Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Where were you when the world went mad by Daisy Luther song by The Liberty Bard

 

A Post-Apocalypse Christmas Story
Daisy Luther


This Christmas story has been graciously contributed by Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper.
It has been only 7 months since the lights went out, but it feels like forever. Some people call it the Apocalypse and consider it the worst disaster that the modern world has known. At our house, we call it the Change, because my mother says that just because it is different, doesn't mean that it's the end of the world, and that words matter. Whatever you call it, though, the day the lights went out is the day that everything in our world became dramatically different.
The days go on and on, blending into one another with the sameness of our tasks.  I don't go to school anymore because there is no school. My mother teaches me at night, when we leave the door to the wood stove open to preserve our precious candles, but still have light bright enough to read by.
I never thought I would long for gym class or for the school cafeteria, but I do. I miss hanging out with the other kids, sitting around the table making fun of the food, and being in the classroom, learning about the things that I used to consider incredibly boring. If I had only known then what true boredom was I would have cherished the time to just be a kid. I would have delighted in every bite of food that I didn't have to harvest myself.
Instead of school, I work to keep us fed and warm. I work in the garden in warm weather.  My mother walks with a cane, so it is my responsibility to be her legs. I walk in the woods near our house and look for anything that might be edible or useful.  I collect branches and twigs in the cold weather.  Staying warm and fed is the focus of our daylight hours, and those two tasks take up nearly every minute that the sun is up.
We have heard from those passing through that the cities were death traps.  People there quickly ran out of food and water, and had no way to get more. Violence erupted because people were scared and desperate, and there was no one left to quell it. All the police had gone home to take care of their own families. The people who left right away were the lucky ones.  Those left behind were constantly at the mercy of thieves and worse.  I'm not exactly sure what "worse" is but when the adults talk, that's what they say: thieves or worse.  I'm glad that we don't live in the city.
Our home is in a very small town. We have a big fenced yard with an apple tree.  My old swing set has become the support structure of a makeshift greenhouse, and the rest of the yard is no longer a yard, but more of a field. I used to think my mom was kind of weird, with her backyard chickens and her garden and her herbs, but now I am glad because we have food. The well water that tastes so different from the liquid that used to come from the taps is our true saving grace, my mother says, because water is more precious than gold.
Other people trade with us for eggs and apples and the seeds that my mother saves from her garden. The man next door with the pale, quiet wife and two rambunctious children gives us firewood in return for 8 eggs per week. We eat a lot of venison because my mother traded her skills and some of her precious jars to preserve some venison for an old man who hunts.
We are safer than most because our home is very small, and it is hidden behind trees.  You can't see it from the road. My mother says that the smallness of our house is a blessing because it takes less wood to stay warm.  Since I am the one who goes out to pick up kindling every day I agree completely. I can't imagine needing even more wood.
The past week has been a break in the daily monotony. It was the week before Christmas.
This Christmas is entirely different from any holiday season I have ever known in my 11 years.  There will be no brightly lit tree, half hidden behind a pile of brightly wrapped gifts that were purchased in the months leading up to the big day.  We won't be going to parties or buying useless gifts for the teacher just because I don't want to be the only one not giving a useless gift. I won't be getting the newest electronic gadget.  We aren't inundated with Christmas carol muzak at the mall, with people pushing to get around us anytime we stop to look in a window.
The stores are all empty, yawning caverns, littered with discarded wrappers. Anything that could possibly be of use was taken months ago.
Still, Christmas is something to be anticipated.
My mother said that all school children need a holiday, so for the past two weeks, instead of lessons in front of the fire at night, we have been making gifts. Whereas we once would have gone to the store and purchased yarn, waffling between two favorite colors amidst all the choices, this year I have unraveled an outgrown sweater with a hole in it in order to make my mother a scarf. For my next door neighbors' young children, I have drawn small pictures – one of a kitten, and the other of a puppy.  I placed these pictures in little frames made from twigs.  Now they will have something cheerful with which to decorate their rooms. For the Smith's daughter, who is 7, I have made a little book with carefully printed letters and drawn pictures. It is the story of the Three Little Pigs, from memory. For the man who hunts – his name is Roger but I always just think of him as the man who hunts – I have helped my mother make a warm hat. I embroidered an R on it for his name.
Many of us in the small neighborhood where I live have families from far away.  There are no visits to family anymore, because there is no gasoline to fuel the vehicles. If you can't walk to your destination, you don't go.  So my grandparents will not be coming, and this is the first time I've had Christmas without them in my young life. I don't know if they have survived the Change and I probably never will.
Even though I feel as though I will probably be disappointed in the morning, I still have trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve. I'm still only 11, despite the heavy responsibilities in the world after the Change.
***
I awaken to bells ringing.  Bells?
I sit bolt upright in bed, the heavy covers falling to the floor.  "Mom?"
"Get up, sleepyhead! It's Christmas!"
