Category Archives: Liberty

Brad and Britt And Glass Houses

So, two months ago local talk radio show hosts were taking phone calls on their show.  The guys at Brad and Britt are Liberal.  I don’t think that they’d object to being described as left of center.  Anyway, they took this call from a listener and it turned out he subscribed to the more conservative point of view.  Britt, clearly having taken the opposite point of view went into his “Little Rush” imitation.  This is where he puts on Rush’s radio bumper music and does a fantastic impression of Rush.  By itself, Little Rush is hilarious and spot on, using it to yell over an earnest caller is obnoxious.

I called him out:

That Tweet got me “blocked”.

Meanwhile, Britt feels it’s totally appropriate to call out Neil Boortz in a much less polite tweet:

This is how the Left rolls.  Free speech for me, censorship for thee.

 

UPDATE:

It would appear that The TalkMaster blocked Britt months ago:

Not sure that this makes any difference what-so-ever, but Britt felt it was important to include.

Done.

Picture IDs – Morning After

Oh my!

How are we going to protect our young, poor, rural elderly Democrats from having babies?

WASHINGTON –  In a surprise move, the nation’s health secretary stopped the Plan B morning-after pill from moving onto drugstore shelves next to the condoms, deciding Wednesday that young girls shouldn’t be able to buy it on their own.

The Food and Drug Administration was preparing to lift a controversial age limit and make Plan B One-Step the nation’s first over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, available for purchase by people of any age without a prescription.

But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius intervened at the eleventh hour and overruled her own experts.

Plan B instead will remain behind the pharmacy counter, as it is sold today — available without a prescription only for those 17 and older who show an ID proving their age.

It is clear that Democrats hate Democrats.

Wickard v. Filburn

The Supreme Court decision that started it all.

See, a long time ago, in 1942, a small time farmer, Roscoe Filburn, grew wheat for consumption by his animals on his private property.  He was doing nothing more than growing food for his own personal use and had no intention of selling it.

This violated the government limit on wheat production per acre.  Mr. Filburn was ordered to destroy some of his crop and pay a fine.  Being a reasonable man, Mr. Filburn declined.

See, the Federal government at the time felt that one of the ways out of the Great Depression was to raise the price of wheat.  And to do that one had to control the supply; so they imposed a limit per acre.  The case made its way all the way to the Supreme Court where they decided that had Mr. Filburn NOT produced the extra wheat, he would have been forced to purchase it market prices.  Wheat, being subject to a national trade, was therefore granted regulatory viability under the Commerce Clause.

In the office I work at, we call that Un-fuckin’-believable.

And to make matters worse is the back story.

See, the Supreme Court at the time was not a Liberal court, on the contrary, it was Conservative.  However, the President was one of the worst in History; FDR.  See, he threatened the court that if they did not side with his agenda, he would simply appoint additional members to the Supreme Court until he had the majority he needed.  The Court, not wanting their power and influence diminished, gave FDR the decision he wanted.

What amount of tragedy would have been avoided had Wickard v. Filburn been adjudicated according to Liberty and law?  The horrors of dictatorial power in the hands of the gentle Left.

Jon Stewart: Occupy Wall Street

It doesn’t matter the organization.  Or the society.  Or the group.

People stratify.

It is the nature of man to maximize self interest.  It’s bred into us through 1000’s of years of evolution.  We look out for ourselves.  And when ourselves are looked out for, we look out for “the us”.  We are tribal individuals.  We just are.

If you can find a system that changes humans from the selfish creatures we are to ones that live in “peace” and “harmony”, then we can talk about how better to arrange human society.  But until then, free and open markets are the single best way to organize ourselves.  If you don’t like human greed and our focus on the material thing, open a church or a synagogue or a mosque.  Something that speaks to improving a man’s character.  His inner self.

But don’t legislate it.

Which brings me to Jon Stewart.  And Occupy Wall Street.

Jon continues to be my 2nd source of comedy; Modern Family is hands down #1.  And in this episode he actually takes down the Occupy crowd.  To his credit.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-16-2011/occupy-wall-street-divided

I love the fact that the park has segmented into two classes.  And my favorite part is when the protester dweeb is rambling about “access to the goods of life”.  You know, the guy who is worried about “personal property” as opposed to “private property”.

Props to Jon for a humorous sketch on OWS.  Good stuff.

Occupy Raleigh Protesters Arrested

Apparently the protesters aren’t aware that private property is, you know, private:

Raleigh, N.C. — Six members of the local anti-Wall Street “Occupy” movement were arrested Friday afternoon after staging a protest at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh.

