From the comments:
It's personal freedom, responsibility, and the right and willingness to fight for both, or the creeping road to total slavery.
There is no middle ground.
What you need is the ability to protect yourselves, not to forfeit that to government.
If everyone on a plane had a 6 inch knife in a sheath on his hip, a free, responsible man's mind, and knew the law would fall on his side if that knife were used out of necessity.
Does anyone think those hijackers would have succeeded?
While the government has released the fuzzy photos of actual people who have been scanned by these machines, in reality the pictures are extremely clear. Furthermore, the people wearing Transportation Security Administration costumes each day examine both full frontal and rear pictures of the nude bodies of adults and children, even though it is against the law for anyone to look at a picture of a nude child on a computer screen, something that has landed many people in prison for long terms.
I am not joking. Moreover, people who decline to be photographed are then subjected to the "pat down" searches in which TSA employees rub their hands upon the genitals and breasts of women (on the outside of their clothing). What one needs to understand is that if one does that to another person in another setting, one can go to prison for sexual assault. In fact, one does not need even to touch any of those areas to be charged with child molestation.
Somebody eventually had to say it – and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed."
"We kidded ourselves for a while," Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could "live side-by-side" and "enjoy each other" has "failed, utterly failed."
Sowell says, “The multicultural dogma is that we are to "celebrate" all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing – but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don't have better results in the future, it is society's fault.
Kel Kelly says, “The only way politicians can really improve the economy — and our lives — is by (1) getting out of the way, and (2) undoing the policies they've previously implemented that hamper it.”
A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.
Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. To stress this point is the task of economics as it is the task of biology and chemistry to teach that potassium cyanide is not a nutriment but a deadly poison.
AND
The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.
You know what's interesting is the change in meaning the word "liberalism" has undergone from "classical liberalism" to the modern "social liberalism."
Also, "liberal" basically means a person that is open minded and willing to work toward political change. I think you could actually say that tea partiers are liberals, although not espousing the modern social liberalism, but a more classical liberalism.
Who we normally consider as liberals today could be considered conservative in that they are attempting to hold on to the present system of increasing taxation and centralization of power in D.C.
Food for thought.
Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief.
Here he addresses the problem concerning democratic governments’ defense practices:
“Moreover, under democratic conditions, insult will be added to injury. For if everyone - aggressors as well as non-aggressors and residents of high crime locations as well as those of low crime locations - can vote and be elected to government office, a systematic redistribution of property rights from non-aggressors to aggressors and the residents of low crime ares to those of high crime areas comes into effect and crime will actually be promoted…[government] taxes more in low crime and high property value areas than in high crime and low property value ones, or it even subsidizes the residents of the latter locations – the slums – at the expense of those of the former and thus erodes the social conditions unfavorable to crime while promoting those favorable to it.”
How would a private system operate and solve the problems created by a democratic government’s system? Hoppe thinks people would basically buy defense insurance and lauds the superior sufficiency of the private sector:
“Based on its continually updated and refined system of statistics on crime and property values and further motivated by the noted migration tendency from high-risk-low-value (“bad”) to low-risk-high-value (henceforth “good”) locations, a system of competitive aggression insurers would promote a tendency toward civilizational progress (rather than decivilization).
He also discusses what would happen if a state were to attack a stateless area protected by private defense associations. What would the attacking state face?
In this case the aggressor would not encounter an unarmed population. Only in statist territories is the civilian population characteristically unarmed. States everywhere aim to disarm their own citizenry so as to be better able to tax and expropriate it. In contrast, insurers in free territories would not want to disarm the insured. Nor could they. For who would want to be protected by someone who required him as a first step to give up his ultimate means of self-defense? To the contrary, insurance agencies would encourage the ownership of weapons among their insured by means of selective price cuts.
People would actually have economic incentives to own weapons. The insurance agency could weigh the risks and effectively pay people to help defend the territory voluntarily. Futhermore, if the insurance agency failed to protect your property, it pays you. In our world, when the government fails to protect your property, it still charges you and tells you better luck next time.
