Down With Power Audiobook!


L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE

Number 872, May 15, 2016

Conservatives regularly mealy-mouth about the
First Amendment, lie about and willfully
misinterpret it, exactly the same way that
Progressives mealy-mouth about the Second Amendment.


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Der deutsche Schriftsteller Karl May (1842–1912) schrieb in einem Brief an den Maler Sascha Schneider 1908: „Wehe und tausendmal wehe dem Volke, welches das Blut und das Leben von Hunderttausenden vergiesst, um anderthalb Schock Ritter des eisernen Kreuzes dekorieren zu koennen! Wir brauchen Maenner des Geistes, Maenner des Wissens und der Kunst. Die wachsen aber nicht bei Wagram oder Waterloo!"

Harald Mischnick
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Re: "Why the Left-Wing Seems Insane (Mostly Because They Are)" by L. Neil Smith

Michael Savage came out with a book back in the early 2000s titled Liberalism is a Mental Disorder. I considered it more a partisan opinion than a scientifically valid one—and possibly a slippery slope because it was commonplace in the former Soviet Union to declare those with dissenting political views to be insane and imprison them in mental institutions. Also current progressives have been on record for some time in making similar accusations against conservatives—namely those with strong Libertarian or anti-government views and recommending their incarceration and treatment.

That said—one still cannot help but wonder if both you and Mr Savage might be onto something when it comes to the irrational views of the Left and the often downright destructive policies they often beget. Few people take Freud seriously anymore but some of the things the Left has advocated—like the cut off our collective nose to spite our collective face tendencies of environmental extremism or the Cloward & Pivens strategy to overload and collapse the welfare state in order to foment revolution—sound like either a Freudian death wish of someone looking to destroy their own society that they cannot ever hope to rule by way of a forced suicide pact—Jonestown on a continental / global scale—or else a persistent rational (and evil) belief that they can still succeed in achieving dominion over all life on this globe.

Another author—Howard Bloom of whom I've written about previous contributions suggests something more along the latter in his views concerning the meme driven nature of human societies and the competition of Life—both individuals and the collective entities he reveres to as "Social" or "Super Organisms" in their never ending efforts to rise or hold their ground in the pecking orders of individuals and nations. He wrote also of the tendency of suicide by individuals either intentional—like the tragic demise of our beloved H. Beam Piper—or indirectly by the lethal auto generated chemical cocktails of stress hormones that degrade immunity and the cardiovascular system leaving the body open to opportunistic pathogens, cancer and heart attacks that destroy human beings much like cell lysis destroys individual cells that are no longer useful or a liability to the body.

Understanding mental illness is difficult because it is something like the paradox of what came first? The chicken or the egg? Early psychologists argued it was environmental—the result of bad upbringing or cracking under the stresses of life or social persecution or personal failure—which begat the term "Nervous Breakdown". Or being "driven crazy". Then along came modern psychology and what some of its critics have come to call "The Therapeutic State" in which any manifestation of bad feelings or deviant behavior is beaten down and repressed with drugs on the assumption that the root cause of mental illness was a result of a chemical imbalance in the brain that might be hereditary. But on the other hand there are often environmental triggers involved—which brings me to reconsider the validity of some of the older theories by way of both Bloom and Savage. The latter who is an outspoken opponent of medicating people for every little bout of hyperactivity or depression once commented on his show that our moods naturally flow and ebb like the tide—we have highs and lows and throwing drugs at them may be doing more harm than good—and the best way is to just ride them out with the enlightened understanding that our moods are temporary and depression brought on by our personal troubles or the problems of the world around us is just a natural part of being human. Having seen the current system in action involving family members and friends as well as numerous mental patents that came through the Aeromedical evacuation system in my Air Force years (it is understandable how military life can crack people up) and years in the Emergency Room afterward—I don't have much faith in the mental health profession—other than the techs, nurses and social workers who do their best to handle the patients in a professional and humane matter. Sometimes I've wondered if the psychologists themselves might be the real crazies?

In regard to the overall picture I have come to believe that we need to accept the imperfections of our humanity at both the personal and societal level. Be it the result of Original Sin or evolutionary baggage—a government restrained by the Bill of Rights was the firewall that the Founders intended to protect themselves and future generations against abuses of power and the impulses of tyrannical majorities or the inevitable mad men & women who rise to power.

Least someone gets us all killed with their crackpot Moonbattery!

Jeff Fullerton
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Who will something the somethings?

In the 1960's there was an off and on Communist insurrection going on in Malaysia. Now it so happens that the majority of Malaysia's Communists at the time were ethnic Chinese. Following the example of the Viet Cong Malaysian Communists would enter small villages, kill a couple of elders, and explain to the rest that they were going to pay war taxes and provided bearer to support the revolution. From time to time they would do this in a Dayak (aka Borneo Headhunter) village. The Dayaks would go on a rampage, massacring Communists. The local Communist revolution was now over. Out of racism and the coincidence of who became Communists they also massacred a lot of Chinese in general.

The Malays didn't particularly love the Chinese and were pretty bigoted against them. There was not a whole lot to done to protect the non-Communist Chinese because of this. To be honest, the Malaysian government didn't have the ability to do much about these massacres.

A lot of people act and talk as if they feel that our current government would have tried to protect the Chinese by assigning troops to protect the Communists among them, the same Reds who were trying to overthrow selfsame government, and denying a Communist insurrection was going on. I'm not saying these people are right, I am saying that's how they feel. To be honest, our current government is doing damn all to prove them wrong.

I have to ask, how could government that refuses to identify its people's enemies, let alone make war against them, protect its people's freedoms, even that of its equivalent to non Communist Chinese?

A.X. Perez
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Lone Star Planet—H. Beam Piper—YouTube

Never imagined finding this!

[link to youtube]

Jeff Fullerton
[email protected]


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