“Anarchy” is one of those words that many people react to emotionally – having been conditioned to do so.
The word has become generally synonymous with chaos and disorder. Dog eat dog. As EPautos’ king troll (Clover; see here for more about him) puts it, anarchy means “do whatever the hell you like.”
Well, no.
Anarchy, strictly defined, means simply the absence of government.
It does not mean people won’t – much less can’t – govern themselves.
The fact is most people do exactly that.
And they do it without government.
Already.
Do you need government – its threats and laws – to keep you from taking a ball peen hammer to your neighbor’s head? Would you transform, like Wolfman, into a run-amok creature “doing whatever the hell you like” if Congress, the president and every federal and state bureaucrat got Jesus Hoovered into the sky tomorrow?
Probably not.
Well, you might do many things currently not legal.
There are many possibilities – given that almost everything is currently illegal unless done precisely the way the government demands it be done.
But it’s not likely you’d become a murderer or a thief, even if government disappeared tomorrow. Because you – like most people – are capable of self-government. Have no desire to hurt others and so try to avoid doing so, law or no law.
Which is what anarchy’s all about.
It does not mean the absence of rules or order.
It certainly does not mean chaos.
That is merely the bogeyman presented by those hoping to delegitimize opposition to top-down control of every last detail of our lives by remote, centralized authority. It’s not unlike the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz. He did not need the Wizard to give him a brain; he already had one.
Similarly, people are capable of self-government without needing government.
Do you behave a certain way when you are a guest in someone’s home? Do you behave that way because of government? Or because you self-govern?
Consider your interactions with neighbors and friends and co-workers. Are you only behaving decently because you dread “the law”?
Would you rip-off your customers if there were no law that said otherwise? Beat your children? “Do whatever the hell you liked”… regardless of consequences, no matter who you hurt?
Of course not.
Because like most people, you are probably not a narcissist or a sociopath or a psychopath. Such people are, according to academic studies of the matter, always a small minority of the general population. You will, however, encounter them regularly in government, which attracts defective people afflicted by the sick desire to lord it over others.
Which brings up an interesting point.
The critic of anarchism argues that people not under the yoke of a government will “do whatever the hell they like.” That is, they will not practice self-government. But who comprises the government? People! Check HEB Ad and Hy Vee Ad. The same people (one assumes, unless we are talking about a new species) who are, according to the critic, prone to “doing whatever the hell they like.” Only now, these people are organized into a mighty gang – armed and anointed with the legal authority to “do whatever the hell they like.”
Which of course they tend to do.
Exponentially.
Narcissism and sociopathy plus power usually results in big problems. The Holocaust or the Killing Fields or the Trail of Tears or the Iron Curtain… vs. the small problems that inevitably occur between individuals.
Which would you rather have?
Most of us manage pretty well without being managed.
If you’re married, probably no one forced you. No laws required it. You and your spouse agreed to it. Made a commitment, together. Consent was actually asked – and freely given.
You chose the place where you wanted to live, bought the house you liked from other people who built it without anyone holding a gun to their head (setting aside the codes and other at-gunpoint dictates of the government; the thing itself was done freely).
You decided to have children – or not.
You do not need government to coercively organize and manage and mediate your social circle, either. You have friends because you – and they – want (and choose) to be friends. It happens organically. As would – and could – other social and economic interactions.
You choose your line of work, you elect to go for a walk, pursue this interest or that hobby. Whether you’ll own a car or learn to fly an airplane or take the bus.
A million different things.
But these choices are individual and personal and so variable. They are not predictable by a central authority, do not happen in a controlled and ordered fashion.
Collectively.
Everyone marching in step (the Germans had a word for this, gleichschaltung) according to the “plans” of powerful individuals, who see themselves as the managers of society, of the lives of other people. Whose “plans” take precedence over your right to be left out of them.
This is the meaning of government … as distinct from self-government… that is, anarchy.
We rule ourselves, according to the Golden Rule.
Or, we are ruled by others – according to the rules they decree.
Which do you prefer?
Anarchy does not mean the absence of problems. It means the de-collectivization of them. Whatever problems may occur between and among individuals, they are necessarily small-scale. The individual stands a chance.
When the individual is faced with government, he stands no chance. The outcome is preordained, in favor of the government.
You and your neighbor have a disagreement. He may be a jerk – but it’s just him and so you (and other neighbors) have a reasonable chance of working things out satisfactorily. But what happens when your jerk neighbor has an army (and “the law”) backing him up?
You have no real choice but to back down. To submit and obey.
This is the order admired by people who get their backs up when anarchy is mentioned. They want you to do as ordered.
As they order.
They abhor discretion, individual judgment. The very idea of a free man, as that was once understood, absolutely appalls them. They view themselves as masters – and to be a master, there must be slaves. The degree of bondage isn’t the relevant consideration. A “house slave” was no less a slave than a “field slave.” Neither was free. Both were owned.
And so are we.
The fact that most of us own cars, a house, have some discretion as to the type of car (and house) and the “spending money” we’re allowed to use – according to certain conditions – in no way changes the fundamental fact that we are owned because we are controlled.
Because we are governed.
And that is why “anarchy” must never be carefully examined.
People might get ideas.
The wrong ones… from a certain point-of-view.
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Magister Aurum Aqua:
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth.
And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
– No matter where you are, even your favorite place, even this website, when you begin to see things wrongly understood, when you see false notions leading to conformity, get out of there immediately, don’t hesitate even for a moment. You’re better off somewhere on your own, than stuck in any kind of despotism.
– I mean, here I am stuck in a big ol’ mess of 6 million people. Yet there’s plenty of places outside the conformers and despotters if you’re watching for them. I never look at them. Or listen to them. I have no idea what accents people have or clothes styles or anything really. They don’t even exist to me.
Took the family to Bingo Wonderland in Spring, Texas, the other day. A huge smoke filled room where even 7 year olds can win $600 gambling. Cause that’s just the way things should be. Simple. Fun. With zero calls for conformity or despotism. You cultivate an uncanniness that makes you never fit anywhere with anyone, you do your own inexplicable things, and soon, they quit asking you to be hosp-explicable to them. Because why would you try with any of them anyway. Aint none of them no good to nobody. Not even to themselves, the miserable cusses.
More MAA aka BG
My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn’t first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the nuts.
You don’t need to be ‘straight’ to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight. Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.
I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
Conservatism, we are told, is out-of-date. This charge is preposterous and we ought to boldly say so. The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline. These principles are derived from the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His creation. To suggest that the Conservative philosophy is out of date is akin to saying that the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments or Aristotle’s Politics are out of date.
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
The specter of single-issue religious groups is growing over our land. One of the great strengths of our political system always has been our tendency to keep religious issues in the background. By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.
The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy.
They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives. The great decisions of Government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. This was true in the days of Madison, and it is just as true today. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn’t stop now.
Johnson was a dirty fighter. Any campaign with him in it would involve a lot of innuendo and lies. Johnson was a wheeler-dealer. Neither he nor anyone else could change that.
Vietnam is about halfway around the world from Washington. It’s as large as the major European nations, with nearly 130,000 square miles. Its ancient recorded history goes back to 111 B.C. We entered (that country) with considerable ignorance.
The best thing Clinton could do — I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I’m not sure — is to shut up…. He has no discipline.
Common Core, esp. the math portion, was designed by burro-craps who claim (and may actually ‘think’) to have the best interests of ‘the children’ in mind. However, Khan Academy has adopted it and continues to grow. So while there are ‘issues’ with the material itself, the more serious problems result from this: those who ‘teach’ in the gunvermin schools and those who administer said schools are all gunvermin burro-craps who know nothing about education, because they have no experience with it themselves.
Phillip the Bruce,
I have looked at some of the practice tests used for math tests for middle school and high school students. I thought the questions asked math that the students should have have seen before the parcc test. Some complaints I have with the test (based on the practice tests being representative of the actual test) is that:
— the test ask questions in a manner that is different than how the students are exposed to the math material.
— the questions are not always worded in a clear unambiguous manner.
— the test has multi-part questions so if a mistake is made in the beginning, there is little hope in getting the rest of the question correct (even if the math using the wrong answer from part one is correct).
Another issue with parcc testing is the amount of time it takes from the school year. Last year it was about 20 days or close to one month. Testing takes more and more education time, yet the students are expected to learn more material in now less time.
All this is not even looking into who is profiting from this testing and whether this testing is even appropriate.
All this is just part of the reason that the GICs need to be shut down and students and their parents take responsibility for their own learning.
Now ‘the Bern’ wants free college for all, when most are not capable of earning a college degree – shoot, many are not capable of attaining what a high school diploma should be. And it does no one any good to pretend they are.
College is no longer (if it ever really was) a guarantee of a good job. But there are many jobs that need doing that do not require “book larnin'” but can be done with dignity and pride if done well. Of course the gunvermin and its ‘livable’ minimum wage laws must also get out of the way.
“Minimum wage” jobs are supposed to be entry-level, not careers. Some say “What can you learn working at, for example, McDonalds?” 3 things: Show up on time; do what you’re told; dress appropriately.
And if MickyD’s is the best job you can get, better to get it w/o Mulit$K student loans leeching at you.
Minimum wage is an exercise in kicking the can down the road. We need to control the surplus of dollars injected into the system in QE.
More of an item makes it less valuable…. (Econ 101, aka micro-e)
And WRT College, the “solution” has been to make people get more and more “ejumakation” – because a BA or BS isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, we now need MA/MS, or even PhD, to get a foot in the door.
BS= Bull S…
MS = More S…
PhD = Piled High and Deep…
Agreed on Bern; as I said elsewhere:
+++
Not to get religious, we’re DEFINITELY worshiping the wrong gods. Efficiency, Obedience, Mechanization.
Not much room for meritocracy or intelligence or individuality. Our Technology has exceeded our Humanity. (Asimov, I believe.)
Think of it this way: There are 8th grade tests out there from like 1950s, which require more thought and knowledge, and ability to explain and discuss concepts and topics, than a college grad can manage these days.
I saw Bernie Sanders’s ad last night, talking about how we need the MOST CAPABLE, BEST EDUCATED people in the world, to maintain our place in world …!!!!
So, “Free College”…..
For people who are unable to read and write and comprehend, and are being taught to fit in nice little boxes and never think outside their box… to never THINK, in fact.
What’s the point? (Besides to enrich TPTB.)
+++
The cost of an edumacation has gone loony. My essentially worthless liberal arts degree (most of what I’ve learned, I’ve either learned on my own or could have; the degree was not essential, except as a necessary prerequisite to getting a “real” job) cost about $4,500 a year… this was in the late ’80s, not all that long ago. One could (and I did) work a job and go to school, finish school and not leave school in debt.
That’s shot now.
Glad I am not a millennial!
I agree with those who claim that the increasing cost of college (and grad school) is primarily due to the easy availability of gunvermin guaranteed loans. Easy to get, that is, but increasingly difficult to pay back.
I’ve also heard it claimed that “College Degree required” is code for “We don’t want no blacks.”
Agree on both counts.
It’s madness.
In my field, for instance. A guy can write – or he can’t. If he can, the degree is irrelevant. And if he can’t, it’s irrelevant.
I bet Clover has a degree.
Phillip the Bruce,
What is a GIC? If it was mentioned elsewhere, I must have missed it.
Thanks for the clarification.
GIC = gunvermin indoctrination center, aka public skool
Phillip the Bruce,
Thanks. I never heard of sight words until my nephews started school.
I remember learning phonics along lines of the electric company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INL6hc9yEow&list=PLFE40713756EE832D
Here is one with Morgan Freeman: (the br sound)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K00rz73s_zU
And this is what the GICs are up to: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/02/linda-schrock-taylor/schools-let-us/
“civilizations are created by individuals; they are destroyed by collectives”
I don’t always agree with Butler Shaffer, but when he’s right, he’s right.
“The stabilization of social and economic conditions that appear to promote the permanency of institutions actually frustrate the processes of adaptation upon which life depends.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/02/butler-shaffer/eulogy-civilization/
Dear Phil,
Great quip.
In fact, the deeper one delves into the whole concept of government and coercion, the more obvious it becomes that “There’s no government like no government”.
When I first began entertaining the notion that “Ya know what? Anarchism might just make sense!” I was still somewhat tentative about affirming it.
But over time, the facts and logic behind anarchism have come into sharper and sharper focus.
As a result, many tenets of anarchism now feel almost like truisms, as almost trivial.
To me the bottom line is that problems can be solved only if people are FREE to solve them. If they are bound hand and foot by others who assert some “authority” to decide what they may or may not do, the problem do not get solved.
bevin, I agree completely. I wish I had caught on sooner….comme si, comme sa. I wasn’t old or wise enough to appreciate a few would be presidents who didn’t like big guv so much. Goldwater comes to mind. While he didn’t advocate no rulers, he came close to it, as close as he dared I expect.
“A government that is big enough
to give you all you want
is big enough to take it all away.”
— Barry Goldwater
Dear 8sm,
Ditto!
It’s amazing how far we’ve degenerated since the 60s. Back then one could still respect “conservatives” to some degree.
Hell, back then even some liberal Democrats were surprisingly respectful of individual rights, at least in some areas.
Guess who said the following, for example:
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”
Would you believe Hubert Humphrey, Vice President to LBJ, author of the Great Society?
Quoted in Guns magazine “Know Your Lawmaker” column, p. 4. (Feb. 1960)
“A government that is big enough
to give you all you want
is big enough to take it all away.”
— Barry Goldwater
Actually I think that is a paraphrase of Thomas Jefferson. Maybe Goldwater said it too, but he did not originate the thought.
The first time I heard it was when VP Gerald Ford used it in a speech.
I assumed he was the author back then.
It sounds too modern to be something from Jefferson.
Hi Bevin,
Did you happen to catch this on Lew’s site today?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/02/roger-stone/jeb-bush-coke-dealer/
Dear Eric,
No I didn’t. I took a quick gander at it now.
” Jeb Bush dealt both drugs and alcohol at his Andover prep school for the rich and entitled and that he was involved in drug smuggling operations that eventually led to the murder of CIA pilot Barry Seal, who tried to blackmail the Bushes and ended up riddled with bullets. ”
This is friggin’ hiiarious, in a black comedy sort of way that is.
I mean, really, what’s the difference between government officials and mobsters?
This sounds like something out of Goodfellas or The Sopranos.
Again, meaning no disrespect to the Mafia, which is less dishonorable than government officials.
The Bushes and Clintons are Caligulan.
Dear Eric,
Stone follows up his expose of the Bushes with a great LRC podcast!
https://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/worse-mafia/
Speaking of Stone, a campaign strategist, have you seen the film “Our Brand is Crisis”?
A must see! What “The Candidate” was in 1972, “Our Brand is Crisis” is in 2015.
Sandra Bullock plays a Mary Matalin type political consultant, who knows all the dirty tricks required to “manufacture consent”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLZo_ILZhfk
Concerning Barry Seals, probably one reason I’m unpopular with what appears to be a great deal of federal and state govt. agencies might have to do with some of my old friends who worked for the Children in Action. One thing they had in common, even the colonel in the air farce who worked for them, were all victims of their employer. They deem most everyone it would appear to be disposable. One good friend who was a civilian pilot who owned his own planes was contracted to smuggle some papers and whatnot of a disposed dictator I won’t name. He got over the jungles of S. America when his plane inexplicably quit. He crashed and found himself alive(a good landing). Just to ensure if he landed somewhere he could be prosecuted, he found enough heroin in one container to make sure he didn’t live if “caught”. He walked to some village literally in nowhere and was greeted as a celebrity by the people. He stayed there for months, a good move. He finally came back to Tx. The AF colonel started farming and had a tractor tire explode and nearly kill him. Not believing in coincidence he investigated the tire debacle and he had the only two defective tires made in a lot of 5,000 Firestone tractor tires, a very unlikely scenario which took some of the American gung ho out of him.
The friend who made it back from S. America was attacked in his home by a few cars of ‘unknowns” who riddled his house till it nearly fell in. This all happened in a small west Tx. town and nobody came to investigate even though the carnage could be heard all over town. It’s a town on I-20 so there were countless sheriff and DPS in the area. He didn’t believe in coincidence either ha ha.
“It sounds too modern to be something from Jefferson.”
Yeah, I think so too. One of those anachronistic ‘quotes’ that bugs the shit out of me is the one supposedly by Ben Franklin:
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
Bullshit.
This is the quote from Franklin:
” Democracy risks being the tyranny of the majority over the minority. Two wolves. One sheep. Whose wishes for dinner will prevail? Not the sheep. ”
The other one started appearing on BBS sites in the 1990s, attributed to Ben Franklin. It’s a modern paraphrasing of his writing, and it’s a criticism of democracy, with no mention of arms.
“It sounds too modern to be something from Jefferson.”
Well, you called me on it so I googuhled. While it is often credited to both TJ and BG, the consensus seems to be that it was Jerry ‘Leather Helmet’ Ford.
” it was Jerry ‘Leather Helmet’ Ford.”
Good one. Very descriptive. I got a good laugh at the mental image it conjured up in my diseased mind. ahaha
People made fun of him as a klutz. But he was an All-American fuuuuutballlll player at the University of Michigan, along with Supreme Court Justice Byron ‘Whizzer’ White. But it was indeed when helmets were still just lightly padded leather. Could explain a few issues.
Jerry may have been a victim of Dain Bramage Syndrome. It could help explain how he allowed himself to be drawn in, along with Magic Bullet Specter, by the conspirators who made up the Warren Investigative Committee.
He belonged to the conspirators from then on. Not a smart move, IMO.
Hi Phillip,
Did you know Ruby worked for Nixon back in the late’40s? So many threads… we’ll never get to the bottom of it, probably. But it’s interesting to note that the Zapruder film was not released or viewed by most people until years after the Warren Commission. Oswald firing from the rear, six floors up …yet the kill shot shows Kennedy (who was leaning forward at the moment of impact) blown backwards, blood and brain matter being ejected toward the rear. Action – reaction.
You tell me!
Dear Ed,
” Democracy risks being the tyranny of the majority over the minority. Two wolves. One sheep. Whose wishes for dinner will prevail? Not the sheep. ”
Now that sounds more like 18th century vernacular. That sounds more believable.
Ditto the alleged TJ quote about “Democracy is mob rule”. I’m sure TJ felt that way. But I doubt he worded it that way.
I wish to hell people would stop taking liberties with what are supposed to be verbatim quotes. They only undermine what are otherwise good arguments.
You mean like George Washington, “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Yeah.
Like that.
I know people mean well. But false quotes merely undercut our arguments.
Speaking of history: I have recently found a very good podcast by an Anarchist history teacher. I download lots of podcasts in blocks that I play as I am driving or doing other things which don’t require much mental energy. It sure beats listening to mainstream talk radio or decades old music.
The podcast is called: Prof CJs Dangerous History Podcast:
http://profcj.org/
I have downloaded all of them, and today I learned that George Washington was worse than I thought. He profited massively from the war and from sleezy real estate deals.
I also learned that common farmers actually had more to do with starting the Revolutionary War than the ruling elites who later took credit for using their leadership abilities to form the military.
Dear Brian,
Thanks for sharing that.
I’m going to download them too.
“George Washington was worse than I thought. He profited massively from the war and from sleezy real estate deals.”
I read some similar things about ol’ Benny the Frank. Seems he played the money game with the royal minsters, getting appointments for himself and grants of land and other stuff.
BTW, isn’t the state of Washington named for him because he actually owned that territory via a royal land grant?
Hi Ed,
Washington was kind of like Ronald Reagan by the time he became president. A superficially affable old geezer controlled by others, who’d made his fortune by good looks and good timing. Washington married money and obtained his generalship because there was basically no one else as tall and handsome and wearing a snappy uniform hanging around. I think he lost every battle he ever fought (except Yorktown, which the French won).
Now, to give him his due, he was a great political general. The war probably could not have been won (attrited) without his leadership.
Bur he was a tool, fundamentally.
“Bur he was a tool, fundamentally.”
Yes, he was. As to which type of tool, I think it’s called a shit hook. ahaha
According to Prof CJ, Washington had contempt for his soldiers and settlers living in the west, which back then was Ohio, Kentucky, etc., because they were p[oor, dirty, and poorly educated. Washington actually coveted the land there, but didn’t want to live among those folks.
Might the settlers have been poor because that were sold land by rich land speculators such as Washington who greatly exaggerated potential opportunities out west along with the quality of the land and under-rated the threat from Indians?
The settlers were expecting protection from the Indians by the army, but just like today: the federal government claimed lack of resources for protecting people, yet will suddenly find plenty of resources to attack us for resisting them. Washington quickly built a larger force to put down rebellion than he had during the war. Or, to use a Spoonerism; They used our money against us. Washington also was a very important behind-the-scenes guy during the illegal constitutional convention. He may or may not have been “superficially affable”, I do not know, but he was far from being the genuine grandfatherly figure as he was portrayed by mainstream historians whose job is to make the government look good.
Prof CJ includes resource links at his site that I have not yet had time to check out.
Good stuff, Brian.
Washington was also the cuckold (ideologically) of Hamilton, who exerted tremendous influence by proxy. Hamilton was disliked and distrusted by many of his contemporaries while Washington was (so I’ve read) at least respected.
Ed, I have several shit hooks I count on when I least expect it……hence the name “shit hooks’. Not all are quality but they have served their purpose….and sometimes beyond.
