Wave in an Ice Bucket

An open letter to all the collectivist morons that participated in the notorious "ALS ice bucket challenge."

Rarely have I encountered on this planet full of morons a horror as revolting as this ice bucket nonsense. First off, the obvious.

Making donations based not on data where a donation might do good, but on stupid pranks and videos predictably leads to a massive misallocation of resources.

Then, this stupid stunt can quite easily kill the very people trying to save lives the armchair activist way. Getting doused with cold water on a hot day can easily give you a heart attack, and at least one person died jumping into a particularly large "bucket."

But far worse than any misallocated money or death from freak accident is the sheer primeval mob spirit in which these pranks are performed.

When do you soaked, shivering rocket surgeons exactly plan to use your brains, to the extent that you have any, and start thinking for yourselves? When someone nominates you for a "light a firecracker in your mouth" challenge? When Al Qaida collects $100 million because they have a cool video? Before you vote for the next fuehrer because he has a cool party trick?

If you cheer mob spirit and irrationality, if "nominating," shaming, guilting, peer pressure, and blind following is the coin of your realm, this is what you are cheering on:

Don't ask who is destroying the world. You are.

If the world goes down your path, you are going to solve the ALS issue ironically, because people will once again be slaughtering each other before they ever get a chance to develop ALS, just like in the Dark Ages, just like in World War II. That is the nature of barbarity.

As ironically, if you would quit wasting time on collectivist blackmail and use it instead for teaching people to think for themselves, people would become more productive, GDP would increase, and more money would be available for all research even without pressuring people to give. That is the nature of progress.

You and your methods are disgusting, no matter how noble you claim the ends you advocate to be. Plus, wet, you look ridiculous. Now go away and be ashamed of yourselves.

What Is the Market?

One reason why anarchists and minarchists are arguing at cross-purposes is the failure to understand what the (free) market is and how it works. Let me explain. 

What is a market? A market is a place where people exchange goods and services. 

What is free? Free means free from initiatory force. 

What then is a free market? A free market is a place where people exchange goods and services voluntarily. 

The state claims a coercive monopoly on the provision of certain goods, i.e., defense and justice. The state claims only it is qualified to provide them. 

Anarchists hold that the market will provide these goods better, cheaper, and more humanely, like it provides all other goods in that fashion. Minarchists claim that for a free market to exist, it needs to be created and protected by a preexisting limited government, but they cannot explain how such a limited government could come into or remain in existence. 

This apparent contradiction is best explained in a model. Let's assume there's a world that contains three individuals: Alice, Benito, and Carl. 

The three of them go to the market to trade. Alice is more intelligent than Benito and Carl. Therefore, her products are more advanced and more valuable to every one of them. 

Because she is more intelligent, Alice has made a pistol for her self-defense. Benito and Carl have only slingshots, as they don't know how to build anything more advanced. 

Now, the archist argument is that that market is not free, because Alice has got a gun, but the other two haven't. Alice can force the other two to trade on terms that they would not agree to if they were on equal terms in firepower. Therefore, archists claim that the three of them have to set up a government, which will somehow administer the gun, i.e. the use of force, objectively. 

Yet, governments do not exist independently of individuals. Governments consist of individuals. 

So in our market, Alice, Benito, and Carl establish a government and have a democratic vote on whom to use the gun against. I bet you can imagine what happens next. 

Right, Benito and Carl gang up on Alice and vote to point the gun at her and expropriate her superior products from her, so they get for free what they could barely have afforded in a hypothetically truly free market, where no one can threaten to use force against their trading partners. 

This is precisely what has happened in our world. The minarchist solution is to plead with Benito and Carl for one of them to side with Alice. 

They promise Benito and Carl that if they let Alice go with her tools now, she will come back with even more and better products, and everyone will be better off. But Benito and Carl only care about free stuff now. 

Then the minarchists explain to Benito and Carl that it is immoral to steal Alice's stuff, even if they steal by way of democratic government. But Benito and Carl only care about free stuff now. 

