Most people die of natural causes. If anti-gun bigots were consistent, they would scream to ban natural causes... even if it meant murdering people to prevent them from dying of natural causes. I mean, they are already on the side of murderers now, so it's not much of a stretch.

Can politics avoid using the political means?

If your politics encourages you to steal from others or to control what others do with their bodies or their property, it's a problem. And that's pretty much the definition of politics. Only if you try to pretend politics is about society by redefining it, and leave out what it really is, can it be justified. 

It's why I dislike politics. ALL politics.

This is why libertarianism isn't political-- not when it stays libertarian. And it's why a Libertarian (political) Party is going to be not-so-libertarian when it tries to do something other than educate people; when it tries to engage in politics.

I get it: others are using politics to violate your life, liberty, and property. They are using politics to archate. You want to turn the tables for a change. You want to use politics defensively to protect yourself from their politics. But I don't think it's any more possible to use the political means defensively than it is to set off a nuclear bomb defensively. You'll end up being the aggressor by your action. Theft and aggression are never defensive, nor are they restitution.

Sure, it sounds amusing to say the Libertarian Party is all about plotting to take over the world so they can leave you alone, but is that true? If liberty can only be protected by using the political means is it worth it? Is this a case of raping to promote virginity? I'm not sure but that's how it looks to me.

Obviously, any type of libertarian is better than any type of authoritarian. Don't think I'm saying otherwise. I'm just bothered when libertarians advocate using politics against others in any way for any reason. It doesn't seem to fit with the principles of the thing. What if that's the only way? Do you really "have to" slaughter an entire village-- women and children, too-- to protect yourself from a few bad guys who live there and are a threat to you? I doubt it.

I've just never seen any politics that didn't involve justifying archation at some level. And if it existed, how would it still be politics?

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If anyone would like to toss a little bit of money into this troublemaker's PayPal account ( paypal.me/Dullhawk ), it would be appreciated. Thank you.

If you start with the assumption that government is necessary, that democracy is a positive thing, that vaccines are always good, and that cops are heroes, you aren't thinking. You're just parroting the tenets of your cult.

Government doesn't disappoint

When you expect nothing good from government you won't be disappointed. This is why government can never disappoint me. 

It can anger me-- as any aggressor or thief will-- but it isn't possible for me to be disappointed in it. Sure, I'll feign disappointment sometimes to mock government, but it's only an act.

When government does something stupid or harmful, I just roll with it as well as I can. Sometimes I am a little bit shocked by the depth of the stupidity, but never disappointed.

When legislation fails to protect the innocent, and actually makes things measurably worse, no disappointment. Anger, but not disappointment.

When government drops the ball on some "service" I am being (non-consensually) charged for, I am not disappointed. Neither am I disappointed that I never get refunded due to this failure to provide the service I was forced to pay for. Sometimes a little disgusted, yes, but not disappointed.

Government can surprise me when it fails to do the wrong thing. It has happened a few times, but not often. Even those pleasant surprises are tempered by the knowledge that those events were made illegitimate through theft ("taxation") and aggression.

Back when I was young and naive and I could be disappointed in government, it was nearly a permanent condition. One disappointment after another. I was young and dumb. I believed that politicians mostly meant well. I confused legislation for law. I believed it was possible to have a mostly good political government, if you did it right. But then I grew up.

I am not disappointed that thieves and arsonists violate property rights-- it's what they do. Sure, I like it when they get shot in the act, but I can't be disappointed that they act the way they act. The same goes for political government. It would be stupid to be disappointed that government does what government-- by definition-- does. People act, and things function, according to their nature. They can't do otherwise without changing what they are.

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Hating the messenger

Some of the angriest responses to things I write come after I warn of bad things in the near future-- particularly bad economic things. Such as inflation. It's not the only thing people get mad over, but it's probably the strangest.

Why would people get mad over economic warnings-- mad enough to write to tell me how wrong I am? To tell me it isn't happening and that it never will. To say I'm an idiot for claiming it's already started because they don't (won't?) see it. 

