Rationality- not terribly popular these days

I just really don't know how to respond to people anymore when their only justification for thinking a certain course of action is right or wrong is based upon superstition and imaginary beings who they believe are watching them.

I stopped even looking at the comments on one of my Clovis News Journal columns when the commentary devolved into "this is wrong- and must be kept illegal- because God says it is wrong".

I'm sorry, but if you get your notions of right and wrong from a supposedly immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient supreme being who is fine and dandy with, and completely supportive of, slavery, genocide, and other things that are harmful to innocent people (and, yes, I am fully qualified to judge that most victims of these horrors do not deserve them), then you have no principles and no moral compass. You will fall for anything as long as some authority you respect tells you it's OK.

I know who deserves to be defended against. I know who should be left alone. I know who is harming others if I see it happening. I know what actions are causing actual harm and which ones are just offensive to someone. If I can know this, shouldn't your supreme being be able to know this too?

Or, is he (or the narrative of him) trapped by the words and attitudes that were written down by barbarous tribesmen thousands of years ago? Unable to escape a primitive and brutal culture that laid out the rules of the game and claimed that this being was forever completely unchanging, since he was already perfection personified. Good thing for him that his fan club is so good at cherry-picking. Still, craziness is craziness, no matter how popular it remains, and it should not be coddled and encouraged.

Factual or fictional; rational or completely insane. You are free to believe whatever you want to believe. It is not within my rights to order you otherwise even if it were possible. But... you have no right to base "laws" upon your silliness. If you try to do so, and you harm other people in the process- people who were simply trying to live their own lives- you are worse than those you seek to stop from doing ... whatever. You are actively committing acts of evil.

Smart - evil = libertarian

I've come to the conclusion that smart people who are not evil are very likely to be libertarian. People who have struck me as highly intelligent have usually turned out to have a very strong libertarian streak when I find out more about them. Often enough that I think it is more than coincidence.

While dumb people may be libertarian, it's probably just because someone told them something that sounded good at the moment and they latched on (there is always the possibility I belong in this group). Dumb people seem to be very attracted to the notion that it is OK to push people around and kill them if they don't cooperate. Some hide behind The State and some do it on their own, but there is no real difference between the two kinds of aggression.

Smart people will think things through for themselves and come to the libertarian position all by themselves without any outside guidance. They are also less likely to abandon their libertarian principles under coercion or distress.

Smart people who cling to the barbaric desire to harm people who do not deserve to be harmed right now will gravitate toward one form of authoritarianism or another. It is the only way they can justify the harm they cause (and usually avoid immediate consequences). They can pretend to be something other than a bad person, but it is a transparent act. Many of these end up joining the world's biggest, most violent gang.

Why "Dull 'Hawk"?

People seem to really enjoy using my "Dull 'Hawk" moniker (often shortened to "dullhawk" online) as an insult. The "dull" part, anyway. I'm sure I've explained this before, but I can't find it, so I suppose it's appropriate to post it here.

Dull 'Hawk is my "mountainman name", and is short for "Dull Tomahawk". (We mountainmen usually call our tomahawks "'hawks" among ourselves.)

So, why is my 'hawk dull? Actually, it isn't. Back in 1992 I was at a mountainman rendezvous and was competing in the tomahawk-throwing competition. My tomahawk would hit the target every time... and fall off. In practice it stuck every single time, but in the contest it simply refused. Performance anxiety, I suppose.

Anyway, people gave me the name "Dull 'Hawk" at that rendezvous and I kept it.

The State- collapsing under its own failures

The State- collapsing under its own failures

The State is a failure. Need proof?

An Albuquerque police detective has been placed on "administrative duty" while his arrest for punching his girlfriend is sorted out. They were fighting over her taxes. Fail, fail, and fail again. So the police department is quickly distancing themselves by emphasizing he is just a "part-time" Only One. Just in case their "thin blue line" fails to protect one of their Brothers.

The girlfriend should not be forced, by The State, to experience the stress of cooperating with and enabling the theft of her property. There should be no special elite class who are given special treatment when accused of serious offenses. If he really punched her, should he be doing anything "official" for the APD, or might this give a dangerous man opportunity to harm more people with impunity? In a free society this entire situation evaporates and would probably never have happened in the first place.

Then, to add failure on top of multiple failures highlighted above, the "career criminal" who has become a prime example of the failure of The State to do what its supporters claim is its number one job has been arrested for the 128th time. In a free society he would have been shot and stopped long ago by one of his intended victims, rather than being protected by "laws" against defense of self and property.

Enough is enough.