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…
Category: Free speech
Grubby work continues around Ye Olde Homestead and I cannot yet face returning to the “our job” series. I hope you enjoy this somewhat random, mostly occasionally “lite” post in the meantime. My reluctance to return to Serious Blogging is partly because the next episodes are planned to cover ideas for building alternative justice systems and nobody can build a great justice system, anywhere, at any time. Because justice systems, however noble their intent, nearly always involve both coercion and unhappy (for somebody) outcomes. But my reluctance to return is in part because events are moving so fast that the…
I’m quite determined not to write a part III-c(5)(xyz) of this series, so I plan to give as good a brass-tacks overview of alt-communications potential as I can in this one post. I’m sorry to disappoint you who expect detail, but that would literally require a book. Hopefully I can provide a framework and a few good links on where future privacy tech might go. But this is an area where you of the Commentariat can fill in where I have to skim. H/Ts in advance to S, CX, the blog Commentariat, and the members of the Living Freedom Forums.…
Once again I’m breaking a long, detailed screed into a two parter. I really have to stop splitting multi-part series into multi-part mini-series. But not just yet. —– Many years ago I got a mocking write-up in one of the big national tabloids for suggesting that someday freedom lovers seeking private communications might resort to carrier pigeons. I’d made the remark only in passing (in a book chapter having to do with many alternate forms of covert communications, from modern adaptations of hobo sign to dead drops). But apparently I’d managed to come up with an idea so ridiculous that…
Note: I would be very glad to have experienced health-care workers jump into comments with any additions, corrections (however savage), reality checks, bright ideas, personal insights, or other forms of enlightenment. —– One thing about the hardest systems to route around: Being HARD, lacking flexibility, they develop a lot of cracks. Take a look at any heavily institutionalized or subsidized medical system. I’ll use the U.S. system because the U.S. is home-not-so-sweet-home. But despite the claims that various socialized systems (e.g. Canada’s and the UK’s) are inherently better, many of the same or equally awful drawbacks apply to them. We…
Politics is downstream from culture. — Andrew Breitbart Culture is downstream from character. — Me —– Last week I wrote that an important job ahead of us is to build parallel systems, and even parallel societies. We need these to sustain ourselves and sustain freedom as utterly corrupted, immoral, self-serving government and corporatist systems crumble. I promised a series on that. Here it begins. As with my earlier series, “In Praise of Men” (which ended up running to seven segments), it seems best to lay some groundwork. My premises for everything that follows … follow. —– 1. Alternate systems are…
This will be brief. I have company this week. Though my guest and I have brainstormed through a world of perils and generated vast amounts of blog fodder, I planned to wait until next week, then begin a new multi-part series on bringing down totalitarianism. A moment has come up this afternoon, so here’s a beginning. First, please take a cruise though these links that I’ve been collecting in preparation for the upcoming series, most especially the last in the list. Adaptive Curmudgeon sums up everything that needs saying about the obnoxious, unconscionable, cruel, inciting, totalitarian, and exceedingly dangerous speech…
There’s a strange paradox at the heart of our unique and growing totalitarianism. On one hand, our ruling classes are as putrescent as any powdered princeling from France’s ancien regime. They have been for a very long time. Marie Antoinette may never have said, “Let them eat cake” when informed the deplorable masses had no bread. But today public and “private” figures like “let them eat ice cream” Pelosi, “take your jabs and pay no attention to my depopulation dreams” Gates, and “fighting climate change by blasting hydrocarbons from my private jet” Kerry are an undeniable fact of our lives.…
Continue readingDealing with our new totalitarian reality, part II</br>(We have just two jobs to do)
There’s one thing you can say for totalitarianism: the coolest people will all be Outlaws. They’ll import and export goods without government controls. They’ll provide free-market services. They’ll operate free communication networks. They’ll make unregulated products and sell them in unregulated ways. They’ll barter, use cash, use gold or silver, develop and use new forms of cryptocurrencies. It’ll be just like Libertopia. Except, you know, with the ever-present threat of death or long, harsh imprisonment. But that’s what Outlaws are about. Since totalitarianism is the direction we’re going, hey we might as well enjoy a few silver linings. —– I…
If you’re going through hell, keep going. –Winston Churchill —– We hardly need Arnold Schwartzenegger to tell us our freedom is screwed. As determined as we freedomistas may be to uphold our mental and philosophical freedoms, our political freedoms and economic freedoms are gone-gone-gone. They’ve been going for decades of course. But we now live under a regime that in eight months has ruled via a combination of ever-shifting whim, diktat, incompetence, and a complete disregard for reason, principle, or constitutional law. When you’re ruled by capricious madmen, your external freedoms are moot. Here today, gone tomorrow, partially restored for…