I bounce out of my room and I have that oh-my-gosh-it's-Christmas-morning feeling fluttering around in my stomach.
My mother is smiling from ear to ear, and she has a steaming mug in each hand.  One has coffee for her, and the other has….I can't believe it – cocoa!
"Where did you get hot chocolate?" I ask as I take the first decadent sip.
"Santa must have brought it, " my mother says with a wink. She picks up the jingle bell ornament from the table and rings it again.
My stocking is not full to overflowing like it was on Christmases past, but I'm just happy to see that there are a few strange bulges in it. Inside I find a ball of yarn that looks suspiciously like an old sweater that I had outgrown a couple of years ago, an apple from our tree that has been covered in a sugary candy coating and placed in an bread bag from before the Change, and a clean cloth wrapped around something mysterious.  When I unwrap the cloth, I discover a hair barrette that my mother has decorated for me with a piece of wire and some beads from an old broken piece of costume jewelry.  I put it in my hair immediately and preen.
Our tree is from before the Change.  It is an artificial tree and its lights remain unlit, since, of course, there is nothing to plug it in to, but it still looks beautiful with the assortment of ornaments that we have used for as long as I can remember. Under the tree is a large, lumpy bag for me, and two small paper-wrapped packages for my mother from me.
I make her open one of her presents first.
She gasps in delight to see the word LOVE made from twigs I found in the woods and tied together with garden twine to form letters.  She immediately gets up and places the word on the bookshelf, front and center.  Her hug and her smile make me feel warm and happy.
It's my turn now.  I open my bag and find a purple winter coat.  I could hardly believe my eyes because I had never expected anything half so wonderful as a coat. "Where on earth did you get this?"
"I traded your outgrown coat from two years ago to the Smiths for their daughter, and Mrs. Smith gave me one of her coats for you."
"We have to find someone who needs my coat that I have outgrown, then," I tell my mother.  My wrists have exceeded the length of my coat sleeves by about 3 inches.  Change or not, I still had continued to grow.
My mother opens the last package, which is the scarf I have made for her from the holey sweater.  She dons it immediately.
I can't help but compare this with the previous Christmas, when there were at least 20 presents to open.  Somehow, I feel happier drinking this cocoa made with water, stroking the sleeve of a used purple coat, than I ever felt then.
***
We are hosting Christmas dinner. My mother says that our neighbors are now our family and that we must love and care for each other if we are going to survive. The old man who hunts brought us a turkey yesterday. It is cooking with garden garlic and onions in a big roasting pan on the woodstove.  My mother says that the turkey may not look like the kind we usually have, all brown from the oven, but that it will be an amazing treat.  It smells so good that my mouth has been watering since early that morning.
Our home is decorated with pine boughs that I brought back from the woods, and iced with a fresh layer of snow.
We are serving with it applesauce from the jars of it my mother canned from our apple tree in the back yard.  She had been storing crusts of bread and leftover biscuits in the outside cold room for a few weeks to make stuffing, and yesterday she cooked a pumpkin from the cellar as well as a big pot of potatoes.
When the neighbors begin to arrive, we are excited to see that they are also bearing food.  This has been a hungry time and we rarely eat until we are totally full, as our food must last until the snow is gone and we can grow more to eat.
The Smiths, from whom my mother got my beautiful purple coat, have peppermint sticks for all of the children.  Mrs. Smith found them in her bin of Christmas decorations.  They are stale and chewy and the most delicious candy I have ever eaten.  I take small licks to make it last as long as possible. The man who hunts, of course, has provided the turkey.  The people next door, who keep reminding me to call them Tim and Libby, have arrived their children and a basket of cookies. They are the only people in the neighborhood with an oven that still works for baking. Sadly, their fuel for the oven will soon run out and there will be no way to replenish it. But for today, we have cookies.
For the first day in a long, long time – it feels like forever – all I have to do is play.  My mother and the other women will keep the fire going, the men will sit and talk, and we will play in the snow without a care in the world. When you're playing in the snow, you forget that there is no electricity and no heat except for that from the fire.  You are just a kid throwing snowballs and building forts.
At dinnertime, we eat and eat and eat until we couldn't hold another bite if we tried.  My mother uses some of our candles and opens up the woodstove. The living room glows. Mr. Smith reads the original Christmas story in his deep melodic voice, followed by How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which was brought over by Tim and Libby.
Then, the most magical thing of all: Christmas carols.
We have no music except that which we make, but we all sing the familiar songs: Jingle Bells, Come Let Us Adore Him, Silent Night, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – we run out of songs we know and begin to sing them all over again because no one wants the music to stop because then the night will end. One by one, the younger children fall asleep, with their full tummies and flushed cheeks.
I sit there on the floor, leaning against my mother's chair.  The sweet voices of our friends and neighbors surround me like the softest blanket.  I'm full, warm, and content. And although it is all by candlelight and my "big" gift is a used coat, it seems as though this day, this brief respite from the battle to survive, has been the best Christmas – a true holiday full of all that is sacred and beautiful.
Please feel free to share this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to this website and the following bio.
Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

