Most people are not liberty-inclined.
Not anymore.
America has become a nation of, by and for control freaks – populated by the people I style Clovers. If they don’t like something, if they want something, if they don’t want people doing something, they will casually urge that violence be deployed to make the necessary adjustments. This has become so reflexive that it is now unconscious and people – most of them – think nothing of it. Because, truth be told, they don’t think of it at all. Which isn’t an accident. Public (that is, government) schools do not raise the question: Is it right to harm someone or threaten to who has not first harmed you? The ancient heresy resides in a box on a shelf somewhere, next to mummified mammoth remains and broken cuneiform tablets.
The easy violence of modern American society is now so pervasive, so taken for granted, so everywhere that it has become as invisible to us as water must be to a fish.
We swim in it.
The only reason some of us grew up in a country that still had a remarkable degree of liberty (cops once had to have individualized suspicion of criminal activity before they could stop and search you; there were these things called “court orders” that had to be obtained prior to filching through a person’s private correspondence; if arrested, they had to charge you with a crime in order to hold you captive – and they had to prove you had committed the crime you were charged with before they could throw you permanently in a cage, or take your stuff… ) is because the fumes of the Founding had not yet completely dissipated. Cultural inhibitions passed down by habit temporarily stifled the “safety” and “security” neurosis that has got us to where we are today.
Some of you will remember.
And what dissipated those lingering fumes of a more independent-individualist time (what I call, the “What’s up, Doc?” Bugs Bunny era)?
Among the certain factors: That ugly thing called feminism. Not (though it’s styled as such) equal rights for women (there are only human rights and everyone shares them equally). Rather, feminism was a clever way to end-run the individualist-independent mindset by smearing it as “patriarchic” and “oppressive” and “racist.” White men were (and still are) the straw men, the initial soft targets.
But they were never going to be the exclusive targets.
Note that feminism – as expressed/embodied by leaders of the movement such as Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton – is about ordering people of both sexes about. With characters such as Hillary and Dianne giving the orders. Possession of ovaries will not protect you. Women, like men, will be free to do as they are told. As racial minorities are free to do as they are told. The pants suits and power blazers are merely a change of uniform; the underlying ideology – collectivism at gunpoint – is the ancient orthodoxy reasserting itself.
And it has succeeded because the ancient heresy – individualism/independence – had become by the 1960s a half-dead thing that was inarticulable by most people and so extremely vulnerable to being turned against itself. People believed in “rights” but poorly understood them. Which made them easy meat for women’s rights and black rights and gay rights. That is, for the replacement of individuals (and individual identities as paramount) with collective ones. Each a constituency with its own leaders and agendas – conflicting necessarily and purposely with those of others, who had different leaders and agendas. Fractiousness – and violence – predictably ensued, with each bloc maneuvering for power to be used to assert and impose itself on the others.
People – especially strivers for power – began to speak in collective terms. With themselves at first the merely the mouthpieces representing (oh so unselfishly!) the great “we,” the “public” and (of course) “society.” In time – today – the fuhrerprinzip is out in the open. Americans want – they demand – leadership. Never pausing to wonder what it is that leaders invested with power tend to do. They no longer look to themselves – or even to others. They look to saviors who can “create jobs” (presto! just like that) and who will give them (to quote El Presidente Pancho Hernandez Enrico Rodriguez) This, That and The Other Thing.
All of which will simply appear – somehow – and be distributed “equitably.”
There is no longer any security except that which flows from the barrel of a gun. Those guns held largely by others, with the sole legal monopoly on their use. The only question – answered every two and four years – is in what direction these guns will be pointed.
Never whether they should be pointed.
Ron Paul tried to bring that up – and see where it got him. His son has learned a valuable lesson. One does not obtain power by disparaging it. People want things – and they will vote for those who will give it to them. Ron Paul had nothing to offer except his promise to leave you alone.
His son promises so much more.
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Operation Passover from April 3rd – 11th, 2015 was a controversial event that greatly changed life on planet Earth.
At 9:11 am EST on April 3rd, President Obamas daughters and thousands of other politician’s children were killed in a vast Jihad event orchestrated by members of every majority Islamic country in the world. $12 trillion dollars in property damage occurred. 2 million targeted civilians were murdered. And 2,000 thousand westerns of high net worth of more than $50 million died.
By 10:00 am EST, the previously prepared Operation Passover was conducted. During this NATO orchestrated retaliation all but 5 million Muslims were killed in an eight day period. It is estimated that 1.7 billion Muslims perished in total. 200,000 non Muslims were also killed. Some having been targeted, others dying due to collateral damage.
Using a proprietary technology, the people were electro-vaporated through a variety of delivery systems, such that the average casualty left nothing but about two grams of iron ions and 5 gallons of plasma vapor and 10 watts of incandescent carbon flare.
Western intelligence sources had known this was coming in some form, yet were unable to stop it, due to the vast resources and human capital willing to participate in this Fatwa. All remaining Muslims were ordered to convert, or move to the Indonesian Tolerance Zone. Anyone converting received $10 million dollars and a stipend of $200,000 for life.
Non-Muslims were allowed to remain, but all formerly Muslim nations were de-industrialized and primitivized back to what existed in the 1500s. Most of the land is now part of the United North Atlantic nature preserve which is free for use by all humans, so long as nothing invented after 1550 is imported or created there.
