Something else I already knew...

You scored as Serenity (from Firefly). You like to live your own way and do not enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you that you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you. Coming on December 1, 2005: Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? The Sequel Serenity (from Firefly) 88% Millennium Falcon (from Star Wars) 75% SG-1 (from Stargate) 69% Nebuchadnezzar (from The Matrix) 63% Galactica (from Battlestar: Galactica) 63% Enterprise D (from Star Trek) 56% Bebop (from Cowboy Bebop) 56% Moya (from Farscape) 56% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

"It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil."
-- Friedrich A. Hayek

Gone...but not forgotten...

Ok...we haven't been around much. We are relocating to a new "gulch". We are almost in. Once we get settled there should be more bloggin' goin' on. In the meantime visit the links on the blogroll. Most of them are good eggs, and they all have something to say.

One thing I need to make clear. Liberty is only for those who actually want it. If you don't want it, you won't do the things neccesary to achieve it and you won't be free. If you do want it, then no one in the world will keep it from you. It is that simple. Too many times I hear liberty minded folk asking for government or society to give them freedom. If freedom is something that can be given, then it can also be taken away. Remember, no one can enslave you without your permission. Take freedom for yourself. Set an example for others and stop "trying to change the world".

"... the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. "
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty [1859]

You scored as Captain Jack Sparrow...

Roguish,quick-witted, and incredibly lucky, Jack Sparrow is a pirate who sometimes ends up being a hero, against his better judgement. Captain Jack looks out for #1, but he can be counted on (usually) to do the right thing. He has an incredibly persuasive tongue, a mind that borders on genius or insanity, and an incredible talent for getting into trouble and getting out of it. Maybe its brains, maybe its genius, or maybe its just plain luck. Or maybe a mixture of all three.

Captain Jack Sparrow		88%
William Wallace		79%
James Bond, Agent 007		71%
Lara Croft		71%
Maximus		71%
El Zorro		71%
Neo, the "One"		67%
Batman, the Dark Knight		67%
The Amazing Spider-Man		63%
Indiana Jones		63%
The Terminator		50%

Thanks to The Anarchangel for the link...

"Beg your pardon, mam... I'm a pirate, and proud to be called one..." Robert Shaw as "Red Ned" Lynch, Captain of "The Blarney Cock" - Swashbucklers

Liberty ain't easy...

Ryan McMaken, at LewRockwell.com reviews Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. You might think that so soon after the birth of the nation, things would be relatively peaceful, liberty would prevail and all would be well with the grand experiment. You would be wrong...

In 1796, when Washington was more than happy to leave the troubles of political dissent to someone else, the Federalists had become the target of significant public criticism from Jefferson and the Republicans. Events had helped to solidify party cooperation. Hamilton’s taxes, it should be remembered, were the result of a Federalist-supported treaty (negotiated by Federalist Chief Justice John Jay) approving the use of federal taxes to pay off British creditors from the war. The treaty infuriated supporters of local sovereignty and legislative primacy, including Jefferson. According to Beard, Hamilton was stoned in the streets while attempting to defend the treaty and "Jay was burned in effigy far and wide amid howls of derision from enraged Republicans." Americans had begun to experience the fruits of the new constitution. And many didn’t like what was happening.

Later, in an effort to destroy the Republican threat, Federalist newspapers, emboldened by the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, had begun to demand that "traitors must be silent," and the Federalist Gazette of the United States decreed that "He that is not for us is against us. It is patriotism to write in favor of government – it is sedition to write against it."

Jefferson, now regularly called a traitor by half the newspapers in the land, had had enough. Ferling recounts Jefferson’s impassioned plea against an unchecked federal government:

Jefferson took to his desk at Monticello…and wrote that the framers of the Constitutional Convention – delegates who represented twelve separate states, not the nation – had formed a "compact" to vest the national government with certain explicit powers but leave the "residuary mass" of the people’s "rights to their own self-government" within the states. Yet, Jefferson asked, who now was to determine if the national government had overstepped the bounds assigned to it in the Constitution? No "common judge" existed, and it would be ludicrous for federal authorities to be the "final judge of the extent of power delegated to itself." Each state would have to decide. Each state, he insisted, must have the authority to declare improper steps taken by the national government to be "void and of no force" within its jurisdiction. The vice president had drafted a doctrine of state nullification.

Knowing the rage these writings would produce in the minds of Federalists, Jefferson cloaked his personal support of these doctrines in secrecy. But, according to Ferling, Jefferson was confident that most Americans had never desired the kind of national government that the Federalists had been trying to impose on the public for a decade. He believed that time was running out for the Federalists.

More here...


"...the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
-- Thomas Jefferson