Car was driving down State Street until a Yazoo clay monster, similar to the monster made famous by the movie Tremors, engulfed it.
http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2010/08/north-state-street-is-falling-down.html
Except that it blows up our engines. EPA delayed a decision on a plan to institute E15, a 15% ethanol blended gasoline.
"We are disappointed," warned food giant Archer Daniels Midland. "We find this further delay unacceptable" and a "dereliction of duty," harrumphed ethanol lobbying group Growth Energy. 
As one who is opposed to centralization, I am wary of attempts to turn a grassroots movement against big government like the Tea Party into an adjunct of the Republican Party. I find it even more worrisome when I see those who willingly participated in the most egregious excesses of the most recent Republican Congress push their way into leadership roles of this movement without batting an eye -- or changing their policies!
As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.
Our foreign policy is based on an illusion: that we are actually paying for it. What we are doing is borrowing and printing money to maintain our presence overseas. Americans are seeing the cost of this irresponsible approach as their own communities crumble and our economic decline continues.
I see tremendous opportunities for movements like the Tea Party to prosper by capitalizing on the Democrats' broken promises to overturn the George W. Bush administration's civil liberties abuses and end the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A return to the traditional U.S. foreign policy of active private engagement but government noninterventionism is the only alternative that can restore our moral and fiscal health. I am optimistic, and our numbers are increasing!
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/27/a_tea_party_foreign_policy
From its inception in 1819 Prussia, the road to state socialism progressed. Compulsory schooling was first instituted in Massachusetts, in 1852, before spreading to the rest of the states in the next 50 years. Interestingly, there is an opposite movement going today; the Swedish system, which only lasts 9 years, because they’ve found children learn better at home than in public schools. And Hong Kong, which outperforms Japan in math and science, has a shorter school year.
John Taylor Gatto lays out his view of public schools in the article from The Kossar Education Newsletter.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/gatto6.1.1.html
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Educate/public_school_nightmare.htm
Thomas Sowell says:
“There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before.
Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race card fraud.”
"For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.
So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines.
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/06/30/2nd-amendment-victory-an-opposing-view/
I had to reproduce this written by Shawn Stocker:
Though often known as an epicenter of European leftism, Barcelona itself is filled with a fiercely secessionist history and an anarchy-tinged past. See: Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia.” Even today one can sense the precipice upon which authority hangs, everywhere one can sense the minimal lack of respect for the State and its thugs; and there is often a whiff of administrative collapse, of anarchy, of freedom, in the air. (And I forgive the misguided syndicalist/socialist economics amongst the Catalan anarchists, the majority are truly nothing more than miseducated lovers of liberty)
Repressed by centralist Madrid since 1714, this formerly independent nation longs to reclaim its self-determination.
Yesterday the Spanish supreme court severely curtailed the Catalan Autonomy Statute, passed by referendum in 2006. Among other items, the statute defined Catalonia as a nation and recognized Catalan as the preferential public language.
I must say the whole city is outraged. And I don’t want to think what the provincials are saying (they’re even more anti-Spain than the leftist, Barcelona city slickers). Massive manifestations are being organized, a re-vote of the curtailed Statute called for, and outright votes for independence being pushed (over 300 municipalities have already held non-binding independence referendums in the past year, with the pro-secession vote averaging upwards of 90%).
Let’s see what happens. I, for one, am excited to see a popular uprising against the ever intruding central state.
Catalunya is unique in its history of being conquered and oppressed, its people and their fierce independent nature, and its economy as the major source of funds for the modern Spanish State’s socialist system. All of this forms an ideal hotbed of secessionist action.
While I do fear the influence of the insidious left upon all of these events, it is my opinion that any disintegration of the State is a positive and that any erosion of central power is a step ahead for human liberty. And, frankly, the vast majority of Catalans outside of Barcelona are still quite traditional and individualist, so these Barcelona “pijoprogres (progressive snobs)” aren’t too threatening.
