Golf

[Golf @GolfTube99]

Complete slaughter of the historical record here. Friedman failed, his way was never even sniffed. Since 1912 our government prices our homes, everything we buy, the size of our paychecks.

GOP is not going to get away with this lie - the base is not as dumb as the swamp thinks.

[H.A. Hazony @HAHazony]

VP @JDVance tells @michaeljknowles that the economic position of the Republican party has moved from Milton Friedman to Alexander Hamilton.

Less laissez-faire and more American developmentalism.

The economy is a tool to provide a good life for citizens.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

This is all true - but missing the entire silver lining: American civilian gun ownership.

Every adult male has a duty to be armed, trained and ready to fight threats foreign and domestic.

I argue the last and only restraint now is the line 100 million gun owners draw.

[Porter Stansberry @porterstansb]

As we approach our 250th anniversary, I believe it's worth noting that our government is only actually 165 years old.

The American Republic established in 1776 ended in 1861.

The Civil War cost almost a million lives: one out of every five white men of military age in the South and one out of every ten in the North. It destroyed virtually all of the wealth in the South — a 90% reduction to per capita GDP. The South would not recover economically until 1950.

But the real cost of the war wasn't economic. It was political.

The Civil War destroyed the Federalist system that our founders built to ensure the central government's power remained genuinely limited. Not limited by the goodwill of its legislators, which is no limit at all, but limited by the existence of rival sovereign States, which could restrain the central government and each other through competition.

After 1865 the only real limit to federal power was the self-restraint of the men in office. And that didn't last for long...

But, before we look at the long-term impact of America's first war of aggression, let us dispel a critical myth: that the Civil War ended slavery. Slavery was ending because of technology and economics. And it would have ended just as surely if no war had ever been fought between the States.

Britain abolished slavery, without a war, throughout its empire in 1833, freeing some 700,000 people in the West Indies alone. France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848. Russia — the most backward great power in Europe — emancipated some twenty-three million serfs in 1861, the very year of Sumter. The Netherlands freed the slaves of Surinam and Curaçao in 1863. Across the entire industrializing world, unfree labor was abandoned within a single compressed generation. And, in no other great nation, was war required.

In America, slavery did not end because of General Grant and the boys in blue. It did not end because of a moral awakening. The cause was economic.

Chattel slavery extracts muscle power from human beings. Therefore, slavery only makes economic sense if muscle power is the binding constraint on production. Once machines had multiplied the labor output of muscle by hundreds of times, slavery was not only immoral but inefficient. In an industrial economy a slave costs more than he yields. As a result, capital flees from slavery into factories. All over the world. And even in the South.

Slavery ended everywhere at roughly the same time for the same reason: innovation and economics. It would have ended in the American South regardless of who won at Gettysburg. Even Brazil, the last holdout in the Western hemisphere, freed its 725,000 slaves with the Golden Law of 1888. No war was required: slavery was no longer productive.

With apologies to the celebrants of Juneteenth, slavery was not legally abolished in the United States until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December 1865. The institution died, not because of the war, but because the world had entered the machine age.

The unnecessary destruction of half of our country and almost a million people wasn't the greatest tragedy of the Civil War. The greatest tragedy was the loss of Federalism and the hard-won liberty Americans won in the Revolution.

The Civil War destroyed the federal structure of the American republic, in which the several States were sovereign in their own spheres, with genuinely different legal systems, cultures, and traditions. The national government was beholden to the States, with only limited and enumerated powers.

The clearest proof of this change lies in our language. Before 1861, the United States was a plural noun. Men said the United States "are." After 1865 our country became singular. The United States "is."

The doctrine that a state could check the central government — by interposition, by nullification, in the last resort by departure — died at Appomattox, and with it the last structural brake on the power of the federal government died too.

The framers had not relied on parchment to limit the government they created. They relied on competition. So long as the States were genuinely sovereign — so long as a man oppressed in one State could remove to another, so long as the national government had to reckon with twenty or thirty rival centers of authority each jealous of its own jurisdiction — the central government could not easily grow into a Leviathan. The States were not administrative subdivisions. They were the Constitution's immune system.

What followed the Civil War was America's first empire -- in the South. And Empire's require a strong central government. Thus began a long erosion of the line between the citizen and the State, and between private institutions and public power.