Mall police arrested the protesters around 2:45 p.m. when the group began to demonstrate in the mall’s food court, Sughrue said.

I can’t help but feel dismayed by this.  Somewhere, at some point, some school failed these people.

This Is How Occupy Raleigh Rolls

Okay, so, I like to engage in debate.  Most especially I enjoy debating people that I tend to disagree with.  I suspect that this has to do with the fact that there is little to gain in debating someone you actually see eye to eye with.  This creates a condition where I only really interact with people who are not necessarily open to my point of view.

However, most of the time, I stress most, I engage with people who “put it out there”.  That is, I’ll engage people through this media.  Blogs, chat rooms or even Facebook.  I typically don’t engage friends, I try not to at least, family, or co-workers. Each to their own in their own daily lives.

So, when I see Occupy Raleigh, a group of people who have banded together to make a point, I might wanna engage them.  I might wanna challenge their facts, their assumptions and their solutions and conclusions.  This becomes more true as they take advantage of public largess and organize in a public manner.

They protest daily.  They have created a blog.  They have a Facebook page.

They encourage dialogue and discourse.

But those are just words.  You see, the Occupy Raleigh movement i n specific, and I suspect the type of individual involved in general, suffers dissent not at all.  They will do everything, EVERYTHING, to suppress your voice, your opinion and your viewpoint unless it conforms to their ideology.  The tolerant Left is a massively repressive regime when it comes to dissent.

They march in protest of CEO speaking at Universities here in Raleigh.  They claim they are denied freedom of expression when they are yanked out of the room.  But when it is THEIR forum, THEIR stage, and anyone tries to speak out against the mob, they shut you down.

I have long avoided confronting the Occupy Raleigh folks.  Some have come here and I try to make my case; I stay away from their forums.  However, the other night I decided to create a Facebook presence for Pino.  I don’t mind these freaks knowing who I am, but I don’t wanna expose my Facebook community to these guys if I can help it.  And I posted a ling on their wall.

It was deleted within 20 minutes.

Then I commented one of their posts.  Nothing untoward, same tone I use here.

I was called a troll.

Later I defended my position and let well enough alone.

Tonight, I got an email telling me that they had replied to my post.  I went to Facebook and they had deleted all of my comments and I’m now unable to post comments.

The left image is from my personal page, the right image from my Pino page.

If you dissent, you will be silenced.

This people, is how the Left rolls.  It’s how they’ve ALWAYS rolled.  They claim tolerance and compassion and understanding, but when those same qualities are demanded of them, they balk and and refuse.  They censor, the repress, the silence and they are brutal in the totality of it.

These people don’t represent the 99%.  They don’t wanna hear open and honest debate.  They aren’t about new ideas.  These people are Marxists.  They are Stateists.  These people are hard core Liberal actors bent on changing the way in which America was created.  They don’t like risk and reward.  They don’t appreciate Individual Liberty.

These organizations are damage.  And reasonable people route around damage.

The Fruits of Liberty

I suspect that a child, with loving parents, will grow to be a confident young adult.  Certainly the variances of life will come to play, but love begets love.

Of course it does.

Individual Liberty, when left alone to flourish, is wonderful thing to behold:

 

Occupy Raleigh

The Occupy Movement gathers strength amongst it’s supporters from the fact that they claim to represent the 99%.  That means that they feel 99% of American’s are being fairly depicted by these people’s actions.  That somehow, the words and ideas and thoughts and thesis of this movement is embraced by the 99% of American’s that are not the richest 1%.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Much of us not in the top 1% realize what it means to succeed in America, what it takes to make a life that is better than the one given to you as a child.  It requires risk, sacrifice and hard work.  It means that things we might otherwise hold dear to us will have to be passed by or delayed in order to achieve the goal.

And sometimes that doesn’t work out.  For some, it means that a life is spent in futile frustration agonizing over business ideas that never took hold.  For others it might mean a life of unrealized potential; an otherwise qualified corporate President is relegated to a life of middle management due to circumstances. And, in some cases, it means that decisions that are made are wrong.  Or if not wrong, less right.

But in aggregate, the fact that Americans all, poorest to the richest, have the best life ever afforded any group of people belonging to a nation in the history of the world is proof enough that Capitalism is the greatest anti-poverty program going.

But that isn’t enough.  For some, they have to make the papers, the news, the limelight.  They have to scream out that the world just isn’t fair and that somehow, of course, it’s not their fault.

