Some friends have been actively talking about their Exit Plans – about getting out of this country before the curtain goes down. While there is still time. They believe the situation to be hopeless. That despite the upwelling of liberty-mindedness among some, the vast majority of Americans are not liberty-minded. That Americans – tens of millions of them – are stupid, unreachable, mean, irrational, authoritarian-minded Babbits and poltroons. People who always speak in “we” – and lust to control others.
Reluctantly, I have to concede the point.
I have had exhaustive (and exhausting) conversations with countless people – some of them probably a lot smarter than I in terms of raw IQ – who just can’t connect the dots.
Or – much worse – don’t care to.
The problem is as much psychological as it is intellectual. There may just be a defective sub-species of human being, homo servilus, who – much like a bee in a hive – is programmed to crave the collective and therefore accepts its corollary – coercion – as the natural and right order of things.
It’s very easy to get these “bees” to reveal their true natures. Their core antipathy to individualism – and its corollary, liberty. Just let them know, for example, that you find sports/celebrity worship disgusting. Or that you don’t subscribe to any particular religious doctrine – or much care what doctrines others subscribe to, so long as they leave you be.
Let them discover that you don’t feel obliged to pay more taxes for “our children” – only an obligation to take care of your own children. Criticize war.
Make a negative comment about cops… .
So, I don’t disagree that jumping ship is probably a smart move. Nonetheless, I’m reluctant to leave the country, for many reasons – high among them just orneriness. This is my country, dammit. I hate the idea of just giving it to … them.
That said, I am beginning to wish I’d “gone deep” when I selected our fallback redoubt. We consciously moved to very rural SW Va. from the Northern Virginia area (near DC) about eight years ago to a great extent to limit our exposure to what’s surely coming. But I am thinking now that we would have been smarter to have moved to rural Idaho or Wyoming or Montana (like Chuck Baldwin did) instead. There are too many Clovers here. 
And signs of sprouting continue to worry me.
For example: Several recent “letters to the editor” in our small community newspaper go on and on about how “we” need to raise taxes on real estate so that “our schools” will have “adequate funding.” There is one school – an elementary school in a far corner of the county – threatened with closure because of limited “revenue” and not enough students to justify keeping it open. So the idea was floated to close it and consolidate it with another. “The children” would then get bussed a little farther to their new school. This is an outrage to the parentsites of these children, who believe others should be compelled to provide the necessary “revenue” to keep the old school open for their children.
Everything discussed in terms of “we,” of course. It’s never my children need you to pay for their school.
If I were to speak at a public hearing about this and ask why don’t people who chose to have children bear the responsibility for raising their kids – which includes educating their kids – as opposed to their kids becoming an open-ended claim on the property – on the liberty – of other people who had nothing to do with it… I’d likely be the victim of a mob beating. At minimum, I’d become a community pariah – regarded as “selfish” and “anti-child” (as well as “anti-education”) … because I am troubled by armed men threatening to kill me and take my property so that it may be given to someone else’s kids – kids I’ve never even met let alone had anything to do with bringing into this world. It is no defense, either, that such a policy makes it that much harder for people who’d like to pay their own way to do so.
Other people’s kids take precedence.
Over everything.
It never occurs to these “freedom loving” Americans that freedom can’t exist when you are no longer free to say no to being forced to hand over your rightful property to other people to whom you properly speaking owe nothing – other than goodwill. That if “the children” becomes a justification for theft, then any other reason is just as good a reason.
But don’t dare say it out loud…. these freedom-loving Americans will very quickly show you just how much they actually believe in freedom… including even the freedom to speak your mind, if your mind differs in any meaningful respect from the parameters of orthodoxical Republican or Democrat parameters.
The only cardinal sin is to commit non-authoritarianism. To state that you don’t want anything from anyone except their respect for your rights – and are willing to extend the same courtesy in return.
It is a thought increasingly foreign to Americans – even here, in a rural southern farming county 35 miles from anything in most places and often a lot farther than that.
Another example:
In our tiny, literally on-stoplight county, the same government that moans about not having sufficient “revenue” for “the children” recently spent probably several thousand dollars painting at least six “pedestrian crosswalks” in town, complete with “safety man” icons imprinted into the pavement plus signage. Apparently, people cannot cross the street unaided here, either. I have no doubt that tickets for jaywalking are right around the corner. Tazerings for the non-compliant.
Signs of the apocalypse.
There is talk of writing zoning laws – which this county has never had – and which will surely mean The End of everything that made moving here worth doing. People will no longer just be able to freely buy and sell their land, to be used however the new owner wishes. There will instead be restrictions on how a lot can subdivided – and what may be “lawfully” constructed on said lot. I can already see a time when BTK-type “zoning enforcement officers” will be knocking on people’s doors, threatening them with onerous fines (and ultimately, county seizure and auction of “their” land) if they don’t mow it, or have too many cars parked on it or a “not approved” shed built upon it… .
Clovers. The god-damn bastards are here now, too.
It only took them eight years to find this place – and ruin it.
It’s entirely possible that nowhere in North America is a safe redoubt.
What happens, ultimately, depends on the character of the people. And the character of the American people – by and large – is one that reflexively defers to authority – willingly, worshipfully. That happily submits to the most despicable degradation if it will “keep them safe.” And which never fails to speak in terms of we.
So, where do the rest of us – the remnant that still believes in I – go to get away from we?
That, friends, is the question of our time.
Throw it in the Woods?
Rise and Shine: With a ‘sunshiny’ voice on the phone lines, program yields lifesaving results
Delores Hammett doesn’t remember much about July 2. There are just a few things – a deputy arriving at the door, her service dog Cinnamon Girl barking incessantly, and herself being carried down the stairs. Then it all went blank.
For three days, Hammett laid in a hospital bed, unaware of what had transpired. When she awoke, she found out she had suffered a massive heart attack and was also fighting pneumonia. Alive, she soon knew whom to thank.
Hammett has been with Floyd County Sheriff Brian Craig’s Rise and Shine program from the beginning. In his campaign for sheriff, Craig had talked about starting the outreach, and Hammett said she was anxious to see it launched after he was elected. The sheriff came to her house, took down her information and signed her up as a participant.
Hammett lived alone and needed someone to call and check on her every day, and that’s exactly what the program does. Frances Burnette, one of several Floyd County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers who make those daily phone calls, said she enjoys talking to the people enrolled in the program and getting to know them. “You get attached to all of them. I’m glad we let them know that someone cares enough to check on them.”
Hammett also compliments the dispatchers. “They call you between 9 and 10. You’ve got this sunshiny voice (on the phone).” Hammett said just hearing their voice is enough because she knows someone cares. “I might not know them on the street, but I do on the phone. These people are so giving.”
The program currently has five participants. Craig wishes there were more people enrolled, and he continues to promote it whenever he can. While the program is directed toward senior citizens who have no one to check on them on a daily basis, it can also be utilized by families for other reasons, he explained. “Some people use it temporarily if they go on vacation. If someone needs peace of mind (for their loved one) while on vacation, we’ll make that contact in the morning.”
Dispatcher Shawn Conner was on duty and made the call to Hammett’s house at 9:16 a.m. There was no answer. She called again at 9:26, and after another call at 9:36 with no response, Deputy Jonathan Mullins went to the house. He located Hammett in the bedroom. Realizing that something wasn’t right and unsure of her condition, he called for rescue.
The Rise and Shine program saved her life, Hammett said. “If they hadn’t made 3 calls…I would be dead.
“It’s huge,” she added, “and a wonderful program.” She thanks the sheriff and his “dream team” – the dispatchers, deputies, rescuers – and others in the hospital who provided her care. At home now, she is appreciative of her caregivers and friends, who help her with a variety of tasks and watch over her, too.
Hammett, who will be 83 in November, counts her service dog, Cinnamon Girl, a Rhodesian Ridgeback hound, and a retired service dog, Honey Girl, an Alaskan Husky, among her loyal companions and notes their contributions in helping her to get better. “Service dogs don’t get the credit they deserve.” The dogs are with her 24/7 and are extremely intuitive.
God has given her an extension on life several times, Hammett said, and she is grateful. It is her hope that every sheriff’s office and police department will have their own Rise and Shine program. She emphasizes it is needed and now personally knows it is a lifesaver.
On Monday, the sheriff visited Hammett at her home. She recalled how he also called to check on her while she was in the hospital. “I was very proud of that,” she said and told the sheriff through tears, “You’ll never know how much I appreciated it and how it raised my hopes of living. You don’t know who your friends are until you almost die.”
Sheriff Brian Craig and Delores Hammett
http://www.swvatoday.com/news/floyd/image_8f4f4658-7e98-11e7-8bbe-6bece4a404a7.html
Eric–
Speaking of those hopeless little dweebs writing in your local paper…
…you have a tremendous gift for writing. Have you contributed columns refuting their collectivist mewlings?
I’d jump on it. Get right in their faces; I bet a goodly majority of your independent-minded neighbors will join you.
Right now, right-minded people are cowed by these collectivist arguments and feel guilty for not wanting to support “the children”. Except it’s never “the” children…it’s the Clovers’ children, as you point out.
I used to…
I was a fairly regular contributor of columns to the Roanoke Times for several years. I stopped chiefly because it began to grate that they did not pay “outside” writers – not even a token fee. But your point is well-taken. It’s about changing minds – or at least, getting some minds to start changing. One of my heroes, Thomas Paine, basically gave away his earnings from Common Sense, which as you probably know sold in enormous numbers – and made his publishers very rich. Paine died broke and largely forgotten (after a stint in French prison and a near-encounter with the guillotine). He was scathing toward Washington, whom he came to regard as his era’s version of The Chimp.
In any case, Paine always stood tall, sails in the wind and damn the consequences. A mensch, as they say.
I’d like to live up to that standard – so I will do all I can in defense of the ideas now in jeopardy of being thrown away and forgotten, like Paine himself.
Marijuana is a vasodilator (expands pulmonary vessels) while nicotine is a vasoconstrictor (contracts pulmonary vessels.
That being said, marijuana could be a good remedy for asthmatic attacks if not for the irritation factor.
In addition, marijuana does not contain the same carcinogenic compounds that are in tobacco.
Tobacco is not entirely “bad” as it has been shown that tobacco users have a lower incidence of alzheimers and have slightly faster reaction times than that of non-smokers.
It is FACT that people drink alcoholic beverages to get “high”. No other explanation is valid.
It is an excuse to say that one drinks alcoholic beverages for the “taste”.
Studies were done that compared drivers “impaired” by alcohol compared to drivers “impaired” by marijuana.
Drivers impaired by alcohol tended to be reckless in their behavior, lost all sense of coordination and control and were dangerous beyond compare.
Drivers impaired by marijuana were able to maintain their sense of coordination and control and tended to drive more slowly and carefully.
Drivers that used BOTH alcohol and marijuana tended to be reckless in their behavior due to the alcohol consumption and negated the calming effects of marijuana.
wow,thnx for the education guys.i just recently became aware of how bad things really might just be.i dont know much about the libertarian beliefs,or anything else for that matter,lol.but i really liked and agreed with much of what i just read.anyway great article,keep up the good work,thnx
You’re on your way then gregR…the red pill goes down hard, but the sharp vision and mental clarity mean it’s working.
Quote of the Decade:
gregR wrote. “wow,thnx for the education guys.i just recently became aware of how bad things really might just be.i dont know much about the libertarian beliefs,or anything else for that matter,lol.but i really liked and agreed with much of what i just read.anyway great article,keep up the good work,thnx”
How bad things really might be?
lol?
LOL!
“i dont know much about … anything else for that matter”
That about sums it up.
America, home of the clueless.
Psft.
Stick us with a fork, cause we’re done.
[Not that I don’t appreciate your attempt to seek the red pill, gregR.]
clark,dont be such a codesceding dick,thnx
knee jerk reaction there,
Never mind gregR. Being a condescending dick is about the only upside to being a libertarian. Try it, you’ll like it 🙂
Welcome, Greg – good to have you with us!
thank you sir
Hey Dom? What’s the secret of making a local avatar work on this site?
You need to send Dom a bottle of Japanese saki. 😉
Actually you can go to gravatar website and register. It is not difficult to use.
I do not think Dom would mind if you did send him a bottle of saki.
wow,thnx for the edumication fellas,you guys rock!i stumbled across this article yesterday(via alex jones/lew rockwell),and hav just finished reading all(most,i skipped some of ricks drug stuff there,lol) of the comments.i checked almost every link,video and just alot of stuff i had no idea what you guys were talking about.lol.anyway,i hav recently realized how bad things just might really be,and my initail survival instinct was to go deep.stumbled across survivalblog(dot)com,the first time i came across the word redoubt.im rambling.anyway thnx,good luck and god bless(to any who wont be offended by that)
Depressed?
Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel , “Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land.”
Nearly 75 years ago, (when Welfare was introduced) Roosevelt said, “Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land.”
Today, Congress has stolen your shovel, taxed your asses, raised the price of Camels and mortgaged the Promised Land!
I was so depressed last night thinking about Health Care Plans, the economy, the wars, lost jobs, savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc …. I called a Suicide Hotline.
I had to press 1 for English.
I was connected to a call center in Pakistan . I told them I was suicidal.
They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck……
Folks, we’re screwed.
FYI: I didn’t write this.
It certainly bears repeating Dom, no mater who wrote it 🙂
Dear Dom,
So are you going to become an Ice Road Trucker in Pakistan?
That Lisa Kelly is hot.
If you meet her tell her I’m her number one fan.
I loved your post & spread it far & wide. Thanks!
Thanks, Kevin!
A seriously superb article, Mr. Eric!!!
Cheers, JQP
Thank you, JQ!
“That said, I am beginning to wish I’d “gone deep” when I selected our fallback redoubt.”
I considered the Atlantic states when I decided to move a couple of years ago, considered them seriously enough that I took the time to drive them. They were very pretty due to all those tree covered mountains, and I was tempted especially by Tennessee’s low cost of living, good fishing, pretty scenery, etc…
Trouble is the East Coast is the most populated part of the country, and clovers thrive best in that kind of environment, and they breed like rabbits. I don’t care how remote you think you’re living if you’re less than 500 miles from the East Coast, their offspring, or at the very least their laws will reach out to you in the next 20 years.
It usually starts with weekend cabins or back to nature city clovers and as soon as their cabins are built they start bitching about everything not being up to city standards. If they’re retired they might even move there, get elected to a position of power in that county and then the flood of bad initiatives, statutes and laws start coming your way.
In your case, Eric, I see you 20 years from now, standing on top of your house, or an old shed, shotgun in hand, clovers surrounding you. You’re screaming, “Just leave me alone. Let me live my own life.” they’re screaming, “It’s for the children! For the environment! For the U.N.”
As far at the topic of going deep, I bet not that many people have thought of Northern Canada. Most of Canada’s large population centers are close the USA border, with the exception of Edmonton and Calgary. Otherwise it’s just a series of small towns and lots and lots of land you can hunt, fish and tell them all to go to hell( the clovers ). Cold winters though, I bet.
Even if you have an American passport or greencard, you can live in some places you’ve never thought of, such as Guam, and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific and other such protectorates scattered through the world. Maybe you get an Asian wife and settle down in her country if you like it.
If you’re not American, or if you are but you have Italian or Irish ancestors it’s easy to get a 2nd passport, an EU passport, which gets you a free pass to a bunch of small islands off the coast of South America, Dutch, English, French & Portuguese, or you can move to French Guyana on the continent, which borders Brazil.
If you’ve followed my suggestions, traveled the globe, and found someplace you really, really love, you won’t be there 5 minutes, before you’re approached by a clover with a clipboard who wants to screw up your happy life!
You’re right, Alex.
A battle is coming. You can smell it in the air. It’s going to be us vs. them. They have numbers. We have right on our side.
It’ll be quite something, I expect.
Not quite accurate, but your comment made me think of the Doors.
For me another song came to mind.
Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkADj0TPrJA
The lyrics fit remarkably well.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand
I’ve seen your face before my friend, but I don’t know if you know who I am
Well I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you’ve been
It’s all been a pack of lies
I went and watched the video on youtube and got chills…the words are so apropos
“If you’ve followed my suggestions, traveled the globe, and found someplace you really, really love, you won’t be there 5 minutes, before you’re approached by a clover with a clipboard who wants to screw up your happy wife!”
Ha! I’ve god that one covered! My wife isn’t happy either!
If we want to start dismantling statists, it has to begin at the root of the issue. School needs to be unmonopolized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBNh543A81U
Schools need to be a matter of individual choice. Parents choosing who shall educate their children – and taking care of the necessaries. It is no business whatsoever of the government’s.
Abolish “sovereign immunity” for ALL government officials. The threat of lawsuits can (and will) make people behave themselves . . .
Eric,
This says it all:
Americans have been brainwashed for a century.
I’m staying. I’m fighting. For the minds of everyone who still has a spark of liberty in their soul.
You, too, pal. This one is worth winning.
Uncle Bill,
Amen.
We must (as the old saying goes) gird our loins and keep our powder dry.
Der tag kommt.
Uncle Bill, thank you for posting this documentary, PSYWAR. Over the years I have watched many, many documentaries, including others about propaganda – but I have never seen this one before. I just finished watching it, and it is powerful, detailed, historic, and accurate. No wonder the sheeple masses would NEVER consider spending 90 minutes watching this, as they would actually learn something.
Eric, as usual great piece. Whether writing about cars, cycles, or liberty you are always excellent. I am in the same boat you are in as a stranded human in a sea of clovers. I and similar thinking parties are looking around the Missouri area.You would be welcome to show up any time. My folks had to leave the southwestern part of Virginia in 65 after the Yankees took over lol.
Ernie – thank you!
One of these days I may just have to host a pig roast down here; then we can all get together for a Clover-free weekend!
This is spot on. While the visible threat is the thug with the gun, the cause of the trouble is whining, sniveling, dependent masses.
At the grocery store today, I noticed a hand wipe dispenser (bad enough.) Attached to it was a sign: “Warning: In order to function properly, wipes must be removed at a 45 degree angle.”
There ya go.
Luckily my wife is from Mexico, so I’m trying to convince her now to at least get a house or ranch somewhere near Guadalajara or Puerto Vallarta. Compared to the USSA, Mexico is an anarchist state with very few nanny state rules and almost zero taxes. There are no property taxes for example. It’s a much better slave camp than the USSA, and of course you get the better weather. Rural America will not be spared unless you’re completely isolated in an undesirable geographic location, which means your quality of life would be terrible.
Check this dude out.
http://www.citizensopposingprohibition.org/
It’s all so simple, and reasonable. Why don’t they take a breather? They’ve become so rich off the common man, why risk it all?
Thanx for sharing but he’s not even close.
First: Congress can prohibit and repeal. It has no power to legalize anything.
Second: Nothing less than an across the board repeal of de facto Drug Prohibition is acceptable.
I’ve yet to see anyone with the courage to wear a shirt calling for the repeal of opium prohibition, yet opium is still the most effective analgesic known.
Were I Gawd, you can bet that I would shift all chronic pain from the present sufferers to the prohibitionists. They deserve it.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
I’m ready to go anywhere to leave behind the balloon animal fear carnival these clowns keep bringing to town and won’t let me leave.
I don’t want to ride the new all electric teacups or Mr Toads wild environmental awareness ride. I wanna go all the way deep, cause this shallow funhouse mirror safety glass licking idiocy has is boring kids stuff.
Each day I wake up in a bed worth 3 grand. For what? On a cocktail napkin, I could scribble plans for better sleeping furniture that could do more and cost less, because it would be free of the Central Services Monopolies like the ones depicted in the movie Brazil. Why not slumber heuristics, and dreamtivos, and a monthly premium rollercoaster bed decoupling where I whisk off alone in the night to some random sleep service girl, she being contractually obligated to remain anonymous, unreachable, and hence no threat to my legal permanent spouse?
And why do I roll out of my overpriced slave galley rack to comb my hair? What a trillion dollar farce hairstyles are. WTF, am I a preening cockatoo or something?
Next I’m expected to use a razor to rip my nerves down to my pores and pay a barber to keep short my cranial external nerve structures so that long haired women can maintain their superior awareness of surroundings and the mystique of women’s intuition which comes from having non-damaged hair follicle nerve endings out in the open air. That sounds equal!
Then I consent to jumping in a shower of nationwide recycled sewage water, each upstream cities crap washing over the downstream next. Every guy must stew in the cannibals pot of the collective offal of millions of unknown proles, its the law.
Just to cope, I live in a quarter million dollar pine and taconite shack for shelter. Yet also I’m expected to affix additional a cycle of daily mobile shelters called clothes directly on my body. This rodent inspired technology serves to further stifle and scramble the remaining unmutilated body hair nerve endings below my neck which of course I am conditioned to ignore anyway.
Its fashionable, they shout at me in 30 second intervals on all media screens, to don micro-organism laden linens and polyester replicas of pre-cambrian era animal skins. No sheer circuit boards or portable tools of microfibers here. Why wear 10 TB of wifi micro SDs when you can shlep around in conformist symmetrical yet machine randomized in ways so trivial even a crow would be to bored to investigate shirts and pants?
Also I am conditioned to be ashamed to be an animals sinfully trapped in a smelly carcass. Got to be a good consumer and lather up in lots of volatile hydrocarbons, so that all the rest of nature gives me even a wider birth. The more expense and primal the required rituals, the tighter their controls.
I’m a man. Gotta turn on the tube, wanna hear some eastern sports propaganda network maryandrew lisp about which player for the National Felons League is being incarcerated and fined for which plantcrime and sexcrime today. I’d rather watch two teams compete to mount and strip naked some young broads in bikinis or some kind of high tech aereal rugby or hockey, but then that would make me want more of an authentic life than the Team Owners of the world are willing to provide.
The melting pots broth is so shallow now, it won’t be long before its all boiled away, and whoever stays in is really gonna get stuck hard to the national iron skillet they hold over the fires of our true underlying natural reality.
I just spotted this article on Business Insider International, published on April 25, 2012: “16 Reasons To Move To Iceland Right Now” at
http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-economy-life-move-2012-4
So far, the Icelandic people are the only population and country on the planet to forcibly refuse to be taken over by bankers via debt.
Eric, One of your problems is that you live in Southern Virginia, which heavily populated with Southerners, who, above all people, should be libertarian-minded, but Lincoln’s destruction of the Old Way was so thourough that southerners actually say stupid things like, “Honest Abe”, when refering to the destroyer, and sing “The Battle Hymn” in Church of all things! I’m a southerner, by the way, so don’t none of you try to say I’m a Yankee Snoot.
I don’t know of any state where individualism is still prized. Some of them teater on it, but are constantly inticed by Federal money to capitulate. Good luck and let us know if you find something and some of us might join you.
Eric
I can confirm what you are saying. I live in a conservative part of the Twin Cities. I do not know of a single person who actually believes in liberty amongst all of my neighbors. I can only find like minds on the internet. When I point out problems like the NDAA they just shrug and say that it doesn’t affect them yet and they don’t care. I am a former Cuban refugee and have seen this all play out before. They end may not be pretty. I have concluded that the best option is to expatriate but my wife thinks I am crazy. People like you are the only thing keeping me going. At least I know that somewhere there are kindred spirits. Thank you for your insights. I always find you at lewrockwell.com
Thanks, Wes!
And: Sorry you had to flee Cuba to find Cuba sprouting up all around you here….
That reminds me of a story my Dad told me. His friend just landed from Cuba in 1961. An American told him that he (the American) was lucky to be born in America where he didn’t have to worry about such problems. My Dad’s Cuban friend told him “yes my friend but your problem is that you have nowhere to flee to”
Since it is my understanding that there is actually a base/colony on Mars, I would suggest going there asap. My second option would be for you and the rest of us who are not clovers to start standing up for what is right, damn the torpedo’s. Go to the council meetings, run for office locally, teach the Constitution and Bill of Rights to all you know. Carry a copy of the Constitution in your pocket, read it often refer to it often.Become as independent of the system as humanely possible. Frankly there is no point in hiding
the game is over if we don’t change the tide now, and that is a sad but true fact
You used the term “Clover” without defining it. I “googled” the term but could not find anything that helped me understand what you meant in using that term. Could you explain?
See here:
http://clovercam.com/
Top menu bar, third item from the left (“what’s a clover?”)
Best,
Eric
A Clover is unaware of Situation Awareness. The worst of the lot should be taken to the nearest Vet and be mercifully put to sleep.
My favorite phantasy is quickly dispatching them with an Avenger cannon that is standard equipment in the A-10 Warthog. You could film the action with a gun camera and dub in some chilling screams. (Eat, your heart out Vincent Price.)
tgsam
Uh oh, who’s the murderous jerk now?
Certainly not you Gil. Being a “murderous jerk” requires a set of cajones. Clovers only have soft little petals; that’s why you have to employ gun-vernment thugs to do your dirty work. What was it that you do for a living again Gil?
I don’t think there’s a place in the country where “cloverism” isn’t rampant anymore. On one hand, you have leftist welfare-state types that can’t get enough of sucking up my tax money to spend on “worthy causes,” and on the other, you have rightist warfare-state types who have a collective orgasm every time a drone drops a bomb on someone. Even our local “libertarian” radio host wets himself with excitement at the thought of being able to celebrate “flag day” or some other fascist-inspired nonsense.
America now isn’t much different from Rome in maybe 250 AD or so. Both started out as agrarian republics that had recently thrown off monarchies and made a virtue of independent thought and little trust for self-proclaimed authorities. Eventually, Rome became a financially ruined warfare state trying to hold onto its empire to benefit only a wealthy few who attained their power and position by manipulating law and the public treasury, while everyone else tried to keep their heads down and hope for the best, knowing that there was little they could do to change the situation at that point.
