According to James Poulos: So today it may be said that no popular movement has successfully, substantially reduced the size and scope of government power in America. There have been blips. Speed limits went up! We ended welfare as we know it! And today more Americans than ever adopt servile assumptions toward their relationship with government, and the institutions necessary to serve such a people weave inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. … Unless something big changes, we will continue to scramble. Confronted with the rule of fear in our private and public lives, our pop psychology gave up…
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
This judge wins the Ultra-Statist of the Week prize for excusing the NSA while kicking Snowden. I’ve been asking myself this question, too. When will insurance companies say, “Enough’s enough!”? We need more judges like Donald Beatty. (H/T Hobbit) Going “offshore” … in South Dakota. A sign of the times? And another sign of the times. Great one! College shooting ranges are on the rise. (Tip o’ hat to L.A.) The president of Uruguay. No matter what else you may think of him (or not think of him, since I’m guessing you spend a very, very small portion of your…
It’s that time of year again. And the question is (actually questions are) Are you making new year’s resolutions this time around? If yes, care to post your top resolutions in comments? If you don’t make resolutions, why not? —– Personally, I do make them, though not necessarily at the appointed and dictated time. I’ve done birthday resolutions, October resolutions, and yeah, occasionally even the new year’s kind. This year I’m going with new year. I think resolutions — just another word for goals — are important in the cause of being the boss of your ownself. It doesn’t even…
Thank you all for being here and making this blog a great place to hang out! So here are some singing dogs (and friends). (H/T Brian Wilson) And here’s the lovely story of a young woman who reached out from beyond her death to send Christmas wishes to her husband and his new wife. (Have a hankie ready.)
We haven’t had a good, solid think piece around here for a while. I’m working on a small one that I hope to blog between now and the end of the year. Then this morning, David Gross dropped this great one into my email box. This is long, but seriously worth reading (as is the essay on which it’s based). Gross does a contemporary riff on Vaclav Havel’s 1978 essay on dissidents (of which Havel was a notable example): “The Power of the Powerless.”
… and that 3D printing technology and the people developing it are creating miracles for the masses: Little girl with no fingers on one hand gets a 3D-printed prosthetic made by high school students. And a bottle of pink nail polish for her new digits, to boot. Sometimes the world — especially the central-control-freak part of the world — seems so bleak and black and freaking DOOOOMED. But oh, the wonders individuals can still produce!
Commonsense about polygamy is finally appearing in the mainstream. (No, I don’t think government should be involved, but otherwise, this is good stuff.) If you want to live innovatively off-grid, maybe it’s best not to do it in a city. Or at least not to talk about it if you do. (H/T H.) That Texas “affluenza” brat who killed four people and turned one of his friends into a vegetable may not have to pay any consequences for his actions. But his parents might. The courts might never stop the NSA’s outrages (despite hopeful rulings to the contrary). Congress? They…
Something amazing happened this morning. If you read Joel’s blog you already know about it. The people who did it don’t want their names published. I know who they are, though. They’re long-time readers and supporters of this blog. Long-time encouragers of me. And now big-time heroes to Joel. And what they did for Joel is simply typical of what they do. I know of many more acts of kindness on their part, some in the freedomista world, some not. They are people who give of themselves, as well as giving of their hard-earned resources. And hard-earned is the word.…
By Bill Whittle. As everybody else in the gunblogosphere and the freedomistablogosphere is urging this morning, read it.
Since I’ve done my share of ripping into thug cops, it always seems fair to give the better ones a tip o’ the hat. And this tale — from a freedomista’s wary daughter — is pretty cute. Her dad writes: So my daughter S. moved away from home at the beginning of November. She graduated from a medical arts program in June, and Florida seemed like a good place to be. My mother-in-law lives there in a [huge community almost entirely made up of seniors]. We packed up the car and my wife took S. to FL to stay with…