One particular guy wrote me last August in response to this column, saying local prices weren't going up and the dollar wasn't losing value because "God is in control". I wonder if he sees prices going up yet, or if his head is still stuck in a prairie dog hole and he hasn't bought anything since he wrote that email. Would it be nice of me to follow up and see what he says now?

Why all the anger? If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I hope I am; I don't want hyperinflation to happen. It's not that important for me to be able to say "I told you so". But they could show me why they believe I'm wrong, rather than simply expressing their anger over my warning.

I suspect the anger might be triggered by a few different things. 

Maybe they are just that invested in the current system. They believe it has served them well so far, and they want to believe it will keep doing so. Maybe they don't want to feel bad about what they've done to their grandchildren's future.

Maybe uncertainty scares them; if they proclaim their certainty forcefully enough, they feel safe. It's like a magic spell to chant for protection.

Maybe they just don't believe the government they worship through Holy Pole Quilts and pledges of allegiance would ever knowingly wreck the economy (while enriching its cronies) and put them in harm's way.

Maybe they just hate me and this topic pushes them over the edge and motivates them to write out of anger.

Or, maybe that one correspondent's religious faith depends on not seeing that government can do bad and stupid-- even evil-- things, and attacking anyone who suggests otherwise.

But if you don't see it happening now, I doubt you ever will. Not even when you're pushing your wheelbarrow of "dollars" to the store for a loaf of bread. Getting mad over it won't change anything. Hating the messenger doesn't prevent disaster.

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Drug abuse stupid but prohibition evil

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for June 2, 2021)

It's normal to focus more on things which matter to us personally. It's harder to care about everything else. I'm most vocal about the liberty I see being attacked the hardest. This is why I mention gun-owner rights so often. These rights are currently attracting the most hate.

If you want me to defend a right, start a coordinated attack against it.

Beyond rights I care about the most, you have the right to do things that don't interest me at all, or things I don't like. As long as "it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg", as Thomas Jefferson said-- nor the pockets or legs of anyone else-- I support your right to live as you wish. I don't care who it offends; there is no right to not be offended.

I recognize and respect the equal and identical rights of every human being alive. It matters to me when those rights are violated, whoever is doing the violating and however they justify it.

So, even though access to marijuana isn't important to me, I write about it because it's a right which matters to many people. It attracts attention, both from those who recognize the right to trade and use it and from those who want to continue using government violence to violate the right.

All choices have consequences; accidental or intentional. Some of the things you have a right to do can hurt or kill you. Misuse of any drug-- especially those more dangerous than Cannabis-- is one of those things. I still oppose drug prohibition. Drug abuse is stupid, but prohibition is pure evil.

If you are irresponsible you can harm others; something you have no right to do. Saying you were under the influence when you accidentally harmed someone can't wipe away the debt your act created.

You also owe restitution just as surely if you are under the influence of political authority and harm someone with legislation. Accept your responsibility.

Self-employed bad guys are almost as much a problem as those who believe they are entitled to violate your rights. The mugger and the tax collector are doing the same job, with the same result. There is no difference, other than it is more socially acceptable to defend yourself from one thief than it is to defend yourself from the other.

Respect liberty, even those parts you don't care about. It's what society needs most.

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Get a Time's Up flag or two

Liberty requires perpetual secession.

Happy Independents Day

No, that wasn't a misspelling. If you get it, you get it.

I hate that Independence Day has become "The 4th of July" and a celebration of government and the government's military. That's so not what it's about, and something I can never participate in.

But for those out there who understand, celebrate your independence with me.

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I love America and therefore I hate its enemy, the United States of America. It's odd how many people are confused by that statement.

Body counts aren't a good argument

People who argue for even worse "gun control" [sic] than Americans are already burdened with love to quote various questionable statistics on how many people are killed with guns every year.