Truthfully, there’s no safe place to go these days, or good place to hide. If you go overseas, you risk being victimized by an out of control foreign policy. If you stay stateside, you risk being scooped up at some point for saying the wrong thing, or having a piece of property someone wants, or just from dumb random luck. All this within the context of the sword of Damocles of financial meltdown hanging over our heads. Is there a sane response? Maybe have a closet full of food and at least be independent-minded enough not to fall for the garbage that the gummint-media complex puts out, so that when the herd of lemmings runs one way, you can calmly walk in the other direction.
I really don’t want to believe your genetic theory Eric. I want to believe that logic and facts can form a persons opinion. Perhaps epigenics comes into play.
@Jason Calley Thanks for the video. It’s nice to know that there are people who are like minded. I will not vote either. I have supported people who run for office, but only because they are trying to get a message out, never because they want to rule. I actually heckle voters from my property that borders a township hall.
“The candy is not worth my pride” was a great line. I couldn’t agree more. When you vote you give them a mandate or should I say permission to rule. I do not give my consent. If voting ever made a difference they would make it illegal.
Hey Brad, you say: “When you vote you give them a mandate or should I say permission to rule.” Yes, exactly! I remember when “conservative Republican” Nixon was elected and then turned around and started the EPA and OSHA, and started the export of US industry to communist China. Most Republicans did not approve of any of those things, but because they had voted for him, he was “their boy.” They could not criticize Nixon without admitting that they had been suckers when they voted to put him into office. Of course the Democratic politicians are as bad or worse, but the point is that voting makes citizens support even bad policies when their guy does it.
What makes current voting even more mysterious is that you and I do not get to observe or verify the vote. People vote, and then the “powers that be” assert who won. To make it even more crazy, if someone wins an election and then does the exact, diametrical opposite of what they promised, we the people have no recourse to remove them. Yes, they can be removed — but only by a majority of their fellow dishonest politicians!
Madness!
I decided to vote, given there was a Fiscally Conservative & Socially Liberal choice available, which happens once every 20 years. I was also curious what flavor of lunatic fellow travelers I was living among.
I voted for Ron Paul in the primary. It was in a school shiny new on the outside, but a soviet bunker on the inside.I had to wait a half hour for the precinct captian who showed up late. It was me, my old lady, a late 50s guy who was digging on Santorum and an early 60s guy in the back who was undecided. It was in a high school reported to be one of the better magnet high schools.
We met down the barren hall in a 15X20 windowless cell with five long dilapidated tables and dodgy chairs suitable for about 40 young county inmates. The books were in poor condition, some missing covers. The content was muddled scientism and environmental drivel, even though the textbooks were titled: Biology. It was on par with books I read in about 4th grade in my 70s catholic hippy retreat and groovy schoolhouse of rock.
The young 20s captain showed up handed out our papers and said we should each take the floor. First guy babbled about newly becoming a bandwagon second hander to the noble Santorum, and regaled us with some anti Obama talking points and come to Jesus feverstories. I briefly explained why I was voting for Ron Paul. Precinct Captain added he was for Ron Paul and was shockingly erudite and me and 60s guys enjoyed every word we were able to here, whenver Santorumite had to take a breath.
Undecided guy said he was now leaning towards Ron Paul, he ended up committing to pay to be a state delegate for Ron Paul, and was still talking to the captain when I left to enjoy the rest my weekend, trying in vain to outpace the endless cloverspiel of the Santorum fanboy following me on my way out.
It is amazing how traffic in places with less respect for authority tends to flow much more freely than it does in the US.
I learned to drive in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There on is much more likely to know what drivers are going to do because their moves usually make sense. The bubble around cars is much smaller, mergers are executed more effectively and brakes tapped less frequently. When I watch videos of traffic in India I am amazed to realize that even Rio or Rome’s traffic flow can be enhanced. The Driving in the US sometimes feels like a long walk down a nursing home hall pushing a walker that has been modded with tennis balls for durability. German Autobahns, on the other hand, show how highly regulated roads can also flow well when the laws are generous and drivers capable.
Traffic is an amazing example of what self interested, yet respectful individuals can achieve. Individuals that are self interested move forward determinedly, respectful ones do so making sure that they are allowing others the right to move forward, as well.
Dear Skillful Means,
Good insight.
I’ve concluded over the years that driving styles are a reflection of “national character.”
As a radical individualist I am deeply reluctant to apply group labels. But I believe that as long as one keeps in mind the certainly of exceptions, there is such a thing as “national character.”
In fact, I would go even further. I think that peoples driving styles are an implicit indicator of their political outlook.
For example, drivers here on Taiwan seldom yield right of way to pedestrians in a crosswalk. Even when they do, they are so impatient they come close to clipping the pedestrians from behind as they walk past.
To me this is a revealing indicator of how they would behave in the event they were entrusted with political power.
As for the pedestrians, few are indignant about being treated this way. On those occasions when I attempt to commiserate with the pedestrian next to me, instead of expressing solidarity, he or she will act as if I committed a social faux pas.
To me this suggests a deeply ingrained Sheeple mentality.
I have a solution for you ….. yes you need to go where the population has different attitudes…. First I am outfitting a live aboard motorsailer…. you don’t have to pay high marina fees if you know how to get things done….
If I don’t like the area I’m in …. then I fire up the engine and or hoist the sail and go to a better area…. as a base of operations I have a cottage on a small carribean island of about 5K …. where my yearly real estate tax is 126 dollars a year….
I want more expats there…. so if anyone wants to check it out email me and I shall offer you the cottage/villa so you can see for yourself if this island is right for you….. [email protected]
good luck guys and girls if you want liberty you must earn it and not just wish for it…..
Just read your article – very interesting. Not sure how I feel about the zoning issue. I understand the need to use a piece of property as one sees fit as the owner. However, I must admit, if I and others had comfortable homes in a rural setting (for the quiet and beauty of our surroundings) and someone came in and decided to build an oil refinery next door, then I’d be pretty upset. There is no doubt that it would interfere with the “quality of life” for residences in the vicinity of the new refinery. So, what’s your take on a situation like this? How would you approach this?
I’m all ears!!
Bob
Hi Bob,
Welcome!
On zoning: The principle here is no different than in other scenarios where a potential exists for an outcome you might not like – vs. the damn sure certainty of one that you won’t as a result of empowering the government at the expense of your (and your neighbor’s) rights.
For example: “Safety” checkpoints are justified on the basis that someone might be drunk. To catch this generic “someone” who might be drunk, everyone else must sacrifice their right to be left in peace.
It’s exactly the same with zoning laws. A hypothetical harm does not justify an a priori restriction on what I may do with my land. Unless, of course, we choose to do away with the idea of us owning land and replace it with “conditional usership” – which of course is just what we do have.
I’d rather have liberty – and ownership. How about you?
Zoning is irrelevant to someone with the political power to build a refinery in the present system. Someone with political power like that can take your land and have the government’s armed employees remove you if it comes to that. If zoning actually protected our property rights that would be one thing, but it does not. It just secures the power of the people who have power. If we have an annoying neighbor the state often has no motivation to do anything about it and if someone wants to build a refinery next door government and its zoning laws will be on his side. So what’s the gain for what we lose?
Also with zoning, who gets to be on the boarders? How does zoning protect the guy who’s house is on the edge of the residential zone? Then again, I feel such properties are often valuable because they are within walking distance of stores and such.
Zoning is just power for a few. And benefit to those who don’t want to be near stores or offices or factories or whatever using other people’s property as a buffer zone. That’s all it is.
The way I’ve always looked at it Bob is if one of my neighbors can do something that I notice and that bothers me I didn’t buy enough land. There are some consequences to living in close quarters and people are bound to piss you off. I have a neighbor who used to like parking his parts car collection right on the property line as close as he could to my house. Lined ’em all up. Didn’t matter that he had 26 acres of land I couldn’t even see, he decided they belonged right smack dab on the property line.
I asked his wife if she wouldn’t mind asking him to park them somewhere else in the interest of domestic tranquility and he did. Frankly I was shocked. Who would have known?
It’s hard not to get caught up in a retaliation game though. You have to be real careful not to complain too much about what your neighbor does since damned near everything is illegal and it just isn’t that hard to escalate these things to everyone’s (except of course the State) disadvantage. For this reason I’d like to own everything I can see from my front porch. I believe that’s the best way to ensure harmony with my neighbors.
As someone who currently lives in No. VA and who has seen the prospects of Southwestern VA (there were none for me, a software developer by trade), I can honestly say I have witnessed much of what you discuss. I know that SW VA is currently a dying area where there are more elderly than children, with a few college towns. Your story about the demand for more taxes to fund local public schools is funny because I know that the majority of taxpayers in your area would not pay a dime as the elderly tend to have exemptions on property taxes.
This is not an isolated incident. In Lancaster Co., PA where my grandparents have lived most of their lives, many Baby Boomers from upscale areas in NYC are retiring there. Seeing as how that area has been a rural community for a long time, these morons cannot believe that the area will smell like manure during the planting season. So they complain to the local government.
I have a feeling that once the majority of the Baby Boomers die off, many of these problems will be resolved, but that may be just wishful thinking.
I am shocked that there is the aroma of manure in a rural community. 😉
Near where I live there is a race track that was built about 40+ years ago in an area with nothing but woods and forest creatures. Now people built houses closer to the track. The new neighbors do not like living near the track and have been working to make the track quieter if not shut it down.
Unlike Lancaster, I doubt these people will move away or die off. More likely is the track will be closed.
Near where I live there is a race track that was built about 40+ years ago in an area with nothing but woods and forest creatures. Now people built houses closer to the track. The new neighbors do not like living near the track and have been working to make the track quieter if not shut it down.
It never ceases to amaze and infuriate me, the gall of yuppie clovertards who move to new overpriced housing built next to sports venues, factories, or other facilities that generate noise or odors and then complain about them. While I’m certainly not one to advocate the enacting of new laws, perhaps a case could be made for a “common sense” law that would indemnify stadiums, factories, or other such facilities from lawsuits based on noise or olfactory emissions filed by people who move into housing built immediately adjacent to such areas (what kind of moron knowingly does this who can’t stand the noise?).
When I lived in the Annapolis area of the People’s Socialist Democratic Republic of Maryland, my wife and I used to attend baseball games in Bowie, Prince Georges County, at the Baysox Stadium (the Baysox being the Baltimore Orioles AA farm team). It used to be that, during the first four years after the stadium opened in the mid 90s, there would be fireworks shows on Friday and Saturday nights after the ball games. Then, around 1999, a housing development went up around the stadium and the fireworks stopped. Why? Because the residents of the new development COMPLAINED ABOUT THE NOISE! Were these people blind and deaf when they bought their houses? Did they buy them sight unseen?
Amazing!
Similar (same old) story here:
We moved to rural SW Virginia to get away from the suburban Northern Va. mentality; we intended to live as people live here – not force the “Northern Virginia Way” on the people who live here. But there are plenty of Northern Va-type dickheads moving in to the area – and of course, they’re determined to recreate here the mess they created up there.
A pox on all their houses…
Actually, “burning them out” would be too kind.
I’ve lived in Bowie since ’67. The Baysox still do fireworks on Thursdays – Saturdays, but they aren’t allowed to set them off if the came goes past 10pm.
Also I grew up next to the Berwyn Rod and Gun club, they have been there forever…and every once in awhile some new a-hole group tries to close them down.
Sam think with Capital Raceway up in Crofton. People have been trying to close down the drag strip and its been there since the 60’s
I hate to collectivize, but I have to agree–the Baby Boomers on the whole are the most brain-washed, flag-waving, soldier-sucking, drug-warring bunch of idiots on earth.
I agree (and I’m part of the late boomer period myself), but we had our “Silent Generation” parents to set the example for us.
Eric, like you, I lived in NoVa (Alexandria), but I didn’t get out until two years ago this October. Unlike you, I had to remain within commuting distance of DC for the jobs, so I ended up on 5 acres just outside of Berryville (near Winchester). Without the golden chains, I’d have moved to someplace near Lewiston, Idaho.
I left because of what I see coming and thinking I needed to be near like-minded rural folks. What I’ve found mostly is that rural folks are so busy trying to make ends meet that they don’t have time to look up and see the economic freight train barreling down the tracks right at them. Others can’t seem to stop waving the flag and worshiping the military and vicariously engourging themselves on the death and destruction it wreaks on ferners. Then there are those who, like me, work for the man but they cannot think that the man means us any harm. Only in the past month have I met a guy near me who is prepping.
I have given serious thought to getting out and cutting all ties (changing citizenship), but my wife is in love with our garden and doesn’t [want to] see what’s coming, so it looks like I’m staying (unless my prayers will move God to change her mind).
So you want to stay here in America. I have a question for you (and your readers who are staying): got militia? (See link at my name.)
Hi Flick,
You did a smart thing – and probably the best thing you could, given circumstances. I feel the same way about what we did. Yes, we’re farther away from the bullseye – and in general the people here are a better sort in that they are more self-sufficient than the suburbanites we used to live amongst. Still, I’d have liked to move even deeper into the hinterlands. But I’m about as far away from The World as I can be and still have access to the press cars for my work (reviewing cars). So, a compromise: 16 acres in rural SW Virginia vs. 200 acres in Idaho.
Like you, I’ve encountered the same flag-waving, cammo-huffing Republican “conservatism” here. It’s a contrast to the left-liberal Democrat mentality that dominated in Northern Va., but to a liberty-minded person, it’s poison either way. Based on my interactions with people – and based on how the discourse goes, nationally – it’s pretty clear that the vast majority of Americans are not liberty-minded people. They may think they are – but talk with them a bit and you’ll soon be disabused. It’s a sure bet they’ll defend their chosen version of coercive statism – whether it’s in defense of “their” Social Security or some “public investment” they favor, or schools for “our” kids or “support the troops”… etc. etc.
That’s what troubles me most. Not that the government is fundamentally tyrannical. But that most people are fundamentally tyrannical.
Hi Eric,
So, a compromise: 16 acres in rural SW Virginia vs. 200 acres in Idaho…. Why don’t you buy a few acres in Idaho & when it’s getting close to SHTF time, you’ve got someplace to go?
Hi Kevin!
I’m too po’ and too tired…they can come get me now, if they want to. I don’t have a woman or kids; it doesn’t matter anymore. I await the tsnunami with equanimity.
I wonder what your city/county is hiding in assets in there “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report” (CAFR)!!!
http://www.examiner.com/article/cafr-8-trillion-update-senator-liu-assemblyperson-portantino-so-far-silent
Oh. don’t get me started. The local school Fuhrer – a “Dr.” Arbogast” (notice that these puffins who have iffy liberal arts PhDs – “social policy,” etc. – tend to demand being referred to by their honorific?) was getting paid an enormous six figure salary plus a “travel budget” on top of that which amounted to something like $40,000 per annum. Mind, this is in a literally one-stoplight county.
But the school system “has no money.”
Clover is basically a psychopath…Tribal instinct falls with consciousness as man becomes sovereign/individual or God (I-ness is God). People who are conscious (most everyone on earth now) and embrace collectivisms are basically psychological muggers and rapists…Parasites. The political terrorists have screwed the masses up – psychologically speaking – with their public schools and TV broadcasts…Turned them into childish psychopaths – Murderously Envy-Ridden Bullies – who won’t leave other people alone. This was done deliberately by our owners to create chaos that make the little people cry for more government help.
The desire for Coercion/Collectivism/Terrorism has nothing to do with intelligence or genetics…It is psychological…A form of mental retardation in the form Rote Indoctrination.
DD,
I agree.
Cloverism is not a function of intelligence. It is a psychological issue – the outward manifestation of a crippled mind. A mind that either has been rendered unable to think conceptually, or which lacks empathy, or which is simply diseased with the psychopathy you mention: the urge to impose its will on others.
In effect, liberty-minded people are surrounded by madmen. We are inmates in a planetary-scale nuthouse!
Correct.
If you want to really know what is happening, I suggest you read Julian Jaynes and his work on the bicameral mind.
http://www.julianjaynes.org/
Jesus was conscious and possessed the mind-space for conceptual thinking…The “Kingdom of God” he spoke of was his own ability to think and see what the elitist terrorists of his day were doing. Jesus was anti-establishment/atheist and was murdered by the state/religion terrorist cartel…The terrorist scum who claimed to own him and the idiot peasants. Nothing has really changed since Jesus but sky-daddy religion is waning – Giving way to terror-state “LeeeeDrrr” worship.
The Terrorists have destroyed people’s ability to think in concepts and integrate concepts based on physical reality. Public schools and TV programming (wonder why they call it called “programming”?) are all about pushing the terrorist’s statist adgenda by use of repeated memorizations.
You are correct…We the individual God-man is surrounded by psychotic brats who can’t think logically – in concepts based in physical reality. They are just indoctrinated statist parasites that claim to own others and their earned property. Idiot Peasants.
Yeah right, Libertarians are the true heroes. If Libertarians discovered a killer disease that would kill all non-Libertarians then they would have a duty to release it as the only victims will be criminals.
Clover,
We – liberty-minded people – want nothing from you. We just demand that you leave us the hell alone. We leave you alone. What is it about your mean-spirited little selves that makes you so constitutionally unable to extend the same courtesy in return?
Gil is a “What’s mine is mine – What’s yours is mine” psychotic brat that is incapable of leaving other people alone. Just a filthy little parasite no different than a mugger or rapist. It murderously resents others for wanting to keep what they earn and to be left alone. A psychopath.
Exactly so, DD – well said!
Funny how Gil expresses what has long been a desire of the ruling class and then projects it on to libertarians.
These clovers just project what they think, what they feel, on to other people. So, is Gil just well conditioned or a lacky or member of the eugenics cult of the ruling class?
Dear Gil,
In a March 1997 Playboy Interview, Clint Eastwood was asked: “How would you characterize yourself politically?”
Eastwood replied: “Libertarian… Everyone leaves everyone else alone.”
What part of “Everyone leaves everyone else alone” don’t you understand, Gil?
In case you hadn’t noticed, we libertarians place such a premium on being left alone many of us are escaping to other countries.
Murdering people en mass with “killer diseases” is clearly part of your anti-libertarian thinking. After all, you brought it up. You were thinking about it.
But it sure as hell isn’t part of ours.
In reply to all three: if a mugger kept robbing but this you brought a gun would it be wrong to kill him? Or to kill a burglar looting your home? Nope it’s self-defence. Releasing such a disease would be self-defence because non-Libertarians rob Libertarians far worse than any mugger or burglar every day of every year. However, for your squeamishness, suppose non-Libertarians could get immunity by becoming Libertarians – how’s that then? Now you definitely have no reason whatsoever to not release such a virus. It would the necessary incentive leave everbody alone except voluntary transactions.
Although normally I am not one to point things out, but shit mang… Spell checker is fast and easy.
Knock yourself out!
http://www.iespell.com/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spell-checker/
Dear Gil,
And your point is?
Gil is not here for intelligent discussion; his object is simply to be disruptive by being disputatious. We have traced his IP and e-mails and the result of these inquiries suggests he is one of those people paid by the government to try to disrupt liberty-minded, anti-state web sites by provoking people to post suggestively violent things. We therefore keep him (or her – or them) on a tight leash. I wouldn’t waste my time attempting to communicate with him/her/them. I let some posts through for purposes of illustration only!
Dear Eric,
“by provoking people to post suggestively violent things.”
Got it.
Well, Gil is out of luck. I doubt anyone here is going to take the bait.
Heard an interesting story once; Memory is hazy but here’s the gist:
A Frenchman, who could see the obvious war clouds growing in pre-WWII Europe, decided he was going to get out with his skin and find himself a nice quiet corner of the globe to ride out the war. He poured a tremendous amount of time and effort into the decision-making process, looking to find the most out-of-the-way corner of the planet, that the warring powers could never squabble over, where he could live comfortably until cooler heads prevailed.
He moved to Guadalcanal.
Something for the aspiring expatriates to mull over. When TSHTF it can blow very far.
I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon lately. Lots of Ron Paul signs and stickers here in Seattle. More Obama, but that goes with the territory. No Romney though. I mean seriously, I haven’t seen that name on one single car or front lawn in this entire city. Not even in the Republican enclaves where GWB stickers were common in ’04.
I don’t know exactly what this means, but I find it noteworthy. Something’s going to happen in the next year. Election shenanigans may end up being a flashpoint. Less than five months now. Time is running out for expats. It’s definitely time to shit or get off the pot.
Dear That One Guy,
“He moved to Guadalcanal.”
Wow.
I guess he had an “Appointment in Samarra.”
“The Appointment in Samarra”
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])
The speaker is Death
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
The con is wearing thin, methinks.
The GOP – the supposed “alternative” – has brought forth another puppet; an obvious tool of the same statist interests that no one except those statists interests (and the mindlessly partisan) could possibly summon the least enthusiasm for. The very architect of Obamacare, for creep’s sake!
That’s supposed to be the “alternative” to Obama.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
But the amazing –and stomach-turning– thing is that the Cloverpublican votards will, as if through some sort of radio-controlled cue that transmits a signal to a microchip embedded somewhere in their central nervous system, drop to their knees almost en masse and start worshiping the Mitten, probably right after the coronation ceremony in Tampa takes place. It happens EVERY SINGLE ELECTION YEAR, no matter who the candidate is. I remember in ’96 when Bob Dole was the GOP puppet candidate. The Cloverpublican votards all went out to vote for him in droves, even though nearly every one of them I talked to said that they despised the man and wouldn’t trust him to walk their dog. So why did they vote for him? Because “he [wa]sn’t Bill Clinton.” That’s it. That’s the ONLY reason these idiots wasted precious life-minutes to go out and cast a vote that didn’t count, for a corrupt, worthless, unprincipled, senile, career political hack that none of them believed in – just because he wasn’t “[the Democrat].”
Trust me, it’ll be the same thing with Romney, even in the Seattle neighborhood you describe. Come the day after the GOP Convention breaks up (September, at the latest), the yards and car bumpers will be full of “Romney/[Rand Paul?] 2012” poster and bumper stickers, sprouting from lawns and car bumpers of brainless clovers who would never have given Romney the time of day, but who now are sure the world will end if they don’t vote for “whoever is not Barack Obama.”
Pitiful – but absolutely typical.
Absolutely true. I remember Bob Doooooooole very well. And you bet, they will snuggle up to Mittens just the same – notwithstanding that Mittens is personally responsible for the single thing most (allegedly) loathed by these brain-dead Republicans: Obamacare.
The typical Republican is just as statist and just as partisan as the typical Democrat. Ideas don’t matter. Just that “their team” wins. It is exactly like fuhhhhhhhhhhhttttball.
Imbeciles.
My Dear TOG, et. al.:
Guad is one of the 6 major Solomon Islands. News of the end of World War there has been greatly exaggerated. It is still under brutal attack by the United Naggers, on many fronts, including Health Naziism. Libertarians would have a chance to reinstate Laissez Faire, depending on what they offer in Quid Pro Quo, just as much as they have in many other locations.
http://www.solomontimes.com/news.aspx?nwid=6996
A True Account of the International Health Blitzkrieg.
A major anti-smokers kristillnacht has been launched across the Solomon Islands following new smoking laws introduced on June 1st, 2012. The laws prohibit smoking in schools, hospitals, workplaces and on public transport. The ban follows a 2008 Global Youth Tobacoo Survey conducted by the World Health Organization that claimed the Solomon Islands has one of the world’s highest rates of smoking among young people.
The 538,000 mundanes of Solomon’s 6 major islands, and 916 minor islands, were of course not consulted. There role is to stay hidden in their international grid of prole huts, or to speak in folksy local Pidgin about how much they enjoy Foreign Clover tourists snorkeling around their reefs and demanding they wear western clothes & display western family values while being prodded with state bayonets.
Solomon Islands Health Minister Charles Sigoto told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat the aggressive attack will target 13 to 15-year-olds.
In the next year, myself and my staff of taxfeeders will be waging a war on smoking throughout the country, including indoctrinating our youth population on the impact of smoking, Praetor Charles said. Huge fines will be levied against those who ignore the stringent new edicts. The prison recently built by 15 neighboring nations who are occupying our islands in addition to the British military occupation will be used as much as is necessary.
The main strategy will be to use a team of thugs within each province to actually go from village to village, and school to school to disseminate and physically enforce propaganda related to smoking.
The Solomon Islands Tobacco Company will likely close its factory which is currently being looted for $18 million per year by its government, ensuring further dependence on the heartless taskmasters of the international plantation system.
The only thing we need to think of is the ability to effectively monitor these new laws,” said an unnamed Overlord closely involved in the formulation of the policy.
While it is certainly a drastic measure it is really in response to a growing problem…that of smoking rates amongst the young.
Much of the emphasis will be on the sellers of tobacco to young people, said the unnamed Overlord.
So it’s not indiscriminate targeting, the Overlord ominously cackled, we are being very selective, and also quite practical in my view.
http://www.who.int/tobacco/surveillance/policy/country_profile/slb.pdf
These 77% literate in Pidgin English people produce $3500 a year, I have to believe they’d take quite a fancy to achieving more. They’d be willing to allow a keep-to-themselves tolerant group of libertarians coexist there on their own terms, I’m willing to bet.
TOG – Let’s analyze this. Romney is a neo-con imperialist warmonger; Barry O. has gone down the path of Lincolnian imperial dictatorship by personally ordering the military murder of an American citizen and his teenage son (remember: nits make lice) by presidential fiat in a foreign land. Romney managed to ram fascist medical care down Massachusetts’ throat; Barry O. crammed it up the entire nation’s arse. Romney is a disingenuous gun-grabber that joined the NRA for no other reason than to garner the 2nd Amendment vote; Barry O. is an outright, albeit toned down, gun-grabber responsible for the Fast & Furious debacle. I could go on, but to sum it up: Why would your neighbors vote for Obama Lite when they can have the full bodied flavor of the real big O?
