DOWN WITH POWER
Narrated by talk show host, Brian Wilson, “Down With Power” a Libertarian
Manifesto, by L. Neil Smith now downloadable as an audiobook!
L. Neil Smith’s THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number Number 1,130, October 17, 2021

Americans are snarky bastards

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Letter from A.X. Perez

Letter from Jeff Fullerton

Another Letter from A.X. Perez

Letter from Dennis Wilson


Letter from A.X. Perez

Smarting Up

Reposted a memory on Facebook regarding people not being as smart as we think we are, or at least not enough to be so impressed by ourselves. The test used to compare modern and Victorian IQ measured speed of reflexes. Our brains work slower than our ancestors did. I posted about this sometime ago in TLE. The bottom line is that apparently we are more likely to do stupid things and less likely to have the IQ and reaction times to get out of them unscathed. The good news is, this is a result of technological and societal advances that reduce the evolutionary pressure to be smart and fast, in other words we don’t need to be as smart and fast to survive as our Victorian ancestors did, so slower, dumber people are having more kids that live to reproduce even slower and dumber kids. Essentially, we can work to keep things sane or we can pay greater and greater hell with each generation.

Marylin Monroe one time said “I can be smart when I have to be.” (Line in a movie, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes I believe) The corollary is that people act no more intelligently than they need to get by. Which means from time to time we need to be damned smart indeed.

Here’s hoping you avoid that circumstance (plan a) or overcome it by suddenly demonstrating smarts you never knew you had (plan b). I suggest you work at making yourself smarter, something no politician wants you to do.

This, by the way, is the second reason it matters, the first being surviving to reproduce. Liberty, requires intelligence and education, more and more diverse than potential tyrants would like us and our descendants to enjoy.

I’m not smart enough to figure out how to reverse this trend without giving up modern technology. Perhaps one thing we should use our liberty to accomplish is to make ourselves smarter while not giving up the benefits of living in a technologically advanced society.

A.X. Perez
[email protected]

[ And if we can’t make ourselves smarter, at least we can try to be more rational—and here are a couple of books that try to show us how to do just that, guides to the techniques and methods of thinking without self-deception — Editor ]

Map and Territory (Rationality: From AI to Zombies Book 1) by Eliezer Yudkowsky

How to Actually Change Your Mind (Rationality: From AI to Zombies Book 2) by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

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Letter from Jeff Fullerton

Self-Defense Is A Human Right – Bearing Arms

Self-Defense Is A Human Right
by Cam Edwards
I’d like to think a statement like the headline above wouldn’t be all that controversial, but I know better. In fact, one of the biggest groups that supposedly fights for human rights would (and has) whole-heartedly disagreed with that conclusion, and on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. we’re wading in to Amnesty International’s amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court that argues the right to armed self-defense not only violates international law, but is in fact a human rights violation.
[ Read More ]]

It appears that Amnesty International prefers victims are not empowered to defend themselves because genocide is the lesser of two evils as opposed to full blown civil war when the victims can shoot back. And they are also concerned that robbers and rapists might be denied their right to life by victims in defense of property or personal virtue. And we know that government criminals also known as tyrants want their prospective victims disarmed to make life safe for themselves and the minions they would send door to door to impose their will and expropriate private wealth.

They complain that self defense introduces too much complexity to the equation. Well, the best way to simplify that is the Zero Aggression Principle that forbids the initiation of force against other human beings and justifies it in defense of life, liberty and property.

Very simple and ultimately just.

Jeff Fullerton
[email protected]

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Another Letter from A.X. Perez

Free to Be You and Me?

“Kill the Indian, and Save the Man” — Capt. Richard H. Pratt

The above quote refers to a philosophy of forcing Native Americans to not only adopt and assimilate into American culture, but to give up their tribal identities and cultures in the process. Up until the 1960’s Chicano students were suspended from school for speaking Spanish on public school campuses in El Paso in private conversations until the US Supreme Court ruled this was protected by the right to freedom of speech. Of course, the goal of encouraging them to adapt and assimilate into American culture was admirable, demanding they give up the culture they practiced at home, not so much. Immigrants often had their names Anglicized, went through the whole Speak English, again not only to force them to Americanize, but to give up their old culture.

There is nothing wrong with demanding that people under American rule become loyal Americans, learn the American Way, learn to love liberty and constitutional government. We do need a common public culture and language, but we do need room for variations from other cultures. There’s a big difference in asking people to become true Americans and demanding they become Imitation Anglo-Americans trapped in a one size fits all Procrustean bed definition of what’s a real American.

You may think, "“here goes Albert, on a multicultural, embrace the diversity rant.” Not guilty, or at least there are extenuating circumstances. After carefully looking at what “cancel culture” and political correctness demand it becomes obvious that what they are calling for is that we cut our hair, change our names, and speak their dialect of English and only that dialect. They don’t want Southerners to put aside racism, they want us to put aside being Southerners. They want Mid- and South-westerners and just plain Westerners to become imitation Yankees, and their kind of Yankees.

In The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K. Le Guin tells the story of a young man with the power to rewrite reality. Trying to make things better, it seems every world is just that little bit worse in each iteration, reaching the point where he writes the love of his life out of the story.

The liberal/progressive left is trying to make us all gray, to kill our cultures in order to save us by making us just like them. They make claim they want us to have diversity, but in the end what they mean is we have permission to be who they tell us to be.

A.X. Perez
[email protected]

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Letter from Dennis Wilson

Video Reveals Pandemic Was Planned to Experiment Universal Vaccine by Mandate in the General Public

In 2017, at the very beginning of the Trump administration, Fauci predicted some kind of pandemic was coming and would affect the new administration. In 2019, Fauci and a group of scientists were planning a pandemic to experiment a universal vaccine on the general population and submit the people under control of a totalitarian global system. Oann has the videos.

Dennis Wilson
[email protected]

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