The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) apparent war on Amish raw dairy farmers increased on December 6 when they filed a “motion for summary judgment,” with Pennsylvania judge Lawrence Stengler asking for a permanent injunction against dairy farmer Dan Allgyer to forbid him from selling fresh milk out of state.The people of Kinzers, PA can sleep safe at night knowing a vile criminal mastermind like Amish dairy farmer Dan Allgyer has found government resistance at his front door, literally. (\End sarcasm)
After a two year expensive, exhaustive undercover operation, including multiple armed raids on Allgyer’s farm, FDA agents and a team of ten federal lawyers amassed over two hundred and seventy-six pages of evidence allegedly proving what Allgyer openly admits, that he is raw, unpasteurized milk to customers who knowingly carry the milk across state lines.
A few commenters have criticized me for not defending "freedom" enough or at least not understanding the grave danger inherent to official power. I don't necessarily disagree as I focus far more on the noxiousness of culture than that of government, though the two are undoubtedly linked in America. In sum, I guess I just have essentially no personal experience with government imposition. Maybe a long line awaits me at the DMV or some beaurocratic nonsense annoys me in a professional context, but I can't ever say the government or an official body has thwarted my freedoms or punished me for doing something they unjustifiably consider wrong. For me 1984 is an imaginative dystopian novel written by a dead Englishman, not a dishearteningly realistic account of an evil Communist government or the prescient thoughts of a man seeing the West's future.
I basically just don't get the often shrill hysteria about government gone wild. I basically think, "well, there's absolutely no way it's ever going to happen to me." "First, they came for..." someone else and never got around to coming for me or mine.
Maybe it's due to my relatively insulated life as an American, privileged in a sense that we have a historical stubbornness against big government. Given my lack of personal experience, it's difficult to even fathom how government can go off the deep end, even as Britain actually jails people for thoughtcrimes and Russia is dominated by closed-door leaders. Yet I just can't imagine that coming to America; heck, I can't even imagine that happening in Britain or Russia despite reading the articles myself.
Is this how government gradually embeds itself - by either convincing people that everything's just fine or by relying on the masses to not notice or not believe what goes on behind the scenes? Maybe I'm being naive here or putting too much faith in an elite that I ironically lambast almost every day. Or maybe I'm justifiably more concerned with the dominance of harmful culture, believing that culture can negatively drive our social and personal actions in a way government can never do. Or finally, maybe I just like badass leaders such as Putin - my right-wing parallel of liberalism in which government makes you feel safe at night despite stealing your tooth fairy money while you sleep.
28 comments:
Part of the problem is that we are (or were) raised on propaganda about totalitarian regimes that is just not true. People get the impression that living in the USSR or Nazi Germany was like living in a black and white propaganda movie - sky always cloudy, people quickly rushing back home from work without talking to anyone, no happy times and throw in some depressing music in the background.
I visited people behind the iron curtain. If you were not part of a persecuted group, life pretty much went on normally. You worked, you played but you knew the limitations the government placed on you and lived with it.
The gradual elimination of rights via the passing of laws and regulations in the USA follows more closely the Nazi Germany model as the USSR had a revolution. It's the old story about boiling a frog in water, and we're well on our way.
People get the impression that living in the USSR or Nazi Germany was like living in a black and white propaganda movie - sky always cloudy, people quickly rushing back home from work without talking to anyone, no happy times and throw in some depressing music in the background.
Ironically, this cinematic caricature more closely resembles a low-trust society with simmerng antagonisms you encounter in today's America. A rush-hour subway car is full of snarling ugly faces, half of them noise-polluting the space with jangling headphones.
I grew up in one of the Soviet satellite countries during the seventies. My childhood memories always have blue sky in them.
By the way, Olave d'Entienne's responses to Dave on the "Obscene Liberal Anger" thread is epic. Those comments deserve a compilation, similar to how Roissy did with Dave from Hawaii's series of comments on LTR-Game.
If you were not part of a persecuted group, life pretty much went on normally.
A lot of Americans identify quite directly with a persecuted group - the creative and the productive. Ayn Rand strikes a powerful note. Not all persecution needs to take the form of gulags and Tokarevs held to the back of your head. Having your ideas ignored or reviled has extreme emotional impact.
