- Discrimination is a right. And a natural aspect of being a free, thinking human.
- Amazon and friends beat back the new employee head tax that Seattle had just unanimously passed.
- Pain plus reflection equals growth.
- Alan Dershowitz on the final nail in the ACLU’s coffin The group was never as neutral as he claims, but it defended rights; now it defends only lefts.
- Movie director’s Tesla spontaneously combusts.
- Why have a backyard pool when you could have a backyard beach?
- Per jc2k in comments: Little yorkie stays all night with lost toddler and alerts searchers in the morning. (Damn, searching in a cornfield would be hard — like searching in a jungle of knives.)
- Cat owners! Tell your kitties just say no to catnip!
Catnip = kitty weed! 🙂
OK, I (& a group I led) was a long time ago represented by the ACLU pro bono, it was a civil rights type case against a state concerning their laws on petitioning or how they were using them to denied rights.
The ACLU has changed for sure for the worst over time as has the NAACP, NRA, GOP, Democratic party, AMA, etc.
You name it; many of our institution have lost their way. Many don’t do what they did and now do what they didn’t. Sad and a sign of the times I’m afraid.
It’s a reflection of how those with their own agenda’s have wormed their way into control of so many organizations.
Trump wants to build a Berlin Wall-style barricade on the U.S. border, and hopes to convince the world that fleeing to the U.S. in the hopes of finding freedom here is a fool’s errand that will lead to thugs ripping your family apart, and meanwhile is playing favorites in the economy in a way that would seem unsubtle and exaggerated in an Ayn Rand villain, while his #MAGA faction have created a bizarre authoritarian cult of personality who will turn on a dime and praise Kim Jong Un if that’s what the daily newspeak tells them to do. The Republican party controls all three branches of the federal government and is going along with all this because.
I turn to Living Freedom for some relief, and, *increasingly* what I get is a double-helping of bash-the-libs culture-war baloney about how awful it must be to have to compete with transgender student athletes and why the real problem with racism is that negroes can’t stop complaining about it.
What the hell happened around here? When did the freedomistas slip beyond the veil into that weird bizarro-land bubble world? Is there anything I can do to bring you back to reality?
Yes, discrimination is a natural human right.
I used to defend the ACLU to my “conservative” family members, but it’s been a long time since they did something heroic.
I love giving catnip to my cats. I don’t always have cats who respond to it, but it’s so fun when they do.
Hark Less,
You seem to have missed that people hereabouts tend not to be fond of either “right” or “left.”
If you have the impression that I like Trump, you’re wrong. I’ve decried his trade wars, his cronyism, his vulgarity, his failure to rein in the drug war, his appointments of old familiar DC neocons, etc. And yes, his Berlin-style wall, too.
I do, however, think the left has completely lost its mind, while Trump and friends are just typical right-wing protectionists. Insanity is more interesting than just another variation on business as usual.
If you feel this blog needs a different slant, I welcome you to become more active in comments to add that slant.
[…] From the Living Freedom Blog: Monday links […]
Hark Less, it isn’t really either/or. Lots of folks who disagree with most of Trump’s more interesting ideas voted for him because they considered Clinton more dangerous. Many still do.
When Dershowitz says, “America has always thrived at the center and has always suffered when extremes gain power” he’s bought into the idea that politics is a balance between liberal and conservative. Today’s liberals and conservatives are both on the same side; that government needs to control everything. (See the War on Drugs.)
Down here in Texas, Republicans are writing a plank into their platform* that basically calls for outlawing abortion, and then thumbing their nose at Congress and the Supreme Court. And they truly believe that the people of Texas will rise up in their support. Which is insane.
As for Living Freedom, you’re seeing more comments on liberals because they’re the ones, right now, who are chanting loudest.
* Yes, I know just how relevant party platforms actually are.
Lots of folks who disagree with most of Trump’s more interesting ideas voted for him because they considered Clinton more dangerous. …
Today’s liberals and conservatives are both on the same side; that government needs to control everything.
+1
And despite many of Trump’s actions being appalling, IMHO the current incarnation of the left is still more dangerous — much more dangerous. They’re trying to force us into Orwellian changes of language and culture, as well as Marxian economics. They’re telling us if we don’t think exactly as they want us to think, we’re evil. They’re telling us if we have the “wrong” skin color or we’re the “wrong” sex we’re permanently guilty and we owe them something that we’ll never be able to repay (because we’re “wrong” from birth).
Nothing Trump’s done is on that level. Even his wall is most likely to turn out to be not much more than an expensive (and highly penetrable) boondoggle.
Link from McElroy yesterday irt Head Tax :
http://reason.com/blog/2018/06/15/after-seattle-ditches-amazon-tax-silicon#comment
The info is interesting, the Comments are enlightening. “Taxation is Theft” is poo-poo’d when affecting the little people – but “Taxation is Job Killing” when applied to mega employers.
