It Really Is Very Easy

Last Tuesday, I took a phone call from Scott Ott. He's a nice guy and we talked for about twenty minutes.

PJTV.

You know, the ex-president is a Lying Bastard -- just like I've said for about fifteen years -- and Jake Tapper (ABC News) ought to hang his head in shame. He got completely saddled and ridden by that flash Arkie hick, right in front of everybody, and it's too damned bad. All Scott had to do was send an e-mail and dial a telephone.

I suppose it doesn't matter to Tapper that I say that he's completely despicable, but he is.

~~~~~

Later -- Scott has now posted an MP3 of our entire telephone interview. As I told him in e-mail, we ran fairly abroad of the general subject at hand, and he didn't have to let anyone know that. I'm proud of both of us. Go listen at the link above.

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Lexicon: Commies

The spark in my lap, today: John Venlet links over to Mises.org and David Gordon's review of G. A. Cohen. Behold this cite from the latter's "Why Not Socialism?" (2009) --

"Although inequalities [of the sort just mentioned] are not condemned by justice, they are nevertheless repugnant to socialists when they obtain on a sufficiently large scale, because they contradict community: community is put under strain when large inequalities obtain … We cannot enjoy full community, you and I, if you make, and keep, ten times as much money as I do, because my life will then labor under challenges that you will never face, challenges that you could help me to cope with but do not, because you keep your money."

(pp. 34–35)

When you ever see the word "commies" here or anywhere else you might find me, this is why I use it. Cast aside all rubbish about McCarthy and witch-hunts and cocktail sneers about Neanderthal reaction. I take these people at their words. I also categorically reject the positive communist assertion that my life is available to their "camping trip" fantasies. I am not interested to "enjoy community" with anyone else at all except on my own terms and in action after my own values. The reciprocal of the principle is that I do not expect anyone else to live my values. Every individual human being holds sole responsibility for and authority over his or her own life, without any arbitrary assertions of "community" by others or their political ramifications, which in the case of socialism include force: the denial of individuals' right to act on their own judgment.

The answer to Cohen's question is as simple as his metaphor:

It's because I don't want to go camping with you, and -- being an American and knowing what freedom is -- I don't have to.

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On The Recent Glance Directly At Me, From The Death-Star

Yes: of course I am aware that I was paraphrased in a speech given last week by an ex-United States president. The e-mail notes have been furious, and still trail in almost a week later. You can read the speech here. That's a .PDF, and the passage at hand is in the first paragraph of page eleven. Everyone who has paid attention to me knows that he mangled my line, but that it is without question my line.

Here are some facts: the speech refers to "...these 'hatriot' groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the others..." (Bottom of page ten.)

Mike Vanderboegh has run the line that I wrote on his weblog almost since the day that I wrote it.

Here is my conjecture: the ex-president either briefly eyeballed that blog himself, or accepted a memo from one of his flunkies which included the line that I wrote.

I have made up my mind that I would be no more interested in hearing his apology than I am offended by his presumption. It is simply a matter of note that The Lying Bastard of The Ozark Long March knows nothing of which he speaks, amid his insinuations that I advocate violence in this poor country's current straits.

Here is a word for that despicable person: I am "a Southerner", too, you strutting ignoramus. I was born in Little Rock, and my mother graduated Central High School six years before Eisenhower finally saw fit to roll out the National Guard. Don't even try to hand me your threadbare sanctimony about "paying" for the Civil War. For many reasons which I will not attempt to relate to you, I am quite beyond your ex cathedra pose in the matter. You have nothing to say to me. Sit down and shut your insipid mouth.

To the rest of you reading this, let me try to explain something to you. Pay close attention:

"If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by the majority is right because it is done by the majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong) -- how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies: each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered."

Now, I am not going to attribute that quote for you. I have good reasons for that. I will point out to you that the basic principles on display in that passage are now a matter of the public consciousness: it is an accepted maxim now that, in politics, "either you are at the table or you are on the menu". I will point out to you that America has never before sounded more like a bar-fight than it does now. All of this is because of what Frederick Bastiat put his finger on, one hundred sixty-two years ago, when he wrote: "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