Most people should probably relax and take life less seriously. No doubt about that. Trouble is, "My ideas are extremely important and unique" is a belief that is conditioned by (the adult half of) the education system, starting about when children are taught to read. Kids don't just identify with Superman or Wyatt Earp, they also identify with Einstein and that guy from Amistad.
Then they find that the other half of the education system (the pattern of social / emotional interactions between schoolchildren) tends to behave more or less like ... Bolshevik bureaucrats. New ideas are reviled (even if the only thing "new" about them is that no other kid in the class previously solved the problem). Efficient, less-social students are demonized. Every iota of praise a child gets from a teacher is extracted away (you might say "taxed") by the mob, with interest. Unfortunately, high marks and gold stars from teachers carry a lot less weight then being pushed over by a mob of bullies.
US schools are way more communistic than the rest of US society. "Communistic"? Stalinist?! Not usually. Brezhnevite. "Sloth is effiency." "Apathy is commitment." "Contempt is respect." (Note that Miller's The Crucible is taught as a historical look at the 1950s. Koestler's Darkness at Noon is not.)
Alas, if you read enough Neal Peart lyrics, it is heavily implied that Canadian schools are the same way. Why did the same band play "Subdivisions" that produced 2112? Synopsis: the first is a Rush song about high school, kids abjecting each other for not being cool. The second is an album with one side forming a sort of musical version of Rand's Anthem. Dystopian low-tech future with the usual mix of oppression and superstition. A musician discovers the guitar, learns to play it, and is cast out by the priests. Peart and perhaps the other guys from Rush are, not surprisingly, libertarians.
So anyway, the point is, a lot of people would find a life that goes on normally to be hellish. Restless, creative people sublimate their thanatos from an urge to literally blow things up into better impulses. Fuse thanatos with creativity and you get a desire to smash inefficiency and build more productive habits and techniques. That behavior pattern is the only reason people could ever make a Finnish swamp into a productive farm. It's really the only reason people could survive in north Eurasia.
Then they find that suddenly, innovation, experimentation, and efficiency are huge sins. The pioneering spirit perceives it as profoundly painful.
Cultural degradation goes hand in hand with the gradual growth of government power. Essentially, an immoral people are incapable of governing themselves and therefore end up surrendering their freedom in exchange for peace and security.
An example of this is the lefts use of minority crime rates to justify disarming the populace at large. Some minorities are largely incapable of civilized behavior so if we remove those pesky weapons (which no one really needs anyway) we'll all be able to sleep sounder at night.
Another example is irresponsible trash not capable of raising their own children providing the government with an opportunity to expand the precedent of gov. interference within households through social services.
Now we all know both of these examples(and countless others) do not reflect society at large. But, in society where all peoples and persons are equal, the law will be applied to all, regardless of their own level of responsibility.
This is why responsible citizens should give a damn about cultural corrosion; it inevitably leads to loss of freedom. An excellent example is of course Weimar Deutschland.
-NW
Thanks PA. I wrote so much on that thread, I even proofread some of it before I posted, that I figured I might want to compile it and post it on my site. I haven't written much there for a while. Something about Dave's style made me want to create a sort of genealogy for rightist thinking.
OneSTDV, you are exceptionally naive as to the destruction the government is laying to average people everday. You need to subscribe to Lew Rockwell's blog and read it for a year. Often you will find yourself bitterly disagreeing with them, but you may come around.
I work in the dietary supplements industry and my life has been ruined by regulation. Absolutely, ruined. That means the same for my wife and my kids now have limited economic means. Your love of big government, as shown by your distaste of Ron Paul, means that you are fully accepting of the fact that innocent people are crushed by the government everyday. That is not a good moral position to be in.
Dave's style does have w way of spurring one to lucid writing. He's that elusive Leftist who seems reasonable and open to communication. I gravitate to the type because I'm genuinely interested in what goes on in the head of a man who seems intelligent enough to see reality as it is and extrapolate leftism to its natural conclusions... and yet he continues to advocate evil.
He's rare and in a way a welcome type in discussions. I liken the rhetorical style of 99% of Leftists to incoherent shrieking demons you see in horror movies. This includes feminists, blacks, homosexualists... they are impervious to reason.
But Dave is that rare devil you think that you can communicate with.
