I’ve mentioned before that I came to my liberty-loving worldview early in life, thanks mostly to my father and his Appalachian parents.
My Dad’s family was self-reliant, hard-working, generous, welcoming…and distrustful of government and “outside interference.” Along with large family holiday get-togethers throughout the year, I spent weeks with my grandparents each summer, soaking up their knowledge and way of approaching life. The broad range of life skills and strength of character my grandparents exhibited was inspiring to me as a child, and continues to inspire me still, even though they have been gone for more than 20 years. I know I fall far short of their example, but I strive to be as much like them as I can manage.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to hear how the Glibertariat came to be more liberty-leaning than average. Did you have a particular person who influenced you? Was there a defining incident that served as a wake up call? A series of little things chipping away and shaping you? Was it a path that caused strife in your family?
Please share!
I got into the Trades, then I got married, then We had a Daughter.
I was forced to listen to Rush in the beginning of his Career, I was a Hippie Leftard at the Time, but I began to notice, all the things he said were right, and I was Wrong!
WF Buckley Died, and because of my stance on Drugs, and TOS, Here I am, a Glibertarian
I love it here with all of You Guys and Gals!
Blow some Shit up for Me!
I could give someone bad advice about their furnace and maybe they will blow up? Oh wait, it’s 96 fucking degrees out right now, guess that’s going to wait a few months.
No Fireworks allowed in my City, and no money in the City Budget for the usual Show at the High School, Guess Why?
Blow up some thing Safe then
When I was just in VA, they had huge tents set up selling fireworks all over the place. Here in Murland, you will never see that. But our neighbors were setting them off last night, probably illegally because everything here is illegal.
And that right up there is why I chose to live in PA instead.
I’m about 99% likely to be in VA soon. 1.5 hour drive to work, but I never go to the office more than 3 days a week, so not that bad, especially to get the fuck out of here.
So, growing up in Australia, there was no real liberty-minded voice. As a young kid I supported Labour, partly because they were underdogs and partly to go against my dad. I gradually became a resolute leftist and continued so for many years – the kind of leftist that would have despised Obama for being a sell out. Then, my first year in the states, I sat through a series of lectures by a guy who presented history as a Biblical Christian Worldview. He argued for fairly limited government but with a commitment to biblical values. It was one of those road to Damascus moments for me. For a while, I fully embraced that, even going so far as to think violations of the Ten Commandments should be punished by the death penalty.
However, as time went on, I could not reconcile the idea that government should be limited in some spheres but not in others. Much of the behavior of the W administration further soured me on conservatism. Eventually, I stumbled across Reason and, by the time I could first vote in the US (2008), I voted Libertarian which, unfortunately was a vote for Bob Barr, something I would not do if I had it to do over.
“I fully embraced that, even going so far as to think violations of the Ten Commandments should be punished by the death pensalty”
Thank god you saw the light.
Yeah, no kidding, he might have teamed up with Mike Huckabee and all of us here would have wound up in the gulags awaiting our death by stoning.
The last time someone teamed up with Mike Huckabee we got Sarah Huckabee-Sanders. Ugh.
You don’t like Pie?!
https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/fashion/daily/2017/12/14/14-Sarah-Huckabee-Sanders-Pecan-Pie.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg
Frightening.
Test:
[img]https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/fashion/daily/2017/12/14/14-Sarah-Huckabee-Sanders-Pecan-Pie.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg[/img]
Don’t you talk shit about Pie!
Yeah, PieInTheSky writes good stuff. Shame the articles run when I’m at the office. They’re dead when I get a chance to read them.
There’s a vampire joke in there somewhere.
I see what you did there.
I went through periods early in life, alternating between a Republican and a Democrat. But I could never figure out why, there was just something wrong about both parties. I felt like a freak or something, why was there no one else like me? How could it be that I could be for legalizing weed, while at the same time, I agreed with conservatives on the economy? Then around 2005, I discovered, by the magic of the internet, that there were actually other people like me and they were called libertarians. I had never met one, then like you, I found TOS, around 2007.
’60s and ’70s hippie liberal. We believed that the FBI and CIA were evil, that government spying on us was evil, that non-defensive wars were even more evil, that what people drank, ate, inhaled, or otherwise ingested was their own business, that police were brutal and corrupt, and that government-corporate collusion was even more corrupt. We believed that treating people differently because of things like race was both wrong and stupid. We believed that folks like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were happy to make the government even more powerful and oppressive. We believed in absolutism of freedom of speech.
I’m not sure when “liberal” came to mean “in favor of powerful and oppressive government, against constitutional rights, in favor of racial segregation and conscription, and worshipful toward the FBI and CIA,” but it was more of the definition of the word “liberal” changing than me changing.
“We”?
“’m not sure when “liberal” came to mean “in favor of powerful and oppressive government, against constitutional rights, in favor of racial segregation and conscription, and worshipful toward the FBI and CIA”
When the hippies of the 60s got political power and decided to use it. So called ‘liberals’ have not been liberal for many years now. The left has now completely infiltrated and taken them over. What was left of the liberals, the ones who didn’t go into politics or hole up in academia, they got real jobs and became libertarians.
I’m not sure when “liberal” came to mean “in favor of powerful and oppressive government, against constitutional rights, in favor of racial segregation and conscription, and worshipful toward the FBI and CIA,”
“Power corrupts”
For better or worse, liberalism* became the dominant political ideology. While liberals don’t have a lock on political power, they managed to gain considerable institutional power. This gutted the skepticism that was once at the heart of liberalism. The desire to have government leave people alone, which was borne of a well founded belief that the government can be turned against anyone, was replaced with the desire to have government force people to comply, borne of the belief that the right sort of people were really in charge of the public institutions (courts, schools, bureaucracies, social groups, and now publicly traded corporations, too).
Liberalism without skepticism is not liberalism at all. The core reason for being liberal is not wanting to see factional strife played out across a grand stage. Yet, if you believe your faction holds the upper hand, then why should you be against it? It takes a sober outlook to answer that question and sobriety has been excised from the public discourse.
1. This was meant as a reply to OMWC, not Hyp.
2. The missing asterisk was meant to pontificate on the meaning of liberalism in the context of the past few decades (i.e., so-called “neoliberalism”) but it’s beside the point.
“liberal” came to mean “in favor of powerful and oppressive government, against constitutional rights
But here we are. If you ever call “liberals” out on this… hoo boy. I’ve been in those arguments.
I was a child of one of those, not the hippie but the liberal part. In high school I drifted from the left to Libertarian. Part youthful rebellious about being told what to do, part older coworkers who were pretty much what would now be “fuck off slaver”. I was a subscriber to reason for a while and such but starting drifting towards more establishment conservatism, especially when the state LP revealed itself as little more than an enforcement arm & training ground for the GOP.
The failure of the W administration to achieve any real small government goals while greatly expanding the power & scope of the state completely soured me on that and pushed me back to small “l” libertarianism.
“I’m not sure when “liberal” came to mean “in favor of powerful and oppressive government”
After the Progressives, who were commies and initially applauded what Hilter was doing with the German economy well prior to the war, destroyed that term, they stole the Liberal moniker which was in good standing. Now that they’ve made Liberal a dirty word, they’ve reverted back to Progressive because people forget. Hayek was pissed that American allowed the progs to steal the Liberal moniker.
My tale is similar. Here’s a good song for you
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PViXv5AQuhw
One of my favorite bands.
Um that happened before your time? See Wilson, FDR and Truman?
Also Robespierre.
Open thread? You’ve done went and did it now.
Yes, but I am glad it was posted. It’s like open mike night.
Play Freebird!!!
I just like pointing out when people are full of shit. Just happens that people who leave other people alone are less full of shit.
So are people who drop a deuce down the porcelain throne.
