The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
From this video:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXbdJ3kyVyU?rel=0]
Bill Whittle: National Treasure.
The QotD is this:
Part of The Deal, you see, is that you pay in blood for progress. If there’s no progress, what’s the point?
Watch the video.
As a highly disgruntled GOP-aligned voter, I must confess to viewing the current slate of GOP POTUS candidates with emotions running from despair to disdain.
You’ve got serial flip-flopper and dog abuser Mitt Romney, who with his usual brilliant sense of timing has decided that a period of serious economic concern and persistent financial populism among the public is the right time to quadruple the size of his multimillion dollar home in La Jolla.
You’ve got people like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry who seem more interested in running for President of the Southern Baptist Convention than POTUS.
You’ve got Sarah Palin lurking in the shadows, a prospect that gives me the willies.
And then you’ve got seven or so dwarves.
In point of fact, Sarah doesn’t really bother me that much, but overall I’m in agreement with Professor Bainbridge here.
From Joe Huffman Lyle at Joe Huffman’s, Jesus the Socialist:
When Jesus shows up in person, dressed in a black ninja outfit with his own team of storm troopers to take my property, I’ll believe he was a socialist. Until then; Girls, you be trippin’. I’ll go with Douglas Adams’ definition of Jesus; “A man who got nailed to a tree for suggesting we be nice to people.”
RTWT.
He speaks for me.
From Adaptive Curmudgeon, Hobbits! Really! Part II:
Tolkien’s Hobbits fought to resist power. Career politicians wallow in it. Too much power makes politicians hollow and disconnected. Lacking anything else, they cling to power until they drop dead. A defeatist mentality of emptiness. If you’re wealthy enough to retire but hold elected office until you die in old age; power has destroyed you.
Conservative Strom Thurmond and liberal Edward Kennedy are egregious examples. One died in office at age 100 after 47 years in office. The other at age 77 after 46 years in office. Virtual opposites in politics; yet they both clung to power until their dying breath.
Dilbert, from December 21, 1990:
Reader Phil B. emails a link to another outstanding piece: Untouchable, from the blog The View from Cullingworth. Read the whole post, but here’s a taste that qualifies for QotD:
Unlike Oborne – and unlike the left – I reject the idea of man’s perfectibility. Or indeed that we are in need of a “moral reformation” – it is an economic and political reformation we require, a change to the order of things. It is not moral decadence that links the powerful to the rioter but a belief that they are untouchable, that the normal rules of society do not apply.
Tam brings it so hard I had to do two QotD:
…look at Cameron’s résumé: He’s a blandly handsome guy who went to all the right schools and has never had a productive non-government job in his life… No wonder Obama hates him; they both wore the same dress to the prom.England used to be a cool place. It used to rule the world. Now it’s like an island of California, except without the nice weather and food.
I must entreat you, to consider the words of this authority (Sir John Kelyng, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 1665-71); the injured person may repel force by force against any who endeavors to commit any kind of felony; if any of the persons made an attack on these soldiers, with an intention to rob them, if it was but to take their hats feloniously, they had a right to kill them on the spot, and had no business to retreat; if a robber meets me in the street and commands me to surrender my purse, I have a right to kill him without asking questions; if a person commits a bare assault on me, this will not justify killing, but if he assaults me in such a manner, as to discover an intention to kill me, I have a right to destroy him, that I may put it out of his power to kill me. — John Adams, History of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770
(My emphasis.) Adams’ point was that the inherent right of self-defense was not denied to soldiers by dint of being soldiers. They were entitled to the same rights as any man on the street when it came to defense of self and property.
It doesn’t work that way in (formerly) Great Britain anymore.
Phil B., expat Brit and current resident of Middle Earth emails a link to Counting Cats in Zanzibar from which comes the QotD:
One thing that is quite interesting though is that this demonstrates how weak the authorities’ grasp on power really is. Numerous commentators throughout history have noted that even the cruelest dictator rules by consent; if the people do form a mass against him, he cannot prevail. A lot of people are saying, “why are the police letting this happen?” and while we’re all I’m sure going to play armchair quarterback with this for many happy internet-arguing weeks to come, there does seem to be that lesson here that mass resistance- or rather, a kind of mass ignoring of the hypothetical “social contract”- leaves government/governance reeling, especially in a nominally liberal polity. It makes you realise just how compliant we are; ten million smokers or whatever the number is, all dutifully trooping outside to have a ciggie. The authorities rule by the presumption and acceptance of power, and when people just ignore them they lose control very quickly.
This scares the snot out of those presumptively in power, and you know what to expect of frightened animals.
Billy Beck has been preaching civil disobedience as the tool to wrest back our liberty – not, as Counting Cats says, “run(ing) outside and set(ting) fire to World Of Carpets and steal(ing) mobile phones”, but simple refusal to comply – stop paying taxes. Stop feeding the Beast. Unfortunately, for this to be effective it must also be widespread. Pillaging and burning has the advantage of being (mostly) anonymous and, if you’re so inclined, fun. Refusing to pay your taxes? They have your number – literally.
So expect to see looting and arson, but principled civil disobedience? Not so much.
The British state lectures, hectors and micro-manages the law-abiding. When it comes to defending them, it is, all too often, AWOL. — Andrew Stuttaford
This column is so right that it’s very difficult to pull just one piece out of it for a quote of the day, but Janet Daley’s UK Telegraph op-ed If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth is today’s must-read:
We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.
The only way that state benefit programmes could be extended in the ways that are forecast for Europe’s ageing population would be by government seizing all the levers of the economy and producing as much (externally) worthless currency as was needed – in the manner of the old Soviet Union.
That is the problem. So profound is its challenge to the received wisdom of postwar Western democratic life that it is unutterable in the EU circles in which the crucial decisions are being made – or rather, not being made.
The solution that is being offered to the political side of the dilemma is benign oligarchy.
Yes, that’s what’s being offered, but it’s not what will be delivered.
Read the whole piece. Twice. At the time of this writing there are nearly 800 comments. One of them was this:
…this article is the most important one I have ever read in the mainstream media.
I concur.