My dad was one of those who rarely spoke ill of anyone but he rightly had some pegged as shit hooks. It didn’t take long for me to be keen on discerning the shit hook but to my shame, I haven’t been as quick on the uptake as my dad.
The wife was completely unaware of the term when we met. She was a sheltered person, totally unaware of the shit hooks around her, not a failing her mother has.
“I think he lost every battle he ever fought (except Yorktown, which the French won).”
LOL.
Hey, but he looked good standing at the bow of a boat while crossing the Delaware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware#/media/File:Emanuel_Leutze_%28American,_Schw%C3%A4bisch_Gm%C3%BCnd_1816%E2%80%931868_Washington,_D.C.%29_-_Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
8, it is a handy term. In my home town’s vernacular, there were a few other similar terms, such as shit stick, and the lowest, shit ass. A use can be found for the shit hook and even for the shit stick, but the shit ass is pretty much unacceptable in even the most depraved strata of society. 😉
OK, I had to scroll up for a reply button. We hillbillies from the Ozark Mountains call the worst of the worst shitheads,
Brian, yall just ain’t larned to talk proper like Texans.
Every time somebody says shithead or CJ does something I’m not fond of, I think of that scene in The Jerk where Navin has a dog in a motel room who starts barking and he interprets it as only Navin could as the building is on fire.
Dear 8sm,
“On fire”?
Don’t you mean
“On fahr”?
bevin, excuse me, you’re correct. I commonly hear people say something like “Man, did you see that mount’n of tars on tv? That was sum fahr. It really was a mountain of tires at a recycle facility and I could see the smoke from 60 miles away.
A few years ago a friend and I were at a mutual friend’s mechanic shop and he was relating the previous week-end bike meet he’d been to(He’s a Gold Wing freak, has one you could pull a gooseneck trailer with, huge engine). He allowed there were all sorts of home-made bikes and one guy even had a track made out of a wreck Dodge Cummins pickup. He said they used pipe for the frame and ran the coolant through the whole frame with a pusher fan blowing the radiator on the back.
I’m thinking of a tracked vehicle so I ask him what sort of tracks it had, rubber or steel. He looked puzzled and the other guy is laughing. Well, I was born and raised here but I was still thinking track. Finally the other friend who’s laughing says “He’s saying “trike”. Oh, then I felt sorta foolish. So I said “oh, yeah, a track, gotcha”.
Dear 8sm,
I’m definitely getting a good laugh out of that one!
“We hillbillies from the Ozark Mountains call the worst of the worst shitheads,”
Brian, where I come from “shit head” is high praise compared to shit ass. Hell, shit head is so much better than shit ass, that you couldn’t catch a bus from shit head back to shit ass.
ahaha….sometimes I crack my own self up. 😉
Dear Ed,
I thank 8sm and you for Cultural Learnings of Texas for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
bevin, you’re quite welcome. I think Ed and I live to bring enlightenment to all, or in my case, to yall.
Speakin of N ligtenment, little ol’ Loretta Lyn didn’t give a shit who knew what she meant by her songs. It was her own way of speakin’ or nothin’. Remember her lyrics in Coal Miner’s Daughter:
“All day long, we worked hard
At night we slept, ’cause we was tard.”
I mean, that just rhymes like a son of a bitch, don’t it?
Ed, I can hear Loretta singing that right now. She never pretended to be anything but what she was. We were pore but we had love, sort of a halfway between poor and pore, the way she spoke and thought.
Mommy scrubbed our clothes on a washboard ever day. Why, I seen her fingers bleed, to complain there was no need.
Her songs were dang sure what she knew. “Don’t Come Home a’Drinkin’, With Lovin on Your Mind”, “You Ain’t Woman Enough(To Take My Man)”, Fist City. I knew ’em all by heart.
She wrote “The Pill” that lots of stations wouldn’t play and went on to write another 8 songs that were banned by a significant amount of stations. She told and sang it like it was.
Funny you mentioned this because earlier today I was thinking about how we have always spoken and the word “tard” was one I recalled. A bit ago another trucker called me. I told him about my stupid boss telling me I should grease my truck every other day, a really stupid thing to say since nobody greases a truck every other day. I was telling him I’d been working 13-14 hours, leaving in the dark and coming home in the dark and when I got home the last thing I was gonna do was grease a goddamn truck cause I was “tard”. I realized Porter Stansberry probably comes in tired some days but I stomp the limestone off my boots and walk in “tard”…..ever day.
Reminds me of that Lord J Cameron cinematic quote. Listen to me. That governator is out there. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse. It can’t be bargained with. It doesn’t sleep or eat or rest. And it absolutely will not stop ever until you are subjugated or dead.
PtB, that quote is directly contributed to Goldwater by various sources. I once had the speech and circumstances from which it originated…..by him. I suppose he could have stolen it. I doubt it.
Pretty sure he did not steal it from Leather Helmet. Doesn’t matter, it’s true whoever originated it.
But here’s the BG quote I like – “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Kind of puts the kibosh on ‘bi-partisanship’ doesn’t it? Compromise is acceptable in questions of taste or preference. There is no room for it in cases of right and wrong.
Anarchist A discussion with Person B…
A: “I want my body to have no cancer in it.”
B: “What? But we have to have a heart!”
A: “Yes, a heart is good. I just don’t want cancer.”
B: “But we need lungs!”
A: “Yes, lungs are fine. I don’t want cancer.”
B: “Why are you opposed to having intestines?”
A: “I’m not. I’m opposed to having cancer.”
B: “But we couldn’t live without a liver!”
A: “I want to do away with cancer, not livers.”
B: “But without a brain, we can’t function!”
A: “I know that, I’m not… JUST HOW STUPID ARE YOU?!?”
Anarchists have conversations which are this ridiculous on a regular basis. Only the subject matter is different. Many of them sound more like this:
A: “There shouldn’t be a ruling class.”
B: “But people need to organize!”
A: “I’m not against organization. I’m against having a ruling class.”
B: “But people need to cooperate and work together!”
A: “Yes, I’m all in favor of that. I just don’t want a ruling class.”
B: “But people need to protect themselves from bad people!”
A: “Yep, and that’s fine. But there shouldn’t be a ruling class.”
B: “Why do you want it to be every man for himself?”
A: “I don’t. I just don’t want there to be a ruling class.”
B: “I don’t like ‘might makes right’ and survival of the fittest.”
A: “Me neither. That’s one reason I don’t want a ruling class.”
B: “But I like roads, and libraries, and electricity.”
A: “Me too, but there shouldn’t be a ruling class.”
B: “I think it’s good for people to cooperate and work together.”
A: “Yes, I agree, I’m not… JUST HOW STUPID ARE YOU?!?”
Dear Tor,
That was great!
I sometimes have trouble deciphering the meaning of your comments.
Not this time!
Your point was crystal clear!
Thank you most kindly, Bevin. Sometimes I think I’m an evolving uncanny bot dispatched by anon ESL’ers to ascertain what helps/hinders my being accepted as a specific human residing in a single geographic location.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oL6dasqhvo
chin-kú bô khòaⁿ lí – Tor
tor munkov
https://www.facebook.com/tor.munkov
Now even your own children will be fined by Obama’s government under harsh new Obamacare penalties called ‘incentives’
http://www.naturalnews.com/052828_Obamacare_penalties_children_federal_government.html
Some of you might like mark passio’s videos
Link ebove – What on earth is happening?
I also greatly appreciate Larkin rose, Lysander spooner, Ayan rand, (spelling)
Comprehensive listing others learned from on my research sharing sites
http://freedomtruth.wordpress.com (legal land) and
http://willandtestamenttraining.wordpress.com (lawful or natural law focus – self governance without politics, religion, commerce/profit, etc)
There are a growing number of folks that have rescinded all guberment and others have found a level of success having fully authenticated birth record resulting in holding title no longer under “Trading with the enemy Act” and left along while traveling, and now in system as Private no long Public enemy….
A smaller handful have garnered not only handsome regarding travel but also won time and again with challenging other fictions eg utility companies, loans, mortgage, because technically the signature is the payment because the signature is sold three to ten times on the securities exchange, no kidding… not to leave out by u.s. style manual the all uppercase is NOT a living man rather a STATE created entity and some are having STATE secretary pay the bill… hospital included as right to life I say (smile)
Hi Cynthia,
This stuff (sovereign man) comes up pretty regularly. I agree with it in principle. In the real world, however, asserting such will invariably get you arrested, jailed and subject to endless hassle. It’s a full-time job. Get arrested, go to jail, get bailed out, go to court… argue with the judge… repeat.
For those with an open mind, non religious Rath with soul, spirit, heart and open mind in and for living body temple …
Verified that when one comprehends key gnostic concepts, “Know thy self” and clearly communicates that along with “legal” vs lawful unto key men as “head of state” one can be free from “… body politic…” and “corporate” “government” (govern=control + ment=mind) abuse, for only living men can ‘act’ while fictions can not.
I dig it, Cynthia!
The gnostic texts/doctrines make a great deal more sense – appeal to me – far more so than the rude edit job that is the Bible.
“I dig it, Cynthia!”
eric, did that Harley drive you to huffing glue? 😉
“There are a growing number of folks that have rescinded all guberment and others have found a level of success having fully authenticated birth record resulting in holding title no longer under “Trading with the enemy Act” and left along while traveling, and now in system as Private no long Public enemy….
A smaller handful have garnered not only handsome regarding travel but also won time and again with challenging other fictions eg utility companies, loans, mortgage, because technically the signature is the payment because the signature is sold three to ten times on the securities exchange, no kidding… not to leave out by u.s. style manual the all uppercase is NOT a living man rather a STATE created entity and some are having STATE secretary pay the bill… hospital included as right to life I say (smile)”
Didn’t understand a bit of it.
“Didn’t understand a bit of it.”
When a poster neglects to even try to construct proper sentences, my response is to scroll past the post. Life’s too short, etc.
My first guess in these cases is ‘ESL.’ But it could just be gunvermin schooling. Worse yet, both.
Ed, a friend had a GF who spoke in some way that no one could decipher. Seems like if she had enough stimulant in her it was more coherent but that’s merely a guess. She’d speak to someone, sometimes conspiratorially or maybe it seemed that way. But then she might be speaking to more than one person or a few. Nobody knew for sure. If she ended with what could be taken as a laugh, I’d respond with a Buckleyism such as hmmm or ahhh or uh huh. If more than one person was present there would generally be looks all around, a slight shrug of the shoulder and back to something everyone could understand. She’d sometimes end with a barely understandable “if you know what I mean”, or at least you might think that. Then I’d smile and nod and she would too. For those rare people not in the know they might ask me “what did she say?” Better ask her I’d say.
“Then I’d smile and nod and she would too. ”
That’s what I’ll do from now on, in response to unintelligible posts. It’s more polite. 😉
Perhaps the reason that our messages haven’t taken off as fast as we would like for it to is because we are playing on the defensive side of things by responding to challenging questions. We should flip things around on them by asking questions in strategic locations where statists may hear or encounter them such as:
Why should we spend so much time and resources on finding and electing candidates who seem to lie the least when people are able to govern themselves?
Candidate …., do you support ending the governments use of euphemistic words and phrases for describing words like assault, bribery, child-endangerment, robbery, theft, extortion, blackmail, kidnapping, jury-tampering, etc.
Gifted writers and speakers: please steal my idea and improve upon it.
“Gifted writers and speakers: please steal my idea and improve upon it.”
OK, Brian, full disclosure required here: I’m neither a gifted speaker/writer. I’m just a dimbulb kinda guy who entertains himself by saying things out loud that crack me up when they occur to me in my twisted mind. Anyway, here’s a question I would ask a politician in public debate, if I could:
“When did you stop sucking Cub Scout peckers?”
It’s a little like the old “when did you stop beating your wife” question, but it sounds funnier to me, dumbass that I am.
Hi Ed,
Love it!
Of course, these pols molest all of us – young and old, male or female…
Dear Eric,
We the Sheeple in ‘Murca are clueless for sure. But guess what? We the Sheeple in the Taiwan and Hong Kong regions of China are even more clueless.
On Taiwan people across the political spectrum actually believe that
“政黨輪替” zheng dang lun ti, “political party changes”, or “political parties taking turns” means something.
I tell them that “政黨輪替” is nothing more than “政黨輪姦” zheng dang lun jian, “political party gang rape”, or “political parties taking turns raping”.
But few if any in either camp are able to overcome their cognitive dissonance and taken in any observations along those lines. Their blind faith in “democracy” is truly pitiful.
Newspaper editorials penned by “intellechewals” from both ends of the political spectrum parrot the mantra: “The solution to the problems of democracy, is more democracy”. How sad is that?
If ever there was a real life example of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results — politics on Taiwan is it.
Hi Bevin!
Yup. Democracy is the best tool for keeping the masses quiescent via giving them the illusion of choice and consent. The elites learned that having a Fuhrer or Duce makes it all too obvious. Notice that even the Chinese now use the lingo of Democracy, despite the obvious authoritarian collectivism.
The genius is the real powers behind the throne never change. Just periodically shuffle the front men, the “presidents” and so on.
Dear Eric,
Neocon political theoreticians such as Francis Fukuyama trumpet democracy as “the end of history”, as “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”, as “the final form of human government”.
What crap.
The essence of democracy is the violation of the natural rights and political liberty of the individual by the collective.
“Democracy,” as Benjamin Franklin astutely noted, “is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”
This brutal rape of the individual is given a veneer of moral legitimacy by pro forma rituals such as voting and term limits, none of which alter the fundamental immorality at democracy’s core.
Going through such ritual motions as voting merely adds a layer of hypocritical pretense to the process.
The ugly reality is that the collective has imposed its will upon the individual by means of brute force, the same way that a rapist imposes his will upon his victim.
I’m stronger than you. Therefore you can either submit, or be physically overpowered or even murdered.
The only difference is that society has “normalized” democracy’s systematic rape of the individual by the Leviathan State.
Democracy is merely cannibalism with better table manners. Democracy is merely cannibals learning to use the proper knife or fork as they devour their fellow man.
Why did the cannibal enroll in Le Cordon Bleu?
So he could ‘serve mankind better’!
Voting: a sacrament of the state religion by which individuals sanction their own enslavement. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
Voting in a democracy is merely having a say in what colour suit the bureaucratic monster is clothed in. The monster always remains.
“Voting in a democracy is merely having a say in what colour suit the bureaucratic monster is clothed in”
Yep, if that. One view is that votes cast aren’t even actually counted.
I recently heard on radio of considerations to do away with voting districts and count the total vote. There may have been something about no voter registration, as if that would make any difference. Oh boy, big sweeping change for the better no doubt. Stick me with a fork, I’m done……decades ago.
Voting: the privilege of choosing which Illuminati puppet will be one’s master. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
The 2004 “election” was not just CFR A vs. CFR B, it was Skull & Bones A vs. Skull & Bones B
Hi Eric, et. al,
The power and achilles heel of the modern nation State is the veneer of legitimacy. States must create a legitimacy narrative that enough of the subjects believe in order to maintain rule. In monarchies this was achieved through the supposed “divine right of kings”. As the “truth” of religion came under increasing attack, a new narrative was needed. As I see it, attempts at legitimacy fall into three broad categories: communist, totalitarian and democratic.
Marx, heavily influenced by Hegel, adopted a pseudo scientific theory whereby a paradigm shift would occur in the nature of man. He thought of society in evolutionary terms and, armed with the Hegelian concept of “historical necessity”, argued that communism represented the final stage of human evolution. The legitimacy of the State was justified on the grounds that it was necessary to abolish existing power structures in order to allow for this “natural” evolution to occur. Although it seems ridiculous today, Marx believed that once the “evolution” had occurred, the State would wither away. He objected to the anarchist position because he believed that a coercive institution was necessary in the short term to “help” the evolutionary process.
Totalitarians developed the idea that the State itself represented the culmination and purpose of man. Heavily influenced by Plato (especially the Republic), they believed that the State was a living organism. Individuals were to the State as cells were to the body. As such, postulation that individuals possess individual moral autonomy was seen to be as foolish as the idea that one’s arm could possess autonomy with respect to the body. While communism and totalitarianism share some similarities concerning the structure of the State, the stated end goals were different.
Democrats unwilling or afraid to abandon completely the idea of individual autonomy, developed the concepts of the “general will”, the ironically named “self rule” and “popular consent”. American theorists, leery of “mob rule” and the inefficiency of direct democracy, promulgated the concept of representative democracy. This system pays lip service to the “will of the people” while keeping the elite power structure intact. Progressives drew from all three categories. They blended “scientific socialism” which aped the Marxist pseudo scientific credibility, with the totalitarian idea of the State as organism, individuals as lesser parts and the democratic idea of popular consent.
Of the three, democracy has proven to be the most powerful. No matter how wistful leftist academics may be about the promise of communism, it is now obvious, to all but the most demented, that human nature did not play along with their grand dreams. It is no longer respectable to openly embrace totalitarianism, so progressives and fascists have fused their ideologies with democracy.
However, democracy is vulnerable. Unlike communism and totalitarianism, it provides no other theory of providing legitimacy than popular consent and the general will. It is quite easy to show that consent is a fraud and that the general will is merely a euphemism for majority rule. If democratic theorists were honest, they would have to concede that slavery was a perfectly legitimate institution if ordained by democracy. Most people inherently understand that democracy is not enough to justify some State actions. What they don’t understand is that it’s not enough to justify any State action. Apostles of democracy sneak in human rights, fairness and equality to “temper” the defects of majority rule. But, if democracy must be tempered by”rights” that proves that democracy cannot be the source of any rights (including those of the rulers).
Democracy is not an ideology of government. It is a mechanism for “choosing” and legitimizing those who wield the power of the State. It confers no moral legitimacy to the State. Our task is to continually point this out.
Jeremy
Well-said, Jeremy!
One of my greatest pleasures in life to date is being involved with the group we’ve got here – which includes some of the brightest and most well-read/thoughtful people I’ve ever met.
One day, I hope we can all get together and roast a pig!
Hi Eric,
Thanks! I feel the same way. As I’ve said before, this site is a remarkable accomplishment.
Years ago, my wife and I were visiting her mother in Puerto Rico. A big party was planned up in the hills and the host hired a local man to roast a pig. He showed up with his two sons and they set up the pit. The spit was built from the steering column of an old truck. They set up the spit over the pit and the sons took turns, sitting in a chair, slowly turning the steering wheel until the pig was roasted to perfection.
it was awesome.
Jeremy
Strange you say that. Yesterday I was doing chores and the boss calls. I’d had several so I ignored it. It rings again a few minutes later just as I came into the house. Screw it said I, too many Shiner blacks to do a hotshot load now. About 2 minutes later I see him coming pulling a livestock trailer, backs up to the horsepital cum pigpens and discharges 4 hogs. Maybe I can turn him into a libertarian. He already hates subsidy farmers and cops and the govt. An excellent start.
Had me my first Shiner @ Nicos on Loop 494 Humble Tex the other day. Trinidad Gent suggested it and wasn’t far wrong. Kinda like a coffee beer combo vibe about it as I recall.
I was at the Honda dealer on North Eastex yesterday and they had Hillerary and Gabby Gumbo brains Giffords twanging from their whatever’s about how the guns done ate their babies. Had to wheel my chair into the hall to avoid that CNN shit show they had twisted to the front.
Guess what-a-burger is soon to arrive maybe I can find whirled piece somewhere deep in the mammal grease.
L8r GovShovLov H8rs!
Dear Eric and everyone here except the clover trolls,
“One of my greatest pleasures in life to date is being involved with the group we’ve got here – which includes some of the brightest and most well-read/thoughtful people I’ve ever met. ”
I share the sentiment, “one hundred and ten percent”, as a fuuutbaaaaal coach would say.
Tor, was it the Shiner Bohemian Black Lager? Black lagers are good for digestion although I know no cure for What a Burger burger. It’s said by health experts black lager sans alcohol would be a health drink. I likely won’t find out.
It was about 6 years ago a guy hauled me to a Buffalo Wild Wings in Midland , Tx. where they had quite a selection of draft beer. I drank a Guinness Black Stout and noticed the Shiner right beside it. I tried the Shiner, realized it was tastier and never looked back. Been drinking it ever since off and on but a couple years back living on the high plains with nothing but Bud, Coors and MIller products in the convenience stores I sought the beer aisles of a grocery store. They had Shiner BBL and it became my regular brew after a hard day of rock hauling, equipment hauling and various other hauling. A couple years ago every county around including the one I live in voted in liquor so the town our yard is near and I mostly pass through when coming home amazingly stocked it in the only liquor store in town. They keep a good stock of it since apparently i’m not the only one to drink it. For a one beer suits you fine, I’d recommend a Young’s Double chocolate Stout, beer and dessert in one.
Dear Jeremy,
“Most people inherently understand that democracy is not enough to justify some State actions. What they don’t understand is that it’s not enough to justify any State action. Apostles of democracy sneak in human rights, fairness and equality to “temper” the defects of majority rule. But, if democracy must be tempered by”rights” that proves that democracy cannot be the source of any rights (including those of the rulers)”
Dead on!
As I put it,
The problem is not that governments violate human rights. The problem is that government itself is a violation of human rights. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
Dear Bevin,
I really enjoy your quotations from chairman zhu. If I may, I’d like to suggest this one.
Civilize: the process by which government usurps, denigrates and attempts to destroy man’s natural propensity to cooperate with each other.
Jeremy
Dear Jeremy,
Thanks!
Coming from you that means a lot.
