And speaking of short videos, here (with thanks to Instapundit) is Rand Paul, complaining about the new toilets the government made him buy.
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Epic Rant PaulFebruary 7th, 2013 |
 15 comments to Epic Rant Paul |
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Fundamentally, the nanny-state has no answer for this, by and large they got into these positions to control and you don’t control by saying ‘please’. You control by putting a gun to someone’s head and saying ‘If you don’t do exactly what I say then I’m going to pull the trigger’.
This is the fundamental reason why I am a libertarian (small ‘l’), because I hate the fact that I am continuously confronted by representatives of the state forcing me to do what they say under duress.
It doesn’t matter whether the problem is toilets that don’t flush or light-bulbs that have the incandescence of 3 glow-worms. It is the fundamental principle of government monopoly on the use of force.
Time for another revolution I think.
His ‘pro-choice’ comparison was simple and brilliant.
As the great Homer Simpson once said, “It’s funny because it’s true!”
We live in the age of the toilet smuggler – where people smuggle in toilets from Canada.
And we live in the age of ELECTRIC toilet – where people (in the name of the environment) have to put electric motors in their toilets in order that the limited water hits the …… at high speed thus shoving in round the bend….
I feel that I have also gone round the bend.
This is not “regulate interstate commerce”.
Secede, Secede, Secede.
What was her initial response when he asked if she was pro choice ? I didn’t quite catch it, it sounded like “I’m pro choice of balms” which means nothing to me.
He made some good points but he went on way to long and kept on repeating himself. He took five minutes to say what he could have said a lot more pithily in one. If he wants to run for President he needs to learn that when it comes to getting your message across, less is more. He could learn something from Palin in that regard.
Regarding being pro-choice on abortion, but nothing else, Mr. Paul has touched on something of a key point I think.
The abortion movement has for a long time co-opted the concept of “choice” in an attempt to sound more laudable and to obscure their real agenda. They argue that they are neither for nor against abortion, but think women should “have the choice”. This can be revealed as disingenuous by reference to any other pressure group.
For example those who campaign for greater firearms rights are happy to be called “pro-gun”, and yet almost none of them think you absolutely should get a gun, or that you should be required to get a gun. They think you should have the choice.
The same is true for those who are “pro gay marriage” and so on. In common usage to be “pro” something means you are in favour of it under certain circumstances, and believe it should not be criminalised.
Yet the abortion movement has tried to obscure that, by the commonly held definition they are pro-abortion. Now the reason that Ms. Hogan could be accused of hypocrisy on this matter was not to do with intellectual inconsistency on her part, but to do with the way in which the language has been abused. The notion that personal choice is an ideal worth pursuing will not even have entered her mind, hence her authoritarianism on light bulbs and toilets. The reason she is “pro-choice” is because she considers abortion a desirable amenity within her post-feiminst, progressivist world-view. It is right up there among the key philosophical boxes you need to tick to be called a good lefty.
Choice doesn’t enter into the matter at all.
Hurrah! I am at the very epicentre of the latest libertarian thinking. I recently remodelled my shower room and installed a refurbished Victorian high mounted cast iron toilet cistern. It has one moving part, operates on the siphon principle with no seals to leak, and flushes with a very satisfying thunder of water down the pipe into the pan and beyond. Highly eco-unfriendly, which gives me a great deal of satisfaction every time I pull the chain.
Viva la resistance toilettes!!!
JV – yes indeed.
“Planned Parenthood” (and so on) are not going to give people both sides of the matter if they to to them for advice.
They are not “pro choice” they are pro abortion – and all their advice (and their pay) is directed that way.
Jim – yes indeed you are the centre of the toilet resistance.
An example to us all.
If you have not already seen it, the book “Bourbon for Breakfast” by Jeffrey Tucker (the bloke from the revived Laissez-Faire books) has many more examples of this kind of meddling–weakened washing powder/weak showers/cold-wash washing machines. Beyond the book, he has a video somewhere on the net about the epidemic of bedbugs in the USA. The bedbug is making a comeback because pesticides are banned for many uses and increasingly hard to get for ordinary people.
The more I think about Agenda 21, the more I wonder….
Lee, somebody with better hearing than me might offer a correction, but I think she was anticipating and trying to cut off his line of reasoning by saying “I’m pro-choice on bulbs.” Which in Orwellian speak mean she wants people to have the freedom to buy the particular bulbs she directs them to buy.
I would have liked to hear where the 10th amendment comment at the very end was going. The mere mention of the 10th Amendment (by presumably the Democratic chair?) at a hearing in the US Senate is remarkable.
Ah, thank you Midwesterner. Bulbs it was.
Thinking about it a bit more, although I applaud Mr Paul’s general sentiments on this, I don’t think this is a particularly effective line of attack. For, so far as I am aware, you don’t get a perfectly free choice of abortion any more than you get a perfectly free choice of light bulb. For example, most states require that you use a licensed physician. Consequently, once the busybodies have thought about it a bit, they’ll just reply that there’s nothing wrong with regulating light bulbs to ensure acceptable standards, just like there’s nothing wrong with regulating abortions for the same reasons. Regulation doesn’t prevent choice, it just ensures that your choice is a safe one. We are entirely even handed between abortions and light bulbs they will say. You’re free to choose from any of the alternatives that meet acceptable quality standards.
In Ken Mcleod’s great distopian book, Intervention, about the future, the government has gone further than this, and is regulating all aspects of living with the excuse that ‘free’ markets are impossible because no single individual can know as much as the government about any particular product or service, so the government decides for you the thing that you would have done if you’d known all the facts. They know what your ‘informed’ choice would have been, if you’d had the time to study all the facts, so they make the choice on your behalf.
It’s a rant, Lee. Although for a rant to be effective it does require a rational premise behind it (and this one has it), impeccably logical exposition, careful choice of words, conciseness and purely rational arguments are not among the requirements. A lot of ordinary Americans feel the way Rand does, but do not have the public stage to express their feelings (‘feelings’, rather than ‘purely rational and logical arguments’, being the operative word). I think that Rand did a good job speaking for them. I especially enjoyed seeing whassername being lost for words. She could have retorted with a perfectly rational argument, pointing out the irrationalities in Rand’s rant, but she couldn’t afford it. And the reason she couldn’t afford it was that doing so would have exposed her own feelings about the subject.
I say well done.
Jim has realised that it’s not called the “thunder box” for nothing.
Lee, the scary thing is that regulation is indeed becoming the new method of control. Instead of having to pass pesky laws, you get what you want to control under regulatory control under seemingly reasonable pretexts then have your friends adjust the regulations without having to go to the bother of having to go through all those pesky checks and balances.