Well now, this is encouraging. Teenagers commit civil disobedience to protest a proposed new history curriculum that would de-emphasize strife and civil disobedience: Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay. Yeah, yeah, I know that school curricula have always been political playthings. I came through prison school in one of those “shut up and obey” eras. Learning only the…
Category: Resistance
Sometimes you need to say “no” to Big Brother
I’m deadlining this week and also dealing with the aftermath of my crushed roof, so posting may (or maybe not; we’ll see how it goes) be light. But here’s some good reading. This summer (and now, this fall) Vin Suprynowicz has been running a long series on what happened (and may yet happen) at the Bundy ranch. His first episode (1 of 6) is here. His latest (5 of 6) is here. I don’t see a good chain of links between them, but you can find them by searching one of the archive categories they appear in, like private property.…
Yesterday Mike Vanderboegh re-printed a classic that I’d missed first time around even though it riffs on a classic of my own — asking that ever-pertinent question, “When is it time?”
Mike uses the sorry example of the Weimar German Reichsbanner to show how even the prepared can tragically fail to act when the day comes. The Reichsbanner were a military group sworn to protect the Weimar Republic against an anticipated Nazi coup. But when Hitler rose to power they did … nothing.
They were waiting for a signal from a leader. And for various reasons, they waited. And waited.
—–
This got me thinking about the differences in packs vs herds vs lone individuals.
This morning I was offered the “opportunity” to sell out. I was asked to do something that (if it worked out as my correspondent hoped) would make Alan Gottlieb and his “JPFO Lite” look better than they are.
It would not change anything in any material way. It would not restore principle to JPFO or protect Aaron Zelman’s legacy.
It was merely the opportunity to create an illusion — to have people say, “Hey, maybe Gottlieb’s not going to wreck JPFO after all!”
And what would I get for doing Mr. Manchin-Toomey (and not coincidentally, the correspondent proposing the idea) such a favor?
Why, I’d get influence. No, let’s capitalize that. I’d get Influence — that much-craved prize of wheeler-dealers everywhere. If I just sold my integrity (which, after all, isn’t worth anything on the market), I might gain the privilege of suggesting to the new powers at JPFO Lite that (pardon my French) it might be better if, for now, they just chopped off one of JPFO’s b***s and not both.
The sellout of JPFO to SAF will be complete as of this Friday, September 12. The remnants of JPFO will be hauled away to Washington (and, I picture in my mind’s eye, be stashed away like the Lost Ark at the end of that movie). While Gottlieb promises JPFO will continue to operate “independently,” in fact SAF is making no attempt to learn anything at all about how the organization functions. Surely they’ll keep some JPFO-ish thing going and it may even look good for a while, but it’s clear that what they’re really after is mailing lists — of…
“Work’s for Squares.” The (unsurprising?) decline of labor-force participation. But on the good side of that subject … Wally Conger reviews my How to Kill the Job Culture despite the fact that it’s been out of print for several years. Hm. If I can find those old files or get somebody to OCR the book for me, maybe a Kindle edition is in order? Ken at Popehat says yes, there is more to that incident of the teacher arrested over his SF novels. Ken also opens with the best description of media-cop relations I’ve ever read. (H/T jed in comments)…
I think a few people were laughing about me feeling intimidated and being submissive to cranky county fair volunteers yesterday. Found it pretty funny, myself. In real life, I’m mostly just a person who’d rather get along or talk things out than make a scene — until you really offend my sense of right and wrong. Once you get my righteousness up, you’d best get out of my way. I’m dealing with an IRL situation like that this very minute. On Sunday I mentioned a Bad Thing I’d been told (not asked) to keep confidential. It already felt wrong to…
Oh rats. Device sniffs out smuggled money. Irony. While Obama asks Ferguson, MO, police to quit attacking journalists, press-freedom advocates ask Obama to do the same. In the “decline of civilization and common sense” department, two women are so terrified of an angry cat that they call 911. And this was their own cat, not some potentially rabid stranger. (H/T SC) “The Soros Put.” The savvy, super-connected billionaire bets $2.2 billion (17% of his assets under management) on a coming stock market crash. H/T to Silver, who also comments. “Who lost the cities?” Hint: Their close cousins lost the whole…
The U.S. Department of Justice (sic) is arguing that nobody has a right to refuse to snitch. That is, should you just say no when offered the “opportunity” to become the fedgov’s patsy, TPTB are free to punish you by means fair or foul to coerce and terrify you into doing their bidding. First Amendment does not apply. Nor any other amendment, for that matter. So they argue and so (in today’s statist legal climate) they may prevail. Another brick in the wall. Another brick we’ll pull down on their evil, power-mad heads one day in the not too distant…