Starvin Larry

Via NC Renegade

The average person is a statist, whether he realizes it or not. It is important that liberty activists recognize and accept this fact because the truth of our limitations as a movement determines the kinds of solutions into which we should ultimately put our time and energy. The fantasy of a final grand march of an awake and aware majority on the doorsteps of power is just that: a fantasy. Some people might argue that given more time, such an event could be organized or could happen spontaneously. But these people seem to forget that the immediacy of any crisis inspires awareness and cuts the bindings of complacency for only a certain percentage of any given population. With “more time” often comes more complacency, not less.

So, history becomes a kind of balancing act, with crisis generating the necessity of intelligent and moral action in some people but rarely, if ever, in most people (even during the American Revolution, in which patriots represented a stark minority). The reason that the culture of freedom consistently plateaus and remains stuck at underdog status is because human beings are, first, often acclimated to the idea that crises are things that only happen to other people, and, second, they are obsessed with the idea that governments should retain prohibitory and administrative power over the public as a means to “prevent” crisis from occurring (the sheepdog and sheep mentality).

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By William N. Grigg

Via The Aging Rebel

The Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences at Dallas released the autopsy reports for the nine men killed as a result of the Twin Peaks Massacre on My 17. A cursory examination of the 91 pages of documents reveals no smoking gun. The forensic evidence appears to contradict some witness accounts of what happened that day.

A brief summary of the autopsies results follows.

Daniel Raymond Boyett died of a two gunshot wounds to the head. Both were made by copper jacketed bullets. One of the head shot was on top of the head and the other was to the back of the head. “Additional copper jacket and lead fragments” were recovered. “The direction of the bullet” was “downward, right to left and back to front.” The fatal shot left “a round, 1/4 inch in diameter gunshot wound. Entrance is on the left temporal scalp, 3 inches below the top of the head.” Boyett also had contusions and abrasions that appear to indicate that had had been in a fight. The autopsy also describes a deep graze bullet wound on the left side of his abdomen. All three wounds appear to have been made with copper jacketed bullets. There is no evidence that the bullets were fired at close range.

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Via The Aging Rebel

It is still déjà vu all over again in the North Korean vacation destination formerly known as Waco, Texas.

Twelve weeks and four days ago, People’s Republic of Waco  security forces took something more than 177 capitalist stooges and their running dogs into custody for eating pulled pork sliders and fried pickles for breakfast. “Yes we’ve eaten donuts,” P.R.W. Tourism Commissar W. Patrick Swanton emphasized. “ A high number of people jailed, killed, or injured (while eating pulled pork and pickles) were not from the Waco area. We know that for a fact.”

Infallible Commissar of Laws Walter H. “Pete” Peterson smelled a stack of 354 mimeographed pages, fell into a fugue state, awoke giggling and declared all the criminal tourists to be guilty until proven innocent. There then began a long and tedious unfolding of laws and hearings and Official Truths. Swanton (wearing the big hat in the photo above) announced he was running for Field Marshall. Foreign lawyers from exotic nations like Dallas and Houston told lies and simultaneously avoided mandatory lobotomies. P.R.W. Enforcer of Liberty Abelino “Abel” Reyna ordered the foreign lawyers to shut their mouths lest their specious words endanger the freedom of the 177 capitalist stooges and their running dogs”

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In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

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Via NC Renegade

Via Francis Porretto

One of the problems inherent in the decision to reject the status quo is the inability to answer the “Then what?” question: “What would come next?” The corollary question is the sting in the tail: “Whatever it proves to be, are you sure you’d find it preferable?”

The number of revolutions that were followed by a state of affairs freedom lovers found preferable is very small. The American Revolution is the one we know most about, and the honeymoon that followed that one wasn’t as long or as blissful as we’ve been led to believe:

     Politics, as hopeful men practice it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance. The American colonists, when they got rid of the Potsdam tyrant, believed fondly that they were getting rid of oppressive taxes forever and setting up complete liberty. They found almost instantly that taxes were higher than ever, and before many years they were writhing under the Alien and Sedition Acts. – H. L. Mencken

A change in form is not only not the same as a change in substance; it is most often used to conceal continuity of substance. In any sort of political system, regardless of its labeling, the substance is power.

The history of revolutions suggests that should the current American system – i.e.. the governmental arrangements of the United States not in Constitutional theory but in actual practice – be swept away, what will arise to replace it stands a very good chance of being at least as intrusive, at least as lawless, and at least as oppressive. These things, after all, are the hallmarks of power.

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The push by some conservative lawmakers to get states to take over management of federal lands in the West is a “cold, dead hands” issue for Randy Newberg.

“It’s not something that’s going to happen without a fight,” said the Bozeman accountant turned national television hunting celebrity.

“I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” was a phrase popularized in the 1970s by a National Rifle Association bumper sticker. Newberg has revived a portion of the phrase to apply to a different fight that he said outdoors folks must wage to ensure federal public lands stay in the public’s hands.

“We can’t be the polite people we are,” he said. “Don’t give these guys a break; tear them a new one.”

Utah roots

The push for states to takeover federal lands was launched in a conservative Utah county in 2012 and has since spread across the West. At the core of the arguments for the takeover has been that states know best how to manage the public lands within their borders, can do it with less bureaucracy and can make money by charging higher fees for natural resources like timber, oil and gas.

Newberg sees the numbers argument — that states can make more money than federal agencies for the same resources — as a poor claim.

“To say that all of these public lands are a value written on paper, that’s B.S.,” he said.

He prefers to look at them as a financial trust that should be kept intact for future generations.

“If this were a financial trust — full of bonds, stocks and real estate — imagine how foolish this would sound,” he said.

Legal maneuvers

Other hunters and anglers have agreed. During this year’s Montana Legislature they packed the Capitol rotunda to protest legislation aimed at exploring a federal lands takeover.

Montana wasn’t alone. All together there were 37 bills introduced in 11 states to promote the transfer of federal lands, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “Only six bills in four states passed.”

Although the rhetoric from that confrontation and others across the West may have faded, the groups behind the push have continued their work, this time in the halls of Congress.

In March a budget amendment seen as a testing of the waters about disposing of federal lands was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. It passed the Senate by a 51-49 vote largely along party lines with Montana Sen. Steve Daines voting in favor of the legislation while Sen. Jon Tester voted no.

The wording of the amendment was to “establish a spending-neutral reserve fund relating to the disposal of certain Federal land.” According to a Washington Post story, such legislation has become more common among federal lawmakers.

“These deficit-neutral reserve funds are popular because they carve out an area for future policymaking without having to specify upfront a precise mix of revenues and/or spending cuts to pay for them,” according to Sarah Binder, a rules expert at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution, that the Post quoted.

Not backing down

Taking the legislation to Washington, D.C., won’t stop Newberg from continuing his objections to the idea.