What's up with North Korea?

The first questions I always ask is why is this so newsworthy today above and beyond all else that's happening in the world today and what are they not saying.

Both North and South Korea have recently undergone changes in leadership.  They're both quite obviously simply just testing each other like a child tests the limits of his mother to see what he can get away with.  What makes this situation so important as to capture headlines today?

How is this situation any different than what goes on daily between Washington DC, various state capitols, and the citizens of the Republic, especially in regards to the current seemingly irrational focus on gun control?

Think.

What do NY's Smoking Ban and NY SAFE Act Have in Common?

Simply put, they are both egregious infringements on individual rights to own and use property as seen fit.

Smokers have lived with numerous assaults on their personal decisions for years, but the smoking ban rose to another level and attacked small business owners throughout the state effectively denying them use of their personal property, that they worked hard for and built, for a specific purpose as if they were nothing more than caretakers of public property.

This is certainly not a partisan party issue.  The final votes in the Assembly and Senate were greatly mixed showing both parties infiltrated with control freaks.

Democrats:    Assembly  84 yes - 11 no  ~  Senate  20 yes - 4 no
Republicans:  Assembly 13 yes - 33 no  ~  Senate  37 yes - 0 no

Assemblyman Daniel Hooker’s comments made on the floor of the Assembly during debate on the smoking ban, Wednesday, March 26th, 2003:

I am from a rural district as well, and while we don’t have any cities, we do have a lot of restaurants, taverns, and diners, and this bill will hurt their business. We also have a lot of VFW Posts, American Legion Posts, and Marine Corps League Posts. I can’t help but think of the irony of the situation where a soldier or Marine comes home from the war, goes into a local VFW for a beer and a cigarette, and the bartender says "I’m sorry, young man, while you were overseas fighting for freedom, your State Assembly was quietly legislating it away here at home."

However, Mr. Speaker, I am chiefly opposed to this bill because it presumes that people are incapable of thinking and acting for themselves without the government telling them what to do.

At present, people are free to choose to work in an environment that is smoke free or not. A lot of waitresses who smoke choose to work in a bar specifically because it is a smoke-friendly environment. This bill would limit that freedom.

I don’t smoke but believe that others should be free to smoke if they choose to.

I am not insensitive to the health hazards of smoking. My Dad smoked, and he died of lung cancer. Cause and effect? Probably, but he died a free man who made his own choices.

My general philosophy is that our government spends way too much time telling people what to do and this seems like a good example of that practice.

I am opposed. 

Even though I wasn't from his district, I had written Mr Hooker to thank him for his stand, and he replied with a hand-written and personally signed note providing me with the full text of his speech.  All I got back from my own two representatives were form letters praising the great courageous stand they took standing with the majority to figuratively lynch a minority constituency.

 

We don't want to merely die like Dan Hooker's dad as free men, we want to live our lives as free men, unmolested by tyranny.

 

Why am I writing about this long dead issue now?  Well, first of all, it's NOT dead, it was just a lost squirmish in the never-ending battle for liberty.  And when it was a raging battle, we were severely chastized during that crusade for even insinuating that this assault on individual property rights would snowball down the slippery slope.  Yet today, we have Mayor Bloomberg assaulting individual rights nearly every day with stop and frisk and even denying your right to choose how big of a soft drink you'd like to buy.  Bloomberg rules NYC with an iron fist, but his crusades, especially against the 2nd Amendment are affecting people outside his jurisdiction.  We also have Gov Cuomo, rushing through the ill-conceived NY SAFE Act to attack another group of citizens to deny them their 2nd Amendment rights to own certain property to defend themselves, their families, and their property.

 

The assaults won't ever end until enough people wake up to just say NO!  We must honor the Constitution's legal framework that was set up to defend individual rights against usurpations of the collective and the tyrannical majority.  And just saying no once or twice here or there isn't enough.  We must demand that all such laws be reviewed and those that infringe on individual liberty must be rescinded or repealed.  A single such law makes a precedent for others to follow.

 

There's a reason for the many levels of government and the central powers are enumerated and severely limited.  Even statewide laws should be extremely limited.  Where freedom of association comes in is at the local level.  Don't like the colors your neighbor may paint his house, then join a local homeowners association and dictate away to attract like-minded people to your neighborhood sort of like what's going on in Kiryas Joel.

