Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day—Ted Turner

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I don’t like what we’re doing to the national forests, cutting trees down at taxpayers’ expense and destroying the forest, just so we can have a few jobs. That is like saying, Adolf Hitler trying to justify the Nazi concentration camps — it provided employment for people. Bulls–t! I’m fanatical. A part of me is so angry that I want to take out a gun and do something about it . . . Even though in my heart I do get angry and frustrated, I have never done anything . . . and I want to go down and burn lumber mills in the middle of the night and spike trees, I don’t do it. I just dream about it occasionally. I work within the system.

Ten Turner
Sometime before 1993.
[Apparently Turner is a typical liberal with a propensity for falsehood (it’s not at taxpayer expense, lumber companies PAY for the trees and have to replant afterward) and violence. Trees are a great renewable resource and apparently Turner doesn’t comprehend that.

I would like to suggest Mr. Turner try living for a month or so without wood products. Of course I suppose he could use one of his silk shirts to wipe his ass when he runs out of toilet paper. Then someone should complain about the exploited silkworms.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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Is it just me or do people who use the force of government to take money from me and spend it on things I don’t think it should be spent on (nearly everything but Obama Care is one of the better examples) also want me to be happy and grateful for what they have done?

Do robbers who stick a gun or knife in your face and take your money also expect your gratitude?

Clearing Some Old Files

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I found this old letter to the editors of a local paper.  I don’t think I posted it here;

Dear Editors,

Regarding Mark Winstein’s letter entitled “Lets Not be a Big Box Town” printed in last weekend’s edition:  I will point out to your good and thoughtful readers that in Mr. Winstein’s opinion, the last people who should be making decisions about land use are the actual land owners, the last people who should decide what is and what is not a “sustainable approach to the economy” are those who have their own capital at risk in a given venture, and by rights, the very last people on Earth who should decide where to shop are the shoppers themselves.

Apparently, there is a new field of study at the U of I, known as “Helping Make the Economy More Reflective of Ecological Values”.  I might like to meet one of the Doctorate Professors in this new Helping Make the Economy More Reflective of Ecological Values Department.  However, between taking care of my family and minding my own business instead of advocating the use of force in minding other people’s business, it would be hard for me to justify the time.

Now I want to propose an entirely new concept– one that Winstein may not have ever considered:  Maybe we could advocate the protection of other people’s rights (even if we dislike them).  It might be interesting if people could make their own decisions in what I will call a “Free Society” (I might enjoy entertaining the Dean of a “Free Market Solutions to World Problems” College).  I understand that this is a new and terrifying proposal (for some) but it may be worth considering, given that if our neighbors have the Right to Choose, perchance it would follow that we too would be afforded the same right at some stage.

Sincerely,
Lyle Keeney

That was several years ago, and I had been accosted in a parking lot by a petitioner that same year, too.  The argument was; “Look how big it’s going to be.”  Big is bad, I guess.  People are supposed to be small.  Or else, and that reminds me of a bumper sticker quote from Dennis Preger; “The Bigger the Government, the Smaller the Citizen”.  Someone called the show to tell us that their car had been keyed after putting that sticker on it.

I started to argue with them, but it quickly became an obviously pointless exercise and I drifted away.

Today we have that Super Wal Mart the communists were trying to kick out of town by force of law (fairly and equitably of course).  I do a lot of shopping there.  It’s good to live near a big box town.  It’s the next best thing to living in a big box town.  The hippies pay something like eight dollars per gallon for milk at the Hippie Haus (our nickname for the local food co-op).  The supermarket Rosauer’s now has a hippie section, so you can pay three to four times as much for your food there too.  It’s for The Children, somehow, I guess.  And world peace.  And LSD, and stars per gallon.  When I was a kid, we bought milk directly from the farmers for next to nothing, and it wasn’t processed in any way except for already having been sucked from the cow’s teats.  When I was twelve years old or so, I’d take the family car several miles, usually running at ~0.5 Mach* along the narrow country roads, to get unpasteurized milk.  I suppose the hippies would be envious as hell to learn about that, until they realized that these farms were (gasp) private (gasp) businesses working for (gasp) profit on (gasp) private land, and (gasp) not charging us any tax for milk that was (gasp) never inspected by anyone except for the farmer, who (gasp) knew ten times more than any inspector ever will.  Poor communists– they never see anything that happens as a result of private initiative and free choice without getting all pissed off and bent out of shape (unless it’s an abortion or a pot party**).  I will feel sorry for them after we’ve crushed them into the dirt and no one else remembers them.  Maybe it’s because I have a soft spot in my heart for ignorant, vacuous, ridiculous, embarrassing hippies (i.e. hippies) having been one myself in a former life.

