Tag: freedom

Where Will Freedom Take Root Next?

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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.”

Neil Oliver Talks About Despots and Freedom

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Since I first saw one of Neil Oliver’s videos on The Conservative Treehouse I’ve come to envy his amazing eloquence and his Scottish brogue.  But more than his language skills I enjoy his forthright defense of freedom.  I really don’t know his history or his specific political stripe but he has been passionate about standing against the anti-freedom forces array against him and us.

In this video he talks about how what’s happening in Ukraine is no longer the antithesis of how the West behaves.  After all if Joe Biden doesn’t like your politics he’ll send men with guns to throw you into prison and if you resist you’ll end up just as dead as a Ukrainian freedom fighter.

What’s a Twentieth Century American to Do? – Part 2 – Are There Alternatives to the U.S.?

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In the first part of this series of posts I identified two separate questions associated with whether The United States was still the freest place in the world to live.  The first question was to answer whether the U.S. still the freest country to live in.  The second question is contingent on the first answer being yes.  If it is the freest place then the second question is how do you live in this new America in a way that maximizes your actual freedom here.  Because without a plan it is unlikely that it will feel very free.

This post is meant to answer that first question.  I looked around at some of the other places in the world and asked whether they were more or less free than the U.S.  And I think I’ll have to say that there are other places that would feel freer than here.  I’ll try to explain how I came up with this answer.

One of the first thing I decided was that if the standard of living of the country in question was close to first world conditions, then I would not fault the “freedom” quotient on that account.  For instance, I would rate most countries in Europe as an acceptable economy to compare to the U.S.  whereas some place like Haiti or North Korea would be unacceptable.  Looked at this way, places like Argentina and Chile and even Costa Rica might be acceptable places to live because the infrastructure exists to enjoy a decent life.

The next question is whether a country enjoys freedom of speech.  And it is understood that this is relative to what currently exists in the United States.  Though we technically have complete freedom of speech in the United States that is far from a true statement when you take into account the effects of woke practices on employment and the “hate speech” laws that although technically unconstitutional are unchallenged in multiple jurisdictions throughout Blue America.  Looked at from that point of view there are plenty of places that have the same or more freedom of speech as the United States.  Certainly, there are many places in Europe where the woke thought police are even more rabid than in this country but places like the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, for instance, are not among them.  And these countries are not in the clutches of the LGBTQ mafia.  And they are all opposed to illegal immigration.  And finally, the Czech Republic even has gun rights that come close to what we have in the United States.

So, my cursory survey of other countries that might provide a freer environment than the U.S. seems to say that there may in fact be choices.  And it is understood that none of these places are as prosperous as the United States or possess all the advantages that this country possesses.  But what they do have is a less leftist outlook and a lack of woke public policy.  And since this is just a cursory examination, my next step is to look at these Eastern European countries to see whether the reality matches the appearance.

And if anyone out there has information on these three places and other candidate countries, please leave information in the comments.

What’s a Twentieth Century American to Do? – Part 1

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A few days ago, I was having a political discussion with someone on our side of the cultural divide.  I said something like, “If none of the red state leaders does anything to resist the unconstitutional changes being made then we might as well leave and go somewhere else.”  His answer was that maybe we might leave out of protest or anger but we wouldn’t be going someplace where we would have more freedom than we have, even in this diminished America.  And that got me thinking, “Is that true?”

Our complaint with what is going on is that we are being cheated out of the freedoms that were the defining qualities of this country.  If we cannot have those freedoms here, where can we have them?  If the answer is nowhere else then leaving would just be a matter of protest.  So, this needs to be determined in order to know what is the reasonable course of action.

