If we choose to act dramatically about small drama – worthless drama – we sacrifice any ability to handle anything bigger. Worrying, doubting, fighting, and losing sleep over little things like your opinions or your comfort or your current social status will cost you.
Tag: justice
Don’t Blame the Guns, Blame the Schools
Today’s public schools already share many characteristics with prisons, yet the ‘answer’ some folks are proposing to the (statistically negligible) threat of school shootings is to make schools even more like prisons. Schools are an artificial environment that (much like a prison) forces kids to join gangs or cliques in order to avoid rejection and outsider status. Those who don’t fit in are subject to ridicule, abuse, and even brutality in some cases.
Yes, We Do Need 30-Round Magazines for Self-Defense
I keep encountering the truly ridiculous assertion that anyone who has a 30-round magazine for a firearm “must be planning to kill 30 people.” Now, most of the people making such claims aren’t attempting to have a good-faith discussion, but for those who actually don’t understand the issue, here’s a more realistic assessment.
The Transition from Slavery to Freedom
I sometimes hear people, including freedom advocates, pondering how society might “transition” from an authoritarian system to a stateless society. The implication is that there could be some sort of gradual, peaceful phasing in of freedom, and a phasing out of governmental controls. But that is not how things works, and not how things will ever work.
Nonsense on Stilts
An English proverb holds that a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. It also appears to be the case that a government can be shot through with corruption before the ink is dried on its Constitution.
Corruption
I heard a radio program, this morning addressing the issue of politicians accused of dirty politics in our justice system. In the particular cases, the alleged corruption-mongers skated based on narrow technical interpretations of laws under which the prosecution had, perhaps unwisely, chosen to proceed. The short-term lesson seemed to be that the laws were not sufficient to stop the corrupt behavior.
Partitions IV — India-Pakistan
History had totally intermixed the Muslims among the Hindu and the minority ethnicities of the sub-continent. So one has to wonder what the English thought they would accomplish by breaking out the Pakistans, then separating them with a huge wedge.
The Church of America
“Perhaps we should read the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause — ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ — not as a mandated separation of religion and state but as a non-compete clause.”
#ReleaseTheMemo — And Then Some
On the campaign trail, they tell us that we’re their employers and that they’re just humble “public servants.” But once elected, they go to work behind closed doors and hide their hearings, their discussions, their memos and their other work product from us at will.
You Are The Obstacle to Peaceful Coexistence
It’s wrong to initiate violence. Using force against people is only justified when it is used to stop an actual aggressor. That is true in rich, pretty neighborhoods. It is also true in poor, rundown neighborhoods. It is true where there is a lot of violent crime. It is true where there is little or no violent crime.