Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Rant

Firearms Friday: Silencer Suppositions

America, in general, is a great place for libertarians. It is not perfect, of course, but to my knowledge, it is the only place on earth you can legally buy an ounce of weed and an AR 15 in the same day (although you may not want to publicly declare it since the weed is still federally regulated). In particular, our gun laws are some of the most permissive in the world, for better or worse, and we can own damn near anything we like. Our silencer laws, however, bite ass. For those that just woke up out of an extended coma or are learning English as a second language, silencers are long tubes you screw or clamp onto the muzzle of a gun which reduce the deafening boom accompanying a shot down to a more manageable level. They are also called suppressors or mufflers, the latter being probably the most accurate description since they function very much like the muffler of a car. They are primarily used for safety and comfort, since it is much nicer to not go deaf from your hobbies, and ear muffs can be uncomfortable and ineffective, along with other downsides. “Those sound like great inventions” you’re probably thinking. They are. Too bad they are damn near illegal here.

Pictured: Shit you can’t have.

You see, about 80 years ago, a bunch of politicians decided to take their first really big shit on the second amendment, and boy did they deliver. It’s called the National Firearms Act. You may have heard me talk about it once or twice, and I promise I will mention it again in the future because you will never love a woman (or man, if that’s your bag) as much as I hate that piece of legislation. The NFA put a de facto ban on a whole bunch of fun, useful, and constitutionally protected items, including silencers. The silencer regulation was particularly painful because it affects all silencers, for all guns, for all reasons. There is absolutely no way you can own or possess one without going through the NFA. There’s no decibel threshold for what constitutes a silencer, either. If it reduces the sound signature of a firearm in any noticeable way, it is considered a silencer. You literally cannot legally make your gun quieter. I don’t think it’s difficult to grasp how infuriatingly asinine it is to prohibit an item that is dangerously loud from being made safer to use. What really puts the corn kernels in this shit sandwich is that, by itself, a silencer is completely harmless. They’re regulating ownership of an overpriced piece of sewer pipe. In terms of lethality, it’s somewhere above a metal spatula and below a large flashlight.

If only the chainsaw was a little louder, we could have had a chance.

The thinking (and I use that word as loosely as possible) behind it is that criminals use silencers to muffle their murderous gunshots during crimes, thereby delaying or avoiding police intervention. Sounds reasonable, right? Except that it’s 100% horseshit. A silencer doesn’t actually silence anything, it simply reduces the sound of the gunshot down to hearing safe levels, and even with a silencer many guns still do require hearing protection. A silenced gun is still about as loud as a chainsaw or an ambulance siren. I don’t hear any morons in congress talking about making those louder for safety. Imagine if a law was introduced severely restricting mufflers on passenger vehicles in order to reduce collisions. It would be laughed right out of Congress, but change ‘cars’ to ‘guns’ and suddenly it’s common sense regulation!

To put this in perspective, a number of countries with significantly more restrictive firearm laws not only allow but encourage ownership and usage of silencers on firearms. Places like Norway, New Zealand, and Poland have essentially no restrictions at all on silencers, and even the gun hating utopia of the UK is relatively lax in their silencer ownership laws. When you’re doing worse than the UK at something gun related, you know you’ve got problems.

See this guy? FUCK THIS GUY! FUCK HIM RIGHT IN THE EAR!

There is, however, some hope on the horizon. a few years ago some politicians got together and introduced the Hearing Protection Act, a name which puts a big trollish grin on my face every time I read it. The HPA would take silencers out of the purview of the NFA and treat them like a gun, requiring only a 4473 and a background check to purchase. It had fairly broad support in Congress, but never went anywhere because chocolate Jesus would have vetoed it on the spot. That all changed when Big Donny Sixgun came to town, though. With orange being the new black, the HPA has a real shot at getting passed. That shot got a little bit louder (or is it quieter?) recently when some clever fellow in Congress (oxymoron, I know) decided to roll all of the major provisions of the HPA into an otherwise boring little piece of paper called the ‘Sportsmen Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act’ or SHARE Act. I wonder how much they pay people to come up with names for these bills. Is that where greeting card writers go after they’re promoted? Anywho, the bill was scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday, but some fucking dicknose bernie bro douche canoe had to go and put bullet holes in a couple of politicians that morning, and the hearing has been canceled until further notice. So, if that was your ultimate goal, you fuckstick, then mission accomplished. I am going to break my foot off in your ass when I see you in hell.

June 16, 2017
To Be A Nihilist or Not – That is the Question

Here’s some good news for you: Hamlet wasn’t contemplating nihilism. From my high school
English classes through to my university English literature classes, I’ve been told that Hamlet’s
famous soliloquy was about whether to commit suicide or not. However, the Prince of Denmark
was more concerned with the choice of being a scuzzy, disloyal subject who will bide his time until
he becomes king or of giving Claudius the old Right There Fred. By reading this soliloquy the way
the Bard intended, we can perhaps find the strength to fight the outrageous slings and arrows of
outrageous government ourselves.

Here are perhaps the most famous words ever written by Shakes:

HAMLET

To be, or not to be–that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep–
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–
To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. — Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! — Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

What I had been taught repeatedly by corduroy elbow patch wearing public school teachers was
that the To be is referring to existing, or, in other words, to live and the not to be is referring to
committing suicide. There’s just one problem with that interpretation: Hamlet had already
decided to kill Claudius before this scene. What he’s torn on here is the consequences of killing
the usurping sumbitch. If he is To be that means continuing the way things are and eventually
ending up as king one day himself. The other choice of not to be means he kills the king and, well,
hopefully, it’s a deep sleep when he dies because otherwise, he’ll be rotting in Hellsinki. Kill the
king and right Th’oppressor’s wrong and hope for the deep sleep. But damn, what if I’m wrong?
It’s a logical question that really doesn’t have anything to do with offing himself.