Visca Catalunya Lliure!
The photo, by the way, is of some anarchist graffiti. Of course, I oppose the vandalization of private property, but this is a “municipally” owned news kiosk. Translation: “Prison is the State’s terror against those who combat its miseries.”
Let A Thousand Nations Bloom blog is holding a Secession Week in honor of the 4th of July, when our country seceded from Great Britain.
Here is the introduction to the blog’s Secession Week:
As you might have guessed from the name of this blog, we want to see more nations. There are serious benefits to having more and smaller states: the efficiency coming from jurisdictional competition, the robustness coming from decentralization, and the satisfaction coming from choice are all, frankly, awesome.
But, anyone who talks about secession has surely gone off the deep end and must be a crazy redneck racist.
Interesting blow against states’ rights. I don’t see the excitement over this decision. Laurence Vance basically sums it up:
The McDonald gun decision handed down yesterday by the Supreme Court, discussed by J.H. Huebert here and here, apparently won’t change any of NYC’s gun restrictions. The problem, of course, aside from the Court affirming the bogus incorporation doctrine, is the exceptions to the second amendment in this and the Heller decision.
Jackie Hilly, the Executive Director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (a gun-control group), is pleased with the decision. Says Hilly:
All the other amendments have reasonable restrictions on them. So I actually really like the Heller decision and the McDonald decision because they put the Second Amendment in the context of all the other amendments…people from the gun lobby like to promote the idea that you have an absolute or god-given right to possess a gun. That’s clearly not true; your right can be restricted.
Judge Andrew Napolitano and Shepard Smith Discuss the oil spill and…the Federal Government.
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=36456
1. Those with ability
2. Those with need
3. The “do good-ers” or levelers
A recent article in the Clarion Ledger says his travel expenses are coming under scrutiny. Apparently when he travels, he doesn’t stay with other council members, he doesn’t attend meetings with the other council members, and the other council members don’t see him at those meetings. Hmmmm.
He was sent to Chicago last August and can’t even remember why. Here’s Marshall Ramsey’s cartoon.
Ron Paul introduces his new Private Option Health Care Act. It seeks to allow individuals to have control over their health care choices, and to restore a free market health care system.
H.R. 5444: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 and to replace it with provisions reforming the health care system by putting patients back in charge of health care.
He introduced his End the Mandate bill in April. H.R. 4995: To restore the American people's freedom to choose the health insurance that best meets their individual needs by repealing the mandate that all Americans obtain government-approved health insurance.
Here's an interesting article on "What's Really Wrong with the Health Care Industry" by Vijay Boyapati.
Here's an additional article addressing the upcoming Republican response. I think it will be interesting to hear the Republican's reasons for not supporting these bills. After all, they are all for repealing this act of socialized medicine, right?
Please listen. It gets really good toward the end. And by good, I mean bad.
Colleges in Mississippi decide to spend money on allowing more students to attend, rather than expanding or improving the quality of education at such institutions. This helps to perpetuate the myth that there is a right to a college education and that students need a 4 year degree to succeed in life.
Ramesh Ponnaroo writes:
It is absurd that people have to get college degrees to be considered for good jobs in hotel management or accounting — or journalism. It is inefficient, both because it wastes a lot of money and because it locks people who would have done good work out of some jobs. The tight connection between college degrees and economic success may be a nearly unquestioned part of our social order. Future generations may look back and shudder at the cruelty of it.
Today many students are considering different options because they see rising student debt, stagnant graduation rates and a struggling job market flooded with overqualified degree-holders.
When institutions make it their goal to admit more students, rather than admit intelligent students, the overall educational experience will suffer. Class discussion will not be thought provoking, and the “why are we here” mentality will be conveyed from public high schools to the college level.
Some have even stated that there is a higher-education bubble caused by government subsidization of colleges and universities. Brian A. Kroll writes:
As a consequence of the past few decades of capital misallocation, the United States has decreased productive goods-producing private sector jobs in favor of government service sector jobs. This has resulted in an ever-increasing trade deficit impairing our economy from real economic growth. As result, production-oriented skills have been in increasing demand in the ailing U.S. Economy.
