Medicine + politics is no longer medicine, but is only politics. Same with science. This is how you get mandates and power-hungry people declaring themselves to be "The Science". It becomes the opposite of what it claims.
Education mixed with politics becomes gov-school, which is anti-education.
Economics + politics becomes Keynesian "economics"; fake economics. This is how you destroy an economy.
Religion with a little added politics becomes theocracy. If you want to completely discredit your religion, this is a quick way to do so.
If you add politics to a region (or to governance) you get a State, which is going to be spending most of its time and energy violating natural human liberty. This results in destroying property lines by mixing in politics so that they are replaced by "borders".
And libertarianism mixed with politics turns into political libertarianism. Then you get people stamping their feet and insisting that "anarchism is NOT libertarianism" because "true libertarianism" embraces the State, but wants it kept "small".
Even if politics was part of the original mix, you improve a thing by distilling away the politics. Remove the contaminant and you've got something better. (According to everyone who isn't invested in promoting the dross, anyway.)
Politics seems to be the one thing that is always bad to add; never an improvement or an essential ingredient for making a superior alloy.
I've been pondering for days whether there is anything that gets better if you mix a little politics into it, and have come up empty. Maybe I'm missing something that you can think of. And I guess it would depend on your definition of "better".
They believe that the Patriot Act was actually patriotic, that the "Safer communities" acts make communities safer, and a Respect for Marriage Act would somehow codify "respect" for marriage. Instead of the opposite. And they believe that's all those bills would do.
If it's a bill, you can know it will be given a name that is the opposite of what it embodies, and it will be filled with irrelevant, harmful legislative trash. If congressvermin have any shred of ethics left they will v*te against every bill every time.
Even if a bill has some good stuff in it, it should be v*ted down anyway just because no more legislation is needed, and it all needs to be abolished.
Government licenses are among the most useless and harmful things I can imagine.
Are you operating your vehicle in a reasonable manner? If so, I respect your driving abilities and no government needs to get involved to either "respect" or sanction your driving with a license or recognition of your license from another state. No government involvement is wanted or needed.
You tell me you're married? That's good enough for me. I consider you married. I don't need to go ask a government bureaucrat whether or not I should "respect" your marriage. I have never once asked someone if they are "really married-- like, does the government say you're married?" As if that matters to me.
And, obviously, since I don't want government to meddle in your life, I don't want them to use your marriage status-- married or not-- as an excuse to molest you or reward you. Your rights don't depend on your relationships with other people.
"But what about contract disputes?" If the two (or more) of you are splitting up and have a dispute, find arbitration-- the state isn't necessary for this either.
What do I mean by "political libertarianism"? Political libertarianism is concerned with pragmatism, politics, government, v*ting, the LP (and party politics in general), and not "scaring the women and children" with harsh truths. It seems to hate something external to itself more than it loves liberty.
I've watched political libertarianism used to justify police, "borders", war, taxation, and many other statist problems.
I think all libertarians slip into political libertarianism sometimes-- it has happened to me-- but some choose to wallow in it. I don't think anything beyond a quick dip is healthy-- and I'm not sure how healthy even the quickest splash really is.
Not because I want him to be president (I really don't care either way and I don't need a president), but because he breaks the brains of those who hate him. That does amuse me somewhat.
No, I'm not going to v*te for him. Nor for one of his opponents. But if I'm going to be subjected to political drama, it might as well be entertaining in some way.
I had supposed that once Trump was out of office the TDS would subside and its sufferers would shut their pieholes about him and move on to some other topic. But, no. I was wrong. They can't let him go (they are much more attached to him than even his supporters). If I'm going to have to listen to it anyway, it might as well be for something real-- an actual sitting president that makes them crazy, not an irrelevant former president they can't get over.
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That's because such a right can't exist-- the very idea is in conflict with rights. To imagine you have the "right" to impose government or politicians or legislation on others is to deny the existence of rights.
If you are in a situation where you believe you need to v*te in self-defense, there are other, more effective ways to defend yourself. Ways that don't guarantee "collateral damage".