 

I can go on and on comparing the smoking ban and the NY SAFE Act to a myriad of social issues pertaining to individual rights such as one with the Defense of Marriage Act and the individual right of a citizen to marry whomever he or she pleases that is essential to maintain your right of free association.

As I continually stress, if you petition the government to limit the rights of any other individual to do anything you personally dislike, you empower them to come after you to limit yours.  Think long and hard about it and please ~ Help stop the madness!

Americans Under Attack by Own Government

Morningland Dairy was raided last month and 18 tons of cheese destroyed by bureaucrats and their minions "just following orders". 

This business is not a fly-by-night operation, but a family business that operated for over 30 years with no complaints lodged against them except by government regulation makers.

This is a crime.  And so many are happy when Obamacare will come between you and your doctor because it's "free".  One has to wonder how wonderful they'll think this free service is when doctors start collecting personal information and becoming government informants and ordering you how to live your life rather than giving you recommendations.  This is what happens when the government "health" industry comes between farmers and their customers. 

We're under attack.  Wake up.

(Updated below:  9 Feb 13):

Another video shows questions asked of representatives of the county sheriff's department. 

Now this guy doesn't know about gun confiscation during Katrina.  He also doesn't know about the government's refusal to allow the business owners here to have their cheese tested before issuing a confiscate and destroy order or about the government "health nazi's" attacks on raw milk producers and other small business owners just working hard trying to make an honest living across the nation.

They aren't all just jackbooted thugs.  Many of these guys in public offices are just uninformed people following orders thinking they're doing their jobs.  The answer is education and to get the information out there like Sheriff Mack is doing with the Constitutional Sheriff's and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA).

This should go viral and hopefully honest, hard-working Americans will step up to demand that the government agencies responsible provide just compensation to what they stole from these family farmers.  Government bails out banks and corporations who get in trouble from their own incompetence and they bail out disaster victims such as those of hurricane Sandy who lived where government officials deemed it was safe for them to build, but destroy small family businesses like this example. 

Reach out, speak out, educate and overcome!

And to government officials, sheriffs, peace officers, and judges who may read this.  We are patriots who helped build this country and you work for us.  People like these farmers create wealth.   We are NOT your enemy.  Please, learn how to do your jobs and protect us from tyrannical bureaucrats.

(Update 2 - more links)

1) Interview of Joe and Denise Dixon, owners of Morningland Dairy
2) Family Farm Odered to Destroy 50,000 lbs of Cheese - 11 Oct 10
3) Morningland Dairy - The Final Solution - 18 Jan 13
4) Wisconsin Judge Rules Against Raw Milk Farmers - 23 Feb 13

How 'Pro-Choice' Are You?

Reason.tv created an intriguing short video at the Democratic National Convention asking people about their thoughts on choice.

Now this is not to denigrate Democrats or liberals for there is plenty of hypocrisy in everyone's opinions on the way things ought to be to go around.  There are considerable numbers of Republicans and conservatives who are staunchly pro-life, yet they certainly don't mind dropping a bomb or two here or there.  As one lady said at 3:40 in that video, "So maybe there are some contradictions, but people are made up of contradictions."  Ain't that the truth!  But the larger question is:  Do we have to put up with it?  Of course not!

Brandon Raub - American Hero or Ticking Bomb?

The republican Mother is following the developing Brandon Raub story.  Her latest post Brandon Raub:  Crazy Like a Fox? gives us a most profound thought on what young Brandon may or may not realized he was doing when he predicted his detainment.  She says:

But getting back to Brandon and his comments, the one I found most interesting was the one made on August 14, a couple days before his arrest. "The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it."
 

Adam Kokesh's interview with Brandon blows my mind, for he certainly sounds perfectly sane yet he's still being held after 72 hours on the opinion of someone who Ben Swann describes as a "special judge who is actually just a lawyer and part of what Virginia calls a Civil Commitment Board".