Long ago might made right, then someone came to change all that by Paul Craig Roberts song by The Liberty Bard

 

The Greatest Gift for All
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts


Dear Readers, thank you for your support in 2013. Although you have kept me working past retirement age, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.
My traditional Christmas column (below) goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind's abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?
Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.
Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.
The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States would be a different country, and Americans would be a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution and assaults on Christianity are assaults on all of us. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults.
In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.
Paul Craig Roberts
Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.
Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.
The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.
In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.
This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual's soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.
Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.
The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.
In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by "political correctness" and "the war on terror." Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.
Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.
All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have already been murdered and millions displaced, because their religion does not submit to Washington's hegemony.
Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as "unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything." Washington's drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.
Christianity's emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ's birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.
As we enter into 2014, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, hangs in the balance. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

Monday, December 30, 2013

It's just the end of fiat currency it's not the end of time by Jason Simpkins song by The Liberty Bard

 

The Dollar's Replacement Is Already Here - The Greenback is Doomed
Jason Simpkins


With the Fed taper officially underway, you'll be hearing a lot about a dollar revival over the next year.
Don't buy into it.
At the end of the day, the dollar is still a flawed currency. It's not backed by anything other than the word of a government that's proven frivolous at best and incompetent at worst.
The United States has racked up so much debt, it's practically unpayable. We've reached the point where, even if the government doesn't default outright, it's still lost credibility.
No one believes in the United States anymore.
And can you blame them?
When we're not meddling in the Middle East, launching drone strikes, arming rebels, or toppling governments, we're spying on our allies...
It's only a matter of time before our currency is shunned.
The dollar is doomed, that's a fact.
The question now is: What replaces it?
Special Drawing Rights
Some experts — notably those from China, our largest creditor — have suggested global monetary authorities adopt the Special Drawing Right (SDR) as the new world reserve currency.
The SDR was created by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system. Its value is based on a basket of four key international currencies, and it can be exchanged for freely usable currencies.
For a long time, its only function was to facilitate global trade.
However, back in 2009, the governor of the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, nominated the SDR as a replacement for the dollar.
Basically, China is beginning to realize that the United States is more interested in inflating its debt away than it is in actually paying it off...
With each passing year, the trillion-plus dollars China holds are worth less and less. It's being debased. And worse, the United States has twice teetered on the brink of default, as Congress held the debt ceiling hostage.
The IMF understands this as a threat to the global financial system, and in 2010 it released a report on the subject.
In the report, the IMF basically agreed that while there would be some "technical hurdles," an increased role for the SDRs could help correct global imbalances and shore up the global financial system.
In addition to serving as a reserve currency, the IMF proposed creating SDR-denominated bonds, which could reduce central banks' dependence on U.S. Treasuries. The Fund also suggested that commodities, like oil and gold, could be priced using SDRs as opposed to U.S. dollars.
Finally, the IMF is also seeking to include China's currency, the renminbi, in the SDR basket — which may be what it really wanted after all.
The Renminbi
More than that, the Middle Kingdom seeks to position its currency as the heir apparent.
Indeed, China is the number one exporter on the globe — and soon it will have the world's largest economy, as well.
The Chinese would like to see global currency usage reflect this shift in global economic power, and so they are  aggressively taking steps to internationalize the renminbi or the yuan.
The main way China is doing this is through currency swaps. Currency swaps allow countries to use their native currencies in trade, rather than first converting to dollars.
This is an effective way to erode the dollar's prominence, as it means countries no long need to store dollars to trade.
Over the past few years, China has signed nearly two trillion yuan worth of currency swap deals with 20 countries and regions.
As recently as October (while Uncle Sam was busy playing games with the debt ceiling), the PBOC and ECB opened up a three-year swap line worth 350 billion yuan ($57 billion) when Chinese currency is provided to the ECB, and 45 billion euros ($61 billion) when money is given to the PBOC.
It's a slow process, but the strategy is succeeding.
Earlier this year, a survey from the Bank for International Settlements showed the renminbi entered the list of top 10 most-traded currencies for the first time.
And earlier this month, a report from financial-services firm SWIFT revealed that the renminbi had overtaken the euro as the second most used currency in global trade finance. Its share has leapt from a mere 1.89% in January 2012 to a respectable 8.66% in October.
No doubt, there's still much work to be done. The value of the yuan is still heavily influenced by the government, and it's not permitted to trade freely. At some point, China will have to clear these restrictions and give more power to the market in determining the value and flow of its currency.
Still, it's making noteworthy progress. And if the dollar collapses, China will look to fill the void with the renminbi.
A Universal Digital Currency
There is a third option.
It's entirely probable an overhaul of the global financial system would give rise to a new currency, one that isn't tied to any one specific country.
That is, if the dollar goes down, the international community won't be eager to make another fiat sovereign currency its replacement...
It'd look for something more stable, more predictable. It wouldn't be gold or silver, either; it would be something digital, something befitting the modern era.
We're talking about so-called "cryptocurrencies."
These are currencies that are digitally mined, and thus, impossible to counterfeit.
They're also limited in supply, so there's no concern about inflation or excessive printing.
And because they're not backed by a single country, they're immune to sovereign debt crises.
It may sound like science fiction, but the truth is this currency exists... and you can own it.
Get paid,
Jason Simpkins Signature
Jason Simpkins
Jason Simpkins is a seven-year veteran of the financial publishing industry, where he's served as a reporter, analyst, investment strategist and prognosticator. He's written more than 1,000 articles pertaining to personal finance and macroeconomics. Simpkins also served as the chief investment analyst for a trading service that focused exclusively on high-flying energy stocks. For more on Jason, check out his editor's page
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Sir, it seems like you have had a little too much to think

 

Heavy Thinking
Anonymous


It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- just to loosen up.
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking at work, you'll have to find another job."
This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver.
"You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.
They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.
You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster.
This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today I took the final step...I joined the Democratic Party.

