implemented and weeded out those guys, the ones that were left were absolute morons who had no clue, no common sense, and working with them scared the living shit out of me.
I no longer wonder why many products Made in America are junk, or why I see employees doing the stupidest of shit. In too many cases, the only ones who are willing and able to pass the drug tests, are the stoopedest MoFo’s ever.
And you wonder why the people at the store you shop at are so dumb?
Now you know.
The people who have passion for that job, and are competent, and will put up with the Bullshit, have been run out.
What’s left is some hollow shell of,… I don’t know, competency?
It sure fits in with the rest of what’s going on in the world today.
That’s my take anyway. …But nobody is asking me.
Roth, no shit. I’ll be the first to admit in almost industry including the oil field, there was rampant drug use and it nearly always benefited the employer. People did whatever got them safely through the shift, often tailoring their drug to the chore in front of them. Well, they got the drugs out of the patch, or at least the ones that lasted more than a few days so all that’s left are the worms. They’re still dying for good drillers and roughnecks but you gotta be a company man and pass that safety test on paper that has shit to do with anything you’re working with. I too used to work with cranes, heavy steel and trucks, loading, unloading, in fairly dangerous areas and people used their uncommon abilities to do it safely but then comes the most common of denominators, a clean piss test. Some jobs now require hair DNA drug tests, but not the jobs that absolutely have to get done every single minute. What a bunch of shits this country has turned into.
Morning, Eight –
Indeed. When you wrote:
“…you gotta be a company man and pass that safety test on paper that has shit to do with anything you’re working with”
I thought back to my little encounter with the volunteer FD.
The guy I was talking to about volunteering – one of the head guys – was obviously in poor physical condition; not a little bit overweight and not in a powerlifter kind of way. Just flabby. And because I know him personally, I happen to know he has – wait for it – bad knees.
The rest of the crew looked pretty sub-par, too. Couple of guys way too old for this kind of work. One scrawny guy who probably couldn’t squat the 45 pound bar at the gym. Several of them smoked. One 125 pound or so girl who had no business anywhere near this kind of job – but, hey, we believe in equal opportunity….
Now, I’m no Hercules, but I am in pretty good shape. I do not smoke. No problem running a couple of miles at a pretty good pace; I can pick up and carry my own weight up or down a flight of stairs. Etc. I would have been an asset to these ass clowns, if what they wanted was someone physically able to do the got-damned job. Instead, what they demand is a flaccid company man (excellent term) who voices no objection to stupidity and always does as he’s told. Fuck that – and fuck them!
“What a bunch of shits this country has turned into.”
Exactly.
@Roth – That is where you went wrong in a career choice. Should have been a politician or cop. Never tested. My guess is a lot of vacancies if they did though.
Eric, the FD would have been lucky to have you, but like you said, it’s not about who’s most fit for the job, it’s about who’s willing to play by the arbitrary rules set by the head honchos. They call the FD in NYC “New York’s Bravest.” Bravest, my ass. “New York’s Broadest” is more like it. And instead of “New York’s Finest,” the piggies should be “New York’s Fattest.”
Mama, I think the reply buttons only appear a couple levels into a thread. I think the idea is to keep the levels from getting too deep/complex. What I usually do is scroll up to the last button and use it.
I hear the Libertarian Party is promoting “America needs a 3rd Party.” To which I respond, “No, we need a 2nd Party. Right now we have 1 Party with 2 different names.”
Exactly. It’s the exact reason I refuse to “run for office” or involve myself with government unless absolutely necessary (I don’t vote but I pay all my taxes, obey laws, etc).
Here’s hoping more people wake the hell up to this fact.
Dear PTB,
I of course get what you’re getting at. But I’m sure you would agree that we really don’t need either a second or third party.
We need no parties at all, because we need no government at all.
Unless we are talking about an entirely new kind of party, akin to PDAs (Private Defense Agencies).
An internet “high-five” to you for plugging anarchy very well.
I’d love for there to be anarchy but to wake people up I try to ease them into it… I missed my chance on jumping straight into “anarchy is the answer” here. But luckily you’re here to “pick up the slack”.
While I’m thinking about it, I want to commend you for doing this all over the web. Personally I’ve only “seen” you on this website and youtube, but I tend to see you as the top rated comments on a lot of anarchy related youtube videos. Keep on with the keepin’ on.
Dear Jacob,
Thanks for the too generous praise. Much appreciated!
I sometimes see stuff on YT that irks me and try as I might, I can’t help venting my spleen!
Bevin, no reply button above, but I think you’ll understand my answering here.
You and I have no obligation to convert, teach or convince anyone else to live that way – no matter how much we may WANT to do that, or how hard we may try to reach others. In the end, they are responsible for themselves and their own choices/actions. Some people have to learn this the hard way, and some refuse ever to learn. All we can do, then, is figure out how we can defend ourselves from them.
The idea that it is somehow impossible to withdraw our consent is one of their vicious lies. It is possible. Large numbers of people do it all the time. What was the last figure for voluntary income tax filing? 40%? And most of those folks are not doing it because they understand “libertarian” principles, but from sheer anger and frustration, responding very naturally to the ever tightening noose. Even an evil, hardened thief hates it when someone steals HIS stuff. Believe it or not, freedom is the actual default setting for humans, but like a lot of other things it has been distorted and twisted so out of shape that only a few of us understand that. The “freedom” part has been separated from the responsibility part in so many people, but life eventually imposes exactly that… we are eventually responsible for our actions. The alcoholic simply cannot continue to stay drunk forever, no matter how many enabling projects the legislature passes. He/she either stops drinking or eventually dies, with all of the attendant horror.
Which is why it is important for those of us who love them, love liberty, to reach out to them, of course… but that does not imply responsibility for them, or any need to wait for them.
Many of us have found places to live with minimal government interference in our everyday lives, minimal exposure to the insane peer pressure of the Mrs. Grundies peering out their curtains, eager for some reason to “call the cops,” or CPS if she doesn’t like the way you raise your children. Come live in a place where nobody cares how tall your grass is, or if you have grass… where nobody cares if you own a gun, or how you choose to carry it. Withdraw consent by no longer having any need to peer over your shoulder or avoid a surveillance camera.
Those places still exist. I live in one.
We’ll wait out the storm and watch the non-voluntary government consume itself, and do our best to survive. Nobody can expect more. Utopia is not an option.
Dear ML,
You wrote,
Which is why it is important for those of us who love them, love liberty, to reach out to them, of course… but that does not imply responsibility for them, or any need to wait for them.
I assume you’re referring to my remark about the need to deprogram a sufficient percentage of the population within a society so that the minority of libertarians can be free?
Just to be absolutely clear, no externally imposed, binding obligation to participate in this campaign of deprogramming was implied.
That was merely my understanding of the problem and my solution, offered for your consideration. My take is that there is no one answer to “What must be done to promote liberty?” To me, a scattergun approach makes sense.
Libertarians disagree on how best to bring about a free society. Instead of seeing that as a bad thing, why not see it as a good thing?