Will Grigg had another good post today – why are WE, the people that “LEOs” are supposed to be working for, of less value than their dogs?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/william-norman-grigg/whats-your-status-before-the-law/
I really enjoy your writing, thanks for everything you do to keep the flame lit. =)
As bad as things seem, I think it’s important to try to keep perspective. There is a cycle at work in a culture that spans decades per phase, and it’s very easy to get mired in the doldrums while forgetting that things do change.
Right now we are at a standstill culturally. We are at the end of a long train of usurpations that can’t continue, but we don’t seem to have any relief in sight. I do think it is coming, and it will be unexpectedly good this time.
Unlike last time, when WW II seemed to close the book on individualism and we had an 80 year jag of collectivism led by the Northeastern elitists, things are different now. Technology has finally erased scarcity, the lack of productive jobs is a sign of that. A small percentage of the population can provide for the needs of everyone, which has led to mass “unemployment”. The old system can’t cope, and the old moral standards such as Calvinism and the Protestant Work Ethic are somewhat anachronistic as times move on.
What used to seem like a necessity has come to seem like a system of slavery to many, and those Clovers that cling to their sense of self worth through their useless paper-pushing jobs will, over time, come to be seen as throwbacks. What we think of as “the financial system” will be seen as simple usury and parasitical. Money must change with the times as well.
None of this is easy when you are living through it. Whole institutions and industries need to come down, and those fearful of losing their means of support, their control scheme, or their sense of self worth are going to be obstacles. But it is not for the free-minded to attack and sweep them away. Events will do that.
I believe it is the purpose of the free minded to build the future. Those who, for whatever reason, have left behind the old world and face the future unfettered will be the ones who write it. As a fellow Gen Xer to some of the posters here, please take heart in this knowledge. =) It is not the “elites” that actually drive evolution or make history, and you do not have to scream from a bully pulpit to enact change. That is the delusion of the fanatical egos that currently think they run things. They will be swept away like the rest of the old system as time moves on. History is not driven by the victors so much as it is recorded by the self serving beneficiaries of events that have transpired, regardless.
True change will come from the values of individual freedom and the hatred of slavery that you instill in your children. It may seem like the whole country is full of Clovers, but that American Spirit that cast the throne away is alive and well. There are more supporters that we know, and as time goes on people will coalesce around this anti-slavery ideal that is buried in the American psyche. Decades of propaganda and fearmongering has coated it with a thick layer of dust, but if you see the rising discontent in the people you can tell our core is still there.
I’m optimistic about the future, with the proviso that there is always the possibility that the parasites will succeed in some kind of gigantic war scheme to hit the reset button and buy their class more time. But I think in the end this change is inevitable.
Take care! =)
Yes culture does change. Most likely they will become bad in a new, not yet foreseeable way. But is being part of a forced conglomeration of 320 million people a fait acompli?
I for one, do not consider myself part of this culture. I feel at home only where the existing hierarchy is weak or non-existent. I despise everything America claims to be and the other thing that it actually is. I wish there were no such mass delusion in anybody’s minds as “America.”
World War II is a misnomer. There have been far more world wars, and there is certainly one underway right now. All you need to do is abandon the foolish belief that war’s are rational actors and accomplish anything. There is only individuals and their actual lives, there is no reality to the imagined aggregations of shared events by countless unrelated humans.
The amount of scarcity is always exaggerated by those who seek power over others. There is more than enough to satisfy everyone, if only you become immune to the manipulations and lies that cause false scarcities to become real and to cause individuals pain.
Nearly everyone is gripped by a paralyzing fear of change and dissatisfaction with life in general. We all remember what was once better, and it is difficult to accept that in many ways life is about decline and loss of function and there is a limited chance to make the best of what opportunities exist and to learn to enjoy life such as it is as best we are able in spite of this.
Only the belief in a hereditary throne has been abandoned. The poisonous idea that there exists thrones based on merit is very much alive in the minds of Americans today.
Fear mongering yields diminishing returns and at some point becomes a net negative. But passivity mongering is a far greater malady, and is the thing that we all need to fight against.
When you begin to rationalize and normalize the chains and slavery. When you become accustomed to your neutering and over-civilizing and accept your captive status without further struggle. That is when you cease to be a man. that is when you cease to be alive.
There is a lot of truth in what you have said. And it is all very well presented and its tempting to just sit down in these well-written comfortable paragraphs as if they’re a new leather couch where you can loll about and imagine you are a consumer of a lifetime of tyranny, usurpations, and brutalizations. That you are a connoisseur of coercion, as it were.
But that is a noble lie. That is yet another fatal conceit. That is yet another blue pill of blissful ignorance I will not swallow. Here are seven Hayekian Pills which prevent me from taking any false comfort in a well-polished fairy story of how I became a happy housepet in Uncle Sam’s Cabin.
Key concepts in Hayek’s thought, Central planning theory is influenced by the economist F.A. Hayek. Here is an excellent summary of his seven red pill key ideas:
Markets versus planning Market exchange works because people value thing differently. The planned economy rests on the unlikely assumption that everyone can agree what to produce, and how.
