Time for some less-seriousness. These images are all stolen from Bored Panda’s “First-World Anarchists Breaking the Rules” series, which they’ve been running on and off for years. Building ‘crats told this man he couldn’t build a garage door. So …
13 CommentsLiving Freedom Posts
Who’s in denial about our current cultural and political state of collapse? Most everybody. Millions of ordinary people who think bad times are always temporary are in denial. Oligarchs and plutocrats who believe we ordinary people are eternally tractable and malleable are in denial. Intellectuals who believe increasing quantities of fashionable nonsense are in denial. Politicians and their handlers who believe they can rule by fiat without consequences are in denial. Fools who imagine “the science” is a religion and that dissent from any statement by a high priest government-approved scientist is heresy are in denial. I’ve been in denial…
22 CommentsOver the years, when people have asked me, “Is it time yet, Claire?” my response has always been something like this: It may be moral to ‘shoot the bastards’ who kill freedom, but this isn’t the time. It doesn’t make tactical or strategic sense. Violence now will only make things much, much worse. That’s still my strong conviction. To any members of the Deep State trolling the ‘Net desperately searching for those elusive “domestic terrorists” they’re so determined to locate invent: I’m a useless target for you. I don’t advocate violence except in self-defense and I dread seeing anybody, especially…
39 CommentsHappy post-Fourth of July. I hope you enjoyed what scraps of freedom you have left in these strange and parlous times. Although I left New England, I had further adventures and observations. —– In one day, my companion and I crossed five states. By road. Which sounds pretty impressive until you realize the states in that part of the world are scaled for Ken and Barbie. Did you know Delaware is 35 miles wide at its widest point (nine at its narrowest) and contains only three counties? I knew the states in the upper corner of the U.S. could be…
11 CommentsAs a Western-hyphen-American (bitterly clinging to the Pacific coast as I do), I never thought I’d see this storied place. But here I stood. At first as I approached along the path I thought I’d cry for the wonder of being here where it all began. Just as quickly I realized I might cry for the sorrow of being here in the days of its ending. (We came to the statue under a blazing noonday sun. No angle allowed a good photograph until I surrendered to the understanding that I could get only a silhouette — and got this grand…
17 CommentsI’m suffering the sudden onset of optimism. Don’t worry, the condition probably won’t be fatal or chronic. I’ll be back to my normal, healthy, pessimistic self in a week or two. But meanwhile I can’t get rid of this feeling that everything may turn out okay out there in the world. Well, not everything. But outcomes of the current madness may be better than we expect. I feel this way precisely because everything’s falling apart. And all kinds of people are recognizing that everything’s falling apart or has already fallen and can’t be raised back up. That’s the part that…
31 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 CommentsI’m working on the conclusion to last week’s Freedomista symbiosis blog. With luck you’ll see it tomorrow or Wednesday. Meanwhile, walking to town to clear my brain and organize my thoughts, I picked this up at the post office: It looks like an intriguing and maybe instructive book. It’s in great shape. It even came with a handwritten note from the seller, thanking me effusively (with exclamation points and red underlines) for the order. Except I didn’t. Order it, that is. The one thing it didn’t come with was a note naming the giver. It’s clearly from someone who already…
12 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 CommentsI’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…
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