(this image, BTW, comes from Darkness at Noon that you alluded to.)
Speaking of, I guess there is a third category of leftist: the crude bureaucrat like Gletkin. Unlike Rubashev's first interrogated Ivanov, who was also someone you could reason with but who ultimately failed as a bolshevik commissars, the stolid, primitive Gletkin succeeded.
Unlike Rubashev's first interrogator, the sophisticated Ivanov who was also someone you could reason with but who ultimately failed as a bolshevik commissar, the stolid, primitive Gletkin succeeded. (correction to previous)
Your tax money at work. We end up paying for our own jailers.
anonymous says,
" ..... I work in the dietary supplements industry and my life has been ruined by regulation. Absolutely, ruined. That means the same for my wife and my kids now have limited economic means. Your love of big government, as shown by your distaste of Ron Paul, means that you are fully accepting of the fact that innocent people are crushed by the government everyday ....."
Your comment about the intrusive and corrosive influence of gov. reg. brings up a Catch-22 IMO.
Ok, first, I take no pleasure in your inconvenience and the economic misfortune it has caused you; second, I'd bet it likely if you had elaborated that you'd say the government outlawed/banned certain substances that you once sold and were profitable for you but did so for reasons you find to be insufficient; furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd say they did so in some cases to protect big companies who made other substances that were competing with those recently banned substances, etc.
Now, I sympathize with your situation (assuming those hypotheticals are correct) and understand and think it rightful that you would be angry toward those actions.
Still, what about the truly fraudulent and/or even dangerous supplements that are out there for use on a unprotected and naive public? Is it reasonable to expect every lay consumer to have the intricate knowledge necessary to make safe, let alone useful, substance purchases? Isn't there a certain safety level that indeed does make necessary a gov. body with a FDA-like public-protectionary purpose ----- however possible or even likely that said body may wind up abusing its powers or using them in that aforementioned competition-leveraging way?
I mean, I see a sort-of damned-if-you-do-or-damned-if-you-don't scenario being first and foremost here.
PA says,
"Dave's style does have w way of spurring one to lucid writing. He's that elusive Leftist who seems reasonable and open to communication ....He's rare and in a way a welcome type in discussions. I liken the rhetorical style of 99% of Leftists to incoherent shrieking demons you see in horror movies. This includes feminists, blacks, homosexualists... they are impervious to reason."
Upon reading 'Dave's' first comment, it and 'he' struck me as very familiar; I work beside many-upon-many 'Daves' in my job; most of the people that you and I agree could be rightly labeled 'Dems,' 'leftists' or that you folks dare even deem 'DWL's' are likely 'Daves,' albeit caught in a momentary unforgiving light or ungracious verbal moment.
Seriously, 'Dave' doesn't strike me as being in any way rare in his thinking; it's the CONFRONTATION and heat of political debate that turns members on each side into caricatures and that blocks further reaches of communication and understanding.
I mean, I'm a bit more rightist in my absolutes and concessions on certain racial issues, but I think of the many times that even I have been called a 'black supremacist nitwit' or something equally unflattering, when in a more reasonable light what I said wasn't even close to deserving such insult.
No, it's the impoverished civility and clime for political debate that make the 'Daves' seem so rare; a sad commentary that's on ALL of us ---- there's plenty of 'Daves' out there; I see 'em everyday!
yep. the govt can't keep mexicans on their side of the border or keep feral negros in check, but they have time to crack down on the Amish.
shows you who the govt thinks the trouble makers are
Patriot Act
NDAA
SOPA
ALL brought upon us by the big government party of Democrats and Neocons.
What I don't get is that YOU don't get it! The freedoms guaranteed (now usurped) to us by the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Magna Carta were not simply handed to us, they were earned. They were fought for through a relentless battle between the forces of tyranny and those of Liberty. For centuries men gave their lives and indeed their very souls to fight for Liberty. Were their efforts made in vain?
You dirty, stinking so-called Conservative "neo-cons" pissed our freedoms all away within a ten year span. And for what? To kill some Arab people out of a sense of servitude to a high-iq sand dwelling clan of bloodsuckers? You and your ilk disgust me. Repent by voting Ron Paul and taking up the cause of Liberty! Or don't, and continue on the ruinous path of tyranny.
