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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
Some Still Waiting Return of Liberty
Post Date: 2019-01-31 07:14:01 by Deckard
2 Comments
For decades I’ve had my doubts about whether America is still the land of the free. With rules and enforcers everywhere you look, it doesn’t seem so. I’ve been wrong. Most Americans are free — as free as they want to be. I prefer liberty to freedom. Liberty means having the freedom to do everything you have a right to do; freedom is simply doing whatever you want, without regard for others. This is why, for most Americans, America is the “Land of the Free.” They are doing what they want. They tolerate checkpoints because they make them feel safe. They comply with the airport “security theater” gauntlet, pretending it’s fighting terrorism. They ...
Trump’s Foreign Policy Reveals the Tribal Nature of Our Politics
Post Date: 2019-01-29 09:15:31 by Deckard
4 Comments
When President Trump decided to pull US troops out of Syria, anyone under the naïve impression that the famously peace-loving Democratic party of the past two decades would hail his bold end to American military adventurism in the Middle Eastern nation was surely disappointed. For these benighted few principled voters, the stark political realignment on this issue has offered a masterclass in tribal politics. Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton bellowed, “This president is putting our national security at grave risk.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, called Trump’s decision to exit Syria “dangerous.” Yet, politicians flip-flop all the time, so the ...
Venezuela: None of Our Business
Post Date: 2019-01-29 08:56:48 by Deckard
15 Comments
On January 23, the President of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Juan Guaido, was sworn in as “interim president.” In what was presumably a pre-coordinated move, Guaido’s administration was quickly recognized by the governments of the United States, Canada, and several countries in Latin America.Guaido’s claim rests on a provision in Venezuela’s constitution which allows him to assume the office should it become vacant. The Assembly says that it is. Nicolas Maduro, elected to a second term as president in 2018, begs to differ. A number of countries, including Russia and China, continue to recognize his government.All of which seems either remarkably simple ...
A Pentagon Campaign to Keep the Public in the Dark
Post Date: 2019-01-26 16:41:03 by Deckard
0 Comments
Reports that were never classified before are suddenly considered top-secret.President Trump doesn’t much care for efforts to monitor and report on wasteful Pentagon spending and other military inefficiencies. This month, he ordered acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to withhold battlefield reports from inspectors general in order to keep the information from becoming public.“The public means the enemy,” Trump explained. “Those reports should be private reports.” This order doubles down on a worrying trend at the Defense Department since Trump took office toward increasing unnecessary secrecy. {"contentId":"PLOO6O6JIJV20 ...
Food stamp section 8 ride is over!!! Welfare queens got their wake-up call!!!
Post Date: 2019-01-26 12:53:03 by A K A Stone
0 Comments
Economic Controls Turn Regular People Into Criminals
Post Date: 2019-01-22 08:55:58 by Deckard
0 Comments
Part of the underlying drama of the show The Americans is that we know how it ends up. The glorious communist utopia of the Soviet Union, to which the main protagonists have devoted their lives as undercover spies, goes belly up at the end. Which is to say: they seem to be wasting their lives on a lost cause. The viewer knows this going in. The characters do not. They continue to believe they are working for the great cause.You can summarize every domestic economic policy of Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution through 1991 as an attempt to salvage the unsalvageable. The attempt began in 1922 with the New Economic Policy, an expedient to save lives following the disastrous wartime ...
What We Own...
Post Date: 2019-01-18 20:45:01 by Deckard
10 Comments
It’s interesting that the only things we can say we truly own we have no legal title to. The clothes I am wearing, for instance. They are fully, meaningfully mine in that I have absolute control over them; the government (i.e., organized other people, who’ve empowered themselves to do violence to whomever the please, “legally”) doesn’t decree the style I am allowed to wear. No “shorts are unsaaaaaaaaaafe, you might scrape a knee.”Or the size or the price. There are cheap clothes and expensive clothes and practical clothes and hugely impractical clothes. I can wear my clothes as long as I like – no matter what anyone else thinks of them – ...
Black People Dismantle "White Privilege"
Post Date: 2019-01-18 09:09:55 by A K A Stone
1 Comments
Lift Up Your Hearts: The Democrats Are in a Shambles
Post Date: 2019-01-11 09:10:23 by A K A Stone
1 Comments
It is time to rekindle our political spirits in this new year, and to take stock of the subjects of encouragement. First, the takeover of the House of Representatives by the Democrats was, on balance, not as jarring to the vital organs as was feared. As a figure of horror, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has become almost like Bette Davis, one can believe she just acts the part, though she acts it convincingly. And she has earned her spurs as a Democratic legislator with staying power, the first speaker to serve non-consecutive terms since Sam Rayburn (D-Texas). She certainly didn’t get much back-talk from all those bushy-tailed Democrats who were going to send her off to knit ...
