Can you believe this $#!+?

Click here to view a dramatization of the newscast you may watch today.

You're having a nightmare, go back to sleep

If someone were to announce today, "We the Government reserve the right to spy on you, collect any and all information about your life, micromanage your behavior, shoot you dead with impunity, wage undeclared war on nations thousands of miles from our borders, and generally ignore any poetic prose you worship about your inalienable rights," would anybody really care?

Someone might look up from tweeting about dead celebrities and say, "Oh. So THAT'S what you've been doing," and nod off again.

What's with the heroin

You can be addicted from your first taste, and oh by the way your first taste could be lethal.

What idiot would ever put heroin into their bodies?

(This thought is not meant to imply support for the "war on drugs." If you want to poison yourself, be my guest. But really ...)

Seeking an artificial high from a substance that could kill you has to be the most moronic thing in the world. Well, aside from voting while expecting to make a difference.

The omnipresent face

On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Is it just me, or is Barack Obama on TV a lot? It seems no news story is complete without a visit to Our Leader to get his opinion about what's going on.

This will shock some of you, but it's possible to live your life and make decisions without wondering how Our Leader would handle it – or seeking his help or beneficent aid.

Rhetorical question

Is there a bigger buffoon or more inept politician/diplomat in the world than John Kerry?

The evolution of American liberty

1776

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

— Thomas Jefferson, July 2, 1776

2014

There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

— George Orwell

The men behind the curtain

"Shift isn't about security versus freedom or socialism versus capitalism," Micah continued. "It isn't about you versus me. It's about giving the people of this union an Us and a Them. Whatever fate they end up with, our system gives them the illusion that they are choosing it. They'll know who they can bond with and who they should blame for everything that's wrong. Us and Them. It gives their lives a framework. It gives them an identity and a purpose."

The Beam, Season Two

Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant

Never

There will never be a really free and enlightened State 

until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, 

from which all its own power and authority are derived, 

and treats him accordingly.

Henry David Thoreau

Resistance to Civil Government

On spin

Sometimes I listen or watch or read the spin that politicians and government hacks lay out there, and I wonder: How stupid do they think we are?

But these are people who have been elected and/or placed in positions of trust, so I suspect they know there are quite a few actual or willfully very, very stupid people among us after all.

You read Nineteen Eighty-Four and conclude that no one could really get away with declaring, "War is Peace!" "Freedom is Slavery!" "Ignorance is Strength!"

And yet every day the ether is filled with those very words, or damn near close.

Reporters ask questions, pols respond, and the reporters dutifully journal what the pols said, without further question, even if the "answers" make no sense on their face, and call it journalism.

Surely, the observer says to himself, most people recognize that the reporters' questions were evaded, never truly answered.

Surely?

If only it were true

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Mark Twain

(The sad truth, of course, is that these thieves and self-serving scoundrels are quite intelligent and wily creatures – just not quite as smart as they think they are.)

Liberty.me: An interesting new site

Lovers of liberty have a new place to turn on the web – new to me, at least, I'm not sure how long it's been there.

It's called Liberty.me. I haven't really explored it too much yet, but it looks like a nice font of information.

It was recommended by an old friend whose recommendation is good enough for me.

How to use smoke and mirrors to frighten millions

The newscast is alarming. A couple shoots three people in Arizona before dying violently themselves. A gunman shoots up a school in Oregon. Two little girls knife their classmate in Wisconsin. A little boy brings heroin to his elementary school in Philadelphia.

Two conclusions can be reached.

1. We live in an increasingly violent and dangerous nation.

2. In a nation of more than 300 million people and 3.79 million square miles, the news people needed to travel more than 3,000 miles to find four violent and dangerous acts.

One conclusion ramps up fear and the desire for a stronger police state. One conclusion concedes that people are generally peaceable and nearly always will not commit violence against one another.

Yes, murder and mayhem happen every day – SOMEWHERE within those 3.79 million square miles.

