EPautos’ resident authoritarian apologist – Clover – let fly with the following intellectually (and grammatically) palsied, ethically crippled commentary in defense of dragnet-style, random and arbitrary “safety” checkpoints:
Eric asking you to stop and talk for 10 seconds is in no way injurious to you. If you believe it is violence to be stopped then I guess you have never stopped at a stop sign or stop light. Eric 100s of thousands of drivers have been stopped by police with no violence placed on them.
Italics added.
It kind of speaks for itself. doesn’t it? In the same way that an outhouse does. But, I decided to attempt a reasoned riposte, as follows:
Clover claims that random “safety” and “sobriety” stops do not involve violence. That the person stopped is merely being “asked” a few questions and this is “in no way injurious” to them.
It seems Clover is unfamiliar with the concept of duress. And cannot tell the difference between a request (which one may refuse) and an order (which must be obeyed – or else).
What takes place at a checkpoint, Clover?
One is compelled – by the threat of violent repercussions for noncompliance – to stop one’s vehicle, to roll down the window and submit to an interrogation and a visual search of the contents of one’s vehicle. One is not free to decline the interview. Indeed, if one does not “cooperate” – that is, if one does not submit and obey – not only will violence be used (you will be physically removed from your vehicle, then subjected to a physical search, including quite possibly a forcible blood draw or “body cavity” search). In many states, mere refusal to cooperate is sufficient to warrant punishment as if one had actually been driving “drunk” and convicted of this offense – even if it is later proved that one had “0.0” percent alcohol in their system. Refusal to submit to interrogation/various “tests” empowers cops to arrest and cage – and courts to convict. One’s “privilege” to drive may be rescinded. Etc. 
I queried Clover:
Do you deny that, minimally, the threat of violence is involved in all the above? Do you seriously claim that motorists are free to not stop? To decide not to roll down their window? To elect not to answer the questions spoken by armed men? What will happen to any person, Clover, who peacefully attempts to go about their business or turns around and attempts to drive away?
Regardless of their state of intoxication.
Clover knows exactly what will happen – but via some bizarre process of doublethink does not consider this violence. His position is that so long as one obeys, there will be no violence! And thus, the interaction is not violent.
Government schooling works miracles.
It is telling that Clover – like all authoritarians – feels the need to couch the violence he advocates and defends in euphemisms. One is merely asked questions. In the same way that one merely contributes to Social Security – and is a customer of the IRS and DMV. Do as ordered – and there will be no need for violence. “Millions of people” (Clover’s trademark justification) have not had violence done them … because they did as ordered!
I’ve asked Clover to at least be honest and admit that what he advocates involves threatening people with force in order to compel their obedience and submission for the sake of some “greater good” (as defined by Clover).
But since I don’t back up my questions with threats, Clover is free to decline to answer them.
And so, has elected not to.
Instead, he responds with more of the same evasions, euphemisms and non sequiturs:
Again Eric I have been stopped and no violence was placed on me. Dom (EPautos tech guru) showed us a video of him being stopped and no violence was placed on him. Eric if you take a swing at them or try to run them over then I hope they use violence on you because you would then not be an innocent person then would you?
If they do not use violence on me or anyone that I know and only use it on libertarians then what does that say about libertarians? It shows that libertarians use first force because they do not touch innocent people like me.
Sigh.
I suppose Clover won’t mind if an armed stranger shows up at his house and – very nicely – “asks” to be let in to have a look around … while fingering his pistol.
No response.
I asked Clover (again, no violence behind my question): Why not apply his awful totalitarian premise of presumptive guilt across the board?
We’d catch so many more criminals that way.
We’d be so much “safer.”
Why not conduct random cop sweeps of people’s homes? Search every person approaching a bank (after all, “someone” might be about to rob the bank). How about “your papers, please” checkpoints for pedestrians at every major intersection? We’d catch more criminals, certainly. Mandatory ankle bracelets for everyone – perhaps even locator/monitoring “chips” embedded in their bodies. So much easier to monitor and track law breakers… along with everyone else.
Bu that’s the part that Clover doesn’t grok – or give a damn about. Criminalizing everyone – and forcing them to prove they’re innocent.
Clover instinctively recoils from the quaint idea that in a free society, it should be hard for cops to hassle people – even if it means it’s harder to catch “dangerous drunks” (and so on).
Clover prefers to make it easier for cops to catch “dangerous drunks” – by catching everyone. Including people who’ve done absolutely nothing to indicate they’ve done … anything.
Clover does not believe this involves violence – because he does not mind being stopped and is happy to answer the “nice” policeman’s questions. All in a good cause.
But the fact that Clover and his ilk don’t object to being treated as presumptively guilty until they’ve proved themselves innocent does not mean others haven’t got a right to object to being treated like criminals before they’ve committed a crime or given anyone a reason to suspect they might have.
And of course, Clover is incapable of comprehending the broader principle – the menace – that is at issue:
I asked him:
Do you believe that if I don’t object to cops randomly conducting “checks” of my home (after all, a child might be in danger; there could be elder abuse… and I believe it is important to keep kids and old people safe) then no violence is used … and therefore, you also ought not to object to random “checks” of your home?
No answer. Or rather, more euphemisms and evasions.
Yes Eric I believe in principles. I believe it is not violent as you say to talk to someone in a nice manner. Your definition of violence and mine is drastically different. I believe it is violence to allow people under the influence is to be on the road with me or my family. You say you think they should not be on the road either but your solution of kissing their asses until they kill someone is in no way a deterrent. Then you come up with your what ifs as usual. Eric how about the what if that the police will kill you tonight in your bed. If that is something you believe as very possible then why worry about anything as minor as talking to you?
Italics added.
I have attempted to explain to this Clover creature that if it is acceptable to subject people who – by the government’s own admission – have done nothing whatsoever to give any reason to suspect they might be “drunk” – to a compulsory investigatory process … to forcibly interrupt their peaceful travel, to subject them to an inspection/interrogation (however “nicely” conducted) not on account of anything they’ve done or given reason to suspect they might have done… but because a hypothetical “someone” might have been drinking and driving … then there is no rational/principled basis for objecting to any random/arbitrary search/interrogation.
Because there is always the chance that “someone” might be guilty of (put “x” here).
You want to talk “safety,” Clover? There is nothing less “safe” than granting to government random/arbitrary power over people. In your childlike little mind, you see government as a benevolent entity that is wise and trustworthy and which would never abuse such power.
And yet, it does.
Because useful idiots such as yourself have signed away not just your rights. But all of our rights.
You see, Clover, when anyone’s rights are violated all our rights are threatened. Not just in the one isolated instance, but generally.
Because principles matter. Even if they do not matter to you.
But you’re not bright enough – or thoughtful enough – to understand this.
Which is why, Clover, we now live in a country where the government brazenly intercepts and collects everyone’s telephone conversations, all our e-mails, our web surfing records. In which old ladies, cripples and little kids are forced to endure humiliating personal searches in order to board airplanes. In which people who’ve not even been formally charged with any crime may be snatched off the street and – literally – tortured.
Or even murdered – by fiat. No different than Tony Soprano ordering a hit.
No presentation of evidence, no opportunity to defend oneself. No presumption of innocence until proved guilty. Just presumptive guilt – and violence.
Obey – or else.
All you can do is rationalize such things as being necessary for various “greater goods.” You can compartmentalize and euphemize. You can hem and haw. But – ultimately – you believe in presumptive guilt rather than presumed innocence. You’d rather everyone be treated as guilty lest any “guilty” person “get away” with something.
This is the country you and your kind are building.
But you’re not bright enough – or thoughtful enough – to understand this.
Which is terribly sad.
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Most Valuable Traded Commodities Worldwide:
1 Soldiers, Laborers, Men, Children. Done through wars, treaties, coyote smuggling, border changes, regime changes, adoptions, and private agreements.
2 Comfort Women, Domestics. Done both aboveboard and below. Arranged marriages, imported adult models, mail order brides, and private agreements.
3 Crude Oil and derivatives – The most commonly traded commodity is Crude Oil, and its various derivatives such as heating oil and gasoline. These commodities are mostly traded in the New York Mercantile Exchange [NYMEX], ICE Futures, the Dubai Mercantile Exchange [DME] and the Central Japan Commodity Exchange [C-COM].
4 Coffee – The second most traded commodity is Coffee [value wise]. Coffee is mainly traded through the New York Board of Trade [NYBOT], the Kansai Commodities Exchange [in Osaka, Japan], the Singapore Commodities Exchange [SICOM] and Euronext [London].
5 Agriculture – Common commodities in agriculture include wheat, corn, maize, oats, rice, soybeans and they are traded in the Chicago Board of Trade [CBOT], the Kansai Commodities Exchange [in Osaka, Japan], the Risk Management Exchange [RMX-in Hannover], the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange [WCE], The Tokyo Grain Exchange [TGE] and Euronext.
6 Animals and Animal Products – Animals and animal products such as live and feeder cattle, beef, frozen and fresh pork bellies, and eggs are mainly traded in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange [CME], Euronext, the Risk Management Exchange [RMX-in Hannover] and the Central Japan Commodity Exchange [C-COM].
7 Cocoa, Butter, Orange juice and Sugar – Items like cocoa, butter, orange juice and sugar are also commonly traded in the New York Board of trade [NYBOT] and Euronext.
8 Metals – Metals such as aluminum, nickel, copper, lead and ferrous scrap are mainly traded in the New York Mercantile Exchange [NYMEX], the London Metal Exchange [LME], the Shangai Futures Exchange [SFE], the Central Japan Commodities Exchange, Hedgestreet Exchange [in California], and the Tokyo Commodities Exchange [TOCOM].
9 Precious Metals – The other commonly traded commodities are precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum and they are traded in the New York Mercantile Exchange [NYMEX], the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange [BMF], the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange [DGCX], the National Commodity Exchange Limited [in Karachi, Pakistan] and the Tokyo Commodities Exchange [TOCOM].
10 Plastic – Plastic is traded in the London Metal Exchange [LME] and the Dalian Community Exchange [DCE-China]
11 Natural Gas – Natural gas is traded in the New York Mercantile Exchange [NYMEX] and ICE Futures.
12 Bio-fuels – Bio-fuels are now being traded in the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange [BMF], the Bursa Malaysia [MDEX], the Chicago Board of Trade [CBOT], the Chicago Mercantile Exchange [CME] and the New York Board of trade [NYBOT]
Of course the American Grand Inquisitors will tell you everything natural is bad for you. Everything except their unnatural food, media, weapons, values, and money. They are empty dementor souls that seek only to question you to death.
No one Expects the The American Inquisition. Yet here it is!
Welcome stranger. We’re reform libertarian Americans here. Milder than your usual nosy authoritarian. LOL. JK. Where do you work. Do you work for the government. Are you on welfare. Are you a leech or a looter. Do you take things without payment. In what ways is your work unethical. Where do you live. In what ways does your way of living offend others. Are you loud. Do you have kids, how do you pay for them. Do you use condoms. Are you promiscuous. Ever had an abortion. Are you fat. Are your kids well behaved. Do you pay 100% of their upkeep. Are you a shill. Are you a government agent. Are you a troll. Are you a spammer. Are you a hacker. Do you eat meat. Do you smoke. Do you injest medicines without experts permissions. Are you healthy. Are you fit. How do you spend your free time. Do you pollute. Do you trespass. Do you lie. Do you cheat. What do you believe. What have you stolen. What are your blasphemies. How old are you. How wealthy are you. What is your race. What is your religion. What are your crimes.
We are Americans. We have inquiries. We have questions.
Normal people and mammals are afraid you will physically harm them. Injure them. Kill them. Confine them. Starve them. That’s not even 1% of an American’s fears.
– I got to admit. I’m afraid of the responses I’ll get. I’m afraid to write this. I’m afraid of getting admin banned like I was on reddit. Afraid someone is watching me as I type this. Afraid someone is plotting against me. Afraid someone is nursing a grudge and lying in wait for me. Afraid anything I say can and will be used against me. What’s right is to remain silent. That way there won’t evidence in an inquistion by the professional official ministry of inquisitors or by the amateur inquistors who engage in the great american pastime of inquisiting.
Katniss shows you how to smoke tea and annoy statists
make a greentea cig in under a minute
tobacco is a form of money, currently exchanging with feddie kruger reserve notes at $1.87/pound.
it continues to be one of the best available sources of earning domestic and foreign currency. plant and then harvest some ASAP. start building your bank balance today. don’t let the federales tell you otherwise.
captive german state researches started to find health issues with it during germany’s currency collapse. from then on out, anti-tobacco propaganda spread to other fiat currency empires, who of continue to attack this potent source of fungible value, in an attempt to perpetuate their ponzi schemes a little while longer.
the global poisons hoax and the global warming hoax are two peas in a pod. each confected to give further license to leviathan states and their ravenous appetite for value usurpation and destruction
Maybe I have mentioned this here before, but there is anecdotal (sorry dlo) evidence that much of the harm caused by Amerikan cigs is not due to tobacco, but the additives that the Big Corps add to them. Case in point, the percentage of smokers in Lebanon is much higher than Amerika, but the rate of cancer is much lower. The difference? The Lebanese grow their own ‘backy and smoke it ‘straight.’
Another good trade good/’money’ in case of an SHTF scenario is coffee. Once the beans are roasted, they begin to oxidize (go rancid) fairly soon, but the green beans (coffee beans, that is) can be stored in a low oxygen enviroment, like the survivalists do their grains, etc. and last for years.
These are some facts. Step one is to understand them. Step two is to make a choice. Either find some way to develop Morlock skills to change them or evade them. Or resign yourself to being best domesticated Eloi you can be, and learn to accept and work within them.
1 There are two kinds of people, those who work for a living and those who VOTE for a living.
2 The people will always choose some champions whom they set over them and allow them to nurse them into greatness. It is this and no other that is the root from which the tyrants later spring, from among the class of those who first appeared as their protector.
3 The dark miracle of our age, is the way something immoral, when done privately, becomes moral when it is done collectively by authorities. Does this mean legality establishes morality. Slavery was legal; Apartheid was legal; Stalinism, Nazism, and Maoism were legal. In the name of stopping those tyrannies, the laws have been increased to where everything is a matter of government concern. Laws which act in lockstep so that no place remains free for long. Clearly, the fact of legality did not justify those crimes. Neither do the current laws justify the current crimes. Legality, it is clear, cannot be the talisman of moral people.
Morality will have to come from somewhere else.
dear dorothy
it’s a small apartment
all right god, send me to hell
first thing i do in the morning
i like to have a martini
a girl’s best friend
Prologue:
What do you want? What do you want? Gunter glieben glauchen globen. I got something to say. Yeah, it’s better to burn out. Yeah, than fade away. Gonna start a fire. Rise up! gather round. Rock this place to the ground. Burn it up let’s go for broke. Watch the night go up in smoke. Drive me crazier, no serenade. No fire brigade, just Pyromania. What do you want? What do you want? I want rock’n’roll, yes I do.
Long live rock’n’roll….
Introduction:
A wolf (canis lupus) is a sovereign being. Because we have been raised in artificial captivity, you and I are unable to communicate with it effectively.
There is clear evidence that wasn’t always the case. Without our ancestors having included the original now-extinct wolf-like canid as a part of their families, we wouldn’t have the modified quasi-independent beings we call dogs.
Chapter 1
The origin of the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris or Canis familiaris) began from a single domestication of a now-extinct wolf-like canid in Western Europe 11 to 16 thousand years ago.
This period predates the rise of agriculture and implies that the earliest dogs arose along with hunter-gatherers and not agriculturists. Conceivably, proto-dogs might have taken advantage of carcasses left on site by early hunters, assisted in the capture of prey, or provided defense from large competing predators at kills.
Final Chapter
No one survived the holocaust. Anyone lucky to have survived was changed permanently. None of us are going to be the same if we survive this cold holocaust either.
Did the Eloi evolve from their imperfect ancestors. Aren’t we both better off and worse off than our ancestors. We certainly are different. To say we have opportunities that wolves lack is incomplete. We also have countless burdens that wolves lack. Nearly all of them counterproductive and poisoned with the myth of authority and the greater good.
In any case where civilization leaves us worse off than we were without it. I say revert to the natural state. In most cases, providing civilization is a net benefit, retain it, and seek to improve it.
Epilogues:
Authoritarian Sociopathy – Davi Barker of Daily Anarchist
More Than Mazel. Luck in Surviving the Holocaust. [pdf]
http://www.taosinstitute.net/Websites/taos/images/ResourcesManuscripts/Ellis_More_than_Mazel.pdf
Josie the Outlaw follows you following
@JosietheOutlaw1
I bet the Native Americans wish they had a stricter immigration policy. #ImmigrationAction #ImmigrationReform
RETWEETS 7 FAVORITES 13
2:59 PM – 21 Nov 2014
La vie d’un chien (The Life of a Dog)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2YuigZfEzg
A French scientist invents a serum which temporarily transforms him into a dog. It is only later, when he becomes human again, that his troubles begin…
“Clever, funny, and profound social satire. A compelling case is made that the freedoms of a dog greatly outweigh the freedom of a human.”
Hi Tor,
I always enjoy your segues… but, the point I’d like to focus on is not abusing your fellow naked apes… even when you can do so with impunity.
The kinds of things I was discussing belong to agorism and anarchy theory. They are a daunting collection of prison yard tactics sometimes, I’ll admit. I’m not a political being in the least, so for me they’re just strategies for possible use in interpersonal games.
I am going to go an entirely different way in the near future. I will challenge the status quo but from an entirely different angle.
1 using the internet to bypass the brick and mortar economy. embrace it fully all technology available as a readymade alternative to the police state & fiat currency treadmills.
2 creating our own money. As a thought experiment, lets imagine all of us become coffee growers and create our own tradable commodity. We all join the ranks of money creators. We’re our own PTBs. Our own Morlocks. Only without all the abuse of course.
2B
Oct 31st 2014 dollars and cents per pound (ico.org)
ICO composite indicator 1.73; Colombian Milds USA 2.19; Other Milds USA 2.27′ Brazilian Naturals USA 1.82 Robustas USA 1.09
2C There’s no real ethical way to participate in the American economy. So we opt out. Say your accessible net worth is $150,000. $20,000 liquid, and $130,000 you could take in a refinance. After you settle all your other debts and unload all the clutter you can. Pay remaining bills with money orders/non banking options. You would end up like the following.
2D Family truck. Commercial vehicles capable of hauling coffee. Internet including using craiglist and other software for everything so you can barter or deal with individuals directly. Pay in cash, coffee, or other commodities. Stay out of brick and mortar consumer prisons.
2E Acres or Greenhouses where you grow coffee. Ownership in coffee plantation somewhere. Machinery for processing crops. Packaging in bags. Convenience packaging in ready to consume form. Labeling and business arrangement to trade coffee at all levels. Internation commodity, local bulk delivery. Small retail delivery. Direct to businesses and consumers. Online delivery methods. Form Montana LLCs and other legal entities as appropriate
2F
Jan 2015 Balance sheet
Planted crops 30 acres 4 buildings $50,000
Matured crops 70 acres 6 buildings $130,000
Silver/Gold other bartered real money $20,000
Harvested crops $3,000
Bagged coffee $17,000
Property Plant Equip $20,000
Entrepreneurial debts (90,000)
Net Financial Position $150,000 same as above before business began
Net income resulting in positive free cash flow $4.500/month
2G
Your now earning 3% per month on your capital. There’s a huge upside to this the more you work at it. The drawback is the amount of time and risk this will bring. The upside is your mostly unplugged from the thugs and police state socialists and all their bloody schemes.
The longer you stay at this and leave the equity in the business. The more you’ll be holding coffee/gold/silver and the means of production. Which means you will thrive in any scenario, come what may.
Let’s estimate where you’ll be at the end of 6 years in 2020. Let’s say every month your free cash after all settlements improves by $100 a month. You add sometimes to the business, withdraw other times to your business.
So in 2020
Jan 2020 Balance sheet
Planted crops 70 acres 5 buildings $200,000
Matured crops 100 acres 8 buildings $210,000
Silver/Gold other bartered real money $150,000
Harvested crops $5,000
Bagged coffee $25,000
Property Plant Equip $40,000
Entrepreneurial debts (30,000)
Net Financial Position $600,000 after five years of hard work and careful operations
3 because of the shifting priorities. you continue tracking the decline of the status quo but don’t spend time on the internet as much . you retreat to a simpler more easily defended political position. Classic liberalism. Focus work on ending the federal reserve era of fiat banking theft and market destruction.
All you need is enough stability and peace to conduct your affairs. By amassing wealth outside the system, you’ll call your own shots regardless. Only proceed politically in a forward looking manner, no conservativism or calls to return to days gone by any longer. Just friendly sociotechnical F A Hayek and Leonard Reed type stuff.
Joo guys see this?
A stinking pig in NY falsely accused a retard McDonald’s worker of spiking his Big Mac with glass shards! After a 10 year ordeal, the poor ‘tard finally got $437K (Hardly makes up for a 10 year ordeal!)
http://www.eater.com/2014/11/21/7260645/mcdonalds-worker-falsely-accused-of-putting-glass-in-big-mac-wins-437k
The poor ‘tard is likely no dumber than the pig- as in NY, they won’t hire anyone with an IQ over 104 to be a pig!!!!
1 A literal maggot is a natural part of the natural world. People who behave as maggots are another thing entirely.
check.
2 The golden rule is “empty” and “newspeak”?
Perhaps to you. That is entirely your choice.
I try hard to treat others the way I’d like to be treated, out of empathy as well as self-interest. Other people throw that in the woods, preferring the rule of the stronger/might makes right.
– Disagree. As Yoda says, do or do not there is not try. “Trying to treat others…” means fail. In anarchy, there is no multiple choice you have to choose among. I don’t have to choose what you’re saying. Nor refute you. Or to choose rule of stronger. Or accept might makes right. Your claim that this is all that exists in the philosophical action space is a false claim. All I hear is a threat. That either you or someone in your stead is going to lay hands on me, and try to make me do what you think is the golden rule.
3 Perhaps they’re right. Maybe I am foolish for expecting (for hoping) that people can live without taking advantage, on the basis of voluntaryism. Without stealing. Without forcing. Live – and let live. Naive, perhaps.
Disagree. You are far less dissonant and scattered than I. But then you lessen that higher status in my estimation by doing your package dealing.
Why not just practice voluntaryism. No sidecars about taking advantage. Or about stealing. Live and let live is the same as NAP. Taking advantage, stealing, lying, a hundred other things isn’t part of the aphorism. JUST LET LIVE. That’s is huge and daunting enough already. Don’t overload yourself and others who are assembling around your property and your thought leadership with more than that. Or course continue to insist on combos, it’s your forum and audience of course.
But I feel cleaner advocating that – and trying to practice that.
– Disagree again. Do or do not do. There is no try. There is no feel. There is no points awarded for advocating. There is nothing outside your mind, of what you’re trying to practice. It’s an image in the mirror of your mind, no one else sees it.
Cleaner for me is a euphemism for sterile and artificial. This is personally anathema. But of course YMMV. Some of us are neat freaks. Others are filthy and covered in life.
Minimally, I can look myself in the mirror. I know in my mind and heart that I am not a shill, not posing. That’s worth a lot to me.
-Disagree. The mirror is a pointless vanity. You are what you do. Avoid mirror time, and you won’t spend time posing. Or worrying about your image instead of your essence. I have experienced the good you are capable of directly. That is real and felt out in the world. Stuart Smalley time is time you could be doing something real.
Your mileage may vary.
-check. I’m essentially a vector extremist. I judge myself and others ONLY on what they do, and where they are going. And on nothing else.
—I appreciate all convention and custom is thrown in the woods here. I hope that what you are writing continues to have an effect for your audience and readers. Truly it is the owners, and the people of record who make the difference in the world. I am not one of those at this time. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to opine you provide all of us.
Yoda was not human. We often fall short of our good intentions.
In summation.
My commitment to the NAP is absolute. Bring 500 million Americans from south of the border into the US if you want. And let all of us leave as well.
Abolish the minimum wage. Rip up all trade agreements. Let China come here unhindered. Boatloads of them even if a billion want to come. Buyers beware. Sellers beware. Emptor Emptor and more Emptor. Emptor fidelis ooh rah. No guarantees. No promises. No demands. Life is a playing field. Many different games many different rules. But we are strong. No one will tell us we’re wrong. Searching for freedom for so long. All of us knowing. Life is a gambling hall.
To me the alternative is to use physical violence. Prohibitions at gun point. Treating humans as lower than animals even. No other animal has rules in stone for all to follow or else.
And that is all the NAP means to me. Differing from animals in that we don’t try to kill, injure, beat, restrain, capture, or confine each other.
It doesn’t mean I can’t realpolitik as long as no one is injured. It doesn’t mean I can’t be deceptive, coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian. It means I can be counted on to obey one commandment. Obey it absolutely. And no more nor less.
I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
I take this pledge as a personal Declaration of Independence. As a sovereign individual, I assert the exclusive right to my life, my liberty and my property, as best I am able to by my own means. You pledge nothing to me. Nothing.
I oppose, and declare as inhuman, all actions taken by individuals or groups that violate these rights I charge myself with defending.
I support a return to the principle of individualism upon which this frontier was first settled. A frontier that is still here, if we tear down the fences.
I reject any initiation of the use of force as being wholly inappropriate, I support a society based strictly upon voluntary association and free trade among its people.
And that is it and not a damn word more. Nothing about who is good or who is bad. Who is preferred. Who is despised. Nothing to prevent open sewers, used car lots filled with stolen cars, child hookers, ebola infested pet monkeys, drunken fiends coming by the house to try to hook up with my wife and molest my children while I’m away at work. None of it.
All kinds of bad shit is here. And is widely in practice. All I ask is a de minimis NAP. No one stop me. Cage me. Fine me. Restrain me. Beat me. Kill me. Threaten me if I don’t do as they like, though I don’t even know them. Threaten me because of some principle that exists only in their own mind, and which I do not acknowledge. In fact, I refuse to admit to any need to answer to anyone.
Its just me. And whoever else in my individual case is with me. And whoever wants to put on a Helot patch and mount the steel horse or moped donkey or wait for the giant conch bus or call an uber camel and ride with me and trade and converse and live wild and untamed.
No cliches. No getting on the same page the way Bill Clinton used to. Or having a bromance at the rally while trading Ron Paul pamphlets with my new freedom bffs.
Sometime there’s no shirt, no shoes, no underwear. There’s smokers and boozers and losers. Horrible music. Unpleasant philosophies. Everyone is welcome if they can think and contribute. And not kill, cage, or kidnap me. Or want any proxies to do this on their behalf.
Perhaps Hayek applies here?
F A Hayek Quotes – Individualism: True and False” (1945)
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
Who imagines that there exist any common ideals of distributive justice such as will make the Norwegian fisherman consent to forego the prospect of economic improvement in order to help his Portuguese fellow, or the Dutch worker to pay more for his bicycle to help the Coventry mechanic, or the French peasant to pay more taxes to assist the industrialization of Italy? If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this justly and equitably.
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, ‘a new form of servitude.’
The part of our social order which can or ought to be made a conscious product of human reason is only a small part of all the forces of society.
We can either have a free Parliament or a free people. Personal freedom requires that all authority is restrained by long-run principles which the opinion of the people approves.
Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?
The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government.
The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.
We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice.
The effect of the people’s agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.
The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism which tries to persuade us that what we have done in the recent past was all either wise or unavoidable. We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation.
To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be always controlled unless we declare our specific purpose. Or, since when we declare our specific purpose we shall also have to get it approved, in essence this means we will really be controlled in everything.
It is neither necessary nor desirable that national boundaries should mark sharp differences in standards of living, that membership of a national group should entitle to a share in a cake altogether different from that in which members of other groups share.
If the resources of different nations are treated as exclusive properties of these nations as wholes, if international economic relations, instead of being relations between individuals, become increasingly relations between whole nations organized as trading bodies, they inevitably become the source of friction and envy between whole nations. It is one of the most fatal illusions that, by substituting negotiations between states or organized groups for competition for markets or for raw materials, international friction would be reduced. This would merely put a contest of force in the place of what can only metaphorically be called the “struggle” of competition and would transfer to powerful and armed states, subject to no superior law, the rivalries which between individuals had to be decided without recourse to force.
Economic transactions between national bodies who are at the same time the supreme judges of their own behavior, who bow to no superior law, and whose representatives cannot be bound by any considerations but the immediate interest of their respective nations, must end in clashes of power.
The Germans would appear as the disturbers of peace, as they already do to some people, merely because they were the first to take the path along which all the others were ultimately to follow.
Tor – the statement you quote is an excellent example of where Hayek, unlike Mises and Rothbard, departed from Austrian economics and from the NAP.
Distributive justice? What in hell is that? Equal justice under the law is my goal.
Notions of distributive justice are a hallmark of a primitive mentality. I ran into it all the time when I lived in Charlotte, it seems to be the consensus throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.
Where I would say Walmart has good aspects and bad aspects. You’d have to add up all the particulars to make an objective assessment of it. It’s every bit a part of nature as is a beehive or a bird’s nest.
Many of you gentlemen ascribe motive and a morality to spontaneous disjointed locale of commerce and trade. You go so far as to say Walmart is good, or Walmart is evil. You worry about what it does to your image or character, every time you shop at Walmart.
You scoff at those who believe in global warming without evidence. But then you engage in a similar behavior and believe in a global morality decline, also without evidence.
It’s not unlike a religious man who imagines the rain as being a moral agent that is called upon by a hidden intelligence to fall on the just and the unjust alike. It’s a mysticism thats very deeply held, and hard to wean from among those who hold such concepts.
Robert Nozick on distributive justice:
The term ‘distributive justice’ is not a neutral one. Hearing the term ‘distribution,’ most people presume that some thing or mechanism uses some principle or criterion to give out a supply of things. Into this process of distributing shares some error may have crept… [But] [t]here is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the resources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out. What each person gets, he gets from others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift…There is no more a distributing or distribution of shares than there is a distribution of mates in a society in which persons choose whom they shall marry.
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 149-150.
F A Hayek on distributive justice:
I must turn now against an abuse of the word justice which threatens to destroy the conception of law which made it the safeguard of individual freedom.
Social justice, or sometimes economic justice, came to be regarded as an attribute by which the ‘actions’ of society, or the ‘treatment’ of individuals and groups by society, ought to possess.
As primitive thinking usually does when first noticing some regular processes, the results of the spontaneous ordering of the market were interpreted as if some thinking being deliberately directed them, or as if the particular benefits or harm different persons derived from them were determined by deliberate acts of will, and could therefore be guided by moral rules.
As an egoist, my view is that each individual should pursue his own happiness, and limit the moral defense of capitalism to arguing that capitalism frees each individual to pursue his own happiness.
For most people, this pursuit has come to include things like downloading media files from the internet without regard to where the digital information originated. It is up to each owner of capital whether such files are available for free or restricted to always requiring payment. If you find this objectionable, the only mechanism for redress is the market, not the soapbox.
It also means when filling out personal information on the internet, you’re free to do whatever you like, because there is only you and a machine involved. There is no moral component to what name and info I give to facebook or wordpress. To say otherwise is madness.
If you become indignant when you find out someone has called themselves Murray Rothbard, but is not actually named that. You are the one in error.
Concepts of morality have no special standing in commerce and trade. To say cars made in Japan are intrinsically different because of where they were assembled than the identical cars made in China is base superstition.
There is a harmony of interests under capitalism: each individual can pursue and achieve his interests under freedom and only under freedom — even the poorest and least talented individual. Under capitalism, no one is sacrificed to anyone.
Hayek was no libertarian. He may have been opposed to socialism- but only like a modern “conservative”/Repugnantcan is.
If I was kidnapped and kept in a jury box with leg irons and forced to participate in the Kabuki Justice Play…
I would deal only in specifics. And never in principles there, because American justice has no real principles nowadays.
I think in Germany, Japan, Canada/Australia I’d behave differently. Perhaps its a convenient rationalization for wanting to be an outlaw anyway.
So if in a specific instance, someone stole Elon Musk or Bill Gates car peacefully. Which is to say by hotwiring it when no one was around. I would probably vote to acquit but to continue holding the guy in custody while the civil trial got under way.
The value of thefts could be added to that persons credit score, just like any other debts. Then catch and release the guy into the wild. Every month, he would have to pay some percentage to victim support. No payments made, lock him up just like right now they do with child support.
At a certain level, even an obvious infraction like theft of an expensive vehicle isn’t necessarily injurious to any individual. This is also my rationale for watching the movie Interstellar on a Swiss piracy site without payment. And for saving all manner of books to flash drives without payment.
To be a man, you have to stay sharp. And you have to hunt and gather. You can’t really do this outdoors anymore, unless you’re somewhere with lots of support and people who know you and have your back. If I were in charge, I’d move my family back to the upper midwest and go that route. But everyone likes it here.
Since I’m stuck, I’d prefer to stake out a gold, silver, lithium, claim in NV where I live and where land is 90% government owned. And go work it honestly as a profitable hobby and share in the harvest with the govt overlords in an aboveboard manner.
Really I’d be just as happy living outside in a tent and sleeping on the ground. I’d like to be half hermit. Half family man.
If you’re able to stay on the treadmill. And not break even the smallest laws such as jaywalking to your car to drive to work when its parked across the street. Bully for you. Again, I have to see specifics of your situation. I don’t think principles come into play without specific knowledge of just how it is you manage to stay on the straight and narrow path. Show me, as they say in Missouri.
This guy is my hero. He stole to survive, and never got caught. Never hurt anyone. Too bad he didn’t spend his free time learning to live off the land honestly.
