My gift to you, Fort Theatre.
BEST MOVIE EVER
Umm.
I never claimed to be any good at photoshop, but cmon.
I might be the only person in the theater for this film but it’d still be the greatest thing to happen to the Garden of Eden since BC.
Coming Soon: The Last Supper.
But I will categorically deny that I ever kidnapped anyone or forced anybody to use drugs.
“
| — | Rand Paul |
Don’t get me wrong, American Politicians, or hell, even citizens for that matter, discussing armed revolution concerns me too. But he isn’t wrong about the origin of the Second Amendment. Its like my boy Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
The idea of armed resistance to a tyrannical government was front and center in the minds of our founders. An excessive and over reaching government was what they feared most. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the Articles of Confederation. They hobbled the government for a reason.
TJ is actually a great source of real revolution-y quotes. A couple of examples:
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. “If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.” “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny” Quotes Courtesy of Thinkexist and Bartleby, formatting courtesy of me not knowing how to change it after the copy and paste.Every generation needs a new revolution.”
To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
“
| — | Christopher Hitchens, discussing his cancer diagnoses |
Water at 718 Frames Per Second - Technorati Videos
if you have drugs, now is the time to take them
Hooters 1st commercial (via HootersRestaurants)
WHY IS OUR BEER SO COLD?
So yeah, I post my annoying political shit on here, usually without commentary. But today, for some reason, I am feeling it, so lets give it a shot.
I’m a libertarian. Most of you who read this ( I think that there are like… 3? maybe) are aware of that fact. But I wonder how many of you know why.
First off, of course, there are the ideals. The Declaration of Independence, J.S. Mills, John Locke, Ayn Rand when she sticks to the basic political stuff and doesnt try to extrapolate it to romance and architecture, this shit gives me a real hard-on. Pure and simple. I like the idea of individualism. It appeals to me on a basic level that will make me always favor arguments for it over arguments against it. Don’t really have a better way of putting it than that.
But ideals are not everything. There is practice too. And that’s pretty goddamn important. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say I worry about growing government power. Forget the totalitarian nightmare, that 1984 shit. It’s scary, but that transition is something entirely different, and anyone who disagrees on that is a dumbass. But its the smaller things. America has a lot of laws. At the municipal, county, state, and federal level. The thing is, yeah of course the police should know the law, especially before the arrest someone, but honestly, how could they? I’d bet there isn’t a police officer in this fair nation who knows all of the laws in his or her jurisdiction.
1% of the United States population is incarcerated. 3million and change. Now I don’t feel like going off on a war on drugs thing, or a prison-industrial complex thing, and I certainly dont want to go through how the prison system serves as a real nice modern version racial disenfranchisement ala Jim Crow. I just dont feel like it. So let me just settle for this: I think that there are too many laws in this country. Too damn much stuff is illegal. Its way too easy to get arrested, have your property seized via asset forfeiture pre-conviction, lose the right to vote, and generally have your life fucked up by the “Justice” system.
Its not just the number of laws, its the mentality. I don’t know when “Tough on Crime” became such a big political merit badge, but it is one. Mandatory sentences, three strikes laws, SWAT teams serving search warrants on non-violent offenders, I honestly think that its lunacy. No politician is willing to throw the breaks on this crazy train. People claim horror at figures like Sherrif Joe Arpaio because of his publicized antics, such as his ownership of an APC, or a humvee with a .50 cal turret. But he is just all of this taken to its logical extreme. Look at cases like Salvatore Culosi(1) who got shot to death, unarmed, while a SWAT team served a warrant for illegal gambling. Look at Aiyana Jones(2), the seven year old girl who got set on fire by a flashbang grenade while she was sleeping, and then shot by police, after they served a warrant on the wrong residence in a duplex. The police in this country have this military mentality that is very dangerous. I am not saying that there are no good police officers. Honestly, I think most of them are, call me naive if you will. But, however good a person may be, you keep telling him or her that they are at war with crime, that their department is an army and their jurisdiction a battlefield, and you will have the mentality I am discussing, in which civilians are seen, not as citizens whom public servants are beholden to, but rather as enemy combatants.
I ranted here. I know. Sue me. If you don’t like it, you three readers of mine, then don’t read I suppose. That was kinda cathartic.
1.http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/36743/death-by-wager
2. http://www.macombdaily.com/articles/2010/05/17/news/doc4bf0c1bd018d2538679040.txt
