On the anniversary of the signing (the vote was held two days previously) of the Declaration of Independence I will repost something from November of 2008:

Let's talk about Socialism.

We must understand that Socialism is essentially a Master/Slave ideology. If you pardon me for quoting the First Trustifarian, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." And for the socialists, as with the antebellum slaveholders, the needs of the masters will always be much greater than the needs of the slaves.

The socialist master class, both here in the United States and abroad, basically see themselves being dispossessed of what according to their ideology is rightfully theirs. Control of their slaves and the products of slave labor. What should not be a surprise to us is that the response of the socialist master class and their supporters is in many ways similar to the actions of the antebellum slaveholder class and their supporters.

Those who reject the chains of the Left are subjected to public ridicule and slander by the self-styled intellectuals and subject to physical violence by the goon squad, with the ski-mask replacing the white sheet as the attire of choice.

If you will pardon me for the use of shocking language, to the master class of the Left, we who reject the chains of Socialism are (regardless of our actual race) no better than a bunch of "Uppity Niggers." It should be no surprise to us that they are treating us as such.

If we want to go on the ideological offensive (Or is it the Counter-Offensive?) we should simply point out the fact that the socialist economic structure is based on SLAVE LABOR.

If you will pardon me for repeating this, "from each according to his ability -- to each according to his need." Is the literal description of a slave labor economic system.

It is invariably the full socialist states such as the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, and the various People's Republics of Whatever that build and depend on full-service slave labor camps to create the goods that they need to survive.

It is the socialist parties in the otherwise Capitalist nations of the West that act as if wealth, the product of everyone's thought and labor, belong not to the individual who created it, but to some manifestation of the collective (Der Volk, the World Proletariat, etc.) as a whole, and thus act as if a robbery has occurred when the true creators of wealth are allowed to keep some of it.

(Gosh, wow, I do tend to get a bit long winded sometimes.)

The socialist is for the most part someone who declines to live the essentially rational and productive life that is proper to Man, and instead goes to great lengths (including the total disconnect from reality) to cook up excuses to grab the wealth created by others. As if the goods and services created by others were something naturally found in nature.

Instead of living as rational men, socialists choose instead to exist as less than rational animals.

Perhaps we should start treating them as such.

Let's start by voting them out of office and go on from there.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?
_

Everything I need to know about unions, I learned during the 1983 copper miners’ strike in Arizona, when a 3-year-old girl was shot in the head while lying in bed with her teddy bear. All because her father was a strikebreaker.

-- John Skookum

I'm not a Christian, but I do believe that those who live by the sword, should as Christ says, die by the sword.

I believe that those who benefit from the exercise of coercive force should be put down by force.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?

I saw Atlas Shrugged, Part One on Monday.

It wasn't how I visualized it.

It's better.

I've also posted my annual rant on the Waco Massacre in The New Resister.

I have a question for Republican office holders and members of the Tea Party:

If public employee unions, and teacher's unions in particular are corrupt, then how can we continue to allow them anywhere near our children?

I think the answer is obvious.

I have pretty much invoked the "Cry Wolf" rule as far as the emissions of the Leftist Commentariat are concerned.

What ever happened to Anthropogenic Global Warming?

The inflato-roof of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome stadium (appropriately named for a famous source of hot air) collapsed as a result of a blizzard this weekend.

This will have the effect of transferring all Minnesota Vikings football games to other venues and all associated taxicab business with it. Not good for a cab driver like me.

I also spent several hours working to get my car unstuck from the parking lot of the building I live in.

This weekend just sucks.

Chuck Prime, who was the sysop for our local Objectivist BBS here in Minneapolis (He moved to Arizona) has set up a couple of interesting sites:

http://www.burnthekoranforfreedom.com/

http://burnthekoranforfreedom.com/wordpress/

This was after I posted a letter from him without his permission:

http://newresister.blogspot.com/2010/09/chuck-prime-on-defiance.html

Yesterday some African American Asshole called me a racist because I wouldn't give him a free ride in my taxi cab.

That's not racism, that's business.

This comment brought to you by the letters "F" and "U".

Frank reentered the room.  He brought in a two page printout of something and a thick paper-bound book with a black-colored cover.

He stopped and looked at everyone.

“Did I miss something?  He said.

Kira spoke up.

“The subject of Earth came up.”  She said.

“Did you mention the lamp post?”  He replied.

“What lamp post?”  I said.

Andy sounded a little bit embarrassed when he answered.

“The lamp post that the senior senator from New York may have been hanged from.”  He said.

“May have?”  I said.

“Well we can’t be certain,” Andy replied, “the post in the recorded location may have been replaced one or more times since The Reformation.”

Alice jumped into the conversation.

“There was a lot of looting going on since the fall of the Earth.”  She said.  “We sent an expert team to the reported location of the artifact and recovered it, though technically it was an act of looting.”

“It’s called archaeology.”  I said.  “Where is it?”

Frank answered the question.

“We gave it a good home.”  He said.

