Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

This was the week.

A coupe years shy of twenty since the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York City—a day that would go down in infamy much like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled America into World War II and forever changed the way we operated as a nation.

The event was sudden—unexpected and traumatic on the heels of two uneventful years following the false alarm of the Y2K problem that was supposed to cause all manner of mayhem when the clocks rolled over at midnight on New Years Eve in 1999. Or the end of the Cold War in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed; which seemed like the end of history in which swords were being beaten into plowshares that was exemplified in a radio ad theme song of a prominent HMO at the time: Goodbye Pentagon Hello Health Care that in turn became the rallying cry of the Bill Clinton campaign—or vice versa. I’m not sure as it was a long time ago and in the lull between Operation Desert Storm and my departure from Andrews and the USAF I was kind of busy on my off duty time with critter related matters and networking the local reptile hobby community to really care about politics. And I was never a big fan of either political party. Indeed when I went home that day in November of 92 to vote I pulled the lever for Ross Perot—the independent candidate—out of sheer anti establishment sentiment. Much the same as I voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016 and finally got my wish to at least shake up the apple cart and keep the government and it’s minions on the defensive for a while anyway.

But in the words of a few others like El Neil—owner of this journal and author of many books—or Dick Bartlett (In Search of Reptiles & Amphibians): I Digress! Which sort of grew on me as a favored apology for rambling off topic down through the years. However there is a significant backstory to 9/11. It goes back to a failed attack on the World Trade Center with a car bomb instigated by the Blind Sheik that happened in the early 90s. I thought about it through they years as one of the more impressionable acts of terrorism of our time. Alongside the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and the IRA car bomb that went off in London near Buckingham Palace. And I had a feeling those people would not be easily dissuaded and sooner or later would try again.

And they did. On a Tuesday morning in September of 2001. Two years after what seemed like another series of events that seemed to reinforce the notion that the end of the Cold War was the End of History. First was Y2K that turned out to be a big false alarm in which a lot of computer programmers ended up laughing on their way to the bank to deposit their ill gotten gains from all the unnecessary fixes hoodwinking governments and businesses—talk about big time fraud. That seems to be a common theme on what I’ve come to describe as the Crisis Industry Complex—modeled on the Military Industrial Complex that took root in a Washington during the Cold War. It was during the lead up to the turning of the Century and advent of the new millennium that I really learned to be afraid of those in the government looking to profit from a crisis in the way of power grabs that would allow them to seize resources and press people onto involuntary servitude and do other unconstitutional stuff they could not do openly under ordinary circumstances. That was scary stuff at least as scary as the end of days hallmark of biblical millenarianism or ecological doomsday scenarios involving nuclear winter or destruction of the ozone layer by CFCs and the burning rainforests that have recently become issue again. Climate Change was a minor bugaboo then—sort of in transition between the global cooling that was vogue in the 70s to warming that seems now to be on the wane and maybe just the manifestation of a natural decadal cycle of solar and ocean circulation patterns. But never underestimate the ability of people to extrapolate and blow things out of proportion for the sake of pushing an agenda or making a fast buck.

That became a significant platform in the Al Gore campaign in the halcyon summer leading up to the 2000 Election and my primary reason for voting that year. Given the fervor of those—even fellows in the hobbyist communities who promoted or bought into arguments that restrictions on a lot of things we like to do—even draconian austerity measures deemed necessary to save the planet—I feared what an Al Gore Administration wound bring so I followed the slogan on Bush / Cheney billboard at the confluence of Rt 982 & 119 to “VOTE FREEDOM FIRST”! It seemed like a good idea at the time and for the course of the year that followed after the hotly contested vote tallies in Florida with the dimpled, pregnant and hanging chads there was another halcyon summer in which I took a fun trip to North Carolina. I also worked sporadically digging out and squaring the final dimensions of the greenhouse foundation—a project that had been ongoing in fits and starts since my last year at Andrews before I defaulted to the Florida Room in the basement that is in the process of being resurrected after all these years. Will have to do a more detailed history of that someday in the new Adventures in Herpetology thread.

It was the Y2K scare that sort of rekindled that effort under the notion that it might be nice to have the greenhouse to grow vegetables in the winter in a crisis scenario. No matter that I had once again underestimated the time and effort required to get such a project up and running. And the greenhouse was far from becoming the vegetable producing oasis by the time the ball dropped in Time Square on New Year’s Eve 1999. But in the coming season I decided to get serious and get it done that year.