Beware the Emergency State: Imperial, Unaccountable and Unconstitutional
Post Date: 2019-01-10 07:37:45 by Deckard
0 Comments
“For seven decades we have been yielding our most basic liberties to a secretive, unaccountable emergency state – a vast but increasingly misdirected complex of national security institutions, reflexes, and beliefs that so define our present world that we forget that there was ever a different America. ... Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was ...
A Rash of Evil (Rashida Tlaib)
Post Date: 2019-01-10 07:34:43 by Deckard
2 Comments
I have long assumed that such vermin as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, or Donna Shalala are the lowest of the low for the female of the predatory species, Tyrannosaurus Democraticus. After all, how likely is it that any woman anywhere could be uglier, viler, more corrupt, tackier, phonier, more asinine and Marxist than these four? But I was wrong. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) may well surpass them. Not by much, mind you. But even to be in the running with such stiff competition after one week in the US House is impressive. Were I a betting gal, my money would say ol’ Rash will nauseate more Americans more mercilessly than even Maxine, the Mistress of Malaise. First, though, ...
Texas Libertarian Ron Paul: We don’t need Trump’s border wall to stop illegal immigration
Post Date: 2019-01-09 11:03:08 by Deckard
6 Comments
PointsPresident Donald Trump doesn’t need a wall to stop undocumented immigration, says former presidential candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul.Instead, he should remove incentives for coming to America, argues Paul, former congressman from the border state of Texas.Trump is expected to describe what he calls a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border in a prime-time address to the nation Tuesday night.President Donald Trump doesn’t need a wall to stop undocumented immigration along the U.S. southern border, three-time presidential candidate and well-known Libertarian Ron Paul told CNBC on Tuesday.Instead, the Trump administration should remove incentives for coming to America, said Paul, ...
Trump won the night. Schumer and Pelosi lost.
Post Date: 2019-01-09 10:33:09 by A K A Stone
6 Comments
President Trump did something Tuesday night that he has rarely done since taking office: He used the presidential bully pulpit to reach beyond his hardcore base of supporters to make his case to the American people as a whole. Speaking from the Oval Office for the first time during his presidency, Trump embraced our country’s tradition as a nation of immigrants, declaring “America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation.” He then offered a cogent explanation why he believes we face what he called “a humanitarian crisis — a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul” along our southern border. He ...
Mitt Romney: A Dishonest, Dishonorable Man
Post Date: 2019-01-07 09:09:50 by Deckard
2 Comments
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1509590440695-0'); }); Failed GOP presidential nominee and newly minted Utah senator Mitt Romney couldn’t even wait until he was sworn into office before he submitted his anti-Trump editorial to the vehemently anti-Trump Washington Post. Despite his public image as a wholesome and honest man, an image that he has labored indefatigably to craft, Romney is, in truth, the embodiment of all that is wrong and bad with the Republican Party and, by extension, the conservative movement. In other words, for as reprehensible as so-called “RINOs” undoubtedly are, few are as contemptible as is ...
The Great Man Theory of Governance
Post Date: 2019-01-05 17:39:27 by Deckard
7 Comments
One of the political phenomena that the Trump administration has brought to the surface is the political philosophy that now guides much of the conservative movement. Unlike libertarians, who have a deep philosophical commitment to the principle of a government with very few, limited powers, conservatives have come to embrace what can be called the great man theory of governance. It holds that people should elect (or select) a great man to serve as president and then loyally and unconditionally support whatever he decides to do in the interests of the nation. During the past few decades, a popular conservative political mantra has been, “We just have to get better people ...
Is Voluntary Socialism (“From Each, To Each”) Compatible With Libertarianism?
Post Date: 2019-01-02 10:20:23 by Deckard
4 Comments
Yes. This already occurs. All of these organizations live by the “Marxist” notion of from each according to his abilty, to each according to his need. But, they do so on a voluntary basis, so they are all in accord with libertarianism: nunnery, convent, kibbutz, commune, collective, syndicalists, cooperatives, monastery, abbey, priory, friary, religious community; family. In all of these cases, people live by the philosophy of “from each, according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Since this is done, at least ideally, on a voluntary basis, yes, voluntary socialism of this sort is indeed compatible with libertarianism. However, socialism is also defined as ...
How a president shapes the public character
Post Date: 2019-01-02 08:05:56 by IbJensen
2 Comments
The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president's thoughtless claim that America has long been a "sucker" in world affairs all defined his presidency down. It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex ...