There couldn't be a less convincing argument for them to make. Sorry. And it isn't that I don't care. I care a lot! I've had three close friends who were shot; two of them died as a result of being intentionally shot by evil losers. (The other was intentionally shot by an evil loser who was mugging him, but he survived.) That's no excuse to support anti-gun legislation. I'm not going to punish you for the deaths because it wasn't your fault. You didn't pull the trigger. In fact, I believe if you'd been there and were properly armed you would have tried to save their lives-- and I say this to anyone reading this blog. 

The problem is never "too many guns", and there is no way to "keep guns out of the wrong hands" without keeping them out of too many of the right hands, too. And the wrongest of the wrong hands-- government employees-- are never even factored in. 

Even if you use the dumb excuse of preventing the "mentally ill" from having guns by imposing draconian legislation, that's a hard "No" from me. Keep legislation out of it.

People die tragically every day. If you believe guns should be banned or rationed by the state because they are a tool that is sometimes involved in tragic deaths, why not food? (And yeah, I realize there are government-supremacists like a former NYC mayor who would support rationing or banning food on this pretext, too.)

Thousands of people choke on food annually. I know of someone whose young son choked on a piece of popcorn and died before they could save him. People commit slow suicide with food by grossly over-eating and by eating horribly unhealthy things. You've seen it happen. Evil people have served poisoned food to others as a way to murder them. Sometimes there are food "malfunctions" (contaminated food) and people die from it. 

Still, no one has the right to ban food. It's crazy or evil to even suggest it. No one has the right to regulate food, either, but they've already got their foot in the door on that point.

Back to guns: You could argue that there are other defensive tools you could use instead of guns if guns were eliminated. But none are as effective as guns, especially in a world where you'll never get rid of all the guns as long as government employees have them. (If they were as effective as guns, I'd bet money that the gun-banners would want to ban them, too.) 

You could argue that there are alternatives to traditional food, too. Twinkies, for example. (Just kidding.) People could swallow nutrition pills instead of eating food to keep themselves alive. Or get hooked to an IV full of nutrients. The point is, there are suboptimal substitutes for food, but you could try to rely on them to keep you alive. Just like the suboptimal alternatives to guns.

With all its drawbacks, food saves more lives than it takes. So do guns, but that's not the part of the story that makes the news. It's more thrilling to focus on evil losers murdering people than on boring things like good people showing a bad guy a gun and encouraging the bad guy to go away quickly.

The lack of food kills. The lack of a gun can kill. Both are your natural human right-- which doesn't mean anyone is obligated to provide you with either one; they just have no right to prevent you from providing for yourself. Gun-banners are exactly as evil as those who would starve you to death to keep you safe from the very real dangers of food.

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Getting permission to change your mind

People can't believe what they don't believe, and don't believe what they can't believe. I know; I've tried.

There have been times I really thought I should believe something I didn't believe. Either because I didn't like the implications of not believing, or because people I respected believed differently.

In those instances I was already primed to change my mind; any real reason could have nudged me over the line. Yet, in most cases, no one could give me good enough evidence to really change what I truly believed. No one could give me a good enough reason. No one could give me what was needed to actually change what I believed at a deep level.

I could lie and say I changed my mind, but why? There is no way for me to pretend to believe something I don't. I know it's not real to me. I won't act on it as though I believe it. (If I have any doubt, then I don't "believe" it anyway. I just lean that direction.)

This is something I can lose sight of when dealing with other people. Even realizing that they may be the same way I am when I'm in their shoes. If I expect them to change what they believe, I've got to give them a good enough reason to do so. Give them evidence. Maybe it won't help them change their mind, but if I don't give them at least that much, how could I expect them to change.

In the heat of a disagreement-- especially when the other person keeps pulling out insults and decides to call me a "mediocre white man" because I believe in liberty and rights for EVERYONE-- it's hard to not sink to their level. At least, I've never sunk to racism like they did, no matter how nasty they get.

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Just in case you weren't clear on the issue, taxation WITH representation isn't OK, either.

Do you agree with me yet that politics makes people stupid? And that by inserting politics into anything, you make that thing political and stupid and anti-science? Or do you need even more evidence? How much evidence will it take if you don't believe me by now?