Importance of prices The price system reflects the imbalance of demand and supply, and automatically steers resources to where they are most needed – without the need for planners to discover, understand, and correct the imbalance.
We’re all planners We all plan, and we do so on the basis of our own knowledge of local conditions. There is far more useful and current information in this dispersed knowledge base than could ever be collected in a central planning agency.
Competition is dynamic Competition is not a textbook ‘given’ but a dynamic process, in which people constantly search to discover the cheapest mix of resources to produce the most desired outputs.
Human action but not human design The social order is like language. It is a product of human action, but not something that we have deliberately designed. It evolves and changes, but endures because it is useful to us.
Limits to our understanding Just as language is built on complex rules of grammar that we follow with ease but cannot necessarily articulate, the social order is built on complex regularities in our behaviour – common law, ethics, customs, manners – whose importance we only faintly understand.
The fatal conceit The totalitarian disasters that have occurred when utopians attempt to redesign society according to their rational plan shows just how little we know about the workings of the complex system of rules on which the social order is based.
Yeah……….all of those unproductive whose labour is no longer required by the 1%? The Plan is to exterminate them. Cull the herd down to 500 million serfs worldwide.
You may well be right, Mike.
It’s very hard for normal people – people who aren’t sociopaths – to grok it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not a reality.
This thread popped up as if by magic today. Prescient.
Done With It All, it is 6 years after your prediction of change and dust-coated freedoms being remembered. Where are we? You hit the nail on the head with that “reset” line of thought, but the trendline of reset is screaming downhill towards communism faster than the Texas Cyclone on a hot August evening. I certainly hope you are correct about the remnant remembering their freedoms, or this reset will look more like what happened in the Ukraine in the 1920’s than Massachusetts in 1776.
`Africa` by the Bourbon Peridot
Y’all keep on trucking and building them yellow bricked roads to serfdom. Not me. Not gonna follow follow follow because because because. Of some wonderful wizard that never was.
Nah, I’m running on the road less traveled. Ain’t been asking them or telling them nothing, and that choice’s made all the difference. There was a time in the woods when I made that defining choice from the two roads that diverge. I knew right away the only way for me was to start running down Copperhead Road
Tor,
Horribly, most Americans still believe this “road” is righteous.
https://www.bloodshotrecords.com/news/jon-langford-and-skull-orchard-drone-operator-video-premieres-usa-today
Jeremy
So I’m slightly confused. do you support Rand Paul or not?
No!
If we HAD to make a choice (which TPTB would like us to believe we must) Rand would be less objectionable than most of the of the other options.
But the lesser of 2 evils (or the least of many evils) is still evil.
eric, do you mean maybe not? No….has such a definite sound to it. I noticed he has his Israel sucking bill back up before the scum in DC again. Fish heads and all that.
America has ALWAYS been a place where conformity trumps freedom. From Day One the New England Yankee (the dominant American faction) defined ‘freedom’ as his unrestricted right to control others. Had America remained under the Articles with its weak national government things might not be ending so badly. Better a dozen modest nations sharing the middle swath of the continent and occasionally drawing eachother’s blood than what we have now. The hopeless turn to tyranny came with King Abe in the 1860’s. Funny though that the ‘friendly’ fascism of FDR is seen as a 1950’s golden age when it was already busy post WW2 with a campaign of invasion and murder around the world which makes 1940’s Germany look not all that bad.
Oh MfW – you make too much sense.
Mike, 1940 Germany might have been a high time for some but not for those who saw the writing on the wall, esp, Jews. 1945 was a time of mass murder in Germany….of Germans. Smart women didn’t even fight the Russians when they raped them. I would say if I didn’t know what the US would end up being that they should have let Patton do his thing but if he had conventional warfare in mind, the Russians would have slaughtered US, Britain and French soldiers en masse as they did everything in their path. You can’t take back all the materiel you have given a country nor their ability to produce their own. You might want to bone up on that war. Martial law never went away there either.
I have a friend who was a German orphan. Hi won’t go back and meet or visit his family there even though he knows who they are and has a standing invitation. He’s scared he won’t be able to leave. I don’t think that’s a realistic thing but he does and his dad, a GI at the time who adopted him, probably had something to do with that. I wouldn’t second guess him.
I don’t like the way this country has gone but Germany isn’t really a bastion of freedom to this very day. Just read what Mith had to say about it in ’74.
I knew a lot of soldiers who were stationed there and knew they were hated. They liked the hash and beer though.
Interesting post on Guns.com re: replacing police with private security.
http://www.guns.com/2015/02/27/opinion-its-time-to-consider-privatized-policing/
Clover is a retarded parasitic terrorist runt (Basically a public school sub-human tapeworm) and it wants everyone else to be as well. It HATES strength and independence in others. It also hates that there are 7 billion people on earth and wants their terrorist organizations they call “Government” to murder a few billion people. What does infantile petty-terrorist Clover say about 200 million people murdered by socialist government last century? A good start.
Agree, Jello.
This is the nut of it. Read our resident Clover’s posts. He is an archetype of the species. Every one of these posts urges control and punishment of people not for anything they’ve done to cause harm to anyone, but in order to compel their obedience and submission to Clover’s notion of what ought to be.