Knowing the fellow that I was talking to; I think he was specifically talking about the 2nd amendment.  But I thought about all the things that are considered freedom in America.  And that is a complicated calculation because some of the most cherished freedoms, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms; are exactly the things that are under assault by the Left.  But there are other advantages in this country that we might want to consider freedom.  I remember during the Second World War the US government sponsored Norman Rockwell to produce public service ads that highlighted some of the American virtues that we all benefitted from, such as, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.  As diminished as some of those things have become it is definitely important to look at what trade offs would exist if an American were thinking of leaving here.  After all, as unequal as some of the enforcement of laws has been in the last few years it bears remembering just how non-existent justice tends to be in most of the world outside of the first world.  Imagine demanding your rights from the police in Mexico or the Philippines.

So that is the first part of what this post, or these posts are about.  But contingent on the answer to whether there is a freer place to go, there is a second question.  If there is no better place to go then the next important topic is how can we maximize our freedom while living in this post-freedom America.  And surely, I’ve talked about this a million times already but I want to look at it from a different perspective.  It’s a new idea I’ve had.  I have started calling it the “American Archipelago.”  The concept is that we can look at all of our separate lives spread across the length and breadth of this continent as islands of freedom in a sea of darkness that is Woke America.  We can walk in freedom on our own tiny preserve and we can visit each other in real life or in digital space and step from island to island and travel over this sea of darkness without being drowned in it.  All we have to do is perfect our seamanship to avoid being drowned.  I like the metaphor and plan to use it in a story I’m thinking about.

But for now, I’ll think a little bit about the answer to the question.  Is post-freedom America still the freest place on Earth?

Freedom or The Hive – Anarchy or Society – Are there Any Ways to Get the Best of Both Worlds?

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Are our only two choices to be either a drone in the global hive that our tech masters are quickly creating or a Hobbesian natural man whose life will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?”  The Founding Fathers tried to thread that needle by building a state that guaranteed certain “inalienable rights.”  As we have lived to see, these guarantees have been abrogated by the elitist class that runs our government and all the corporations that control the livelihoods and material resources that we depend on for existence.

But what we shouldn’t forget is that those things existed for a very long time in this country.  There is nothing theoretical about living free in a law-based society.  What has changed is the thinking of the elites who control so many levers of power.  They have over time decided that they are the rightful rulers of this country and by extension all of Western civilization and that they have a better understanding of what we should be allowed to be.

They’re not interested in inalienable rights.  After all they don’t believe in God so they can’t believe that there are rights given to us by God.  Without God we are all just animals that happen to exist here on this spinning rock somewhere in the meaningless depths of a universe that increasingly seems to make no sense.  So, if they find that they have control of us then in their minds they are gods and we have little to say about it.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  And I think he was right.  Human social arrangements cannot be made static.  They change over time as the customs and character of the people change too.  We are not the British colonists.  This is not the world that they lived in.  But we are human beings.  We have very similar minds and bodies to theirs.  Our world is very different but people living together, men and women still want and need the same things.  We want to enjoy life and we want to keep what we work for and we want our families to enjoy these same things after us.

So, what it comes down to is this.  We’ve let the people in charge take back the things that were agreed to be ours.  We’ve been cheated.  But if we want to get them back, we’re going to have to do more than complain.  So, the choices available to us are:

  • Fold
  • Flee
  • Fight

Those are the choices.  Fold means give in.  Join the hive and become a drone.  It’s not much of a life but at least you don’t have to do much thinking.  They’ll find a small cell for you to inhabit until the winter comes and they push you out of the nest into the snow.

Flee means leave.  Find a better place either in a red state that has maintained some independence from the hive.  Florida looks promising.  Maybe Idaho.  Or maybe find a foreign land that will take you in and hasn’t been absorbed by the hive.  Are there good places in the world?  Yes.  Will they take us.  Maybe not.  But it’s worth exploring.

