This is What an Abolitionist Looks Like

War

War is the most destructive act man can undertake. It robs innocents of life. It divides those that might otherwise be friends. It decimates land and property. It extinguishes the fires of culture and tradition. It makes widows of wives and turns pride into sorrow. It transforms its survivors into amputees, suicides, and vengeance seekers.

How are wars most often carried out? Can it be said that today’s wars are carried out by the summation of each soldier’s own volition? Is it the consent of the financiers that allow wars to continue? Who truly finances wars? Must everyone agree, and in merely participating in the conversation be forced financiers of wars? Why must your neighbor be forced to fund the wars of your choosing or vice-versa?

Imagine for a moment that war was like any other service, such as paper delivery, premium television, or landscaping. How are these services financed? In most cases, they are paid for by individuals acting voluntarily. In imagining war to be similar to these services can any ideas be formed about how untenable war might be if it had to be paid for voluntarily?

Now imagine a different scenario. What if, in order to buy children’s cough medicine, you had to agree to a war surcharge? For every bottle of cough medicine you buy you are tacitly paying a percentage toward a bomb or mortar or rifle to be used in a war. Would you refuse to buy that medicine? Would you buy that medicine with the hopes that someday its manufacturer would change his mind? Would that medicine be as affordable as medicine from another manufacturer that did not redirect its income toward war?

Is war profitable? If it is, what makes it that way?

‘Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.’

—Gandalf the Grey in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King The Last Debate

The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

“Wealthier people are consuming,” Watkins says. “They don’t want to build a future. They don’t have a reason to invest in the community.” For that matter, neither do young people — because their futures likely involve moving out of San Francisco. According to Joel Kotkin, “San Francisco is Disneyland for adults, or a place people go until they grow up.”

San Francisco is a thriving city due to hard-working entrepreneurs, but a dying city due to “good intentions” and centralized planning.

Pure propaganda if I’ve ever seen it. But in all seriousness I have one question for you:

“What have you done with Barack’s moon?”

Maybe it is in Afghanistan and that’s why he sent thousands more killers there?

Hold an a second, USPS. I’ll give you back all your bins if you can tell me where my property is? You know all the money you’ve stolen to subsidize your failed attempts to provide mail service? Oh, it went to pay for all these bins? Then you won’t mind if I just keep MY property? Cool, thanks.

Hold an a second, USPS. I’ll give you back all your bins if you can tell me where my property is? You know all the money you’ve stolen to subsidize your failed attempts to provide mail service? Oh, it went to pay for all these bins? Then you won’t mind if I just keep MY property? Cool, thanks.

A day in the life of a Statist

This is my satirical response to the seemingly anonymous and pretty clever “A Day in the Life of an American Conservative Shithead”:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock, which was certified safe by the independent Underwriters Laboratories. It was powered by the unnatural and unprofitable energy monopoly enforced through violence (which I refuse to see).

I then took a shower in water, which I am told is safe by my rulers despite incidents where the water was unsafe. It is okay though because even if I didn’t have a monopoly water provider insisting the water was safe, I live in a really good area.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of our many objective, federally regulated news channels to be informed that “We’ve always been at war with Spain Germany Japan Nazis North Korea Russia Vietnam Iraq Bosnia Iraq Afghanistan Iraq Afghanistan Iran.” Though the weird thing is that I don’t hear as much about the collateral damage these days. That kind of news never really made me happy anyways.

While watching TV I ate some organic cereal with real cane sugar. I don’t mind paying extra for it because I believe that corn subsidies and trade restrictions with sugarcane farmers make us all richer.

I then took my artificially high-priced drugs while thinking about how wonderful it is that I gladly pay to imprison people for taking or selling products the Food and Drug Administration say are no-nos.

On the way out the door I deposited my outgoing mail in my federally owned mailbox. What a relief that the USPS forcefully shut down competition years ago. If competition in first-class mail were allowed then I would have too many choices and I’d probably make the wrong one. If there is only one information handler for my first-class mail then I can be assured that I have no control over right or wrong or whatever.

At the appropriate time, I got into my car to drive on the roads where over 40,000 people die each year. Luckily, I have a high-paying job subsidized by federal defense contracts and your stolen money so I can afford one of the newest, safest cars.

Then I dropped my kids off at the government indoctrination center where I know they’ll learn that Lincoln was a great man, war stimulates the economy, and that their neighbors who don’t believe these things can’t be trusted. I can only hope they will grow up with as much admiration for legitimized violence as I have.

After having spent another worry-free (I am locked into this government contract so I have neither incentive nor drive to be competitive or cooperative) day at work, I got back on the unsafe roads in my safe car. I arrived at my house to find the cops had raided my home (they had meant to get the marijuana dealer next door) and shot my dog. Oh, don’t worry! They also shot his dog after they had realized their mistake. I know this is the price we must all pay for a safe neighborhood.

And then I logged on to the internet, which thrives under decentralization, and spread the false dichotomy of conservative/liberal politics. I also posted on a few forums about how great the State is. I try not to give its greatness a label like SOCIALISM or FASCISM or CORPORATISM or MERCANTILISM or even STATISM because those words are so… littered with the murders of millions of people.

There is no such thing as intellectual property so I have no problem if this is disseminated, changed, not attributed, et cetera.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

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Propagandhi - Supporting Caste

When the credits finally roll for this, the worst story ever told, don’t bother sifting through the names for yours or anyone you know. Unless they were by chance a shepherd king, a virgin birth, a resurrection, a messianic prince or some such childish thing. You can storm the edit suite or move to block its theatrical release, but I think we can safely guarantee that there will be no revisions to the script made on behalf of a supporting cast(e). Because history exalts only the pornography of force-that of murderers and psychopaths (the rest of us, of course, stricken from the narrative wholesale: a back drop to the tale)-as we, the two-bits, are ushered on and swiftly off this stage with the jawbones of asses. No stirring curtain call for the masses. No floral bouquet. No breaking of legs. No recurring role. No artistic control. And so in these days, in this terminal phase, it’s all left to chance. A piece of advice: if you’re cast on thin ice, you may as well dance. Do what you feel you must, but as for me I was not put upon this earth to subjugate or serve.

“Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you is like trying to have a conversation with a dissenter who is calling me out on the fact that this program is, indeed, similar to the totalitarian health care program instituted by the National Socialists in 1930s Germany. I have no interest in dissent.”

This is not Godwin’s law. It is the law of legitimized violence. As more and more violence against peaceful people is legitimized the State approaches and may surpass the level of violence, murder, extortion, and slavery seen during the time of the Nazis.

Barney Frank and all the other Statists who insist that they own you, your neighbor, and everything you produce need to be ousted as the evil and illegitimate rulers that they are.

You see a wrong? Right it. And how do you right wrongs? There ought to be a law. Legislation! But legislation is a very blunt instrument. It never merely rights wrongs. It creates a whole new set of wrongs as well.

—The Invisible Heart by Russel Roberts

It used to be said that only three things were definitely true of the Holy Roman Empire: it wasn’t holy, it wasn’t Roman, and it wasn’t an empire. Similarly, two things are definitely true of representative democracy: it isn’t democracy and it isn’t representative.

Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

Adam, I’ve been concerned about the economy and the value of the dollar and I was trying to think of something I can put my money into so it will hold it’s value… Can you get me a gap card?

Growing stocks of unsold cars around the world | Business | guardian.co.uk

Growing stocks of unsold cars around the world | Business | guardian.co.uk

[the] first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call in enemy nations state indoctrination.

—Jonathan Kozel