ETA;
* I believe that was the only time in my life I ever tested, and later verified, the actual top speed of a medium to lightweight, V8-powered motor vehicle on flat ground.  I suppose that may have something to do with why they don’t typically license 12 year olds to drive alone.  Back then though, I was only vaguely aware of the notion of “licensing” in any sense.  The subject of licensing was among the largely esoteric or academic (of no consequence) concepts in our lives then.  Any mention of it and we would have ignored you, not out of malice or disgust, but because it simply had no meaning for ordinary people who lived in the country unless a “fuzz” or a “putch” (a degraded abbreviation of the word “patrol”) happened by on the off chance, in which case we left.

** Jam sessions and music festivals come to mind, but those are a subset of “pot party” and so they are covered.  Protests where thought of, but ditto, and other than the very smallest protests that you’ll scarcely ever see and never hear of, hippie protests are not the result of private initiative.  “Hippie” and “private initiative” have only the very thinnest excuse to exist in the same sentence unless it be, “A hippie has almost no private initiative”.

Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson

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The left needs a sacrificial lamb. So it has nonsensically turned with a fury on Obama as if he were culpable for getting through the left’s own agenda. If Democrats don’t blame the public’s anger on their once-beloved messenger, then they’re left only with their message itself. That’s something they simply can’t accept.

Victor Davis Hanson
September 14, 2011
Why liberals are giving prez the shiv
[And I’ll bet they thought the “Occupy Wall Street” protests would resonate more as well. As near as I can tell the left lacks a grasp on reality. That limits their ability to accomplish anything other than by using violence. They apparently realize that and are making what they think are the appropriate plans. But as son James said last night (paraphrasing), “Bring it on.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kurt Hoffman

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If you oppose the people’s Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms in defense of their families, lives, homes and liberty, perhaps it is you who have some explaining to do.

Kurt Hoffman
October 12, 2011
Brady Campaign offended by truth about Second Amendment
[If someone opposes a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights I think they are past the explanation stage. Either they are ignorant and need to go back to their high school government class or they are opposed to the basis of our nation and should leave the country. They simply don’t belong here. You can’t get much more fundamental about our political underpinnings than the Bill of Rights.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Independent Democratic Conference

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PROPONENTS OF A MORE REFINED FIRST AMENDMENT ARGUE THAT THIS FREEDOM SHOULD BE TREATED NOT AS A RIGHT BUT AS A PRIVILEGE – A SPECIAL ENTITLEMENT GRANTED BY THE STATE ON A CONDITIONAL BASIS THAT CAN BE REVOKED IF IT IS EVER ABUSED OR MALTREATED.

Independent Democratic Conference
September 2011
Page 34 in CYBERBULLYING—A Report on Bullying in a Digital Age
[I love the word “refined”. It makes the proposed degradation of a specific enumerated right so much more palatable. It’s a lot like “progress” and “liberal”. All very nice words. Surely reasonable people can agree we would all be better off if the government were to punish those that were divisive.

Via Thirdpower and Eugene Volokh.—Joe]

This is why Boomershoot

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Roseanne Barr advocates people who earn too much money and don’t “pay it back” to be sent “to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded”. This was while being interviewed on Russia Today so I suppose she had a more receptive audience than in the U.S. I would like to suggest she move to Russia and run for President there because that isn’t the way things are supposed to work in this country.