I’m fervently hoping Obama wins.
Here’s why:
It’s finally waking people up, a little, and actually breaking down the false left/right paradigm.
A Romney win will anesthetize the sheeple again–which is probably why the Bilderbergers seem to have given Romney the nod.
I wish that were true. Unfortunately, in my experience, the clover majority -especially the Cloverpublican majority- are so profoundly emotion-washed (I wanted to say brainwashed, but the absence of such an organ in most of them makes that an inaccurate description) that they’ll never see through the charade.
Robert E. Lee’s surrender was signed in the home of a man who had moved to Appomattox to get away from the fighting after the First Battle of Bull Run.
Ocean View, HI
If this is “the” John – howdy! – and, welcome!
Please carefully consider the fact that feminism is a root cause of the problems listed in this article. The feminization of society and subsequent emascualtion of it’s male population has led swiftly to the servile and cowardly populace that now enables this disgusting situation. Men are comfortable acting like women, fearful, timid and worry worts.
Wives won’t let their husbands stand up for anything because they are consumed with fear and expect their husbands to cater to that fear!
Why else are 81% of divorces enacted by women? !
America, home of the fee land of the slave!
I prefer to call it emotionalism as opposed to feminism. As an advocate for liberty, I must defend the equal right of women to do as they please, to work (or not) as they please, to have kids – or not – and so on. My issue is with the manipulation of the female tendency to be emotional – in particular as regards “the children” and “safety.” These two things embody an emotional state (as opposed to a mindset) that is simpatico with tyranny. Example:
Demagogue speaks darkly about “the threat” of (put X here) and then offers up the solution – a new law or power exerted over the individual. It will “keep us safe,” he croons. Or it’s for “the children.” This sort of appeal didn’t generally used to work on most men, who tended not to fall for treacly pabulum. But it is very effective on most women. But they are only half the population. Thus, not only must women be encouraged to emote, men must be made more emotional – more feminine in their emotional state.
This, as I see it, is the true nature and object of feminism.
Ever notice how much in american society is a manipulation of women? It seems that the strategy is to manipulate women into something then the men go along with it because if they do not then they will be without women.
Why a diamond engagement ring? Marketing, manipulation of women by DeBeers decades ago to create an expectation of a diamond ring. The men go along. The synthetic holiday ‘sweetest day’ is a more modern and less successful example.
Men can open their wallet and go along or their dating/marriage prospects drop to the very small percentage of women who aren’t manipulated by this BS. It’s very effective marketing manipulation, which is essentially the same as a social control.
One striking example I saw in another autos forum many years ago. Someone who at least wanted to appear as an attractive woman was just spewing bullshit. Complete and obvious BS. Being the way I am I called her on it. The entire group of men turned on me.
Social control as it appears to me is about illusions and creating conditions by where the mass believes it has independent thought but instead always comes up with the “solutions” those in power want.
Manipulating women has this huge multiplication factor because men will almost always go along with it even if they know it is BS. The key to feminism is that it is a controlled social movement like many others. To empower those who are manipulated to think a certain way. The way those in power want. Watch what happens to someone that clearly believes in equality between the genders that actually exercises free and independent thought. The movement will act against her.
It is so in most everything. There are similar manipulations of men but doing it to women is just so more effective because it drags most of the men along.
Men need to man up and women need to understand that the greatest joy in their life comes from being a wife and a mother. Just as the greatest joy in my life is being a husband and a father.
I like the term emotionalism. Those types of girls are what we always referred to as “holes”, because that is all they are good for.
The positive side of this manipulation (for me at least) is that it made it a lot easier to get thru all the bs that most girls subscribe to and allowed me to meet my wife.
To smart guys this can become a type of sorting mechanism.
“The positive side of this manipulation (for me at least) is that it made it a lot easier to get thru all the bs that most girls subscribe to and allowed me to meet my wife.
To smart guys this can become a type of sorting mechanism.”
Excellent, top-drawer – and, me too!
Yes, absolutely. I often feel like falling on my knees to thank the Motor Gods I managed to find a woman who is not like that. She’s not perfect – and of course, neither am I. But when it comes to the stuff that matters, she is squared away.
Otherwise, I’d have never considered marriage.
BrentP; it’s interesting that you bring up the diamond engagement ring scam. I taught myself to make and repair jewelry at 14 years old. At 16 I was employed in a Williamsburg jewelry boutique doing repair work, design and custom orders. I got into it based on simple logic: girls like jewelry, guys like girls and hence will pay dearly for jewelry to give girls in exchange for we all know what. Even as a teenager I knew it was a tightly controlled market with high profit margins and I was able to buy at wholesale, invest a little time and effort and reap great rewards while still undercutting the competition. De Beers, Harry Winston, Lazare Kaplan et al, set the system up that way in no small part by using the very emotionalism Eric describes to prey on the vanity and greed of the “fairer sex.” All over a rock that would probably be little more than semi-precious if the market weren’t so tightly controlled.
Like Wormwood the jewelry trade subtly whispers this message to women: If he really loves you he’ll buy you that huge rock. If he still loves you next year, he’ll buy you the matching pendant. In five years the earrings and you ten years down the road, you get the tennis bracelet. If he doesn’t shower you in gold and precious gems he doesn’t really love you; make his life hell ’til he does or leave and find another sucker that can afford buy you. Call me cynical, but having dabbled in the trade I saw a lot. Let’s just say there’s no dearth of selfish women and limp-wristed men out in tee-vee land. Much of it amounts to little more than a sophisticated and genteel form of prostitution.
Ultimately I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want a partner that was so shallow, greedy and vain that she could be bought off periodically with trinkets and baubles. The very night that I sat at a stop light in Richmond and prayed for a woman like that, I met her! We’ve been together ever since (24 years now). The irony of it is she has never been impressed with “stuff” or money. If I offered her the choice of diamond ring or a tractor with a loader and finishing mower, she’d take the tractor (or more likely ask “do we really need that?”).
I am no fan of the current state of affairs and for the most part agree with a “hands off” approach to government. I think our country has taken a very wrong turn in so many ways and most people are fooling themselves about many important things…clovers, one and all. However, everyone in the United States is part of the United States and there MUST be some laws else we descend into anarchy. The issue is where to draw the line.
Eric, you make it loud and clear that you do not want to pay for my kids education. What if I don’t want to pay for you to drive your car because I don’t have one? Should I not have to pay whatever portion of my taxes go toward roads? what if I am anti-military? Should I get to keep whatever portion of my money would go towards funding defense? And don’t get me started about the damn police that protect you and your family. I don’t need em, my family is armed to the teeth and we shouldn’t have to pay for police.
Would you mind if I purchased the land right next to yours and put up a slaughterhouse on one side and an adult bookstore on the other? I would be bummed if that happened to me, so I am for zoning laws, they make sense. If that makes me a clover, then yes I am.
Someone else was griping that their daughter had to wait until she was 16 years 9 months and /gasp pass a test to get a driver license. I think kids should not be allowed to drive until the age of 18. I know, you are mentally yelling “thats YOUR right, do as YOU want, don’t tell ME what to do!” But what if your 15 year old/non licensed driver runs into me and kills me? What then? Should I take your “hands off!” approach to government and say that my personal beliefs are an eye for an eye and so your 15 year old should pay with their life? Sorry for straying into the extreme/possibly crazy for a minute there, but I think you can see what I am getting at. Your actions will affect me just as mine will affect you. We need some laws in order for us to all get along.
Bottom line folks is that there has to be some laws. The good citizens of your city, state, nation got together and made up some laws. If you don’t like ’em, then run for office or lobby to change them. As should I, if I just can’t stand them.
If you are not driving, the only taxes you pay that go to the roads go to the road right in front of your property. Furthermore drivers will be paying for much of the transit you’ll end up using.
Back when this nation was more free, without zoning, people could live and work without so much traveling. Now a days someone has some sort of business that has been there for decades and then people build houses next door and drive out the business through zoning. Then they wonder why there aren’t many jobs like there used to be.
Zoning really isn’t needed if simple rules are followed not to interfere with one’s neighbors. What difference does it make if it’s a modern slaughterhouse without any odors? An adult bookstore is obsolete, but again, the offense isn’t having the bookstore. It’s like blaming gun store for violence. Silly.
What zoning does is do away with rules regarding not interfering with the neighbors but instead gives government power to say what can be where. So what if someone had the zoning changed for lots to either side of you so that those two things could go in? Well now you’re stuck. They are in the correct zoning for making smells and having obnoxious customers. Tough for you. And that’s the point of zoning, to give leverage to those who have control of government. That ain’t you.
But zoning gets even better. Let’s say you wanted to start your own quiet and odor free business in your home or garage? Your competitors can have government through the zoning laws stomp you out before you get started. Force huge costs on to you for a properly zoned and inspected location that make it impossible for you to get a start.
Zoning is a tool of those with power to maintain it. Sure sometimes people manage to fight off a monster now and then, but usually zoning protects people like it did for the residents of New London.
I wasn’t griping so much that Maryland’s driving age has gone from 16 years to 16 years and 9 months, actually come to think of it – it is 16 and 6 months, I’m griping at the arbitrary nature of the age that they picked and I am griping that the State seems to think they are better judges of when my kids are ready to drive than when I am. You say 18 to drive. Why is that any better? I know plenty of 18 year-olds that are irresponsible and suck at driving. Actually there are plenty of 50 year olds that suck at driving too, mainly Asian women it seems. Some of my kids were good drivers at 15 (we practiced in the neighborhood and in empty parking lots starting around 14/15).
It’s Just like the stupid “21 to drink” laws. Some of my kids could handle drinking earlier and some maybe not at all. The State wants to control every aspect of our lives. All these laws start out being for the “greater good of the public”. At least that’s how the politician busybodies spin it. But they couldn’t care less about your safety or mine. It’s just an excuse to get the laws passed. All they care about is power and money.
I can’t drive more than ½ mile around town without having to jam on the brakes for some speed camera. Then 100 yards down the road everyone hits the gas…seems like a safe system (eyeroll). Oh and all these cameras are near schools to “protect” the kids. That’s always how it starts, never mind that in the first month our town had speed cameras (just 4 of them to start) they issued just over $100,000 in fines. And then surprise-surprise, there are no over a dozen of them in town. Yeah it’s all about our safety.
Roads should be private anyway so there should be no gas/road taxes.
I have 12 kids and one on the way (yeah I know what causes it :p) and I don’t want to pay for anyone’s else’s kids damn education. Educate your kids at your own expense. Even if the Public Schools weren’t mini-prisons and pushing a State Worshiping agenda I wouldn’t want to contribute to anyone’s education other than my own kiddos. I can’t stand getting my early property tax bill and knowing that a big chunk of it goes to the schools. Of course it doesn’t help that I live in Prince George’s county MD where the schools are even more of a joke than most other places. Most of my friends who don’t homeschool or can’t afford private schools have moved to neighboring counties just to get away from our ghetto schools.
Sure there have to be some laws. Laws against violating someone’s property (including their body) are all we need.
Ok enough of my rambling, my boys are waiting for me to help them replace the headliner in our Trans Am….at least they are learning something useful today.
Oh and for all you grammar Nazis out there, I don’t have time to proofread this post, so suck it.
Hey Rob,
You’re my kind of people!
(I should have known… you have the car!)
the inexperienced driver will be inexperienced until they gain the experience.
I was a very good driver by the time I was 16 because I occasionally rode dirt bikes and my dad started teaching me how to drive when I was 13 in the large empty parking lots (commuter town so there were large bus parking lots for people going into the city for work everyday). It was a safe way to learn and by the time I was officially on teh road with other drivers I was well ahead of the curve. Currently 16 year old are the riskiest drivers, if you move the age to 20, then 20 year old will be the riskiest drivers. If there is a need to license then age should not be a requirement, it just a form of corraliing people into groups, we need to stop wtih teh groupthink, only the skillset of the individual matters.
I certainly don’t believe in these arbitrary rules. I’d been driving from the age of 14, in my father’s wicked-fast V-8 Merc. But hey, if we’re going to make up rules to “protect the children” how about this one: set the driving age at 21, when the risk is lower; set the DRINKING age, however, to 15! That’ll give the little shits 6 years to make peace with beverage consumption and figure out their limits, before they’re turned loose on the public roads.
This seems to work in Germany, where I saw many a dad take their 15-year-old sons to the Hofbraühaus on a frequent basis.
@Rob S:
There’s a difference between Common Law and Administrative Law.
99% of what we suffer under today is the latter. If we returned to Common Law, only things that humans intuitively understand to be crime would be that–crime.
Murder. Rape. Theft. Fraud. Extortion. Kidnapping. Vandalism.
What’s the commonality in all these? There’s a victim and a perpetrator, a complainant and a defendant–neither of them is the almighty State.
When the State pretends to take offense to your actions, it’s the end of civilization; because civilization depends on clearly defined rules easily understood by everyone. When we interject the State, it becomes a free-for-all in which everyone attempts to live at everyone else’s expense (Bastiat). In effect, every vote is an auction of someone’s property.
Common law is as old as the Magna Carta; older in fact, but that’s its first formal expression in Western culture.
It’s so simple: no victim, no crime.
thank you for the quick summation of what is wrong with the legal system
no loss, harm, or injury ..
no crime
factually, what is the “State ” ..??
RICK, as all drugs are already available to anyone who goes looking none of your arguments make any sense at all.
Yes all drugs should be legal.
Yes employers should be allowed to drug test. For instance if I want to hire a new member for my band I should be able to test him and make sure he tests positive for THC. I don’t smoke but it’s my band so I get to make the rules.
Make sure he tests nice and high…want the band to sound extra cool 😉
Brad,
How do you plan makeing them legal?
Again, unless you can convince the gov that a 20 year old dope head knows more then the Doctor at the emergency room that has treated him for a bad high, you are just spinning wheels with lots of smoke.
Simple:
Rescind all statutes that currently make it a criminal offense to merely use, possess, manufacture or sell the “drugs” that are currently – arbitrarily – illegal.
Just as was done with alcohol.
If someone causes harm – whether as a result of using drugs or for some other reason – you pursue them criminally for that offense (e.g., robbery, assault, what have you).
It’s so god-damned simple. Yet so few people seem to get it.
ERIC
Simple, yes. But how do get self- admited dope-head President Obama to change the laws?
He has to power to do a “letter ruling”
That is simple enough.
IIRC, Congress makes the laws in the US. Although your point can be applied to the congressmen.
The president could direct the different federal agencies to stop enforcing the laws regarding drugs.
Rick,
You keep referring to people who have used arbitrarily illegal drugs as “dopeheads.” This indicates to me that you have some weird – because irrational – animus toward anyone who uses a substance not approved by you. Do you also refer to people who enjoy beer as hopheads? Not everyone – or even most people – who use or who have used arbitrarily illegal drugs is an addict, or even close to being one. Just as not everyone – or even most people – who partake of alcohol is a drunk.
Point made – I hope.
And Obama? Just another despicable hypocrite and power luster.
People smoke pot to get “high” and feel good . . .
People drink alcohol to get “high” and feel good . . .
Any alcohol drinker that denies that they drink to get “high” is delusional . . .
Eric,
I use the term dope-head because I have met people that call them-self’s that and and are proud of it.
And every person that uses drugs is not an addict.
Every person that drinks is not a drunk.
But if a person tells me he is a drunk, then I call him a drunk.
The p/c word is “A substance abuser”
In our drug court they have a option, ,like Portugal to go to re-hab to see how much help they need to determine if they are a “dope head” or a “Recreation Drug User.”
That determines what the court will do.
Hi Rick,
I called you on “dopehead” because use of pejoratives is a means of delegitimizing people who use arbitrarily illegal drugs, the vast majority of whom are recreational uses and neither addicted nor addled as a result.
I am an example.
Like most people my age (Gen X) I smoked pot in college. So did virtually everyone else I knew back then. Amazingly, we managed to graduate, go on to productive careers in the various professions, suffering no apparent ill-effects – or no more in the way of ill effects than we suffered as a result of drinking beer. None of us ever attacked anyone, stole or otherwise caused anyone any harm.
So, I know for a fact – personally – that recreational use of arbitrarily illegal drugs is no more necessarily “dangerous” than is consumption of the arbitrarily legal stuff. I’m sure you know it, too. If not from your own experience than from knowing that most of the people around you have partaken – unless you live in a bubble or are over 60. And even then.
The broader point is this: Locking people up – even fining people – hell, interfering with them in any forcible way – merely because they have chosen to partake of some substance is an outrage against the most basic of human rights: The right to do as you wish with your body. It is to assert an ownership claim over another human being’s literal corpus – his physical body.
I can think of few things more obnoxious.
Of course.
But the reason is immaterial, ultimately. People have the right to eat/drink/smoke whatever, for whatever reason. It is no one else’s business – certainly not the business of “the law.”
They can be legal again by REPEALING Drug Prohibition. Assuming a so-called dope head to be someone whose life is out of control due to excessive use of alcohol and other drugs, there are comparatively few.
Most folks who self-medicate have no problem maintaining control of their lives. Individuals who realize that drug use is making their lives uncontrollable can choose recovery whenever they want to. I have reason to believe that economic and other considerations cause most of of them to do just that.
The sooner most Americans respect the Principles underpinning the Unanimous Declaration, the better.
If I were the only person who knew that all the world’s Prohibitionists were just over the horizon in rapidly sinking ships, I would not bother to call the Coast Guard. Hopefully, all the ignorant, misguided, hateful sons-of bitches would drown.
Tinsley Grey Sammons, sober by choice since May 28, 1990.
Until you can convince me that keeping them illegal stops people from using you’re just spinning wheels.
Once again and to clarify, nations that have gone the legalization or decriminalization route have seen a reduction in use.
How do I plan on making them legal? Educating people is the first step.
What I have seen is you using a logical fallacy known as begging the question. You continue to argue your points using your own points that are up for debate. It would be like me saying “There is a god because I believe in god”. You have yet to show any evidence that prohibition works other than your own belief that it can’t.
I and others have provided you with evidence that prohibition does not work. I will gladly wait for your proof that it does work and continue our debate from there.
Brad,
Then if drugs were legal, at what age is to young?
20 , 15, 10, should I smoke crack with my toddler?
Is my 5 year old girl old enough to decide, or do I mix the cocaine with her OJ?
If drugs were made legal,
How about the un-born?
People are getting busted right now, thanks to u-tube posting for that. At least know we have laws against that.
I keep hearing about Portgal. I looked up the drugs laws there. Drugs are still illegal to sell,
grow, bring into the country. For using, they have a program simular to our drug court with re-hab. When I read the law, they take suprising stiff action against the users. Some of the action is stiffer then our town drug court.
Also the information I did read shows that the use of all drugs increaed by 4.2 % since 2001.
There is no Medical pot law there. Pot is still illegal to grow or even have the seeds, even the pipe to smoke is illegal.
People get arrested for growing small amounts or having seeds.In fact , the Moroccan drug lords and the Cops are having a war over the pot seeds.
People still get arrested if they have more then
the listed amount of drugs, because they are now a pusher/dealer.
In Portugal, since they changed the law for the user, drug use has gone up 4.2% If they dropped all the drug laws I am sure it would go up higher.
What country has legalised drugs and had a reduction in overall us?
“Then if drugs were legal, at what age is to young?”
Dunno mang! I’m sure the Pharma companies can answer this question a lot better.
I have no idea where you are getting your information from but it’s not correct.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
You are correct that they only decriminalized it and that it is not legal. However decriminalization has worked. Please read the article.
As for your 5 year old comment. It’s not only a straw man argument it once again comes back to the one subject you have refused to comment on. It’s already available!!! If you wanted to put coke in your kids OJ you could do it today. What is stopping you? It’s not Johnny law now is it?
Rick,
“Then if drugs were legal, at what age is to young?”
Dom blasted you pretty well on this one! The fact is drugs – all kinds of drugs – are readily available to anyone, everywhere, even in maximum security prison. A fact beyond debate. If you could point to the drug war having prevented drugs from being readily available, then you’d at least have the utilitarian argument on your side.
But you don’t even have that!
So, if you want to continue this discussion intelligently, at least concede the point that prohibition hasn’t succeeded in preventing anyone who wants the arbitrarily illegal drugs from obtaining them. All it has succeeded at doing is punishing people – and not just the people who are involved. You are punished, too. You are treated in a demeaning manner by your employer, as a presumptive “dopehead” (your term) and made to pee in a cup – even though you have never once given any indication that you abuse arbitrarily illegal (or arbitrarily legal) drugs or are compromised as a pilot in any way whatsoever. Right?
Do you like being treated as a child? As a presumptive criminal?
I don’t.
All the opiates including heroin as well as cocaine were legal before the Harrison Act in 1914. You could buy a bottle of Bayer Heroin pills for a dime in the familiar yellow and brown bottle.Cannabis was legal until the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
They didn’t have street gangs or drivebys or other battles over turf. The only reason the stuff is illegal is so the big boys can make a big black market profit!
Check this out! whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/dyinginafghanistan.php
Ever read The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/524830/The-Politics-of-Heroin-in-Southeast-Asia
Ever wonder why Cannabis is illegal?
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/
Brad,
I did read that. It does say drug pushers, dealers, still go to jail. It says that drugs are still not legal. It does say no country has legaized drugs.It does say small amounts are a money fine for the user.
It does say the goal is to get people off of drugs so less AIDs and death from dirty needles.
It does say deaths are down from AIDS, dirty needles.
What works different then our town drug court?
We fine the person for small amounts of drugs,no jail time, send to re-hab, and throw the drug pusher in jail. Same as Portugal.If the dope head complets the program, the slate is wiped clean.
It does not talk about the drug war. But we know if drugs are not legal there and they a putting
people in jail for dealing there is a drug war.
I typed in to Google ” Portugal Drug Laws” and got the information on the pot laws, seed laws.
and a lot more information. How much drugs I can have before being arrested for being a dealer.
30-50 doses of LSD. 5g Cocaine. 40g Hashish.
Looks like the Moroocan dealers have a monopoly
on the Hashish. There might be opening for another gang.
What is not correct?
Your assumption that it’s better to keep it illegal is what is wrong. Again you have refused to address the fact that you can under current law get it anyway.
Why do you continue to dodge that question?
Also are you saying that if it were only legal you would put cocaine in your 5 year old child’s OJ? What is stopping you now? What is stopping any user? Again it’s not Johnny Law, is it?
Seriously, you ask me to answer your questions and I have. So why not answer mine? Anyone can currently get anything, so how does locking people up for damaging themselves help anything?
It’s like you have your fingers in your ears and your head in the sand. It’s a nice way to stay in denial, but it’s also a great way to get kicked in the ass.
I think that is the definition of a clover. Complete unawareness of the actual situation. Look in your rear view mirror. Drugs are here already. Hell they can’t keep them out of Prisons. Should we turn our nation into a super, super, super duper high max prison?
Do you even have one logical solution?
Oh and one more thing. You keep acting as if people in this country do not go to prison for possession. That is patently false.
“Approximate number of people incarcerated for drug related crimes:
108,000 people in federal prisons as of April 2010
280,000 people in state prisons across the country as of June 2007
31,500 people in California state prisons as of December 2008
Let’s expand a bit by putting it into perspective, and that means understanding how many total people are incarcerated for all crimes:
211,455 inmates at federal prisons as of April 2010
1,395,916 inmates in state prisons as of June 2007
171,161 inmates in California as of December 2008
So that means around half of all inmates in federal prisons are there for drugs, around 20% of inmates nationwide in state prisons are there for drugs and around 18% of inmates in California state prisons are there for drugs.”
http://open.salon.com/blog/stephannie/2010/05/16/how_many_people_are_incarcerated_for_drug_related_offenses
Not only prison.
Let’s not forget asset forfeiture.
It is now common for people to have their vehicles (and homes) seized and auctioned off if they are found to be in possession of “x” quantity of arbitrarily illegal drugs. The amount is often quite small. But in any case, people’s major assets are being stolen by the government as punishment for non-crime.
Oh, but wait: Now they’ll seize your cash, too – even if you aren’t found to be carrying any drugs at all. Because having “large amounts” of cash is proof (in their eyes) that you must have had drugs.
It’s cloverian logic. The idea that because they fear punishment, everyone must. Or perhaps because they think in terms of consequences everyone must.
The problem is we are dealing with people willing to destroy their own bodies wrt many of these drugs. They aren’t considering this consequence so why on earth would the punishment of the state ever enter their minds in the decision making process?
So then, does punishment keep some people from using these illegal drugs that do little or no harm? Probably. Because people who consider consequences might try something with little/no downside risk if the state didn’t punish people for it. But since these drugs do little to no harm why are they illegal in the first place? because the state said so. Why? Usually an economic interest of a few connected people.
Then what happens? more harmful drugs that aren’t (yet) illegal.
It’s impossible to argue with you, RICK, because you don’t argue from principle; you argue for contention and ignore logic.
We’ve asked some core questions:
1) whose body is it, your own or the State’s?
2) does Prohibition work?
In (1), if it’s your body, you may ingest whatever you want. If it’s the State’s, they may dictate to you. Is that what you want?
And (2) is the weaker utilitarian argument; as Eric points out, you could at least have that on your side if it worked. But it doesn’t. Drugs are more freely available at lower prices and better quality than ever before. At the same time, we have more than 50,000 SWAT raids a year in Amerika, with steroid-jacked thugs breaking down people’s doors, shooting their dogs and very often the people too, terrorizing children, sometimes killing children…and often at the wrong house.
All for the War on Drugs.
So RICK–do you support the War on (some) Drugs?
And if you’re such a brave, brave boy, would YOU have the chutzpah to participate? Or do you prefer your vicarious violence at arm’s length, hiring thugs to kidnap and kill your neighbors for fun?
Because clovers LIKE authoritarianism. It makes them feel important and strong, like they’re the big tough Sheriff.