It’s hard for me about Rand Paul. I’ve always hoped he’d be a kind of Trojan horse with his father in his ear. I told myself I wouldn’t vote again after the last time I did. But is our only hope truly what you’ve discussed above? Ignorance is bliss I suppose and I know that would sound condescending outside this circle.
Hi Preacher,
Rand has done nothing to disabuse me of the suspicion that he’s merely another “conservative” (neo) Republican warmonger/authoritarian.
I don’t disagree with you unfortunately. I do think he would try to roll back some of it which I realize just isn’t good enough at this point for most people here including me. I know it’s probably better to let it all go over the cliff quickly than to continue limping along like it has been and slowly decaying. It’s just hard to hope for the shtf scenario for me or for that to seem like the only hope left.
When your bus goes over the edge of the Grand Canyon, it won’t matter when you hit the bottom whether the driver’s foot was on the gas or the brake. Ron Paul was the only Presidential candidate ever to say, “It’s not enough to slow down, we need to turn the bus around.”
I have read that it really was a fairly small percentage of the ‘colonists’ who WANTED to throw out George III. But those who did were passionate about it, and did outnumber those who favored keeping the King (as opposed to not caring either way).
Two of the things I find valuable about this site are:
It reminds me that there ARE others who think along the same lines I do;
It helps keep me worked up about changing things for the better.
We are part of ‘The Remnant.’
One thing I have to say,Boothe-only as long as my wealth was acquired by honest effort-not by taking advantage of the feeble minded,etc.(Remember the story of Jacob and Esau) a lot of that happened around here before I came along(I’m a boomer)what the “smart” ones(yeah right) didnt take the Govt tries to wrest from our callaused hands and stiff fingers,I have every right to my property and any increase not generated by usury and wile and guile.
But you made a good point,slowly increase the temperature and no one will notice till its to late.
Lost the post about the relocation of the Mountain people but it happens all the time now,with the greedy and Eminent Domain,few people have heard of the other big govt land grab called “The Big Survey” the govt came in and took most of the high ground,including some my ancestors had under fence-This government ,knows no shame(Clovers-good Nazis one and all(just doing my job-heard that so often) when we can bring the humanity back into living then prosperity will come slowly but surely and if some choose not to go that route,then live them the Hell alone!
The biggest CF-land grab now is called “conservation easements” everyone of these things brings the Gore-ite,green,mass,easily controlled populace concentraion,closer to reality,I would say”Wakeup America” but I’m afraid its too late
Eric I’d say Europe’s worse.
Agreed, Charles… it is.
If someone has a time machine that goes FTL, please go back to Massachusetts and prevent the First Mayflower full of English Puritan and Separatist Clovers from ever arriving here. We’d all be a lot freer if only that could be accomplished.
Nov 1620 Mayflower Compact(Crom version)
In the name of Crom. We loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of Crom, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the Glory of Crom, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, (the clovers were actually in Massachusetts, but oh well) do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of Crom, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
“All due submission and obedience.” Gee I wonder why that didn’t work out so well, they all signed a contract stating their lives were of absolutely no value, and they would do anything for the good of the collective.
Body of work of Kevin Swanson, author of the Second Mayflower…
Apostate – Kevin Swanson
Christian pastor and radio host Kevin Swanson this week pointed to abortion, marijuana legalization and “decadent homosexual activity” as the possible cause of recent historic flooding in Colorado.
Swanson reminded listeners that state House Speaker Mark Ferrandino had been photographed by the Denver Post kissing his gay partner.
– Yeah, Kevin Swanson is really tore up about the loss of freedom in America. You can tell because he wants what few freedoms still remaining to be prohibited as well. Heck, maybe there’s two with the same name. This can’t be the right guy can it?
– – Feed all the puritans fish heads, but don’t F’ em, there’s enough of them here already.
Indeed Tor. Many of the early settlers were control freaks that were kicked out of Europe because of it. That’s quite clearly where the vile control freak streak comes from in this country.
Canadian Big Brother.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/25/canada-cse-pony-express-email-surveillance/?comments=all#comments
One of the comments from the article,
“You know sometimes I wonder, and maybe one of you authors may want to comment on this, if these guys want to collect emails perhaps we should accommodate them by programming our computers to send thousands of random letter or copied script junk emails/day.”
All I would add is ‘highly encrypted’ junk emails.
🙂
Are you a conspiracy theorist? Keep in mind that the CIA invented the term to discredit their antagonists.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/con.html
People aren’t going to wake up. Since giving up religion they have looked for a new god. And government is a false god which very literally punishes unbelievers and rewards adherents and disciples.
I personally am a heretic. Most libertarians are. I have no quarrel with atheists, I believe in a higher power, in Karma, in a natural order. A -theism properly understood is an absence of dogma, not an absence of faith. Jesus was a great man and if read deeply understood the human world. The Jesus who chased the establishment bankers out of the temple was acting against the theism of the day.
The early Christians were mostly misguided. Like most people they saw things through a very narrow lens, and saw Jesus as a vehicle, as a deity, as a tool to their own ends. And then at the awful council of Nicea the whole Christian thing was hijacked by government- Constantine I told him what he wanted and they accepted it and found favor. They turned their back on wisdom and grace to find favor with government.