Millions of planes land safely every day. Scores of millions of people resolve their conflicts far short of harming or killing one another. The reason the violence is news is because it is so rare, so unusual.

But don't mention that fact to the demagogues building your cage.

Guard thine enemies from oppression

A thought for the next time you wish someone would shut up, or you wish someone would stop that guy, or you wish someone would outlaw that ...

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

— Thomas Paine

Problems and solutions

Most news stories follow the same template: Define a problem and explain what the government is saying or doing about the problem.

Listen carefully enough, and you'll hear that the government can only make the problem worse.

The more individual men and women exercise their freedom, the sooner an authentic solution is found.

How to end the gay marriage controversy

Another ban on gay marriage has been overturned, and folks in Milwaukee and elsewhere have flocked to the county clerk’s office to get their relationship state-certified.

I get that this opens up the doors so that your partner can qualify for benefits of various type, and no idiot hospital or petty family member can deny the right to visit your sick or injured spouse, but the whole issue of the state interfering with gay marriage raises a broader question.

Why do you need the state’s sanction for the religious ceremony known as a wedding? What right does the state have to impose itself on a personal relationship? Show me where “defining marriage” is a legitimate responsibility of the state.

Of course the state will eventually make gay marriage legal everywhere – selling marriage licenses is a revenue stream. The more, the merrier.

Rather than having gays argue for the “right” to get a marriage license, perhaps people of all inclinations should examine whether the state ought to be in the business of licensing marriages.

Never truer words

I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

 — Henry David Thoreau

The shocking truth about politicians' great deeds

We often hear a politician praised for how much good he or she has done for the world. For example, a politician is praised for increasing the gas mileage on the average car to 40 mpg.

He has done no such thing. What he DID do was write a document instructing car manufacturers to build a machine that burns only one gallon of gas for every 40 miles it travels. This document contains the real or implied threat that if they fail to build such a machine, the government will halt their ability to do business, whether or not consumers are interested in buying the machine.

The car manufacturer, threatened at gunpoint (for how else does government follow through on its threats?), does the research, designs and builds the vehicle – or it goes out of business – or it moves its manufacturing to another country where the government threats are not as onerous.

The heavy lifting of research and production was done by the targeted business and industry. All the politician did was bare his teeth and dictate. Oh, the bullying is couched in poetic words about a vision of the future, creating a better world for our children, or some such. Don’t be fooled by the poetry: The politician points the gun, and the business person complies or dies.

The simple requirement every politician fails

It's a simple thing to ask of elected officials: Don't spend more money than you take in.

And yet, no matter how much more they confiscate from the people every year, expenditures always exceed revenues.

I know from personal experience how hard it is to live within one's means.

But when you are spending other people's means, it seems it is not only hard, it apparently is impossible.

I got nuthin today

Figures the day after I promise to ring the bell of freedom here every day at 13 o'clock, my brain goes dead.

Too much of it all. Do I write about the negotiating with terrorists? The trend toward hip hop poetry slams masquerading as collegiate forensic debate? Oliver Stone as director of an Edward Snowden biopic?

As George Harrison once wrote, it's all too much, too much, too much, too much.

So let me just assure you, it's all smoke and mirrors, bread and circuses. You're free to go. Free. To. Go.

So go. Stop trying to make that damn clock work.

A long time ago, we used to be friends

The immortal
Fay Wray

I've been blogging again for about a month, and the little button that says "stats" says not many people have noticed. Not a surprise; I haven't made a big deal about it. But the other day it occurred to me that at least I could put a link at my old blog, which still gets regular traffic four years later, a fact which is kind of sweet in itself.

So, if you followed that link, hey! Good to see you. And if we're old friends, good to see you again. This is what I've been thinking about the world recently, which isn't a whole lot different from what it was then, except in the spots where it is.

