Liberty unquestionably demands an educated people – because daily living requires some degree of understanding of how the world works. There are, of course, many questions. How much education? About what subjects? What balance between education and experience?
This old cartoon makes a pretty good point:
We know, it is a long headline. Hopefully it attracted your attention.
As mentioned several times recently, we seem to always be hammering on California and San Francisco (and other cities and regions in the People’s Democratic Republic).
So here is another one.
As reported in the GB News, California drivers will see amazing increases in taxes on gasoline and Diesel in the next two years: “The California Air Resources Board Low Carbon Fuel Standard 2023 amendments impact assessment suggested that drivers would feel the squeeze over the next two years.Prices are estimated to jump by 47 cents per gallon in 2025 and 52 cents in 2026 – excluding the existing gas tax in the state. On Monday, the average cost per gallon in California was $5.286, compared to a national average of $3.619.”
Continue readingEditor’s Note: We tend to rail on the City and County of San Francisco.
The NY Post reports that the City is spending millions of dollars to provide essential products to the homeless of the city. Given San Francisco’s climate and terrain, it would seem reasonable that the City is giving the indigent better shelter, warm clothing, perhaps even free bus and light-rail passes.
But no: the City and County of San Francisco is providing the vast numbers of jobless, often mentally-ill and drug-addicted, squatters on the streets something much more important. The city government has budgeted $5 million dollars to buy booze for their homeless population. Vodka and beer, specifically.
Continue readingThe sign says it all:
Tyranny is built on lies and fabrications – including lies which are warping of truth. And as with freeways, where you would find such a sign, the wide gate and the broad way is the road to serfdom: you have to take the narrow slip road (exit ramp) if you want truth.
And indeed, “the truth shall make you free” as a very wise and important man once said. But only if you act on the truth. Only if you take the exit and leave the freeway – the broad way – that goes to serfdom: to tyranny and slavery.
The choice is yours. The choice is mine. And we can’t not make that decision, sooner or later.
If you want to learn more about liberty and living free, while resisting tyranny, look up:
F. A. Hayek The Road to Serfdom (Academia.edu – free registration needed) Free download
H. Browne How I found freedom in an unfree world (Summary by Nat Eliason: book online here)
For younger people: The Tuttle Twins series of books and stories
We’ve been bombarded with images of protesters chanting “from the river to the sea” in support of Hamas and Palestinians against Israel. We also have seen a deluge of opposition claiming that this chant is literally a call for genocide of “Jews” (Israelis). The pro-Palestinians are quick to claim that the current war is nothing more than an Israelis genocide of Palestinians – now in Gaza and later in Samaria and Judea (the West Bank). Israel is condemned as “historically denying nationhood to Palestine and Palestinians.”
Who has the right of it?
Mottos like this are catchy memes to trigger people’s emotions. They are ubiquitous throughout history: “Remember the Alamo,” “Remember the Maine,” and “Remember Pearl Harbor” are all American examples.
The claimed denial of Palestinian statehood by Israel is a false one. For more than 70 years, the Israelis have been willing to accept a “two-state solution” but the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank have rejected that. Rather, they demand publically that the only solution in their eyes is one-state. No Israel.
In the same way, in the last eight months, Israel has agreed to attempted ceasefires in their war with Hamas. But it has been Hamas that has rejected those attempts: in essence demanding that Israel in essence surrender to them: to Hamas.
The chant expresses this idea: the State of Israel has no right to exist. The Hebrews (Jews) have no right to live in the Levant. It may not go as far as Jews have no right to live, but some advocating this seem to push that far.
Does this amount to genocide? Very possibly.
Continue readingDespite recent snows in the High County (the Rockies and Sierras and Black Hills, at least), the summer tourist season is nearly upon us. With that, people are traveling and warm days and cool nights (but not too cool) bring out the rats. The human kind as well as the kind with tails.
And courtesy of the current fad of “from the river to the sea” protests and occupations and “peaceful” vandalism and confrontations on and off campuses across the country? People are concerned about the safety of themselves and their families as they travel and as travelers come to their area.
The mainstream media loves to feed on and ramp up these fears. Europeans and even Brits and Australians continue to be sold the idea that the States are a lawless, gun-violence-filled land that resembles their imaginations of the Old, Old, Wild West – an image pushed by Hollywood for a century.
Continue readingLet us return to a frequent theme of TPOL.
Modern American education is worse than a farce. It is perhaps the single greatest cause of the seeming collapse of American society, the economy, and the hope of many. A century and a quarter ago, when 8th grade was the most common expectation of Americans, what they learned in 8 years was actually far more than what the average American student has learned in the last quarter century in 13+ years of school. (Pre-school, Kindergarten, grades 1-12). And perhaps more than the majority of graduates in “liberal arts” of colleges and universities learn today.
Let us look back, not just 125 years, but 2000 years. Back to antiquity – education (in ancient Rome, during the Republic (SPQR)) and early in the Principate under Augustus and Tiberius.
Continue readingWe were warned a long time ago, weren’t we?
It was not, of course, just Madison who told us what might happen.