I would also suggest you look at the quality of writing, grammar, spelling, logic, and factual command of the other comments. Compare that to your own.
You are in the presence of your intellectual superiors, and a wise man, recognizing that, would seek to learn from his betters…not irritate them with sophomoric sniveling.
Rick – Imagine if you will a closed society in securely gated community where all of the citizens are under constant supervision and surveillance. The police are everywhere 24/7 at a ratio of roughly 1 cop per 20 citizens. No one is allowed to have a gun, not even the police. Every citizen is safely behind locked doors every night by 10:00 PM. Drugs, alcohol and even unrestricted communications are completely prohibited and each citizen is subject to comprehensive monitoring. All food, medical care, recreation and housing are publicly funded and regulated with all citizens living under exactly the same conditions, even wearing the same clothes; so everyone is “equal.” It would seem to be a crime free utopia would it not? No one would be able to speak of or much less commit a crime, would they?
That closed society actually exists right here in America; violent crime including assault, battery, maiming, rape and murder is common place there. The police are often very sadistic rent seeking opportunists, even pitting the citizens against each other for control as well as macabre entertainment. Drug abuse is plethoric. What is this utopia I write about? Why the US penal system of course. Due to their scarcity, drugs are very valuable, hence extremely expensive, so the risk – reward ratio is so high the “police” (the prison guards) find it worth their while to provide this commodity to the “citizens” (inmates) regardless of the risk to their jobs.
High profitability will invariably cause otherwise disinterested parties to get into a market. Alcohol prohibition enriched and empowered many unscrupulous men who would have otherwise remained minor and relatively harmless street punks. If recreational drugs were dirt cheap and commonly available (like nicotine and ethanol), there wouldn’t be many “pushers” or “drug cartels” or “crack houses” for the same reason there aren’t many “bootleggers” or “moonshiners” any more. High quality beer, wine and hooch is available on the open market for a reasonable price so why go to a high priced middle man? After more than four decades of a hot war on drugs, the drug abuse rate in this country is worse than when no drugs were regulated. Explain that. Or are you so blind that you can’t do a simple root cause analysis?
Prohibition does nothing but corrupt people, including politicians and the police, that are otherwise too lazy to bother with the low profit margin the same commodity would yield in a free market. Worse yet, once these people step over the line of illegality, they usuallly have no compunction against committing real crimes like receiving stolen goods, providing dope to children, assault and battery, and even murder. After all, the sentence won’t be much worse than what one gets for dealing alone.
Our leaders know the war on drugs is futile for controlling human behavior. But I strongly suspect it’s working just the way they intend it; to create a police state. Hillary Clinton outright admitted, on the record in an interview in Mexico, that decriminalization (much less repealing prohibition) wouldn’t happen because there is too much money in it. Think about that. Money for whom? Money for what? Rick, I think you’re here at this site because you know something’s seriously wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it. Go ahead Rick; man up, take the red pill and acknowledge the truth. Or just put your hands back over your ears, your head back in the sand and brace for impact. Because sooner or later, as BrentP pointed out to you, mean old Mr. Reality is going to score a bull’s eye on your keister with his boot if you stay in that position.
Holy smokes! And Boothe pretty much sums it all up AGAIN. Nicely put!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/06/12/ottawa-car-price-disparity-border-shopping.html
If you are thinking about moving to Canada here is a run-down on how much more cars cost in Canada, even some who are made in Canada and sold in the US of A.
Ich, Canada is definitely off my list. It’s even more statist than the US; granted the police state is slightly more polite, but the people’s buy-in is even greater.
No, and Hell no.
Likewise with New Zealand and Australia. Really too bad about New Zealand, I think southern hemisphere is smart considering the possibility of further meltdowns and nuclear war.
Southern Hemisphere is where its at if you can make a go of it. The north is more likely to glow from the fallout.
Shortly after I left the Military I was planning on leaving the country. I was completely sick of the Government and everything it does. I had the money and I was used to moving around and I had been in many other countries. I was looking at Belize seriously. They speak English and the climate is not bad if you don’t mind the heat and rain or if you do like most and live half the year on the coast and half of it up in the mountains. Land is cheap and building codes are non-existent in most places. Me and my wife were left property there just recently, so it’s our bug out destination if need be.
I ended up staying because this is my country. I hate the government, but I love my country. My country is my friends, and neighbors, the lands and waters. It’s mine and I will not leave unless forced to for the safety of my family. I also stayed so I could protest. As a vet who has seen exactly how fucked up we are I felt it was my duty to try and open people’s eyes. Vet’s are in a unique position. First off we saw it with our own eyes so it’s hard to deny our facts. Second, we really piss people off when we protest. We are heretics, once inducted you are supposed to stay inducted. Honestly, smelly hippies don’t piss of the Statists like we do. We are expected to continue waving the flag and when we won’t it just burns them up inside.
I hear you. I think all this leaving the country talk is a bit much. This is our country and we need to fix it. We get enough people organized and these problems can be solved.
We need to start with the simple shit like objecting to the fucking bullshit road blocks and TSA pat downs. We need to stand the fuck up and quit being pussies…
Oops, did I say “we!”
Right on! It doesn’t take a majority to change the country it takes a relentless minority. You do your part I do my part, obviously Eric is doing his part and many others. Sometimes “we” do need to band together so we are stronger. But if each of us sit’s around waiting for others to do their part nothing will ever get done.
I do believe we will reach that tipping point in our lifetime. The point where the government has pissed off so many people that they stand up and fight. It probably will not happen until we have an economic collapse. When the government can no longer bribe the poor. When baubles and trinkets are no longer available, etc.
It doesn’t need to be violent either. Take a look at the Soviet Union. Although the outcome wasn’t ideal it just shows what can happen and quickly too. I think what libertarians need to do is to do our best to position ourselves so when change does come it’s for the better. I don’t want to see an out of the frying pan into the fire scenario. The internet is a powerful tool if used properly it could make all the difference.
Just don’t fly and let the airlines go broke! Then, they might listen and get rid of the TSA!
So, I don’t disagree that jumping ship is probably a smart move. Nonetheless, I’m reluctant to leave the country, for many reasons – high among them just orneriness. This is my country, dammit. I hate the idea of just giving it to … them.
I’m sure a lot of East Germans said the same thing before the Wall went up.
I know… I know… and for the first time in my life, I understand what those people faced. And what they felt.
As a kid, I read about people living in Germany in the late 1920s and early ’30s… people who clearly saw the storm clouds gathering but elected to stay put. I did not understand. Why didn’t they leave, I asked myself. Now I know why.
At a gut level, I feel myself in the same position. It is very troubling.
Better hope they don’t come for your family. How would that weigh on your conscience. You knew, you saw it coming and instead made justifications to stay put.
I understand. But there is also the cost of leaving. I am able to provide now. If we left the country, I might not be able to do so. Our standard of living would certainly decline by orders of magnitude.
Everything is a balance.
PS: Have you bugged out? Or are you still in the US? If you did leave, would you be willing to share some general things such as how old you are, what you do for a living and whether you’re married?
Seeing the storm clouds coming… in other countries that have had that experience, those who stayed and went “Deep” still had to suffer the consequences.
Those who left had to put up with some hard times at first, but were better off in the long run.
Some where in Classical literature there is story about a prison system. The prison had torture and misery without end. It was general knowledge that it was possible to ask to go down a special hall, with a special door. The door and hall were very much feared. It was the Unknown. no one who had ever gone down that hall had ever returned to tell what was on the other side. Prisoners would rather starve to death than to go down that hall. The reason was that the feared hall and door lead outside of the prison, to the free world. That is why no one ever returned.
We are kept here by our fear or the unknown.
Checkout http://www.expatblog.com
It has blogs from people who have chosen to go down the feared hall and out the door. Many of these people are doing just fine. They enjoy their freedom, they live on less money, off the consumer live to work/spend hampster wheel.
Correction on expat blog. http://www.expat-blog.com
If all leaving meant was fleeing to WI or IN I’d be gone yesterday. Essentially that’s the choice those in East Germany had. No language, cultural, or career barriers. Just move to the neighboring state.
Even under Nazi Germany they had more close options than we do. To go further there were clear good options. Not so now. Our “good” choices seem to consist of mostly dysfunctional authoritarian states. Places that are not technically free but effectively free due to the dysfunction, corruption the little guy can play, generally government hating/ignoring population, and low tech of their police states.
Absolutely Loved this bit: 1400s. Leonardo da Vinci then stated, “There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”
RICK, once again you make the same mistake. You assume that prohibition stops anything yet it doesn’t. Any privately owned company can do as good or better job of keeping intoxicated people from flying or driving for them.
You say “Almost all the charges for drug use here,is not for the drug use, but what they do when they are on the drugs. Beating, robbery, b&e, car accidents.”
First off, most people get locked up for possession. Secondly, everything else you mention is because of it being illegal. Once again you fail to realize that the laws don’t stop people from becoming addicts at all. What they do is drive up the price so addicts commit crimes to get their fix.
Brad,
You are right when you say dope head steals for money to feed his fix. Dropping prices will help? When the dope head has no job(we are in a depression)where will he get the money? So now we arrest him for stealing only and skip the re-hab?
Yes, if you keep prices low enough people can get by with begging to feed their habit. Many people do that already. In fact it happens all over the world.
As for rehab nobody is suggesting that we have no Rehab. Keep in mind that the vast majority of arrests do not result in rehab but incarceration. The ones who end up in rehab do so because they have the money to pay for it and a good lawyer who makes a deal.
Oh, and once again you are making the assumption that we will have more junkies if it’s made legal. Nations that have legalized or decriminalized have seen just the opposite.
Yes, you arrest them for the crime not the uncrime. They have committed no crime for abusing their body. Unless of course you believe that their body actually belongs to the State? In that case I would suggest we would all be locked up.
Dear RICK,
I’m sure you’re aware that the depression was caused by the government’s suicidal, self-destructive economic policies?
Or maybe not.
Brad,
I agree that a private company can check its pilot and drivers.
But as a self-employed commerical pilot and flight instructor it is between me and the FAA. There are alot of truck drivers that are self-employed and it is between them and the DOT.
No companies involved.
However the self employed have a lot of motivation not to work under the influence. They will be without an income very quickly. The government regulators are likely to be the last to know.
Once again it’s not stopping anyone now. Pull into half the truck stops in America and see how many lot lizards and dealers are walking around at night knocking on doors.
The guys that own their own trucks are probably the least likely to fall into it because they have the most to lose.
Which airline, so I can avoid being flown around by an illiterate?
Dear methylamine,
Did you ever get an answer from RICK on which airline he flies for?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Rick appears to have retired from the field…
@Bevin–sadly, no. I shall have to trust the screening process at the majors not to let him in. Note to self: no puddle-jumpers domestically, pilot can’t read.
@Eric–gotta admire the guy though, he was like Rocky after the fifth round with the Russian guy. He could take a beating alright; I’m just not certain he knew he was taking a beating.
Dear Eric, Methylamine,
He was “grounded.”
“I’m just not certain he knew he was taking a beating.”
I’ve noticed that is often the case with Clovers/Sheeple. They are so oblivious to reality they don’t realize how thoroughly their arguments have been thrashed.
It’s frustrating. You can win by a knockout, but when they come to, they still assume they are ready to go a few more rounds.
Bevin,
I am a self employed commerical pilot. I fly by contract. If you need a pilot to fly your airplane you can hire me as long as I am checked out in it.
I am all for making little cities the drug users can live at with three hots and a cot. They can have cable tv, ball fields. They can bribe the city people for drugs they want, trade drugs for sex and steal from each other. That way they can leave me alone. If they complete re-hab they move out. I will gladly send the money. I think someone here talked about those citys.
Rick,
So, you really favor throwing people in cages merely because they choose to imbibe a substance arbitrarily declared illegal? To be very clear and precise: People who have caused you no harm whatsoever. You think it’s right to point guns at them – and throw them in cages?
I want a specific answer to this specific question. Not evasions and detours.
I await your reply.
Dear RICK,
Freedom means the freedom to do all sorts of things, as long as one doesn’t force others to do them against their free will.
I demand freedom. That hardly means I want to do drugs. I don’t like drugs. Why should I do them?
But you don’t have the right to make that decision for me.
And conversely, I don’t have the right to make that decision for you.
See how nicely that works out? It’s called mutual respect.
Can you really not understand the rightness of that? Can you really not understand the justice of that?
Dear Bevin,
We could make all drugs legal. The employer then could give a list of approved drugs by contact and demand by contract drug tests. If the worker fails,fire them and put out a list of people fired so others could make a choice or not to hire them. Also sue for lost buisness, and the cost to re-train people. When the fired person starts to steal to feed the habit ,because of no job, then a crime has been done and send the person to jail.
As you said, people can do what they want as long as they don’t bother other people.
Because the person made the choice of using an unapproved dug listed by the contract, no re-hab.
“The employer then could give a list of approved drugs by contact and demand by contract drug tests. If”
I don’t get that mentality at all. Why is anything (consensual, doesn’t create victims) done in a person’s off-work hours any business of the employer? If an employee comes in high – or drunk – or for whatever reason is unable to properly or safely perform his work – then discipline (or fire) him. But otherwise? Fuck off!
This is the reason I’ll probably never be a volunteer fire/EMS in my county. I don’t touch “drugs” – and rarely drink more than a beer or two every once in awhile. But even though I’d pass the piss test they require, I’m vehemently opposed to the idea that I need to prove to them that I don’t use arbitrarily illegal drugs on my own goddamn time!
Sounds very company town to me me, Rick.
This modern control freakism started with the company towns. It was “voluntary” because nobody had to work for these companies. Americans rebelled against it. Refused to live like that to have a job. It faded away. Now it is done through the government so we cannot refuse.
Eric,
As you said if the worker comes to work drunk or high fire him. If it causes safety issues, as you said fire him.
If the drug user uses drugs at home, but the after-effects are causing harm to me or the buisness fire him. You also, at one time, suggested contract for workers
and if the job applciant did not like the contract, do not take the job. When I hire a co-pilot I have then sign a contract like that. Some pilots re-fuse to work for me. But it is a free market.
If you fire the drug user,
Put a list out of the safety issues and the harm to the buisnees, sue the drug user for lost buisness and the cost to re-train the new worker. Then list the law suite in the paper so other people can decide if they want to take a risk on the the drug user.
That is how the FAA works. Every 6 months I go see the FLIGHT SURGIAN who gives me a list of FAA approved drugs.
If take the wrongs drugs I get grounded for safety risk. That is the risk I take for being a Pilot.
If the drug user looses the job and can-not find work then causes harm to me, robbery, then send him to jail. As you have said many times let drugs be legal, and only jail them for crimes against people or property. Under this system, their habit will still land them in the cage. Just take longer.
I have yet to meet a drug user that will not steal to feed his habit.
If the drug uses is causing no trouble leave him alone. Dont point a gun at them. But see above statement.
“I have yet to meet a drug user that will not steal to feed his habit.”
Well, you’ve met me. I smoked pot (and grew pot) during my college years. I neither developed a “habit,” nor stole to “feed” it.
I can say the same with confidence about, oh, about 40 other people I was friends with during those years…. .
Most people who “do” drugs (what a loathsome loaded expression that is) in fact simply partake for recreational purposes. They like the sensation, or find it enhances other sensations. Just like alcohol.
Strange, isn’t it, that we don’t describe people who enjoy a snifter of brandy or a beer or some wine as “doing” … “drugs.” Nor – excepting demented prohibitionist types – imply that everyone who drinks is somehow morally defective, a weak-willed or “sinful” person who “gives in” to a “dangerous habit.”
You say you’re a pilot. If so, you must be at least reasonably bright. Use your brain. Think. The “war on (some) drugs” is a despicable assault on human liberty based on outrageous lies and package-dealing straw man arguments.
Eric,
When I am at 40,000 feet in a 747 going through a thuderstorm with a load of cargo, I need to know what is the risk of my co-pilot on unapproved drugs. That is the life I lead. With all the checks and balances of drug tests and drug wars I feel confident the the co-pilot is all there. Without the checks and balances,the risk does go up.
We know some pilots use non-approved drugs, but with the war on drugs, Flight Surgeon checks evey 6 months, the pissing test, those people get grounded fast.
And if they go to re-hab, MIGHT get back in the air.
That is why I have a contract with my co-pilot. When I get called on short notice, I do not want my co-pilot showing up with any beer hangover.
So my contract says no booze when on standby. I like that because I am getting good at detecting booze breath.
Not good at bath salts. When I sinffed one person, they almost bit off my nose.
I sent that ground crew with the police.
Rick, you are evoking commandments of what here is called “cloverism”.
The first one is “What’s good for me is good for everyone” And the second is “If I have to live under these rules so should everyone else”.
The problem is, what is good for one person isn’t good for everyone and because one person ends up confined by rules for one reason or another doesn’t mean everyone else should.
As far as risk, if you feel your co-workers are so lacking control over themselves that they need threats of job loss and testing not to impair their ability to do their job, the problems are way bigger than drug use.
If fear of punishment is the only thing keeping pilots from taking to the air stoned or drunk it just gives me another reason not to fly. Because that would mean that anything that’s not enforced or easily detectable could be in play. People who do whatever they can get away with instead of having their own good sense of judgment are people I don’t want flying a plane I’m on.
Having ‘get away with it’ situation is far scarier than trusting them to be professional out of their own pride.
@RICK: this passes for wisdom in your miss-spelled thoughts?
I and half of my friends took Ecstasy hundreds of times in college. Hundreds. LSD a few times, plenty of pot.
Made it through medical school–top twenty percent–the switched careers to software. Software requires thought; long, hard, intricate thought.
So do you think I stole to “feed my habit”?
What gives you this Rock-em-Sock-em Robot black and white mentality on drugs?
Can you not fathom that people might use something other than ethanol for recreation? And that those things might (gasp) be safer than ethanol?
Name the common drugs that can kill you in withdrawal. Here, I’ll give you a list:
1) Ethanol.
But that’s all the weakest argument I can give; it’s the <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/utilitarianism"utilitarian argument–hyperlinked so you can read the definition, I’m trying to help you here.
The much more powerful argument is the moral argument.
I own my body, not you, and not yours. Thus, we’re both free to do with them as we will.
Unless I harm you by my actions, you have no claim on me…regardless of what substances were in me at the time.
Harm is harm. It’s not “super-harm” because I was drunk when I T-boned you; I simply T-boned you and bare responsibility.
Dear RICK,
A voluntary, market based arrangement consistent with libertarianism.
Employers and employees do indeed have the right to negotiate the terms of any employment contract. It must of course strictly be between themselves, and not coerced by any third party.
The FAA (F for Federal) is hardly a market based entity. It is part of a coercion based entity known as “The Government.”
Therefore your FAA inspections requirement clearly fails the test for voluntary, non-coerced “capitalist acts between consenting adults.”
I forgot to comment on the ‘steal to feed the habit’ comment.
In the war on drugs we now have civil asset forfeiture. This means instead of worrying about some drugging stealing from us, the government will do it.
Furthermore, if the drugs were legal the prices would collapse to their natural level which is almost zero.
In re asset forfeiture:
It’s now a very real threat even for people who don’t touch arbitrarily illegal “drugs.” Just have the bad luck to be found carrying “excessive” cash – and that’s sufficient pretext for them to literally rob you. They seize your money on the assumption that it’s “drug” money – and then it’s up to you – on your nickle, at your expense – to prove that the money is not “drug” money.
This is something people like us – people who buy/sell vehicles, especially used ones we often pay cash for – need to be aware of.
I, for example, always bring cash to a potential transaction on the theory that “cash talks” and having it on hand will help me negotiate a favorable deal. Plus, when the bargain is struck, I prefer to take immediate possession and conclude the transaction.
Now I have to worry about some costumed goon seizing my money – without any evidence of my having committed a crime of any sort.
And so do the rest of you. Be warned. Be wary.
Bevin,
My contract is stiffer than the FAA.
The Flight Surgeon is in private practice and is trained in the medical aspects of the human body flying at 40,000 ft at 400 mph. That is differant than going to Stop and Go for beer.
Because of that, I ask him for a list of approved drugs. Alot of legal drugs are not good for flying and are banned by me.
FAA says .03 on the drunk meter is ok. My contract says “0”. My contract is market driven by insurace companys.
Same thing with my load master. I send him to the Doctor also. FAA does not require that, but I do by contract. Last thing I need at take-off is ten tons of cargo sliding around because my loadmaster had a hangover. That makes for a big smoking hole in the ground.
I stay away from the FAA as much as I can, and go with my contract.
Dear RICK,
The key issue is not whether private sector standards are more lenient or more stringent than Leviathan State imposed standards per se.
The key issue is that private sector standards are voluntary and contractual, whereas government imposes standards are coercive and unilateral.
The physical coercion, prior to any actual harm inflicted, is what make government morally defective.
Eric,
The rules only apply to the people that sign my contract. If they don’t like the contract don’t sign. That is between two adults.
What gets some pilots in trouble is they read on some web site that smoking pot helps driving skills by increasing senses. So think it makes them better pilots and will try to impress me by using pot.
I can tell real fast and send them for a private piss test with my private Flight Doc. My Doc tells me that is not good for flying. He knows alot more than me.
I report to the FAA and the pilot goes to re-hab.
Dear Meth,
I did see that you said if you t-bone me because of drunk driving it is only the accident that counts, not the drunk driving, and you should have the right to drive drunk.
Does that mean should be ok to get into a 747 drunk, run off the runway and turn you and me into a big fireball because drunk flying should legal and only look at the damage done after the accident?
Eric,
I too am considering moving out of the country.
You say you want to stay and fight.
I think it is time to realize and admit that this country has gone through considerable change in the last 10-20 years. New laws are now on the books, not yet enforced. They will be once the economy falls into the pit.
The USA has gone through a quiet, unannouced coup. Yet just as effective as Germany in the 1930s, Chile in the 1970s, China in the 1940s, or Russia in 1917. Gee, things look the same BUT ARE NOT.
I would rather remember the good things I recall about the 20th century USA, but from a different country. I am sick of the lies and progpaganda that the MSM tell us about 24-7
There used to be a large differnce in quality of life in the USA verses other countries. Now that the USA is on the way down, and other contries on the way up, the gap is not so large. Sometimes onc can achieve a good quality of life on a fraction of what it costs to live here.
JvG–where are you looking?
I am looking at Ecuador. Lots of bang for the buck. There is a choice of coastal tropical, or Andean high altitude. Perpetual spring/summer.
Also considering Chile.
Too bad that Eric does not have a Private Messege option in this website. I Wouldenjoy chatting with you.
I’d like that too.
So DOM–how about it sir, two new feature requests–an edit button, and a “PM me”?
I looked at Ecuador hard early on. The only things that bother me are
a) it’s really backward, hard to earn a living there. the infrastructure is questionable
b) government there is iffy compared to Chile
Mike Adams had a big presence there, but he’s not so fond of it anymore. I haven’t found out why; it might be worth emailing him.
Chile appeals mightily. Good infrastructure, stable, decent rule of law, low taxes, etc.
Although I would like an edit button, I think it is better without an edit button.
This would prevent someone from changing or deleting their post at a latter date. I have seen this happen and when it does happen a thread can look a bit disjointed due to a lack of the whole story.
Perhaps if a post could only be edited in the first X minutes before being set in stone.
Dear mithrandir,
I put in a request for an “Edit” button earlier too.
But I’m having second thoughts on it. Maybe it’s better to live with typos and other errors for the sake of finality.
mithrandir, the running forum that I practically live on, Has Edit and Delete buttons. You can only Edit for the first 30 minutes after posting. And you can only Delete for the first 30 minutes after posting. And you can only Delete you posts in the first 30 minutes if no one has replied to your post. That why the thread integrity is maintained.
An Edit button would help with my sucky spelling and grammar
True –
But I suppose like many people, I am reluctant to pick up sticks. We’d have to sell off our place – which we love and which I worked my ass off to be in a position to buy and then worked my ass off some more to get in into the condition it’s in now. I’d have to get rid of most of my stuff; probably my antique car and motorcycles and of course all my guns. Then, go shopping for a new place in a country I’ve probably got no personal knowledge of.
I could go to Switzerland. I have dual citizenship. And I have enough German to be functional and would become fluent probably pretty quickly. But, the cost of living there is stratospheric. My entire net worth after transmuting all our assets into cash would probably be just enough to get us a small condo in Zurich. I am not a city person. And the prospect of saying goodbye forever to owning land – acreage, not a small plot – makes me very depressed.
The biggest single obstacle, though, would be: How to make a living? I’ve spent 20-plus years building up the career I have as a motor journalist – a niche specialty that doesn’t translate to countries outside of America. Certainly, there are other things I could do. But I like my work and am reluctant to start over in my mid-40s.
Granted, I may lose everything this way. I realize it.
If I were in my young 20s and single, I’d be gone tomorrow. But us middle-aged Gen Xers are in a tougher spot….
Congrats, you worked your ass off to “buy” a place you will never own, one that you will rent from the state, under threat of confiscation, for the rest of your life.
I understand – I know. But we do what we can, right?
At least I am able to use my 16 acre spread… I am not surrounded by “neighbors” … I can shoot guns in the backyard and run naked through the woods.
I’ve got a large house, a three car garage and two outbuildings. Granted, these could be confiscated at almost any moment – and granted, I must pay “rent” to the government to continue to be allowed to live here.
But what better option is there?
Where could I go and obtain an inviolate allodial title to my land? Where else could I go and even begin to think about owning a 16 acre spread like this?
In Europe, one would probably need to be a multi-millionaire to afford a place like this.
And I do not want to live in some stack-a-prole apartment in a city, ever.
You do know that when it get really bad, they will start rounding up folks in the country and moving them to the cities yes?
They may try – in which case, I go down like the Hood… guns blazing.
