More than 100 million Americans own nearly 400 million guns, and have no intention of surrendering those guns. Furthermore, Americans can build relatively sophisticated weapons with relatively inexpensive machine tools and/or 3D printers, and very basic firearms with items found in most homes. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t have to like those facts. They’re facts whether Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like them or not.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
Being Normal
I’ve always been weird, but at this point in my life I feel like I understand non-weird people quite well. If you’re still baffled, my weird friends, one simple principle captures most of what you need to know.
Frightened Out of All Proportion
I always thought that totalitarianism would come to the USA via war and the central government’s ostensible efforts to fend off a foreign foe by regimenting the people. I failed to foresee that the country would arrive at this horrifying destination by a different road, namely, state and local government overreactions to a perceived public-health crisis.
Why Unity is Bullshit
“Unity” is usually a message to merely shut you up and to get you to go along with bullshit. It is a message of social intimidation. Once a person and/or their values can be justified in defining the group, they perpetuate their power by telling everyone that unity is doing what authority wants. It is perpetuated by those with power and dim people looking to merely get along, and is used to otherize dissent. It is used to make people look at dissenters as disunifiers and for people to make them outcasts.
Glub, Glub, Glub…
The Titanic has already hit the iceberg. Its fate is sealed. It is going down, even if most passengers have no clue about the rising water levels in the lower decks. Those shoveling the coal know the truth.
The Titanic has already hit the iceberg. Its fate is sealed. It is going down, even if most passengers have no clue about the rising water levels in the lower decks. Those shoveling the coal know the truth.
Who do you want conducting the orchest…
Impasse
I’ve spent over 30 years arguing about ideas. During those decades, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve changed minds. Normally, however, arguing about ideas is fruitless. Tempers fray. Discussion goes in circles. Each and every mental corruption that Philip Tetlock has explored rears its ugly epistemic head. You even lose friends.
An Idea That Has Come and Gone
Have you ever been struck by the fact that most of the matters about which people demand that the government “do something” are none of their business, and hence no proper business of the government officials who purport to represent them, either?
Humble Action
When we focus on being better people, extending kindness, helping our families and supporting the voluntary and cooperative in our communities, then it does not matter who the monarch du jour is within government border lines.
Mark Twain’s Thought
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
In Government We No Longer Trust
The results, so far, of the 2020 US presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden have been nothing so much as chaos – and where they go from here is absolutely anybody’s guess, but I’ll venture one (admittedly obvious) prediction: Whichever “side” loses will regard the outcome as having been stolen and achieved fraudulently by the opposition.