The Best Libertarian(-ish) movies

Go here for a good discussion. 

And the correct answer is "Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix". 
Dolores Umbridge IS the Nanny State. 

Liberty Book Discussion Group - "Anthem" by Ayn Rand

Thursday, April 26th at 7:30 p.m., we're going to get together at the Downtown Cowtown Barnes & Noble (401 Commerce Street) to discuss Ayn Rand's "Anthem", a mini-masterpiece about one man's struggle against a collectivist state. No struggle on your part, though, as you can easily finish the book in one sitting, and the complete text is available on numerous websites.  You still have time. 

I'll deliver a brief history and summary of the book, followed by discussion time. Before we wrap up the conversation, we'll vote on which book to read and discuss in June, and elect someone to lead that discussion. We intend to hold these book discussion events every other month, so "Capitalism And Freedom", "Atlas Shrugged", "Economics In One Lesson", "The Rational Optimist", "The Fountainhead", "The Revolution: A Manifesto", "The Road To Serfdom", and "Eat The Rich" all await us.

If things go as they usually do, we'll probably wander across the street to The Flying Saucer to continue the discussion, but more loudly. 

Hope to see you there, and when you're reading "Anthem" be grateful for your light bulbs. (That's a joke. If you don't get it, you will after you read the book.

Speaking of light bulbs, now that I've re-read "Anthem", I see something even more sinister about these damn things.....

So many topics, so little time....

I have blogger friends who occasionally claim that they don't have anything to write about. I repeat....I have blogger friends who claim that they don't have anything to write about.

We've been dumped into the middle of the most amazing, hog-stomping, buck-raking, fleece The Sheeple circus anyone could hope for. Anyone that who can type should get out of bed in the morning thanking god for the chance to be alive in the year of our Lord 2009.

Here's everything I'd be ranting about at great length today if I had more time to do so.....

The Netroots folks who put the Democrats in charge of the House, the Senate, and The White House have been strangely silent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What happened to THE FIERCE MORAL URGENCY OF NOW that we heard so much about until January? Write a post about how and where THE FIERCE MORAL URGENCY was lost, and the efforts of the White House janitorial and landscaping staff to find it. Photoshop a milk carton to show TFMU as a missing person.

Roger Kimball has latched onto the Yale University Press decision to censor the book about the censorying of the Danish cartoons of Muhammed. The plot is thickening. The book had already been vetted by Yale's legal staff, and some Islamic scholars had already approved of the book and its contents. But Yale has some financial relationships with some nasty places in the Middle East. Ye shall know the Veritas....

Ron Paul wants to audit The Fed. Copy the entire editorial onto this site. No snarky comments allowed.

George Will thinks the people who run the United States Lottery programs have no business moralizing about online poker. Write a post about the people who subsidize the lottery, vs the people who would contribute towards online poker. Or, God help us all, blackjack.

Charles Krauthammer takes up the idea that government involvement in health care would save money. He has a good time with it. But not as much fun as I would have, bringing up defense contractors, $800 screwdrivers, $5,000 toilet seats, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, VA Hospitals, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Post Office, and every other government money pit.

Little Green Footballs 2.0 has a funny picture of Obama as The Joker as a Doctor. Follow up with this gem where they're saying that if you don't think the Obama/Joker posters are racist, you're a racist. Print it as is, but delete the text. Ask for captions.

It seems that people aren't dressing properly when they approach the thrones of their lords and masters at the Healthcare Town Hall meetings. How dare the serfs wear a ballcap while addressing a U.S. senator? Go Medieval. Explain for the 10,000th time that these are not our leaders. They are our employees. In a truly just society, electing a president or a senator would be like deciding whether to keep the old lawn service or hire a new one.

Ed Morrisey continues The Obamateurism Of The Week. Link to it, then "share it" on Facebook.

There's a new documentary about Saint Albert, The Goracle Of Music City and radical environmentalism. It's called "Not Evil, Just Wrong". Post the trailer. Clear the Comment Field for Cedric Katesby.