What Anarchism Means To Me
Post Date: 2019-01-01 10:17:29 by Deckard
5 Comments
Anarchism is my declaration of peace with you. It is a repudiation of the use of coercive power to achieve my own ends, or to abet the domination of any man by his fellows, or over his fellows. It is a renunciation of the use and support of structures that function to create discord and disparity among men and between nations, and peddle mayhem and mischief under the aegis of security and protection, and carnage as an acceptable cost -- not of survival, but of satiety. Anarchism is my declaration of independence from corrupt and debauched systems which institutionalize the dominance and submission of the mind and conscience, pillaging the property of the peaceful and raping the human ...
TV chef in hot water after ‘horsesh-t’ Chinese food diss
Post Date: 2018-12-29 11:22:53 by IbJensen
11 Comments
“Bizarre Foods” host Andrew Zimmern has been axed from prime time on the Travel Channel amid the controversy over his assertion that Chinese food in the Midwest is being served in “horses - - t restaurants.” The celebrity chef’s “Bizarre Foods” juggernaut franchise and sister show, “The Zimmern List,” have been bumped by network owner Discovery, Inc. into a graveyard rotation slot on Saturday mornings to run their course, Page Six has confirmed. Filming has stopped on both shows midseason, sources tell us, and is not expected to continue further. The move comes after the James Beard Award-winning chef offended the Asian- American community ...
Endless War Has Been Normalized And Everyone Is Crazy
Post Date: 2018-12-26 06:55:37 by Deckard
0 Comments
Since I last wrote about the bipartisan shrieking, hysterical reaction to Trump’s planned military withdrawal from Syria the other day, it hasn’t gotten better, it’s gotten worse. I’m having a hard time even picking out individual bits of the collective freakout from the political/media class to point at, because doing so would diminish the frenetic white noise of the paranoid, conspiratorial, fearmongering establishment reaction to the possibility of a few thousands troops being pulled back from a territory they were illegally occupying.Endless war and military expansionism has become so normalized in establishment thought that even a slight scale-down is treated as ...
Kurt Russell Drops Massive Truth Bomb About Gun Control
Post Date: 2018-12-22 10:29:21 by IbJensen
29 Comments
'If you think gun control is going to change the terrorists’ point of view, I think you’re, like, out of your mind.' In a recent interview for Hollywood Elsewhere, Kurt Russell shut down a reporter’s argument in favor of gun control. The conversation started out civil enough, focusing on Russell’s performance in the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film “The Hateful Eight,” but things took a turn when reporter Jeffery Wells described guns as a “metaphor that disenfranchised white guys need… [to] feel good about themselves.” “If you think gun control is going to change the terrorists’ point of view, I think you’re, like, out ...
Politics doesn't improve your life
Post Date: 2018-12-18 07:40:09 by Deckard
2 Comments
Occasionally I’m asked what I write about. It’s a hard question to answer. Some would say I write about politics, but this isn’t quite right. I don’t care about politics. I want to encourage people to grow beyond politics; to find better ways.Politics seems to be the art of making mountains out of molehills. By “art” I mean in the sense you might call pickpocketing an art; not like the Mona Lisa.Politics is “do unto others before they do unto you.”Life is needlessly complicated when you believe you need to control other people, since they’ll believe they should control you, too. You’ll probably both take the short-cut of electing someone to ...
Vox: Change the Constitution so Ocasio-Cortez Can Run for President!
Post Date: 2018-12-14 09:04:19 by IbJensen
4 Comments
President Donald Trump is personally responsible for a wave of mental instability across the American left that will be beyond the healing reach of even the most experienced psychiatrists. Trump Derangement Syndrome is seen regularly on cable news, Capitol Hill, and even, if you believe recent stories, on mental health couches from sea to shining sea. (Although we suspect most of those couches are located rather closer to the sea than the center). And it has most definitely infected Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, who wrote an entire 1,200-word column this week about how we should change the U.S. Constitution so that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “the biggest star in the Democratic ...
IT MAY BE TIME TO QUIT THINKING!
Post Date: 2018-12-12 13:28:58 by IbJensen
2 Comments
I was thinking; If only 11 million people have Obama-Care, how will 24 million people die if it is repealed? Will an additional 13 million people be randomly shot, poisoned, or spayed? If Donald Trump deleted all of his emails, wiped his server with Bleach bit (Like Hillary) and destroyed all of his phones with a hammer, would the Mainstream Media suddenly lose all interest in the story and declare him innocent. (Like Hillary) If women do the same job for less money, why do companies hire men to do the same job for more money? If you rob a bank in a Sanctuary City, is it illegal or is it just an Undocumented Withdrawal? Each ISIS attack now is a reaction to Trump policies, but all ...
To a Nation of Snowflakes, Christmas Has Become Another Trigger Word
Post Date: 2018-12-12 05:51:05 by Deckard
0 Comments
“This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power.”— Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another ...
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