He thinks more individualized educational opportunities like online schools and trade schools may be the answer. He also looks back to how education shaped the 20th century in America:
…a college education was [once] the fundamental gateway towards a middle-class American life. One was told “Work hard, get a good education, obtain a degree and you will be virtually guaranteed a high standard of living in the United States.”
Who wins when the volume of students who can’t afford to work their way through college is increased? Who wins when more people are forced to become debtors?
Approximately 30 states now apply a sales tax to soda.
D.C. Councilwoman Cheh proposed the tax obviously believes her job is to control the behavior of her constituents. She said merely adding a sales tax would “be too little” to change behavior and wouldn’t be as obvious to consumers.
C.S. Lewis puts it well:
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
From the mouth of the Minister of Information leader of our national government:
"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter." With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations...information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. " [emphasis added]
Here’s a good figure of the road to serfdom. When watching the news, you only hear about liberal v. conservative. These ideologies function equally as a means of progression toward a totalitarian state.
There are a few more figures and explanations when you click on the figure. 
There’s also a really smart guy who wrote a book called The Road to Serfdom. You should check him out. He was born on this day in 1899.
The Liberal Assault on the Poor
Here’s a great article detailing how the policies aimed at helping the poor actually confine them to poverty and prevent upward mobility. The collateral damage is everyone else in society.
Mr. Hornberger discusses the following :
Public and private ownership
The role of capital
Return to poverty
Employment and value
Creating unemployment
Unemployment and crime
High wages
Indefinite Detention Without Trial for US Citizens
Mississippi’s own Senator Roger Wicker[R-MS] is a cosponsor to The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, or S. 3081.
The bill, which has eight cosponsors, explicitly names U.S. citizens as among those who can be detained indefinitely without trial:
An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent ... may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities. [Emphasis added.]
Among the groups opposing the bill are the following:
The bill was introduced by presidential runner-up Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]. The cosponsors are:
David Vitter [R-LA] (withdrawn)
First we have Obama joking about killing the Jonas Brothers with Predator Drones.
Next we have footage of how the Predator Drones operate.
Finally, drones already being tested and used domestically.
Where is Sarah Connor?
DeSoto Country residents face a new police training facility in their backyards.
Alan Brosnan, who operates Tactical Energetic Entry Systems in Horn Lake, said
only small explosive charges - from 3 to 4 ounces or much lighter - would be used in classes such as explosives handling and breaching doors and windows.
No, police don’t need to train to blow out our doors and windows. They can already do this:
GM released a commercial that touted its paying back the taxpayers in full, with interest, 5 years ahead of schedule, except:
“They came in the dark, shining bright flashlights while my family was asleep, keeping me from milking my cows, from my family, from breakfast with my family and from our morning devotions, and alarming my children enough so that the first question they asked my wife was, ‘Is Daddy going to jail?’”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/26/raw-milk-crackdown/#ixzz0mRNh7j1I
April 28, 2010
by Michael Boldin
Over the last couple days, I’ve received a number of emails about Arizona’s new immigration law – and thought it was worthy of some constitutional consideration.
To start – we must keep adherence to the 10th Amendment as a top priority. This means that the federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers that we the people of the several states delegated to it in the Constitution…and nothing more. These are often called the enumerated powers.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution empowers Congress to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” – or, more simply stated, to make universal rules about giving foreign-born residents of the United States the “privileges of native” born residents.
The most important thing to consider at this point are the words “immigration” and “naturalization” themselves. While most of us would consider them strongly related, we have to keep in mind that in any 18th Century law dictionary, they would have been seen as two wholly different words, with two separate meanings.
And, if like any legal document, the words of the Constitution mean the exact same thing today as they meant the moment it was signed (barring amendments, of course), it’s imperative that we understand the meanings of such words at the time of the founding.