It was the weekend just before the attacks when I had a friend who is a construction worker set the outside forms for the foundation footer with a laser transit he borrowed from his boss. The following Tuesday—9/11/2001 I was setting the inner forms myself off the outer ones using a spirit level working solo. It was late morning when I decided to take a break and take the truck—my old dilapidated and incapacitated 1997 Ford F-150 that was then serviceable and in prime condition out for a spin to gas it up. My brother who had borrowed it recently had set the radio dial to the station featuring Howard Stern’s show which I ended up listening to on the way. That was how I became aware of the crisis that was in the process of unfolding in New York.

I came in on it between the hit of the first and second plane when Stern was rambling hysterically about the first and then screamed—“Oh MyGod; here comes another one”! That was how I first become aware of 9/11.

I rushed home after filling the tank to continue following the story on TV. There I found out about a third plane that hit the Pentagon and a fourth that crashed after what was described as a valiant struggle of the passengers and flight attendants against the terrorists who hijacked the plane. That was Flight 93 which went down not far from where I live—neighboring Somerset County. My first impulse since I work in the emergency room was to call work and ask the charge nurse if help might be needed to deal with casualties. I was told that survivors were unlikely which turned out to be the case but regardless the greenhouse project was on hold for the day which I spent glued to the TV watching the remainder of the event unfold. Namely the tragic rescue attempt by the firefighters who rushed in—mostly to their deaths to rescue or guide people out of the burning buildings which collapsed from the weakening of the structure that has become the subject of many a conspiracy theory. I’m not so sure that the government staged the whole thing in the way of orchestrating the hijackings and planting explosive charges to implode the structures after the planes hit. But there is plenty to suggest that a lot of incompetent bungling or deliberate neglect let this happen like many other catastrophes that the government had capitalized on in order to utter the infamous Plea of Necessity that William Pitt the Younger was historically renowned for describing as the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves back in the 18th Century. That has more or less become a modus operandi for the Crisis Industry operated by the Deep State to justify infringements on personal liberties in the name of Necessity—usually for the purpose of national security. Or for safety from the ravages of drugs, gun violence, or climate change—which more or less became the replacements for the strategic threat posed by the Soviet Union as a blank check for deficit spending and running roughshod over the Bill of Rights after the Cold War ended.

Muslims were not the only ones celebrating the news of the destruction of the Twin Towers that day. There were many federal employees who welcomed the opportunity of crisis which would guarantee the floodgates of government largesse would be opened wide and the Bush Administration was able to capitalize on the mass hysteria of the event to launch the nation into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are still ongoing for the most part today. And guarantee itself a second term. Otherwise the likely scenario would have been the fights over mundane stuff like school vouchers and maybe even having to deliver on the promise of smaller government. So much for FREEDOM FIRST. All that stuff went out the window which is a good thing even for a Republican administration which is about big government too. Just focusing on a different set of issues. As for the democrats—they jumped on the 9/11 bandwagon too at first to make sure they were on the right side of history at the moment. In the words of Senator John Kerry who ended up running against Bush in the 2004 Election and lost; he voted for the wars before he voted against. That was a very entertaining time in our history with good talk radio and the political theater of the hypocritical politicians—like Al Gore’s meltdown over how Bush played on out fears—never mind that his book: The Inconvenient Truth is a masterpiece of a fear-mongering potboiler documentary certainly did the same with the melting icecaps and drowning polar bears!

And then there was John Kerry who walks into a hardware store for a photo op and inquires: “where can I get me a huntin license” to soothe the anxieties of pro-gun democrats that might be inclined to vote for the other party. The democrats had a lot of bugaboos about civil liberties and privacy issues back then—which ended up going out the same window as FREEDOM FIRST once Barrack Hussein Obama was in the White House and the democrats had majorities in the House and Senate. Bush’s horrible police state became less horrible once it became Obama’s police state. Hell, even the best thing since Hitler and sliced bread!

It was was the fear of material shortages from wartime rationing that fortunately never kicked in which made me gear up to order the kit from Turner Greenhouses and hire a local contractor to do the block foundation and wooden structure portion after I poured the footer with the help of my brother and a few of my friends. The project was finished through the winter and ready for use the following spring which led to some really good years afterward. Through some of my best—leading up to the crash in 2008 that was the start of a new era in politics and a continuation of my pursuit of excellence and happiness with guarded hope that i might get through that with most of my cherished possessions and assets intact.