Why not see it as not putting all our eggs in one basket? Why not see it as a diversified investment strategy? Why not see it as a market oriented approach to promoting liberty?
Once again, Bevin, no reply button…
But yes, exactly. Each of us must do what we think best to build and preserve our own life, liberty, happiness. Each of us must do what we feel is necessary to reach out, or not, as seems necessary. There is no one size, fits all answer to much of anything, and everyone will never agree on what liberty means, much less how to find it.
What I’m objecting to is the idea that “we” must somehow convince everyone, or “enough” of everyone, to make certain things happen… when we have no idea, actually, what might happen, or what will turn out to be the best for ourselves, let alone anyone else. What will happen, will happen. The best we can do for ourselves and others, I think, is to survive without violating our principles.
Let us demonstrate non-aggression, strong and unflinching self and mutual defense, and defense of the truly helpless. Let us live in peace, integrity and mutual cooperation as much as possible. And so forth. I’ve found that to be far more powerful persuasion, in many cases, than my words.
I can talk about my right to carry a self defense tool all day, but when I do carry it openly, every day, everywhere I go, without apology or embarrassment, it speaks for itself. 🙂
Dear ML,
“What I’m objecting to is the idea that “we” must somehow convince everyone, or “enough” of everyone, to make certain things happen… ”
As I see it, there are two ways to read that.
One. If something is perceived as the solution to a problem, then everyone must be compelled to sign on to it.
Two. if something is perceived as the solution to a problem, then everyone ought to be persuaded to sign on to it.
Obviously One has nothing to do with me or any other free market anarchist.
As for Two, yes indeed, I do firmly believe that deprogramming a critical mass of any given society is essential to liberating that society.
AND, I also know from spontaneous market order that how that deprogramming will take place is going to be highly unpredictable.
It is not either/or. It is both/and.
The scenario in the UK is much worse in that there’s one party with three names.
Roll on UKIP!
Ironic, isn’t it? Politicians are always talking about CREATING jobs — something they have absolutely no control over. But they DO have the power to DESTROY jobs, through minimum wage laws and endless regulation. And that’s ALL they do.
Untrue – sometimes the steal from us, too. 😛 (Sardonic humor)
Liveleak responses on MamaLiberty article The-Man-I-Might-Have-Killed are in…
Views: 948 | Comments: 25 | Votes: 8 | Favorites: 1
Do you gun freaks sit around all day and talk about your dicks as much as you do about guns ?
Posted 41 mins ago By HarryTuttle (240.70)
This is something everyone should know
Posted 2 hours ago By RANGER51262 (72.34)
I had a man force entry, so now he is doing 40 months. I chose to avoid detection, whilst talking to the emergency call taker. It took 10 minutes before he was in custody. I have learnt to appreciate my adrenaline not fear it.
A man got I think 3 years for confronting a guy tagging his fence, & running after him, the guy was stabbed once, now the home owner is doing time.
Posted 4 hours ago By Monique Jones (506.40)
Good on you – you saved that car from being ransacked or stolen. I hope that car appreciates how you were forced to violates God’s first commandment to save it from certain harm. Sometimes cars can be very ungrateful, and I sincerely hope your car is not one of them.
Posted 5 hours ago By old_laughing_lady (2.00)
@old_laughing_lady
You know the old saying, take care of you car and it will take care of you.
Posted 5 hours ago By Dorpen (230.70)
I also use birdshot in my self defense shotgun. The one in the chamber is 7 1/2 bird shot, the next four are 00 buck. It’s all up to the criminal whether he chooses to die or not.
Posted 5 hours ago By onepercent (1043.60)
@onepercent Glad to see I’m not alone. First shell in the .45 ACP is bird shot, but the rest are hollow points.
Posted 2 hours ago By TheSidewinder (81.80)
Here’s how I see it:
Mistake 1) Having a useless, small, yappy, fucking dog.
Mistake 2) Having a single load shotgun
Mistake 3) Not using your only shell for a kill-shot
Should have blasted the oxygen thief, and gone back upstairs for a peaceful night sleep while the coyotes feast on the sack of shit you so gracefully splattered in the street.
Posted 5 hours ago By KildaBlax (121.00)
Should have let him get closer and ventilated him right in the middle. No telling how many other victims you would have saved.
Posted 6 hours ago By mvlazysusan (421.10)
Would be an interesting read but here in new zealand we cant use guns as self defense or even to scare people off from stealing our property. Someone was robbing a farm owner and the farmer shot into the guys truck to stop him and got charged and the robber got off with a slap on the wrist.
Posted 6 hours ago By Silentgal (26.20)
@Silentgal We are entitled to self defense, but it has to be like with like basically, & we then are expected to take any chance we get to get away.
I prefer not to scare them off, but to let them remain in the act, & let them be arrested red handed.
When I had a man force entry(he was arrested on site)a cop spotted I had a Polynesian war club(for decoration), & I was told “You should have used that.”
Posted 4 hours ago By Monique Jones (506.40)
Cue the ‘progressive intellectuals’ with their pejoratives and ad hominem in 3…2…1
Posted 6 hours ago By planestrainsautomobiles (898.54)
To all anti-gun left-wingnut politically correct assholes….just watching this video doesn`t mean you will actually get shot with a gun.
Posted 6 hours ago By Stage-Right (294.08)
@Stage-Right
Well obviously you’re just a racist…….
😉
Posted 6 hours ago By planestrainsautomobiles (898.54)
@Stage-Right
What video’s that ?
Posted 6 hours ago By lauriebhoy (1456.51)
@planestrainsautomobiles…..;)
Posted 6 hours ago By Stage-Right (294.08)
@lauriebhoy…..Keep looking. Take your time, there`s no chance you`ll get shot.
Posted 5 hours ago By Stage-Right (294.08)
My choice would have been a Crossman 1377 pellet gun to get his attention and make a mark, then a Taurus 9mm in case he came forward.
Posted 6 hours ago By xfer42 (302.78)
The least thing i wanna do is learn important things from a woman.
Posted 6 hours ago By qualia (364.90)
@qualia
Jews and Muslims are more alike than different.
Posted 6 hours ago By nonad (681.70)
@nonad Ok moms boy.
Posted 6 hours ago By qualia (364.90)
@qualia
The sow that bore you never taught you much .
Posted 6 hours ago By lauriebhoy (1456.51)
@lauriebhoy Yep you know me more than anyone.
Posted 6 hours ago By qualia (364.90)
I see there are quite a few comments from outside the US. Just wish they could come visit and talk with me as we walked out in the woods or grasslands. I think they would see things from an entirely different perspective if they could do that.
A tourist from back east once was scolding me for carrying a gun. After some conversation about it, I asked her what she would do if someone ran toward us holding a knife and obviously attacking. She looked thoughtful and said, “get behind you.” Then she grinned ruefully and went away. Not sure I convinced her, but I hope she thought about it for a long time.