Let’s look at a couple of events from the past few years and see how the people involved may
have had similar thoughts to the young Hamlet.

Eduard Snowden

The lines from Hamlet that jumps out at me in relation to Snowden are:

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,

The kid is living the high life in Hawaii, making six figures a year and he decides to chuck it all
in the shitter to expose massive 5th amendment violations by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Snowden must’ve had more than one sleepless night as he wrestled with the choice of exposing
The insolence of office by those tasked with keeping us safe. Did he contemplate suicide as a
solution to his problems? I highly doubt it and the reading of Hamlet contemplating action vs
inaction makes for an interesting comparison.

Sharyl Attkisson

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

An award-winning journalist for CBS News, Attkisson decided to leave CBS. She later explains how
her former employer had squelched stories on the Benghazi attacks and Obamacare. Like
Snowden, Attkisson did not fall victim to her inner coward and followed her conscience instead.
Did she pay a price? You can decide for yourself, but she paints a rather brutal picture of
corporate media in her book, Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth Against the Forces of
Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.

Escaping from an arranged marriage and the threat of being the victim of an honor killing,
Hirsi Ali has certainly gone up against a sea of troubles over the years. Her choices were
blindly following the path expected of many Muslim women and accepting the domination
imposed on them by the men in their families or to break away and expose the reality of far too
many women in the Islamic world. Suicide? I’m sure her critics would love for that idea to be
floating around in her head. Instead, she took up arms in the form of exposing certain aspects
of older and even modern interpretations of Islam that are oppressive.

Of course, you are welcome to interpret young Hamlet’s soliloquy in whatever manner you like,
but I think you are missing out the debate going on in the prince’s head: Accept the fate that
has apparently been laid before you or attempt to right a wrong even though the law and even
God may not sanction your actions. How long do you wait when justice seems to have
abandoned your society and what happens if you have a society of vigilantes? I find these
questions rich for mining of philosophical discussions. Should you kill yourself or try to right a
wrong? Not much depth to that, unless you’re half a nihilist.

June 14, 2017
Musings from the Trash Can #3: I got gum stuck in my fur
Welcome to my latest musings! This is where I write about random crap and let y’all sort it out.
- I love Wheel of Fortune. It may make me seem like an old geezer or something, but I love that show. I’m also unnaturally good at solving the puzzles. It irritates people when they watch it with me.
- I’ve been thinking about writing a short story about a transport spaceship in the near future that transports pure water from Europa to bases located in the asteroid belt. The spaceship is a converted multi-generational colony ship originally destined for an exoplanet, but didn’t make it out of the solar system and is now run by the second generation as a transport. The big plot arc would be uncovering a conspiracy having to do with the original mission of the ship and some of the Earth governments. We’ll see if I ever get the free time to start on it.
- Is anything going to actually come of the Seth Rich stuff, or was Kim Dotcom just bullshitting us?
- Occasionally I’m struck by how most environmentalists are motivated by guilt. Many have the most environmentally destructive lifestyles. In comparison, many non-acolytes (including so-called conservationists) live in harmony with nature. For example, I have more trees in my yard than your average city park. Wildlife is constantly milling about in my backyard. The hipster urbanite can’t even fathom such a lifestyle, but instead stays insulated in their urban jungle, so they have to assuage their guilt by nagging everybody else.
- Being a desk jockey sucks. I’ve worked for 10 years in one desk job or another, and I’ve never liked it. I come from farming stock, and my body just isn’t happy unless I’m doing something active. It’s too bad that I’m really good at this desk jockey stuff.
- How many of the crises du jour in today’s media climate are curated attention seeking? When you strip the political manipulation out of it, most of the national news cycle is centered on boring questions like “man calls opponent a loser, is he Hitler?” and “little girl scrapes knee, should busybodies mandate kneepads?”
June 9, 2017
Firearms Friday: NFA Noncompliance

I have been a libertarian, to varying degrees and levels of enlightenment, for all of my adult life and probably most of my childhood as well. There is not really a defining event I can point to as a road to Damascus moment regarding politics. If there is one thing, however, that I can hold up as a shining example of why I believe that government is inept, corrupt, and generally full of more shit than the third member of the human centipede, it is the National Firearms Act. The NFA is quite possibly the worst law in America. It simultaneously violates the constitution, endangers human health, gives bureaucrats massive power, places unreasonable burdens on civil rights, bans or heavily restricts otherwise common products, and does all of this while not actually performing any useful function. Add in the fact that we have had this dumpster fire on the books for over EIGHTY FUCKING YEARS and the prospects for recovery are grim. In order to keep this post out of the novella section, I won’t go too deeply into details, but the cliff notes version is that rifles with barrels less than 16 inches in length are considered ‘short barreled rifles’ and are a royal pain in the ass to buy and make. They cost an extra $200 dollars per gun to register and registration can take up to a year. Silencers are also similarly restricted because… reasons? I honestly don’t know. I guess they just hated gun owners so much they wanted them all to blow their eardrums out. If you want to know more the Wikipedia page is linked above.

The gun on the left is considered a short barreled rifle, subject to heavy regulation and a federal felony for unlicensed possession. The gun on the right is an AR pistol, legal almost everywhere with no special permits.

Fortunately, like most bad laws, the NFA is complex and poorly written. This allows freedom loving capitalists to find loopholes to exploit for fun and profit. And exploit them we have! Using just a bit of technical understanding and a careful reading of the law, some clever individuals have found suitable workarounds for most of the restrictions that the NFA has created. The most common of these available are AR/AK pistols. As I stated before, if you have a rifle with an overall length less than 26 inches or a barrel less than 16 inches, it is considered a sbr. If the gun does not have a stock, however, then the ATF has decided in their benevolence that this is a pistol. I wrote about these kinds of pistols in my last post so I won’t repeat myself too much, but these can be extremely fun and useful guns if you need something handy and compact with lots of firepower. By themselves, these guns are fairly awkward to handle, but if you attach a single point sling or an arm brace (more on that below), they become extremely viable systems. They are very common and affordable. You cannot, however, just take a normal rifle and cut it down. If you make a pistol out of a rifle, then by law you have made a SBR or AOW even if you remove the stock. It has to come from the factory as a pistol or you have to build it as a pistol from parts. You can take a pistol and make into a rifle though, and then take that rifle back to a pistol with no problems. The other thing you cannot do is attach a vertical foregrip to a pistol, ANY pistol. Doing this makes the gun an AOW in the eyes of the ATF and you go to prison. Angled foregrips, however, are completely kosher. I told you this law was retarded.