Until the restoration of full liberty which we really have never enjoyed fully as a country. Only at times here and there in neglected places like the Rust Belt where the major industry apart from health care has long been state governments. I was even able to get away with being an outlaw turtle keeper for a while and today I even regret being so hasty to get rid of my state protected species. Maybe I should have been a little more deliberate in my decisions to part with those as the Founders argued that deliberation is important when it comes to making important decisions. Something that is totally lost on the perpetrators of the Crisis Industry Who always scream for urgent action whenever something bad happens. The argument is always that the danger is imminent and we cannot afford to debate or delay. But too often I they are wrong or over exaggerating the dangers and just want a foot in the door commitment to action before evidence emerges that action—and a massive budgetary appropriation is not necessary. This was the rallying cry for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and passage of the Patriot Act. It was after all because of 9/11: a Day that Would Live in Infamy. Nine Eleven. 9/11. Those very numbers make for a very powerful symbol—when you have an emergency; what do you do? Call 911! The twin towers even look like the number 11 which I’m sure has been touched upon by a few conspiracy theorists. Again I won’t go there. It’s probably coincidence and it’s so much easier to evoke the Plea of Necessity in time of a real crisis like 9/11 or the housing bubble crash in 2008 than to choreograph a false flag event. Of course we had the “Y2K problem” and the ongoing climate debate that are more or less examples of non problems or potential ones with exaggerated doomsday consequences that special interests or policy makers attempt to use to enrich or empower themselves at other people’s expense. All these wars and other existential crises like the wars on poverty, drugs and terrorism as well as the response to the economic crisis in 2008 and the pending climate change catastrophe all come with their own set of recommendations for expanding government power and spending on what amounts to various pet issues from one wishlist or another depending on who looking to be leading the charge and looking to cash in on the crisis.

It’s essentially the world will end unless they get their grab bag of pet issues addressed and bailouts for their special interests and or campaign donors. That’s the Crisis Industry Complex and the Plea of Necessity that is the driving rationale for it in a nutshell. Something you should always keep in mind whenever a horrible catastrophe like 9/11 strikes again and it will—sooner or later. Or every time someone calls for urgent action on climate change or the latest mass shooting. Necessity is always the Plea for infringement on human freedom and it’s the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. Which we are all destined to become if we keep letting them get away with it.

And for the Latest News From Greater Appalachia

In conclusion I’m making note of a decision to combine this thread—From the Rust Belt to the Asteroid Belt with the Latest News From Greater Appalachia to save on writing and because the two go together. As for the latest news—we had a shooting outside a football stadium last week that turned out to be related to a drug deal gone bad as opposed to the mass random thing that democrats and quisling republicans are jumping on right and left lately. They are certainly trying to evoke the Plea of Necessity to disarm the population under the argument that you don’t need assault weapons to hunt deer.

Another popular slogan lately is that the Second Amendment was written for muzzle loaders not the modern weapons of war. These people either miss the entire point of the Second Amendment—or they have darker motives. The clueless ones who do the corny dog and pony show at the local gun clubs or John Kerry’s stunt buying a huntin license at a hardware store in 2004 get it all wrong. The Second Amendment is not about your right to kill Bambi. It’s about the individual right to adequate self defense and the collective ability of the people to deny the government a monopoly on force. And that means a collective ability of freedom minded individuals to bear arms in the name of mutual aide and interest in staying free—not a collective group right to organize armies or police forces to delegate the use of deadly force against their neighbors or aggression against foreign nations. That is the argument of the Left based on the words of Mao that power comes from the barrel of a gun.

But only their guns.

For those in power or seeking it with nefarious intentions—the Second Amendment was written especially for them. Especially the current crop of candidates debating for the Presidential nomination to represent the Democratic Party in 2020—these last three years of reprieve went so fast! Most of them are calling for all kinds of draconian verging on totalitarian policies to address a whole stew of long standing progressive pet issues; everything from socialized health care and wealth redistribution to gun control and climate change mitigation. Many of their proposed solutions require such a high level of social discipline and individual sacrifice that a substantial portion of the population—even people on their side of the isle will be unwilling to go along with. So it is imperative to the Left that the population be disarmed and rendered helpless or at a disadvantage to those who would be tasked with implementing these unpopular and often harmful directives. God forbid a LEO or federal agent, or member of that internal security force that Obama thought was such a good idea gets killed by someone trying to defend the furnace they were sent out to confiscate or destroy in the fashion of Edward the Confessor: enforcing a ban on the burning of carbon based fuels in the midst of a brutal winter to boot! That’s why the gun grabbers want an assault weapons ban and eventually a ban on all weapons. To make life safer for themselves and the people who do their bidding. And it’s the reason why private ownership of assault weapons should not be banned and in places where they already are; be fully restored.