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201409/the-last-true-hermit
Working the land and resources is denied us. As is most honest work in our Soviet system. Instead I work at a subcontractor in a city with no projects. Just maintenance of the vast govt building complexes.
The only game in town is things like helping the school district make its learning buildings more like prison cell blocks and retrofitting surveillance of the kids. Building special school police admin buildings. Crap like that.
It’s just too much. Being an Uncle Tom. And helping the Massas make a prison world for the next generation. My outlaw sense says its outside the moral code of an intact male. So there has to be some other answer. One I’m still looking for. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Sorry I’m not taking the time to proofread and fix these posts. I’m hoping there’s enough here to get what I’m saying. There’s a lot of other things going on at the same time.
Running on a treadmill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT5bWBfjTV8
Lyrics of another insipid song from better days
http://www.metrolyrics.com/running-on-a-treadmill-lyrics-oingo-boingo.html
Libertarianism isn’t just about the NAP (Rip Van Winkle napped for 20 years, and he wasn’t a Libertarian!)- but it is also about property rights- since without property, you do not have the means to sustain your life; privacy or other basic rights.
Stealing is a form of aggression- just as is the cop pulling you over and interrogating/searching you with the implied threat of violence.
The Non-Aggression Principle also includes aggression against property. I think there can be some variation between libertarians in details of belief, but the NAP is foundational. There can be compromise on matters of preference, but not on matters of principle. This is what would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad, about the Demlicans in Congress insisting that the Repubocrats need to compromise in order to move the country forward (or whatever their rationale is). Of course the Repubocrats cannot compromise on principle, because they have none. A ‘conservative’ is someone that says not that the leftists are wrong, but just that they are going too fast.
If your bus goes over the edge of the Grand Canyon, it will not matter when you hit the bottom whether the driver had his foot on the gas or on the brake. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who ever said “We need to turn the bus around.”
@Philip the Bruce- I thought you mentioned at one point that you were a theonomist. While I know there’s a lot of overlap between the two, how can you be a theonomist and an NAP-supporting libertarian at the same time?
I understand there’s a consensus possibly and a minority position. As far as using Uber. Bitcoins. Avoiding speed traps. Getting media without payments. If you look at the Freestate project, the consensus is take it and run. I’m in the majority, not the minority. But so what.
But stealing is almost a newspeak term. I think there’s some discussion to be had. There’s also this huge wing of libertarians that say IP is a fiction. I’m not trying to get in on that debate even.
I’m making a straightforward case for being a principled outlaw. Including fully disclosing the cognitive dissonance of saying taking without giving value is a necessary action of survival in MY INDIVIDUAL CASE.
It’s a sore subject that I don’t want to rub salt in anyone’s wounds. I’m only offering MY REASONING for what I am doing. Maybe I have a mistress or visit high class call girls every weekend. That would also be my own individual circumstance.
Even if it means producers suffer. There’s a point where you can’t just keep being an Uncle Tom. My take on matters is the computer is an amoral free for all. If you find pictures of naked toddlers and want to view them. Do so. You’re not causing any additional harm in the real world.
Perhaps rather than black and white conception of hypocrisy. I use a percentage system. Batshit insane Americans don’t want to deal with the big issues.
They’re a collection of rogues and violent thieves. They don’t leech content. They strong arm and trade trinkets for continents. Then they get the same treatment from their govt.
Who cares what your opinions are on matters of principle. Quit robbing the Chinese and other 3rd parties who you unfairly force to take your fiat rag paper as if its a respectable settlement of a debt.
Most of what I take from pirated sites is free content like TV episodes from England and Germany. It’s just easier getting them from the pirates, than having 100 different apps to watch each individual thing.
If you think back, the world was a better place with pirates to keep statists in check. And plantation owners who owned humans as property also kept power more widely distributed.
I don’t see abolition of pirates, bootleggers, and plantation owners as a plus. It’s made the whole world handicapped accessible to every drooling moron who will take abolition all the way to its logical conclusion, when no one is free to do anything unless everyone approves.
If you’re telling me that going over to my friends house and burning a copy of his DVD or CD precludes me from the Libertarian club, its going to be hard to take that seriously. It’s a problem. But a minor one amid a sea of troubles.
Libertarianism’s not an evangelical movement in my eyes. Maybe to some of you it is. I’m not saying outlaw libertarians are better than statists. Just different. If you’re about making this some kind of new philosophical clerisy, count me out. When I hear people hear saying they’re better than statists, I start to cringe.
And maybe that’s a lot of what this is. That awful puritanical urge to feel your better than others. Are housecats better than tigers. Not everything is comparable.
State enforcements vary. Really the be all end all, is what “crimes” is the state able to prevent. If I have to use violence to illegal download. Stab AMC security guards with a knife to watch Walking Dead episodes outside of approved broadcasts, then I’ll stop.
Not trying to use sophistry to win here. I’m certainly not advocating that anyone do what I’ve done. I’ve toned down, but am still at it. One consequence is I can’t do online banking. Give out my credit card. Really even let any strangers know where I specifically live, work, and who I am IRL. That sucks, but that’s the consequence of being an outlaw. Crime doesn’t pay.
Morning, Tor!
I endorse the “outlaw” position to the extent it conforms with the NAP. So – obvious example – I ignore “buckle up” laws because such laws are contrary to the NAP and so by definition ok (morally) to ignore/flout to the extent possible. I would also never have anything to do with prosecuting/punishing people who’ve elected to consume (or freely exchange) various substances for their own personal use. I’ve paid for things in cash, to help others escape legally required taxation. Und so weiter.
But there are also instances where – law or not – and whether I can “get away with it” or not – I will not do certain things, because – as I see it – to do them would be to commit a wrong because there is an NAP violation. Taking things/using things that do not belong to one and which one knows the rightful owner would like to be compensated for fall into this category. Most especially when the owner cannot realistically prevent a “knowing taking.” It is the moral equivalent of robbing a cripple.
This, for me, is the issue on which Libertarianism as a practical moral system will stand – or fall.
Can enough people to make it viable act according to the NAP without external coercion? By basing their actions on the NAP? If yes, then we do not need external enforcement mechanisms. Cops, laws – the whole edifice of the state.
If not, then we do.
Because as much appeal as freedom has, if it inevitably devolves into a free-for-all, without self-restraint, with a critical mass/tipping point percentage of people needing some form of external “nudge” to get them to do the right thing – it’s doomed. Unworkable. As now. People – good people – will demand security. Laws. Mechanisms of enforcement. Because other people cannot or will not “play nice.”
Gresham’s Law applies in the social-philosophical context as much as the economic.
In different things I have listened to, usually on C2C, about human society evolving, people being able to rule themselves, without need of a government, is usually the end game. Thing is the people professing these spiritual things clearly have no understanding or even knowledge of libertarianism. So it was interesting to hear the same ends arrived at from entirely different means. It is simply obvious to them that such an arrangement is the higher order.
On another note, the present system of laws, security, force, etc is doomed because those mechanisms fall into the hands of people who will exploit them. Maybe humanity is simply doomed.
Until we get to the point you’re talking about, Eric, I’ll forgive minarchists even though I can’t philosophically be one on principle. We have more in common with them than we don’t. But even in an ancap society, law will still exist, just not monopoly-provided enforcement. The NAP is still the law.
Hi David,
Certainly.
As I’ve written many times in the past, I try not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Circa 1960 America was vastly preferable in terms of individual liberty than 2014 America – even though 1960 America had “plenty” of government and was far from being minarchist. But it was a lot more minarchist than what we’ve got today – and I’d leap into the time machine with a smile on my face, if I could!
@Eric- Agreed. This is also why, with reluctance, I intend to vote for Rand Paul in 2016. I have an anarcho-capitalist friend that cannot understand how I could possibly support Rand Paul. My answer, more or less: No, I don’t 100% trust him, he may stab us in the back, but assuming he doesn’t, at least he intends to make the government, both domestically and the MIC, SMALLER, which is an improvement. In an ideal world people would support such small government (if any at all) that people like Rand Paul would look like fascists in comparison. But while we are where we are, I’ll take the significant improvements that I can get. Similar reasoning, I would hypothetically vote for Mitt Romney over Adolf Hitler though I would not have voted for Romney over Obama.
Mind you, each person has to decide for himself to what extent we’re willing to compromise with the electoral system. Among my libertarian friends, some are willing to support the majority of Republicans, others are not willing to vote at all. I’m somewhere in between. I’m skeptical of the political process. But I’ll use it for my ends, not my PERSONAL ends but for liberty, when I can.
“Stealing is a form of aggression…”
Indeed. Especially when you know you can do so with impunity. As I see it, this is the worst sort of stealing. Snatching a paper from the blind man running a newsstand. We (Libertarians) have no excuse because we know perfectly well that whatever we didn’t produce or rightfully own isn’t ours – and that someone else produced it and rightfully owns it. To just take it – because it’s “there” and “free” for the taking, because we know the rightful owner cannot do anything to prevent the taking… that seems to me to rather despicable, particularly for an “aware” and “awake” Libertarian.
It’s hard to imagine us as a whole being much more despicable than we already are.
So the wolf that prowls on your property and takes a chicken while you sleep is despicable. But the obedient neutered dog on your porch that waits patiently for you to open a can of GMO grain and pork parts for him is of the highest moral caliber.
Interesting.
There’s something about having less to lose and less to defend that makes mocking your betters all the sweeter, I’m learning. Property really is a curse when there’s no honor to be had. I’m new to this, so bear with me. Not trying to be personal in the least.
I love my kind of libertarian reasoning. Not so sure of the benefits of yours. I don’t see so good. Is that Murray Rothbard and a bunch of bodyguards to defend Mr. NAP because he couldn’t defend himself from a plastic bag on a windy day. Tell us more about the harmonious Zion Murray.
I don’t usually watch those dogs shows where your well bred kinds of libertarians are viewed. I’m sure those kind are good boys. Very good boys.
Ruslana of the Ukraine – Dance with the wolves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFx5D2eokFs
I’m not gonna cry, I’ll stay in the woods. When my heart is aching. I dance with the wolves
I’m not gonna try to mess with my rules. When my heart is breaking. I dance with the wolves
You think you know me, think you control me
The more you’re feeling right, the more you’re going wrong. Don’t say you got me, you don’t know anything about me. The more you make me weak the more I’m getting strong.
Maybe there’s a Vatican Castrato performance wherein your preferred form of compliant freedom sermons are being sung, can’t find it tho. JK. Taking a bit of piss. Stealing the piss actually. Keep up the good work. This was only a test.
We’re all far from perfect – including in terms of our actions. But, I think it’s worth trying to be better. I do my best to “be excellent” toward others. Whether it benefits me isn’t the main consideration. Certainly – in terms of realpolitik and cold self-interest – there are occasions when it might be to my advantage to not “be excellent” toward my fellow naked apes. But what matters most to me is the ideal. The place I’d like to humanity evolve into. And that will only happen, as I see it, if most people self-regulate according to the NAP.
>”So the wolf that prowls on your property and takes a chicken while you sleep is despicable”<
Wolves aren't concerned with morality nor the rights of others; they do what they must to survive. Wolves use aggression to get what they want. A society of wolves produces what we have now. I think most of we, as libertarians, desire a world that is free of aggression.
Wolves prosper in the present system of things. If one's highest goal is merely attain the things they want/need via the easiest manner possible, then wolverine-ism is a viable plan- but it only works among chickens and sheep; then the lion comes along and does the same thing to the wolf. That world is essentially the statist world we live in today. It is not compatible with libertarianism.
I've had coyotes nab my chickens. No hard feelings, as the coyotes are doing what coyotes are meant to do, in a time when their own world has been encroached upon; and where aggression has often been practiced on them. Our world has made it hard for them to survive, so they must become outlaws and steal; but that just leads to the chickens having to be confined in pens. Chickens are happy and safe in pens….but I don't want my neighbor being confined to a pen; so I don't act like the wolf or the coyote; and since we, as human beans [;)] have the capacity to not only survive, but to prosper through our own auspices and production, why not choose the better, non-violent world, rather than the cut-throat violent claw-to-survive one? The end result of the two ways are very different. Lots of people shoot wolves and coyotes…aggression begets aggression when practiced against those who even wouldn't care to use it.
What is the point of being a libertarian, if we do not oppose aggression? Then it merely becomes "I want peace and freedom for me; but I'll deny others those things, in the name of getting what I want/need"- and that is pretty much socialism/authoritarianism. Act like animals…the world becomes a zoo.
I don’t agree with any of that. I don’t desire a world of anything different than what it is today. Quite the opposite.
What I want is for those with such a zoo-maker mentality to leave me be.
I want to be allowed to LET LIVE. That is all.
If you are concerned with libertarians being a better Social Justice Warrior than the red and blue teams.
Of hijacking the shared pursuit of individual happiness to instead mean we focus collective effort on ridding human societies of its wolf aspects.
Then you are my enemy, not my ally.
It has nothing to do with “social justice”. It’s about non-aggression, and indeed, about letting live- as your own actions toward others pretty much determine their responses to you. Respecting other’s rights to their property is the ultimate “let live” action; to transgress their right to their property, is the very opposite.
It makes little difference if one does their stealing/trespassing personally- or through their elected “representatives”- it amounts to the same thing. If we don’t want elected representatives usurping our authority/property, or that of others, why would we want other individuals to do the same; or to act that way ourselves?
It’s a dead end it seems. Building a car entails materials and methods. Some builders might offer cars that have cleaner emissions and the market might select those. Over time this tendency is how progress happens.
You seem to have abandoned that notion.
Now you’re saying people won’t stand for builders who build cars that don’t have cleaner emissions. It is our moral duty to expect everyone to only build cars with cleaner emissions. And our moral duty to only buy cars with cleaner emissions.
To use another example
Your body functions the best when it has a sufficient amount of protein. For now, the way to get that protein is to go to the store and buy a steak which was made from a living animal.
In the near future, there might be a synthetic steak available that doesn’t entail killing an animal.
Instead of leaving the matter to the market. You are on the fence about whether you as an individual. And libertarians as a community should abstain from eating meat on moral grounds.
This can best be understood as the incoherent primitivisms of dead beat Americans who have given up on the market altogether. Who are in default to the world market and refuse to pay up and return to exchanging value for value and become solvent again.
If an honest currency was to return to the world. Then you could pay actual money with true value to scientists and entrepreneurs to bring a market solution to the problem.
You’ve lost capacity to do things like that. All you can muster, is to examine your feelings about not having an alternative to eating meat.
And then developing some kind of doctrinal groupthink about what the best practice is because there is no market alternative yet available to your perceived dilemma.
Last example is your lack of a market solution to protect your intellectual property. Instead of spending the money to secure a market solution to your perceived dilemma.
You’ve resorted to freeloader shaming. I curse you freeloaders, you are naughty and a pest. Normally we employ a market solution to thwart your kind. But not this time.
We’ve abandoned the market. Instead we’re using Jedi mind tricks on ourselves and attempting them on everyone we come in contact with. Sure we could contact other content providers and cooperate with them to form some kind of market response. But where is the feel good social justice tingle in that.
Hi Tor,
A wolf is an opportunistic predator. That is its nature – and it has no capacity to choose to not be an opportunistic predator.
Man does.
“So if in a specific instance, someone stole Elon Musk or Bill Gates car peacefully. ”
Italics added.
How does that work, exactly?
Did the owner peacefully acquiesce to the loss of his property? That which he created – or worked for?
Or did the thief violate the sanctity of someone else’s property, take what was not his? Profit – by force (via taking) – from someone else’s labor?
No you’re right. It’s a breach of the peace. The right word would be non-violent.
I’m ASKING to discuss this outside of any kinds of concretes that you might personally be familiar with.
And to assign a higher value to human beings. Which is hard to do. Because we have no functioning monetary system. No real way to value each other. Try to think of all the connections and interactions of every person. We can start cutting off hands of theives. Or doubling the incarcerations. In the long run, devaluing the least of us devalues of us all.
For instance, the first nations that came to the Americas would have a hard time understanding your stance on property. The tomahawk in your teepee is just located in your teepee. Even if you built the thing yourself.
To ask the people at the very bottom. And the people at the very top. To perform identically isn’t productive.
What I’m trying to get to is proportionality. Sure you can be rigid and say me sending my kid over to steal a newspaper from the bundle that gets dropped off to the local paper boy is aggression.
And maybe the delivery kid might run short. You’re the last guy on the route. You won’t get a paper.
But to just have one word “aggression.” And to say my kid swiping an unpaid copy of a newspaper. And my family being criminals who hit Vegas tourists over their heads and steal their wallets is equivalent. I don’t agree.
I grew up in the world you live in. I understand the rules.
But I’ve since lived in ghettos for decades. There’s a different mentality as far as property. A huge percentage from their work. Gives freebies to their friends. Sees outsiders as people its okay to take from.
To me its a suboptimization. To go to such an extreme on property and to discount the humans involve so much. Taking someone with tens of billions car, is meaningless.
One of things about wealthy employers that be that I’ve observed. They factor in this minute quantity of pilferage and they accept it. They’ll crush you like an insect if they catch you. But they understand that not everyone has the same conception of property rights and boundaries.
To me, demanding that everyone be expected to waste their time helping you enforce every last morsel of property is ludicrous. Consider dialing it down a little. Or don’t. I just enjoy thinking about such things.
Try to imagine everyone that’s visiting this site. The NSA. The spammers. The content scrapers and thieves. The freeloaders. The paid trolls. The nice guys. The good friends. The paying customers. The major important donors. Your contacts and network who enable you to occupy the position you’ve attained. The work you’ve put into this.
Its complicated. Nuanced. Is it really in your best interests to use only a one size fits all morality here. Is it in the best interests of your freedom. As a non-owner, I can only observe from the outside. I have no skin in the game except my time.
You seem to have chosen to assign zero value to site visitors time regardless of how its spent. I hate making assumptions, but what else is available if I want to continue. It’s understandable your assessment of zero value. But it might not be the best choice for you, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Only you know the answer.
Don’t forget about what the state is already doing against our will to everyone’s property.
There’s been a whole lot of 4th turnings one after another. That grade school primer you posted is the tip of the iceberg. The brain drain is so rapid, you can see it happening day by day. Its unreal.
I do assign a high value to human beings – which is why I am so passionately opposed to humans taking advantage of other human beings.
Whether one steals at gunpoint – or just waits for an opportunity to take when no one’s around or looking – in no way obviates the fact that a theft has been committed. Right?
And to take the property of another is to take the fruit of that person’s labor. To violate him personally.
The golden rule applies, nicht war?
Should’t Libertarians – above all others – do their best to not participate in things they know to be wrong? Whether it’s a free for all out there being beside the point? Should I loot because others are looting? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Most of us would not be happy to wake up and discover our car had been snatched in the dead of night. Hence we understand why it’s not cool for us to snatch someone else’s car at night.
I do assign value to the participation of posters; to their patronage of advertisers. But spammers and trolls? They are unwelcome, uninvited and – indeed – have been asked not to come. Yet they do. Which makes them maggots.
Okay. But why do real maggots exist. They are every bit as necessary and belong on this Earth as do you or I. That is a natural fact.
Think of them as a natural indicator. A status quo to be understood. Your passionate feelings about them are irrelevant. Someone or some being is behaving in a way that maggots have a place to thrive.
So what if maggots are despicable to you. But for you the butterflies are Platonically noble. The only question I would have is why? You are drunk with fatal conceit I think.
There are real rules of metal. Such as the ones that govern what pistons and axles are possible those are real technosophic rules. But golden rules. No neomuslim sober and serious conservatism for me.
Again its just houses of cards built on cities of sand castles and high tide is coming in soon to wash it all away. You’re not getting to bedrock first principles. You’re sloganizing and training dogs to fight dogmatically but to what ends I don’t really know.
Hate the state. But love the empty newspeakisms like the golden rule. No thanks.
The golden rule is equally as ephemeral and useless as all the rest of the sky daddy babbling. I thought you were on the same page with me on that kind of ninnyism.
You are passionately opposed to humans taking advantage of other human beings. Holy crap. I’m dumbfounded. Now you’ve gone all the way off the cliff if you mean what I think you mean. So I’m a maggot if I take advantage of people who I know can take it.
Well as long as there are feelings. And you’re passionate. I understand where you’re coming from. But what is the radius of these strong beliefs. Do they extend everywhere on the Earth.
Some things and some people will never be cut and dried. They will always be in swamps. Must everything be drained and dried. You live near the woods, but you think in ways of the desert I think.
These people can be paid a wage. They can be housed and fed and will work for you. Many people have no code. Want no code. That is a perfectly okay think to do. Just so they don’t impose on others their preferences with armed goons.
If you take advantage all the time. Your reputation will suffer. But if you sell cheap, and you’re there when noone else is. Or have what no one else has. You’ll still make sales, and that’s okay.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Which translation of this is correct. Which language at which time. What does gold have to do with it.
So when I eat a steak I am doing unto the cow how I want to be done. I’m really saying I hope someone makes a steak out of me.
Are we really doomed to repeat these tropes for all eternity. Why?
“Do not impose on others what you do not desire others to impose upon you.” (Confucius, The Analects. Roughly 500 BCE.
Hindu sacred literature: “Let no man do to another that which would be repugnant to himself.” (Mahabharata, bk. 5, ch. 49, v. 57)
“Hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful.” (Udana-Varga, 5.18)
Zoroastrian sacred literature: “Human nature is good only when it does not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.” (Dadistan-I-Dinik, 94:5; in Muller, chapter 94, vol. 18, p. 269)
Buddhist sacred literature: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” (Udanavargu, 5:18, Tibetan Dhammapada, 1983)
The Greek historian Herodotus: “. if I choose I may rule over you. But what I condemn in another I will, if I may, avoid myself.”
(Herodotus, The Histories, bk. III, ch. 142. Roughly 430 BCE.)
Isocrates, the Greek orator: “What things make you angry when you suffer them at the hands of others, do not you do to other people.”
The purpose of literal maggots it to consume rotting flesh. They serve a valuable function. We take advantage of this on our property by placing dead rabbits, chickens, etc. in a bucket with holes in the bottom and hanging it in our chicken run. The flies lay eggs which hatch into maggots. The maggots eat the dead critter. Then they crawl out the holes and fall to the ground where the chickens chow down on them. The circle of life.
Human maggots serve no purpose that I can see, unless you count ‘being a bad example.’
A literal maggot is a natural part of the natural world. People who behave as maggots are another thing entirely.
The golden rule is “empty” and “newspeak”?
Perhaps to you. That is entirely your choice.
I try hard to treat others the way I’d like to be treated, out of empathy as well as self-interest. Other people throw that in the woods, preferring the rule of the stronger/might makes right.
Perhaps they’re right. Maybe I am foolish for expecting (for hoping) that people can live without taking advantage, on the basis of voluntaryism. Without stealing. Without forcing. Live – and let live. Naive, perhaps.
But I feel cleaner advocating that – and trying to practice that.
Minimally, I can look myself in the mirror. I know in my mind and heart that I am not a shill, not posing. That’s worth a lot to me.
Your mileage may vary.
PS: I am inclined to concede the point in re meat eating. I do it still, yes – but with some unease.
eric, everything will be eaten by something. The “when” part is something none of us know.
I’ve had people take me to task for hunting. It’s easy to shoot them down, their argument at least. Well, I’m just a meat eater and it seems natural. I didn’t realize you were a vegan.
Oh, I’m not a vegan. I just don’t see how you can kill something.
I see, you don’t want to kill and animal but you have no problem eating what I kill. So how do you get your meat?
Well, I buy it at……
Wait up there missy. You pay someone else to kill for you. Even been to the slaughterhouse? Those animals know what’s coming. OTOH, Bambi is browsing and enjoying life when the lights go out. Tell me, which would you rather be, Bambi, happy or contented or whatever Bambi normally feels when it’s not pure paranoia or fright or that steer who knows, hears, smells, sees his fate coming? I’m not saying either is right or wrong. I can only put myself in their places as I can imagine it which might not be accurate in any way.
Tell me true, would you rather be walking along or whatever you might be doing, hopefully, having some great sex, and the lights go out or would you rather see, hear, smell and generally visualize what’s about to happen?
For me, I’d just as soon it be those brief seconds of seeing that canyon coming after my steering tire blows and that “oh shit” moment and nothing after that. It beats hell out of the way nearly all my family has gone. Beats hell out of almost everyone I’ve ever known has gone(there have been a few who appeared to be asleep and didn’t wake up).
It’s really much too complicated for me to stress about a great deal. It is what it is(whatever that is)and will continue to be so as far as I can tell.
I’d stun my own beef or hogs if I had the facilities to manage it. I get no joy from killing, no matter how it’s done but I can’t obsess about it. Who’s to say that plant’s not feeling pain as it gets cut, lopped off, chewed by old Bessie or however it loses it’s life? Maybe it was having the best sex it could imagine when Bambi bent down and cut it off at the ground……right before Bambi’s lights went out.
I have plenty other stuff to feel guilty about as probably most people do. And I feel more guilt paying for CAFO food than shooting that quail.
Tor’s post of one of Dorthy Parker’s quotes fits in about here. The one about feeling guilty about stepping on worms and how their clan will get their revenge in The End.
It’s the way of the world.
To me, feeling guilty or uneasy about eating meat is about like feeling guilty for being alive.
And, like you said, “Who’s to say that plant’s not feeling pain as it gets cut, lopped off, chewed by old Bessie or however it loses it’s life?” Supposedly, plants communicate, so, why not?
I would write that I too, “get no joy from killing” per se, but when I get wild game from hunting, it’s like getting a prize. I feel the same way when I find a Morel.
I guess I’m a bit wolf? Or, a part of this world, and not running from that fact?
Just thinking out loud.
Hi Helot,
It’s an issue I’m still ambivalent about. I eat meat. But I also have animals all around me – pets and the ones you eat (and which I eat it, too). It is pretty clear to me these animals are conscious; that they feel emotions and are individuals. They are not self-conscious, of course. They do not have – so far as the evidence seems to indicate – “deep thoughts.” The don’t weigh ponder existential questions or do differential equations. But then, neither does Clover. Arguably, a not-small percentage of humanity is animal-like in terms of stimulus-response/mostly reflexive behavior. And – let’s face it – what are even the brightest of us here in comparison with, say, a Steven Hawking or Leonardo?
To be very crystal clear: I am not condemning meat eating. I am only stating my own philosophical ambivalence, even as I still do eat meat.
I rarely eat meat (I have no moral issues with the eating of meat- I just don’t do good on it: After being a strict vegetarian for 15 years, when I moved to the country, I started raising steers- butchered one of ’em, and started having meat twice a week…and gained 50 lbs! [which I’ve since lost]- and that was with organic, grass-fed meat, with any trace of fat removed!)
But anywho: This issue is more about our core beliefs and world-view. Me? I believe God put animals here for our service- whether it be vultures to clean-up the landscape; or doggies to keep us company; or cows and deer to eat and make things out of.
We are to be good stewards of these things- just as we are supposed to be with the earth.
I’ve always found it interesting, that the animals we are allowed to eat- the “clean” animals, such as cows- don’t seem to have real emotions, like say, a dog does.
I could never kill a dog (I even made friends with a dog around the corner, who bit me when I first started bicycle riding…)- but taking one of my steers to the butcher, and eating him.
Most of the cows today would not exist if they were not being raised for meat and such. I mean, few people would want one as a pet…. and there aren’t too many places where they could live in the wild.
Regardless of ones philosophical/religious views, it has to be admitted that death is a very necessary part of the environment/ecosystem. Some animals kill others and eat them; some animals live off of already dead carcasses; the bear eats the fish, who in turn et the worm; It’s the cycle of life- which is dependent upon death for it’s perpetuation.
If one were able to stop all death, it would in turn result in the death of all- because the world and it’s natural processes could not function and support life….without death.
Even within ones own body, that cycle is going on, on a micro level- even if one doesn’t eat meat. Good cells are killing off bad cells; bacteria is killed; skin cells die and are replaced by new ones, etc.
I think the real question comes down to: Do we see man as the ultimate beneficiary of these processes; and recognize that these processes all exist to sustain man; and therefor it is no transgression to avail one’s self of their benefits? Or do we see man as just another link in the chain, of no more import than an amoeba or squirrel?
The funny thing is, that those who see man as no more important; and who think that our use of the natural world and it’s processes constitutes aggression, don’t seem to realize that even if mankind were exterminated, that cycle of life and death would still continue, unabated- and that even if they could somehow stop it, it would then result in the death of everything; the cessation of all life- even plant life, because of the symbiotic relationships.
So while many vegans seem to think that their philosophy is one of preserving life…in reality, it is really a blueprint for the ultimate death of man and everything else.
Hmmm…think I’ll get me one of these T-shirts, just to be consistent!
http://maddox-store.spreadshirt.com/for-every-animal-you-don-t-eat-i-m-going-to-eat-three-A18835824/customize/color/63
RE: “gained 50 lbs!”
Eating Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat
“A wonderful infographic based on Why We Get Fat by science writer Gary Taubes, explains exactly why eating fat doesn’t make you fat – but eating carbs can kill you […] It’s Time to Let Go of Your Fear of Fat”…
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/02/joseph-mercola/eating-fat-doesnt-make-you-fat/
That said, eating too much red meat could give you too much iron.
The End Of All Chronic Age-Related Disease
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/bill-sardi/the-end-of-all-chronic-age-related-disease/
You know, Helot, I’m a firm believer that different bodies react differently to various foods. I actually tend to do good on a lot of carbs (Ditto my whole fambly- maybe ’cause we’re Dagos- but there are literally no fatso’s among us…)
Eating that steer was the only time in my life that I was fat….
I seem to have a very metabolism, too. (Probably why we tend to be long-livers).
I think so much of dietary research is pure BS. It varies, depending on the individual; genetics; lifestyle- and there are so many variables, they can never all be taken into account.
Just look at how all last 40 years of “science”….saying that eggs and butter and salt were bad for ya;’ and veggie erls good…is all out the window now…and suddenly, everyone’s done a 180…
(The real truth probably lies somewhere in the middle- The “new” “truth” is probably just a ruse, to get animal fat back into products, ’cause it’s cheaper)
I think we just need to know what works for US, personally. Like, I know meat doesn’t work so well for me. Yet pasta is like a diet food for me…. (Hey, it’s Sunday…the day that all us Wops have pasta…it’s the la! -and one that even libertarianism can not anull! :D)
That should be “I seem to have a very SLOW metabolism….”
I wonder if one key was here, “when I moved to the country”
A big assed lifestyle change, lots of stress maybe? Just from the change in lifestyle alone, maybe not the pace of life or anything?
But yeah, it could be that, “different bodies react differently to various foods”?
Myself, I think a motor, is a motor, is a motor, biological or metal. Maybe as with the computer controlled car discussed on the other thread it’s the other components which throw a wrench in the works? There’s all kinds of other factors involved:
Chubby Cheeks. Man Boobs. An Expanding Spare Tyre. Never Mind Doughnuts… Are Your Hormones Making You Fat?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2299053/Chubby-cheeks-Man-boobs-An-expanding-spare-tyre-Never-mind-doughnuts–Are-hormones-making-fat.html
Are These the Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Belly Fat?
“Stress makes your body produce cortisol, known as “the stress hormone,” which depletes lean muscle and makes your body hold on to fat in the abdominal region. It also enlarges your fat cells, allowing them to store more fat.” …
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/joseph-mercola/still-not-losing-the-belly-fat/
5 Surprising Factors That Make You Pack on Pounds
#1: Antibiotics in Food and Medicine
#2 Other Growth-Enhancing Drugs Used in Livestock [And, from the water supply!]
#3: Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, Including Pesticides
#4: Artificial Sweeteners
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/joseph-mercola/5-factors-that-can-fatten-your-waistline/
I’m curious, are your Dago bunch long lived? I know that a lot of my carb heavy skinny ancestors were not.
Study: Both Exercise and Whey Augment Human Growth Hormone Production, Which Can Keep Your Body Young
“Why Carb-Loading is Not Recommended if You Exercise for Longevity” ….
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/02/joseph-mercola/study-both-exercise-and-whey-augment-human-growth-hormone-production-which-can-keep-your-body-young/
I think maybe this is more along the lines of what you meant when you said “different bodies react differently to various foods”:
How Probiotics May Aid Your Weight Management
“Your intestinal bacteria are part of your immune system, and researchers are discovering that microbes of all kinds play instrumental roles in countless areas of your health. For example, beneficial bacteria, also known as probiotics, have been shown to: […] Boost weight loss […] pathogenic bacteria and other less beneficial microbes can wreak havoc with your health if they gain the upper hand. It can also affect your weight […]
“A more recent study found that major diet shifts can change the mix of gut microbes noticeably in just a day. Omnivores switching to a diet of all animal products saw the biggest change, as some bacteria boomed and others declined. Microbes settled back to their previous profiles a day or two after subjects returned to their usual diets…” …
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/joseph-mercola/a-secret-weapon-for-weight-loss%E2%80%A8/
Anyway, interesting thought-wave you initiated there, Moleman
Nah, Helot, I got RID of the stress and all that when I moved to the country. And was here a few years before I et that steer…..
I’ve been eating a good clean diet since 1985; never used any kind of drugs, Rx or otherwise; I lead a very simple healthy life…
It’s my metabolism. If I ate the calories that “they” say a guy of my dimensions should eat, I’d weigh 500 lbs. I gain weight if I even eat my BMR.