I mentioned before that a SBR is a gun that has a barrel length less than 16 inches or an overall length less than 26 inches. What if you have a gun with no stock, a barrel length less than 16 inches and an overall length greater than 26 inches? Is it a rifle? Nope. Is it a SBR? Wrong again. Is it a handgun? Not that either. What you have is a class of weapons known simply as ‘firearms’. This is a relatively new breed of gun that first came to the forefront when a company named Franklin Armory debuted their XO 26. It is an AR with an 11 inch barrel, no stock, and a foregrip. Normally foregrips on this type of gun are verboten, but because it is longer than 26 inches it is beyond the purview of the NFA as long as you don’t put a stock on it. The vertical foregrip doesn’t sound like much but it actually does make a gun like this a lot easier to shoot. Plus it’s a nice fuck you to the gov, which is a reward unto itself. You don’t have to buy that version, you can make your own if you like. As long as the gun was not originally a rifle, it can be made into a firearm. Just make sure the overall length is greater than 26 inches.

Dual wield for extra DPS.

Okay, so a foregrip on an AR is probably not the most exciting thing ever. How about a short barreled pistol grip shotgun? As I said before, a shotgun must have a barrel length greater than 18 inches. Unlike rifles, there are no pistol loopholes in regard to smooth bore guns, so you can’t simply build a stockless shotgun and call it a pistol. BUT, if you have a shotgun with an overall length greater than 26 inches, a barrel length less than 18 inches, and no stock, you officially have a ‘firearm’. Enter the Mossberg Shockwave. This is a pump action 12 gauge with a 14 inch barrel. The secret is the shockwave birds head grip. The grip sticks out almost inline with the barrel, unlike a traditional pistol grip. This grip is what gives the gun the overall length needed to beat the NFA and escape regulation. They still lack a stock so they are not the most stable shooting platform, but they are definitely useful at close range, and they are short enough to be holstered like a large handgun. They would make an excellent car gun or even home defense weapon. I plan on picking one of these up when prices level off.

Now let’s get into some really fun stuff. How do you get around the machine gun ban? When you get right down to it, the functional difference between a semi auto gun and a full auto one is simply a matter of how fast you can pull the trigger. Some of you may be familiar with a technique known as bump firing, in which you hold a gun in such a way that the recoil of the gun causes your finger to bump the trigger, resulting in what appears to be fully automatic fire. A company figured out a way to design a stock that slides freely and allows you to bump fire the gun while actually controlling and aiming it. Enter the slide fire stock. They make models for ARs and AKs that start around $200. It is a bit gimmicky and it takes some practice to get used to it, but it does work. It’s still more than I am willing to pay for such a device, but anything that make gun grabbers shit their pants can’t be a bad thing.

So slide fire stocks are a good first step, but let’s take things to the next level. The legal definition of a machine gun is any gun that fires more than 1 bullet per motion of the trigger. The ATF considers pulling the trigger and releasing the trigger as two separate motions. Some clever guy decided to make a trigger that fires when you pull the trigger and then fires again when you release the trigger. The result looks something like this:

That is not a full auto AR. It is a binary trigger. It is completely legal and stamp free. I can hear you creaming your panties from here. They are pretty expensive though, coming in around $400 for just the trigger pack. It is considerably less expensive than even the cheapest full auto gun, however, and much more accessible. Franklin Armory was the first company to come out with a binary trigger (I think their unofficial slogan is ‘We love to fuck with the ATF’) but there are now a few of them on the market.

Now it’s time to talk about a slightly more controversial topic: pistol arm braces. These caused quite the stir when they were released a few years ago. They are designed so that a person who is disabled or has weak arm strength can put a brace on an AR pistol, slide his or her arm into the brace, and hold and fire the pistol more easily. If you remember my last post, I showed you a picture of one. They look a lot like a stock. They also work a lot like a stock, too, if you shoulder them. When these first came out, the ATF issued an opinion letter that stated that these were not considered stocks and would not make your pistol into a SBR no matter how you used them, as long as they were not modified. Thousands of these braces were sold, most of them probably not to disabled veterans. People declared it the death of the SBR. Videos popped up showing smiling people happily shouldering and firing AR and AK pistols while wiping their asses with the ATF logo*. The world was at peace. Then people got a little reckless. Other companies came out with their own, more stock like designs. People started modifying the braces, increasing their lengths, making them collapsible and foldable. The tipping point was when a company called Black Aces Tactical actually put one on a short barreled shotgun and got it declared as a firearm. The ATF took the unusual step of specifically articulating that people were not allowed to shoulder these guns. Why were these guns singled out? Well, they weren’t. A few weeks after that declaration, the ATF sent out a new open letter stating that, in their opinion, touching a gun equipped with an arm brace to your shoulder was redesigning a pistol into a short barreled rifle, and that anyone doing that was making an unregistered SBR. Was the ruling arbitrary, capricious, completely devoid of legal backing, and nigh impossible to enforce? Of course it was, it’s the fucking ATF! Despite this, few people wanted to risk their freedom over such a thing, and the pistol brace craze was over… until recently. Last month, in a stunning bout of clarity and common sense, the ATF reversed their reversal, and once again you can shoulder your arm brace like a boss. Being the ATF, they may change their mind again at any point, so buyer beware.

Silencer? What silencer?