Now this is scary.  I've been looking at many other situations where Americans or permanent residents have been picked up and even convicted on skimpy evidence or coerced confessions.  They need to be tied to the escalating use of swat teams to prosecute the War on Drugs, which is spilling over into arrests of non-violent offenders in other areas such as student loan fraud and food co-ops.  There are so many more out there that I was planning on someday putting something together to better "connect the dots", but until then, here are a few.

 

• Justice for Yassin Aref - Monster or unwitting innocent victim?
• The Lackawanna Six - Many questions abound about how big of a threat they really were.  See also this.
• Robert Perske - Advocate for justice for those with learning disabilities.
• The Agitator - Radley Balko performs exhaustive investigative reporting on civil liberties and the criminal justice system.
• Sultans of Swat - Can they seriously come for you?

 

That's enough to give a glimpse into the serious implications of possible effects behind our government's imposition of the Patriot Act, NDAA, and other excesses into the usurpation of our Constitutionally protected rights.  Of course, without anyone left actively supporting their oath to abiding by that Constitution anymore, you have no rights.

Update (28 Aug 12) - Brandon, who was taken into custody on Aug 16, was ordered release by Circuit Judge W.Allan Sharret on Aug 23.

Brandon discusses his ordeal with John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.

Social Contract

Very interesting discussion over at Tom Woods, "When Did I Sign This 'Social Contract'?"

More later.

Update (21 Aug 12) - My comment on that thread:

Tom, when you received what may be considered stolen goods in obtaining your property which was most likely unjustly expropriated from a number of others who held claim to it before you, you entered into the contract to protect your rights to that property.

NAP is simply a principle, not a contract. It may be a basis behind certain contracts, but no more or less so than a contract based on a principle of mutually assured destruction. It's merely mutually assured non-destruction. MAD vs MAN. :)

Libertarianism seems to fail to consider that rights are nothing more than a conceptual fiction. Nothing is inalienable, except through contract that all sides endeavor to uphold. Rights do not exist in nature, only constant struggle.

http://uncertainoutcomes.blogs...

Marriage, the Chick-fil-A debates

What a delight to see the outrage erupt from both sides over the relatively benign comments of Chick-fil-A's CEO, Dan Cathy.  Cathy said in his now famous interview in the Washington Times article, "Chick-fil-A chief’s views on marriage alienate gays, Muppets":

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles,”

Nothing wrong or particularly inflammatory with that, simply a man expressing his views.  However, this simple statement caused such an uproar in the gay community that several prominent Democrat office holders stepped up the dialogue proclaiming disdain towards Cathy for daring to speak publicly what was on his mind and threatening that they would use their "power" of office to make it difficult for the company to conduct business in their cities.  "How dare Cathy speak his mind?!?" is their message to us all.  Indeed the Mayor of Boston and Chicago both came out with scathing words against not only Cathy but the entire Chick-fil-A enterprise, which as far as we know, has broken no anti-discrimination laws.

What the Hell are Rights Anyway?

That's all we hear these days:  Rights, freedom of speech, right to life, right to bear arms, liberty, natural rights, religion, 4th amendment rights, etc.   My rights, your rights...  Rights. 

Imagine this… A right is the ultimate fiction, nothing more than an abstract idea propagated by men along with “the law” to control men and induce them to act in a certain way within a society. There are no rights in the natural world, only constant struggle. You are endowed by your creator or nature not with rights, but only your five senses and various characteristics or skills such as speed, agility, endurance, and intellect to assist you in that struggle.   Life exists only as long as you can successfully use those senses and apply those characteristics in struggle or join with others to avoid or ward off conflict with anything bigger and badder that has a compulsion or desire to deprive you of it.

The Constitution is nothing more than a pact between mere mortal men to collaborate in a group effort to protect each other’s lives, liberty and property from those forces, both foreign and domestic, wishing to deprive them.  It has been and always will be under attack and is only as good as our mutual continued support to engage in the struggle to defend it to preserve equality, justice, and fairness for all.

An intriging parallel can be drawn between the Battle at Kruger in the embedded video below and the concept of rights and the struggle of interactions between the federal and state governments and the people.  Watch it, think, and then let's discuss.

 



 

 

(Updates )

 

17 Mar 2013 - Adding this link The Right to Life - From the blog of Philip Schuyler.  Interesting thoughts worth a look.