Just for fun...
Scene 3
[clop clop]
ARTHUR: Old woman!
DENNIS: Man!
ARTHUR: Old Man, sorry. What knight live in that castle over there?
DENNIS: I'm thirty seven.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I'm thirty seven -- I'm not old!
ARTHUR: Well, I can't just call you `Man'.
DENNIS: Well, you could say `Dennis'.
ARTHUR: Well, I didn't know you were called `Dennis.'
DENNIS: Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you?
ARTHUR: I did say sorry about the `old woman,' but from the behind
you looked--
DENNIS: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior!
ARTHUR: Well, I AM king...
DENNIS: Oh king, eh, very nice. An' how'd you get that, eh? By
exploitin' the workers -- by 'angin' on to outdated imperialist dogma
which perpetuates the economic an' social differences in our society!
If there's ever going to be any progress--
WOMAN: Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here. Oh -- how d'you do?
ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
Who's castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous
collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would--
ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
in that castle?
WOMAN: No one live there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical
aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power
just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that,
eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me,
you saw it didn't you?
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
When the Government Promises It Won’t Abuse Its Powers, It’s Lying
by Kevin Carson
Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne used to point out (“The 7 Vital Principles of Government”) the obvious truth that, no matter what promises are made by the sponsors of a law you favor, and no matter what their stated rationale for it, once it’s passed it will be interpreted and enforced by people utterly unaccountable to you. And it will most likely be interpreted by people you don’t like, to serve the interests of the powerful.
In World War I the Wilson administration and legislative sponsors of the Sedition Act assured the public it would be used only to prosecute those who actively interfered with the war effort or hampered conscription — not to harass dissidents who publicly criticized the government or disagreed with the war on policy grounds. The ensuing mass arrests of left-wing dissidents under the Sedition Act, including Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, were the largest repression of dissent in American history from the Civil War to the present.
More recently, we’ve seen the abuse of RICO statutes — ostensibly passed for the comparatively narrow purpose of fighting organized crime — to suppress political movements out of favor with the government.
Now we’re seeing an especially instructive example of this phenomenon: Homeland Security’s seizure, at the behest of the music and movie industries, of the domain names of dozens of websites which were accused (but not charged, tried or convicted) of promoting copyright infringement. You just go to a URL, and in place of the former website you see a menacing Department of Justice logo. Please note that the “infringing activities” of some of the websites which were shut down consisted entirely of providing search engine results linking to torrent sites. So apparently there’s no longer even a safe harbor for those who link to alleged “copyright infringers.”
Most people who supported the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of DHS, no matter how unjustifiably, presumably believed that those extraordinary grants of power would be used only for the extraordinary purpose of fighting genuine terror networks like Al Qaeda and preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. It should be abundantly clear now that those people were had.
Homeland Security is expanding its mission into areas totally unrelated to the ostensible purpose for which it was initially sold to the public. And it is engaging in this mission creep under the influence of powerful economic interests which are totally unaccountable to the public: Namely, Joe Biden’s friends in the MPAA and RIAA.
Read more
Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne used to point out (“The 7 Vital Principles of Government”) the obvious truth that, no matter what promises are made by the sponsors of a law you favor, and no matter what their stated rationale for it, once it’s passed it will be interpreted and enforced by people utterly unaccountable to you. And it will most likely be interpreted by people you don’t like, to serve the interests of the powerful.
In World War I the Wilson administration and legislative sponsors of the Sedition Act assured the public it would be used only to prosecute those who actively interfered with the war effort or hampered conscription — not to harass dissidents who publicly criticized the government or disagreed with the war on policy grounds. The ensuing mass arrests of left-wing dissidents under the Sedition Act, including Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, were the largest repression of dissent in American history from the Civil War to the present.
More recently, we’ve seen the abuse of RICO statutes — ostensibly passed for the comparatively narrow purpose of fighting organized crime — to suppress political movements out of favor with the government.
