The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv’d them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas’d them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.
- Essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771), later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, p. 425
Given my life in the Marine Corps, and having six kids of a pretty good spread of ages, my children have gone to schools everywhere from Kadena Air Base to Catholic School in Virginia to public schools in California, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Florida, and on-base DoD schools in several other states, including North Carolina and Virginia. Three have also finished college. Most recently, my daughters were attending a reasonably well-regarded public high-school in Hingham, Massachusetts. At one point, the younger two were complaining about a book report they had to do. This was sometime back in 2011 or so.
“What book?” I asked while we were in the car, riding back from school.
One of my daughter’s held up a copy of President Obama’s book, Dreams of My Father. This was during the election season for his second Presidential bid.
I nearly spit out my coffee.
“What in the holy fu-??!” They looked at me and said, “I know” thinking I was referring to the injustice of the book report, or even of their preference not to be reading that particular book, but that had nothing to do with it.
“You are required to read a book by a sitting President?!? What the fuck is this, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book? Holy shit, we’re a fucking banana republic, now.”
My daughters were a little shocked at my response, needless to say, but I couldn’t believe that any U.S education system would require its students to read the opinions and ideas of a sitting President, given that he was not far away from his second election and the very group of people being required to read it were about to be – or were – eligible to vote! That borders on the insane to me. And it gets worse, down to the granular level. To wit:
One of my daughters – my youngest – has been a budding libertarian since high school. (I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t have something to do with it, nor that I’m not proud). Her insistence upon questioning her teachers or existing dogma, however, has caused her no little stress. On the matter of the book report of our current President, how do you think my daughter got graded when she reviewed the book unfavorably? Moreover, what do you think was the tenor of the red-ink comments, especially coming from a member of the Teacher’s Union, one of the most ardently supportive unions of our current Commander-in-Chief.
Yes, this is the education that your tax dollars buy.
To have a sitting elected official’s bullshit personal Prop-O piece front and center in the curriculum before children-who-are-about-to-become-voters is tantamount to putting cigarette machines in elementary school cafeterias and hallways. The harm in the case of the cigarettes is only their lungs; in the case of the book it is to their intellectual and even physical freedom. (And I feel the same way about any other President’s bio, so we can dispense with the reflexive “BOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!” screeches). I have no idea if he wrote one and put it in front of kids, but if he did? Fuck him, too. You could make it a Constitutional Amendment as far as I’m concerned: No Public School System Shall Ever Require the Reading of a Biography of a Sitting Elected Official, Nor Shall Any Student Be Graded Upon Such Nonsense.
Now, when I say these kinds of things, people think that I’m hyperventilating and losing my mind, but I’m merely reporting the facts. People can draw what conclusions they will, but I would respectfully submit that the culture wars are not imaginary. They matter. Facebook has forever ruined the word “meme,” (and “memetics” may have done that on its own), but ideas do matter.
Newton’s Principia mattered; it altered the world in ways that we can probably never fully appreciate. So did Beethoven’s symphonies, which are nothing more than the musical effusions of one man’s mind. Slavery is an idea – a very, very shitty one – that we have thankfully discarded, although only recently for some countries. Technology is what it is today because ideas matter. This means that a country’s ideas about political and economic organization, about ethics, its law, and how its children are inculcated with important – i.e. valuable and valued – cultural information – this is a country’s future. What gets transmitted is necessarily and logically a society’s cultural bequest to its children.
This is as true of baseball culture as it is of the entire United States; the matter is simply one of degree or scale of impact. It was true of ice hockey when I played it, as well as rugby, as well as wrestling, jiu jitsu, football, and on and on. When I was getting ready to get winged in may of 1993, we had to put in for aircraft selection. This had already followed our selection of either Fixed-Wing, Props, or Helos for Marines coming through primary flight training. I took helos and now was going to select for one of four different models the Marine Corps flew: the CH-46 medium transport helicopter, UH-1N (“Huey”) utility helicopters, CH-53E large lift helicopters, or AH-1W SuprCobra attack helicopters. I was asking an instructor about the selection process and he said to me: “Ya know. Everyone has a theory about how it comes out but I’ve now reconciled myself to the fact that it’s God. You get put right where you belong. Every community has its own unique culture and you find out very quickly if you fit or not. If you don’t, you’ll know it and you’ll ask for a transfer. If not, you’ll leave…but I’ll be damned if somehow it doesn’t seem to work out right the vast majority of the time.” I don’t know about the Almighty’s hand in selection, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t seem like we all wound up right where we were disposed to be.
What we believe in any given culture, small or large – our collective values – what we revere, is exactly what we will propagate and get. It can be courage and honor for soldiers, or physical dominance for athletes; cacophonous noise in music or the subtlety and complexity of jazz (not my bag, by the way, but it requires extraordinary talent to play well); or even in the esthetic we have for beauty, between a fit woman or the dysmorphia of models. We’ll get, culturally, exactly what we esteem and transmit, along with the consequences. And that is exactly why I rail against socialism, or laws and courts that give immunity to government officials, or idiotic gun control legislation, or climate change bullshit and the redistributionist policies that come out of that, or the horrors of asset forfeiture and Prohibition (including the drug war), or Obamacare – none of which has worked, nor will work, as claimed. I point these out not just because the premises upon which they are based are frequently fallacious, but also because they have predictably horrible outcomes.
Now, I don’t expect people’s love of the power over others to disappear any time soon, but if the American experiment is to survive, it’s going to have to take a lesson from military culture and figure out how to convey the self-sustaining notions necessary to ensure the survival of ideas that we hold transcendent. And that right there – the acknowledgment that there are transcendent and valuable concepts, like Truth, Integrity, Freedom, Property, Individual Liberty, the Rule of Law, and a host of other “intangibles” that are necessary precursors to a truly liberal and civilized society – is the starting point for the discussion. The problem is we can’t seem to even get past that. We need to stop apologizing for past transgressions, being slaves to the guilt of multiculturalist nonsense, and lay claim to those values that are at the heart of any ethically sound society: We once did.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
What follows in that great document is a list of factual justifications for the American revolution, for the abandonment of settling the matter with words and instead resorting to force of arms, as against what was then the greatest military in history. A framed copy of that document hangs on my wall. Every now and then I like to take a look at where we are now, by comparison… It feels me with both a sense of purpose and of dread. Things do not look good to me.