We now live under The Sucker State. There will be no voting our way out of this, and that is as it should be, in at least one aspect: free people do not supplicate to government. They become manifest in their actions. In any case, however, whole generations have gone down under the rampant delusion that the sources of life spring from everything but individual human productivity: they believe that government can steal for them forever.

The hideous noise that you hear all around you in this culture, now, is only the beginning intimation of how wrong they are. It is the sound of savages scrambling around the lip of the government cannibal-pot, into which all values must eventually be collected by force and from which they will be dispensed under heavy guard. If you are capable of one moment's sense and are not a goddamned deliberate liar -- like an ex-president -- then you can see where this is all going.

There is only one more thing to say, here: every sane person had better hope and pray against violence. This goes for you, Mike, and everyone like you. I understand your efforts and I know why you prepare. This thing could blow-out at any seam, at any moment, and it is only prudent to be ready if that happens.

I, for one, would have far, far greater esteem for anyone ready -- like me -- to present themselves for imprisonment in order to demonstrate to the whole world just what this regime appears to be ready to destroy. No honest person could ever mistake the moral probity of a move like that, and even if it failed, the issue would be unmistakably clear to all -- this battle with a force dedicated to destroying freedom (the word that fell from The Lying Bastard's lips, last Friday) -- and the final and terrible resort to violence would yet be available.

I beg you all to keep cool in this matter.

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Is It Just Me?

...or did anyone else's hair stand straight-ass-up when they heard that Vladimir Putin will head the commission that will investigate the airplane crash that nearly wiped out the Polish government?

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The Whip Of The Week

"I think what Boaz is saying is that if we had no FDA,no income tax, no Department of Education and Wickard vs Filburn had gone in favor of Filburn then African Americans would be draft animals and any woman not being beaten regularly by a husband or father would be free to rape."

(In the comments on a remarkable pile of mush)

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Good For You, John Venlet

If this country is going to be saved, then the ethics on display in this post will be the only way. People will have to learn again about exchanging values instead of tearing them out of each others' hands -- whether in person or by the terrible proxy of democracy -- and only then will the concept of "care" have any useful bearing on American life.

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You Really Can See In The Light Of Principles

"You people are sitting around here looking at your own kids -- hypothetical or otherwise -- deciding that you know what's best for them, and projecting that perspective on this affair, and it's simply nonsense. Among some people who I've considered have a fair grip on the principles of liberty, I've seen an amazing amount of high-hierarchy (logically far downstream of principles) hair-waving & splitting, and it's just emotional sophistry. There isn't any other way for me to attribute it. There is no rational way whatever to consider Elian's father a free man. Not even remotely, like us here in America. There is no way that his life in Cuba will compare to what it would be in America, and that's for all the reasons having to do with 'ideology', which includes the fact that his father will never be a free man who could, thus, act on his estimation of what's best for his son in a context of all possible choices.

But none of you should worry about it. Elian is going to go back. And if you get to keep your eye on things as they go in the future (depending on what Castro is going to show you and what you can ferret-out between the lines, which is the perennial pastime among observers of communist regimes), you're going to live to regret that you ever thought it best to send him back.

And that will be cheap, and god bless you for it, too, because that kid is going to live it."

That was me, only one week shy of exactly ten years ago.

I don't know why some people couldn't see it -- all the principles were as obvious as the light of day -- but they just couldn't and there was nothing that I could do about putting it together for them. I must've said it a thousand times: you can lead another person to principles and concepts, but you cannot make them think.

And what a difference it all makes... this matter of ideas...



Elian Gonzalez, April 22, 2000 -- feelin' the love in The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave.



Elian Gonzalez, April 4, 2010 -- Making the most of everything Havana has to offer, you bet.

Really well done. I trust that everyone is satisfied.

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Mises' "Socialism"

Following the most recent post here, I must point out that the complete text of Ludwig von Mises' "Socialism" is available online here. If you don't have a hardcopy handy, I urge you to go get this crucial work and get with it.

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