Take high ground against legislation

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for April 16, 2023)

Is everything hopeless? The dominant cultures around the world have gone insane. Dishonest ideas, presented as normal or reasonable, are forced on us and the young and the gullible seem powerless to resist. Social media makes diseased ideas seem trendy and cool.

As long as you don't allow someone to violate you, let them be wrong. People have the right to make mistakes and you have the right to defend yourself from the consequences of their mistakes-- without violating their equal and identical rights. This is what liberty is.

Take care of yourself, because if you are unable to stand against the rising tide of insanity, who could replace you? Make sure you are okay no matter what happens around you; no matter what disastrous path society takes.

Don't allow yourself to be forced to act as though lies are truth. It's dangerous to stand your ground against armies of smug liars with power. Do it anyway. Speak the truth even when it costs you; even when those around you claim you're hurting someone's feelings.

Don't suggest "there ought to be a law"-- there are ethical ways of dealing with these lies. Ways which don't involve the other horrific lie, that political government is somehow legitimate in some circumstances. It's not.

People who haven't got a leg to stand on will always seek to make up new legislation to force the world to conform to the way they wish it were. Then they'll use those who enforce legislation to get what they want. Don't be like them.

Legislation is the low ground; take the high ground. You do you, and let them fall off the cliff if this is what they are determined to do. If you try to save them and they pull you over the edge too, no one is better off. If you can keep someone from following them into oblivion, though, do it, within the limits of what you have a right to do.

No one has the right to prevent you from doing anything which harms no other person nor violates their property. No one has the right to punish you for living in this way. A government job doesn't create this right, nor can a law. To stand up against the insanity you're going to need to become comfortable doing things which are unpopular with "the crowd". You're reading this so I have faith in you. You give me hope.

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You're an outlaw. Get used to it.

I couldn't tell you the date for sure, but I'll bet the first time I told you that you are going to need to become comfortable with being an outlaw was within the first year or so of launching this blog-- in other words, probably 18 or so years ago. (The earliest example I found was from May of 2007, which is in the first year of the blog.)

And it's only more obvious today than it was back then.

If you don't want to be a slave you're going to have to be an outlaw. And you might as well get comfortable with it now. Unless you're OK with being a slave, in which case, why are you reading my blog?

Several times over the years my dad has told me it was a good thing his dad died before certain social trends took hold-- because he wouldn't have been able to handle them.

I never want to be that way, but that doesn't mean I'm going to quietly accept certain unacceptable things without speaking out. Even if it's unpopular or illegal to speak the truth about them.

I don't want to be an angry, out-of-place old man, I'd rather be an outlaw who just doesn't care what society, through government, dictates. 

Sure, it would be nice if society and government changed (or in the case of government, died a horrible death) so that liberty was valued and no longer illegal. But my opinions aren't going to change to fit the dying culture if that doesn't happen. 

If the bad guys-- who I have less than zero respect for anyway-- are going to label me an outlaw for doing what I have a natural human right to do, I'm OK with that. Are you?

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Seeing what they choose to see

 

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"The REAL libertarians"?

Classical liberalism is "libertarian, but".

Those who call themselves classical liberals like to claim they are "the real libertarians". Perhaps... 

They sure do have big Buts, though.

They like liberty, BUT they believe in a "night watchman" government to do the things they believe are "too important" to allow someone to do them correctly-- without theft and coercion.

If they think it's important, they want to have the least honest or capable among us responsible for it. And they want it done with theft and coercion.

They like to keep the state around for those functions states invariably reach for first when they want to rob, enslave, or murder the people under their power. Police, military, etc... the usual suspects.

Yet, they'll claim others who don't believe in this excessive state (which they'd claim is a "minimal state") are statist, but they themselves are the libertarians. Whatever, fellas.

Claim whatever makes you happy. 

I'll just say classical liberalism is much too statist for me. Every interaction I have with one of them on social media drives this fact home.

To see them attacking someone else as a statist-- while being so completely statist in what they advocate-- is funny stuff.

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Is it bad to want to overthrow government?

To want to overthrow an evil political government doesn’t automatically make a person bad.

All political governments are evil.

Any institution that would be considered a "government" by anyone who isn't nitpicking technical details is political.