I have another message for Barr and her supporters—the “reeducation camps” and the executions far too frequently advocated by my political opponents are why I put on Boomershoot and delete the records of who participated.

H/T to Tamara.

Quote of the day—Ubu52

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Isn’t the smallest form of government a dictatorship? Is that really what Libertarians crave?

Ubu52
September 29, 2011
Comment to The Mind of the Left.
[I suppose it could be very ignorant question. After all, even if you were to grant that a libertarian dictatorship is technically possible the smallest form government would be no government at all or anarchy.

But I think I smell a troll.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Dewey

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You can’t make Socialists out of individualists — children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.

John Dewey
From Accuracy In Media
[Ahhhh… yes. The collective society. The good of the collective is more important than the good of the individual. The individual must not think for themselves. Except of course the dear, enlightened, leaders who decide what is best for the collective and just happen to live lives of luxury.

What the “intellectuals” need to understand, if history has any lessons to be learned on this topic, is that the “intellectuals” are the first to get the bullet in the back of the neck and occupy the mass graves in the woods. Look at what Stalin, Pol Pot, and communist China did.

It may be that it “won’t happen here”. It may be the government of the collective will put the “intellectuals” in positions of power and that when the shooting starts it will be individualists who first occupy the mass graves. But when the shooting stops it will be because the individualists ran out of collectivist “intellectuals” as targets. Not because we ran out of ammo or individuals.—Joe]

Time for Change in which You Can Believe

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…and better grammar.  I can say that I’m college educated, but barely.  I can however recognize that words mean things.  I’ve learned orders of magnitude more about language and writing from reading things outside of academe than inside, yet I can’t claim to be literate in the way that a person considered literate in 1900 would be literate.

The use of the double “is” has become a disease, and has infected all parts of society.  I wonder if the CDC has been looking into it, but then I realize that their job is to get money.  The double “is” has become so common that it now has its own contraction among the smart people– “The thing is’s…that…the sky is blue.”  That’s three applications of “is” when one would have done better, yet we have people with advanced degrees, those with careers in journalism, and holders of public office saying crap like that.  I wonder when journalists and commentators will start typing “is’s”.  I suppose it’ll be a while before Bill Gates puts “is’s” into the word processor spelling dictionaries, and I figure most journalists haven’t figured out how to put it in themselves, so we may overcome this virus without “is’s” becoming “proper English”.  It could just as well be, “The thing is; the sky is blue” but even that is silly.  How about, “The sky is blue”?  It takes less energy, it actually means something, it requires thinking for a millisecond or two before you speak, and I won’t walk away thinking you beneath my 1.5 years of trade school.

Still I see horrible misuse of the language.  We can stop, right here and now, using the term “liberal” to describe an ideology that isn’t.  Really.  It isn’t difficult.  Other people may misuse and torture the language, but you aren’t held to their standards.  I’m a liberal.  I can say it and mean it without permission from those incapable of telling the truth.  Referring to a statist/socialist as “liberal” is to embrace a lie.  We can stop that right now.  These things matter.  You’ll find yourself thinking more clearly, with only a few little adjustments like that.  It is a Change in which You Can Believe.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home, hopeful that I might have gay intercourse over the dinner table with my family.  I might pick up some faggots along the way though.  See?  Things that were written not long ago (as recent as my grandparents’ time) have had their meanings corroded.  Our Constitution is one of them.

Quote of the day—President Obama

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I’m determined because there’s too much at stake. The alternative I think is an approach to government that would fundamentally cripple America in meeting the challenges of the 21st Century and that’s not the kind of society that I want to bequeath to Malia and Sasha, and your children and your grandchildren.

President Obama
What President Obama saying to his donors
September 25, 2011
[What President Obama isn’t directly saying is that the U.S. Constitution is crippling his vision of a utopian society.

And while I say that’s a good thing the battle has mostly been lost. I fear the majority of people in this country will have to learn the lessons of socialism and perhaps even communism for themselves.