True until you get around Big-L Libertarian types, then damn if they aren’t just about as full of shit as any commie-prog or bible-thumping-rightie.
I was raised in a middle-class Republican not terribly religious household, worked for a Republican Congressional candidate (who won) and voted for Reagan in my first eligible election. Hoped that Caspar Weinberger would live up to his Sacramento nickname of Cap the Knife with the Pentagon – we all know how that turned out. So I slid over into the LP, for a while (until I came to the realization above).
“…..how the Glibertariat came to be more liberty-leaning than average.”
I’ve always had, shall we say, “issues with authority”.
This, I don’t do Crowds, and want to be left alone. I avoid all interactions with any GOV.
And I really do want you off my Lawn (actually Bark and shrubs but whatever)
Grew up in a law and order Republican household, but generally viewed things through a libertarian perspective.
I remember the exact moment I became a small “l” libertarian. Bush 1 and Karl Rove decided on steel tariffs. Also highly influenced by the RINO Republican Party of NJ. What a useless bunch.
Granddad sent a copy of “Conscience of a Conservative” then Ayn Rand wrote a book about trains.
Forgot about the Train Lady,
I started with The Fountainhead however, probably a better story
I have beer! Woohooo!!! Partah! And this:
Eagle Rare
See, it has an eagle! I shall show my patriot self by having a shot, or two!
I posted in the other dead thread:
“Eagle Rare is my go to bourbon. In my opinion, Eagle Rare and Weller 12 are the absolute best bourbon values on the market. Weller 12 has become a unicorn in the wild though, and you can still actually get Eagle Rare. Good shit.”
The Eagle Rare really is a good one at the price. The problem is, like it’s name, it’s fairly rare that I see it. I just wanted to order some beer online this morning and as usual, I peruse their liquor stock. I saw that and had to have a bottle. Of course, I would prefer Blantons, but it’s 2X the price and even more rare to see it in stock anywhere.
At this point, I have to say that my go to whiskey’s are Buffalo Trace and Sagamore Spirit Rye. I can typically find those at any given time, and so I have a full backup stock of them.
Eagle Rare is just 10 year old Buffalo Trace, so it’s always a good one recommend to BT fans. BT and ER are mash bill #1. Blanton’s is the higher rye mash bill #2 and an excellent whiskey. It is suuuuuper popular though and thus too expensive and hard to find. My favorite mash bill #2 whiskey is Elmer T Lee.
#bourbonnerd
I haven’t even got to try Elmer T Lee, yet. It’s impossible to find here. If I visit a local store and they have Blantons in stock, I’ll buy every single bottle they have. I traded the last two of 4 bottles I bought the store out of for 2 bottles of $125 a bottle cachaca. It wasn’t a bad trade, that stuff is incredible delicious liquor, if you like a strong oak barrel finish, which I do. In fact, it’s the best liquor I have ever drank in that regard. There’s a bottle of it right beside the Eagle Rare in that photo I posted.
I did find a bottle of 23 year old Pappy Van Winkle at one of our local stores for $399. No thank you, I’m not that rich yet, still working on it.
I’m not a cachaca fan in general, but I’d be happy to try some quality stuff.
If you see Pappy 23 for 400 bucks you fucking buy that shit dude. Jesus Fucking Christ. Pappy goes for 2 or 3 grand easy on the secondary market. If you’re willing to hold out for the right buyer you can sometimes get in the 4k range.
Arbitrage man arbitrage.
And you call yourself a libertarian….
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/old+rip+van+winkel+pappy+fmly+rsrv+23+straight+bourbon+whisky+kentucky+usa/0
Yeah, it’s not like I don’t know this, but this was 5 years ago and the situation was not like it is now. Back then, you could just buy Blantons anywhere, at any time.
Also, the cachaca, the good stuff is just as good as the best bourbon, you just cannot buy it here, just like how I can trade a bottle of Blantons for the best liquor available in Brazil, no matter the price.
I love me some Crazy,
http://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5910359/Iranian-commander-accuses-Israel-stealing-Irans-CLOUDS-order-cause-drought.html
We should go back to giving those people truck loads of dollars.
As I mentioned before, I grew up in notionally Marxist country, in an essentially Communist/Civic Nationalist family.
As the democratization started, people started speaking of some nasty things that happened in the past (first, of course, internal squabbles in the Party, but soon other voices were raised). At the same time, federal PM started market liberalization program that worked, while the Communists everywhere turned Ethnic Nationalist, if not overnight, within a week or so.
By the time the civil wars started, I was classical-ish Liberal by default, because the other two options (Communism and Nationalism) failed, and then it was just dicking over price. Didn’t take long to conclude that Social Democrats cannot be trusted to keep the welfare within reason, and that government can turn on you quickly, so it must never be given a lot of power (it’ll take it anyway, just make them work harder for it). Gunz For All took a bit longer, but fuck it, guns are cool, fuck governments for banning private ownership.
Sadly, the prison memoirs of a guy who was one of my major influences haven’t been translated to English as far as I know. It was quite intriguing – at age 18, he got 15 years prison for “spying for foreign power” (really, for being a founder of a non-Communist organization, which was legal at the time). Also, it’s horrible to say, but he died just before the war started, so he never had to tarnish his reputation with excusing the mass murder, as some others did.
You can do it!
I was very independent as a kid and this independance was fostered by my parents. This was probably because it was easier for them (they both worked a lot and were raising three kids).
Became a half assed punk anarchist in HS and this instilled the DIY attitude. I still don’t get how so many so called punks became and acted like commies.
As an kid and as an adult I was distrustful of gov and authorities. I had little respect for those who didn’t respect me or those I loved.
I didn’t start learning about personal liberty and libertarianism until I found Reason magazine in a Barns and Noble ->Reason online->Glibs.
Grew up in a conservative GOP upper middle class household. Evangelical Christianity. Govetnment was nothing to be admired, cops were govt employees, not heroes. The POTUS was just a guy who ran the govt, not a hero or savior. In junior high I got into punk rock, and DIY. Formed bands, booked concerts, tours, record labels. An entrepreneur. Always read alot, including Rand. And of course was a loyal Dittohead from about 1993-1997. I’ve been lucky to work alot of freelance gigs in my adult life, so always worked on self-reliance. Always had a very anti-authoritarian streak. Never really knew what libertarianism was until I stumbled across TOS back in 2009. Then it dawned on me “this is my political philosophy.”
I’ve said it before on here, but my parents were Reagan conservatives. They talked about small government and such, but then I saw things they believed politically that would necessitate a large government, that just never sat well with me from a young age. I don’t think I ever ‘became’ a libertarian, I just found a word that matched my own ideas on small government. Of course, even that label wasn’t accurate enough for me, so I developed the CPRM philosophy to solidify my exact thoughts on how government should be structured.
A few other tidbits; my parents encouraged outside the box thinking and skepticism; and also when I was about 9 I went to Monticello and became somewhat obsessed with Jefferson.
Also also, I’ve always been a bit of a politics junkie. To make most of you feel really old; I was in kindergarten when Bush the Elder won and I remember even then sitting on the floor watching the states being called on the TV.
I would say my grandfather set me on the more liberty minded path. He was the one that provided me access to guns, took me hunting, and taught me about personal responsibility and hard work. My parents run a close second because they raised me right. Plus, they allowed me the freedom to wander outdoors without adult supervision at a young age.
I thought every thread was an open thread?
/ducks
Like Tres, I’ve always had issues with authority. I went to Catholic school K-12.
The defining moment was when I got my first job with a paycheck (previous jobs were paid in cash under the table). I was just starting my junior year of high school.
I received my first paycheck and saw tax withholding. I said to myself, “so you aren’t really getting paid $4.40 an hour, you’re getting something less.” At about the same time my Rush Limbaugh loving dad was talking about Andre Marrou. Marrou wanted to repeal the income tax!
