“Your loyalty should always be to your principles, not to any political machine.”
Yes. If you care more about some specific political party than you do about actually making your state or country freer you are doing it wrong.
This is the way.
Your loyalty should always be to your principles, not to any political machine.
Use the best vehicle available to advance your principles — but do not grow too attached to the machine itself.
I love my car because it takes me where I want to go — not because I have loyalty to my car.
BIZARRE: NH Democrat Stefany Shaheen refuses to answer if she endorses Graham Platner or if his conduct is acceptable.
Shaheen's staffer responds by repeatedly attacking the questioner with a donut.
WTF is wrong with Democrats? 🍩
@___weak_weak_@DavidMMcintosh It looks like that because no one reins them in. It isn't like no one can, it's that no one with the power to do so has any incentive to care.
@___weak_weak_@DavidMMcintosh Government isn't accountable, it has no incentive to give a shit. They might make a BS public statement they don't mean to calm most people down then do nothing. It isn't like you can cancel your account and subscribe to a different service.
@___weak_weak_@DavidMMcintosh Police are agents of the state, they will do what their bosses want them to do to keep their jobs. Many people, especially conservatives, are under the delusion that the police work for them, or "the public" or "the people" (whatever that means). Cops work for the government.
I’ve been an atheist all my life (I was raised Catholic, but don’t remember ever actually believing that god exists). I’ve come to the realization over the years that most people need religion. If they don’t have it they start to hold other things sacred, such as the state and its institutions and buildings, or concepts like “democracy” or socialism/communism. It’s a rare person who can completely divorce himself from the divine. And that Christianity and maybe Judaism are the only religions compatible with western civilization and culture. If libertarians don’t make nice and ally with Christians then western civilization is doomed.
"The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That’s all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165."
-P.J. O'Rourke
We need to end the whole concept of "Not guilty by reason of insanity". A human being is responsible for his actions. If you are not responsible for your actions then you are not a human being. Animals who hurt humans are put down. You are either a human being responsible for your actions or you should be put to death immediately.
A judge has accepted a Mississippi man's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity in connection with the stabbing of a Manchester grandfather. Raymond Moore is now in New Hampshire's state psychiatric hospital. https://t.co/9Giv6CcdpN
There is a restaurant in Texas where they bring you food until you tell them to stop.
They do not tell you to stop. You tell them.
I did not know a man could be trusted with such power. I confess I wept.
In my country, when a host feeds you, you finish what is served. To leave food on the plate is to insult the hands that made it. This is not my opinion. This is the law of the table.
So when the man said "all you can eat," I did not hear an offer. I heard a challenge of honor.
The house was offering me everything it had. To stop before the house stopped would be to call the house stingy. I would not insult the house.
Plate one, fried chicken. I bowed. I finished it.
Plate two, ribs. I bowed. I finished it.
Plate three. Four. Five.
The house did not stop. So neither did I.
A waiter came and said, kindly, that I could stop whenever I wished.
I told him I did not come here to wish. I came here to settle a debt of honor.
He brought a manager. The manager brought water. I do not drink water during battle.
By the second hour, the kitchen had slowed. I took this as weakness in the enemy and pressed forward.
By the third hour I could no longer feel my face. But a samurai does not retreat simply because his face has left him.
They turned off the lights and closed the restaurant around me. I remained seated. Still chewing. The last man at the table.
I won.
I have not eaten since. That was eleven days ago.
So tell me honestly. When the sign says all you can eat, who is supposed to surrender first?
Because it will not be me.
My sword broke last winter, and so I went to replace it at the only smith I could find: a vast American hall called The Home Depot.
A young man in an orange apron asked if I needed help. He was perhaps twenty. To carry the burden of an entire armory at twenty, he must have trained since boyhood. I bowed deeply. He said "no worries man" and bowed back, which I found very correct of him.
I told him I sought a blade. A real one. He led me, without hesitation, to an entire wall of them.
I have never seen such a forge. Hundreds of blades, hanging in rows, each wrapped and labeled. This boy guarded more steel than my entire province.
I took down a long one. The label read "machete." A foreign school, perhaps. I ran my thumb along it the way my father taught me, feeling for the soul of the steel.
"You can get the cover for that too," he said, "keeps the rust off."
A scabbard, sold separately. Sensible. I nodded as one nods to a wiser man.
I asked him which blade he would carry into battle. He thought about it seriously. This is the mark of a real craftsman, that he does not answer quickly. Then he pointed to a curved one and said "honestly that one's great for clearing brush."
Clearing brush. A code, surely. The brush being one's enemies. I understood him completely. Two warriors, speaking plainly at last.
I selected three. He helped me carry them to the front. He even asked if I had found everything I was looking for, the way a host asks before you leave his home. I told him he had served his clan with honor.
Then a woman at the counter asked for forty dollars, and for my membership number.
I do not have a membership number. I have a family name, eight hundred years old.
I gave her that instead.
She typed it in. She said it was not coming up.
So tell me honestly, because that boy was the finest swordsmith I have met in this country.
How do I become a member of his clan?
I would be proud to serve under that orange banner.