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Run and Hide; The Kaptain's Back
The Kaptain's Log
by Manuel Miles
aka Kaptain Kanada
manuel_miles@shaw.ca

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

The recent hiatus has not improved your kindly Kaptain's disposition. I was never inclined to pussy-footing about, and I'm even less so now in my advancing old age. So if you think that you can be "pro-life" and pro-war, or that you can be pro-abortion and libertarian, take a hike off the plank. I'm not cutting anybody any slack.

How ironic that TLE ran an excuse for abortion, an article about compassion and the importance of an apparently "vegetative" human life, and one asking why we aren't reaching more people. Perhaps I can assist in answering the question raised by that last...

re: El Neil's "I Told You So": No you didn't, El, and that irrational, illogical article only trots out the same old abortionist nonsense. We are to presume, apparently, that if a hospital bullies a pregnant woman that this will lead to forced monitoring of pregnant women. The issue isn't even abortion there, it's simply the state being called in to enforce a medical opinion. The woman stated, and nobody suggested otherwise, that she would not abort her baby. She had checked in out of concern for her own and her baby's health. So knock off the paranoid fantasy about "enforced pregnancy", et cetera.

It turns out that the hospital was medically right anyway, as the baby was lost, due apparently, to the complications that impelled the woman to seek help in that hospital in the first place. Still, the State has no right to force somebody either to seek or continue medical treatment.

When I broke my leg, I had a heck of a time getting out of hospital before they wanted to "release" me. [Note the expression.] You are incarcerated in a hospital in most western countries. I had to sign all manner of papers prior to surgery, even though I was so high on morphine that I had no idea what I was signing, and I had to sign my way out of the place, too. This I did because the dumb system hadn't provided for the likelihood that I would have painful muscle spasms post-op, even though that's the most probable result of having your leg torn apart and a 14 inch titanium rod hammered into the tibia.

I had a good surgeon, but the western medical system is so compartmentalised and so bureaucratic that I couldn't get a simple, over-the-counter muscle relaxant to stop the spasms. The nurses couldn't contact the doctor, so wouldn't give me anything that wasn't on The Holy Chart. Finally, I called my biggest, ugliest, toughest-looking friend and said, "Pete, come take me out of this place. Just tell them at the desk that you're taking me home, and do not smile." This he did, and I still had to run a gauntlet of forms, dire threats and ominous predictions. We stopped at a grocery store on the way home, I got some muscle relaxants and the spasms stopped.

This was a nasty experience, it still irritates me to remember it, but it doesn't justify abortion. It also doesn't mean that the State will soon be looming over every gimp on crutches, either, forcing us to report for cast clinics. Since the State loves abortions, it encourages, subsidises and promotes a culture of abortion, it's absurd to suggest that it would do anything but continue on this path. Abortionists fear not that they will be forced into doing anything, but that they will be stopped from doing something. And they always give that away after the initial distraction about being "forced" to have babies; they moan about their supposed "right" to kill them. That's what the real issue is here.

The essence of libertarianism is that you have the right to do anything you dang well like so long as you don't violate the rights of another human being, not that you can do anything you dang well like. Let's look at it in El Neil's own words: "...no right exists to initiate physical force or the threat of force against anyone for any reason." [emphasis my own] Forcing somebody to have an abortion would seem to qualify here. China does it as a matter of routine, but pro-abortionists don't even squeak about it; supposed "libertarian" abortionists try to forget about it entirely until it is mentioned, then it's always tossed off with a quick, "Well, yes, of course, we oppose that." To which I reply just as quickly, "Bullshit." They never "oppose" that unless prompted, just as they never oppose the fact that I am forced to subsidise abortions with every confiscated medicare payment—unless prompted.

So let's look at what is hidden behind the smokescreen of supposed libertarianism: the right to the individual in the womb to his or her own life. Abortionists would have us believe that a baby isn't a human life unless they decide it is, and that this varies from person to person, from time to time, and from whim to fancy. It's the same attitude that the Nazis made so famous with their "science" of eugenics. The only difference is that in one case the State reserves the right to decide which lives are human, and in the other the State decrees (as it did in Roe vs Wade) that individuals can make that call in regards to the unborn. This latter is like saying, "It's your body; if you want to rape with it that's your decision." Women's libbers don't like that, however, because they don't want to have their rights violated. An innocent unborn human being doesn't rate the same consideration with them, though.