For example, when I read the complaint that the King “has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance,” I can’t help but look at my paycheck and laugh…. oh wait, never mind, in light of the Covid19 lockdowns, I don’t have a paycheck! I’d like to cry, but I have my Faith to sustain me. I’ve made this point before in comments but I’ll repeat it here: Setting aside the issue of ownership of other human beings for the moment – which is evil, always and everywhere – but setting aside that aspect of Slavery, and considering that terrible institution only as a mathematical issue, slavery is a one-hundred percent marginal tax rate.” You work under the threat of the lash all week and get exactly $0.00 of what’s been done.
After digesting that, the corollary becomes clear, too: you are economically free – which is what really matters in a free society – only to the extent that you get to keep the market rate of your labor or the market rate for your property. If the government takes 50% of the fruits of your labor, you are 50% free. That is the inescapable reality of the socialization of anything and everything. Compulsory insurance? At least with cars you can choose not to drive, but now with the Justice Roberts’ abandonment of any need to protect individual liberty, the original purpose and raison d’etre of the judiciary, we are now bound by fictitious obligations to “society,” for which we must pay, and this is merely by being born in the United States because, in Justice Roberts’ world, as long as it’s called a tax, Congress can do it.
The colonists complained that the Crown “has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation” and I laugh after the recent treaty with Iran. I don’t even care about the particulars – in fact, I think we will ultimately benefit by engaging in free trade with despotic countries, both in an overall reduction in human misery and suffering, as well as a concomitant reduction in resentment and anti-American sentiment which closed countries can foment when contact with US goods, services, and – most importantly – cultural ideas, are cut off. No, my objection is how the Constitution has been stomped on by the last President, this President, and all of the previous ones in incredible acts of Executive arrogance. The Climate Change Treaty also comes to mind. In fact, the entire Executive Order makes me cringe. That skit is brilliant, and funny, though it fills me with an incredible sadness.
Our forefathers resorted to violence in response to the Stamp Act and a tax on tea and we sit idly by and watch far worse with nary a peep. Without any central government, bound only by cultural values, people of the various (and frequently fighting) Thirteen Colonies banded together in support of Massachusetts after the passage of the Intolerable Acts. Now, by comparison, we are divided into special interest groups, states with and without lockdowns, and we lobby against each other for a piece of the ever-increasing tax pie that government collects from all of us, with K street lobbyists largely determining which “more equal” pigs gets access to the federal trough.
“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent…” (Nothing need be said here, but it’s worth pointing that there was no income tax in the United States until 1913; somehow we managed to accomplish quite a bit without it).
“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury…” (U.S. citizens held without bail or trial for years in the War on Terror)
“For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments…” Covid19 lockdowns, mandatory closure of businesses, churches being fined for holding services… anyone… Bueller?
I’m not a revolutionary by heart. Hell, I’ve spent most of my life working for the federal government in some form or another, but I wonder how long this goes on for before the straw finally breaks the camel’s back. My sense of it now is that we are the proverbial frog being cooked slowly. We’re not yet cooked, but the water is getting uncomfortably hot. My contention – no, rather, my unfortunate, but unswerving, conclusion is that unless we revive our essential cultural values, the necessary soil in which individual Liberty may prosper, we will one day be worse than dead: we will be slaves by our own choosing, by vote.
Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say “what should be the reward of such sacrifices?” Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
- Samuel Adams speech at the Philadelphia State Assembly, 1 August 1776
Imagine if you can the country and culture in which such words were not merely spoken, but followed by actions that led to the independence of the colonies and the establishment of this (once great) Nation. If the total number of dead were a justification for the cessation of rights, then there would be no United States at all. Imagine if every day the colonial papers had published a running toll of the dead in every battle against the British, if instead of public advocacy for Freedom, we had public advocacy for subservience… never mind, you don’t have to imagine: it’s what we have now.
I must be one of the few people that loved the fact that we were in a hundred different places as a military brat. My dad of course never sent me to school with the Us kids but with the locals. Helps you quickly learn to speak multiple languages.
Moving around never bothered me much, though I do remember being slightly jealous of kids who all knew each other because they had grown up together. Living in Germany as a kid was cool, we lived off base, and did a ton of traveling around Europe. Still went to the base school, though.
Ozy, you put me in mind of an essay I wrote back in my blogging days: No Secession, No Legitimacy!
Sadly after my retiring, the new management nuked the comments section and replaced it with Discus, so the vigorous debate it contained, which included Steven Kinsella himself, is now lost.
In the end, I concluded that every grievance in the Declaration of Independence with only one exception(!) can be legitimately ascribed to the current federal government.
I’ll take a read, tarran. Thank you.
It’s somehow fitting that the only comment is from our old friend Kizone.
I read the article and saw that turd sandwich he left. What a douche canoe.
Thanks tarran. You did a much more thorough job than I felt like of going through all of the listed grievances. I’ve known for a while without looking that we’re way past anything the colonists would have tolerated.
FYI, the Wayback Machine still shows the original, vigorous debate in the old comments section. If The Liberty Papers’ new management cared at all, then they would have imported the old comments into Disqus.
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20090504212903/http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/05/01/no-secession-no-legitimacy/
Funny thing how successful Jefferson was with the Declaration. The great complaints weren’t with George III, but with Parliament. Of course it is much harder to personalize tyranny in that form, so he just did a bait-and-switch. And here we are, two-plus centuries later still reciting his bill of particulars.
Also, a point on military culture and when it may not be all that we like to crack it up to be.
Bureaucracy is still bureaucracy is what I get from that piece. The Pentagon isn’t “military culture.” I’ll leave it at that.
I agree that it was Parliament what did most of the abuses, but that does ignore that George III was the Head of the State. It seems to me something less than a “bait and switch.”
The tyranny of Parliament just doesn’t play near as well, even as you grudgingly admit these were “Acts” of said body. Don’t short Jefferson the credit he is due – he knew what he was doing. This was nothing like the grounds for the French Revolution. I think the point raised yesterday that these were Englishman, as Burke noted in defense of the Colonies, is crucial. It was an argument for restoration/respect of rights, being abused by the English govt (not ameliorated by it being parliamentary) that keeps it from being the more or less normal revolution. Or maybe it was just dumb luck, who can truly say.
Absolutely. They don’t have “usurpations” to complain about if it isn’t for the Great Charter and the subsequent rights of Englishmen that developed in the centuries that followed.