That answer sounded distressingly familiar.  Unlike the fictional Captain Kirk I tried not to raise my voice in response.

“Where?”

Alice smiled when she replied.

“We put it in front of the new planetary government center in Landfall.”  She said.  “And we gave it a nice brass plaque to remind every member of the Senate and the Assembly to be on their best behavior.”
       

    The Delegation came to my home today.
    They sought my consent to place my name in nomination before the Electoral College. 
    It was nice of them to ask.
    I declined.
    What do they not understand?
    I am a man. 
    I am not a magical or holy being.  Nothing I have done, nor anything that was done to me, qualifies me for the office that they want me to assume. 
    I am not the messiah, nor am I the masked deity who steps out of the machine and on to the stage to solve everyone’s problems so that everyone can go home happy.  
    Nor have I held a major elected executive position such as planetary governor, nor a farm club position such as state governor on any member planet. 
    But now they want me to take over as the political head of what is for all practical purposes an interstellar empire?
    Are they insane?
    I said all this, but they did not listen.
    What part of no do they persist in not understanding?

***

    I remember waking up, I’m dead certain of it.
    It would be really nice if one could simply go straight from a state of sleep to full consciousness in zero time.  The closest I came to obtaining this state was in the spring of 1982 in one of the old wooden barracks buildings in the Harmony Church area of Fort Benning, Georgia, with the assistance of Sergeant First Class Shartiger and Staff Sergeant Burnette.  They were the drill sergeants for the trainee platoon I was in.  Being awakened at four in the morning by a very loud noncommissioned officer is a very rapid process.  And no, contrary to legend, American Army drill sergeants did not dump the slower or unresponsive trainees in the upper bunks directly onto the floor.     
    Yes, I did occupy an upper bunk during basic training.  And I did regret it.  But for different reasons.
    I admit that I didn’t miss this form of a sudden wake up after graduating from basic training, but in retrospect it was better than what I went through on the first day of my return to existence.
    What I went through was a process akin to coming out of sedation, but slower.  It took time for the senses to come back online.  It took more time for me to gain control of my body.
    The first thing that I fully consciously noticed was that I had two functional eyes again.  The field of view was wider than I remembered from the last time I was awake.
    The room I was in was different too.  I was laying in a hospital bed in what appeared to be an intensive care unit built for one patient which was done in a completely sterile white, including the one door.
    Where am I and was done to me?
    I confirmed the existence of the functional left eye by simply closing the lid over the right one.
    I could see clearly with the left eye.  The nose occupied its usual position in the lower right part of the field of view.
    And I saw a zit.  It was a big one. 
    The pimple was just to the left of the point of the nose.  Without thinking I brought my left hand up to touch it.
    And I noticed something else, apart from the unsteadiness of the arm and the intravenous drip attached to it.
    The left hand was fully intact.  
    All of the fingers were there.  Nor was there any scarring or signs of advanced aging.  In fact the hand appeared smaller than it should be for an adult of any age.
    What the Hell happened to me?
    Is this some hallucination?  A grand and final firing of the neurons before I finally pass away?
    To the extent that I could do so without a mirror I looked at myself.  What I could see appeared to be about a hundred years younger than I should be.  I guessed that the body I was in was that of a twelve-year old.  I also moved my tongue around in my mouth.  I apparently had a full set of teeth.
    At that point I just had to take the hands and feel the top of my head.  I had hair.  All of it.
    Somebody, did something radical, very radical, to me.
    What and why?
    I decided at that point to try to sit up.  It was then that I noticed two other things.  First that I was wearing an adult sized diaper, which was still unsoiled.  And second, that I was sitting up in a full terrestrial strength gravity field.
    I had to vocalize a thought.
    “We’re not on Mars anymore.”
    I sat on the bed in silence for about a minute.  I then heard a click.
    I turned my head to the right to see a door opening.  It was a simple and basic airtight door which was apparently part of an airlock between this room and the rest of the facility. 
    Aren’t doors in an ultra-high tech facility supposed open up  like an iris?  Like God and Robert Heinlein intended?
    Was the iris entry not invented?  Or was it prohibited by the local building codes?  Or were the people responsible for creating this facility a bunch of cheap bastards?
    Perhaps the person entering the room could answer.
    The person was wearing a biohazard protective suit with no visible identification tag or card.  I had no idea if it was a man or woman until she came right up to the bed.
    It was at this moment that the final dying hallucination theory picked up a point.
    Apart from apparently being about ten years older she was a dead ringer for someone I knew when I was growing up.  The first time I grew up, that is.
    I had to say something.
    “Hello.”
    “Um, hello.” She replied in Standard English with a very familiar accent.  She continued to speak.
    “Sir, could you please lie down?”
    She spoke to me as if I were an adult.  I had to respond in kind.