Wow, you really are cossetted. Haven't you heard about how California school officials will confiscate any cookie, cupcake or donut found in a child's sack lunch?
Maybe I'm being naive here or putting too much faith in an elite that I ironically lambast almost every day
You are and you will experience government imposition if it goes too far. Canada is already well on its way to nanny-statism. The government that destroyed the long-gun registry is working on passing a bill that could make it illegal to create a website that contains a link to yours. This was supposed to be the party that stood for free speech and less government.
The States is in a precarious position thanks to the Permanent Government entrenched in the bureaucracy.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=YhS_Cesn1-wC&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=walter+olson+permanent+government&source=bl&ots=VCkLCqEOWE&sig=IVhnQ-6b-g_4Uwbh_fpba7JxrkM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WzATT_WNCaLy0gHRr5y1Aw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Your problem is that you don't realize that you can give the government to control culture, but, you can't control which culture it finds superior. I say the same thing to anti-smoking and anti-drunk-driving advocates. They are so willing to take the rights of individuals away because they view them as evil. But, I say, they can expect the exact same treatment when something they do becomes vilified. Suddenly, they'll understand when they suddenly loose the right to eat bacon grease or feed it to their children, enjoy a fresh pint of beer outside on a hot day or start up their motorcycle and go for a joyride.
In the case of the whole milk, it just affects far too few people to pick up any momentum. Why should it be illegal to sell you something if both of us are fully aware of the risks? Meh, I don't drink or really care about raw milk. And so, death by a million small bites begins. Eventually, everyone will be doing something that is antagonistic to government's views and that is the first step. Then, when most are taught how to think and the rest are afraid to speak up. Those who do, will find themselves easily arrested on charges of other misdoings.
I have felt the threat of force from Police and it isn't fun. They have the nerve to threaten your safety in the name of your safety and see no conflict in this . Police don't know or care what the proper use of force entails. They see everyone as potential victims and perpetrators and they don't care until you become one or the other. When they do, they take swift action and do not question the motives of those who give them their mandate. It is not their job. Their job is to subdue any and all threats.
The only problem with Orwell is that it has become a cliché. The communist threat on which it was based has faded from public conscience and anyone who mentions the risks or makes a comparison is deemed paranoid.
Authoritarianism isn't a left or right phenomenon; it is merely a tool employed by those that govern. Just because you haven't run afoul of useless cops chasing after non-criminals doesn't mean they aren't out there. The cops arrested the Amish for producing non-pasteurized milk, so why would they hesitate with thought criminals? As Cul-De-Sac Hero points out, Canada is already clamping down on free speech.
One --
Consider going through the security line at the airport. The TSA, unionized and nearly all non-White, exists mainly if not exclusively to humiliate and punish ordinary White people who are not special enough to fly private or chartered jets. Meanwhile Muslims and such are ignored, while Granny gets her colostomy bag opened.
Or, VDH's tales of the police going after middle class Whites, and leaving illegal alien criminals alone, in the Central Valley. Or, going to jail for putting the wrong stuff in the recycle bin, while non-Whites beat down unlucky Whites with impunity. Or some Mexican woman pepper sprays a crowd to get cheap X-boxen with impunity (she's Mexican! She can't be arrested!)
In England criticizing Muslims or Blacks or Gays gets you thrown in jail, while Muslims can preach jihad and violence with not just impunity but Government endorsement.
Freedom includes the freedom to be let alone by government as long as you mind your own business. That freedom does not exist for Whites without power/connections.
And the whole "Freedom" riff is not new. The Whiskey Rebellion was all about not paying taxes on Whiskey the way the American Revolution was not paying taxes to absentee Brits.
Hillbillies don't like or trust the government, save when the military kicks foreigner ass (that they like very much). And that is because the government has historically done nothing but oppress them (save the New Deal which electrified the backwoods and produced jobs) as the tool of other White groups, particularly the Puritans and Quakers.
If you want to know more about practical government oppression, please look into the kind of harassment that is endured by anyone who attempts to homeschool their children. The level of interference varies state by state, but the baseline is quite high.
This is without going into the ethics of charging people via taxation for a failed public school system that a homeschooling family doesn't even use -- which also goes for anyone who sends their kids to a private school.