ABC's John Stossel is understandably puzzled by the Feds raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in California. What were you expecting from the new Hope and Change administration? Change?

Professor Bainbridge contrasts the Healthcare Town Hall crazies with previous crazies. Compare all of these groups to Martin Luther and the church door, various clerics who waited three days barefoot in the snow to see the pope, Buddhists igniting themselves during the Viet Nam war, and every other performance art protest. Sometimes a letter to the editor isn't enough.

From the Talking Points Memo, on The Family, the conservative Christian lobbying group....
The right-wing Christian Broadcasting Network does damage control for C Street, explaining that the real question isn't, how many affairs were covered up, but rather, "how many affairs were thwarted." These are the guys that Nevada's John Ensign, Mississippi's Chip Pickering, and South Carolina's Mark Sanford have been hanging out with. Quietly and calmly ask why The Family has a tax-exempt status, when all they do is lobby congressmen and senators. And provide meetup places for their administrative staff.

Send people HERE. Warn them that they will wander around in there for days.

Valarie Jarrett, one of Obama's spokesmuppets, was recently booed and hissed at a Netroots Nation conference. The Netroots people aren't happy that Obama has kept almost EVERY objectionable George W. Bush war policy and program in place. Write a breathless expose which proves that Obama is merely a front for Karl Rove. Dick Cheney is the guy who programs Obama's Teleprompter.

"Jesus, Interrupted" - Bart Ehrman on miracles

From New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman's new book "Jesus, Interrupted", on the possibility of historical evidence for a miracle:

"In Jesus' day there were lots of people who allegedly performed miracles. There were Jewish holy men such as Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the circle drawer. There were pagan holy men such as Apollonius of Tyana, a philosopher who could allegedly heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. He was allegedly supernaturally born and at the end of his life he allegedly ascended to heaven.....Anyone who is willing to believe in the miracles of Jesus needs to conceded the possibility of other people performing miracles, in Jesus' day and in all eras down to the present day...."

"But for now I want to focus on the miracles of Jesus. His resurrection wasn't the only miracle. According to the Gospels, Jesus' entire life was filled with miracles. He was born of a woman who had never had sex. As an adult he performed one miracle after the other - healing the blind, the lame, the deaf, the paralyzed, casting out demons, restoring life to those who had previously died. And at the end of his life came the biggest miracle of all; he was raised from the dead, never to die again."

"Despite the prominence of miracles in the Gospel traditions, I don't think historians can show that any of them, including the resurrection, ever happened..... And I am not saying that we cannot demonstrate that miracles happened merely because our sources of information are not completely trustworthy. To be sure, that, too, is true. Our first records of any of Jesus' public miracles were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after the fact, by people who had not seen any of those things happen.....And these records are absolutely filled with discrepancies, especially the resurrection narratives themselves....."

"But that is not why historians cannot show that miracles, including the resurrection, happened. The reason instead has to do with the limits of historical knowledge. There cannot be historical evidence for a miracle."



"To understand why, we need to consider how historians engage in their craft. Historians work differently from the way natural scientists work. Scientists do repeated experimentation to demonstrate how things happen, changing one variable at a time. If the same experiment produces the same result time after time, you can establish a level of predictive probability: the same result will occur the next time you do the experiment...."

"Historians work differently. Historians are not trying to show what does or will happen, but what has happened. And with history, the experiment can never be repeated. Once something has happened, it is over and done with....."

"Did Lincoln write the Gettysburg address on an envelope? Did Jefferson have a long-term love affair with one of his slaves? .....Make up your own questions: there are billions.. There is nothing inherently improbable about any of these events; the question is whether they happened or not. Some are more probable than others. Historians more or less rank past events on the basis of the relative probability that they occurred. All that historians can do is show what probably happened in the past."