I wonder how things would have played out if the schmucks in Parliament had just said “let’s give the colonists a handful of seats in Parliament. We can toss them their bone and still outvote them whenever we’ve a mind to.”
That sorta did happen when they eventually dealt with the rotten boroughs, etc.
The only quibble I can think of is that, IMO, the frog is sitting in a boiling pot, wondering with his last ounce of mental energy where all the bubbles are coming from.
I meant to add that the entirety of that paragraph is spot on and the article as a whole nails it.
Listening to Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, he came up with a great line. He called what we’re going through a Cold Civil War. I agree with him that the culture war we are going through is a cold war. And for the record, I hope it never goes hot because that would be devastating. Which is why I think that it hasn’t yet. Of course the left right now has the high ground in a number of places such as academia, entertainment, and main stream news. Though the last is falling apart due to changes in communication technology. There used to be a time you couldn’t get in a fight with people who could buy ink by the barrel. Trump does it every day now. Just another reason Orangemanbad.
Personality cultists are relieved of the burden of thoughtfulness. They merely await instructions.
People have a great propensity to follow, they just need the leader. It is because it absolves them of responsibility for the group actions, since they were merely going with how they were being led. Don’t underestimate just how attractive that is to most people, and why non-conformity threatens them so.
Farging teachers and their penchant for marking down essays they don’t agree with philosophically. I failed to make cum laude because of a poor mark I got when my mini-dissertation on the Industrial Revolution included views opposed to the “they’d all have been gamboling in rose covered cottages if not for the greed of the sweatshop owners.”
The worst aspect of that is that they’ll say they’ll accept a different view if it is well argued. The problem is an undergrad or high school student isn’t going to be able to make those kinds of arguments with the level of persuasiveness needed to get a good grade. You’re better off just towing the lion and muttering under your breath.
That’s one of my chief complaints about what public education is now: it’s just about conformity of thought. Independent-minded kids are punished – severely – for their non-conformity. That’s all the modern high-school is. In that sense it’s a perfect microcosm for our broader society, I suppose.
Some people say that was the original purpose of public education. To train people to work in factories where conformity and listening to authority were important. As a nice side effect that also produces citizens more willing to defer to authority.
There are, however, people who are working hard to break up that system. Not many, but they’re out there.
That’s kind of the original Marxian critique – that schools produce the fodder of factories. This is why I don’t buy the Gramscian notion of education as demoralization – because our educational problems trace more to Dewey than any European/communist source. Once we allowed teachers colleges to become parts of universities, and the instruction of teachers to be in a discipline run by pedagogic theoreticians – you have all the mischief you need.
Dewey was an aficionado of Fichte (and Kant with his affection for duty)
Fichte (disciple of Kant) was the progenitor of the entire German educational system, which was adopted in its full form by the Nazis.
On Fichte:
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.
― H.L. Mencken
Oh wow. I hadn’t heard that one: Mencken once again delivers the goods.
I quote him just to remind myself that our modern insanities are only different in degree, not in kind.
Well done, Ozy. I like how this series is going.
I have become convinced by some of you who say our current culture is a result of us having things too easy. The acceptance of lockdowns is the ultimate result of that. We’ve had a few generations now that have been raised with “safety first, last, and above all”. Don’t take risks, and follow the rules of your benevolent leaders (parents, teachers, government) who are only looking out for your safety and well being. There aren’t many real boogymen out there, so we will invent some and protect you.
Absolutely agree with this. Having been raised to trust authority (father was career army/DOD 40+ years and has always been pro-government), I still fight with the tendency toward the need to feel “safe and protected” by police, etc. Actually, I have no idea where my *little* independent streak came from.
Current events have been stripping away more and more of the delusion of protection by big daddy guvment. I can’t be the only one being pushed in this direction, and that gives me hope.
having six kids of a pretty good spread of ages – what about the overpopulation problem? Also the all sex is rape issues?
but also because they have predictably horrible outcomes. – sounds suspiciously utilitarian
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, – except minorities wymmin and the gingers
Well that’s because gingers don’t have a soul, Pie. C’mon, you should know that!
That they put the word “all” in there may have been that they too noticed this issue.
I really enjoy your essays, Ozy, but damn if they don’t get me a little surly.
I’m not a revolutionary by heart. Hell, I’ve spent most of my life working for the federal government in some form or another, but I wonder how long this goes on for before the straw finally breaks the camel’s back. My sense of it now is that we are the proverbial frog being cooked slowly. We’re not yet cooked, but the water is getting uncomfortably hot. My contention – no, rather, my unfortunate, but unswerving, conclusion is that unless we revive our essential cultural values, the necessary soil in which individual Liberty may prosper, we will one day be worse than dead: we will be slaves by our own choosing, by vote.
Perfect.
Tundra, as bitter as I may write, I’m genuinely not. I’m certainly bothered by how both our citizenry and elected assholes have pissed away Freedom… but my travels have led me to the view of the Universe that this is all just a proving ground – training for what follows, if you will. Thus, I take this all as an opportunity, but I also know it doesn’t have to be this way, so that opportunity includes agitating for Liberty. This thought is part of a larger piece I’m still struggling to fully articulate, but I can tell you the title of it: “Government Sanctifies Nothing.”
Have you ever read Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism? That you use the word “sanctifies” is so on point to that book.
I have not. I just bought it for Kindle. I’ll let you know what I think as I move along.
I get it. Agitating for liberty, however futile, is what should drive us.
One thing that I really appreciate about you assholes is all the help in developing my arguments. I’ve successfully co-opted my kids, my brother and several friends so far. It’s fun to watch them see the world as it really is.
*drops gloves and grabs musket
I always thought you were naturally surly. :-p
Liberty is the exception, not the rule.
The default condition of humanity is penury, slavery and misery. We are just dumb animals with little hope of long term redemption.
Fermi’s Paradox seems to confirm the pointlessness of worrying about the continued existence of civilization, so you might as well just have fun.
TL;DR: Life’s a waste, let’s all get wasted.
The Fermi Paradox seems to ignore a whole bunch of science and reality. “It’s only a few million years” between planets. It completely ignores that life – human life – is tied to Earth. It evolved from it. I met an astronaut once (this guy). He told me and my companions that space travel (zero G) fucks up the human body irreparably. Which makes sense when you consider that we evolved after billions of years in 1G. Fermi’s Paradox seems to me to ignore this rather glaring fact of life.
Playing Devil’s advocate: I would think that solving that particular problem would be peanuts in comparison to solving superluminal travel.