Is the tide finally turning? It feels different this time - article by Ol' Remus song by The Liberty Bard

 

 

Political Correctness
Ol' Remus


Scott Collins at The Los Angeles Times reports, "Robertson, the long-bearded patriarch of the clan of Louisiana duck-call merchants, is on "hiatus" from filming episodes of the No. 1-rated cable reality show after giving a GQ magazine interview where he made anti-gay remarks and questioned the need for the civil-rights movement." No fair minded person would call his remarks anti-gay so much as Politically Incorrect. He expressed his opinion frankly, without evasion or apologizing in advance. Nor has he backtracked. Remarkable.
For once we heard something other than value-free, pH-neutral blather. Said differently, he committed a thought crime. And for once, like-minded people defended themselves and the speaker from the hosing that followed. It's a rare and welcome moment.
The reason that so many Americans love Duck Dynasty is because it represents the America usually ignored or mocked by liberal elites: a family that loves and cares for each other, believes in God, and speaks openly about their faith. As PC enforcers often forget, tolerance is a two-way street. - Sen. Ted Cruz, Facebook, via Tal Kopan at politico.com
This is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades... This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. - Camille Paglia, via Caroline May at dailycaller.com
This stuff has a dismal history tracing back at least to Prohibition, which was closely tied to the women's suffrage movement, and pushed to near-completion while men were overseas fighting World War I. It arose from noble intent perhaps, but it was naive and unenforceable to a certainty. The results, aside from being disastrous, were a national joke, as is its replacement, the War On Drugs. Both set new standards for stupidity, exactly the sort of thing do-gooders either won't see or can't resist. They seem to have an appetite for conspicuous but pointless domination, wasting other people's lives and misallocating resources on a colossal scale.
The Sons-of-Prohibition go on and on. The Korrectness Korps prohibited trans-fats for instance, not just for themselves but for everybody, thereby saving the unwary from Death by Donut and making the world safe for GMOs one supposes. This is "because-we-can" nannyism, Bloomberg-style. The prohibition against trans-fats is based on dubious science, probably junk science. And good science is bad enough, the half-life of all medical knowledge is pegged at about twenty-two years. Ban salt? Without salt you die. Secondhand smoke kills? Not according to the National Cancer Institute. Future school kids will write essays about these diktats and wonder, "what could they have been thinking?" Their parents will assure them it can't happen again. Pshaw and tsk tsk. It always happens again. It never stops happening.
Now consider the prohibition against dissenting opinion, Political Correctness as it's known. The term dates from the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Those caught—or more likely, those denounced, for voicing an independent opinion were sent to labor-reeducation camps for rigorous training in "politically correct" thought. Inmates confessed their deviant ways in ever more demeaning and self-destructive acts. The specifics of the criminal charge were not revealed, so inmates searched their memories and their imaginations and confessed endlessly, hoping to hit on it. It was a ruse, the formal charges were random contrivances.
What chance of release they had relied on convincing their captors of their total and exacting devotion to Marxist orthodoxy in word and deed. Stalin said breaking a man was more satisfying than executing him. This is the how and why of brainwashing. We see it replicated today in PC to one degree or another. It's the foundation of the White Privilege scam, for one.
Political Correctness in its modern form came to America around the 1970s. At first it was ridiculed, a sure-fire laugh for standup comedians. But it became ever-more powerful in sly and surprising ways. Knowing the latest version required close attention, it was no idle exercise to stay current, a misstep had social and career implications. "Afro-American", once mandatory, is now heard as a sardonic insult. Oops. A couple of generations have grown up believing Political Correctness is the default reality, that deviation is illegitimate by definition. It's intent is to ensure dissent expends a lot of resources to overcome a perception of malicious intent, no matter how compelling its merits.
The opposition to all this was well anticipated. Appeals to free speech and our tradition of unencumbered expression were shouldered aside. PC intensified, then awarded itself the power to penalize, notably with zero tolerance policies and hate crime laws. In the main, opponents of PC failed, and they continue to fail insofar as they misunderstand Political Correctness. They think it's faintly humorous 'nice talk' designed to make everybody feel good, or just some Victorian scolds with clumsy rules for a "non-threatening national forum". Annoying, but after all, unpleasantness is, well, unpleasant. No, stereotypes didn't become stereotypes on the basis of nothing at all. And no, it's not just making nice, it's an iron-fisted political gulag with compulsory self-censorship, or as they put it, "words have consequences."
We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely. - A&E Network press release
Martin "Banshee" Bashir at MSNBC was not fired right away for his pornographic/scatological remarks concerning Sarah Palin [he said somebody should urinate and defecate in Sarah Palin's mouth], but the Duck Dynasty guy was fired immediately for expressing his Christian values a bit too firmly. - Carlos Eire at babalublog.com
Political Correctness is not a free-standing option, nor is it an alternative code of happy-talk, it's the hard-wiring for a cult of coercion designed to negate free speech by setting non-negotiable margins on thought itself. PC violators are fast-tracked to the leper colony, and there we see the nature of Political Correctness: opposing ideas are not just wrong, they're not just illegitimate, they're literally unspeakable. Even the "Intellectual Right" is embarrassed by the "non-PC Right." Ambitious political outfits want into the PC system. It's a handy, fingerprints-free star chamber. Notice how the global warming extremists, its persuasion being unpersuasive, strain for a piece of the action. No debates for you, it's straight to the Nuremberg docket.
Notice also how the non-PC marketplace is being criminalized outright, to wit: those "'automatic' assault rifles designed to mow down classrooms of adorable toddlers at one go". And thereby inconveniencing PC-Approved preteen sex recruitment, they don't add. Incidentally, the liberties homophiles award themselves are astounding, now it takes a whole 'nuther "the talk" to prepare boys for "education" salary. Probably not most, but many of these 'educators' should sell if their IQ reaches 70.
The straight white collar world is so imbued with LGBT orthodoxy that as soon as GLAAD issued its statement about Phil Robertson's GQ interview, A&E just went ahead and tortured itself. Its immediate censure and suspension of Robertson was a pure and very public act of self flagellation. The LGBT world didn't have to lift a finger. All it took was a short press release. - Doug Mainwaring at americanthinker.com
If politics is downstream from society, it worked as intended. Merely questioning some detail of the Politically Correct code marked one as an aggressive cretin. But there came a time when serious, effective confrontations occured, and in doing so discovered PC's weakness: it only works if they can turn people into zombie blivots populating an eager-to-please collective. To this end, they've largely taken control of the national dialogue as they understand it, television and newspapers, faculties and legislatures, in short, the shuck'n jive tentacles of official power and decision-making. It's a classic mistake made by medieval royalty to the Politburo, and now by DC and their Stasi-state apparatus.
In times past, resistances peddled underground newspapers and staged street theatre to build support. Today such things are mainly useful to give activists a dynamic outlet, the real work occurs long before these things happen. Such public displays announce the final push over prepared ground. It begins in conversation. Perhaps someone expresses a reasonable, carefully worded, mild reservation about some aspect or another of the PC code. It builds as like-minded people find each other and speak more frankly, it matures as events clarify and inform their opinions. In a deep but informal way, dissent eventually coalesces into a self-aware critical mass. The internet facilitates all this, it's where people talk among themselves beyond their own neighborhood.