@spiritsplice:
They’re doing it already. Fines for hay dust when you mow your field. SWAT raids for selling raw milk. “Health” inspectors showing up to a private farm-to-fork dinner party and ordering the food destroyed*. Almost-finished houses ordered removed to protect “wetlands”.
Agenda 21 is in full swing. They’re coming after the easy ones now–the ones who won’t fight back. Once we’re all too poor to fight back, they’ll really throw it into high gear; it will look like The Hunger Games.
We’re not free-range cattle anymore. America is a CAFO**.
* I still can’t believe those people complied. I would have frog-marched the bitch off the property with a very stern warning never to come back.
** CAFO–concentrated animal feeding operation.
I drove thru Leipzig in 1990 just after the Berlin wall came down….
I tellz ya – You have never seen a real stack-a-prole. It was even worse than Detroit.
LOL!
That’s what the Agenda 21 creeps have in mind for us, too!
“How to make a living?”
And there you have it Eric. “How to make a living . . . “, is conveniently left out of the leave the country articles. The persons who can afford to simply leave the country can generally afford to avoid arrest anyhow.
It would be interesting to see an accounting of the drugs used by Larry Flynt and his late lover. Strange it is that Flynt’s doctor was never subjected to the torment inflicted on Elvis’ doctor.
Career… most of the people who take relocation to other countries so lightly are people who can make their living online as traders or something of that nature.
I design and develop products for a living. Thus I am limited to countries with a manufacturing base. Language barrier gets worse because of the technical nature of my work. I’d still be able to do a lot in english internationally but I still have to communicate with the people around me.
If there were a truly free country I could start the manufacturing base where I went. Trouble is there aren’t any where I wouldn’t end up in a complex game of local politics, bribes, etc.
So where? I could go to China. That’s about it.
Exactly.
There’s the proverbial nuclear option – sell all assets and use the proceeds to relocate and “live small” someplace else. I know that several hundred k would go very far in a place such as Uruguay or Brazil. But not far enough. I am not ready to exchange a 16 acre spread and our large home for a 600 sq. ft. apartment or cinder block one level shanty.
Besides, I like my work – I’d like to keep on working at it, too. Sure there are other things I could do to earn money, but I doubt I’d enjoy doing them nearly as much.
And besides, I like to think I am in my own small way doing something worth doing – trying to get people talking about liberty again. If I can contribute to a rebirth of freedom, even if I am not around to enjoy it, I will consider my life well-lived.
Uruguay is expensive, and the laws are Cloverish in the extreme. Brazil I know nothing about.
Look up information on Ecuador expats. Your dollar would go much further there. Country real estate…. no problem. More land than you have, for less money. Check out Chile as well….
I suggest looking for parts of the world that are less expensive to live in!
Check out a website called Numbeo.com It lists cost of living by city and country. You could compare a city close to where you live with a city elswhere in this country, or else where on this planet. Switzerland? EXPENSIVE…. somewhere else, not so much.
Several issues, though:
As a non-citizen, you probably have even fewer legally protected rights – such as property rights – than citizens, who probably have fewer such rights than even we have.
No right to own guns for self defense – a huge issue for me. Screw being disarmed.
Making a living (gone over that already).
There is something to be said for staying simply to be with family and friends and in the place you call home. Leaving is giving up, and I don’t fault anyone for doing it. But sometimes you just have to do what is right. And somebody has to stay and try to save the world. Eric – you are one of the ‘somebody.’
Thanks, Lisa – and, likewise!
This little corner of the ‘net is a tonic because it proves we’re not alone. And that there are more of us than the Clovers might be counting on!
How amusing staying and risk being enslaved or killed is seen as heroic while leaving and starting anew is seen as wimping out.
Clover,
I’d leave if there were a “United States” as it existed even as recently as 50 years ago to flee to. But there isn’t. There is no freedom alternative. Your type has brought tyranny the world over. So we shall have to fight you where we find you. And where you find us.
Sure, outside the U.S.A. is the Badlands.
When you talk about the drug war which means the Gov arresting the drug pushers and cookers. By dropping the Gov part of it still would not stop the drug war here in Flint and Saginaw MI. The thugs would still be shooting each other over deals gone bad, market shares,.
gangs against gangs. If the Gov stopped the drug war,more homes burned down from meth labs, because cooking meth would be legal.
Flint and Saginaw have always been a mess, they were shooting each other before the war on some people who do some drugs.
Furthermore, if drugs were legal then corporations would be producing them and selling them in pharmacies. The gangs would still be shooting each other, but it would end that part of it anyway.
Your argument that more people would be cooking meth is flawed, for one simple reason. Nothing is stopping them from doing it now. Junkies need their junk and Johnny Law doesn’t stop a thing.
On top of that if it were legal people especially those with children, could actually feel comfortable getting some help. I’m sure more charitable organization would step in to help. The fact that it would be legal would allow them to help in other ways as well. Instead of cold turkey they could wean them off of the drugs or use other drugs to make it easier.
TO: Brad Smith
When people say stop the drug wars , they want to de-crimalize the drugs That is not the same as legalize cocaine to manufacture. Companys aleady make pain killers that dope heads want to take and sell. The dope heads want to get the drugs without a persciption ,sell them to under-aged kids, like beer. There would still be
drug wars ect.Because of the laws, if Cocaine was legal to make in the US, overseas would be cheaper, and we would still have drug wars between gangs getting it here. In MI we have “Drug courts” to get addicts help.
As far as Meth cookers go, right now if the Police get a “smell of a cook” they get a search warrent. If it was legal the could not go in until a fire happened.
Again they are not stopping people from cooking meth or importing coke or anything else.
Freedom and liberty means allowing people to make decisions for themselves even if they are bad ones. The war on some people who do some drugs is a complete failure. In fact it has only made things worse and will continue to do so.
You think your kids can’t get drugs? Trust me they can. Google “oxycodone without a prescription” Just see how many hits you get. The same is true for any scrip.
Heck they have an APP for cell phones. Kids put money on their phones and then pay the charge per minuet and they send them the pills. I could go on and on. The cops are not stopping a thing.
What prohibition has done however is to force create gangs, cartels and organized crime. On top of this it’s easier to smuggle small amounts of anything so the trend is to further concentrate everything.
Take a look at pot. Believe it or not prohibition has even changed the makeup of weed. Yep, it’s more profitable to grow strains high in THC, because it’s less dangerous law wise to carry less weed. In the old days weed was more balanced. It had just about equal amounts of THC and CBD. The CBD was an antagonist that had anti-anxiety properties.
I do have one question for you. Do you honestly believe that cops are making a dent in our drug problem?
Used copies of Thomas Szasz’ OUR RIGHT TO DRUGS are available for less than $5.00. I strongly recommend it, especially for those care about the Principles underpinning the Unanimous Declaration.
The Drug War is a legal racket that serves opportunists and parasites on both sides of the law. At least the so-called dealers give you something that you want for your money. The REAL criminals are those in government who, knowing that the Drug War is unconstitutional, do nothing to stop it.
Brad,
Yes I think our war on drugs has helped. It has helped the FAA keep safer sky’s. If, as a commerical pilot, I get tagged by the cops for drugs, It is sent to the FAA .FAR 61.15 and 91.17 would apply. We know that some pilots are dope heads and the war on drugs helps to weed them out.If possession and use was legal then it would be harder to weed them out. Also DOT rules for truck drivers apply.
As to the gangs and thugs, they will not flip burgers at Micky Dees but find other ways to steal, kill, and make a buck. We would just shift the war to other areas.
Car jacking comes to mind.
I know kids will get drugs. Are you saying we should turn our backs when a 17 year old gets cocaine, meth, perscription
drugs? Right now we bust the pusher, and send the kid to drug court and re-hab.
Are you saying we should drop drug court and re-hab?
Almost all the charges for drug use here,is not for the drug use, but what they do when they are on the drugs. Beating, robbery, b&e, car accidents.
We have a drug court, the drug charge is usually dropped if they go to re-hab. Think Charlie Sheen.
Oh Rick, what lovely rose-colored glasses you wear:
Nearly a million pot arrests last year, Rick, 750,000 for simple possession.
55% of federal prisoners are there for victimless drug “crimes”.
Are you one of those people of microscopic cranial dimensions who believe that laws make things All Better?
I guess then that I am not people.
When I say “stop the drug war” I mean get rid of any law that has anything to do with the free non-violent mutually agreed non-other-harming non-coercive… behaviour of other people.
Decriminalize? Reminds me of the idea “make legal”. When you say something is “decriminalized” or “made legal” at the root of the statement, the essential juices of the word choice, is the idea that what free people do is something that they have to have permission for. It’s kindergarten. You are not free to go to the bathroom if you have to raise your hand and ask teacher. You are allowed. Going potty is decriminalized. Kindergarten.
When I say “stop the drug war” I mean government, my next door neighbour, anybody has zero business disallowing, allowing, permitting, lording over, posing any sort of control, benign or savage, over the issue.
So, if the people you speak for* mean “quietly wring our hands and deign to allow other people to live their lives as we see fit” then I guess I’m not people.
* I love that about the 99%** how they claim to speak for me. They steal my voice without even asking me.
** I did the math. I think I got 0.3%.
Don’t be stupid Rick–study history. Prohibition made gangs flourish because it made booze wildly profitable. When it ended, the profits collapsed and the gangs moved on to the next thing…prohibited drugs.
Stop prohibition, stop crime.
How hard is it to understand that?
And if meth were legal, it would be so much cheaper to buy it commercially, no-one would bother cooking it themselves. Starting with P2P, then reductive amination via methylamine and NaBH4, it’s a few pennies a dose. A commercial operation would start with even cheaper precursors.
Try making those prices with a crappy home-cook.
Dear methylamine,
Quite right. Prohibition generates the very problem it purports to solve.
The transparent folly of the War on Drugs got to be so obvious that even conservatives William F. Buckley, George Schultz, and Milton Friedman came out in favor of drug legalization — way back in 1996.
Buckley devoted column after column to it in the National Review, particularly the now-famous February 12, 1996 issue titled “The War on Drugs is Lost.”
Thanks for the reply.
You right when booze was made legal the thugs went to dope dealing. But are you saying all these dope dealers will stop doing crime when the drug war is stopped?
Do you think think all these dope dealers will be flipping burgers? I think they would be smart enough to steal the drugs from warehouses, as they do now, to sell on the black market. They would sell at a reduced cost, no overhead, and we would still be in a drug war.
The drug companys would raise the cost to cover the losses, and the thugs would knock over more warehouses.
As far as Meth goes, it is a legal drug with a perscription. The Name is DESOXYN. It is a drug that has been stolen from drugs stores in town here ,also from the warehouses.
When meth has been stolen, it gets cut so the dealer can make more money. If drugs were made legal, the stolen drugs would still be cut for the black market for more profit.
A quick check of history showes a bunch of ways that we would still have a drug war if we legalize drugs.
But make meth legal on the open market, you need to convince the Medical establishment that after 12+ years of training, Doctors don’t know anything about the proper use of meth. Good luck with that.
An entirely illiterate economic exegesis, Rick–kudos on mangling erudite explanations into this morass of non-sequiturs.
I’ll give you a clue, and a more recent history lesson.
Look at Amsterdam’s cannabis policy. Tell me about THEIR gangsters.
Or Portugal, which a few years ago decriminalized everything. There, if you’re caught with up to a two week supply, it’s at most a $50 slap on the wrist–usually not even that. The third time you’re caught–and you’d have to be thick on a Rick scale to do that–they may recommend treatment.
No jail time. No arrest, wood shampoo, or electro-torture.
The result? Drug crime down 80%. Drug usage down 50%–whoda thunkit? Indeed, making it safer to seek treatment, and de-glorifying the act while reducing the profit motive to get people addicted, reduces usage.
Here’s another mind-boggling thought experiment:
What if you offered someone FREE heroin, who’d never done it before? 99% of them would refuse. Why? Because they don’t want to. That is why prohibition doesn’t work, and freedom does–because people make choices, irrespective of the “laws” you make to interfere with them.
Bravo! And all so true. Portugal is a wonderful example and one that drives American drug “warriors” into totalitarian knipchen fits.
I did look up Portugal history.
Drug use is still illegal there. They have what our town calls “drug court” where the drug charge is dropped and the dope head is sent to re-hab.
And their court will suspend Dr liceses, or any licence that a dope head has that may cause a public safety risk. And they will take personal property. Sound tougher then our drug court.
In Portugal, crimial penaltes still apply to drug growers, drug dealers and pushers. They stopped a couple of tons of cocaine from comming in last year.
Sounds like a drug war there also.
Excellent points methyl (as usual). One of my favorite examples is cigarettes. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Cigarettes are still perfectly legal, but through education the percentage of smokers in the USA has dropped considerably (from 42% of the population in 1964 to 19.8% in 2008). Now let’s look at illicit drug use in the United States. In 1900 it was estimated that the American drug abuse rate was 1.1% of the population. At that time you could buy laudanum, Bayer brand heroin and cocaine tooth drops (for your kids!) over the counter. Cannabis was totally unregulated and cannabis hemp was a major agricultural product. We’ve had a “war on drugs” going on since I was a kid (over 40 years now) and the drug abuse rate (*not* including alcohol which, of course, is a drug also) stands at 7.9% as of 2004. Heroin abuse rates in the USA have been steadily going up along side the increased opium production of US occupied Afghanistan. Coincidence? Methinks not. US troops and drones are guarding the poppy fields for Pete’s sake!
Regardless of your opinion of Randolph Bourne, his statement “War is the health of the state” is a timeless truth. Whether it is a figurative war on poverty, drugs, terrorism, illiteracy or what have you; or be it a hot war against the neighbors because you want their oil, lithium or land, an aggressive stance against fictional injustice or danger and a good propaganda machine prompts the populace to roll up their sleeves, stick out their chests and fork over the cash. For a while that is. Then the PTB have to get creative to fund their foreign and domestic land and power grabs. What better way than forfeiture laws (besides inflating a fiat currency that is) based on the non-crime of consuming or possessing an artificially prohibited “substance”? This gives the government busybodies an excuse to poke around in your car, your home and your bank accounts with impunity and take any of your property that *might* be the product of a “drug crime”. It is then up to you to prove that it isn’t. And even if you can, it will be at great legal expense with no recourse against the government actors personally that took your rightful property to begin with.
But wait…there’s more! If you want to fund black ops, set up secret prisons in unsavory third world dictatorships and generally do whatever you want to whomever you want, you may have a hard time getting any congress-critter to take that one home to mom and pop in tee-vee land. But if you have the aircraft, connections and a highly profitable commodity and you’re the CIA (which means you already have pictures of your political opponents screwing the neighbor’s dog), you can get your funding, keep it out of the public eye and eliminate some those nasty low class “weed people” you despise to boot!
Rick is apparently suffering from propagandistic delusions and cognitive dissonance leading to denial of the truth. He can’t make the connection between a governmentally skewed market leading to an enormously distorted risk – reward ratio in “illicit” drugs because it goes against his public education and MSM programming. The very idea the to completely repeal the drug laws and let grown ups make their own choices, good or bad, is apparently counter-intuitive to him. Rick, the real issue is that those that wish to govern wish to govern without limit and take what they want with impunity. If they can get you to accept that and even welcome it because you falsely believe it is for your own good, it makes their survival as parasites that much easier. I implore you Rick; dig a little deeper for your facts, think a bit more critically, study human nature and you will realize that most of what the government and their propaganda arms feed you is a pack of lies designed to benefit them. The supposed benefits on the prohibition of (some) drugs being but one of the government’s myths.
> Or Portugal, which a few years ago
> decriminalized everything. There, if
> you’re caught with up to a two week
> supply, it’s at most a $50 slap on the
See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. What part of free people living their lives in peace comes with fines? And how long will those fines remain small and “if at all”?
Oh, you’re being punished by a legal system but you aren’t a criminal, you have commited no crime, you have done no wrong, hand over your life. wtf?!
When this PERSON says “stop the drug war” he means “stop the drug war” not “change rules and still catch and fine” people. Decriminalize? Pah.
@gruhn:
I agree completely, I only use Portugal as an example to Clovers that the world won’t explode if drugs are made semi-legal.
I’m 100% with you–no-one may dictate to me the terms of life while I conduct myself without causing them harm, and extend them the same respect.
Government is violence, fraud, theft, and deceit.
Eventually humanity will out-evolve it.
THEN we will reach the stars.
Yes we would, but it would be much much smaller and limited to those who commit crimes. Yes, people still break into liqueur stores to steal booze and cigs. Do you see armed gangs fighting over booze territories? NOPE. But during prohibition there were.
Brad
Do you think if drugs were legal they would be cheaper? Think Camels and Lucky Strikes
One big thing would be insurance companys that insure the stores and Doctors. We do have dram shop laws so the bartender can cut off the drunks. How the clerk going to cut off the dope head?
I watch tv and see the sharks have ads to find people that have a bad medical reaction to drugs. So now we would have ads looking for people that have a”bad trip” and sue everybody?
The insurance rates alone would drive the cost so high the dope heads would still be robbing and stealing.
Of couse the drug dealers would be raiding the warehouses to sell on the street and we would still have a drug war.
Plus you would have to convince the Doctors that see and treat the dope heads that get treated at he hospital, that is a good medical thing to send the dope head home with 2 weeks of Meth.
Countries over-seas have a whole different laws for lawsuit’s, so you would have to completly re-write our laws.
Hi Rick,
Brent and Methyl and others have already addressed the major points, but I wanted to add another:
The fact that some people may abuse something is not sufficient reason to criminalize its use by everyone. By your logic, guns ought to be illegal too since there are people who commit crimes with guns. Etc.
The fact is most people who use drugs do not commit crimes – “crime” being defined as committing some act of aggression against another, causing him a harm. Smoking pot or shooting smack – as such – is no more a “crime” than having a few mixed drinks on the patio. We don’t throw people in prison and seize their assets for having mixed drinks. Why should we do the same to people who use other drugs?
Consumption, possession, manufacture – these are not actions that can described as “criminal” except in a legalistic – and totalitarian – sense. They are no more “crimes” – in a moral sense – than eating fast food. Bad for you, perhaps. But “bad for you” should not be an excuse for Team Blue to assault you.
PS: No package-dealing. If someone drives drunk, we punish him for driving drunk. Not for drinking. If someone commits a robbery to support his drug habit, he should be prosecuted for robbery. But leave the harmless user alone.
Unless, of course, you want to live in a police state where anything you might do is sufficient warrant for “the law” to control your life – and possibly toss you in jail, too.
“The fact that some people may abuse something is not sufficient reason to criminalize its use by everyone.”
TOUCHE!!!
Not only is it not sufficient reason but it is unlawful as well. Drug Prohibition is a monstrous crime.
People want OTHERS to live in a police state while THEY are left alone to do whatever they please.
In addition to alcohol, I used recreational drugs, mostly pot, for many years. All the while, like most other users, I was and still am a self-sufficient non-criminal.
WE hold these Truths…
Yes indeed, that’s what the American Ideal is all about.
Drunk Driving laws are abhorrent to freedom. They contradict your whole point about not punishing someone who hasn’t done any harm.DD laws are punishing risk. It is already a crime to crash into another car, *why* the person did it is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if they were high or drunk or sleepy or angry or nuts. Punishing risk is no different than punishing intent as hate crime laws do.
Oh, agreed. I should have been clearer. To wit: People who damage other people’s property or harm their persons for whatever reason deserve to be punished – and compelled to make their victims whole.
How’s that?
When you talk about legalizing drugs, which drugs?
One of the big problems you would have with legalizing drugs is the medical establishment. The perscription drugs, meth, oxiecotton, morfine, ect are controlled by perscription so the Docs can treat medical problems. You would have to convince the government a 20 year old dope head is smarter that a person with 12+ years of medical school.
Yes, now those drugs do get on the black market with theft and drug mills. I know that.
I guess you could.just ask the Doc for free sample packs of meth.
All drugs.
The idea that anything ought to be illegal for anyone to put into their body is a noxious – an evil – doctrine. It’s my body. Just as yours is yours.
What gives you – or the government – any right whatsoever to dictate to me what I may and may not put into my body? To threaten me with violence – if I do not comply?
Don’t fall into the Package Deal trap. It does not follow that because something may be abused by some people that all people must be assumed abusers, even before they have abused. Or that because some people who “use” might commit a crime (cause harm) everyone who uses will also commit crime – and therefore must be treated as a criminal, a priori.
This is the essence of Cloverism – and I will have none of it.
@ Spirit Spice and Eric
I understand the point you guys are trying to make about Punishing Risk (Drunk Driving) rather than the actual Act (of hitting something while drunk driving).
However, I do think there is a distinction that needs to be made in that the degree of probability of an accident rises very quickly when a driver is “under the influence” (not just alcohol).
At the point that an intoxicated person gets behind the wheel and drives – that person has immediately increased the amount of risk that all other drivers and pedestrians in the vicinity have been exposed to and they are completely unaware of this fact (increased risk) and so cannot make an informed decision to remove themselves from the situation.
So what I am hearing from you is that you would prefer to defend the right of an intoxicated person to drive – and until they have committed a murder or major damage to public or private property then that is OKAY in your world?
So Victimless Crime “potential” be damned – it is a semantical ejaculation that has no merit.
There is a major difference in the situation versus someone drinking or taking drugs in their own home and staying there versus getting behind the wheel and exposing others to a degree of risk that they have no say about.
The fact is we do need some degree of government structure (maybe not as much as we have) but this is one of those rules that really is in the interest of all – and trust me on this – I am no clover.
Well, let me point out a problem with your argument (as I see it):
Who is more of a risk behind the wheel? A completely sober – but half-blind and senile 80 year old… or a driver with excellent vision, reflexes and natural skill with a few beers in him?
Yet, we don’t have “senile citizen checkpoints”… or a statute forbidding “driving while old.” Should we?
A cop will – rightly – pull over a driver who is wandering and appears to be impaired by alcohol. But have you ever seen a cop pull over a clearly past-it old coot puttering along at 15 MPH (or more) below the speed limit, with a line of cars stacked up behind him?
Of course, not all old people are bad drivers. Just as not all younger people are good drivers.
Drivers are individuals. Some people are simply better drivers even with an amount of alcohol in their systems that would qualify them as legally “drunk” than some people are completely sober – simply by dint of the fact that the former starts out with a higher skill set such that even when “impaired,” he is still more in control of his car than the former when sober.
Just making a point.
My position on this business is simple: If a given driver, for whatever reason, is showing signs of impairment, then by all means pull him over and check him out. But don’t pull me over – or anyone else – absent specific reason for doing so.
Seem reasonable?
GW, Criminalizing risk is essentially an unlimited license to regulate every detail of our lives by arbitrary edict. We are watching this snowball grow and grow right now.
Most things in life are a statistical distribution. Let us accept the idea that a 0.08 BAC shifts driving skill to the poorer end. Let us say that this shift is one standard deviation to the bad driving side. Now let’s take a driver who is normally two standard deviations to the good driver side and get his BAC to 0.08. Now he is one standard deviation better than the mean of sober drivers. Why should he be arrested and face life changing consequences when sober drivers two standard deviations below average can drive without penalty?
This is why if anything is going to be penalized it should be bad driving. I really don’t care why someone is driving badly. The result of their bad driving on me is the same. The risk they pose to me is the same. Get an average driver drunk to the point he’s 3 standard deviations below the mean or just put someone sober behind the wheel that is 3 standard deviations below the mean. They pose the same risk to me.
Rick, I tend to think the ingredients in drugs aren’t expensive. (My friends and I have brewed beer from scratch except for growing the hops ourselves and the ingredients cost next to nothing and I imagine most drugs are the same) It is the overhead of having “soldiers” and enforcers, transportation along with the risk of operating a black market that makes it expensive. The growers grow and the dealers deal because of the super high profit margins. If you take the risk of imprisonment out of the equation the price will plummet because that risk is such a large portion of the equation.
And if people are so worried about hte crime associated with people still robbing others to feed their habit, adopt a nationwide conceal carry policy. Everything is a balance of risk and reward, not many are going to rob others if everyone is packing. An armed populace is a respectful populace.
Eric
But how do you get the goverment take the word of a 20 year old dope head over the Doctor that treats him?
That is what it would take to make drugs legal.
Unless this question is answered you are just spinning wheels with a lot of smoke.
“But how do you get the goverment take the word of a 20 year old dope head over the Doctor that treats him?”
You miss the point entirely, Rick. The only legitimate purpose of government is to keep people from aggressing against others. A 20 year old is under no obligation to get the government to take his word about anything he may wish to put into his own body. None of us are. We owe the government no such obligation because the government has no moral claim over our bodies. They are our bodies.
If I want to smoke pot, that’s my business alone. Just as it’s my business alone if I wish to have a rum and coke. Or take supplements. Or pain killers.
Period.
The idea that you – or anyone else – has a right to threaten me with violence, to point guns at me, to seize my person or put me in a cage – merely because I have consumed or possess some substance that you arbitrarily decide ought to be “illegal” is among the most despicable notions I can imagine.
Think about it: Imagine twisting the arm of some kid painfully behind his back and slapping cuffs on him; shoving him into a squad car and taking him to a cage…. because you found he had a bag of weeeeeeeeed on him.
It’s psychotic.
Dear RICK,
You wrote:
“That is what it would take to make drugs legal.
Unless this question is answered you are just spinning wheels with a lot of smoke.”
You really don’t get it, do you? Your entire mindset is wrong from the get go.
You seem to think that someone who wants to inhale the smoke from some dried weeds must justify himself to strangers. To someone he doesn’t know from Adam who has too big a nose and too much time on his hands.
What people put into their own bodies is nobody’s business but their own.
Human beings own own themselves. Their bodies are their own property. They do not need to justify themselves to anyone else.
