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The Crusades: (Video Lectures)
The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here are two of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
Sean Gabb
[email protected]
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Free State Rides Again!
Greetings Neil. Since it all started here with Jason Sorens back-in-the-day, I figured I’d share the below email with you that I just sent to the current board of directors of the Free State Project. Publish if you want:
Greetings everyone. Most of you on the FSP Board may not know me, but I was on the board of directors when we held the Free State Project vote that chose New Hampshire as the Free State in 2004. Even though I still have a Grafton, NH address, I haven’t been able to spend as much time in the Free State as I have in the past (and that’s on me… exceedingly bad). However, there’s an interesting phenomenon that’s been occurring over the last few years in Florida that we should all take a look at, i.e. the emerging nickname of "the Free State of Florida." Paul Mirski (one of the founders of the GOP conservative movement in NH in the 1990’s) and I are both here in Florida, and are staying in touch both with respect to what’s happening in New Hampshire and what’s happening in Florida. One of the things that’s happening in Florida, as you all are no doubt aware, is that there’s been a steady (and increasing) migration from the “blue states” to here (and to Texas, Tennessee and the Carolinas). Like New Hampshire, Florida has no state income tax. Like New Hampshire, Florida is exceedingly 2nd Amendment friendly. Like New Hampshire, Florida is trending increasingly “red state.” And like New Hampshire, Florida has some pretty good right-wing and libertarian leadership (not including Sununu or the RINO Chuck Morse of course). Among those who have “made their escape” to Florida and live here now instead of in blue-state paradises like New York, California, New Jersey and elsewhere, are included the following: President Trump and all of his immediate family; Rush Limbaugh (RIP); Tom Luongo; Shawn Hannity; Tucker Carlson; Prof. Tom DiLorenzo; Matt Gaetz, future President Ron DeSantis, Lou Dobbs, Dan Bongino, Ann Coulter, Roger Stone, “Baked Alaska” and plenty of other libertarian-friendly and right-wing friendly types (as opposed to old-style RINO Republican “conservatives”).
So what does all this have to do with New Hampshire and the Free State Project? Just this: I’d like to open a conversation about… what if the Free State Project incorporated a warm-weather political subdivision as part of the movement? There are certainly plenty of people who would like to be able to miss at least month or so of the worst part of the winter in New Hampshire. And there are certainly people in Florida who wish the Free State Project well and would like to be up there to establish residency in the summers and work for the ultimate success of the FSP. Why not create some kind of “linkage” that would benefit both the Free State Project in New Hampshire and the “Free State of Florida” (as it’s coming to be known)? There could be complementarities that just might benefit both the Free State Project AND the growing freedom movement in the state of Florida.
As it happens, I am hearing about people in Florida who are discussing just this possibility. Interestingly, although Florida is the third most populated state in the U.S., its political structure is much more “locally oriented” than that of New Hampshire. Counties in Florida, for instance, have multiple elected positions that hold strong political powers under the Florida State Constitution (including elected sheriff’s, elections supervisors, court clerks, judges, and other positions). So compare the entire state of New Hampshire (9,350 square miles) with its 870,000 registered voters, with a single warm-weather county in Florida, such as Collier in the southwest tip of the state (2,300 square miles), with 246,600 registered voters (overwhelmingly Republican). If, for instance, Collier County, Florida were to be declared “the down-south sister county to the Free State Project of New Hampshire,” there might appear to be mutual benefits for libertarians and other freedom-lovers in both locations. The two could link up and work together for mutual benefits.
What do you think, Free Staters?
Tim Condon, founder of the Porcupine Freedom Festival and former member
of the Board of Directors of the Free State Project
[email protected]
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“On third thought..”
Just finished re-reading Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Could not help comparing it to our present situation with Covid-19. Those of you who have read this book should be having OMG, OMG moments making the same comparisons.
A new version would have to address the inability of the government to command trust to deal with the invasion and the inability of various government officials and entities to resist the temptation to exceed and abuse their authority in dealing with the emergency. Let us not forget loading the bill to pay for the invasion of Titan with every bit of Progressive Green New Deal nonsense known to man and yet to be imagined.
As long as humans insist on inflicting government on themselves, a government over free men must be able to earn and deserve the trust and loyalty of its citizens and/or subjects (to “command the assent of their reason in so far as reason can be commanded” to misquote our founding fathers). The Section of RAH’s novel deserved that trust, but that was fiction. Our current government doesn’t. Sadly, they are not even trying to earn it.
