What is the greatest threat ...

... To American liberty?


Big Govt ... 72%

Big Business ... 21%

Big labor ... 5%



http://townhall.com/tipsheet/connca...-as-greatest-threat-to-their-liberty-n1887471

Somalia beckons, sweetie.

Clearly government as our Founders feared and tried to protect us from, but when you are saddled with moral busybodies such as this:

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf...,
Barack Hussein Obama
2001 Radio Interview



You do not stand much of a chance.

"Who can seriously doubt . . . that the power which a multi-millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest [bureaucrat] possess who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work?"
FA Hayek
__________________
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
CS Lewis

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington

Ishmael

Terrorists didn't make the list?

That's odd. There's a tremendous amount of right-wing fervor for more government to protect us from terrorists. I guess they're just loudmouths.

Americans

Amberchgo said:

What is the greatest threat...

... To American liberty?

Click to expand...

"American liberty" is collective...

...and all collective - whatever it may entail - is rooted from individual primaries.

You can assign all the "threat" you want...

...but the "greatest" malay "To American liberty" is the abdication of the reverence of individual liberty by individual Americans themselves.

It is exactly that reverence for individual liberty which made "American liberty" exceptional...

...and it is the abdication of that reverence for that exceptional individual liberty that makes America everyday, more and more, simply like the rest of the collective world.

phrodeau said:

Terrorists didn't make the list?

That's odd. There's a tremendous amount of right-wing fervor for more government to protect us from terrorists. I guess they're just loudmouths.

Click to expand...

In a Pew poll the looney left said climate change was a greater threat than terrorists.

eyer said:

"American liberty" is collective...

...and all collective - whatever it may entail - is rooted from individual primaries.

You can assign all the "threat" you want...

...but the "greatest" malay "To American liberty" is the abdication of the reverence of individual liberty by individual Americans themselves.

It is exactly that reverence for individual liberty which made "American liberty" exceptional...

...and it is the abdication of that reverence for that exceptional individual liberty that makes America everyday, more and more, simply like the rest of the collective world.

Click to expand...

This ^ well said.

Amberchgo said:

... To American liberty?


Big Govt ... 72%

Big Business ... 21%

Big labor ... 5%



http://townhall.com/tipsheet/connca...-as-greatest-threat-to-their-liberty-n1887471

Click to expand...

A, B and C in collusion.

And since they're pretty much always been, it's your illusion of some sort of magic exceptional liberty that's being threatened. You have about as much of the real deal as you've always had.

"Big Government" is too ambiguous. Nobody wants a big government. But when you dial down to elimination of specific government programs or functions, everyone screams when their ox gets gored.

The greatest threat is dependency and its growth trajectory. It is the sugar that coats the pill of tyranny.

The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp.

by Steve Washam based on a telling by George Gordon

Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions–especially his traps–and drove south. Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

It was a Saturday morning–a lazy day–when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town’s local citizens.

The traveler spoke, “Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?”

Some of the old timers looked at him like he was crazy. “You must be a stranger in these parts,” they said.

“I am. I’m from North Dakota,” said the stranger.

“In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs,” one old man explained.

“A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!”

He lifted up his leg. “I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp. “

Another old fellow said, “Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!”

“Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They’re wild and they’re dangerous. You can’t trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself. “Every man nodded his head in agreement.

The old trapper said, “Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?”

They said, “Well, yeah, it’s due south–straight down the road. “But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he’d meet a terrible fate.

He said, “Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the wagon. “And they did.

Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The townsfolk thought they’d never see him again.

Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn.After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought ten sacks of corn. This went on for a month. And then two months, and three.

Every week or two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn and drive off south into the swamp.

The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild and free hogs.

One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn.

He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove. He took off his gloves.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up,and they’re all hungry. I’ve got to get them to market right away. “

“You’ve WHAT in the swamp?” asked the storekeeper, incredulously.

“I have six thousand hogs penned up. They haven’t eaten for two or three days, and they’ll starve if I don’t get back there to feed and take care of them. “

One of the old timers said, “You mean you’ve captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?”

“That’s right. “

“How did you do that? What did you do?” the men urged, breathlessly.

One of them exclaimed, “But I lost my arm!”

“I lost my brother!” cried another.

“I lost my leg to those wild boars!” chimed a third.