The last thing on this list requires a bit of explanation. Say you’re an environmentally conscious gun owner. I mean a really environmentally conscious one. You only use lead free, shade grown ammo, you only buy guns made from non old growth forests, and you ensure your targets are made from 100% recycled paper. Yet that still is not enough to soothe your aching guilt. Well, my friend, you need a solvent trap. Simply thread one of these cylindrical tubes full of tiny cups onto the end of your rifle and it automatically catches all 8 drops of the used, contaminated gun cleaner that washes out of your barrel during cleaning, ready for proper disposal at your nearest hazardous waste facility. What’s that? It looks like a silencer? Gee… I guess it does. Huh, that is one strange and completely uncanny coincidence. It can’t be a silencer, though.. I mean, you would have to own a drill press and at least 1 extra long drill bit to make it into a functional silencer, and everyone knows that kind of technology is far out of the reach of your average yokel. Okay, okay, fine, how bout this: For a more heavy duty option, you can buy one of these handy adapters that let you thread a common automotive filter right onto the end of your gun. That thing will hold enough solvent to last a lifetime, and there is simply no possible way that an oil filter could be used as an effective silencer. Nope, no way at all.

All kidding aside, don’t fuck with these. You can probably bullshit your way through even the most flagrant violation of one of the other rules listed above. It’s not like cops are going to pull out a tape measure and check your barrel length if they see you at the range. But there is no way on God’s green earth you are fooling anyone into thinking that big fucking can on the end of your gun is anything other than a silencer. You can buy these online and at most large gun shows, but ffs just say no. Assuming the republicans pull their heads out of their own asses sometime in the next 18 months (asking a lot, I know) we might even get silencers off the NFA list. Until then, you’re just going to have to wear ear plugs and deal with it like we all have. Oh yeah, and for the record, I am not a lawyer so don’t take anything I just said as legal advice.

*Not really.

June 2, 2017
The Nation Misses The Point on Counterterrorism

It was brought up in the morning links (h/t: AmSoc), but deserves expanding upon.

Grande and Mattis

The Nation is more concerned with making President Trump and his administration look foolish than they are about taking terrorism or counterterrorism seriously. And I have no doubt that Ariana Grande means well, but she’s dead wrong. Inclusiveness is no strategy to fight terrorism. It is a strategy to offer people an opportunity to assimilate to an enlightened western culture. Some people will take that opportunity, as evidenced by the millions of Muslims that live peacefully among people of other religions as well as agnostics and atheists throughout the western world. But some won’t. And you can be as inclusive as you want to be, but that won’t take away their desire to impose their beliefs upon everyone else, often resorting to terrorism when people aren’t receptive.

Juan Cole writes:

Secretary of Defense Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis said in an interview on Sunday that US strategy toward ISIL has moved from attrition to annihilation. Since 2014, he said, the United States has been making it difficult for them to stay in one place, disrupting them and chasing them out of their strongholds (through airstrikes). Now, he said, the new strategy is to surround them and kill them all, to prevent the foreign fighters from returning home to foment more terrorism. He also urged a battle of humiliation against them in cyberspace, depriving them of any mantle of legitimacy. He was unapologetic about the recent Pentagon finding that a US air raid set off explosives in a Mosul apartment building, killing over 100 civilians, and seemed to pledge more reckless airstrikes.

Certainly there is a case to be made for non-interventionism. But that’s not the case Ariana Grande is calling for. (If she were, I’d be happy to cheer her on.) She calls for inclusion. Now tell me, what possible good can come from being “inclusive” toward a regime built on terror? Can we “include” into western culture their belief that women caught without an escort should be stoned to death? Can we “include” into western culture their belief that gay men and women should be tossed to their death from the highest point in town? Can we “include” into western culture the taking of sex slaves when they conquer a city? And lastly, can we “include” into western culture the celebration of slaughtering innocent people in our cities because we resist the importation of their insane lifestyle? That’s not inclusion. That’s tolerance and acceptance of barbarism. We, as a society, are better than that. And while I believe we should remain non-interventionist when it comes to global meddling, once they import that activity to out nations, we should destroy those who would perpetrate those violences with every tool that is constitutionally available to us.

The strategy of annihilation is sort of like fighting forest fires with gasoline hoses.

Actually, its not. An enemy can be annihilated. It can be rooted out and extracted like a cancer. Sure it may pop back up again at a future date, but that doesn’t mean its not worth fighting to eradicate. And its a damn sight better to have tried and failed that to succumb to evil in any form. And I have to say, the strain of any religion that accepts massacring innocent people at a concert for the spread of it, or the killing of any gay person for the spread of it, or the taking of sex slaves and stoning of women not adequately subservient for the spread of it, deserves to be wiped from the face of the earth with all haste possible.

I will give him partial credit, though. He wrote this:

George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, in other words, created the exact conditions in that country that were guaranteed to foster terrorism. Washington has never come to terms with its own responsibility for destabilizing the region.

However, he completely omits the expanded war on terror Obama waged, expanding it to nations Bush never bombed. He fomented rebellion in Libya and Syria, directly leading to the soldiers, and in all likelihood the arms, necessary for ISIS to gain a foothold. He also forgets the overwhelming bipartisan support Bush and Obama both received to wage their wars in parts of the world that posed no threat to us. I’m sure it was an oversight and not a deliberate attempt to score cheap political points. But it deserves to be mentioned.

This is real.

Look, there is no surefire way to prevent terrorism. But once it reaches our shores, the individuals carrying it out deserve to be treated harshly, so long as it is within constitutional limits. And people that are guests here who return to the battlefields of the middle east should be forbidden re-entry. We are under no obligation to “include” their idiocy any longer. Neither does Britain, Germany, Sweden or any other nation that chooses to eject those whose sole purpose is conquest through barbarism.

