Living Freedom

LIVE BOLDLYPart II: What does it mean?

Published January 13, 2014 12:55 pm by Claire

I can tell you what living boldly is not.

Living boldly is not flinging yourself randomly at every injustice or every cause. That may be bold. But it ain’t livin’. And it’s not effective at creating freedom. (To paraphrase the great trickster Abbie Hoffman: Random action produces random results: Why waste even a rock?.)

Living boldly is not being obedient while waving your arms and ranting about how bad everything’s getting. (Not even if you rant really, really forcefully and get lots of hits on your blog and have lots of followers on Twitter.)

Living boldly is not flipping off cops just to show you’re brave and defiant.

Living boldly is also not being forever strong and fearless. You can live boldly and still have weak moments, emotional meltdowns, failures, self-doubts and plenty of 3:00 a.m. fears for the future. (Ask me how I know.) Living boldly is what you do in spite of all that.

Living boldly is creating your own life in your own way, even if you’re depressed, discouraged, defeated, and downtrodden. Even if you fear — or are downright dead-solid certain — that the whole damn world is doomed.

21 Comments

Sometimes state-level politics looks … interesting.

Published January 13, 2014 10:16 am by Claire

Like the idea of states banding together to defy federal gun laws. And punish fed agents. Yeah, yeah. I know this doesn’t meet anybody’s anarcho-purity standards. Still … intriguing.

3 Comments

New book on tax resistance

Published January 12, 2014 1:28 pm by Claire

David Gross (a longtime reader and quiet contributor to this and my earlier blog) has just published his new book on successful tactics for tax resistance. I read an early draft of the book and contributed a blurb. I haven’t yet had a chance to read his final edit. The draft I saw was primarily directed toward groups who may use, or contemplate using, tax resistance as a form of protest. But even us lone wolves can take heart, inspiration, and ideas from the many, many historic examples of successful tax resistance campaigns Gross writes about. His book is a…

3 Comments

Giving Dick Metcalf a taste of history

Published January 12, 2014 1:15 pm by Claire

As Tam says, with anti-gun former gunwriter Dick Metcalf recently whining to the New York Times about how unreasonable and intolerant the rest of the gunworld is for getting his arse kicked out of his formerly cushy gig with Guns & Ammo, my February 2014 S.W.A.T. article, newly online, is pretty timely. I could have gone on for pages, fisking Mr. Moronic Metcalf’s one-page G&A fiasco. His general ignorance of history, of the fight for rights, and even of grammar, was mindbending. But inspired and helped along by a Certain Formerly Famous Person in the gun-rights movement (who chooses these…

5 Comments

Weekend links (and another thank you)

Published January 12, 2014 1:02 pm by Claire

You wonderful people. You’ve seen me Definitely Not At My Best twice just since New Year. And … well, you wonderful people. That’s all I can say right now. There will be more soon on that and other things. But for now … on with the blogging, the linkage, the trivia, and the dogs … Um. Well. On the topic of that E.C. I so recently maundered about: How to deal with an existential crisis. Illustrated, yet. Thug sues Nike for not posting a warning on its shoes that they could be dangerous if used for face-stomping. Things you never…

4 Comments

How embarrassing.I’m having an existential crisis.

Published January 11, 2014 1:23 am by Claire

First thing: Thanks for your patience. Thanks for your support, both moral and material. Thanks for keeping the conversation going while I was away. Thanks to you most awesome people for fixing Joel’s eyeballs (even if he’s not feeling so good about it at the moment).

—–

Now, that said, I’m afraid I have to go ahead and have my existential crisis right in front of you. Which is, as I say up there in the headline, embarrassing.

It’s embarrassing having the crisis at all. It reminds me of my senior year in high school during which I was not only in a perpetual E.C., but pretentiously name-dropped Sartre and Camus to illustrate just how Deep and Profound my teen angst was. (I won’t do that on you now, I promise. Nevertheless, if you hate maundering confessionals, you might just want to skip this post.)

It’s even more embarrassing having an E.C. in public now that I’m a grownup. But I’m a writer and I find that the process of being a writer sometimes involves dumping out the contents of my brain in print.

This week I’ve got an article due. I’m halfway through it. But I’m not going to be able to finish until I empty all the brain junk and sort out what’s worthwhile and what’s not.

27 Comments

I’m not back. But …

Published January 5, 2014 10:11 am by Claire

As soon as I post this, I’m going to make Thursday’s “bad” post public again. If clever people and hobby-horse riders want to make the comment section All About Them, that’s on their heads, not mine. Your encouragement, good cheer, and wisdom delivered via email and via comments on yesterday’s apology post helped me get over myself. (The irony was not lost on me that I squealed like a little girl over comments on a post titled “Live Boldly.” It was amazingly nice of y’all not to mention that. 🙂 ) I’m still going to take a week off. I…

15 Comments

Apology

Published January 4, 2014 3:51 pm by Claire

On Thursday I posted something I wish I hadn’t. It was meant to be part one of a two-parter. I knew exactly what I wanted to say in part two, but posted the partial because it was getting long. I expected to provoke discussion and some disagreement. That’s how it goes — all to the good. I didn’t expect to be so totally misinterpreted. I was stunned at the message people thought I was conveying. It didn’t even resemble the message I intended. At first I thought a few individuals just didn’t get it. Or were deliberately twisting my words.…

36 Comments

LIVE BOLDLYPart I: A nation of cowards, redux

Published January 2, 2014 1:40 am by Claire

This is a companion piece to Tuesday’s “Live deliberately.” Part I defines the problem. Part II is a challenge to become the solution.

—–

Twenty years ago, when the Internet was barely a thing, Jeffrey R. Snyder set Fidonet and Usenet groups afire with his essay, “A Nation of Cowards.”

Snyder demolished the then-common advice, “Don’t resist criminals. Just give them what they want. Your life is more valuable than your property.” He wrote in no uncertain terms that meek submission diminishes and devalues life. And personal character. And culture. He went on to nail virtually all “gun control” as hokum. Elitist hokum. Deadly hokum.

The 9/11 hijackings (in which the majority of those airline passengers fatally followed recommendations not to resist) put an exclamation point on Snyder’s message about handling criminals. Twenty years of gun-rights activism wrote Snyder’s message in bold and underlined it.

Today, violent freelance crime is down and every crook with half a brain knows that he may lose the other half to an armed homeowner, c-store clerk, or concealed-carrying pedestrian.

Yet more than ever, we are a nation of cowards.

54 Comments

New Years links

Published January 1, 2014 7:23 am by Claire

Kurt Hofmann: “Resolved to be a gun criminal.” Well, now there’s a resolution that should be pretty easy to keep! Starbucks orders little pub to cease and desist. Little pub tells Starbucks … This cop n gun story is so scary-weird on so many levels, I can hardly believe I exist in the same universe with it. (H/T Hobbit) Take this FWIW, but here’s a former cop on how to behave if somebody puts a gun to your head. The one time something like that happened to me, calm (which said cop recommends) was definitely an asset. But I was…

11 Comments

Living Freedom Posts