Which would only have to ignore Einstein.
That chump?
Pffffttttt….
TL;DR: Life’s a waste, let’s all get wasted. – I usually do this but am sometimes thinking of my long term health. I don’t want to day like 2 years before eternal youth is invented.
When the Marxists couldn’t win by competing in hard truths because the truth worked against them, postmodernism sprung forth from academia, fully formed and ready to wreak havoc upon all truth and remove the opposing force’s advantage.
Michel Foucault – “It is meaningless to speak in the name of—or against—Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.”
And thanks Ozy. Well written, and it encourages me to drink on a Friday.
Oh, come on…
Be honest.
New Bill Would Give Americans $2,000 Per Month Until Coronavirus Pandemic Is Over
Yes, let’s fully remove the incentive to work from a significant portion of the populace and drive inflation at the same time.
Yeah. There’s no such thing as inflation anymore. Haven’t you read the good news?
*facepalm*
NO.
Ok, ONCE AGAIN… you could spend a fraction of that money protecting the people who are most vulnerable (i.e. people in nursing homes), let the rest of us get on with our lives, and have many fewer deaths. But let’s not let logic get in the way of remaking society.
“…they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that.”
Define “over”.
It’s over when the Democratic Socialists say it’s over.
My guess plus the 600/wk kicker they are already giving out on top of UI?
About 5000-6000 a month? Doing nothing?
I will find a way to become unemployed at this point because we are making ends meet but I would be rolling in the dough with this plan!
I have to come back to this. I got about 1/3 the way through and got really pissed.
Dreams of my father? Really?
I am calming myself down with a hog’s head cheese sandwich. Then I will make a vodka and try again.
I’ve got two new kittens crawling all over the kitchen as I write. We just got them a week ago and the fuzzy little imps do wonders for my emotional well-being. The sheer “fuck around with everything an anything” attitude makes me love them. I highly recommend having a couple around.
After digesting that, the corollary becomes clear, too: you are economically free – which is what really matters in a free society – only to the extent that you get to keep the market rate of your labor or the market rate for your property. If the government takes 50% of the fruits of your labor, you are 50% free.
On a more serious note, this is rather relative.plenty of people would take somewhat higher taxes with much lower bureaucracy and regulation.
I tend to agree, but I consider those just another form of tax. If the government said 0% income tax, but made the permits and licenses for opening a business in the thousands of dollars, would that be any better?
Worse. It would create a barrier to entry for small businesses that most would not want or try to hurdle. See Detroit.
That was exactly my intended point – which is why i say that I consider all of the various occupational licensing/credentialing to be an even worse form of taxation than a straight income tax.
this to. if you are not the right people a sum of money you can afford wont get you in
Yep. A lot of successful small businesses are created almost by accident. Barriers to entry just strangle them in the cradle.
sadly more often than not it does not take a flat payment. that would be a tax but preferable. You have to spend your time queuing on the halls of the kings men. Which is also a cost. time being money and all that. but they want to make you squirm a bit. I would prefer an honest payment and leaving it at that.
Then it appears we are all in accord! Harrumph.
We Now Have the Worst Unemployment Rate Since the Great Depression
But today’s headline figure may understate the actual extent of joblessness at the moment. In an FAQ accompanying today’s report, the BLS explained that due to a data-collection mistake, up to 8.1 million Americans may have been categorized as employed but not at work, when they likely should have been classified as unemployed or on a temporary layoff. If you factor those individuals in, the April unemployment rate would jump to about 19.5 percent, the government’s statisticians wrote. That would place us roughly in 1932–33 territory.
I asked my father last weekend what it was like to live through two great depressions. The man that always has a quick reply said nothing.
Two employees we had to lay off on 3/19 still have not received any unemployment payments.
Now explain to me this….
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/us-stock-futures-rise-slightly-after-nasdaq-composite-claws-back-2020-losses-jobs-report-ahead.html
I’m impressed with how well the big players and the Fed have manipulated the stock market over the past couple of weeks. But it will not last.
Two things:
1) Free government money – used in order to reduce liability with stock buybacks.
2) A whole lot of employees that companies wanted to fire but couldn’t because of how difficult it is can only do so with a general layoff. This greatly reduces expenses which helps the bottom line.
I think it’s more simplistic than that. The major players (with the help of the Fed) are propping up a bear market rally. It will end. I thought it would end this week, but it will end shortly. I expect a 25% to 40% drop from here.
Despite my “don’t look, don’t bother” index fund mentality, Im really tempted to lock in the short term gains and hang out in bonds for a couple months.
The local news this morning had the NJ unemployment rate at 20%. If you count all the business owners locked out their livelihoods, it’s much higher. This is a self-inflicted disaster like nothing I’ve ever imagined.
Also, all this talk of daughters, as usual I have to ask… any single?
with the usual caveat only for the green card. no icky stuff like physical contact or anything.
Yes – a number of them, Pie. My youngest biological daughter is a pretty hardcore libertarian, however. i.e. A unicorn. Middle daughter is currently volunteering at a COVID unit, so you may want to cross her off of the list.
Middle daughter is currently volunteering at a COVID unit, so you may want to cross her off of the list.
Seems harsh.
Keep in mind Pie Ozy is a Marine. Let that sink in.
These aid packages….income as long as the pandemic ends…blah blah.
It is called communism. If they couldn’t get us to vote for it they will just bribe us. Outlaw private businesses and pay everyone with phoney money
I hope y’all are all stocked up on toilet paper.
The downside of electronic banking. Not enough cash to use as toilet paper.
“Government Sanctifies Nothing.”
Nice.
Right now it’s a loose collection of disjointed, but somewhat related thoughts. I just can’t seem to connect it all into something coherent and cohesive, but I can feel it bubbling under the surface.
Put some pre-marinaded pork in the oven for dinner, I’ve dealt with all the active issues at work and have one more meeting before the weeked.
Unfortunately it’s a “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THAT NOW!” meeting.
We have to set up a new agency in our system, because they”ve decided to open an “Office of Renewable Energy Siting”… when we don’t have any money for this shit and are cutting back on the stuff that actually needs to be done.
So, destroy the economy and simultaneously switch to a completely unworkable energy system. That seems like a solid plan.
I wonder what the world will look like in ten years.
like now only with purple oceans
Like a Mad Max movie is my guess right now.
*sigh*
I’m not even sure why I’m on this meeting.