It was all downhill from there.
I was a standard-issue, not particularly engaged liberal through college. The one person who started opening my eyes would have to be Camille Paglia. Not that her politics make any particular sense – just the fact that certain things that everyone just knew could even be questioned was a revelation. From there it was an easy road to TOS with a couple year pit stop at NR.
That’s an interesting question. Where did you come from? I meandered from Mises, to TOS, to here.
Around 2001 or so I ran into Andrew Sullivan, and he was at the time “forbidden fruit” compared to the opinions I was exposed to in Canada.
More importantly this was back when he was at The Atlantic, and so I cross-jumped to Megan McArdle’s blog, which was actually weakly (and sometimes not at all weakly) libertarian. I followed her as she ascended the ladder, and, after few times she linked to hubby’s articles at Reason, I found H&R probably cca 2011 and lurked there couple years before registering.
Yeah, Sullivan was a pretty good before he went clinically insane.
good “read”
I learned about reason from an article linked from Drudge. Poking around the site, I discovered ‘Hit-n-Run’. My eyes opened and I caught my breath: for me it was the motherload of politics, sarcasm, snark, wit, and often outright contempt, that scratched me right where I itched.
I was a print subscriber back in the Postrel days after finding the magazine in a library but let my subscription lapse at one point. Missed the personalized reason cover. I found HyR when it was mentioned in one of the biographical profiles at the back of Foreign Policy (either before that pub went tits up or the scales fell from my eyes).
Mine was off. Queens NY, where I lived at the time, has this stupid thing where they put a hyphen between the hundreds and other digits in your house number and that threw off all the mapping sites for years.
The USPS is putting an end to the hyphen bullshit. They are also trying to get rid of “half” addresses i.e. 1225 1/2 Audubon Rd will soon not be a valid address.
What are they going to do, make people change to letters like 1225 B Audubon Rd?
Descended from early 20th century immigrants. Successful businessmen. Naturally, by the third generation (my parents) most everyone was left leaning.
Politics was never much of a thing in my house growing up. It wasn’t until the first Gulf War and, later, starting a couple businesses that I really began to question wtf my government was up to.
As I experienced more and tried to seek out different opinions, the web kind of blew up. Drudge to AoS to Reason to here. The older I get the more absolute I become about the individual and the necessity of freedom. My family is riddled with proggies, but they have mostly learned to leave it at home.
My kids are progressing nicely and are showing signs of libertarianism. I’m trying to be a good example and promote liberty where I can.
My parents were Democrats back when I can first remember. But these were Kennedy democrats, not the democrats of today. They’ve been Republican since then, very conservative until this day. Politics is something though, that was not an obsession. The past few years I’ve spent Thanksgiving with them, politics were never even brought up once by anyone. I’m really thankful for that.
I grew up, mostly, around a bunch of fanatical religious fundies. At some point, I realized those people are crazy and as soon as I could, I escaped. Only to find out that their ‘liberal’ secular equivalents are just as crazy. Is there anywhere without crazy people who want to force their twisted beliefs on you? I think not.
The Interwebs were still a dream, But We had Rush and NR to read, and the occasional Copy of Reason Magazine, the Web blew everything up politically and ideologically for me.
I went to the local parade – and saw Justin Amash, who gave me a return wave – also a fairly large contingent of lefty protestors who were chanting against Amash, or any Republican or Pro-Lifers marching in the parade.
Not sure how that will be perceived by the people who just came to the parade to have a good time with their kids. But yeah – the left is nuts.
“But yeah – the left is nuts.”
They’re completely oblivious to the harm they are doing to themselves. Good, I say carry on.
I checked my calendar and it’s the 15th anniversary of my 4th of July introduction of omy extended family to my Wife and SIL to be. My wife has a small and in some cases very disfunctional family, while I have a huge and outwardly loving extended fam.
That impression changed that day for my wife and SIL. I made the mistake of talking politics around by drunk uncles after having a few as well. This turned into being verbally and nearly physically attacked for a few hours by my moms brothers.
I made a point of not backing down or leaving my parents house to keep the peace as I have in the past while keeping my hands out of it.
I’m glad i didn’t beat the hell out of my uncles that night, but it would have felt great at the time. I’ll be seeing them again in a few hours and I’ll keep the loudmouth soup to a minimum.
That dude snorting heroin out of a Nicaraguan hooker’s asshole might just cure cancer. Or he might die of some terrible disease. His choice. Just don’t make me subsidize the heroin.
Pictures or it didn’t happen.
Way too drunk to fall for that.
Drink some more, and then pictures.
Liberty: my old man is one of those American success stories: came from a family of 8 kids living in poverty. But they weren’t the types to accept handouts – and most of them turned out to be rather successful in life. That Christian Reformed Church background is also very conservative, very right leaning. And the Dutch continue to dominate Western Michigan mores and politics, even to this day.
I’ve always been an against-the-stream kind of guy – suburban punk railing against the boring and the conservative. But never really lost sight that power, whether it is wielded by the left or right, corrupts. So yeah, I was a lefty when I was young but never fool enough to buy into the orthodoxy. And then I swung right after college – taxes, job, family – but lost faith in the Republicans after W. So Glenn Reynolds led to Reason H&R, which led to you crazy people. And reading, and participating, led me to where I am now.
I’m trying to think of why and how I came to where I am politically: let’s call it disappointment in politicians and movements and so-called “do-gooders”. It certainly makes one a cynical bastard to go through public school, college, and the general dealings of the human race. And history teaches so many lessons that people tend to ignore – again and again.
Honestly it’s sad.
My wife once mentioned how reading Glibs can be depressing – because we aren’t “changing” anything. I replied that it’s like being a gambler at the table as the Titanic goes down. Enjoy the company and the port. We are the (mostly) sane ones in an insane world.
And maybe – just maybe – some person will come along to our site and read something that will challenge their mind; and steer them toward liberty.
Freedom is Scary, wouldn’t you Agree?
Where else can you go and have an intelligent conversation about politics? Even when I disagree with someone here, their points are typically well thought out and we can have civil, logical discussion. We don’t all have the same world view and it would be boring if we did.
That’s why I’m here, Despite what other commentariat may think , this is no Echo Chamber,
You’re completely wrong!
I totally agree with both of you!
Shut up Tulpa!
“Shut up Tulpa!”
Exactly what Tulpa would say.
“Exactly what Tulpa would say.”
No it’s not!
“No it’s not!”
You’re a towel!
…this is no Echo Chamber…
…this is no Echo Chamber…
In the real 3D world, I know a precious few people I can actually have a stimulating conversation with, and none of them live near me. That’s why I’m here. There’s been a few times my wife will come here and sit with me when I’m posting. First time, she was amused and said ‘your internet friends are crazy’. And I said, crazy, but smart and well informed. That’s much better than not crazy, but boring and dumb. Most people are in no way at all even curious intellectually, they are just dullards. That’s why society mostly sucks and libertarians will never get most of what we want. People in general, suck.
My wife gets mad at me too, because I’m not doing “anything” about my bitching.
I can only change me. If those around me choose the same path, that’s winning!
My little brother went from Prius driving proggie to Jeep driving, SIG loving, freedom hound.
I suspect I had a small influence.
Good job!
Yep, good job, carry on, bro.
Nice!
It is why libertarians will never take over the world. We don’t claim to know everything and have all the answers. We also won’t promise plum no-show jobs to our supporters.
Personally, I have 2 people in my life that have at least re-examined a lot of their core beliefs – if not become closet libertarians – because of some of the pontifidrinking that I have done with them.
Just tell your wife if she can’t change you into the man she wants you to be, how the fuck can you convince strangers to follow you?
It might work except that she used to be more of a habitual democrat until she met me. The kind that would support whatever programs they were pushing and MSM as an impartial source, etc. Now she’s taken the red pill, and isn’t always happy about seeing things more like I do.
tl;dr: I “changed” her so why am I not doing more?
