Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

I only have a few things to say about a variety of different issues, but I only have enough to fit a paragraph or two on each issue. So if it seems like I am all over the place on this article, I apologize ahead of time.

Ghostbusters Folly Continued

About three months ago I wrote an article about the recent Ghostbusters remake. I wrote about how the trailer indicated that Sony was taking the franchise in the wrong direction. Not that any of this was a surprise to me considering that Hollywood has a habit of remaking and rebooting great movies and turning them into a shell of what they once were. What did shock me was the way that Sony, along with the director and one of the cast members decided to respond to the movie’s negative criticism by attacking the fan base. In my entire thirty-six-years on this planet I had never seen anything like it. What do they have to show for it? Well considering that the movie is likely going to end up being seventy-million dollars short of its budget, I would say not much. Instead of spending all their time pandering to feminists and attacking their fan base, maybe Sony should take a few prompts from Walt Disney and provide a little fan service.

Freedom of Association

Recently a restaurant owner in Maine decided to get on a political high horse by announcing on her web page that she will refuse service to AR-15 owners. Putting aside the obvious problem of how this woman would be able to tell which individual entering her restaurant owns an AR-15, short of them announcing said ownership or possibly walking in with the offensive weapon. What this woman didn’t seem to realize is that while she certainly had a right to deny her goods and services to people that she didn’t want to associate with, freedom of association actually works both ways. As soon as she wrote the announcement on her webpage, she had to quickly take it down after receiving several threats of boycotts from angry gun owners. It is funny how she claims that she still stands by her original announcement of refusing service to AR-15 owners, but responsible gun owners are welcomed. I remember what libertarian YouTuber, Shane Killian once said about anti-discrimination laws. He said that he would actually prefer that a business owner be open about his ignorance and bigotry, so that it would make it easier for the consumers to decide whether they want to patronize that business. This is a prime example of this concept being put into action.

The Fall of the Young Turks

I wrote about the internet news show that goes by the name of The Young Turks once in an article titled More Denial about the show’s host Cenk Uygur’s denial of the Armenian genocide. I make no bones about the fact that I have never thought much about the show from the very start. I actually have even less regard for the show’s journalistic integrity then I do of the integrity of the mainstream media. I never thought that my opinion of the show could sink any lower, until I saw these clowns at the Republican National Convention. While they were doing one of their live shows they were interrupted by talk radio host, Alex Jones. It was claimed by Jones that he was actually invited to the show, but you could easily tell that Uygur wasn’t at all happy about Jones walking up on the stage. He became even less happy when Jones gave him a t-shirt with a picture of Bill Clinton that had the word Rapist written on the bottom. Uygur then crumpled the t-shirt up and called Jones sick. He then went off the rails when he screamed at conservative writer, Roger Stone who was actually standing off stage for the lies that he wrote about the Clintons. When Stone left the area, Uygur then turned his wrath towards Alex Jones and proceeded to scream in his face. Of course he wasn’t the only member of the crew that resorted to the behavior of a ghetto woman on a talk show yelling at her boyfriend’s ex that her man wasn’t her baby’s daddy. Ann Kasparian, the woman who I like to refer to as the self-hating Armenian, decided to call Alex Jones a Fat Fuck. It gets even better when another member of the crew spit right in the face of Jones. Just when you think it couldn’t get any more surreal, the camera crew tried to lift their shirts above their shoulders so they could block the fiasco from being viewed by the general public. Yeah, a little too late for that guys. If you didn’t want your boss to look a buffoon you should have done a better job of calming him down. Way to go guys. Not only have you thrown whatever journalistic integrity that you did have out of the window, but you actually made Alex Jones, a man who has been called everything from a clown to a psycho by the mainstream press, look good. Good job guys.

