Let's Have Us a Little Talk About Rights.

I recently read a lovely blog post by Matt Walsh about some of the recent... nefariousness of the homosexual community.  I really don't know a better way to put it. And to go along with all of the stories that I've read, and that Mr. Walsh listed of homosexual couples suing and forcing people and businesses to cater to their weddings (which why you would want to force someone to participate in something that personal I have no idea), I have also noticed a few stories of Muslims doing the same sort of thing to at least one business.

This has all had the effect of telling me that most people don't really understand what Rights actually are.

As Mr. Walsh says in his blog:
You're feelings are not constitutionally protected.

You do not have a right not to be offended.

You do not have a right to force your opinions on others.

You do, however, have the right not to be harmed by others. That's the right to life. The Declaration of Independence states that all Men (in the all inclusive human race sense) possess the Rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Not a guarantee of happiness, but the right to pursue it.

One thing that I picked up from my philosophy classes was that your rights end where the next person's begin. I don't want anyone to think I'm saying anything that I'm not here. All actions have consequences. You can't just go and shoot someone in the head if you feel like it because that violates their Right to life. You can't take a random person off the streets and lock them in your basement because that violates their Right to liberty.

But really, the Right to liberty is much deeper than simply being free to locomote where ever you want to. It is the Right to live your life as you see fit without undue interference.

Mr. Walsh writes very eloquently about the problems of forcing people to change because they somehow offend a few people with something that really isn't that big of a deal.

I'm writing today about Rights themselves. Where they come from and why they're enshrined within the Bill of Rights.

The Founding Fathers really were amazing men. They had a depth of understanding of philosophy and politics that is exceptionally rare, especially today. Modern day education is very much assembly line indoctrination... but that's beside the point.

The philosophy of the 18th century was based upon Natural Rights. These rights weren't provided by any organization or government. Natural Rights are based upon universal laws.

Natural Rights are not opinions, or desires. You can want a thing but that doesn't give you a right to it. Natural Rights are those things that are required for sentient beings to exist and live with dignity.

That is the idea that the Bill of Rights was written upon. The Founding Fathers wrote that Bill so that the Rights of the citizens of the new nation would not be abridged by its new government.

You know what? Watch this video. This Bill Whittle fellow says what I'm trying to say much better than I am.


So we're clear now, right? Rights are provided by some force larger than human organization. Governments that do not rule according to Natural Law do not rule lawfully. If you're forcing someone to do something like say... host your wedding, then you are violating their Rights.

If you want to learn more about Natural Law and good government from the same source as our Founding Father's here's a .pdf of John Locke's Two Treatises On Government.

Here's another video that you might find interesting as well. A little bit more of that old Templar vs Assassin duology.

Thanks for reading!

Libertarianism and the Battle for Freedom

I recently started playing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, and it reminded me that I really I really enjoy the Assassin's Creed games. And not just for the really fun game play, or the interesting stories. I like the games because they set up an important dynamic between eternally combating forces. Freedom verses Control. This dynamic is being echoed in popular culture more and more, but I think that Assassin's Creed is a good example.

On one hand you have the Templar Order, it's symbol supposedly based on the Mark of Cain. The Templar's main goal is to control people's lives and minds. Templars seek to create a perfect world full of order and control and woe be unto anyone who does not display the correct thinking or stands in the way of that perfect world. (Sound familiar? If it doesn't I'll spell it out later). In the Templar world, freedom and individuality aren't just overrated - They're dangerous. Templars seek the dominance of the state over the individual.

On the other hand you have the Order of Assassins, also called the Liberalis Circulum (Circle of Liberals), that fights against the Templars in order to preserve the freedom and the progress and growth that comes with it. I like what the Assassin's stand for so much that I once designed a Liberalis Circulum Agent prestige class for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. But that's beside the point. The Assassins are almost always few in number compared to the Templar, and the Templar always seem more powerful, but the Assassins make up the difference with pinpoint victories. 

I mentioned earlier that the dynamic is increasingly present in pop culture.  In two fairly recent movies the topic has come up and the outcome of the stories were heavily weighted, I think, in favor of the Liberalis Circulum ideology. 

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the insidious force of Hydra hijacks SHIELD to try and take control of the nation while eliminating powerful and dangerous individuals like Tony Stark and Doctor Strange (that mention was a great geek out moment) who can confidently say that they can run their own lives and business better than the State. When viewing the helicarriers that Hydra would eventually use, Steve Rogers replies to Fury's rationalizations with "This isn't freedom, this is fear!"