The regime wages savvy operations against it to be sure but, like resistance movements of the past, a dispersed opposition can absorb their frenzy with barely a yawn. This is where we find ourselves today. Political Correctness and its interlocking system of repression is visibly faltering. Issues thought safely set aside are reappearing. Even the vaunted NSA can neither locate or avoid the pain. PC pillories a victim or two and beats its chest, but looks silly doing it. Even its loyal cadre sees what's happening, and they suspect this is no minor setback. They smell an authentic consensus welling up beneath their feet. Notice the fencing-in of reader comments at news media websites, or their outright discontinuance. The trend is not their friend. Those with their ear closest to the ground "get it" and are edging toward the exits.
Political Correctness is still potent, but newly vulnerable. PC assumes compliance will be preferable to the social price of disobedience. Alas, compliance is otherwise unenforceable, and that's PC's decisive weakness. Prohibition was repealed because it fell into deserved disrepute and, being unenforceable, was unenforced. Duh. PC is failing the same way. The personal price of compliance has overtaken the personal price of disobedience, in fact, non-PC terms are a near-reliable gauge of sincerity. This, incidentally, is what's behind the rapid-fire issuance of new PC terms, a self-destructive cycle if there ever was one, but they never did have more than a delusion of adequacy. It's no secret PC Police have to be watered twice a day.
The drill has become familiar. Someone speaks out in favor of maintaining the traditions of marriage, and instantly the gay rights organizations are up in arms, making threats, filing lawsuits, and mobilizing protests. Then, instead of Christians putting up a serious resistance, there is apathy, apology, and defeat. The script was repeated over and again, time after time. This time was different. - Robert Arvay at americanthinker.com
The Duck Dynasty revolt reveals more about PC than their worst fears allow. After decades of being effectively unopposed, Political Correctness is playing defense, but it has no experience with it. It's paranoiac fluster at any challenge is followed by—and people notice this—slapstick overreaction that looks ridiculous even to the disengaged. Defending PC today points out the defender as a hopeless rube, and supplicants for absolution as invertebrate wusses. The rising defiance to PC is causing genuine panic in their ranks. PC has been unconstrained by reality for decades, now it's far from sight of shore, held together by little more than cant and chants, its internal stresses incapable of withstanding any informed confrontation. It's buckling. The people know it.
 

Another Distraction - Know the REAL issues by Szandor Blestman song by the Liberty Bard

 

 