So true.
I can’t use it though, because the quotations are all ones that I made up. I can’t take credit for something that isn’t mine.
Tell you what. You could start compiling a “Quotations… ” webpage of you own! I’ll bet you have plenty more where that came from. I could then link to you.
Dear Bevin,
Thanks! I’ll work on compiling a list. How’s this for a start:
Anarchasm:
1) The explosive joy one feels at finally expelling years of Statist indoctrination.
2) The gulf that exists between those who have and those who have not experienced an anarchasm.
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
The “gulf” you speak of is daunting. The original Matrix movie captured this brilliantly. One feels alone, alienated. It is taken as a given, instinctively for most people, that “democracy” is good, we have given our “consent,” that “if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,” and that it’s ok to steal, assault/cage (and even kill) other people provided it’s called some other thing and not looked at too closely and done by “our representatives” and has been judged to be “in the public interest.”
Dear Jeremy,
See?
You’re already on your way!
Jeremy, and I’ll proofread for you. I make mistakes but when I read others comments, articles, whatever, I’m hell on wheels on correcting errors. I’m serious. If you want someone to look it over, let me know.
Meanwhile, keep up the great work.
BTW, I like the “experience an anarchasm”. righteous
Hi Eight,
Thanks! Life is strange right now and I’ve been trying to develop the courage to embrace a different path. I’ve got a few essays kicking around in my head and I’m humbled by your offer to help.
Let me know how I can contact you.
Jeremy
Strange here, too, Jeremy.
Must be something in the water… or perhaps Planet X?
Dear Eric,
It’s synchronicity!
Amazing coincidences happen all the time — but are they simply the product of random chance, or do they convey some hidden meaning? The answer may depend on whether you believe in synchronicity.
The term synchronicity was coined by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961). Jung had a strong belief in a wide variety of paranormal phenomenon, including psychic powers, astrology, alchemy, predictive dreams, UFOs and telekinesis (moving objects with the mind). He was also obsessed with numerology — the belief that certain numbers have special cosmic significance, and can predict important life events.
Jung became convinced that everything in the universe is intimately connected, and that suggested to him that there must exist a collective unconscious of humankind. This implied to him that events happening all over the world at the same time must be connected in some unknown way.
Jung was inspired by the I Ching and Daoist philosophy.
bevin, it’s easy, in some ways, to see what could be synchronicity. While I don’t have predictive dreams that come to mind, I do have precognition, but not to a degree that’s controllable. I only know it’s accurate after an event has happened. But, some things I feel a great deal of surety about. I had been thinking of three cousins I hadn’t heard from in a long while. I used to keep up with the oldest but then she just dropped off the map. I had a feeling something bad had happened to her younger brother but no feeling about the youngest.
Friday night my closest cousin let’s me know the oldest, a woman a few year younger than me, had been killed in a car/pedestrian accident and the younger brother had been incarcerated in state prison. Yesterday I had a feeling the brother would not leave prison alive due to ill health. It’s almost always very traumatic events I see. I’d gladly give it up if I could.
Dear 8sm,
I used to dismiss such things as rank superstition
But that was before I immersed myself in “transpersonal psychology”, and was forced to change my mind.
I’ve seen too many things that cannot be explained away.
I still consider myself a champion of science. I do not believe in the “supernatural”. There is no such thing as the “supernatural”.
If something exists, it is by definition natural. It just means the scope of nature is wider than we originally assumed.
“We the Sheeple in ‘Murca ”
Oh no. I’ve been spelling Merkin wrong. It should be Murcan. I was going with the phonetic spelling and missed my mark. ahaha
Dear Ed,
Shame on you.
Put on the dunce cap and stand in the corner!
Mah fellow Murcans….or is it Merkins? Anyways, I will give up my dunce cap when they pry it from my pointed head.
Ed, damned funny to my old mind too. I’d apply that question to Rand(oh hell yes, I’m genuflecting and typing at the same time)the Jew sucker. I lost the thread where somebody lamented Rand might not be the straight up guy he’s made out to be. Just like every politician I know, I’d gladly put a rock in his pants and throw him down the well.
“Just like every politician I know, I’d gladly put a rock in his pants and throw him down the well.”
Me too, 8. If he was drowning, I’d throw him a cinder block…..a 12″ one at that. I worked masonry in the ’80s in East Texas. Those 12″ wide cinder blocks were called “birth control blocks”. Hump those 65 pound scutters all day and it’d make you just pat the old gal on the butt before you fell asleep. ahaha
Ed, I believe you. Right out of high school I got a job working for a road construction outfit. I always picked the easy stuff. First day(I’d been sick for months, first with a badass bronchitis thing and then with the mumps that went down on me immediately following almost returning to health)they put me and a great big boy loading pieces of busted up culvert into a dump truck. Humping those pieces of 50-100 pounds of concrete was a laughable job, no problem, for about 2 hours. The rest of the day wasn’t nearly as adventurous. The next day I had serious problems as I had worked to the point of using everything I had at the end so I had a great hemorrhoid to show for it. One day, I don’t know what a hemorrhoid is, the next day I’m completely caught up on them. A week later I’m an old hand. Shoulda, coulda, woulda bought Prep H stock when I sold my firs cattle and hogs 4 years earlier. I’d be rich today and might get a discount, or it would feel like one.
Dear Ed, 8sm,
I’m glad I never did manual labor beside you guys. You guys would have mocked me mercilessly as a total wimp, and not without justification.
Just listening to you guys share war stories about loading sixteen tons of number nine coal makes me tired.
Working in architectural firms did result in some pretty painful paper cuts from blueprints over the years though.
Ditto that, Bevin!
I’ve done manual labor – a summer spent roofing when I was 19; unloading UPS trucks at night during my sophomore year in college – and that gave me respect (awe) for people who do that full-time, when they are not 19 but 39 or 49.
I also learned about “country strong” spending a hot July day (all day) digging fence posts with my 68-year-old neighbor…
Dear Eric,
I did framing on a tract house one summer. Was that an education, or what?
I learned first hand just how hard “honest labor” was. Was I ever glad to get back behind a drafting table after that, and grateful I could earn a living without hard physical exertion.
I couldn’t imagine doing that for a year, let alone an entire lifetime.
“Working in architectural firms did result in some pretty painful paper cuts from blueprints over the years though.”
Ah, an architect. When I was laboring in the construction trades there was a saying, attributed to an architect:
“The difference between a mistake and a fuck up is that a mistake can be fixed with an eraser. A fuckup has to be fixed with a jackhammer.”
Dear Ed,
“The difference between a mistake and a fuck up is that a mistake can be fixed with an eraser. A fuckup has to be fixed with a jackhammer.”
Don’t I know it!
Don’t ask for details. I’m not telling.
I saw an example while working electrical on an addition at a glass manufacturing plant. An electrician, who clearly knew better had run conduit and pulled 20+ sets of 12 ga. wire from a distribution panel into a new clean room, because the prints showed it that way.
When I took over to pipe and wire the clean room, I could see that it was a mistake by an electrical engineer who neglected to draw in a sub-panel inside the clean room. It was obvious that the 12 ga. circuit feeds were for branch circuits and would never have been tied to a 400 amp breaker in the DP, but the guy who piped and pulled it that way probably wanted to show what a fuckup that was by the EE.
When I took the print to the field office to get the change approved to install the subpanel, it bothered me that the other guy had wasted the time and materials just to turn a mistake into a fuck up so as to embarrass the Electrical Engineers .
Ed, we were pulling wire to a big floor trough behind a long bank of control panels. The trough was 12″ wide and since we were always “saving money”, the conduit in concrete was sometimes blocked with concrete because someone had knocked off the plastic end caps. That leaves fewer runs with the same amount of wire. We were pulling some big stuff in there like 3/0, not huge, but too damned big to make that turn in 12″. It had been a long month, walls up on the gin, no roof and no air with a merciless west Tx. sun. We were working 18 hr days which translates into about 4 hrs sleep. Fighting several badass runs I had run out of patience and everything else.
My boss is nearby checking things out and I say “I’d like to kick the ass of the yahoo that designed this ffffff gutter”. He says to me “You might not be able to whip his ass”. I told him if I couldn’t that would be fine, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d had my ass kicked and the SOB would know he’d been in one.”
Nothing more was said and we continued to work. Later on, a guy who heard it came over and laughed and said “Hell, it was the boss that designed that fuckin gutter”. Open mouth, insert foot……but at least he knew how I(and everybody else)felt about it.
8, that was funny. Speaking of blocked conduit, getting a washed pebble or two from the roofing in the 1″ EMT that comes up to the rooftop AC condensing units can ruin a wire puller’s day.
Hafta wonder whether those pebbles get in there by accident. 😉
Ed, when it gets roofed there will be nobody who cares how much gravel goes down anything including conduit. It’s above their pay grade and certainly above their “give a shit”.
Yep, we did our roof membrane penetrations for the conduit before the tar and gravel went on, before pitch pockets became widely used. Sealing the ends of the conduit with duct tape didn’t always keep out the stones.
With a pitch pocket, the conduit could go in after the roofing was done because the pocket was just a square tubing section with a cap on top. You’d just take off the cap, run the conduit, then tamp in some packing and pour the pocket full of roofing cement.
If you got a stone in there doing it that way, it was deliberate on the part of somebody.
Eight it was Shiner Bock from the tap. Always been a buy by the lowest price guy but that stuff was magic.
It’s a mixed biker oiler neighbor mix but some how a fight broke out and I chose to help bloke A to the door to let bloke B cool down. In all that ruckus non compos drinkus I lost a lot of the sales presentation plus also Boobs and an amazing free bar band playing all the good stuff from those good old days.
I’d sneak in there again tonite while the chief gets sponged and nurse maided but then I have to come the long way around thru the emergency entrance and jazz.
Need a libertarian IMU tower with blackjack and hookers just the way Mencken always wanted us to have. And a full bar and gun range like Hunter inhabited at the end of his days.
All this talk of brewskies brings to mind this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhiofL2Rh4
Websense has blocked unauthorized streaming. Freeee hospital wyfy has got me guessing for now.
It’s a video clip from “Blue Velvet”, where the Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper talks about beer.
Frank Booth: What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbor?
Jeffrey Beaumont: Heineken.
Frank Booth: Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
Tor, my kind of scene for sure. I pick up bock when I can’t get black. I’ve drunk a six of SB in a bit over 100 miles at 80mph going to the house many times and be laughing my ass off. We were coming in one night, tired as hell, drinking SBock and this ex-coworker’s name came up. I told a story about him and what he said about another co-worker to the foreman and his wife. The foreman could barely drive and his wife was laughing, screaming, crying and needing oxygen and a piss stop by the time I was through. I was rolling in the back seat and the foreman was just hanging on the steering wheel. We couldn’t go over 15 minutes without somebody(mainly her)exploding with laughter. I miss those trips with Sirius radio. Me and the foreman would listen to various country stations and play name that song, artist, writer, year, etc. I’d ride in the back mostly and the foreman would put his hand over the readout and challenge me. I told him I was an encyclopedia of music and he came to believe it, esp. when somebody’s music from them first starting out sounded nothing like their later, more famous music.
8, since you read WHO WHAT WHY, here’s an article you’ll like:
http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/01/27/disinformation-part-1-how-trolls-control-an-internet-forum/
Ed, hhhhmmm. All good points and disquietingly accurate. Is this a case, with a twist, of “if the fu shits?”.
Part 2 is already up. Seems somewhat familiar, but one thing I always keep in mind is that the writers at WWH are all leftists, so when their facts are straight they’ll draw different conclusions from what I’d draw, usually.
Ed, I can no longer think along the lines of left and right. Hitlery is supposedly the darling(sic) of a party who likes “social” welfare as opposed to the party that likes “corporate’ welfare. But both parties contain plenty, including Hitlery, who would bomb, strafe, gas, drone strike, missile strike(without the drones) and any and all other means of killing as much of the planet, according to their “likes”. It’s obvious that anyone who comes into their political radar they deem not on their side is fair game including anyone in any country or the high seas.
Stay tuned for future releases “Kill ’em faster in the USA” as well as old favorites “Kill ’em for being, your choice, commies, islamists, non-Israeli’s, etc. etc.”
Next week features include “know your enemies and how to gain more”.
We have enough scum in DC now to make Bill Kristol blush……and not have any more idea of what to label them than I do.
Hi Eight,
Bill Kristol is the Paul Ehrlich of the right. He has a perfect track record of being wrong about everything. Nothing can make him blush.
Jeremy
Kristol is a Cheshire Cat-grinning poltroon. I have this recurrent fantasy in which he’s air-dropped over Baghdad or Teheran to “fight for freedom.”
eric, put Jonah Goldberg on the plane with Billy K. It would be delicious to know that they’re out there fighting in the wars they promoted.
8, the writers at WHO WHAT HUH? are self identified leftists, but I know what you mean. Politicians are neither left, right, or center. They’re all on the same level, and AT the same level, too; lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.
I like reading their revelations about the JFK/RFK, MLK murders. They seem to be good at rooting out facts.
Ed, there are those on what I call the principled left whose presentations are well worth considering. The best way to determine if they have anything of value to say is to track their attitude toward Bush crimes vs Obama crimes. People like Russ Baker, Jeremy Scahill, Chris Hedges, Kirkpatrick Sale, Glenn Greenwald, Daniel Ellsberg, even Amy Goodman all bring necessary information to light.
Unfortunately, most of them are economically illiterate and hopelessly naive about the nature of the State. Still, they are often “good at rooting out facts”.
Jeremy
“Unfortunately, most of them are economically illiterate and hopelessly naive about the nature of the State.”
Yes, not to mention that they buy into the most patently ridiculous nonsense invented to promote the state, such as AGW.
Ed,
“Yes, not to mention that they buy into the most patently ridiculous nonsense invented to promote the state, such as AGW”.
The same people who recognize the corporatist scams at the heart of the war on drugs, the war on terror, “privatization” of prisons. the ethanol mandate, even obamacare (some recognize this) still beat the drum for AGW alarmism. While many people concerned about AGW are sincere, if uninformed, the government-corporate alliance pushing for complete control over energy production are in it for power and money.
Climate control regulation, if implemented, will prove to be the greatest corporatist boondoggle ever. How can they be so naive?
George Carlin on saving the planet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Jeremy
Yup.
AGW is a near perfect pretext for totalitarian control.
It provides the white collar sociopaths of the NWO a perfect excuse. They can allege that individual liberty violates “humanity’s “collective right to a sustainable environment”. It enables them to argue that individual rights must be overridden by government, preferably “one world government”.
The AGW scam proves that its chief advocates are “watermelons”. Green on the outside, red on the inside.
They are today’s Leninist/Stalinist/Maoists, with “environmental sustainability” standing in for “social justice” as their moral justification.
Dear Ed,
“lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.”
LOL!
Love it!
That sounds like a line straight out of a Western movie.
Bevin, that was from Uncle Jed on “The Beverly Hillbillies”, IIRC. I find myself remembering things from 50+ years ago since my car crash. Maybe it’s just old age finally getting a grip on me and has nothing to do with the crash.
When my grandfather passed away, approaching his 97th b-day, a family member got up at the memorial service and related the following that Grandpa had told him: “When I was young I knew I would have a lot of things to remember in my life, so I thought of my memory as a bookshelf, and carefully arranged things for easy access later. But now I’ve been alive for so long, all I can do is kind of pitch them up onto the top shelf, way overhead. And that’s why I can tell you things that happened decades ago easier than I can remember what I ate for supper last night.”
Ed, trauma is a strange thing. I certainly wouldn’t compare my broken leg with your much worse injuries but the continual pain took me to place I might never have been. Had I been able to write or even had a recorder, I’m sure I wrote some good songs since I had nothing else to do. After a couple months(the last two weeks of which I had NO pain killers except alcohol)I could get up and get around but it was so excruciating I didn’t last long on any mission so I’d find myself back in bed…..with Cooter Brown and writing songs. They helped and I wish I could remember them. Even when I could see a monitor and stand to be in front of it, I found my writing style and the thoughts I had significantly different from before. I’d remember things from childhood or later(same thing for me)I had forgotten. Supper? Not a clue….most likely, another jug of whiskey and a case of beer.
We had a new litter of kittens. They thought I was their mama, roamed all over me and used me as a playground. If my wife would have helped I’d have made a video, How Not to Treat You Cat. First, never put them on their back and I would have had them upside down, purring like crazy. Don’t move directly at them. I played with them by jabbing my hand at them and grabbing them by the head, purring all around. Never try to hold one upside down by their belly. I’d hold one in each hand by the belly skin, purr city. Don’t make sudden moves. I’d slap right beside them and they’d attack me, purring. I’d hold them up in the air by their belly and drop them. They’d land on their feet and want more. I could still do all those things but they’re too damned fat. We have a new litter. One of the females realized my chifforobe was shoulder height so she uses other furniture to get on top and steps off on my shoulder to hitch a ride where ever I might be going. Only one seems to like the truck. I fire up that old Detroit and he calmly sits on the front tire. Cats….sheesh.
8, the only mercy I was shown after all the surgery was Dilaudid for 5 months. They sent me home with 80 hits, and it lasted a month. I quit taking them with one hit left in the bottle, cold turkey.
A doctor said that withdrawal would be hell, but…..here I be, clean at last.
Ed, I’m guessing nobody expected you to do anything after what you went through. Cold turkey on that much Dilaudid would come close to killing me, just the way I am. I can take a lot but stopping suddenly just ain’t in my book. But I stopped since I could get no more. The doc said Quote”The DEA doesn’t like me to give this stuff out”. I replied Quote “Fuck the DEA, I have the broken leg”. We had no conversations after that.
Later, after going to a specialist of another flavor, he said that Achilles tendon pulled out was a real deal breaker, looked at the scars on my leg and asked who did the surgery(what surgery? I had none, the scars came from the inside out) and was amazed I had driven a truck for 12-14 hrs a day for nearly a year. And the truck I mainly drove had such an old clutch it was really hard to push and finally broke the linkage. It was so hard all the grip on the aluminum pedal was worn slick. Since my boots were always covered in limestone dust I occasionally wouldn’t be able to get it out of gear when I felt my foot was going to slide off so bad things would occasionally happen.
And I was just sitting here wishing I’d had the doc inject something into it yesterday. When I take a physical for employment I bite the bullet, go through the motions and lie lie lie.
Glen Frey(The Eagles co-founder) recently died from complications caused by drugs(NSAIDS) he took for rheumatoid arthritis. More people die from tylenol each year than illegal drugs and traffic accidents combined. War on Drugs, what a frickin joke.
I’m glad you’re still around. You and I both learned a lesson, the “health care industry(key word, industry)sucks the big one.
I hope you continue to get better.
8, funny thing about the withdrawal from the Dilaudid: I was expecting a bad time that never materialized. Just some abdominal cramping for while, nothing bad at all.
Before the wreck I was 30 years clean, no drugs at all. I was expecting to have a terrible time getting off the stuff. I dumped all the meds they had me taking once I was home.
I refused all NSAID meds the whole time. That stuff killed my brother in law a few years ago. Allopathic medicine is a fraud. It’s nothing but chemicals which are supposed to suppress symptoms but, instead they cause more damage and heal nothing.
Ed, that wasn’t my first time with opioids so it kicks my butt. I was prepped for shoulder surgery and being rolled in when the prep nurse leaned down and said “You know, this is one of the most painful surgeries there is”, smiled and I wanted to grab her neck but she timed it perfectly when she stopped and the gurney kept on. Don’t know what I did to piss her off and she was no where to be seen when it was over, bitch. She was correct though and I had to take pain meds for months just to get through therapy. That was decades after my back surgery though. I need the other shoulder done but I’ll just grin and bear it.
Bad as I hate to say it, I get by on Alleve daily. Just kicked again from that truck wreck where I got run over from behind and coming up on my 14th month anniversary from my run in with the Northern Pacific due to crossing light failure. 64 years old and not a single truck wreck and 2 in less than 5 months, neither my fault.
8, You could try Kratom. It’s still available legally, though the fuckin drug warriors are seizing shipments here and there as if it were a “controlled substance” (what a stupid Orwellian term).
http://www.sagewisdom.org/kratomguide.html
http://ensobotanicals.com/kratom/
http://kratomonline.org/
“controlled substance” (what a stupid Orwellian term)
Indeed it is.
Never let anyone tell you that there is no such thing as mass insanity in the form of “consensus reality”.
Why oh why do billions of seemingly intelligent human beings assume that total strangers in blue costumes have the right to prohibit one from making “moonshine” or growing certain species of weeds???
By what logic???
By what right???
As I said, most of our fellow human beings are under a collective hypnotic spell, known as the Myth of Authority.
The greatest mystery in the world is why people feel obligated to obey total strangers merely because they call themselves “The Government.” https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
If you take a moment to think about it, another idiotic term is
“medical marijuana”.
Why the fuck do individuals need to justify the ingestion of a “controlled substance” to some fucking clover, by pleading that “But it’s for medical purposes!”
The collective trance is hard to break.
Bevin, old shoe, medical marijuana is usually damn good indo’ while the street boo is often just ragweed. 😉
I say that as if I actually know after not having a joint in 30+ years.
Hi Ed,
Cass Sunstein, proponent of the Orwellian theory “Libertarian Paternalism”, co-wrote a paper in 2008 arguing that the government should employ “cognitive infiltration” methods whereby GovCo agents would target “conspiracy” forums.
From the paper:
“What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).”