Election Day

In less than a month, we will once again be faced with the same old dilemma of having to choose the lesser of two evils. I can certainly say that I am not at all thrilled at the prospect of a Trump presidency and even less thrilled with the thought of Hillary being our next president. So I can certainly sympathize with conservatives and libertarians who don’t trust Trump as far as they can throw him. Though the biggest whiners have been the Social Justice Warriors and the Establishment Republicans who cringe at the possibility of having one of the most politically incorrect presidents in recent memory grace the Oval Office. I have absolutely no sympathy for these people, since they are the ones who are responsible for Trump’s success in the first place. The reason why so many people find Trump appealing is because they are tired of political correctness and having Republican candidates that aren’t much different than their democratic adversaries. You guys made your beds, now you get to lie in them with the rest of the country. Though you guys get to do it without complaint.

What is it with Australia?

I have always found it somewhat telling that the victim disarmament crowd is always telling us that they aren’t after our guns, yet whenever they are asked about which gun control they think is effective they always mention Australia, the place where gun confiscation actually occurred. That is like the CIA telling us that they are against torture, but think that the Spanish Inquisition had the best interrogation tactics.

Dinesh d’ Souza

While I realize that Dinesh d’ Souza has the same shortcomings as the rest of his fellow conservatives, I am actually a fan of his work. I liked his 2016 documentary and absolutely loved America. I haven’t seen Hillary’s America yet, but I have read the book and it was definitely a good read. I did have some minor disagreements here and there, but what bothered me the most was the paragraph at the end of his book where he told libertarians that we should give up on our dream of ever having one of our own in the presidency and support a Republican candidate that is pro-free Market. Dinesh, buddy, just about all libertarians know that we are never going to have a hardcore libertarian occupying the Oval Office. Hell, we couldn’t even get a conservative with strong libertarian leanings like Ron Paul passed the Republican Establishment. I can’t speak for all libertarians, but I am sure that there are many like myself, who would love to settle for a Republican that supports the free market. Where can we find one? Donald I am Going to Raise Tariffs Trump is hardly a champion for the free market. Come to think of it, when was the last time we had a Republican candidate or president that was pro-free market? It sure as hell wasn’t Mitt Romneycare Romney or John McCain or any member of the Bush clan. To be honest, I don’t even think that Ronald Reagan was as big of a free marketer as you and your conservative buddies claim. If you guys want our votes so badly, then you are going to have to bring something better to the table.

Trans Confusion

I remember that there was a time when I thought that the social conservatives were full of crap when many of them said that once gay marriage was legalized, we would fall down the slippery slope where people were able to marry their dogs. Granted, we are still a long way off from having bestiality legitimized, but it still seems as if social conservatives weren’t that far off after all. First we have the whole transgender acceptance movement that started with the Bruce/Kaitlyn Jenner publicity. Of course the whole trans movement didn’t just stop with gender. We later had a white woman who identified as black and another who called herself a transdragon. No, I’m not kidding. I don’t think I could have made these crazy scenarios up. Though Trey Parker and Matt Stone sure did when they wrote the South Park episode about how Kyle, the token Jewish kid was turned into a tall black kid, so he could play basketball. What is even funnier is seeing his dad transformed into a dolphin and then complaining about a sports stadium not having restrooms to accommodate him. I swear both Matt Stone and Trey Parker are prophets.

Now I want to point out that I could care less if somebody wants to call themselves transgender, transdragon, transK-9, or transdinosaur. To quote Estelle Getty from the eighties classic, Mannequin “I don’t care if he runs around naked with a rubber glove on his head and yells ‘Hi, I’m a squid.’” What I do care about is that there is a movement trying to shove acceptance of transgender lifestyles down everybody’s throats. That is why we have this whole restroom controversy where everybody has to recognize a trans person’s alternate gender whether that person conveniently decided to become a different gender on a particular day, doesn’t really matter. I remember talking to a few social conservatives about the gay marriage issue and many told me that they didn’t really care about two people of the same sex getting married as much as they did about the government having to subsidize it with their tax dollars. I realized that they actually had a point. Though many of them seemed to scoff at the libertarian idea of privatizing marriage and treating all unions between consenting adults as private contracts. Now that there is a good chance that the government could extend marriage to God knows what, how is marriage privatization sounding now, guys?