Now we’re seeing an especially instructive example of this phenomenon: Homeland Security’s seizure, at the behest of the music and movie industries, of the domain names of dozens of websites which were accused (but not charged, tried or convicted) of promoting copyright infringement. You just go to a URL, and in place of the former website you see a menacing Department of Justice logo. Please note that the “infringing activities” of some of the websites which were shut down consisted entirely of providing search engine results linking to torrent sites. So apparently there’s no longer even a safe harbor for those who link to alleged “copyright infringers.”
Most people who supported the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of DHS, no matter how unjustifiably, presumably believed that those extraordinary grants of power would be used only for the extraordinary purpose of fighting genuine terror networks like Al Qaeda and preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. It should be abundantly clear now that those people were had.
Homeland Security is expanding its mission into areas totally unrelated to the ostensible purpose for which it was initially sold to the public. And it is engaging in this mission creep under the influence of powerful economic interests which are totally unaccountable to the public: Namely, Joe Biden’s friends in the MPAA and RIAA.
Read more
Not All of the Founding Fathers Were Patriots
I finally took the time to watch the HBO documentary, "John Adams," and found it engaging even as it opened my eyes to the fact that I much more a Jeffersonian than most of my everyday, religious-right, conservative acquaintances. To my disappointment, I heard former president John Adams sounding like a typical, modern-day liberal. It is no wonder that his eldest son, the over-achiever/responsible child of Adam's clearly dysfunctional family, who later became sixth president of the United States, immediately assumed the roll of a socialist leader. It was only Thomas Jefferson who I found consistently reasonable. In vain, Jefferson continuously beat the drum of libertarianism to Adams during his presidency. For some reason, many people, the religious right, neo-conservatives especially, tend to delude themselves by idealizing our founding fathers as being the apostles of the "free world." Deeper investigation shows that this was far from the case.
As Polycentricorder.com puts it, "In the first place its important to recognize that not all of the “founding fathers” were patriots. There was quite a large contingency of men during those formative years that were not in favor of liberty for mankind, nor for low taxation, nor for a limited government. Ben Franklin at one point put fourth the idea of doing away with the states entirely and having a single central government to rule the entire country. Hamilton envisioned an American empire based off the British Empire. And George Washington after Fighting a war over taxes on tea, was ready to fight a war against his own people who were rebelling over his unjust tax on whiskey. On the other side there were principled men, who were of the opinion that what London was doing wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t be right even if it were our government that did it. George Mason, and Patrick Henry, chief among them, campaigned against the Ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, and were instrumental in the drafting of the Bill of Rights, without which, the constitution would be clearly seen for what it is, the Charter of a centralized, overbearing, intrusive and unjust centralized government."
"The Constitution is not holy, it was not written by the finger of God on stone tablets and brought down from Mount Sini by Washington! the men who voted for it, were not founding fathers, but traitors to the revolution. Its justification, the very excuse for a stronger centralized government was to beat the british and gain our independence, they said the Articles were not strong enough. And if we lived in Ray Bradbury’s novel, we might accept this as truth, but the fact is that the King signed a peace treaty with the 13 colonies and Vermont four years before the constitution was ratified. Turns out the constitution was entirely unnecessary. Yet there was a silver lining, in that dark our. The Anti Federalist, those against a strong centralized government gave us the bill of rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution."
Read more here: Polycentricorder
As Polycentricorder.com puts it, "In the first place its important to recognize that not all of the “founding fathers” were patriots. There was quite a large contingency of men during those formative years that were not in favor of liberty for mankind, nor for low taxation, nor for a limited government. Ben Franklin at one point put fourth the idea of doing away with the states entirely and having a single central government to rule the entire country. Hamilton envisioned an American empire based off the British Empire. And George Washington after Fighting a war over taxes on tea, was ready to fight a war against his own people who were rebelling over his unjust tax on whiskey. On the other side there were principled men, who were of the opinion that what London was doing wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t be right even if it were our government that did it. George Mason, and Patrick Henry, chief among them, campaigned against the Ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, and were instrumental in the drafting of the Bill of Rights, without which, the constitution would be clearly seen for what it is, the Charter of a centralized, overbearing, intrusive and unjust centralized government."