And that’s just ONE of the reasons I carry openly. What people don’t see, they won’t think about. What they won’t think about, they will never understand or accept. And I don’t care if half the people I encounter laugh themselves silly or are as uncomfortable as hell. That’s their problem.
Where do you live where you can do that & not be instantly gunned down by the police in the interest of your safety?
I live in rural NE Wyoming. Everyone here owns guns, and many carry them. We don’t have any “cops,” just a few peace officers. Nobody is stopped and searched, let alone at random. I’ve been with a person who was stopped for “speeding,” and the officer merely asked what the gun was… and we discussed the relative merits of his favorite vs. mine for a while.
A few tourists and one or two “transplants” from gun grabber places object to the gun occasionally, but most either don’t notice it or recognize that I am completely within my rights. Often I get a wide grin and the incredulous question, “Is that LEGAL?” I offer them my card, detailing why I carry, and why they really should. http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/Guncard.htm
One encounter stands out in my mind. An elderly Hispanic couple (rare here) were coming out of our mercantile store one day as I was going in. The gentleman looked at me with wide eyes and a big grin, then said to his wife, “AIE, CARUMBA!!! Pistolera!!! I offered my hand with a smile, and he took it with great respect.
Hi Mama,
I just got to your thoroughly excellent column. Needless to say, I’m glad the cretin did you now harm. Some of the comments, though, were appalling. I often wish I had moved us to Wyoming – as I am becoming more and more convinced the Cloverism is a function of population density. The more people in any given area, the higher the percentage of Clovers. Inevitably, they dominate the area.
No reply button in your comment, Eric, so I’ll make one here.
Yes indeed, population density surely has something to do with it. Only about 5,000 people in the whole county here, and only about 2500 in the largest town. The weather certainly has something to do with it as well, and lack of welfare, “public” housing, etc. Very little to attract most parasites, though we do have far more “government” than a lot of other places because they rob the mineral producers instead of taxing the people so much. That government, however, is pretty much content to run around in circles (legislature only meets 40 days a year) and leaves most of us alone to do our own thing. Outside the town, there is no zoning, building “codes,” business licenses or much of anything else to tell you how to live and charge you “fees” for the privilege.
Come on out and visit sometime. I’d be tickled to give you the 50 cent tour. 🙂 Not to mention the fact that Wyoming beef can’t be beat.
@Eric – My #2 rule for living in the USSA. When you put “too many rats in a cage” (city) they will start eating each other.
#1rule is you “can’t talk logically to a drunk or a politician”. Neither one is listening.
I have a hard time believing NE Wyoming only has peace officers rather than cops. They don’t participate in asset forfeiture and are joined at the hip with the feds in sharing the loot?
Anyway, I thought to myself, self: my #2 rule for living in the USSA. When you put people under the thumb of government and the unjust laws that result, only then does “too many rats in a cage” (city) transmorgify into cannibalism. And it happens in the sparsely populated areas in the country too. It’s like Kool-Aide, just add statism. It’s stronger in the jug, but weaker in a glass of partially melted ice, but it’s still a glass full of… statism.
The optimist in me keeps the idea of a city of Panarchy front and center. Someday, maybe?
Roth, when it comes to that “war on some drugs”, “seizure and forfeiture” dominates all else the in pea brains of those with badge and gun. They’re literally knocking each other down for their piece of the prize.
RothbardianamericanHelot , utopia isn’t an option, of course. But no, there are no “cops” in this little corner of the world. No SWAT teams, no midnight raids, not much of any “police” activity at all. Traffic stops in town rarely, mostly resulting in “warnings.” There are just seven “officers” in all, enough for two each shift and one on call.
The sheriff is far more concerned with tracking cattle and hay thieves than much of anything else. He’s tickled with us who carry, and I had been doing the CC classes for him for years… until Wyoming got rid of the concealed carry “license.” I still have a few who want the “permit” to travel into the badlands of Colorado and beyond.
No, our excess government, mostly “schools” is paid for by the tax and fees extorted from the energy industry, the coal, gas, and oil producers, and many other mineral extractors. Far too much of the land here is “owned” by the feds and state, so the governments claim the lion’s share – as they do everywhere… just part of why those things cost too much.
I live in Southeastern Arizona, in a rural area on the outskirts of Tucson, and plenty of people here openly carry all the time (myself among them) without any interference from porcine predators.
lib, so what’s the weather like there right now? I know, I can’t stay on topic but it’s 71° a little after noon, high humidity and wind of course and we’re freezing ha ha. Dang, I hate it when it gets below 80°.
I live in Glendale, AZ and have walked my dog with my .357 at my side only to have neighbors wave at me. I’ve even done it wearing steel toe boots, work pants, and a wifebeater …I still get waves and smiles. Usually I just pocket carry my .38 J frame.
As much as the pessimist inside me thinks society will all come crashing down, and that’s going to suck big time, I don’t think it will be too bad here in AZ.
I’ve recently started talking to some of the neighborhood dad’s around me and although I think they’re still stuck in the “Republicans good, Democrats bad” mindset, they’re all on the same page about what “we” will do if there are “welfare riots”, which I optimistically equate to similar scenarios that we haven’t discussed, like the dollar crashing. Thinking about this and bragging about it here on the internet actually just kinda made my day…. Also all my coworkers own guns, (I now work for a very small company with a total of about 12 employees), although none of us are allowed to carry while we’re on the clock it’s pretty comforting to think about.
Dear Jacob,
Music to my ears. I really think the open carry movement is important.
It’s the exact antidote for Eric Holder’s strategy:
US Attorney General Eric Holder:
“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes. You know, when I was growing up, people smoked all the time. Both my parents did. But over time, we changed the way that people thought about smoking, so now we have people who cower outside of buildings and kind of smoke in private and don’t want to admit it.”
At the end of this clip, Holder says anti-gun ads should run every day, and we need to “really brainwash people to think about guns in a vastly different way.”
Widespread open carry desensitizes people to the bullshit “Look out! He’s got a gun!” mindset.
Forgot to include the link.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-atty-general-we-need-to-really-brainwash-people-to-think-about-guns-in-a-vastly-different-way/
Eric Holder is a sick puppy, ain’t he? He obviously relishes the thought of formerly free people “cowering outside of buildings” in order to have a smoke.
I’ve seen that quote and wish the youtube video I saw it in (it was the video where he says that dumbass quote) but the youtube account was deleted. This particular video was called something like “Why gun control is for a UN takeover” or something like that. I really wish I could find that video again…it was about 20 minutes long of politicians saying obscene stuff (like the eric holder quote) then it would cut to scenes of ex-military preaching about how ashamed they are of the government and scenes of Iraqi parents crying over their dead babies (who died at the hands of “our” military)…then it would cut to a scene of politicians saying “only police and military should own guns”… Ugh I miss that video! I really need to start downloading and saving all the good youtube videos I see…
Dear Ed,
It’s the authoritarian, nay, totalitarian mindset.
As many have correctly noted, “gun control,” so-called, is not about controlling guns per se. It’s about controlling people. Since people with guns cannot be easily controlled, proclaiming that one is “attempting to control guns” is a no brainer.