A.X. Perez
[email protected]
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This Kingston Trio song has been haunting my brain!
The Merry Minuet
They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain.
There’s hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil, and thankful, and proud,
For mans’ been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away.
They’re rioting in Africa, there’s strife in Iran.
What nature doesn’t do to us, will be done by our fellow man.
— The Kingston Trio
Merry Little Minuet (Live) - YouTube
Dennis Wilson
[email protected]
Signatory: Covenant of Unanimous Consent
https://tinyurl.com/The-Bare-Minimum-W
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NHexit.com statement on Kremlin invasion of Ukraine
1) The Russian government’s act of all-out conventional war is wildly excessive. Any individual or voluntarily funded institution wishing to help defend Ukraine against this overstep is far within their rights, recent Kremlin threats against this non-withstanding.
2) The initial success of the attack on this Western-leaning nation… is a reminder that Washington cannot be relied on to defend New Hampshire. Counterintuitive as is sounds, NH would be better off—and the Western world should benefit—if we handled own defense and diplomacy. Instead of being tied the weirdly aggressive-yet-impotent D.C. zombie, we would find a wide range of better options for our security. These range from the happily de-militarized neutrality of Costa Rica to the gun-heavy but non-aligned preparedness of Switzerland. We would also have the option of doing something better for future nations-under-threat like Ukraine: We could insist that any government we ally ourselves with… free its own people from invasion-enabling gun control laws: [Click Here]
3) Ukraine’s government has made this invasion practical by doing something most European governments and even American governments are still doing: They limited the private possession/carry of firearms up until the week of the invasion, when they finally let civilians carry them without permission. This is roughly what happened in the ill-fated Spanish Republic during the 1936 war. Ukrainians are now reported to be desperately mobbing gun stores, for good reason but probably too late. GunPolicy.org lists Ukraine as having only 7 civilian firearms per 100 persons… a foreign invader’s dream. Civilians in the average U.S. state, including New Hampshire, reportedly possess over 115 per 100. [Click Here]
4) Washington has unnecessarily provoked Moscow over the last 30 years. By moving NATO so close to Russian borders and arguably sponsoring a Ukranian coup in 2014, it ignored the Rodina’s security concerns. Since 2001 especially, it has bombed, blockaded and invaded many nations with little good reason but much abuse of local civilians. It has cast away the relative ethical high ground, against the wishes of most New Hampshirites. It has also become a direct physical threat to all of us with its unconstitutional rules and raids inside our libertarian-leaning state. It has become incapable of credibly condemning Russia’s actions the way it did during the Kremlin’s invasion of Finland in 1939.
5) U.S. ruler Joe Biden’s statement of Feb. 24, 2022 is partially worthy of condemnation: “Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences.” By speaking in this manner, he equated the Russian people with their quasi-dictator… that would be like equating General Franco with the Catalan anarchists he so victimized in the Spanish Civil War. Individual Russians and the Russian nation should be treated as potential allies against Putin; many have already risked their lives this week to protest against him.
6) New Hampshire, unlike Switzerland and Costa Rica, is currently on the nuclear target list as a result of its membership in the United States system. This would be one thing if the U.S. were generally in the right and generally humane. It is not and thus is not worthy of *our* lives. Both D.C. and Moscow deserve opposition; neither deserve support.
7) Moscow’s move may be designed to divert attention from a planned attack on Taiwan, where invasion-friendly gun laws are even more severe than Ukraine’s.
8) The appropriate New Hampshire move is to peaceably declare independence from the U.S. (as Rep. Sylvia’s current legislation at Concord is attempting to do). Then it should set a clean foreign policy of its own crafting. This policy should be one that does not overextend and does not aggress but does keep faith with foreign allies by insisting (as a minimum condition of continued partnership) that their governments end all the gun controls they are imposing on their people.
Dave Ridley
[email protected]
NHexit.com
“Independence without enmity”
(603) 213-8248
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Liberty International: The reason we’re moving from San Francisco to Texas
I’m writing to inform you that we’ve made the decision to move from San Francisco to Texas. From now on, the Liberty International new office address will be:
Liberty International
701 N. Vista Ridge Blvd. Apt. 12208
Cedar Park, TX 78613-7844
Much of the reason for the move is related to the terrible political climate in San Francisco and California, especially throughout the last two years. SF used to be attractive as a vibrant, cosmopolitan, world-class city. Normally, the awful local politics can be ignored, but the draconian Covid lockdowns have destroyed many of the businesses, as well as much of the social life. It’s difficult to work and operate under such conditions.