Sure, eventually my group will develop the SQL to actually do the work, but that’s later on.
At least it was short.
Thanks for the article Ozy.
I’d comment directly on the article, but I am in much too foul a mood regarding tax cattle that are waiting for their next bailout.
Another case of ammo was delivered yesterday. My wife asked if I had enough. I said, “for now”.
Buying Ammo is like that line about planting a tree: when was the best time to plant at tree? Twenty years go… but the second best time is right now.
I have them both covered
I’ve been planting trees on my proper for 15 years now. Of course, I’ve been cutting down lots of trees too. So break even I guess.
Good article. I do think this is where we are as a nation. I feel for the first time that the next generation will NOT be better off than the previous one. Not a lot of hope.
“If the government takes 50% of the fruits of your labor, you are 50% free.”<— this works in one direction but not the other. Many people don’t give to the govt at all; they are just leeches. So 0% is taken from them. But are they free? They are on the dole….
Great point, HE. Maybe I should have pointed out that the leeches are the reason we have the taxes in the first place? Without leeches – i.e. if we were a tribe of people who could all hunt and kill their own food or provide sufficient value to trade for our own – what purpose would government really serve? There’s only a few one comes up with and they really wouldn’t require much money at all to run.
Eh they will be. Always are.
The bit on slavery reminded me of the late Roman Empire as it was breaking down. The patricians were exempt from taxes as were slaves. That left the middle and working classes to be on the receiving end of crushing taxes. To the point that skilled workers were voluntarily selling themselves into slavery to escape their debts and taxes. They had decided they would rather be a slave to a patrician they trust, than a slave to the state. As governments do – root of problem was ignored and Emperor Valens just made it illegal to sell oneself into slavery. This was the foundation for medieval feudalism.
But it the end light chains and good masters is what most people want. We need to find a stargateto an earth identical but uninhabited planet. And move there to for libertopia, kidnapping then necessary amount of women off course. But some government would probably confiscate our stargate for lack of proper permit I suppose…
Another great article, Ozy – but left me feeling sad and discouraged. There are too many who want this mess.
I don’t mean for people to have that emotional reaction, though I see why when I read it. I must have been in a bit of a foul mood when I wrote this. Try to be of good cheer, RA. life is filled with miracles and magick, great and small. Knowing that Liberty is Man’s birthright and highest good can lead one to sorrow over the loss, but really, the Freedom-Smashing-Assholes (FSAs henceforth!) give us a purpose that we would otherwise not know existed. Great battles and victories aren’t won against even odds. 😉
We are lucky to have you, Ozy – thank you.
Au contraire! I’m lucky to have you all to rant to. My daughters have heard all of my schtick and my wife is tired of it, too. You guys are fresh ears for me!
Thanks for the article. It is depressing, but better to face it than to keep our heads in the sand.
In reference to a few different things in the article and the comments above:
The great crime of public education is the transition from “teaching How to think” to “teaching WHAT to think”.
And a culture based on preserving established systems at all costs will be destroyed by an inability to adapt.
I think we’re headed down that road.
And- not knowing what wealth truly is, nor how it is created, is a certain path to destruction.
We know what wealth is! It is swimming pools of gold coins hidden in the mansion, just like on Duck Tales! /indignant-proglodytes
I think that really may be the biggest chasm in education. Everyone should have to read this guy’s essay on wealth. I can’t recall how I found it, but it made a big impression on me. Might have been one of the early things I read that turned me on to “economic thinking.”
Bud Light wins appeal, can once again advertise that Miller Lite brews with corn syrup
And the appeals court was scathing in its ruling: “If Molson Coors does not like the sneering tone of Anheuser-Busch’s ads, it can mock Bud Light in return. Litigation should not be a substitute for competition in the market.”
Corn sugar is for moonshine, not beer.
Let the rice beer versus corn beer war rage!
(If those were my only choices, I’d take the corn beer)
That barley makes any sense.
You hopped on that one UnCiv.
Are you trying to ferment a rebellion?
It’s been brewing for a long time.
Let the rice beer versus corn beer war rage!
Uh, let’s go with neither.
Although maize does have its place in some fine Belgian beers.
And British.
And Kentucky Common.
And…well, you get the idea. If you are going over 10% though, you better have a good reason. 30% is right out.
Adjunct grains are just another ingredient. They all have their place.
Let’s not forget beet sugar.
I honestly can’t tell the difference.
I’m not a beer snob. I’ll definitely drink a light beer and it’s fine, as long as they are cold.
But I really don’t get how there are fans of one in particular, when they all taste the same*.
*When I drank soda, I also didn’t care if it was Coke or Pepsi.
**runs away quickly**
Yeah, it’s all just beer.
Yup. I use corn in some homebrews. MUCH smaller amounts than Miller uses.
Looking thru historical British beer recipes, corn is a common ingredient…but see above.
I am aware of a recipe from 1600 that includes split peas to increase the fermentable sugar in a strong ale.
I meant more late 19th and early 20th. Lots of shit was going in the beers way back then.
History is history.
I always enjoy the posts you bring for 19th and 20th century beers.
My focus is generally 16th century and earlier.
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2013/05/brewing-materials-at-start-of-ww-ii.html
WW2 causing a change from flaked maize to flaked rice.
+40 / Sterling Marlin
Americans are also drinking less overall, which has helped boost hard seltzer and non-alcoholic beer.
Wut.
Zoomers, brah.
And related… it’s not just the small and regional brewers getting hit with declining sales.
InBev is notoriously tight-fisted compared to the way AB used to throw money around. I wonder what they’ll cut.
Clydesdales?
They tried it once, but people protested, so they backed down.
$10 million per min Super Bowl ads?
“it’s quite easy to look at a picture of a tired doctor at the end of a long day in ICU and call him a hero for sticking out the job he gets paid to do[…]It is far more difficult for some starry-eyed, millennial opinion writer with a brand new thesaurus and a gig at The New York Times to look at a father schlepping back and forth to his office job every day and see a hero. That writer probably sees a bored man, or a defeated man, or an uninteresting man who doesn’t have an immediate impact on those around him”
https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2020/05/07/kira-davis-one-act-of-heroism-nuclear-family/
Lives of quiet desperation.
More:
“the traditional family seems to only ever be insulted and derided in pop culture these days. I suppose that is because so many of our coastal reporters and celebrities don’t have families of their own. They don’t know how to quantify the sacrifice it takes to raise a family and maintain a marriage. It just looks like a relic of a different era to them, instead of the essential foundation of a healthy and prosperous society.”