Americans wonder why we are losing our liberty. We are losing our liberty because so few Americans really understand what liberty is.
Liberty (or freedom) is the absence of physical coercion by other human beings.
In the case of “controlled substances,” liberty is “You don’t get to dictate to me what I can or cannot put into my own body.”
The entire collectivist “we” does really piss me off. For many reasons mentioned above, but for another major reason. It’s hypocritical. For most of them it’s really not meant as “we” it’s meant to say “you”. “We need to do something to help the innocent in Syria”. That is complete bullshit because they have no intention of doing a damn thing. When I hear people say that shit I simply tell them to lace up their boots and strap on a rucksack and get their sorry asses over and join the rebels.
We need to fund the schools, like in the article, it’s the same fucking thing. It’s not about us funding the schools it’s about them telling me to do it for them.
It’s the same codswallop when it comes to Global Warming or whatever they are calling it this week. Jackasses like Al Gore running around telling us all what “we” need to do. Like that shithead has any intention of cutting back himself!
For 99% of these sheep “we” simply means “you”. The sad part is that they believe that forcing you to do their part is their part.
Exactly…Fucking Democracy Parasites.
The stupid little “We” brats…Clovers.
You will NEVER be free in a Fucking Democracy(TM)
It will NEVER happen.
You need to move to a dictatorship…at least everyone else around you doesn’t claim to own you because they out-vote you!
“Democracy” has been heavily pushed by the elites because it is much more effective at establishing dictatorial control than the old-style single autocrat or autocratic party. Because it provides the illusion of consent (there were always elections in the Soviet Union, too) and the average person doesn’t see that a million democratic tyrants ruling over him is effectively the same as being ruled by a single tyrant.
Scary world…
that is why i am trying to become wealthy, with wealth comes choices, which is essential to freedom. You get to decide whether or not you want to do something, not whether or not you can afford it. It is the old saying, if you have to ask “how much?”, it’s too expensive.
If one has enough wealth you can do what Doug Casey refers to as “making corruption your friend.”
The basic idea is that in a nation like Chile or Argentina that has a lot of rules but not a strong enforcement arm one can easily grease the wheels to build a house, start a business and in general stay “free”. One of the big problems with the US is the enforcers are very efficient and actually beleive what they are doing is “right” and cannot be easily bought off. It’s an interesting idea that I will probably never be wealthy enough to test myself.
“One of the big problems with the US is the enforcers are very efficient and actually believe what they are doing is “right” and cannot be easily bought off.”
I disagree. Prior to retiring I had many Establishment customers; cops, lawyers, media people and even a couple of judges. To a man they knew that the Drug War is bullshit. The lawyers knew and arrogantly admitted that the legal system is essentially an extortion racket.
One day near quitting time I shared a joint with a New Orleans Cop in uniform. I’ve also snorted coke with a couple of lawyers and the fact that one of my lawyer customers was heroin dependent was no secret to the sheriff, judges, and the rest of the entire Legal Establishment in St. Bernard Parish Louisiana. “Equal protection of the laws?” Don’t you believe it.
I never missed an opportunity to admonish this Brotherhood of Hypocrites. Perhaps strangely, I had customer loyalty from the Establishment Crooks no matter what I said and wrote.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Indeed.
Exhibit A: President Barry.
This vile hypocrite openly admitted he partook – yet now is chief (and ardent) enforcer of laws he knows to be vicious, which will destroy countless lives… lives just like his, but less valuable in the Great Ones eyes, because of course they are not he.
Addendum: Blacks are the most savagely victimized by the drug “war” – yet they overwhelmingly support “their” black president.
Drug MONEY related crime hits Blacks hard. Yet they continue to at least pretend to believe the bullshit spread by black leaders that EVERYTHING is a result of Whitey’s exploitation of the Black race.
With IQ’s that hover around 85 what do you expect?
American blacks band together. Always race comes first in the black religion.
If only whites had not been stripped of their own sense of pride and weren’t willing committing suicide they might fight back.
“Here lies the white race, killed by it’s own altruism. A virtue the enemy did not share.”
Spiritsplice, in the absence of White Solidarity the White Race in America and great Britain is headed for extinction.
Extinction is forever.
Yes it is.
If BO pardoned all the non violent blacks locked up for the non crime of abusing their bodies or helping other adults to do the same it would free more blacks than Lincoln did.
Instead this hypocrite is going against the states and busting medical MJ clinics. Here is a guy who loves his pot and his cocaine(when he could afford it)and he has the gall to bust these people. He acts like he can’t stop Holder but he sure did a good job stopping Holder from going after Bush and his cronies.
Exactly.
Why the average black regards this elitist hypocrite as his president given just this fact alone is itself a fact worth pondering.
I’m becoming convinced that there is actually no such person as Barack Hussein Obama – or whatever the fuck his real name is (which we mundanes will probably never know). I simply cannot believe that a real sentient human being with his supposed pedigree would stoop to doing the things that he’s doing (or, depending on your perspective, not doing) as “president,” things that not only fly in the face of everything that he is supposed to represent, but things that are inimical to his own personal best interests. No matter how hungry he is for the illusion of temporary power, such complete and utter abandonment of one’s own self-respect just doesn’t seem possible.
Either this guy truly is the “Manchurian President” and is completely and irreversibly brainwashed, his every waking thought or move under the complete control of his CIA/Bankster handlers (as investigative reporter Wayne Madsen asserts), or he’s an actor –and a damned good actor at that– who is being paid a fortune to front. Either way, the front has become obviously just that – a front. The fact that it still continues to fool massive numbers of clovers, no matter what their skin color and no matter how increasingly and obviously phony the front becomes, tells us that we’re really beyond any hope of redemption as a nation.
Yes –
And Mittens is just as bad.
Have you seen the idiot commercial about (drum roll) “how many jobs Romney created”?
It’s all illusion. Perception. The american people are children believing in fantasies. They are duped and they like it that way.
As I have posted before, some days I get close to thinking that I should just find a way to profit off their stupidity. With the internet it’s just stupidity and laziness not to know how things really work.
It doesn’t matter what color a person is in this country, all that changes is how they are duped.
Webster Tarpley even believes those who are libertarian are being duped. In a way many are I suppose as many people while considering themselves libertarian don’t go stateless. Although Tarpley doesn’t seem to understand the concept of not having state or anything state like or the non-aggression principle.
I would like to see the DEA sued for “practicing medicine without a license”. It is FACT that most pain control specialists are intimidated by rogue DEA tactics and rarely prescribe proper dosages for adequate pain relief.
There should be a two-tier system for prescription drugs.
Tier 1 woud be the system that we have today. Lawsuits would be possible for adverse drug reactions (as is the present system).
Tier 2 would make it possible to purchase ALL pharmaceutical drugs WITHOUT a prescrption. Tier 2 would prohibit lawsuits against drug manufacturers and pharmacists for any reason. This two-tier system would make it possible for those with chronic conditions to avoid paying a doctor for “permission” to obtain needed drugs.
Tier 2 would also require patients to be informed about the risks of medications; a lawsuit waiver would have to be signed to obtain drugs. . .
eric, I think the financial system here in the U.S. is on a precipice. As it falls, it will take much of the Federal, state, and local governments with it.
Why? Because governments are big holders of bonds, which are going to get slaughtered as sovereign and municipal defaults accelerate.
When Spain or Greece exits the EU and defaults on their bonds held by German and French banks, our banks will feel the pain via the credit default swaps that they sold to those German and French banks. To save the big U.S. banks, the Treasury will have to seize IRAs and 401(k)s — triggering massive outright revolt — or The Fed will have to print money, which will cause massive outright pain.
Just grow your own veggies and raise a flock of hens, and prepare to lay low and provide for, and protect, yourself.
At least here in the U.S., unlike much of the world, you can own a battery of rifles, shotguns, and pistols to defend your property. And, when the system breaks down, you will be able to use them with impunity, because the cops and Federales remain home to defend their own families.
“Just grow your own veggies and raise a flock of hens, and prepare to lay low and provide for, and protect, yourself.”
Covered!
Got a veggie garden and guns….but just like an un-tagged car, can’t have hens here in Commie-ville
Either the Rebels or the Government forces will confiscate and consume your vegetables and chickens and take whatever else they want. If revolution comes to America few will be allowed to remain neutral.
And can you imagine the unrestrained factions in a cultural/racial mixed bag of snakes like the U.S.?
Hopefully the Rednecks will emerge triumphant this time. Had they had Industry to match their Balls and marksmanship they would have won the first one.
Watch or rewatch:
Friendly Persuasion
Viva Zapata
Dr. Zhivago
sorry, I do not agree..
Amerika …
will never come to this point, and besides DHS will kick your ass
what WILL happen, is exactly what YOU see transpiring now
after a number of years, You cannot exist with participating in .Gov programs, simply to exist
You now depend on .Gov..
for everything…
How might You …Revolt …??
think carefully about this
I have given this issue a lot of careful thought
I figure I’ve got a fighting chance – or at least, a chance to fight. People in densely populated urban and suburban areas will be the ones facing the toughest times, the soonest.
While we have Clovers out here, they are fewer and farther between. And it’s well-known that rednecks are usually armed and more than ready to use those arms. There is a reason why violent crime and property crime happens in places like this a whole lot less often than it does in places like Northern Virginia.
I did not see Viva Zapata, but the other two are excellent films.
“Just grow your own veggies and raise a flock of hens, and prepare to lay low and provide for, and protect, yourself.”
I sure wish I could afford to. As it stands, I have every motivation to do so, but not the financial capability.
What I don’t see in this thread of comments is worry for those of us (the liberty minded, anarcho-capitalist, individualist 1%) who cannot afford to protect ourselves or our family by getting out of the major cities before everything goes to hell.
Umm… Sure you can! You have friends and family right? You have means of travel? Have a few bucks for a cheap gun and some ammo? You don’t need to have a lifetime supply of shit, just the means to get you started should you need it!
We’re light on both friends and family, unfortunately. My wife and I have been pretty much left to fend for ourselves since day one. We barely talk to our family (for very good reason) and my “friends” have all but abandoned me over the years. The one real friend I have left is far far away, and in no condition to offer any kind of help (he’s broke too, and in an urban area himself).
We have a 5 year plan to get out of the city and start homesteading… but man I really hope nothing stops it from working, and I hope it’s not too late.
Hi Trocki,
Moist of us probably wish we could do more to prepare – and some of us are better prepared than others. The thing is to do what you can with what you’ve got. Being aware is the most important thing. All else follows from that.
Buy a little extra food every time you go shopping – even if it’s just a few cans of veggies or some dried oatmeal (both of these items can be bought on sale for almost nothing; less than $1 per can for the veggies and maybe $3 for a very large “drum” of quick oatmeal at Wally world or Sam’s).
Think about water.
Get a gun – a good used .38 wheelgun can be bought for $200 or so and makes a great personal defense gun. Used SKS rifles are abundant for $200 or less, too.
Just to get you started…
Thanks for the advice Eric.
After all these years we’re just now getting to a point where we have a few extra dollars with each paycheck. We have a few things to purchase in the next few months that are far overdue… Among those are firearms for all 3 of us (my wife and son included). We’ve also recently considered bicycles for my son and I to get around locally, and a motorcycle for my wife to use for her daily commute (the fuel savings will pay for the bikes/motorcycle, and eventually help us save for moving out of the city.
We are looking at purchasing some land with a house within the next 5 years, and have been doing our research into what it will take to become self sufficient with food/water/power/security/comfort.
We’ve even considered the FSP (Free State Project) that some have discussed in this very thread, since we really feel we need to be near other liberty minded individuals. But unfortunately, we had some issues finding any kind of income for my wife in New Hampshire. I work from home with my income coming from the internet, so I can live anywhere in the states and make something… But she is the major bread winner, and her field of expertise is a bit more specialized.
By the way: I have been reading your articles for a long time, just posted first time tonight. This is a hot topic in my household so I couldn’t hold back! Thanks and keep up the good work! 🙂
Anytime!
On food: Rather than buy (at full mark-up) MREs and dehydrated food, I just buy extra of the food we normally eat. For example, the oats I mentioned. Also rice and pasta. All are inexpensive, especially if you buy bulk and/or on sale. Then, I just rotate out the older stuff for newer, eating as we go (so to speak). The advantage to this, as opposed to buying MREs or dehydrated food, is that you’re not pouring a lot of money into stuff you may not need. This is food we’d eat anyway, so worst case, we just have extra food on hand. But if the system goes down, we also have food stored away…
Guns: I have a nice (high-end) semi-auto pistol, but the truth is that its only real advantage as a close-quarter personal defense weapon is its higher capacity. A .357 (or .38) wheelgun is very effective and much less expensive. Also totally reliable and inherently safer. One of my friends has a really nice custom AR-15; he spent a wad on the thing. And it’s a beautiful gun. But, a good AK (or SKS) will do the job for a lot less money.
I’d get the land as soon as you can, even if you can’t live on it yet. The one upside to the Fed funny money is that interest rates are virtually “free money” right now. It’s worth it – in my opinion – to take out a small loan, if need be, to buy the acreage. If you buy in a rural area, you should be able to get that five acres for $30,000 or less. Maybe a lot less, depending on where it happens to be. In any case, don’t delay. Because if you do – and interest rates shoot up to 10 percent (or more) as seems likely and even inevitable – loans will be much less affordable.
I have a friend in your exact situation – and he’s going to buy the land now, rationalizing it to himself as a “vacation” property. Which it is. He can take his family camping there – or hunting, etc.
Thanks again for the kind words!
Eric makes a good point on the food. we just buy extra of the food we use everyday. especially when it is on sale. I just found a peanut butter deal on Amazon. Peanut butter has really been going up in price. Anyway I just bought 30 40ounce jars. Good price, stores well, no sales tax or shipping and no driving to the store to get it. We built a large panty 5 years ago and store the newest stuff in the back and use the soon to expire stuff first.
We also have 2 fridges and a full-size freezer so we can take advantage of meat deals.
Now I know if the shit really hits the fan we might not have electricity to keep the meat frozen, but we will deal with that if the time comes.
btw-see if you have a website group called ‘freecycle’ in your area. its an online community you can join and get and give away stuff for free. That’s how we got our full-size freezer for free.
My wife gets all kids of things on there. We needed a pac-n-play playpen for a baby. A few weeks ago she went on freecycle and put out a request. We had one a few hours later.
I’m a runner and a few years ago i was looking for a jogging-stroller to use on some of my runs to give my wife a break. Asked for one on freecycle, had 5 different people offering my one in less than a day.
Trocki,
My wife and I are ‘stuck’ for now in the suburbs, with no land for anything other than a small garden and can’t have chickens etc…in our city. We are starting to prepare as best we can anyway. Redirecting money from retirement to stocking up on foods, meds, silver coins and a few guns, plus a small stash of cash in case that is useful.
Our mortgage will be paid off next spring and we are trying to decide what to do then: use the monthly savings to prepare or refinance and take a big chunk of Funny Money and really prepare and hope the mortgage gets inflated out of existence
Unless one is independently wealthy, exiting the USA is simply not an option for most of us working class stiffs. Besides where are you going to go that doesn’t present its own set of challenges? You may actually be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire! (I have traveled this world and lived in other countries – I know of what I speak).
But Rejoice (and do it for the children)in the fact that this clover attitude will be squashed and the course will be reversed at some point in the near future when this whole fiscal house of cards collapses. Until then enjoy the “game” – go ahead and piss off the neighbors with the holier than thou attitudes – it makes for good sport and can be intellectually stimulating as you know you have already won – it’s just a matter of time before the clover realizes it.
I’m not rich by any stretch. I’d have to earn a living there within a month or three of arriving…I wish we had the funds to buy a place in Doug Casey’s Cafayate and live off our investments.
But the time between now and when the house of cards come down is going to SUCK, harder than a black hole. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, sackcloth and ashes.
The Elite-scum aren’t letting their plan; they can see the awakening, and they’re ramping up their plans dramatically. They’ll set the militarized police against us, and when the police are exhausted, they’ll use the foreign troops they’ve been training here in urban-warfare exercises.
I’m not certain why America seems to be getting the brunt of the Elite-scum treatment; perhaps because it was formerly a beacon of freedom and prosperity, and shattering it is a psy-op to assist in subjugating the rest of the world.
I feel as Eric feels–screw them, this is MY (adopted) country, why should I be the one to leave? But when I look at what’s arrayed against us: militarized police, half the population ready and willing to become little self-important Eichmanns informing on their neighbors, military to be turned against civilians, food to be used as a weapon (we’re already being poisoned with GMO’s, wait ’till it’s Ukraine-style starvation time), 300+ bioweapon labs ready to have an “oopsie”…it could redefine Hell. Do I want to put my kids through it? No.
Jeez–wish we had an “edit” button. I pooched a sentence; meant to say:
“The Elite-scum aren’t letting their plan go gently into the night”
And GW I’ve lived in and visited my share of countries, too. I realize there’s no utopia; but America, for the reasons I give, seems to be slated to get the worst of it.
To each his own – it sounds like you have already lost.
My spirit is not broken – I will choose to stay and resist to the best of my abilities for as long as I am able.
No – it is not a battle of equal forces and there will be consequences, however, even an Elephant can be brought down by a splinter and the subsequent infection.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization; I haven’t “lost” anything. The highest good is what is best for me and my family; the same goes for you.
We might part ways amicably. I will continue to resist–just from outside the prison, where I can whittle my arrows (children).
Meth – maybe not, aplogies then, was just calling it like I see it. Perhaps I should have added – “I hope you reconsider your position in leaving” – me thinks we are fighting for the same cause…
Be that as it may, one of the reasons that we are all in this mess is the notion of “everyone doing what is best for themselves” (Bankers/Politicians, etc)which is essentially a smackdown of the Golden Rule!
Fight the good fight from where you may- and yes keep those arrows sharp – God only knows I may need a few of them incoming at some point.
@GW–
I’m certain we’re fighting for the same thing. Part of my strategy would be to survive until the Elites have played out their strategy; which is to create massive internal strife, using first the militarized police against Americans, then the military, then foreign military. I think they believe they’ll break the American spirit once and for all.
When they fail–and they will–it will be a momentous task to rebuild.
*IF* they don’t go the bioweapon route.
But I’m suspicious they will; Elites throughout history have gone bat-shit crazy at this point in the cycle, and this turn is no different.
BTW there’s a fascinating theory of microbiology driving society. It goes like this:
Toxoplasmosis–the protozoan sometimes found in cat feces that doctors warn pregnant women to avoid–has an interesting effect on the rats and mice it infects. It alters their dopaminergic neurotransmission, making them irrationally brave. They’ll taunt a cat and stand right out in the open–and get eaten. Good for Toxoplasmosis though, because it can then complete its life-cycle in the cat.
It may affect humans the same way to a lesser degree.
Syphilis acts similarly; late stage syphilis, called neurosyphilis, leads to psychosis…and irrational promiscuity.
There are dozens of examples of psychopathic elites later shown to be suffering from neurosyphilis. The current batch–who knows? But Bohemian Grove sure would be a place they could “share” their little secret.
“I’m not certain why America seems to be getting the brunt of the Elite-scum treatment”
I think that one’s pretty simple; Americans owe them money.
I kind of disagree with your assessment America is taking the brunt at this point. I’d say Ireland got hammered pretty hard, then there’s the unraveling story of Greece and Spain playing out before us this summer. I’d have to say the elites have been surprisingly kind to Americans and it’s my guess that the USD’s reserve currency status has a lot to do with that. Just a guess, but I think it could well be true. If so, it isn’t going to last forever. The debt will come due even if all that can be recovered are pennies on the pennies.
They, the elite, aren’t owed anything.
They have extracted vast wealth from the people of the USA as well as much of the rest of the world. The “debt” is creation of a system they put in for that purpose. There is no “debt”. The money was created from thin air in the first place.
Correct.
And when I refer to the “Elite”, I’m not talking about the decadent 1%. I’m talking about the 0.0000001%; the 5-10,000 people who truly are at the top of the heap.
The top few hundred you never hear about. They’re certainly not mingling with the hoi polloi in Fortune’s “Richest 100” list. They’re so far above that, Gates is a pauper–someone they buy and sell.
Trillions in wealth. Estimates vary, but the Rothschild dynasty is said to control somewhere around $10Trillion. So much that it exerts its own gravitational pull.
These people care nothing about money, it’s become immaterial. They care about power, because they’re total sociopaths. They’re leading us back toward a Dark Ages, a neofeudalism spiced with the kind of eugenic and sociological nightmares depicted in HG Wells’ Time Machine and Huxley’s Brave New World.
That’s not just my idle speculation; these ideas are detailed in their own foundations’ documents, from Club of Rome to the Rockefeller Foundation.
They’re serious, and they’re seriously insane; but right now, they’re winning.
That is pretty much my attitude. I’m a prepper, I don’t need them for a damn thing. I moved to a place where my friends are all pretty much in the same boat. We have land, we have guns, we have plans in place so when the shit hits the fan we can keep what is ours. Bring it on Mother Fuckers, let the collapse begin. If we lose we have bug out plans in place too.
Oh yah, I love pissing off clovers. Actually I love pissing off just about anyone in authority as well.
On a lighter note, being a prepper has it’s own rewards anyway.
Git ur Piss “ON” Mr Smith – Thanks for the chuckle
Without trying to sound like an apologist for the wealthy, I think it’s important to remember that the tax feeders will most likely be the ones you really need to be concerned with as opposed to the elite. The elite just want their money back for the most part and they’re having a hell of a time getting blood from a turnip right now.
The truth is that the socialists demanded the elite make free money available during the late 90’s and early 2000’s and the elite, faced with strong political pressure, pulled a Br’er Rabbit move on them and let ’em have exactly what they asked for, good and hard.
You just can’t blame the elite for this. Clinton begged, pleaded and did everything short of pulling a gun to get his “affordable housing for everyone” plan through and he did it at the predictable cost of destroying the economy. Nevertheless, the piper *will* be paid in situations like this. The problem is that debt on this scale can’t be constrained to effecting the debtors alone; it will take pure and sinner alike. That’s why finding higher ground is a good idea for those with the liquidity to afford the trip.
The elite like any form that is central management with dependent people.
Clinton served his masters well. These ‘ideas’ do not come from the people who are elected. These ideas come from the people who get them elected. The ones who need to be pleased so they can reach their social and career goals.
Either through conspiracy or conditioning the end result is what the so called elite want.
This is kind of “out there” – and I am not saying I necessarily subscribe to the view – but: I often wonder whether politics at the national level is not unlike Scientology’s method with regard to Hollywood celebrities. Meaning, they seek out “damaged goods” people who have some personal foible or defect that would be embarrassing if known publicly. They groom them and help their careers – with the individual knowing at all times that the organization has the information – the “dirt” – which could ruin them, if they fail to toe the line.
Clintigula: Mena, prostitutes, personal drug use;
Chimp: Drug use, DWI, sexual assault, AWOL/sketchy military service;
Barry: Drug use, gay dabbling/bisexuality;
Oh of course they have some way of owning all these people. It’s one of the lessons they learned in the 1960s.
Between JFK, RFK, and MLK they were getting dangerously close to waking too many people out of their slumber. There are only so many times they can get away with that sort of thing before the non-kooks start putting two and two together.
The last president that wasn’t completely controlled was probably Reagan. That’s why he had to take CIA Bush the elder as vice. They then put a bullet in Reagan and essentially ball was played sufficiently well from that point forward. It’s clear that Obama wasn’t fully trusted because they made him take Biden.
@ Eric and BrentP
Yes! I think you are both right. For what it is worth, I came to the same conclusion independently some years back. Regarding the bullet in Reagan, few people know that his shooter (and the shooter’s father)were family friends of the Bush clan.
Another example is recent Illinois governor Blagojevich. Who now remembers that he had a press conference the evening before his arrest? He announced that the state of Illinois was going pull its money from Bank of America if BOA did not start loaning again to small businesses in Illinois. The next morning he was marched off in handcuffs. Essentially every high level politician has a crime(s) in his history so that he can removed if he goes off script.
Every political office holder that is taken out with criminal prosecution, is taken out for a reason that has nothing to do with the crime which they are accused (and likely guilty) of.
They get away with anything until someone with more power wants them taken out. We can see it in the media with what happens when members of the mere public expose their crimes. Nothing.
Now if their crimes are exposed by the connected media or other people in government… well that’s different. It’s all so obviously staged.
Eric, Brent, Jason–
Right on, fellow tinfoil hatters!
Except, these aren’t conspiracy theories; they’re conspiracy facts.
I actually laugh at people who say I’m a conspiracy theorist, or dismiss conspiracies because they’re too hard to maintain.
Most of history IS conspiracy; it’s revealed afterward, but the driver was secret at the time.
JFK floated twenty billion in U.S. Notes backed by silver–separate from the Federal Reserve–to bring money power back to the people.
That is the hinge-pin of the globalists’ power; fiat debt-money. Any threat to that, and you’re fucked.
Look what they did to Bernard von Nothaus for floating silver and gold currency!
And if the politician is too clean when he enters office, they’ll muddy him up some so they have material. In fact, this is a classic tactic of secret societies; Skull and Bones, for instance, has initiates lie in a coffin masturbating while relating their entire sexual history to the congregants.
Bohemian Grove–bet there’s plenty of incriminating footage shot there. The real insiders don’t care; they’re in it so far they’ll never pull out. But it’s sure useful to have a bucket of nasty dirt on someone new.
I lived in Romania for 4.5 years and highly recommend it as an expatriation destination. 90% Agrarian, you can buy an entire village in the mountains for $1000. There’s the Carpathian mountains for skiing, the Black Sea coast for beaches. It’s a short train ride to everywhere: Budapest, Austria, Munich, Turkey.