A motor may be a motor…but we ain’t motors. The way bodies metabolize food, and a zillion other factors, make for a LOT of differences from person to person- which is why they can make the research say whatever they want it to (i.e. carbs are good; carbs are bad; Butter is good for you; butter will kill you; High fat foods are good…high fat foods will kill you…) because no matter what they try, only a percentage of the test subjects respond in the desired way- i.e. “34% of those who ate a low fat diet farted 12 or more times a day vs. 52% of those who ate a high-fat diet”- and then someone else does similar research with a different group, and gets different numbers- because different people = different results, because we are all different.
And then when you look at some of these studies…sheesh! I was looking at one a few weeks ago in an online news story…turns out, the test group consisted of [get this!] 27 people. 27!
So they’re saying human kind as a whole should respond in a manner corresponding to the percentage of a group of 27 people who were tested…and even in that small group, the results were nowhere even near unanymous…
See what I mean? It’s all smoke and mirrors. They got a percentage of a tiny group to respond positively to the point they were trying to prove, and then extrapolated that result to all of humankind. It’s insanity.
Or for instance, take smoking tobacco: In Italy, everyone smokes, and yet they live longer than many others, and don’t have anywhere near the degree of ling cancer; emphysema; and all that good stuff that we have here in America. Why? Different lifestyle; different genetics; etc.
All I know, is I’ve been 5’10”, 170 lbs since i was 16, and am now….but after eating that meat twice a week for a year, I found I was 225 lbs! (Funny thing was, I didn’t even realize it, until I went to measure myself for a bicycle, when I took up the sport- ’cause I didn’t have a big belly or anything- I didn’t look that fat- it was really solid fat…which made it harder to lose!)[Still have the same low blood pressure as when I was 16, too!]
Interesting comments, moleman. Very.
“for instance, take smoking tobacco: In Italy, everyone smokes, and yet they live longer than many others, and don’t have anywhere near the degree of ling cancer; emphysema” etc…
I wonder if Monsanto has a choke-hold upon Italy like it does much of the rest of the world? I also wonder what role dust kicked up in the air from farming-gone-wild and industrial output plays a role?
I Very much doubt lifestyle and genetics plays a bigger role than poison.
Moleman says, “Nah, Helot, I got RID of the stress and all that when I moved to the country.”
Stress comes in many flavors and colors. It’s not always easy to see. …Also, did you miss the bit about how, “major diet shifts can change the mix of gut microbes noticeably in just a day”?
It seems like you’re glossing over that.
Who knows, though?
RE: “Just look at how all last 40 years of “science”….saying that eggs and butter and salt were bad for ya;’ and veggie erls good…is all out the window now…and suddenly, everyone’s done a 180…”
In the background, the guys promoting the Primal/Paleo diet/lifestyle are saying they have 5000 Plus years to back up what they are doing. Solid stuff there. The recent 180 is but a blip.
Anyway, thanks for your reasoned reply. I appreciate that.
No problemo, Helot! If we can’t discuss such things rationally amongst ourselves…then we wouldn’t be worth our salt, eh?
Ironically, my grandfather who immigrated here from Italy….died at 74 (a young man by our family’s standards) from….emphysema! I’ll bet driving a cab in NYC (In the days long before A/C and catalytic converters) had more to do with it than smoking.
Re: Stress: LOL- No….the last decade has been the least stressful of my entire life. I have very little contact with the world. I don’t weatch TV or listen to the raddio[sic]; I work at home; I live on 28 park-like acres, which I love maintaining; I go to town for errands maybe 3x a month..and I ride my bicycle for fun. My dog is my best friend, and we’ve never had a harsh word between us 😀
And even in the city…I was always by nature, a very easy-going relaxed person… And if I were under stress; and stress was responsible for the weight gain…I’d still be fat!
That reminds, someone locally wrote a poem entitled “I’m Fat And I’m Also Phat”. It wass pretty boring, so I did a remake of it, in my own way….
I’ll favor you with it:
I Smell by Moleman:
I Smell
Olfactory sense sample roses in the dell.
I smell.
Farts emanate which I can not quell.
I smell.
Stately aroma of frankincense,
While digested beans emit their stench.
Wow, awesome life. I envy you.
I think maybe you’re missing my point. Stress can be more than what passes for “stress”.
Your life seems to shove to the side the idea of “stress”,… perhaps? But, maybe there’s more to stress than being “uptight”?
“Change”, is a funny thing.
And, whoa, we lost our grandfathers to the same damn killer. …Do you suppose it was an open air kind of thing? Geo-engineering or mega pollution? IDK?
In the end, there’s still this: ““major diet shifts can change the mix of gut microbes noticeably in just a day”
>”
And to take the property of another is to take the fruit of that person’s labor. To violate him personally. “<
Exactly. It is for that reason we oppose taxation. If we didn't oppose theft, then there would be no reason to oppose taxation- which is just institutionalized theft. We'd be like the socialists, who support theft, as long as they think it's being perpetrated against "the other guy"; and supporting themselves or their favorite group of charity-cases; where as we don't want our neighbor to be robbed; just as we don't want to be robbed.
Tor is literally taking the position that statists falsely accuse libertarians of taking. I’m sure you’ve heard it before “Oh, you don’t like drug laws, so you’re basically saying people should just be able to run around and do whatever they want.” Or replace any other non-aggresssive action instead of drug use, and I’m sure you’ve heard the argument before.
Most of us say “no, but lest we use aggression against the peaceful to prevent aggression against the peaceful, peace-keeping services need to be funded on a voluntary basis, whether that be by voluntary donations from the community, competetive PDA or DRO businesses on the free market, or whatever.” I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I’m assuming most of us would say something like this.
Tor is basically saying “yeah, without the government, I can steal from people if I want to.”
Most an-caps want “anarchy” in the philosophical sense, meaning the absence of rulers, or at least coercively imposed rulers (whether a non-coercively imposed ruler is a contradiction depends on how “ruler” is defined exactly.)
Apparently there are a few of “us” who want anarchy not in the philosophical sense, but in the conventional sense, state of nature, you can do whatever you want, survival of the fittest, and all that.
I have had some people try to tell me that that’s really where anarcho-capitalism leads. I don’t think it does, but if it were true, that would probably be the biggest possible temptation for me to return to minarchism.
Dear David,
You wrote:
“I have had some people try to tell me that that’s really where anarcho-capitalism leads. I don’t think it does, but if it were true, that would probably be the biggest possible temptation for me to return to minarchism.”
Mirabile dictu! I actually agree with you on this point.
Of course it’s flat out untrue. This can be verified both a priori via logical deduction, and empirically, by reference to the historical record. Therefore the issue is moot.
@Bevin- I agree with you. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the difference between anarcho-capitalism and what Tor was suggesting is bigger than the difference between anarcho-capitalism and minarchism.
Dear David,
I didn’t read what Tor said, so I have no opinion on that.
I was responding only to your comment by itself. I agree that IF anarchism meant law of the jungle, I would prefer minarchism.
But it doesn’t. So I don’t.
@Bevin- I agree with you, though the more cynical I get the more I’d be thrilled to EVEN acheive minarchism. I prefer anarcho-capitalism.
Yes, indeed.
Anarchism does not mean no rules. It means the absence of government (and a legally enforced monopoly on coercive violence).
I’m not sure what, exactly, Tor wants.
He appears sometimes to defend theft, for instance. Apparently, because “everyone’s doing it, so why shouldn’t I dive in?”
My ideal is that aggressive violence becomes as despicable to most people as molesting kids. The difficulty is getting people to comprehend the principle that aggressive violence is just that whether it’s done by an individual on his own or under the rubric of “majority rule,” the ballot box and so on.
There are times where people will defend aggressive violence when done by the individual, but not nearly as often and to the extent that they defend it when it is done by government. Some people might think it would be OK to pull a gun out of the hand of a person who is about to shoot himself (I’d probably do this as well, for better or for worse.) Nobody would think it would be justified to point a gun at someone for not wearing a bike helmet, unless the person who is pointing the gun is a “police officer”…
@Eric- I think one could make a valid case that its acceptable to “steal” from the government, since they are a criminal organization and thus do not rightfully have property rights. I know that’s not what Tor was talking about, and I could be wrong, just throwing it out there.
When we get “taxed” we know we aren’t really paying for services, we are being robbed at gunpoint whether we use the services or not. But, I don’t think its illegitimate for a libertarian to use said services even while he fights to abolish them. It would be like if a gang stole 50 dollars from you and then offered you 20 dollars back. Taking it is not justifying the gang.
Mind you, there are times where we shouldn’t use government services, but that isn’t just because they are tax supported. Using public schools is ordinarily wrong*, but that isn’t because they are funded by theft, its because public schools are a means by which government brainwashes children. By contrast, it is not immoral to drive on the road, and it IS immoral for government to aggress against you for not following their “rules.” I also don’t think its immoral, per say, to take financial aid, social security, or welfare if you need it for the same reason. In a true free market system, such things wouldn’t be present or needed, but if government steals from all of us to fund such things, I don’t think its wrong to take advantage of those things when needed, especially when the need is likely created by the very existance of said programs. I would even more consider this to be the case considering that most people aren’t libertarians. I could imagine a principled argument that in some way by taking student aid (as I did last year) I was really taking from you, but really, I was taking back from a gang that stole from all kinds of people, most of whom support the gang.
Now, to be clear, I am NOT advocating taking from people who support the gang. There are no thought-crimes. But I think its OK, on libertarian principle, to take from the gang itself. I personally only do so in legal ways, and not in all the legal ways I could, but that’s more some mixture of pragmatic and Christian principles than it has anything to do with libertarian principles.
*The only time I’d say public school usage isn’t wrong is A: Literally no other options, or B: A child (generally would be in high school by this point, but who knows?) is intelligent enough that he could both avoid being brainwashed by the system, AND influence other peopke positively. That was true for me in 11th and 12th grades, but isn’t true for most other people…
Hi David,
There is a word which may apply here: quibbling.
Is it good for us – for our own sense of ourselves – to ever take what’s not ours?
Mind, I have no problem with recovering anything that is/was specifically mine. Someone takes my tools. I hunt the bastard down, take my tools back. But what about taking “government’s” tools to make up for the loss of mine?
It makes me uneasy.
Eric,
I agree with you on this. While I understand–where David is coming from–the case can be made that it isn’t wrong to “steal from government”. I’ve heard it argued by Walter Block, whom I highly respect, argue that taking money from the government is akin to taking it from a thief.
Your word, “quibbling” is very fitting here. What are we calling “stealing from the government”? How is it defined? I believe it comes down to how an individual feels about it personally. It would be hard for me personally, to go and steal tools from a government shop and feel good about it. Even though they received the tools in an ill gotten manner, I still can’t feel good about it.
In my excavation business, I do work for the private sector and public sector. The private sector relies on grants and subsidies from government in such a vast manner, that I don’t feel it any more immoral to work for a municipality than I do working in the private sector. Somewhere down the line, virtually any transaction you participate in was facilitated by a subsidy, tax or whatever. It is that way because of the type of statist society we live in. It matters not where you go. The state has involvement everywhere to some extent. Simply using FRN’s we are party to theft and subsidy the world over.
That being said, I–personally–quiver at the notion of using government funds directly. Food stamps, grants, medicaid, etc. are all out for me. I couldn’t bring myself to use any of that. Indirectly is another story. If someone pays me for work I have done for them with money form their medicaid check, or from their savings that they only have because they are on food stamps, that’s another matter.
I will continue to complain. I will continue to do everything I can to reduce the influence of the state and even promote abolition of the evil institution. But, I don’t have the means to move to a private island where I can self sustain myself and my family and have no connection to the outside world and their immoral statist tendencies. What I can do is control the direct, or indirect involvement I have with the state. I prefer to limit it to indirect involvement. The only direct involvement I have is always initiated by them and their agents.
Personally, I face moral dilemma’s in my mind constantly. Because of this, I refuse to participate directly. I can’t feel good about it and the strings attached to it are much to great for my comfort level.
Ancap, I think you are on the right path. It’s like myself- I don’t want what the goobermint has taken from my neighbors. If they want to give it to me, I still don’t want it; and I’m certainly not going to steal it from them; or even buy it from them (I don’t go to gov’t auctions- such as police auctions, where they sell shuff that was “confiscated” or to which they couldn’t “find the rightful owner”[because they didn’t want to]…)- I don’t take farm subsidies; etc.
I do believe that a lot of these nefarious things would go away if people simply would stop participating. Imagine if no one showed up at the stinking-pig auction? If no one went to the welfare office and applied for food stamps? If no one took a subsidy to grow (or to refrain from growing) something? The goobermint would lose a LOT of their power and control, if people simply didn’t participate.
I don’t participate.
Now the thing is, we can’t stop the Clovers from participating. So if they’re paying you for a product or service, and their money came from welfare or a subsidy or whatever, …well…. there’s not much you can do about that- other than to try and limit your dealings with such people- which is not a bad idea, anyway.
I mean, if you open a convenience store in the ‘hood….you know you’re going to be existing on 2nd-hand welfare money; If you become a doctor, and take Medicare… or you drive a school bus….you know both where the money is coming from; and that you will be subject to a level of control, from those who control that money.
It’s kinda like: You can’t examine everyone who walks into your store, to know that their money didn’t come from robbing a bank…..but if you locate that store in a nice family neighborhood, you’ll have less of a chance of dealing with a crook, than if you opened that store next-door to a casino or brothel or police station.
The less we participate; the fewer of their things that we use…the less we are contributing to their crimes; the less control we are subjecting ourselves to; the less we are perpetuating their system; and the freer we and our neighbors are.
@ancap- I couldn’t really justify robbing a government tool shop either. But I’d probably vote “not guilty” if I were on the jury for someone who did. For some reason I am OK with taking student aid as I did, I’m not sure quantiatively why beyond Block’s arguments which you mention above. We all use the roads, thus, in some sense, we are “using theft” to get around. I don’t blame people who want to use the government as little as possible, but at the end of the day, we’re to some extent stuck in a system where we have to use stolen goods. Its not our fault and I don’t think we’re responsible for it as long as we fight against it.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t really feel good at shooting at a government agent who was using legalized violence against me either, although at a certain point I would say that doing so is objectively justified. I don’t think I’m totally a free-thinker yet, even though I try to me. My society and my culture have less influence on me than they do on most people, but if I’m honest, they still have some.
>”We all use the roads”<
Yeah…but only because they've been forced upon us. They've paved-over most of the dirt and gravel roads, which used to just exist and be maintained by the people who used them..or no one at all….and now that they've filled the world with smooth-paved roads, it has resulted in the world being structured in a such a way geographically; and has rendered most other forms of transportation either illegal or unsafe for deployment on their roads- that I am forced to get a car; driver's license; insurance; registration; etc. just to travel about. They've taken my money and have used it against me.
So I may get to use the proceeds of their criminal activities…but who says I want to? They basically force us to, because they have put these things in place of what used to be there.
I’d be all for tearing down the system, yesterday. If you’re going to take from the system, just don’t forget what it really is.
David,
I’m not calling anyone wrong. I just put my personal feelings out there. I view it in a similar way as Block, but not exactly. He basically says, if you can get a grant, go ahead. If you use it to preach against government, it’s great. I differ with him on that point…..mostly because I like to be as self sufficient as possible in the soviet system we have. I have a hard time in my gut, arguing against things that I take advantage of in my private life. I know others who are good philosophically, but are different in practice.
The nice thing with an ancap society, we wouldn’t have to worry about people who say one thing and do another, legislating things to us. Thus, I can accept yours and Blocks argument–because I don’t have to worry about either of you favoring tyranny instead of an ancap society.
eric, I see stuff I could steal all the time that belongs to govt. entities. If I stole it though, they’d just replace it and want more tax money from everyone for their losses. Stealing has always been anathema to me. I’ve seen plenty of chances my whole life and i could be wealthy without my aversion to stealing, even though I could have countless times and actually done so legally. I suppose that destined me to be poor. I could easily steal all sorts of “publicly owned” things but wouldn’t that simply increase the funds the gummint steals from me and everyone else?
If I stole, then how could I condemn the gov’t for doing the same? If we rob the mugger and return the money to it’s rightful owner, we’ve done good. If we rob the mugger and put the money in our own pocket….we are almost as bad as the mugger. The gov’t is the mugger- they rob the innocent and other muggers as well.
Yep….theft by proxy….is still theft.
The thing is, they’ve stolen from all of us. We’re all just recovering what has been stolen. I feel doubly justified in the fact that I’m one of only a few who’s actually justifying the theft. The neighbors who I’m arguably depriving of their property by taking from the government support the system anyway, thus have no real standaing.
I look at it like this: A steals from B. C steals B’s money from A and pockets it. I would say that C is a criminal, but not because he stole from A. Rather, he’s a criminal because he is stealing from B.
Now, say A stole 50 dollars from B and 50 dollars from C. C manages to take back 50 dollars from A. I would say C has the right to keep the money. After all, C is simply recovering what’s his. I would say this is DOUBLY the case if B is saying “you know, I think A is a nice guy and he has a right to steal from all of us. In that instance, I wouldn’t even necessarily blame C for stealing and keeping all 100 dollars of the stolen money. Not sure.
Note that I used the word “steal” throughout, but its arguably not really theft since the “victim” is himself a thief.
David, you know, THAT was the evil genius on which this whole system, started 100 years ago, is premised on.
People say “I paid taxes for that, so I’m just getting my own money back!”
But they never give it much thought.
I once calculated that a relative of mine, in the years he worked c 1940-1980- paid somewhere between $10K-$15K in Socialist Security taxes.
For that 1015K he paid….he (retired for c. 20 years before he died); 2 of his children (on some kind of Socialist Security entitlement for the last 30 years or so) and his 3 former wives (all collecting off of his “account”) have gotten over $2Million in “benefits”- and that’s not even counting the free medical BS (One of his daughters is a hypochondriac, and goes to the doctor literally every week of her life….must use well over $100K of medical services a year- has probably had 100-150 CAT scans/MRIs over the last 25 years…)
But I could just see the guy saying “well, I paid taxes for that!” 🙂
It’s such a complex; corrupt; unjust system. I try and let them take as little as possible from me…and try to avoid participation as much as possible- because once they draw you in, no matter how you look at it, you become a part of their system- whether you’re a taker or a giver….as long as you participate, they can manipulate you and use you to manipulate others.
We could effect a 90%-effective revolution, just by refusing to participate- and by going about our own business without involving “them” in any way, shape or form….just cut them out of the loop- stop taking their subsidies/entitlements; stop going to their schools; stop voting in their elections; stop working at their offices; stop paying their taxes; etc. The only thing they would have left, is brute force….and then when they used it, people would see it for what it is, and would probably pick-up the other 10% of that revolution to stop it.
RE: “because once they draw you in, no matter how you look at it, you become a part of their system”
Reminds me of a scene in The Godfather, “Once you get out, they suck you right (!) back in!”
Dear David,
The Magnificent Seven had a quote to that effect.
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t6720.htm
http://www.subzin.com/s/A+thief+who+steals+from+a+thief+is+pardoned+for+100+years
Hmmm, yeah, Helot- I don’t see much difference between the gov’t and the guys in the Mafia- they both make you an offer you can’t refuse; both offer to sell you protection; both wanyt a monopoly on gambling; both use enforcers and hitmen…..
I ain’t never seen The Godfather….but I think I’m familiar with their tactics… 🙂
Moleman wrote, “I ain’t never seen The Godfather…”
For the Longest time, I was the same.
You’re not really missing much, but to better understand the rest of the fellas around you, I suggest you watch it.
Helot: “You’re not really missing much, but to better understand the rest of the fellas around you, I suggest you watch it.”
Aaayyyy! I’m Eye-talian; and a few uncles even married Sicilians…believe me, I don’t need no movie… 😀 (Actually bought The Godfather for my mother…it sits 300′ away from me as we speak…but I have no interest in it.) And I went to school with Danny Aiello.. (Well…not THAT one…but I remember the kid, because some girl got mad at him, and called him “Fanny I-smello)
Hehe, sometimes, I get to thinking that way too, David. It’s like “Maybe the welfare people have the right idea! Take everything they’ll give; have nothing they can take from you;and your neighbors who are being robbed to supply it are the very enablers who voted for these schemes, and who participate in and work for their existence. So why not help bring the system down sooner, by joining in it’s very dysfunction which is bringing it down?”.
But how could someone of principle and morality look themself in the mirror then? Not to mention how one would have to give up even more privacy and freedom to participate in those things.
By contrast- look at the Amish- how free they remain, compared to the average schmuck- just by not participating; and by living outside of the system.
When you say “welfare” people I doubt you’re counting the really big takers.
RE: “When you say “welfare” people I doubt you’re counting the really big takers.”
Ain’t that The Truth.
One of The Greatest “divide and conquer” baits ever laid out.
So many people (on other threads and in other places in R.L.) just go absolutely bonkers about some dirt poor two-bit families who mooch $250 or so a month plus extras (that never amount to No million Bucks) off the goobermint teat, yet they totally gloss over the big corporations and even the mid-tier farm families with their pot-O-gold plots such as tobacco “land-permits” and C.P.R. b.s. while raking in the subsidies.
Then throw in the rants by so many about illegal immigrant crime “this” and illegal immigrant crime “that” while ignoring the real in your face stealing from every family happening in plain sight. It really makes a thinking person wonder about …. everything and everybody.
That’s not to say that I’m absolutely pure or anything, but gee whiz, …Psft.
In The End, is it accurate to say the whole system is not repairable from the inside, or from any angle? That the only way there will be true “reform” is by out and out big-time default?
Is it also true that the Great goobermint has promised wayyy more than it can deliver and the only way Out for The Great goobermint, is through default?
The Only question is, when?
…And, when “when” happens, you better be as self sufficient as you can be?
Enough to get over “The Hump”?
I hope I live long enough to see what it’s like, “Over The Hump”. The good side of that, Not the possible ultra-Fascist side that so many write about.
One can only insulate oneself so much from participating in Govt-subsidized activities. The gas you fill in your vehicle relies heavily on direct (drilling on “state-owned” land using permits obtained through sweetheart deals) or indirect (the taxpayer-paid military) subsidies. Cheap food in supermarkets depends on farmer subsidies.
IMO, all one can do is live one’s life without imposing on others and not taking handouts directly from Uncle Sam.
Escher, I wish you were right about cheap foods being govt. handouts for farmers, and it’s true to some extent, wheat, rice but there’s an overabundance(que Sally Fields or any celebrity…..we could feed all the starving children in this country…..really? I only see children that are too fat. Not sure where you find hungry children)taxpayers pay through the nose over. But tobacco, expensive habit and crop that is, getting subsidy? And we have no need for the short staple cotton produced(or not….a couple days ago I saw more than one farmer shredding his cotton crop, a really good deal since they avoid the costs associated with harvesting it). Just so everyone knows, ADM has a lock on all the non-GMO cotton seed. I’d call that a monopoly…gummint made at that. Even though cotton hasn’t been worth growing for most of my life at least the seed is good feed. You can’t get cottonseed any longer and every benefit from such is bought and paid for before harvest by mainly ADM. Not a bad deal to have a govt. mandated lock on cotton meal, oil, etc. Not to mention if you do make a crop you get a newly passed legislation price for it so there are no “bad” years. I live in cotton country. Want to identify a cotton farmer? Just drive around and find the mansions in the country.
Helot says: “the only way there will be true “reform” is by out and out big-time default?”
I don’t believe so. There will change as a result of the innevitable default, yes- but real reform? No. Not as long as there people who are hungry for power and pilfered wealth; and people who want others to protect them; and people willing to take up arms to merely do as they are commanded without thought or conscience.
The resultant power-vacuum created by the default, will soon be filled…and not to our liking, so long as the majority of people do not value liberty above all else.
And in fact, with such things as the Bill Of Rights completely out of the way, the level of tyranny imposed in the next go-round, will be swift and brutal.
I mean, just look at human history: Other than Patriarchal times, and maybe for a brief period when America was very young, where has there ever existed anything even close to real freedom anywhere on earth throughout recorded history?
Very true, Escher. We can minimize; but not completely eliminate. Just using their fraudulent currency is a travesty.
MoleMan
Actually, there is a BIG difference between government and mafia. Bigness is that big difference.
I agree with your view more than David’s, but David does make a decent argument. It is very Block-ean.
I “get” the whole. “where has there ever existed anything even close to real freedom anywhere on earth throughout recorded history?” Ya. Ya.
Iceland and the Vikings non withstanding.
I’m thinking that the trip-up is at, “as long as there people who are hungry for power and pilfered wealth”
Gary North has a bit about how the pilfered tax Never goes higher than 20% or so. The People just won’t stand for it, he says.
And, I agree. …I mean, would you keep working if more than 20% were taken from your paycheck beyond what you’re already paying?
How much could “they” take from your paycheck and you’d still keep on working?
“They” have made promises beyond 20% of your paycheck. …At what point would throw in The Towel and say, “screw you”?
Also, why wouldn’t there be “real reform” if the money coming In got cut in half, or thirds? …Do you suppose the Welfare Dept. or the S.S. Dept. could go on doling out Dollars if their budget got cut into a third of what they have? …They’d have to do Real Reform then. Drastic!
Or, are you saying the goobermint can extract taxes from The People at whatever rate they desire with no ill effects, … forever?
The goobermint pocket is limitless?
They just keep any one bite under 20%. The total taxation bite is way over 20%. Well for people who are taxed and still haven’t fled to the hinterlands.
Also, RE: “anywhere on earth throughout recorded history?”
…As if that were the absolute Proof? And, Nothing is beyond that? Or, possible? Those who love self-imposed limitations would jump all over that.
Keyword: “recorded”
Have you been reading about those ancient civilizations? The ones off the coast of India, or the others where giant blocks of stone were cut by tools more modern than our own?
And just ignore those societies which existed and were too small to get counted or even to be known by us.
Never-mind those who say there was once a way in Eqypt to forge steel in one step, as opposed to the three steps it takes now.
The idea of, “throughout recorded history” is flawed, I think.
BrentP wrote, “They just keep any one bite under 20%.”
Oh, sure they do. …Like Hell.
When you write it that way, it’s like you could almost ignore the farmers who are pissed off as Hell right now. And the other fellas right behind them. …Have you talked to any of them lately? They haven’t gone off into any Hinterlands (wherever that might be?I’d like to go. Is it like Gault’s Gulch?) They are just steaming, boiling, like a cauldron.
Full Definition of CAULDRON
1 : a large kettle or boiler
2 : something resembling a boiling cauldron in intensity or degree of agitation
“Let the poisons, which lurk in the mud, rise up.”
“So many people (on other threads and in other places in R.L.) just go absolutely bonkers about some dirt poor two-bit families who mooch $250 or so a month plus extras (that never amount to No million Bucks) off the goobermint teat, yet they totally gloss over the big corporations and even the mid-tier farm families with their pot-O-gold plots such as tobacco “land-permits” and C.P.R. b.s. while raking in the subsidies.”
I believe you meant CRP, hahaha. But it’s funny you bring this up. My brother in-law bitches about welfare, non stop. He farms with his dad and between the two of them, they bring in a cool $60,000 just in direct payments alone. That doesn’t count the dozens of other subsidies they receive, like no sales taxes in the state of Idaho, while us non-farmers pay 6%…..but the people in the hood are ruining this country because of their “laziness”. These guys work long hours–with their asses planted in a tractor steered by a GPS unit– for 3-4 weeks out of the whole year. At planting and harvest. The H2A workers from Mexico do 90% of the work in between. It’s a tough life napping all winter and driving around in their nice pickups, which they don’t drive during farming season,. They have “work trucks” for that.
Rat bastards, all!
Helot, I threw in the towel long ago; but apparently our fellow countrymen will tolerate anything.
Add up all the taxes, and the average American is paying over 50% of their income in taxes already. even worse if you live in one of the liberal states.
Back on Lawn Guyland, there are 3 million people, who gladly tolerate paying over $10K a year just in property taxes on a modest everyday home. Just saw where in one township there, they raised their already absurd taxes 8.8% just this year. You’d think the streets would be paved with gold for those prices…but instead, the whole place is crumbling; and quality of life there is non-existent.
Is there a revolt? A mass exodus? No…. People just keep taking it.
Funding for things like welfare and subsidies will never get cut by a significant amount. As long as an authoritarian gov’t exists, they will just keep inflating the money- which is another form of theft, on top of taxation.
I wasn’t talking about that, when I said “after the default”- I meant more like if we got nuked, or something- if half of society perished; along with our present gov’t- the remaining people would erect something just as bad or worse than what we have now.
The majority don’t love liberty; they couldn’t care less about it. They want the benefits that they think they get from a powerful state; they will thus invite-in those who fill that need for them- and since such people have no qualms about the use of force and violence, WE will be no closer to a free world than we are now.
Crap, I did say C.P.R.? Ha! …But you know what I meant. at the same time, it might as well be, C.P.R., eh?
You spelled it out perfectly, ancap51.
I Just. Don’t, Get. Those guys.
It’s like there’s some haywire cross-thread in their thinking and they won’t fix it even If it’s pointed out to them.
I’ve known some guys who HATE being proved they’re wrong, but these guys take The Cake. …And, I’m Not just talking about the guys riding in the tractor seat, but the many many guys running commando along side them in the Inter-Web computer seat.
…I guess my problem is, I expected better of them. …And, they failed, The test.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment, Helot- but what does ancient high technology have to do with liberty?
Just the opposite: Usually where you have a highly structured society, with the infrastructure needed to create high technology and great public works, you also have authoritarianism and usually even down-right slavery.
Frre people don’t spend their time building pyramids or working in factories- only slaves do- whether their enslavement is overt, or through economic manipulation.
Just look at our own country: The rise in technology and great public works corresponds directly to the rise of autharitarianism and loss of freedom.
When we lived ion log cabins and rode horses, we were pretty darn free. Now that we drive fancy cars on a nationwide network of smooth-paved roads…not so much.
Helot, those farmers aren’t revolting, because most of them these days are Clovers. Sure, their taxes get raised…but so do the various benefits which they receive (if not in actual amount, then in quantity).
I know of at least one farmer here who has left the country already. Most won’t though, because they don’t care about liberty- as long as it works out O-K financially for them, they’re O-K with whatever the goobermint does. They don’t care that the gov’t is telling what to grow; what not to grow; how much they’ll get paid for it…..principles are out the window…they play the game, just like a welfare recipient in the city does; or the defense contractor. Farming is no longer about growing stuff; it’s about filling out forms and getting in on all the programs.
Mang was that depressing, Moleman.
For some reason, especially this:
“there are 3 million people, who gladly tolerate paying over $10K a year just in property taxes on a modest everyday home.”
That’s grossly pathetic!
However; The Thing you’ve Got to consider (and me) is that The Fed Gov. is Mucho larger than any One locality, and they have promised wayyy more than they can deliver. Not too mention how they are riding on the backs of Easy Money and a Housing Bubble forever.
As if….
Your locality might wish to pave the roads in gold and accept paper promises to heaven, but ask yourself, at what point of taxation do the dupes say, “No way, we won’t pay.”?
They might not Even be close to that point in your locality – but in the nation (and worldwide via bond rates) – I wonder, how much blood can you squeeze from a turnip? And, what’s that get a Power Elite?
i mean, if a Dollar buys you Jack Sheet, how far does a locality travel?
There’s Macro, and then there’s, MACRO.
Micro, need Not apply.
Ancap, when I was looking for land down here, first thing I’d ask when inquiring about any place, was “Is it in CRP; or does it have a tobacco base; or anything like that?”. It was hard to find parcels that weren’t enrolled in some commie program. (And once they’re enrolled in many of those programs, the new owner can’t just stop….the land is in the program for as long as the program’s contract stipulated).
Totally disgusting. WHAT facet of life is not controlled and sullied by gov’t?!
It’s funny- on a local forum, ya see welfare recipients (with computers; smart phones and fast internet connections) complaininmg about the farmers; and posting links to how much local farmers received in subsidy money; and ya hear the farmers complaining about the welfare loafers….but no one says “Why don’t we just stop all this BULLSHIT, and live by our own means, participating in a free market?!”.
No. Instead, it’s like two sides of one coin fighting. Nothing gets accomplished because both sides are wrong….but keeping them fighting keeps the pluralism going necessary for the major parties to stay in power.
What do you mean, “I’m misunderstanding your comment, Helot- but what does ancient high technology have to do with liberty?”???
You wrote, ““anywhere on earth throughout recorded history?” …As if, “recoded history” was The Be-all, to end all, for everything.
You wrote, “just look at human history: Other than Patriarchal times, and maybe for a brief period when America was very young, where has there ever existed anything even close to real freedom anywhere on earth throughout recorded history?”
You write, “where has there ever existed anything even close to real freedom anywhere on earth”
Well, if the “recorded history” of the earth is incomplete, who The Hell knows? There might have been great periods of freedom and Liberty and we would have No idea.
There’s whole periods in South American history we have No idea of, and of Africa, and of the greater past I touched on in lost civilizations. Which means: we Have No Clue!
Moleman wrote, “Helot, those farmers aren’t revolting, because most of them these days are Clovers”
Ya, That may be true. How-Freaking-Ever:; a whole Hell of a Lot of them aren’t Clovers – and – they’re mad as all get-out.
Also, RE: “Frre people don’t spend their time building pyramids or working in factories- only slaves do- ”
You’ don’t come across as a fan of the Free Market and the ideas surrounding that.
You write, “Usually where you have a highly structured society, with the infrastructure needed to create high technology and great public works, you also have authoritarianism and usually even down-right slavery. ”
How do you Know this?
Is this really a fact?
Do you suppose maybe Free Market forces might have been in play which were not “recorded” in human history?
Can you think of any modern situations where this was the case?
I know I can.