If this runs counter to open borders libertarianism, I’ll happily accept the scorn of those friends of mine on this one issue. But open borders can exist at the same time a strong counter-terrorism operation can be waged within the confines of our Constitution. And its time we allowed the warriors to stand up and properly defend us from those who are using “inclusive” appeasement as a means to infect our society with their oppressive, pre-enlightenment form of barbarism.

**The views in this are mine alone and do not represent the views of other Glibs staff.

June 1, 2017
Memorial Day

SSG Juantrea T. Bradley, SPC Tenzin L. Samten, and SPC Dustin C. Jackson. I did not know them personally. But right after I got to the base at Talill, Iraq (March 2008) they were killed by a 107mm rocket that landed right on the pickup truck they were taking to pick up some local workers at the front gate (I was trying to scrub a layer of dust off in the shower at the time of impact. How is that for martial glory?). Two of them died instantly, one made it a few hours more before succumbing to his injuries.

A few days later, their names were added to a memorial wall on base, and their friends and fellow Soldiers told us about them in their eulogies; they were close friends, and someone’s husbands, fathers, and sons. Their stories differed, certainly, but they all came back in the end to the impact they made on their fellows – the NCO who was a friend and mentor (that one really hurt to hear – the pain lent the speaker eloquence and clarity) the cheerful Soldier who never left a comrade without a good word or thought, the soldier with the great and selfless desire to serve and to help. Then the final call of the Roll, Taps being played…it hits home in a way that is hard to describe.

I have known others that have been killed. But that seemed to make it….personal. This hit in a different way. Why them? What the Hell were they doing that was so wrong or so dangerous? They were just getting some guys in to help build a damned gravel road….it wasn’t a bayonet charge against a machine gun nest! But it was a Soldier’s Risk, so you accepted it and moved on. Though I must confess, if I never hear Taps again, I would be fine with that.

But now, on Memorial Day – I cannot help but think about them again. Obviously their families remember them, know what they were doing, and today is but another slightly more sad day than all the others. But does the day set aside for just such remembering have any impact on the thoughts of others?

Certainly, there are solemn ceremonies at various cemeteries and memorials across the country.

My town’s Civil War memorial. The town lost a tenth or more of its military aged men.

But the number of people who have direct experience, so to speak, are lessening. The people who fought in the huge conflicts, in mass conscript armies and navies are becoming rarer, as time marches on. So are the family members who lost a close/immediate relative in those conflicts. Ours (US and Canada – this is glibertarians.com after all) is a professional, and volunteer armed forces. They are also smaller than what has been around for most of the 20th Century to today. Soon enough, it will be my turn to be the white haired, bent with age and infirmity, but-still-attending-the-ceremonies guy. What will I remember?

Those that died during the various wars, police actions, interventions, kinetic whatevers – whether they were conscript or volunteer – paid the highest price anyone can. THAT is what I wish people could remember. You can be vehemently against the involvement the country had in the conflict in which they died, but they didn’t cause that involvement…. They sure as Hell paid for it, though.

You will hear the word “hero” bandied about rather a lot this day. But it doesn’t matter if the person who died was heroically fending off a wave of enemies (i.e. SFC Paul Smith) – or just going to the front gate at Talill to pick up some day laborers? Either way…They lost EVERYTHING. Their families lost their father/son/brother, mother/daughter/sister. Juantrea Bradley and Tenzin Samten never got to see their children again (between them, they had 7 kids). Their children never got to see their fathers ever again.

In some military and veteran circles, it is popular to rail against the mattress sales and “the unofficial start of the barbecue season” and the like. I will not stamp my foot, demanding people be solemn and quiet. Personally, if that Jaish al-Mahdi version of Davey Crockett (SOB was landing 107s on my tiny camp with shocking accuracy from a long way off) in Spring of 2008 had nudged his launches a tiny tap to the left – I wouldn’t be here… and I would want my family to remember me with grilling and toasting with high quality beverages, while throwing around a frisbee or playing volleyball in the back yard.

But do, please, take a moment to remember that a fair number of people over the whole of this last bloody century (or two) have had their lives snatched away because they were put in harm’s way. Just war, unjust war, ambiguous war…it doesn’t matter to the dead. Just remember what happened to them, please.

BONUS RANT: The past few years it has become semi-fashionable for people to say “thank a veteran or someone in the Armed Forces today” – save that for Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day is about the dead. They had life taken from them early – and that should be the primary thing in focus. Oh, and for the people who have started adding in police, firefighters, “first responders” – KNOCK IT OFF.

Oh, and keep yer fookin’ politics out of it, period. I don’t give a fig who was CinC when someone got killed, where or when. Shut yer gob about neo-cons, Islamoappeasers or whatnot. The dead don’t need that crap, nor do their families. Just remember, somebody got the ultimate short end of the stick – and it wasn’t you.

May 29, 2017
Compare and Contrast

A connected and wealthy guy sends naked pix to a teenage girl (an actual teenage girl). Pleads guilty. Looks like no jail time.

A schlub with no particular connections or money sends naked pix to a teenage girl (actually, not even a teenage girl, a cop PRETENDING to be a teenage girl). Gets 20 years, which disappoints prosecutors, who want him to get a life sentence.

Life sentence requested, 20 years given. For dick pics. To a pretend teen. Versus no jail. To a real teen. Must be nice to be rich and in the Clinton orbit, eh?

May 19, 2017
Separation of college and sex

I’ve just finished The Campus Rape Frenzy, by K. C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr. The subtitle – The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities – should dash any false hopes that this book is a STEVE SMITH adventure. It’s about how the federal government forced – or probably the right word is egged on – colleges to provide inadequate hearings for male students accused of sexual misconduct.

The usual scenario is that Bob

and Betty

Drive safely, indeed

two hypothetical students at Hypothetical U, both drink a lot of booze, then get together and have sex.

Here’s a picture of the booze

Later, sometimes much later, Betty decides that she was raped and, after failing to persuade the real-world judicial system of the reality of the crime (or neglecting to report the alleged crime to the real-world judicial system at all), takes the case to the campus “justice” system.