Duck Dynasty, the Fed and the NDAA
Szandor Blestman


Until last week I didn't know anything about Duck Dynasty. I really couldn't have cared less about those people, their business or their antics. Apparently, however, enough of my fellow human beings find them entertaining enough to make it worth A&E's time and effort to produce a show based on their lives. Now, suddenly, I know way too much about them. Now, suddenly, I feel like someone has grabbed me by the neck and shouted in my face "These people are important! What's happening to them is important! Pay attention to them!" All this because some old dude with a ratty looking beard expressed an opinion that to him a woman's vagina is more appealing than a man's anus, an opinion I happen to agree with, by the way.
What's happening to Duck Dynasty is not important. What he said was not important. The fact that some idiot executives (or highly intelligent and manipulative ones) at A&E decided to kick some commander of ducks off the show or some such thing is not important. What takes place between A&E and the duck people is between A&E and the duck people and has nothing to do with freedom of speech or any violation of human rights.
Sure the duck general, or whatever he wants to call himself, has the right to express his opinion, but no organization has the obligation to give him a platform upon which to do it. The only obligation here is to the federal government that they make no law violating the right to free speech. What we have in this witch's brew of inconsequential ingredients that has captured the attention of so many is a call to allow the federal government to do just that. It's all just a distraction, really, and in the meantime laws of real consequence that really do violate natural rights are being enacted and not a peep is heard because everyone's busy feeding the ducks. The magicians have once again done a good job diverting your attention while their slight of hand makes something precious disappear.
I am happy to notice that as this "controversy" grows more and more commentators are beginning to call out its artificial nature. Intelligent thinkers are pointing out the private nature of the contract between A&E and the duck people which makes the censorship not a First amendment issue and I've even read a couple of intellectual gay commentators point out that the tactics being used against Phil Robertson are the very tactics they abhor when used against gay people. It seems that perhaps people are finally beginning to understand the concept that in order for one to live freely one has to allow others to live freely, whether you agree with them or not. Allow others to have and to voice their opinions, however vile and repugnant you might find them. Allow others to conduct their own private business in their own way so long as they're not harming others or committing theft or fraud. Expect them to do the same for you. Just leave others alone to go about their day to day business and expect the same and we should all get along just fine. It really is a simple concept, "Do unto others..," Etc., ad nauseum, and yet one we still don't seem to get. Even so, it seems to me it's time to take the next step.
First Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Seated: Charles S. Hamlin, William G. McAdoo, Frederic A. Delano. Standing: Paul M. Warburg, George Skelton Williams, W.P.G. Harding, Adolph C. Miller.
The time has come to stop talking about ducks and their dynasty. It is time to talk about parasites and theirs. The parasites I refer to are the central bankers, the corporate cartels and all the politicians which hail from these corporate families or are bought and paid for by corporate special interests. These are the people that attach themselves to the productive part of society and suck it's economic life's blood from it. These are the true entities of importance we should be talking about. These are the people that can truly affect your everyday life by their opinions and actions.
It is time now to start demanding a reversal of some of the things that make us less free rather than discussing what to do to curtail people who are exercising their freedoms, perhaps in a controversial way. It is time to start turning the conversation around and asking why aren't we trying to do something about the institutions that want to control and enslave us. It is up to the people who understand freedom to point these things out to those who might still have a foggy notion as to what freedom is.
For instance, as many of you might know, I feel the most important issue of our time is the Federal Reserve. I feel that if we could get rid of the Fed and decide for ourselves what currency to use when trading with others that many of our economic woes would disappear. So, if I'm standing around the water cooler and I hear someone talking about the ducks and their dynasty I might say something like, "That's nice, but you don't have to watch that show or read about what they're doing if you don't want to or if you disagree with them. We all pretty much have to use federal reserve debt notes in order to survive. We are forced to do business with families that are putting the nation into inescapable, incomprehensible debt. I think that matters a little more than what some duck dictator thinks." Keep the focus. Move the conversation to where it needs to go.
Another matter that is of importance is how the federal government is trying to use unconstitutional legislation to trash the Bill of Rights. For instance, while this whole pressed duck controversy was going on the 2014 NDAA was passed which still allows for indefinite detention and all kinds of other unconstitutional human right violations. So, if this is important to you, as you're standing at the water cooler and the whole duck kingdom thing comes up you might want to consider saying something like "Did you know that a new NDAA bill was passed while this duck BS was happening? They still think it's ok to indefinitely detain anyone, even Americans, without trial simply by calling them an enemy combatant. Why, they could accuse this Phil Robertson guy of plotting a terrorist action with renegade ducks, call him an enemy combatant and we would never hear from him again. I think that's a little more important than knowing whether or not he'd rather put his penis in a woman's vagina or a man's anus."
The point is, the establishment is using its media outlets to try to hide the issues that are truly important by creating issues that are not important. They don't want us talking about issues of importance and would rather have us clucking about non issues like a bunch of hens running around the chicken yard. They have used sneaky psychological methods in order to do so and it's up to us to counter as best we can in a way that nullifies the effectiveness of their methods. In the same way we must start denying consent to be ruled by a bunch of psychopaths in Washington, DC, we must also stop listening to their version of what is important and telling them what is truly important. As more and more people become aware of how the media is manipulating them, less and less will pay attention to the establishment media. When enough people deny consent and ignore the media, that is when we will see a true change for the better start to take place.
If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation. For those interested, my latest work of fiction is entitled Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti.
I have another new Youtube video created for the season entitled Workshop at the North Pole which is more like a commentary some of you might expect from me.
Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.
Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti
Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti
The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti
The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Are they all Mad? We must combine our Power with Wisdom by JJ3

 

