Category Archives: Liberty

The Liberal Version Of Tolerance

Posted on April 2, 2014 | 5 comments

Confused

I’m in DC this week taking in the sights.

Got me to thinking about things like Liberty and Freedom.

Some time ago the left was aflutter over the bill passed in Arizona allowing businesses to deny service based on religious freedoms.

Ridiculous, of course.  Everyone who believes in people being free support people businesses denying service to anyone for any reason.

But not the left – THEY have cornered the market on tolerance.  See:

Silversun Pickups have demanded that the Romney campaign stop using the band’s song “Panic Switch” at political rallies. It is the latest pop group to object to the use of a song at Republican events.

The band sent a formal cease-and-desist letter to the campaign on Wednesday, saying the Republican presidential candidate never sought permission to play the song. “We don’t like people going behind our backs, using our music without asking, and we don’t like the Romney campaign,” the lead singer, Brian Aubert, said in a statement.

And going a little further back:

Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign also came under fire for using music from artists who did not support it.

In 2008, the band Heart asked the campaign to stop playing its song “Barracuda” in honor of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s nickname on her high school basketball team, “Sarah Barracuda.”

The band even went on national television to express its outrage.

“Sarah Palin’s views and values in no way represent us as American women,” Ann and Nancy Wilson told Entertainment Weekly. “We ask that our song ‘Barracuda’ no longer be used to promote her image.”

McCain also settled out of court with Jackson Browne for using his 1977 hit “Running on Empty” in a campaign ad without the artist’s permission.

Foo Fighters, John Mellencamp and Boston asked McCain and other candidates to stop using their music.

And Tom Petty didn’t find Michele Bachmann his type of “American Girl.” The rocker’s manager asked the Bachmann campaign to stop using his 1977 hit “American Girl” after it was played during the kickoff event for the Minnesota representative’s presidential bid.

See, it’s okay to deny service as long as it’s properly liberal.

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How Liberty – Democracy – Is Lost

Posted on March 19, 2014 | Leave a comment

West WIng

I’m watching the West Wing on Netflix.  Awesome clip from Season One Episode 7.  A democrat no less:

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Gender Bias: Joe Biden

Posted on March 3, 2014 | 1 comment

Gender BiasI’m continued to be surprised that the Democrats push this meme that not having to work, and therefor live off the labors of someone else, is a good and noble thing.   Perhaps the notion forwarded by Republicans that at the base of liberal policy is the idea that we need to create more Democrat voters.

Anyway, Joe Biden was at it again:

“How many of you are single women with children, in a dead-end job? You’re there because of your health insurance,” Biden said. “You would rather have the opportunity to spend the next couple of years with your child until they get — if that was your choice — until they get into primary school.”

Biden said because of Obamacare that women will now be able to make an “independent choice.”

“You’re now trapped in that job because if you leave, you lose your health insurance. Now you’ll be able to … make an independent choice,” Biden told “The View.” “Do you want to stay in that job and still have health insurance, or do you want to … stay in that job, even though you can get health insurance absent that job? And it gives women a great deal more freedom.”

Forget the fact that he’s advocating the idea that working is somehow a state of “lesser freedom”, a notion that is reprehensible.  But how does Biden get away with the gender bias implicit in his logic?  Why is it that only a woman would feel trapped by a job and wanna stay at home with the kids?

Why wouldn’t a man in similar circumstances want the same freedom?  Or, for that matter, why restrict to single moms?  Why not allow for the fact that anyone would wanna quit his job in order to live off the fruit of someone else’s labor?

Men.

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Governor Brewer – Veto That Bill! *

Posted on February 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

Jan Brewer

Arizona SB 1062 – Religious Freedom

You have to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the bill that passed the state legislator in Arizona.  SB 1062 would allow businesses to refuse services to gay and lesbian customers based on their religious faith.

I think that Governor Brewer should veto this law because it singles out people who might be homosexual in an unfair manner.

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Posted in Liberty, Politics: State, Republicans Can Be Leftists Too, States Behaving Badly

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Union Defeat In Chattanooga

Posted on February 15, 2014 | 12 comments

Union

UAW Suffers Massive Defeat

The UAW is in its death thralls.  Membership is down dramatically and it needs a new source of membership; enter the southern manufacturing states.

Labor leaders say a “yes” vote is critical to the union’s long-term prospects. If successful, this would be the first victory for organized labor inside a foreign automaker’s U.S. operations in the South.

For the UAW to grow, it must make inroads with foreign manufacturers with plants in the United States; most of those operate in the South. A “yes” vote in Chattanooga could provide momentum for organizing at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, a BMW plant in South Carolina and possibly a Nissan plant in Mississippi.

