Monday, December 17, 2012

The decline and fall...


Yeah, me too.   Read it here.
Some of my libertarian friends think that a financial or societal collapse will lead to a better understanding of the importance of freedom, and that a new flowering of liberty will bloom in the aftermath.

That’s a foolish and stupid idea.

What will actually happen is what happened when Rome fell: a period of barbarism and tyranny and darkness will sweep over us at worst, or at best, people will demand that a man on a white horse punish the appropriate scapegoats and make the trains run on time again. Sure, I hope I’m wrong, but history is on the side of pessimism. As nearly as I can tell, all we can do is hold on tight, because we’re getting ready to ride this puppy down in flames.
...
But, maybe, in 500 years or so, a confident, adventurous people will once again step onto the surface of the moon. No doubt they will be amazed to learn that the mythical figures of Buzz Aldrin, Alan Shepard, and their companions actually did exist, and set foot there once upon a time, and left behind six beautiful, red-striped banners, spangled with white stars on a field of blue.

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

I have no words...

... but Mark Stein found some appropriate on this, the morning after the Unites States gleefully embraced marxism:

I appreciate the sterling if pitiful efforts of my comrades to clutch at straws these last few hours, but, on this grim morning after, I fear the most salient analysis comes from Sir Richard Mottram, Her Britannic Majesty’s former Permanent Secretary for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, albeit speaking in another context:
“We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The whole department’s f***ed. It’s been the biggest c**k-up ever and we’re all completely f***ed.”
Words to ponder.
I like Sir Mottram's words so much, I'll appropriate them and say it myself:  We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The whole department country's f***ed. It’s been the biggest c**k-up ever and we’re all completely f***ed. 

Friday, October 26, 2012

A disgrace



There are simply no other words for it.   I never liked Obama; I thought he was a hyper-partisan socialist/communist whose policies were misguided.  I thought he was hyper-political, running focus groups on what shoes to put on in the morning.  But it never occurred to me that he would deliberately paralyze the national security apparatus for what has to be political reasons.  
While American diplomats and personnel fought the terrorists for seven hours, Obama's crack national-security team and the U.S. military simply watched and listened. U.S. fighters could have been on the scene in an hour offering support, and U.S. commandos within 3 hours, but no orders were given. A military-loathing, anti-American commander in chief sat on his hands while U.S. territory was attacked, a U.S. ambassador assassinated, and three other Americans murdered, and team Obama then devised a phony story to cover up for the disaster.
I say deliberately, because I have to believe that in the absence of orders to the contrary, there is someone in the US military chain of command in Africa or Europe that has the authority to make the call to go in and secure the facility and save the embattled US personnel. 

Then, a BS story or excuse is not only thought up, but sent around to the State Dept. et al and told that this is the official word, even though individuals in State and elsewhere knew perfectly well it wasn't.  All for polling reasons.  Disgraceful. That alone is worth throwing the bum out, and once he's out, pressing charges.

Original is here, but you have to dig down a bit.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Thoreau the libertarian


I've never read much (like any) Thoreau.  I understand Walden Pond was like 1.5 miles from his house, so On Walden Pond as a definitive treatise on back-to-nature is a bit, well, overblown. That said, this quote is supposed to come from him, which raises him up in my estimation:
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

 --American author and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Mixed feelings

I saw a guy on a street corner socializing his "dog" on my way into work this morning.  The pup was wanting to run and hide as each car came by, and the guy would bring it back (it was leashed) and reassure it.  As I drove by I saw that it was a wolf pup, probably 6 months old.

My first thought was "you dickwad, wait until that twitchy animal is 120 lbs, still twitchy, and you can't control it".  My vision was of someone's 5 year old kid running by that wolf, surprising it, and the wolf removing the kids face with one bite.

That said, I'm generally opposed to people putting their noses in where they aren't involved.  So now I'm conflicted.  Is it OK for that f'n genius to raise a wolf in town or not?  My gut very much says no, its not OK, but I'm trying to reconcile that rationally.

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Quote of the day

Quote of the day, from Richard Fernandez :

Nils Pratley at the Guardian is impressed. “Bailouts in the eurozone used to generate relief rallies that lasted at least a week. The Spanish version couldn’t even manage a full morning.”
The yield on 10-year Spanish government debt, which had fallen to 6% soon after the start of trading, ended the day at 6.5% – an astonishing turnaround. Worse, Italian bonds followed the same pattern, closing a whisker above 6%, the highest since January. Far from calming nerves, the grant of €100bn (£81bn) or so of cheap loans for Spanish banks seems only to have hardened investors’ analysis that the eurozone debt crisis is getting worse.
 ...
The bitter truth is that the European collapse is simply the consequence of Leftist fantasy politics.  It is what happens when people realize that the ‘paradise’ they’ve been building is nothing but a deconstructed, demographically collapsing, hollowed-out and bankrupt shell of lies.

Pax Americana is not the way the world normally operates

Richard Fernandez gets it right again:
The idea that the office on the corner will always be able to dispense Government Cheese does not reflect the normal historical experience. Rather it reflects that peculiar period of stability and prosperity which followed the end of the Second World War: the Pax Americana, which the Left hates. Our civilizational attitudes have been formed on the basis of the exception, not the rule.
We in the first world have been on a global vacation from history since the 1960's.  I fear its time to get back to work.

Whole article here.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

An excellent point

"Who killed the 20-30 million Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago -- big government or big business? ... Who deliberately caused 75 million Chinese to starve to death -- big government or big business? ... Would there have been a Holocaust without the huge Nazi state? Whatever bad big corporations have done is dwarfed by the monstrous crimes ... committed by big governments." --radio talk-show host Dennis Prager

Friday, April 20, 2012

You'd better run...

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

Monday, March 05, 2012

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the
wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to
work because the other half is going to take care of them;
and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work,
because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.