“Transcendence Gate”

Maybe it was a myth, born of a universal but desperate hope...

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KA-POW! #27 - Upshur

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Abel P. Upshur for “Our Federal Government” :

The principle that ours is a consolidated government of all the people of the United States, and not a confederation of sovereign States, must necessarily render it little less than omnipotent. That principle, carried out to its legitimate results, will assuredly render the federal government the strongest in the world. The powers of such a government are supposed to reside in a majority of the people; and, as its responsibility is only to the people, that majority may make it whatever they please.

...

But in a country so extensive as the United States, with great differences of character, interests and pursuits, and with these differences, too, marked by geographical lines, a fair opportunity is afforded for the exercise of an oppressive tyranny, by the majority over the minority.

KA-POW! #26 - Palmer

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Matt Palmer for “Rothbard and the Nature of the State” :

The Rothbardian perspective is distinctive because he refuses to interpret the actions of states as belonging to a special class of human action. Rothbard holds all people to the same standard of conduct, whereas others give the actions of states special moral considerations. For instance, if one person who is not designated as possessing state authority threatens another person with violence in order to take their property it is considered criminal. However, the very same action if committed by those with state authority is not considered criminal. Nobody can deny that the actions are the same, even if the intentions are different. The difference in these actions is simply a matter of how the actions are interpreted.

KA-POW! #25 - Read

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Leonard Read for “Find the Wrong, and There's the Right” :

Man, on the other hand, does not now possess a like set of instinctual do-nots: built-in prohibitions. Instead, he must enjoy or suffer the consequences of his own free will, his own power to choose between what's right and what's wrong. In a word, man is more or less at the mercy of his own imperfect understanding and conscious decisions.

Beating the Drums of Olds

I had been relying on a very tired twenty-year-old sedan...

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KA-POW! #24 - Casey

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Doug Casey for “How to Survive Financial Collapse Right Now” :

Because governments are not living persons who care and can be motivated to do the right thing. They are collections of individuals — politicians and bureaucrats, not exactly the most desirable types — who pursue their own interests. Regardless of the rhetoric, their interests coincide with the public good only on occasion, like a broken clock being right twice a day. Even in the most enlightened times — even in the best of times — governments have huge incentives to spend more than they take in. These are not the best of times; the population has been trained for generations to expect subsidies and freebies as their due, without regard to who pays or how they will be paid.