"That is the problem inherent in miracles. Miracles, by our very definition of the term, are virtually impossible events.....by their very nature, (they) are always the least probable explanation for what happened. This is true whether you are a believer or not. Of the six billion people in the world, not of one of them can walk on top of lukewarm water filling a swimming pool. What would be the chances of any one person being able to do that? Less than one in six billion. Much less."

"....historians cannot establish that miracles have ever happened. This is true of the miracles of Mohammed, Hanina ben Dosa, Apollonius of Tyana - and Jesus."

"But what about the resurrection? I'm not saying that it didn't happen. Some people believe it did, some believe it didn't. But if you do believe it, it is not as a historian, even if you happen to be a professional historian, but as a believer.

There can be no historical evidence for the resurrection because of the nature of historical evidence."

Hmmmm.......

Update from 5-16-09 Here's a CNN article on Ehrman.

The goofiest part is from Bishop William Willimon, who claims "He keeps presenting this stuff as if this is wonderful new knowledge that has been kept from you backward lay people and this is the stuff your preachers don't have the guts to tell, and I have," Willimon says. "There's a touch of arrogance in it."

If anything, Ehrman doesn't present his theses as being new at all. He repeatedly says that all this info has been out there for a long, long time. THEN Ehrmann marvels that it's the stuff your preachers don't have the guts to tell.

Topics for further reflection and study

* President-elect Obama has resigned his Senate seat. There is a big vote coming up on the bailout of the Big 3 automakers. Obama's trend of voting "present", or not voting at all, continues.... Mr. President, there are no more rungs on the ladder. There's no point in carefully preserving your record of neutrality any longer. Do something. (Nawwww. I take that back. Please don't do anything.)

* California needs a bailout. Detroit needs a bailout. Wall Street needs a bailout. A.I.G. (headquartered in New York City) needs a bailout. Are there any bailout candidates that aren't located in the traditionally Blue states? Just wondering.

* The United Auto Workers spent upwards of 80 million dollars on this election. The unions are pushing for something called "Card Check", which does away with the secret ballot when voting whether or not to unionize. Is there any rationale for doing this other than bringing fear and intimidation into the picture?

* Grey's Anatomy, the prime time hospital soap opera, has ended its Hot Lesbian Doctors storyline. One of the characters has since been written out of the series. Why aren't people rioting in the streets?

* Obama plans to nominate Eric Holder, someone that I seem to remember favorably from the Clinton years, for Attorney General. But according to the Newsweek blog, "The only hesitancy about Holder’s selection was that he himself had reservations about going through a confirmation process that was likely to revive questions about his role in signing off on the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Although there is no evidence that Holder actively pushed the pardon, he was criticized for not raising with the White House the strong objections that some Justice Department lawyers and federal prosecutors in New York had to pardoning somebody who had fled the country." What do nominations like this one, plus the possibility that She Whose Name Is Not Spoken will be leading the State Department, do for those who bought into the "Change We Can Believe In" mantra?

* I have a Serbian friend who claims that everyone in Eastern Europe is telling their friends and relatives in the U.S. to get rid of their dollars. The currency is going to collapse in February. Mostly for reasons outlined here. Note to the dreaded secularists, secular humanists, and atheists....if this happens, it'll be a perfect moment to remove "In God We Trust" from the currency.

Things To Write About

I'm generally amazed when, during my websurfing, I find Blog Posts lamenting that there isn't much going on to write about.
Yes, those statements are out there. Put the phrases "not much to write about" or "nothing to write about" into Google, and you'll find them.

It's the Year Of Our Lord 2008. China's got Olympics problems with Tibet. A former P.O.W. who was tortured for years by the Vietnamese is running for president against either a black man with serious preacher problems or a white woman with more hidden and lost baggage than Heathrow Airport. Our government has checks in the mail in a Keynesian effort to end a recession that we can't be in yet (recessions require two consecutive quarters of negative growth.) There are millions of people online, just waiting to read what you have to say about all this. But sometimes we all need a kick start.

So as a service to our Republic, here are my suggestions for what to do when you think there's nothing to write about.