We are in a bad time right now. A nuclear armed feudal dark age. Where democratic mobs will use violence to further their passions. The only peace is to turn inward, to maintain your moral and ethical core, and to understand that sooner or later you will be required to fight to the death to preserve whatever you do hold dear. Obamacare may well be that trigger. They believe themselves masters and demand obediance and obesiance. When you can’t afford health insurance and they rob you and claim that you don’t have the choice to not have it, the line is drawn.
A better choice may be to recognize that the masses are hopeless. Recognize the system as it is and find a comfortable place within it. Get elected and enjoy a pass from some of the predations of the cops. Avail yourselves of some of the taxes they so happily pay. But to do this and remain sane you had better develop that internal code finely. Give them what they demand and make sure there is an out for those who want it. There is no good answer or happy ending in sight- this is a dark age and you must find your own happiness.
One problem with liberty is that not everyone agrees with what you do with your time, especially when away from the workplace.
One reason the abolitionists were against slavery is because slaves didn’t have a correlation between work performed and their lifestyle. You really have to walk a fine line with slaves: beat them too much and they’ll turn on you. You paid a lot of money for this slave, so you don’t want him starving or sick, and you certainly don’t want to have him try to escape all the time. So you’d better provide a decent living space and enough food for him. If you were working in a northern sweatshop in the early 19th century, your life wasn’t any better and likely was worse than a slave (and everyone got whipped and beaten, usually by the local constables, for even minor infractions). After the work was done, the slave drank, danced, and invented Jazz. The northern workers were required to attend school or church when not at work, and many were locked in dormitories at night, lest they leave and enjoy themselves.
This tended to drive the elites of the day crazy. Even Thomas Jefferson didn’t see how his slaves could become productive members of society, given their “lack of motivation.” It’s also why only property owners could vote. After the Civil War the stereotype of the lazy black emerges, because blacks were thought to only do the absolute minimum of work to get by (just like most poor whites, btw), they were considered lazy and unproductive.
Contrast that attitude with the 1960s and 70s, and the 1980s until now. Remember that there were groups of people who shunned modern lifestyles, choosing to “live off the land” on communes (with results much like the 19th century farm… short life and plenty of hardship). Then there was the other group, commonly made fun of in television and movies of my youth (Caddyshack, Animal House, M*A*S*H), who wanted to whip the lazy, unproductive types (what we think of as hippies) into their image. Unfortunately they seem to have found their voice in the 1980s, taking credit for Reagan even though the 80s had nothing to do with temperance and clean living.
So both the left and the right have a large contingent of people who want you to suffer. In different ways, yes, but they can agree that we plebs need to get in line and do without. This is why global warming is such a perfect problem: it’s both Gaia and the vengeful God teaming up to exact revenge on our “hedonistic” lifestyles, and the only solutions offered are political. Agenda 21 is the ultimate expression of their desires to keep you in your place while they exempt themselves from the problem.
They want your life to be completely structured, planned, and timed down to the minute. Of course the first thing they’ll take away will be your transportation and force you on to their scheduled, inconvenient mass transit system. Then they’ll take away your land, forcing you into one of their mega cities. Many of the masses will enjoy it, given that they’ll no longer need worry about maintaining vehicles or homes, as long as they have access to their drug of choice. But the minority who aren’t the 1% but want to live free will wilt and die. They won’t be missed.
http://www.amazon.com/Renegade-History-United-States-ebook/dp/B003L7874A
http://www.amazon.com/This-Perfect-Day-Ira-Levin-ebook/dp/B00T5PI65W/
Clover’s rallying cry is, “There ought to be a law …”
We maybe we need a law against saying “there ought to be a law …”
So true. It’s the answer to every problem now a days it seems.
But its almost always the wrong answer too.
The nation-state with its ravenous appetite for power over our lives needs to go. Question is what replaces it?
The only hope is an evolution of consciousness that renders aggressive violence anathema to a majority of people. All else follows. Society would organize (where organization was desired) on the basis of individual, mutually agreeable interactions… write small then large.
The phase, “less is more” is what I tell people. I am currently trying to extract myself from “Obamacare” and when I say it should be replaced with nothing, people think I am the crazy person!
Its insane!
Why does the government think it has the right to invade my privacy about how I run my healthcare? Why do I have to have a “reason” why I should be excused from this stupid, horrible, badly written so called”law”?
The question SHOULD BE, what excuse do they have to inconvenience me and trample my rights as a private citizen!
I will probably have to have a HEARING, yes, a hearing to get an exemption. And I doubt I will get it. It is costing me MY time and it will soon be costing taxpayers as these things are not free. I haven’t had health insurance for the last 15 years, and it hasn’t been a problem. And frankly, it won’t ever be a problem. Except now it is. Not because I am unhealthy now. No, it because I cannot (even if i wanted to) comply with this so called law. Not as it is written. Its not possible.
I should be looking for work, so I can be employed again. But no, I have to waste my time trying to practice my rights. Rights that cannot be given by a government. Laws cannot be written that cannot be complied with.
Its said that the more corrupt and dysfunctional a society has become, the more laws it has. That is so true of today’s Amerika.