IMNSHO, you don’t have to be a SoCon to see that family structure (and I don’t necessarily mean Mom, Dad, 2.4 kids and white picket fence) creates the civil society in which liberty thrives. That’s why Commies’ #1 goal has always been to smash the family and replace it with Big Daddy. It’s also why dystopian novels almost never feature any kind of family unit.
I note in particular the line about sacrificing to maintain a marriage. More than anything else, I think that is what drives the decline of marriage. People have gotten it into their heads that they are entitled to be 100% happy 100% of the time. If your marriage isn’t perfect, then you should break it off. Along with that, a lot of people enter marriage with the notion already in their heads that, hey, if this doesn’t work out I’ll just get a divorce anyway.
When I said my vows, I meant them. I got married with a total commitment to my wife and a determination to make it work – and an understanding that there will be bumps in the road. Big bumps, sometimes. Early in our marriage, we had a few screaming matches that got heated enough that nosy neighbors called the cops on us. Another time, a few years later, she actually kicked me out like we were re-enacting The Odd Couple. There were other hiccups as well, but we’re coming up on seventeen years this summer and I would say our marriage is stronger than ever. There were so many points along the way where it would have been really easy to just say “ah, the hell with it” and walk away.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t marriages that are irretrievably broken, but in my opinion those constitute the minority of failed marriages.
This
Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
TED S IS A RUSSIAN BOT!!!1!!! CONFIRMED!!!
Fuck… the local Walgreens had on their sign, “Heroes work here.”
*barf*
Look, everyone is a Hero. And you have to recognize that or you are some kinda self-centered inividualist racist!
Orwell got the degradation of language correct, but didn’t capture the primary method for doing so… Defining down morally charged words until they lose any real meaning.
Speaking for myself, I have a feeling of deep foreboding. It has pretty much always been a realistic option to keep your head down and do more or less as you please, so long as you do it on the sly. This lockdown and the enthusiasm with which the narcs seem to be reporting those who attempt to evade it are extremely worrisome.
^^^So much fucking this.
Everyone around you, until proven otherwise, is a potential enemy.
Talk about a low trust society…..we’ve now seen glaring evidence that many of our fellow citizens will gleefully turn informer when given the opportunity.
Did you see my comment in the last thread about the SOCIAL MONITOR in the grocery store.
the guy himself didn’t seem to be a problem. What gives me a sense of dread is that someone with actual power thought it is a good idea.
Say what now?
Another Doctor gets it.
Litigation should not be a substitute for competition in the market.
We’ll see what the Roberts Court has to say about that.
Penaltax?
Great read Ozy!
I I was arguing with a local group that has formed, in sorts, with having to do education at home.
I made a statement “How am I supposed to teach my young men civics, republicanism, and the structure of our government when they are seeing the exact opposite right before their eyes? How can I, with a straight face tell them that the legislators create the law, the judiciary interprets the law and the executive executes the law?
All while out state executive has taken over all those functions without any pushback?”
Know what I got? Well its an emergency! Pandemic! You need to be safe and think of our vulnerable!
Our culture is certainly fractured.
Man has been finding ays to justify his cowardice for all of history. “Pandemic! Emergency!!” These people might as well be screaming “I’m a fucking coward!” but they can’t bear to ever consider facing that. There are people who are legitimately ill/immunocompromised who should be isolated as much as they can, but even those people have to know that they’re playing a losing game – we all are. That’s the thing no one wants to face up to. Death really doesn’t turn most people into cowards. This thing has just given people license from their “leaders” to scream and bray like cowards and be held up as heroic at the same time. It’s the ultimate emasculation of real heroism, but we’ve been headed this way in art and culture for a looonnnnng time. Fear-mongering now = courage
It goes with the cult of victimhood and the moral standing assigned with that.
Exactly. Victim is now a special legal status. I had this hammered home during my law course for Bar admission. My state was a leader in crafting a “victim bill of rights” in criminal justice. I mean no disrespect to people who suffer at the hands of a criminal; I’ve been a prosecutor and defense attorney. I have put people behind bars for lengthy terms of years and defended people charged with doing ugly things to their fellow man and woman. All the appropriate caveats aside, giving the putative victim “rights” by statute demeans the concept and devalues the person. It also logically puts the cart before the horse – until someone’s convicted, you’re only the putative victim. Why do you suddenly get “special rights” for making an accusation? It’s a fucking problem. It’s the same kind of problem that you have when you have a law that makes killing a cop a death penalty offense (yep, learned that gem in my AZ law course, too.) Normie deaths don’t count as much.
That’s why Commies’ #1 goal has always been to smash the family and replace it with Big Daddy. It’s also why dystopian novels almost never feature any kind of family unit.
Oddly enough, during my sleep mode malfunction the other night (eyes popped open at 3;17 AM) I ended up watching the last half or so of modern production of Nicholas Nickleby. At the end, when the evil uncle had been vanquished, and everyone was well on the road to Happily Ever After, the narrator comes on and gives a little speech about how good people, deprived of their happy families, create a new family to be happy with.
“I am being serious here: what is happening in the US is purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act by our leaders. Can they be held responsible under international law?[…]This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?”
https://campusreform.org/?ID=14840
This is a man who gets paid to do epidemiological research at an Ivy League institution.
Best. And. Brightest.
Tow the lion and keep your job at the epicenter of anti-Trump lunacy. Probably get a promotion.
Prove it.
What a load of shit. Evidence already suggests that the virus was here and widespread earlier than thought.
They had a plan with mitigation measures but the measures were wrong. The high school science project–on which the social distancing guidance is based–didn’t envision the infection that would be very dangerous to a specific population group but largely a nuisance to healthy people under 65. The authorities ended up implementing the plan they had when instead they should have rushed to quarantine the nursing homes.
That’s the stupidest thing about the response – we know which where a vast majority of deaths will be… But for some reason, we’re not allowed to use that knowledge to our advantage.
With every other medical issue that is hugely concentrated in one demographic, they focus on testing and prevention for that demographic. Nobody is telling men to get mammograms every five years to detect breast cancer because there’s such a low chance that a man will develop it. If a doctor advocated screening every single person for breast cancer regularly and shouted “But anyone can get it”, they’d be laughed out of the room… Yet that’s exactly what was done with the COVID response. This idea came from somewhere that every single person is at a great risk of death if we don’t lock down the whole country right this second.