I still think you're beating your head against the wall trying to get The Powers That Be to grant you the freedom you already own in your head, the freedom that you were born with – remember that one brilliant turn of phrase that summed it all up in 27 words? "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Remembering that the word "men" in this context also includes women, the point is: You were born free. You don't need anyone's permission to be free. In fact, petitioning a government for your freedom, trusting a government with your freedom, is handing the chains to the slave master for him to outfit you properly.

Most of the posts here may sound pessimistic as I make observations about our government's descent into chaos and totalitarianism. Underlying it all, however, is an optimism that free men and women will continue to be free in spite of the state's most concerted efforts.

And I plan to keep ringing that bell of freedom every day at 13 o'clock.

The sanitizing of Godzilla

Akihiko Hirata
as Daisuke Serizawa

Ogata, if the oxygen destroyer is used even once, politicians from around the world will see it. Of course, they’ll want to use it as a weapon. 

Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new super weapon to throw upon us all. 

As a scientist – no, as a human being – I can’t allow that to happen! 

— Dr. Daisuke Serizawa in Gojira (1954)

When Gojira was cut and remixed for American audiences as Godzilla, King of the Monsters in 1956, there was no reference to war-hungry politicians. 

The new Godzilla movie, while a magnificent bit of entertainment, also is devoid of emissaries of the state beyond the military personnel who carry out the policies.

Perhaps the concept of policy makers whose motivations threaten civilization is considered too much for American audiences.

Our brave new world

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. 

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. 

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. 

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. 

In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

The object of power is power

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Blah blah blah blah

There is a sad but true one-liner about folks who engage in the power struggle euphemistically named public service.

How do you know when a politician is lying? His/her lips are moving.

These people are not involved in any sort of activity designed to make life easier for the common man, even when they earnestly believe with all of their heart and soul that they are.

The heart and soul are freed when the harness and reins are removed. Government exists to restrict freedom. It has no other function. That's why it's called governance, from the Latin to direct, to rule, to guide.

They do not trust you to live your own life responsibly and free. Oh, perhaps they do trust you personally - but those other people, who need help from above to rule their lives - those other people are why we must have ever-increasing, ever-intrusive government.

Their idea of freedom is most people's idea of slavery.

The truth about bigots

The most racist remarks usually come from so-called liberals regarding so-called conservatives of color.

The most sexist remarks usually come from so-called liberals regarding so-called conservative women.

The most vicious bigots claim to celebrate tolerance and diversity at every turn.

True believers in the collective cannot bear it when individuals think for themselves and hold different beliefs. They must shout down such individuals of any color or sex, but when those individuals are of color or female, they come in for a special kind of hatred.

The preachers of collective tolerance are the most intolerant among us.

My climate change prediction

The Green movement had its roots in a spinoff from the German Socialist Party of a few decades ago, because the party was not being aggressive enough. Socialism being what it is, that's why every solution offered by green folks involves greater restrictions on personal liberty and increased government regulation – because socialists believe common people left to themselves are too irresponsible to be free, and the state knows better. That's just how these people think.

My prediction is that the Earth will keep breathing. Natural cycles will continue much the same as they have done all my lifetime, and across the lifetime of the planet. Some decades it will get warmer, some decades (like this one) it will get colder. Lakes and rivers will hit all-time lows, and a few years later they will hit all-time highs.

Some people worship Gaia, insisting the planet is a living creature. Living creatures breathe; we go through cycles. We inhale; we exhale. The bacteria in my stomach rarely make a difference, but when they do, the impact rarely lasts very long. A bacterium may believe its actions can make a life-changing difference, but it would delude itself; its footprint on my body is just not that dramatic.

So it's ironic that the people most inclined to believe in Gaia act as if the Earth is a machine that behaves linearly – in the 1970s the cry was that a new Ice Age is near, and in the 1990s it was always going to keep getting warmer. (P.S. Government intervention was their solution both times.)

Climate change as a political issue is not about saving the planet; it is about gathering control of our lives into the hands of an elite few.