"The Constitution is not holy, it was not written by the finger of God on stone tablets and brought down from Mount Sini by Washington! the men who voted for it, were not founding fathers, but traitors to the revolution. Its justification, the very excuse for a stronger centralized government was to beat the british and gain our independence, they said the Articles were not strong enough. And if we lived in Ray Bradbury’s novel, we might accept this as truth, but the fact is that the King signed a peace treaty with the 13 colonies and Vermont four years before the constitution was ratified. Turns out the constitution was entirely unnecessary. Yet there was a silver lining, in that dark our. The Anti Federalist, those against a strong centralized government gave us the bill of rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution."
Read more here: Polycentricorder
Nullification
The Ninth Amendment (Amendment IX) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, addresses rights of the people that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The following are excerpts from the article entitled, While the Ninth Amendment and the Right of Nullification Protect Our Freedom, Let Us Also Repeal the 20th Century!, taken from the website, ReasonAndJest.com.
"There are so many reasons for Americans to understand and practice nullification — nullifying federal intrusions into our lives and nullifying federal restrictions on our private personal and economic lives and livelihoods."
Murray Rothbard noted, "With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. We shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state. We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and perpetual war. We shall repeal the 20th century."
Read the entire article at ReasonAndJest
"There are so many reasons for Americans to understand and practice nullification — nullifying federal intrusions into our lives and nullifying federal restrictions on our private personal and economic lives and livelihoods."
Murray Rothbard noted, "With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. We shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state. We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and perpetual war. We shall repeal the 20th century."
Read the entire article at ReasonAndJest
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
PONEROLOGY: The study of evil.
“In the author’s opinion, Ponerology reveals itself to be a new branch of science born out of historical need and the most recent accomplishments of medicine and psychology. In light of objective naturalistic language, it studies the causal components and processes of the genesis of evil, regardless of the latter’s social scope. We may attempt to analyze these ponerogenic processes which have given rise to human injustice, armed with proper knowledge, particularly in the area of psychopathology. Again and again, as the reader will discover, in such a study, we meet with the effects of pathological factors whose carriers are people characterized by some degree of various psychological deviations or defects.” (Lobaczewski, 42)...
"Oversimplification of the causative picture as regards the genesis of evil, often to a single easily understood cause or one perpetrator, itself becomes a cause in this genesis. . . . Any attempt to explain the things that occurred during the first half of our [twentieth] century by means of categories generally accepted in historical thought leaves a nagging feeling of inadequacy. Only a ponerological approach can compensate for this deficit in our comprehension, as it does justice to the role of various pathological factors in the genesis of evil at every social level." (Lobaczewski, 144, 109)
Read more: http://www.ponerology.com/index.html
“In the author’s opinion, Ponerology reveals itself to be a new branch of science born out of historical need and the most recent accomplishments of medicine and psychology. In light of objective naturalistic language, it studies the causal components and processes of the genesis of evil, regardless of the latter’s social scope. We may attempt to analyze these ponerogenic processes which have given rise to human injustice, armed with proper knowledge, particularly in the area of psychopathology. Again and again, as the reader will discover, in such a study, we meet with the effects of pathological factors whose carriers are people characterized by some degree of various psychological deviations or defects.” (Lobaczewski, 42)...
"Oversimplification of the causative picture as regards the genesis of evil, often to a single easily understood cause or one perpetrator, itself becomes a cause in this genesis. . . . Any attempt to explain the things that occurred during the first half of our [twentieth] century by means of categories generally accepted in historical thought leaves a nagging feeling of inadequacy. Only a ponerological approach can compensate for this deficit in our comprehension, as it does justice to the role of various pathological factors in the genesis of evil at every social level." (Lobaczewski, 144, 109)
Read more: http://www.ponerology.com/index.html
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
I'm Back
I stopped blogging last year. I started homeschooling, I became busy with other things and finally I even forgot what account blogger was set up in. I opened a Facebook account and began using that instead. I started to save articles and links and interesting things on a Word document thinking someday I would add this again. I have evolved from a conservative to a conspiracy theorist to a voluntarist. Today, I found my account and opened it. Maybe I will start to fill some pages again.
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