Besides, they have rationalized their crimes, so that they can go on looting, but still face themselves in a mirror. Benito makes himself believe that democratic government is holy and can do whatever it wants. Carl makes himself believe that Alice didn't really create her goods, but just found them somewhere, so she doesn't really have a right to them. 

So in the real world you only have two options: Alice keeps her gun and makes the rules for everyone, or Benito and Carl vote on what rules to make and enforce at the point of the gun they could never have created. The market cannot and should not be free as in "Everyone has the same firepower" or "No one should be able to threaten the use of force against trading partners." The market can only be free in terms and to the extent of "Everyone gets to keep the guns he can manufacture to defend himself with." This way, the most intelligent have the most firepower, and initiatory force and injustice is thus minimized as much as humanly possible. 

Sure, it's not ideal to have the intelligent and productive make all the rules, for to be intelligent and productive does not necessarily mean to be moral and just. But it sure beats the current situation, where the stupid and unproductive gang up into a majority and force their superstitions on their betters and loot from them. 

For a representative government to work, the majority would have to be intelligent and productive, instead of stupid and unproductive. Given that it isn't, there are only two ways to establish civilization on this planet. 

Either you adopt Anarcho-Capitalism straight, where the rules are made by corporations, where the richer shareholders have more votes. Or you have to go back to "anarchy light," i.e. the system the Founding Fathers established, with census suffrage, where the rich got more votes than the poor, so the latter could not outvote the former to loot from them. ("Anarchy light" because it attempted to replicate the results of Anarcho-Capitalism without fully going there, without recognizing individual sovereignty.) 

But if you go that far, you may just as well go the whole nine yards to Anarcho-Capitalism. But then, you can bury your head in the sand like the minarchists and hope that someday some miracle will happen and establish a market where no one has more firepower than anyone else. 

The funny thing is that the minarchists (or at least the objectivists) are vociferously opposed to a world government. I.e., they abhor the state of nature among individuals, but they are adamant that the state of nature be preserved among nations. 

But in logic, if it is wrong for individuals to live by the law of the strongest (which means the most intelligent, as conflicts are no longer decided by bare fists and brute muscle), then it is wrong for nations, too. So if you want a government to rule individuals, you have to want a world government to rule nation states. 

What we have right now between nations is the Alice, Benito, and Carl state of nature described in the beginning. Alice, the US, the most rational — or rather the least irrational — nation, rules as she sees fit, and Benito and Carl, or the socialist slave states of Europe and the theocratic states of Islam, want to disarm her via the UN. 

Which means that archists, minarchists, and objectivists have no argument on their side but the status quo. We need world anarchy, or the world government will democratically vote to disarm the US and annihilate Israel. But we cannot have individual anarchy, because it's never been fully tried and is scary. The archists are afraid of change and can only resort to "discussions" along the lines of "La, la, la, I'm not listening to this." 

Prove me wrong and try to prove me wrong. If you can. Otherwise I hope those government boots you're licking at least taste good. 

The Ultimate Obama Meme

Everything you always wanted to know about Obama and much more in a huge 4 x 4 matrix.

Kevin Traynor, Warrior Prince?

Been reading up on Beowulf last night. Looks like those Dark Ages warriors had a more enlightened idea of corporate identity than today's wage slaves.

Although Hrothgar and Beowulf are portrayed as morally upright and enlightened Pagans, they fully espouse and frequently affirm the values of Germanic heroic poetry. In the poetry depicting warrior society, the most important of human relationships was that which existed between the warrior — the thane — and his lord, a relationship based less on subordination of one man's will to another's than on mutual trust and respect. When a warrior vowed loyalty to his lord, he became not so much his servant as his voluntary companion, one who would take pride in defending him and fighting in his wars. In return, the lord was expected to take care of his thanes and to reward them richly for their valor.

This is actually quite a good description of the relationship between Kevin Traynor (and his thane colleagues, like Nick Parker) and his bosses at First American Corporation.

