The rawboned, overall-clad man driving a tractor 12 hours a day, calling the cows in for their evening milking, slopping the hogs, and sitting down for an evening pipe on the front porch before bed was once my grandfather. Now he’s a carefully cultivated image of the past, used by organizations like Duvall’s to propagandize for the transfer of billions dollars every year from your pockets to theirs via the political process, on top of what you spend in honest exchange for their livestock and crops.
Tag: america
Encouragement as Bad as Discouragement
In our society, we commonly and appropriately demonize discouragement because we see it as someone interjecting themselves into this exploration. Discouragement is a tool to distort the exploration of a child in favor of the insecurities and self-interest of the discourager. It is a means of the adult trying to live through their child. Discouragement is someone trying to tip and distort the scales within the ecosystem of a child’s discovery process. The last paragraph also perfectly describes the problems of encouragement.
The Voluntaryist Ethnicity
As my family has traveled the country and met or stayed with other voluntaryists and unschoolers, I can’t help but notice certain general customs among people and families of this kind. Without putting anybody in a box or limiting how it is expressed or experienced, here is the voluntaryist ethnicity as I’ve seen it.
Why Unschoolers Grow Up to Be Entrepreneurs
Almost by definition, entrepreneurs are creative thinkers and experimental doers. They reject the status quo and devise new approaches and better inventions. They are risk-takers and dreamers, valuing ingenuity over convention. They get things done. It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that many unschoolers become entrepreneurs.
“Progressives” Against (Economic) Progress
Most opponents of the sharing economy, the gig economy, the cryptocurrency economy, etc., posture as “progressives” even as they openly side with corporate dinosaurs and parasitic bureaucrats and against workers and the entrepreneurs who empower those workers. Let’s call these self-styled “progressives” what they really are: Reactionaries.
When You Mix Your Religions
Just as African slaves in the American South may have combined native African religion with Catholicism to create Louisiana Voodoo, all over America many people are combining Christianity with statism and practicing the hybrid religion which results.
Missing Children: The Pottery Barn Rule Revisited
A government employee who loses track of 1,475 children placed in his charge needs to to be fired — at least. An investigation of possible criminal negligence doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Nor does a home visit by the area’s Department of Children’s Services or equivalent to make sure his or her own kids haven’t gone missing.
German Police Are Cracking Down on Family Vacations from School – Is American Policy Very Different?
With Memorial Day Weekend here, many Americans have hit the road early to avoid traffic to their favorite holiday destinations, or catch a Thursday flight to make a weekend stay at Grandma’s less rushed. For some German families, who celebrated a three-day weekend last week, taking their kids out of school to get a jumpstart on the holiday ended with police airport interrogations and looming fines.
Don’t Trust Government to Keep Deals
President Trump decided to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and his critics are enjoying their opportunity to show concern. You can debate whether the deal had any legitimacy, whether it was a good idea, and what breaking the deal means, but you’d be missing the point. Agreements are meaningless to governments.
Words Poorly Used #136 — Originalism
The non-loyalist, non-royalist patriots, who sued for freedom in the lead up to and conduct of the American Revolution, wanted freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. As a secondary matter, they made the poor choice of wishful thinking about the objectivity of the courts in issuing warrants of reasonable search and seizure. Why on Earth did they believe that courts would be any different here than in England — they were based on the same general model?