What is it about words being written on paper that causes the vast majority of people to think that using violence is an appropriate thing? Have people no independent source of understanding the morality of an individuals actions? If I get twenty people together and nineteen agree to write down that I can use violence against the lone unfortunate twentieth person, does that make it right?
Why was it apparently virtuous to use violence and imprison someone who wished to protect a fellow human being from the horrors of chattel slavery? Words on paper.
Why is it apparently virtuous to use violence and imprison someone who wants to grow a plant on their property today? Words on paper.
Why can the people of Derry, NH enjoy the freedom to set off fireworks on a day celebrating a “free” country without violence being used on them? A screw up in locating a specific set of words on paper.
I wonder how many people reading this blog see news like this and find that it is acceptable to put someone into a cage like an animal for the innocuous act of growing a plant. I wonder how many of those people think that it is acceptable to seize steal his house (which the state can do) in a “civil forfeiture” proceeding. There really is nothing civil about a “civil forfeiture” proceeding. If the state wins the “proceeding,” men with guns will enforce the “ruling.”
Men with guns coming to throw someone out of their own home really is anything but “civil.”
Men with guns killing someone who refuses to be thrown out of their own home is definately not “civil.”
PORTSMOUTH — Thousands of bookmarks promoting two organizations’ points of view recently created a headache for public libraries on the Seacoast.
The two groups placing the bookmarks in Portsmouth, Dover and at the University of New Hampshire are the School Sucks Project and Freedomain Radio. The School Sucks Project Web site calls for an end of public, government-funded education in the United States, charging that it is ineffective and values obedience over creativity. Freedomain Radio bills itself as a philosophical radio show.
It’s not a new phenomenon at libraries, but Portsmouth Public Library Director Mary Ann List said several in the area were hit recently with a scourge of bookmarks promoting an unspecified political cause between the pages of books. The messages tend to be politically or religiously focused, she said, and libraries typically strive to remain disassociated with that type of propaganda.
The latest dispersal was the largest Cathleen Beaudoin said she has ever seen. (more…)
A loyal Free Keene subscriber sent me this article about a New Hampshire grandmother who died as a result of National Grid electric disconnecting her power for an unpaid bill. I agree the article is something worthy of discussion/dissection by those of us who philosophize about the ideas of a society without a coercive violent monopoly.
“53-year-old New Hampshire grandmother Kay Phaneuf died this weekend after National Grid cut her power over an unpaid bill. Phaneuf suffered from a heart condition that required her to sleep in an oxygen tent and use a plug-in oxygen machine.”
I personally do not think the power company did anything wrong. I also personally think that this death was tragically needless and could have easily been avoided had Mrs. Phaneuf communicated her medical situation and/or asked for help.
A police officer blocks a man from carrying his wife into the emergency room because he ran red lights getting her to the hospital, the Downsizer Dispatch, undercover officer draws gun on a man for speeding ; the driver videotaped the interaction and now faces 16 years in prison for it, and Hampton NH talent show threatened by American Idol for using the word “Idol” in its name.
Man, 