Cass Sunstein was rewarded for these ideas by being appointed “information czar” by the Obama administration.
Watch him pretend not to remember writing this article when confronted by a persistent reporter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OIiOztc52g
Jeremy
Dear Jeremy,
There’s another phenomenon that I consider even more disgusting.
I’ve noticed an increase in Facebook posts that make false claims about evil deeds that the US government is planning.
It is not that the government is above doing such evil deeds. I’m quite certain it will eventually get around to doing them.
But these posts are intended to trick champions of freedom into jumping on the bandwagon so that they can be discredited when the claims are revealed to be premature, therefore false.
No dirty trick is beneath them.
Dear Bevin,
Your comment echoes my thoughts (this morning) on another “definition”.
Conspiracy theory:
1) A factual and supportable explanation of a major event that contradicts the official narrative.
2) A false, but somewhat credible, theory designed to lure people into advocating a hoax; the purpose of which is to discredit factual conspiracy theories.
3) An interesting, but currently unsupportable, explanation of a major event.
Jeremy
Ever notice how the mainstream media always goes after the most ridiculous theories and never addresses the sensible and supported ones? The later is always ridiculed using the former. The public than repeats that. If you talk about a theory that is supported by evidence and analysis people lump you with the crazy nutballs.
It’s almost as if the nutball theories are grown intentionally to get the attention.
Dear Brent,
Yes!
I’m a “9/11 truther” to use the current vernacular.
But I suspect some of the wilder 9/11 theories are deliberate fabrications cooked up by government agents to sow confusion among truther ranks, and to discredit truthers in the eyes of the larger public.
Never underestimate how evil the government can be.
I mean, think about it. the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was not perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. I was perpetrated by the “US Public Health Service”.
I won’t accept ‘truther’ or any other label. I may mock the labels assigned to me from time to time but that’s it. I know the government lies by default. The question is only how much? Sorting the lies from the truth. I present the facts as I learn them and the logic as I see it. I refuse to theorize or speculate on major event. I can’t examine the evidence personally to draw firm conclusions or theories.
If it’s something more general like what self appointed social engineers are aiming for I will talk about what I believe their are aiming for as I deduce it from actions and writings. But that’s just discussion. Intellectual exercises. The average person stays away from those things when they realize the weight of the background material. They’ll only go into what the TV makes them feel informed about. There the best I can do is just plant seeds so when they hear something years from now maybe it will click.
BrentP, most people, ok, almost everyone has no practical knowledge of building construction nor large equipment.
Let’s consider “pulling” WTC 7 “over”. First you need to realize these building have huge steel beams at least a couple hundred feet concreted, with all the steel and other components, into the earth that consists of stone.
How do you pull it over? First off you need to consider they were showing tracked excavators with some ostensibly, steel cables.
How large a cable do you need to have a plethora of machines “pull” over a building. I didn’t get a degree in ME although I had 3.5 years towards one. My real knowledge though comes from plain old, BTDT….in the field. Not even the smallest of buildings, say a 3 story bank building could be pulled over. But let’s get back to what you’ll use even if a bunch of excavators could even make the building wink, which they couldn’t since an excavator operates from a hydraulic pump and is made to move itself with some extra. We can rule that out immediately. Then you need to figure out what size cable you could attach to the building(good blackout Hollywood video) to pull a building over. Well, in a word, there aren’t cables that large made by anyone for anything. How long would it take, if cables like that, in those lengths, existed, for workers with something like the largest of crane helicopters to get that non-existent cable let’s say, up to the top of the building and affixed to all those beams? If cable that large existed, it would be a long process, weeks of hard work to get to those beams, and somehow attach those non-existent cables to those beams. But there are beams all the way across the building. Now we get into a huge spiderweb of those non-existent cables somehow attached to nearly every one of those beams. What do you pull it over with? Certainly not an excavator. Then you consider dozers, big ones, the largest obtainable in the world. Next we’re speaking of hundreds of trucks with several jeeps hooked to tri-axle tractors and let’s say, 10 axle lowboys and at least 3 quad axle jeeps per rig for each lowboy hauling a dozer body. Then you need several other larges trucks to deliver the blades which you must have for weight. A dozer is only as good as what it weighs. All the power in the world does no good without enough weight. So there’s another big truck and trailer with it’s own jeeps to move in one blade. Then there is the track assembly. Same scenario for track assemblies. Once it’s all on site, it takes an experienced crew, with cranes, several days to assembly a single machine. I won’t go any further. It can’t be done, period. There aren’t enough machines to hook to non-existent cables, even with hundreds of workers trying to get to the beams and helicopters to deliver the end of that cable to those workers while a plethora of welders work on the beams to attach those cables that don’t exist to the beams in such a ways as to not break the cable(that doesn’t exist). Then something would be need to be made to attach to the dozer in order for the non-existent cables to be attached, again, in a way that won’t break the cables with sharp points. I forgot to point out maybe two construction helicopters would work above that building at the same time.
Everyone in the building trade knows this. Everybody who saw 9/11 unfold knows flying beams from adjacent buildings didn’t take out that huge part of one side of WTC 7. It was easy to see their first try at demolition didn’t work, something happened to not let the rest of the charges detonate. There literally is no end to the bullshit answers somebody like Larry Silverstein wouldn’t be able to answer.
it’s all such bullshit and if you can accept 28 redacted pages from the FBI’s report, you can gobble anything.
Dear Jeremy,
“2) A false, but somewhat credible, theory designed to lure people into advocating a hoax; the purpose of which is to discredit factual conspiracy theories.”
That’s it!
You got it!
Dear Bevin and Brent,
Another way the gatekeepers shut off debate is to demand an alternate theory. It should be enough for one to say, “I don’t know what happened, but I can demonstrate that the official narrative is almost certainly false”. But, this reasonable approach is always rejected by the gatekeepers. They shift the burden of proof from the architects of the narrative (where it should lie) to those who question the narrative. In effect, the official narrative enjoys a presumption of truth that it does not deserve. It is not considered sufficient to merely point out the problems with the official narrative, one must provide an alternate theory that explains the facts.
I think this is interesting because we, as libertarians, are routinely given the same impossible task. When we point out the flaws in the Statist system, we are told that our ideas should be rejected until we can prove, to their satisfaction, that “our system” will work. Advocates of the existing ideology place a burden on us that they are incapable of meeting themselves. But, unfortunately, many of us fall for it.
I think the same dynamic happens to “conspiracy theorists”, which may explain some of the more outlandish theories. I have no doubt that the PTB intentionally create false narratives to discredit critics. However, by upending the proper burden of proof, they can safely rely on some people to provide their own implausible narratives.
Jeremy
Dear Jeremy,
“Advocates of the existing ideology place a burden on us that they are incapable of meeting themselves. But, unfortunately, many of us fall for it.”
True, and sad.
Many gun rights defenders fall for the “no legitimate sporting purpose” trick all the time.
They rush to justify why they should be “permitted to keep” this or that gun. When they do this, they have already fallen into the trap.
I’ve made it a point to expose this trick on forums. I tell other gun rights defenders that the best defense is a good offense.
I ask them why they imagine that the gun controllers have any right to decide what they may or may not own in the first place.
I point out that gun controllers have no intention whatsoever of getting rid of guns.
They merely intend to get rid of your guns, so that they are the only ones left armed, while you are left utterly defenseless.
“Gun controllers have no intention whatsoever of getting rid of guns.
They merely intend to get rid of your guns.”
A veritable truism, in the truest sense of the word.
Dear Phil,
Pleased that you liked it!
I’ve been trying to think of ways to get my point across as succinctly as possible lately.
bevin, the Constitution says “arms”. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with guns. Yes, guns are included in arms but arms mean anything you can use to keep the state at bay. Forget self-defense from other persons. It’s the defense of one’s self against any entity that would seek to take what is yours, no matter what that is by any means you can imagine.
The Geneva convention defines means of genocide that are “allowed” and those that are “not allowed”. What an asinine concept.
“Another way the gatekeepers shut off debate is to demand an alternate theory. ”
In a 9-11 thread in another forum recently I posted what I have here. What I see as the incorrect assumptions and flaws in the NIST report. One tenacious person tried to hang what other people say on me and when that didn’t work kept demanding my theory. I kept responding that I don’t have access to the evidence to produce a theory, I have access to logic and engineering knowledge and I disagree with NIST’s assumptions because well, they contradict each other.
Dear 8sm,
No argument whatsoever!
Dead on. Arms, not “guns”.
I cited “guns” only because I was responding to gun control in particular.
As I have noted elsewhere, gun control is not really about gun control, it’s about victim disarmament.
That is the reason the PTB are determined to ban military style rifles, because even without full auto function, they enable “mere mundanes” to neutralize goonvermin enforcers.
Hi Brent,
Yes, falsifying a theory does not require an alternate theory to replace it.
Jeremy
Morning, Jeremy!
I just upgraded you to Contributor status (which gives you more access to things). Cheers!
‘Arms,’ eh? I guess I better start saving my shekels for that M1A1 Abrams I mentioned a few days ago.
Hey, I bet I would stand a better chance of getting it if I was paying in shekels!
In reply to Philip the Bruce, who said:
“Gun controllers have no intention whatsoever of getting rid of guns.
They merely intend to get rid of your guns.”
A veritable truism, in the truest sense of the word.
“Those who beat their swords into plowshares,
Will farm for those who do not.” – Thomas Jefferson.
Morning Eric,
Thanks so much! I’ll explore.
Jeremy
Jeremy, I think Cass Sunstein would crawl over his mother’s corpse to try to rape his sister.
Well, at least to lick Obama’s balls.
Dear Ed, Jeremy,
I’ve been away from the US so long, I had to look up Sunstein.
Here’s one excerpt. Mind-boggling!
Taxation
Sunstein has argued, “We should celebrate tax day.”[33] Sunstein argues that since government (in the form of police, fire departments, insured banks, and courts) protects and preserves property and liberty, individuals should happily finance it with their tax dollars:
In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live? Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public… There is no liberty without dependency.[33]
“There is no liberty without dependency”???
Talk about Orwellian Newspeak!
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Dear Bevin,
This cretin considers himself to be part of the libertarian movement! Bastiat had his type nailed years ago.
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
Jeremy
Dear Jeremy,
Sunstein considers himself a libertarian???
Doublethink, mang. Doublethink.
Doublethink is the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts.[1]
Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Somewhat related but almost the opposite is cognitive dissonance, where contradictory beliefs cause conflict in one’s mind.
Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.
Dear Jeremy,
Re: Sunstein’s cretinism
Who was it who said,
“Only a graduate of an Ivy League university could believe something that stupid.”
Or words to that effect.
Dear bevin,
Sunstein co-authored the book “Nudge” wherein he advocates his theory of “libertarian paternalism”. David Gordon reviewed it here:
https://mises.org/library/cass-sunstein-and-libertarian-paternalism
Jeremy
Sunstein is another one of these cowardly authoritarian types who loves violence provided it’s not recognized as such and provided he can get proxies to do it for him. Bernie’s another such. Neither of these creeps would dare to threaten anyone with violence on their own. But their lust to control is so fevered they spend their entire lives either working for the government or using the government to control others.
I’d love to see Sunstein and Bernie in a real-life Revenant situation.
“libertarian paternalist”, ifn’ that ain’t one hell of an oxymoron…..unlike Sunstein=Moron
I have encountered the same troll (group?) twice in years past. The first time I encountered this group was around the year 2000 in a militia site whose name escapes me…something like afpn. One troll would announce an event that he was going to participate in with-in a day or two. Afterward, this troll would pat himself on the back publicly, but another troll would pop up and inform us that he likewise attended the event, and that the first troll had sold us out or was lying. Other trolls would chime in, picking sides. Long diatribes would be exchanged, and anyone who was trying to discern the truth would soon get a headache. This would go on day after day, and the group lost membership including myself.
Years later, I was a member of a great yahoogroup called unclesamsucks. The group had several owners, and one of them knew me personally. After some time, that owner lost interest in moderating it and decided to give me his ownership without asking me whether or not I wanted it. I liked the group, so I chose to keep it even though I was an OTR truck driver that was seldom on-line.
One of the times I got on-line, I saw that this troll group had arrived and was up to their same old game. I immediately told them all that I recognized them, and I told them to take their disputes offline or get banned. They persisted, so I banned them. The next time I could get on-line the group had been closed presumably by another owner. I don’t know if I had banned the trolls too late or what. Someone later tried to revive a watered-down statist version of the group, but I doubt that he succeeded.
Brian, that sounds like several situations I saw happening online starting in the late ’90s and continuing through today. You may remember Free Republic from the late ’90s through ’02. That forum became so thoroughly infested with neocon trolls and federal agents that it was soon unrecognizable.
Guys,
I promise that will never happen here. I’ll shut down/close the doors before it does.
One of the cast of characters went by the name Larry Lawson. I don’t remember the other names.
That name sounds familiar as does Jerry “something” can’t recall another name but it definitely was “Jerry”.
LRC ran an article by some statist dweeb today regarding the decline in individuals asking for state permission to drive cars. This person posited the reason was due to people today not needing to get around as they did when the internet didn’t exist. She also stated in a round about way that some don’t get them because the cost associated with a dependable automobile are prohibitive.
Of course, to the statist the obvious never presents itself. Just because the internet exists doesn’t decrease the need to travel. Whether to work, for recreation or shopping. I drive to places when I take a vacation. While I do purchase items from internet retailers, I still shop at Walmart, Sam’s Club, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sears, J.C. Penny, etc. I will admit that I am picky when it comes to buying certain things. I’ll buy an EGR valve off the web but not Shoes. That goes for certain other items like televisions (Yes, I have them but I use them for watching movies and then only those with a liberty theme or a definite pro individual plot and I prefer movies that have a strong male presence unlike the crap that passes for entertainment today!). I have to take my Granddaughter to work as well. So I put a lot of miles on my vehicles and I mean a lot! My Honda is 12 years old and has 228800 miles and climbing on it. My son does all these things and has to take his two daughters to school and day care!
So what is the reason for the decline? Well, here is my two cents on it. More and more people are refusing to either apply for a driver’s license or re-up their existing driver’s license (this applies also to a state issued ID as well) because they want to limit the state’s ability to regulate their every action.
A case in point, the State of TenNUTSsee has mandated all individuals present a state issued ID to buy alcohol of any kind. So if a person that is 90 years old, using a walker, can barely hear or see doesn’t have a state issued ID? No booze! Sorry Great Grandpa! Currently there is a case where an individual is suing the state over this issue. He’s 76, lives in walking distance from the store. He doesn’t own a car and refuses to get a state issued ID because there is no legal (sic) requirement to have one. This case has been on going and delayed by the state hoping the dude will die as the matter will, according to the state, all go away. That is until someone else decides to sue again. Which I am sure will happen sooner than later.
I do believe people are getting sick of all the crap the Gooberment and its minions push on them and this bit of Civil Disobedience is a way of telling those A-Holes to F off!
David Ward
I think many people just don’t bother with getting a drivers license. It doesn’t mean they don’t drive. How many people drive without auto insurance? Many, so why would a drivers license be any different?
As long as you aren’t stopped by the cops, you can get away with it for a long time. It’s free to drive without a license (or insurance). As long as you don’t speed, get in a crash or do other stupid things when driving you could go a long time without a problem. I did it by accident a few years ago, forgot to renew it. Drove two plus years technically unlicensed. Only noticed when my brother was renewing his, and took a look at my own. My insurance company never noticed I was without one either, and the state doesn’t bother with a renewal notice anymore.
One of the newspapers in Chicago did a piece a few years ago, on people who had lost their licenses for drunk driving convictions. People who had just lost their drivers licenses were literally driving out the courthouse parking lot under the not so watchful eye of the county police.
I know one of my brothers friends was one of those people. How else are you going to get to work etc without driving there? He has been caught a number of times, and I doubt they will ever let him have a license again.
Why does the dictionary have the word ‘anarchy’ containing opposite definitions? The Oslo Convention answers this question in this article:
http://www.anarchy.no/oslo.html
Hi Brian,
The link provides an interesting etymology of anarchy. “The prefix an means negation of as in anaerobe versus aerobe and arch means superior, i.e. in contrast to subordinates”. In contrast, most sources cite Arkhos (ruler) as the root. Their interpretation perhaps explains the left anarchist’s curious, and I would argue, dangerous obsession with the elimination of hierarchies.
Jeremy
From Ayn Rand:
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
This brings to my mind a couple of Lysander Spooners articles:
Natural Law: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2182
Vices are Not Crimes: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2499
I think of what you have articulated here almost every time I drive through Virginia. At least a handful of times, we wake up in either Winchester or Abingdon and drive for hours on I-81, along with dozens, if not hundreds of others, at what Big Brother considers the reckless speed of 85 or so mph. We all want to get there, wherever “there” is. We all know we need to keep a safe distance, signal our intentions, etc. I’ve never seen it not work. People are polite (left-lane hogs excepted). We all get along.
The funny thing about government: It interrupts and interferes with the lives of those who do self-govern, but yet isn’t able to prevent nor deter the actions of those who won’t self-govern. Government doesn’t seem to do much about sociopaths and sadistic abusers. It instead hires them as cops. The lives of the self-governing are micro-managed, and their often-benevolent actions prevented, deterred, and or penalized; A good man who has committed no real crime becomes an outlaw merely for not submitting to tyranny and the dictates of the state, while the vermin can live much freer, until and if such time they are caught committing some attrocity.
Ordinary people are seemingly unable to grasp that deliberate and inherent aspect of the design. That it stifles and punishes the people who aren’t the problem. Well aren’t the problem for society. They are a problem for the state. Self governing productive people don’t need the state. They demonstrate the state is not needed. Criminals show the masses why the state is needed. Lazy people show why the state is needed.
It’s the gun control argument… scaled.
You and I and probably 99 percent of the people who visit this site… our actions would not change if it became legal to own a nuclear-tipped ICBM tomorrow. Certainly, we’d not become muggers. Gun laws are a nullity as regards us, as regards our tendency to use a gun aggressively against an innocent person.
Same as regard the rest of it.
If government disappeared tomorrow – along with its laws – would our actions toward others change? Would we become murdering, thieving, raping maniacs?
Of course not.
Which is how I debate statists. I ask them if the government disappeared tomorrow morning would they murder me and take my stuff? Not one said they would. They refer to the mythical somebody else who would on occasion. Then I ask them how government stops them today. They say the cops, courts, prisons, ect. I then point out it doesn’t, it only punishes those it catches after the fact some of the time. Person still dead, stuff still stolen. They might persist that the fear of punishment stops them. If they are team D they trip over their gun control stance by doing so. If they are team R then I can go the route of prison numbers and how fear of punishment later doesn’t work.
BrentP, you’re dead on. It’s simply brainwashed fools who support govt. and it’s “just us” system, it’s “crime prevention and Law enforcement”, the judges and jails. And it’s done so others make money from it, great big loads of it.
Sonof a bitch, it won’t let me post a link to a very good article about this very thing, a problem of privatization that’s being addressed in the Tx Lege right now. Go to gritsforbreakfast.com for today and read their article.
How many times have you heard some craven, Cloverized captive of the commune ask some variant of, “so, should everybody be allowed to own a howitzer?”
As for ICBMs, it is usually useful to note that the United States government is the only entity, natural or otherwise, to have used atomic weapons. Of course, the greatest generation tends to take offense to that fact.
“so, should everybody be allowed to own a howitzer?”
My reply to that is “No, no one should be allowed to own a howitzer – including the gunvermin.
If gunvermin is really based on the consent of the governed (no evidence that it is), the governed cannot legitimately consent to anything they do not have the individual right to do or have.
Applies even more so to atomic weapons, which are impossible to use w/o ‘collateral damage.’
PtB, everybody should have a howitzer. It would be great just familiarizing yourself with one, becoming proficient in hitting a target. If you could afford an F-22 I think you should get one. As for atomic weapons, they should have been banned as soon as they found out what they’d do as Oppenheimer was in favor of. The scientists didn’t want to produce the weapons nor continue to make material for them. That was the pols that used the damned things.
I don’t want an F22, but I wouldn’t mind an M1A1 Abrams.
Even with that, as with a howitzer, I would be concerned about ‘collateral damage,’ as the gunvermin do not seem to be.
“No, no one should be allowed to own a howitzer – including the gunvermin.”
I might say that anyone BUT government should be “allowed” to own a howitzer. The average asshole on the street would be more trustworthy with such a gun than any government employee.
I would keep a howitzer or two because I might need to shell a government facility if one of their employees aggravated me. Just keepin’ my options open, y’know.
Dear Ed,
All seriousness aside, I agree completely.
The same goes for nuclear weapons. Statists invariably invoke this as a sort of “reductio ad absurdum” argument to justify limitations on the private ownership of “arms”.
But if you think about it, could private individuals really have used nukes any more irresponsibly than governments?
Actually, nukes would not even be a problem if it weren’t for governments, and government efforts like the Manhattan Project. They wouldn’t even exist.
Ayn Rand pointed this out in Atlas Shrugged, with “Project X”.
Project X (2018-20), in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, was a project of the State Science Institute, completed in the last year of the strike of the men of the mind called by John Galt. It was, quite simply, a weapon of mass destruction and was intended as an instrument of totalitarian control. Instead it became the trigger for the final collapse of the socialistic society that the United States of America had then become.
Project X also was a type of the perversion of science by unscrupulous and power-hungry government authorities, and was also a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the use of taxpayer’s money to fund scientific research.