Fight means taking the country back.  How that can be done is anyone’s guess.  The oligarchs have control of power that is virtually infinite.  The resources of the federal government.  The reserve currency of the whole world with an almost limitless ability to print money.  The largest and most potent military that has ever been.  Even thermonuclear weapons if the reason for using them ever appeared.   They have almost complete compliance from every corporation and entity with any power, from the media outlets to the universities to the manufacturers and commercial giants.  And finally, the information resources of the Silicon Valley billionaires.  They know so much about us that they think they can predict our every action.

The idea of fighting all that seems like a bad joke.  But by the same token we have at least eighty million living human beings on our side.  If a constituency that large can be organized it will have resources and capabilities that could accomplish a lot.  Even in the complete absence of violence or even protest a force that large could change things very significantly.  But what we currently lack is organization, leadership and a plan.  And of those three things what is most lacking is leadership.  Someone strong and smart has to step forward and take control of organizing.  Who knows, the decision might be that what we need to do is flee.  Maybe we can organize a program to allow us to emigrate together to some place that we could call our own.  Perhaps several of the red states could become our reservation.  But we’ll need to get organized to accomplish any of this.

And getting back to the original thesis of this post, it is possible to live in a free society.  But it’s not possible to keep it if you’re not willing to defend it.

Where Will the Next Renaissance Occur?

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Human history has a cyclical structure to it.  Civilizations are born, grow, weaken and die.  Each one is unique but they have similarities that cause their histories to resemble older ones.  We are at the end of the European Renaissance Civilization and it’s been a humdinger.  From its origins in the rise of a merchant class in 14th century Florence, Italy it has spawned the growth of human learning and the taming of the forces of nature to such an extant that the world we live in today would be completely unrecognizable to those scholars and even the forward-thinking politicians of the early days.

But without a doubt, the impulse that animated the birth and growth of that mighty endeavor is completely spent.  The United States and the European Union are the main political centers that represent the descendants of the Renaissance civilization.  These two entities are moribund.  Senescence defines everything they do.  Vigor and youthful enthusiasm are completely lacking.  And the whole of their failing energy is directed toward protecting the status quo positions of the wealthy elites.  And even in that sadly myopic endeavor they are losing ground rapidly to a more confident culture, the Chinese.

But very often the birth of the next civilization appears among the ashes of the previous one.  And that brings me to the point of this essay.  Where will the next Florence be found?  Some might say that Silicon Valley is our Florence.  Here the brightest minds are assembled building the trillion-dollar industry that increasingly runs every aspect of modern life.  It sells us our clothes and tools and entertainment and provides our leaders with the information they need to control us.

But I think an organization like Silicon Valley that seeks to subordinate human happiness to an algorithm and openly espouses a worldview that disparages faith and family is hardly a new Florence.  Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg is hardly the next Lorenzo de’ Medici.  You could say that at least Elon Musk might have a chance at claiming to be a new Edison perhaps.  And Peter Thiel does talk about the lack of innovation but that’s not the same as playing patron to Michelangelo or Galileo.

No, I think the next big explosion of heroic human creation will happen elsewhere.  Where?  No one can tell.  Maybe it’ll be in Texas or Hungary or Russia.  Maybe it’ll be in Japan.  Or maybe it’ll be in some third world backwater.  Somewhere people will figure out how to switch things up and get to keep the fruits of their labor without having to pay the Pope and the Emperor.  Somewhere (probably a small place) will break away from the global hive and think and live for themselves.  Will it take a thousand years as it did with post-Rome?  For my grandchildren’s sake, I hope not.  Could it happen today?  I tend to doubt it.  We haven’t successfully revolted against the king in 250 years and we’ve grown weak and fearful.

My guess is it’ll happen elsewhere.  But that’s no excuse for not trying to make it happen here.  As weak and fearful as we are, that doesn’t mean our opponents are brave or strong.  They’re just positioned on the high ground and they’ve done a good job of gaslighting our kids.  If we do a better job of organizing, we may be able to get them off our backs for good.  But that’s a big if.