I believe my anti-authoritarianism began at an early age by attending shitty public schools. The incompetence and idiocy was only surpassed by the capricious punishments and cruelty of the teachers. I was being born during MLK’s I have a dream speech so had an interest in his biography. So my mom would let me watch documentaries which showed Bull Conner unleashing the water cannons and dogs on protestors so that formed my initial disrespect (hatred?) For cops. My dealings with the police and the “justice” system later in life I.e. how you could get totally screwed over minor traffic violations that you couldn’t afford to pay and the snowball effect of that process made my believe the police shouldn’t exist at all. As a huge 2nd Amendment proponent, the Clinton Administration really made a huge impact on my politics. Not just the anti-gun legislation but the completely out of control almost rogue actions of the BATF, DEA, and FBI on display were major influences on me. I also studied Theology and Philosophy for a number of years which completed my transition to Atheism and increased my disdain for all forms of religous authoritarism and oppression. Ron Paul was really my introduction to Libertarianism and I started lurking at Reason, reading CATO, reading Bastiat, Popper, Nozik, etc. And then their was Glibs:).
I also recall having to walk to work for a period of time because I didn’t yet have the money for a car. My walk took me past federal housing with Central Air, Cable TV, and a car in every parking space none if which I had working every day. Pissed me off at the time so I’m sure that helped as well. I’m no longer poor and some of those people are probably still there.
I worked at grocery store for a while when I was a kid.
I remember noticing some of the folks on foodstamps ate better than my family.
I actually had a friend, x-friend now, I couldn’t stand to listen to the guy any longer, brag about feeding filet and lobster to his dogs because they couldn’t eat all the food they got on government assistance. Lazy fuck and his wife had not worked in 10 years, despite being young and able bodied. He’d say that they both would need at least 30K a year before they were going back to work.
The system is not being abused and gamed, no siree, not happening.
argh – not enough charcoal to grill. And I’m getting too drunk to drive to the store.
When that happens and I can’t get something delivered, I just call Uber.
You have wood furniture and an axe right?
Self-reliance FTW!
What are you some antifa-soyboy that need an axe to break up furniture?
I just thought since he was drunk he would want to get the ax out anyways.
Ill share some of my Kingsford premium if you have some charcoal lighter.
I think Ill be doing the ‘paper towel soaked in vegetable oil’ method.
Still haven’t siphoned any Gas from the TRESmobile?
Still haven’t siphoned any Gas from the TRESmobile?
How did that happen^?
Error! Loose nut behind the keyboard.
Get a chimney starter already.
Gasoline is more fun…..
/Pyro
tax cuts helping minorities and women
NUH-UH! Minorities and wiminz are hardest hit by these crumbs!
My father worked all over the world and had to deal with lots of commies. By the time I could walk I was a certified commie-hater. I also noticed at a young age that people who most want to control you are the least qualified to do so.
I remember seeing an episode of the Johnny Carson show where they had a Chinese national as a guest. The Chinaman said about our country “Yes you are free. You are free to starve”. I couldn’t have been more than ten but that illustrated clearly for me which side of the line I wanted to be on. Also, when I was in grade school they were still teaching solid American history.
Hah. I remember a work colleague going on and on about something Ted Kennedy was proposing that would ” improve” all our lives.
I said, “He’s made a mess of his own life. Why do you think he is qualified to control ours?” All I got was “well, this is different.”
I am a single issue voter. The litmus test is a candidates stand on the second amendment. That tells me all I need to know about the candidate because it tells me what they think of me.
Ol’ Ted didn’t pass muster for me.
That is also a litmus test for me. If you don’t support the 2nd Amendment you’re not getting my vote. Period. The real 2nd Amendment not the phony hunters and sportsmen one.
Jesus. Of course, that was probably just the party line, instilled from birth and enforced with the threat of disappearance and/or death. But the audacity of it is striking. The only reason China wasn’t starving while Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show is because of the bounty of food that freer economies, and the technology developed in such economies, was able to provide.
I grew up when parents would demand that you eat everything on your plate because ‘Children in China are starving!’
It was the irony that struck me.
Africa for me. Famine in Ethiopia was a big news item then.
Not surprising, nobody talked about the causes. Many years later I read “The Black Book of Communism” which included a small section on Ethiopia.
The number of people who know that Somalia, Afghanistan, and a number of other African and Middle Eastern countries are failed socialist states is strikingly low. Hell, even people who know about the Balkans conflicts often don’t know about the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It’s as though one day certain parts of the world just magically fell into chaos and nobody knows why.
The Soviets used to be fed a diet of propaganda imputing that the U.S. was a hotbed of racial strife the likes of which no socialist country would ever have. Yet, most non-Russians in the Union would call it a Russians-only club, there was an institutional policy of discrimination against Jews throughout the USSR, and both Russian and non-Russian Europeans viewed the Asian members of the Union as inferior. The lack of racial strife was more due to the apparatus of the socialist state throwing everybody into the Gulag at the slightest hint of troublemaking than any real prevailing sense of racial harmony.
I remember reading about how if you were in the soviet military and were not Russian that you better hope like hell you weren’t stationed with a bunch of Russians because they would torture you.
A really long story. My mother thought FDR had saved America, my dad said “All politicians are sonsabitches” but in a Latvian accent. Neither voted. After the public school education or lack there of, I got a job in a union mine. I had trouble understanding what benefits I was getting from my dues since we were unemployed about 7 months of the year, provided we even had a contract for iron ore. During a strike in 1956 I volunteered for the draft, just as an escape from Smallville. Turned out the Army couldn’t get rid of me and I was good at the bullshit part. In 1971 I was going back to VN for the second time, as an advisor to a VN Infantry Div. That was the beginning of my questioning period, I couldn’t help but wonder why we were having such a tough time kicking the ass of some little guys, we had all the assets, etc. As an advisor we had a briefing every morning, describing the previous days events, some of which I had participated in and they weren’t always the same as I had remembered them. Anyway I Vietnamized, got my ticket punched again and went on with my military life. When VN fell in ’75 I was really bitter, I had lost many Infantry friends. I retired in ’76, pissed off, bitter about what seemed to have a been a bad dream.
In about ’79 I picked up Robert Ringer’s first book, “Looking Out for Number 1” and it made sense, then I started questioning the government and politicians, I thought I was the only one. I found Rothbard, Williams, Sowell and many others that made sense to me. I moved to Madison, Wisc to work in ’83, met some libertarians and found there were others that thought as I did. I even hired Annie Laurie Gaylor’s brother, a fine young man and a good employee. The libs directed my reading, out argued me, taught me a whole new way of thinking. Reason and Liberty magazines were discussed.
I had to change my thinking in believing that the government was there to help to realizing that the government put up impediments that stymied creativity and hard work. I joined the Libertarian Party, dropped out after a year or two, not wanting to belong to anything. I knew something was wrong as early as ’71 but couldn’t pinpoint what it was, took another 10 years before it had a name.
Wow – you must be older than OMWC!
Oh, the Kid?
Are you still in Madison?
No, SP,
I moved to the Twin Cities in ’85. I brought Half Price Books from TX to the national scene. First store out TX was Mad Town, Nakona Plaza. If you shopped there ’83-85 I was the tall skinny guy, I spent a lot of time in the store. I retired from HPB in ’92, live in Northern MN in the woods.
I wasn’t born yet in 1983-85. 😉
Really, though, OMWC and I have only been an item for 11 years or so. I’ve never lived in Madison.
I adore Half Price Books! When we lived in Austin, the North Lamar store was a weekly stop for me on my Central Market provisioning runs.
HPB and HEB are my two favorite corporate enviroments.
I actually trust Central Market made foods.