One for you, 19 for me

A friendly reminder about the lengths to which the state will go: The Beatles song "Taxman" is not fiction. The British government taxed very high income-makers like John, Paul, George and Ringo at a rate of 95 percent. And in the USSA, the top rate in those "progressive" times was 70 percent.

Fortunately the beneficent government redistributed the income in such an equitable way that poverty was eliminated in both countries. Oh, you missed that? Odd; so did the poor.

The utility of war

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Big news from the free state of Tennessee

“Higher education experts and states around the nation will have their eyes on Tennessee as the Volunteer State embarks on an ambitious plan to provide free community college to all high school graduates.”

It is good that we live in a world where college is free. Obviously the professors have all agreed to work without pay, and the energy company has volunteered to heat and cool the buildings gratis, and someone has agreed to give the college employees all the food they need to survive.

Not true, of course. This notion that anything can be provided without some kind of cost is the foolishness upon which so much of contemporary life is based. Of course Tennessee is not providing free community college; what the writer means to say is that someone else is paying the cost, no doubt involuntarily.

The thugs in good suits who run Tennessee have decided to confiscate the costs of running a community college from their usual victims, in order to appear beneficent to the young people who will be deluded into believing their education is free.

This is how the “two-party” system works: One branch of the party steals from the rest of us in order to provide benefits like “free” education and welfare, and the other branch steals from us in order to maintain order and security through powerful police and military forces. The resulting police state monitors our everyday behavior to make sure we are living the life they have chosen for us.

This is their definition of freedom: Free education provided on the backs of wage earners everywhere. Their freedom is slavery, and the clocks are striking thirteen.

7 questions for happy frogs in warm water

Is there something you wanted to say during a conversation about politics but decided you didn't want to risk the inevitable retaliation and/or ridicule?

Is there something you wanted to do with your property but discovered you need a government permit to do it?

Have you put off filing your tax return until the last minute because you're anxious that you will inadvertently forget something and face some penalty?

Did you pass through a sobriety checkpoint while driving somewhere recently?

Have you gone to a sporting event and submitted to a search on your way through the front door?

Have you taken a trip on an airplane?

Do you still believe you live in the freest nation on Earth?

Sebelius resigns; the worst is yet to come

The resignation of nanny-in-chief Kathleen Sebelius is good news for lovers of freedom everywhere, except for the near certainty that someone even worse will be appointed to succeed her.

The ever-increasing federal attempts to micromanage citizens' lives will no doubt move inexorably forward, no matter who is put in charge of the effort. As egregious as her efforts may have been, Sebelius is merely the figurehead of the nanny state campaign to tell us what to eat, drink and otherwise consume from day to day.

Likewise, each of the last three presidents has been the worst in U.S. history, and as long as the government's march toward totalitarianism continues, that trend will continue. It won't stop until a majority of Americans decide to assume the responsibility for their own lives again.

Headline horrors; papa government to the rescue

The morning news brings the usual assortment of troubles and proposed government solutions.

A mysterious virus is killing pigs, raising the price of bacon as an anxious nation waits for the USDA to approve a vaccine.

A new (government) study indicates as many as 60 percent of returns processed by tax preparers contain errors, partially because so many states do not regulate the tax preparation industry.

Newly released test results suggests students whose families received vouchers to attend private schools did not score as high as their peers in public schools.

All of the stories are based on the assumption that the government knows better and is best equipped to take care of us and solve our troubles. Ah, the sweet naivete of the morning news.

In which the headline writer begs the state to protect us

In the wake of an incident in which another shooter killed three other people and himself at Fort Hood, one headline this morning trumpets: "Gun in Fort Hood shootings was purchased legally."

Implication: The laws controlling guns are so lax that any old crazy person can legally purchase a weapon to use against innocents. Surely the state must pass more laws to prevent the rest of us from doing so.

I have not had my ear tuned in to the stories behind the headlines as yet. I am confident the chorus demanding that the state further throttle our liberties is singing full-throated.