Indeed. Most weapons systems are far too expensive for individuals or even most corporations to create without government to pay the bill. And should any of them wish to invest the treasure to create them they would soon find that there was no profit to be had from them without government to buy them. Without government to make goods illegal organized crime could not fund the weapons either.
With only sporting, hunting, and personal defense there would be no need for anything beyond a full auto rifle. Maybe someone comes up with a rocket launcher or something at the worst. That is until a government was created somewhere. Then it’s off to the races again.
Exactly!
Statists argue that “We need government to protect us from evil people.”
But governments are filled for the most part, with precisely those “evil people” that statists say we need government to protect us from!
These people, motivated by insatiable power lust, created WMDs in the first place.
Civil society would never have created nuclear weapons to begin with.
We all used to have spud guns till everybody got paranoid because the BATFE said they were illegal cannons and they were on a mission(I doubt it ever existed)to bust people for them.
A couple dollars of ammo and a can of hair spray would entertain you all day.
The Waco massacre was an attempt by the ATF to justify its miserable existence.
Reagan considered the ATF a rogue agency, and intended to disband it.
NB: I am not endorsing Reagan per se. Merely noting one issue on which he was right.
Seen on a T-shirt – Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Definitely “laughing out loud”.
Hi Bevin and Eight,
The BATF***ers had ample opportunity to arrest Koresh and inspect “the compound” for illegal weapons (their stated goals) without launching a raid. Koresh, who was known to visit town often, invited the ATF to inspect his property for illegal weapons. The ATF refused.
They wanted to launch a high profile raid, complete with fawning media attention, to bolster their tarnished image. When things went south, they doubled down; eventually culminating in the murder of nearly 80 people. This was done to “save face” after a botched publicity stunt (the codename was “Operation Showtime”).
The flagrant media misrepresentation of the events that led up to the raid, the orchestrated demonization campaign of Koresh and the silence on ATF crimes, were so effective that 73% of Americans approved of the raid, even though it ended in mass murder.
From Anthony Gregory:
‘Shortly before the Waco raid, the agency’s public image had hit an especially low point. Back in October of 1992, some African American agents accused the agency of discrimination at a House of Representatives subcommittee meeting – specifically claiming that their superiors assigned them to more dangerous jobs than their white counterparts and denied denied the same opportunities to job promotion as whites received. They filed suit. These allegations of racism were not the end. Female workers from the ATF had also made allegations of sexual harassment, and said they faced retaliatory punishment for voicing their complaints. The ATF announced that it would launch an investigation as a result, two months before the assault at Mount Carmel. A couple of CBS’ 60 Minutes exposés had focused on the harassment charges, including one before the Waco raid and one a month after in which a reporter found, “Almost all the agents we talked to said they believe the initial attack on that cult in Waco was a publicity stunt – the main goal of which was to improve ATF’s tarnished image.” This would explain the codename of the raid, Operation Showtime.”
“Infrared evidence shows that the FBI used incendiary devices on April 19, which could have easily sparked the conflagration. The FBI also claimed that some Davidians had died of self-inflicted bullet wounds. But the same infrared evidence also shows that, in spite of their claims to the contrary, the FBI shot at Davidians during the fire. They fired machineguns at the only exit and escape left for the sect members after all others fell under the stress of the fire and the tank assault.”
“A Gallup Poll taken shortly after the fire for CNN and USA Today found that 73% of Americans approved of the FBI’s assault. It is impossible to know definitively why so many approved and a sizable number did not, but it is fair to assume that much of what Americans thought of the incident came from the press. The way that so many Americans could adopt such a distorted view of the event involved press coverage that was, to a large extent, directed and manipulated by government officials for their own ends.”
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
I was working as an editorial writer/columnist for The Washington Times at the time; we sat around the office, watching the assault happen on live TV. One of my fellow editorial writers quipped: “It was an action worthy of Jurgen Stroop”….the SS general who razed Warsaw.
HI Eric,
I remember watching this atrocity unfold on live TV as well. At the time I was a partner in a pretty eclectic bicycle/outdoor shop. Most of our clients were kinda counter-culture, and proud of it. Still, most of them bought the bullshit narrative and cheered on the Feds. My business partner was divorced and his daughter was living with her mom in a weird, religious commune.
I blurted out, “what the f**k is wrong with you people?” I turned to my business partner and said “that could be your daughter”. Everyone got silent and never, at least in my presence, made light of the atrocity again.
Jeremy
Dear Jeremy, Eric,
I recommend that everyone watch “Waco: The Rules of Engagement”, a superb documentary expose of the massacre at Waco.
It was so well-made, even Roger Ebert, MSM film critic, gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/waco-the-rules-of-engagement-1997
Watching William Gazecki’s remarkable documentary “Waco: The Rules of Engagement,” I am more inclined to use the words “religion” than “cult,” and “church center” than “compound.” Yes, the Branch Davidians had some strange beliefs, but no weirder than those held by many other religions. And it is pretty clear, on the basis of this film, that the original raid was staged as a publicity stunt, and the final raid was a government riot–a tragedy caused by uniformed boys with toys.
— Roger Ebert, 1997
I bought the film on VHS tape when it first came out.
Now of course, it can be found online or downloaded from Netflix.
PS:
In retrospect, the Waco Massacre was an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.
To wit: the USA Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the militarization of the police, FEMA camps, Jade Helm, Sandy Hoax…
Hi Bevin,
I have it on VHS as well. My wife bought it for me when it was first released. Alas, I no longer have a VCR to play it in.
Jeremy
Ditto!
I no longer have either my VHS or Betamax tape players.
LOL.
The public supported the murder of the Davidians because they were different. They were weirdos. They didn’t conform to the greater whole of american society. The government knows this. It’s why they were chosen. Government goes after those it knows the greater society will not protect.
This what dufuses like Bundy don’t understand. The american public by and large likes its murdering government so long as it goes after those bad people over there. The public has no issue with fed gov doing what it wants with bad people and bad people are defined as those who aren’t like them. Bundy got someone killed with his confrontation with fedgov. He’s lucky they weren’t all killed bonnie and clyde style.
Did Martin Niemoller predict Waco?
Dear Brent,
It’s unfortunate.
Morally, the Bundys weren’t wrong.
In fact, I would even go further and say that they weren’t even wrong tactically.
But they jumped the gun. They should have waited for the S to HTF.
Timing is everything.
Dear Phil,
The lesson of Martin Niemoller is that nobody ever remembers the lesson Martin Niemoller.
Bevin,
I have to disagree. They are all around stupid and have become yet another thing principled libertarians have to overcome with regards to TV consuming public. They did nothing but cause harm with this stunt. This sort of thing doesn’t work unless one has the hearts and minds of the masses. Since they don’t all it does is make matters worse.
Now when fedgov wants to stomp on someone who believes in liberty the public will equate fedgov’s target with these guys (and if they don’t TV will tell them to and they will) and just cheer it on. Won’t matter if it’s totally unrelated and an unprovoked stomping, fedgov now has an upper hand media wise with a fresh event to paint its targets as kooks in the minds of the public.
BrentP, couldn’t find a reply button anywhere near your comment and this was the first one I found. You say the public is so stupid they will cheer the feds. I read some articles that were linked from various other sites like yahoo news and the like. In the comment section the people who supported the group that took over the federal buildings comprised maybe a 5th or 6th with the rest being rabid “kill these people, yeah feds” sort. It’s fairly amazing.
I watched the Waco siege as much as I could every day. I saw the encounter on the roof when someone walked what appeared to be a .30 Cal semi-auto rifle right along where the agents were walking and were going to attempt an entry.
I simply couldn’t understand why people with several of these style rifles simply didn’t riddle that frickin cattle trailer, just walk those rounds along at about 3 heights and it would have been lights out for the ATF. Go ahead, crouch down behind that car and I’ll show you what a Garand loaded with ball ammo will do and I’ll include a couple tracers and light up the gas tank too. To me, it seemed the time to go on the offensive. Don’t ever let anyone bring it to you if you know they’re coming.
Dear Brent,
Actually that is what I was trying to say.
They jumped the gun. People aren’t ready. If they were to do exactly the same thing somewhere down the line from now, the public reaction might be very different. But they didn’t, and it wasn’t.
Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
As you note, most especially with the Matrix quote: MOST PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO BE AWAKE.
Some Japanese Anime, forget what – Soulreaver, maybe? They compared the Slivers to actual Humans. Slivers, in essence, had no souls. Like pennies compared to a dollar, the scope of the energy (soul) was very limited.
A full human was 100 pennies. A sliver at most would be 5.
Not sure I like the implication, as odds were you’d be a sliver.
But the graveyards are full of irreplaceable men.
Most people CHOOSE to be slivers, I think. Pursue pleasure, not as a hedonist, but as an animal, basically. (Hedonist pursues pleasure for the sake of pleasure, animals seek to minimize pain and pursue pleasure in that passive form.)
Most people won’t EVER care. They’ll have their children tagged with GPS (it’s already coming – saw a pilot example on Fox news about three days back. That still used external GPS, but I’m sure the RFID network is in play already, since RFID is in play for so many other things. Just add some code to the cell towers, RFID is passive…. no power source needed….)
The Matrix works, too, in that it is an economic allegory. The pods? Your cubicle, and the micro-apartment “THEY” will allow you to live in when not encapsulated in work.
Seriously, we have enough people out of work that, if benefits ended tomorrow, you’d have a mass riot and civil war, hot, within 24 hours. In the same way, we have enough people out of work that we don’t NEED CAFOs, mechanization, even power tools. We could put everyone to work in low- or semi-skilled positions, and pay everyone a decent wage with minimal issues. Wouldn’t make for Middle-Class lifestyle as shown on TV, though – Especially the “middle-class” lifestyle of even the Cleavers (Leave it to Beaver) – let alone The Brady Bunch (Upper class, actually).
But they could get their “living wage” – and we wouldn’t need to worry.
That would reduce the pressure, though, the Elites have invested a LOT in making sure we use our productive efforts to enrich them, while believing in upward mobility for ourselves – “If you work hard, you can be rich,” basically. The “American Dream.”
And that ultimately means, we’ll NEVER hit that critical mass.
Seen that elsewhere, too, WRT “Line in the Sand” or “watershed moment” (discussed here, actually.)
It will never happen. Too few people give a cr@p. The majority are counting on benefits, or counting on a paycheck. That will account for over 2/3 of the population. Of the remainder, at least 50% don’t care about any of it, as long as they can live their life with minimal issues. They’ll put up with stripsearches by the roadside, and mandatory blood draws, and whatever, because (like taxes), “It’s the cost of living in a free society.” And they are LITERALLY too stupid to see a contradiction there.
I’m not crazy – just ahead of the curve. 😛 Which is NOT comforting. We have to go through the full dissolution of empire, which TPTB will delay and extend as long as possible….
(As a side note, I also think TPTB want to starve most of us to death, and poison the rest. Hearing that the CAFOs are now facing more avian flu or chicken flu or whatever they call it, outbreaks. Not just eggs that are at risk now, Perdue has had to put some of their birds down…. Swine flu a while ago, not solved. GMOs that are known to cause cancers. Vaccines too, known to cause sterility (gardasil) and autism (and who wants to procreate with the autistic?). Control of money, too. Still talk of negative interest rates and a mandated cashless society. Markets are down, food costs up, dollars down, and yet – the wage of 4 silver quarters, at (time X I don’t recall), would now equate to… $15.15. Per a meme on Facebook which has disappeared. Or course, instead of $1.00 at face value, it was the valuation of the silver, but still….
Like the Muslims/Alienorks: We need to take them at their word, they want to kill us. Why should we NOT believe them?
How can so many things all be “conspiracy theory” and NOT have ANY truth, when we know human nature? THEY attempt to control US because (they think) WE are so venal and corrupt… Yet THEY are somehow immune to it? It’s the old Class based society, god gives wealth to those who are best, and therefore deformity or poverty are signs of God’s Disfavor, earned because you did something sinful….
And now, the Sin is against God-Government.
I think my Wildcat method would be most effective, but end the same As John Brown. Question is, how long can you make it, and how much trouble can you cause, before you get planted? And that’s a young man’s game…
But everyone thinking there’ll be a watershed moment or sudden change or crossing of “the line in the sand” and “We, The People” will respond? Is smoking something more potent than ganja….
The next generation is in training to give up more freedom and self-determination already. Why push things? It’s a mutli-generational extinction event that is planned.
We will die out. (See the comments on Time above, how people think time is static, even when they see the changes around them all the time.)
THEY will pass down THEIR culture (Yale, Harvard, etc) – WE are being indoctrinated in a self-destroying set of lies. (Again, google Alienork Way, WRSA and Gates of Vienna). WE are being set up to be exploited.
Same as the “liberal Jews” article I linked to some time back, over on Return of Kings. It’s the same methodology, “Homogeneity for me, Heterogeneity for Thee.” OUR culture gets passed down, yours is diluted and distorted and destroyed, and the result is a sign of God’s Love for US.
I’m rambling, but I think the underlying thoughts are coherent. The human animal hasn’t changed much. We just need to find a way to break their OODA loop, destroy their culture for a generation or two – put them on the same Diversity footing we face – and TPTB will be TPTwere.
But who will work to that end? Hard to be an assassin and poison the Trilaterals, and even harder to get away with it afterwards. And that’s just ONE aspect of the whole thing. CAIR, CFR, FiBbIe, all the same deal… Even if you worked for a caterer, you’d likely never pass the vetting for such an affair as a white house dinner, of you were part of “the movement.”
Patton’s right: Violent plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed in three week’s time.
“nukes would not even be a problem if it weren’t for governments”
Yep. Considering the fact that control of the US nuclear weapons armory was handed over to an imbecile who referred to those weapons as “nukular arms” and “adam bums”, I’d say you’re right.
Now that armory is in the hands of an illegal alien who uses his Nobel Peace Prize as cover for murdering various people with drone attacks.
This world is just too ridiklus to live in, as Little Big Man said.
Dear Ed,
The real world, as of 2016, is more unbelievable than any dystopian scenario dreamed up by some SF novelist.
As a former Cold Warrior, I never imagined that (relatively speaking) the Russians and the mainland Chinese would be the “good guys”, and the US and NATO member nations would be the New Evil Empire.
We inhabit an alternative universe from Quantum Leap.
bevin, Truman and Eisenhower both tried to defund NATO seeing it for what it was. They were thwarted by the shadow govt. Now it’s coming back in spades to haunt us. BTW, it’s this way now and always has been, take away US funding and NATO dies a quick death. I recall understanding that in grade school when we briefly studied NATO and got the lowdown on how much every country contributed. Back then the US ponied up nearly every cent for nearly every country. It only made sense in that it was an arms length tool for the US.
Hell, if I can knock off it’s raison d’etre at 10 years old you’d think everyone else could have too. There were member nations whose air force was an old Cessna with a couple black guys in back carrying leftover Boer war rifles. Why no investigative articles in the MSM back then? Same reason Kennedy was snuffed. STFU and sit down.
Other players, many of whom are quite wealthy plus European nation monies and US money was well have supported the WHO, another organization of nefarious intent.
I seemed to have left out another organization Truman and Eisenhower both tried to defund and totally dismantle and that was the CIA.
I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to shed myself of the notion of the Constitution and it was mainly those of this site who rubbed my nose in it and led me to places where I could find out for myself of the illegitimacy of the entire concept.
One thing I think held me back was agreement on anything with the shrub. He had that effect on me.
At one time if he’d said I had as much right to live as anyone else I would have argued with him. Strange how somebody so evil can affect you so deeply you lose sight of what’s right in front of you.
Like a very good descriptor, “blind rage”, It’s very apt in some cases. Your hatred of someone or some thing blinds you to the truth.
Dear 8sm,
“I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to shed myself of the notion of the Constitution ”
Hey, nothing to be embarrassed about. It took me about a decade after encountering Murray Rothbard before I finally jettisoned the myth of “limited government” for good.
The indoctrination is nothing if not thorough.
It seems so transparently obvious now. Why am I obligated in any way to obey total strangers who made up a bunch of rules without consulting me? It’s obviously a ridiculous notion, right?
Yet most of the 7 billion people on earth think it makes perfect sense.
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I wonder “How could I have believed such nonsense?”
Goes to show ya. There is indeed such a thing as mass insanity.
Dear Ed,
I know.
Actually the word “nuclear” isn’t really that hard to pronounce.
Broken down into syllables It’s “nu-clear”.
Sounds like “new clear”. People really shouldn’t have as much trouble with it as they do.
One word everyone in the English speaking world gets totally wrong is “Karaoke”.
They say “Carry Okie”.
In fact, it’s pronounced pretty much like it’s spelled: “Kara-okay”.
Kara, as in the girl’s name. And okay, as in A-okay.
“Actually the word “nuclear” isn’t really that hard to pronounce. ”
Yes, but W is an imbecile. He tried mightily to sound as though he’s a Texan, but the best he ever managed was to sound like a borderline retard from Connecticut trying to affect a Texas accent.
He managed to fool his fellow retards, but the rest of us laughed at his ridiculous affectation.
An imbecile and a psychopath.
The brutal little bastard should be in prison. But instead, he paints.
Here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say about it. \ˈnü-klē-ər
Of course being a Texan I don’t give any dictionary the final word so to speak on any pronunciation. They caint pronounce many words such as bobwor or crudeawl. I best mosey along….fixinta look fer sum grub.
The shrub used to go home when they couldn’t keep him in Midland on holidays and such. He’d get there and try to get a car to drive. He was so hard on cars everybody would be using theirs and he’d have a hell of a time getting a ride.
I walked into the Holiday Inn bar (between Midland and Odessa) one evening and drew up on a stool. Bartender had this smirk on his face, a couple regulars looked at me and sorta smirked. I ordered and got served and the bartender has this big grin goin. By this time everybody else has a big smile too. So I give a big smile back and the guy closest to me says “You’re sittin on his stool”. I’ll bite, so whose stool says me. The guy said “That’s George’s stool…..Bush?” I take it in and everybody is grinnin like a bunch of coons now. I slide over to the next stool, feelin sorta soiled and they all laughed. I didn’t know I said. So then the stories started. One involved the smart-ass gettin knocked off of it one night by a guy who didn’t know or care who he was. Nobody could remember what exactly had been the reason but they all though it was hilarious. Course the shrub didn’t have to worry about gettin beat to a pulp since his protectors were there…..and a bit slow on the uptake. Evidently nobody liked him, not even people paid to babysit him.
Dear Ed,
“a borderline retard from Connecticut trying to affect a Texas accent.”
ROFLMAO!
I’m a “naturalized Texan” myself. Went to college in Houston then worked there after graduation. A decade and a half altogether.
Dear 8sm,
I went looking for humorous guides on how to talk Texan and found quite a few.
But I stumbled across this, which was even funnier.
http://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/texas-secede.jpg
Yee haw!
bevin, if you lived here 15 years you’ve heard it all I’d guess. Speech is funny in that being more familiar with someone you can use less words. A friend and I have so many keywords(words it would take paragraphs to explain the full meaning)we can have a conversation with others looking on and hearing it but not having a clue as to what we just said.
Check out the Texas Nationalist Movement. It’s not my ideal but beats hell out of what we have now.
Dear 8sm,
“Check out the Texas Nationalist Movement. It’s not my ideal but beats hell out of what we have now.”
Sure does.
I “liked” their FB page.
Bevin – as a previously naturalized Texican (my son is a native) who has expatriated to the People’s Republic of Maryland, I like that flag.
Dear Phil,
Texans have a very strong case for independence. This is of course on top of the already more than sufficient market anarchist justifications.
After all, Texas was an independent republic before it joined the US, and even more independent than the original 13 independent states.
Bevin, a mispronunciation that makes me chuckle is “banzai tree” instead of bonsai tree. I get a mental image of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, except with tiny little trees swooping down on people.
bevin, Sam Houston tried to keep Texas out of the uncivil war and was rewarded by being ousted…..but he was correct. Houston rejected the actions of the Texas Secession Convention, believing it had overstepped its authority in becoming a member state of the newly formed Confederacy. He refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and was deposed from office, saying:
Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas….I protest….against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void.[22]
I’ll add here, Houston was a good friend of the so-called Indians and lived most of his life with them. In real life, I’d imagine Sam killed more white men than natives if he killed anyone at all. He did his best to help natives defend themselves and literally devised some of their best battle schemes. He had a native wife till the Union forced his fleeing the territory and was never able to get back to his family. Then his life changed abruptly to leader of the then Republic.
After his ouster from the governor’s office, Houston maintained a low public profile until his death in July 1863. Houston later wrote a friend: “There comes a time a man’s section is his country…I stand with mine. I was a conservative citizen of the United States…I am now a conservative citizen of the Southern Confederacy.”
Sure, Texans(the vote anyway) then saw the confederate cause as just but they had no real resources to combat the money of Britain. An amazing chapter of the war of aggression involved Texans who force marched for two weeks and arrived to completely change the outcome of the Battle of Antietam.
And while Texans consider themselves somewhat of the confederacy they moreover consider themselves Texans as do I.
I know of nothing that’s pure and just no matter which side you look from but the battle for Texas took many decades. There’s nothing pretty about what the Union army did to the natives but plenty white people managed to live peacefully for many decades prior to scenes such as the Trail of Tears.
Dear Mike,
That’s pretty funny!
Dear 8sm,
Damn 8sm, that’s some interesting historical background.