Twelve years after the war, the Supreme Court considered whether a State could fix by law the prices a private grain warehouse charged its customers. The owners argued it was a taking of their property without due process — that what a man does with his own property, and what he charges for its use, is rightfully his own affair. The Court disagreed. Chief Justice Waite ruled that when private property is "affected with a public interest, it ceases to be juris privati only," and may be regulated by the government for the common good (Munn v. Illinois, 1877).

That was the end of private property in America. After all, if the national legislature may decide which property is "affected with a public interest," and may then dictate its prices and uses, there is in principle no property the government may not control.

Justice Stephen Field saw it and dissented with prophetic fury. The doctrine, he warned, "is nothing less than a bold assertion of absolute power by the State to control at its discretion the property and business of the citizen." A legislature that could fix the uses and prices of property "against the consent of the owner" could "deprive him of the property as completely as by a special act for its confiscation or destruction."

New York City's landlords are finding out the truth of this reality. They believe they own their properties. But they are about to find out otherwise, as rents will now be controlled by the mayor, who is a communist. This will spread. A communist ruling over all of America is only a matter of time. Why? Because the law provides an unlimited incentive for such power. There is nothing in America the government cannot take from you. Nothing.

The proof of the unlimited central authority was established in blood. The courts followed where the armies led. And the first American Empire — the North's conquest of the South — led to more such military adventures, which continue to this day.

In its first century, the United States heeded its founders' warnings against entangling alliances, a large standing army, and foreign military adventures. But the creation of the massive Northern army created its own momentum. Only 20 years after Reconstruction, the country clamored for another Empire and war against Spain. America became an imperial power, with possessions from the Caribbean to the far Pacific — Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines.

The consolidated nation that emerged from the Civil War was the precondition for the American Empire that emerged in 1898. Power flows to the center, and the center's reach has no natural boundary.

The Leviathan must be fed.

In 1913, every American became a direct serf to the national government: The Sixteenth Amendment gave the federal government the power to tax incomes directly. The size of a government is set, in the end, by the size of its revenues. The income tax removed the ceiling.

The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified the same year, provided for the direct election of United States senators. Under the original Constitution, senators were chosen by the state legislatures. This was the last vestige of State sovereignty. It could not be allowed to stand. The Senate stopped being the guardian of federalism.

And… then… with these Constitutional impediments finally vanquished, you saw Leviathan act to ensure its permanent dominance: it would control the money supply.

In December of 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve System. The power over money, which the Constitution had strictly withheld from the central government, was enshrined into law. Income tax, a central bank, and the removal of the states from the Senate — all in one year.

The Revolution that began in 1861 was complete. America's Empire had begun.

Munn established that the government may dictate the use of private property. 1898 established that the consolidated nation would project power without limit beyond its borders. 1913 established the revenue, the money power, and the removal of the states from their guard post. The 1964 Civil Rights Act expanded this dictatorial power into every private transaction in America.

Government of the people, for the people, and by the people has been destroyed.

We now live in an Empire, not a Republic.

The Civil War didn't free any slaves; it enslaved all of us.

[Martin @MartinTweats]

You mean science books written by these Christians?