For example, a common 18th century definition of naturalization was “The act of investing aliens with the privileges of native subjects”, while emigrate had a common meaning of “to move from one place to another.”
Such a delegated power over “naturalization” then, does not specifically address the power over immigration rules in any way. But, Constitutionally-speaking, one also has to then consider the common law doctrine of principles and incidents (i.e. the necessary and proper clause) to find authorization for anything not spelled out in the constitution.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument that control over who can and cannot cross a border was considered by the Founders to be an incidental (lesser and directly required) power related to the delegated power over naturalization.
But, I’m sure someone will try to make one eventually. And yes, I’m all ears! Otherwise, such power is something retained by the people of the several states to be dealt with by their state governments or not – as they see fit.
If this analysis is correct, then Arizona’s new immigration law would be acceptable under the federal constitution. It would then need to be scrutinized for compliance under the Arizona State Constitution (which I have heard almost no mention of in this debate).
At the same time, if my state of California (or any other state for that matter) were to then pass a law allowing more immigration than what Arizona or D.C. or anyone else has allowed, this would also be acceptable under the Constitution – and then would need to be scrutinized for compliance under the State Constitution of that state.
Such “marketplace competition” between states would certainly allow us to see which policy worked best, not only for the economy, but for the amount of freedom vs restriction that people want in their lives. That’s the system that was set up by the founders and ratifiers under the Constitution. It’s called federalism.
The key, of course, would be to remove any federal funding of social programs for people who weren’t “naturalized” under the rules of the federal government. (discussions on the constitutionality of those programs aside for the time being) States, however, could enact their own social programs should they choose – or none at all.
There is one other extremely important point in all this – just because something is “constitutional” does not mean it’s good policy.
I thought about applauding Arizona for “trying” to solve the problem of illegal immigration, but that would be like me applauding Obama for “trying” to solve health care.
Judge Napolitano says that SB 1070 is unconstitutional and will bankrupt Arizona and the Republican Party of Arizona.
Interestingly enough, Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled him “another hot contender in the far right-wing advocacy department.”
This video is from 2007, so skip ahead to about the 30 second mark to where Dr. Paul starts talking about the problem of illegal immigration. He cites the main problem being that immigrants can come here and get free medical care and free education…government subsidizing immigration, if you will.
This is in response to news that FEMA is coming to Mississippi today. Some things about Mississippians can't be compiled into national rankings.
[Y]ou people discussing the intimate affairs of my people affected by this tragedy make me sick... people in choctaw county ain't waiting on a dang thing. we grabbed our chainsaws and went to work... mema and insurance adjusters were around yesterday, and they will handle the situation best they can im sure, but we together as a group of people were helping each other. thats who is responsible for rebuilding. churches, families, and individuals helping each other are the things i saw... liberals will always claim that the responsibility lies in the hands of goverement to meet our needs, wipe our butts, and tell us how to live our lives. in choctaw county we take care of ourselves... so if fema or obama or whomever never shows up, then so be it, because we are mississipians, and we know how to survive, and thats by helping each other and ourselves... ive been shocked by the comments of some of you that try to make everything a race issue and play that card. go back to new orleans
Collectivism in all its manifestations, with its splendid and empty promises, is the great lie told by those with absolutist mentality. Its subscribers seek a governance possessing near complete control over citizenry; because, according to the mindset, “the people” are incapable of making appropriate decisions regarding the fundamental questions of how to manage their lives.
The collectivist aligns himself with the poorest members of society. This tactic too is part and parcel of the great lie.
In the bribery of minority groups, with federal funds for welfare babies, for instance, and misdirection of federal tax receipts toward community reinvestment programs serving primarily to pay off local constituency and re-elect incumbent politicians, socially-minded politicos are complicit in perpetuating a kind of slavery. The extortionist headmen of recipient community groups are as complicit as their counterparts in government.
Slavery existed in this country since before its founding. Slavery has existed on the planet from the beginnings of recorded history, undoubtedly from the species’ nascence. It is practiced in various forms all over the planet today.