—Joe]

Quote of the day—Harvey Ruvin

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Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.

Harvey Ruvin
Vice Chairman, ICLEI.
The Wildlands Project
[I wish I could find the original document which contains this. I can find lots of references to it but without the actual document and context I’m hesitant to speculate nearly as much as others have.

In any case, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.—Joe]

Safe storage laws

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There are now controls for Internet control of your heating and the government wants to control your air conditioning, refrigerators, lights, and computers so this is really just a logical extension.

It’s for the children.

Via Gus from work.

Quote of the day—Carrie Severino

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I’m not sure exactly what these folks are pledging to do. Are they living constitutionalists pledging fealty to the Constitution on the day they sign the pledge? Or some future Constitution the exact substance of which they don’t even know when they sign the pledge? Is each person pledging to their own Constitution which just doesn’t change to them? Unless, of course, they are all pledging to a Constitution that actually has a definite, knowable, unchanging substance — in which case I look forward to joining them in celebration of Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia’s service at the next Federalist Society convention.

Carrie Severino
September 16, 2011
More on the Living Constitutionalists’ ‘Pledge’
[People who “believe in a living constitution” haven’t thought things through. Do they also believe in “living contracts” where the terms of the contract change without all parties to the contract agree to the changes or even being notified that the contract no longer means what it says? To say, “we have a living constitution” means we have no constitution.—Joe]

Quote of the day—4moreDubya

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Look at it this way, do you think it’s up to the states to set their own rules on slavery? Or search and seizure?

4moreDubya
September 14, 2011
Comment to House Weighs Bill to Make Gun Permits Valid Across State Lines
[States have powers to set their own tax rates, build (or not build) roads, license businesses, and many other things. States have not been given the power to infringe upon specific enumerated or natural rights. Some people just don’t grasp the difference between exercising powers granted to them and infringing upon rights specifically protected. Some people just aren’t very bright.—Joe]

Fundamentally Transform This

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Our second amendment protects a pre-existing, fundamental human right to self determination and self defense, including defense of one’s community and of liberty in general.  The American Founders understood all of this very well, and specifically added that, practically speaking it would deter (“hold in awe” I believe were the exact words) any army that our government could muster for the purpose of tyranny against the general population.

The phrase “…a rifleman behind every blade of grass” is often attributed to Imperial Japanese warning their own against an open attack upon the American mainland.  The story of Sergeant York was widely known at that time too.  Whether it was actually said, the reality was there and no doubt it was, and is, a deterrent.

In my neck of the woods, there may not be one rifleman for every single blade of grass, but school teachers, housewives and mothers, grandmothers, farmers, business owners and professionals in large numbers tend to own and regularly use firearms.  As for the socialists, general leftists and other nitpicking, envious busy-bodies who are incapable of minding their own business, who strive to use the power of government to beat back the American Principles of Liberty and self reliance – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kids;

Photo by Oleg Volk.  I generally don’t believe that saber rattling is good politics, but then I didn’t start it either.  Too many people have fallen for the deep lies that form the rationalizations for Central Planning, and make no mistake about it – Central Planning (or Redistributive Change, or whatever the hell it’s called this week) by government relies purely on threats against peaceable citizens.  This has gone on far too long.

All I want to do is mind my business.  I avoid getting into other people’s faces as long as they stay out of mine.  I’m ready and willing to help out when need arises, and I understand that my own success, such as it is, in addition to setting a good example, increases my ability to help those in need.  But that is my prerogative and mine alone.  That goes for me and several million of my closest friends who favor liberty over tyranny.  So go ahead and march for “One Big Global Union”, screaming for revolution, carrying your picket signs attached to baseball bats.  Go ahead and plan ’till you’re blue in the face, and plan to carry out your threats.  I’ll be sitting here quietly minding my own business and respecting other’s right to do the same, until it comes time to act.  I hope you’re not that stupid, but I know from experience that I can’t count on socialists having a lick of sense, even when it comes to self preservation.  They tend to get themselves in far, far too deep before they even begin to understand the implications.