'Liberty Tax' collections kick in for new 'health care' system

It's fascinating to watch the administration lackeys back away from acknowledging the massive tax increase that is the "Affordable" Care Act, even going so far as to deny that someone who paid the tax needed to pay it.

Summarized here, the blood-sucking has begun, beginning with first-quarter estimated tax payments from the self-employed and entrepreneurs who in a better time would be fueling the engine of our economy.

5 gems of pith and vinegar from H.L. Mencken

No one since H.L. Mencken has been able to cast a few words into the sea and catch the truth – of course there’s the legendary observation “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Here are several more of my favorites courtesy of Brainy Quotes:

+++ Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

+++ The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out ... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

+++ The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

+++ It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

+++ I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Irony

Toyota agreed to pay a $1.2 billion bribe fine to the U.S. government on Wednesday for a variety of crimes against humanity, among them misleading the public from 2009 to 2012.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black …

The one thing all dystopias have in common

Just finished watching Catching Fire, the second of the four films in the “Hunger Games” trilogy (Don’t ask). The series gets much more compelling as it goes along. In this installment, the country grows increasingly discontented with the idea of having young people kill each other in a lethal reality-TV show after 75 years, and people veer toward violent revolution.

Having inhaled the three books a couple of years ago, I’m impressed at how well the first two have been adopted to the screen, this second one better than the first.

I am a big fan of dystopian fiction – Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and any number of other great books and films – and you know what theme they have in common?

A government that believes it knows better than the rest of us. Government officials who believe they are made of superior stuff than the rest of us. A government designed to shepherd the lives of the rest of us.

No matter how well intentioned, the more government tries to run our lives the more it messes our lives up – and the more well intentioned, it seems, the more terrifying the result.

Why they need us

Another one of my golden goodies. It's amazing how stuff I wrote 6-7 years ago still holds true. If anything, the scare tactics of our totalitarian state are more obvious and absurd than ever. And P.S. If you still haven't seen V for Vendetta, shame on you.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

[This musing assumes you have seen the film V for Vendetta. If you have not and wish not to view "spoilers," go watch the darn flick and come back later. You've been warned. You're welcome.]

Towards the climax of the great movie about violence and the state V for Vendetta, megalomanical leader Adam Sutler declares the time has come for the rulers of totalitarian England to remind the peasantry "why they need us." What follows is a montage of news reports clearly intended to cow the citizenry into a state of fear, reminding them that the government is the only thing standing between their security and utter chaos.

A civil war drags on in the former United States. Water shortages are reported and predicted because of a lack of sufficient rain for two years. Police arrest nine suspects who were hoarding vaccine against the deadly avian flu. Twenty-seven people have died in the wake of the discovery of a new airborne disease. New evidence links the terrorist V to an attack on London 14 years earlier - reminding them of the attack that made citizens turn to the government for protection in the first place. A skeptical bar patron says out loud: "Can you believe this shit?" Of course we can't, and we shouldn't.

The truth revealed by the movie is that the state is the source of the chaos. The titular character V, either a freedom fighter or a terrorist depending upon point of view, helps detective Finch uncover the reality that the central terrorist attack of his age was staged by government forces seeking control of citizens' lives under the cover of providing more security. V himself is the product of secret government medical research gone awry.

A central theme of the movie is the same as mine: Refuse to be afraid. The standard political script has been unchanged for decades now: Remind people about something they fear. Offer yourself as the solution to that which they fear. Once elected, strip people of freedom in the name of fighting that which they fear. Rule with an iron fist or a velvet glove, but rule; do not let people live for themselves in freedom.

I would like to dig one notch deeper: V himself preys upon fear, as well. He manipulates people's fear of the state and their fear of losing their freedom - a healthy fear, no doubt, but a real and palpable fear. Notice that V's agenda is first vengeance against the people who conducted the secret medical research on him - hence the title V for Vendetta. He justifies his vendetta by wrapping it within the more worthy cause of freedom: "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people." But this little proverb betrays his agenda: Someone should be afraid.