Those who like to believe American slavery ended with the Civil War are very much mistaken. As an acknowledged institution, yes. Yet slavery continues.
You do not have to look to the high-rise tenement buildings of the former Soviet Union to see the effect of collective ownership (oxymoron alert!); you can see it in Lathrop, Cabrini, and the erstwhile Robert Taylor. And while the politicians do not precisely say these “projects” are collectively owned, given the fact they are paid for by the citizens what else are they if not that?
Some folks will say the problems in communities such as these stem from a long history of outrageous mistreatment. To be sure there is a good deal of truth in this sentiment. But to suggest institutionalized slavery as the raison d’etre ignores a long (though comparatively shorter) history of institutional hand-outs, a system that has so thoroughly perpetuated a feeling of disenfranchisement that an apt new term was coined: The Welfare Trap.
If you cannot believe that giving poor people stuff for free and rewarding them for having more out-of-wedlock children could possibly be a bad thing, take a hard look at what has happened to the institution of family over the past fifty or sixty years.
Then again, who needs family when the State is there to provide all?
And what does this have to do with Orwell?
George Orwell was not a conservative. He was, in contemporary parlance, a liberal. So, when Orwell exhibited the temerity to write against centralized government, “the Party,” and communism generally, the radical Left in his native England had a field day. His book, 1984, was hard to publish given that Stalin at the time was an ally of Britain. One impediment to publication, a government official, later was found a Russian spy.
Some in the press called Orwell “Trotskyite,” a term today roughly equivalent to branding someone with whom you disagree “racist.”
Then as now those who condemn men for shedding light on the true nature of their ideologies deceive themselves (Orwell calls it doublethink); – good intentions are an end, never mind that the means corrupt and destroy. This is how they think:
Abasement of the individual to the collective is the first tenet of statism; rights must be rooted out. The individual becomes a dependent of the State, i.e. a slave. The Constitution, our primary document guaranteeing rights, is anathema.
You can recognize a person as collectivist because when speaking of the Constitution he or she will refer to it as “a living, breathing document.” This is doublespeak for saying that the Constitution is a very imperfect document that must be changed according to society’s (re the Government's) current interpretation and requirements.
On August 17th the brilliant Christopher Hitchens – an Orwell scholar among other things – joined Professor Russ Roberts on his fabulous EconTalk podcast. Hitchens, who also wrote the book Why Orwell Matters, explicates Orwell’s experiences as a child and young man and relates how Orwell himself had made the decision to preserve his soul by leaving his post in imperial Burma. There, Hitchens explains, Orwell fully came to understand the nature of power and how a human being can easily become corrupted by its influence, believing himself superior, effectively putting himself on par with God. --Orwell matters, and indeed so does Christopher Hitchens.
Today a state of human bondage might come in a form other than brute force. It might, as it were, come on little cat’s feet. It might, for instance, drab in wearing the guise of a penitent. That which is the Anti- knows better than to show up in the uniform of a Nazi. And so a free people must be constantly jealous of their freedom, guarding against marauders, vigilant in defending the bastion. Political freedom has proven exceedingly rare in this world. To lose it would be unforgivable.
Still they come smiling. They bear gifts and act in the name of something amorphous; but it is something, they assure us, that is beautiful and right. Everything will be taken care of, the collectivists chime, just don’t you worry.
Upon scrutiny: the mantle of righteousness is false, threadbare, and discolored. Their smile is that of the wolf. Their attitude that of mercenaries. The price they exact is All.
This is the nature of the hive mind. This is the nature of the statist.
Looking around at our elected representatives today, one has to wonder: Is everyone asleep?Commentator:
Obama's stimulus plan is working. This administration is making all the right choices. I just wish he was more of a liberal.
Mississippi Guesser:
Wow, I've never said any president's administration is making all the right choices.
Even Krugman says the stimulus's effect will peak during the middle of this year. Then we're headed down in a hurry.