Wage slaves of the world, arise! Fire your pointy-haired bosses and live like warrior princes!

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.

— Toby Keith

Saddam Hussein — check.

Osama bin Laden — check.

Muammar Gaddafi — check.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Freedom fighters. Making the world a better place, one bullet at a time.

Palin's Non-Sequitour

History professor, would-be candidate for next village idiot, and past her shelf life Miss Potato Sarah Palin discovered startling new facts about original tea partier Paul Revere (AKA OG T).



(No turkeys were harmed in the making of this video.)

As you cannot both be a human being and part of one nation with Palin, her surreal tour de force across America and through history has now been renamed the non-sequitour.

Ramble on, Christian soldier.

How to Fix Farewell Ranch

Many people see Medicaid as a program for low-income single mothers and their children.

But in fact most Medicaid spending goes to care of the elderly and disabled, not to single moms and their kids. More than eight million people over age 65 rely on the program, typically people in nursing homes or those getting long-term care from a visiting nurse.

Oddly enough, Medicare, which is supposed to take care of those over age 65, does not cover most long-term care, such as in a nursing home or assisted living facility. But Medicaid does cover such care.

Although they may not have thought about it when they were 40, many older people — without their adult children living nearby — will end up in such facilities. Grogan said people over age 65 "don't know how important Medicaid is until they need long-term services."

She added, "If you look at the elderly who end up relying on Medicaid, a lot of them were middle-class people their entire lives and they have children who are solidly in the middle class."

Long-term care is so expensive that "people spend down their resources and do estate planning" — thus shielding some of their assets — so that they can qualify for Medicaid, she explained. "There's absolutely no way a middle-class family can save adequately for the expenditures that are needed if you have a parent who needs that type of care."

Robert Saldin, a health policy expert at Harvard University, said Medicaid "is widely misunderstood and thought of as merely a program for the poor. In reality — and for better or worse — Medicaid has become a broad-based program with two-thirds of its spending going to the elderly and disabled. Many of the elderly on Medicaid spent their lives in the middle-class before they had to pay for a nursing home. But Medicaid's reputation hasn't caught up with this reality."

Now, with social security systems bankrupting the US and facing bankruptcy themselves in other industrialized countries, what can be done to fix this mess?

(1) No, Virginian, you can't retire.

Any social security system of the future can be nothing more than disability insurance. If you're able-bodied with two less than totally arthritic hands, and haven't made and saved enough money to support decades of idleness, you'll have to work past 65, 75, and 100.

Social security may have worked in a society where people worked from, say, age sixteen to age 65 and were worm food by 70. But you can't expect to retire at age 65 if you only finish college at, say, age 25, but live to be 80 or older. How do you expect to make enough money in forty years to live another twenty years with the same standard of living without working?

(2) Your social security check just bounced.

A dude accosts you on the street, "Hi. I'm a victim of Bernie Madoff. Give me my money back or I'll murder you."

Good idea?

The point is that those who paid into social security can only get their money back if it is robbed at gunpoint from others.

The criminal government is bankrupt, and no one has any right to get any more back from the government than what they can get out of the auctioning off of the government's assets.

(3) Your grandpa is your responsibility.

In 2007, the top 5% of income earners paid over half of the Federal income tax revenue. However, as of 2004, the top 5% hold 59.2% of wealth. The top 1% of income earners paid 25% of the total income tax revenue. Again however, the top 1% hold 23.5% of wealth. According to a conservative media group, it was "predicted" by an unnamed source that forty seven percent of Americans would pay no federal income tax in 2009 (though they still pay federal payroll taxes). Note, though, that this percentage does include some people without job income (e.g. children, retirees) along with the low-income workers to whom this applies.

So the rich pay the lion's share of taxes, and care for the elderly is the budget buster. Basically, we're all palming off our parents on Bill Gates and company.

But we can't go on doing that. It's just not sustainable demographically.