THEY’RE ALL MAD

Posted on 25th December 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

ObamaCare As Alice In Wonderland

By on December 25, 2013
One need not fall down a rabbit hole to enter an Alice In Wonderland world. A flight into Dulles International provides an alternate route.
Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, may not have anticipated modern-day Washington and ObamaCare, but it provides a pretty good framework for it. Mr. Carroll could not have dreamed of the progress and technological innovation that was ahead. However, he understood human nature and its stability over time makes his novel applicable to ObamaCare today.
On Friday President Obama made yet another change in his legislation. The changes are now coming so frequently that one can imagine ObamaCare pondering its own metamorphosis. In Carroll’s words:
“I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!” “How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.”
alice4The most recent Obama alteration declared that those whose policies were canceled would be exempted from the individual mandate. Instead, they would be allowed to buy catastrophic insurance from exchanges which would (try to) provide them.  This change moved Dick Morris to lurch into a modern-day version of Lewis Carrol:
In other words, if your policy was cancelled because it was not sufficiently comprehensive, you can buy one even less comprehensive and that will be okay.
This type of logic has plagued the program from its beginning. The President may not have thought this important, but the Dutchess in Wonderland did:
“Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.”
For those watching the desperate Washington shenanigans from afar, each change adds to the humor of  the train wreck. That is not the case for those directly affected by it. Carroll provided proper words for what interacting with the website must be like:
“The Mad Hatter: “Would you like some [health insurance]?” Alice: “Yes…” The Mad Hatter: “We haven’t any and you’re too young.”
Worse might be dealing with untrained plan navigators who try to be helpful (possibly while stealing your personal information). Does a conversation like the following seem plausible for this situation?alice-MadHatter
“Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more [health insurance]?
Alice: Well, I haven’t had any yet, so I can’t very well take more.
March Hare: Ah, you mean you can’t very well take less.
Mad Hatter: Yes. You can always take more than nothing.”
Dick Morris has determined ObamaCare is a failure:
ObamaCare is dying from a lack of interest among the very people it was supposed to help. A New York Times survey showed that 77% of those who are currently uninsured do not approve of ObamaCare and have no intention of signing up.
With the president in full retreat and the individual mandate eroding, the end of ObamaCare is in sight!
It is probable that Mr. Morris is correct, although in what increasingly appears to be a dictatorial state, Obama may continue to change rules and deadlines, keeping the plan alive long enough that a return to the former system becomes impossible.
Regarding the current condition of ObamaCare, Mr. Carroll provided wonderful words:
“If it had grown up, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child; but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.”
Colorful, but I doubt there is enough lipstick in the world to make this pig appear handsome. Many of the original, ardent supporters of the program are now reaching the same conclusion reflected in this Carroll quote. Once that is realized, then the question of what was I thinking when I supported this monstrosity enters their mind.
Let Carroll answer this from the perspective of ObamaCare addressing its creators:
“You would have to be half mad to dream me up.”
The political implications are now recognized. Those most at risk, the ones up for election in 2014, have already rebelled as much as they dare. Others will follow as families are disrupted with no coverage or coverage that is substantially inferior to what they had and at more expense.
The political nightmare will grow as the health care nightmare unfolds. The health care industry will slowly be emasculated:aliceMad-Hatter-johnny-depp
  • Medical providers will be lost despite promises otherwise.
  • Massive new cancellations will occur as employers amend or drop their plans. The deferral of the employer mandate until after the 2014 election to mitigate the political impact will not help. Most employers will inform employees before the election. Early notice serves two purposes:  (1) it provides necessary time to put replacement coverage in place; (2) it reminds employees what ObamaCare has cost them just in advance of an election. For most employers, the latter may be more important than the former.
  • Finally, real structural damage to the industry will begin to appear. Bankruptcies in the insurance industry will only be avoided by taxpayer bailouts, reminding the public of the financial bailouts.
  • Doctor shortages will occur. There is no solution for doctors retiring early other than returning to some form of slavery which prevents them from doing so. For many, the reduced income and bureaucracy will not be worth it.
  • Brighter students will  choose careers other than medicine. That will drive down the quality of physicians and healthcare over time.
  • More immediately the quality of healthcare will diminish for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Driving rates down will mean fewer doctors take fewer of these patients. Typically the less talented doctors will be left with the lowest paying customer groups. Many doctors have already left traditional practice and set up concierge practices.
  • The cutbacks in staff at major hospitals have already been announced and occurred. Soon closings and bankruptcies of hospitals will begin.
  • The rationing of healthcare must take place immediately. As the supply of medical resources declines in reaction to price controls, this rationing will become more severe. “Death panels” will be employed from the very beginning. When prices no longer ration supply, then bureaucratic rules must.
From a political standpoint, there is no greater horror than what is unfolding. The reaction of some politicians will be like that of the chaplain in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. He did his best to put Joan at the stake, but when he realized the implications, he reacted thusly:
‘ I meant no harm. I did not know what it would be like . . I did not know what I was doing . . If I had known, I would have torn her from their hands. You don’t know. You haven’t seen : it is so easy to talk when you don’t know. You madden yourself with words . . But when it is brought home to you ; when you see the thing you have done ; when it is blinding your eyes, stifling your nostrils, tearing your heart, then then O God, take away this sight from me ! ‘
Some Democrats who pursued ObamaCare like the chaplain pursued Joan are now experiencing the same horror from their achievement. Others have no conscience, but are concerned about re-election. Regardless of the motive, most wish they had not gone along with this legislation.
obamacartercartoon0dAPC20100612124609No Democrat has been hurt more than President Obama. His lame duck second terms appears more like a dead duck. His credibility is gone. He openly lied to his supporters, committing repeated fraud in order to impose his Frankenstein monster. Lewis Carroll’s words describe his diminished condition:
“You used to be much more…”muchier.” You’ve lost your muchness.”
Memories of this transformative figure, a Messiah to some, now only serve to anger the dupes who held them. His incompetence and duplicity would be laughable if the harm inflicted was not so great. This shell of a man is about to be turned on by his own Party. Again, Carroll had the appropriate line:
“Off with [his] head!”
alice5Sadly, the problems of ObamaCare have barely begun to surface. If left to play out, they will destroy the health care industry in this country. They will also destroy the Democrat Party. One outcome is welcome but not the other.
The lesson Washington should learn but will not is simple:
“If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.”
This lesson cannot be learned in Washington because
“We’re all mad here.”

Beware the Thought Police - Looks like you've had a little too much to think

Resist!  Disobey!  Do not conform! 

