Tag: Choosing Freedom

What Do We Keep and What Let Go? – Part 2 – Freedom

photog Current Events , , , , , ,

I’ve heard lots of people say that freedom was the Enlightenment Era’s original sin.  By demanding freedom, we opened ourselves up to all the ills of our society.  But I don’t believe this.  All the stuff about equality running us into a ditch because it was the source of feminism and the other isms may be true.  But I contend that any society that allows me the freedoms that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights has given me the basis of a happy life.

My idea about what has to be changed is nothing more complicated than to demand the complete restoration of these freedoms.  We must resist any demands to give up any part of our rights for the sake of some misbegotten crusade to make everyone “more equal.”  People are as equal as they’ll ever be.  Which is, not at all.  Every individual is just that, an individual.  And as long as we provide them with the same freedoms, they’ve got nothing to say about anybody else’s pursuit of happiness.

The beginnings of the restoration of these rights have finally made some headway.  The Supreme Court recently outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.  Well, that’s a good start.  But outlawing it completely in the federal government is what is needed.  It’s the feds that have used quotas to force all kinds of businesses and organizations to hire or admit people on the basis of race or sex or sexual deviancy.  This is the basis for most of the misery that has gripped this country.  Free association is one of the fundamental behaviors of a free people.  Choosing who you want to work with or play with is the way you try to make your life yours.  We’ve all seen what happens when an affirmative action hire turns out to be a disaster.  It builds up animosity and frustration throughout the organization.  And it forces the people around the mismatched employee to work twice as hard to make up for the employee that cannot be cajoled or forced out.

And think of how many fraternal organizations were ruined when they were forced to admit women.  Half of the reason for the organization was to get away from wives to spend a few happy hours with the guys in a mens-only environment.  The same goes for the Boy Scouts.  Admitting girls and then gays was a betrayal of the basis of the organization’s reason for existing.  And for what?  There is already Girl Scouts.  There could be a scout’s organization that let anyone in and that didn’t mention God or chivalry or normalcy.  But the real point was destroying something that didn’t include them.

And since that’s the point why should we feel bad if we manage to stop this shakedown racket.  But you’ll be told that discrimination will be happening.  Well, of course it will be.  Everywhere you look in life there’s discrimination.  How many kids that end up in Harvard and Yale are there because their fathers and grandfathers went there?  And how many of those kids are smarter than the thousands that are rejected?  And how about the kids who are let in just for the color of their skins.  They’re not as smart as the rejects either.  So, discrimination is okay if it’s done for the elites or for their pet projects.  What’s that old saying?  You know who’s in charge by who gets to break the rules.  Well, let’s stop with the games.  They want to have their kids go to Harvard.  Then let’s stop pretending that the people in charge play by the rules they make for us.  And let’s just let people live their lives the way they want.  If the Bushes and the Romneys want to belong to their secret societies and wouldn’t let me in if their lives depended on it, why should I care?  And if my poker game looks like the older version of the kids I grew up with and doesn’t have enough diversity, equity and inclusion why should anyone care?

Let’s face it.  With a country as multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious as America has become the only way, we can avoid going for each-other’s throats is if we give each other some room to breathe.  The happiest and ultimately the most efficient way to let people organize their lives is to let people organize their own lives the way they want.

And that is what most needs to change in this country if we want it to survive.  Drop the affirmative action and drop the policing of employment and membership in organizations and just leave people alone to live their lives the way they want.  That is after all the real reason most people came to this country.  The nineteenth century immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were under no illusions that they’d be hobnobbing with the Astors and the Rockefellers.  They knew they’d be lucky if they got to clean out the chimneys and drain pipes of the Astors and Rockefellers.  What they did hope for was the opportunity to pursue their dreams through hard work and enjoy the community of fellow immigrants who huddled together in the various ghettoes of places like New York City.  And each ethnicity, even each village had its own neighborhood.  Maybe a few city blocks and a church and some store fronts.  And all these neighborhoods were cheek to jowl with each other and many of them didn’t get along very well.  But as long as they had their own clubs and festivals and customs it worked.  All they had to do was obey the law and mind their own business.

And that’s still pretty good advice.

Where Will Freedom Take Root Next?

photog Current Events , ,

Contrary to the beliefs of some people freedom is not the default condition of humanity.  In fact, depending on what model of human social grouping you believe in you might be inclined to believe that freedom is an unstable condition that appears very infrequently and disappears almost immediately.

After all, the great majority of people throughout recorded history have lived under regimes that barely understood what the concept of freedom even meant.  The agrarian societies of antiquity, Egypt, Mesopotamia and China were monarchies that incorporated a temple priesthood to reinforce the godhood of the emperor or king or pharaoh or whatever they called their head monkey.  And they had an army to put muscle behind it in case religion wasn’t enough to keep the peasants in line.