Isaac Newton
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Blaise Pascal
Michael Faraday
James Clerk Maxwell
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
Max Planck
Arthur Eddington
Georges Lemaître
Werner Heisenberg
Erwin Schrödinger
John Polkinghorne
Jennifer Wiseman
Don Page
Russell Stannard
Stephen M. Barr
Ard Louis
William D. Phillips
Charles Townes
Antony Hewish
Nicolaus Copernicus
Tycho Brahe
Giovanni Battista Riccioli
Christopher Clavius
Pierre Gassendi
Roger Joseph Boscovich
Marin Mersenne
Jean Picard
Giuseppe Mercalli
Leonhard Euler
René Descartes
Augustin-Louis Cauchy
Georg Cantor
Kurt Gödel
John Napier
Marin Mersenne
Brook Taylor
Colin Maclaurin
Bonaventura Cavalieri
Pierre de Fermat
Blaise Pascal
Jacques Hadamard
John Wallis
Girolamo Saccheri
Chemists
Robert Boyle
Antoine Lavoisier
John Dalton
Humphry Davy
Robert Bunsen
Joseph Priestley
Amedeo Avogadro
Jöns Jacob Berzelius
Henri Moissan
Louis Pasteur
Linus Pauling
Gregor Mendel
Carolus Linnaeus
John Ray
Georges Cuvier
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Alfred Russel Wallace
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Francis Collins
Kenneth Miller
Jerome Lejeune
Francisco J. Ayala
Conrad Hal Waddington
George Washington Carver
Jan Swammerdam
Marcello Malpighi
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
John Ambrose Fleming
Leonardo da Vinci
William Harvey
Joseph Lister
Edward Jenner
Thomas Sydenham
Andreas Vesalius
Raymond Damadian
Alexis Carrel
Thomas Browne
Paul Brand
Ben Carson
John Snow
Albrecht von Haller
Giovanni Battista Morgagni
Nicolaus Steno
James Dana
John Woodward
William Buckland
Adam Sedgwick
Charles Lyell
Matthew Fontaine Maury
Louis Agassiz
Richard Owen
Charles Babbage
Konrad Zuse
Claude Shannon
Alan Turing
Samuel Morse
Alessandro Volta
Guglielmo Marconi
Nikola Tesla
Wernher von Braun
John Ambrose Fleming
Karl Ferdinand Braun
Philo Farnsworth
Rosalind Picard
Roger Bacon
Gregor Mendel
Georges Lemaître
Marin Mersenne
Pierre Gassendi
Christopher Clavius
Athanasius Kircher
Girolamo Saccheri
Roger Joseph Boscovich
Jean Picard
Nicolas Malebranche
Nicolas Steno
William Buckland
Adam Sedgwick
Owen Gingerich
Deborah Haarsma
Prasanta Kalita
Alister McGrath
C. John Collins
Simon Conway Morris
Denis Alexander
Fritjof Capra
Allan Sandage
Arthur Compton
Robert Millikan
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Walter Bradley
Henry Schaefer
Brian Heap
Arthur Peacocke
Ian Hutchinson
Freeman Dyson
Charles Coulson
John Lennox
Rosalind Franklin
Cyril Ponnamperuma
Peter Medawar
George Ellis
Joseph Murray
Charles Hard Townes
Jeremiah Horrocks
Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Evangelista Torricelli
Otto Hahn
Max Born
André-Marie Ampère
Jean-Baptiste Biot
Georg Ohm
Christian Doppler
Anders Celsius
Ole Rømer
William Herschel
John Herschel
Johann Bernoulli
Daniel Bernoulli
Niels Stensen
Athanasius Kircher
Jean Buridan
Nicole Oresme
Albertus Magnus
Thomas Bradwardine
Robert Grosseteste
John Philoponus

[Golf @GolfTube99]

Feminism and weak men who let it happen turned into:

[Rae ❤️‍🔥 @FiatLuxGenesis]

Widespread contraception (the pill) turned procreative sex into recreational sex that fractured the relationship between men and women that led to promiscuity that led to no fault divorce that led to abortion that led to the destruction of the family that led to societal chaos and our current moment.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@FiatLuxGenesis Sorry - append “Feminism allowed by weak men led to…” at start.

[MW4Liberty @MW4Liberty]

The defense for Flock Cameras, etc, is simple: “You’re in public, so you have no right to privacy.” But have you considered the endgame of that logic?

If privacy stops at your doorstep, then it is perfectly legal for a police AI drone to meet you at your driveway, follow you everywhere, and record every interaction you have all day long. Every single person, followed by a machine, every single day.

If that physical reality makes your skin crawl, then you cannot defend the digital version. An AI camera grid on the streets is just a robot cop following you that you’ve been told to ignore.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@PalmerLuckey @jhanikhil @pmarca This is a way more important comment than most will realize.

Interestingly: This is especially acute in small conservative towns - where there is so little revenue that selfish boomers have to choose between higher taxes/rotting town or letting people build things.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@esaagar How are you and this many other people this dull?
The in-person requirement is for notarization, which may or may not be stupid. The Title company makes about $0 on that and you pay them for Title Insurance, on which a 5 second Google can enlighten you.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@slave_2_liberty This is retarded, and this guy sucks. Our world is full of people dull enough to find this a compelling rant?

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@CNN Protestants grasping for some kind of legitimate authority is so hilarious 🤣🤣

[Abandon Comfort @abandoncomfortx]

Not having to lock the front door to my house or take my keys out of my truck at night is absolutely worth dealing with “bad pizza” & limited mexican food options.