I was the Big Bossman in Austin before I moved to Madison. I had 3 stores in Austin, Bryan-College Station, Killeen, Temple and Waco. My son lives in Austin, has a website, “Traces of Texas”, UT alumni.
I have an employee discount card, get a deposit every year in my account, courtesy of HPB. Twin Cities has several I shop, I liked the Houston stores and I hit 2-3 every time I went to Houston.
Did OMWC shop HPB-Madison?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ringer
His first book, Winning Through Intimidation, was published in 1973.
I read Winning Through Intimidation in 76. It changed my life.
I gave it to my father, he never gave it back. But he did pay me the cover price. 😉
As did mine, albeit, with a different book. I’m sure I gave my copy away as well. It gave me hope that I wasn’t just an old crank that was disagreeable. Now I am an old disagreeable crank that finds hope with all the Glibs. Thanks to so many of the Glibs that have brought joy to a geezer and hope for the future.
How about your father? Did he join the ranks?
I moved to Madison, Wisc to work in ’83
Interesting, our paths might have crossed. I moved there for work in ’84.
Fuuuuuck – go away Fed Fed. Shut up. And walk away. AIEEEE
I grew up in a blue collar, Catholic, pro-life household. My parents voted blue collar, pro-union, but bit their tongues when it came to the pro-life stance. The church they belonged to always backed the pro-life candidates.
The years passed. . . Later on in life I grew into being less Catholic since it really bothered me that non-catholics were all destined to end up in purgatory, even if they were in a third world county that had never heard of catholicism, which seemed totally unfair to me. But this didn’t stop me from being a democrat. I got even more radical in college, so close to socialism even.
Then, thanks to Lord H, I gave up on being religious.
Then I read a good article – thanks to Lord H- on how socialism always justified itself by saying “yes, it has failed, however, that’s only because no state has practiced “perfect” socialism.” So I gave up defending socialism.
The years passed. . . . Then I became a parent and a tax payer and hated the justifications for my income being taken away from me. Then I was republican.
Then I went to law school. Then I started reading instapundit and ToS, then I ended up here.
I am a Glibertariat!
Glibminx.
My parents were rabidly anti-union; my dad had been in the teamster’s union in the 70s and saw first hand how it was there as slush fund for those in charge and protected shitty workers so they could be a source of revenue for those at the top.
A Teamsters boss embezzled the fund which included one of my grandfather’s pension money.
My grandfather got no pension when he retired.
He hated Teamsters.
Ironically (?) my old man busted up a few union movements back in the 70s/80s. Oh how the great wheel of fate spins.
oops – supposed to be me. Logout before posting, logout before posting.
It’s too early to screw up your socks Tulpa!
::furtive glances::
It’s never too early to start drinking.
Damn straight, that’s why I’ve started drinking. This is Murica and there’s not another damn holiday until late November. You have to take these real drinking opportunities seriously, they are few.
Labor Day?
Forget it, he’s rolling.
“Labor Day?”
My clients do not do labor day. It must be some sort of shitlord unwoke holiday. No Easter… err I mean Spring Spheres, either.
Well, it is a commie holiday
I’m drinking… errr… rolling too!
And it wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor!
SP and I would sooner use second hand toilet paper than use the same computer.
It’a always starts with the kids and the Taxman, then the Slippery slope Of Weed, Mexicans .. you know….
weed & mexican ? I did have craving for a margarita for later. . .
“I did have craving for a margarita for later. . .”
Translated: I really want to bang that young latina over there while we give each other weed enemas. Sicko!
I was beginning to worry about my son. In college he was kind of a lefty. Then he got out and got a job.
I’m surprised you didn’t have him working long before then.
He worked in school but when he got up he got a serious job, a wife, a car and a house. The first serious paycheck he got horrified him with how much was taken out.
I distinctly remember being bashed over the head with women’s rights crap in 8th grade. They were teachings us about some lady that wanted to wear pants, important stuff. Being the little asshole I was I asked why men couldn’t wear dresses if you are all about freedom. I wore a skirt the next day ( in Catholic school). Kind of went from there.
Nowadays they’d celebrate you for being transgendered.
WTF?
These people have some really twisted ideas. Can I just go enter another country illegally and then sue them for not giving me my pony? Sounds like a lucrative idea, I’d better get packing while the pay is still good. Also, become the NRA for the left? What does that even mean? Because that makes no sense at all to me.
Every one of their issues is phony baloney bullshit. Every single one. The left in this country are nothing but low rent grifters.
Big lefty talking point is that NRA owns the GOP (ie right-wing fanatics) and has an unlimited supply of campaigns funds obtained through their members to buy congressional seats for them. So if the left had their own group that did that for the DNC they might stand a fighting chance against the Evil Empire that are the GOP. It’s ironic that they pick the ACLU. Or maybe its ironic that the ACLU calls itself the ACLU or would oxymoron be a better term?
The NRA is just one of their fave strawmen to attack. You think they’re going to actually debate real people who disagree with them? Not a chance, they’ll get stomped into the mud. Better to attack a strawman and think you are winning than to be humiliated.
NRA owns the GOP
The utter inability of so many on the left to even understand what the NRA is, never mind what it represents vis-a-vis politics, is striking. The NRA gets most of its funds from dues-paying members, not the arms industry; and the idea that the arms industry benefits from the high murder rate is also absurd. Most of the gun homicide in this country is committed with stolen guns. The NRA represents people who want to defend the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms which it recognizes. When the NRA stakes out a position, it is not a set of marching orders that nobody in the GOP can stand against. Instead, it is (usually) a statement that, “this is what gun voters want” and as such if a politician doesn’t support it, they won’t have the support of gun voters. It is votes and not dollars that determine elections.
I will give some limited credit where its due, the handful of honest lefties who are against the 2A, or at least a strong interpretation of it, stick to arguing actual facts and statistics rather than focusing on the NRA.
Somehow listening to Spinal Tap right now just works with this thread.
And drinking Liberator Gin (Tom Collins small batch)
https://sipologyblog.com/2016/03/10/liberator-barrel-rested-old-tom-gin/
Well, We do go to 11
off for a swim – at the non-government / neighborhood run pool. A perfect example of people coming together to pay for something, volunteer to do work to keep it going, and collect dues to be a member. And we have paid lifeguards too.
Grew up in a Republican house. My dad has always been a libertarian, he just doesn’t know it. The same went for me until I got to college and realized there was a name for people like me. I cited Reason for a project in college, that’s when I started lurking. 10 years later I’m here.
I’ve always been rebellious, probably in part to deal with Mom and partly because the schools didn’t know what to do with me (smart enough to skip a grade, but such a social misfit that being with people another year older than me would have been a disaster). Republican (well, NYS Republican) by upbringing only because I was in one of those small towns where the Republican town caucus was basically the general election.
Events that turned me libertarian were the military worship around Gulf War 1, and the unraveling of the bogus day care sex abuse cases from the 80s (McMartin, Amirault, et al.). The final straw was seeing the difference in reaction between Michael Irvin’s dalliances with a drug not approved by society and Brett Favre’s going into rehab for being addicted to a “good” prescription drug. (This was, of course, long before the demonization of opioids.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/01/man-arrested-after-shouting-womp-womp-and-pulling-a-gun-on-immigration-protesters/?utm_term=.ad14c2303a1a
I know this was posted a couple days ago but I was thinking about this part
I bet a box of donuts that possessing within a 1000 ft of a protest was passed during the Civil Rights era. And not to protect marchers.
I’ll tell my story later, but now is is good time to to tell this fun story of why a friend of mine hates Commies.