Only a few times a millennium an Athens or an America breaks out.  Interestingly, it seems to me that it only happens when a middle class appears.  Whether that is Athenian merchants or Roman small farmers and traders or English yeomen moving to North America it seems to be town people in the middle of nowhere discovering that they can band together to protect their own interests without the God-King.

But what inevitably happens is the aristocrats discover a way to re-establish the empire.  They rebuild the temple by calling it the bureaucracy.  And pretty soon Athens is run by the Four Hundred and Rome by the mega landowners and America by the Fortune Five Hundred and their animatronic Biden.  Even the end of empire doesn’t spell freedom.  When Rome fell you might think that would allow for freedom to reappear but if you look at the history of the dark ages any local freedom was at the whim of chieftains, nobles and bishops who mostly took their cut of what peasants produced and provided “protection,” such as it was, from even more rapacious forces such as the Northmen and Saracens.

So, freedom is fragile.  And it’s relative.  Fifty years back we had almost unlimited freedom.  Freedom of speech, mostly fair elections, the right to bear arms, freedom of association and freedom of religion.  And in addition, we had amazing prosperity and modern conveniences (telecommunication, rapid transit, air flight) that Caesar Augustus or any of the other ancient rulers would have assumed were only within the purview of gods.  If today we lost most of our freedom but were guaranteed the standard of living we had, most Americans would complain a little and then go back to sleep.  So, freedom from want is a freedom that most people don’t enumerate.

Another one is the freedom to raise a family that will be there after you’re gone.  That’s one of the freedoms we see disappearing in the United States.  And to my mind that may be the deal breaker for a lot of people.  After all, what’s the use of living comfortably if it’s at the expense of having a family?  That’s the swap that a lot of Millennials have made.  They’ll get an Obama phone, an EBT card, a universal basic income, free porn and Section 8 housing and mindlessly squander what’s left of their lives and disappear from the Earth.

But for the people who want to leave descendants, what is the deal that is available?  If the Left has its way, the only way to be part of the elect is to drink the Kool-Aid and join the club.  You won’t be one of the Elite but you can work for them.  What was the priestly caste three thousand years ago is what we call the managerial class today.  You can be a bureaucrat at the IRS or the Social Security Administration.  You’ll donate to the Democrats, buy a tote-bag from PBS and put a rainbow bumper sticker on your electric car.  If you’re a little more talented you’ll be a middle manager at a Fortune Fifty company and send your child (hopefully a daughter) to Bryn Mawr or Smith College where she’ll be groomed to be a transgender studies professor.

If you’re hoping for your children to be normal people who will have children of their own then it becomes a lot less certain.  And that’s the subject of this post.  Where will you be able to go to try to give your descendants at least a part of the freedoms and prosperity that you were given by your parents in America?

And in terms of them getting everything we were given the answer is there isn’t such a place.  That world is gone for good.  What you will be looking for is the best deal that’s available.  So, in terms of prosperity, maybe that is still America.  There is still a good deal of money sloshing around this place.  The Elites need their lawns cut and their companies to be managed.  There is money to be made if you’re not too picky about what you have to say and do.  And if you’re in the right trade you might even be able to raise your kids the way you want, for the most part.  So that’s something.  You’ll have to keep a low profile on social media and be careful not to offend anyone really important.  But a lot of what passes for the good life is still to be had in abundance if you know how to work around the system.

But are there other places just as good or better?  I think there will be.  Because I think there will be other places that may not be as prosperous as the United States but they may be more culturally attractive than America.  Eastern Europe seems like an interesting place.  They haven’t allowed the woke West to proselytize their children into joining the LGBTQ cult so far.  Hungary has even shown their willingness to reject unlimited migration and even legislate to encourage their young people to raise families.  A place like that should probably be looked at as an alternative if America sinks into global feudalism.  Even some of the third world may turn out to be freer than America in the future.  I hesitate to talk about Russia and China because those societies are hard to penetrate as an outsider.  But it’s far from impossible to imagine that sometime in the future one or both of those places might provide opportunities for ex-pat Americans.

So, I don’t expect to see another United States appear in my lifetime or even in the lifetime of my great-great grandchildren.  But what I think makes sense is to instill in my descendants the understanding of what to look for in a home.  Look for stability, a little bit of prosperity and some kind of value system that embraces the idea of a middle class.  With those things you can hope to thrive.  Who knows you could get lucky and end up in the next “Land of the Free.”

Will the Canadian Parliament Allow the Emergency Declaration?

photog Current Events , ,

If any Canadians would like to chime in, I’m curious whether they think Parliament will allow Trudeau to assume dictatorial powers against the “Bouncy Castle” occupation.  I’ve always assumed that the Canadian government was just like our Uniparty only more so.  And I guess this is the time when it’ll show its true colors.  The declaration specifies seizing bank accounts, cancelling insurance and revoking business licenses.  These are pretty serious infringements of people’s lives.