>”There might have been great periods of freedom and Liberty and we would have No idea.”Ya, That may be true. How-Freaking-Ever:; a whole Hell of a Lot of them aren’t Clovers – and – they’re mad as all get-out.””
You’ don’t come across as a fan of the Free Market and the ideas surrounding that.”<
WHAT????!!!!!
I can’t even respond to that. It’s too absurd.
>How do you Know this?”<
In a truly free market, you have lot of entrepreneurialism; unlimited liability; no captive labor.
Again, when you look at all the societies of the past and present, which have huge public works/high technology/massive infrastructures; they were/are the result of: Captive labor; schemes to limit liability (like corporations); fiat currency; eminent domain; etc.
Because, as I said, free people in a free market do not voluntarily waste their time working in factories or building pyramids- people only do those things out of necessity- and that necessity is usually created manipulative laws and economics. People who are free can earn a livelihood independently; on a smaller scale. They don't need to spend 40 years doing some mundane task in a factory, to make TVs or cars…they can instead make these things on a smaller scale- i.e. make their own TVs or cars; They don't need to build the Empire State Building, because they can have an office or business in their own home or on their own property.
Read Jacques Ellul ("The Technological Society")for the low-down on the relationship between the state/technology/Cloverism.
Free people don't need all the BS of empires/multinationals- because when one is free, life can be simple and easy. Who wants to spend half their life sitting in a cubicle or on an assembly line, when they are free to do their own thing? And thus, who needs all the ridiculous infrastructure/public works which those empires use their subjects to create?
Helolt, sorry- the first part of my previous post got messed-up, somehow…so here is what should have been there:
>”There might have been great periods of freedom and Liberty and we would have No idea.”Ya, That may be true. How-Freaking-Ever:; a whole Hell of a Lot of them aren’t Clovers – and – they’re mad as all get-out.”How do you Know this?”<
In a truly free market, you have lot of entrepreneurialism; unlimited liability; no captive labor.
Again, when you look at all the societies of the past and present, which have huge public works/high technology/massive infrastructures; they were/are the result of: Captive labor; schemes to limit liability (like corporations); fiat currency; eminent domain; etc.
Because, as I said, free people in a free market do not voluntarily waste their time working in factories or building pyramids- people only do those things out of necessity- and that necessity is usually created manipulative laws and economics. People who are free can earn a livelihood independently; on a smaller scale. They don't need to spend 40 years doing some mundane task in a factory, to make TVs or cars…they can instead make these things on a smaller scale- i.e. make their own TVs or cars; They don't need to build the Empire State Building, because they can have an office or business in their own home or on their own property.
Read Jacques Ellul ("The Technological Society")for the low-down on the relationship between the state/technology/Cloverism.
Free people don't need all the BS of empires/multinationals- because when one is free, life can be simple and easy. Who wants to spend half their life sitting in a cubicle or on an assembly line, when they are free to do their own thing? And thus, who needs all the ridiculous infrastructure/public works which those empires use their subjects to create?
Lets try this one more time!:
Helot:”There might have been great periods of freedom and Liberty and we would have No idea.”
Moleman:”And elephants may have been pink and talked too! Let me put it this way: From all we have know of our past, it is apparent that tyranny and wars in one form or another are the norm. You can’t say “Because we may not know the details of every civilization that ever existed on earth, we can not assume that freedom is an anomaly” because all that we do know points to organized human society behaving the same way, pretty consistently.”
Helot: “Ya, That may be true. How-Freaking-Ever:; a whole Hell of a Lot of them aren’t Clovers – and – they’re mad as all get-out.”
Moleman: “I beg to differ. 99.9% of farmers are partaking of the subsidies; are selling their produce on the rigged market; are shooting up their animals with whatever the gov’t tells them too; are tolerating gov’t inspectors snooping around their farms (an obligation to get the various subsidies); are gladly giving all of their financial details to the IRS; etc. If they were mad as hell, they could simply stop engaging in many of these behaviors- but NOooo! They may complain a little with their mouths- like my neighbor who expressed disgust when NAID was first proposed…and yet, before it was even implemented, he had signed-up for it, because they offered a financial “benefit” for doing so.
When I lived in the city, I assumed that farmers were independent freedom-loving “real Americans”. I now know different. Most are just as Cloverish as the Greenwich Village apartment dweller. Like Ronald Reagan- most of ’em talk a good talk…but that’s all it is- talk.”
Moleman said, “Because, as I said, free people in a free market do not voluntarily waste their time working in factories or building pyramids”
Do tell.
I’ve known many a Person who was QUITE happy in their brain numbing job. More than once they told me, “I Love my job!”.
Not everybody has business sense. …And, maybe they realize that? So, maybe they aren’t a cog in the machine out of neccity.
Not every labororer which appears to be captive, is.
Also, you say, “When I lived in the city, I assumed that farmers were independent freedom-loving “real Americans”. I now know different.”
…As if you met Every farmer in the americas?
Just like your example of history, how you wrap up the known history of mankind as if it were the totality of mankind, …You don;t know The Whole story.
Just because you haeve no record of such, does not mean it didn’t happen.
Imho, you flame wide, and not all plants wilt.
Human action.
Moleman said, “Because, as I said, free people in a free market do not voluntarily waste their time working in factories or building pyramids”
Do tell.
I’ve known many a Person who was QUITE happy in their brain numbing job. More than once they told me, “I Love my job!”.
And, No. I didn’t understand, why, either.
Not everybody has business sense. …And, maybe they realize that? So, maybe they aren’t a cog in the machine out of necessity.
Not every laborer which appears to be captive, is.
Also, you say, “When I lived in the city, I assumed that farmers were independent freedom-loving “real Americans”. I now know different.”
…As if you met Every farmer in the americas?
Just like your example of history, how you wrap up the known history of mankind as if it were the totality of mankind, …You simply do Not know The Whole story.
Just because you have no “record” of such, does not mean it didn’t happen.
Imho, you flame wide, and not all plants wilt.
Helot: ”
I’ve known many a Person who was QUITE happy in their brain numbing job…..”
I’ve known plenty of people like that, too. Just like life went on for many people in Soviet Russia, and they just accepted their fate and played along….
But just think: Without the conditioning of pooblik schools; without coercive unions and wage laws [people will be paid what they’re worth; not $32/hr. for sweeping the floor]; without multinational corps; guaranteed benefits; etc. etc. I think if we were free, there would be a lot more cottage industry (as there indeed used to be); and I think a lot of things would be done on a smaller scale- so instead of having some company with 30,000 employees, maybe you’d have a bunch of people working out of small shops with 5 employees, and a lot of those would probably be independent contractors.
I mean, the scenario we’ve come to accept as the norm today- where you spend 40 years or more as a cog in some corporation, is pretty unnatural- and pretty much never existed until 75 or 100 years ago- and then only because people started moving to cities, where there was really6 no other alternative.
If people were not manipulated through politics and circumstances, I’d bet we’d see more of what Thomas Jefferson envisioned: A nation of tradesmen and merchants and farmers- rather than the nation of wage slaves and union thugs we have now, who require the coercion of government and the leverage of limited-liability corps in order to secure their living.
I mean seriously, what would the point of libertarianism be, if we just ended up with the same crap we have now? What we have now, we largely have because individuals and the market are not free.
Sure, send people to public school for 5 generations; and let them live in places with no access to land; where it is illegal to even keep so much as a chicken…and what else are they going to do?
That is precisely why, to a large extent- things exist as they do- to create a captive labor force. Those who embrace freedom would largely not want to live that…and the others- the parasites, would die off, or go to Sweden or something….
Walkin about smoking some coca crystals.
Walkin about drinking some high fructose corn crystals.
One idiot who’s destroying his body has to buy his product on the black market. There’s no outlaw agorist libertarians around to help him get his product peacefully at the gray market.
The other idiot can buy as many 99 ounce big gulps as he wants. At the white market. He can even buy from a vending machine and not deal with any chimpanzee clerk at all.
In many ways, the far more destructive product is the coca drinka. The coca smoka is only bad for a fleeting moment. It’s actually all the poisons mixed in with it because its black market.
But the Uncle Tom slobberers about the laws and the cult of personality politicians and the big dicked handsome founders and the bright shiny church and the magic sky place.
All hail the manscouts in their religious, political, and military outfits. Maybe you’ll get another merit badge of freedom. Always be prepared to return to your own vomit ad nauseum.
Why is it they just can’t take the leap of mind and see that both these coca swilling idiots are identical. If I weren’t such a cynical addled burnout, I’d probably get better results I suppose.
Warrant – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6f68Wd9dc
go put the bodies in the wishing well?
I wonder if there’s some old MC constitutions and riders bills of rights. Since everyone gets so giddy about that stuff
http://www.ridermagazine.com/rallies-and-clubs/the-top-four-oldest-u-s-motorcycle-clubs.htm/
Maybe the coca should still be in the cola? And Bayer heroin still available from the pharmacist at the corner store instead of the one out back in the alley?
Sugar binds to the same receptors as cocaine, and is just as addictive. (Take a look at my gut, I don’t drink beer.)
Yes, heroin is addictive – unless you are actually taking it for pain relief. Then, not so much. Fewer ‘side effects’ than its replacements, first aspirin, then acetaminophen, then ibuprofen, then naproxen. What’s next?
And still the gunvermin insist that most ‘legal,’ prescription opiates be blended with acetaminophen, which will eventually cause liver damage.
But what can relieve the pain in the A__ that is gunvermin?
What if they outlawed sugar, and inlawed heroin?
I think you’d find out Hi Fructose Corn Syrup 55 and 40 are every bit the popular street drug that heroin once was.
And that after heroin being legal, it would once again simmer down to being plain old opium.
Part of the addiction is the fear of not satiating the need. Sugar lovers would turn to crime. And they’d degrade right before our eyes. They would become a disgusting horror in short order.
Let’s return to those Science Priests that say this or that receptor. Sugar lovers and heroin users are tweaking the same receptors. Think of the sick shit scientists do to animals to learn these things. Their knowledge comes at a price, as does everything.
Far from being altruists, many of them are sadists, whose job entails torturing nature to give up its secrets. They know a lot of shit. And they were ruthless in pursuing that knowledge, so don’t let the white coats fool you. There’s a lot of blood and suffering involved in what they’ve learned.
There was a natural world that was lived in 110 years ago, right here in Southern Nevada. One before the central banks. World wars. Do gooder prohibitions and restrictions.
The last big gold rush happened a little north of Las Vegas
http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/goldfield
In the year 1900 there was still a limited small frontier in existence. They discovered the gold. Everyone showed up and thousands lived in tents.
They threw up dwelling overnight with the local materials.
Opium dens were opened. As much as you wanted was available, but you had to pay yourself. No medicare and socialist system existed.
Professional women were brought in. Many of them brought themselves. Though subject to abuse by the men in their lives, they also had a kind of social power. Saloons were thrown up everywhere. Churches went up. An opera house appeared in the desert.
http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/goldfield
A fortune in gold was being dynamited out of the ground. Dug out with picks and bare hands. Natural law was at work. If you wanted wealth, you worked hard, took risks and you got it.
Plenty of swindlers were around to. They’d sell you claims. Often the claims were on unproductive land. It was up to you to figure out what the truth was. And what held actual value. If you acted wrongly, you were ruined.
There was no one to intervene. The wise guys didn’t need to put guns to anyone’s heads. There were plenty of suckers streaming in, and they fleeced them as fast as they came.
Violence in the early 1900s was swift and final. Start a dispute with the wrong guy, and he might beat you into a lifetime of crippledom. Or shoot you, and you might not live. The most you could expect was to be buried by the mining society. It was the ultimate anarchy.
If you were a soldier. You kept quiet about it in a saloon. They’d throw you right out. If a guy bought you a drink. You drank it. And fast. Not accepting hospitality was not an option. The other patrons would give you a thorough beating. Everyone there started thinking you were up to no good if you weren’t drinking.
As the boomtown died down, the state makers came on the scene. First they outlawed this. Then that. Before too long, Goldfield was just another den of slavery instead of a den of productivity and sometime iniquity.
The taxsuckers sucked it all dry. Now there’s barely a few hundred there. There’s a thorough vampire mentality at play here that is without equal anywhere in the world.
Everything is sucked out of you. If you want to live as an American. You learn to suck wealth from the neck of the weak or you perish. That is the true American way. It is outlawed to just work the land and live with the simple dignity even an animal enjoys. You’re either a vampire in America. Or you’re dead.
You exist merely as a host for the myriad specialty tax vampires. Sure you drive a truck. Farm the land. Work in a factory. Construct as a builder. But you only do so because you consent to having duly authorized vampires come around and suck some portion of your life’s blood out of you.
If you’re on the grid. You’re a Draculor. And a Draculee. You allow them to take your blood. You find others who will provide you blood. There’s no humanity involved in it.
@helot
Nothing wrong with a blind whore. Probably a benefit, not having to see the slobbering wheezing man-shaped manatees as they each shuffle up to get their moneys worth like an assembly line of honking walruses each enjoying a sweet sunny spot all to themselves for a few moments on an outcropping above the shore.
Justice tho. She’s a cunty one. Steer clear of her as long as you can. Sooner or later its your own detached cojones she’s weighing in her scales.
The Helots would make a good outlaw motorcycle club name. Just like the guys in Sons of Anarchy. Except without all the killing and violence.
Good clean outlaws with mad skills that nobody even knows about. Why not just talk to her. Hell, maybe get her number if she’s good looking. Tell her you’ll vote to acquit. But then she’ll owe ya a little quid pro quo.
A lot of relationships is about perception. And about power. You should learn to play a little Texas Hold’em or some other game of chance that involves bluffing. Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand if you play your cards right.
Don’t worry about what cranky old crankpots like me have to say. Or what the thumbsquad at SHTFplan says. Don’t show anyone your hole cards. Don’t let anyone know they can get to you. You’re too cool for that.
Show strength when your cards are their weakest. Act humble and helpless when you’re sitting on a pair of aces in the hole. Learn to win with nothing. Put the other guy to a tough decision. Make him doubt what cards he’s even holding.
The most gifted and accomplished people are quite vulnerable to the bluff. They’re always holding strong hands, and when they see the other guy bet big, they assume he’s got a monster hand as well.
Hey, Tor –
I really like the idea of a motorcycle club named Helots! The lifestyle – sans the aggressive violence – appeals to me more and more, as “straight” life becomes less and less satisfying.
Me too.
Helots can be outlaws. But they need not be criminals. Larken Rose battled against the tax slave catchers. He was an outlaw and paid the price for being caught. But in no way was he a criminal. Not in my eyes anyway. He transgressed against mere statutes. No victims. So no crime as I see it.
When watching SOA, I see a lot of legit businesses and acceptable outlaw behavior. The Helots would have similarities to the Sons, but of course avoid the violent criminal aspects.
Outlaw gangs such as ares could spread across the free world. They’ll have a harder time than criminal gangs. They’ll just have to suffer the consequences. Sometimes only violence will work. When that time comes, we’ll just have to fail and face the consequences. And do a better job next time. That’s what it means to have principles.
e partisan wrote this for l neil’s site {modified by me}
I choose to be an outlaw. There was once a time when a majority of American Citizens understood this and approved. True, there were probably numerically more Tories residing in America at the time, but by definition one who chooses to be the subject of a ruler is not a Citizen, and of no consequence to anyone honorable.
America was a nobility-free republic — a revolutionary creation of outlaws. A land of honorable outlaws who agreed upon a minimal set of laws that even an outlaw could abide and grudgingly lent a tiny fraction of their natural sovereignty and reclaimed liberty to the obvious mutual benefit of all.
Not all criminals are outlaws, and not all outlaws are criminals. An outlaw lives by a moral code, but blithely ignores absurd laws designed to suppress dissent and control private personal behavior.
A criminal lives by no code, external or internal and is an animal to be mistrusted or destroyed. A criminal ignores whatever is inconvenient at the moment while an outlaw often chooses a personally inconvenient and sometimes dangerous course in the name of principle and honor.
A criminal has absolute freedom, while an outlaw has personal liberty and spiritual freedom. A criminal will steal food from a working man, while an outlaw will refuse to pay child support to a welfare agency.
A criminal will lobby into existence a law putting the cash of ten million laborers into his pocket, while an outlaw will refuse to file a tax return. A criminal will carry a gun to intimidate victims, while an outlaw will carry his gun as a symbol of his liberty and to defend against all aggressors.
In some ways the Bill of Rights was a flawed relic that tried to maintain our outlaw past. It was a set of codes written by free Citizens who imagined they could create a monster that would be of benefit. That was their mistake. Why create a monster in the first place. Just letting the outlaw code flourish without centralized force would have been the wiser choice.
Unfortunately they went too far and tried to force a code on everyone in a one size fits all manner.
For some bone headed reason, they tried to create a ruler, and advisers, and then hope they didn’t actually try to rule. Boy was that a stupid idea.
The outlaw lives by a code, so long as there are unjust government laws he must break and not be silent about it, while a criminal lives by no code and can always beat the law. The result is lots of criminals, lots of Tories, and a few angry outlaws.
Eric, for some reason, you made me think of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O395ZHZbGhA
(Listen to the lyrics….these guys “want to be straight”!)
eric, yesterday i was hauling a big load and just got to thinking about the bad, cold, wet weather we’ve had although it was so warm I was sweating and I thought how sweet it would be to have a good bike. Aren’t we getting into the sweet spot of cheap bikes now? I know i won’t find one of those “divorce” bikes but still, I’d like to have just a decent cruiser like the old Kaw’s the cops used, fairings and all. I just don’t know where to look.
My main problem is, I’m not hooked into any crowd. When you work 15 hrs a day and rarely even speak to the boss cause you know the jobs that need to be done and can figure out which have priority on a day by day basis and you take care of every aspect of your rig and load and unload yourself almost all the time, you really do live in a world by yourself.
The rare phone call is something like Hey, can you divert off what you’re doing now and go do this? yep, I can but it’s probably not a good idea since these people are priority and those others will have to wait on other things anyway.
Or the b&c calls and asks if I’m coming home because CholleyJack is running around and looking everywhere with his ears back. And he’s right 99% of the time.
Is there a website you can check out what’s on the market and not just someone selling bikes you have no idea if you can trust?
I was going around some sharp curves a couple days ago with a big load and realized I was leaning into them really hard, as if that would make any diff in a big rig. That was when I knew I really needed a change.
You can easily browse for any search words (KZ1000) by clicking the motorcycles subcategory with pictures and expand the radius as far as you like.
http://www.searchtempest.com/
Hi Eight,
I’d cast a wide net, first of all. Start by cruising eBay Motors; use their search engine (type in “Kz1000 Police”) and see what’s on the block. Another good source for candidates is Craigs List (search the “motorcycles” category). See also yakaz.com (another search engine that collates ads from all across the country).
The “P” Kaw bikes are fairly easy to find, last time I looked anyhow.
You might also consider an older Goldwing – not the current Wurlizters on wheels but the circa early-mid-late 1980s models. Nice ones can be found under $4k.
Garysco, eric, thanks. I’ll check those places first.
You bet, Eight!
The “P” bikes you’ll find will probably have higher miles on them, but don’t dismiss them on account of that. The Kz DOHC four is a tough SOB of an engine that will run a long time. And refreshing them is easy. Parts no problem to find. The bottom end is usually fine; Kawasaki overbuilt it and unless some idiot ran it without oil, should be ok even with high miles. A new/rebuilt oil pump is good policy, though.
So, the top end work is the main thing. Maybe new pistons (but you might get away with just rings), cam check/usual valve/head stuff. The carbs – if not physically damaged – are super easy to rebuild. Trans ought to be ok, if not subjected to abuse. Very strong.
The cop (“p”) bike will have dual disc brakes – very good policy – and they have a unique seat that some like a lot better than the civvy seat. The side hard bags and fairing are cool, too!
Morgan Freeman narration about titty sprinkles
a storybook for the children of today
Wow…
Just how ingrained is Cloverism?
I took my soon-to-be 90 year-old Mother to the Dr. today. In my truck, she says re: the power windows: “This could be bad if you left a kid in here; no way to roll down the window.”.
I said: “Today, you’d get arrested if you left a kid in the car while you ran into the store. Just think, you’d be considered a criminal no, for letting me sit alone in Freddie’s car for 10 minutes when I was a kid!”.
Mater [Thinks for a moment]: “Yeah, but if it saves a few kids, it’s worth it!” 🙁
[I forgot to mention the thousands whose lives are destroyed when they are pried from their parents and homes; the lifetime consequences that can affect the famblie’s life; the fact that the kid might be put into the care of a pervert….]
THIS is why there is no hope for the Western world. Even if the state were weaker than a popcorn fart…..Cloverism is so hopefully ingrained in everyone, if Simon LaGree drops the whip, they’ll pick it right back up and hand it back to him.
Uhh…”hopeLESSLY ingrained”…..
There’s some larger issues at play here.
Why do we take pleasure in dumbing down young humans. I can remember being a clueless kid being left in a car. I had a problem once, and it never dawned on me to deal with it. I just sat there like a non-mammalian vegetable waiting for the adult to come back and fix things.
The other issue is raising women to be self-denying altruists. It works great for us men, that they make themselves doormats for our families. The problem is, when the media and culture tells them we’re all one big family, they lack the discernment to evaluate and reject such lies. They just go into compliant doormat mode.
I have lots of great memories from sitting in cars alone when I was a kid (Not that it was a common occurrence- we didn’t even own a car… It was just if we’d go somewhere with someone once in a while)- Sitting there; watching the world go by….having quiet “alone time” to think…it was great! And now? Another facet of everyday life which the young will never experience…..
I had a whole house to my self for 3 months a year, 9 hours a day from the age of 7 I think. It’s not the leaving alone I object to.
It’s the fetishization of instilling intentional helplessness and ignorance.
It’s especially obvious with pet owners in an urban environment. You have these so-called dogs that were once a type of asian wolf. An intelligent and capable being. In our culture you raise them so all they know is to fetch. Eat out of a can or a bag. Nothing is expected or required of them. They’re utterly worthless and without value.
Why is their never a healthy middle? Beings are either beaten and enslaved until an early miserable death. Or put out to pasture before they even have a chance to do anything.
It’s always going to sound extreme what I say. Because I’m arguing against the status quo. And of course there’s a long history and reason why things are as they are.
I’m looking for ways to deliberately withhold satisfaction from things that are satisfactory. Because that might lead to things being more to our liking.
In the case of kids. Why not teach them right away how to defend themselves. How to escape to safety. How to get others to help you. How to trade value for value. How to get good value for you money or wealth to get the things you need to survive. How to feed yourself.
There can still be a playful openminded way for children to do these things. But their play can also provide value for them and others. Why is it demanded of children that what they do is absolutely frivolous and meaningless? Why do we want them to be such a burden on their families, when it is so easy to have them contribute?
RE: “In the case of kids. Why not teach them right away how to….”
Because the … oh wait. Those were rhetorical questions.
RE: “if Simon LaGree drops the whip, they’ll pick it right back up and hand it back to him.”
No doubt. Except for those who are of The Remnant. …We get tazered for showing our lack of insolence towards “Authoratee!”. ,,,And shot, or cuffed and stuffed and/or fined. But on a good day, well, it’s like that time some cop got the sheet kicked out of him by some rednecks after the cop pulled them over for B.S. reasons and tried to make a mountain out of a molehill and nobody knew who the rednecks were to this day. (..Hmp, maybe that’s why they got cameras all over the place now?) ..Some guys, as kids, escaped, “The Car” while those in, “the compliant doormat mode” froze and watched with open mouths. Agape, even.
In the background, The Liberty Train is going by, there’s lots of fighting and bickering along the wayside. Much of the terrain really is like, “The Lord of the Flies”. …And the gunvernment has conquered the fly paper.
Actually the character Uncle Tom was a rather heroic character in many ways. He endured massa’s whip rather than snitch on his brethren.
“Tom was “a large, broad-chested, powerfully-made man” with a “self-respecting and dignified” look that indicates “grave and steady good sense.”
A man around forty with a wife and three children, he was notable precisely because he did not betray fellow enslaved blacks.
He turns down an opportunity to escape from his Kentucky plantation because he doesn’t want to put his fellow slaves in danger of being sold or punished.
Later on, he endures a terrible whipping at the hands of the cruel slaveowner Simon Legree because he refuses to reveal where two enslaved women are hiding.”
– – –
And shouldn’t all of us who comply with our govt be called Uncle Sams?
Say what you will about the Crazy Ivans in the Ukraine. They’re not meekly cringing and kissing any governments’ ass.
Do Black People Really Know Their Uncle Tom
http://thegrio.com/2011/02/16/do-black-people-really-know-their-uncle-tom/
Uncle Tom Revisited: Rescuing the Real Character from the Caricature –
http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/uncle-tom-revisited-rescuing-real-character-caricature
If you look strictly at the wealth, standard of living, status, family cohesion.
Blacks in the aggregate may actually have lived better lives in many ways under slavery than they do now.
Probably because the Civil War was a ruse for the Unproductive Thugs of the Political Means to plunder the Productive Men Who Were Hardhearted Assholes to the their fellow men.
I admire the Russians. The ones I’ve met and come to know seem to be full of life, friendly… and not to be fucked with.
The Germans learned this.
Americans may, too.
Yup.
Rush – Tom Sawyer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLBLk4ibAk
It’s no wonder they don’t play that kind of music on the F.M. dial here anymore.
Somehow “African-American Jim” just wouldn’t have the same ring to it! 😀
I’ve always said “I wouldn’t piss on a cop if he were on fire”. Wanna make me prove it? 😀
It really is like, “The Lord of the Flies”
‘The New York Times doesn’t Want you to Understand this Vladimir Putin Speech’
The Russian leader delivers an important foreign policy address we should consider. The Times botches it badly
By Patrick L. Smith
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/the-ny-times-doesnt-want-you-to-read-this/
BTw, I hated being stuck in a car as a captive passenger. Sometimes I didn’t even wait for the wheels to stop rolling before I jumped out. I can’t even imagine the madness of being strapped into a seatbelt and having to await being set free by an adult when they got around to it…Heh, you shoulda seen me riding shotgun on a one-seat farm tractor. Oh, the horrors, Clover, the horrors.
You’d Really freak out about the time we…
See also: Fred Reed.
Good point, Helot! Being strapped-in or in a car seat would change the whole game. No wonder millenials tend to not be enthusiastic about cars….. How traumatic- being immobilized and rendered helpless. And imagine hearing mommy or daddy saying in response to your objections “I have to do this, or I’ll get arrested and you’ll be taken away and given to the queer couple down the road, Neil and Bob!”.
Cars didn’t even have seatbelts until I was nearly grown thankfully. I was lucky in that my dad and grand-dad would know I was dying riding shotgun and let me drive. They got to teach and just ride, a benefit for them and I got to drive and learn, a benefit for me. My dad used to drop me and a 5 gal Igloo water cooler off at the farm and I’d fix fence, cultivate(you shoulda seen my grandfather laugh at how I got the old Ford Ferguson unstuck with the Jeep and the Chevy pickup both chained to it and both in granny with the engines idled way up) or chop oaks into fence posts. Sure, there was nobody else for miles and anything COULD have happened to me I suppose but that’s just the way it was. Some of my friends who farmed near town would drive the tractor to baseball practice and some of us would bicycle or drive the farm truck. We were too young for licenses but the trooper just looked the other way since we were working. My how things have changed……and not a single thing for the better. Even men with no boys had girls plowing and I couldn’t tell it hurt them one bit, in fact, it made them brown and healthy and attractive.
You don’t see that hardly at all anymore. Some gals still have it. A friend recently sent me a pic of a pickup sitting on a lone piece of dirt with a big ditch dug around it filled with water. It was supposed to be dug by a disgruntled woman. I said it didn’t look like the work of a woman to me and he called me out for being biased against women in trades such as equipment operation. That wasn’t what I meant. I showed it to a young woman who grew up running her dad’s backhoe. She said “Sure as hell don’t look like my work. If you ever found what was left of it, it would be way deep in the ground”. And that was my point. The song “Intentional Heartache” comes to mind, a Dwight Yoakum good’un.
She drove all the way across his mama’s garden, never hit the brakes and ran right into this Chevrolet.
And I’d rather have a woman like that than one who’s first reaction is to call 911.
Hi Tor,
That was my childhood, too. I think many Gen X (and older kids) had the same experience. We were not constantly monitored; our lives scripted and controlled. I’d come home from elementary school – walking by myself from the bus stop home. Let myself in the house. Make myself a snack. Then decide what I wanted to do for the rest of the afternoon. Explore in the woods? Go find my friends and play with them? Ride my bike somewhere (no got-damned helmet)? Whatever seemed to be the thing to do.
I grew up free.
Which is probably why I chafe so much at the world as it exists today.
There is a way for us to be free. We have to be willing to be outlaws. Ideally an outlaw lives in a decent society, and is able follow all laws, and only be an outlaw in principle.
For many of us, this is not such a society, and we have to either give up some of our freedoms, or be an outlaw and a statutory criminal.
When you compromise too much, you become an Uncle Tom. Even highly productive people, like Bill Gates or Elon Musk have their accomplishments tainted by being Uncle Toms.
That’s the problem with using Google, Facebook, and Cell Phones. Or watching football or Fox News. It’s difficult to do such things and not be an Uncle Tom of sorts.
We might be all manner of politics here. But we only truly belong here, if we are outlaws of some sort.
That is the question of the year. Are you going to be some kind of slacktivist internet chatterbox.
Or our you going to pony up a shekel and walk the walk and be a freedom outlaw. Become a regular here on this online Outlaw Gear Headed Breaking Bad Sons of Anarchy Walking Dead Harsh Mistress Internet Club.
Are you for smokers, dopers, degenerates, losers, cheaters, liars, speeders, warranty voiders, gun law ignorers, victimless criminal accomplices, tax evaders, anyone who’s peaceful.
Are you an outlaw?
Or are you a registered Libertarian Party member bumper sticker affixing Uncle Tom freedom wannabe?
>”I grew up free.”<
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Same here. While I did have a full-time mommy….I spent my childhood doing those very same things- walking in the woods; riding my bike; building things in the backyard…and if I got really bored: Playing with a few friends. (I think that's why I love cycling today- it reminds me of the joy and freedom I knew as a kid!)
Before the advent of the safety cult- even at 8 years old and with visual impairment, I'd ride all over on my bike….I was truly on my own out there- and had to deal with whatever came up, myself.
I cringe to think how it would have been had I been born a few years later- I'd probably be like the daughter of a family friend, whose life consisted of going to school, and then coming "home" to sit in her mother's office until quitting time. Naturally, as soon as the kid got into her mid-teens, she went wild…got knocked-up; started living with older foreign men……
Eric, I know people who would respond to this with “the world is more dangerous now.” Are there any stats that would prove or disprove an assertion like that?
Hi David,
Yes, it is more dangerous… because government is more aggressive and ubiquitous than it has been in the past (in the West, at least).
Is the average person more – or less – likely to receive a beatdown or be killed in the street by a cop today vs. say 1975? Absolutely.
Are there more victimless crime laws on the books now than there were 30 years ago? And more severe punishments for transgressing them? Absolutely.
I do not fear ululating “terrorists.”
They represent, at most, a theoretical danger to me.
I do, however, fear the homegrown terrorists all around me. Clover – and those like him. Who are an all-too-real threat to me, physically/literally.
Exactly, Eric! 99.99% of people will never encounter a “terrorist” in their lifetime; let alone be personally affected by one….but virtually every will encounter the gov’t and it’s mercenaries on an almost daily basis. I’d much rather take my chances with the former than the latter. Not only are my odds better; but they’d probably be easier to deal with and of higher quality than the ones who claim to be “protecting us”. [Funny, but when we could still protect ourselves, we didn’t seem to need all of this protection; there were far fewer of those around who we needed protecting from; and not as many of us were being killed by those are “protecting” us…]
I hear ya, Tor. I consider myself very fortunate to have never been left alone at home when I was a kid- and on the rare occasion when my mother couldn’t be with me, she left me with either one trusted neighbor, or a close relative. The times I waited in a car…were always by my own choice- “You wanna come in?” “Nah, I’ll wait in the car!”.
Hate to see people who leave their dogs alone for 8 or even 10 or 12 hours a day. Or, like around here, often just leave them loose outside, where they wander into the road and get hit.
I think today, a major social ill is that there is no family life anymore. Even in traditional mom & dad households- both parents work; both the kids and parents are involved in a zillion outside activities; life revolves around institutions (school; office; gym; daycare….) The home becomes just a place to sleep; (and really, between everyone living in city apartments, or suburban homes on tiny plots of land, with strict “codes” which render the home useless for pretty much anything) half the time, the whole fambly doesn’t even eat a meal together. Sons no longer learn their father’s trade; daughters don’t learn how to cook- everyone has a separate life; Even if they have a “vacation” together- it’s just more busy time- traveling 1000’s of miles, and being busied with a bunch of silly activities (Oooo! Lets travel 5000 miles to Hawaii to watch some half-Asian actress dance around in a hula skirt and remind us how real Hawaiians entertained the tourists 100 years ago!)- It seems as though most people exist just to be fodder for the state and the military-industrial complex. Little girls’ll spend a third of their lives preparing to be an astro-knot 😉 but boiling spaghetti or taking care of their offspring is beyond their capacity. But let your kid sit in the car for 10 minutes when it’s 65* out….and THAT is an evil Uncle Sam[bo] weill not tolerate…..
PS. Tor, You want kids to be taught to handle situations and defend themselves, in a culture where their parents can’t even do that; and where the kids are arrested if they draw a picture of a gun at school or point a finger at someone?
The only “skill” Clovers know and teach their kids, is to “Call 911”.