In the name of being Tough on Rapists, the federal government – invoking the anti-sex-discrimination statute, Title IX – has encouraged the campus SJWs who were already pressing for making campus “courts” accuser-friendly. The campus “judges” are students, administrators and faculty who have been trained to view accusers sympathetically and to be on the lookout for those predatory rapists responsible for 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 coeds getting sexually assaulted. These “judges” are warned that the idea of large numbers of false accusations is a myth, and “only” 2%-8% of accused men are actually innocent. These statistics are phony, as the authors show.

Never mind, though – combined with the “judges’” training is their ability to ignore many traditional due-process restraints on their power, restraints which might allow the accused man to throw a wrench or two in the accusation. The “courts” can put the defendant on trial on really short notice, they can limit his right to cross-examine the accuser, invoke the assistance of a lawyer, or present evidence in his own favor (there’s a lot of cases where the texts the “victim” sent at the time of the “rape” are not consistent with the behavior of the victim of such a crime, but the “judges” aren’t always interested in seeing these texts).

Sometimes the trial is conducted by one person hired by the college to conduct and investigation and reach a verdict, without holding a full-dress hearing in front of both parties as in traditional Anglo-American trials. The judge/investigator just interviews the witnesses, gives the accused a (perhaps incomplete) summary of what the witnesses said, and then reaches a verdict.

It almost gets to be like the old joke of the judge who didn’t want to hear the other side because hearing both sides tended to confuse him.

All rise for His Honor

The bottom line is Bob is branded a rapist and suspended or expelled. It’s kind of hard for him to get another college to accept him, and many employers, seeing that the guy was branded a rapist, will be like “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

So if Bob or his family has enough money he can sue, and maybe win or maybe lose. But any victory, while it benefits Bob, doesn’t necessarily benefit the next guy who comes along accused of rape in the Kampus Kangaroo Kourt.

And if there actually was a rape? In that case only the real-world justice system can impose the prison sentence needed to keep the rapist away from the public for term of years. Throwing an actual rapist out of college and out onto the streets seems a tad lenient, and not entirely safe.

You want to teach rapists not to rape? Send them to one of these educational institutions.

Johnson and Taylor have all sorts of perfectly sensible ideas for reform, but I want to focus on one idea they reject.

Johnson and Taylor indicate that it might be desirable to discourage students from getting drunk and screwing. This might annoy Jimmy Buffett (NSFW), as well as the “don’t blame the victim – teach rapists not to rape” crowd. But such discouragement is a good idea as far as it goes. Rape accusations flourish, as a practical matter, in vaguely-remembered encounters which may be regretted once sober, adding to which is how easy it is (according to university regulations) for alcohol to make consent to sex irrelevant. And current dogma means that if both Bob and Betty are drunk when they have sex, Bob is raping Betty but not vice versa. How colleges reconcile this doctrine with Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination is unclear, but that’s how the system operates.

But Johnson and Taylor don’t go all the way (so to speak). They frown on drunken sex, but they scoff at the idea of discouraging student sex in general. They acknowledge that, given the kind of cases which lead to these “he said/she said” controversies, a good survival strategy might be “celibacy,” but the authors dismiss this as a “nonstarter[]” which “few will find appealing.” College students in the past – often from necessity – often managed not to rut like bunnies while pursuing their studies, but I suppose the idea is that we’re a more sophisticated, liberated, non-taboo-having, healthier people today.

“I hate going to these orgies – so many thank-you notes to write afterwards.” /old joke

What if colleges simply stopped encouraging student sex? That could make moot the question of how to handle drunken hookups by their students.

Don’t mistake my meaning – I am speaking of the separation of college and sex, not the abolition of sex itself, although of course as you know abolishing sex is the ultimate objective of the Catholic conspiracy.

Colleges can only do so much, and training the horniness out of its students is something which is beyond their capacity. But that doesn’t mean a college should provide boinking facilities for its students. No using dorms as sleepover facilities, fraternity would-be orgies, etc.

When I worked as a student dormitory assistant, checking students into and out of their rooms, I felt like the clerk at a sleazy hotel. My job wasn’t to keep the guys out of the girls’ rooms or vice versa, but to make sure they left their student IDs at my office before going upstairs for their…whatever it was they did (probably not canasta).

I was also the piano player

Did colleges put up with this sort of thing in the past? No – although students weren’t any less horny than today. College education wasn’t as near-universal as now, you needed some money or enough talent to get a scholarship, but if you had one of these qualifications there were plenty of institutions to choose from. But generally, the colleges at least made an effort to keep the students on the straight and narrow.

Mandatory chapel. Curfews. If the college admitted women (not a given), then there was separation between the sexes, and social events needed chaperones.

“Don’t mind me, you kids just have fun.”

Most students wouldn’t put up with that today. But that’s all right, most students don’t need to be at a modern residential college.

We’re in a situation where colleges and universities ought to downsize anyway. A four-year sojourn at a residential college (often involving indebtedness and fairly sketchy post-college plans for promptly paying off that indebtedness) is not an essential part of every young person’s life, if it ever was.

There are some career paths which may require studying at a residential college, some career paths which may call for online education (dropping by the local public library for proctored exams), and some career paths which may call for a good high school education (where it can be found) and/or an apprenticeship.

And there are some people who may still go in for a liberal arts education as defined by Cardinal Newman – learning for its own sake, including the things associated with being a learned person, including theology, the “queen of the sciences.”

Blessed John Henry Newman

In each of these situations, the college can separate itself from enabling its students’ sex lives.

If a student is working on his or her online degree while holding down a job, then their college life and social life will run on separate tracks, for the most part, or if they get together with other students it will be off campus and they’ll have signed all sorts of forms that the college won’t be liable for broken hearts, broken bones, disease, death, etc., resulting from independently developing relationships with other students.