I never knew that about Houston, even though I lived in the city named after him for a decade and a half!
Thanks for sharing that.
His live and let live relationship with the Indians reminds me of the accommodation reached between Josey Wales and the Indians in the film “The Outlaw Josey Wales”.
Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.
Josey Wales: That’s true. I ain’t promising you nothing extra. I’m just giving you life and you’re giving me life. And I’m saying that men can live together without butchering one another.
Ten Bears: It’s sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life… or death. It shall be life.
bevin, damn, I’m watching Josey Wales right now. We’re to the part of the shoot-out with the red legs but I was sitting here thinking of the words of Ten Bears when I got this in. And they are words to live by and to die by, depending on your commitment to seek peace with others.
I’m having a big argument on a private forum over anarchy…and they’re throwing religion at me…..crap. Not much I can say to them till their brainwashing wears off. They simply can’t make the change of civilized man living peacefully with each other without somebody “in charge”……piss
Morning, Eight!
Coupla thoughts on Christianity and “in charge”…
One of the things that steered me away from the organized religion I was exposed to growing up was its insistence upon obedience. To whom? Well, “the Lord.” Ok, but how come this Lord dude can’t seem to speak up and tell us what he wants? Oh, but he does! It’s in the Bible. Right there. But, wait a minute. Isn’t it true that the Bible is the edited product of a bunch of political hacks convened by a political dictator (Constantine)? Weren’t they all just dudes? Why should I obey these long dead dudes? There are many other long dead dudes who also wrote (and edited) stuff that demanded we all obey them. Which dudes are right? Who says?
How about I just write stuff down in my own book and obey that?
Dear 8sm,
No kidding!
That’s pretty amazing!
Stuff like this makes me believe in ESP.
I’m convinced that a lot of “psi phenomenon” such as ESP, are not “ooga booga”, but have scientific explanations. We just don’t know what they are yet.
Many natural phenomenon are real, but haven’t been understood… yet, but eventually will be.
Now I’ve got to watch the movie again!
LOL!
bevin, I don’t believe in coincidence when it come to political or LE crap but for many things I can think of no other reason or as you said, ESP.
Many years ago my best friend, my childhood and even on into our 30’s best friend was living about 300 miles away. I worked for a major corporation at the time and NEVER made phone calls out from the company phones long distance and rarely outside for personal reasons. One day at morning break I sat down in the back room by myself and had the need to call him badly enough I just dialed the number. If I didn’t admit to the call, as if they’d catch it, it wouldn’t be a big deal anyway. He answered, was totally down since his wife had hired two cops to come “protect her” while she had them load her stuff up and haul it away. It was such a stupid thing since she was such a lush and used everything else she could find. He sat there and talked with the off-duty cops who he said looked sorta sick over the whole thing after they saw what was going on, not exactly what they’d been expecting.
Here he is, all alone, nobody to really call(who wants to call and cry on the phone to somebody?). When he explained I said I told him to come home(my house, his house too….to this very day)and we’d figure it out. He came, we went back over the week-end and hauled his entire household goods back to my barn and got mightily drunk. It was an expedition since his pit bull had a thing for black people, a big joke for us since the dog was black as night. Anyway, we were heading down the turnpike west from Dallas overloaded with a huge trailer and too much crap when his dog lunged out to the end of his chain hooked to his harness and the rear seatbelt deadman(seat was out of a Wagoneer), out through the window to his rear legs just raising hell with his teeth bared and snot flying just as this old black man in a late 60’s model Chevy pickup with his bud and lots of crappie rods wandered over the stripe and within less than two feet of us…and Spike, the pit. The guy notices a shitty going on, turns and all he can see is pit bull highly fired up and wide open yaw with fangs snapping. He whips that Chevy to the right and soon, there’s three lanes of traffic doing a jig that we were part of and everybody behind us was part of also. Cars were whipping and sliding way behind us and he nearly lost it on the shoulder and almost back into us, just what the dog wanted. It continued for a while till they dropped back causing even more mayhem.
After it was finally over and for some reason, nobody wrecked, we realized we’d live and so would everybody else. We both looked back at the dog and he was still looking for those guys. Man, we fell out right then. We started laughing and couldn’t stop. We laughed for another 250 miles. it was funny beyond words when everybody lived and even the dog got fired up and wanted to have a laugh which he did by mauling us in the front and we still couldn’t stop laughing. West of Ft. Worth we got some cold beer and eased on to the house taking 180 instead of I-20. We laughed all the way home and Spike laughed with us.
Dear 8sm,
Pretty amazing story.
I’ve had similar ones. I won’t go into them now, but maybe later.
Let’s Just say that there is more to this thing called consciousness than meets the eye.
“so, should everybody be allowed to own a howitzer?”
Or better yet an atom bomb?
A problematic question, given that you can’t “allow” anyone to do anything unless you own them, meaning we’re right back to the brute squad and the tax man.
In the new world of free people it will be between you and your insurance company. If the rest of us find out you have an atom bomb, but you’re not insured, you might quickly find yourself without the bomb and possibly an outcast due to your dramatically lower trustability score.
Insurance company???? You really want that? The part of banking that gets the rest of your money. I believe people could stop the manufacture of material for a bomb. It takes such a huge amount of money to produce one. In MY free world we’d get by without nuclear reactors and stop anyone from building one or at least with fissionable material.
And what ever happened to using wave energy for electricity?
IIRC, all the technology and designs are bought and buried…
Tesla was on the right path; hard to find his work, since Tommy Edison and General Electric destroyed all they could, and FedGov too the rest and classified it.
We should shred them. FedGov, I mean.
I agree with you Brent. Your post of yours reminded me of a quote by someone whose name escapes my memory. It goes something like very roughly like this:
If man is good, then no government is needed. If some men are good and some bad; the evil men will have strongest motivation to seek power over others. If man is indifferent; then you don’t dare have government. If man is evil; then we are already doomed.
“Government doesn’t seem to do much about sociopaths and sadistic abusers. It instead hires them as cops. ”
That’s a very astute observation, Nunzio. I missed seeing your post until now, but the entire entry is quotable.
The underlying principle of maintaining anarchy is first and foremost the non-aggression principle. The obvious response to aggression is self defense to the degree necessary to stop the aggression. What need have we of government?
Larken Rose states: “The most dangerous religion is statism.” The most dangerous belief is the belief in authority. The most dangerous threat to freedom and liberty is the state itself.
All governments eventually become authoritarian and destructive to liberty. The state attracts those who crave authority over others and rewards them for creating further encroachments. The state must by all definitions increase its authority in order to justify its existence. The bureaucrats increase their authority in order to justify the ever increasing funding to maintain their authority over others.
The state eventually becomes corrupted and evil: representatives of the state are easily swayed by corrupting influences: money, sex, drugs, or blackmail and extortion.
Statists revere the state in the false belief it is protecting and serving them. They also believe in the states ability to manage society wisely all the while the state increasingly intrudes into the privacy of the individual, creates ever more restrictions on liberty in the name of public safety and believes the state should use whatever means to do so ie: spying on its citizens.
The statist believes the state should also use whatever means to disrupt groups which oppose its authority, to use violent methods including murder, assault and false accusations to silence those who either are critical of or oppose its authority.
The statist believes the state can violate the Bill of Rights for any reason, ignore the Constitution and start wars based entirely on lies. That it has the right to continue to prosecute and individual until it gets the verdict it wants even though that person has been declared not guilty by a jury, by shopping for a judge that will bend in servitude to the state and not in deference to the Constitution.
Overall the statist believes in the power, authority, benevolence and wisdom of the state even when it commits the most egregious acts against humanity:war.
Amen, John!
I’d only add that: A common street criminal does not demand you respect his authority. He just wants the damned money.
To all you who object to Eric’s article, let me get this straight.
People are too evil to be left to live and guide their own lives and make decisions for themselves. But, in order for their not to be a terrible outcome a bunch of them need to get together to guide and run the lives of others by the use and threat of force and violence.
To paraphrase Bastiat(I believe), if people are so stupid and evil as to not be allowed liberty; why is it that the proposals of politicians, bureaucrats and social engineers are considered to be good? Are they not also members of the human race?
There not their…DOH!
How does one through individual action prevent goverment from occuring? Won’t there always be someone to prey on people’s fears?
Great point!! ……………Satan did it with Cane?
This really is the problem, how do you keep new people from being the government? It would only be a mater of time until groups of people, gangs if you will, start to rob and loot. Other gangs will charge protection money.
You will have the same problem we have now. They come to your house to collect. You don’t shoot them, if you did they will just send back 100 more and burn your house down.
I think that people in general would be just fine, but what keeps the bad guys in check?
Would it be any worse than now, maybe not.
Hi Todd,
The greatest advantage the Statists possess is the widely held belief that government (defined as a coercive monopoly) is morally legitimate. It seems to me that our first task is to explain why this is not so. As I’ve stated before, governance is obviously valued by human beings. However, it does not follow that “government” is necessary to provide “governance”.
Central to libertarian theory is that free people can create that which they value, without central planning. This is as true about the provision of order and justice as it is to the provision of shoes. So, it frustrates me when libertarians mimic the statist objections with questions like “how do you keep new people from being the government?” The answer is, we don’t know with certainty. However, we do have reason to believe that, stripped of its’ false moral legitimacy, “government” will be regarded with contempt and suspicion by the people. Communities can, have in the past and will in the future figure out ways to protect themselves from the relatively few sociopaths in society without resorting to the coercive monopoly known as “government”.
Uncertainty makes people uncomfortable, I get that. However, with respect to the human desire for the provision of order and justice, the worst possible way to achieve this goal is to empower an institution that attracts the sociopaths and protects them from consequences.
“I think that people in general would be just fine, but what keeps the bad guys in check?”
Government does not keep the bad guys in check. At best, it retroactively punishes some of the “bad guys”. At worst, it protects the most dangerous of the “bad guys” and grants them legal cover. The State, by definition, exists outside of and above the law. The rules it imposes on “us” are mostly incoherent, immoral and arbitrarily enforced.
There is a large body of literature on the specific mechanisms that could emerge in a free society to provide order and justice (Hoppe, Murphy, Rothbard, Block, etc…) if you are interested.
Jeremy
……and the cognitive dissidence of your neighbor. That watches the uniformed goons haul you away……………..”GEEEEE he must of broken the law or something
maaa”
Hi Todd,
“but what keeps the bad guys in check?”
Certainly not government.
Not only does ordinary criminality abound, notwithstanding government everywhere (we live in a low-grade police state) we have the criminality of government itself to reckon with.
The common mugger… and the IRS (and the rest of it).
At least, if you take government out of the equation, you get rid of the most organized gang of criminals in town.
Hi Shock,
It takes a critical mass of people – not necessarily a majority – to effect change. It can be change for good or not.
Consider: If the people who regularly visit this site all got together and established a community, it would be free – really free – for as long as that generation lived. Perhaps the next generation and the one after. Possibly, longer.
I grant that, eventually, Cloverism might take root (as it has in America) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth establishing the free community, or working toward another one on the future!
“How does one through individual action prevent goverment from occuring?”
I think that if, say here in the USA, everyone were to become accustomed to seeing anyone and everyone walking around with their favourite Kalashnikovs complete with 30 rd magazines (or whatever defensive solution is preferred), and the resulting completely peaceful society, that a recurrence of any state would be impossible. The first brave soul that hired on as a tax collector might also be the first casualty.
I suppose it’s technically possible that the Russian or Chinese or Canadian states might invade without that mega trillion dollar defense establishment to protect us. Monkeys also might fly out of my ..
Dear Chris,
“if… everyone were to become accustomed to seeing anyone and everyone walking around with their favourite Kalashnikovs complete with 30 rd magazines… ”
Contrary to the CW, and what passes for “common sense”, that is exactly what needs to happen.
The Cultural Marxists and Social Justice Warriors have been aggressively “normalizing” all sorts of crap, desensitizing people to the sight of all manner of spectacles.
It is high time defenders of human rights and individual liberty aggressively normalized universal open carry, such that no one even blinks when they see a “mere mundane” getting a latte at Starbucks with an M-4 slung over her shoulder.
eric, it took the rest of the country going to shit to send enough clovers to Tx. to change it significantly. We could travel hundreds of miles at any speed and not be assaulted by a goon with a badge. I will admit though the closer you got to populated areas the more the LE bunch preyed on people. Maybe Bill Gates is right. If a large number of people are killed off we might all be more free. Let’s just try and see how it works out. Kill every clover you see and I’ll bet the rest of us wouldn’t jack with each other. You might accuse me of being radical and maybe it would be but it’s just a more personal way of doing what the elite intend to do with GMO, energy in few hands, land in few hands and all the rest of it, forced compliance to take “state approved” vaccines and other drugs. We’d simply be doing it .45″ at a time.
I’m having an identity crisis here, Eight… 😉
8, I am replying here about your arguing with the Christians about anarchism since there was no reply button there.
Ask them about 1 Samuel 8. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+8 I turned away from mainstream Christian church teachings during my massive transformation while reading that chapter. It seemed that during that time, destiny was taking over my life. I could strongly sense that events were falling into place step by step. Anyway, when I got to the end of the chapter I stopped reading to reflect. Clearly, the bible made it very clear that government was not needed and was an evil institution. I noticed the volume of the remaining pages in the bible, and I realized that had those people made the correct choice; the entire remainder of the bible would have ended up being entirely different, and there undoubtedly would be plenty of Anarchist countries today. But that group doesn’t need to know about my story, just that chapter and……
Jesus Is an Anarchist http://praxeology.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf
Love these Lysander Spooner type pieces you do Eric.
Is it not the person who in a gathering for planing a party or some un- important
gathering that say “I have a idea lets form a committee and will come up
with a plan”. Are the ones to watch out for?
I have a friend that is retired engineer who sits on a city council.
He has signed up,elected , and appointed himself on so many boards
that all his week is mostly filled up.
What is up with people that feel that they need to. Or bestow upon themselves
the honor that we need them as guides in are lives?
Thanks, Cowboy!
I don’t get it (the lust to control) either. I have enough work trying to manage my own life!
“I have enough work trying to manage my own life!”
Through both observation and experience (as in “being on the receiving end”) I am convinced that most of those who crave power over others, and who abuse such power once they have it, have utterly failed to manage their own lives. This leads them to seek dominion over others, either as a form of projection, misplaced anger over their own failures and shortcomings, or just because it’s easier to deflect by trying to lird it over those perceived as weaker.
I’m no psychologist, but I’m sure this assumption would make a good PhD dissertation for someone in that field.
Great analysis ,well said.
I think the lust to control is what Gary North calls ‘Envy.’
Jealousy is saying “I want what he has (and will steal it if I can).” Envy says “I don’t have it, and know I never will, so I will destroy it so no one else can have it either.”
Is that what envy is? I always thought it was when I said “Damn, I envy ____, I could go for that”. I always thought it was appreciation and wishing you had the same. The last thing I think of is taking something from someone or destroying it. Somebody might have a sweet job I’d like. Isn’t that envy?
8, jealousy entails guarding what is yours against theft or destruction. Envy is wanting what belongs to someone else, or wanting others NOT to have what you don’t have. Covetousness entails scheming to take what another has for yourself.
Jealousy isn’t necessarily evil, but envy and covetousness are. The meanings of some words get to be twisted in common usage.
Ed, so what is it when I learn of something someone else possesses and wish I had one too? I’m not speaking of that specific thing but something identical. Or if it’s something that’s unique but I’d be pleased to have it? I have no intention of denying it to another, I simply appreciate what they have…..and it could simply be a state of mind they have I desire?
“Ed, so what is it when I learn of something someone else possesses and wish I had one too? ”
Sounds like simple admiration of the something to me. Saying “I envy you for having that” doesn’t mean you actually envy the guy. It’s likely just something you heard people say when you were a kid and repeated without really thinking.
Admiring somebody’s property or personal traits isn’t envy, to me. It’s more like motivation to acquire something or to improve your own character, if that makes any sense. I don’t always explain my thinking that well.
Dear 8sm, Ed,
Agree.
Many words have been debased by semi-literate members of the Booboisie. The result is even more literate individuals are misled.
I suspect it’s often deliberate. For example, take the conflation of “anarchy” with “chaos”. I strongly suspect many among the PTB are deliberately attempting to discredit anarchism by falsely equating it with chaos.
Also, have you ever noticed that when you type the word “statism” online, it gets flagged as not a proper word?
I don’t think that’s an accident.
What book or article was that from?I remember reading that
and though profound.
“What book or article was that from?”
I think I got those definitions from Dave Black, a pastor who once contributed to LRC back in the early days, ’99 or threabouts.
I have people tale me “you should run for county sheriff.
you really understand the law, and rights.”
“No…..I just know more than you.”
“You would know more if you would lay down the Mink OIL,
and the goddamn tv remote”……..I muse to myself.
Though flattering, I could never dream of tailing someone
what to do with,or how to manage their lives.
So when I walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins.
Like politicians,city and county swinest public servants.
I get disturbing thoughts of how narcissistic they are
not to have feelings of guilt, or recognize evil incarnate.
Scary…………no?
Playing in bands for 30 years can also give you a feel of how
people (especially women) are sucked into the over fawning,
and pseudo honor of celebrities and politicians.
I think this Twilight Zone episode illustrates taking responsibility for your own life and abandoning the myths of authority pretty well in an accessible way nearly anyone can apprehend.
Having the courage to embrace anarchy really is that easy and simple. You have so little to lose, and a whole new life and world of your own to win. Why not try it give it a go and let fly the black flag of anarchy today?
– – –
“Gabe’s Story” is the twenty-third episode of the science fiction television series 2002 revival of The Twilight Zone. The episode was first broadcast on December 11, 2002, on UPN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Hb4r_3JFQ
Opening narration
“William Shakespeare once wrote that the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves. However, Gabe O’Brien, a man who just can’t get a break is about to learn the fault may actually lie somewhere else.”
Plot summary
Deliveryman Gabe O’Brien is coming home from work and is caught in a car accident. He receives a bruise on his head and his car is in bad shape. Arriving home, he has to put up with his daughter practicing the violin incessantly. Gabe’s wife Nancy is taking care of their baby, and warns him that she has not been able pay the car insurance premiums for three months.
Gabe admits to her that he did not get the promotion they were looking forward to, but not to worry, that things should still turn out better.
Going out on the porch, Gabe sees a man in a jumpsuit using chemicals on his yard and killing the grass. He confronts the Jumpsuited Man who is surprised Gabe can see him and realizes the blow to his head during the car accident gave him second sight.
Nancy comes out and does not notice anything and the Jumpsuit Man tells Gabe to forget what he saw and then leaves.
That night, Gabe talks to his friend Luke about what happened. Luke wants Gabe to help him rip off Gabe’s electronics company, but Gabe refuses.
However, the next day Gabe makes a delivery to a customer named Fisher and discovers the Jumpsuit Man in the house breaking a vase. The Jumpsuit Man refuses to answer Gabe’s questions and leaves: Fisher does not believe Gabe’s story that an unseen man broke the vase. Gabe goes home and Nancy tells him the other driver is suing for injuries. When Gabe tries to explain about the Jumpsuit Man, Nancy figures that he is just making up an excuse so he does not have to take responsibility for his own actions, the same way Gabe has always done.
She tells Gabe that she has called her parents, and she and the children are going to live with them for a while. To add even more misery to the situation, Gabe’s boss calls and informs him the price of the vase will be coming out of his wages.
Desperate, Gabe accepts Luke’s offer and they go to Fisher’s house. Gabe is to make the delivery and leave the truck door unlocked so Luke can steal the electronics.
However, his loser friend Luke ends up coming to ask Gabe for help carrying all the merchandise he plans to steal and then sell, because its all very heavy.
Gabe then looks outside and sees the Orange Jumpsuit Man slashing Luke’s tires. Naturally, Luke does not see anything, so Gabe grabs the Jumpsuit Man and demands an explanation. The Jumpsuit Man pleads with Gabe that he only has fifteen minutes to get to his next assignment.
Gabe refuses to let him go until he gets an explanation. The Jumpsuit Man finally explains that the Writer has scripted it so that the police will arrive and Luke and Gabe will be unable to get away, and will end up in jail.
Angry, Gabe demands a meeting with the Writer responsible for his miserable life and forces Jumpsuit Man to take him to her office building. The Jumpsuit Man takes Gabe to a seemingly empty plaza, but then a huge building appears, extending upward into the clouds.
Following Jumpsuit Man’s directions, Gabe goes to the 2100th floor to meet the Writer Roxanne. She is a lower-class bureaucrat in an office who explains that she is in charge of 6,000 lives and that if she does not write their lives, then nothing will happen to them. Roxanne explains that she has a really great car chase laid out for Gabe but he is not interested. When he demands that she change his life, she explains that she is only in charge of the small-time stuff, and her superiors are the ones who handle the overall course of his life.
When he refuses to leave, she finally calls Mr. Jennings in Management. Jennings insists that as a matter of efficiency they cannot change Gabe’s life. Gabe demands control of his own life back and points out that if he gets his wish, then Roxanne will have less work. With her support, they convince Mr. Jennings to let Gabe be in charge of his own life.
Back home, Gabe starts making plans with Luke to open up their own electronics firm. Nancy is preparing to leave when Gabe talks her into staying, noting that since she has supported him through the bad times, it is only fair she be on board for the good times. She decides to stay and they begin to prepare for their new life under their own control. They start by selling their daughter’s violin in order get her a piano. Forest Whitaker appears and narrates that Gabe O’Brien’s actions prove that sometimes you can grab the pen from the poet in order to write your own story and be your own hero.