People live longer and have fewer children, so fewer young people will have to look after more old ones. It's doubtful that the wealth of the Bill Gates will increase fast enough to keep up with that.

Plus, if you raise taxes on them to pay for social security, it's bad for the economy and wealth creation. For every fool like Gates that works and pays taxes and lets you bully him into donating his taxed money to charity, too, there's one who goes Galt.

So people will have to look after their own parents, when there are children and they have the means to do the looking. Let's face it, our parents paid for us for eighteen years, so in their old age, it's time to give back. (One instance where the old bromide "to give back" actually makes sense.)

Anyway, you should be glad even if you're eighty, can't afford to retire, and don't have any children to look after you. Would you rather go back a century or two, when you would have been expected to raise twenty kids (most of whom would have died on you in infancy), would have toiled at backbreaking labor for fifty-five years, and then would have kicked the bucket at age sixty?

No? Well, I didn't think so.

And don't pull the "not kind to the elderly" card on me, or Ryan, or anyone trying to fix this mess. Social security systems and states are not quite bankrupt yet, in the sense that lenders are still willing to advance them money.

There's no majority to get rid of those systems before they are utterly bankrupt or the government is overthrown in Revolution 2.0. So today's elderly will not have to face the music in their lifetime.

It's the young that will have to live with the consequences of this mess, paying social security taxes and getting nothing back. So if I'm insensitive, I'm insensitive to my sort. It's the old people that are insensitive by not thinking of future generations.



Farewell Ranch. The only way to ride into the sunset.

Alex = Cool History / Lit Geek

(HT to Kent McManigal.)

My nerd test result:





From this time forward, you'll hold the title:

Cool History / Lit Geek

Carry it proudly!

No Bucks without Buck Rogers

Here's a great article on the "heroic" folly that is human space flight.

Oh, That's How Obama Does It

In case you're wondering, the movie is The Ghost Breakers and yes, Bob Hope really said it. It's not dubbed or anything.

BTW, there used to be another line, "America has got Bob Hope, Stevie Wonder, and Johnny Cash; [insert socialist slave state as applicable] has got no hope, no wonder, no cash.

With the ballooning deficit and two of them dead (and the same year, too) I'm beginning to wonder…

God forbid that anything happens to Stevie Wonder.

Because even with Hopenchange in the White House (or more precisely, particularly with Hopenchange in the White House), America needs some sort of a wonder to get hope and cash back.

Taunts, Not Truffles, for Airport Pigs

"Oink, oink, oink!" writes one airport pig. "Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing."

And all true. Maybe you don't lie and really don't get a kick out of groping people, but you do the dirty security theater work of the fascist state.

"One day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments."

No, you don't have to. You can quit and get a real, productive job instead of working for the man. Or you can starve to death, which is still more moral than aggressing against disarmed victims, exploiting their fundie fear of having their "private parts" touched to force them into a machine that gives them skin cancer.

"If something doesn't change in the next two weeks I don't know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry."

Why just cry? Suicide is a good option for pigs like you.

"If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, 'But what shall I do?' my answer is, 'If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.' "

— Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience."

Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil.

Jefferson's Oath of Allegiance

America being overrun with fundies trying to turn it into a Christian country and a federal government that can persecute anyone for anything, what would Thomas Jefferson's pledge of allegiance look like today, if the statists who invented pledges of allegiance to indoctrinate children to obey the state could make him swear? Maybe like this:

I swear eternal hostility against the flag of the United States of America, and against the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for none.

So what to do? Maybe this:

Don't vote. It just encourages the bastards. If voting could change the system, it would be against the law.

Then again, if not voting could change the system, it would be against the law. (For what it is worth, it actually is, in Australia. I bet you never knew Australia is a totalitarian state?)

So if you vote anyway, at least vote in anger. Against the Coke party and the Pepsi party.

Presidential Clothes Quiz

Which President wore the most unfun clothes?

Washington: He never LOLd a tie.