And that’s where the Occupy Movement comes in:

RALEIGH — Protesters from the occupy movement disrupted a speech at N.C. State University Wednesday afternoon by the head of Wells Fargo Bank, but the program resumed after police escorted about a dozen protesters from the building.

There were no arrests during or following the outburst that occurred about 4:45 p.m..

John G. Stumpf, the president and CEO of Wells Fargo, was on campus as part of an executive lecture series sponsored by NCSU’s Poole College of Management.

His remarks were disrupted when protesters scattered amongst the audience of about 400 stood and started speaking. One woman protester began a speech and the others repeated and amplified her words.

The protesters said, “John Stumpf, we won’t take your home, but we will take a moment of your time. Your leadership has led to the death of the American dream. Wells Fargo is guilty of widespread predatory lending and holds over $5.7 billion in student debt.”

I suspect that John G. Stumpf has created more jobs in his singular life that the number of jobs that will be created in aggregate of the Occupiers escorted from that room.  Further, the benefit to society by having Wells Fargo around is lost on many, if not all, of those Occupiers.

Proof?

They hold it against this man that his bank holds $5.7 billion in student debt.

I ask you, how willing would YOU be to borrow money to some kid to get a degree in Eastern European Social Studies with a focus on Slovakian history?

Occupy Capitalism

A most excellent development in the whole Occupy movement has occurred here in Raleigh.  See, the young socialists had been thinking that they could just camp on public grounds; the capital being public, the idea was they could just stay there.

Well, it turns out that the good people of North Carolina don’t want the Occupy people clogging up and cluttering up the State Capital with their nonsense and noise.  The city and the State has said that they have to move on.

So, they did.  And where did they move to?

Raleigh, N.C. — Protesters with the Occupy Raleigh movement moved into a more permanent base camp last week, thanks to a local business owner who saw his new tenants as a capitalist opportunity.

Rob Baumgart, who owns a Sprint and Nextel sales company called Chatterbox Communications, is leasing a 2,500-square-foot lot near the corner of West and Edenton streets, not far from downtown. He’s charging $400 a month to the group of about 15 people who have braved the cold and rain to camp out for their cause.

It’s what any small businessman who believes in making money would do, he said.

“That’s $400 that I didn’t have last month, and if the city allows me to continue doing it for 12 months, that’s $4,800,” Baumgart said Tuesday. “I don’t know a single American who would turn down $4,800 a year.”

Excellent news!

The young protesters protesting the evils of capitalism are now going to get a first hand look at running something.  See, ow that they pay rent, they are going to expect that members contribute.  See, every month that rent check is gonna come due and they are gonna need their friends to chip in.  Or but out.

We’ve seen how this plays out in other OWS encampments around the country.  We see in NYC that the haves and the have nots don’t always see eye to eye.  In Portland Oregon folks have been angry that people who don’t contribute to the movement are glomming on to the free food and shelter.

The sooner these kids can see that organizations require real leaders, the better they, and we, will be.

Abortion: Call It What It Is

There was a lot of debate around the Mississippi legislation that would have defined life at conception.  I’is no secret that this was nothing but a method to move to make abortion illegal.  The pro-life folks want to codify that life exists and therefore, that life has claim to individual Liberty.

While I resonate with the concept I diverge in two areas:

  1. I don’t think that human life begins at conception.  Shortly thereafter?  Sure.  Heartbeat, brain activity and blood flowing?  Yeah, then.  Then’ish.
  2. We don’t have to work that hard to make this point.

There is already bi-partisan support for this concept.  In fact, that support passed new legislation into law that will take effect here in North Carolina tomorrow, December 1.

RALEIGH, N.C. — More than four years after a pregnant woman was killed outside a Raleigh convenience store, a law named for her unborn son that criminalizes the murder of a fetus will take effect Thursday.

State lawmakers passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, often referred to as Ethen’s Law, in April. The legislation deems that anyone who commits murder, manslaughter or assault against a pregnant woman is guilty of the same crimes against the fetus, regardless of whether an attacker knows about the pregnancy.

I do not find it consistent to be charged with a crime against a human being unless you committed that crime against, you know, a human being.

We all  know, ALL of us, that life begins well before literal conception.  What we’re doing is just negotiating on the time.  As such, we know that the kid in the womb is just that, a kid.

So, we’re not arguing about what’s going on when there is an abortion, a child is dying.  We’re just saying we’re okay with the taking of that life when it suits us.  It would be refreshing, as if, the Liberal Left would be honest and admit that.