I’m reminded of a saying from the movie Broken Trail – “There are things that knaw on a man worse than dyin’.”

Quote of the day—Daniel Sitarz

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AGENDA 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on earth… Effective execution of AGENDA 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced — a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources.

Daniel Sitarz
1992
Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save our Planet
[This sounds like something out of a dystopian novel.

If they try to “reorient” me they might succeed in a manner in which they had not intended.

I wonder how many people he is willing to kill to accomplish his goals. I know how many I am willing to kill to stop them if they choose that method of “reorientation”.

As. Many. As. It. Takes.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Verini

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Let’s start with the obscenely irresponsible laws that cover gun sales in America. For instance, anyone without a criminal record can legally purchase as many rifles and other long guns as they want in the United States. You read that correctly. If you have no criminal record, you can walk into a gun dealer and buy 100 AR-15 rifles, 200 AK-47s, the store’s entire inventory of shotguns, or a .50-caliber sniper rifle that can take down a low-flying aircraft — as long as you have the cash.

James Verini
August 30, 2011
Mexican Roulette
[And anyone, regardless of their criminal record, can purchase as many copies of the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and Korans as they want in the United States. Anyone can also purchase as much gasoline, road flares, and matches as you want. Or you can purchase as many baseball bats, hammers, and knives as you want. What you can’t legally do is deliberate or carelessly harm other people.

As seen in this light that you have to pass a government mandated background check to exercise a specific enumerated right demonstrates that firearms are over regulated.

It’s time for Verini to grow up. The government is not, cannot, and should not be his mother or anyone else’s.

H/T to Col. Milquetoast for the link.—Joe]

Seldom Do I LOL…

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…even when I’m watching good comedy.  Maybe it comes from growing up in a large family.  If you LOL, shut up already.  I’m trying to listen, and anyway, how can you listen while you’re cackling?  (In a live social situation, at least the deliverer of the comedy usually has the sense to wait for some degree of quiet, so that’s different)  Stuff like that.  But I LOL’d at this, from Tam;

Meanwhile, I’d like to offer my services to moderate the next GOP debate:

“Now, if you will all look down at your podiums, you will notice that you’ve all been provided with a short document. A few of you might even be vaguely familiar with it. If you don’t mind, could you each just look in the part headed ‘Article II’ and point out to me the sentence or phrase that indicates that ‘job creation’ or ‘the economy’ is within the presidential purview?

We’ll start with you, on the end, with the hair. No, not you… the other one on the end, with the hair…”

It’s absurd in its truth.  Funny and sad.

When thinking of the most recent, absurd rationalizations and excuses for government meddling, and the obvious expectation from politicians that we revere them (why is never explained) I find, more and more frequently, the phrase, “None of your filthy, stinking, rotten business, you sniveling, made-up, hairsprayed, lying piece of shit with the painted-on smile” comes to mind, followed by the thought that if you actually told them to mind their own business they wouldn’t understand– they actually believe that your business IS their business.  Tam made it funny is all.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should clean my guns.

Quote of the day—Barron Barnett

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These piss swilling cheeba monkeys are TSA agents because of one of the following three conditions:

  1. They are too stupid to get a job any place else, including McDonald’s.
  2. They get off on physically molesting people .
  3. They are wanting crimes of opportunity for theft .

There are no other options.  While one would say maybe they just need a job, the bottom line is they sold their morals down the river and now are molesting people.  They are molesting people cause obviously they’re too stupid to get a job any place else.

Barron Barnett
September 8, 2011
A Security Theater and Illegal Aliens
[I think there is the possibility of some other reasons.

  • They could be of the opinion that it is the job of government to do these sort of things. The reasoning could be something like, “Government is for the good of the people. If the government does this then it must be good.”
  • They simplistically believe that laws against “molesting people” do not apply if they are wearing the proper badge (see examples where people have explicated claimed that possession of a badge means “the law doesn’t apply to us” here).

Still, Barron gets it almost completely right in the rest of his post which I categorize as “a nice rant”.—Joe]