Meta-analysis interests me, as you know; the coverage of the coverage. Far more revealing to me than the quotidian details of Lauryn Hills’ hounding by the IRS was the manner in which Fox News, the so-called conservative network, framed Ms. Hill’s failure to pay her taxes.
After all, Hill’s story is humdrum—that of the theft of private property by the state (anyone still want to argue that taxes are not paid at the point of a gun? “Forfeit your private property or lose your liberty”).
Both Shepard Smith and Megyn Kelley gloated that the threat of prison did the trick and compelled the singer to fork over close to a million dollars in taxes owed. At Fox News, this was a good-news story.
The Good “Guy” here is Ms. Hill. Taxation rejects a man’s absolute and natural right to his property and vests property rights in the political establishment. The 16th Amendment (“The Number of The Beast”) does just that.
Is communism conducive to cannibalism? Of course. Immoral systems give rise to more of the same. Food shortages and starvation are byproducts of communism. The rest follows as sure as night follows day. Taboos fall by the way when one is starving. The Plymouth pilgrims, circa 1623, abandoned private property for communal ownership of the means of production. They starved.
Archaeologists revealed Wednesday their analysis of 17th century skeletal remains suggesting that settlers practiced cannibalism to survive.
Researchers unearthed an incomplete human skull and tibia (shin bone) in 2012 that contain several features suggesting that this particular person had been cannibalized. The remains come from a 14-year-old girl of English origin, whom historians are calling “Jane.”
Photos: Cannibalism evidence Photos: Cannibalism evidence
Scholar: Settlers ate each other
Studying the history of cannibalism
Cannibalism in colonial America?
There are about half a dozen accounts that mention cannibalistic behaviors at that time, although the record is limited, said Douglas Owsley, division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of National History.
The newly analyzed remains support these accounts, providing the first forensic evidence of cannibalism in the American colonies.
Good luck in finding a discussion of native culinary appetites and practices in the Americas. But now that archaeologists are implicating the Christian Jamestown settlers with cannibalism, you’ll never hear the end of it.
As was observed in “Rousseau’s Noble Savage – Not on this Continent”, “The Americas are scattered with archeological evidence of routine massacres, cannibalism, dismemberment, slavery, abuse of women and human sacrifice among native tribes. Why, the Northwest Territories Yellowknife tribe eventually disappeared as a direct result of a massacre carried out as late as 1823. …”
Still, I’d like to read a response to this news item from a real historian. Kevin Gutzman? Tom Woods?
If all aspects of the airline industry, “curb-to-curb,” were truly private, as they ought to be, we wouldn’t chafe about whether pilots should carry guns or not, whether granny and grandpa from the prairie ought to endure patdowns, or whether air traffic controllers should be furloughed because central planners have run out of other people’s money, to paraphrase the late Mrs. Thatcher.
Meanwhile, back on terra firma, it’s hell for the faithful who believe Big Brother will deliver them from want—and from A to B. Via The Guardian:
Republican and Democratic leaders are working on draft legislation that would protect aviation from the estimated $87bn across-the-board spending cuts.
Furloughs forced on air traffic control staff have seen flights cancelled and many others delayed. FlightStats reported that on Thursday alone, up to mid-afternoon, 107 flights had been cancelled and 3,387 delayed. The sequester cuts are being implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration, after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a budget plan. Although the sequester began on 1 March, the cuts have been slow to take effect; the flight disruption is now highly visible and it is set to become worse from 15 June, when dozens of control towers are set to close.
The specter of residents of the suburb of Watertown, in the Greater Boston area, being forcibly turned out of their homes and stared down by SWAT teams is not likely to disturb your average American. Said the great Roman statesman Cicero: “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.”
Of those Americans who vaguely compute something about a Fourth Amendment—“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects”—most still believe that blatant violations of these sacred protections are probably justified, and visited only on “terrorists.”
In other words, if an authority figure violates the Fourth Amendment—you average, pliant American will simply surmise that it’s likely OK.
In addition, liberty as it was codified by the founding generation demands a rational mind. Being both childish and sentimental in the extreme, Americans shun rational thought. It thus becomes impossible to think clearly about liberty.
Where is the outrage that the Powers That Are in Boston essentially made prisoners of an entire city? On what grounds and by what authority does any municipal government presume to place every citizen of a major United States city on house arrest? In the afterglow of the successful capture of the remaining Boston Marathon bombing suspect, alleged Islamist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the people celebrating in the streets that Tsarnaev was taken alive (ironically, only because the “lockdown” was lifted and the property owner in whose boat Tsarnaev was hiding could finally go outside and check his yard) ought to be asking themselves what they have to be happy about. They are beta testers of the New Freedom, which looks a lot like the Old Oppression. At whim, your government may order you to remain in your home, and if you dare disobey, they will point guns at you, essentially threatening to murder you.