Funny how people like Holder actually believe they are “liberal” and “progressive.”
What always kills me is the glaring contradiction between the egalitarian “We’re all equal” rhetoric and the obvious elitist classification of human beings into a ruling class who can be trusted to have guns, and mere mundanes who obviously cannot.
Thanks, Jacob–for reminding me we still have many decent compatriots.
Two things came to mind when you talked about your AZ open carry experience (as an aside, why the hell doesn’t Texas have open carry??)…
My neighbors all have guns, some have many. Good to know if SHTF. Hope they don’t try a Katrina in my neighborhood; there will be resistance.
Second good news: as a “team-building” (god how I hate that term) exercise last month, the company I’m contracting with took the whole programming/testing team to lunch and a shooting range for the day!
Yeah. Thirteen of us; four had never shot before. The nine who had brought two or three guns each, and helped tutor the four newbies.
The best part was seeing the newbies’ reactions; the UI designer, a woman in her early 30’s who’d never shot before, had a broad grin on her face as she emptied 10 round out of my .45 USP…”I like this one!” she said.
The big Indian guy picked up my Glock and put five rounds in a five inch circle from ten yards–the first five rounds he’d ever shot. Some guys are just naturals.
Needless to say, the Indian guy and the UI girl have both bought weapons already and are well on their way to a proper home armory. Once people get over the mystery and media-induced fear, they realize what we all did…it’s a useful tool, a wonderful bit of human ingenuity, a finely crafted machine, and a load of fun to boot.
The UI girl, who was born and raised in Egypt, said as we were leaving–“You realize the mistake you’ve made? You’ve given an Arab a gun!” My sides hurt from laughing.
As we were walking out of the range, I saw a sight to leaven the heart. At the counter where they were selling AR’s, a group of seven or eight Korean-looking girls, no older than 25, were checking out two different AR’s. I turned to one of the guys and said “When you see hot Asian chicks checking out AR’s to buy, you’ve won the 2nd amendment fight.”
re: Methylamine:
Google “Hello Kitty AR” 😉
Perfect for hot Asian chicks…
And tweens, teens, adult women.
(The pink ones sort of throw me off for personal use, though.)
Dear meth,
Don’t forget, Korean shop owners in LA were “first to fight” during the LA race riots!
Of course they weren’t “hot Asian chicks.” LOL.
It’s all good. All exactly the scenario we want, and Eric Holder doesn’t.
Dear Eric,
Ditto “incentives” for (favored/connected) businesses with (to use Ayn Rand’s excellent term) pull.
‘Murican “Champions of Democracy” routinely denounce officials in “Communist” China for abuse of “guanxi” (Chinese for “relationships” or “pull’).
But the only difference is the terminology. Governments everywhere are all the same. Incorrigibly corrupt.
Tian xia wu ya yi ban hei. Crows everywhere are just as black.
Eric said “But he does not create anything. He takes from the creators – without whom he’d have nothing to redistribute.” Or as Mr. Obama put it “You didn’t create that.” Meaning the collective did, so now you personally owe the collective.
In 1775 King George got his “take” from the creators. Who gets it today? We get the government we deserve, or as Ayn Rand put it “Brothers, you asked for it.”
“He takes from the creators – without whom he’d have nothing to redistribute.”
Good words to seriously think about. Good words to paste on the bathroom mirror as a daily reminder of who gets what from your (labors) paycheck.
Dear Gary,
A friend sent me this, which I then reblogged.
The Wealth of Nations
posted by Bevin Chu
January 31, 2013
Taipei, China
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!
@Bevin – Plagiarist! 🙂 Of course those are original truths aren’t they?
I just got done with Ayn Rand’s “Return of the Primitive”. Mostly written in the 60’s and 70’s, it should be every libertarian’s current a reference book of exactly how we got here and what the Eco, Collectivist, Egalitarian, Political Left, and Diversity mongers real motives and techniques are. An amazing read that could have been written yesterday, much less 30+ years ago.
PS – Finished the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Good story. It would have to be shortened quite a bit to make into the movie. A lot of moving parts to the plot. Have you read any of Neal Stephenson’s works? (Similar is some ways, but updated with more Internet and nano tech. The Diamond Age is a good one dealing with Hong Kong and futuristic China.
Dear Gary,
The Millennium Series was too long for a single feature film. The Swedish film trilogy was about the right length though. it was actually slightly better than the remake.
The original French Nikita was even more so. Much better than the Hollywood remake.
Even the great Scorsese failed to surpass the original Hong Kong film, “Infernal Affairs.” Neither as nuanced or even edgy as the original.
A real shame the author of the Millennium Series passed so soon. The three are so good I want to know how the other seven would have turned out.
Maybe someone else who knows the author and who spoke to him about his concept for the series arc can finish the series for him.
Whatever Rand’s flaws, when she was right, she was right. Even though I have moved further away from “Orthodox Objectivism,” I still consider maybe 3/4 of what she wrote dead on.
Stephenson. Diamond Age. Not familiar with either. Will look into it!
Going to check out the Israeli series “Hatufim” on which “Homeland” is based. Two seasons were shot.
Bevin, “The Departed” didn’t surpass “Infernal Affairs”, true, but there were some great lines. My daughter has been saying, “Fackin fiah fightahs are a bunch of homos” for years now, everytime we pass a car with the FF tags. I’ll look at her and she says “Well, they Aahhh!” We both repeat the line, “There is NO ONE more full of shit than a cop” after any encounter with a member of the chubby blue line.
I think I should add “Infernal Affairs” to my Netflix queue again. I have a dvd copy of Scorcese’s version. They’re both good.
Dear Ed,
I agree! The Departed was still worth making. I’m glad Scorsese went ahead and did it.
Otherwise we would not have gotten to see and hear Mark Wahlberg say those ROFLMA lines.
Dignam: This is unbelievable. Who put the fuckin’ cameras in this place?
Police Camera Tech: Who the fuck are you?
Dignam: I’m the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.
Ed, my statist sister thought ‘infernal affairs’ was just too good, sorta like the “chubby blue line” so I watched it. I suppose millions do it but I always liked anointing it “infernal affairs” since that’s how it seemed by the end of the damned movie. And just for the record, “They’re yankees, who cares?”.
Good tip about the Ayn Rand book, I’ll have to check that out.
On “the girl with the dragon tattoo”… watch the original movie, starring Naomi Rapace, I didn’t read the book but I thought it was a very good movie. I refuse to watch the american remake version. (the original is available on Netflix).
Ed, have her call me and leave a message on my phone I can play whenever I think about those sorry, statist shits. I try but it still comes out as a drawl. You can take a boy out of the country…….