If everyone open carried in public; that would put an end to most of the mass shootings that are being sensationalized in the news and limit the damage by those that do happen. They wouldn’t get as far with the body counts because someone would put a stop to it in short order. For those who might object to the carnage and collateral damage that might result from the use of a full auto in self defense in a public space —there is a matter of etiquette and the fact that even in an armed society where self defense is a basic human right it is incumbent on everyone to avoid harming innocent bystanders who could end up in the line of fire. So it would not be prudent to take a semi or full auto to a rock concert but it still ought to be a right to own one or however many you think might be necessary for defense of life and property or to have on hand to join with neighbors to defend themselves and community against occupying armies or forces of their own government that has become tyrannical or genocidal and deserves to be forcefully overthrown.

Which brings me to yet another news-bit that caused me quite a lot of funk yesterday evening when I read that the federal government is now apparently entering new territory of running trillion dollar deficits. It finally has happened where trillions have become the new billions—a long way from 1984 when the democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale fretted about Reagan’s trillion dollar national debt. This should get an article of its own some other day because this one has already consumed my Saturday. Relevant to this current thread is the possibility of the debt bomb that Glenn Beck and others have been worrying us about for many years actually blowing up in our faces very soon and in spectacular fashion that could make the bubble that bust in 2008 look like a harmless firecracker—which it probably would have been if Obama didn’t use it as an excuse for himself and his cronies to engage in another spending spree and series of power grabs like the Bush Administration did with 9/11 before him. The Crisis Industry spewing the Plea of Necessity reared it’s ugly head again and it will happily do it yet again if there is another crisis.

This scenario is yet one more reason for the gun grabbers to take the guns away from the people. In fact it’s a primary reason because it makes it safer to go door to door to confiscate private wealth and demand contribution of service to the state in the fashion of Mao or Hitler. Or Lenin. Or to arrest and detain political enemies without due process. Would be more dangerous to pull off something like the Cultural Revolution or round people up for the trains to the death camps if there is machine gun in every household!

Existential danger concerns really clouded my prospects for the rebirth of the Florida Room and I must admit for a while I was bugging about it with Ray last night. Everything from being unable to maintain my way of life to having to eat my critters. But the resulting article turned out to be a good catharsis in the way of time spent at the expense of other things. And my thoughts on the matter have come to reaffirm the good things about civilized life that are certainly worth defending against the counterculture that has come to embrace Death, Tyranny and The Equitable Distribution of Misery in place of Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness. They must be denied access to the levers of power and never be allowed to disarm the people and come to enjoy a monopoly on the use of deadly force. They are dangerous people who reject the Zero Aggression Principal and if their ambition is unchecked they would not hesitate to murder anyone who gets in their way or is otherwise inconvenient to them.

Addendum: This week I learned that box cutters are forbidden in my workplace. So much for the convenience for opening cardboard boxes—though disposable surgical scalpels work fairly well and it would be very inconvenient to the doctors if those were prohibited or kept under lock & key. Some of the ridiculous things we must endure thanks to the 9/11 terrorists and the security obsessed who’ve capitalized on that incident to change our country in ways that it was never meant to be changed. And put it trillions of dollars in debt. 21 Trillion last heard and now going to add to it I. Trillion dollar increments per annum or even 2 trillion with the debt doubling or quadrupling by 2030. If we even last that long. It’s the epitome of insanity with no end in sight until circumstances bring it to an end because the politicians won’t. They are hellbent in the words of the late Jerry Doyle of Babylon 5 fame who later became semi famous as a radio talk show host who ought to be remembered for his quote about Congress kicking the proverbial can down the road and building more road to kick the can down!

Or another one othat kind of echoed my thoughts not long after the attacks went down; that the Congress has done more damage to America than the 9/11 hijackers could ever hope to accomplish with those planes. At 21 trillion in debt with deficits running in the trillions coming soon—History now says that Mr Doyle was right.

As for box cutters—I don’t think it is necessary to worry about those anymore because from here on anyone in their right mind will rather take their chances getting slashed with a knife blade than letting terrorists take control of the plane they are on and crash it onto something—or the ground!