Public school is half of the waking day for kids, parents can't opt out of funding it, the system fails to provide adequate education services, children are subjected to noxious nonsense by an 80%+ female staff, and kids have to live through the abuse of the top 10% of popular kids.
If you don't see oppression, you're pretty well-conditioned.
"If you don't see oppression, you're pretty well-conditioned"
If Americans of 1950 were shown the America of today, they would have committed mass suicide.
Nikrit wrote:
"Still, what about the truly fraudulent and/or even dangerous supplements that are out there for use on a unprotected and naive public? Is it reasonable to expect every lay consumer to have the intricate knowledge necessary to make safe, let alone useful, substance purchases? Isn't there a certain safety level that indeed does make necessary a gov. body with a FDA-like public-protectionary purpose ----- however possible or even likely that said body may wind up abusing its powers or using them in that aforementioned competition-leveraging way?
I mean, I see a sort-of damned-if-you-do-or-damned-if-you-don't scenario being first and foremost here."
Nikrit, thank you for writing. And your assumptions about my situation are all correct. Now to your concern about safety. My advice to OneStdv was to read Lew Rockwell everyday for a year. He might also read the Mises Institute weekly for a year. This will have a profound effect upon one's thinking. For we are now conditioned to always think in a binary way when additional options exist. In the case of dietary supplements the answer is simple: enable some firms to complete opt out of government regulation and to put a big warning on the bottle. Then the people who don't understand that the only motivation of a government employee is to retain his job, can go forth and buy regulated products all in the belief that they are safe, while individuals such as myself can peddle safe products to knowledgeable consumers and maybe not so knowledgeable consumers.
In my method: some balance of freedom is retained. In the present method, it is nothing but fascism.
As for ultimate safety, how can society allow abortion and then regulate anything that you ingest? Think about the logic: if abortion is a right to privacy, then how do you not have a right to ingest that which you want? Maybe you say it is because the government can regulate trade. Well, it cannot regulate trade if such regulations impinge your constitutional rights. Otherwise many states would just ban the economic trade of abortion.
Back to dietary supplements: many people are foolishly choosing them because of the poor quality of medical care and consultation in the USA which is a direct result of regulation. There are too few Dr.s and too many economic penalties on the medical trade. Allow more Dr's and lower barriers and more people will consult with physicians and fewer will rely on hokum. No matter how you spin it, the government is the enemy.
yep. the govt can't keep mexicans on their side of the border or keep feral negros in check, but they have time to crack down on the Amish.
shows you who the govt thinks the trouble makers are
Anarcho-Tyranny; follow the good part of the herd and tax/regulate them to death, use the bad part to justify your regime and terrify the good part.
I don't think I've seen the same Dave you guys have. He seems steadfastly full of shit to me, argumentativist and amoral.
ALL brought upon us by the big government party of Democrats and Neocons.
You dirty, stinking so-called Conservative "neo-cons" pissed our freedoms all away within a ten year span.
1) Neocon does not merely mean "someone I disagree with."
2) Gosh, how did the Founding Fathers articulate the pursuit of freedom and the danger of tyranny without having the neocons to get hysterical about?
(Without the sarcasm, why do the most strident alt-righters on "freedom" always seem way more concerned with neocons than actually defending a free society as a moral imperative, as was the concern of the Founding Fathers?)
"Definitely rooting for Pats vs. Giants again."
OUCH!!!
How? How, I ask!!! This is not possible!
From Brazil:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/natural-hair-racist-_n_1189068.html
Sony Music forced to pay 1.2 million dollars in fines for racist song.
Anarcho-Tyranny; follow the good part of the herd and tax/regulate them to death, use the bad part to justify your regime and terrify the good part.
Yeah, that's the same theme frequently commented on at The Daily Bell (www.thedailybell.com). The idea being that the ruling elite are planning the strife on purpose because it leads to more control. In fact, the proles will themselves demand more control for 'security'.
Here is more from a Lew Rockwell contributor:
http://williamlanderson.blogspot.com/2012/01/amerika-obama-and-eric-unjust.html
A marine biologist facing 20 years in jail for a non-crime; TSA agents steal $40K and get a slap on the wrist.
A vote for anyone other than Ron Paul is a vote for tyranny. There is no other way to look at it.
The world's getting too creepy. I'm only 45 and starting to look forward to death.
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