Or if students are taking one of those intensive courses of study which requires a residential program, they should be warned to do their foolishness (if any) while they’re off campus.

And at least in theory, nontraditional-age students supplementing their education, often online or through occasional visits to campus for class purposes, will have homes of their own and any kinkiness they do will be in those homes (and they should ask their spouses first, if any).

And for those few liberal-arts residential colleges which survive the coming shakeup of higher education – those colleges should be unashamedly elitist, recruiting students who are actually committed to a course of study, with socializing with the other sex limited to chaperoned activities like in earlier times.

(If a young man and woman meet at a residential college (or before going) and decide to get married, then of course after their marriage the college should put them in married-student housing.)

I guess the one downside to my scheme would be that it would force the SJW “student life” bureaucrats to get other work.

Look carefully, and you might be able to see the violin on which I am playing “My Heart Bleeds for You”

May 8, 2017
Lyrical Analysis of “My Sex Junk”

People have been justifiably lambasting Bill Nye and Netflix over Rachel Bloom’s performance of “My Sex Junk” in Nye’s new series, Bill Nye Saves The World. And yet it seems that Bloom’s performance itself has, by and large, undeservedly escaped censure. Although “My Sex Junk” spectacularly plunges into unintentional self-mockery, allow me to have a grab at some of the lowest-hanging fruit ever produced.

I’m no expert on song lyrics – in fact, I listen to mostly instrumental music – but I feel rather secure in thinking that Rachel Bloom’s “Sex Junk” doesn’t rise to the level of Paul Simon, Sarah McLachlan, or Noel Gallagher. It doesn’t even rise to the level of “Louie Louie”.

It begins on a stupid note, and only gets worse from there:

DJ SEAHORSE

This one goes out to all my bipeds

who identify as ladies!

And now enter…Rachel Bloom.

BLOOM

This world of ours

is full of choice

But must I choose between

only John or Joyce?

First of all, way to other Suzanne Somers there. But when did “choice” enter into this discussion? I thought this stuff was decided for you by biological urges.

Are my options

only hard or moist?

My vagina

has its own voice

So, you opt for “moist”, then? Or were you trying to look into adding teeth? A Doomcock? Tentacles? We’re two verses in, and we’re farther away from a point than when we started.

Not vocal cords

a metaphorical voice

Kudos on rhyming “voice” with “voice”. This is Shakespearean stuff.

[speaking]

Sometimes I do a voice for my vagina

Please don’t tell me I’m the only one who does that.

WOMEN HAVE VAGINAS AND THAT’S SO FUNNY! But what are we talking about here?

CHORUS

Cause my sex junk

Is so oh-oh-oh

Much more than

either or-or-or

I’d like to think that Rachel Bloom (born 1987) was a fan of Bill Nye’s as a little kid, and when she heard that Netflix was going to reboot his show, she was excited. And because she was a fan, she arranged to meet him; however, as so often happens, meeting your childhood heroes can be underwhelming, if not an outright disappointment. Nevertheless, during the meeting, she agreed to contribute something to his new project.

With the “meh” of their meeting fresh in her mind, Bloom moved the Nye project onto the back burner for months until, suddenly, the deadline loomed large on the horizon. Frantically, she scratched words on to the page, all the while cursing herself for not backing out of the project. The midnight oil burned through the smallest hours, there wasn’t a single grain of cocaine anywhere in sight, and she was falling asleep at the keyboard. She looked over the latest revision of the first draft: It’ll be fine. I’ll do a stupid dance, I’ll do the vagina voice joke. No one’s going to be parsing every single word, they’ll be laughing too hard.

If that isn’t what happened, if this is the best that Rachel Bloom could come up with, and if Bill Nye and his people reviewed the material and said “This is great!”, then fuck it. I’m going on a shooting spree. I can’t believe producers threw money at a bunch of placeholder lyrics written by an insane person and then presented this material as educational and/or entertaining. Wrapping my shoes in duct tape is more enlightening than this stuff, and way more fun.

Power bottom

or a top off

Versatile love

may have some butt stuff

WHEN ARE WE GETTING TO THE GENDER IDENTITY PART??

It’s evolution

ain’t nothin’ new

there’s nothin’ taboo

about a sex stew

Well, we’ve touched on Jack and Janet, sexual organs, role-play, sex acts, and evolution. Nothing about the topic du jour.

Just add salt

or Gerard Depardieu

[spoken]

French treasure

If we’re forced to live with the heavy hand of the state anyway, I’d like for everyone involved with this travesty to be arrested, and their assets seized, on the grounds that this video is promoting pedophilia. My justification goes like this:

1) Bill Nye,The Science Guy was a show aimed at children. His reappearance on Netflix could fool parents into thinking that his current show is aimed at children, thus exposing them to age-inappropriate content like this

2) Gerard Depardieu starred in 1993’s My Father The Hero with a then-14-year old Katherine Heigl. One of the film’s set-pieces involved a musical number in which Depardieu’s character was misunderstood to be singing about the joys of romantic love with underage girls. Clearly, Bloom’s reference to Gerard Depardieu is expressing solidarity with that idea

3) As is well-known, the French Treasure is a particularly sordid sex act involving foie gras, spools of pastel-tinted yarn, a half-dozen Gauloises, and a schoolgirl uniform. Or so I’m told

4) The French are all a bunch of perverts

CHORUS

Cause my sex junk

Is so oh-oh-oh

Much more than

either or-or-or

If they’re alive, I’ll date ’em

Channing or Jenna Tatum

I’m up for anything

Don’t box in my box

Let me rewrite this so that…let’s say, “it’s less incomprehensible”. Because “it makes sense” is the wrong phrase here:

I’m not very selective

about my sex partners

I’ll even have sex with super-hot celebrity couples

It’s so cool how I’m not a prude

Still waiting on something – anything – about transgenderism.

Give someone new a handy

then give yourself props

I’m not even going to comment on this toe-jam posing as a couplet, because the video now takes a sudden nosedive into the darkest depths of stupid.