Whoever/whatever convinced young people otherwise is ridiculous.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@MallBangers @grok I’m curious. Make the exact inverse of the advice in the post, in the form of life advice.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@MallBangers So, we take life advice from him now? Is that how this works?

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@ThefarmerFranz @TheJustice_Rev Cheers and would love that longer convo some day. And sorry for assuming you weren’t messing around 🤣🤣 maybe I’m too doomer now for my own good

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@TheJustice_Rev @ThefarmerFranz I can’t tell anymore 😩
Getting paid for leaving land non-productive is real, stuffing corn in our gas and food and making far worse products, just to create a market, is real. Dousing food in nasty chemicals is real

Farming has all the hallmarks of a welfare-killed industry

[Golf @GolfTube99]

OK out of curiosity I see OP is “husband, father, pastor.”

You are nearly as far from the Church as the Mormons, and for nearly identical reasons (just different manifestations).

God bless you please come home, even if it means finding a new job 🙏follow @DrScottHahn

[Golf @GolfTube99]

Correct - and all applies to every Protestant.

It amuses me to watch Protestants, who reject the Church and countless of Her core Dogma, trash the Mormons. They aren’t in on their own joke…. They suddenly stand on Tradition and the Creeds!

No idea who OP is btw

[Golf @GolfTube99]

Correct - and all applies to every Protestant.

It amuses me to watch Protestants, who reject the Church and countless of Her core Dogma, trash the Mormons. They aren’t in on their own joke…. They suddenly stand on Tradition and the Creeds!

No idea who OP is btw

[Joel Webbon @JoelWebbon]

Mike Lee's complaint only works if everyone agrees to ignore what Mormonism actually teaches.

He wants the public to focus on the label while averting its eyes from the contents.

But theology is not judged by branding.

If it were, every cult in America could become orthodox by hiring a better marketing department.

Mike Lee belongs to a religion that teaches God the Father was once a man who progressed to godhood, that human beings may follow the same path, that Jesus and Lucifer share the same heavenly parentage, and that the highest aspiration of the faithful is not merely to worship God forever but to become gods themselves.

These are not minor disagreements within Christianity. These are different answers to the most basic questions Christianity asks.

Mike Lee knows this.

He was raised in Mormon royalty, educated in Mormon institutions, and formed by Mormon theology. His objection is not that the Pentagon misunderstood Mormonism. His objection is that the Pentagon accidentally described it accurately.

What makes the spectacle particularly amusing is that Mormon leaders spent generations insisting they were not what Mike Lee now demands to be called.

-Joseph Smith launched his movement by declaring every existing church on earth an abomination.

-Brigham Young mocked the God of Christianity as a being who "never did exist."

-John Taylor described Christianity as "a perfect pack of nonsense."

-Bruce McConkie warned that the doctrines of Christendom would damn men's souls.

-Gordon Hinckley openly admitted that the Christ worshiped by Mormons was not the Christ worshiped by traditional Christians.

For nearly two centuries Mormon leaders built a theological wall between themselves and Christianity brick by brick, sermon by sermon, book by book. Now Mike Lee appears before that same wall demanding to know who built it. The answer is simple: his own prophets did.

The deeper problem for Senator Lee is that Mormonism's truth claims are so spectacularly strange that they force a choice. Either they are true, in which case historic Christianity has been wrong for nearly two thousand years and Joseph Smith really did restore the gospel through golden plates, angelic visitations, sacred underwear, proxy baptisms for the dead, and a seer stone in a hat. Or they are false, in which case Mormonism is one of the most successful religious inventions in American history.

What it cannot be is ordinary Christianity.

The faith that emerged from Nicaea and Chalcedon has many internal disputes, but none of them involve exalted men becoming gods, planets populated by spirit children, or a deity residing near a star called Kolob.

Mike Lee is free to believe every one of those things.

What he is not free to do is pretend they are the same religion that produced the Apostles' Creed.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@Strikestrike01 @McJuggerNuggets Work on my planks daily. As I said, I’m an awful repentant sinner.
And I am compelled to spread the Gospel, including sharing the (obvious) truth that eugenics and infant sacrifice described here are evil and damning.
Hope I’m corrected if I am temped to the same. God bless.

[Golf @GolfTube99]

@Strikestrike01 @McJuggerNuggets It’s evil to kill a child. Not a grey area.
I am a sinner as well, and beg for forgiveness and sanctification from our Savior. OP must do the same.