Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

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  • Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

    After reading the review on the prepper info manual disguised as a novel by Gojira, I noticed the comments touched on a wide range of topics. I’d like to go into a more practical insight on several of these, but not so much an ideology, as was done in the novel. This will be a series of articles on various subjects regarding survival preparation, though mostly pertaining to natural disasters and weather events as this is the most common situation hopefully that any of us will see. This is not intended to do anything but give ideas and spark discussion. Weapons, accessories, gear, all are what I have determined to be best for me, in my situation

    This intro article will, by necessity, touch on a little bit of ideology because that is what sparked both a practical interest in the mechanics and gear/skills for self-reliance, as well as my decision to join the Army when I was 20.

    First, definitions. The plain text of the Second Amendment states that:

    “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The history and clear intent are widely available since all of this was discussed during the ratification process in personal correspondence and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers. The important part is in the terms well-regulated and militia. Regulated in this context clearly meant equipped and trained. A modern equivalent would be an armed neighborhood watch, as well as local and state militias. Militia is simply anyone able to fight, being prepared to do so if called upon – The Minuteman. The phrase “a free State” meant literally a state of freedom. As a citizen of the USA, I have always known that it is my responsibility to defend the ideals set forth in the Declaration, and the mechanism by which government was created to protect them, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

    I thank my grandparents who were educators before the infusion of Marxist and non-Marxist Progressive-tainted indoctrination. My upbringing was infused with learning practical skills such as farming, hunting, weapons training, computer programming, and use of tools to either fix broken equipment or make a tool specific to the task at hand.

    My level of deep study into the founding documents intensified as my 18th birthday approached and I prepared to vote in a Presidential election later that year, Ronald Reagan’s bid for a second 4 years in office. Reagan was the first and last time I have voted for a candidate from either major party.  I was a libertarian and just didn’t know the term yet. I did know that neither political party had any interest in adhering to the Constitutional functions, structure, and limitations that Federal government exists under.

    Two years later I swore an oath, supreme in which I was to uphold and defend the Constitution, against enemies for foreign and domestic. I made damned sure I was aware of what I was willing to put my life on the line for, and agreed with it. I served in the 82nd Airborne as an infantryman, and then, after 9/11, as a Parachute Rigger (which is ironically when I was used in a combat zone in an infantry capacity). I got out in 2005; they wouldn’t let me keep going due to too many TBIs and structural damage to knees, back, neck, and lumbar spine. Plus, there was no way I was going to a promotion board in the Rigger field.

    So, my choices regarding arms and equipment are based on compatibility with current issued equipment for several reasons. By definition, I am part of the militia, even though I am not part of any local or state group. All of my neighbors and I live on plots of land ranging from 10 acres up to 120 acres; all are former active military, and reverting into an organized cohesive unit in times of severe societal disruption is second nature. Ft. Bragg’s southwestern corner is our boundary, and has several thousand acres of forest land crossed by dirt road fire breaks – lots of deer, coyotes, black bears, rabbits, and squirrels. My choices are based on these environmental conditions, and I would do some things differently in Austin, Texas than I would here. From an equipment standpoint, my personal gear is set up for me to go and meet a threat before it makes it home; whereas, the family’s is geared toward defense in place. Most of all, the most important weapon you have is you. The rest are just tools.

    Whew, enough of that! Today, I want to talk about basic arms and ammunition.

    I chose the AR-15 as my primary weapon. It is a SIG M400 direct impingement rifle with a 16” barrel, 1 in 7” twist on the rifling to handle heavier bullets up to 77 grains (Sierra Match King and the Nosler version). It isn’t that expensive in basic form. The trigger group needs some light touches with a fine stone to make it glass smooth. Parts are interchangeable with standard .mil issue. It uses the same ammo, 5.56×45 NATO M855 62 grain penetrator FMJ, as the .mil issue, and it loves this stuff to the point of being sub-MOA (one minute of angle is approximately 1” at 100 yards).

    I have upgraded parts to include a Troy M-LOK 15” free-float handguard with a MAGPUL vertical foregrip, Troy backup iron sights, a 2-point padded sling from Tactical Tailor, and an EOTech XPS-2 holographic sight. I am getting the M33 3x magnifier to go with it for more precise shooting and target ID at middle ranges (100-400 meters). The rifle has the MAGPUL MOE-SL stock. I have the Streamlight TLR-1 Game Spotter green LED light for taking out predatory species such as coyotes at night, and a Streamlight TLR-1HL as my primary weapon light with a tape remote activation switch.