Garysco,
Neal Stephenson has been one of my favorite authors since the early 90s. He writes his works longhand using fountain pens. The Baroque Cycle, a historical fiction trilogy, marks the nadir of his written works IMO. The guy is a true wordsmith. The three Stieg Larsson/Lisbeth Salander novels were also very well done, especially for anybody who has any connection with Swedish life. IMO, Ayn Rand was a bit of an enigma. Her philosophy was interesting, her background was amazing, but she was an extremely flawed and internally inconsistent person. That said, she and others of “libertarian” leanings have and do properly point out that the majority in “advanced cultures” are essentially parasites….
Allow me to throw a wildcat into the discussion – UN-Cull Sam
WildCat runs 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits. WildCat is being developed by Boston Dynamics and is funded by DARPA.
LS3 Testing in Desert near Twentynine Palms, CA
If this was on Mars, I might feel differently. Nothing’s too good for our brave boys on Mars, they’d say.
Alien Resurrection – Alternate Ending
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnmMksVK8pY
A Clone and a Cyborg waxing philosophically before the ruins of Paris and the remains of Gustave Eiffel’s tower he built for the Exposition Universelle of 1889.
Tor,
Do androids dream of Electric Sheep? is the first thing that came to mind after your last line… 😉
Ha! But electric wool would REALLY itch. LOL
hahaha.
“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick
electric sheep – with sound – fractal animation
electric sheep – no sound – fractal animation
Deep Mandelbrot Set Zoom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGaio87u3A
– Do jobs really exist? look beyond simplistic superficiality of enslavers and enslaved. how much value are you creating. for whom. for what. why? to what ends?
It makes for a Pleasant Tingle.
someone hand me a lightbulb? 😀
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/user_images/2223000/axemnas-2223421_447_330.jpg
Jean, if they were like Data they’d like REAL sheep.
Wow, that robot cool. I used to live out in 29 Stumps. Great place for catching lizards and riding dirt bikes!
Dear Tor,
Again, the most “paranoid” scenario is never as improbable as one might assume.
Ideas have consequences. Really nasty ideas have really nasty consequences.
The most dystopian visions of totalitarian states using technology, funded by our own wealth, to spy on us, enslave us, and slaughter us, is hardly “tin foil hat paranoia.”
It is closer to a forgone conclusion.
Why can’t they take the same amount of money they take, but build infrastructure and useful things with it. Why do we need office buildings full of talkers and meeting havers?
Any nationstate that focused only on doing and never on talking and deciding would soon surpass every other nation in existence.
I remember watching The Terminator twice in a row in 1984 with my friend in high school. Even then it seemed the machines didn’t rise up spontaneously, but they were programmed either by conscious choice or unconscious urge by humans.
Hey buddy, you got a dead cat in there?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-o-4txOiVE
Nested dolls of evil intent. Killing machines built by killing machines. A story and movie made by a Kanadian Kalifornian that wants you to see technology as inherently evil. Also making Titanic and Avatar. His little agendas like dolls nested in other larger agendas ad infinitum.
So many false choices. Mine for unobtanium. Live in home tree. There is no conflict Jake Sully.
Celine Dion – Live At Pandora Planetarium
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZAY2tGeLZU
Everything Wrong With Avatar in 4 Minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq00mCqBMY8
Consider locusts. Are they not living weapons of war? What other purpose do they serve?
Best line in a move – Gov. Arnold in his slow Austrian voice “I let him go”.
Tor, why don’t they send money to infrastructure? Because it all goes to to big bankers and war contractors for very expensive blow-up things that get used once and need to be replaced by the newer more expensive model. That is where the real profit is made.
Unless it is in a “no bid” third world country we destroyed with those same bombs. They get new roads, bridges and schools at your expense. I mean how else could the Pentagon just loose a few billion dollars ( http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/26/world/la-fg-iraq-funds-20100727 ) and give the Bart Simpson “I don’t know man” excuse.
If a road or bridge is built, I’m okay with it. Schools however, are useless office buildings, where nothing but pointless rituals occur.
Most of what happens in an schools and office buildings is completely useless. Like crows or hamsters, rearranging the contents of their nests. No rhyme or reason to it.
As far as Commando, it seemed to be one pointless action scene after another. Action scene is a misnomer, because in an action scene, there is no action.
A hits B. B hits A. At the end B is bloodier than A. Or B is dead. Nothing has occurred.
All fights are pointless animal activity with no purpose, things end the same way they begin.
Kind of like this chicken fight in a family guy cartoon.
Maybe they have a few minutes to fill, and no one has a joke. Why not animate a few minutes of filler?
There is nothing more pointless or meaningless than animated fights. Or soldiering or policing. Nothing is accomplished whatsoever. Someone is injured or dies for no reason. Who cares?
At least when an animal dies, you get a meal out of it. Any humans who willing fight or make war deserve their meaningless injuries and deaths.
If so inclined, pitch in dig a hole and throw ’em in. Do it quickly though, why waste your precious finite life on nobodies, hurry up and get back to doing something with purpose and meaning.
Chicken Fight – Family Guy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4WGQmWcrbs
“Why can’t they take the same amount of money they take, but build infrastructure and useful things with it.”
Because the only people who can legitimately decide what those “useful things” might be are the people who actually create and own the wealth. People in voluntary association can build all the “infrastructure” THEY believe they need and want.
I’m betting that thing goes down like a busted-rod Yugo when shot with a steel-core 50BMG round.
Looks like it’s somewhat hardened; 5.56 and maybe 7.62 w/out penetrators might not stop it.
Not much stops 50BMG though.
The government desperately needs full employment, primarily to keep tax money coming in (since they rely on labor for income instead of consumption), and secondarily to keep the masses busy so they don’t notice when the pigs line up at the trough, or the “freedoms” are stomped by various 3 letter agencies.
The problem is, of course, it’s impossible for the government to create productive jobs, only make-work and overpriced infrastructure projects.
I’m reading Steve Job’s biography. I have yet to see anything at all about the government (granted I’m only about 1/3 of the way through). According to an Apple (biased) web page, the company has created about 600,000 jobs:
http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/
The problem is, that the next Steve Jobs is being regulated out of existence. Start up companies are being saddled with stupid accounting rules designed to keep the status quo companies in power, buying out small companies instead of allowing them to grow and displace the old guard. When people talk about what makes America exceptional, it was always that the little guy with the good idea could take a chance and get rewarded for the effort. The government even made it “safe” to experiment through limited liability and easy bankruptcy rules that wouldn’t destroy a person’s lives. Now that these laws have been eroded away in order to protect the incumbents and big bankers there’s no real innovation, and it’s doubtful we’ll see the kinds of innovating tech advancement in America again.
Remember, todays startup in a garage is tomorrows Apple, Cisco or Microsoft.
How to create jobs? Just leave people alone to conduct their business. That’s really all that is required. And no, it’s not perfect either, but it’s a hell of a lot better than any of the alternatives.
I had a small business in 1975, out of my back yard, that grew out of a chance encounter with someone who needed a service nobody else happened to be offering right then and there. I was able to perform that service, and word of mouth quickly spread to the point where I seriously needed help if I was to eat, sleep and take care of my young family.
So, I looked into the requirements to hire a helper. She wasn’t interested in working “off the books,” as I was, so I had to find out what it would cost to go the whole nine yards.
