nwhiker | Kentanji Brown Jackson Hearings

I didn't listen to all of 'em but bits and pieces, plus reporting and I often went back to listen when I saw what I thought had to be misleading headlines.

They were not.

Republicans want to take us back a century.

WTF is the matter with those people? Using the term people loosely here, I think.

I mean, reversing Roe, Griswold, and Loving? And leaving it to the states? Yeah, no. I mean, I know Roe is toast, the stupid little handmaiden will make sure of that, but Griswold? Birth control? I mean, I guess, since it and Roe are both determined based on a certain right to privacy, but damn. I suspect that Eisen... need to look it up.... Eisenstadt vs Baird, the right to birth control for unmarried couples, will go along with. Jesus. Women are truly going to be second class citizens in many states.

1920, here we come.

ETA So I had to look up the spelling for Eisenstadt, and that led me to notice that the right so homosexual relations also falls under the right to privacy. As does Obergefell.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Do bear in mind, I'm not trying to convince or convert you. But you seemed genuinely puzzled: "What is wrong with those people? Don't they understand?"

And the answer is, Yes, we do.

All we got to say on this proposition is this: First, me and you is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time whichever way he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else.
That any government that don't give a man them rights ain't worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of government they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter.
That whenever any government don't do this, then the people have got a right to give it the bum's rush and put in one that will take care of their interests.
Of course, that don't mean having a revolution every day like them South American yellow-bellies, or every time some jobholder goes to work and does something he ain't got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, and any man that wasn't a anarchist or one of them I.W.W.'s would say the same.

But when things get so bad that a man ain't hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won't carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it…

I'm not trying to convert you, I'm pointing out that you're promoting a jejune political philosophy that enshrines toddler level selfishness as a basic tenet, ignores reality of life in a society. It ignores how much of so-called freedom is tied to privilege. And fails to adequately explain how people in society in need of protection will get it.

As for me knowing who Rose Wilder is... Like most women of my generation, the two (or more) before me, and at least one after, I read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books as a child. And when I grew up, I learned more about the author and her daughter. _Libertarians on the Prairie_ was worth the read, though I'd found out about much of it long before.

You mistake me for one of the coffee-shop theologians whose fruitless dithering and debating turned the Libertarian Party from a bold new initiative into a justly-disregarded footnote.

No, I'm a Taft Republican - a landowning, taxpaying, law-abiding Goldwater Reagan Republican who remembers when the sole business of the Federal Governmment was to "protect the country, coin money and leave us alone."

It was not through Federal Socialism that America came to "sit bestride the world like a Colossus." Once, half of all manufacturing worldwide was within the USA. Look today: What isn't "Made in China"?

C Northcote Parkinson stated it best: Nations thrive until the ever-growing burden of government crush them into the ground.

Once was le Grand Siècle - and what is France today? Once Britannia ruled the waves - today it, too, is disregarded, pushed aside by America… which is now just another European tax-and-regulate country. In every case, "There oughtta be a law" - and soon there are too many. For the Greater Good, of course - right, Hillary? (Her contempt for the people she sought to govern was always palpable.)

Once, one income was enough to raise a family. Today, two incomes are not enough - but we have a 1.85 trillion "social spending bill".

That's not my America. And so many people agreed that it put D Trump in office. He was a symptom of our awareness: This is wrong.

Too bad he was what he turned out to be.

(“Stimulus check”? Sure! Here's $3,030 for you. Good day… No? Then where are $1,850,000,000,000 of our money going, and what ever is accomplished?

“Poor people have been voting for Democrats for the last 50 years and they’re still poor.”
— Charles Barkley)

Edited 2022-03-26 02:18 (UTC)

The average law-abiding American has but little to do with the government, and sees but few of its agents. Away from Washington or one of the larger centres of population he sees no government official save the postmaster. The national government lays no direct tax upon him, and only in rare instances, and only after attaining a certain local prominence, is he summoned to serve as juror in a United States court. Indeed, he sees but little more of the State government and its officers. Occasionally the State legislature enacts a law which directly affects him or his business, but not often. In fact, the whole system of government, national, State and local, is represented to the ordinary rural dweller by the post office, and to his fellow in the city or town by the policeman and the fire department. The American has up until this time lived a life fairly free from official surveillance and control. He has been left to his own resources, and that very fact has been the making of him.

The tendency, strongly marked in every European country, to extend to the individual the increasingly paternal care and oversight of the government, is manifest in the United States as well, but it is so repugnant to American traditions and so at war with the principles that have made America what it is, that every proposal for its advance is strongly resisted. So long as developments of this kind confine themselves to safeguarding the public health, to preventing manifest injustice and fraud, and to limiting law-given privilege, they can, however, readily be defended and justified; for we have passed forever beyond the rule of laissez-faire. But when they attempt to to regulate and curtail private business, to limit personal fortunes for purely punitive purposes, and to spy upon the private life of individuals, they are so obnoxious to the American instinct that they will not be permitted by the people - until their national character is wholly changed - even if measures of such a kind could successfully pass the scrutiny of the courts…

Nicholas Murray Butler, “The American as He Is,” lecture before the University of Copenhagen, Sept 1908

To what new America may Americans now emigrate?

Kentanji Brown Jackson Hearings

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What a difference a century makes.