    “I would prefer to sit up for the time being.”
    “Sir, the doctor in charge...”
    I interrupted her.
    “I do a lot of things for the Time Being.” I said. “Does the Time Being appreciate this? Noooooooo!”
    She broke and laughed.
    “Do you have a name, Miss?”
    “Miriam.”  She replied.
    Miriam.  Which meant beloved in an ancient language.  Hebrew if I recall correctly.
    The Miriam I knew was the second of five sisters who were going through what the city of Minneapolis called a school system at the same time that I did.  She was a year ahead of me in the process and, unlike her younger sister who was in the same class as I was, would actually talk to me.  She would eventually become the co-captain of the cheerleading squad and the homecoming queen. 
    The last time I recall seeing her was at the polling place on the Election Day of 1980.  It was the first time I voted for Ronald Reagan for President.  (Not being a Democrat, the second time I voted for Reagan was on Election Day of 1984) 
    Her name was the second point in favor of the hallucination theory.
    “Miriam, you remind me of someone I went to school with.”
    “You remember that?”  She said.  “That’s good.”
    “Actually,” I replied, “there’s a lot from that time I would rather not remember.”
    She frowned a bit.  Then she spoke.
    “Mister Keller...”
    I interrupted her again.
    “Allen... my close friends call me Al.”
    There was a slight furrow of her eyebrows.
    “Allen, you need to lie back down.”
    I had to be very careful of how I replied. 
    One of the day jobs I held prior to The Reformation and the Final War was as a uniformed security officer for a hospital system.  Part of my training for the position was in the techniques used by the nursing staff to subdue unruly patients.  From time to time I had to assist some of them in holding down a patient while they were being strapped to the hospital bed. 
    I did not want this done to me.
    “Miriam,” I said, gently, “I would like to remain seated until the supervisors, whom I assumed that you’ve summoned, arrive.  May I do that?”
    “The doctor in charge is not going to like what you’re doing.”  She answered.
    “Yes, I understand that.”  I said.
    The doctor on call wasn’t happy about the situation.  He apparently blamed Miriam for the for my refusal to lay back down and began to chew her out about it.  I couldn’t let him do that and I had to interrupt with a raised voice.
    “Doctor!”
    He ignored me.
    I responded to this by standing up off the bed and getting into his face.  This required rolling over to the opposite side of the bed and grabbing the I.V. support stand and moving it with me around the bed.  I was bit unsteady but I managed to walk right up to him and spoke to him with the full authority and power of an Army drill sergeant.
    “DOCTOR!”
    That got his attention.
    “If you have an issue with anything I do, take it up with me, do not take it out on anyone else! Is that clear?”
    He was visibly stunned.
    “Do you understand?”  I repeated.
    I was not sure if I saw him nod through the faceplate of his isolation suit.
    “I did not hear that.”  I said firmly.
    “Yes, sir!”  I heard him say.
    Somehow I managed to speak with authority to a doctor in the body of a twelve-year old boy while wearing a silly adult sized diaper.
    I moved, with a little more steadiness, back to the edge of the bed.  I dialed back the tone of my voice to that of commissioned officer and spoke to him again.
    “I will now get back into bed, and I will even lay down, but I do have a few requests.”
    The doctor visibly sighed.
    “Yes, sir.”  He said.
    I sat down on the edge of the bed and spoke.
    “The first thing I would like is some decent hospital attire, a set of pajamas or at least a hospital gown, along with a robe and slippers.”
    Both the doctor and Miriam nodded.  I continued.
    “The next thing is access to a bathroom.  I’m not going to continue wearing this diaper.”
    “Um, Al,” Miriam spoke up, “the nearest bathroom is on the other side of the airlock.”
    The vice of parsimony was one of my own personal faults, especially in the years before The Reformation.  Whoever set up this place was definitely a cheap bastard.  Perhaps a bit too cheap. 
    I asked a question.
    “Would the airlock and the isolation suits be due to an immune system issue?”
    “Yes, sir.”  Said the doctor.
    “Then it’s bedpans and sponge baths for the time being.”
    On looking back I have to say that this would have been a better time to use the old Time being joke.
    Miriam frowned slightly.  The doctor started to crack a smile until I stared him down.
    “And one more thing.”  I said.  “Breakfast.”
    “That’s going to be a problem, sir.”  The doctor replied.
    “Adapting to solid food?”  I asked.
    The doctor blinked.  I spoke again.
    “If I recall correctly, American soldiers in the Second World War managed to accidently kill some of the starving inmates of the labor camps they were liberating by sharing their rations with them.  We ran into the same problem during The Reformation whenever we liberated a city held by the Looters.”
    “Um, yes.”  The doctor replied.  “That was the problem.”
    “Can we start working on the problem?”  I asked.  “Anything as long as its not apple juice or applesauce?”
    And I then recalled another horror of hospital food.
    “And NO green beans!”  I said.  “I cannot stomach them.”
    The doctor mumbled something in apparent agreement and departed through the room’s airlock.  Miriam did some nurse stuff.  She took readings of my heart rate, my body temperature, and my blood pressure.
    After Miriam left the room a thought occurred to me.  (No, it didn’t hurt.)
    I had not asked any questions about my present location in time and space.