The Ron Paul Question

Nearly eight years ago, flush with the zeal of the newly converted anarchist libertarian, I passionately advocated for abstinence from voting under any circumstances—forever. Four years ago, I expressed my doubts hither and yon about Dr. Ron Paul’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, sniffing as I had done a few years earlier that it was somehow not properly anarchist/libertarian to ever vote for anyone in any government election for any reason, even if it was for a candidate who was vowing to do whatever he could to roll back state tyranny and oppression.

As the song goes, I was so much older then but I’m younger than that now. 

You Can't Say Nobody Tried to Warn You

It's Getting REAL in the U.S. of A.

(See the addendum at the end of this entry.)

"May you live in interesting times." I know a lot of people who think that is an ancient Chinese proverb. Wikipedia theorizes that it may actually have originated in the English language as no one has ever been able to find a Chinese source. It is supposed to be the first of three successively more severe curses, says the Wik, the subsequent ones being, "May you come to the attention of those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for."

I would think that one should view being alive at any point in time to be interesting, but we are most definitely living in an interesting time by anyone's standard. And I would normally dig that, I really would. It's just that I'd rather not be living in an interesting time during which "interesting" is synonymous with scary as hell. As the urban youth lingo has it these days, it's getting real in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Striking Some More Roots

I'm once again pulling guest editor duty over at Strike-The-Root.com.

Check it out.

On Miscognitive Consonance

While perusing the Interwebs recently I came across an ad for something called Americans Elect 2012. They splash across their website such catchy slogans as "Elect a President, Not a Party" and "Help Make History: Every dollar you give helps put your choice on the 2012 ballot." You can sign a petition, submit names of your ideal candidates for government office, submit questions to them, and do all sorts of other fun activities designed to give you that warm, fuzzy, self-deceptive feeling that the gang of thugs who retain a monopoly of force over your life will for some who-knows-what reason, presumably out of a superhuman capacity for altruism, put your particular concerns before the concerns of their own monopoly.

Wee luv are warz

Voluntary Self-Revelation

Visa and MasterCard decided last year to cut off all services for facilitating donations to WikiLeaks on the grounds that the whistleblower site was engaging in "illegal" activities by posting hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government cables allegedly provided by Pfc. Bradley Manning, as well as the notorious "Collateral Murder" video.