Things have gotten expensive in the cities but in the country people farm their own fruits and vegetables, pork and other livestock. They drink well water – which is wonderful I might add, not like here. They make their own bread and schnapps and wine. You can barter, pay with dollars, euros or romanian lei.
They have all the bullshit laws the rest of the EU has but nobody pays any attention to them. Most cops don’t even carry guns. In the country there are no cops! And guess what? Everyone gets along just fine as a community. No robbing or mugging or murders. How is that possible?
It’s a simple culture but very friendly in the countryside. I mean you have to be a simple person to take advantage of it and appreciate it. But you are then you can live quite comfortably there on $2000/mo.
BTW: the girls are beautiful and the beaches are topless. Just sayin’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania
I spent a couple of days in Romania and even though I only got to see a few Potemkin Villages I have to say I’d like to go back undercover and find out what it’s really like to live there. I don’t speak Romanian, I have a little Czech and some Slovak. While I was in Romania I found out that neither worked as well as good old Engletski.
My urban experience was in Constanta and Bucharest, my opinion was (in 2009) that neither was completely ready for prime time western tourism. In Bucharest you have a car or you get on a bus as soon as you can. Pedestrians are either intentional targets (ala PacMan) or invisible. I never could figure out which. Everyone parks on the sidewalk, which complicates being a pedestrian even further by forcing everyone to walk in the road (thereby enhancing the gaming experience of the drivers). All in all, walking in Bucharest sucks (unlike “Walking in Memphis” which happens to be one of my favorite songs).
But the Romanian countryside is a place I’ve only partially explored and would like to see more of. Constanta is a poor beach town in desperate need of redevelopment and there are opportunities to make money there. I’d rather go for the farmland myself.
For Eric: Romania has a *booming* black market 🙂
Of course, myself being in IT, I discovered it’s a hub for internet scams galore. Regardless, find someplace far poorer with less money and stolen resources to screw with you. Then and only then will you be left alone. There are still the baltic states, Poland is on the rise, Cambodia, Laos, Central and South America, plenty of places you can still reasonably hide away in.
I would move, but this collectivist mood is really global. My sister moved to Finland, and let me tell ya they give the term socialist a whole new meaning. As I see it, I think the scientific dictatorship is coming and there is really nothing to stop it. The social mood is right or as they say the zitgeist, trust in state authority is at a all time high, heck even when someone has an epiphany it is usually couched in statistic ideas. I think in due time it will fail. Then we “may” learn something.
In the USA you are free to do as everyone else does. To actually exercise freedom means having the crowd turn on you.
In another forum yesterday I crossed the line out of the hassle free zone. Someone had started a thread of photos of someone’s car wrapped around a tree. Those posting are writing things of how stupid and careless the driver must have been. Then someone claiming to be driver shows up and posts. Among other things he invokes his military employment. And then it starts….
Now the posts are “thanking” him for his “service” and other nonsense. I have to say something. So I carefully create a post to state that this person claiming to be the driver added these irrelevancies to invoke an emotional response. I stated that he was playing upon the military worship so many in this culture practice. I closed with a BTW and a link to “War is a Racket”. Then the shit hit the fan. A mod quickly closed the thread.
Americans and perhaps people in general, emotionally invest themselves into believing things. When the illusion is in the least bit challenged they throw a fit. There must be conformity of thought. The illusion must be preserved. How dare someone speak of things differently. They take it personally too. Showing them that they are being manipulated or conned angers them. Not at those running the con, at the person who shows them they are being conned.
It is difficult for me to comprehend. I’ve changed what I’ve thought many times in my life because of new data. These people can’t. They emotionally cannot handle having drawn the wrong conclusion from being lied to, not having the information, and so on. So they double down on the illusion and go on the offensive.
It isn’t their underlying love of authoritarianism and collectivism that scares me so much as what is going to happen when their illusions break. When the fact they’ve been conned is right out in the open. What are they going to do? Are they going to double down and violently attack anyone who has some remaining wealth (those who didn’t get fully conned), attempting to desperately cling to their illusions? Will they go after the elected office holders, finally starting to hold the con-men responsible? They don’t even have the intellectual curiosity to see how things got here.
What happens when the illusions can’t be maintained? So long as they can have their illusions and their football games the masses will be relatively docile. When they lose it… there are pretty good odds they are going to go after the people who warned them. They will see the illusion busters as the ones who hurt them. Not the Barry Obamas and Mittens Romneys let alone those who pull the strings of Barry and Mittens.
I don’t even think a rural area is safe unless the population is illusion free. Self reliant is only one part of the equation.
@Brent:
Now THAT’S a terrifying, and highly likely, outcome.
Instead of a satisfying “Yep, I told you so. Glad you’ve come around, now let’s get to fixing it.” You’ll have to defend yourself against them.
It’s yet another reason I’m on the exit train again. I just can’t stand the hypocrisy, the lying, the diligent self-deception anymore. I can’t stand funding this system with my hard work, knowing my money is used to buy reprehensible weapons used reprehensibly…and soon, to be used against me. I’m paying for my own prison to be constructed around me.
Worse yet, the government is stealing from my children to build the prison they’ll live in.
And the mealy-mouthed fucking idiots with whom I’m forced to share air like it and think it will all be fine.
I wonder how close we are to having that magical 10%? When 10% of a population believes unshakably in an idea, it takes over the discourse very quickly.
Do ya’ll believe 10% of people are truly freedom-minded? I’d say it’s perhaps 1 or 2 percent.
1% is highly optimistic in my view.
The problem is the 1% (or whatever the %) will inevitably draw sides against those that are on the other side of their hot button issue (legalization, abortion, etc). It’s the same divide and conquer method used by the Republicrats. While everyone is talking about something stupid like gay marriage, the politicians are slowly turning up the heat on the kettle and confiscating our wealth and labor.
“When the illusion is in the least bit challenged they throw a fit”
That’s pretty much a symptom of delusion isn’t it?
“These people can’t. They emotionally cannot handle having drawn the wrong conclusion from being lied to, not having the information, and so on. So they double down on the illusion and go on the offensive. ”
They’re scared Brent. They’re very frightened and they really do know something bad is happening to them. They just don’t know what to do about it and they will fight anyone who tries to bring it to their attention. They’re in a state you and I know of as denial. After this comes anger. We need to be worried about anger.
Except they are the tools by which all the wrong is happening. Their denial, their refusal to change their behavior and attack anyone who does different is key to the whole scheme. If they just stop doing that all these plans fall apart.
They are being played but instead of having the guts to accept they’ve been played and refuse to be tricked again they just decide to be tricked again.
I think the thing is they don’t know how to resist. Realistically, telling the IRS guy to take a hike doesn’t work, you just end up in jail. Same withe the county zoning department.
Passive resistance won’t work, active resistance in the form of protests and demonstrations aren’t going to work either. The only way I can see is by using their own tools against them, and that means being smart and dedicated enough to actually understand the laws and the codes and take them to court when they overstep their bounds.
That ain’t cheap or easy, nor is it a task to be undertaken lightly.
The thing is, they don’t have to protest, they don’t have to face down the government guns. They just have to stop the social pressure.
It costs them nothing. It puts them in no peril. To not maintain illusions about ‘troops fighting for our freedom’ and other illusions by attacking people who challenge them. Just stop attacking people with different ideas. That’s all they have to do and the state falls away for its inability to maintain the illusion.
All the little enforcers of “public opinion” are required for the state. The state cannot control us all with guns and fear and threats and so on. It needs the illusions to rule.
@ BrentP “All the little enforcers of “public opinion” are required for the state. The state cannot control us all with guns and fear and threats and so on. It needs the illusions to rule.”
That is one of the most brilliant insights one can have. It may not be easy to implement the change, but the first step is to make people realize that the present government is not their friend, not their Big Father, not their protector. Officer Friendly quit walking the beat years ago, and they need to stop supporting the new guy. When some poor schmoe tells you how the latest governmental program is such a great idea, such a wonderful new law, just answer, “I am the world’s undisputed, greatest expert on what I want and on how to run my life. Why should I have to pay some bureaucrat I never met to decide what is best for me? Why? Just because they have guns?” That’s all you need to say, really. No need to tell them they are a schmoe, no need to show the graphs and charts. No need to tell them what to think. Just tell them that you know what is best for you and ask why someone else has the power to take your money and run your life. Most people are basically good if they know the truth. Just tell them the truth and let them figure out what to think. Unless they are a sociopath, they will come around
a good start would be a healthy disrespect for authority
great article on LRC
http://www.lewrockwell.com/stevo/stevo18.1.html
Just cross the line at FreeRepublic (yeah, as if) and you’ll get your throat slit faster than you can say “Lysand….”
Dear MoT,
A good one!
LOL!
The Freepers are mindless warfare statists.
Any resemblance they might bear to with genuine lovers of liberty is pure illusion.
Dear BrentP,
You wrote:
“It is difficult for me to comprehend. I’ve changed what I’ve thought many times in my life because of new data. These people can’t. They emotionally cannot handle having drawn the wrong conclusion from being lied to, not having the information, and so on. So they double down on the illusion and go on the offensive.”
I’ve said the same thing, almost verbatim, many times. One must be wiling to bring one’s beliefs in congruence with new evidence when it appears.
I was always free market oriented, beginning with my exposure to the French Physiocrats and the British Classical Liberals.
But I had to be persuaded that “checks and balances,” constitutionalism, and ultimately “limited government” per se were fallacies and would never work.
But given time, I eventually surrendered to the new evidence. And miracles of miracles, I survived. I’m still here, in better shape than I was laboring under the old delusion.
Alas, far too many people who are more intelligent by other measures, seem incapable of making such paradigm shifts. They “double down” on their existing prejudice.
It truly is difficult to comprehend. But it is precisely why the evolution of human social and political consciousness is such a painfully slow process.
* spit take! *
LOL_WUT?
When did you become the king of the U.S.A.? Since when is it “your land”? Squatter rights or some bull like that? No you lease the land off the government and can buy and sell leases to land but you can never, ever own land unless you dismantle the government.
Now there’s a thought. See you can propose intelligent ideas when you try.
That’s what I always tell people who say they have “too much to lose”. You aint got nuttin to lose partner! None of it belongs to you.
Where? For a while back in the late 90’s I thought it might be somewhere in the remoter regions of the US; you mention Idaho and Wyoming, two of my own top picks. So I moved my family to Wyoming, the NW part along the Idaho/Utah border.
Don’t bother. Cloverism is rampant in NW Wyoming, which is the only Blue area of the state. 98% of Teton County is owned in one way or another by the federal gubmint. Too make matters worse, Wyoming is a net debtor State, meaning it receives more in federal money than it pays. As a result, the people of Wyoming are very “patriotic” seeing as they’re pretty much all on the dole.
I mentioned this a few months ago I think but I’ll say it again; look for geographic regions with a strong black market. That’s where you’ll find people who are independent and mind their own business.
I’ve heard this from other quarters also. Sad.
The main upside, though, to those areas is that there are still vast areas that are lightly populated – and that by itself is a toxin to Clovers. Clovers and density go together like shit and stink. Once a population gets over a certain critical mass density, it’s all over. The more “away” you can manage to get, the better off you’ll be. Even in Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany… isolated farmers stood a better chance of surviving than anyone in a town or city….
I’d like to think population density makes a difference, I suppose it does in some small way but the fact is laws and regulations are made in towns and cities. They effect people in rural areas to the extent the State has enough money to pay for enforcement. I don’t know if your county has a big town in it, mine does and that’s where the Zoning department is. I live 30 miles from that town in the middle of nowhere and they still have no trouble telling me how I can and can’t use my land, the only saving grace being that only my neighbors might be able to see me and I have enough dirt on each of them to make turning me in about as attractive as starting a land war in Asia.
As an example of my point; California (the entire State) is set to outlaw Foie gras on the first of next month. Animal Rights activists decided it was cruel to force feed ducks before they were killed and eaten, so they managed to get a whole passel of chowderheads in the State Legislature to pass a bill banning the evil practice as well as the traffic of said duck parts in the open market.
So now you can legally buy dope on the streets of San Francisco, but you can’t buy goose liver. It’s like a really good Monty Python skit.
California is making a good start for once.
You a follower of.the veggie cult as well as a socialist? They do tend to go together.
Thank god they’re finally making a good start huh! They really screwed the pooch on all that environmentalist crap during the 70’s, then they did it again taxing the snot out of everyone during the 80’s and wrapped up by stealing everyone’s tax money to but houses in Florida during the 90’s.
I hope the get it right this time! Thanks for commenting Gil! It’s always a pleasure.
buy houses. Who buts a house?
longhorn sheep
O.K. Eric. Color me clueless but I have yet to come to grips with the term “clover”. That’s something you’ll need to define for me. I think I get it but edumacrate me if you will.
Dear MoT,
The first time I came across that term at Eric’s site I was baffled as well.
“What the hell is he talking about?” I asked myself.
But a quick search of the Urban Dictionary turned up this:
Clover:
1. A person that believes all laws are made for the common good, and that all laws have to be followed. Clovers generally believe that if someone does something that irritates them in some way that a law should be made to correct the problem – “There ought to be a law”. A Clover will always side with the police or the government no matter what egregious evil they have committed.
Ahhh!!! As the Japanese say, “Naruhodo”, I see! Thanks, Bevin. That’s exactly what I needed to know. Hey, BTW, have you haven’t written anything for LRC lately?
Dear MoT,
I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t contributed anything to LRC for several years.
I’ve been busy working for a think tank here on Taiwan.
But… I’m working up to it! I’m thinking about an article on how to implement Market Anarchism “through the back door,” as it were.
Bevin, until seeing this thread, I had no idea that you had written for LRC. After seeing that, I checked the archives there and found a number of great articles that you wrote. You are totally awesome.
Dear Mike,
Thanks so much for the generous praise. Deeply appreciated.
I have to tell you, I really don’t consider myself any great shakes. I’ve made a sorry mess of my life in many ways.
All I do is what the little kid did in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
I say, “Hey, wait a minute … am I the only one who sees something wrong here?”
I think if we all do that, if a critical mass of us makes our views more prevalent, society will transform, almost miraculously.
The key to collective political transformation is individual psychological transformation.
Clover is the resident gadfly. If you go to clovercam and select “What is a clover” it will lead you to some posts endemic of clover. Most of clover’s rantings are confined here. I think he was banned from this site.
Clover’s posts tended (still do on clovercam) to repeat the same mantra of “gov’t is always good”, “speed kills” and other sayings. This by itself would not be bad. When a dialogue is atempted clover would resort to ignoring others to repeat his mantra, call others names/insults, distort the truth among other things.
Clover is alive and well on clovercam.com! That dude just don’t stop. I think it’s a government account that has a primary author and sidekicks that chime in ever now and again when his posts see the light of day on this site. Eric won’t let his posts through here anymore.
Ah! Another take on it I see. Well, I’ve met that sort of goose-stepping robot plenty of times in the past.
Dom,
I am glad eric minimizes clover’s posts on this site. One site with clover’s drivel is enough.
Isolated areas have proven to be unsafe when things get dicey. Agierre (Ferfal) has blogged incessantly about how, post Argentina’s 2001 meltdown, isolated farms were THE most dangerous places to live.
Invaders have all the time to scope out weaknesses, show up in force, and hang around until their bloodlust, rapelust, etc is completely slaked.
The whole theme of getting off the grid sounds great, but in practice it apparently does not work.
My wife and I discussed moving to “The Redoubt”, perhaps joining Chuck Baldwin in the Flathead Valley of Montana.
Two things stop me; we’re atheist, and don’t feel like having the inevitable hounding by Chriiiiistians to convert.
And those people are a giant target. The FedGov will declare them dangerous, crazy, militias, terrists and they’ll be disappeared faster than Waco.
We’re looking at South America mostly.
The third thing that should stop you is the Flathead Valley has a really short growing season. You need to move quick during the summers and very slow during the winter.
I once was a missionary and today I simply live quietly and peaceably with Christians and Atheists alike. What irritates the shit out of me are both evangelizing and back stabbing anyone who believes in what they purportedly “believe”. For Christians I say “So what makes you so afraid and unloving that it bothers you so much” and to atheists I say, “If you truly are an atheist then all the bleating of so-called “believers” should fall on deaf ears like so much water off of a ducks back” Just ignore them and quit finding ways to be irritated. And if you think going to South America will be a panacea to religion then, like that good olde Judas Priest song “You’ve got another thing coming”.
I don’t wear my atheism like a chip on my shoulder; evangelizing itself isn’t that irritating. But the social ostracism is dangerous if you’re hunkering down to survive in a community.
I just don’t mention it. But among fervent believers, it’ll come out eventually–and to my detriment, I think.
Nor is S America a panacea, agreed; it’s just not one of the main issues as I suspect it will be among Chuck Baldwin’s flock.
Simon Black just bought 1100 acres in Chile; it might be a cheaper alternative to Casey’s Gulch in Argentina, and I believe it’s within reach of Santiago–meaning, you could work.
I here ya brother. I’ve met my fair share of both breed of cats now that I’m staring 50 in the face.
Chile sounds better. Though, to be honest, there are beautiful redoubts in Argentina or Uruguay as well. The question is which would be more “stable” come the inevitable instability.
I was never a listener to Chuck Baldwin but I did read somewhere, can’t remember where, when he threw up his hands and took off up north because he figured, rightly that is, that things were going to pot. Of course he used the usual “I was led” sort of verbage to explain his reasoning.
To me it’s only the sane man who recognizes what’s going on and makes plans, regardless of where he lives, for the coming tsunami.
My wife is Japanese and the kids are dual-nationals. Now the Japanese are the biggest lovers of “order” there are, much like the Germans, but truth be told I felt safer and less hassled there then I ever did here in the States! Go figure. I’ve shared with the spouse how we should ship her and the kids over there with friend and relatives should things get out of hand here. The last thing I ever want is Uncle Scam getting his grubby hands on my children for some god forsaken excuse of a war.
One thing about the Japanese – they’re not barbarous. The recent Tsunami thing was very revealing. No riots, no thugs running rampant. You know what would happen here if a similar event happened. At least, when “here” is any major American city with an urban proletariat.
So, I agree with you. There may be a lot of petty rules and crap to deal with in Japan, but it’s a physically safe place. The people seem to be much more decent, in a way that Americans used to be but aren’t anymore.
I’m agnostic – that is, I’m open to possibilities but do not accept it as proven that there is – or isn’t – a god. Or something beyond our ken. Maybe there is. If evidence comes along, I’ll certainly be open to it.
I also try to keep a low profile, but as anyone who has lived in the Bible Belt will tell you, they sniff you out. It is pretty common for people in my area who you’ve just met to ask you things such as “what church do you attend?” and even “do you know the Lord?” It can be awkward.
The thing that turns me off the most about many Republican “conservatives” is their religious militancy – which often finds expression in support for militancy in public policy, including rabid “support the troops” nationalism of the same sort you can see in those old video reels of the Sieg Heiling masses at the Zeppelin field.
I love Casey’s political deconstructions, but he’s selling swampland in Argentina according to what I’ve read elsewhere.
Uruguay apparently is among the best of S. America, although I’ve also read some good things about Brazil.
Frankly, leaving the US looks like a frying pan/fire problem to me.
What surprises me is that the Japanese still continue to hunt whales throughout the world. If native populations (like the Faroes) need to do this to survive, then I’m ok with it. It’s a bit perplexing (and moronic from a financial perspective) that Japan continues its whaling efforts.
“It’s entirely possible that nowhere in North America is a safe redoubt.” –Eric Peters (2012)
“Someday people will hate one another simply because there are so many.” –Philip Wylie (Finley Wren pub. 1936)
The Naked Ape will continue to increase in numbers until specimens inhabit every habitable bit of land on the planet.
I gag at the mere thought of a diet of Soylent Green.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
My 16 year-old daughter bought a used car a few months ago cause we found her a good deal. She can’t get her permit until October because in the People’s Republic of Maryland one has to be at least 16y 9motnhs old (plus do a lot of other nonsense) before one can have the State give them “permission” to drive. Anyway not wanting to tag and title and pay insurance on the car, we parked it at the top of our driveway. Sure enough after a month or so the Code Nazi’s for our town noticed it (or a neighbor ratted us out) and forced us to do tag it thing or move it. So it now sits in my dad’s garage until October. BTW-this is a really nice looking car, not some POS up on blocks…not sure why the city cares, other than that they wanted the tag, tax, title revenue to trickle down to them.
PS-did you see this article on Lew Rockwell on 10 signs that highways are becoming prisons? http://lewrockwell.com/rep3/highway-prison-grid.html
my favorite part: “in New Jersey you can now be fined up to $1000 for not having your pet properly restrained while you are out driving”
Rob Who Teaches/Educates his own damn kids using his own damn money.
Slave on slave action is extremely demoralizing. Hey Chicken Rob, one of yer leg irons be falled off, I’s gonna to call me over MassaGuvvanna O’Malley and lets him know you’re freer than me.
I’s can’t stand the break in symmetry in your lockstep, which comes from having an unshackled leg.
Eau Da Doo Dah Days of Infamy.
Americans vote hoping to gain some enviable advantage. Only a pitiful few care about freedom and justice per se.
To paraphrase Mencken: Voting in a democracy is just an auction of other people’s property.
That is one of the reasons I have come to a conclusion that today, in the current political environment it is immoral for almost everyone I know and see to vote. The majority of people who vote are doing so in the hopes it allows them to claim other peoples’ property or not interrupt the current entitlements. They are giving their approval to wide-scale theft. They are giving a small part of themselves(compliance/consent) so as to empower someone to impose aggressive force on their neighbor(s). It has devolved into a form of prostitution and larsony. (I personally have no problem with others practicing prostitution but would not choose to practice it myself even if there was someone willing to pay which is highly unlikely)
If there was an election and no one showed up, would anyone be elected? I personally adhere to Celente’s theory, if only 40% or less vote, they can’t claim they have the consent of the majority. It would require them to be more overt and would open people’s eyes thru experience.
If voting mattered, they would make it illegal. (forget who said that)
WP. The quote you’re reaching for, and one of my all time favorites, is:
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” – Emma Goldman, leftist anarchist.
To think it took an honest leftist to state the obvious.
Willy P,
Is this the F-111F, Willy P?
-flek
@ MoT
How can there be such a thing as a “left anarchist?
I agree it’s an awkward term.
Like the great novelist Robert Heinlein, I prefer the either-or of: Authoritarian or not authoritarian. It’s pretty simple. And a person either is – or isn’t.
Another Heinlein quote, “Democracy can’t work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that’s all there is — so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.
“But a democratic form of government is okay, as long as it doesn’t work. Any social organization does well enough if it isn’t rigid. The framework doesn’t matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing — except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros.”
flek,
not the person you are thinking of, I don’t know what F-111F is in reference to.
I think he’s referring to the General Dynamics F-111 military aircraft – aka the aardvark.
If you have not seen this video by Stefan Molyneux http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igbBItLemsM you really ought to watch.
The hard fact is, there are not enough people who love freedom. The hard fact is, there would be more who love freedom, but we have been trained and brain washed to think that patriotism means not criticizing our government. We can’t stop paying excessive taxes, stop obeying stupid laws, stop living like cattle unless there are more of us to stand up. Just like racism began to fade when individuals refused to smile and laugh at racist jokes and stopped being polite to bigots, we now need to stop showing approval of government. When someone tells us about some new program or law, tell them that you will obey because you don’t want goons to come with guns to kill you. When someone tells you that electing a conservative Republican or a liberal Democrat will solve things, ask them why that will work now when it hasn’t worked for a hundred years. Tell them you will support the government when the government supports your freedom. Tell them you obey “the law” for the same reason that cattle do what the rancher wishes.
To paraphrase Gustav le Bon, “Every revolution starts with the death of a belief.” We won’t get our freedom back until more people realize and admit that their government is a gang of sociopaths.
Stefan is excellent – I’ve seen this video already. But watching it again never hurts!
@ chris “democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work.”
Democracy is to politics what communism is to economics.
I have deep respect for Heinlein. Filed away at home is a photo of a much younger me standing next to him.
Heinlein is one of my favorite writers – and philosophers. His books makes excellent reading – as well as thought-making. The best writers entertain and educate at the same time; they get you to think about things you’ve never thought about – or think about things you have thought about differently.
i loved that clip of stefan, thanks for posting it.
another example of why this is all a joke, they couldn’t even repeal the loan program/subsidy that funded Solyndra. pathetic…
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/republicans-join-democrats-to-save-corporate-welfare-again/
The state wanting yet more of your money is the reason – but even more execrable is that, probably, one of your neighbors (as you say) ratted you out. These petty busybodies – the same people who in Nazi Germany made excellent “block fuhrers” – need a wood shampoo.
Unfortunately, honest people can no longer legally defend themselves or their property against such cretins.
They’d have us be a master race of hightech cannibals. Each of us baking the other into giant loaves of collective daily bread.
They are the bakers. They are the purveyors of better living through sustainable cannibalism of a thousand tiny unsatisfying bites.
They are the ovenkeepers. Keeping the oven at just the right temperature to let their lethal leaven rise within us.
Their policy is one child one easy bake oven. Every citizen is expected to drive his own train to the concentration bakeries and cheerfully jump right in every day, happy to be a crumb of the soylent hamburger helper, feeling great to make you make a great meal.
Mammy’s little baby’s loves shortenin, shortenin.
Wait, that makes no sense; I must be insane. A persona non sanus and non grata. A textbook definition in the flesh of the pre-newspeak definition of insanity. Back when it meant violating the societal norms, and one unable to conform to the every demand of their assigned local society.
Remember what Winston Smith wrote in his diary:
Sanity is not statistical.
Remember, those who love freedom are the odd ones. Liberty is an aberration of thought in the human mind. You cant’ convince people of it’s value because they want nothing to do with it. Collectivism is part of the human genome. Only us weirdos see why it is a problem. Likely, mankind was engineered to be this way on the genetic level.