I feel like I remember Eric pointing out awhile back that if the income tax were abolished far more families would be able to live off one income, which would allow the other parent to be able to stay home and raise the kids. Eric pointed out that this would do FAR more to strengthen the family than anti-gay causes and so forth. I totally agree. Stupid social conservatives who support these taxes are not helping anything.
I think we’d all have to agree with that, because it’s the simple truth!
The sad thing about such social engineering, is that most men I know (in fact, pretty much every man I know, other than myself) actually WANTS a wife who works now- The idea has been so ingrained, that they consider women who don’t work outside of the home to be “lazy”. (Of course these same men live on frozen dinners and restaurant fare…)
And the women are just as bad- Many have voiced their opinion to me about how it is their “right” to work and be “independent”; to stave off the “abuse” that being dependent “almost certainly guarantees” (So why do they even get married?!)
….the idea of a man supporting his fambly, seems to have been lost. Now the men want the women to “pay their fair share”; and the women don’t want to be “straddled” with the role of wife/mother/home-maker.
It’s almost like the concept of man and woman; husband and wife have been totally lost. Now the person you’re married to is your “partner”; and you each are supposed to do everything 50-50. 🙁
Every time someone introduces their spouse to me as “their partner”, I always say :Oh, you’re in business!”.
The idea of marriage as a 50/50 partnership will never work. Unless you are both willing to give 100%, the marriage is doomed.
Some men seem to think that all the ‘labor saving appliances’ in homes these days – gas or electric stoves, vacuum cleaners, automatic washers and dryers, etc. – mean that women who don’t work outside the home are underemployed. Try telling that to a 3, 5, 8yr. old, that their mom has time on her hands.
Even if she does have some “spare” time, she can probably put it to more profitable use doing something at home than going to the expense of being employed somewhere else – clothes, commuting, etc.
Although it is still not common, it is becoming less rare for a woman to be a ‘homemaker’ and invest in the future of her children rather than her own ‘career.’
Yeah, anyone familiar with business, will tell you that 50-50 partnerships NEVER work out- even with a good business, the fact of there being no clear leader to make instant decisions; and the squabbling that inevitably ensues, will ruin even the most prosperous business……yet the half the households now-a-days are being run this way- is it any wonder the divorce rate is what it is?
I have also never seen so many men as sole parents raising small kids! The women take off….get an apartment; work a job and play on Facebook- they don’t even want their own kids…
Just another part of the equation, and why I say, even if the state were to collapse tomorrow, the Clovers would resurract i immediately, or otherwise let some power-hungry thieves have dominion, because there are so few strong families today- and an organic (i.e. NOT state-controlled centralized….) society can not function without strong families.
When it gets down to the wire, all single mommies and single daddies and mingled families where the kids get batted from house to house like a ping-pong ball, will not only be easy pickin’s for the next power-elite…but they weill gladly usher them in, in exchange for promises of other people’s resources
I agree, Moleman.
I’ve experienced this in my own life – and observed it in the lives of my friends. My marriage, for example, was much healthier when I was earning a very respectable income as a MSM columnist/author. It’s been on shaky ground ever since I left the reservation and lost the status (as well as the income) I once had. We’ve all been targeted – to be driven batshit crazy by this system. Men emasculated. Women masculinized. Natural bonds undone – in their place, the state as family. The Great Parent. Giver of “security” (material and otherwise).
I understand much more clearly now, in middle age.
Which, of course, is about 20 years too late!
The next model will be fully robotic and I would guess a model for the female desires as well.
Real Love Doll Yasuragi
Japanese sex doll by Orient Industry
US$ 8,017
(WARNING : X rated)
http://www.kanojotoys.com/real-love-doll-yasuragi-p-2104.html
Can’t speak for others, but – anyone else notice that “50/50” means you end up doing most of the work, and she gets the credit?
SHE made a wonderful dinner….
YOU only peeled the potatoes, cut the potatoes, cooked the potatoes, cooked the vegetables, prepped the meat, seasoned the meat, and baked the meat….
And set up tables so you could eat in front of the TV. (Personal issues with that, especially as I get older.)
Oh, and walked the dog, fed the dog, played with the dog, checked the laundry.
But you didn’t bring fork and knife with the dinner, so “[she] has to do everything herself.”
FTAFT P until they gag and turn blue…
Fishheads they could swallow.
Teach ’em to swallow something else…
Moleman, you seem to think women still do all the domestic tasks. They don’t. A woman having a job is not an unreasonable expectation. What is an unreasonable expectation is that she’ll cook a meal every so often.
I know, Brent- that is what I’m complaining about. Women have become just another commodity in the military-industrial complex….they can run a nukular reactor…but they don’t want to care for their own kids, or cook; or clean the house, so hubby can go out and not be burdened with that stuff, and earn a decent living. It’s one of the major problems of our society; it’s destroyed the family. [Not quite sure how you got the opposite idea of what I was actually saying, from reading my posts….but I must be doing something wrong… 🙂 )
My take: Both sexes are caught in the consume-debt-status gerbil wheel. This system, this matrix we’re all caught up in makes it extremely difficult for people to do otherwise. You’ve noted previously the way housing prices have been driven to preposterous levels such that even if one wishes to live modestly, within one’s means, it is very, very difficult. Hence, both the man and the woman work. Hence, harried all the time. Hence, little time for normal human interactions. Wake up, spend the day at an office, come home dead tired, grab some processed food and go to sleep. The weekend comes – just long enough to get the shopping done. Rinse, repeat for the next 30 years or so.
It’s crippling.
And it’s no wonder millions of people are frustrated, stressed out, overweight, addicted to various unhealthy activities/substances… et cetera.
A lot of this ‘career woman’ crap began back during WW II, when many good men were dragged away from their homes and a lot of them did not return.
I can understand why a woman would not want to spend all day every day with her kids, esp. toddlers. But the women used to support each other, esp. extended families. Those are exceedingly hard to find these days.
Eric’s right too in re: the debt trap. But many families, if they actually did the calculations of the NET increase from a 2nd paycheck would find that after taxes, increased clothing costs for the working woman, price of more prepared and convenience foods, day care, etc., find they are really little or no better off.
Right you are, Eric!
The thing is: I think it is more than just the “need” to have two incomes, which drives the current lifestyle- as couples where the man earns $150K a year, often still have the woman working; or even here, where the living is cheap and taxes low- men want their women to work; and the women would rather work than take care of their household and children.
It’s more than mere economics- it’s part of the bill of goods that we’ve been sold with (un)feminism and egalitarianism.
Studies have shown that there usually is no difference, economically, between couples where both work vs. couples where only one works- because the working couple has higher expenses- i.e. need for two cars; commuting expenses; child care; convenience foods; hiring people to do what they don’t have the time to do themselves; two business wardrobes; higher taxes from a higher income, etc.
I also don’t think it’s because of the higher housing prices and higher property taxes…but rather, I think it’s the opposite: We have those higher housing prices, because people feel they can afford more having two incomes, so the market gets pushed up; and they can charge those higher property taxes, because people have the incomes to pay them.
Funny though, ho0w everyone works more and has more money, but the quality of life for most has deteriorated so much, compared to when people “didn’t have as much”… 🙂
Moleman, it was your mention of what those guys expect but they eat frozen dinners. If they are eating frozen dinners now they’ll likely be eating frozen dinners after marriage too. The only way that will stop is if they do the cooking. Just my observations.
Eric, maybe my POV is warped, but I see that gerbil wheel not only due to the central bank and the powers that be but also of marketing. A lifestyle of avoiding debt is not attractive, especially in an age of debt where nobody lives on anything close to a cash basis, but a debt service basis. Prices and expectations are bid up ever higher.
Moleman, you are correct, housing prices are bid up because two people are working. Worse yet it’s not bid up by just the additional income but by what debt the additional income can carry.
If any young men OR women today know how to cook, they probably taught themselves, ’cause Mama don’t know how.
If they were lucky, then grandma taught them.
PtB, you’re correct in most GenX women not knowing how to cook. My oldest deceased sister couldn’t boil water w/o burning it and my other sister never tried. OTOH, I like to eat and like to cook good food. I’m lucky in that my wife is a great cook and I’m no slouch. My mama sent a new 10″ cast iron skillet with me when I left home and I still use it.
If I’d had a clue I would have realized that skillet and my skills would have gotten me more sex in college than booze, fast cars or even money(close one there).
Almost every GenX’er I know and many of my generation have the man as the chef and the woman doesn’t know squat about it. I don’t know how this happened but I’d bet mickey d’s and such were a great excuse for their mom’s.
All the people except one in my entire company think I’m demented because I won’t eat fast food. They now understand I’m a health freak but don’t understand how I drink them under the table. I just know what’s in everything and avoid all the prepared food I can. Can’t help it, I love micro-brewery beer. They’ll invite me for chili-dogs. I’m the only one ever seen commercial chili or wieners made. No thanks, I’ll pass on the bologna and Vienna Sausage too.
8SM – several years ago the wife and I took a romantic trip to Colonial Williamsburg (that’s where we went on our honeymoon 25 years ago). One of the character actresses was portraying an innkeeper, and listing what was on the evening’s menu – boiled tongues and udders. One youngster, as you can imagine, was grossed out by the idea, and let it be know loudly – EWWWW!
When the innkeeper asked what the problem was, he said “We don’t eat those.” And she came back with “Then what do you do with them?” Standing in the back row, I stage-whispered “Bologna.”
PtB, think cancerous eyes and prolapsed vaginas as well as those old canners that have to be forklifted into the kill floor. If everyone knew what I know about processed meats, we’d be a vegan society in a heartbeat. I’m not hot on beef since I no longer produce it and appreciate our home grown pork the more because of it. Over the ball and chain’s objections, I’m going to be forced to build a chicken coop, like a lot of my old crowd has done and buy a calf or two to pasture. I occasionally have homegrown eggs given to me and that’s some good eating very few experience. When it comes to wild anything, I’ll generally eat it if it’s not fast enough to get away. If I weren’t in a hurry all the time and had a big toolbox, I’d field dress that just killed deer since I see countless everything dead on the road every day. I think I could park my truck so nobody would see what I was doing. I need to check the laws. Seems like Tx made some new law to allow road kill to be taken. Makes no sense to not eat deer in the winter when whatever might eat it is going to suffer the same fate. Buzzards all went to Mexico when it got below 20 recently.
My mother STILL asks “When are you going to get married?”- I say, with trhese women today (and especially with me liking young’uns!) I’d still have to do the cooking and the cleaning…so what do I need all the drama that having a woman around invites? (And the romance is better in the mind, I’m sure, than it would be with an actual woman!)
If we’d call food what it really is, instead of using euphemisms, people might get a clue.
Hot-dogs? Try: “Lips and assholes”.
I haven’t eaten fast-food since I was a kid! How anybody could eat that crap…. It’s disgusting, plus they KNOW how bad it is for them (how could they not?!)…..yet they shovel it in.
There’s NOTHING like frsh home-raised eggs. They look different…they taste totally different. Ones ya buy in the store are from chickens that eat crap…literally- they east a slurry of GARBAGE and feces.
Those pale light-yellow tasteless things from the supermarket are NO comparison to real eggs.
Don’t even get me started on commercial milk. Lots of dairy farms around here…they are filthy and disgusting! Not to mention how the pasteurization kills the good enzymes that one needs in order to absorb the vitamins…and the homo-genization changes the structure of the fat so that it clogs your arteries (Whereas fresh raw milk will actually CLEAR your arteries)….
I will “amen” that, Mole. We have chickens; fresh eggs from free-range birds (they eat whatever they like foraging around our 16 acres) and you’re absolutely right – once you’ve had such eggs, the store-bought/battery hen crap is inedible.
I love duck eggs even more than ‘real’ chicken eggs, but we recently sold ours because no enough other folks agreed with us. We should still have turkey eggs available again come next spring.
And as for milk, I love whole, fresh, raw milk, grew up on it most of my child and early adulthood. But here in what they call “the Free State” of Maryland, it is illegal to either buy or sell. Good thing we are not too far from the PA border.
It wasn’t all that long ago when even in a suburban setting one could have chickens and such. 1970s and 80s.
But in some instances I’ve heard of come backs, so maybe not all hope is lost. Also the rise of organics and other better made foods. It’s a war, but the industrial crony side has never played fair. On a level free market playing field they would be lucky to stay in business.
Ya know Eric, I meant to add about the eggs: My grandpa, as late as the 1950’s, used to have chickens in his backyard in the borough of Queens in NYC… Today, they even tell you what kinda pets you can have in your HOME (e.g. ferrets are illegal in NYC!)…and chickens anywhere arte verboten!
When my mother was a little girl in the 30’s, it was still common for horses to ply the streets of NYC; and I’d bet people still even had a milk cow or two.
Amazing how they can outlaw the basic necessities of life; and one’s ability to sustain himself, while calling these filthy sprawling dead-zones “progress”!
I get happy when I read of people bringing chickens on buses in third-world countries…while some sophisticated hipster in NYC has to pay $15/dozen for decent eggs from an ex-hippie in VT.!
Seriously, was Sovioet Russia ever as bad as we currently are?
Moleman, that’s funny, lips and assholes. That’s what we’ve called baloney and weenies for 40 years but we just say L and A. I sho like dem Viannie sausages. An L and A man eh? Huh? LOL!
A 90 cow Jersey dairy a mile down the road from me…..neighbors with chickens, my own chickens…….I take for granted that people get milk and eggs at a store. All my life you got those items from the farm……grandpa(he was a dairyman)told me “if it ain’t raw, just eat the cows shit, it’s more nutritious”.
Is there a difference between Cloverism and motherhood (including grand motherhood)?
Part of me sympathies with mothers having to watch/or see their children attempt death defying feats and wanting to protect and guide them. While at the same time, Ya. That’s Cloverism. Especially when it extends to other children not their own.
There’s a line there somewhere, isn’t there?
My guess is: the line is, “They’re Not you’re children or grandchildren” … The Buck stops there and doesn’t extend to every other mothers child,… within a fluid wavy unset boundary which is wrongly stretched and stretched further out with each generation and usually goobermint is pulling hard at one end?
I mean, this is even understood by children. I’ll Never forget playing grass field baseball, a child too young to play is on the sidelines, ignored for the most part, when suddenly one of us yells out, “No! Stop! Don’t eat that piece of dog shit!”
I looked over and saw it was inches away from completion.
It was cultural anarchy as far as I can tell. Not Cloverism.
But at the same time, as I watched it play out I thought, “What business is it of mine?”
They key was: the child who attempted to eat shit was being warned by his brother.
I suppose if I noticed it first I would have said something similar. But not as forcefully. Would that be Cloverism?
I think, maybe, it would be Cloverism if I demanded that All children be banned and forced from playing in grass fields due to the possibility they might be tempted to eat shit or step in it. Or, that they should be forced to wear mouth-guards.
Ok, sorry for putting that thought in your mind. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Just thinking out loud. …And, maybe that’s why grandma stayed at home when we went out on the tractor into the fields? Cloverism is a “mommy” impulse?
Ha! The Mommyification of the world! Let the mommies everywhere unite to bring down this dastardly notion of freewill and manliness! Forevermore, let the notion of manliness be seen as a fault and a flaw and scoffed at in every avenue by those who whoreship The State and fear and tremble at every mouse (and large bug) even one in a trap. Eeek!
When a child, any child, is doing something actually dangerous (like eating dog shit) or just plain wrong (as in a violation of the NAP) then it is not wrong to intervene IF necessary, and notify the ‘appropriate authorities’ – i.e., the parents. This is the truth behind the statement “It takes a village to raise a child.” This truth has been distorted to mean “It takes a gunvermin, but we don’t give a rodent’s rectum about the parents.”
My mom is sort of a clover, and my grandmother is probably the biggest clover on the planet. I suspect they are related, based on personal experience. I do think its possible to be a mother without being a clover, though.
You’re so right, Moleman.
All I’m trying to accomplish is to keep the heretical cult (individualism-freedom) alive in a few hidden hideyholes… so that when FTL travel becomes possible, the heretics will be around to get off this ruined rock and start again, somewhere far, far away.
There is no hope for here.
Yeah, Eric. I think we’d be much better off if everyone realized/admitted that- instead of thinking that the teeny-tiny minority which we represent is somehow going to change the thinking of society-at-large, and overpower the Beast at the same time. Then maybe we’d have a chance of doing something positive- like providing info and support to others who want to escape the asylum; and stop supporting this insanity with our labor and money; and maybe at least live out our lives in places where we can be relatively free.
Kinda like how the Founders realized that it would be hopeless to try and reform England.
The current system is going to implode. It’s not a question of if, just when Socialist Insecurity and MedIDon’tCare reach the end of the funds.
We, the “remnant” must be ready with answers to the questions that EVERYONE who survives the meltdown (and that may not be many) will be asking – What to we do now?
I think clover eagerly awaits each and every roadside Iranian Drop from Officer Iron Sheik
I think Clover would be happy living in Israel. Hey- that’s it! Maybe he’s a Jew! No- wait…Jews tend to be smart…..
Yeah!
Clover is to the left of the Bell Curve for European whites. Forget Jews!
I’d wager his IQ is in the general vicinity of sub-Saharan African.
Clover would be to the left of a bell curve of a Polish bowling team!
You mean a Polish drinking team with a bowling problem?
1988 – Cars That Go Boom – L’Trimm – If Hip Hoppers are to be the new ruling class and they dial it back 26 years. I’ll take the loud cars and them. No hesitation.
For those of you who do not regularly peruse LewRockwell.com, I highly recommend it. Today, for example, there is a “classic” Joe Sobran post about democracy that would have Clover turning green (if he wasn’t already).
And, well, Fred Reed is Fred Reed. ‘Nuff said!
Hey, they even have a post today by some guy named Eric Peters. What a coincidence!
Since clover drives around so much, he must have a sales territory of some kind. Perhaps he’s been inspired by all the people who’ve just voted. Maybe its for his new business idea. How will it go?:
Here is the sales pitch for clover’s new business idea:
“You’re too stupid to make your own decisions! You don’t know what’s good for you! But now, for the low, low, low price of…. well, I will decide the price, and change it whenever I want, and you will either pay up or I will hurt you. For your own good, of course.
Anyway, for whatever price I arbitrarily decide, I will ‘serve’ you by forcing you to pay for whatever I think you should be buying or supporting, and by forcing you to make the decisions I think you should make! Because you’re just too damn stupid to run your own life!”
Given the large numbers on the prospects list of people who’ve just voted. Clover knows you’ll be very interested in his new business. Because there are so many voters who accept the business model when its called govt – I expect this new business to be very lucrative for him!
Good ‘un, Tor!
Funny, how they readily accept the business model when it’s called “Gov’t”; but when it’s called “Mafia”, then they see that for what it is, easy enough; and even though the latter is less deadly, and affects far fewer people, THAT is the one they are more concerned with, and demand to be protected from by electing a different gang of criminals and murderers.
I guess it’s not that they dislike violent tyrannical criminals….they just dislike them if they’re Eye-talian 😀
The Clovers think that due to the rigged game/sham/spectacle of voting (we can have our choice of proffered thugs) the psychopathic violence of the State is somehow not only acceptable but is something to be embraced.
The State routinely engages in mass theft, extortion, slavery, destruction, and murder on a scale that would make even the most ambitious Mafia don quale.
For more on this, see Joe Sobran on today’s LRC (11/18)
Or read “Democracy, the God That Failed” by Hoppe.
CLOVER!! FOR THE LAST TIME; IT’S NOT: “I could care less.” GOT DAM ILLITERATE IMBECILE!!!
Thank you Tor.
I was getting ready to say the same thing. You saved me the trouble.
On this, as on everything else, clover is impervious to new information.
Clover’s mindset is “Don’t confuse me with the facts!”
You would probably have better luck teaching that distinction to a squirrel.
I guess I should really care less.
The Penn State squirrel whisperer
That’s one thing that makes you different than Clover – you really COULD care less. He can’t, even though his feeble grasp of English makes his say he could. Hey, do you think maybe he’s ESL?
Even the best of us may have a squirrel component. A lifetime of wrongheaded nuts of rationalizations and accommodations for our statist capitulations. It’s not our fault you we’re imprisoned you see. We’re innocent don’t you know.
When motivated people come on here, there’s a lot of experts ready to tell them nothing is going to work, the state is too powerful, let me recount my extensive memory of the good ol days that’ll never come again. Pull up that rocking chair.
– – –
re: add’l Kriho info from wiki…
Kriho was found in contempt of court and charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for learning from the Internet that the defendant could face a four- to twelve-year prison term if convicted, a fact that had not been disclosed to the jury by the court.
She violated some BS rule after already being selected. So be careful of that. Don’t overworry about what one insane judge did. He’s on record doing all manner of even more insane things. It is prudent to find out the record of the judge you’ll be working with, on the off chance they’re insane as well.
Jury Null US Court Rulings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification_in_the_United_States#Court_rulings
Beyond Contempt
http://www.westword.com/1997-01-23/news/beyond-contempt/
Last year in Ft. Worth a “visiting” judge from Mineral Wells went berserk after a jury let a local guy accused of DWI go free. There’s really not a great deal more to the story, just a jury using nullification and the judge going off the deep end, telling the jury they were wicked and warped as OJ and on and on. Funny, he hasn’t been “invited” back for another case. A rare victory, a small one but it gave people a bit of hope.
Come on now. I’ve got devilishly good deals here. You don’t needa girlfriend in your life. I provide virtual lust avatars for free my good sirs. Your very own personal pornstars. Who needs boring ugly reality chicks. That takes work, effort, compromise. I’m providing you fantasy femmes for free and 24 hrs/7 days accessible. No sabbath. Who can resist?
These virtual babes are totally there 4 you. Not like they’re being paid to read and pantomime from a script and perform on command by the Violence Cartel, right? And why pay them even a pittance, when you can enjoy them gratisimo thanks to the Theft Cartel?
What a wonderful world.
– I steal trees of green…
Guess I’m on the right track! I skip the porn; and keep the Sabbath! (Keep the real girls, too- they’re too high-maintenance; and don’t offer enough for the trouble they are!)
So who won the recent election “contest” between the Demlicans and the Repubocrats? The CIA.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/no_author/the-cia-won/
I don’t know who won…but I know that WE lost…as always.
Of course – the ‘game’ is rigged and the house always comes out ahead in the long haul. Better odds than Vegas.
Something along the lines of “Heads, they win, tails, we lose.”
And the banksters.
Don’t forget the banksters. They are always the real powers behind the throne(s).
See: I was called a liar here awhile back by some Dumkoff for saying Oboma was going to put a lien on your house for failing to pay your health tax. That was something I was told by a pretty honest farmer which was passed out to his soldier son on official paper.
“Moreover, if you fail to sign up for Obamacare and subsequently refuse to pay your penalty your house will be raided by armed IRS agents, seized by the government, and you’ll be imprisoned for tax evasion.
“Welcome to the new America, where the government now has the power to compel you to purchase products from private companies under the threat of imprisonment or death. Yes, death. Because if you run from those armed IRS agents they’re going to use their brand new militarized AR-15′s to ensure your compliance.””…
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/your-children-will-be-fined-if-you-fail-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-people-are-going-to-be-in-for-a-shock_11142014
Ya, Clover, you’ll soon come to understand what it means.
“Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.
“Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
Dumkoffs, suckers, and dupes.
I doubt that Clover would have a problem with “some nice IRS agents coming to his house and talking to him”- but since Clover just asks “how high” when he is told to jump, I doubt the nice men will be paying him a visit.
So…..IRS raids; property seizure; and jail……is this the “freedom” those mercen…err…uhhh….”troops” always claim to be fighting for?
A line comes to mind… about not being able to cheat an honest man.
Hey Clover!
You ask “if police have stop points and 95 percent of people are not drunk then tell me how they can declare everyone as guilty?”
Well let me ‘splain it to you Lucy!
By stopping everyone, they are declaring everyone to be guilty, UNLESS they can prove they are not guilty.
That is NOT how either the Founding Fathers or the Framers of the Constitution expected our ‘justice’ sysem to work. The basic principle is “Not guilty until proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
But you don’t give a rodent’s rectum about justice, do you?
Dom in the video above said he was guilty? Guilty of what? You guys are idiots. By your logic I would be guilty by thinking about driving. Again you are an idiot.
Clover,
It used to be the case that if a person had not committed a crime and had not given tangible suspicion to suspect he might have, cops – by law – had to respect his right to be left in peace. This was freedom. Because the authority of the government was limited.
Now – because of people such as you – innocent people are treated as presumptively guilty of such things as “drunk driving” until they prove they’re innocent. This is tyranny. Because the authority of the government is unrestricted.
Clover, I have “told you how” at least a dozen times now.
I may be a mental patient, but I can read and write – and will concede facts when presented. You, on the other hand, refuse to acknowledge the fact that these “checkpoints” entail stopping people at random – people who’ve given no reason to suspect them of “drunk driving” (or anything else) – then forcibly subjecting them to a criminal investigation under duress (the threat violence) for any refusal to comply, including refusal to provide evidence that can and will be used against them.
Facts. Undeniable.
They are treated as presumptively guilty, until they prove to the satisfaction of a cop that they are not “drunk.” Fact.
Additionally, the pretext of the “check” enables cops to search for other actionable evidence that in better times would have required a search warrant issued by a court, specifically describing the items to be searched for. Cops now have legal carte blanche to search you/your vehicle at their discretion – their whim – for no other reason than they have you in their clutches. If you object, you will be forcibly removed from your vehicle, forcibly detained and very possibly forcibly taken into custody for “resisting” or “disorderly conduct or some other manufactured offense.
And, Clover, there is this additional fact: In several states (perhaps all) mere refusal to take a “sobriety test” constitutes legal grounds for immediate arrest/caging, and even if it is determined subsequently that the “offender” had zero alcohol in his system, he is nonetheless subject to the same punishment as if he had been convicted of “drunk” driving. It is no different than sending a man to prison for murder whom the court knows perfectly well did not commit murder. It is done out of spite – to punish people who insist on being treated as innocent until they’ve been proved guilty of some crime.
America used to be the one place where people were legally entitled to be treated as innocent until proved guilty. The one place where they had a legal right to tell a cop to fuck off if the cop had no legally defensible evidence to suspect that they, specifically, had committed or were about to commit a crime.
Another fact.
Which you are too despicable to acknowledge – or too unintelligent to grasp.
“America used to be the one place where people were legally entitled to be treated as innocent until proved guilty. The one place where they had a legal right to tell a cop to fuck off if the cop had no legally defensible evidence to suspect that they, specifically, had committed or were about to commit a crime. ”
That is such a sad true statement.
It’s bizarre how things have changed from that.
It’s bizarre how the clovers of the world have come to rule it.
It’s sad that the younger generations never knew it.
There is one place where the individual still has the power to tell the State to fuck off — in the jury box.
I just received a “summons” for jury duty. Of course all of the threats it contains for not meekly complying raise my hackles, but truth be known I love getting picked for jury duty for the opportunity to get in on a victimless case where I can totally and completely screw over the State.
What you have to do is act like a meek Clover until you’re picked for the jury, then if it’s a victimless “crime” you just kick back and say “the prosecution has not convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt.” You can bring the entire crushing machinery of the state to a grinding halt and there is not a damned thing they can do about it. At best if you can convince the other jurors that no real crime has take place, the accused walks free. At worst now the persecutor has to figure out where he or she went wrong and whether it’s worth going through another trial.
I love jury duty.
The duty of the jury is to determine THE LAW and the facts. Even if the evidence is overwhelming that the “defendant” is guilty of violating the law in question, if you as a juror find that the law is invalid, then you have not just the right, but the duty to vote “Not Guilty.”
Of course you cannot let the judge or prosecutor know that you know this before the jury is excused for deliberation, or they will kick your butt off the jury.
Precisely. It is necessary to hold one’s nose and play “dumb-ass Clover” during voir dire. Once you are safely placed on the jury, try to become foreman (likely the others will concede) and proceed to judge the law itself, ignoring the instructions of the judge who will lie to the jurors on that issue. If you can sway the others, great. If not, kick back and stand your ground and let the persecution stew in its own juices trying to figure out what’s going on.
See: http://www.fija.org
Dear helot, Jason, Phil,
Thank god for trial by jury.
It’s the only part of the machinery of state that has anything to recommend it whatsoever.
Be very careful to stick to that plan because if you let or your last post is tied to you, you’re going to need a lot of time and money.
http://www.progress.org/drc07.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anarchman/Laura_kriho
The one time I got called for jury doody[sic] in all my 52 years (It’s as if they KNOW not to call on me, ’cause I’d F the system over!), I had thoughts of maybe actually going, and doing as others suggest here….but I figgered, with my luck, instead of getting a victimless-crime case, I’d get a thief or some such (Althpough the odds are really stacked for the victimless cases- which seem to occupy about 95% of all court activity)- which would be a moral conundrum- as I’d want to see justice done- but even if the crook is clearly guilty, I could not in good conscience take part in putting him in a cage, when the proper penalty ought to be restitution with added punitive damages.
So I just wrote back to the chief dipshit-in-charge, explaining that if I were compelled to participate, I would not convict anyone of a victimless crime…yada, yada…and I got back a letter saying that I was excused forever!
It also occurred to me, that this being a small-town rural area, there could easily be retribution by the powers that be, if they did not like my verdict/conduct.
Best I can tell from my experiences and what I’ve read so long as a person declares himself as having a belief in jury nullification before trial there’s no ill feelings and that person is excused from jury duty, removed from the system. If he gets seated on a jury then they get angry and vindictive.
Dear Brent,
In other words, if FIJA adherents have zero impact on the corrupt status quo by taking themselves out of the game in advance, then the establishment doesn’t get too upset?
Gee.
Why put words in my mouth? It’s like I am on usenet or various other places where statists dominate. I can start using the protective language I use in such places here if need be, I just figured it wasn’t required here.
I think it was obvious even if not explicit that I was speaking of individuals not organizations that seek to undermine their way of life. If it desired I take greater care with blocking such openings, I can do it, I do know how to play that game.
Dear Brent,
You misunderstood. I was not being critical.
I was being affirmative in a bitterly cynical way, to show solidarity with your position.
I guess I failed to make that clear. If so, sorry.
PS:
My bitterness was not directed at you. It was directed at the system.
I was attempting to say that I share your feelings about how corrupt the system is.
Truth be told, this is probably something we should talk about more. I think we all know that victimless crimes laws such as drug laws and so forth should be nullified. But, what to do when the penalty is grossly disproportionate but the crime is real? Such as the whole “Prison for theft” or so forth. What is the libertarian to do in that instance? Either way would be anti-justice, and it really does feel like a lesser of two evils situation. I don’t really know how to handle that one. I know I would vote “guilty” to lock away a murderer or a rapist even though I don’t think prison is the “proper” punishment. I’d probably vote to convict an armed robber to. When it comes to smaller degrees of theft, though, that’s a real dilemma. I don’t know.
Hi David,
I agree with Mole (and Phillip) who advocate restitution in cases of harm caused. Much more equitable, I think, than prison. You break it, you bought it. And so on.
But what to do with people who, for instance, attack others?
In particular, with those who commit violent assaults? Who have proven they’re not merely capable of such but have actually committed such awfulness?
Well, in the first place, there is self-defense. To whatever extent the victim deems necessary to protect himself and his property. It ought not to be the burden of the person being attacked to fathom the attacker’s intent (much less to retreat; what a despicable doctrine!)
Is he merely going to beat the shit out of me? Rape me? Just steal my stuff?
No. It seems to me that an attacker by dint of choosing to attack forfeits the benefit of the doubt. If he is killed in self defense, that’s on him. It is sad, certainly, if it turns out to be a stoned 14-year-old who broke into someone’s house at night to snatch some Cheetos. Maybe – had the homeowner been a large (and confident) man, he might have waited to see who it was, or wrestled the kid to the ground. But too bad (for the kid) if instead the homeowner – scared to death – simply let loose with a shotgun blast and splattered the kid’s brains all over the wall.
But we all know, first of all, that cases of that type are exceptions and – regardless – it is not the burden of people asleep in their own homes to determine the identity and intent of a stranger breaking into their home. Whoever does so takes all the risks upon himself.
Murder and rape fall into the above category, obviously. A raped woman has, in my opinion, every right to kill her attacker. Whether during the attack or at any time afterward. And the family of a murdered person has the same right.
Some will call this vigilantism. But that’s dishonest. I am not advocating mob (or individual) violence against innocent people. Rather, that innocent people have the right to redress wrongs done them.
There is something odd about having the state as complainant in court. And restitution made to it rather than to the people actually harmed.
I can assure you that if I’m on a jury and decide to nullify a bad law (such as drug posession) the scum will never know the reason why, all they get is “I’m not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.” You have to play your cards close to your vest when dealing with government filth.
Good luck on the creeps figuring out any kind of identifying information from these posts.
Crap. You guys are makin’ me feel bad about the time I was on jury duty long before I was fully aware. …If only I woulda pretended, for the sake of that woman up on D.U.I. charges.
I disobeyed the judge, walked out in the hallway when no one was lookin’, sat down and talked to her on my own to hear her side of the story.
Then promptly got thrown out of the jury pool for giving our overlords sheet.
Looking back on it, I guess I’m lucky I didn’t wind up in The Clink, too.
…Still. Wished I woulda known then, what I know now, for that contrite strangers sake who really did no wrong, other than being n the wrong place, at the wrong time, and wasn’t wealthy enough to afford a kick ass defense lawyer..
“Justice” really is, a blind whore, open to the highest bidder.
My thoughts exactly, Jason!
