One October day in 1844, thousands of followers of William Miller awaited the return of Jesus in glory and their own glorious ascension to heaven. The non-event that followed became known as The Great Disappointment. It didn’t help that the whole non-believing world was laughing their asses off while the devastated Millerites grieved and tried to recoup. You’d think something called The Great Disappointment would have been the end of the Millerite cult. But only if you underestimate the self-justifying irrationality of human beings. Sure, some walked away. But many who walked simply became True Believers in a different sect…
19 CommentsMonth: November 2021
Comments on last week’s blog got me down. Between the vociferous guy who wanted the rest of us to start shooting (but who himself was best at standing on the sidelines verbally sniping) and the vociferous guy who complained that our brave, newfound allies in resisting government diktats weren’t philosophically pure enough for him, I despaired. Oh, as always there were also great comments — and a lot of them. But it’s like when your day goes 90% wonderful but is 10% overrun by a**holes … well, in that case it’s 100% overrun by a**holes. You don’t go home from…
31 CommentsI’m pausing the “Our job” series to talk about what’s going on now, which is so bad it might become good. —– When you thought about your line in the sand I’ll bet you never thought about this. I bet you thought about gun confiscation or internment camps or invasion by blue-helmeted “peacekeepers.” Maybe you believed your line in the sand would be reached if your religion was outlawed or your son or daughter was drafted to fight in one of the empire’s future foreign wars. Your personal line in the sand could be any one, or two, or three…
50 CommentsFor this post, I owe everything to the fine people of The Living Freedom Forums, including TLF (especially), CX, S, BSC, ATX, TB, and RJT. I was struggling to start this segment of the series because I was stuck in the forms of justice (juries or no juries, formal or customary, tribal or institutional, adversarial or based on mediation, etc.). Forum members immediately changed the subject to principles of justice. They were right and their contributions broke the logjam in my brain. —– “Rightful Liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal…
45 Comments