Richb,
Libertyhealthshare.org
It’s not insurance, but it falls under the “exemption” from Obamacare. It’s not terribly expensive, although definitely more than no insurance. But for people who want some type of catastrophic coverage, its the best I have found–actually offering far more than catastrophic coverage.
It is total bullshit that you can’t decline coverage if you don’t want it. That’s what I did for years. In 2011, a year after our first kid, my wife talked me into a catastrophic plan. It didn’t qualify under Obamacare, but libertyhealthshare is better and cheaper anyway.
Don’t know if that helps, but it helped me.
Yet another great article Eric.
But since you brought up evolution… I think that the only fear I have with relying upon that is that the evolutionary process tends to reward those who are more successful in their appropriate environments. And the evolution towards more statism has been very successful indeed for those that advocate it and depend upon it for sustenance. I wonder if individuals will ever be able compete effectively with that? Especially given the fact that statists have always used their power to manipulate the social environment to legitimize itself.
Thanks, JRO!
On evolution: It could go either way – and of course, as you note, it sure seems to be going one way. It may not ever go our way again. Or it may not do so for a long time.
I favor the FTL solution. It may be the only way out. Literally.
There may be truth to the idea that humanity is not a single species but rather there are subspecies and breeds of man. Just as there are different types of dogs (all canines, but with varying temperaments, intelligence and so on).
Coexistence may not be possible. Which leaves, leaving.
Which requires FTL.
That cannot be the only hope. If it is there is non hope! Humans are killer apes, control freaks, slaves to their passions. Some of us have developed beyond this, but that nature is still in the background. The visceral temptation to deal directly with the cop which vexes us, to wish ill of the busybody neighbor clover, is always there.
My hopes are:
1. advances in genetic medicine and nutritional therapies will allow me to live another 200 years.
2. Those same advances developing outside the regimented and strangled US will make current medical care mostly obsolete.
3. Obama will become the USA’s Akhenaton, the culture destroying pharoah who became so hated that the whole middle kingdom attempted to destroy every vestige of his despised existence (hell, he even looks like the guy!).
4. That the horrors visited upon us by him will finally trigger an awakening and start to roll back the predations of the central state by awakening people to the fact that they can and should usually be ignored. I want it to fall apart through neglect and disuse.
These are hopes. Changing human nature only happens when the human is ready individually.
Hi Ernie,
I like the Akhenaten connection! But I fully expect the next pharaoh to be even worse. It will be – probably – that gash Hildebeast or The Chimp’s brother.. or perhaps Reichsmarschall Christie?
FTL drive is the only hope.
The universe is essentially limitless, words without end. With FTL, one could finally get away from Clovers forever.
Eric,
Sounds similar to Mutiny on the Bounty and their escape from the English yardarm. They had to disappear where there were no English authorities.
Yup.
The settlements in North America were exactly that, too. An effort to get away from… them. Of course, it was only a temporary reprieve. It is axiomatic, I think, that whenever you get “x” critical mass of people living within a given area, Cloverism flowers.
A book titled “The Second Mayflower” tries to get us to get our chins up and look for a way to a New World, escaping the Old. Unfortunately there wasn’t too much substance in it. There is no more New World to flee to, and the author’s advice was pretty much to flee the world as much as you can where you are.
Even had we the science in the movie “Interstellar,” I suspect we’d take our old faults with us wherever we went. The future isn’t encouraging.
Probably so, Ross.
But, for a time, there would be more liberty. Possibly, several lifetimes (as was the case in North America). It took a good long while for Cloverism to replace the predominant attitude of independence and individualism. I do not say America was ever Clover-free; just that Cloverism did not dominate. This was the case well into the 1980s, when – in my opinion – the balance finally tipped and Cloverism became dominant.
Anyone over 40 today will probably agree – because they can remember a time when people in general were not neurotics conditioned to fear (and demand deliverance from) “risks” and when “safety” and “security” were the bywords of pussies and assholes.
“Where wealth accumulates, men decay.”
I believe from Poor Richard’s Almanac; since I’m supposed to be working, I’m not going to look it up.
Point being, Cloverism is an inherent trait of the Omega. We tend to make lots fo Omegas; not everyone can be Alpha, nor even Beta…. “The tribe” is whatever is left over, followers. Whomever was bullied, beaten, shamed, guilted, etc, enough when younger, that they have an inherent fear of “sticking out.”
It is futher enhanced by accumulation of wealth, which then allows demarcation of classes (protection from risk.) Omegas are made, in this sense, by injuries received; they come to fear further injury; they accumulate wealth to prevent injury, and to rule over others.
By ruling others, they have an insulating “class” of flunkies (who may, in fact, be more alpha – violent, aggressive, less intelligent, less able to see results of actions, etc.) …
Without the insulating wealth – When there’s a need for warriors – you have the same demarcations of Alpha, Beta, Omega, etc, but there’s a difference: An Omega farmhand of the 1890s would beat the living SNOT out of most of us, and COULD do so. More challenge, more physical exertion, more achivement = more confidence, more mental and physical strength, more kinesthetic awareness. We MIGHT have more knowledge; how many of us have been in real FIGHTS? Especially lately, as adults? Practice helps, but there’s no match for experience….