And, unless we’d have the luck to be dealing with some upstanding citizen who was being persecuted or abused….chances are, we’d just be dealing with some creep/low-life/criminal who isn’t even concerned much with their own freedom; let alone freedom in general.
In fact, we’d likely embolden such people… “Hah! I beat the system! Now I’ll jes walk around town smoking my crack pipe, ’cause iffin a git caught, who cares? They won’t convict me!” [Then next time the boob gets a jury of ALL Clovers, and goes in the cage for 20 years)
Way I see it, when you have a very corrupt unjust system, you can not fight it by being a part of it/participating in it.
It’s kinda like voting: It accomplishes nothing, except for you to give your assent and permission to those are running.
And what would we get in return for our heroism? In a small town, where you’ll be seeing and interacting with the other jurors, they’ll raise more than an eyebrow at you being the one who wouldn’t convict Martin The Dirtbag. (Wouldn’t mind it, if it was for a noble cause; to effect justice for a decent person; but to put one’s own neck on the line for Martin The Dirtbag….???)
>””Justice” really is, a blind whore, open to the highest bidder”<
OJ Simpson proved that! He walks….but some poor schlepp who didn't hurt a fly has their life ruined for some technicality.
Moleman…
“…chances are, we’d just be dealing with some creep/low-life/criminal who isn’t even concerned much with their own freedom; let alone freedom in general.”
I would certainly be reluctant to give a real criminal who is leaving real victims in his or her wake a “get out of jail free” card. However anyone who is being accused by the State of an arbitrary victimless “crime” is going to at the very least get a hung jury if I’m on the panel. Guaranteed.
You wanna throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the State? Being a juror is the perfect opportunity, possibly the only one that can be taken advantage of with few if any repercussions.
As far as any Clover-type jurors, the cops, the prosecutors, other assorted statist shits… I really don’t give a damn what they think or what they want.
That presents another problem though, Jason.
Say you’re put on a case where some guy stole a car. It’s obvious that he is the guilty party. What do you do?
You wouldn’t want to declare him innocent- as it would be a perversion of justice- especially for the victim; and yet, if you declare him guilty, you, your neighbors; and the victim are going to have to support him in the gulag; support his wife and kids with welfare and food stamps, et al- whereas the proper penalty should be for him to pay the car’s rightfull owner 4 or 5 times the value of what he stole (restitution + punitive damages)- and if he can’t pay it, then he gets to be an indentured servant and work off his debt.
But under the system we have now in this country, your only option is to cut him loose; or put him in the gulag. Either way, injustice is done to many. I couldn’t be on a jury on such a case, because neither one of those options is viable.
And re: the retribution if you rightly let off the perp of a victimless “crime”. It’s not what people think of you that you’d have to worry about- but rather targeting by the local gendarms (“He said Harry Heroin Hitter was innocent! He must be one of his pals, and taking drugs too!”) or the people you deal with on a regular basis (“He must be a friend of Harry’s!”) etc. One could really find themselves in deep do-do (And percentage-wise, these small towen pigs and sheriffs are even more corrupt than their big city counterparts.)
I would stick my neck out for someone who deserved it….but not for Harry Heroin Hitter, because all I’d really be doing is in that case, is proving a philosophical point- while Harry gets paraded before the judge every few months……
Gotta pick ones battles carefully- but when it comes to being a jury, one can not do that.
“Say you’re put on a case where some guy stole a car. It’s obvious that he is the guilty party. What do you do?”
In a case like that there is clearly an injured party and a real crime, therefore I would vote “guilty.” The current system of punishment rather than restitution sucks but currently it’s all we currently have to work with in dealing with real criminals.
As I said, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the local cops or Clovers think. I’m already on their shit list since from incendiary bumper stickers, to publicly humiliating public employees whenever possible, to flipping cops the bird whenever I feel like it, I do nothing to hide my disgust of the State and all associated with it. The older I get the less I care about any “deep do-do” this may entail. If I’m on his jury, Harry Hop-Head goes free.
Jason: >”In a case like that there is clearly an injured party and a real crime, therefore I would vote “guilty.” The current system of punishment rather than restitution sucks but currently it’s all we currently have to work with in dealing with real criminals.”<
Ah, but you see, that creates an injustice almost as bad as the other. Your "guilty" vote, means that the prisons/state profit; the taxpayers/innocent citizens lose; the victim loses (no restitution or even possibility of it, since the crook is confined in the can, and is now a slave of the state); and even an injustice to the crook (Although not that I care that much about him) by punishing him in a disproportionate way relative to his crime; and increasing the likelihood that he will not be able to lead a normal life in the future.
That might be the current system, but remember, our whole purpose in accepting jury doody, was supposed to be to affect justice- but instead, we'd just be giving our assent (under the above scenario) to their system of injustice.
Moleman,
Life is full of situations where we have to make sub-optimal choices as they are the only ones open to us.
In the case of jury duty the individual has the chance to strike back at the heart of the State, its power to forcibly inflict punishment for violations of arbitrary and capricious “laws.”
It is like playing the lottery, maybe you’ll be able to keep someone who has committed no real crime free for another day, or maybe you’ll have to put someone engaged in real criminality into the jaws of the system. (Or maybe you won’t be empaneled on a jury at all.) But unlike the sham of the voting booth, this is one place where your one vote does count and can make a difference when the opportunity presents itself.
One can also choose to not play but then you don’t get a chance to make your mark, and the goons and Clovers get their way with no meaningful opposition.
So take your choice. Until we change the rules of the game this is what we’ve got.
Jason, sub-optimal choices. ROTFLMAO. The story of my life and everyone else’s. Do you take her for your? Oh hell, why not? Seems like I’m in a sub-optimal situation here…..ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yep, that sums it up. Wish I’d thought of “sub-optimal”. Oh wait, I did, I based my life on it. And all this time I just called it fucking up. LOL@@@@@@
Hehe, yeah, 8S. “Sub-optimal”. I try never to compromise. There may be some gray areas; and some battles where we are not strong enough to win and have to admit to just ducking and covering- I dunno- maybe I’m just a stubborn dago- but I’ll tell you, I have no regrets in my life. None! If I were to compromise; or settle, I know I’d have instant regrets, and be miserable- and I don’t care if it’s about women, or particip[ating in something that you know is not going to have a ghood outcome no matter what you do…
Why am I writing this? Because it’s late! 😀
I screwed up on jury duty once because I didn’t want to be on it. It was some bullshit thing and I knew the victim(the perp)was going to get railroaded as usual. I looked around me and saw nothing but complacency. When I was asked if I could render a fair verdict I said no. I told them my mind was already made up(it was and I’m ashamed to say I was stupid enough to not realize I could have helped the person charged) so the judge says “you’re off” and I walked out.
Now I wish I could be on a jury. You’ll never miss the water till the well runs dry, so says Buck(RIP). I still get called now and then and I have been tempted to go and try to get on. I’m just afraid after a verdict they’ll realize I should never have been on the roll and come up with some other bad charge for me. So if they call a felon to serve and you do, I’d bet it will be your fault if they ever catch it. Idiots….friggin bureaucratic, illiterate, illogical fools. all’em But the stupid shits continue to serve notice. it’s really a conundrum for me.
Every state in Oz now charges one with high-level drink driving when failing to provide a breath sample, for any reason.
If they have half a lung, they’re forced instead to suffer a hospital trip to take blood.
Proof of innocence must be supplied by the accused, instead of the other way around. So the police have evidence already that you’re drunk? Why the breatho and blood samples then?
Ask them next time.
Lining up like sheep to justify your innocence. Next time C_lover’s unable to provide samples for legitimate reason, I hope he learns something from the charges they’ll inflict, but I doubt it.
This madness will end, but only with a class action or mass disobedience.
ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N , people like Clover think that the tyranny of which they approve only affects “criminals”; They can’t see how it affects themselves much more, until they or a loved one are victimized in a massive way (Like when their grandma is tasered, or their daughter raped at a late-night traffic stop on a lonely road; or their money confiscated and not returned; or their dog shot…) -And meanwhile, the tyrants are more judicious to preserve the rights of the real criminals, because they don’t want to blow the case on a Constitutional technicality; whereas with the innocent, they (the pigs) have nothing to lose- so they can do anything they want, and whatever charges stick or get dismissed, they don’t care, because there is no real case to begin with- so it is all gravy, anyway, with the innocent.
Yup.
Here, they’ll arrest you for “drunk driving” if you’re asleep in the back seat of a parked car. Even if the engine’s cold to the touch.
So – why the fuck not go ahead and actually drive drunk?
Such a thought never occurs to Clovers.
Does ANY thought ever occur to Clovers?
I’m sure Clover must approve of this –
Police now to come knocking after funerals in search of guns
http://www.guns.com/2014/11/11/police-now-to-come-knocking-after-funerals-in-search-of-guns/
PtB, et al,
There’s an apocryphal story that Timothy Leary once had a lecture in Buffalo in which he stated: “Buffalo is an intelligence test you have failed.” That any set of people would put up with that kind of shit tells me that it’s pretty much too late for the bulk of humanity. Meanwhile out in the desert, the Arabs were eating their dates…
And what about Timothy’s brother, Really Leary?
I thought his brother’s name was Jose? And his other brother’s name was Hose B.
Seems like all of N. America; The former English Commonwealth countries; and all of Europe, are now part of that experiment. (Only some of ’em are more full of Moe Hommid’s, than Hose B’s)
I agree, Giuseppe…
Did you happen to see the film, Deep Impact?
It’s about a cataclysmic asteroid strike. Rather than try to flee, the woman reporter who broke the story decides instead to go see her dad, who lives in a house by the ocean. Knowing the asteroid will strike deep water and the result will be a tsunami of epic proportions.
I feel like that, often.
Death Race 2000? Ah ha ha ha ! Carmageddon. Love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO-YkaXGtLM Death Race 2000 (1975) full film Public Domain Movies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNv-vgI2PP0 Death Race 2000 Soundtrack by “Dayglo Abortions”
Might also try Deathsport 1978
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIdLAUkFVzs
“In the year 3000 there’ll be no more Olympic Games, World Series, or Superbowl, there’ll be only…DEATHSPORT!”
Kaz Oshay, is a good-guy “Range Guide” who hops on his “Death Machine” to participate in a sport to the death, in Roger Corman’s futuristic gladiator motorcycle film.
The film takes place 1000 years after the “Neutron Wars” have decimated civilization, except for pockets of domed cities.
Deneer (Claudia Jennings), tells Kaz that a group of mutants have abducted her daughter. Kaz and Deneer escape and set off in search of her daughter as they dodge the Statesmen and their high-decibel motorcycles.
Kaz is forced to participate in the “Death Sport” — a mad free-for-all inside a tunnel in which only one contestant can emerge alive.
Love that movie!
Stop annoying Mr. President with impertinent questions….
This is as good a place as any. As I cannot locate the original comment.
[Got dang “Bad Idea T-shirts” chick on the right is very distracting, btw. WHoa. Ah-hem…Now, What was I saying?Oh, yeah…}
Whomever it was that said they wished “we” wouldn’t make comments on other websites cause “they” make fun of us, I say.
In the year 2070, if ever I should live that long (Praise God, not the Flying Spaghetti Monster 😛 ) if it should happen that a young person looks me in the eye and says, “Why didn’t you say or do anything and defend Freedom and Liberty?”
With a clear conscious I shall reply, “But, I did.”
And, “It seemed like “They” didn’t listen”.
At the same time, I get your point.
I once read a comment in response to some outlandish claim of goobermint supremacy which simply said, as if it were said with Great effort, “…Must. … Re…sist….”
I guess I’m weak?
And, I doubt I’ll Ever forget your advice of stop spreading pearls before swine.
I guess I’m just hoping to cast one before some Ok Person by the wayside?\
Whoa, I hope it’s not a waste of effort. ..Prolly so, though, eh?
W.F.D.
Oh, and pardon me. That shouldn’t be a smiley face in my comment. That should be a P with eyes in front. You know, like a tongue, right out atchya.
: P
I’ve gotten to despise smiley faces in certain circumstances,… and, it has no aim like a P and a semi-colon does.
IMHO, in most instances, a smiley face is like a spitwad that hits the floor.
HA! That’s a metaphor for a Clover, “like a spitwad that hits the floor.” …Only, maybe it’s not (?) it seems that the Clover bunch is deadly as of late. You know, poison ivy blends in and takes the shape of the plants it lives in, Clovers are a Lot like that poison ivy plant.
Yes, I’m rambling, forgive me, it ain’t like Brent’s rambling which is interesting.
Helot, that is exactly why I post comments and debate on internet forums (Well, not that I do so too much anymore…but I used to). Whether it be Libertarianism or Creation/Christianity, just to get an alternatiove view out there; or to challenge people to think; or the knowledge that my comments may help embolden and encourage others who are already somewhat on the path, but who feel overwhelmed by the majority BS views, and who are having a hard time resisting.
Of course, my presence here is just to enjoy some rare camaraderie with the choir…
And while the actual number of converts I’ve made over the years, whom I know of, is infinitesimally small; I have no way of knowing how many were prodded by my posts, and may have just carried a thought for years, and eventually came to question the mainstream, and maybe converted to the truth years down the road- just as a comment by a radio talk-show host back in the 80’s set me on the path of Libertarianism, even though at the time, I turned the radio off after hearing his comment.
And as a side benefit, I found that debating really served to make me think; to test my own ideas and beliefs to the extreme; and to strengthen my position by doing so.
I guess I’ve grown weary, though- as I do prefer to spend my time with youse[sic] guys now…ya know…birds of a feather and all that- but every once in a while, when I see some glaring vacuum, I’ll fill it. -Like on a local forum, whenever the subject of evolution/Creationism comes up, there never seems to be anyone capable of defending Creationism, even though they may believe in it- all you see is the typical “I believe by faith”…so I feel compelled to jump in and offer a real defense.
I wonder how man times Clover has uttered “Who needs privacy, if you’ve got nothing to hide?!”???
Clover probably does have nothing to hide, even between his/her? legs.
Nor between his/her/it’s ears…..
MM – that lack between the ears COULD be hidden, if (s)he would just stay away from the keyboard.
PtheB, he/she/it probably surfs from a huge, elaborately=-festooned computer, with bull’s nads hanging from the monitor!
Got-damn it, Phillip!
I just spilled my effing coffee all over the keyboard!
I had a biopsy yesterday. This morning I was looking over the paperwork they had given my wife while I was still out of it. I saw they had scheduled me for an “F/U” appointment. Given the location of the procedure, I think I already had that.
I think the F/U is just the abbreviation for Obamacare…or his whole presidency….
What are libertarians in favor of?
Anything that reduces the ability of a state to control its residents. Anything that lowers its ability to force people to serve it
Libertarians were for the fall of the Berlin wall on 11.9.89
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM2qq5J5A1s
A falling of international borders between the US and Canada & Mexico might mean for-profit businesses could assume the role of monitoring people entering and exiting the USA instead of it being provided by the US government.
Libertarians are for the fall of the American Berlin Wall of Taxation, Prohibition, and Regulation
http://www.bna.com/berlin-wall-us-n17179895624/
Obviously, all that libertarians need to have in common is the desire for government restrictions to be reduced. Or for controlling government entitities to be replaced with something more responsive to people who need or will tolerate the underlying responsibility of the governance. But without the mandatory violent force aspect being retained.
Examples
Private internet businesses could provide surveillance.
Private businesses could monitor farm produce quality.
Private businesses could educate children.
Local merchant groups could collect taxes, check for fugitives, provide census and demographic info, provide mail pickup and delivery, distribute and collect bills, welfare payments, social security payments, and other government transfer payments.
Americans have mixed views on fall of Berlin Wall
http://www.gallup.com/poll/4450/americans-mixed-views-impact-fall-berlin-wal.aspx
World Socialist Website – Fall of Berlin Wall
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/11/pers-n09.html
Earnest Partisan: e_partisan
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2000/libe68-20000331-13.html
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle594-20101107-01.html#letter03
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2012/tle670-20120513-01.html#letter07
The worst aspect of clovers is how they revel under escalating servitude and subjugation.
Listen to Wikipedia
Information doesn’t want to be free
Lesson on Anarchism in Season 5 The Walking Dead Episode “Slabtown” from 11/3/2014.
Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
“I put in 35 years…”
“It ain’t right…”
“I don’t know what to do…”
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
C. Bukowski
Dear Tor,
Thanks for calling attention to that blog article. Excellent.
I left a comment there as well.
TWD is a terrific TV series. It truly is about far more than just sensationalistic horror. As we have discussed before, TWD, GOT, and a handful of other TV series are a refreshing change from the pablum fed to cop suckers on “COPS” type shows.
Tor, good rant. I, also as an old man, and also as doing something old men aren’t “supposed to be doing” but that’s mainly what I see these days and today saw a very old woman also driving a big rig reefer with great skill best I could tell, just re-read an old Bukowski book. Once into it I remembered why it affected me so much when I was young….and so was the book. Everybody always told me I should write but it was hard to work in with my carousing, drinking, fighting and general hell raising….and that was when I wasn’t working….ok…..sometimes when I wasn’t working. Boss to me after seeing the empties in the truck “Good job cleaning up behind the competition”. Thanks, just trying to hold up our reputation.
Think the wife has finally given up. She got on the computer t’other day after I walked away(limped). Later she said “So, can you send eric money via paypal or something?” I replied “I COULD…when hell freezes over but there’s no way I’d send anything that could be taxed.” So she says “Like a BD card?(we send cash in BD cards or something similar) Or like a get well card?” Her twisted humor. “Hell no, I’m a package man, something I can entrust to FedEx or UPS, don’t need another package gone awry with the USPS”.
In the Virgin Galactic space plane accident, the guy not wearing a seat belt lived. The guy who was strapped in died.
I’ll bet anything the guy that lived is the kind of guy that does his own thing, and probably has always done things his own way according to his best judgement.
Those of us who follow our own rules learn early on never to talk about it. It will never be admitted. There’s no way you unbuckle yourself when travelling faster than the speed of sound. This guy has likely never worn his safety harness his whole life. This time, it’s saved him.
when I got run over July 23rd I luckily wasn’t wearing a seat belt, something that would have caused me great harm getting hit from behind. I told the trooper I wasn’t wearing one, didn’t believe in them in a big rig even though I could have lied but I was hurt and pissed. I told him in 50 years of trucking that was my first accident. Here’s what he wrote on the ticket Driver said he hadn’t worn a seat belt in 50 years. That’s exactly what I did not say. I’m a buckle up guy and it probably saved my life a couple years back in a rollover but I won’t wear one in a big rig. No study yet has shown an advantage except the study the state did that showed a huge increase in collected revenue from us old truckers.
BTW, just so those who think Tx is always hot, I have nearly froze my butt off the last 3 days.
I have never EVER seen a stinking pig write an accurate, factual report- or one that didn’t contain out-right lies. NEVER.
Moleman,
Are you telling me that the police aren’t the very best of us?…..and all these years I thought they were honest, hard working, stellar examples to all who meet them. Thanks for bursting my bubble.
8sm,
You think it’s cold down there, come to ID. It has been 16 degrees for a high, the past 3 days. I bet your idea of cold and mine are two different things. But we should both be grateful we aren’t in ND or MN. Those places are COLD.
It has dropped from a reasonable and sane 60-something degrees to 20-something here in SW Va.
Fuck it and feed it fish heads!
I hate winter. It is Satan’s work.
I don’t know how I endured all them NY winters! Big improvement, moving south….except this winter’s gonna be a doozey- we’re at least 25 degrees below what we normally get for this time of year- having January weather in November…. Global Warming you know! 😉 -and just when I finally got acclimated to the heat!
Winter IS the result of Satan’s work – it follows “the Fall.”
ROTFL!~!!!! Very good! (Close to the truth, too- there likely was no winter before the Flood…. but the pun wouldn’t work with “flood” 😀 )
Not close to the truth – it is the truth. Winter involves death, and there was no death before the Fall. I don’t know how long that 1st spring/summer after creation lasted, but I know when it ended, when Adam and Eve ate the ‘forbidden fruit.’
I dunno- I mean, after The Fall, God did curse the ground- so we got thorns and weeds…..but I don’t think we got winter till after the Flood. The Bible doesn’t say that specifically [Although I don’t think winter is ever mentioned before the Flood]- but when you look at some of the physical evidence, a good case can be made for it.
I don’t necessarily mean winter as in snow and ice – shoot, it didn’t even rain until the Flood. But the cyclical pattern of the seasons began when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden. That’s how I see it anyway. But I’m not dogmatic about it.
Another thing that many folk misunderstand about the Curse is that they think it means WORK is the curse. No, Adam worked, God created him to work – he tilled and guarded the Garden. The curse was that his work became unproductive.
I agree, PtheB, we can’t be dogmatic about things that just aren’t plainly revealed- But I just never associated winter with the curse/Fall, because, I mean, there are plenty of places on earth today where they don’t even have winter- and winter really doesn’t mean death…more like dormancy- just like when you plant a seed and it regenerates into a full plant after it’s period of dormancy…. Just my opinion of course, though. And it’s interesting to kick this stuff around, eh?
I totally agree with ya about the curse not being work, though! Work is a good thing…the curse just made it a lot harder. Kinda like Sodom and Gomorrah -most people get into trouble when they have too much leisure time on their hands- and it’s interesting that our present society is pretty much built around the idea of man conquering nature through technology/machinery, with the promise of less work/more leisure time- and here we are, back to the whole world having turned into Babel/Sodom….
Very interesting times to live in- having the overview of history that we now have; and seeing the culmination of that history unfolding right before our eyes; bringing us right back to the point mankind had been at just before the Flood- wehich is exactly how Jesus said it would be in the last days.
Ha!
Never thought of it that way; but it works…!
Fantastic job, Eric.
Here’s a typical clover comment from Josie the Outlaw’s YouTube channel. I’ve added a few paragraph breaks but made no other changes.
– – – –
John Poteat3 months ago
I agree, that our government is in bad shape and corruption is in this world, everywhere, but come on. I just watched “who owns you”. You are going on and on about how bad things are, however there are places on this planet that would do very bad things for your rhetoric.
In mid-evil times you would have been beheaded. You complain with no solution. We could go back to have no laws, no congruency in our actions, what then? We would all fraction off, into tribes, then with no laws at all we would fight and kill one another.
The more perverse men out there would rape all the women. We could steel what we wanted, kill at free will etc. Have you ever visited other countries and see how they live??
For example, I was in South Africa in a little shanty town, they had no proper sewage system, no infrastructure ( which is where we would be with out any government ) nobody would take care of it.
People would die, disease would run rampant. You really should be grateful for the life you have. To reiterate, our government needs work, but you should be grateful wear you where born.
No matter who is in office people complain. We are very far from slaves. We can come and go as we please, buy what we want, choose who we want to be with, feel safe when we go to sleep at night.
I have an idea, why don’t you find a deserted area island, take your subscribers and live somewhere, have no laws etc. see how things turn out.
At the root of human nature we are ruled by our desires, guess what Men are Physically stronger so no law guys with questionable morals you and other women would become slaves to someone.
THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES, of no laws. Things would be out of control, so somebody would gather a group and try to rule the group. You’re Lucky To Be Here. If you don’t feel fortunate move somewhere else.
John Poteat. Attends Mindful Marketing Academy
Lives in Orlando, Florida
https://plus.google.com/+JohnPoteat/posts
Dear Tor,
Re: John Poteat
Jesus H. Christ. Talk about your indoctrinated sheeple edumacated in gubmint skools.
If the spelling errors, grammatical errors, and run-on sentences didn’t give him away, his logical non sequiturs would surely have.
Good article.
Another book that will help put things into perspective is “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945” by Milton Mayer. What happened in Germany last century, and what we see fully unfolding this century in the States, are very closely related. Not just because of people like Dulles but basic human nature as well.
Hi Eric, et al,
“No different than Tony Soprano ordering a hit.” Actually it is. TS was honest about his brutality. He did no couch things in bullshit…Gandolfini portrayed a violent thug who took what he wanted and murdered people who stood in his way, but never pretended anything different.
WRT Americans being brainwashed about the evil deeds of U.S. feral govt, that’s almost universal and it all begins with public schools. (not that most of the religious private schools are that much better in the brainwashing department). I have friends that I love and respect but who just shut down mentally when any action the government undertakes, no matter how heinous, is questioned. These are the people who will be totally surprised when outright martial law comes down.
WRT DUI, that’s always been a bullshit claim. If we were following even the lame constitutional principles, none of this horseshit would have come about. FIrst of all, the whole alcohol/driving impairment “issue” was cooked from the getgo. The justification is based on a tenuous correlation…e.g. alcohol was involved in x% of traffic accidents. We all should know that even if that was true, one cannot base a causal relationship on a correlation. Hell, 100% of traffic accidents involve somebody driving a vehicle…better ban driving, right? No, Clover, I was being facetious….don’t go off and join that bandwagon. Ever see or read the movie/short story Minority Report? Why, you’re all assumed to be guilty, all the time, of anything you might do in the future.
In any case, enough rambling. The state, any state of any form, will always end up as a tyranny. Every state assumes that it owns its “citizens”, ergo every state is based on slavery. That people who espouse to believe in “liberty and justice for all” can mentally process the dissonance of falling for state slavery speaks to the fact that doublethink thrives in the U.S.S.A. (as well as everywhere else)
Hi Giuseppe,
Indeed.
Once one awakens – and begins to think systematically/conceptually/logically… one begins to appreciate the depths of most people’s somnolent unconsciousness. The way they react by rote, in accordance with their conditioning… literally, like a trained animal.
The dynamic was best expressed by Orwell’s inner party vs. outer party duality. The outer party is, in its own way, as asleep as the proles. Conceptual – heretical – thought is reflexively stifled before it can even form fully… via the technique of doublethink.
Clover is an extreme example, but – sadly – most people are like him to one degree or another…
Long ago in a previous century, to someone who shall remain nameless, the following incident occurred. While driving under the influence, but still well within his abilities to drive safely a skill he had learned from experience by living in an area lacking public transit, he was speeding on a major thoroughfare during rush hour. Needless to say he was passing vehicles in order to get where he was going while motoring above the posted limit. Looking in his rear view mirror he saw some flashing red lights about a block behind him but gaining on him as other vehicles moved aside. Realizing there was a good chance he was the target he pulled to the side of the road hoping the police car would pass on by.
It did not. Knowing that the interior of the vehicle smelled of booze he decided to get out and meet the officer outside his vehicle. The officer followed all the protocols, which back then were not as stringent as now, and after the usual wait returned and said; “I realize you have been drinking, but as it took me three blocks to catch you I will just issue you a speeding ticket, drive safely.”
Hi Senior,
Yup!
Among the imbecilities of our time and place, the fetishistic fixation on arbitrary standards – even when they fly in the face of individual reality.
Clover, for instance, is ready to crucify anyone who is found to have “x” arbitrary BAC level regardless of their actual driving – because for Clover, the BAC level is ipso facto proof the driver is “drunk.”
He refuses to even consider that people tolerate (and process) alcohol differently. That people vary in their abilities – some having a buffer of much higher skill/better physical reflexes than others, which to a great extent counters the effects of alcohol such that while they may not be as keen behind the wheel as they would be with no alcohol in their system, they are still nonetheless vastly better drivers than many other people are who have no alcohol whatsoever in their system.
Thus, Clover is not fervid about the old man with glaucoma who has terrible reflexes, even though he is more meaningfully impaired than the driver with excellent vision/reflexes, who is a superb driver, but has “x” BAC. The old man wanders across the double yellow and causes an accident – it’s just an accident and the old man gets a ticket.
The superb driver causes no accident – but has the bad luck to roll through a “checkpoint” where he “blows” a certain arbitrary BAC.. and he is crucified for “drunk” driving….
My friend was killed by a senile old man of 88 years when he turned left in front of my friend on my bike that I loaned him while working on his bike. His son was leading him around in court because he was so decrepid. I hounded the cops for months to get them to contact his family in another state. I did all of the detective work for the cops and it still took them 3 months to reach them. Otherwise, the state confiscates his remaining property.
I asked the prosecutor if the court was going to make sure this geezer never got on the road to kill again. “That is up to MVD.” was the reply. The reality about how the system works is shocking. My suggestion is to test every driver every year over age 60 to prove that they are still able to drive safely, if they flunk the first test. First we need driving tests that are difficult enough to require real world skill for all drivers. This is evidence that your contention is correct. The basic destruction of freedom starts with the criminals that run our country. Guess who really benefits from the DUI laws; cops, courthouse workers, insurance companies, etc. Oops! Excuse me, it is all for our “safety”. NOT!
“First we need driving tests that are difficult enough to require real world skill for all drivers.”
Good luck. All one has to do is open a drivers manual. They are interested in one thing: that you followed orders and looked through their whole book.
You could be a professional driver with years of experience, no accidents, etc., but if you had to take a driving test again without looking at their book, you’d be almost a guaranteed fail. There are too many trick questions and things that don’t relate to driving, but are merely something mentioned in the book.
The state wants you to follow orders and do exactly as you are told, plain and simple.
I used to favor the idea of such tests – but I no longer do. Rather, I support the notion of presumptive competence. If a person is able to drive (or ride a motorcycle) without causing a wreck, then it seems to me he is presumptively a decent driver/rider.
Conversely, anyone who is the cause of a wreck has given us an objective reason to suspect lack of skill, impairment, poor judgment (or all three). Such a person should be held fully responsible for the consequences – unlimited liability, as Moleman put it.
But everyone else has a right to be left to go about their business in peace.
Well said Eric. We don’t know what type of requirements the market would come up with, because we don’t have a free market.
I learned haw to drive when I was 7 years old. It was a 1976 Chevy Luv. Manual transmission, total POS. I’m grateful to my dad for giving me the lessons and experience. Through that experience, I learned that I need to take responsibility. I have liability. I have to pay attention and can’t take for granted that others will be paying attention.
There’s something about learning things at a young age. I feel like I was trained well to operate vehicles on the road. After getting married and observing my wife, I’m left with no doubt that I was trained well. Most people will never have near the experience that i was fortunate enough to have.
When it comes down to it, the state is the last place in the world
that we should trust for testing or training. The market could provide us with a much better alternative. An alternative we will never know, until the market is freed to do so.
Not surprising – I suppose! – I also learned to drive years before it was “legal” for me to drive! Like you, I have no doubt that, as a consequence of this, I became a much better driver. Because I groked driving before the state “showed me how.”
Bingo.
Biggest contributor to my never having had a collision (had a few accidental and puckering moments but never contacted anything) is that I was allowed to play in the field with junk cars as a kid. Six years later when I got my drivers license, I already had many years of controlling drifts, threshold braking and judging traction conditions. In less than ‘safe’ cars to boot.
Few learn how to drive these days. They may know how to change direction, accelerate and stop, but the knowledge of what the vehicle is physically capable of and what it’s doing at the moment is just not there. Most will be dealing with their first out of control moment on the highway as most driving schools in North America only teach how to drive when everything is going according to plan. Few teach what to do when it all goes wrong.
No. The answer isn’t to limit the freedom of drivers-over-60; or to limit anyone’s freedom.
Driving isn’t a privilege granted by the state. Each driver is responsible for his own skill or lack thereof. And he’s responsible for any harm he causes.
Remember the NAP in this and in all cases.
Sounds like the “buzzed driving is drunk driving” campaign that the Ad Council is running. As is you get arrested for drunk driving even if you don’t actually blow the .008.
Hi Eric. Glad you were finally able to bag another Clover.
Just to add.
It’s also noticeable that Clovers are quick to defer their own judgement to those of intellectual authority. “STUDIES HAVE BEEN DONE!” they’ll tell you. And that’s ample proof that their positions on the matter are both correct and incontestable. It doesn’t matter to them that such studies have opposite interpretations.
Yup!
The curious thing is how eager they are to defer to “authority.”
And the loathsome thing is how angrily they insist everyone else must as well!
eric, another disconnect with the way things were and how they are now. Due to necessity, I was turned loose with a pickup at the ripe old age of 12, a common occurrence in my part of the country. Sure, I did do the chores and I screwed off as much as I could too. I taught myself(by reading Sports Car Graphic, Hot Rod, Popular Mechanics and all those other mags)to four wheel drift, to heel and toe(it was backward from sports cars but it had the same effect), to steer into a slide, and so many other things I can’t count.
I never practiced steering by over-power, your right foot in effect, until I had my own car but I was well up for the effects and results from absorbing many years of car sports mags.
If it rolled, we raced it. I am having trouble recalling all those people I knew who grew up driving and learning really good skills that are dead now via motor accidents. Oh, that’s the other group. All those I knew who didn’t live from motor vehicle fuckups. That’s significant since I know many people my age who never learned those skills and have not survived the trials and tribulations of the road.
It seems like nobody speaks much of those you knew who didn’t have a clue and became statistics and those who didn’t(become statistics).
I realize good driving habits go a long way to staying alive and not killing others. But doesn’t anyone remember those people you could tell would never be able to drive worth a damn? Of course, almost to the last person, they had other things on their mind. Hey Clover, ring a bell?
Just today I was 18 wheel drifting with a bit over 83,000 lbs. when….. Oh wait, I wasn’t drifting, merely trying to save my own butt when my trailer suspension broke on the driver’s side. Now at’ll get your attention. I want to thank my grandfathers, one who was a trucker, one who coulda been, my uncles, my father and all those other people who turned me loose with whatever conveyance that needed to be moved.
Dear 8sm,
If I didn’t know you were the real deal. I would think you were the biggest spinner of yarns this side of Paul Bunyan!