    This rifle needs to be capable of CQC as well as SPR uses at close range and mid-range respectively. I try to keep at least 1,000 rounds of the .mil ammo in reserve, and I usually put that many through the rifle every week. I carry 3 30-round PMAGs and one 20-round PMAG on my plate carrier, with a knife, a 2-liter hydration bladder, an MBITR pouch, and an individual first aid kit. I carry and additional 8 30-round PMAGs, another IFAK, 2 spare pistol mags, and the pistol on my belt system (currently an HSGI padded battle belt with slimline suspenders from Warrior Assault Systems, though I want to try out a couple of other options).

    Secondary weapon currently is a Springfield Armory XD45 (.45 ACP). I’m a 1911 guy, so Glock ergonomics didn’t do it for me. I can easily do headshots at 25 meters with this pistol, all day long. Same ammo routine as with the primary, 1,000 rounds in reserve and about 1,000 a week through the pipe. However, I will be transitioning to the SIG P320 for the same reasons as I chose the AR-15 as my primary. With the 9mm version, I can have interchangeability with current .mil weapon. With the barrel and magazine kit, I can go to .40 S&W caliber and therefore be compatible with LEO ammo used by most departments here. I also will get a second P320 in .45 ACP because I like the caliber, have reloading dies for it, and have tons of brass to reload for it.

    Lastly, I have the Mossberg 500 in 12 GA since I am left-handed; my sister has the Remington 870 Express Magnum. The difference is in the safety – The Mossberg’s is on the tang and is ambidextrous; the Remington’s is on the trigger guard and is only practical for right-handed persons.

    The above shows why the next article will cover reloading and why I am getting into doing it. I can make match ammo for the pistol and rifle for less than ½ the cost of surplus or commercial ammo, using all-new brass. Closer to 1/3 if I reload the brass.

    Okay, GO!

    Don Carter/11H1P, Professional Beach Bum

  • What This Feels Like For Us

  • Yellow Calcite

  • Meanwhile In Canada, Motion 103 Induces Nausea

    In the aftermath of the massacre of six Muslims in Quebec City, Mississauga-Erin Mills Liberal MP Iqra Khalid tabled Motion 103 calling on the government to condemn Islamophobia. Now keep in mind, this is just a motion, not a bill. It’s just an MP using the democratic process to express an opinion. Nevertheless, it has become a leitmotif where debate about free speech is concerned in Canada. It’s worth questioning its tenets as well as the Prime Minister’s subsequent comments. If anything, it highlights why it’s rarely a good idea to formulate laws after a tragedy when emotions run higher than reason leaving itself vulnerable to unintended consequences and that protecting free speech demands eternal vigilance.

    Following her motion, Khalid unfortunately received her fair share of hate mail that would seem to confirm her position. However, if anything, it only highlights the need to protect free speech, not curb it. The messages still don’t rise for the need of such a proposal, in my view.

    Specifically the motion stipulates:

    -Recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear.
    -Request the heritage committee study how the government could develop a government-wide approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia.
    -Collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities and present findings within 240 calendar days.

    It would be helpful if she’d clarify a couple of things. For example, how does she define ‘climate of hate and fear’?  Who will be charged with doing all this ‘contextualizing’? What’s ‘Islamophobia’ exactly? Who will guard the contextualizers?

    If the premise leading this motion into a potential Bill is clunky, what the heck does one think will happen once it’s law?

    As if this problematic (if not silly) proposal isn’t enough to send shivers down our spines, Justin Trudeau offered these illuminating words exposing his awesome dedication to free speech. CBC reports:

    “In a seven-minute response, Trudeau said fundamental rights and freedoms are enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that individual rights must be balanced with others in our society. Determining the parameters is an ongoing discussion in a dynamic, successful society like ours, he said.

    Trudeau said the motion aims to address the fact there is a community that is “particularly vulnerable these days to intolerance and discrimination.”

    “You’re not allowed to call ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theatre and call that free speech,” Trudeau said.

    “That endangers our community. And as we saw 10 days ago in Quebec City, there are other things that can endanger our communities. And we need to stand strongly and firmly against that.”

    A little precautionary principle here, a little “save free speech from itself” there, and a dab of “protecting the vulnerable” here, and presto! Civil Nirvana!

    I’m no longer surprised – numb perhaps but not shocked – that this pretty much summarizes the general Canadian outlook on free speech. Canadians weren’t basted in notions of the First Amendment as their American cousins were in school or even afterward. If free speech is regarded as ‘quaint,’ imagine the perception of the Second Amendment.

    It just doesn’t compute. Hence, flippant musings on free speech passed off as progressive enlightened perspectives; there’s a general misguided belief we can “balance” free speech without any opportunity costs. ‘Hey, man! I didn’t mean my speech! I meant HIS speech!”

    It’s even more so with Trudeau, given his father wasn’t exactly a card carrying classical liberal. This sort of sophomoric approach to free speech, when exposed on a bigger stage than Canada, can really look, erm, second-rate at best.