The trapper said, “Well, the first week I went in there they were wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn’t come out. I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon. Every day I’d spread a sack of corn.

“The old pigs would have nothing to do with it. But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first.

“I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all free; they were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time.

“The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn in the clearing.

“At first they wouldn’t come to the clearing. It was too far. It was too open. It was a nuisance to them.

“But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it was easier to come to the clearing every day.

“And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds upon them.

“The next step was to get them used to fence posts. So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush so that they wouldn’t get suspicious or upset, after all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the brush. The corn was there everyday. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.

“This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts.

“The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail, after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence–they could always jump over the rail and flee in any direction at any time.

“Now I decided that I wouldn’t feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn’t feed them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them– but I only fed them every other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.

“Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food, they now needed me. They needed my corn every other day. “

“So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around the fence.

“But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will. “Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well. “

“Yesterday I closed the last gate and today I need you to help me take these pigs to market. “

The price of free corn was freedom.

The parable of the pigs has a serious moral lesson. This story is about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and independent people.

Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only individuals to a state of dependency; state and local governments are also on the fast track to elimination, due to their functions being subverted by the command and control structures of federal “revenue sharing” programs.

Please copy this parable and send it to all of your state and local elected leaders and other concerned citizens. Tell them: “Just say NO to federal corn. ” The bacon you save may be your own.

© 1997, The Idaho Observer. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for non commercial purposes in entirety including this notice

JohnnySavage said:

"Big Government" is too ambiguous. Nobody wants a big government. But when you dial down to elimination of specific government programs or functions, everyone screams when their ox gets gored.

Click to expand...

Cut everything 10%. No bitching allowed.

Amberchgo said:

Cut everything 10%. No bitching allowed.

Click to expand...

That's stupid and myopic.
Not unlike you.

Amberchgo said:

Cut everything 10%. No bitching allowed.

Click to expand...

for a start. It has already been shown with the sequester cute that che checks went out the indolent government workers still got paid....

Be good to do away with zero baseline budgeting while you are at it. Ridiculous to have no mechanism in place to reward administrators that save money year over year. as it is it is use it or lose it which is why the VA always short of money goes out and buys furniture and art it does not need to keep its budget intact. Even if you simply let them roll savings over into next years budget the money would be slightly better spent.

To suggest there is no waste is stupid.

There is a whole agency devoted to procurements because in theory it is more efficient to have them buy in bulk handle rel estate and so on. THAT agency is now a morass of ridiculous spending. as if the smallest dept in govt is not already large enough to buy in bulk.

stupid, all of it.

Amberchgo said:

... To American liberty?


Big Govt ... 72%

Big Business ... 21%

Big labor ... 5%



http://townhall.com/tipsheet/connca...-as-greatest-threat-to-their-liberty-n1887471

Click to expand...

Big gov't.....Regulation is out of control and needs to be curbed.

Amberchgo said:

Cut everything 10%. No bitching allowed.

Click to expand...

What which benefits you are you willing to give up?

Liar said:

What which benefits you are you willing to give up?

Click to expand...

Her post seems pretty clear. Any benefit is cut 10%

query said:

Her post seems pretty clear. Any benefit is cut 10%

Click to expand...

That doesn't answer my question in any way, shape or form and you know it. Is she telling other people to suck it up and not bitch about it, or is she willing to be one of those people for the benefit of the nation?

Amberchgo said:

Cut everything 10%. No bitching allowed.

Click to expand...

So the sewer will only go up to the top of the block, and you'll have to cart your shit from the house.

Liar said:

What which benefits you are you willing to give up?

Click to expand...

Any benefit that caused our debt to explode from 10 trillion to almost 18 trillion.

Liar said:

That doesn't answer my question in any way, shape or form and you know it. Is she telling other people to suck it up and not bitch about it, or is she willing to be one of those people for the benefit of the nation?

Click to expand...

I am sure she can speak for herself. It sounds pretty clear to me.

I realize it is the go-to talking point that not ONE fucking dime can be cut because whatever it is that is near and dear to you will go FIRST!

So go ahead and spout that nonsense if it makes you feel smart.

Computer hacking forcing the economy to implode or having the water supply or electrical grid attacked.

Your liberty's will be immediately taken if either of those three things happen.