In Divergent, the system in future Chicago groups people into five 'factions' and those who don't belong... die or disappear. A few people who are labelled as 'Divergent' for having a little bit of individuality basically save two of the factions from a third (Erudite, the "we're smarter than you so we are the only ones who know how to run your life people) and still end up hunted and on the run.

I'm a classical Liberal, which means that these days I'm a Libertarian. Modern Liberals are statists who have usurped the good name of the label. They've done the same with Progressives. President Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive, but he wouldn't recognize modern progressives as anything remotely connected to his ideals. Thomas Jefferson was a liberal, but he had nothing in common with today's liberals.

The words liberal and liberty have the same root word, and both do (or at least should) mean freedom and free-ness. This isn't freedom from responsibility or consequences like so many people want to think, but rather a freedom to act and live unfettered from outside influences such as government. 

If you want to see what real "Templars" would do with power and influence then you have no farther to look in life than the 'liberal' Left in this great nation. They have no higher cause than themselves and their perfect world. They have control of the government bureaucracy and the media, and what have they done with it?

- They have become thought police, trying to destroy anyone who thinks differently or freely. Examples of this have been seen with the furor over Hobby Lobby and Chic-Fil-A, and more acutely with the bakers and wedding planners who have been forced by the government to cater to homosexuals against every belief and moral of their beings.

- They have convinced Americans that we aren't simply Americans. You have to get the black vote, or the latino vote, or the women vote... They've factionalized America and far far too many people are okay with it. The value of a person is in the content of their character, not the color of their skin or the shape of their genitals. An American is an American.

There are more, but I don't feel like remembering them. But essentially, the Left wants a permanent underclass that will only vote for them, while eliminating anyone who doesn't agree with their thinking.

Libertarians are a different beast entirely. They're much more chaotic and individualistic than the Left or the Right. They have all manner of personal opinions on everything from drugs to guns to energy production, but they all agree on one thing: People can run their individual lives better than the government can. 

I find that the main difference between statists and individualists comes down to their perception of humanity. The statist believes that in any given situation, a human will act poorly and selfishly. The individualist believes that a human will act beneficently and selfishly in any given situation. The statist believes that human nature needs to be curbed by powerful organizations or else destroy everything. The individualist believes that human nature is an engine of creativity and goodness. Pessimism and Optimism. Control and Freedom. One believes that the world works better when other people run your life, the other believes that the world works better when you run your life.

History has shown again and again and again which way actually works. The statist 'utopias' of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Communist China are just recent examples of what happens when the pessimistic view takes hold. Inevitably, those statist bastions caused death, destruction, suffering, evil, and stagnation far far beyond anything that the Left or other statists will admit. 

In contrast, those nations and eras built upon individual freedoms have thrived and become innovative, optimistic, and closer to ideal. 

Will the world ever be perfect? No. But an honest look at history shows the best way to go about life. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, "Government at its best is a tolerable evil, and at it's worst an intolerable one. Even so it is evil and must be fought against." Government is a consumer and not a producer, no matter what government lackeys may try to tell you. Left unchecked government grows into the monstrous pile of bureaucracy that we're dealing with today. 

There are good things worth fighting for in this life, and freedom pretty much tops the list. So are you a statist or an individualist? A pessimist or an optimist? 

Are you a Templar or an Assassin?

Israel: the Battle of Good and Evil In Action

This is a little late... the post itself and the topic. But that's what you get for lending me your ears.



This topic is rather important, though. For everyone. I mean, Israel and the people living there are kind of amazing. They've inhabited that region for three thousand years or so, they've survived ridiculous persecutions (I believe that the holocaust killed at least half of the world's Jews at that time), they revived and speak a dead language (only time that's really happened) and on and on.

Every time that Israel is attacked, their the first one's at the table to bring back peace or a semblance there of.

So lately we have little Israel, the only real peaceable and Democratic nation in all of the middle east, on a plot of land smaller than the state of New Jersey under nearly constant attack by their closest neighbors. The people attacking Israel (Hamas) store their weapons in schools and hospitals. Israel defends itself like any self-respecting nation would... and the world condemns them for that.

Isn't that insane? Maybe I haven't framed the situation in the best way, but really... things are insane here. Hamas is recognized as a terrorist group by just about every authority that matters, but when they attack Israel, they ask Israel to stop provoking the terrorists... who were provoked simply because Israel exists.

If you're not up to speed on the history of the area and conflict I'm posting some useful videos below. Go ahead, I can wait.