I'm not going to criticize those who are fighting against the Ancestral Enemy-- who, of course, will be labeled as "bad" by the Ancestral Enemy. What else can the Ancestral Enemy do?

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Reader (?) response

Here's a response to today's newspaper column:

Dear Mr McManigal and mr [Redacted] (a local Republican activist)
Boy howdy, you two are a pair.
Both of you wear hats in the house (now that is not real cowboy or polite)*.
“Liberty is more important than imaginary safety, or even life.”
I wish you two cowboys would saddle up and go to Ukraine and shoot your guns.

I’m tired of listening to your hunter biden, nord stream conspiracies, or the government taking your home protection firearm.

Now an assault rifle with a clip (semi automatic) is another thing.
I wish both of you to volunteer in the emergency room for a 9mm gunshot wound vs multiple 30-06 wounds.   Both stop an intruder, but you don’t want a kid using either.
A 30-06 is a deer rifle (bolt action) not an assault rifle with a clip.
One bullet one kill…. That’s how it worked in the old days.   No mistakes.

I believe you two “voices” contributors in the newspaper are destructive and you both need to be a little more constructive in our society.
Happy Mother’s Day and pass it on.
Sincerely [redacted]

Here's the reply I sent:

Mr. [Redacted 2],

Mr. [redacted] and I are not generally on the same side. I am the polar opposite of Republican/Democrat.

It's very strange that today if you're against Biden you're MAGA. If you're against Trump you're a leftist. If you're against both you're MAGA again. Politics makes people stupid.

I do not support the Ukraine government. I do not support the Russian government. I support every individual who is neither initiating force nor violating private property.

When have I ever mentioned Hunter Biden or Nordstream? Are you hallucinating? 

As for government taking home protection firearms-- that's the whole point of every one of the 20,000+ failed anti-gun rules (they aren't, and can't be, laws) and the criminal gang of the BATFE. A territory where only government employees are armed has a name; it's called a police state.

Assault rifles are select-fire rifles and have been (illegally) rationed since 1934. They are not semi-automatic. A clip is a metal strip that holds a few (usually 10 or fewer) cartridges together, ready to be pushed down into the action of a rifle. You're probably mistakenly referring to magazines. This is why it's difficult to take anti-gunners seriously when they try to speak as though they know what they're talking about while saying things of this sort.

The term "assault weapons" (which is so ridiculous it seems to be falling out of favor with people more often using the objectively incorrect term "assault rifles" for firearms which aren't assault rifles) was made up by Josh Sugarmann in 1988 in order to fool the public into supporting a ban on semi-auto rifles. His argument was: "Assault weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons --anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun-- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." So even he knew he was lying for a political purpose.

Your point about the 9mm wounds vs "multiple 30-06 wounds" makes no sense. Yes, the more powerful 30-06 is going to do more damage, especially if there are multiple wounds. So? I haven't even heard of any political criminals talking about outlawing rifles that shoot 30-06 yet. They are focusing on those that shoot little underpowered .223 bullets (AR-15s) right now. 

Both a bolt action and a semi-automatic shoot one bullet per trigger pull. That's all. It's still "one bullet, one kill" if that's your goal. Remember, JFK was killed with a bolt action.

Most of the time, though, the only goal is to shoot paper targets. Anti-gunners must be very violent people to constantly fantasize that the only reason to have a gun is to kill people. I support the fundamental human right for anyone who doesn't want a weapon to not own a weapon, and if you think this much about killing others, you should probably opt out of weapon ownership-- including cars or hammers.

No one has a right to shoot someone who isn't currently attacking them or violating their property. You're arguing a straw man you've constructed.

Why wouldn't I want a kid using a 9mm or a deer rifle? Would I prefer to keep guns a forbidden fruit so they'll not know how to handle them correctly, but will be obsessed with getting their hands on one precisely because it's not allowed? This is like pretending the best way to keep kids from drowning is to make sure to keep them ignorant about water and forbid them to learn to swim, and ignore the fact they'll still be curious about water-- even more so since you've made it off-limits. It's counterproductive and will end up in more deaths.

If you believe this is "destructive", then the problem is within you.

Kent McManigal

*Demonstrating historical ignorance 

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