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Re: NFC: political stuff...[LONG]

Ty_Hall at eFunds_Com wrote:
> 
> Robert, I don't mind the posts. I can decide for myself if it's a cause I
> want to support or not. (FYI, this one I do not)

That's mostly what I was trying to say. Ty just did it better. I also was
pointing out the inevitable consequences to list discussion that posting
such blatantly statist calls could cause. The results seemed to offend some
and they apparently didn't want to hear our responses. [Jokes about FL and
voting excepted, of course. :-)]

Like Jake, I certainly want a cleaner environment, our natural treasures
conserved, and will work very hard toward that end.

Like Chris, I'm a libertarian (small "l" not big "L," in my case) because I
have personally witnessed nearly 7 decades of failed attempts to use force
(aka the state) to "solve" every human problem known. In extreme cases, the
deaths of humans ran into the 10s, even hundreds of millions, always in the
name of "doing good." Folks, it doesn't work! Freedom does, if we have
enough common sense to keep any.

Here, we have Prohibition, later resurgent as a "War on Drugs" that created
a huge criminal class by providing a government price-support program for
one drug or another, while identical drugs were being forced on our school
kids by the exact same governments.

We engaged in a "War on Poverty" that expanded poverty about 4 times, while
institutionalizing it with a huge bureaucracy that then became a political
constituency on its own, needing even more poor people to expand and grow.
[The road to hell is paved with...]

Literacy dropped from over 90% in the mid 19th Century, before "public"
schools, to less than 80% at the start of the 20th. During the past Century,
under universal mandatory education (since 1911), it dropped to roughly 60%
(even as admitted by the government schools that caused it!). Another huge
political constituency was created at our expense. [40% of the delegates to
the convention that first nominated a recent President belonged to either
the NEA or AFT, BTW.] [BTW2. Our national spelling bees and similar contests
are all being won by home-schoolers, to the dismay of the establishment
that's trying to prohibit such "unfairness."]

NFC seems to be populated with an unusual number of folks who believe
strongly in personal, hands-on conservation and public education. The
explosion in wacko "Environmentalism" in recent years is heading us into
another one of those black holes cited above. 

We may well be here in NFC because we do not believe our fellow man cannot
be educated and is automatically bad, requiring police force to make him
comply to our particular whims about what is "right." [I, personally, was
not entirely comfortable with NANFA, and certainly not with the Desert
Fishes Council on those scores.]

My four trips a year into the NV desert, with the Desert Springs Action
Committee, have been very educational to me, both about the fish and their
geologically-produced origins, *and* about the needs and desires of the
ranchers who share their water. I sincerely wish I could do the same in CA,
and cut out an average of 1500 miles per weekend of driving. [It is, so far,
quite illegal here, unfortunately.]

My experience (at cocktail parties, of course) with Sierra Clubbers is the
exact opposite. All I learn is their privately-expressed desire to keep
"undesirables" out of their pristine wilderness. You can read "undesirable"
to mean blacks, orientals, latinos, cripples and anyone other than a
back-packing WASP with the latest trendy equipment. They have no qualms
whatsoever about using state force to have their selfish desires satisfied
at my expense, and are blindly unaware of the long-term adverse consequences
of such actions.

Government theft is still stealing, and highly immoral in my book.

The recent post that Robert sent us clearly falls into the category
described many years ago in the following quote:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

The same can be said of a ludicrous book written by a recent Presidential
Candidate, espousing even more, but similar, expansions of government and
curtailment of freedom to "save the earth."

I, personally, do not mind postings about what the government wants to do to
restrict my freedom further, but please bear with me if I take the time to
answer such postings here.

Fundamentally, I feel we can do better conservation work by communication,
education and getting potential adversaries to see where both can benefit,
than by sending in the Brown Shirts to take control. YMMV, and I'm happy to
discuss it with you, on or off line.

Wright

-- 
Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 494-8679  huntleyone at home dot com

                Important things we should remember:
      [and weren't taught in mandatory government propaganda camps]

       The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

                *** http://www.libertarian.org/ ***
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