I believe there is a name for that “Democide”. Such as what happened throughout the 20th century
So does that mean Andy Cuomo is going to be in the dock for fighting against keeping New Yorkers out of other states? I mean, even the NYT has reported that traveling New Yorkers are responsible for 60-65% of the cases in the rest of the country.
“Our forefathers resorted to violence in response to the Stamp Act and a tax on tea and we sit idly by and watch far worse with nary a peep. ”
As has been pointed out here many times we don’t rise up because of how incredibly destructive it would be. People have too much to lose; property, money, families and careers.
If the lockdown continues much longer that will change very quickly. The idiot shitweasels dont see that. Look at Nancy and her ‘let ’em eat cake’ moment. I have never seen a more glaring example of someone out of touch. Still her arrogance is such that even if she realized what she has done she would not care.
The future does not look so bright.
Counter: the primary people who put stuff on the line in the Revolution were the ones who had a lot to lose: property, money, family, and careers.
If England had granted a few spots in parliament to the colonies, Adams probably would have been representing MA.
They had a lot to lose and were about to.
Yeah, I think this is a good point. One of the geniuses of some of the revolutionary leaders was their ability to convince people further down the economic scale that their property was also at risk (I’m working on a piece that touches on this). The problem right now is that the assaults on liberty are being conducted hand-in-hand with giving out goodies to a lot of people. That is, “the government is limiting rights to assemble, own guns, speak publicly. BUT, I’m not personally invested in those rights. AND, they’re giving me money so I can keep my house, et al.”
You’re talking about a woman who comes from a long line of corrupt politicians that managed the downfall of one of America’s most important cities.
What is it Scott Adams said about America being two audiences watching the same thing and seeing two different movies? There are people where I work–which is largely Progressive government employees, particularly university employees, so consider the source–who are convinced that people driving to the beach this weekend in defiance of the governor’s requirement that you only go to a beach if it’s in your county of residence will live to regret it, as their stupid, anti-science, selfish behavior WILL RESULT in the death of one or more of their family members. And I mean these people genuinely believe that.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people I know outside of work who are done with the kabuki theater. They’ve lost pay, money’s tight, or they’re just sick of being told where they can go and what they can do by the government. We’re not talking about armed revolt, but these are people who to varying degrees see the lockdown as at least something that has gone on long enough and at most a grievous abuse of power that served no good purpose to begin with.
It’s easier to be an idiot when you’re fat and happy, I think. Unfortunately, not everyone works for the state, so some heads will roll soon based on how long, how harshly, and how eagerly governors jumped on the lockdown wagon. Personally, I’d love to see every government employee who recommended the lockdown policy sued for all wages they received during the lockdown period.
Exactly this. If you supported the lockdown you forfeit any pay you received during the lockdown. Already spent? Tough shit, cough it up.
I honestly think where I am in Texas would’ve started buckling soon if they hadn’t begun opening things up in steps each week. You heard about the hair salon woman, of course, but we can see tangible steps of opening each week. It’s something to chew on now at least.
Don’t Tread on Colleyville !
This is so on point and I couldn’t agree more. Culture is the foundation and the destiny of a society. And education of one form or another is the transmission of culture, which is why it’s so important to reclaim it from the statists, Progressives and otherwise. It’s like a back door right into the mind. Children (and adults, in some cases) are sent defenseless into an environment primed to accept ideas from an authority holding cultural cachet that defends him or her from criticism. It’s nothing short of brainwashing, or maybe indoctrination in polite company. Our current political state is a direct result of educational institutions being taken over by leftists and Progressives in the previous century.
Look at Nancy and her ‘let ’em eat cake’ moment. I have never seen a more glaring example of someone out of touch. Still her arrogance is such that even if she realized what she has done she would not care.
I wonder how much she spends on those scarves she covers her face with. I probably never paid as much for a car as she pays for those.
I wish someone would throw a bucket of water on her.
You have got to be shitting me.
Heh. Kinda reminds me of the time, two autumns ago, when the spousal unit and I were on a train from Paris to Barcelona (with numerous interruptions along the route, precipitated by an unGodly amount of rain in southern France/northern Spain, and amplified by the incompetence of each country’s national train system), where I glanced over at a young couple with baby in tow, and noticed that the man (who looked like a caricature of a soyboy) was reading a copy of “Thanks, Obama.” My eyes rolled so far up, I almost (as SP says) saw my own brain.
Heh. I read this on the Eurostar to Paris a couple years ago at the behest of a commenter for an article where I poked fun at the Scots. https://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997
Three English businessmen were across the row from me and asked how the Scots Invented the modern world.
“Mostly by coming up with ideas the English co-opted and moving to America.”
Actually I do believe it. My sister and I got into a spat once about charter schools and she mentioned two books she had to read for her class (at a well-regarded public HS in Scottsdale). She was all, “I know what I’m talking about.” One arguing in favor of charter schools, the other against. Since she claimed to do well on the assignment I asked her what were the books.
She couldn’t remember the title or author of the former. Nor was she happy I implied she didn’t read the book and came to the “correct” conclusion in the assignment given it was at a public school.
My stepson was pissed off when he had to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” when he was in 8th grade.
We had taught him well enough to know it was BS and that making kids watch was a political ploy and definitely BS.
100% true story. I was apoplectic. My two teenage daughters begged me not to go down to the school and raise hell.
My ex-wife heard and even called me up. “hey, the girls were talking to me… please don’t go down to the school over the book report thing.”
Never apologize….
Wait, I thought the rule was that it’s better to ask forgiveness than ask permission?
Apoplectic. D’oh!
Whatever. I’m not apologizing.
I like this. A couple comments/quibbles/what-have-you.
To have a sitting elected official’s bullshit personal Prop-O piece front and center in the curriculum before children-who-are-about-to-become-voters is tantamount to putting cigarette machines in elementary school cafeterias and hallways.
I think all schools should be private, in which case putting propaganda in front of students and having cigarette machines in the cafeteria is up to parents.
I like that your daughter critically analyzed Obama’s work. I don’t like that she paid a harsh price for it.
If I had kids, they would either be homeschooled or go to private school. I actually would want them to be exposed to these bits of propaganda so that they can learn to analyze, criticize, and respond to them. One should know one’s enemies.
For the cigarette machines, well, I’d make sure they know the risks and make sure they’re only using their own money on them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, hard to enforce the latter.
or even in the esthetic we have for beauty, between a fit woman or the dysmorphia of models.