Things that don't help

Yesterday I wrote about when and why I started carrying concealed and the job that encouraged it. Today I'll tell you about a co-worker from that job who probably wouldn't have been helped by concealed carry.

I had worked with this girl for a couple of years and really liked her. She had nearly died in a car wreck a few years previously, and her face had been completely reconstructed. You'd never know, except for a few insignificant scars. And her jokes about the metal plates in her head.

But she was a bit of a free spirit and got fired when she decided to go to a Grateful Dead concert a state away instead of coming to work after her request for time off had been denied. (This boss was bad about that, even though the store had plenty of employees and one being off for a couple of days wouldn't be a hardship on anyone-- turns out he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.)

She immediately got hired at another pet shop in town, and later, when that shop decided to start selling aquarium supplies, she asked me if I would be interested. Since they were offering me 50% more pay than I was getting, and my current boss said he couldn't pay me more, I took the job.

After that job kind of fizzled I moved out of state. A year later a co-worker wrote to tell me my friend was dead. Murdered.

After I left she had been hired by a law firm and she started dating a guy who it turned out was a "resident" at the state mental hospital-- with a history of violence against girlfriends-- who would walk away whenever he felt like it. When she discovered this she broke up with him, but he refused to let her go. He was jealous. He said if he couldn't have her, no one could. He stalked her. After he painted threatening messages about her in the parking garage where she worked-- messages including "Lucifer wants your soul"-- her boss helped her get a restraining order. You know how useful those are.

Then one day, only a few blocks from the pet store we had first worked at together, this evil loser pulled up beside her at a red light and shot her in the side of the head.

This is a case where being armed probably wouldn't have saved her life. Yes, you can say she should have been more situationally aware, but who among us is that aware all the time? Even with a known threat lurking it would probably be impossible.

It still hurts to think about what happened to her, after all she'd gone through (which was a lot), to end like that. I still have newspaper clippings and magazine articles that were written in the wake of her death, but I haven't looked at them in years. She's one of the three friends of mine who were shot, and one of the two to die as a result. It's why I have so little sympathy for those who blame guns for innocent deaths, rather than blaming the evil losers who murder, and it's one reason I have no patience for jealousy. 

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I've always considered hunting to be the more ethical way to get meat compared to the slaughterhouse. Putting myself in the place of the animals, I know which I'd prefer.

And so, I began to "carry"

When I was a kid I used to carry either a lever action .22 rifle or a 20 gauge single-shot with me in the woods. When I carried a gun. Carrying those long guns was inconvenient, and usually, when I needed a gun, I didn't have one with me. I always had a knife or two on me, but sometimes a knife is the wrong tool for the job. I once spent a few hours up a tree because I didn't have a gun when I should have.

In my late 20s I got a new job at a pet store in the ritzier part of town, and when they hired me they asked if I had a pistol I could carry, and if not, they strongly suggested I get one and carry it. (And, no, it wasn't "legal" there at that time. The boss mentioned this, while encouraging me to do so, anyway.) They preferred all their employees to carry while on the job. Nice!

But I'd never owned any handgun before. Nor had I ever really handled one. That was an oversight that needed to be fixed.

I went to my favorite gun store and immediately put a used 5-shot .38 SP Charter Arms snub-nosed revolver on layaway, picking it up a few weeks later. $265. 

I've carried every day-- with a few exceptions-- since.

I soon saw why the bosses made the request. The store was in a strip mall, and the Subway* sandwich shop 2 or 3 doors down got robbed at gunpoint twice in the 6 months I had that particular job. Plus, employees had to go out back, after dark, to put trash in the dumpster that was in the shadows. If practical, no one went alone, but it wasn't always practical. It was good to be armed and situationally aware.

It was fun seeing what my coworkers carried. The big boss didn't only carry concealed; when he took the money bag to his car at night, he would stick a huge, heavy-barreled stainless steel revolver in his waistband.

At the other end of the gun spectrum, one co-worker carried a little .25 semi-auto in his back jeans pocket. I wondered about the definition of "concealed" since his pocket had a clear outline of that pistol worn into the demin, a-la the Skoal can ring so many guys of that time sported. 