Even that far back it was horrifying, and even if I had been willing to take out loans and put my family in hock, I could not have seen my way clear to jump through all the hoops and expose myself or them to such liability.
In the end, I sold the stock I’d accumulated and created, gave notice to all my unhappy customers, and closed forever. I have dozens of ideas for small businesses, but none will ever see the light of day, and I will never be able to hire anyone, until there is a truly free market.
Thank you for sharing that story. The unawakened public has no idea the things that would be available to them if the government simply either didn’t exist or at least just got out of the way of entrepreneurs. Honest employment, virtually free education from employers who would love nothing more than to teach their employees how to run the business, actual relationships with their employer as opposed to the “suits” and the “workers” like found in all large corporations today… And hey, it’s only getting worse!
I have dozens of ideas for small businesses, but none will ever see the light of day, and I will never be able to hire anyone, until there is a truly free market.
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again: the only free market in today’s Amerika is the underground/black market.
Always has, always will be.
The sheeple public would gasp upon the thought, but people selling things to other people, with no threat of violence involved, is the definition of freedom (at least it is in my “crazy” head).
Sure, drug dealers may sell drugs to kids… but it’s up to the community to beat those faggot’s asses into the ground, or lynch them while singing the national anthem. The issues of society, in my highly opinionated opinion, boil down to the parents not playing their proper role in society. This is coming from me, who doesn’t have any kids and doesn’t plan on having any… but if I did reproduce, and I found out their was some neighborhood troublemaker negatively influencing my offspring… a “lesson learning” would be in their very near future… This is not to be confused with “calling the cops” or “dialing 911″….it would be me, some fucked up child, and their ignorant parents, getting “taught a lesson” by my hands/tools.
No judge/jury/police needed. Just “neighborhood dads” and their highly opinionated opinions.
If those “neighborhood dads” think that “they” would like to have themselves some drugs… that is there choice. But the pieces of shit that would sell those drugs to children…. bad fucking things upon them.. (much to the applause of the now “awakened” neighborhood”. Fuck the government!
“…Let’s buy guns and kill those kids, with dads and moms. With nice homes, 401ks, and nice ass lawns…Those privileged as fuck gotta learn that we ain’t taken no shit…”
This coming from a “younger” person who know that it will all come crashing down upon those rich parents who give their children “free” money just because “they” are too scared to tell their “oh so precious” children to work for themselves to get money to buy their drugs/gas money/freedom/etc. for themselves. Wolfgang.
Right on, Jacob.
All this endless talk about “our” children by parents who refuse to personally take care of theirs.
I don’t get it.
I don’t have kids myself, but I do have animals – and I take care of them better than many of these breeders (my term for the above, since parent is not warranted) do their crotchfruit. I do not let them run amok; I protect them from predators (the chickens). I do not expect others to feed them. Or to make sure they don’t run into the street to get hit by a car. The vet bills are my problem – not my neighbors’ problem. I don’t ask them to “help” with them – or else.
And why? Because they are my animals. I chose to assume responsibility for having them.
Why doesn’t the same reasoning apply to human children? Why does some random stranger’s deliberate choice to have unprotected sex impose an open ended, unlimited in principle obligation enforceable at gunpoint on me to “help” pay for the results of that act?
Someone, please explain it to me…
I sold my small internet business in 2000 for exactly the same reason; to grow, I’d need to hire people.
And THAT, dear readers, is a nightmare you don’t want to contemplate in Amerika.
The government’s fist is out–both fists. One with which to beat you, the other with which to grab a fistful of cash every time you so much as blink.
And that’s in “business-friendly” Texas.
I’m an independent contractor now; my LLC pays me and only me.
I’m wondering if now is the right time to stop communicating with the Federal Reserve’s private collection agency, the IRS. How much longer until the collapse is so obvious they don’t have the personnel to go after the small fry?
I’m also wondering again about leaving.
My wife and I went to the Alamo Open Carry Rally on the 19th; it was excellent seeing more than a thousand heavily armed patriots milling around peacefully with AK’s, AR’s, HK’s, and an assortment of other hardware slung on their shoulders.
But when I see my beautiful kids, I think–do I have to dangle them in the lion’s mouth to prove a point, that this is MY country, not the psychopaths’? Or should we GTFO while the gettin’s good, take all the money we can in gold and bitcoins, and let our ungrateful countrymen get all the Hell they’ve been begging for?
I’m getting tired of talking to my idiot neighbor; a rich guy, millions to his name, CEO of a multi-hundred-million-dollar company…who doesn’t want to talk about all those negative things, he just wants to watch fuuuuuuhtbaaaall and pretend it’s happy-happy Santa Clause America. Who tells me how wonderful it is that “our guys” got the bombers in Boston. You. Fucking. Idiot.
But then I see those people at the rally, with that lively fire in their eyes; and I know, if it starts, they’ll defend themselves.
Where else in the world are those people, armed with those weapons?
Can I risk bringing my weapons to Chile? I will not be disarmed. But having them here means a great probability I’ll HAVE to use them–and it’s not something I relish.
Thoughts?
meth, before the govt. and lawyers got all our money I was constantly looking for another place to go. Having gone to Mexico for a couple weeks and stayed with friends ten years ago I knew that restrictive, no guns, no fun, you’re a friggin Gringo and we’re gonna screw you relentlessly attitude(I have experienced that same attitude for over 40 years hauling freight to border towns) would be a major adjustment, one I didn’t really know I could pull off. I could imagine myself in a firefight with the Army over blowing my top after getting screwed on the price of beer one too many times. The upside is I’d have lots more ammo but no backup and one of the first things I had offered to me when I visited was hand grenades for sell. Been my whole damned life in this country, not a single person has offered me a “pineapple” and get to Mexico and it’s me, me, no me, everybody trying to sell me a hand grenade and M-16 or AK. I was seriously considering the move and simply asked So, what does an AR go for here? Evidently, ten years ago they went for $300 from everybody. Guy gets me to the side, away from all the rest of the bidders(these are just family friends as in regular family)and says, Gimme $300 and I’ll be back in a little bit with a new gun. How much ammo do you want? Well, it’s obviously not a problem to get armed but staying that way wasn’t something I wanted to think about too much. A week later I am dogged by a young gang member late at night just walking through town back to where my friends lived and nearly get into a knife fight. No doubt he would have hurt me but I would have cut his head off and then probably been slammed in prison to never be seen again. One of the family member’s women had a husband in prison and it seemed to be a common thing but then again, it’s real damned common in Tx. as you know.