George Washington, yet another Virginian aristocrat, told us to avoid foreign entanglements. Something that we “sorta” did avoid until 1915 when that piece of work Wilson threw us into the British and French camp against the evil Huns. Which ultimately led to tens of thousands dead and maimed. No not just those who died on the Western Front bailing the Brits and French (and Belgians) out. But the thousands dead from accident and illnesses. Especially the hundreds of thousands dead of Spanish Flu. Which wasn’t Spanish at all: it seems to have originated in Kansas and spread through the vast camps of conscripts in places like Camp Funston (on Fort Riley) being trained to be cannon fodder to save Paris and London from defeat by the awful, awful Kaiser. (Never mind that the Brits and French were far, far more successful at the imperialism racket than the Germans. Or Austrians.)
Immediately followed by interventions in Russia against the still more evil Bolsheviks, followed by multiple alliances (not actually legal) and quickly led to 1939 and 1941: massive foreign involvement that has now lasted (in the guise of the UN, NATO, and a dozen other alliances) for more than 80 years.
Madison also told us this:
Of course, the modern Regressives want us to look at these people as just dead white slaveholders who must be ignored. Who have, like so many other politically-incorrect people of the past, been canceled in the halls of academia and government-run, tax-funded schools. And increasingly in every part of government and more and more businesses. At least the multi-national corporations.
And Madison was right, of course. Today we have in the States – and indeed around the world – tyranny and oppression on a scale as great as any time in history. More subtle, more “gentle,” more tolerated, and less overtly bloody than the great episodes of oppression in history. We have no sacrifices of pigs in temples, no marching of the intellectuals and business people out into the jungle to be slaughtered, no kulaks to be starved to death, no gypsies and Hebrews herded into the showers. Not yet.
And the Lord willing, at least in the West and hopefully in the Fifty States, we never will. But only if we take action to prevent it. To turn the tide of authoritarian totalitarianism back on itself.
Which we can do. If we don’t let ourselves get distracted by the likes of all the celebrities and the various fads. If we not only “mind your own business” but persuade other people to also mind their own business, and not ours.
The choice is ours!
Paradigm (formerly Agora) recently discussed dying media: specifically broadcast television (TV). The writer believes that 2024 may be the last gasp of broadcast media as Biden, Trump, and hundreds of candidates flood the old networks and local stations with billions of campaign dollars. He points out that the main spending will be in seven battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Some of these seven morer than others because they are looking at open Senate and House and even governor’s races that are near toss-ups.
Continue reading
The Price of Liberty 
The hits just keep on a-coming! Delusional?
One of us here at TPOL misheard reading of this Fox News headline: Gavin Newsom called ‘delusional’ after touting California as national model on fighting homelessness ‘He’s been in power for two decades and hasn’t solved a thing,’ one X user remarked.
How did we misread it? She thought it was “invites homelessness” instead of “fights homelessness.” It was an honest mistake: the People’s Republic of California and many of its jurisdictions (Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County, and good old San Francisco, to name three) seem very much to be promoting the so-called “crisis” of homelessness. Up six percent in the last year alone.
Promoting it by spending billions (going to the usual government contractors and employees, of course) to provide goods and services for the ever-growing homeless populations. Making life easier for them, perhaps, but encouraging continued camping out and dependence of government handouts. Why bother to work when the living can be free and easy? Especially since California is so greedy and stingy that Sacramento won’t raise the minimum wage to $30/hour?
It is worth noting several things:
Of course, California can be considered the Homeland of Delusion. Courtesy of Hollywood, and well ahead of contenders in NYC (Broadway and media) and Nashville. It is not surprising that Newsom would be infected by an endemic hazard of the State.
While California’s homeless rate is 75% higher than the next State (New York), they have already thrown an estimated $24 billion at the problem. That’s half of their State deficit for the last year: a staggering $49 billion. (Admittedly, pikers compared to DC, but still…)
And all that relatively untracked money is going into someone’s pockets: which is why many organizations and individuals continue to push more and more for incredibly foolish decisions to come out of Sacramento. Anything that generates a buck: no matter how heinous. Especially when they can spin it as “compassionate” and “for the children” and “against global warming.”
Delusion on the part of Newsom may be a feature, not a glitch in his future political plans. After all, he is still much less delusional than beloved leader of the Democrats, Uncle Joe. Though maybe a bit more so than Obummer. (But then, officially, Obummer is so, so last decade.) And when you look at the track record of the last five years’ Democratic leaders in the States, and Congress, delusion could be seen as an essential character trait and even job description. (Not that the GOP is any better, just not so flashy maybe.)
But the last thought is staggering. After all, California is seen as “model” for the other forty-nine States in many things. Environmental “protection.” The arts, especially the performing arts. Sadly, the ever-greater role of government in daily life. “Integration” as regards race and culture. Perhaps it is California’s failure to deal with homelessness and homeless people that is the model that Newsom and those like him want us to follow in the other forty-nine States. Maybe he and so many others are measuring success by an entirely different standard than we lovers of liberty are wont to do.