The Middle East Problem


Debunking the Palestine Lie


What is Palestine? Who are the Palestinians?

When else in history has a nation born such a burden of responsibility for the civilians of the group attacking it? People (usually very poorly informed 'celebrities') keep putting Israel down for bombing schools and hospitals... but that's where Hamas and the PLO keep their rockets. Israel keeps going out of its way to spare and protect noncombatants, they give areas they are going to attack 20 minutes of warning.

Hamas threatens and kills those people who try to heed those warnings.

Why do we keep harrassing the Jews for trying to live, and supporting the Arabs that are endeavoring constantly to wipe them out?

"If you mean whose side should we be on: Israel or the Arabs? I would certainly say Israel because it’s the advanced, technological, civilized; country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages." --Ayn Rand

I find Ayn Rand rather interesting. Some of her quotes I agree with, others not so much. This one I like. And if you need proof that Israel is surrounded by savages well... there are plenty of accounts of honor killings and maimings, child-brides and women used as chattel. Sharia and the Islamic culture that it inspires... sicken me. I could easily find plenty of links and videos to show you what I'm talking about, but I don't want to get that angry right now.

Israel is a civilized and reasonable society that is a force for good and progress. They're surrounded by people who resort to violence and force almost at a whim. They terrorize and destroy.

There are six million Jews in Israel, and one point seven billion Muslims in the world who have 22 recognized nations. Why are they so threatened and angered by such a paltry number of people on a plot of land smaller than New Jersey? It's just ridiculous.

I am firmly convinced that Islam is the greatest threat to freedom, peace, and progress. Now, you're probably thinking, but surely you can't mean to slander all Muslims with such allegations! Well, perhaps not all of them, but while there are good people in any group or population, the actions of that group tends to speak louder than their words.  When more than half of anyone's top ten terrorist groups consists of organizations from one religion, there's something fundamentally wrong with that religion.

Time for a little math. According to a survey quoted by Pamela Gellar, there approximately 15-25% of the world's Muslim population identifies as actively fundamentalist or Jihadist. 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide, so that translates to 255-425 million people around the world that want to destroy democracies and freedoms around the world. I really wish I could find the video where she quotes the statistics, because there are more and they are telling.

When your religion says that people of other faiths must convert, submit, or die; that is a fundamental problem.

The thing that angers me the most is how Islamists treat women. I was raised to be a gentleman, to protect women and to treat them with respect. Muslims rape virgins so that they won't get into heaven. Raping non-Muslim women doesn't count as a sin because they aren't Muslim. The... the violence and perversion that is institutionalized by Islam and Sharia is sickening.

One in four Swedish women have been raped by Muslim men or gangs of Muslim men. And all of the West's liberals and supposed feminists stay silent.

There is no such thing as a moderate Islam. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected attempts to call Turkey the representative of moderate Islam. "It is unacceptable for us to agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not."

This went a in a little bit different direction than I originally intended, but when a group consistently acts in a way inconsistent with life and peace it needs to be pointed out.

Thank you for reading. Here's one last video to feed your thoughts.

We Need You To Dream Again

I'm going to touch on a few subjects this time around that I'll get to on other weeks, but bear with me because it'll all tie together by the end, if not sooner. This is a going to be a long one.

The world is in pretty bad shape, right? We've got at least one deadly disease spreading across the world, our southern border has been all but dissolved by our corrupt federal government, we have a corrupt federal government that would make any dictator proud, there's the Russia-Ukraine thing that's ongoing, the Israel-Palestine thing that's ongoing, Antisemitism is on the rise in Europe (never a good thing) and seems like everywhere else, you have a militant Islamic movement taking over Syria and Iraq that's committing all kinds of barbarisms and atrocities against... well, pretty much everyone they can get their hands on, but mostly on the region's Christians. I'm sure that China is up to something (because they always are) and there's probably a few natural disasters running about.

But we don't have to get depressed. The future doesn't need to get worse. We can dream again.

I grew up in the 90s and the 2000s and while some distasteful things happened, I remember an overall optimism about the shape of the future. Now it is hard not to be pessimistic, isn't it?

Fixing the United States government will be hard but simple. We need to vote out the socialists and the communists (same difference) and the statists and the big government activists this fall and replace them in congress with good reliable responsible small government conservatives. Or better yet, vote in Libertarians. No matter what their personal views on social or financial issues are a good libertarian supports full freedom and the smallest government necessary.

"Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
-- Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"

Alright, I'm a little off the topic I want to discuss here. Politics is for another post. What I really want to talk about is dreaming, and the inspiration for dreaming.

I can just as easily say hopes instead of dreams. But... dreams work better. Dreams provide a goal. Dreams can be more active than a hope.

I like Star Trek. No. Actually, I love Star Trek. Star Trek followed an era where before the closest to flight we could come to was an air balloon, was replaced by actual flight, and then regular flights leading up to almost routinely putting men on the moon (and then explosions and sadness).  Star Trek was inspired by the hope and dreaming of that progression.

I don't know how many of you have read or watched interviews of scientists and engineers, but a goodly portion of them were inspired to go into their fields by Star Trek. And now we have cell phones, and 3D printers, and tablets all because one show inspired people.
The original series of Star Trek, as well as the Next Generation were conceived of as a Utopia. A point where humans had (mostly) made peace with themselves and moved beyond most material greed (the proliferation of replicators probably helped with that). The people are still human (the ones that ARE human), but they still aspire to be better and to learn and create and are everything that make humankind great.
Star Trek inspires people to be better people, as well as to create a brighter future.

I do not like Star Wars. It is a fun enough series, but... that's about it. I suppose it could have inspired some people to go into robotics (although how C-3PO could have done that I have no idea). I just... for everything that happens in the Star Wars universe, it is a very stagnant place. I guess the stories are meant to be cyclical, but it just tells me that that galaxy is stuck in a rut. Star Wars has a history spanning about 20,000 years. In all of that time, you have the story of dark side and light side repeating endlessly because after 20 millenia of mostly unbroken society obviously no one is going to learn a durn thing about curbing excess destructive tendencies.
And their technology... ugh. In 20,000 years you know what the major technological advances are? Smaller batteries for lightsabers, and the Death Star. And the Death Star was just a huge upscaling of existing things! If you took a starfighter from 5000 years before the battle of Yavin (Episode IV) and pitted it against with something from say... 7 years after the battle of Yavin (Episode VI) the performance would be extremely comparable.
No, I do not like Star Wars.

There is so much more to our world than most people realize.

One of the most important steps to moving towards a better and brighter future is cheap, clean, and abundant energy. A few years ago I watched a TED talk on liquid Thorium reactors. It was cool, but I didn't give it too much thought at the time. I think it was this one:


I don't think that he goes into it in this particular video, but Thorium is an amazing power source that, compared with everything else, produced electricity costing pennies on the dollar. That's compared to fossil fuels, solar, wind, and other nuclear power.

Thorium cannot be weaponized, or at least it can't be done easily. The liquid-salt fission reactors don't melt down and spread radiation when something goes wrong and things shut off. They are vastly smaller than current Uranium fission reactors, which makes them potentially very portable.

There was a video making the rounds for Solar Freaking Roadways! a while back that would be awesome, and I am all for that. But I see Thorium reactors as a much more efficient and economical means of meeting the world's energy needs.

With energy from a Thorium reactor, the fuel used per person per year in the United States would be about 4 grams. 4 GRAMS! That's like 2 paperclips! A handful of Thorium provides all the power you should need for an entire lifetime. I watched a video earlier that said the average person in the US uses about 57 gallons of fossil fuels every year right now. All of those fossil fuels pump out a lot of pollutants (and I'm more worried about health effects and genetic anomalies caused by that than any supposed climate change). Thorium reactors are contained in such a way that their only output into the world is energy in the form of electricity or heat.

Can you tell that I'm in love with this idea? I have a vision in my head right now of a world powered by Thorium reactors and Solar freaking roadways!

You know what makes liquid-salt reactors even more awesome? They'll be perfect for space travel and space colonies. Right now our space efforts rely on batteries and solar panels for watts and kilowatts of power... ok... but a liquid-salt reactor will provide them with 50-100 MEGAwatts! Enough to power an engine, and life support, and computers, and who knows what else.

That kind of cheap, clean, and abundant power won't fix every problem on our planet, but man will it be a step in the right direction. There are so many amazing things going on in the world. Support them, and please don't dwell on all of the bad stuff. Act when you can, and things will start looking up.

Thanks for reading. I'll just leave you with a few more Thorium videos and links.



Taylor Wilson: My Radical Plan

Thorium Documentary Summary

Everyone Should Play More Dungeons and Dragons

Yes, I really am promoting what the title says. I'm not saying everyone should play the video game versions, although there are at least a few based on Dungeons and Dragons video games worth some time. I'm talking about the good old fashioned pen and paper sit next to your stinky, argumentative friends Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm just going to refer to it as D&D from here on. Lots less typing.