Civic Nationalism vs. White Identitarianism

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Identity politics has enveloped our modern political world.  The Dissident Right says that the winning strategy for Normal White Men is to play the same game and build a separate identity and negotiate relationships with the other identity groups.  The alternative to this is the civic nationalist idea of a civic identity that embraces everyone who identifies with the traditional American culture and constitutional governance.

The question is which one reflects reality.  And what that hinges on is whether there are more people who believe in Old America or more people who don’t.  If the answer is more people believe then we can try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  But if Old America doesn’t have enough support to win back the country, then identity politics is the only way to go.

I have to confess I don’t know the answer to this.  And part of the problem is that the Democrats and their political machine stopped worrying about obeying the law.  So, it becomes difficult to know if we are the majority or the minority.  If they can steal an election then it may be too late to fix the system at all.

But for now, my world view is that what Old America stood for is a good thing that is worth upholding.  The civic national concept is a framework that provides a way for human beings to live together in harmony.  The live and let live aspect of free association and freedom of speech is an attractive and valuable concept.  If it is shown that these things are irremediably lost then America without them becomes far less attractive a proposition.  At that point I believe it would be necessary to reevaluate all the options.

America’s defining virtue was always freedom.  And freedom is an absolute.  Sure, there were plenty of cheats that occurred against the Bill of Rights.  At different times and in different places crimes against freedom of speech or the right to bear arms or the other fundamental rights were perpetrated.  But for the most part our rights were respected.  We were treated as free men.

If we aren’t free men then our citizenship becomes a lot less valuable than we thought it was.  If it turns out that freedom has been removed from the bargain then what we have left must be measured against all the locations on the globe to decide which one provides the highest quality of life.  In some places economic opportunity might be higher.  In others crime levels might be lower.  In others traditional lifestyles may be more attractive than living in a woke cesspool of dysfunction and delusion.  Maybe some of the red states may provide a successor state to Old America.  That would be a very attractive option if it becomes impossible to save the republic.  That option would include all the virtues of the old system without having to constantly battle the Left for the right to live a normal life in your own country.

So, for now I’ll cling to the hope that we will be able to resuscitate Old America and cleanse it of the lunacy that the Left is inflicting upon us.  I don’t assume that the blue states can be saved.  Places like California and New York are hopeless.  The best thing that can happen there is for systemic collapse to provide an object lesson on what happens when you legislate insanity.

But if my fellow Americans embrace anti-white identity politics then I will be shown wrong and I will have to admit my error and swim across to the Dissident Right.

The COVID Curse is Over

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Today I spent the day with my family.  No masks, no outdoor seating, no nothing.  I spent the day with my children and their families.  I spent hours with my grandchildren and I caught up with them about school and their hobbies and other things like what they were reading.  And with the two youngest I played a game of catch that went on for a couple of hours.  It was exhausting and wonderful.  And then we had a grand meal.  My son in law let my daughter relax for Mother’s Day and went outside and grilled steaks and salmon and we had a feast.  And then we had some excellent Italian pastries and coffee.

And I sat down after dinner and talked to my oldest grandson who is a junior in high school and asked him about his math classes and he said he is doing well in calculus.  He is much like me and I think he will end up in engineering or computer science.  And we discussed some of his other activities.  He has a 3D printer that I funded and I was glad to hear that he has learned how to replace the parts that wear out and make the adjustments needed to keep it working well.  Later I spoke with my daughter and she told me about the straight A’s her son has been getting in math.  And that made me happier than anything.  I guessed that he would have academic abilities but I was afraid he would also have inherited from me a disregard for studying.  I always depended on just raw ability to barely squeak by without doing anything but last-minute cramming.  Hearing that he had picked up some discipline was music to my ears.

And I spoke with my next oldest grandson.  He had grown a lot over the last year and now was almost as tall as his older brother.  And we talked about his school sports.  He loves playing soccer and basketball and now he’s added tennis to his games.  He was happy about being able to play again now that school was returning to normal.  I’ve seen him play and he has great enthusiasm and talent.  And he was so personable and cheerful.  That was personal growth and great to see.