Fear is the great irrationalizer. People do stupid and terrible things when they are afraid. Therefore governments, comprised of people acting as a collective, do stupid and terrible things when operating out of fear. It is one thing to be aware of danger; it is entirely a different thing to be so afraid of that danger that you do or allow stupid and terrible things.

Being aware of the state's incomprehensible assault on our freedom is a healthy thing. Allowing yourself to become afraid of the state, and acting based on that fear rather than rational awareness, is unhealthy.

The state wants you to be afraid. Refuse to be afraid of their straw men and speculations. But go one step beyond: Refuse to be afraid of the state itself. When folks like me show you examples of the state's fear-mongering, use the information to think for yourself - don't be afraid of the state's power, because fear is part of the fuel of their power. We do not need the state to take care of us; the real truth is about how much our leaders need us to believe we need them. And that brings us to the second half of my mantra above: Free yourself.

The character Evie is unable to think clearly until she has no more fear. She reaches that condition of bliss only after a lifetime of horror and several weeks of torture - not a regimen any of us would like to undergo. Perhaps the best we can do is acknowledge our fears and refuse to allow the fear to control our actions and decisions. But that is the key - defeating the fear and living free.

The state of the state

I think I understand this correctly: It’s big news that the governor of New Jersey had people on his staff who arranged for two lanes of traffic to close in an act of political retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee, who declined to endorse Christie’s re-election.

But it’s old news and beating a dead horse to suggest that the president of the United States has an agency (the Stasi Internal Revenue Service) that targets people and organizations for harrassment in an act of political retribution against anyone who dares to challenge the president’s ambitions.

Here we go again: The drumbeats of war

I am always amused by the silence that overtakes "anti-war" activists when a member of the Democrat wing of the State Party is holding the executive branch. When a Democrat sends good American lads and lasses to sacrifices their lives, limbs and minds to the cause of the state, it's not nearly as egregious as when a Republican does.

And so here we are, rattling the sabers again while squirrels who have never tasted life in a combat zone chatter on the sidelines. The next time a member of the Republican wing of the State Party wages an undeclared-by-Congress-and-therefore-illegal war, the chipmunks of the Democrat wing will regain their voices, but this is not that time.

Are the pending incursion into the Ukraine and whatever subsequent response by the United Nations/States part of what Barack Obama meant when he famously told Valdimir Putin that he'll have "more flexibility" after the election? The two state leaders reportedly talked on the phone for 90 minutes the other day; the official transcripts suggests it was a long exercise in saber-rattling, but of course the officials transcripts would.

It's hard to sustain "You're being an idiot/I know you are, but what am I?" for more than a minute or two. That's not how you spend an hour and a half. You spend 90 minutes with someone making plans, setting goals, or talking about your fantasy football teams. I'm guessing the conversation was about the scenario for the next few days, weeks, months and perhaps years.

Some wag back in the 1960s asked, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" We're still waiting for the answer.

The Lessons of Arizona

On the events in Arizona in recent weeks, in which the governor vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses to decline service to people on religious grounds, J. Neil Schulman has summed up the stakes quite neatly in a piece called "The Trap of Politics." A sample: 

Once legal compulsion is established in principle to be used in compelling a private business to serve any customer regardless of the proprietor’s beliefs, ethics, or esthetics — any request for service where there is no right of refusal makes the proprietor a slave to the customer.

But here’s the other thing. Decent people who object to the right of refusal being invoked on the basis of various bigotries — skin color, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual preference — would rather live in a legal and political system that outlaws certain rights of refusal rather than working against such bigotry relying completely on the tortoise-slow uphill climb of argument, picketing, boycott, and writing novels, plays, and movies that combat bigotry with mind and heart.

