The Kaptain's Log
Weight Loss and a Free State
by Manuel Miles, aka Kapt Kanada
[email protected]

Exclusive to TLE

So what do the two have to do with one another, I hear you ask. Lots. In the year of our Lord 2003 A.D., your old Kaptain managed to lose nearly 40 pounds, most of it from his belly. It wasn't easy, but once I got serious and devoted myself to the project, it worked—eventually.

Some people told me not to bother; my efforts wouldn't change anything, and I'd been trying for three years without appreciable result, and it is "normal" for an old fart like me to get a paunch, there's nothing you can do about it, et cetera. Besides, it's an embarrassment to your overweight friends when you lose a lot of blubber.

I was in danger of contracting both diabetes and heart disease, however, as those run rampant on both sides of my family, so it was a matter of life and death for me to get (back) into good health.

For the first three years, however, nothing worked, no matter what I did. Finally, it dawned on me that the things that I did were the wrong things, and it wasn't that God was against me. I had to get serious; my choices were to lose weight or die.

So I got serious, with the above-mentioned result.

Now we have the phenomenon of some thousands of liberty loving people gathering in the state of New Hampshire in order to attempt to (re)create a truly Free State. They see their choices as to either Live Free Or Die.

So they have decided to try to live in Liberty and to pursue happiness. They might succeed, and they might not, but for certain what they are doing has never been tried before in modern (or ancient, for that matter) history.

I suggest that their effort is as threatening to our intellectually flabby friends as my weight loss was to my physically obese peers. The nay-sayers are convinced that "It can't work!" and "It will lead inevitably to statism!" and "It's not worth doing unless they can guarantee an immediate, permanent end to the State," et cetera. I wonder where science would be if nobody ever tried an experiment because a crowd stood outside the laboratory yelling abuse. I know where my waistline would be if I had given in to the ideology of "If you can't lose all 40 pounds instantly, it's not worth trying." At least I'd get lots of work in department stores at Christmas time...

I also know where we are at present, with so many cynics refusing to vote Libertarian because they have one or two disagreements with that party, while they go out and not only vote for, but openly endorse, one branch or the other of the DemRep ruling oligarchy! Apparently it's better to endorse a supposed lesser of two evils than a least of all "evils". Yup, that's got us somewhere, alrighty.

We're in a damned rut, is where we are, and all the furious wheel-spinning is only digging us in deeper. We Canadians have learnt that the only way out of the snowdrift is to accelerate verrrrry slowly, and to proceed by fractions of an inch at first. It takes patience, dedication and the ability to see beyond the next five seconds—kind of like the project of building a free state.

The idea that we won't do anything unless life can guarantee us ideological purity, instant results, two beer and a free lunch is a moribund one. Yelling from the sidelines that "I've tried everything and nothing works!" is just a way to accept one's own intellectual obesity. It's defeatist mental corpulence, and I oppose it. So what do I propose?

Well, I endorse the Free State Project because it hasn't been tried before, it has every chance of success being that it's based on careful study and research, and it will be an invaluable learning experience for the forces of Liberty no matter what happens. (One doesn't learn from the mistakes one is too frightened or lazy to make. Or, as we Canadians say, "Only some of your shots score goals, but 100% of the shots you don't take don't go in the net.") Besides, the Free State Project will be an intellectual fat farm for Liberty... and some of us need to lose a bit of fat off the old cerebellum, eh?

So check out the Free State Project at: www.freestateproject.org and aim for Liberty In Our Lifetime. You risk nothing and stand to gain the blessings of...

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