I searched the world for some place and some eastern bloc countries didn’t seem too bad but you get lots of bs-ing on some of the international living sites too. Almost anywhere in S.America seemed to suck in general ways of freedom. Had I taken this route 30 years ago things might have been better but 10 years ago is a different animal. Could I have taken my bass boat to Mexico? Sure, and pay somebody every day to keep it or just have them killed which seems to be the choices but then there’s the thing about having any wealth there of any sort. The last night I was there the big gates were dummy locked and my pickup had two big gouges in the tool box where somebody had tried to break in and even the caps off my SS tire valve stems were gone, sheesh. $3 retail in the states. Of course I had to buy two new sets to get the right threads again. I would have just paid them to leave it alone. So that’s how things sat in Mexico then and it’s way worse now, traveling is fairly dangerous. And the US has made life hell now in countless other countries, just literally holds their feet to the fire for every little thing. Oh, there were good places in some respects to live if you had lots of money. I don’t know about how I’d make the change from going to simply going hunting or fishing any time I wanted to not doing those things at all. I guess you’d eventually find a way to go fishing but owning a firearm, probably not a good idea unless you just had one for self protection and NOBODY but you and your knew. BTW, congrats on attending the gun rally. I had friends there, said it was a good time, lots of people, lots of pigs taking everybody’s picture with facial recognition cameras including the news crews who are in the pockets of said pigs. One other thing you said, Texas just dropped out of the top ten “friendly” business states that I’m sure traces right back to DC. On another note, I wanted to ask you what you thought about the new Hep C “cure”? I’ve heard some people have a bad reaction of dying but I guess it’s that way with any cure. Cure you or kill you my parents always said.
Excellent points.
I suppose the government grass may be greener on the other side, but the people who have adapted to their version of society are just as bad (if not worse) than here in america. This is sinking in now that I’m thinking of how the rest of the world views americans…I’d have to learn another language and pretend to give a shit about their culture, my ego will not allow for much of the latter. Not that I don’t respect other cultures, but it makes me think of the illegal immigrants I work around that get their asses hassled all day long by the white workers over where to eat lunch (You boys want tacos again? ha…ha…ha….) or what type they’ll do on the weekends (You boys scrapping some mexican gold, aka copper?)…. not that any of those statements aren’t exactly false, my pride and ego would get ground down but the heel by the people of whatever “awesome” country I had in mind to run away to.
Yep, my guns, precious metals, and ego are staying here….’MURICA!!
8, I’m with you. I ain’t going anywhere. This is me. Right here.
Get out if you can. This is a complete 180 from my position a few months ago. If you can be financially successful somewhere else, do it.
That said, although I’d love to run away, I’m staying in America. The thing I’m doing on the shorter term (within the year) I’m fixing up my house, selling it, and “running for the hills” and living in a cheap trailer home on the outskirts of town. I can commute to work in the city, so finding a job won’t be an issue, but I’ll be able to raise my own food, drink non-city water, and just enjoy as much freedom as I possibly can.
To sum that all up: either leave entirely or get somewhere on the outskirts of town. That’s my 2 cents.
Jacob,
A smart move!
I did the same about ten years ago. Left the outskirts of DC, where we had a 1/4 acre in a suburban cu-de-sac and moved to a rural county in far SW Virginia, not far from the NC border. I feel (and think I am) more physically and financially secure on our 16 acres of paid-for land with our water (after physical safety, the most vital commodity in a SHTF scenario) and ability produce meat (chickens for now – hopefully more later) and vegetables, etc. If things only get medium dark rather than outright black, I think we stand a decent chance of being ok.
I was talking with Dom the other day and we both wish we’d all have been able to locate in the same general area. A group of even 20 or so committed to the ideas we talk about here could be a potent little band in the event the S does H the F.
Good luck, amigo – and buy as much land as you possibly can as far away from density as you feasibly can.
Thank you for the kind words in this post and also in previous posts that I wasn’t able to “reply” to.
I’m sure there are other great permaculture websites out there (if anyone knows of any, please let me know about them) but I have learned a lot from this website: permies.com…. without going off on some opinionated rant about that website I’ll just say they are a bunch of weirdo hippies. Most of them are “SHTF” preppers but despite that there isn’t much “SHTF” talk, I just get that vibe based on the knowledge they share. Lots of great information about sustainable farming over there. I also recommend checking out the website’s founder’s youtube channel “Paul Wheaton”.
Good luck with your property. 16 acres sounds awesome. I’ll be lucky to get at least one acre, but I’ll just have to see what’s available by the time I sell my current home.
Ed, here’s the thing, I wouldn’t be moving to simply save money and live on that “budget” so many ex-pats end up with. Tx. may not be the greatest since I haven’t been everywhere but it beats hell out of having to learn some dyslexic dialect and live around a bunch of goat fuckers with their old women bent over and sweeping the steps, probably 20 years younger than my wife but look old as dirt. Here’s something else, and don’t take this lightly either, the smell. I won’t dig deep into that pile, just let it be known….and lots of that could be cured with plain old soap and water for GOD’S SAKES PEOPLE…Yep, I was ripe last night after butchering, splitting, smoking but it wasn’t encased on me. My clothes were clean when I put them on in the morning, not six months ago when I stole them. Hell, this is depressing.
Editor’s note: Comment withheld do to insufficient funds.
Absolutely right on, Eric. So, tell me… why is it you are not teaching economics at Yale or Harvard? sigh… We both know the answer. Just wish there was some way more people could be exposed to this uncomplicated truth.
Anyway, I’m going to repost the link to this article as widely as I can. Can’t hurt. 🙂
Thanks, Mama!
I put this on Reddit… – 151 users are there now – 9 minutes no response.
The Man I Might Have Killed – The Price of Liberty
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/?page_id=846
On high click volume sites, a picture is important to increasing views. Unfortunately there isn’t one with this article.
Sadly, due to the horrible fallen state of humanity, or maybe just the evil of google, there is either smiling model with shotgun, or angry woman with shotgun. No other options.
Nothing called woman defending her self and home with shotgun. What a shitty society we live in. Or what a shitty search engine google is.
This picture would definitely get attention
http://blurbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/woman-shotgun.jpg
Will delete if not OK. Will update if downvoted or upvoted. On a heavily statist mainstream site, no downvotes is almost a positive result.
Two upvotes and zero downvotes so far for after 38 minutes – “The Man I Might Have Killed”
Also posted this gif file
Why do I carry a gun? Use or modify this for your own use – MamaLiberty
It has two upvotes in only two minutes.
I commented with a positive comment…does that automatically upvote it? How do I upvote it?
Give us a link to it on reddit, willya?
I posted Mama Liberty’s Story to Liveleak
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=85b_1382917003
The picture brings tears to my eyes, and really makes reading the story hit you right in the heart.
Self-protection drills using a pumpkin
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d3b_1382812906
Happy SHTF-Halloween all!
Thanks, Tor. I appreciate the exposure for that article. So far I’ve given away about 2500 of my books in email to people who asked for them. The book is called “I Am NOT A Victim.”
I have never used many graphics on my websites, coming from earlier days when such were such bandwidth hogs and bandwidth was expensive! I will seriously consider posting a picture with that article. Don’t have one with me and the shotgun THEN, of course, but it’s easy to take one with that same gun now. 🙂 It’s a family treasure.
Dear Tor,
That “woman with shotgun” pic was “Bree Van DeCamp” from “Desperate Housewives,” one of my favorite TV series.