LOL.
bevin, I’m full of it for sure but that story is the truth. I was really lucky since I hadn’t been over 25mph when it happened. No glory today but an “oh shit” moment when I tried to stop and had no trailer brakes. I was pulling a belly dump with loads of tanks of air and lines for all sorts of things and just got under it this morning, a trailer that’s not my regular belly dump. I froze my butt off working on it all day and finally about 4 pm I got brakes and some other things to work. I got home and drained everything again and actually took things apart and knocked the ice out. I filled two oilers with compressor oil and 91% alcohol, activated everything I could several times till I had alcohol and oil spray exhausting in most of the right places. Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll actually haul some loads. At least it’s a possibility. It’s sitting by the pumphouse, engine heater plugged in and hopefully no water in the system.
Dear 8sm,
God help me, but I believe you!
You have earned the street cred, many times over.
Its honestly really hard to convince the average person that drunk driving shouldn’t be inherently illegal, even many who agree that the checkpoints are unconstitutional. But in clover’s particular case, he’s a government troll. Its obvious he knows better.
I know, David.
If you wanna twist an “average American’t’s” gourd in a knot, just mention ideas like this, they go bonkers:
Drunk-Driving Laws Are Absurd
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/03/mark-r-crovelli/drunk-driving-laws-are-absurd/
You mention those who think, “even many who agree that the checkpoints are unconstitutional.” ..yeesh, you think maybe they are secretly freakin’ nutz, bootlicking suck-ups, even?
” Just put the “Constitutionality” aside for a moment”, they say?
…No wonder so many people say the Constitution is just a worthless scrap of paper. Even the so-called “Constitutionalists” think so. …In the worst possible way.
@Helot –
Good link, but do you really expect people to think logically in re: gunvermin?
Hi David,
Yes, but let’s begin by not accepting their premise!
What is “drunk driving”?
All too many people accept at face value the factually ridiculous premise that it is synonymous with a .08 BAC.
The fallacy ought to be obvious.
People are not alike. They process alcohol differently, have higher (and lower) tolerances. It is a fact that some people are more meaningfully impaired with one drink in their system (or no drinks at all in their systems) than others are with several in theirs.
The issue, as I see it, ought to be: Is the driver impaired? Objectively not in control of his vehicle, a clear danger to others? Whether as a result of alcohol consumption, texting, senility or any other thing.
Why is alcohol the big fixation?
And: If a driver is not weaving or wandering, has given no objective reason to suspect he’s impaired – why hassle him? Even if he has been drinking?
Example: I assure you I am more in control of my car even with four or five drinks in me than my mother-in-law is of hers when she’s absolutely sober. Yet which of us is the target of enforcement – and punishment? Even if I do not cause an accident – and she does?
@Eric- I totally agree with you and that’s how I argue it. Sadly, most people aren’t that rational.
The thing is, there is no need to run roadblocks to find drunks. Just drive at night, and you will see with certainty drunk drivers. Some of them are so easy to see you would have to be blind to miss them. Cops on patrol could easy spend their whole shift arresting drunks, and do nothing else all night, no problem.
They won’t stop doing roadblocks until someone figures out a way to sue the departments doing them. At some point it could be made too costly to do roadblocks. That may be the only way to stop these things (roadblocks, silly traffic rules, stop light cameras etc) since nobody seems to give a crap that all that stuff is unconstitutional. Some government units can’t call on endless reserves of money. There has been some success on removing some red light cameras via lawsuits. Its just sucks that you need lawyers to sue……..
Then richb says police do not need road blocks but just follow drivers around to see that they are drunk. Really? Even in my wildest dreams I could not see a libertarian recommending that they be followed by a police car. I am waiting to see that one. Are they going to pay for hundreds of more police in town to be able to follow everyone? I would have thought that richb would follow Eric’s plan for drunk drivers and that is lock up the drunk after he kills the family of 4.
Before characterizing others as “stupid,” Clover, you might learn the difference between site and sight.
Then you might be able to comprehend simple facts. For instance, that there is no exception in the Fourth Amendment allowing unreasonable searches outside of one’s home.
You might also realize that the Fourth Amendment is part of the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.
Sigh.
It’s not “one action automatically causing another,” Clover.
It is one legal principle establishing a precedent.
It is about the trampling of people’s rights.
We don’t (yet) have cops “following everyone” to make sure they’re not committing theft/assault/murder but rather investigatory attention is focused only on those who give good reason to suspect they may have committed theft/assault/murder.
The same principle applies to “drunk drivers,” you blockhead. If a cop sees a motorist driving erratically, investigate him.
But leave the rest of us alone.
Clover writes:
” Eric’s plan for drunk drivers and that is lock up the drunk after he kills the family of 4.”
You mean kinda like waiting until someone actually commits murder to arrest/prosecute them for murder?
Yes Eric why do preventive maintenance on your car? It might be fine without touching it. With simple preventive maintenance the police can save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in accident claims but we can not have that now can we?
Tell me Eric, do you actually believe it is a search to talk to someone in an open window? Do you have a zero IQ? Are all libertarians as stupid as you are on this site?
Machines don’t have rights, Clover. If I elect to abuse my vehicle, it’s my vehicle – an object – and I have every right to do so.
But you do not have the right to abuse people by treating them as presumptively guilty. However many “billions and billions” of dollars it may save.
And, yes. It is a search when an armed state enforcer compels me to stop then visually examines the contents of my vehicle.
I’ve offered to stack my driving skills up against yours at VIR or the track of your choosing. I’ll also happily compare the results of my IQ test with yours.
I do have to lack at your constant lack of common sense. You are all about saving pennies by driving an old car beater with poor gas mileage but you can not have us saving billions of dollars. Eric that was well spoken by someone with a zero IQ. That says it all.
I don’t doubt that you’ve taken “how to obey the law” courses. But I am certain you’ve never taken a driving course. Because no one who believes it’s “idiotic” to learn how to control a car could possibly know the first thing about driving.
On “saving pennies” by driving an older vehicle:
I’m about to sell one of my trucks, which I’ve owned for 10 years. I bought it for about $7,000. I expect to sell it for about $4,000. You do the math, Clover. My cost of ownership is about $25 a month. I’d say I “saved a few pennies,” wouldn’t you?
But – of course – your reference is a non sequitur. It does not follow. Whether I saved or spent pennies has nothing to do with whether it’s right to treat innocent people as presumptive “drunks” (or any other thing).
I’ve figgered[sic] it out: Clover is a cartoon character. Has to be- no real person could be THAT stoopit- especially in an environment where everything is thoroughly explained; extrapolated and refuted.
Now if I could only think of WHICH cartoon character he is- but I can’t recall any who are THAT dumb…. Hmmm…Barney Rubble (He’d always go along with any scheme of Fred’s, and did whatever was expected of him). Elmer Fudd? (Nah…Elmer wasn’t too bright- but at least he owned guns!)- Hmmm…I think we’d have to venture into Sid & Marty Kroft territory here, to find an appropriate candidate- and I never watched their stuff…. Wait! Wait! Sylvester the cat? Or maybe Transvester would be closer?
MM – Pink Panther, maybe? He’s not too bright. But then he is probably to adventurous.
I think Zippy the Pinhead would be a good fit for who Clover really is. Right down to non sequiturs like “All life is a blur of Republicans and meat!”
Eric I also have a truck that I seldom drive. I am sure I could get about what I paid for it but who cares? If you only drive a few thousand miles a year then yes it pays to own an old vehicle. I drive close to 20,000 miles a year and used to drive even more. Yes an old beater in that case is not the answer.
Eric my driving classes involved real world driving. Not your skidding or whatever. My driving was in a busy city with pedestrians and a lot of cars and traffic. You know what I am talking about Eric, something that you do not have a clue what to do. Pedestrians are supposed to get the hell out of your way and cars are supposed to pull off the road in your world because you are incapable of such driving.
First, Clover, you’re off on another irrelevant tangent again. We were talking about presumptive guilt. Which you favor in some situations (arbitrarily) without comprehending that if one endorses arbitrarily treating people as presumptively guilty in any situation then you’ve opened to door to treating all people as presumptively guilty in every situation.
Your “driving” classes involved such things as learning to worship/obey the speed limit and all other laws, by dint of their being the law. You’ve never taken any courses that impart driving skills, such as learning how to maintain control when a car is “skidding or whatever.”
Eric if police have stop points and 95 percent of people are not drunk then tell me how they can declare everyone as guilty? I know, you are stupid.
My classes told you how to drive. How to keep traffic separation and yes if you have to drive 3 mph over the speed limit to create separation then the class said it was fine to do. They taught things like leave yourself an out, look out for the other guy and dozens of other things. Real world driving that you know nothing about how to do it. Eric those things you do not learn on a track skidding around a corner. The things that they taught reduce accidents, make the road safer for everyone. The taught that your driving and Brent’s poor driving is not the answer and it is proven it is not. They taught you not to ride in someone’s blind spot like libertarians say it is their right to do. They told you not to tailgate which libertarians say it is their right to do. Most libertarians do not know how to drive around others. They are like you, they tell others to get off the road so that you are able to drive.
How is it “if police have stop points and 95 percent of people are not drunk then tell me how they can declare everyone as guilty?”
Really, Clover?
So, if you’re randomly forced to prove you didn’t kill someone – just because you happen to be out and about and “someone” might have committed murder – then you haven’t been treated as a presumptively guilty murderer?
Clover,
A driver who has been trained to deal with skids is someone who can handle emergency situations, such as a car skidding on snow-slicked roads.
Such a driver will also have the skill to avoid accidents by taking evasive action, something you and your kind are not trained to do. You’ve admitted you don’t know – or care – how to deal with a skid.
How does that make you a safe driver, Clover?
Eric a good place to practice winter driving for the inexperience is on a large parking lot with ice or snow on it. What kind of training did you have on such conditions? Eric I have had thousands of miles of hard packed snow and ice experience. Tell me how an idiot trainer is going to improve that? I have watched cars go into the ditch and crash into other cars. If you want to improve drivers then teach the poor aggressive drivers that pass me and go flying into the ditch a half a mile up the road. The aggressive driver that is driving way too fast for conditions will not be helped with training skidding because often when you lose control on poor roads there is nothing you can do to correct it. The number one thing to help you on poor roads is to slow down. That is unheard of by people like you. Did they teach you that in your training or was it all about speeding up?
Eric I can not help with your feeling that the cops think you are guilty of something. If you want to believe the moon is made of cheese or for that matter that landing on the moon was a hoax, or that the government caused the world trade center to collapse then go for it. Facts do not matter to you so without you believing in facts, it is impossible to disprove anything that you say.
Clover eructs:
“Tell me how an idiot trainer is going to improve that?”
Might ask Bob Bondurant or Skip Barber.
Clover eructs once more:
“Eric I can not help with your feeling that the cops think you are guilty of something.”
It’ s not about feelings, Clover. It’s about the fact that people who’ve done absolutely nothing, nor given any reason to suspect they may have, are treated as if they had. Forced by armed strangers to interrupt their travel and be interviewed and searched under duress.
Anytime you’d like to take a side-by-side IQ test (or compared productive skills/achievements) I’m ready. You know where I live. Everyone does. 721 Hummingbird Lane SE Copper Hill, VA 24079
But you’re too much of a pussy to even use your real name here.
Eric my interpretation of the cops declaring me as guilty is to be thrown in the back of their squad car. Talking to me does not mean that I am guilty of anything. Believe what you like idiot.
So in your superior driving school did they once tell you to slow down on snow packed or possibly icy roads? Did they once tell you to stay out of someone’s blind spot. Did they once tell you not to tailgate? Did they once tell you to allow a merging car onto the interstate? Did they once tell you what to do when you see pedestrians ahead? If they did none of these then it is not a good drivers class on our public roadways.
Eric I am one of the best skiers in the country. If I wanted to go to a racing class to improve even more, they will not go into what to do when other people are around because on a race course there are no others on the course. I believe that your drivers training also did not tell you what to do when others are on the road. They did not say things like it is bad to pass when you do not have any visibility of cars entering your passing lane. Yes Eric you did need braking and avoidance training because you as a poor driver would often get into those situations.
So, Clover – just to be clear:
Innocent people – who’ve done nothing to even justify suspicion they’ve done anything – are forced to stop their vehicles so that an armed man can approach them, force them to roll down their window, force them to hand over their “papers,” visually searches their vehicle and then barks criminally investigatory questions they are forced to respond to, forcing them to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the armed man that they are not, in fact, “drunk” – including via the performance of physical gymnastics, as well as possibly being forced to provide their own blood, drawn against their will … yet they’ve not been treated as guilty of anything.
Your mind is fascinating, Clover.
Here in KY. no one knows how to drive in the snow! They drive WAY too fast for the conditions. We don’t get much snow- but every time we get and inch or two, you hear about all the accidents/fatalities.
One of my neighbors was from WI.- had no problem driving in the snow….but hated to go out around here when it snows, because of the way everyone else drives.
I’ve never avoided driving in the snow…but I sure do avoid it around here!
Eric, Dom showed us a normal stop at no time did he do the following “including via the performance of physical gymnastics, as well as possibly being forced to provide their own blood, drawn against their will”. Are you blind or just an idiot?
Eric if you are carrying illegal things in open sight within your car then you belong in jail for your stupidity. Enough said on that one.
Eric your lies and other statements shows us that you have severe mental problems.
Clover,
The fact is the cop could have forced Dom to get out of his car and submit to any of several “tests” – from the Breathalyzer to the blood draw. Fact. The fact is Dom was forced to stop his vehicle; forced to roll down his window; forced to accept a visual inspection of his vehicle. Facts. Not debatable.
Do you understand what a fact is, Clover?
I suspect you do. But because you do, because you know perfectly well that innocent people who’ve done nothing to even justify suspicion are forced to prove themselves innocent to the satisfaction of an armed thug – you resort to evasions and euphemisms. Because at some level, even you know it’s indefensible to subject innocent people, at random, to criminal investigation at gunpoint.
Why not just argue that it’s justified to force people to prove themselves innocent? Why not argue that it’s not an imposition? That government can be trusted; that it’s all for the greater good? That catching “dangerous drunks” is more important than the presumption of innocence; that it’s too much bother to leave the innocent in peace unless they’ve given a good reason to suspect them of having done something?
Why not, Clover?
I think the thing that disgusts me most about you is not your authoritarianism, per se. It is that you are too much of a coward to own it.
I have no doubt that, man to man, you’re a cringing little piece of shit who would never dare to try to impose yourself on another. Unless, of course, you were facing off against someone obviously weaker and unable to defend themselves.
And that, Clover, is why you love government so. It’s the sturdy pair of legs you cling to; the schoolmarm you sic on other kids.
Your problem, fundamentally, is that you cannot abide other people living their lives as they see fit. Even though they’ve caused you no harm. Freedom – the right of every person to make their own decisions and be fully accountable for them (but their actions in no way justifying infringements on other people’s freedom) drives you to carpet-chewing distraction.
What a wretched, pathetic animal you are.
Clover doesn’t seem to take notice of incidents, like a recent one, where “the nice policeman” pulled over some hapless jig “to talk to him” and ended up shooting him, because he reached for his wallet when the pig said “Papers, comrade!”.
Or the grandpa whom the “nice policeman” shot when he reached for his cane.
On a bicycle forum recently, a cyclist was stopped by “your friend, Mr. Policeman” in NYC for not having a bell or some such minor nonsense, and when ordered to produce his papers, the cop reached for his gun, as the cyclist reached for his saddle bag….
But the nice occifer just wants to talk to you; and there’s no threat of violence….
(Would that they would do such to real criminals, like bank robbers and rapists!)
Clover writes,
“Eric my driving classes involved real world driving. Not your skidding or whatever. ”
ROFLMAO!
@bevin – LOL – No need for such performance tomfoolery training, he has pedestrians and heavy traffic to practice on.
Dear Gary,
You mean like… ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6LahtrxVhg
Clover – I have also driven many miles on hard packed snow covered roads. But here in the DC area, that is not common. Here we end up with a lot of slush, which is slipperier than packed snow. Not to mentions that there are people here from all over the country and all over the world, many of whom have never seen snow, much less driven on it. And I have to stay out of their way, not just make my own way.
Likewise in the Dallas area, where the usual 1-2 inch snowfall is invariably preceded by freezing rain, so that pretty fluff sits atop a sheet of glare. There the transplanted Yankees who thought they knew how to drive on snow were more dangerous than the Real Texans, who realized they did not.
Phillip the Bruce was that a scientific study that you gave us that northerners drive worse on snow and ice or did you pull it out of your a–? It may be possible though since northerners may be used to tires that handle on snow and ice and I would guess they do not sell those tires in Texas.
Clover – re northern drivers, I was speaking from anecdotal, but personal evidence. Overconfidence due to a lack of full information can lead to many bad things. But I’m not talking about Eric or those like him as you will probably infer, because his driving record speaks for itself.
How many accidents have you been involved in? Or worse yet, caused without being directly involved?
>”Phillip the Bruce was that a scientific study that you gave us that northerners drive worse on snow and ice or did you pull it out of your a–?”<
As a transplanted Yank, I can tell you that what PtheB says is correct! In 39 years of living in NY, I don't think we ever once had an ice storm. Snow driving was on fresh loose, or packed snow.
Here in the South, now, we seem to have at least 2 ice storms per winter; or, it'll snow an incho r two, then start melting, and then freeze overnight.
The winter driving here is quite different than what I am used to up north; as ice is much different ballgame (and I don't like it!)
And it's not the tires, because you can get the same tires here that you can get Newfoundland!
When getting new tires for my vehicles recently, I made sure that they not only had appropriate tread for snow and ice; but I made sure that they had abundant siping, which is one of the most important characteristics for ice.
Couple that with the fact that the locals just totally don't know how to drive in any kind of bad weather, and I just try and stay off the roads when there's ice or snow around here.
As you said Moleman, New York is not northern if you never get ice. Northern would be Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois etc. In those areas you get it all. Yes there are still good drivers and poor drivers. Most of them that are poor drive too fast and can be found in the ditch or an accident. Yes tires make a big difference but I doubt that they ever put tires on cars in Texas that are made for ice and snow even if you can order them.
Clover, your knowledge of regional climate is right up there with your mechanical knowledge.
I’ll leave this for Eight to deal with!
“NY is not northern” ROTFL!
Clover, Jesus loves you. (Everyone else thinks you’re an asshole).
You are funny Eric. You do not even know the difference between standing outside of a car and searching a house. A 2 year old would know that.
So, Clover, a search cannot be visual? Really?
An armed cop forcibly compels me to stop my vehicle, then forces me to allow him to scrutinize the contents of the car – and you really take the position that no “search” has been performed because (as yet) the cop hasn’t actually laid hands on anything?
And, of course, you (once again) evade dealing with the fact that every aspect of these “checkpoints” is arbitrary, free of individualized suspicion and coercive, with the implicit threat of violent physical repercussions if one refuses to comply and the actuality of violent physical repercussions if one does not comply.
But, you’ll claim no violence is used. Provided, of course, one complies. Just step into the boxcar, Clover. The “nice SS man” is asking politely – and if you obey, he may not club you or let loose a burst with his MP-40.
Right, Clover?
I may be funny.
But the joke’s on you. Or will be, someday.
….not to mention that once the porcine prick initiates a stop by turning on his magic lights or standing in the road- whatever- you, a citizen who has done nada to elicit legitimate suspicion, and who are supposed to be presumed innocent, become a virtual slave, obligated to do whatever the porker tells you to do- to the letter- and if you fail to comply immediately, just see how much violence will ensue!
….all, for merely having the unmitigated gall to drive your vehicle on a road that you paid for.
Having committed a crime, or having done something to elicit legitimate reasonable suspicion of having done so, is thus replaced by mere chance and happenstance of being in a certain place at a certain time.
That appears to be the judicial system Clover believes in: The luck of the draw- vs. the reality of provable facts that our Founders knew must exist, before giving state agents the right to interfere with citizens movement; property; and rights.
“Again the video that Dom showed us is a normal stop other than Dom acting like a jerk.”
Clover,
Some of us still cling to the strange (to people such as yourself) view that it is profoundly abnormal to randomly subject innocent people to criminal investigatory process without even the claim of individualized probable cause. To compel them to halt, submit to an interrogation and search. That sort of thing used to be considered un-American. It was the sort of thing that took place in police states like Soviet Russia and East Germany.
But now, America is a police state.
Because of people such as you.
I suppose (giving you the benefit of the doubt) you genuinely believe the ends justify the means – and that government would never take the principle/precedent any further. To conduct, say, random, probable cause-free “checks” of people just walking down the street – who might after all have illegal weapons, or be wanted fugitives. Nor would it ever begin random spot checks of people’s homes – even though so many live smight be saved, so many kids helped…
Right, Clover?
But, a question: On what basis could one argue against such? If it’s ok to randomly stop/interrogate/search people for this, why not for that?
I suspect you’re simply not intelligent enough to follow a logical/conceptual train of thought. I do not mean that as an insult, merely as an observation.
It is very sad.
Clover wrote,
“the video that Dom showed us is a normal stop”
“normal stop???”
Clover is never going to get it, is he?
>”
Clover is never going to get it, is he?”<
He just doesn't care. He's the kind of person who would have had no problem with the Salem Witch Trials- because what he advocates are nothing more than vehicularized versions of the same- something which our Bill Of Rights was supposed to prevent.
Just look at what the
manlittle boy says- he doesn’t care if the cop blows you away, if you as an innocent citizen stand for your constitutional rights….but he’ll cry big crocodile tears if someone pl;ows into and kills you if his BAC is .08 instead of .07.I still have the feeling that Clover is a troll- because how could someone with no new or relevant arguments just keep posting the same dribble time after time?
Clover,
You don’t mind being stopped; you don’t object to being asked questions by a state official – questions you have to answer – and aren’t perturbed by having a cop give your car a visual search because you believe you have “nothing to hide” and aren’t “drunk.”
But the fact remains the interaction is a coercive police investigation and other people – people like me – do object to that because we take the position that it’s wrong in principle as well as very dangerous to endow police with the legal authority to do such things at random to people who’ve given no reason to suspect them of having committed any crime whatsoever.
It’s wrong because people who’ve not done anything nor given reason to suspect they have ought to be able to go about their business in peace. You may see no harm in a “nice policeman” “asking” you questions. Other people would prefer to be left alone – and have every right to be left alone, provided they’ve done nothing to justify an interrogation and search, etc.
It’s dangerous, because if we accept the principle (in law, this is critical because it becomes the basis for precedent and thus, future law) that it is “reasonable” to use dragnet tactics, to subject people at random to police investigation without any probable cause whatsoever in this case (to “get dangerous drunks”) then there is every likelihood that the same will be applied in other cases – for example, random searches and interrogations at airports and sports events, including even high school football games (all of these now occur).
These things would have been unimaginable to the Americans of 1965. Now, they are routine.
Because of people such as you.
And because of people like you, we will soon see much worse.
Mind-boggling.
Clover really can’t connect the dots, can he?
He just can’t see the obvious connection between “reasonable searches” and eventual creeping tyranny, or these days, “galloping tyranny.”
Bev, Clover just doesn’t care- because he doesn’t value freedom (for himself- much less his neighbor). He is one of those who would gladly trade liberty for perceived “safety”.
Eric if you are afraid of a visual search outside your car then yes maybe you do belong in jail. I could care less. Yes Eric you are all for criminal rights. The innocent driver that just wants to get to where they are going safely is something you object to.
It’s much more than just a visual search, Clover. It’s also a forced interrogation based on nothing I’ve done or given reason to suspect I’ve done. I’m not afraid. I resent it. And unlike you, I realize where it will lead. Where it has already led.
“Yes Eric you are all for criminal rights. The innocent driver that just wants to get to where they are going safely is something you object to.”
How is an innocent person who’s given no reason to suspect them of anything a “criminal,” Clover?
Am I a “criminal” for objecting to being required to prove I have not committed murder?
The “innocent driver that just wants to get to where they are going safely”?
That would be the person who’s done nothing to justify being stopped at gunpoint, interrogated at gunpoint and searched at gunpoint.
Clover writes:
“Dom had a normal stop and at no time was at gunpoint.”
Our definitions of “normal” are very different, Clover. You regard stopping innocent people at random and subjecting them to a police interview (no matter how cursory, that’s what it is) for the purpose of forcing them to prove themselves innocent (or at least, to the satisfaction of a cop) as “normal.”
I consider this profoundly abnormal – in that it is tyrannical be definition to subject innocent people at random to police interviews (and searches). To waylay them at gunpoint. And yes, Clover, that’s exactly what it is.
Are you really going to claim that an armed cop with the legal authority to use his gun to compel obedience isn’t wayling people at gunpoint? What would happen, Clover, if Dom refused to roll down his window? Refused to say anything in response to the cop’s interrogation? If he had attempted to drive away, having committed no crime?
You know as well as I what would happen.
Again: Your evasions and euphemisms are more despicable than your imbecile veneration of authority.
Clover,
The type of life that you wish to live (and wish to force on others at the end of a barrel) is a sad picture of an unexamined life.
You value your rights so little that it is (apparently) difficult for you to fathom why other people resent having their rights violated without just cause.
You (apparently) can not see how giving away your rights (and the rights of others) today could possibly lead to possible harm in the future for you (or other people).
What kind of a person are you?
Based on your replies it appears you are one that does not value the rights of individuals. How little can be debated, but you do not think individuals have rights worth defending.
Mithrandir you say I am all for giving up rights. No Mithrandir, I believe it is my right to be able to travel in this country with only people that are capable of driving safely around me. You want me to give up that right. You are the one that wants to take away my rights. The supreme court agrees with me but you want to make up your own rules.
I really believe that libertarians have no common sense or are like Eric in that drug use makes them have hallucinations and see things that are not there.
Clover, consider:
“It is my right to walk the streets with only people who are not murderers around me.” Therefore: It’s right to randomly stop people to check/make sure they’re not murderers.
Can you explain how this is any different – in principle – from what you defend regarding random “drunk driving” stops?
I have a friend who drives well over 60K miles a year- often towing 20K lbs. -from NY to FL; NY to MI; VA; MD; DE; and all over NY/NJ/PA- In the nearly 20 years that I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him drive anything newer than 10 years old- and always salvage trucks that he’s repaired.
Guess it saves more than pennies, ’cause the guy’s worth quite a few mil.
Hey Clover, explain this:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/no-charges-against-speeding-officer-involved-in-crash-that-killed-5-year-old-1.2109509?i
I’ll bet they don’t keep statistics on THAT, Brent! (How many innocent civilians killed as result of high-speed cop chases; or distracted/negligent cops, etc.)- I’d bet it would be as many or more than by “drunk” drivers.
It happens far more often than one realizes….locally, a state-snooper crossed over the yellow line and killed someone….they hushed it up pretty fast- never found out if he was drunk; distracted; just negligent…and of course, he walked scot-free.
Happened pretty much every place I’ve ever lived…. Back on Lawn Guyland, a stupid pig initiated a chase because a motorciclist was popping a wheelie…..didn’t even have his sireen on…..went flying through a big intersection of a big divided 4-lane Hwy, and killed two people in a car that just happened to be driving by.
Some poor schlepp gets in an accident that isn’t even his fault- but if his BAC is over .07, he’s “a drunk driver”- and it’s all over the news…meanwhile when some stupid pig kills someone with his vehicle…..you may hear about it once, locally, and that’s it.
My neighbor was sitting at a traffic light and got plowed from behind by a flatfoot who was playing wityh a cell phone- hit him at 40-50MPH- really messed up his neck and back. But no one ever heard about it…..
The Iron Sheik has a message for you, Clover!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEoQYPKjRLI
“Eric I have had drivers classes. None of them included the need to skid around a corner. Only an idiot driver needs that training. ”
Did clover really say that?
Just when you thought clover couldn’t say anything more moronic, he surprises the hell out of you.
So Eric is it fine for someone to shoot a gun at you and not be touched until you are dead?
No, Clover – it’s not.
Because a gun is a lethal weapon – and shooting it at someone evinces clear intent to harm them.
I know you believe a person driving a car while having “x” arbitrary concentration of blood in their system amounts to the same thing.
But that’s why you’re a Clover!
If a message is put in the paper that police will start patrolling overpasses where the shooter usually goes then the shooter would change his behavior because he knows he would probably be caught if he does his usual. Does all this sound familiar Eric?
Clover will “give a closer example to what drunks are.”
Sheesh.
Ever read Of Mice and Men, Clover?
What is wrong Eric? Would you prefer a better example of a coherent sentence? 😉
It may not help his argument, but it would be easier to read and understand.
eric, he must be right. Just this evening I was going to the house in my 18 wheeler. About 10 miles from home I stopped at the liquor store, got myself and my wife beer(3 kinds). Of course that’s illegal since all the clovers don’t mind the lege passing bullshit laws like “no alcohol”, even if sealed, in a commercial vehicle. I bought some Ugly Pug and just had to open one. Of course it resulted in me having a horrendous wreck, killing several people, setting the country on fire. A horse came by and I caught his tail and hung on till he dragged me home. I hate to think about what’s going to happen when they identify the burnt big rig and figure out I was driving. I feel soooooo bad. I’m a bad boy and clover is a friggin idiot.
I’d like to put that mandatory seat belt on clover and haul her around all day or week with me and her in the “other” seat. I can’t imagine why she’d object, after all, it is “air ride”. It’s not like there are no clovers out there to scare holy crap out of you. You know, big rig drivers are never hurt, just the four wheel driving fools.
Clover can see others do the move it defended to death here and on clovercam, pulling out in front of traffic and refusing to accelerate, forcing traffic that was already on the road to brake.
What defines a human being?
Intelligence. The capacity to reason.
Clover lacks this attribute.
He is thus a kind of twilight being, in between animal and human.
Eric, you give Clover too much credit (or animals not enough)- My dog is 10x smarter than Clover!
MM – It’s not JUST intelligence. I’ve got an English Shepherd and she is ++smart.
It’s thinking logically, rationally. Of course Clover doesn’t do that either.
“There is a guy that likes to go to the local overpasses and shoot his gun down on the interstate. ”
Dear clover,
Are you telling me that the government cannot ensure public safety on a government overpass over a government road?
Are you admitting that the government cannot “keep us safe” on government land patrolled by government law enforcement officials?
Keep talkin catfish. Given that your IP is based in Illinois, its fairly certain you live in East Saint Louis, IL. Tell us more.
One dead after gunman opens fire on overpass in St Louis
http://fox2now.com/2014/09/04/1-dead-1-injured-after-shooting-in-north-st-louis/
Somehow this just clicked with me. Mind you, I agreed with you before this, but the sheer level of stupidity in the opposite position (the one clover is taking) just hit me again. Hard.
Ditto, David…
I do believe Clover may be the absolute dumbest person I have ever had the dis-pleasure of reading. To think that he isn’t the only person of this type out there–that there others like him–is the most depressing thought I’ve ever had.
Agreed – on both counts.
There are millions of him (and her) out there.
Cattle. Livestock.
But worse than that. Because cattle are not malicious. They do not purposely trample their fellows. Or assist the farmer in herding their fellows down the chute.
I used to feel sympathy for people like Clover – on the assumption that they were merely fools. But they are far worse than merely foolish. If it were only they and theirs who ended up at the edge of the ditch, staring numbly into the distance just before the rifle crack puts an end to their misery, I’d accept it as the cost of doing business, forget it (and them) and move on.
But, as we know, they’ll drag the whole got-damned world into the ditch along with them.
How do we get off this rock?
Cattle (and sheep) are not generally malicious, but they can be stampeded. Then heaven help us.
My wife has a theory about why the Bible refers to some of us as sheep and others as goats. Goats are constantly trying to get out, or see what other mischief they can get into. A sheep will accidentally get through the fence, then panic when he realizes he is alone. The rest of the flock will respond to his frantic bleats by joining him on the wrong side of the fence.
Klover (sp. intentional) believes he would be the Kapo.
“Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were “decent” Nazi guards and “indecent” prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
I think the meaning for Mankind was to herd the children of Seth…. the Cattle of humanity.
Of which Klover is the least fit, generally speaking – the weakest-willed.
If Klover drinks too much, and develops cirrhosis of the liver? “There should’ve been a law…” to prevent consequences to poor, innocent little Klover.
We forgot to do our job of culling the Herd. We’ve allowed the feeble (of mind, mostly) to take over, both by r/K selection (numbers) and by our own decency, allowed our decency to blind us to their evil intents.
Cunning is not a function of intelligence…
———–
I wonder about r/K selection theories and the connection between Neanderthal and homo sapiens sapiens. Neanderthals were not knuckle-draggers, nor were they brutish. They were however far stronger than we are – likely to the tune of 100% of our PEAK performers. I figure real life will do that to you (says the computer geek with a sweet tooth… )
Here’s a half-baked “theory,” sort of borne out of seeing the different skull structures of modern humans, and knowing there’s Neanderthal DNA in us: Maybe whites (suggested because of where whites seem to have originated – cold-@$$ northern climates) are “more Neanderthal” than other races? I don’t know, of course, just bloviating, but – blacks and asians are closer in skull structures, and also are in warmer climates. Semitic people (didn’t see a skull) are also from warmer climates…. But IIRC, sopme of the darkest Africans are the Zulu – who fought with the Boers, I believe (Dutch colonists, Q.V. South Africa.) So the dark skin isn’t only a temperature adaptation… Any more than the white would seem to be exceptionally useful in the northen climates (IE, equidistant from the equator, we’d expect to see parallel evolutionary trends, barring some major variation: E.G., we don’t find humans in the waters of the Atlantic, but there’s a similarity between the Native American peoples of meso-america and those on the Indian sub-continent, and the Chinese, and the Mongols, WRT skin coloration. Different skull structures, though. Something to ponder when bored.