Commentator:
So what I see is that President Obama gets no credit from you folks. Did yáll vote for George Bush? Twice? I thought so. History will judge but I think that Obama will prove to be one of our greatest Presidents. Expanded health care will pay off in the future. Reining in corporate America is necessary. Cap and trade will save our childrens future. Guantanimo is a national embarassment. The rest of the world believes that we are a good influence for the first time in years. The cold war superpowers are reducing nuclear arms. And other nations are willing to let the US take nuclear materials out of the hands of the terrorists. And he's only been in office for a little more than a year.
Obama's legacy will be profound. His policies will keep America competative. The corporations (and that is what the original tea party was about... google East India Tea Company) have been favored for too long. If Obama has a shortcoming, it is because he is too much of a centrist. He should do more.
Mississippi Guesser:
The U.S. national debt (12.8 trillion) is currently 89.6% of U.S. GDP (14.3trillion dollars). The government is taking in 3.1 trillion dollars in tax revenue right now and spending more than twice the amount it is taking in revenue. We are heading toward an economic collapse, and you are praising a health care program that in 10 years will help bring our debt to 20.3 trillion.
It's time to look beyond the seemingly good intentions of President Obama and understand what is happening to our economy. Even Paul Krugman, a Keynesian economist, is criticizing the fed chair Ben Bernanke, who is also a Keynesian economist. Krugman says we're in trouble, and the stimulus will peak in the middle of the year.
We have to cut our spending across the board. We're spending 684 billion on social security, 666 billion on defense/wars, and 768 billion on medicare/medicaid. Those are the biggest budget items. We have to stop spending and pay off this debt.
Here’s the U.S. Debt Clock
Man charged after marijuana, moonshine seized
Starkville adopts helmet ordinance
Why are we so willing to give away our liberty?
Commentator:
When all citizens can walk into an emergency department for any reason at the expense of the hospital and taxpayers, these kinds of policies, which can mitigate the expense of stupidity-in this case riding a bicycle without a helmet-- should be made. If uninsured joe blow student rides his bicycle to class without a helmet and is hit by a car, expenses will likely be far greater than if he has a helmet on.
Thanks to Starkville city leadership for setting this policy in place. As Ben Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Your prevention of unsightly expense from helmet-less riders who are injured is worth far more than the cost of the cure for injuries from such an accident.
Your leadership is valued.
Mississippi Guesser:
If the driver of the car was at fault, wouldn't the driver be liable for the costs incurred by the injured bicyclist?
If Joe Blow is uninsured and not wearing his helmet and gets hit by a car, he is more likely to die and save others the costs of treating him.
What if someone walking gets hit by a car? Should we mandate that all pedestrians wear helmets?
This country was founded on individual responsibility and self-governance. Apparently these principles aren't important to you.
I saw this video and just had to post it.
On March 27, 2010 writer Frank Rich was quoted in the New York Times Op-Ed section The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. Is this true? He then closed his article with Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Many media outlets, including MSNBC, the Washington Post, CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Huffington Post among others are insinuating that there is racism in the Tea Party movement. Take a look for yourself.
Filmed on April 15, 2010 in Freedom Plaza and at the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. by Nathaniel Alexander Stuart.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Nine miles of two-strand topped with barbed wire
laid by the father for the son.
Good shelter down there on the valley floor,
down by where the sweet stream run.
Now they might give me compensation...
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
Now all I have got is a cheque and a pickup truck.
I left my farm on the freeway.
They're busy building airports on the south side...
Silicon chip factory on the east.
And the big road's pushing through along the valley floor.
Hot machine pouring six lanes at the very least.
Now, they say they gave me compensation...
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
Now all I have left is a broken-down pickup truck.
Looks like my farm is a freeway.
They forgot they told us what this old land was for.
Grow two tons the acre, boy, between the stones.
This was no Southfork, it was no Ponderosa.
But it was the place that I called home.
They say they gave me compensation...
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
And what do I want with a million dollars and a pickup truck?
When I left my farm under the freeway.
