End the War on Freedom

From "Sunbeams" in the October 2001 issue of The Sun:

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. -- G.K. Chesterton

and:

Let there be such oneness between us that when one cries, the other tastes salt. -- Rosabelle Believe

and from the "Correspondence" section:

According to his letter in the July 2001 Correspondence, William Dade Foster is a "fifty-eight-year-old white male physician" and a conservative Republican. He therefore wonders why he enjoys reading The Sun, "a liberal rag written largely by a bunch of losers."

The reason is that the drama of the human story cuts across all political and class lines. Suffering is common even among conservatives and "winners." Conflict exists in all our lives.

For the record, I, too, am a fifty-eight-year-old white conservative, and Foster's remark about "liberal rag" and "losers" is the sort of name-calling I'd expect from a liberal. A conservative should have better manners.

Neil Elliott
Evanston, Illinois

and from the "September 11, 2001: A Special Sunbeams Supplement" insert:

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem is that we would fall down and worship each other. -- Thomas Merton

and:

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone. -- Thomas Merton

Isaac Stern died, two Sundays back. What a bummer, man. A bio is available on the linked page (sponsored by Sony Classical). Rolling Stone has another bio. Public Radio Music Source has a spotlight with a link-laden bio by Kim Summer of All Music Guide.

Andrew Bridges at The Alchemind Society - Dr. John C. Lilly Dies at 86 - inner space explorer John Lilly has gone even deeper into inner space than he could encumbered with a body. Blessings brother on your further journey Towards the One. Enjoy programming and metaprogramming the cosmic computer. [market]

Robin Trower is touring. Ticketmaster has the itinerary, as does Trower Power. I want to go to the gig at Northern Lights in Clifton Park (a suburb of Albany, NY) this coming Sunday, 7 October. Other cities in the tour starting today: Columbus OH, Cleveland OH, Buffalo NY, New Haven CT, Asbury Park NJ, Springfield VA, Lake Buena Vista FL, St. Petersburg FL, Fort Lauderdale FL, Jacksonville FL, New Orleans LA, Houston TX, Austin TX, Dallas TX, San Antonio TX, Oklahoma City OK, Muskogee OK, Milwaukee WI, Omaha NE, Kansas City MO, Colorado Springs CO, Denver CO, Portland OR, Seattle WA, San Francisco CA, Orangeville CA, Ventura CA, San Juan Capastrino CA, Santa Ana CA, San Diego CA, West Hollywood CA, Yucaipa CA, Las Vegas NV. The tour ends in early December. Didn't know I was a Trower fan, didja? Too rolling sto-o-oned.

From brad:

Here's a good idea for a new secret weapon. This is a Win-Win idea, it will help win the War on Terrorist and help Iowa Farmers. Boy, I've got your attention now.

What we do is design a small air drop crate and parachute. Go around Iowa and buy up all the piglets that can be found. Put little coats on them with a "Osoma Sucks" sticker, written in Arabic of course. Air drop these little dudes by the thousands all over Afghanistan. The Moslems will go crazy, they can't even touch a pig, or they will not get to see Allah when they die. It'll be "pigs everywhere", in there; tunnels, mosques, huts, homes, ect... Why even the pig poop will contaminate the country side for years to come. This will cause such chaos, the Special Operations Troops can come in, mop up and have a babyback rib BBQ with the remaining Christians in country and come home.

It will be known as Operation Iowa Pig Drop (OIPD).

The swine farmers will love it.

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Why Leave Pilots Defenseless? - why pilots should be encouraged to carry weapons on board.

No amount of law enforcement efforts or heightened airport security can guarantee that a terrorist will never again board an aircraft with a weapon. Terrorists can bribe airport personnel, impersonate police, or even get jobs working in airport security. They can work for the many private contractors that maintain, clean, fuel, and stock planes parked at the gate. They can become baggage handlers. Ultimately, pilots must be still be able to defend themselves against a weapon smuggled onto an aircraft.