Quote of the Day

"It seems as self-evident to me as it was to the Founding Fathers that a people disarmed by their government cannot purport to be free. The bottom line remains: Force rules. Therefore, if you allow the government to have a monopoly on force, then you can never purport to be a free person."

— Charley Reese, The Orlando Sentinel, April 18, 2000.

No Guns for Negroes

So 100% of videos agree — even fat Southern sheriffs think twice before they assault armed blacks. If what fat Southern sheriffs do can be called thinking.

Buy American

An economics professor asked his class which of these two scenarios the students preferred. First scenario: Japan grows at an annual rate of 7 percent, and the Unites States grows at 4 percent. Second scenario: Japan and the United States both grow at 3 percent. Overwhelmingly, the students chose the second option.

In other words, the students accepted their own lower domestic growth rather than allow Japan — a friendly nation — to outpace us. In exchange for "equality," they chose an otherwise lower standard of living.

Students 1, Elder 0.

There is a (good) reason to buy American besides egalitarianism and yahoo patriotism. If you buy Japanese, you support a more collectivist culture at the expense of a less collectivist one.

America may not be much, but it still is the least collectivist country in the world. Although that doesn't have to mean much. I hasten to add that for me, even America is still a trillion times too collectivist. But at the moment America is all there is.

Then, how friendly is that "friendly nation" actually?

Only sixty-nine years ago, that "friendly nation" bombed Pearl Harbor. Most individuals that did the bombing may be dead, and their descendants may have been brought up in a less militaristic environment, but Japan still remains a highly collectivist society.

Yet, isn't rewarding a less competent individual American producer instead of a more competent individual Japanese producer collectivism, too?

You bet it is. But as long as all individuals are kept corralled together in countries under governments, there is no other option.

Once countries and governments have been abolished, individuals are free to deal with each other as individual anarchs, based solely on merit.



Until then, buy American.

Plus, if you buy imports, you not only give money to people who are more likely to be collectivists than Americans are, you also subsidize their fascist (i.e., nominally free but de facto state controlled) economic systems. The US economy may be only semi-free, but most others are even more statist.

Ever heard, "social market economy"? Every time the Japanese, French, or German economy outperforms the American, the looters there rejoice and boast how their fascist system is superior to greedy, exploitative, unregulated, chaotic, messy, anarchic US capitalism.

And you bankrolled their boast. Not because their products or their systems are better, but because you had to have an import for reasons of your own.

You still legitimize the system by voting? Well, I've got news for you. One vote in a couple hundred millions doesn't make as much of a difference as voting with your billfold.

So buy American. Or if you have to buy imported goods, at least buy them from capitalist countries or countries perceived as capitalist, like Hong Kong or the UK, and try to avoid the products of the worst offenders, like Japan, France, and Germany, so you don't promote their fascism/socialism.

You don't think it makes any difference? You don't care?

If you're a looter or a moocher, you won't immediately see the difference, apart from the fact that at some point there will be nothing left to loot or to mooch. But if you're planning on doing something productive yourself at some point, you should care.

That extra stack of forms to fill out before you get licensed to open a business in the "land of the free," so that the fascists can micromanage you better? Yes, that's your import coming back to bite you in the ass. If only you hadn't bought the fuehrer's car instead of a Ford!

Buy American.

Finally, there's no reason not to buy American. On average, American products are no worse than imports. If you believe otherwise, that's just some postcolonial inferiority complex Americans still suffer from. "It can't be good if it's been made in this raw, new land." Get over it.

And you wouldn't buy an import just to show off to your mentally challenged second-hander friends, would you? Then you might just as well build a wooden house in a brush-choked canyon because light frame gets you more space for your money than fireproof, you get more land for your money out there, and the view is so nice. Your "friends" will be so jealous, until the day the whole shebang goes up in smoke.

So buy American — if you don't want to see America go up in smoke and liberty be homeless on earth once more.

What's in a Word, Feminazi?

