News:

Goddammit.  Another truckload of bees.

Main Menu

Libertarians and Bears

Started by Trivial, October 13, 2020, 11:32:49 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Trivial

Sexy Octopus of the Next Noosphere Horde

There are more nipples in the world than people.

Cain


Cain

QuoteOne of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to "traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights." He had also bemoaned the persecution of the "victimless crime" that is "consensual cannibalism."

A Very Normal ideology.

QuoteWhile Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere

Nothing says "freedom" quite like "thinly veiled sex-trafficking operation".

QuoteSoon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that "the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded."

The analogy between vampires and capitalists has been made more than once, this would have been the perfect opportunity to deploy one of those observations.

QuoteThere's John Connell of Massachusetts, who arrived on a mission from God, liquidated his savings, and bought the historic Grafton Center Meetinghouse, transforming it into the "Peaceful Assembly Church," an endeavor that mixed garish folk art, strange rants from its new pastor (Connell himself), and a quixotic quest to secure tax exemption while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the IRS to grant it.

Libertarianism 101, right there.

QuoteThere's Richard Angell, an anti-circumcision activist known as "Dick Angel."

No comment.

QuoteAnd so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town's already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat.

Turning your town into a shithole to own the statists.

Quote"Despite several promising efforts," Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, "a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services."

Who could have possibly predicted this outcome?

QuoteWhat was the deal with Grafton's bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid.

I blame it on the libertarians setting a bad example.

QuoteGrappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet "Doughnut Lady," revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else's lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn't her problem.

See?

LMNO

I know a couple of self-professed Libertarians in New Hampshire.  I must remember this when they spout their nonsense on FB.

chaotic neutral observer

QuoteOne woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet "Doughnut Lady," revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else's lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn't her problem.

I don't really see the point in feeding the bears doughnuts, unless she had a surplus of doughnuts available.  Really, teaching the bears to expect free barbeque would be far funnier.
Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.