V*ting in "self-defense" is like firing randomly into a crowd and hoping you hit the bad guy who is violating you. Sure, it's possible you might get him, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it. If enough people join you in firing randomly into the crowd, your chances of success go up. So do your chances of harming the innocent.
Yes, if you know your target-- say a bad ballot proposal that threatens to violate your liberty-- and enough of you get together to v*te against that one thing and all of you leave the rest of the ballot blank, you could credibly claim that you v*ted in self-defense.
But what if your side loses? Will you comply? If not, why not skip the unnecessary step?
You are almost always going to be outnumbered because [Unfortunate Truth #1]. People respond to promises that they won't have to be responsible. And bad guys run the election system from top to bottom and they count the v*tes. The game is rigged and by now you ought to know it.
I get it. I used to think liberty might be won-- or protected-- by v*ting for the less bad candidate, too. But then I observed and learned from my observations. That new information caused me to change my mind.
I'll never understand how anyone imagines they can tell someone's "legal status" without checking the government paperwork and being a lawyer, but whatever.
I may think you're a jerk, depending on your choices, but I'm not going to try to force you to allow just anyone into your home. You have every right to be an unpleasant hermit.
If, however, you have a store that is open to the public and you say "illegal immigrants" aren't welcome, I think you're in the wrong in more ways than one. Maybe you don't understand what "the public" is. If you have a store that is open to the public, there's a presumption baked in that people don't have to wait around outside your door to find out what exceptions you impose.
If you want to exclude some people, based on anything other than archation being committed right now or the credible threat of it being committed while they are in your store then don't invite the public.
If, instead of being open to the public, you want to have a "buyer's club" sort of thing and access is granted to members only, and you choose who is allowed to be a member and who isn't, that's acceptable. I doubt I'd join, but you do whatever makes you happy.
That's different than letting someone force you to provide a service you don't offer. I don't think it's right (or sane) to force someone to "bake the cake". Who would be stupid enough to consume food or drinks prepared by someone who is doing so against their wishes? Not me! That's completely different than buying a sock from someone who doesn't like you.
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They'll honor government troops for dying for freedom. They'll v*te, rally, and protest for freedom. No one advocates liberty.
Freedom has become almost as distasteful to me as democracy. That's because people who focus on freedom too much always seem to want the freedom to violate others.
If banning guns is what you want to do, you want the freedom to do so.
If you want the freedom to lock down the "border" that's what you'll focus on.
Never mind that you don't have any right to do those things-- they are anti-liberty-- but if you want to do them, you'll want the freedom to do them.
(And everyone seems to want the freedom to impose their ideas on abortion on everyone else, which is a whole other mess and seems to have been the driving force behind the recent election outcome.)
Government supremacists like freedom, but not responsible freedom (liberty). They don't seem to understand or want liberty, since liberty would limit their freedom to violate other people's life, liberty, and property in ways they want to get away with, but which are irresponsible.
Let freedom ring? No. Let liberty ring, instead. It's better in every way!
It is obvious that this is the case.
It's not hypothetical; it matters in the real world because this is exactly what anti-gun politicians do every day.
Yet there seems to be nothing anyone can do about it until after the damage has been done because of the rules of the system, even though the bigots give plenty of warning of what they are planning to do (making credible threats), and it's already known to be a crime.
Could no one intervene and say, "No, that's not OK. We've warned you not to murder anyone and if you attempt to do so you will be stopped, using whatever amount of violence it requires, before you can harm the victim in any way"?
Everyone is supposed to just sit and watch (and comply or be punished) until it crawls back through the court system again, just so the decision can be ignored by these same criminals in the same way again later when they impose their next legislative crime? Is there no way to shut them down "legally" once and for all?
If that's your system, screw your system!
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I don't want Republicans (or Libertarians) to have political power, but...
I never ever from now until the end of time want any Democrat to have even the slightest amount of political power ever again. Not until and unless they reject and repudiate w0keness in all its forms completely and without reservation. The past few years have convinced me of that.
Political power is never ethical. But, to use political power to try to impose a denial of reality on a population, and to punish those who refuse to say there are "five lights"... may even be more evil than anti-gun bigotry (which Republican political criminals also suffer from).
I don't want Republicans to win, but I want Democrats to lose HARD.