Bree is known for her homemaking talents on the level of Martha Stewart, particularly her gourmet meals, breakfast treats and pineapple bran muffins. She is also well-versed in firearm training; she owns four guns and is a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association. Bree supports the Republican Party, as stated in the season 3 opener, and is also known for being a member of the local Presbyterian Church, as shown in the episode Sunday. Her neighbours Angie Bolen, Gabrielle Solis and Renee Perry have nicknamed her ‘Nancy Reagan’ on occasions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bree_Van_de_Kamp
Dear ML,
“… why is it you are not teaching economics at Yale or Harvard? sigh… ”
One has to teach that one can get something for nothing, that “Yes, of course there is such a thing as a free lunch” in order to be able to teach at one of the “elite” universities.
Morning, Bevin!
In re what goes on in government schools: I took a leap toward awareness when I was probably about 13, in junior high, and discovered that the chief requirement to teach in a government school was (and still is) a degree in “education.” That is, an American history teacher is not required to possess an academic background in that subject, or even demonstrate familiarity with the subject. And so on, for teachers of all the other subjects. And what is an “education” degree? It is a four-year course of nostrums relating to nothing having to do with developing the conceptual faculties of kids – since after all, the teachers never develop theirs.
At first I thought it was merely stupid. Then I realized it was evil. Deliberate and calculated to achieve a very specific purpose.
Just as mass fluoridation’s purpose is to create passivity and dullness, so also government education’s purpose is to still-birth peoples’ capacity to think. Not cripple it. Prevent it from ever taking its first baby steps. Its object is to turn people into reflex machines who can be counted on to react exactly as their masters intend, without ever realizing they’re reflex machines because they are literally not capable of entertaining the question that leads to the thought.
The miracle is that anyone manages to somehow escape this.
eric, you know all about “time out”, “what do you think you’re doing mister?”, “everybody, watch how Janie colors, green grass, blue sky and black sun….black sun? Janie?”, then there’s recess, lunch, no child left behind ha ha ha ha, I couldn’t make that up, that’s rich. And then there’s the ubiquitous Edna Krabapple without which no school could function….RIP Marcia.
Dear Eric,
A friend of my late father was a chaired professor of Chinese History at the University of Chicago and University of California at Irvine.
You should have heard him go off on degrees in “education.” Almost exactly what you just wrote, verbatim.
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
― H.L. Mencken
I especially like this part,
“That is its aim in the United States… and that is its aim everywhere else.”
Champions of Democracy boast that public education in Amerika and the Western world teaches young people to think for themselves, unlike public education in benighted, conformist, ant heaps like China, where they are indoctrinated into social conformity.
Mencken knew better.
@Bevin – As you say, that’s a BINGO!
Dear Gary,
That scene from “Inglorious Bastards,” correction “Inglorious Basterds” never fails to bring a chuckle!
What a buffoon!
I had a History Professor back in school who said…
“The essence of an education is not to know that in “1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue” or any other trivial fact, but rather to know how to find the information when you need it”
Knowing how to find and verify useful, truthful information is certainly part of it. The core of education, however, is learning how to think, both independently and analytically. Observation, assessment, verification, experimentation, and willingness to accept truth and integrity when met, even if it makes part of our own work obsolete or proves our former beliefs false.
Education is a process, a journey, not a destination. 🙂
I believe we are multi-dimensional beings. That is what play is about. We are entering other dimensions within ourselves and with our friends.
Freedom discussin’ is serious bizness, except when it’s not and someone’s decided it’s playtime.
The PTB seek to kill all our internal dimensionality. They seek human strains of monoculture. American Corn. European Wheat. Asian Rice.
The covens of Edna Krabappels are kill teams, they find your inner lives and eradicate them like pests and weeds.
The Krabappel Klux Klan arranges desks in a matrix. They tell you whatever you used to believe and have done before is mistaken. Children are planted in artificial rows, with each stalk precisely separated from the next stalk in vast fields.
You are summoned to class to learn about the One. You must become the One. Deny your Two. Deny your Six. Deny you are not a number, you are a free man.
I’m not fully cured, and perform based on much of their programming, but it doesn’t synthesize into a whole for me. Hard to explain. Mainstream thought Is all a jumble, exactly like these cacophonous ColourBox songs:
Just Give ‘Em Whiskey – ColourBox
Looks Like We’re Shy 1 Horse – ColourBox
ColourBox Quotes by MIT’s K. Lundberg
http://web.mit.edu/klund/www/cbox.txt
Excellent, Tor –
I agree with you that life is a journey of exploration and expression. When an individual’s freedom to express and explore is limited (or deliberately stifled in childhood) that person is denied his humanity and becomes a biological automaton. A sleepwalker, if you like.
Most people are utterly somnolent – to the extent that they’re unaware they’re asleep. That’s the irony of it. To be awake one cannot be asleep.
But if one is asleep, how would one ever know it?
Our job is to take them by the shoulders and shake them – then feed ’em hot strong “coffee” until the fog finally lifts….
Not enough “reply” buttons here, Eric!! 🙂
Stop and think about it, Eric… You said: “Our job is to take them by the shoulders…”
No! What makes that “our job?” We may want to, need to, think it is right to help them understand freedom… but it is never our responsibility. Whether it is religion, socialism or anything else… those who see it as their responsibility to extort and convert everyone are the very people who become the nanny state, the enforcers, who are killing us and our freedom “for our own good.” They have this wonderful vision for life, if only we can be shoved into the matrix.
No, that’s not my job. 🙂
Hi Mama,
I think it is our job – in the sense that’s in our own self-interest (as opposed to a positive obligation such as a debt incurred.)
I, for instance, am grateful to the writers (and speakers) who helped me to work out (and mature) my own views.
In my own way, I’m trying to return the favor – so to speak.
Eric, that’s a serious distinction.
You can certainly take on proselytizing as your calling, or even a personal obligation if you wish. You would then call it “my job,” if that’s what you believed. But it can never be “our job,” since I accept no such responsibility.
I have spent the better part of 50 years writing, speaking and demonstrating for liberty, non-aggression and self ownership. And sometimes the hardest part is to watch while it is rejected and ridiculed by those I’ve attempted to teach. There have been times when I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and rub their noses in the truth… but that would violate the very non-aggression I live by.
I think we agree, Mama – it’s just semantics.
I will try to broach topics – and talk-up liberty – whenever I see a potential opportunity. I take it upon myself to do this – and encourage others to do the same. But I do not (to be clear) believe you (or anyone else) has an obligation to do so.
I do think it is in our self-interest, though. Just as I think it is in our self-interest to care for our bodies – and (where appropriate) encourage others to do likewise, by example and even suggestion.
But never because we have to – or are told by others we must.
Why would someone want to wake up? It’s painful. Being awake makes everything more difficult and complex.
People react harshly and/or violently in response to anything that would wake them up.
People will wake up when the pain of remaining asleep exceeds the pain of waking up.