And back then, life was “shorter”, more brutal, more painful, and there was less “wealth” (material crap in our lives), and thus more awareness of keeping what you had – there wasn’t just “go to the store and buy another.” Mom had to MAKE THE MATERIAL for the shirt, for example… [I simplify excessively, hyperbole used for effect.]
There was also a LOT less punishment for normal human behavior – today, we suffer from “learned helplessness.” [Example, nothing like watching, “White Collar Brawlers,” and hearing the sparring opponent yell, “Stop apologizing when you hit me!” We’re civilized beyond recognition, we’re interchangeable cogs in a machine.]
Yeah – I wouldn’t want to go up against a 60-year-old subsistence farmer, even with a knife in each hand and a kevlar vest. He wouldn’t notice he’d been injured, I fear – he’d beat me senseless without breaking a sweat.
Bare-handed at that.
Me? I’m in shape (round is a shape), but wouldn’t manage the fight regardless of my Max Bench. 240# of fat or muscle doesn’t matter, when facing 180# of manual labor induced muscle (and the mindset that goes with it.)
You hit a piece of steel, the steel ignores you. Piece of steel hits you, you get hurt.
There was no safety. There was no Security, save what you yourself could TAKE with your own hands (and weapons.) Everyone knew, even in the cities, that the cops weren’t always around – even if they were honest. And that criminals wouldn’t care, either way – they’d just figure a cop was “cost of doing business” and buy him off, or kill him…
Maybe we need to get back to that way of life, at least a little?
Dog Brothers, for example?
Or Jack Donovan’s article might be a good guide: http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2014/06/a-time-for-wolves/
Basically…? “Fight Club” and “men’s space.”
We get estrogen-free time, and we can be MEN.
(As an aside: The quietest, best times in my life, have been woman-free. I can just BE, just listen to my blood flow, ya know? Meditate, practice, read, piss up a rope if it suits me… It’s not, “do this next, and don’t waste time cleaning up the last task I ordered you to do…” A frenetic energy surrounds woman; she wants to DO DO DO DO, even when she is incapable of doing correctly; and we are supposed to help, regardless of relation, BECAUSE SHE SAYS SO!)
I suppose it is maddening to hate one’s own company so much, that you will manufacture tasks to do, rather than reflect on what you are… That you would hide from yourself, rather than admit weaknesses.
but i’m a strange type from the start, I wanted to be perfect – that means, address your weaknesses.
Samurai.
Knight.
Apache warrior.
Green beret.
Etc.
Not many women want to live that kind of life, let alone would seek out the challenges, or the introspection required…
We could ignore FTL completely.
Objective is to GTFO; why not work on Arkships? We can implement any of a number of mediocre (yet highly advanced) means of getting from Point A to Point B.
But we do not have Einstein-Rosen bridges, Stargates, Space Warp, Space fold, nor FTL travel.
We DO have capacity to work on a large ship that would take like-minded individuals off-world. Like the ISS, we assemble in orbit, and leave the solar system. We keep practical controls on population – each family is allowed two (living) children; refineries and greenhouses and manufacturing are all on board. (“Refineries” is used in a generic sense; it includes smelting, alloying, etc. Raw materials processing.)
Even if we only make it to the asteroid belt, if it gets to be sustainable, we’re light-years ahead of the “competition.”
If we get farther, we might have generations living and dying; we could set sail for Tau Ceti and a few millenia later, arrive and colonize.
We’d be a whole new race – and we could render Cloverism extinct in our genome. Especially if we work towards selective breeding, DNA “cleansing” (I distinctly mean, we map the genomes and find out what each chromosome does, and how they interact. Then strain out the ones that cause abberations like me, for instance, when there is no corresponding counter-benefit. Sickle-cell is an example: It’s horrible in the sense it can cause anemia; it’s great in blocking malaria parasite. We could filter out the problematic genes in the millenia between point A and B, as long as we establish what’s “unacceptable.” Examples would include exclusive same-sex pairing, bad eyes, hearing loss, brittle bone disease, Down’s syndrome, etc. And while we could argue these specifics, we could hash out what’s essential later. Also, note that it’s the PREFERENCE, not the action, that I’m referencing. Straight or Gay is irrelevant; the lack of coupling, the lack of passing on the genes, is the issue. People can create the living arrangements they want, but for reproduction? Maybe the Gay and Lesbian populations can help each other out, with artifical insemination. We should also screen out some of the greed and lust for power… Actively. That’s the only way I can think of to remove Cloverism. )
FTL is the only hope for US to get away – and see the New world.
But ANY capacity to leave, will get the race off-world. Many forms of ship have been postulated; space colonies, too. We could bastardize something together, and GTFO – in two or three decades, probably at the longest. The hard part is the funding to get us off-world, and the skills to assemble things in orbit.
We need a Tesla to fund us, and a Ben Bernanke, and rothschilds…. Which means we will end up propagating the exactly WRONG genes. Unless we pull a coup and execute them once their usefulness is at an end?
Even for me, doesn’t leave a “warm fuzzy” in the belly. And there’s SO MUCH opportunity for us to LOSE (We outlive our utility before they outlive theirs, after all…. And we are likely more moral and honest, making the requisite psychopathy impossible to fake all the way through….)
Can’t crowd-source it, either: everyone will want a seat, and most people aren’t welcome.
I think it would be viable, but we need to figure out how to make an Orbital elevator or Space Plane first.