Needs more pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I can go to reddit and look at (some are NSFW BTW) r/fitgirls, r/fitandnatural, r/ohlympics, r/fitwomengifs, or r/workoutgonewild (note: This subreddit includes men too. Those who like looking at men might like this subreddit, but I’m a clueless straight guy) for pictures, but I was hopeful for some pictures in that linked article. I watched bits of the video, and I cringed at a cat-back deadlift at about the 3 minute mark. You’ll end up like me if you keep that up.
A framed copy of that document hangs on my wall.
Same here.
I wonder how long this goes on for before the straw finally breaks the camel’s back.
I wonder too and I’m worried about how it will shake out.
I was thinking a bit today about the reopen rallies. I think in the short-term they won’t amount to much. The governors might throw a bone or two to the protestors, but the governors will continue on doing what they’re doing. If the rally organizers are smart, they’ll use this opportunity as a way to organize a response for the long-term. Think of what IJ did in response to the Kelo case. They lost the case, but started their “Hands Off Our Homes” campaign. The campaign had some losses, but it had some victories too. If the rally organizers are smart, they’ll take a hint from IJ and use these rallies for long-term change.
Everyone should have to read this guy’s essay on wealth.
I printed it, for later. Thanks, ozy.
I love you and would like to join your luau party sir.
I wish someone would throw a bucket of water on her.
Like this?
That is what I was alluding to, yes.
Fuck… the local Walgreens had on their sign, “Heroes work here.”
When everyone’s a hero, no one’s a hero.
My heroic sisters (both NP’s) are heroically sitting at home because for some reason the patients they’d normally see are afraid to go to the doctor/hospital.
Equity at last!
Only heroes posting here on this family friendly site.
I firmly believe that a crippling fear of death is a chicken-and-egg component of our “please keep me safe, daddy government” culture. Death SHOULD be feared … but not to the point that one believes (or desperately hopes) it can be avoided if government throws enough money at the causes of death.
I’ve read a bit about Buddhism, and found that a paralyzing fear of death is a Western thing. In many Asian cultures (here we go with culture again), they think it’s odd that we pretend like we’re never going to die, and act surprised when it happens. If there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that none of us are getting out of this alive.
Seneca said something like, “Why fear death? You’ve been marching towards your death since the day you were born.”
Reading that dude (and Marcus Aurelius, too) has given me a much greater sense of peace in my life.
Part of being a mature adult is measuring risk and accepting that nothing in life is risk-free. I don’t know when it became admirable to believe otherwise, but it’s a damaging mindset to think that you can bubblewrap everything in life.
Many supposedly well educated people I know seem to have no concept of statistics or risk management. So when I tell them that fewer Americans have died through April 2020 than did in the first 4 months of 2019, they are amazed – as if thousands of people a day don’t regularly die in a country of 330,000,000.
They also have no idea how to view risks. Not the likelihood of something bad happening, nor the ways to mitigate, avoid, transfer, or accept risk. I’d suggest teaching it in school but the government schools would use it further their efforts to turn everyone into cowering morons.
I work in financial risk management. One of the first things I learned in the field is that the point isn’t to eliminate risk, but to make sure it’s measured, understood and controlled.
Death should be feared. But never so much that one is afraid to live.
I am nervously eyeing my 401k. Will it be there when I retire, or will the government confiscate it and redistribute it more equitably?
Because that is how you get a revolution.
I am seriously thinking of cashing out and buying land in the middle of nowhere. I wish that was a joke.
Yeah, you’re not the only one thinking that.
I feel ya. Yesterday I was thinking about some medium and long term spending/savings plans, and a little defeated voice in my head said “Why bother? This will be gone and you will work until you die.”
I never think things like that, but there it was. And my reaction other than mild surprise was apathy.
It’s hard to be part of a society whose values are so antithetical to one’s own.
Yep – If it was 1840, I would be saving up for a covered wagon and a team of horses.
I believe Pelosi floated that idea back in 2008. Government seizes the value of the 401K/IRA and issues an IOU to the holder, effectively making you use it to buy Treasuries.
I about flipped back then.
Argentina has a habit of doing it to their populace, yet they never seem to learn.
What I do expect to happen is that they will come up with an idea that nibbles at the extremes of retirement accounts, but that will blossom into much further ranging taxes.
And the income tax will only be used to take money from the top 1 percent!
Uh-huh. Seriously paranoid about that account…that’s voluntary savings!!
The evil lefties have chanted to the poor for ages that only the rich fat cats have 401k or IRA, so the poorer feel abused.
The lefties hate it when dem voters find out that they can open an IRA too.
I’ve got a 401K.
Brilliant essay. Thank you.
‘you are economically free – which is what really matters in a free society – only to the extent that you get to keep the market rate of your labor or the market rate for your property. If the government takes 50% of the fruits of your labor, you are 50% free.’
If you like your government-run farm subsidies, you can keep your government-run farm subsidies, as long as it is voluntarily paid for. Give to government, not ‘takes’.
Donation not taxation.
‘Imagine if you can the country and culture in which such words were not merely spoken, but followed by actions that led to the independence of the colonies and the establishment of this (once great) Nation. If the total number of dead were a justification for the cessation of rights, then there would be no United States at all. Imagine if every day the colonial papers had published a running toll of the dead in every battle against the British, if instead of public advocacy for Freedom, we had public advocacy for subservience… never mind, you don’t have to imagine: it’s what we have now.’
‘The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger–but recognize the opportunity.’ — John F. Kennedy
‘No, what is unprecedented about the current crisis has little to do with the novel coronavirus itself. What is unprecedented about this crisis is that the human race has changed. So much so that lessons drawn from past plagues are of little use in the current crisis.’ — Quentin du Plessis
How restore culture?
The same way it was built in the first place. Seriously. Culture does not come out of nowhere, it takes persons (not people) making values real and active. In one sense culture is continuous — we’re never without one (not that it is or ever has been unitary). Culture changes, and it changes through the acts of individual persons, who may or may not be acting in concert. Tipping points arise when a ‘sufficiently large’ number of persons enact and embrace values not previously held broadly within a culture. Sometimes cultures fracture and fragment, sometimes they don’t, but they always change over time.
I’m trying to put together an article on this, as this hasty reply, in a dying thread no less, are hardly adequate.
Ozymandias, your above is welcome relief from everything else heard and read today.