Each human being is conceived with his or her own unique genetic identity. Each unborn baby is not a "potential" human life, but a living human being. This is scientific, biological fact. Abortion is the ending of that life by violence perpetrated against it. So the only argument we can have is whether another human being or group thereof has the right to take that life. If that life is an inconvenience to some other human or humans (which, despite the hysterical brandishing of the red herrings of rape and incest, is the actual motive for the vast majority of abortions), does anyone, from its own parents to the Peoples Republic of China, have the right to end it?

If we are really serious about the non-aggression principle, the answer must be a resounding "No!" Otherwise, we will continue to write hand-wringing articles about why we aren't reaching more people. I would suggest that murderous hypocrisy is not going to attract anyone we need to our cause of...

... Peace and Liberty.

And now, a feature you've all missed and longed for the return of...

Avatar is a great flick for a generation of iPod junkies and other pathetic products of government schooling. If you liked Michael Jackson, you should see this one at least twice. A two hour plus special CGI effects whiz bang environmental-case pabulum feast—in zowie 3D no less -- has now made more money than any other movie in history. The most horrifying aspect of this is that it is a poor re-hash of Dances With Wolves and Tarzan of the Apes spiced up with brainless global warmite Save The Earth agitprop.

I could go into detail, but it makes me ill to think about it. Just the linking of tails bit is insipid enough, but the Evil Capitalists raping The Tree of Life in order to obtain some "unobtanium" is absolutely asinine.

The Kaptain gives it zero anchors out of ten.

From Paris With Love is very interesting in that it is something a bit new in "action" flicks. This one is a propaganda flick for the "war on terrorism". I know, "we've seen it before," you are thinking, but we haven't seen this particular twist. The theme and (im)moral of this splatter fest is that Americans are beset by sneaky, beautiful young women who are just waiting for the chance to blow up the holy "leaders of the free [sic] world". If only it were true...

To accustom the audience to massive slaughter of waiters, cooks, fashion designers and ten-year olds (all of whom are now Pakistanis and Chinese, unlike the Clinton era when Those Who Can't Be Trusted And Must Be Killed For Our Own Good were nasty, evil Serbs), a wise-cracking all-American played by John Travolta shoots all of the above without warning. When his U.S. embassy driver reacts with shock at these horrors, it is always revealed that the "bad guys" were making bombs or using cocaine for ceiling insulation, therefor they needed to be shot dead by super-Yank.

This insanity culminates with the killings of not one but two gorgeous young women. I am no fan of women's lib, but never was the term misogynistic more appropriate a description than here. The utter disregard for all non-American life was even extended to the French police who were, in one scene, left to be blown to bits by a booby-trap by Our Hero because warning them would slow him down and besides, you have to sacrifice a lot of people in order to save a handful of politicians, don't you know. I'm surprised that there wasn't a scene of Travolta aborting a "terrorist baby".

This celluloid evil also rates one of the Kaptain's rare zeros. Don't drop anchor in any auditorium showing this filth, shipmates.

The Blind Side, in contrast to the above infamies, shows Americans at their best. It's the (some liberties-taken with, but still basically) true story of the Tuohy family of Tennessee. They are wealthy, white church-goers who actually practice at least some of what was preached by Christ. Leigh-Ann Tuohy (wonderfully played by Sandra Bullock, of all people), the daughter of a racist southern sheriff, took into her home— and family—a homeless black kid, Michael Oher, from the proverbial Other Side of the Tracks. This young man was already attending the same private Christian school as their other two children, thanks to the Christian charity of many other folks, but he was still homeless until Leigh-Ann found out. So she and her family adopted him! Several years later—last spring, to be exact—he had graduated from college and was a first round draft pick with the Baltimore Ravens pro football team, with whom he just finished an outstanding rookie year, Usually I don't have no truck with football, but I'll make an exception in this case.

If you haven't seen this one yet, drop a good nine anchors at your local 'plex and/or get it on DVD. Sandra is favoured for an Oscar for her performance, and deserves one, too.

That's it for this week. Go tell everybody you know that the Kaptain is back. They deserve a warning.

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