What a strange world we live in.
“… the left is still more dangerous — much more dangerous. They’re trying to force us into Orwellian changes of language and culture, as well as Marxian economics. They’re telling us if we don’t think exactly as they want us to think, we’re evil. They’re telling us if we have the “wrong” skin color or we’re the “wrong” sex we’re permanently guilty and we owe them something that we’ll never be able to repay (because we’re “wrong” from birth).”
Agreed on all points, Claire. However, I respectfully submit that an hour or two browsing the more unabashedly Trumpkin corners of the internet- the General Discussion forum on gunbroker.com would be an informative beginning, or the comments section on thetruthaboutguns.com- will rapidly disabuse you of the notion that the Right is any different. They desire the same movements, just in opposite directions. When they talk about “the wall,” it’s mostly to lament the lack of minefields. Their idea of border security is a free-fire zone extending several thousand meters into Mexico proper, with public tables set up so that patriotic Americans can bring their own guns to shoot any man, woman, or child they see, on the basis that any Mexican approaching within say 3km of the border clearly intends to cross it. They’re quite explicit about this. Nits make lice, after all. They’re divided on whether people failing to observe proper obesiance to Police, Military, The Flag, The Anthem and The Donald should be expropriated and expelled from the country or simply executed out of hand. A large number openly and explicitly call for a period of American Fascism, during which all undesirable elements- and libertarians, atheists, and pot smokers explicitly qualify- will be removed from the country, whether vertically or (ideally) horozontally. They are every bit as bloodthirsty and hateful as the Pecksniff/AntiFA crowd, but much more willing to follow through when things turn red and sticky. They are not, at the moment, overtly violent, due to the desire of reactionary conservatives to have zum ordahrz to vollow. However, the minute some Nehemiah Scudder or the like tells them Jesus and Donald Trump say that it’s time to get into the streets and Do Something About Those People, they intend to. The dillitante left gets their jollies from being seen as dangerous, and they’re willing to actually be pretty damned vicious in pursuit of that image. The dillitante right gets their jollies on waiting for The Day, and if that day ever comes they have intentions which make Beria or Yezhov smile in Hell.
My folks ran a gunshop, where I worked for several years. I’ve heard the way these people talk when they think everyone in the room agrees. They want every Muslim in the world stone dead. They want any unrepentant, unconverted homosexual or bisexual stone dead. They want “the ‘groids” to shut up, look down, and git back to pickin’ beans. They want all of us “liberaltarians” locked up, shut up, or dead- along with anyone else insufficiently committed to the many flavours of nationalised idolatry. Many of them are violently anti-Semitic as well, though this is less well-represented online, where mods will sometimes come down hard on Jew-baiting. Waxing rhapsodic about massacreing “mudslimes,” “wogs,” “muzloons,” “kneegars,” “dotheads,” and “wetbacks,” on the other hand, is just another Tuesday.
Just because they’re currently not as blatant or strident as the social-justice Left doesn’t make them any less dangerous. A large portion of these people are one “order” away from an Einzatzkommando.
Methinks the bigger point here ain’t a them or us point but that the point is; it is a them or them point?
Each side left and right today takes a criticism towards themselves as a support of the other side however both sides have their wrongs and those wrongs should be pointed out and to point out that wrong really doesn’t have anything to do with the wrongs of the other.
I have found on this blog criticism of both sides, I know that to be true because I have done it and will continue to do it.
BTW I am on neither side, I’m on my side. Now tell me; is that a libertarian point of view? But if it isn’t, guess what, I don’t care.
“A large portion of these people are one “order” away from an Einzatzkommando.”
I don’t doubt that at all. But even with Trump in office, that order isn’t coming and the people you describe have scant influence.
The crazy, bigoted ideas of the “left,” OTOH, determine who gets into college and what they’re taught there, what news is “acceptable,” who’s allowed to post on social media, whether people are allowed to keep their jobs — or get jobs in the first place. Crazy views influence how children are taught to view themselves and their sexuality, what books get published, what speakers are “allowed” on campuses, who is believed in he-said/she-said encounters, and more.
In other words, leftist fantasies, Orwellian speech, and general narrow-mindedness are reshaping society from top to bottom. The trollish creeps you describe are throwbacks.
Comrade X — Amen, Bruthah!
Again, agreed on all counts. My point, I suppose, is that we must not get so distracted by the wolf at our door that we ignore the viper in the toilet. The viper isn’t dangerous except in certain circumstamces; it doesn’t care about our food or influence; but it will kill us horribly if we’re not careful.
“I am not altogether on anyone’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side; but I am no friend of these tree-killing earth-ripping barærarürum and their masters.”
–Treebeard
And I agree on all counts with you — and Treebeard.