My point was, maybe there’s more or less breeding between “group X” and “group Y” and when the Neanderthal question is examined – and perhaps, given the oral tradition of the times – Neanderthals were red-haired, blue-eyed “demons” (Nephilim?) to the children of Seth (parallel-evolved humans, homo sapiens sapiens, but not as rugged or intelligent as Neanderthals, I’d wager – IE, less independent, less driven to actually WORK for a living? More Economically oriented than human-oriented, as has been recorded by novelists and history writers for quite some time: Hell on Wheels as an example, but any shithole/city is the same, from 1200s London to Modern-Day Chiraq….)
BTW, Eric: There is only ONE way to get an unconstrained disease off this rock….
“Nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Not sure I see a problem, cities could always use some “urban renewal.”
>”by our own decency,”<
Kinda like when we, as a society, used to champion freedom of speech. We naturally even granted that right to our enemies ['cause if we don't believe in free speech for our enemies, we don't believe in free speech].
That freedom of speech enabled all the various groups we see today (who are now granted special favors and protections) to get where they are…and now that they have arrived, they are the very ones working to eliminate free speech, because it "offends them"- thus taking away the freedom of the very people whose ideals enabled them to get where they are today; AND hindering others of their own ilk.
They used the freedom which others provided them; but had no love of that freedom; they rather just wanted to use it to their advantage-p and then restrict others from doing the same, once they attained what they wanted. (The faggots are a perfect example of this)
There’s only one rule about making a deal with the devil:
DON’T.
clover himself is a paid government troll. I’d bet money on that point. I doubt anyone here would take that bet:)
most “clovers” are in fact of similar levels of stupidity to clover at some level, but they don’t usually put nearly as much time into debate, nor do they repeat themselves quite as often, so its more forgivable.
Note that I said “more.” Relative term. Regular clovers are bad. But some of them might be able to be convinced. This clover cannot be. Because his job is to derail discussion here. I think its probably time to block him, Eric, unless you have some strategic reason for leaving him around. Just IMO.
Block Clover? Why? Even if what you say is true, David, leave his ignorant comments alone, so that everyone can see his absurdity; and they provide text-book cases for preaching the glorious truth of liberty- and what better place than this, where Eric and others can provide such excellent and thorough rebuttals?
If we don’t believe in freedom of speech for our enemies, we don’t believe in freedom of speech.
Banning people/censorship would be hypocritical for a libertarian forum.
I would also say, be careful of whom you suspect of being a shill. Often, it’s the one who appears to be a champion for your side; They’ll be all gung-ho for the cause….always there with tons of links and references- and then once they have your confidence, they’ll start proposing some off-beat concept or heretical ideas; in an attempt to draw people away from the legitimate foundations of the movement in question; or to entice them into potential illegal/immoral activities.
I do believe we have one such operative here…but it is not Clover.
I’ve seen this before. Used to have this one guy on my old forum- He seemed like a shining beacon for 9/11 truth- but once he got the majority of members to like and trust him, he started changing his tune, and ridiculing 9/11 truth…and ended up drawing a lot of his followers with him, and ruining the forum. (I was O-K with him doing that- If the other members were so gullible/not grounded enough to have a firm belief in their causes, so as to be so easily thwarted, then the operative really did me a favor by exposing them as such).
But it’s never the out-right critic who turns out to be the shill- That would be too easy to spot, and accomplish little. It’s always the guy you’d likely least suspect; the guy who gains your confidence.
Dear anacap,
Is clover is for real?
Tell me Eric, is clover a libertarian mole?
Are you paying him to deliberately act like a low grade moron in order to make us libertarians look good?
Bevin.
I’m not sure that Eric could pay someone that much to act this stubbornly ignorant/dumb.
Too repeat a saying: “You can’t fix stupid.”
If only!
The guy (girl?) is for-real.
Unfortunately….
Dear mith, eric,
LOL.
Eric, I don’t believe it. Mind you, I don’t believe you are paying him. I believe Uncle Sam is. Do you disagree?
Hi David,
Paying whom? I lost track of the thread!
(Edit: Oops, I see it now!)
Clover, you conveniently forgot about the ohio cop that, responding to a robbery, crashed his car into a car containing a family of 6, and wiped them out. He violated the first law of emergency vehicles, that of NOT having control of his vehicle. Yet he faced no consequences for his murder of 6 people. What would YOU do if this cop came into your court? You’d no doubt be full of praise for this murderer.
PS: You are in more dire need of a concentration camp than any government official in history!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Libertarians do have the right to do anything, Clover… so long as they don’t cause harm in the process. When they do, they (and any other person who causes harm) is fully responsible for the consequences.
But not before.
RE: “The thing is, there is no need to run roadblocks to find drunks. Just drive at night, and you will see with certainty drunk drivers.”
Sorry, mang. That sounds like bullsheet el-supreemO.
Case in point, in the old days back in the eighties, on my way home from work I would take my motorcycle and weave in-between the dotted yellow lines just for fun! Read that, Just For Fun! In was in the country, there was no one else around,… yet, if a cop would have spotted me, “That’s a drunk bastard!”. I may have done the same on the city streets when I thought it was ok,… according to what it seems you’re saying, it would have been ok to treat me as an O.W.I. suspect?
….Or, did you mean something else?
And, at the same time, did the phrase, “No harm, no foul” come into play in all that? … I suspect not.
Never meant that they should go after drunks with or without roadblocks, just pointing out the absurdity of them. Just pointing out that its not hard to find people driving after they have had something to drink. They aren’t having a problem finding people to arrest. Roadblocks aren’t even necessary for them to do their jobs.
Cops if we are going to have them, should be spending time solving real crimes not going after motorists. But solving crimes do not increase revenue.
Your right to say that most people drinking and driving don’t cause harm. I do get that.
Drunks?
Almost every day, I find myself behind some completely sober – but completely incompetent “driver” who literally cannot keep his car in its lane. I’ve posted videos of this. They wander half-car onto the shoulder.. then sway back across the double yellow… and they are as sober as the pope.
But Clover isn’t concerned about them.
Eric,
Most accidents, at least where I live have no alcohol involved. If a driver kills someone, but they were sober, there usually are light, to no charges at all. If someone with any amount of alcohol in their system has a minor accident where nobody is hurt, the state will push to have the person thrown in prison. Even if the person with a BAC count didn’t even cause the accident.
It is pure insanity. The person who causes the accident walks with nothing and the person with the BAC is charged. The story is stated as thus: “alcohol was a factor”.
Yup.
My understanding is that if a sober driver runs over a drunk pedestrian who wandered into the road, it is categorized as an “alcohol-related motor vehicle fatality” and treated no differently (in terms of the statistics) than the case of a driver who was soused and crashed into a tree.
I’ve heard it’s even worse. If sober driver A has the green and sober driver B runs the red signal resulting in a crash and driver B’s passenger is drunk, it’s alcohol related.
True,
On top of that, the state seat belt stats in Idaho count pedestrian/car, motorcycle/car, and bicycle/car accidents into their fatality stats. A year or so ago, I backed those three incidents–where it is impossible to wear a seat belt–out and found that according to state stats in Idaho, it’s roughly 67% safer–according to fatalities–to not wear a seat belt.
Most people will never look into the stuff that smells like shit. They just accept the experts statistics as fact. If you look into things, you find that the statement that there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics is true, indeed.
All true, Ancap – but I still prefer to debate them on principles rather than challenge their utilitarianism. All this stuff boils down to:
Do I – as an individual – have the right to decide for myself? Or does “society” – as expressed via the mechanisms of government – have the right to decide for me?
You know where I stand, of course!
Your position is the position I have taken for years. I used to concede as fact that it was safer to wear a seat belt and argue the right of myself not to based on principle–as an individual right. Then a couple years ago I read an article in a local news paper where a cop stated that the statistics show that it is safer–less chance of death. I decided to look into their stats myself. I found that, not only are they wrong on principle, but they lie about the statistics too. They are wrong on all counts.
I’ve found that when talking to people that are as dense as Clover, principle and principal are the same thing. You get nowhere telling them about principles.
The dishonest already have given up on principles. You may as well feed their hollow–shit filled–souls with their own statistics. At the end of either conversation, the inevitable line you will hear from their cadre is: “It’s the law, so we should just do it.”
In my search, looked at a few states surrounding me. Without looking into it deeply, I came to a conclusion that it is 50/50 at best. It basically doesn’t matter if you wear a belt or not.
I will grant that I didn’t account for every circumstance and factor–something that good scholarly research would demand. But, based on what I did do, I will comfortably call it a 50/50 ordeal.
I’m also talking seat belts in a regular car. A 4 point harness is a different conversation……and if it were all about safety, as Clovers scream it is, why the shitty seat belts? Why can’t I buy a light, great mpg, cheap car that has a NASCAR type cage with a 4 point harness’s?
Dear anacap,
Watch out! Clover will tell you “I could care less,” meaning of course that he couldn’t care less.
Agree about full roll cages and racing harnesses. Especially rally car equipment. The drivers regularly walk away from horrendous crashes in those things, including multiple rollovers!
Soitanly! (As Curly used to say.)
Clover is an imbecile. Principles, concepts – these are not only beyond his ken but held in contempt by him. And yet, it fascinates me (in the same way that Ebola must fascinate epidemiologists) to read his disjointed, subjective, fallacy-strewn ramblings. It amazes me that he cannot – apparently – understand that what’s good for the goose will be good for the gander, eventually. His panties may moisten at the thought of “getting dangerous drunks off the road.” But one day, there will be a knock at his door… and I suspect he will not like it very much,. Nor understand, even then, that he asked for it.
But Eric, only bad get the knock on the door. Good people would never get a knock on the door and get mistreated by LEOs (not that anyone should be mistreated by LEOs or anyone else).
I have gotten into the habit of when a person who derides libertarianism rants about the government or the economy or some interference into his life I just tell them that’s what they wanted. They don’t like it very much but they can’t really argue against it.
It’s conditioning. Conditioning that starts as a child. I see it being programmed into children. I realize how I was programmed with it. Hence how people complain about the results of exactly what they believe in.
It would be interesting to follow our resident authoritarian to other places on the web. I think that often the bigger the authoritarian and busy body the more they complain about what authority does to them, decisions authority makes, etc.
My guess is they like authority, they’ve been trained to like it, but they want to be the authority or at least it be their proxy. Is this human nature or is it a result of the conditioning? We are conditioned to see only authority as a solution to ‘problems’.
Since I’m starting to ramble I’ll stop here.
Dear anacap,
Is wearing a seat belt safer or more dangerous than not wearing one?
The real issue of course is whether the individual’s right to decide is respected, not whether belting up is safer or not.
I have to say that I tend to believe it is safer. Not because of A-hole clovers like Ralph Nader, but because race and rally drivers I respect wear them, and often survive 200 mph crashes because of them.
I know from experience that I was spared serious injury by my four point racing harness when someone ran head on into me in an intersection and totalled my Alfa Romeo Spider.
But again, the real issue is that each individual must be allowed to decide for himself. That is non-negotiable.
Agreed, Bevin.
I also believe that – in general – wearing a seatbelt reduces the chances of one being injured or killed in the event of an accident. However, I also believe my risk of having an accident is extremely low (factually supported by decades of accident-free driving) and therefore elect to assume the small risk because I prefer the benefits (as I see them) of not wearing a seatbelt (comfort, convenience).
On the other hand, I work out a lot. Lift weights and run. Because I believe doing so reduces my chances of developing various health problems and will ameliorate many of the issues associated with getting older.
But unlike Clover, I do not demand that other people also lift weights and run – or else.
Dear Eric,
I hear you, and I agree!
Hey Eric,
Does this imply that a DWC (driving while clovered) should have the same
legal status as DWI?
Giuseppe – no worse, because Clover really IS dangerous.
I followed a guy through a canyon one time and he was weaving back an forth. His passenger-side wheels wouldn’t just touch or slightly cross the solid line at the shoulder, half of his car would cross that line. He went back and forth like that about 15 times in the 10 mile trip through the canyon. And, yeah, the thought crossed my mind that I should report him. But I didn’t. I actually passed him a couple of times to try to leave him in the dust. I ended up getting much more upset with a clover who initially took it upon himself to get into the fast lane and not pass the erratic driver. I’m sure he thought he was keeping us all safe. What a hero.
We’ve got to change the focus away from what someone might or could do to what someone’s actually doing. A person could or might do anything at any time. And as silly as it is, most people believe that there’s a way to eliminate every risk; or that it makes sense to try.
Yeah, the erratic driver could’ve, might’ve hurt someone. But he didn’t. The clover was the one hurting people, albeit in a very mild way. He was taking just a little bit of our freedom away. And that’s what we have against clovers. You have no right to take my time or freedom even in the smallest of increments.
Checkpoints = presumptive guilt.
Like you all, taking this line of reasoning either shuts people down or gets them to change the subject very quickly.
Here the checkpoints are revenue traps. Think of throwing a seine net across a river and keeping whatever you catch in your net .
Most of the violations at the checkpoints here (statistically) are expired license, expired registration, and driving while license revoked.
Every car gets a visual search and every driver is interrogated (presumptive guilt).
I live on US 221 a few hours south of you Eric, and the cops, particular the county sheriffs are more frightening to me than actual criminals.
Why?
Because, if a man attempted to kidnap me (arrest) or steal my car (impound) or take my cash (asset forfeiture) I could use any means necessary to defend my life and liberty with full legal endorsement.
Unless that man is wearing a badge. Then, I just have to submit to whatever whim he might have under pain of death. The police violate their oaths at these checkpoints, and I always take the opportunity to politely and in a non-confrontational manner, remind them that they’re violating my 4th, 5th, and ultimately my 1st Amendment rights just by being there. And if you are CCW card holder, then a vehicle search is almost guaranteed, for officer safety of course.
‘Talking back’, such as questioning the purpose or legal validity of a checkpoint can get a driver into big trouble. If that’s not a violation of my 1st A rights I don’t know what is.
People in general are losing trust in law enforcement. The poor people, ,long harassed and victimized, are already keen to what’s going on. It’s the upper income people who don’t realize the extent of it. That is until they get caught up in the State’s gears.
Cops are picking on and robbing otherwise peaceable citizens. And one by one people are coming to realize this.
The worst thing about all of it is the total lack of accountability and not just for police, but for other government bureaucrats like the NC DSS who can take your kids based on an anonymous tip or false charge. They don’t need probable cause and if they’re wrong (proven in court) they don’t get fired or chastised.
The powers that be are sowing the seeds for a powerful retribution.
Accountability will be restored — in that I have faith.
As with Eric Frein?
Actually, that mess reminds me of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry.
He believed the slaves would come join him…
Instead he was hung.
Frien will get the same, no doubt. (As an aside, I find it interesting they knew who he was from the start… A little too convenient, but IIRC he left word he planned to do this. WTF? )
But we can hope that there will be a decent future, and at least III% will wake up, and stand active.
Cops are lazy. Instead of having to go out and find evidence of wrongdoing, they’d rather just set up a dragnet and check everyone. Much easier than actually looking for drunks by observation. If it weren’t considered entrapment, they’d just stand outside the bars with breathalyzers.
The prosecutors are lazy, and opportunistic. Instead of trying you on one violation, they attempt to find as many things as possible to try you on. This way the chances you’ll be found guilty of something increase dramatically. The FBI/NSA/CIA know this, and that’s the real reason they’re Hoovering (both the vacuum cleaner and J. Edgar) up all the cellphone data of everyone. That way they can go back and find a bunch of other potential things to try you on. Then when it comes time to get reelected (in the case of a DA), or reappointed, or that judge’s seat opens up, the prosecutors can talk about how great their conviction rate is. Of course the NSA/FBI/CIA get a whole lot of insider information that can be used to keep politicians in line and make a few bucks on the side too.
Eric G said:
“If it weren’t considered entrapment, they’d just stand outside the bars with breathalyzers.”
Yeah – in VA, they had the cops (in plainclothes) INSIDE the bar. If you went to your car, they busted you for drunk driving.
Somehow the cunts got away with it… and the interviewed sheep even THANKED the officers for the “protection.”
And now we have presumptive guilt overall, with no-refuse blood-draw check points.
Why is there only ONE man on the run from police in PA? Why not a dozen or five dozen in EVERY state, ALL fed up? “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
Clover, et al, would wear a submissive’s bondage gear, and lick the hand that beats them….
It’s approaching the end of the month, and the LEO has not made his quota. So he parks outside the neighborhood bar near closing time. As the habitues exit, he examines them for likely signs of inebriation. One man drops his keys coming out the door. When he bends to pick them up, he falls down, then has difficulty standing back up. So the LEO’s focus is on him as he wends his way through the parking lot to his car at the far corner. Finally he manages to get his key in the lock, gets in and begins to drive away. In the meantime, ALL the other cars have dispersed.
As this car comes out of the parking lot onto the street, LEO lights him up. As he approaches, the driver rolls down the window and says, stone sober, “Good evening, Officer. I’m tonight’s designated decoy.”
I love the scenario. Great sense of humor.
Laught all ya want – I know the owner’s son.
No joke.
In the end, the family left – his father became sheriff, got rid of the corruption, and next election… they voted in the OLD sheriff, and all the corruption – and the family bar was staked out routinely, so at closing time the question was, “Who can afford a few points?”
They left before they got burned out…
Great response Eric, we’re now all guilty until proven innocent and way too many morons have been brainwashed into believing that’s just fine. It’s too bad that most of the WWII generation has passed on; when I was growing up most of the war related movies had a scene where the Gestapo thug would stop some random person and ask for “your papers, please”, and everyone in the theater would hiss in unison. My dad (RIP) would be absolutely aghast that the evil they defeated had taken root in the “homeland”, another term that is as disgusting as it is revealing, a literal translation of the the German “Der Faderland”. The fascists have won after all, Hitler and Goebels are smiling in hell.
Thanks, Mike!
In re Nazism:
There is an excellent book, “Rise of the Fourth Reich.” The author’s thesis is that Nazism was not defeated; it transferred operations here. Became integrated with the military-security complex, which it infiltrated with the active help of Americans such as Allen Dulles, who admired the Nazi system. Not so much the racial aspects – but rather the practical (and economic) aspects.
Ever read up on Reinhard Gehlen?
Another name not familiar to most people is Hans Kammler. He simply “disappeared” at the end of WWI. Never tried in absentia, either – notwithstanding he designed Auschwitz and was also plenipotentiary for the Reich’s “dark” projects, including the underground V2 assembly plants….
Anyone remember Operation Paperclip? This was the semi-secret plan to get the Nazi scientists out of Germany before the Rooskies could. This of course is how we got Wernher von Brawn, chemists and nuclear physicists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl3sgKj6oTQ
Of course, we know about Dr von Brawn, but why wouldn’t we get a bunch of military strategists (since the modern US army is basically using a Blitzkrieg fighting style), fascist economists, and who-knows-what from the SS? Remember that until the invasion of Poland, Hitler was generally considered a great guy who turned around Germany. At the time, most political types in the US thought the economy would plunge back into depression after the war, so why not sure things up with a few “successful” misunderstood German citizens to work their magic in the US?
Keep in mind, I have no evidence of this happening (especially the SS), but it is interesting how history seems to be working out lately. Before Hitler’s rise Germany was a very liberal place, with a thriving bohemian underground, culture, art, etc. Maybe it’s just the nature of government to crack down on such behavior.
Yup.
It’s not well-known, but Von Braun was a major in the SS. His chief was Gen. Walter Dornberger – also “paperclipped” into the U.S.
SS General Wolff was another buddy of Dulles’ and managed to avoid prosecution at Nuremburg.
Meanwhile, the Just Us Department continues to hound 87-year-olds who were 17-year-old camp guards for six months in 1945…
The FDR administration thought that Hitler’s National Socialism, and, even more so, Mussolini’s Fascism, were the nuts and would help them out of the Depression. What they either could not admit or were too dense to realize was that the Fed had caused the crash, and that Hoover’s socialistic attempts to ‘fix’ it had resulted in the Depression.
“Gather ’round while I sing you of Wernher Von Braun…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs
Tom Lehrer was totally brilliant. I have a couple of CDs of his performances and can’t resist listening to them every year or so. Having gone to Catholic school for a few years, I especially enjoy Vatican Rag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvhYqeGp_Do
I still have the Tom Lehrer LPs that I purchased back in the day. Very controversial stuff at the time. Lehrer is still around but left his satirical music behind a long time ago.
“Tom Lehrer” that’s not the news guy from PBS?
That was Jim Lehrer. Tom was a mathematician at MIT and later UC Santa Cruz. He wrote and performed songs dripping with political satire during the 60s. As Jason said, his stuff was very controversial.
“Pollution, pollution, we use the best toothpaste. Then rinse our mouths in industrial waste!”
Although it has a Ayn Rand twist, the book is full of German details that plug right into the Paperclip operations leading forward
This book answers the plaguing question: How could it happen? How could ordinary people, seemingly decent Germans, turn into goose-stepping, Sieg-Heil-ing robots, eager to obey any orders, even to administer the “final solution”–the Holocaust?
The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America
The author of that book, Leonard Peikoff, was IIRC the executor of Rand’s estate. Rand worked closely with him in the writing of it. When the book was written, from the late 70s to the early 80s, the parallels were indeed ominous. Now they are painfully obvious. Our fascist government has worked more slowly than their fascist government, but a crowd chanting “USA, USA, USA” is eerily reminiscent of those at a Nazi rally with their “Sieg heil, sieg heil”. Ditto “homeland” and “Vaterland”. Ditto “American exceptionalism” and “master race”.
The parallels are there, as Peikoff saw, and they don’t bode well for those few of us concerned about liberty in the USSA.
It becomes a bit of an echo chamber, as much of the Nazi thinking had its roots in the US: Manifest Destiny becomes Lebensraum, the massacre of Native Americans justifies the final solution, etc.
Hitler – evil though he was – was right about American hypocrisy, unction and solipsism. How did America obtain much of her lebensraum? What did the U.S. government do the native populations – not just of North America but also of the Philippines (and other places)? Deliberate genocide was conducted against the Indians by men such as Sherman and Custer, who would have been at home in the Waffen SS.
Hitler was a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln, and read his papers extensively. The origin of the phrase ‘final solution’ was probably a letter to Dishonest Abe from one of his generals (Sheridan, IIRC) regarding the ‘problem’ of the Indians.
eric, I’ve thought of the parallels many times. I’m sure everyone recalls the old stories of German soldiers and in German propaganda, Russian soldiers impaling babies on their bayonets. This isn’t so much propaganda as history though that those particular war criminals who razed the south really did save bullets and used swords and bayonets on any and every size and sex American native they wanted to eradicate.
So why don’t the history books have drawings of this type of action? Or the smashing of the same people’s heads, etc.?
If you read “American” history you’ll see this has gone on forever through the ages but the closer we get to modern day the greater the lying propagandists power to “skip” over it. Hhhhmmmm, I think I see a pattern.
Lincoln: The Hitler of the 19th century- and he is portrayed as some kind of hero. The fools even send their kids to some goobermint school named after him; where they tell the kids that Lincoln was a “hero”. Sickening.
It is heroic to kill for the state, MM.
All who kill for the state are heroes. One who kills a hero in self defense isn’t killing for the greater good, therefore he isn’t a hero. Also, Hitler, Stalin etc, can’t be heroes here, only because they killed for a non-U.S. state.
This may sound ridiculous from a moral perspective, but that’s why “heroes” mus’nt have morals, otherwise they may object to state orders, thus ceasing to be a hero.
Get it? Besides that, Indians had no right to roam around where “we” wanted to install our rails. A hero only had one choice to deal with them–point and shoot.
I think I will post the above on my resume. I’d like to be a government school teacher. This could move me to the front of the line.
Heh, I figgered that out a long time ago, Ancap. You are 100% correct. Those who lack morals, doing the dirtywork of the same. Who else could say, after committing some atrocity or injustice: “Just doing my job”?
Our government is not the real problem- it is just a symptom of the real problem. The real problem, is that throughout history among mankind, there never seems to be a lack of those who will take up arms and do the bidding of a cartel of evil men who think it is their prerogative to rule over and control all of society.
I have no idea what you guys are talking about but I get this part: “a crowd chanting “USA, USA, USA” is eerily reminiscent of those at a Nazi rally with their “Sieg heil, sieg heil”. Ditto “homeland” and “Vaterland”. Ditto “American exceptionalism” and “master race”.”
I am greatly saddened that so many of those around me do not, “get it”. …Not even after I fill in some gaps.
Read Peikoff’s Ominous Parallels.
@Mike- Wait for an economic downturn (like Weimar, Germany), a war they can blame on some other country (or religion) and a gadfly savior to appear and claim the fix. If you follow his popular rhetoric.
Long ago I tried to read Mein Kamph (too thick), but properly introduced it would be a hit today on FOX news.
Scarey indeed.
Key phrase: “Nazism was not defeated; it transferred operations here. Became integrated with the military-security complex, which it infiltrated with the active help of Americans such as Allen Dulles, who admired the Nazi system. Not so much the racial aspects – but rather the practical (and economic) aspects. ”
So Very, spot-on.
However; asking your average everyday American’t to understand that bol-sheet is like asking a horse to understand why it’s being saddled.
Actually today’s gunvermin are combining facets of both our WW II ‘enemy’ and our ‘ally’, the socialism of Stalin. McCarthy was not totally off target with his HUAC investigations. He was exceeding Constitutional authority and carrying it to ridiculous extremes, but there were a lot of ‘commies’ in the FedGov, esp. the administration.
Can I just take a minute to commend the commenters on this site? As far as my experience tells me you are the only intelligent commenters out there. Maybe you can chalk that observation up to the fact that I agree with you. But it’s just nauseating to read comments on any other site. And don’t leave comments of your own there, because all they are capable of doing is calling you names. Talk about casting pearls before swine.
Anyway, thanks. You guys are really refreshing.
Thanks, Scott!
I also derive great satisfaction from the quality of the posts on this site. In particular, the contrast between the posts of our regulars… and those of Clovers.
It helps make our case. The typical authoritarian collectivist is glaringly unintelligent – in addition to being a thug.
Hey, Eric,
Am I persona non grata here now? First my posts got a mr yuck avatar, then the last several simply didn’t appear. Not sure what offense I’ve given (though someone else has occasionally used Ernie as a handle)
Best wishes
EP
Hi epartisan,
I’m not sure what you mean! I haven’t seen any posts of yours at all, either held in the moderation queue or otherwise. Have you tried to post before?
Phillip the Bruce – I hate to be picky but you as well as most folks have fallen for the false HUAC acronym. It was not the House Un-Amercian Activities Committee; that misnomer was assigned to it by communist / socialist journalists of the day (and perpetuated since that time by the mainstream media) to trigger a negative emotional response with the public. As in, “How dare Congress engage in Un-American Activities!” The actual name was the Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities (and the corresponding acronym would be HCUA). And yes there were lots of “commies”, “socialists” and even “Nazis” in gun-vermint back then, just as there are now. Once one is given over to the fallacy that there is no absolute truth, all morality is relative and the end justifies the means, it’s easy to fall for erroneous political theories such as “communism” or “fascism”.
There will always be folks that truly believe the lie that we need “a strong government” to protect us, regardless of the “ism” it’s labeled with at the time. These otherwise “normal” folks will do bad things to their fellow man with the full approval of their consciences to achieve that end. But then there are those others – the psychopaths and sociopaths – that know good and damned well these systems don’t work as advertised, but find their utility indispensable for garnering personal power and fortune. They don’t have a conscience which gives them a serious advantage over even the most addled and brainwashed of their fellow countrymen. People like Alger Hiss for example, or Ted Kennedy, or “W”, or Lincoln, or the current sock-puppet occupying the white house. Since they will do whatever it takes to get what they want, it isn’t any wonder that they’ve gleaned the most efficiently oppressive features from every “ism” and applied them to us right here as much as possible with no end in sight.
Thanks for the clarification, Boothe.
Just as a side note, I used to word with the granddaughter of Joseph Welch, the lawyer who basically shut McCarthy down.
If they could have gotten away with it back then, they probably would have called it the “Un-American House Activities Committee.”
Dear Phil,
Agree!
But that leaves us with the question, “Is any activity of the House American?”
Bevin – there may be something, but I don’t have time to wade through all the crap looking for it.
Dear Phil,
That was a rhetorical question. As I’m sure you’ll agree, no activity of “The Government” can ever be just.
Everything it does is predicated on unilateral brute force coercion. On “We represent authority. You will obey, or we will resort to force to compel obedience.”
Yes, I guess I was thinking more along the lines of “Is anything they do Constitutional?” It is a completely different question.
True.
@Bevin- “justice” of government activities sort of gets into a gray area in the rare cases where they actually do something that would, in and of itself, be legitimate, and where the only illegitimacy is the funding.
I’m not going to complain when the government punishes an (actual) murderer or rapist. Yes, I understand that on principle tax funded criminal justice is unjustified. But, under the current system, what’s the alternative? Letting murderers go? That would be even worse. Now, if you’re answer is “abolish the system”, we are in agreement. But note that I said “under the current system.” I want to abolish it, but there aren’t enough of us yet. Until then, I’ll condemn “government” activities which are in and of themselves unjust, which are the vast majority of them, including enforcements of tax law. But I’ll let those few that aren’t in and of themselves NAP violations go. At this point I’d be thrilled to even get half of what I want.
Dear David,
” At this point I’d be thrilled to even get half of what I want.”
Hard to argue with that, at least from a realpolitik perspective. It’s the reason the World’s Smallest Quiz asks whether the quiz taker would like taxes cut 50%.
No need to ask if they would want them cut 100%.
Morning, Bevin!
Agreed. Just to be able to (legally) go for a ride on my bike without a helmet, to not have to sweat “safety” checkpoints, to not hear the word “homeland” and “America” in the same sentence… it’s not much to ask, is it?
Well-said, David.
On my hierarchy of Bad Things, money taken from me to keep violent thugs caged is way down there. Indeed, I would only grumble a little – and mostly because I am (like you, I expect) well aware of where it ultimately leads – about living under “limited government” of the kind that once existed on this continent. That is, a government that confined itself – mostly – to keeping the peace, enforcing contracts, brokering civil disputes and providing a national defense. Hell, I’d be on the floor writhing with ecstasy for the America of 1970, even. The “big” government of 45 years ago was extremely limited compared with the government we have today.
I’d take it in a minute.
Dear Eric,
Nice to have everyone on the same page once in a while!
LOL.
Often the “Narcissism of Small Differences” rears its ugly head and libertarians wind up bickering among ourselves!
In any event, our feeling level willingness to settle for less is purely academic. Even if we were willing to settle for what we had back in the 60s and 70s, the PTB in today’s Amerika are not about to make any such a deal with us.
So we might as well continue taking a hard and uncompromising line!
Alas, this is the reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvHvW-GrvY
It’s amazing, how things never change: The overlords know human-nature, so they can always get away with using the ruse of “safety & security” to justify building the machinery of tyranny; and the majority of people will always fall for it/demand it- even though they may have been warned about such their entire lives; even though it’s as plain as the nose on their face that the more “safety & security” is offered, the more abusive and dangerous the ones providing it become; and the easier it is to see that their actions and intents have nothing to do with safety & security….. Using the promise of safety to effect tyranny NEVER fails; human nature never changes.
Funny, too- the Clovers never seem to notice, that even in prison, youi STILL have violence; sexual assault; gangs; drugs…. so if we still have these things, even in a completely controlled and regulated environment, where ALL freedom has ceased to exist, then it should be obvious, that even if they regulate all of society to such a level, we are STILL going to have those things…only the good things which we value will cease to exist.
Ditto, Eric and David!
I was 8 years old in 1970. I’m glad that I got to experience “that world”- to know what normal life (without much gov’t interference) was like; and to see how different people used to be, when their lives weren’t shaped by radical gov’t-imposed ideas/behaviors (The average person used to consider themself accountable to God, and behaved accordingly!) – Truly, I’d settle for a return to that world in a heartbeat! It was still not as free as the libertarian world we’d like to see…but free enough that it didn’t take much effort to live one’s life unhindered and avoid all the BS.
And I can only imagine how wonderful it would seem to those of you who weren’t alive in 1970- after knowing nothing but the current BS….to actually be able to breathe a sigh of relief and not having the Beast trying to control your life and every action at every level; just to experience normal life, instead of what passes for it today. It would be like paradise.
well said
Maybe we ought to turn the tables on them and start revenuing too. Maybe we should troll the roads looking like someone they’d profile. We could have support cars that would video the encounters. We could then sue the crap out of the abusers.
Nah…that ‘ouldn’t work today, since cops and judges [et al] are unaccountable/not held responsible. Our goobermint now does whatever it wants, and only “agrees” to be sued when it suits it’s own purposes.
Heh, McCarthyism was a no-win situation: On the hand, McCarthy was right- there were/are a lot of communists in gov’t/the media/every other facet of our society; and yet, what right has the gov’t got to question/restrict the political beliefs of any citizen? Seems like the hearings took the focus off of where it should have been: On making sure that GOV’T was abiding by the Constitution- which of course, it never does.
But isn’t that always the way? They’re always concerned with regulating the people, when in reality, it is they [the gov’t] who need to be tightly regulated; and to abide by their prescribed bounds which are stipulated in the Constitution.
Kinda just like what the main-stream media does: They report on crimes (which are irrelevant to the average person); and celebrities; and sports…but the actions of crimes and gov’t, which should be the number-one subject of a free press, are rarely if ever mentioned!
But the lame-stream media really goes into a feeding frenzy when there is a celebrity or sports ‘hero’ involved in a crime. Double whammy.