[ENTER: Man with glasses taped in the middle. He is wearing a collared shirt, dark tan khakis pulled up too high. His shirt pocket is loaded with pens. He is a NERD]

NERD

Oh, you think you’re so smart

Did you learn gay in college?

I told you he’s a nerd. See, only nerds have prudish ideas about gay being a lifestyle choice which young people are fooled into choosing at liberal universities. Who isn’t aware of that particular nerd stereotype? That’s what makes “My Sex Junk” so funny and hard-hitting – how true to life it is.

BLOOM

Chill with all of that

while I drop some knowledge

“Give yourself props”, “drop some knowledge”? Awfully problematic, this white girl using language found in hip-hop, isn’t it? But I suppose the super-woke deserve a pass.

When she says “drop some knowledge”, I assume she means from the top of a ten-story building, shattering it into a million tiny shards of derp. Let’s see:

Sexuality’s a spectrum

everyone is on it

even you might like it

if you sit up on it

Oh, so this was about sexual orientation after all? Also: Rachel Bloom seems to think we can use the sexuality spectrum to pleasure ourselves with.

Drag queen, drag king

just do what feels right

You’re a tall pansexual

flirty wood sprite

But…but being a drag queen =/= sexual preference. We’re back to sexual identity now. Or are we?

Who enjoys a fleshlight

in the cold moonlight?

That question sounded familiar.

NERD

With a sad clown

Skyping by satellite?

This guy again? Because this dumpster fire of a performance wasn’t stupid enough?

BLOOM

Damn skippy, home slice

sing it with me all night

Is it wrong of me to wish that Rachel Bloom ends up in a dog-fighting ring as a contestant?

[The NERD and BLOOM slap high-fives and then the NERD pulls off tearaway pants. Goddammit, I hate my well-functioning eyeballs sometimes]

BLOOM

Sex how you want

it’s your goddamn right

Which amendment was that again? Because if you thought the whole gay wedding cake fiasco was a shit-show, wait until you’ve received a court order to bang Lindy West or Matt Yglesias.

CHORUS

Cause my sex junk

Is so oh-oh-oh

Much more than

either or-or-or

Get off your soapbox

get off your soapbox

Get off my soapbox? MY soapbox?? Excuse me, but one of us spent lots of time and many thousands of dollars to make an insipid music video on the subject of human sexuality AND IT WASN’T ME.

My sex junk’s better than

bagels with lox

With lots of schmear

“Excuse me, waiter? I’ll have the sex junk and a cup of Americano, please.”

[Performance ends with BLOOM, NERD, and RANDOM DANCER standing in tableau. MORONS in audience applaud wildly. VOTERS look on in horror, prepare to re-elect TRUMP]

May 6, 2017
What Somalia Proves

“Well, if you hate the government so much, why don’t you just move to Somalia?!”

This is one of the most common retorts to libertarian ideas along with “libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot.” I’ll save that one for another time.

Progs like talking about Somalia because they think it proves that libertarian ideas about limited government lead to chaos and misery.

As I have said before, there are 3 kinds of derp:

wrong: 2 + 2 = 5

very wrong: 2 + 2 = -17

not even wrong: hammer + tomato = January

The idea that Somalia is a libertarian paradise is solidly in the not even wrong category.

Mogadishu beach

Let’s examine the claim in detail:

1. Somalia is an awful place.

2. Somalia has no government.

3. A lack of government causes misery.

4. Libertarians want to abolish the government.

5. Since a lack of government causes misery, libertarians are wrong.

All of these statements are wrong or irrelevant.

Yes, compared to most countries, Somalia is a bad place to live. However, in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita income, and other measures, it’s not that much worse off than the countries around it. The main problem with Somalia is not its weak government; it is poverty. This is the same problem that Somalia’s neighbors Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and others have.

Somalia does have a government. True, it is a weak, provisional government with limited control, but it still has a budget, a parliament, a president, a military, international recognition, etc. Most articles about Somalia are careful to note that it has not had a central government since 1991. They don’t say it has no government. In fact, Somalia has at least 2 major governments (the one based in the capital and the other based in the northern region) and many minor governments headed by warlords.

A lack of government does not cause misery. Many countries with parliamentary systems have gone through long periods with no government because no coalition could win a majority and thus elect a prime minister. Countries on this list include Belgium. Did Belgium fall apart during the 589 days between 2010 and 2011 when it had no government? No.

Libertarians do not want to abolish the government. In the last election, the libertarian presidential candidate got about 3% of the vote and he ran on a platform that included saving Social Security. Most libertarians do want much less government, but there is an important difference between less and none even if some people are too dumb or dishonest to notice.

Lasa Geel rock paintings

The evils of too much government far exceed too little government. Who would choose to live under the totalitarian government of North Korea over the semi-anarchy of Somalia? At least in Somalia I wouldn’t have to worry about me and my entire family for 3 generations being sent to a prison camp because I forgot to put on my mandatory Dear Leader pin. Unlike North Korea, you can leave Somalia without being shot at by border guards.

If Somalia proves anything, it is that socialism always leads to death and suffering. Somalia was a socialist country from 1969 to 1991. It was a one-party socialist state officially allied with the USSR and modeled on it. The USSR switched sides after socialist Somalia attacked socialist Ethiopia (not the first time one socialist country attacked another) in 1979. The dictator of Somalia became increasingly authoritarian after a failed coup which resulted from the failed war in Ethiopia. The dictator was finally overthrown in 1991 by an alliance of rebel groups which then turned on each other.

In short, saying that Somalia proves libertarians are wrong is like saying that a bank robbery proves that money is worthless. No, the reason Somalia is screwed up is because they did the *opposite* of what libertarians want just like the reason the bank got robbed is *because* the money is worth something.

And that is all that needs to be said to the “why dontcha move to Somalia” morons.

May 5, 2017