The other two boys, the little guys were live wires and played and bickered with each other and gave me the chance to chide them about their outlaw behavior.  We talked about dinosaurs and giant ants and ninjas.  Of course.

I knew I missed all these things during this insane lockdown but now I remembered exactly what they felt like.  Camera Girl and I were smiling all the way home and we went on and on about how good it was to see everyone and how we would have a pool party for the kids with a barbecue very soon.

And I think how much we were robbed of in the last year.  Our children were cheated out of a year of their education.  Our neighbors were cheated out of the businesses they had built up over the course of a lifetime.  Our country was cheated out of the freedoms that have been the birthright of this country for centuries.  And all of us were cheated out of the government we voted for.

All of this was done under the false pretense that COVID was a deadly plague that threatened everyone.  We were lied to and bullied into giving up all these things and then humiliated into walking around with a pathetic mask that was supposedly keeping away the invisible invader.  We had to forego human contact with those we cared for the most.  Even those who actually did die from the virus had to die alone in a hospital surrounded by masked strangers.

But now we see that the masks did nothing and all the same people lived or died regardless of these useless gestures.  In Florida the people were freed from the masks and other restrictions and they had lower death rates than New York where everyone remained locked down for a year.  And now maybe people will start to wake up from this charade and hold responsible those who perpetrated this fraud on us.  Newsom and Cuomo and Fauci are the names that stand out.  But there are dozens of governors and mayors who locked up their people and enjoyed their little reign of terror.  They locked up innocent people but let the BLM gangsters have free rein to form mobs of people and terrorize the hard-working people of their states.

So, the nonsense about COVID has stopped scaring people.  Now we have to decide if we are going to get our lives back the way they were.  If we can’t do that then we’re slaves here and should look around for a better place to live.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – Safety Over Freedom, A Dissenting Opinion

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(This opinion was a comment to a statement by the ZMan that people will choose safety over freedom – photog)

 

Not everyone chooses safety over freedom. People defying mask and social distancing orders are choosing freedom over what the elite says is safety (masks are little more than a placebo). Even more importantly, brave humans still man the wall in our military and police and firefighting forces.

Of my tribe, there are the Chief Mountain Hotshots, a Blackfoot force of para-jumping firefighters who fight wildfires in forests. They owe no fealty to the federal or state government and the overwhelming majority of the fires they fight are not on the reservation.

The police are still working, even in areas where sissy politicians are trying to defund them. They are still responding to assist citizens even in areas where they are supposedly forbidden to go by protesters.

There are things going on in our military that seldom if ever see the light of day. We have exceptionally brave and skilled people doing almost impossible things to protect us every day. Heck, just working on the most dangerous four-and-a-half acres in the world, an aircraft carrier flight deck, is hazardous even in peacetime. We lose more GIs to training accidents than to enemy action these days. They chose to protect freedom for others, almost all of them who they will never meet and in many cases would not like, over their own personal safety.

When you put your own body between home and the war’s desolation, you prove your fitness to be a citizen. Soldiers do not fight because they hate what is in front of them, but because they love what is behind them. To place your own frail body between home and danger is the ultimate test of citizenship. No sunshine patriots, these GIs and cops and firefighters. They are patriots to the bone.

I do not believe most conservatives fantasize over a civil war. It’s more of a nightmare. It will be pretty damned bloody and Americans killing Americans is not what any conservative wishes, even if we are willing to do it when push comes to shove. When aroused, Americans are insensate fighters. To awaken the berserker spirit within us is not a good idea. Ask the Japanese of the Pacific theater in WWII. There is a reason our civil war was our bloodiest in history. With well over 20 million veterans among the citizenry there are enough trained people to make even a foreign enemy think twice let alone a domestic enemy. That is why a civil war in the US is any true patriot’s worse nightmare.