Category Archives: Liberty

Update III: Tossed and Gored By Gore Vidal

Constitution, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democrats, Homosexuality, Intellectualism, Liberty, Literature, Military, Propaganda, Reason, Terrorism, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

Despite his surprisingly mundane and misguided ideas on politics and economics, brilliant belletrist Gore Vidal, at 83, still manages to dazzle with his original insights. In a country in which homegrown retardation is more pressing a problem than homegrown terrorism, that’s quite something.

Vidal recently gave an interview to the British Times from which it was clear that he no longer sees signs of the divine in Obama. Nevertheless, absent from the dismal score card he gave the president was a realistic appraisal of the putative gifts of Obama, a charmer who was elected based on his ability to sweetly say nothing much at all.

To his credit, Vidal is scathing about Obama’s talismanic, “solve that [war] and you solve terrorism” treatment of the Afghanistan war. At the same time he wants to see Obama, Lincoln-like, lord it over the people (especially with respect to health care). But those kinds of images go with the homoerotic territory.

In any event, his weak protestations over Obama are the least interesting of Vidal’s comments, the ones about Timothy McVeigh and the love that dare not speak its name the most interesting.

Read the interview.

Update I (Oct. 1): Some respect for Gore Vidal, please. He belongs to a generation of intellectuals who SERVED. Bravely. As a matter of interest, “Some 450 out of 750 Princeton graduates in the class of 1956 served in the military.” Samuel Huntington, one of America’s greatest scholars, served in the army. “All four of the Kennedy brothers served in the military; not one of the thirty Kennedy cousins has.” [Excerpted from Are We Rome?The Fall of An Empire And The State of America by Cullen Murphy, 2007, p. 82.]

Most of the neocon-minded war mongers have not served.

Of course, “our freedoms,” such as they are, do not come courtesy of our armed forces leveling this or the other far-flung protectorate abroad. That’s yet more neocon nonsense on stilts. Cheap sloganeering.

Update II: The proverbial Orwellian Ministry of Truth decrees how the peons think about the issues of the day. When it comes to Timothy McVeigh they’ve had the same degree of success as in ensconcing Rosa Parks as the new Founding Mother of America.

Vidal is rare and courageous in recognizing the legitimate effrontery against life and liberty that motivated McVeigh to commit his crime. He is also unique in acknowledging that McVeigh was not a rube, but a thoughtful man who had fought for his country and was familiar with its foundational principles and documents. Here is McVeigh on the American experiment gone wrong (haven’t you read the interview?):

I think it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We’ve gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that’s where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced.

The characters involved in the Waco massacre—our “brave” law and order officers and their puppet masters—deserved to be put to death too, but were not. Vidal has my respect for recognizing what the decidedly mediocre mind of a Rich Lowry has been incapable of. If Vidal were of a younger generation (like myself), his iconoclasm would have consigned him in mindless America to obscurity.

Update III: MORAL/INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENCE. Conflating the causes for which McVeigh committed his cruel crime against agents and family of an oppressive government is akin to conflating MY causes with those of, in Myron’s taxonomy of the evil, the “Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin,” and I would add Al Gore (to round off the profile, and to poke at the humorless).

What sort of moral relativism is this? What kind of messy thinking is this? The causes and theories of the Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin (and Al Gore) were wrong on their logic and facts; McVeigh’s causes and motivation, if not his deeds, were right. What’s so hard about that? Kudos to Vidal, however confused he is about all else, for recognizing this.

Update II: Bachmann & Paul Against Bernanke

Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Iran, Liberty, Military, Politics, Ron Paul, War

I like the idea of a Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann ticket. Paul needs no introduction, but Bachmann is bright in the way Palin isn’t; she is intellectually curious in the way Palin is not (this accounts for why she has beefed up her knowledge of the Fed and is familiar with Tom Woods’ Meltdown); she is attractive, and she drives liberals stark raving mad. (Or madder)

Here Bachmann introduces Paul:

And here is Paul:

Update (Sept. 28): With respect to “Hot Air,” advanced hereunder by Haym as an ostensible source of credible opinion; it isn’t. Credible news, quite possibly, but not opinion. At least not on foreign policy. And not on this site. (Yeah, the adventure in Iraq was fun wasn’t it!) This is a libertarian site; Hot Air is neoconservative. We’ve adjudicated the last 8 years of foreign policy here on BAB in blog posts and in article on IlanaMercer.com. My perspective, which comports with that of Paul, albeit with some differences, has been vindicated. I’m surprised war mongers are unrepentant, and are still be plumping for preemptive war against countries that have not aggressed against the US given the lessons of Iraq. I guess when it’s not your kid who’s hobbling around on prostheses or dead, it doesn’t much move the mind, much less the heart. The “isolationism” pejorative is lobbed by neoconservatives when they wish to discredit those of us who believe in fighting just wars only. It’s like pacifist.

Update II (Sept. 29): I am sure Myron has preordered his copy of “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Update II: ‘The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On’

Constitution, Feminism, Gender, GUNS, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Liberty, Private Property, Regulation, Rights, Sport

RUGER 10/22 FULL AUTO, or modifications thereof. The absence of any kick-back is a huge plus for me. Finding an outdoors, non-range situation is another priority as well. I cannot stand the range: in-doors or outdoors. These are collective, collectivist holding pens into which regulators have herded free people who wish to become comfortable with defending life, liberty and property.

Update I: A different configuration.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) found that the Ruger 10/22 was more lethal than previously thought, especially in upper body injuries, and has reclassified it as a lethal weapon. That’s good enough for me.

Update II (Sept. 28): Taki Theodoracopulos once wrote a “penetrating” piece titled, “Why American Women are Lousy Lovers.” “That article,” Taki taunted his critics, “had nothing to do with the sexual act; it was an anti-feminist tract.” A connoisseur of the fair sex, Taki has often made the case that American women are devoid of femininity.

Why this prelude? Well, guys, you may be used to the manly (often manless), American female gun aficionado, who boasts about her prowess with a firearm as big as the one you can handle, but that’s not me.

I’m not an American woman, and I’m no feminist (I don’t need to compensate for anything). I still trust my guy to physically protect me (as he trusts me to use my big brain to “protect” him, so to speak). Of course, a woman must be able to drop an assailant. But I’m not going to carry on about guns like some half-male, ripped, bionic bimbo. This RUGER 10/22 seems a very sweet toy for a girl (not remotely guy-like) who wants to do damage to an advancing target, in a confined situation.

Watch this space. Photos forthcoming.