See Part I here. The Action, continued Comrade X began emailing Just Waiting’s publicly available, but largely hidden, information to contacts around the county. Immediately, he got pushback from the local Republican Party, which told him they thought the homeless housing could benefit the community. “Then I realized where the problem was,” CX admits wryly. He decided that if established powers weren’t going to act, he’d have to do it on his own. Or rather, not on his own but with the help of other grassroots actors. JW was integral, keeping CX up-to-date on the calls coming in and the…
23 CommentsCategory: Rural and small-town living
Life far from freeways, Starbucks, malls, and other benefits/distractions
I don’t usually write about within-the-system political actions. Most are a waste of time. This was such a successful exception, performed at the local level, and with such Freedom Outlaw panache, that I thought the action and its perpetrators deserve a tip o’ the hat. —– Longtime blog Commentariat members and freedomistas Just Waiting (JW) and Comrade X (CX) both moved to a small town in a quiet, obscure county in the State of Jefferson. They arrived separately, from different sinkholes of statism. Both were seeking freedom. Each had his own intensely political past — one as a tough, scruffy…
13 CommentsA friend of mine works in a field that’s on the cutting edge of the cutting edge. He’s a problem-solving genius and his reputation has taken him all over the world. This cutting edge business (like any industry) utilizes many types of experts. Some are experts in exciting new tech. My friend’s expertise, OTOH, happens to be in a specialty that, while absolutely vital, is old tech. It’s not “sexy.” Even the big schools associated with it no longer teach it. Lots of brilliant young people are never learning it even on a theoretical level, and have no idea it…
39 CommentsGrubby 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…
12 CommentsRusty* was a likeable guy. He attended neighborhood parties. He had another group of friends he met every morning for coffee. Always ready to chat, he could often be seen at the side of the road, talking with neighbors and passersby. Youngish women seemed especially fond of him, and he of them. If you needed a hand, he was there to lend it. Rusty was also smart. Clear into his 80s he had a sharp mind, a good sense of humor, and an awareness of the larger world. In his past, he’d been a private pilot, a small-boat oceangoing sailor,…
31 CommentsI owe you a blog. I had one all planned out and intended to compose it this afternoon and evening. It was about what neighbors can — and can’t — do for each other in these strange times. Then I volunteered myself into a situation that put me in the house you see below. The first two images are the living room (if you could call it that) of a deceased neighbor’s home. The third is, I suppose, a storeroom, and reasonably orderly compared to the rest of the entire two story house. But the little brown sh*tty stuff on…
13 CommentsI just re-read Rod Dreher’s FAQ on the Benedict Option. I love it. Although Dreher is talking exclusively to Christians (though inclusively among varieties of Christians), there’s a lot there for the rest of us, as well. He opens with a quote from his inspiration, social critic and historian Alasdair MacIntyre, that says in part: A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What…
23 CommentsAnd 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 CommentsNo, what I’m about to relay doesn’t really show the decline of civilization. Or rather, it’s too early to tell whether it does or not. Hopefully, what’s happened in my small sphere in the last few weeks is just “one of those things.” Two of those things, actually — signs of personal or societal distress that portend exactly nothing about the bigger picture. But you know how it is. When stuff is happening to you, it’s personal. Then everybody else chimes in, “Oh yes, that happened to …” [me or my next-door neighbor or whoever]. Or “Oh yes, [City X]…
30 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 Comments