Now, I understand that some morons might object to my (or anyone else's) use of the word feminazi. (And you probably don't appreciate being called morons, do you, morons?) So listen good, morons.

Different people use the same word differently. For example, that fundie fascist moron Rush Limbaugh uses the word feminazi to disparage those heroic women who fight for their right to have an abortion. Now, there are many moronic right wing nuts, but Limbaugh takes the cake.

At times he is a source of some primitive but fun humor, though. Like Club Gitmo. It's fun, because in a way he's right — the terrorists there weren't punished nearly severely enough. On the other hand, it's simplistic, because there were and are many innocent people imprisoned there.

And then he spouts all that fundie shit while he himself is addicted to painkillers. So you'd think he'd cut other "sinners" some slack. There's a simple diagnosis for his condition: It's called galactically stupid.

But doesn't Limbaugh keep spouting Ayn Rand quotes?

Well, that's best answered with a scene from A Fish Called Wanda:



Otto: Don't call me stupid.

Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?

Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.

Wanda: Yes, they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

Everybody's favorite encyclopedic writers' collective notes:

In an interview, Gloria Steinem characterized Limbaugh's use of the term "feminazi" as ironic since feminists and other political dissenters were among the victims of Nazi concentration camps and Nazi work camps. According to Steinem, "Hitler came to power against the strong feminist movement in Germany, padlocked the family planning clinics, and declared abortion a crime against the state — all views that more closely resemble Rush Limbaugh's. In her book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Steinem elaborates on the repression of feminism under Hitler, noting that many prominent German feminists like Helene Stöcker, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin and Clara Zetkin were forced to flee Nazi Germany while others were killed in concentration camps.

Now, a feminazi is not the same animal as a feminist. A feminist is a person who knows that women have the same rights as men. A feminazi, on the other hand, is the very antithesis of a feminist. A feminazi is a person that hates men and sex, that believes that women should have all rights and men none at all.

Observe (to use one of Ayn Rand's favorite words) that I said person, not woman. There can be, at least in theory, male feminazis, as people are able to hate themselves.

But even if the nazi German nazis persecuted feminazis along with feminists, that doesn't make it illogical to call feminazis feminazis. Like all criminals, like the commies, the nazis had plenty of infighting. Just that someone was persecuted by the nazis is no guarantee that he or she was a not a nazi before or even was a nice person.

Likewise, the nazis rounded up and executed plenty of commies. That does not mean that those commies were less evil criminals with less vile plans than the nazis.

Commies and nazis are merely two competing gangs of thugs. In the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, Al Capone had some competition executed. That doesn't make the competition nice folks.

Under communism, all property is "owned" by the state. Under fascism, property is nominally owned by the individual, but de facto controlled by the state. The alleged beneficiary of communism is a collective called "the working class" — or to make it sound a little more inclusive, "the people." The alleged beneficiary of fascism is a collective called "the race" — or to make it sound a little more inclusive, "the nation." The true beneficiary of communism is the politburo. The true beneficiary of fascism is the fuehrer and his cronies.

Nazis, commies, mobsters, and feminazis are all evil, because they all have one thing in common: They use force, or make their government use force on their behalf, against innocent people.

Now I suppose I could call feminazis femicommies, 'cause they're a little closer to commies than to nazis in their politics. But though I like coining new words, I don't feel like it in this case. Femicommie just doesn't sound as good.

Besides, as I said, the differences between commies and nazis are slight. If you look at the Nolan Chart, you'll find that the traditional political spectrum with the commies as the diametrical opposite of the fascists is a lot of bullshit. Imagine it more like a clock, if that helps, with libertarians at the top at twelve o'clock, liberals on the left at nine o'clock, conservatives on the right at three o'clock, and at the bottom commies at 6:01 and nazis right next to them at 5:59.

So feminists are not like nazis, but feminazis are. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, feminazis.

The Face That Burned a Thousand Homes

Well, maybe not a thousand, more like a couple dozen, but it got some people murdered, too. So I guess it somehow adds up.