Even the local media admits that 43% of the small businesses in the city have closed. The financial district remains a ghost town. Crime has jumped, and parts of the city are overrun with street people, who are coddled by the city government.
I see no hope for positive change anytime soon. The Democrats have three-quarters majorities in both houses of the legislature, and all seven of the state executive offices. They control all the major population centers.
The political and intellectual climate is dominated by the Green religion. Authorities think that they can run a state of 40 million people on wind and solar, and they are even hostile to natural gas.
The government operations have a chokehold by the powerful public employee unions, who support the Democrats (and vice versa). California government employees get gold-plated salaries and pensions, which are ratcheted up annually. Meanwhile, the education system is a disaster. The regulatory and legal climate is stifling.
What a shame! California still has much to offer, but the government has gotten so bad that thousands of the best people are fleeing the state every month. That now also includes me.
I look forward to a lower cost of living and more freedom in Texas, as well as meeting the large libertarian community around Austin (many of whom are also California refugees). With the new favorable environment and conditions, operating at Liberty International is definitely going to be easier and more efficient. Any help you can provide will be valuable.
Jim Elwood
[email protected]
Executive Director
Mobile: +415-656-7417
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A Few Remarks
She says he’s fully in the pocket of the war profiteers!
Joe Biden,
Warmonger - The American Conservative
He’s got a long history of voting for wars and is obviously looking forward to becoming a wartime President the likes of FDR and Woodrow Wilson. And he’s more like the latter.
Biden’s Russia speech:
Hypocrisy, lies and warmongering - World Socialist Web Site
Even the socialists are unhappy. This is starting to look disturbingly like the days of FDR leading up to World War II.
11
Trillion Reasons To Fear Joe Biden, s Presidency
His season in the sun—coming decades after he first tossed his hat into the presidential ring—may well usher in a dark winter that will persist long after next year, s first crocuses bloom.
As
Ukraine Bleeds, Taiwan Weeps
Why the Democratic Party must die.
They are the party of self inflicted austerity, tyranny and treason.
They are the enemy within: a far worse threat to American survival
and wellbeing than all our foreign enemies combined.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Called Joe Biden ‘A Piece of Shit’ Over Afghanistan - VICE
“Joe Biden, you are not a president, you are a piece of shit,”
What the Russian media is saying about the war in Ukraine
Not going as well as expected. Protests at home. The Russian internet unlike China with its Great Firewall is as leaky as a sieve or the U.S. southern border! Kyiv (didn’t we used to spell it Kiev?) is still standing 24 hours after I was watching the siege Friday night on the big screen TV in the ER waiting room. And their tanks are running out of gas on the highways and the Ukrainians are jokingly offering to tow them back to Russia! That’s even more hilarious right now than Biden embarrassing himself in front of British royalty!
Russian soldiers are running around confused in the fog of war not sure who to shoot “because they look like us”!
It’s a major military/interventionist foreign policy clusterfuck. Governmental failure on display for the whole world to see. The people of Russia are also weary of dealing with Covid and weary of Putin’s authoritarian rule which has over the years robbed them and the world of the promise of the Peace Dividend that should have been the outcome of doing away with the old Soviet Union and end of the Cold War. Russia needs a serious reboot to rectify that and give the world a better hope for peace. I hope they get that second chance.
Jeff Fullerton
[email protected]
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Eyes Wide Open
I remember when Richard Nixon said the April 1970 incursion into Laos during the Vietnam war was the first time we had done so. I said he was lying out loud, not because my 16-year-old self question the righteousness of the act, but because I knew we had crossed before from rumors of MACVSOG Operation Prairie Fire and operation Project Daniel Boone that were already circulating.
When Biden says there are no US forces committed to fighting in Ukraine a cynical part of my mind just knows (admittedly with no or damn close to it evidence) that American Special Forces advisors and/or paramilitary contractors paid by the CIA are fighting alongside the Ukrainians.
I may be wrong, and I have no opinion on the righteousness of the US government sending these men into the Ukraine. As for the Operators involved, they are volunteers who believe they are fighting for the Ukrainian people, s freedom, living up to the brag, De Opresso Liber. But if I, m right, I think we Americans need to have our eyes wide open to what is being done in our name.
A.X. Perz
[email protected]
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