Jeremy Sapienza at anti-state.com - Offensive Anti-Statism - Cursing is sometimes called for. When used as part of rational argument, it can make a point. [anti-state]

So now I'm expected to care about what my "opponents" think about me, apparently. Like anti-statism is a popularity contest and I'm supposed to just die to be the queen of the ball. How about I send them a package with my shit in it, postage paid, so they can eat it?

Isn't it the object that my opponents should at the very least dislike me or what I have to say? So what if they say I'm arrogant? I am. So what if they say I'm a jerk? I am. So what if they call me dumb, inexperienced, immature, delusional, or utopian? Well, those I am not, but I could give a rat's ass if they believe it.

They seek to automatically discredit anyone who uses "foul" language in his screeds. Both Bob Murphy and I have been chided for our usage of obscenity in publication. We don't purposely insert bad words into our articles, but we write the way we think and speak, and we are tired of editing our personalities to tread lightly on the prudish sensibilities of old men whose penises shrivel at the mere sight of anarchists using proper punctuation.

John Podhoretz at The Weekly Standard - Politically Unforgivable: Bill Maher's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week - One man's take on the crash and burn of Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. [market]

Lindsay Perigo's Politically Incorrect Show - 24 September 2001 - Mr. Perigo comments on GW's speech to congress and warns that "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." He stopped transmitting his essays via the radio waves on August 3, but recently found that he still has a lot to say so he's now sharing them via the web. No difference from my saddle.

Peter Cresswell at SOLO (sense of life objectivists) - Civilisation under siege - An Objectivist responds to Bloody Tuesday.

For what makes someone hijack a jumbo jet and then fly it suicidally into a 110 storey skyscraper above teeming city streets if not their commitment to horrific ideas? What makes them want to kill on this scale? And to kill themselves in the process? Only the power of ideas can fuel such evil - evil ideas. Evil ideas can only be fought with better ones, which means you must have better ideas with which to defend yourself. In the long term, only the philosophy of Objectivism can provide the necessary philosophical weapons.

But America isn't armed. America has lost its way. America is not sure of itself or of its founding values, and instead it thrashes around on the world stage, posturing as the world's policeman and becoming instead a world pariah. In part, much world anger against America comes about through righteous disgust at such unprincipled American actions as the bombing of Belgrade, or of Kosovo, or of Sudanese pharmaceutical factories.

But that said, it is clear that much disgust with America springs also from anti-capitalist, mystic, barbaric, stone-age savagery, and it is crucial that whatever action is taken distinguishes itself by being an uncompromisingly principled action against all such forms of barbarism.

That action must be both internal and external, and there are supreme dangers with both. For nothing is surer than that this barbarism was an attack on civilisation itself, and civilisation must needs survive the barbarism.

It will not survive if civilisation itself resorts to barbarism.

Internally, there is no choice but to increase internal security. Britain has been under terrorist siege for three decades, often struggling to remain on the right side of rights protection, but it offers a good model for resisting an internal terrorist threat - a stiff upper lip, a business-as-usual attitude to disaster, and a swift response to barbarity. But with regard to its internal policies (as Gayle Dean points out), the US might reflect that its government "would do well to stop wasting time, money, and resources trying to control its citizens lives domestically --it should cease financing statist welfare programs, suits against Microsoft, and ridiculous wars on drugs-- and turn its focus back to the proper functions of government, i.e., protecting its citizens from foreign aggression and terrorism" - something at which it has signally failed.

Dorothy Anne Seese at Armed Females of America - The Enemy Within: It looks like martial law to me! - I don't like Ms. Seese's idea of an alien database. I don't want any kind of federal database of anything. But the rest of her article is good. I hope she's right that our men and women in uniform will not be willing to impose martial law. I intend to take a sample point myself tomorrow after work, in sha' allah, by going to the airport and talking for a minute or two with one of the armed national guardsmen there, if they appear as promised.

SHOW ME THE WAR. If it's for the America in which I was born, a free America, then we should fight to the last drop of blood for it. If not:

SHOW ME THE WAR, and if it's for a nation under the New World Order using an act of terrorism to subjugate its own flag-waving deceived people, then the first war to be fought is on our own soil by our own people. After that, we can take care of the rest of the world.

Add comment Edit post Add post