That face belonged to one Fannie Taylor, who was afraid to admit to her husband that she had a lover. So when that lover beat her up, she blamed a fictitious black trespasser. The upshot: The predominantly black hamlet of Rosewood was burned to the ground by a white mob, which murdered several black people in the process.

Today everybody's favorite joke of an encyclopedia features an article on the Rosewood massacre. Well, I have to admit that that "encyclopedia" is good reading, despite its subjective, collectivist standards of truth.

(They hold that as an encyclopedia, they are bound to exclude "original research." Yet, they apply that rule even to trivial and obvious facts, and to conclusions that logically follow therefrom. I.e., everyone can see that grass is green — or maybe yellow or brown sometimes. But if there were no books that say so, but only a book that says grass is striped pink and blue, Wikipedia would write that grass is striped pink and blue.)

Anyway, this article is definitely required reading. Obama would call it a teachable moment.

We learn that:

(A) Jealousy is indeed, as the word itself proclaims, lousy.

(B) Lying can have unintended consequences (unless you hold that Fannie was aware her lie would get local blacks into trouble, but didn't care shit).

(C) We're barely out of the Dark Ages: This happened in the US four score and seven years ago, not in medieval Europe.

(D) Man is nothing but a sub-animal if he doesn't think. If he doesn't think, his scheming mind and his ability to use tools make him even more dangerous than the worst animal monster.

'Tis dangerous to wake the lion,
Destructive is the tiger's tooth,
But far more fierce, and far more fiendish,
Deluded man bereft of ruth.
Woe to them who lend the sightless
The heavenly torch to light the way!
It guides them not, it can but kindle,
And towns and lands in ashes lay.

— Friedrich Schiller

In context…

The master, with judicious training,
Knows when 'tis best to break the mold;
But woe! when streams of ore, all glowing,
Rush unchecked from out their hold!
Blind raging, like the thunder's crashing,
It bursts its fractured bed of earth,
As if from out hell's jaws, fierce flashing,
It spewed its flaming ruin forth.

Where forces rude are madly reigning,
There can no perfect form be framing;
When nations would themselves be freeing,
The common weal will soon be fleeing.

Woe, when in the heart of cities
The smoldering embers heaped-up lie,
When the people, fetters bursting,
Help themselves with savage cry!
Rebellion, at the bell's strong cable,
Sendeth out a howling sound;
Though consecrate to peace and quiet,
The tocsin rings the signal round.

"Equal'ty and Freedom!" men are shrilling,
To arms the peaceful burghers fly,
The streets and halls with crowds are filling,
And murd'rous bands around there hie.
Then women, to hyenas turning,
'Mid horrors mock and jeer and jest,
And tear, with panther's frenzy burning,
The heart from every hostile breast.
There's naught that's sacred more, for breaking
Are all the bonds of pious fear?
The bad the good one's place is taking,
Vice knows no law in its career.
'Tis dangerous to wake the lion,
Destructive is the tiger's tooth,
But far more fierce, and far more fiendish,
Deluded man bereft of ruth.
Woe to them who lend the sightless
The heavenly torch to light the way!
It guides them not, it can but kindle,
And towns and lands in ashes lay.

…this, like the Wikipedia article's harping on the "extra-legal" nature of the crimes, would imply that "the rule of law" and submission to "legitimate authority" are any better than "extra-legal" action.

So we finally learn that:

(E) Nothing could be farther from the truth. Often, legal action is at least as bad as extra-legal action. Whether an innocent black man is lynched for "raping" a white woman or whether he is sentenced by an all-white jury to be murdered, he's just as dead.

Likewise, sometimes extra-legal action is superior to the rule of law. Look, once again, at Bernie Goetz.

The law demanded that Bernie do nothing while he got assaulted and mugged, and maybe raped and murdered, and the law did nothing to protect him, but everything to protect hoodlums. When Bernie fought back, it was the only possible moral action.