I think the Parliament has five days to ratify the declaration.  Will it?  Assuming it does ratify these moves I think this will kill the protests.  The only thing that could turn the situation around would be for the whole trucking industry to call a general strike.  That would shut the country down immediately and probably force the government to accede to the demands in a couple of weeks.  But it seems unlikely that would happen.

So, if the Parliament goes along with Trudeau and the truckers don’t call a general strike the protests will end.  The only question remaining is whether this will sit well with the general population.  Is it possible that even the go by the rules, follow the leader Canadians can become angry enough at their leaders to vote the bums out at the next election?

I tend to doubt it.  They seem even worse than us.  But the possibility remains.  Joe Brandon’s approval rating is under water because Americans have grown tired of incompetence but even more so, they’ve grown tired of the COVID fascism.  They’ve learned to distrust the inconsistent and seemingly useless dictates of Fauci and Biden.  They don’t want to be forced to take medicines that don’t work and might be dangerous.  They don’t want to wear masks that don’t work.  They don’t want to carry identification that says they’re complying with these mandates in order to have lunch at a restaurant or watch a football game or fly on a plane.  Biden knows this now and he’s back-pedaling as fast as his stuttering brain will allow him to go.  By March many of the states will have removed most if not all of the COVID restrictions and the feds will be slightly behind them.  That’s so they can hope to survive the midterms.

I don’t know the schedules of the Canadian election cycle.  Maybe they’ve got years before they come up for reelection.  And I don’t know the details of their Stupid Party.  Maybe they’re even stupider than ours.  But I’m about to find out if there is a beating heart of freedom left in Canada.  If they allow the Truckers’ Rebellion to be chloroformed without a fight and leave Trudeau and his henchmen in charge then that will answer the question perfectly.  That will line up with other areas of the anglosphere like New Zealand and Australia where the COVID fascists have crushed all dissent and exposed the majority of their citizens as the powerless and cowardly lackeys of the gynocracy.  Now granted, Justin Trudeau is nominally a man but if you look at him, he’s girliest of girlie men.  The contrast between him and the type of people making up the Truckers’ Protest couldn’t be starker.  Canada is getting to choose what kind of men represent their nation.  I hope they choose well.

Update:

At least one Canadian newspaper (Toronto Sun) is opposed to Trudeau’s fascism.  I’ll call this a sliver of hope.

The Sorting Process

photog Current Events , ,

Nowadays you hear the term binary thrown around more and more.  Famously the sexual deviants and even those who pretend to be sexual deviants for the sake of being trendy declare that their sexuality isn’t binary, meaning neither male nor female.  Apparently, they not only believe in more than two sexes but they think there are infinite gradations of sexes.  And being deviants or idiots or both they spend a lot of time talking about their pronouns and other insanity associated with all this non-binary choice.

But there is a binary phenomenon going on right now and that is the choice we all will have to make in the future.  The choice is to resist the “great reset” or go along with it.  And it is an active choice.  If you do nothing then you get sorted into the group ruled by the progressive elements.  They are on a moving conveyor belt heading into the machine that will grind up all of that protoplasm and spit out the pod people from the back of the machine.  The only choice you have is whether or not to jump off the conveyor and join up with the others rejecting that fate and try to build a different future.

In fact, it will be a series of binary choices because the Left doesn’t take no for an answer.  At every turn there will be another choice where if you do nothing you will be assimilated.  Every facet of life has been weaponized and every facet has a passive default that puts you back on the conveyor belt.

The upside of all this sorting is that anyone who doesn’t end up in the machine has consciously made the decision to resist.  It’s a foregone conclusion that you want to be outside of the collective, outside of the hive.  And of course, there will be some who resist for a good long time and then give up.  Despair and exhaustion will take their tolls.

And even after all this, it will be necessary for the survivors to put together their own organization or fail to organize.  That isn’t a binary operation at least not in the long term because men are naturally contrary and difficult to come to perfect agreement.  Eventually factions will arise.

But in the short term the resistance will form one organization simply because we’ll have to.  The strongest will become the leader and everyone else will find a spot to line up in the hierarchy.  But until an organization is finally assembled, we each have to spend our time avoiding the fate of the cattle who daily advance on the conveyor belt to their fate.  Each day we have to look for choices that we can make to avoid the worst of the poison that the Left throws at us and our children.  And we have to search for political leaders who can represent us and say no to all the madness that the Left has cooked up for us.  Critical Race Theory, slavery reparations, institutionalized voter fraud, sexual mutilation of children, grade school propaganda about race and sex, anti-white discrimination, anti-Christian discrimination, anti-male discrimination and more.

So, this is the sorting process that is going on.  You’re going to have to expend a lot of energy to resist the momentum of the system but as the sorting process continues, you’ll more and more find yourself surrounded by other people who have had to make the same choices you have.  And eventually those will be the only people you’ll find left in the world you will have chosen.