He was born in communist Czechoslovakia after WWII (my age). When he was about six his parents decided to leave for the West and made connections with an underground railway. On the appointed day they made everything look normal. Dad left early for work but got on the railway. Later Mom and my friend went out to go shopping but also got on the railway. They could not, of course, trust a small boy with such potentially deadly knowledge so they only told him what hat happened when they were safely inside West Germany.. When it struck him they were never going back to their apartment in Prague he exclaimed “What about my bicycle!?” He had recently gotten a new bike for his birthday – a huge deal for a small child. You can’t have your bicycle his parents told him. “Why not!?” he asked. “The Communists took it.”
Decades later he laughs when he tells the story, but damn, he still hates the Commies that stole his new bicycle.
Y’all keep talking about drinking. Ugh. I spent most of my energy this morning trying to stop puking and laying on the couch as gently as possible.
I didn’t get all that looped yesterday but I think I just alcohol in my system for too long. I feel like hammered shit.
Sucks getting old.
Sucks getting
oldsober.All this talk of Sobriety makes me want to go to the store,
/BEER!
Do it, man. All the col kids are!
Ummm…the cool ones are, too.
You are both right. Getting old aint no party but it does beat the alternative.
My stock answer when the subject cones up.
I’d rather be old than dead
An ice cold beer or two will delay that hangover and smooth out the drop in your blood chemistry.
Sorry. I hope you get back to normal soon.
Talking is over! It’s drankin time! Sorry, man, hangovers really suck ballz. I haven’t had one since I stopped drinking liquor for a while. Bought a bottle of bourbon today, but it’s sitting there on the shelf and I’m having beer. Last time I drank liquor, I didn’t actually get what you would call a hangover, but man I felt totally useless for about a week.
Juventus makes offer for Ronaldo: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/44717014
As stupid as it might sound, the 55mph speed limit was a huge push. I was just entering college at the time. I was never particularly receptive to authority and being told what to do, but our overlords’ naked hypocrisy and pointless authoritarianism was made plain to me. Blah blah blah we just want to make America SAFER and save precious fuel. Bullshit. We want to turn the cops into roving toll collectors. Even then, my squishy collegiate brain could grasp the notion that if the goal was revenue, there were better and more broadly based methods, like tolls or raising the goddam gas tax. We value your time, and your judgement of what is an appropriate level of risk behind the wheel at exactly zero.
The safety claim was just about the worst, as anybody who ever hacked their way through a rolling 55mph traffic jam on an interstate only to find two state cops on a rolling roadblock can attest. And then they’d suddenly break formation and go roaring off at 100mph; this was especially popular with the New York State Patrol on the Northway (I-87 north from NYC) ; I always imagined them laughing their asses off at all the fuming plebs stacked up behind them.. And the sudden random brake checks as you topped a rise and saw a cop lurking in the bushes with his radar gun.
It’s funny. Once you identify a phenomenon, you start seeing it everywhere. Petty, pointless demonstrations of government power for its own sake were everywhere.
And- I discovered that mean, nasty Nazi racist, H L Mencken.
Preach it.
I rode my motorcycle, with my girlfriend on the back, from NM to CA during the days of 55. On the way back, I was stuck behind two RVs that were hogging the road. The one on the left finally pulled over to the right, so I shot past him and the other one pretty quickly.
There was a cop there and I got ticketed. Oh well, my own fault.
Then we drove through Flagstaff and it was snowing. There were trucks jack-knifed off the side of the road but we pressed on slowly. Cars were passing us at what looked to me to be unsafe speeds, but there was not a cop in sight. Got on the east side of Flagstaff, no more snow, got going quickly again and got another ticket.
What chapped my ass is these things were called “energy violations”. I was using too much energy by going over 55 miles an hour even though I was on a motorcycle carrying two people and getting a zillion miles to the gallon.
My path to libertarianism was sort of directionless and winding. I was brought up by conservative, fundamentalist Christians. Law and order was important. I considered myself a conservative for most of my life, but looking back I was always conflicted about things. I was very pro-law enforcement in general, but was always very quick to criticize local cops if they bent any rules. I had a very “rules are rules” attitude, but had no problem breaking many myself. I remember being very upset when the seat belt law was passed in NoDak. And I blatantly ignored it. And yet other rules of a similar nature were “ok” just…because.
So I went on like that for quite some time. Over the years a few things here and there were pushing me towards libertarianism without me really even realizing. It all came to a head about 1.5 to 2 years ago. My brother and I got into a VERY heated argument about police brutality. He sent me multiple Reason articles. While I blew them off that night, it got me thinking. I ended up spending time at Reason and a light went off. And here we are.
One last confession; I didn’t crack my first beer until about 10 minutes ago. Pathetic, I know.
I still have to go, Dishes got in the way, BEER Right Back!
Sounds like your brother is a very wise man. 🙂
Greetings from the libertarian paradise of Hong Kong (warning: it might not be perfectly libertarian or paradisical… Although my tax return every year does take 5 minutes to fill out, marginal income tax rate is 15%, and there’s no withholding, dividend tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, or estate tax… So I’m not too unhappy). I just want to mention that from our perspective, the USA is still a beacon on a shining hill, and that the SJWs you suffer from are clearly loony. (We also remember the Cultural Revolution…) So carry on as you were… We kinda depend on you to be a backstop for freedom on this planet.
I escaped to Hong Kong 7 years ago from Airstrip One, to which my family had immigrated from (((somewhere else))) when I was 7 years old. Growing up in a nondescript suburb where everyone else was born in the local (NHS) hospital, while spending every summer with (((grandparents))) somewhere else much sunnier and crazier, demonstrated painfully clearly that no-one can possibly know even a small fraction of what it is possible to know, that human experience is multifarious and purely unique. But of course that doesn’t stop many, many people from nonetheless arrogantly believing that actually they are extraordinarily smart, to the extent that they would insist to me on some falsehood that I’d seen contradicted with my own lying eyes. (Teachers in particular suffer from this delusion).
I was always stubborn and questioning as a boy, but funnily enough it was my first trip to China in 2006 that changed me from British-style Liberal Democrat (basically wet centrists at the time) to rabid libertarian. The mixture of incompetent, corrupt and vindictive government with the unbridled hustle and entrepreneurship of the population showed me what free enterprise makes possible (even after a Great Leap Forward to famine followed by a Cultural Revolution of attempting to destroy an ancient civilization and its people and capital). I already basically agreed with what Adam Smith had to say, but mises.org made me question everything about governance and welfare, and reason.com made me comfortable feeling that way. It’s sad that the latter went downhill slowly since Weigel endorsed Obama, but… you know the rest.
So at 2am local time, I just wanted to thank all you crazies for keeping the unfashionable cause of freedom alive. If you ever find yourself on this barren rock, I’ll happily buy you a tax-free beer.
And now I’ll probably go back to lurking because some of us have to work. DO NONE OF YOU WORK?
Nice post, welcome. I’m not even going to call you Tulpa. Sorry for my rudeness in not giving you the traditional Glib welcome. It’s 2:43pm here right now EST USA, and right now, we’re too busy drinking to work. I mean, I really want to work on this holiday, but then I drank too much. Oh well.
Oh Yea!
FUCK OFF!
/Welcome hkGuy
Meet Yufus….our Welcome Wagon
Welcome!
And in celebration of America, independence, self-reliance and loud noises, I’m going to do a function test on my pistol. The .22 top end on the full size 1911 frame was having some feed problems the other day, and I think it was because the hammer spring is overly stiff; just a bit too much resistance for the slide to fully cycle and pick up the next round. I robbed the hammer spring out of the .38 super Llama, which is discernibly softer. I’ll test it in a bit.
We were gonna go to the range today, but decided it was too hot out to be enjoyable.
Have fun.
Son and I went to do some shooting, which we did, but decided it was really more beer weather than shooting weather and headed home.