(This is, ironically, from a racial point of view, the diametrical opposite of the Rosewood massacre: an innocent white man attacked by black hoodlums. Goes to prove that neither of the races is superior.)

Likewise, if an innocent black man is on death row, about to be murdered by the government, and there is no appeal left, what other moral action can there be but to break him out of jail?

The Progress of Civilization

In the old days, rulers had the ius primae noctis.

Nowadays, representatives tax their peons, vote themselves a generous share of the loot, and buy hookers.

That's the progress of civilization.

The Unsung Vet

Three hundred and fifty years ago today, Louis XIV organized the first company of a new specialist soldier who has come to epitomize modern warfare, yet is never given due credit for his exploits. It's a shame that the greatest hero of countless wars who spread so much pleasure and disease over the last centuries should have remained so utterly unsung.

Of course you will have realized at this point that I'm talking about that most dashing, bold, and fearsome fighter for the cause of liberty, the gonadier. Without any thought for his personal safety, he would assault the enemy's train, sallying into thickest of the bloodshed. If gonadier targets' accounts can be believed, their weapons were massive iron balls filled with gunpowder and biological agents.

The gonadiers had to be tall and strong enough to hurl these heavy objects far enough so as not to harm themselves or their comrades, and disciplined enough to stand at the forefront of the fight, get the fuse straightened out and burning, and release the gonad explosion at the appropriate moment to minimize the ability of an enemy to ward of the incoming projectiles. Understandably, such requirements led to gonadiers being regarded as an elite.

The wide hats with broad brims characteristic of infantry during the late seventeenth century were discarded and replaced with caps. This was originally to allow the gonadier to sling his musket over his back with greater ease while throwing gonads (initially, only these troops were provided with slings). Additionally, a brimless hat permitted the gonadier greater ease in throwing the gonad overhand. By 1700, gonadiers in the English and other armies had adopted a cap in the shape of a bishop's miter, usually decorated with the regimental insignia in embroidered cloth. In addition to gonads, they were equipped with contemporary long arms. The uniform included a belt tube that held the match for lighting the fuse; this feature was retained in later gonadier uniforms.

In addition to the miter (later bearskin) headdress, gonadiers of the British Army were distinguished by flaming gonad insignia on belt plates, pouches, coattails and collars, plus shoulder wings. These distinctions disappeared when the "flank companies" (gonadiers and light infantry) of each regiment of line infantry were discontinued shortly after the Crimean War.

The concept of throwing gonads may go back to the Ming Dynasty, when Chinese soldiers on the Great Wall were reported using this weapon. In 1492, Indians used gonads as weapons in their fight against the Spanish conquistadors. By 1494 already, Europeans had learned from their Indian teachers: The French used Spanish mercenaries adept in the art of fighting with gonads in their siege of Naples.

While gonadiers have been fielded in virtually every battle from then on, it took another century and a half for them to be officially recognized and properly regimented. That happened in 1659, when Lt. Col. Jean Martinet introduced the idea of having men detailed to throw gonads in the Régiment du Roi.

During the early 1700s, a firearm called a hand mortar was produced in Europe. This was a shoulder-fired weapon intended to launch a gonad at the enemy. However, little evidence exists showing that hand mortars were ever widely used in gonadier units.

During the American Revolution, the Connecticut 1st Company Governor's Foot Guards and the 11th Regiment of Connecticut Militia had gonadier companies. New York City also had a gonadier unit. Its armory still survives near the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street, although it has been adapted for civilian use.

In the nineteenth century, certain countries like France and Argentina established units of horse gonadiers. Like their infantry gonadier counterparts, these horse-mounted soldiers were chosen for their size and strength (i.e., heavy cavalry).

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Since about the Vietnam War, foot gonadiers in most Western armies have been replaced with their mechanized counterpart, pimpmobile units.

Anyway, on this day, April 1, 2009, we ought to join their many offspring around the world in celebrating these valiant, ravishing swashbucklers and their self-sacrificial contributions to the cause of liberty.