“Likely, mankind was engineered to be this way on the genetic level.”
So what accounts for people like us? Seriously – the question fascinates me. Why it is that some of us can see it; that it’s so obvious – and so obviously wrong. Yet most people – including lots of “smart” people – cannot.
Thoughts?
Statisical anomaly like in the matrix? Mutation? Broken programming (it didn’t take hold)? Natural variation? Wish I knew, because if it is genetic, it means we either have to leave or take over. The crowd will never let us be, even if we made our own country, we would be attacked.
Some might contend that we are more evolved, but that implies all sorts of unproven or untestable things.
I think the topic is one we should put out for discussion and see what falls out.
For openers, there’s the striking absence of the urge to control; the desire to dominate. This is of course a prerequisite to “live – and let live.”
It’s both a rationally arrived at thing (e.g., I don’t want to tell you what do – and am cool with what you do, so long as what you do isn’t causing me some harm) as well as an emotional starting point. Guys like us could never be World Controllers because the idea is just repellent, foreign.
A question I wish I knew the answer to. I believe there is a genetic component that predisposes people to one way or another. But it is just a predisposition and it is a continuum, not a binary switch.
The programming doesn’t work on everyone either. Also not binary. Degrees of damage.
And again, I repeat that those who want freedom are closer to the elite when it comes to seeing how things work and being socially immune than the masses. For whatever reason we simply don’t care to dominate anyone.
However, the elite may be a defective form of clover. You can see the inherent dishonesty, nastiness, manipulative behavior, and so on with many clovers. It’s about half their distribution. Now take people on that half of the distribution and wake them up how the game works. What are they going to do? Probably something like the elite.
Maybe the whole thing is a distribution. the center of the distribution is asleep and easily conditioned and manipulated. The outliers are awake. The right side is control freakish, manipulative, sociopathic, etc. The left side live and let live, caring, etc.
“Most people want security in this world, not liberty.”
— H. L. Mencken
I think the key lies here.
In “The Time Machine” SF novelist H.G. Wells pictured humanity evolving into two subspecies, the Eloi and the Morlocks.
The Eloi are the Sheeple. The Morlocks are the Clovers/ruling nomenklatura.
Market anarchists are the protagonist, who learns of the stomach-turning Eloi/Morlocks ecosystem/food chain, but who is powerless to shake the Eloi out of their stupor and persuade them to rebel.
“Likely, mankind was engineered to be this way on the genetic level.”
I don’t think we were engineered to be collectivist. We were engineered to be lazy, it’s the path of least resistance. I think collectivism is just a byproduct of laziness.
Good one, Eric.
Also From Chapter 9:
The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
The essential act of war (on drugs, obesity, smoking, sexism, racism, inequality, deadbeat dads, etc) is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible. But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded.
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In our own day, countries are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.
If human equality is to be forever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
Once when he happened in some connexion to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, ‘just to keep people frightened’. This was an idea that had literally never occurred to him.
And From Chapter 5:
In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
It seems not a terrible lot has changed since the 1400s. Leonardo da Vinci then stated, “There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”
Memes.
Take a ‘clover’ and a libertarian, examine their brains closely. No difference, same machine.
It’s in the programming.
To change a clover they need either a sudden shock, such as being on the receiving end of the state’s aggression, or literally de-programming.
Liberty-minded folks have, at some point, become immune to the various memes or ‘mind virus’ diseases out there. We’re not “better” than them; we’re just free of the disease.
AC
Eric,
This quote from an article by Doug Casey may give shed some light on the issue of a genetic predisposition to feel the need to control (or not) others.
“I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.”
Rusty
Hi Rusty,
I think there is something to that – a lot to that, actually.
While I am not a biological determinist, because I do believe in free will and that people can choose, I also believe there is an inherited component to intelligence and temperament. And that temperament, to a great extent, predisposes one to either Clover or non-Clover status.
The intellect just finishes the job.
Had the same problem. There isn’t even a law against it where I live. The idiots just say it’s illegal. When I pointed out what the tickets pointed to in the law did not apply the admin court “judge” became angry stating “he knew the law”.
Usually you can avoid the problem of tagging the car if it’s in the garage and the door is closed. I ran into this problem when I was on my old neighborhood’s HOA. A homeowner had inherited a car and, due to some financial problems, hadn’t tagged it.
The State police would cite and tow the car if it was in the public road and our HOA covenants did not allow for untagged cars in private driveways. (This was an attempt to prevent the “car on blocks” issue) No one really cared about this particular guy’s car but I had to go over there and tell him the fix the problem mainly because we had one house in our neighborhood that WAS a problem, with multiple eyesore cars on blocks and in various state of repair, and non payment of fees, etc. That homeowner objected to his allegedly unfair treatment by accusing the HOA of not dealing with the first guy I mentioned.
Solution: I told the non bum homeowner to park the car in his garage and to put a piece of cardboard behind the car so it obscured the license plate (or lack thereof). He got to keep the car from being towed and didn’t have to tag his car.
Eyesores are none of your business. Your subjective value judgments are irrelevant to him as a property owner. You don’t get to control anothers property because *you* don’t like the way it looks. And don’t give me that “property value” shit either. Value is subjective and cannot be measured. It also cannot be owned. It, like your reputation, is an opinion, subject to change does not grant you authority over others.
Well said! I hear that all the time from those that advocate HOA’s. If I want to paint my house pink with blue dots then I have every right to do so and for you to use force to try and prevent me is wrong.
Buying a house is a risk, and if my pink and blue dots house lowers the value of your house to others then that’s part of the risk you bore when you bought the house.
What is someone comes along who just absolutely loves my pink and blue dots house so the value of your house increases?
People, supposed grown adults, still do not know such a simple social conecpt as the difference between right and wrong. What you have a right to do and what you don’t. It’s a society of children.
We got the hell out of Northern Va. to get away from HOAs.
I’ve decided to let the grass in front our house just grow and revert to nature. More privacy – and less work. If we were still up in NoVa, I’d have been fined by now. Then had my house seized for not paying the fine. Then shot for trying to defend my house against the thugs trying to seize it.
Just want we have here in the Maryland suburbs. not a HOA but a city with very strict codes/covenants. They will fine you out the ass for violations and then but a lien on your house
The only reason what color the neighbor’s house is hurts ‘value’ along with probably 90% of the rest of the nonsense is because so many people value conformity.
Even the non-conformists value conformity.
Anywhere a person tries to be free he ends up alone.
Damon, false analogy. In the case of a cell phone plan, the company owns the network, which you pay for access to, regardless of the phone. The HOA does not own the house or the neighborhood so it cannot rightfully make the buyer join. Same is true of the people in the neighborhood.
It also makes no sense to say if you want to own this, you can’t do X with it after it is *yours*.
I’m in general agreement, however, HOAs usually encompass fees for “common areas.” For example, in our old neighborhood, there was a “community center” with a pool and so on that your HOA dues paid for. Also, things like trash pick-up and (in some cases) extra street lighting. So, there are pros and cons.
The point being: You aren’t forced to enter into the contract that binds you. If you don’t want to be bound by the terms and conditions of the contract, if you don’t want to pay for a community center you don’t use, etc. – then don’t sign the contract.
I hate HOAs, which is one of the reasons we moved to an area where there are no HOAs. But so long as they aren’t mandatory – meaning, you don’t have to buy a a house in a neighborhood that has an HOA – then I don’t see it as an abridgement of liberty. Annoying, sure. But people freely sign up for it… and can just as freely elect not to.
Actually, legally, yes the HOA does have a right. The homeowner agreed and signed the contract when they bought the house. Don’t like it? Buy a house with no HOA. In the Mid Atlantic region, good luck! Oh, you can rail all you want, but frankly, it’s BS. I went through the same thoughts before I put an offer on the house in this HOA. At the time, I took the risk that the HOA wasn’t a bunch of whiney bastards, and I ended up OK. They were very accommodating, as I think I explained. It’s not like we were out writing covenant violations up and levying fines—that happens in Mont. County MD 🙂
Hell I’m in PG cnty MD and we have the same problems, and we are ghetto compared to the rich folks in Montgomery Cnty
The concept of an HOA is a violation of a buyer’s rights. If person A has a piece of land for sale, and person B wants to buy it, and they agree on a price, what say does a group of other people in the neighborhood have to say about it?
I’ve asked this many times: why do people feel obligated to sign onto an HOA? What legal obligation does the buyer have? What if the buyer just said: piss off. Is the seller under obligation to only sell it to a buyer willing to join?
I’m sure the answer is just more legal bullshit rather than what the buyer and seller want.
There’s no such thing as a legal right. When it’s contractual it’s a privilege agreed upon by those involved in the contract.
In Northern Va., it is almost impossible to buy a house that isn’t part of an HOA – and the HOA covenant (legally binding) is part of the purchase contract. Buy it – and you buy the HOA.
That’s why we left!
Which amounts to coercion as they are forcing you to sign. How can you be forced to sign something? Even if the previous owner agreed, this cannot transfer obligation to you.The HOA does not own the house.
to spiritsplice
It’s not coercion. It’s the same as buying a cell phone bundled with a data plan. This particular phone is offered with this plan. It’s not sold separately. You want the phone, you also have to buy the plan. You are free not to buy the phone and associated plan but they are only sold together. That is your choice. I’d think the point would be clear.
Any yeah, pretty much anywhere 100 miles from DC you’re going to be in a HOA, unless you convert raw ag land. Personally, I’d rather not have an HOA, but I also don’t want to commute to my job from rural west virgina (like 3+ hrs). Life’s about choices. Deal
@Damon
re: cell phone & data plans. I have been able to avoid the mandatory data plan. I bought the cellphone I want unlocked from the net. I signed up for the service I wanted. I made sure that data network mode was deactivated on my phone. now I have phone I want w/out data plan I don’t want.
I feel the answer to avoid controlling people is to be nomadic and own very little in terms of property.
I’ve thought about that – and it does have some upsides. Sell everything, buy an RV – and live wherever. The downsides are they’ll still force you to “register” the RV somewhere and that means maintaining a legal state residence, even if it’s only a mail drop. Earn any income beyond subsistence and it’ll be taxed, too. It’s only workable, as I see it, if you have enough money put away such that you can buy most of the things you’ll need, indefinitely, without having to earn much “new” income.
But, your general point is well-taken: The less you have, the less they can take.
Why own really when its all fascism? Just go from town to town always being the perpetual visitor, just as soon as people get too comfortable and show their colllective dick traits then move again. All cities are pissholes and most rural areas are little sess ponds. There are no safe havens even in Montana and Wyoming. Although Montana may be the lesser of all anals of travel its still polluted with statist turds. The liberated will always be despised, figure a way to avoid saying yes sir and they will hate you for it. Is it so wrong to not even care what tribe you belong to? I used to think so but now I know that the tribe doesn’t give a crap about you, unless you are a master creep or like being the foot stool otherwise forget about it. You are supposed to grind at a useless job, hate your job, pay huge taxes, and lovey the community. So you’ll have to move to protect the only innocent you may ever know. Soon as you stop moving you become a target of the parasites and game players always. I’m not sure why anyone lives in cities, you always got someone who wants to turn you in to get a brownie badge and another that wants to be a meth addict and build a stinking explosive chemical lab next to you. Answer, keep moving often and pretend to be a ghost. If they can see you then you aren’t moving enough. Oh and I really like reading the articles Eric posts, keep up the good work as it may seem most people are blind but even people like myself can wake up at some point with enough shit flung in their faces. Also, maybe somebody can name a place that isn’t too cold or too hot, that doesn’t have too many taxes, or too many criminals (badge or otherwise) and I think we should converge on this place and name it our capital. Heck I’d be open to living there for a few months before it begain to stink like settled turds.
Thanks, Rod –
Good to have you with us!
I have a good friend who is president of his HOA. He’s also a libertarian and an anarchocapitalist. He defends the HOA as a noncoercive institution. HOA’s are popular because they tend to keep out the riff-raff, and anyone who says that’s not important for property values simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
@ Rob Carlson
Converging on a place is kind of the idea of the free state project: http://freestateproject.org/
That has been going on since 2003. No idea how it is working out.
The simple and concise statement of the less you own the less they can take is very to the point Eric. Invisible wealth is much better than visible for that matter. However, I know its a cop out to say everyone can live from a suitcase as we do need land owner mechants like farmers to grow our food. I was thinking that maybe being somewhere between a rugged individualist and capitalist anarchist is my niche. Seems to me that the problem with land ownership has more to do with titles. Used to be that a person could squat on unused land and claim it without having a title (funny piece of paper). Once you let a county or government create a piece of paper of ownership funny things happen like they can loan against it, tax it, and take it away with a beuracratic pen. Maybe its unrealistic but sailing on the ocean I came to realize that what makes me have the right to be on that particular volume of water was that I was there first and using it. Same with the air I breath I suppose, although I can see they want to give title ownership to the air we breath as well to the lords of government and then probably the sea as well. Its a rathole as property may be used as capital and therefore respect to rights should be based on actual claim of usage by the individual. Not even government should be able to claim the land by title, especially government shouldn’t. Individualist believe land is not really owned since it pre-dates us and probably just be rented to us by a higher power. However, the capitalist anarchist in me believe that what lacks in land ownership by government title is made up for in property rights of the first and continual user of that parcel as long as they can occupy it (Evans). It never suprises me how if a person goes back in rugged land that most of it is unused, unoccupied desolate. Like the ocean most land is vacant and its irony that most go in debt for 30 years to pay off a mortgage on a house with a 1/4 acre along with the pinned down taxes along the way. I realize its a world that can never exist where a person could have absolute property land rights without property ownership by title. But this was the world that existed when it was first settled, and it worked fairly well. But from a realistic standpoint this is probably why the whole thing stinks. Like patents when you ask a government to protect property by paper usually its is instead the opposite and enslavement to the very person meant to protect.
Eyesores become our business when we voluntarily join a homeowner’s association. The HOA can set standards that HOA members agree to abide by. If the standards become onerous at some point, the HOA can change them.
In fact, the HOA is one model community for the stateless society. It’s governed by contract law, not state coercion. Enforcement of the contract is mainly through peer pressure and ostracism. In a pinch, free market arbitration agencies or private judges can be contracted.
I disagree.
HOAs, condominium associations et al are honey to busybody Clovers.
First and foremost, most states, have enacted statutes which give a great deal of power to HOAs and condo associations which they would not otherwise have.
In a truly free, anarcho-free enterprise-individualist society, the individual homeowner gets to decide if he or she wants to install an air conditioner, paint his or her house pink and purple or adorn his or her house with the most outrageous and tawdry X-mas decorations ever conceived in Christendom.
You have heard of inalienable rights? If a right is inalienable, it can not be contracted away as the inalienability of the right trumps a contractual waiver of the same.
Part of being a grown up and being self actualized is the acceptance that “contract” is not the answer to everything. Too fucking bad if A signed all the HOA paperwork which purported to grant the HOA the power to determine what type of X-mas decorations would be permitted.
We need to accept and embrace the fact that enforcement of contract is not the apogee of a peaceful and properous life. Nor is enforcement of contract the sin qua non of a peaceful and prosperous society.
Having been president of a condo board I can say Glen is correct. It’s about contract law. Although the limits of the contract and the powers are set by state law. Maybe that’s where experiences vary so much.
Yes, clovers try to use these associations to their end, they also use the state. clovers will use anything to control each other. I told them repeatedly there was nothing the board could do on numerous attempts at cloverism and if they had a dispute with their neighbor they had to at least try to work it out between themselves first.
As board president I ran things in a very hands off fashion. Always under budget, never raised assessments. My basic method being don’t break stuff, don’t annoy your neighbors, don’t make a mess, if you make a mess clean it up. In the end the clovers preferred their pocketbook over their cloverism.
Simply put, associations cannot use violence. The contract, the bylaws & rules & regs, spell out the penalties, etc and so on.
Now the only point where violence may end up being used is when the state gets involved for some reason, which is unavoidable everywhere in some way.
I know there are bad associations out there. But it is rather easy to rectify. You can actually affect change on that local of a level. It’s not like trying to get rid of a senator. People are so often so apathetic when it comes to the board just stepping forward can get a person on the board.
i do have a 2 car garage but i converted 2/3rds of it to a classroom for my wife to use. I did park it backed-in and at the top of the driveway and normally another car blocked the few of it. we live at the end of a quiet court with very little traffic. that tells me it was probably a neighbor snitching. Most of my neighbors are pretty cool and friends of ours, but all it takes is one dickhead to ruin it
Diamonds are found only in the darkest bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the deepest depths of thought. It seems that after descending into these depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, I have at last found a trove of these diamonds, a vein of these truths, and that as I hold one tight in my hand; I revel in how much it blinds me to look at it.
Where can anyone be safe from the chastisement that is coming?
ANSWER: NOWHERE.
In a series of apparitions consistent with Biblical revelation, Our Blessed Mother warned us that, because of the wickedness of men, a chastisement is coming. At La Salette (1846) and Fatima (1917) she begged that mankind return to God so that the chastisement could be averted. At Akita (1973) Our Blessed Mother warned us that it was too late to avert the chastisement, that “the greater part of humanity” both good and bad would be killed by “fire from above,” and—most chilling of all—that “the survivors will envy the dead.” She warned that there will be NO PLACE TO HIDE.
What then does one do?
Certainly prepare. Prepare for this life and the next. Be baptized, believe, and behave as God commands, then, whether you survive or not, you will have eternal life.
“Be not deceived, God is not mocked.” Galatians 6:7
John Q. YOU have effectively summarized the entire mess in which humanity finds itself. THE answers do NOT lay in the pseudo-wisdom of man, but in THE MOST HIGH GOD ~ creator of mankind. I have often wondered if the appearances of Mother Mary were real or some strange satanic counterfeit, however, scripture seems to answer this in a quote from Jesus in Mark 3:25-26 (KJV):
“And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.”
I believe that if God does not judge this world, then He will have to apologize to Sodom & Gomorrah. Will a Holy God permit more war, aggression, oppression, enslavement and murder of His children? Will He continue to permit transhumanism, eugenics, abortion, and cloning?
When Jesus was asked by his disciples when the world would end He replied in Matthew 24:
And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, tell us, when shall these things be? What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
Jesus answered and said unto them, “Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, whoso readeth, let him understand…”
These comments trouble me. Sorry, a little off topic, but what I’ve to say does apply to the preseding comments. I’ve been doing some critical thinking as of late. If there is a god, then I really he/she cares about the freedoms of men. Take a look at the Bible for instance. (Yes, I know that the authority of man may have made it’s mark here.). In Judges, the Hebrews wanted a king. To paraphrase, God basically told them, “Fine, but once you pick a king, you can’t go back.” So, after some issues, they got Saul, a tyrant, to be followed by David, a war-mongering tyrant, then Solomon, a tyrant who taxed them mercilessly to build a temple that was prophesied. Case in point, in the Bible it states that David was a man after God’s own heart, and that Solomon was a very wise leader, etc. God seems to love tyrants, so does he really care so much for common men? Or, more importantly, the freedom of the common man?
– Sorry, meant to say that if there is a god, then I doubt that he/she cares about the freedom of men.
Mckaila quotes the following: “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.”
Simply substitute God for Satan and that is the story of god creating the angels. His house divided and he threw out Lucifer and crew. Thus his house is divided and by biblical statement can not stand. So that being true, all promised by god is null and void. Assuming you believe that stuff in the book in first place.
Some questions for John Q. Public
Re: Jesus Junkies and Junky Jesus…
Has any force in history done more to vitiate free thought than has religion?
Does religion, what with its preferred pieties, its conditional compassions, and its imbecile eschatology — traffic in the willing suspension of disbelief and pander to the wish for Kings?
Is the universe an emotion? Or an emulsion?
Is “faith” an worthy stand-in for confidence?
Does religion represent a warped manifestation of our desire for community?
Does religion make mice of men?
Here’s a little thought experiment for all the God-fearers out there: Suppose that an antidote for the ravages of aging were tomorrow discovered, and on the next day dispensed. How many Jesus junkies would visit their friendly, local, grovel-hovel come the following Sunday? Sunday a month later? And Sunday a year after that?
We will never leave the Dark Ages until we purge from the homepages of our psyches, the covalent agrarian superstitions of religion, and its terrestrial alter-ego, patriotism.
It’s time for us to grow up!
Cheers, JQP
And the morbid fear of death John. You almost said it…
Eric you are so right on,I live in the Alleghanies in central western VA and the clovers are taking over.They will not leave you alone-Kevin
Yup –
And some of the worst offenders are “Christian conservative” Republicans. As bad as left-liberal Clovers are, at least they’re true to their stated beliefs. The flag and fambly crowd – hates welfare but loves warfare – drives me nuts.
Eric, If you haven’t seen the recent flick “god bless america,” here’s a link — http://www.putlocker.com/file/96F74BE8C3BAF82B
You’ll like it!
Cheers, JQP
Eric while you may have a different kind of folk in your neck of the woods, I think probably you don’t. While I lived in Shenandoah County from 2000-2004, I spoke in front of more than one county Board meeting (or public hearings) on school issues in the past, and asked questions similar to your hypotheticals above about school funding. I didn’t get a beating.
If you concede without speaking then the clovers have already won.
Positive points:
1) Sometimes local newspapers love a controversy, too — so hand them copies of your remarks. You might see more print than the clovers do.
2) You might scare up some people who agree with you.
If you escape with your skin, yes, you may find yourself with some new enemies. But vanishingly few people will mess with you over your opinions. The most reaction you’ll get is some people will just turn their backs on you.
Of course the exceptions might be cops (like that guy in ?Oregon? who can’t go near his house because the cops accused him of stalking them).
But if you live your life in fear of those exceptions, then the clovers have won.
Power corrupts.
Lord Acton was right.
It is not that people don’t support libertarian ideas per se. Libertarianism is rational, after all.
Strong majorities of people give responses to questions that are firmly libertarian in concept – if not execution – in the majority of cases.
The problem is that people are not RELIABLY libertarian. They are libertarian when they understand it is THEIR liberties under threat.
And they are by-and-large anti-libertarian when they see a juicy and seductive morsel of power or loot coming their way.
As many note, whole organizations have been created by the unprincipled specifically to cause confusions in most people’s minds about when it is THEIR livelihood under threat, and when anothers’.
Even in the best of cases, no matter how intelligent, no matter how otherwise principled they seem, when the object of the anti-libertarian policy is of personal benefit to them they suddenly become morally blind.
It is as though the life-reinforcing machinery of their minds pivots towards destruction and rent-seeking and hides the nature of their actions from their consciousness.
They become blind and will not see.
The horrible, but supported by evidence, conclusion to make is that WE ARE ALL SUSCEPTIBLE TO THIS TO VARYING DEGREES.
Ironically, this is why no human government cannot be trusted… because it allows some to pivot the productivity of their minds towards rent-seeking and creates a criminal gang in the process. At the same time, IRONICALLY, it is also why some level of government IS necessary – because its’ lack makes organized looting and organized physical domination the easiest avenue to some individuals’ self betterment…thus turning the machinery of their minds from production to destruction.
No one has ever been able to solve this rubik’s cube.
The closest method in history has been to live self-reliantly on the frontier, where temptations are few and vulnerabilities to others are few.
Where oh where is the new frontier????
Give me the technology for the needed energy and I’ll happily go to Antarctica.
That technology exists my friend and it is not as complicated as you might think.
Been a lurker for awhile. I had to respond to this.
I think that almost all people are libertarian. It is the very existence of a government that allows people to endorse unlibertarian ideas.
Example: Most people would never point a gun at you and tell you to pay a speeding ticket (as 1 example) or else, at the same time most people will say that if speeding laws aren’t enforced (never by them personally) society would deteriorate into “anarchy.”
The state is the vehicle which allows people to support actions that they themselves would never enforce.
My thoughts…
Dear Matthew,
I would quibble over the wording: “almost all people are libertarian.”
But “The state is the vehicle which allows people to support actions that they themselves would never enforce?” Definitely.
And the existence of the Leviathan State is the very reason I am so leery of the proposition “leaving others alone is not enough.”
It is simply too easy given the existence of the State, to subtly transition from that to “We must be compelled to do more than merely leave others alone.”
@Bevin
I guess what I meant by “almost all people are libertarian” was that in my personal experience, basically everyone I’ve ever met follows the NAP in their daily life. Of course most don’t know or care what the NAP is, but they live their lives by it nonetheless.
You said
And the existence of the Leviathan State is the very reason I am so leery of the proposition “leaving others alone is not enough.”
It is simply too easy given the existence of the State, to subtly transition from that to “We must be compelled to do more than merely leave others alone.”
Agreed. The existence of the leviathan state is the very reason I am so leery of 99% of all propositions.
Matthew has a point. Ever notice how the party out of power, be it team D or team R, they always pump up their pro-liberty rhetoric. Team D pushes for things like privacy and lessening government power in social matters. Team R pushes for economic freedom. Of course neither does anything of the kind when they reach office but they spend a lot of time on it to get there.
The trouble is the people they pander to are selectively libertarian. They are not ideologically consistent. But they would never think of doing their bad side without the state. They need the state to cleanse it. Remove the state and they would have to go back to convincing people to voluntarily fund their ideas and they likely would. The state does indeed present them with an easier way to get from A to B and being human they take the route of least effort.
Dear El Gordo,
You wrote:
“At the same time, IRONICALLY, it is also why some level of government IS necessary – because its’ lack makes organized looting and organized physical domination the easiest avenue to some individuals’ self betterment…thus turning the machinery of their minds from production to destruction.”
I agree that some sort of order is necessary. But should we call it “government” or think of it as “government?” I’m not so sure.
We need a term for the natural order that will replace the Leviathan State when a critical mass of humanity finally takes the red pill.