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Posted in Liberty, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National, Politics: State

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There Is Hope

Posted on February 12, 2014 | 2 comments

Hope

America’s View On Government

Sometimes I feel that we’re losing the battle.  That nanny state champions who wanna reward mediocrity, punish success and suspend natural realities are winning.

Then I see this:

Some 60 percent of voters think that over the last five years the federal government’s policies have increased the income gap between the rich and everyone else.  That includes — to varying degrees — majorities of Democrats (52 percent), Republicans (64 percent), independents (67 percent) and those in the tea party movement (74 percent).

Important points:

– Democrats are in majority agreement.

– Independents poll higher than republicans

– The Tea Party leads the way!

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Democrats Support Freedom

Posted on February 10, 2014 | Leave a comment

Statue of Liberty

What Is Freedom – What Is Liberty

According to democrats, freedom is being able to live off the labor of others:

Democrats aren’t buying a Congressional Budget Office report finding that President Obama’s healthcare overhaul could cost the economy millions of jobs over seven years.

The nonpartisan office said the loss of the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time jobs could result from Americans adjusting their hours and employment in response to new healthcare options.

While Republicans said the findings show Obamacare is damaging the economy, Democrats argue any reduction in jobs would reflect the greater freedom the bill gives Americans.

“What we see is that people are leaving their jobs because they are no longer job-locked,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters after House votes Tuesday afternoon. “They are following their aspirations to be a writer; to be self-employed; to start a business. This is the entrepreneurial piece. So it’s not going to cost jobs. It’s going to shift how people make a living and reach their aspirations.”

Pelosi said she hadn’t “fully” seen the report, but, “this was one of the goals. To give people life, a healthy life, liberty to pursue their happiness. And that liberty is to not be job-locked, but to follow their passion.”

Democrats have jumped the shark.

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Bastiat, Liberty And My Daughter

Posted on February 3, 2014 | 7 comments

The Law

I was driving with my daughter tonight and had Jason Lewis on the radio.  Jason was discussing individual liberty, as he often does, and my 11 year old asked me what he was talking about.

Oh yeah!

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Neighborhood Farms – I’m a Hippie After All

Posted on January 9, 2014 | Leave a comment

neighborhood farms

I remember once saying that I like “being a conservative in a liberal world.”

Not so sure I still think that, but whatever.  What I DO enjoy, however, is being a hippie in a libertarian’s world:

When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.

But now, there’s a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.

It’s called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.

“These projects are becoming more and more mainstream,” says , a fellow with the Urban Land Institute. He estimates that more than 200 developments with an agricultural twist already exist nationwide.

“Golf courses cost millions to build and maintain, and we’re kind of overbuilt on golf courses already,” he says. “If you put in a farm where we can grow things and make money from the farm, it becomes an even better deal.”

Very cool.

At the minimum, I would like to see an easing of the regulations surrounding agriculture and neighborhoods.  I get that you can’t have roosters crowing at the break of dawn, but small hen houses, bees and ever growing gardens would be a welcome idea.

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Posted in Liberty, Life

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The Right To Assemble

Posted on January 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

Right to Assemble

The Right To Assemble

One of the core arguments of the libertarian movement, and the Tea Party, is that government interference is damage meant to be minimized.  This is why such groups rightfully are frustrated when liberal government agencies refuse to issue permits to Tea Party groups or charge them for such permits while issuing them for free to like minded groups.

Tyranny

And so it is demonstrated that even as a government has the support of the “less government is good” crowd, it too is subject to power and can over reach in its quest to keep that power:

RALEIGH — The governor’s administration was unable to keep demonstrators off state Capitol grounds on Monday despite an attempt to deny the group a permit to assemble there.

Judge Allen Baddour presided over a Wake County Superior Court hearing on Monday in which he overturned an administrative decision to confine the demonstrators to Halifax Mall, a big grassy area enclosed by state office and legislative buildings.

The hearing was held hours before an evening rally organized by the NAACP state chapter president Rev. William Barber II and others opposed to new policies and laws adopted this summer by the Republican-led General Assembly.

People gather at the Capital all the time – perhaps it’s reasonable to have a permit process.  After all, there may be legal reasons to adjudicate liability in the event of damage or injury.  That aside, the people in The Moral Monday movement are free to assemble and grieve to their government.  To be certain, they are wrong minded and shortsighted, but we are, after all, a free nation.

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Posted in Liberty, Politics: North Carolina, Republicans Can Be Leftists Too

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