    What Canadians don’t fundamentally understand is that free speech is a virtue and not a vice.

    You remove it or try to tinker with it and you’re left with the loss of individual sovereignty. Nothing more. Shutting down speech to any degree presupposes we have the answers; it suppresses self-doubt and increases misplaced self-esteem.

    It leads to assertions of it all being ‘settled’ – to borrow a flatulent term from the system, ahem, climate change crowd – so to speak. There is not a better example of a movement that has foregone tolerance and patience in the interest and spirit of debate. Does it make sense to you to hand over all your inquisitive impulses and skeptical empiricism to…Bill Nye? Are we not free to debate anything however vacuous so long as it doesn’t infringe on the civil liberty of another? It takes patience and tolerance because it’s humbling if someone challenges a prevailing world view

    It is completely alien to me how anyone would consent to allowing the government the kind of power to ‘watch over’ free speech. It’s also lazy. Rather than confront a person’s opinion by the power of argument, we ask the government merely shut down the parts we can’t be bothered to argue. After all, if the starting point is  ‘we know the truth,’ there’s no need to confront and debate. Lazy.

    What is overlooked is that being exposed to bad arguments or ideas actually enhances and strengthens our critical thinking prowess and intellectualism.

    Shutting down opinion under the threat of imprisonment, in short, isn’t liberal.

    It’s illiberal.

    It’s reactionary.

    Moving on to the specifics of his comments: there’s little evidence Muslims are facing a significant backlash – despite the tragic outlier incident witnessed in Quebec City, the hate mail received by Khalid and a recent uptick in attacks usually coming after an Islamic terrorist attack- to justify such draconian actions. Call me when things reach a ‘pogrom’ level. In fact, Jews indeed continue to be the most targeted group.

    Second, the idea that free speech can be balanced by curtailing it is an act of deception, if not outright hubris. To think we can ‘balance’ something as immeasurable as speech is just that: arrogance. Either free speech exists or it doesn’t. It should give pause that the Prime Minster basically said, ‘the feelings of a victim group comes before individual civil liberties no matter what the Charter says.’

    So why have a Charter if you plan to wipe your ass with it, I wonder?

    Does Canada have principles or not? Will it stand for freedom of expression at all cost or not? If it chooses the route (and quite frankly, it already has by the back door through the Human Rights Commission and Quebec’s language laws), then it abandons all pretences of being a nation that values freedom of speech and expression. Welcome to Canada where we cherish free speech but…

    It would be foolish, furthermore, to think this is not an example of a slippery slope. There are plenty of examples (just go to Campus Reform) to see the hideousness of what can happen if free speech isn’t vigorously defended. The natural default position of man, after all, is tyranny. Next thing you know, comedians in Germany and Canada are taken to court. Such progress we’ve made!

    It’s not like we haven’t seen how grotesque it is to take someone to court over an opinion as the cases involving Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn reveal.

    The process, as we know, is enough punishment and I can’t but think about the poor sucker who doesn’t have the kind of pull Steyn or Levant may have will see their life upended because of it.

    Count me in as one of those ‘extremists’ who doesn’t feel it’s legally, intellectually or even morally justified to destroy a person’s life for proclaiming, say, ‘Keep ’em fucken Mooslims outta m’backyird! That is, the government should not be in the business of criminalizing people for their opinions through onerous and obscene censorship laws.

    It’s bad enough that Levant – here have a look for yourself at what 1984 in 2017 looks like –  has to beg before an unelected ‘contextualizer‘ at the HRC, right? Now imagine where this can go with Motion 103 becoming law.

    And given the zeitgeist we’re experiencing in North America (if not the West as a whole), the last thing we should be doing is enabling or giving people incentives to snitch and/or lob lawsuits against one another for words.

    Next up, thought control.

    Finally, Trudeau is misinformed about not being able to yell Fire! in a theatre. In a nutshell, it’s not illegal to do so in the United States. The history of this famous analogy drawn by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is not what people think it is. In fact, the case whence it was born had nothing to do with fires; but it did have something to do with freedom of speech and expression.

    Though not binding, the courts got it wrong and it was eventually overturned 40 years ago but not before this trivial tripe has become a calcified Top 10 ‘go-to’ favorite tattooed into the progressive mindset. Ultimately manifesting itself along the lines of ‘You can’t yell fire in a theatre ergo you can’t make fun of Mohammed! Duh.’

    But. Bashing whites and Christians and causing property damage and violence for stuff they disagree with in general is fair game in their distorted civil order.

    Put more eloquently in The Atlantic:

    “Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as the final word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”

    Sounds like you’d get just as far singing the song Fire in a theatre.

    In any event, would it have been too much to ask if Trudeau be at least up to speed on American law and legal history? It displays a rather unbecoming shallow grasp of American history if you ask me. I mean, if you can’t SJW like its the current year with up to date vapid slogans, why bother? Have some pride in your intellectual acumen, man!