1) Somewhere near you is a newspaper with an online presence. In my case, there's my beloved Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Just looking through the first page of the site, there's an article about the Methodists having a "negotiated disruption", whatever that is, about same-sex unions, gay clergy, and the like. The Star-T also has more info on John Peter Smith Hospital, our local government funded charity health care center, which is underfunded but has $72,000,000 in the bank. Plus, the Top Dawg was pulling in $700,000 per year. Eminent Domain abuser Jerry Jones has signed Bad Boy Pacman Jones. If you don't have something to bring to the table on any of these issues, you need to turn off your computer and go watch American Idol.

2) Because God loves us, She has given us a world that includes an internet search engine called Google. You have information at your fingertips that, just twenty years ago, was inaccesible to all but the most privileged academics. As further proof of Divine Blessing: a feature called "Google Trends". This lists the top 100 search terms put into Google over the last hour.
By the time you read this, Google Trends will have changedfrom these topics, but.... I have an interest in one called Paul vs Hillary, which is a court case involving the baggage lady mentioned above.
Another term in the top Google Trends Top 100: May Day. May 1st. The traditional holiday for socialist labor. Following the links provided led me to this article in the Guardian (UK), about Raul Castro having to lead Cuba's May Day ceremonies in place of ailing brother Fidel. I LOVED the last line of the article....Marches were held simultaneously in other Cuban cities; several million people were expected to attend. As if the poor bastards had a choice.
If you can't spend five minutes on Google Trends and find a topic to type about, give up, get up, turn off your computer, and go watch "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?".
(FYI... As soon as "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" goes off the air, an embarrassing number of the show's questions show up on the Google Trends site. I fear for my country.)

3) Do you ever wish that you had a subscription to Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, and every other major magazine? Well, those are the links. It doesn't matter if you're into dogs, kites, coffin-handle manufacturing, cars, or the life and career of Millard Fillmore, somewhere out there is a magazine or site devoted to that interest. I probably write more about politics than anything else, so from far left to far right, there are websites for The Nation, Mother Jones, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, and National Review. On the libertarian side of things (different continuum) you have Reason and Liberty magazines. (I can never sign onto the New Republic site. I've either ripped them to shreds so many times that they've blocked my URL, or they're going through a financial crisis, or they just can't keep their site running.)
If you can go into those and not find something to make your blood boil, then give up. Go watch Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann. Let tell you what to think. I apologize for the snarky tone toward bloggers who have nothing to write about. I've seen so many great topics in these links.... I could type for days.

4) There are other sites called "Aggregators". They simply collect links on a given topic. Republicans generally like Instapundit or Little Green Footballs. There's one called Real Clear Politics that covers the entire political spectrum. Alan K. Henderson's Weblog and Libertarian Blog Place are the best ones for libertarians. Whatever interests you, simply type "Blog" "aggregator" and _____ into Google. Chances are, you'll come up with something. I just tried it with the word "Decorating" in the blank, and came up with this. It has all sorts of stuff on Decorating, House, Home and relationships. I tried it again with Macroeconomics in the blank, and got this.
Surely you will find something to love, link to, and discuss.

5) Then there's YouTube. Lord, have mercy. I was looking today for something for my next safety meeting and discovered this:


Youtube has enough video of forklift accidents to give me bad dreams for months. Whatever floats your boat, they've got movies of it. Type in the keywords, you'll find it. Amazing. I might do an entire post of "Worst Forklift Accident Videos" sometime soon.

6) How many jokes, funny pictures, photoshops, and email chains are you forwarded every day? Copy them. Post them.

7) What cool places and things are in your city or neighborhood? I once gave online directions to Lee Harvey Oswald's grave, and that thing still gets about a dozen hits a week.

8) You can put together lists of new sites that you've discovered and enjoyed.

I'm tired and going to bed. Hope this has been useful.

This has been a public service of The Whited Sepulchre Outreach Ministry.