Really, I'm saying that everyone should play pen and paper games. There is a huge variety out there like classic D&D (they have five versions out now, from the complex rules smithing of 3.0 and 3.5 to the easy beginner's 4.0 to the 'as simple or complex as you want it' D&D Next that's coming out this fall), pen and paper Star Wars, War Craft, Pathfinder, and more that I'm sure I have no idea about based upon the d20 system.

But you're sitting here thinking "That's all well and good, you handsome devil, but you haven't even begun to tell me why I should even consider your premise."

That's a good thought, citizen. I'm working up to it. If you know how pen and paper games work, you can probably skip this paragraph. If you don't, hold on for a second. with these games, the world everyone plays in is built, developed, and run by a Dungeon or Game Master. He (or she) controls everything about the world that isn't the other people's characters. He controls the npc's, the monsters, the weather, the treasure, and even the experience points. The players, on the other hand, build the characters that they're going to live through in the world according to the rules the GM has set forth. The rules provide numbers and benefits and drawbacks of all sorts that players can choose from and within most rule sets you can achieve a lot of unique characters even with the same race or class.

So now that you know how this type of game works (At least basically. I'm glossing over a lot because, let's face it, it really doesn't matter right here and now), I'll consider getting to my point.

Essentially, D&D and other p&p games are games of imagination. The GM and the players are all imagining the same world, and they're all imagining what's happening. The GM is forced to think broadly, he controls the world and the story, after all. And the players get to focus narrowly.

I think this is great for everyone involved. I mean really, what do most people imagine these days? Don't most of us seem to be limited by what we see on TV and movies, and spoon-fed to by video games? I've only GM'd myself once, and it was great. I created a new and unique world. I designed kingdoms, and gods, and devils. I developed a concrete universe for my players to create their characters in so that they had concrete histories and motivations. I'll admit, I made a few mistakes in my narration, and I had to move before we could finish the story, but just the experience of making a world, isn't that amazing?

Most of my experience with D&D has been through the eyes of a player, though. Like I said, a GM has to think big and broad, but as a player your only real focus is on your character. You choose their race, gender, class, skills, abilities and more. As a player, your character can be wish fulfillment, or exploration of traits you're curious about. Your character can be a reflection of you or be nothing like you. You can play as a paragon of nobility or vileness. I wonder what it says about me that most of my characters end up as madmen... Oh well, crazy and random is fun.

Yep, this was taken during a D&D session.

I love the creativity involved in just about every part of D&D. In fact, one of my little joys is to go online and read people's funny stories. One of the best is about Mr. Bearington and I fully recommend giving a read if you have a minute. Here's another one about the hilarious dangers of introducing a new and untested game mechanic.

But the imagination, man! (or woman, who am I to judge? D&D needs more actual women) You get to imagine new worlds, ferret out details, determine motivations, history, back stories, and more. If you're a writer, what could be better practice for getting into that creative kind of mindset? If you have no intention of writing then you still get to push the limits of your imagination. It's a chance to have some fun and take a step away from rigid mindsets about how things have to be. Go throw a fireball! Go slay a dragon! Why should something mundane keep you from having fun? Expand your mind, man! (Now go back and read that last sentence with a hippie voice. It makes it infinitely better).

And on top of all that fun and benefit, D&D is at its heart a social and cooperative game. Computers my occasionally be involved but the majority of the time you have to be in the same room as your friends, occasionally some strangers, working together to tell a story that can be as fun, beautiful, intelligent, or mind-appallingly stupid as you want (I remember having a barbarian character once who could not for the life of him break through a wooden door with his hands, but broke it with a headbutt. I love the vagaries of the dice). But you will be making those stories and doing those insanely weird and stupid things with your friends.

How many games can really say that? There are board games, sure, but they're so limited. You can most video games these days with your friends, but they come nowhere near to the same level of interactivity and immersiveness as a well thought out game of D&D.

So I recommend, if you haven't played before, getting a set of books (and dice) from Amazon, Ebay, a used bookstore. Heck, buy the books new if you're feeling cocky. Then get your friends together and go on an adventure. And remember, if you aren't laughing about something ridiculous, you just might not be playing right.

Thanks for reading.

PS D&D is only the Devil's game if you play it that way. In which case you better either be trying to stop the Devil, or you need a new group of friends.

PPS Here's my dog. Enjoy.