Attempting to use the blunt instrument of force that is government to achieve social goals is rarely a good idea, if ever. Whichever side won in Arizona – either the cause of religious freedom or the cause of gay marriage – the losing side was fated to be embittered rather than accepting, as any victim of a bludgeoning is likely to be. The governor's action did not create sympathy and understanding, and allowing the new law to take effect would not have created sympathy or understanding, either.

Only what Schulman describes as a "tortoise-slow uphill climb" ever generates true change. Using the jackboot of government to force a change only generates anger and resentment.

B.W.'s Book Report: Why Wages Rise

How, pray tell, does a body get a raise in this world? How the hell does a guy making 13 bucks an hour convince his boss that he oughtta make $13.50, or $15, or $20?

In “Why Wages Rise,” F.A. Harper tells you one way that you don’t make more money: By negotiating a higher salary. By talking your Law Makers into raising the minimum wage. By joining a Union. Those things give you inflation, but they don’t give you a raise.

There’s only one way to get a raise, and it has to do with how you make money in the first place.
You make money by creating something of value and selling it. That’s all there is to it. Really.

So how do you get a raise? You create more. Either you create something of greater quality, or you create somethings in greater quantity.

That’s all there is to it. Really.

Don’t take my word for it. Mr. Harper explains it better than I could. Here’s a link to the book.

The revolution will not be televised - not here, anyway

Stephen Cox notes the utter failure of the American media to "get" what happened in Ukraine over the weekend.

For CNN (“we bring you the world”), the big stories, oft repeated, were a gay football player who remains a gay football player; a racial complaint in Mississippi; how to lose weight; replays of video footage, thought to be “viral,” about a child who might have been injured but wasn’t; and a variety of other non-news features. For Fox News, the stories were the chronic errors of President Obama, a US win at the Olympics (over 20 years ago), how to look good, and a variety of other non-news features. Both cable news networks had correspondents stationed in Kiev, but they were summoned to the camera about as often as brothers-in-law are requested to receive excess funds.

Here's the whole article.

My name is Brian Richardson

My name is Brian Wilson Richardson. I am told I was conceived while the Beach Boys’ new album, “Pet Sounds,” was playing on the stereo. I try not to think too much about that, because who wants to envision what your parents were doing when you were conceived? TMI, says I. TMI.

The name Brian suits me, I think, but most of my friends call me B.W.

I was raised in a small state on the East Coast somewhere between New York and Delaware, then packed off to a private college out here in, well, the state where I am now. There, a rodent with a walrus moustache tried to indoctrinate me into the ways of the collective, but I am my father’s son, and my father was an individual.

One of the first thoughts I remember having along the lines of the way the world is: The folks who signed the Declaration of Independence did not believe they were forming a new country.

“We, therefore … solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states …”

Notice the plural? States? What’s the difference between a country and a state? In 1776, there was no difference. United states, yes – one nation? Not so much. More like a federation, like our United Nations today. That’s why the first contract between the states were articles of confederation.

My ideas about The Way Things Are kind of riff off that thought. “Libertarian” describes my philosophy better than “republican” or “democrat” or “conservative” or “liberal,” and if you suggest that I sometimes veer toward anarchy, I don’t take that as an insult. Just keep in mind that my heroes are people like Gandhi and Thoreau and King – people who used their minds and their creativity to change the world, not their fists or other physical weapons.

If there is a battle between two dichotomies in this world, I suggest it is between the individual and the state. Call me an anarchist, and I respond that I fear a world without individuals more than I fear a world without states. But I don’t necessarily believe the institution of government is bad, if that government is an organization created by individuals to serve individuals, not rule them. I’m just not aware of any government that functions under that code.

I was murdered four years ago. All right, that is not exactly what happened. My father put me to sleep, believing that I had outlived my usefulness.

It’s time to wake up.


P.S. You think you know who my father is, and who I am. Maybe you don’t. In any case remember Tom Paine’s words from “Common Sense”: “Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN.”

Let me just say this

This is a test. Talk among yourselves.