Closing narration
“Shakespeare observed that all the world’s a stage, its men and women merely players.” But Gabe O’Brien proved that sometimes you can grab the pen from the poet and write your own story. A lesson learned in the Twilight Zone.
“Forest Whitaker appears”
That would ruin it for my wife. She hates seeing Forrest appear in a movie or TV episode. I think of ol’ Forrest as a decent actor who has played some unlikable characters. My wife just reacts as though he is the bad characters he has played.
” She hates seeing Forrest” Guess she didn’t care for F-Troop.
Just saw Forrest yesterday in Out of the Furnace and last week in Last King of Scotland. He’s a good actor and has played many “hero” parts and what I consider exceptional parts like “Bird”.
Yeah, I liked Out of the Furnace. Every actor in the cast played a role way outside what they’re usually seen in. Forrest does a good job. He’s the only maimed actor (he’s missing his right eye) I know of working at his level these days.
The closing theme, “Release” by Pearl Jam is the song that introduced me to that band.
More cheese with your whine?
Good to know you’re still reading the articles, Clover!
Eric, Gil obviously doesn’t read your articles. He skims them for something to hang a disruptive comment on, for the purpose of trolling.
I want to send her a picture of me. She can put a candle in front of it and pray to me! (See: Gilbert Bourdain and Guru statue… 🙂
A very simplistic article.
As humans we need a rule of law. We are not advance enough. Whether it’s Somalia, Wild West or Lord of the Flies as examples. There will always need for a leader for the masses. Whether it’s from God, Priest, Elder, Witch Doctor or the biggest bully in town.
It occurs in nature from insects with their queens or the animal kingdom with their alfa males.
It even occurs in science in Entropy ” Order will naturally go into chaos without effort” Where things left to it’s own device turns into chaos.
You are talking about nirvana which doesn’t exist. There will always be people that will put themselves before other.
I can imagine people self ruling in a perfect world where food is plenty.
We all have friends that are great during the good times. The true test occurs during the hard time and unfortunetly alot of them fail. These people are the reason anarchy will not work. It’s just a dream. Maybe as mere humans we will evolve to that point of true self rule. We are not there yet.
Actually, fully embracing anarchy can be the fast track to a better life beyond anything an “alpha male” can even conceive of.
Most alphas here see the flaws of Pakleds, yet are blind to their own deficiencies as Borgs.
We will be ready for anarchy here when we come to see that Pakleds and Borgs are equally despicable, and neither is to be preferred over the other for any reason. Both are to be universally avoided.
In exactly the same way we have rejected team red, nationalism, christian values and conservatism over team blue, liberalism, humanistic socialism, and democratic progressivism as in anyway being something it is important to pick a side or politic or vote or campaign about.
An anarchist, would never bully a woman or an inferior because of his superior knowledge and ability. A man eho embraces anarchy and is without any trace of Borg within himself, will easily out-compete even the most Alpha of Alpha males in the long run.
It seems wrong, but I’ve observed it and lived it. And seen how fast things deteriorate when you decide you need some female because she makes you go. Because she are pretty. And you need pretty, natural and universal principles or reality be damned or held in abeyance for however long you can make it so.
You might be the wealthiest. Healthiest. Best looking. Clean cut. Perfect. Mannered. Popular and ever so always well met. Skilled frugal. Value creating. But what happens when your loved ones aren’t.
What happens when your little princess’ hoverboard ends up in the pool. Or her sister is running the heat downstairs cause it’s cold down there. And running the A/C upstairs cause then it gets hot up there.
Are you able to keep yourself in check and smile and laugh through it all. And find your inner Dick Van Dyke just when the time is right. When plans and advice are all ignored, can you still go fly a kite up to the highest height. Up in the atmosphere up where the air is clear.
Cause that makes you something in its own rarified class. Not just another wannabee alpha male, comparing his home value, salary, bench press, or speed at running a mile against some other guy that lives down the road.
Lashing out due to fear of his loss of status. Or of threats to his authority. Or of losses of his property or means to support himself and keep what is his in safe and good repair. Often the more you try to be alpha, the less you truly are one, compared to the beta guy, who at least doesn’t belittle and berate others because of his own slavish submission to the generally accept great games of life.
Letting Pakleds lie and scheme and freeload, at least until you find a way to thwart them, that makes you an a master of archisms, not a mere student or member of the genre. There’s a zen to being above details, yet not oblivious or ignorant of them either. Pakleds have their uses and niche. Some are quiet beautiful or otherwise charming and good to have around from time to time.
Stop thinking you’re some paragon who others should wish to emulate and be assimilated by your superior technologies and protocols. Borgs are bullies and thick headed dolts without creativity or an ability to even enjoy life in a reasonable fashion. If what you have is truly great, federation members, free aliens, pakleds, they’ll all come around and cater to you, hoping to make you stay and to like them.
Don’t tell them anything about yourself. Not even your real name, or occupation, or where your from. Or anything whatsoever just channel your inner skin horse, and be something that can be loved. And be someone that can express and make others feel your affection and love.
Real isn’t how your made. Or your greek alphabet status. Or what you have or what you can do. Or even if you’re mostly good or bad. Real is a thing that happens to you when your children and wife love you for a long long time, and not just for play. But also for real.
When you’re loved and real. It doesn’t much matter if your free or a slave. For many, real doesn’t come until your hair has been loved off, your eyes have fallen out, and your generally loose in all of your joints.
But these real letters of human meaning transcend all known alphabets and measurements. Something that no statist or clover can understand or take away, because those types of creatures will never be loved and never even learn what it even means to be loved.
Even being the best and working the most isn’t enough reason to force or bully someone you’re supposed to love and care about, ever. And if you even once break this sacred zero relationship force or dominance rule against someone you care about, you will more than likely lose a part of them for ever, and never get that part of them back again, no matter how hard you try, or sorry you feel, for doing what you now see is so very wrong.
Tin soldier alpha toys will never get this, and will always being rigid and wooden and unloved because of this defect. Anarchy always works, because it gives those in the wrong and doing the unreasonable thing the time and space they need to learn from their mistakes, and to finally see for themselves why they should do things the way you do, and why what you do works for you, and will also work for them, when they can adapt it to a form, that they can also use.
“And be someone that can express and make others feel your affection and love.”
Yes indeed, and I’d like to add that love is an activity, not a feeling, in case anyone didn’t get that from your sentence I quoted.
” Real is a thing that happens to you when your children and wife love you for a long long time, and not just for play. But also for real.”
That’s exactly how I see it, too. When my family, which comes first to me in terms of who I need to be with me, is close and forgives my mistakes and my mistaken conclusions, I’m complete as a member of my family.
“Anarchy always works, because it gives those in the wrong and doing the unreasonable thing the time and space they need to learn from their mistakes, and to finally see for themselves why they should do things the way you do, and why what you do works for you, and will also work for them, when they can adapt it to a form, that they can also use.”
There it is. Right there. ‘Nuff said.
Hi Johnny,
Simple often works better than complicated, in my experience.
Is it too much to ask that people try to refrain from being the ones who initiate violence? Most people already accept this as the basis for their interactions with others, on a personal level. Which means the implicitly acknowledge the morality of “no first use.”
However, they still support violence by proxy (majority rule, voting for others to do the wet work for them) because they avoid dealing with the actuality of it.
The key, therefore, is to confront them with the reality of it.
The person who would never – on his own – steal from you is susceptible to being persuaded that it’s just as wrong to steal from you by proxy.
I agree that there will always be people who choose violence – deliberately. But enshrining this principle by accepting the legitimacy of government doesn’t lessen the problem.
It makes it worse.
Dear Eric,
You were remarkably polite to “Johnny”, considering his smug, know it all tone.
As probably everyone here at EPAutos knows by heart, Bastiat demolished “Johnny’s” argument way back in 1850.
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
The defect in “Johnny’s” argument is so obvious anyone who still trots it out in 2016 should hide his face in embarrassment.
Eric,
I take it a bit further. I use the “Why do you want me dead?” statement when dealing with the State’s minions and its supporters/enablers. I always get the deer in the headlights look as a reply. That is until I start explaining their position by using the Connect The Dots paradigm. You know what I’m typing about. It all starts with the State has no wealth/money except that which it steals from the productive and escalates from there. Once their immorality is brought out and they are smacked in the face with it they can no longer hide. In that moment, the person being shown their evil realizes how the productive view them.
Of course, there are those that really do not care about making slaves of the productive. Those are the sociopaths & pyschopaths of the world. They know exactly why the State exist and use it to the maxium extend of their ability. Since they do known the State’s ultimate power lies in its willingness to murder to create slaves, their only issue is making sure that motive remains hidden from the vox populi. To that end, the State will murder to keep the criminal acts they commit from becoming common knowledge. This is why the hero Edward Snowden is reviled in the united States. He turned on the lights and the cockroaches ran to hide all the while screaming for Snowden’s head! The saddest thing of all is the fact that a large portion of the State’s slaves support murdering Snowden for telling the truth. No sane person likes being shown the life they have been living is a lie and they were fooled by evil. It is for this reason they call for Snowden’s demise.
David Ward
Memphis, Tennesse
The government and media made Snowden’s leaks stick. There were many before him. All were cast aside as kooks. But with Snowden it was different. His stuff wasn’t dismissed as ‘fake’ or ‘lies’. Now the government behavior is normalized.
Fedgov at the very least took a risk in how to deal with Snowden. It paid off.
“It all starts with the State has no wealth/money except that which it steals from the productive and escalates from there.”
I tried an argument like this once, and was met with a response that was something like this:
“If they didn’t tax, then they would simply print all the money they needed, which would lead to hyperinflation.
…If you don’t like it, then stop using US dollars as your means for trade and compensation.”
…If you don’t like it, then stop using US dollars as your means for trade and compensation.”
Ha ha and then go to jail when you don’t have any US dollars for the tax man who demands them even if you don’t use them. (They equate whatever deals you did to some US dollar value and then demand a cut.)
Yup, that’s how the Whiskey Rebellion began. The feds, under President Washington, demanded taxes on whiskey. Problem was, whiskey was the form of money in a good portion of the US, as no one had paper cash, coins or gold. So people couldn’t pay, even if they had wanted to (they didn’t, as most people didn’t think the feds had the authority to tax). So it was screwed up from the beginning.
The tax was repealed eventually, but the damage was done. We still have moonshiners 250 years later, that the government still goes after. Its quite insane if you think about it a little.
Like everything else, the best distilled ethanol you can get is shine. Now they sell it with a tax stamp but the old timers still make the best. I guess it’s the small batch phenomena.
Smaller batches = tighter quality controls.
Small changes make big differences.
Because the US Mint still offers gold and silver coins with traditional face values someone got the bright idea of paying all his company’s employees with them (at face value). At face value the payroll became too small to follow all sorts of government rules and pay various taxes. (for the employer and employees). Needless to say fedgov didn’t like this much. It took fedgov two trials but they managed to put a few people in prison over it without really addressing the question of what a dollar is or what it has happened to the money since 1913. Once again there is nothing but force behind everything. There isn’t law or logic just force.
Brent, I don’t think the fed ever got a conviction in that bs. He paid with coins and based his tax on what the coins were said to be worth by the fed. They tried to prove the coins were worth a great deal more but that fell on its face both times since the coins, by federal law, must be taken at face value. No doubt he paid more for them than face value but they couldn’t prove it. Not long after the feds made another law to keep records or everyone buying gold and silver regardless if it were coin or otherwise.
“If they didn’t tax, then they would simply print all the money they needed, which would lead to hyperinflation.
…If you don’t like it, then stop using US dollars as your means for trade and compensation.”
I’ve seen that response as well. The person making that argument apparently doesn’t accept the fact that our government demands taxes while still creating (through the Fed) all the money they think they need.
“If they didn’t tax, then they would simply print all the money they needed” – but they already have all the money they need, to do what they should do. The just don’t have all the money they want, and won’t until they have it all.
PtB, all? That’s the problem. There is no “all”. They continue to produce money digitally with no end in sight, the very reason FRN’s aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, the reason pennies lose money and they want to quit production. But where would we get fuses with no pennies?
That reminds me of being in Mexico. First night with my friends and I had what was probably grounds for a killing, a plethora of Dr. Pepper, verboten in Mexico. They turned on the empty, soon to be stuffed fridge and so we’re ruminating after a great meal of fresh food including fresh caught Gulf fish and the lights go out. I get my big flashlight and meter, head for the fuse box. It one fuse with a tiny piece of stranded wire behind the blown fuse that had melted. I rewired the fusebox…..without pulling the meter, by flashlight, put in new fuses and the party continued. I gave the hostess one of my Mag Lite’s which got me lots of points. That’s a different world, one we’re about to experience daily.
8 – When I said ‘all’ I meant all that we mundanes have.
PtB, that’s not far away. The company laid off 2 people today and probably 2 more tomorrow.
25,000 workers lost their jobs last year in the 1st quarter in Tx. excluding non-ag jobs. It’s been a steady decline ever since and probably the people who are the best off are the Mexican green cards who saved their money and now the peso is at a whopping26 per dollar even though the dollar is worth so little.
If we still had manufacturing jobs the numbers would be less for many reasons including a better economy plus more available jobs to begin with. The country lost 50,000 manufacturers and no telling how many workers after NAFTA was passed. The rust belt got abandoned. Texas was glutted with fiscal refugees. It’s a damn mess and getting worse every second. Yep, we will lose it all. Just wish I could gather barter material much faster right now plus large stocks of food.
“The country lost 50,000 manufacturers and no telling how many workers after NAFTA was passed. The rust belt got abandoned. Texas was glutted with fiscal refugees.”
Here’s a good place to repost this link. It’s by a Texan songwriter whose father is THE Texas fiction author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbWRfBZY-ng
I see your brainwashing has been most effective Jonny.
Jonny5isalive
The Lord of the Flies was a work of fiction about an imaginary emergency situation. It is but a story generated in the mind of an author (a story teller) who had already fully accepted the notion that all humans are at base evil and therefore need a government of experts to control all human lives by expression of coercion backed up with force. Try reading the book and then read about the author’s opinions of the world, humanity and why the book came to be written as it did.
Somalia is a situation where there are competing governments at work whether local or external. This is not an example of anarchy. The mainstream media present a superficial and uneducated view. That infotainment departs from the reality ought not to be a surprise to a thoughtful rational adult. Try finding out the reality of what is going on there.
The so-called “Wild West” was not all extreme violent disorder in the sense that the national US myth presents it. Aside from government actions it was far more civilised than the official story presented in state schools and by Hollywood. Try finding out the real history.
Human beings are not insects. Human behaviour is not insect behaviour. Similarly humans are not animals in the sense you presuppose. Try finding out about epistemology and volition.
Entropy is an imaginary device developed and used by scientists and engineers to mathematically model specific physical mechanisms and systems. We abstract certain attributes of the system we are interested by, eliminating ALL other attributes from consideration and then undertake a mathematical process to learn about what may occur with that system under specific circumstances. There are systems left to themselves where entropy decreases (consider, as illustrative example, a planet receiving constant input of energy from an external to the planet energy source). Manipulation of the value known as entropy does not inform about a man’s intellect, volition, choices, values, personal condition, physical condition, life, relationships, emotional state and actions are or will be. Try learning about entropy, and in particular about the limiting assumptions required for application of models using same.
Perhaps your friends fail you when times are tough. Try understanding that such people never were your friends in the first place. Would you really allow such creatures to rule over you? Why, then, should you accept that creatures you do not even know ought to rule over you?
Your argument is false and you are let astray by what you have accepted in embracing it.
Sione
All you put down are assertions. Try backing them up with evidence and logic.
“As humans we need a rule of law. We are not advance enough. ” [sic]
Thank you for giving me an excuse to demolish this tired statist cliche.
Statists reflexively accuse anarchists of being “naive”. In fact, it is the statists who are obligated to justify THEIR NAIVETE.
After all, if mankind is as inherently evil as they say, how can ANYONE be entrusted with power over others? This goes double for the most evil individuals among an entire race of evil beings. They after all, are the very individuals who seek out government power.
Statists reflexively characterize themselves as “sophisticated cynics, wise to the ways of the world”. They dismiss anarchists as “hopelessly naive” about reality the dark side of the human psyche.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The notion that because mankind is evil, therefore they need government, is a monumental. self-refuting, non sequitur.
Defenders of government have everything backwards. In fact they are the ones who fail to see the obvious. They are the ones who have the explaining to do.
True, Bevin. If men cannot be trusted to govern themselves, how can they be trusted to govern others?
Dear Phil,
Bastiat demolished this logical fallacy way back in 1850.
Yet here we are, in 2016, and brainwashed statists continue to parrot it.
One might say:
“If men are inherently good, they have no need of government. If men are irredeemably evil, they dare not create governments.”
This seems so basic and such dead simple common sense. Why is this not widely accepted?
P.S.
How bad is the disaster in Republic of China? I caught something about it scrolling by on CNN but it was on mute.
Dear Tor,
The short answer is:
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies
to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule —
and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
— HL Mencken
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-under-democracy-one-party-always-devotes-its-chief-energies-to-trying-to-prove-that-the-other-party-h-l-mencken-284864.jpg
Now for a slightly longer answer:
The KMT is roughly the equivalent of the GOP. The DPP is roughly the equivalent of the Dems.
The KMT implemented a correct cross-Strait policy. But it screwed up in other respects over the last two four year terms.
Now disgruntled voters have given the rival DPP a landslide victory. The rival DPP is far worse. Its obstructionism in the legislature was a major contributor to the KMT’s poor performance. Nevertheless most voters do not see it as responsible for the blunders over the past eight years.
Basically the Taiwan Area has gone from the frying pan into the fire.
All 100% predictable if one understands the structural defects in democracy.
New era as DPP takes over Legislature
TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is poised to take the helm of Legislature for the first time in Taiwan’s history and install Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) as legislative speaker today.
On Monday, the 113 lawmakers, who will begin a new four-year term, will elect a speaker and a deputy speaker after they are sworn in in accordance with the Law Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power.
All lawmakers are eligible to be elected to the posts, decided in separate elections, and the two major parties — the DPP and Kuomintang (KMT) — have nominated candidates.
The DPP has put forward Su Jia-chyuan and Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) as the party’s candidates for speaker and deputy speaker, respectively, and with the party holding 68 of the 113 seats, the DPP’s two candidates are virtually assured of victory.
A DPP win in the speakership election would end the KMT’s hold on the leadership of the Legislative Yuan that it has held since the lawmaking body was established in 1948, when the Republic of China government was still based in mainland China before the retreat to Taiwan in 1949.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2016/02/01/457523/New-era.htm
—
Taiwan is province of ‘one China’ and not a sovereign state: says the UK
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/foreign-affairs/2016/02/06/457911/Taiwan-is.htm
—
KMT interim chief dismisses talk about ‘war between two women’
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Huang Min-hui, the Kuomintang’s (KMT) interim chairwoman, on Saturday dismissed media talk about the upcoming party chief election being a “war between two women” or a clash between the pro-unification and pro-Taiwan camps.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2016/01/31/457441/KMT-interim.htm
—
Oh yeah, best of all, US, and eleven other countries signed the TPP free-trade deal because fuck you that’s why
Dear Tor,
Another difference between the KMT and the DPP is their attitude toward US hegemony.
The KMT grudgingly knuckles under to it.
The DPP eagerly bends over and welcomes it.
If you’ve been keeping up with developments in Ukraine, the KMT is more like the Novorussians, while the DPP is more like the Ukrainian fascists behind Poroshenko.
When anarchy is often described, the non-nation “state”, Somalia, is brought up. However isn’t an example of anarchy. In fact, the exact opposite, it’s a bunch of strongmen fighting to BE the government.
When you have a bunch of masked vandals smashing windows during a civil disturbance calling themselves anarchists, its no wonder people get that idea about anarchy.
Modern society has destroyed the “meaning” of the word anarchy. It’s not the only word that is abused like this.
The simple reply is “Somalia is another shining example of United Nations’ meddling in nation building.”
Oh, not recently, but after WW2 and the end of European colonialism in Africa, the UN came in and tried to establish a democratic nation. The problem was that no one ever had a civics class and was not prepared to elect a government that wasn’t going to be a mess. Not to mention that their neighbors had boarder disputes and were happy to stir the pot.
And the recent problems can directly be tied to a communist dictatorship that collapsed under its own weight in the late 1980s. Communism. As in state-owned farms. Kind of hard to maintain a stable economy based on agriculture when the topsoil blows away due to mismanagement. One only has to look at the F***’ed up mess in Russia and realize that without oil they’d be in the same boat.
Eric G, powerful white guys meddling in Africa goes back to at least the 17th century. I recall being in my single digit years and reading Soldier of Fortune at the barbershop(good thing my mama didn’t know and couldn’t enter). There were countless articles and pictures of the fighting between two tribes. Of course there were “advisers” of British loyalty and mostly British by birth. Now that I know history I see this as a last gasp of an already dead empire.
There was an old drug store, the original, in town and few people went there for unknown reasons to me. But I discovered a reading rack not like the other drug store and found a source for SOF. It was always stories of white guys “helping” some black guys against other black guys. The only conclusions I could come to after many years of reading it was the white guys there, for the most part, didn’t know any other way to make a living other than soldiering and tribes fought for various reasons. Seems like they’d arm other tribes against the Zulus since the Zulus were so well-organized and such bad-asses. But somebody was arming both sides cause they used modern weapons up to a point.