I moved on from that job, and although I never specifically mentioned to any subsequent boss that I carry, it was always the case that if there was any situation of danger that cropped up-- and they did-- I was placed on the front line. Maybe they knew I was armed, or maybe I was expendable. It doesn't really matter either way to me.

Because I care about you, I want you to be armed at all times. Just in case. That's the loving, civilized position to adopt with regard to my fellow human beings.

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*I wonder if Subways are a popular target for armed robberies. When I lived in Colorado, a couple of armed robbers went down the highway across the state robbing Subways in each town they passed through, including the one across the street from my job. It was about an hour and a half between towns, and by the time anyone realized the pattern, they were finished. I never heard of them being caught.

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Arguments for government work against it

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for May 26, 2021)

Any argument against the idea of having a free society-- one free of political government-- also works against the idea of having such a government holding society down.

The only reason anyone still tries to make this argument is because crimes are called by different names when they are committed by government employees instead of by the self-employed.

When you pretend criminal acts aren't criminal, you can justify anything.

Theft is called "taxation", "asset forfeiture", or "eminent domain". Kidnapping becomes "arrest" or "sequestering", and slavery is called "conscription". Mass murder becomes "war", while murder on a smaller scale becomes "capital punishment", "collateral damage", or "department policy". Propaganda becomes known as "schooling", "patriotism", or "a government press release", and torture becomes "enhanced interrogation".

The biggest lie of all is when the warlords occupying your land are called "the government"  to hide what they are and to make them sound legitimate. Often, the warlords are dishonestly called "leaders" rather than "politicians" or "rulers". The lie doesn't change what they are.

You wouldn't put up with being treated by self-employed criminals the way politicians treat you. The only reason you turn a blind eye to those who violate you now is because they twist the language to favor themselves.

Most people generally believe government is necessary, or even good, because they've endured thirteen or more years of brainwashing in government-controlled schools. Getting them when they are young and gullible works wonders.

If you won't live peacefully among others without government looking over your shoulder, you aren't really a better person just because it exists. In fact, you could (if you're smart) get a government job so you can get away with the acts you want to commit from a cover of legitimacy. If you can call the theft you commit "taxation", and pretend it is in the victims' interest, you'll probably never face justice. Yet the act remains the same-- taking property which doesn't belong to you, from the rightful owner who would rather not lose it, under threat of violence.

As has been said, anarchy is no guarantee that bad people won't violate the natural rights of others, but government guarantees they will-- and will probably get away with it, too. Their offenses will be ignored or excused because it's all "legal".

If humans were angels, no political government would be necessary, but because they aren't angels, political government is a terrible idea.

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Get a Time's Up flag or two

Science, or medical practices?

People trying to manipulate others into going along with a medical procedure by saying "trust the science" are lying.

Medicine isn't the same thing as science. Good medical practices have a solid foundation in science, but the practices inevitably lag behind science. 

And often, the science is unclear or seems to point in different directions so people have to make a guess. They may call those guesses "science", and try to convince you this is what it is, but they are still guesses.

To confuse medical practices with science seems to lead some people to make mistakes. 

I'd rather a doctor be honest with me and help me make informed choices, realizing we may get it wrong, than to lie and claim "science" when it isn't.

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Futurama predicted Covid-19!

People have talked a lot about the times it looked like The Simpsons predicted the future. Maybe that's not the only Matt Groening cartoon to see what's coming.

The Futurama episode "Cold Warriors" may not have exactly predicted Covid-19, but it is an eerily accurate parallel to the whole mess.

The fictional portrayal of the overreaction of the public, the media, and the government-- over a cold virus-- is cartoonishly similar to how things really went. It's almost as though Covid had already happened and this was a parody of past events.

Or, maybe, the writers just understand better than most how humans behave and extrapolate that into different situations so that when a similar situation comes along, humans do what they do and make the writers look psychic. Either way, you can learn a lot from certain cartoons.

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