No crushing loss would be decisive enough to satisfy me, so I already know I will be disappointed. I also know that caring at all is something I should purge from myself. Politicians and their "laws" shouldn't even matter to me. I'm already OK with living as an outlaw, so why would it matter?
Of course, v*tes don't count; only counting v*tes counts. The fix is probably already in; Democrat spokescritters are already signaling that election results will take a longer time than v*ters expect, which seems almost as good as an admission that results won't be "official" until they are what those in power want.
Will liberty get chipped away at slowly for a few more years, or will it be crushed quickly under the thumb of toxic w0keness?
Or is all this just a reflection of how I'm feeling about everything recently?
However, I have to admit I'm enjoying the way he is antagonizing the Left-statists on Twitter.
I disagree with him permanently banning anyone, ever. No matter how twisted and evil they may be. That's always my position, regardless of anything else. But, if he would use a temporary ban just to make them flip out, then reinstate them after a few hours of tantruming (I know, not a word), it would just be funny.
It's like everything he does is done to poke them just enough to make them act really stupid in response. Planned or not, it's amusing.
It's even more hilarious seeing them contradicting themselves when it's their own side facing the axe instead of their opposition-- only months ago so many were cheering the "other side" getting treated the same way-- or even worse. Especially since I think Musk is joking and the previous Twits were clearly not.
Again, I don't want anyone banned ever for any reason. Free speech is non-negotiable and I want evil people to feel free to express their evil so the rest of us know who they are and what they are thinking. It's just a personal flaw of mine that makes me enjoy seeing them melt down over being treated the way they've been treating others for years.
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Defunding (on the road to abolishing) the police is the right thing to do. Yes, really.
However... the places most likely to defund the police are also the places most likely to violate the natural human right to own and to carry weapons without permission, and most likely to criminalize defending life, liberty, and property with those effective weapons. They planned to fail.
It is stupid beyond measure to defund the police and then use counterfeit rules to empower criminals to make it appear that police are necessary.
If crime increases after the Blue Line Gang has been reined in a little, it doesn't mean you need police; it means you need to be responsible for your own defense. Any political criminals trying to prevent you from doing so are a big part of the problem. It doesn't mean you shouldn't defund the police, it means they sabotaged the plan. It wouldn't surprise me if police, with the support of police unions, are a source of at least a significant chunk of the additional crime, just to show the serfs "why they need us".
It's the same sort of nonsense you'll hear from borderists who say you can't have "open borders" and a welfare system. They are right, but the correct, ethical solution is to get rid of the socialism problem-- welfare-- not to allow government to enforce socialized immigration controls until they decide to get rid of the socialized welfare (which they never will if you give them a choice).
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I disliked the guy because he was a politician. He was an authoritarian who I wrote against a time or two before I gave up on trying to write for the small weekly paper here in town.
The person I was visiting with didn't even think about the actual authoritarianism of the guy. No, his complaint was that this mayor had "allowed" someone to house "illegals" [sic] in town.
A farmer owns a house in town and he lets the workers who need a place to live stay in it while they work for him for a month or so a couple of times each year. Seems perfectly consensual to me. Where's the problem?
Of course, there is no evidence the fellows who stay in the house in question are "illegal" [sic]; they are simply migrant agricultural workers from Mexico. Why assume they are breaking even a counterfeit "immigration law"? But this is the assumption many people here make. I am nearly alone in not caring about it at all. As long as you don't violate any individual's life, liberty, or property that's what matters to me.
As far as I can tell, they never cause trouble. There is no crime wave in town while they are here to work. The guys are friendly and wave and say "Hi" when I walk past. It would never occur to me to inquire as to what government permissions they have to be here.
Some people based their complaint on the fact that several adult men stay in the house-- it's not a "family unit". The formerly living former mayor said there was no law requiring a landlord to only rent to a family unit, which angered the borderists in town. They wanted him to "do something" about it. They were just looking for any "legal" means to stop the property owner from using his property and from hiring people willing to work for him. They wanted more socialism. In that case, the mayor said "No".
Even a politician I dislike can sometimes do the right thing and stay out of people's business.