You know, if there were a barbershop like that now, I’d go there regularly. I don’t recall ever seeing a woman in a barbershop back then. It was a sanctuary as was the beauty shop.
Women cannot tolerate men outside of women’s control, even for a moment.
It allows men to be men, and men are, well, “evil.”
Even with my oddities, I recognize this for the BS it is.
Women are incapable of such introspection, though. They start as “daddy’s little princess” most of the time, and suddenly even the homeliest of them will find the boys do what she tells them to… It’s just HANDED to her by mother nature.
Men must grow and produce and become, all day, every day.
Of course the barber shop is open to women now. And the cigar bars, and the men’s clubs. Everywhere must be open to female imperative.
Not so the converse. Women are allowed their own space, their privacy, their “sacred self” time….
And I’m surprised SOF is still published, to be honest… Much too reminiscent of “evil” masculinity…
I’m becoming a misanthrope, I fear.
Actually Somalia was functioning reasonable well when something called the Islamic Courts movement began gaining popularity. At that point the US arranged for Ethiopia and other African nations to invade Somalia. While predicting what might have happened under an Islamic courts union government is not possible, at the time I do not remember them doing anything provocative. There was no explanation or pretext or even false flag, W just went in. So when I hear people using the situation in Somalia as an argument, as I remember it the Somalis were simply unable to face down the African Union and ended up fighting the invaders using guerrilla tactics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Courts_Union
Code of Thug Life (I have no idea how factual this is, but it seems valid enough):
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=code+of+thug+life
It seems to me as long as a group makes it past the age of about 20 or so they’ll realize they have a vested interest in establishing a society. A few will realize it at an early age, and a few later on, but it seems like that’s the right age. The reason Lord of The Flies is such a plausible fiction is not because it’s human nature to be a savage, but because it is the nature of children to not have the interactive skills to get along in society. Many of the “bullying” and “swatting” events that are getting so much attention online are instigated by children. An adult would never think of prank calling 911 to send a SWAT team to another online gamer’s house, but I’ll bet more than a few of us would have sent them to a buddy’s house (or bad teacher) when we were teenagers.
I believe that empathy and social behavior are hard wired into humans. Because these skills are complicated and often require a certain amount of adaptation to the group’s structure, it takes a very long time for the brain pathways to develop. Most of us look back at the stupid stuff we did at 10, 16, 18 and 22 and cringe. Why did we stop doing that? Was it because of some ruler handing out justice? For some of us that was definitely the case. But for most of us, even though we might have been punished for poor behavior, we stopped it because we “outgrew” it. The “boys will be boys” defense has a lot of validity.
That said, I’ve met plenty of people who should be more mature than they are. If put in a situation where they’d be responsible for their own self-government they would likely grow up, man up, cowboy up or whatever. But because they are willing to take the easy way and defer to an authority figure, they remain child-like.
Dear EG,
“The reason Lord of The Flies is such a plausible fiction is not because it’s human nature to be a savage, but because it is the nature of children to not have the interactive skills to get along in society. ”
Well put.
Statists love to cite LOTF to justify Draconian rule.
But if anything, such Draconian rule, or “strong government”, is merely atavistic LOTF savagery institutionalized. It is the very thing statists denounce.
I was thinking the same thing.
LOTF was the lust for power and control, of gang vs self-governing humans.
The Gang was looking to enforce control over others.
The Others just wanted to make it back to society.
Which is wolf, and which is rabbit?
And why have the terms changed so radically? Hell, has anyone seen what rabbits will do to each other…?
Dear Jean,
Indeed.
Jack represents the irrational nature of the boys, while Ralph represents rationality. Under Jack’s rule, the baseness of human nature is unleashed, and he initiates a period of intertribal violence, punishing other children, inciting the frenzy that leads to the murder of Simon, and torturing the twins until they submit to his authority.
LOTF was not “anarchy”.
It was Clovers fighting to impose their regime on the collective.
So you do not like this form of government? Run for office and change it.
But, you want the form of government that fits you desires and not the rest of the country.
With you systems and principals or lack of them, the lawless will become the law.
Sounds like you missed your calling…ISIS has a place for you…they are working under your system now.
Look what is happened to the people and country!
You live in a country where you stay in the warmth of your home and protection of a free Nation…and continue shout and spell out your anti-government, anarchy and seditious rants.
But Go to the Middle East and preach your anti-government principals.
They have the anarchism Form of government. ISIS is wanting you…but as long as you believe in their FORM of government..which is destroying and killing people that wants to live in peace and with a STABLE form of government. No laws or principals, except for the Lawlessness form of government that are suppressing the freedoms of the law abiding citizens.
No laws against rape of children, men or women. Drugs flow free, neighbors with the biggest gun rules the neighborhood. Homes not safe for their residents.
Schools being blown up and women prohibited from attending. Eight and nine year old children being trained for shooting and cutting throats of the law-abiding citizens that disagree with their anarchism government.
Enslaving those that can not defend themselves.
The so called little people will never get a say in your form of government.
Forcing women and children into prostitution and or forced marriages. Forcing all males to join your form of anti-government Army.
Go join ISIS and practice your form of anti- government. When you come back, and I do not see why you would want to leave such anti-government paradise,… you can rant and rave in the security of a nation that permits such extremes.
You ever wonder why people Do Not donate to your site, as you would like? Or Google is removing you from their listing…. maybe you should re-read some of the crap you are espousing.
Why not advertise on NPR, they dislike America and its form of government, as much as you do and they LOVE the Middle East and Muslims terrorists.
They have become the Terrorist news program to such extreme that they drove Al Jazeera out of business. Recently, Al Jazeera said they will be shutting down in a few months.
This country will not miss another extreme nut case, when you leave for the Middle East.
Oh, you not leaving… did not think so… rather preach and shout than join and fight.
Yes, America has its share of this kind. Sorry, to say.
You can start your own movement, …….Extreme Anarchist Against America!
Sigh… I knew it was only a matter of time.
Clover is back….
Can we all just try to ignore it this time?
“Can we all just try to ignore it this time?”
That ain’t how it’s done here, Jeremy. Here the trolls are revered, fed to surfeit and elevated to the status of site icons. Look at the wallpaper on either side.
I used to try to get others here to ignore them. “Don’t feed the trolls”….
Pointless endeavor. Waste of effort. They’ll feed the trolls because it’s fun.
Hi Ed,
Yeah, I know. I’m certainly guilty as well. But, it’s just not fun anymore.
Jeremy
“it’s just not fun anymore.”
I hear you Jeremy, and I try to resist as well. I have cut way back. But sometimes I just can’t help myself.
Yep,
Now, when I hear the siren call of Clover, I imagine Eric as the alt-country freak Robbie Fulks. Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWPHHgbWAzc
Jeremy
Ignorance can be ‘cured’ with knowledge, but there is no cure for stupidity.
OMG, sack of hammers returns…..
Clovers from down under.
http://973thedawg.com/thieves-attempt-to-siphon-gas-from-a-bus-but-accidentally-suck-out-sewage/
That’s called ‘doing the wrong thing the wrong way.’
How do you remember to continue breathing seeing as how you obviously have no brain?
By the way, “sam,” how many people has your beloved United States government and it’s subsidiary state and locals killed? Maimed? Tortured? Victimized?
The fact is the government you are defending is guilty of all the things you accuse anarchists of, and more. I guess that’s OK with you, right? The stack of bodies doesn’t matter as long as the victims are butchered in an organized, centrally-controlled manner and you’re not in there with them, right?
Sam,
Your post makes me proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free… .
(That was a joke.)
Hi Eric,
My rewrite:
“If tomorrow all the pols were gone, I’d worked for all my life
Then I could start again with just my children and my wife
I’d thank my lucky stars to be living free today,
‘Cause the flag don’t stand for freedom, no matter what they say
But I’m proud to be an American, where at least I’m told I’m free
And that I control my government because we got “Democracy”
So won’t you stand up next to me, just vote it’ll be OK
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt they stole this land God Damn the USA
From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee,
across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea,
From Detroit down to Houston and New York to LA,
Well, there’s fear in every American heart,
and it’s time to stand and say:
I’m not proud to be an American, where I get to vote for three
Of the ruthless scum who rule by lies, who stole my life from me
And I’ll no more stand up next to you and vote, it’s not OK.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land God Damn the USA.”
For some reason the line formatting is messed up, no matter what I try, oh well.
Jeremy
Calling this guy a moron is an insult to morons. I’d just like to ask you if you have ever had an honest debate with anyone, on any subject? I ask because you appear to be mentally hobbled, unable to respond to the arguments put forward. Only able to mimic the rants of those you so obviously adore.
It feels good to look down on that attitude, but the attitude has to be taken seriously because it’s very widespread. My buddy, who is a smart fellow, thinks exactly the same way.
If we ditch this state then we’ll inevitably get another one in the form of war lords, is what he sincerely thinks. And you can’t simply make sure everyone is heavily armed because then they’ll all kill each other. I haven’t had much luck getting through to him yet, because any suggestion of people living without being controlled by others normally brings on a multi-minute long detailed speech about why you have to centrally control all those scum bags our society is infested with.
Your friend doesn’t understand he creates the incentive for the criminals to put a gun in someone else’s hands, to achieve the same ends?
Perhaps we need to re-evaluate intelligence.
As a thought experiment: We term aggressiveness as a mental disorder. Dislike of authority is a mental disorder (Oppositional Defiant Disorder.)
Yet being submissive (which, BTW, means accepting ANY authority figure, even one you make up) is NOT a disorder…?
Governing yourself? DISordered. Think about that: Being ORDERly in conduct makes you a DISordered person.
The lunatics truly are running the asylum, and have declared US insane.
“They have the anarchism Form of government.”
Isn’t that like jumbo shrimp? Or military intelligence?
“Isn’t that like jumbo shrimp? Or military intelligence?”
More like ‘spare time’ or ‘extra money.’
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I do not consider anarchy to be the lack of all government, but the lack of ‘civil’ government. There must be government. In fact, there will be many governments. But all of them except self government and family government will be entered into voluntarily. Employment, church or other charitable organizations, and so on. If you join the Boy Scouts, there are rules you must follow. But no one will make you join the Boy Scouts, or try to prevent you from leaving if you choose. Of course you do not have a choice of the family into which you are born, but even that you can choose to abandon once you reach adulthood.
As far as gunvermin being made up of people that can’t be trusted to make the right decisions for themselves, they also put up the farce of elections, where we can supposedly choose the folks who will make the choices for us that we are not allowed to make for ourselves.
Hi PTB,
I like to make a distinction between “governance” and “government”. People value governance and have created, as you point out, many institutions and customs to provide it. “Government” is an institution that claims a legal monopoly on the use of force. The architects of government have exploited the obvious human desire for governance and convinced people that “rules” can only be enforced by empowering a coercive monopoly to do so. The claim is absurd, but has a surface plausibility to it.
A common theory about the genesis of government is that it arose through predation. If so, there must have been something worth conquering before the “invaders” set up shop. The conquered society must have developed to the point of creating some wealth above a subsistence level. This means there would have been some level of cooperation, division of labor, rudimentary property rights, etc… before the “takeover”. Once again, if anarchy “didn’t work”, society could not exist.
Jeremy
PTB, the definition I remember best for the word “anarchy” is :
‘ Absence of government or of governmental restraint.’
I don’t remember which dictionary it came from, but I did look it up when I kept encountering the word in high school as I was reading this and that.
Try being left alone by those who want to institute SHARIA LAW, or a One-World Government, or otherwise have an agenda.
Given that there is such a diverse opinion among people that will never agree with each other – why would “ANARCHY” work any better than “UTOPIA” ?
Whether you are a Libertarian, Progressive or Conservatives – one can debate if these are nobel concepts or not – but it seems to me that neither one will actually work given the world today!
GW, anarchism allows for people to establish an unlimited number of self-governing communities with vastly different philosophical standards of living and enables people to migrate at will to another community of like-minded people. The state forces conformity, chooses sides during legal disputes for mere political reasons, creates laws that would not be otherwise needed, and robs its subjects at implied gunpoint.
Statism is the utopian ideal that just the right amount of violence used by just the right people in just the right way can perfect society.
“Another law is Sharia. What of the “anarchy” in the refugee camps across Europe. They want to govern themselves, but aren’t altruistic. Why are women being raped when there are no police to prevent it? ”
Anarchy in a refugee camp? Where? Think about what you’re claiming. A refugee camp is established by a government. The chaos in those places is caused by governments corralling people into a fenced enclosure. Women being raped there are being raped in any place the rapists go, whether there are police present or not.
” Does Anarchy work? The locals wouldn’t call it that, but I’m living in it. Not perfectly, but as close as may be possible. ”
Call it anarchy if you like, but you’re living under a government where you are, several layers of government, in fact.
“Would you transform, like Wolfman, into a run-amok creature “doing whatever the hell you like” if Congress, the president and every federal and state bureaucrat got Jesus Hoovered into the sky tomorrow?”
You owe me some cleaning supplies for the coffee sprayed onto my keyboard when I read “Jesus Hoovered”, sir. =D
Yep eric, Jayzus Hoovered(I’m accustomed to hearing primitive Baptists) made me laugh out loud. I admit I act differently when police are present. My normal mode doesn’t have me hauling ass away from the place I might be unless there are badged thugs present. In that case I waste no time putting distance between them and myself.
Just to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment – but with the all the diverse viewpoints of clovers and other idiots who don’t agree with me (insert your own name here) – Then is not “ANARCHY” then just the opposite extreme of the Progressive (Communist) Idiot -ology of a One-World Government run “UTOPIA” ?
If Liberty minded individuals don’t intend to conform with those progressive ideas set forth by the Obama’s / Clinton’s (and the complicit Republicans) of the world – what in hell makes anyone think that THEY would ever conform to the idea of Anarchy or a civil self-government?
We had this (more or less) back in the early days of this country, but the idea of a civil self government has been run over – just look where we are at today!
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, but a Vaccum is always filled…
Semantic shell game. Hide the pea.
Anarchy has no laws but has rules? If you obey, it is a distinction without a difference so isn’t anarchy by your definition. If you don’t obey then they aren’t rules.
When you have a population of Quakers or Mormons, they are obeying God’s LAWs. A group of objectivists are obeying laws derived from reason – the natural law.
If you are saying there are groups of people who need no government, I only agree in that you’ve made the point they are self-governing, but also excommunication would imply expulsion.
Another law is Sharia. What of the “anarchy” in the refugee camps across Europe. They want to govern themselves, but aren’t altruistic. Why are women being raped when there are no police to prevent it? Are these not the same species with the same reason and passions?
You seem to think self-control, industry, thrift, temperance and the other virtues are some kind of common default of man. That man isn’t “fallen” following his passions rather than reason.
There are men who do not govern themselves, or who do with a set of rules utterly different than the ones that gave rise to liberty in Christendom. You ask would some commit crimes – even heinous acts? They do. Was Uganda and Zimbabwe a paradise when Europeans and their ethos left it to the natives? Were the native American tribes – 500 Nations – models of anarchocapitalism? Even one? Any historically in Asia? (yes! ascetic monks! but few would want to live an ascetic life – any others?).
Anarchy can work among a population of men of good will who govern themselves in peace. But what happens when evildoers invade? Have they not the same rights to make their own rules? To destroy, to steal, to rape, to enslave? To obey their different set of rules for self-governance?
You complain about clovers and “heroes”, but what talk, technology, or magic will allow them to be equal members in your anarchy? There is one, but common to both sides. They are willing to shoot you to make/keep you their slave (or do you dispute that?). Are you willing to defend your freedom, say even as those in Bend, Oregon are?
Do not mistake the carefully cultivated garden for the state of nature jungle. Weeds are removed from the former, lest it become the latter.
I’ve already said I’ve gone Galt. Voted with my feet. In my small Wyoming town, there are few clovers (and are considered do-gooder busybodies by most). The police leave you alone if you aren’t causing a nuisance or committing crime, and actually try to help. Does Anarchy work? The locals wouldn’t call it that, but I’m living in it. Not perfectly, but as close as may be possible. But it is the huge majority of moral people which make it possible. Most exercise constitutional carry but there have been almost no shootings.
If you want to live where the majority are driven by lust, greed, anger, desire for power, gluttony, you won’t find liberty, much less anarchy. You should be arguing virtue, so as to allow anarchy, but I expect you think that futile.
Are your words a more powerful magic spell than mine so as to turn a savage into a noble? I don’t see it. But if neither of us are persuaded by the others words, and we generally agree on 95% and understand, what power will such words have on the socialist that won’t listen and understand?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LX9NPR9lWU
“If you are saying there are groups of people who need no government, I only agree in that you’ve made the point they are self-governing, but also excommunication would imply expulsion.”
You said this right after bringing up Mormons — and I used to be one.
First of all, excommunication is rare in that religion — that vast majority of people who don’t go to their meeting houses any more do so voluntarily, not because they’ve been expelled.
And the people who do show up for church do so voluntarily — because they want to. Because they choose to. Not because a gun has been pointed at them, or has been threatened to be pointed at them.
Nobody NEEDS government. Statists WANT government — generally for non-consenting others.
Government is something statists want for other people, but not for themselves. Hence the phenomenon of statists advocating for higher taxes on others, while hiring accountants to find every possible way of reducing their own tax bill.
“Government is something statists want for other people, but not for themselves. Hence the phenomenon of statists advocating for higher taxes on others, while hiring accountants to find every possible way of reducing their own tax bill.”
And also advocating for guns to be taken from the hoi polloi, but not from themselves or their hired guards. Even the poor dupes who volunteer for the military are not allowed to carry weapons on base, a la Fort Hood.
“Why are women being raped when there are no police to prevent it? ”
So you think police “prevent” rape when it happens with impunity everywhere you go? Police log rape and quite often, commit rape…..of both sexes…..and that’s just the sexual rape.
“The police leave you alone if you aren’t causing a nuisance or committing crime, and actually try to help.” Really? The police try to help when they literally attack someone for using one of those non-sainted, non-pharmaceutical drugs? They really don’t go out of their way to arrest people for “crimes against the state”? This place must be the proverbial nirvana. Cops who are mind readers, whose job consists of preventing criminal acts so rape never occurs there nor assault? I need to move there….pronto. Me and the police chief can sit at the donut shop and hit the bong, have some coffee royale and look for people with no halo. I’m a’ coming, I’m a’comin…..old black Joe…..just me and my pygmy pony riding herd on the dental floss bushes.
We need to state to deal with the immoral people and the state creates more immoral people. We have to ask, what is the structure that encourages and cultivates the problems? What institution does that? The state doesn’t solve problems because then the state would lose its reason to exist and to extract wealth from the population. It is rewarded by making problems worse.
So we have a chicken and the egg problem when it comes to the others that aren’t evolved enough to govern themselves. The state is seen as the solution but it is rewarded by causing the problem.
Now as to savages, well that’s where government often comes from in the first place if it hasn’t created the savages through it’s various actions, meddlings, interventions, etc.
Of course most people aren’t persuaded. A person is persuaded if they can think and reason and operate on data. But people aren’t brought up that way, to think. People are conditioned. And who gets to condition the children? The state.
I don’t have a solution, but I know one thing. The state isn’t the solution to humanity’s problems. Not in the forms for which it has existed for thousands of years anyway.
Hi Eight,
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
As you point out, the State exacerbates all of the problems it claims to fix. It attracts criminals who are too cowardly to act without the cover of “law”. These people are much more dangerous than “common criminals”. In short, the “State is too dangerous to tolerate”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILDjo4EXV8
Jeremy
Oops,
Should read, “Hi Brent and Eight”.
Jeremy
HI tz,
“You seem to think self-control, industry, thrift, temperance and the other virtues are some kind of common default of man. That man isn’t “fallen” following his passions rather than reason.”
As far as these virtues are not observed, government exacerbates, not mitigates, the problem. Left without inducement or protection from government, far more people would observe these virtues than you suspect. Quoting myself, “I believe that most human beings are hard wired to cooperate with one another. The religious may posit that we have been created with a moral sense. While this is fine, it is not necessary to explain why most people cooperate. Self interest is enough. Being a human predator is dangerous and difficult. Other people grow to hate you. You always have to fear the arrival of a stronger man. Other people will not voluntarily come to your aid, or protect you from harm. In short, your hold on power and safety will always be tenuous, unless you can convince enough people that you are a “protector”, not a predator”. Self-interest is “some kind of common default of man”.
“You complain about clovers and “heroes”, but what talk, technology, or magic will allow them to be equal members in your anarchy? There is one, but common to both sides. They are willing to shoot you to make/keep you their slave.”
Remove their special protection of “law” and they will have a strong incentive to “be equal members”. Clover is too cowardly to attack anyone directly, he must seek satisfaction vicariously. Law enforcement attracts bullies and cowards; remove their immunity and their willingness to “shoot” will be severely curtailed.
“If you want to live where the majority are driven by lust, greed, anger, desire for power, gluttony, you won’t find liberty, much less anarchy. You should be arguing virtue, so as to allow anarchy, but I expect you think that futile”.
You mean, Congress? As far as “arguing virtue, so as to allow anarchy”, I don’t think that Eric could have made it any clearer: that is his goal.
Jeremy
What a rambling and tiresome post that really adds nothing. Another victim of government schools has posted, how lovely.
Hi Bill,
Thanks – and amen!