Meanwhile, the ribs had been smoking and were close to perfection when we got back. At which point Mrs. JI and sprang into action, cooking the sweet corn and the crabcakes (whilst I also drained a beer from its container). Shortly thereafter, ribs, crabcakes, corn on the cob, pepper-slaw and more beer were consumed. I now sit before you (virtually) nearing a food coma, with still more beer in my glass (Vallejo Half Acre). Once I raise myself from this condition, son & I will retire outdoors to light up some Padron Churchills with one form of whiskey or another.
I hope you happy sonsofbitches have had at least as half as good a day as I have.
Sorry, Eurotards, time to pay for your own stuff
But daddy, I want my pony! I want it, I want it, it’s mine! *rolls around thrashing on ground, screaming*
This is the root of all of the complaints about Trump. He is cutting the leeches off. No more free money for greenies, commies, freeloaders, community organizers, unions, etc.
Or mullahs in Iran. The horror, he really is Hitler.
In my case I started out Republican in 2012 because the left seemed to be the default so on some level, I rejected them for that. When I got to college I joined the CR’s fortunately they were rather close with the libertarians on campus so I got a good view of their opinions, I liked what I heard and right before it collapsed I found Reason, then the great migration started and I had to wait until I could find a link to make it here.
Greetings from the libertarian paradise of Hong Kong (warning: it might not be perfectly libertarian or paradisical
Somewhere around here, I have a Hong Kong dollar (it’s actually a ten, I think) enshrined in a frame, because at the time (late ’80s) I deemed the Hong Kong dollar to be a free market icon.
*as I recall they were bank notes and not central bank currency
7 mile run today. Lot’s of people at the beach, already setting up for fireworks viewing/bbq’s. It’s crowded.
Took a good shower, had a nice shave. Now I’ve tucked into a Smirnoff on ice with Perrier and lime. Gonna head out in a while and get some lunch and probably a pub crawl beck home.
Happy 4th everybody!!! Liberty!!!
I did a 5 mile run this morning – temp was only 75F but the humidity – gah!
It was 80 here at 5am this morning.
Run and a swim? That’s some healthy living right there.
I got up early so I could do my normal Wednesday run and then get back out to run with Team RWB. Had my first beer at 9:45, but am waiting on a friend (any minute now) before my second.
More- on the topic of economic systems:
When I was in college, a few of my friends got to be local emissaries/guides for Eastern European teams competing in the world Figure Skating Championships. They were all gung ho about showing off local culture, and the beautiful mountains, and all that crap. The skaters (and their coaches) all wanted to go shopping. They’d wander around Kmart, awestruck. “Anybody comes in? Anybody buys? Not just Nomanklatura? Your workers can afford such fabulous luxuries?”
It was a huge revelation.
“Your workers can afford such fabulous luxuries?”
You see, this is why we must stop capitalism. /progs
I was originally a leftist / liberal. I tried to refute a free market article, and wound up reading Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell articles. Then I read Rand. My leftism was pretty much done at that point.
Only because your brain suffered from a defect – more logic than faith.
My father gave me Peter Mcwilliams Aint Nobody’s Business if You Do and I stumbled onto Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. I had rejected the arbitrary authority of religion already and extending that skepticism to Government was a no-brainer. Also, as I’ll expand on in the finale of my award-winning The Hyperbole’s Homebuilding series, dealing with codes and inspectors really cemented my disdain for Top-men™. I don’t recall exactly how I came to Reason, but I do recall that the comments were why I kept going back, then I followed the great exodus over to this echo chamber.
“Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do” is a good book.
RIP Peter McWilliams.
[pours beer on the ground]
I’m finally done, Today’s choices are Lagunitas Maximus and Good Ole Torpedo,
and Boneless Pork strips on the Grille later,
It’s about damn time, you slacker.
I am on the Left Coast, so Noon is acceptable
I got 9 Keystone Light double-deuce chilling in the freezer. Ill crack em once I get the grill going in about 1/2 hour for some pre-rubbed Baby-Backs.
Yufizzle, in case you missed the version in DoggVision® in Doggy Vizzle Televizzle….Tall Cans!
TALL CANS! that was fun!
Anytime is acceptable.
So, guys, who gets the SCOTUS lifetime gravy train job? I was just talking to my son-in-law and he seems to like Kavanaugh. I do remember several here mentioning Willett. I think it should be me, I have no legal experience, but you will be able to delight in the prog tears I bring for the foreseeable future.
I don’t remember the impetus. I know that in high school I was ridiculously liberal and a jerk about it. I actually door-to-doored for Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presedential (nomination) campaign. I was very interested in politics and thought I had all the answers. Hell, I even ran for school board.
Although I’m young enough to have never had to worry about the draft, when they reinstated registration, not only did I not register, I spent a bunch of time in front of the post office, encouraging others to not register.
Skip forward a few years …
I never read anything by Ayn Rand, but at I studiously read a lot of political magazines as procrastination to avoid my schoolwork. I consistently found the libertarian argument more compelling, although I think there were precursors that had already led me down that path.
For example, for a while I worked for a Univerisity and was disillusioned by just how little anyone actually *worked* at work. Additionally, even though as an elementary school kid I had nightmares about eventually going to high school and being forced to take drugs, years later, when I experimented with them myself, I decided that most drugs (especially the ones I had tried) should be legal.
Happy Independence Day, all.
I found Liberty natural, but help from my dad, the pragmatist and my step-dad, the history buff. To this day I write in my vote…Barry Goldwater
I am a member of a dominant space-faring authoritarian species so I pretty much do what the hell I want.
You still want that crate of Flying Crowbars I have in My garage? Or is your current Campaign on hold for the 4th?
And yet, you have not yet wiped out the human plague known as progs. You owe us an apology! We spit in your general direction!
I grew up super religious and republican. As a child of the 80’s I heard what Reagan SAID and internalized it, while still being to young to notice what he actually DID. As I got less religious I stopped giving a shit about the socon values and stuck to the economic values.
Existentialism (yep, one of my several worthless degrees is in Philosophy) further conditioned me towards notions of “radical freedom”. By the time I was nearing the end of college I was firmly in the libertarian camp. After grad school I spent some time working for one of the total shitshow agencies of the fedgov. Simultaneous with the daily horror and revulsion of working for leviathan, I started reading Rothbard. Thus my libertarianism metastasized into full blown anarcho-capitalism.
Why didn’t that work on Satre then?
It’s all in how you take it. Sartre saw radical freedom as the root of existential dread. I saw it as liberating me from the moral conceptions of others and re-centering my perspective on my authentic self.
Most people think Sartre descent into communism was weird and Camus thought Sartre reconciling communism with existentialism was total horseshit.
In high school in the 60’s my full focus was on the draft and the Viet Nam war. I knew I identified with the benevolent Democrats and not with those nasty Republicans. But my ideas were more about personal freedom and I didn’t see that from the D’s. In college a guy gave me Atlas Shrugged and, while I didn’t fully understand it, it helped to cement many of my ideas, such as self-ownership. I started listening to Ronald Reagan on the news radio (!) and drifted over into the R camp. When Reagan’s policies didn’t match his rhetoric it ended my fling with the Repubs. I had heard of the Libertarians as far back as the mid-80’s and gave them a second look. By 1990 I called myself a libertarian but was still kind of confused. Reason Magazine helped me to direct my thoughts and pointed me to Austrian Economics and Bastiat, among others. It was many of the arguments on Hit ‘n Run that gave me the final conversion (Fluffy was very influential) and provided arguments for me when debating others (Dean’s Iron Laws, for example). I’m glad that this site made the move because we manage to have a discourse without the poo-flinging that seems to rage at TOS lately.
Off now to grille burgers with friends at watch our “Light Show”. Too dry for real fireworks.
… Hobbit
I didn’t have Atlas Shrugged handy, but I read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” the summer of my 18th year. Certainly formative.
My stint in the Marines probably did more to make me a crazy libertarian than anything. I vowed I’d never again put myself in a position where people could demand my fealty or put me in the fucking brig.