So, we need to re-focus, maybe?
Maybe something we could manage with nuclear power sources…? Or maybe there are other ways to make things work?
I dunno – but open discussion will lead to Gov’t hacks infiltrating, and they ARE psychopaths – we wouldn’t know until it was DONE, that we’d been screwed.
This is one reason I believe it better to just “Take out the trash” here, NAP be damned. The costs are amortized across time, and distributed across time, too. TPTB are looking for such an event to occur, too – I’m certain they’ll False Flag it if The Sheeple don’t do it on their own. Just to make the chaos of a good crisis, to then profit from the power vaccuum (where all the good little sheeple suckers bleat, “DO SOMETHING!”).
It also leaves us able to move around, grow, evolve, and even work on this pet project…. Instead of devoting ourselves to GTFO, with tons of laws and problems to work around, and “hoping” for FTL or such, while building the infrastructure… We won’t leave, we’ll die here. Our children may or may not leave. THEIR children may or may not leave…. But we’ll be building the technology (and the smart ones of us will work to monetize, it, too!), and building infrastructure, and evolving a Shadow Society in parallel with the Sheep Who Would Be Lambchop (king), and maybe even achieve our goals here…. Once the Clover is burned out, turned out, and/or sterilized.
Life CANNOT be easy or cheap, that’s what spawns clover.
But we can achieve a lot, if we “know” each other, and work together.
Examples:
Trade Unionists
Red Communists
Rainbow Code (1970s or so, Stonewall riots area)
Sons of Liberty
Etc.
Pathetic as it is: We must become a Collective, to Stop THE collective from overwhelming us.
(Which I personally worry about, as it may in fact mean we BECOME Cloverian in several generations’ time…. but that goes back to the first quote… We cannot accumulate Wealth this way. It cannot be “inherited” from generation to generation; each generation must earn their own way, and some sort of mechanism mustbe employed to yet retain wealth…. E.G., Tor’s children can’t inherit from Tor, but would be able to “inherit” from Eric; Eric’s children would be able to inherit from me; my children from Tor. As an example. Or maybe we could incorporate, and all the wealth goes to the Corporation, which is merely a holding corporation…? I don’t know, really, as I don’t think in these terms normally. But to secede effectively from “the system”, we must have our own “system” to secede TO, or we will be eliminated one “lone wolf” at a time… “We must hang together, or we shall most assuredly hang separately….”)
Why wait for FTL? Earth still has pockets of less to no regulation. Will require a change in lifestyle and living without certain conveniences that one is used to in the ‘developed world’.
Hi Escher,
I dunno.
Clovers in the less developed world exist, too. Is it really an improvement to pick up sticks (and leave most of them behind) to relocate in a second or third world country where one will be a “gringo” and probably bereft of even the minimal property/personal security one still has here?
I moved to a rural area as an in-between solution. Far from perfect, but significantly better than where I was. I may have to move again, though. And if I do, I think it’ll be to a really rural area. There are still areas of the country largely de-populated and short of a Stalinist-style police state (which I agree may be inevitable) one could probably stay off the radar for the remainder of one’s life and (for the most part) live a decent life.
Idaho is calling your name. Not perfect, but better than the cloverfields of the east and even Midwest. Plenty of bare land and mountain desert where you can hang out and be left alone if you so desire. I get left alone and I live on a culdesac and only an acre. My wife likes the convenience of our location.
I’d like something up in the mountains where we have some land…….”but that’s not convenient”. I suppose she’s somewhat right considering that I have to make a “living.”
Yeah, still a slave somewhat. Hopefully not forever.
“1. advances in genetic medicine and nutritional therapies will allow me to live another 200 years.”
Another 200 years! No thanks. Not unless there is a massive change in societal direction and personal freedom. Probably not even then.
Ernie, if you don’t mind, how old are you?
Well, I’m planning to live forever, but not on this earth and not in this deteriorating body.
I’m trying to keep my container in decent shape in the hope that I will still be viable enough for that FTL trip, when it becomes feasible….
In some instances I come close to believing it already is but if so it will never be officially known to us mundanes.
I belong to the very leading edge of generation X. My entire life has been like trying to find food behind the gigantic locust plague which was the baby boom. Thanks for noticing…
Fellow Gen Xer here, Ernie… ah feeeel your pain.
Or another way of putting it is you (we) are “ASS-ENDER’s” as in we are on the Ass End of the Baby-Boomers and all we get is a pile of SHIT!
Eric, years ago (in the early ’70s) my dad had a college student working for him that listened with interest as he described the level of freedom he enjoyed growing up in the ’30s & ’40s. When he got done she told him she’d never known that level of individual liberty, so it didn’t really bother her. Then she went on to proclaim that her children would know even less liberty and it probably wouldn’t bother them either. As I look around now, it’s plain to see that her mindset was epidemic in its proportions. Having been raised with an outlook that the government should do as little of the peoples’ business with as little of their money as possible, I can’t grasp it. But I suppose when you offer most people a portion of their neighbors’ property at the point of a gun, they will gladly sit on their ass, become wards of the state and collect a cheque. I fear this won’t change until the entire welfare / warfare system collapses under its own weight. It can’t happen soon enough to suit me.