When Ducks Cry

December 23, 2013


When Ducks Cry
As Americans huddle by their fireplaces and space heaters this week to either celebrate or avoid the Christmas holiday, the nation’s hottest cultural controversy hinges on whether anuses are more desirable than vaginas.
This latest bloody clash in the national Kulturkampf pits dick-hunters versus duck-hunters. It revolves around all manner of contentious cultural axes: red state versus blue state, rural versus urban, gun-toting carnivores versus gun-grabbing vegans, and Christian fundamentalists versus egalitarian true believers.
It was spurred by comments published in GQ last week by Phil Robertson, the scowling, grey-bearded, headband-wearing patriarch of the duck-hunting clan in A&E’s reality show Duck Dynasty, which is touted as the most successful nonfiction program in cable television history:
It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.
When asked what he considered sinful, Robertson paraphrased a passage from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, which is reprinted here from the New International Version:
Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Clearly the Christian Bible preaches that “men who have sex with men” will not go to heaven. Despite what the Lavender Lobby and the Gay Mafia and the Homo Militia and their rainbow coalition of allies and enablers and apologists would have you believe, homosexuality is explicitly condemned in the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Quran. None of the three major Western monotheistic religions is down with the idea of men going down on other men. So you can either be a faithful adherent to one of these religions, or you can have sex with persons of your own gender—pick one and stick to it. But you can’t have both. Hey, I don’t make the rules—I only report them.
“This latest bloody clash in the national Kulturkampf pits dick-hunters versus duck-hunters.”
Don’t try telling that to GLAAD spokesman Wilson Cruz, who said that Phil Robertson, rather than the pro-gay progressive revisionist lobby, was perverting the Gospel:
Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe.
GLAAD—which in practice almost always seems far more AANGRY than GLAAD—allegedly used its gay superpowers to squeeze the A&E Network into “indefinitely” suspending Robertson from the show within hours after his homo-unfriendly comments went live.
The Robertson clan has reportedly threatened to walk off the show if the ban on their patriarch remains in effect. In an article for the Daily Mail, an unnamed “source close to the family” says that the Robertsons suspect the entire saga was a setup. The source claimed that an A&E representative was present with Robertson during the interview, yet the network made no apparent attempts to quash the comments before they went live:
It is our understanding that when the TV executives came up with the concept for the show they wanted it to be a case of people laughing at a bunch of backward rednecks. But when it didn’t turn out like that and people actually started identifying with the way the family behaved and were laughing with them, not at them, they became uncomfortable. It did not sit will with the New York TV types.
Moral titans such as former crack addict Charlie Sheen and former heroin addict Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe denounced Robertson in the harshest moralistic terms. Lime-sucking enemy of All Things American Piers Morgan opined that “the 1st Amendment shouldn’t protect vile bigots” such as Phil Robertson. The consensus on the outraged celebrity left seemed to be that anal sex between men wasn’t vile; it was vile for people to say it was vile.
Interestingly, the GQ article quoted Robertson making comments about his experiences with Louisiana blacks during the Jim Crow era, but they didn’t cause nearly the outcry that his anti-anus articulations inflamed:
I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field….They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!...Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.
Although the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees emerged from his gold-encrusted turtle shell long enough to link Robertson’s comments to Holocaust denial, Phil’s comments reminded me of what a friend from North Carolina once told me about his family. He said his folks had lived for generations as sharecroppers in a shack on a farm alongside black families, and everyone got along swimmingly until meddlesome Yankee activists stuck their beaks south of the Mason-Dixon Line in the 1950s and 1960s to begin sowing dissent.
As a Philly-born expatriate Yankee who’s lived in all four corners of the USA and in Georgia for the past seven years, I’ve seen blacks and whites get along with far greater ease down South than anywhere else in the country—far more so than in Philadelphia, which is a de facto apartheid state simmering with self-segregated hostility.

It makes sense that down in the despised South, where whites and blacks have lived alongside one another in greater numbers for far longer than they have anywhere else in the USA, they’d have developed enough shared cultural pathways that they get along more smoothly than anywhere else in the USA. It also makes sense that snooty cosmopolites who view everything between New York and LA as “flyover country” would have a distorted, fearful, and, yes, bigoted view of Southern culture.
This superficially ridiculous yet culturally deep-reaching saga was blown into the Story of the Week by a numerically tiny yet massively powerful special-interest group, and no, I’m not talking about Jews, at least not this time. Perhaps the gay lobby now outranks the race hustlers in terms of media power. But in attempting to silence Phil Robertson, these ideologically intolerant peen-slurpers are also dishonoring the opinions of the 45% or so of Americans who agree with him that homosexual behavior is sinful.
What happened to the art of simple, cordial disagreement? Maybe I have a head injury, but I seem to recall a time somewhere in the 1970s and 1980s where people didn’t freak the fuck out and scream for blood over simple ideological disagreements. This was a blissfully quiescent era right after Red Scare paranoia had peaked and just before PC totalitarianism began its ever-strengthening chokehold on the culture.
Though many of the duck-hating dick-lovers would likely claim they’re atheists, what we have here is a basic sandbox dispute between competing religions—traditional Christianity versus Cultural Marxism. Religions are, by their very nature, intolerant of one another.
But at least for the Christmas season, can you all call a truce? You can continue to call each other bigots and sinners—it all pretty much means the same thing, depending on which of the two religions you choose. But can’t you all share some eggnog and have a good laugh about the fact that homosexual behavior has been observed among ducks in the animal kingdom, and whether or not that’s sinful, it’s at least funny?
Gosh, I sure hope so. I dream of a day when hearts and anuses start healing all across America.
My fellow Americans, why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when ducks cry.


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