And so our “awkward stage” continues. The awkward stage is that excruciatingly, endlessly frustrating phase in which tyranny, brutality, and bigotry against freedom grow ever more oppressive but the oppressed feel powerless to act effectively on a large scale. Moral though it may be to string lawless, dictatorial rulers up on lamp posts, it isn’t what good people do — at least not until provocations and deprivations exceed endurance. Yet without effective options, we good people find ourselves ever more bound and restricted. In the 25 years since I opened 101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution with my infamous…
19 CommentsCategory: Practical Freedom
A broad category of things we can do, or things others are doing, to increase personal freedom
I’m working on the next blogosaurus. The topic will be the symbiosis in hard times between those freedomistas who retreat (Galt’s Gulch style, monastic-style, solo, or within everyday communities) and those who fight. Their relationship may not be easy or even always mutually respectful, but it is symbiotic — and necessary. Meanwhile, I had company for a week and my houseguest courteously brought unseasonably warm and dry weather. We brainstormed this topic one morning and I paused for an hour that day to make notes. But mostly this was the background to the week’s intellectual labors: All we lacked was…
9 CommentsIf you’re hidden and submerged stay that way. Look at it this way: if the people who hid Jews in their attics had come out early to defend them, they too would be in the camps and unable to help. We’re already past the point where “a brave stand” will help. The left knows they’re losing. They can’t understand why, but they know they’re losing, and they’re angry and murderous because of it. And they won’t let go, until it all explodes in their faces. So if you are hidden, stay thus, and get ready to hide people in your…
15 CommentsPrevious posts: Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI —– Men are aggressive, predatory, competitive, rough, sex-obsessed, unruly, stymied by complex emotions, self-important, prone to violence, and domineering. Does that apply to all men? Hell no. As I said early on in this series, I’m going to make a lot of general statements. Generally, historically and biologically, the above statements are true. Your mileage — or your husband’s, son’s, nephew’s, father’s or best friend’s — may vary. But these messy traits are part of the human male character — along with loyalty, focus, protectiveness, assertiveness, directness, courage, physical strength, logic,…
25 CommentsWe’ve been watching freedom be throttled, stomped, and shoved off a cliff for most of our lifetimes. I hardly need mention that the downward plunge has accelerated in the last year and especially the last few weeks. The murder of freedom has been a boon for oligarchs, plutocrats, useful idiots, fans of Marx and Gramsci, co-opters of the name of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, and thousands of pathetic over-schooled conformist nobodies in online mobs who could never gain so much power over others through brains or hard work (who are currently enjoying their brief ascendency, not realizing the Jacobins will…
34 CommentsThe news is dire, depressing, infuriating, terrifying, ominous, twisted, biased, and generally panic-inducing. As always. Okay, it’s more than usually ominous lately, what with the country rather suddenly being ruled by a coalition of pandering post-Alzheimers proponents of the old order and a whole new class of juvenile Masters of the Universe. The flick-of-a-switch “disappearing” of Parler and our then-present president from the ‘Net finally rattled us in a way that previous censorship, deplatforming, demonetizing, Twitter mobs, and disappearances of lesser ‘Net operations could not. Scary, scary, scary, scary, scary. BUT. Have you noticed that activist ‘Netizens (that good old…
48 CommentsParts I, II, and III here. —– “To be a good man is to struggle every day.” So says my good male friend “Tex.” Earlier in my life, I might have responded (thinking about the struggles of my own sex such as pregnancy, childbirth, the aptly named “curse,” lower status, household drudgery, learned helplessness, and endless restrictions), “You think you struggle? You ain’t seen nothin’!” For sure, both sexes and all genders have their burdens. And none should go flaunting the superiority of their sufferings over others’. Ultimately, we’re all in this difficult sentient-mammalian life together. Dividing into hostile camps…
8 CommentsI’m sorry for going so long without posting. I didn’t intend to, but for weeks every time I’ve thought of blogging, I’ve been overwhelmed with disgust. If my disgust were only about politics and the current woeful state of the world, I’d blog my way through that. That’s mere business as usual. Politics and its attendant idiocies, however, are only a minor component of the bile that rises in my soul. The much larger component of my disgust continues to be triggered by the depleted and degraded state of freedom in the minds of so many who ought to be…
27 CommentsThe “left” wants somehow to unite us all behind ideas that are inherently divisive. (“My life matters more than your life,” “I belong to more victim classes than you do,” and “If you don’t think exactly what I happen to think today, you’re evil and should die.”) A growing faction on the “right” (including, apparently, former quasi-pseudo libertarian Peter Thiel), wants to unite us all behind big-government nationalism. Here’s my bet: neither plan will fly, at least not outside of academia, think tanks, and their devotees. The only thing that will ever unite millions in the foreseeable future is a…
20 CommentsI dreamed last night that I was in Portland with a dozen or so blog friends when The Big One hit. We had gone to the city searching for Covid-19 supplies, which was tough enough. But now we were trapped by Mother Nature — in a world where people had been ordered to fear and avoid each other. In a world where natural instincts to help had been crushed. For some reason, I had a large collection of books with me, which two of my friends quickly “borrowed” without permission. I knew they immagined my collection would be loaded with…
22 Comments