    Kill Motion 103. Nothing good can come of it.

    A war on speech is doomed – condemned – to end up like the war on poverty and drugs where the families and communities are fractured to the point of dysfunction. A war on speech will eliminate good ideas and elevate bad ones leaving it exclusively in power. A war on speech is a free ticket to ‘Pass Go’ and straight into a Dark Age where the meek and weak intellectuals prevail.

    All this to bring me back to Ms. Khalid’s motion. The moment more hate speech is introduced, the more you drive it underground. Is it not better to monitor it above board? Free speech, I argue, is the best ally any person or group will ever have.

    My sister met Justin Trudeau a few years back. In a conversation over dinner she said, ‘He really is a nice person. You can tell he means well’.

    That’s the problem.

    In Justin Trudeau what we have is a walking ‘the road to hell is paved…’

    I forget the rest.

     

     

     

  • Hello, My Name Is….

    You killed my father. Prepare to die.

    I’m going to abuse my demigod-like status to deal with a housekeeping topic that vexes me: handle-hopping.

    That one quirk drove me fucking bugnuts at H&R, with people changing handles so often, that I had no idea who I was talking to.  H&R, and now, Glibiteria, is a reputation-based economy.  If we don’t know who you are, we can’t judge the value of your opinion.  And our mongoloid trolls would use this to their advantage.   (Hi KK!)

    So, as one of your apparently friendly landlords, I plead with you, just don’t.  Keep the same handle you rode in with and if you had a different, non-woodchipper handle that we all came to know and cautiously love you under, use that one.   Make this place better than the place we left behind.  It’s the viscous glue that holds the community together.  At least, I think that’s glue.

    So, don’t make me angry, by handle-hopping.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

  • (Freaky) Friday Morning Links

    Well here we are…the end of the week, finally.  Hope its been all that you dreamed it would be.  Let’s get started.

    Looks like Barnum & Bailey might not be done after all.  If the circus of a press conference yesterday is any indication, Bannon was right about needing to move the White House Press Pool out of the west wing…to a tent with three rings out on the South Lawn.

    You can’t see him, but Sean Spicer is in that photo somewhere.

    ISIS bombs Sufi shrine in Pakistan, killing scores. Pakistani forces arrest or kill 75 in raids immediately following the attack.  Just curious, how come the cops and intel agencies always know the people involved and arrest them immediately after these things happen?

    Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey will not comply with a congressional subpoena.  She is being asked to answer questions about her fraud investigation (read: extortion scheme) into oil companies hiding data on global warming climate change but said the federal government has no jurisdiction over her.  No word from New York AG Eric Schneiderman on whether he plans to comply.

    Twenty three kids injured from potentially defective strollers have prompted Britax to recall 700,000 units across North America.

    Kansas City Chiefs All-pro running back and former Special Olympian Jamaal Charles has set up a GoFundMe page to help the athletes participating in the winter games.  Good on him for making better use of his offseason than Darrelle Revis allegedly has.

    And now for our Freaky Friday segment.

    Thanks for laboring along with us through the first week.  We hope you’ve enjoyed your time here as much as we have.  We will do our best to keep rocking and rolling, churning out material that you want to see, staying engaging with you guys to keep you involved, and being responsive too your needs as our readers and friends.

    Have a great Friday and a better Saturday.

  • We Can’t Help You

    Although we’d like to.

    If your desire for privacy is so strong that you skip your email through five proxy servers, three fake email accounts and a final one-time-use email address, we’re going to have a tough time helping you when you need a password re-set or for us to look into whether or not your registration went through.

    If our emails to you bounce after you’ve requested our help, you’re SOL. Sorry, but if we can’t reach you, we can’t help you.

    You might want to consider creating an email account just for this site. And then, you know, use it when you need our help.

    In any case, we aren’t peeking through that keyhole. Because, really, your life is just not that interesting.

  • Overheard on Social: 2/16/2017

    http://altered-states.net/barry/update610/index.htm

  • Thicc Thursdays

    Colombian fitness model Alejandra Gil is thicc.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BPI-NaDjyME/?taken-by=camilita1207

  • Thursday Afternoon Links

    • California Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez introduced a bill to make California a “shall-issue” state.

    “It is our Constitutional right to defend ourselves,” said sponsor Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, a

    Trump is calling contractors to discuss height requirements for his wall as we speak.

    Republican from Lake Elsinore. “Californians should not be subjugated to the personal beliefs of one individual who doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment. If a citizen passes the background check and completes the necessary safety training requirements, there should be no reason to deny them a CCW.”

     

    • Denver police officer Julian Archuleta forgot to turn his bodycam off. Hilarity ensued.