My parents were also both very individualistic and brought my sister and I up to be the same.
I was completely cured of ever wanting to be in charge after being the captain of the football team. Just figuring out if we wanted to wear a tie and shirt (I don’t think any of us owned a suit) or our jerseys on Friday before a game demonstrated to me that groups are stupid and they will never be happy.
I should also point out that I came of age in the early ’80s. Reagan’s rhetoric was so awesome to me because I was tired of Carter’s pre-Obama talk of malaise.
One of the reasons I joined the Marines was that I wanted to be ready to repel the godless commie hordes. (Give me a break, I was young, dumb and full of cum). The other reason is that military adventurism sounds a lot more fun to a young guy from the western prairies than spending the rest of you life selling farm implements or some such boring job.
Still love the Marines. Didn’t care to stay with them, but I still get a jolt when I meet a fellow “brother” in real life and we trade sea stories.
Like how on cruises, 300 guys go out, but 150 couples come home?
/Hey-Ohhh!
Reagan entered office as I was graduating High School. Prior to that I had talked to recruiters and had even taken the test for the Navy. I wanted to fly jets but had terrible vision so that was off the table. Couldn’t find anything else I was interested in that didn’t take 6 years (which seemed like forever at the time) and having Carter as President really didn’t do anything to get me excited about joining so it never happened.
I was in army aviation, which I always say is the next best thing to joining the Air Force without having to tell people you went and joined the Air Force.
I think I was always inclined toward libertarianism, but it took some years of learning about political philosophy and history, and observing the Obama administration, to settle on my current stance of minarchist libertarianism.
My parents were centrist Democrats up until 2009 or so. My Dad’s family is very liberal, my Mom’s family is relatively conservative. I identified as a liberal because it sounded open-minded — I wasn’t a fan of Bush’s militarism, but I also bought into the media slander against anyone with small-government ideas and their praise of lefties. I never bought into the Obama hype, but I gave him a shot.
During college things changed. I studied political science and was quite fond of John Locke and Adam Smith — their ideas made perfect sense. A roommate introduced me to Ron Paul, and what he was saying about the welfare state, needless military interventionism, and drugs lined up neatly with how I was starting to feel. My Dad had by this point become more conservative and quite anti-Obama, and while I argued with him I found that what he was talking about and what I was learning about made more sense. Over those four years I became more and more skeptical of government management and control, to the point of disgust. “The Road to Serfdom” helped with that, having been introduced to it by one of my Mom’s cousins. I eventually found my philosophical home in libertarianism, although I am registered as a Republican to support their most libertarian-friendly candidates.
If someone has an instinctual fondness for liberty and are willing to learn, I think they can be brought to the light eventually — they just have to tune out the propaganda and think critically.
Happy Independence Day!
Damn my computer died before I finished my story, so this is a much more abbreviated story.
I grew up social conservative. Was disenchanted in 2012. Started looking for libertarian news sites and came across Hit and Run. I was struck by all the issues I never heard reported like police misconduct and violence (and all the dog shootings), civil asset forfeiture, and the injustice of the drug war. I was also a big Rush Limbaugh listener, but after the 2012 election I cut back. After finding Hit and Run I stopped completely. How can a self-proclaimed hero of freedom not talk about all those issues I saw on Hit and Run?
Relatedly after becoming libertarian I also read some books that made me rethink my theology and approach to life. Now my Christian beliefs influence my politics rather than the other way around (it’s interesting how Jesus always seems to say whatever the right and left need Him to say on any given issue). I see myself more as a Christian anarchist now. The Church can never be allied with the State as the State is violence. It has not turned out well for the Church in the past when they allied with the State. The Church always loses when things go to shit
I’ve argued before that the worst thing to happen to Christianity was Constantine.
Absolutely
See current South American Shitholes for the outcome of that…..
Yea, liberation theology is communism by another name
Okay Well my Dad was a Progressive Conservative voter who was rather fiscally conservative and not very socially conservative nor religious. And I remember how when I was in public school the teachers were rabidly anti-Mike Harris. When I was in Grade 7 my teacher practically gave almost daily anti-Mike Harris tirades. These experiences culminated in me being very upset at municipal amalgamation. For a while I was almost a socialist though I grew out of that when I went to High School. I also remember the days when the Canadian Left was very anti-NAFTA. Also being taught about the glories of our healthcare system and the menace of “Americanized health care” yet every election campaign was about our broken healthcare system. If our system is so great than why does it appear to in crisis all the time?
Also my fondness for history exposed me to the hypocrisies of Canada especially of the Liberal party. You know how the Conservatives were traditionally protectionist and the Liberals pro-Free Trade which the Conservatives claimed would lead to American annexation but it the Conservatives who created NAFTA and the Liberals who claimed it would lead to annexation but once elected implemented it.
My dad told me the story of how Turdeau Sr. campaigned against price and wage controls only to implement them anyway once he was elected. Really laid before the nonsense of our system.
Anyway my school experiences now tell me of the power of the indoctrination of the school system and what libertarians are up against and the problems of pragmatic libertarianism. Basically the “Common Sense Revolution” wasn’t exactly even a moderate libertarian scheme yet the teachers were rabidly against it. They are not exactly looking for forward to a moderate libertarian that likes weed, immigrants and Ass-Sex.
Anyway once one the internet I eventually found my way to LewRockwell.com and then to Raimondo and I ate it up. However I always felt their anti-Americanism seemed to motivate them more than libertarianism. Being a Canadian I knew full well how the nationalist Canadians have almost always been very unlibertarian. Would Lew Rockwell and Justin Raimondo want me to ruled by Communists as long as the National Review would be pissed off by it? It certainly seems so. By the time Obama rolled around I had shifted over to Reason but I always felt suspicious of the weed, Mexicans and Ass-Sex and cocktail parties and with Trump I went over to glibertarians.
Holy shit, Mike Harris!
You might get a kick out of this – for NDP of British Columbia, he’s still The Great Satan! I hear his name bandied about from time to time.
My family, much like MikeS’s, were fundamentalist Christians (foot-washin’ Baptist variety) and Southern Democrats. Questioning authority didn’t happen. I pretty much followed that attitude until college, when I read Ayn Rand. I started looking around and saw the difference between politicians’ rhetoric and the results of their actions and decided that both major parties suffered from terminal constipation. Objectivism had (and still has) a great many good points – but to my mind, it doesn’t allow much room for being human. I wandered about, learning from the likes of Harry Browne, Hayek and Charles Murray, came in contact with Reason and then came over here when TOS went to seed.
12:56, PDT, M-80s, it begins……..
Grew up in a fairly right-wing, religious household, and was pretty much a straight-laced Republican through my childhood. Until senior year of highschool, when, ironically enough, I was required to take an AP Government course. The textbook I used did a wonderful job of explaining how the US government is actually supposed to function, and that, combined with listening to Milton Friedman’s Free To Choose series, which opened my eyes on how problematic interference is, led me to read and listen to more libertarian views.
That and I’m introverted as fuck and hate people, so I like being left alone.
Thanks everyone for commenting. I love this!
I love when you drop these open threads and just open things up with a question. This is 3rd or 4th one, I think. You always ask a great question that gets a bunch of awesome answers. Thanks SP!
You already have a Get Out of Cat Butt Free card, so maybe you’re just being honest this time and not kissing up!
I probably always leaned towards liberty. Maybe because of a mostly rural childhood, a father who was something of a hermit and didn’t really like people all that much other than his family, and a rock-hard streak of self-sufficiency. As I’ve always said, my libertarianism springs from the fact that I really don’t give a rat’s ass what people do, so long as they leave me alone.
Oh, and I’m an asshole.
^^^^ THIS GUY GETS IT
Me too.
\high fives
You are so not. I’ve hung out with you.
Maybe you *want* to be….