Welcome to the Vermont Farmer

First, let me make it very clear.  I am not a farmer, at least in the agricultural sense.  I do not till the soil.

I do however, observe the season’s of my life.  I have planted the seeds of love in my children, and have watched them grow.  I have fertilized my relationships with time and concern.  I have filled my mind with the thoughts of those both ancient and modern, and  I have reaped much.

The life of a man or woman in our time is quite complicated, at times nearly incomprehensible.  In some ways, I suppose, this blog will serve as a written means to further sift the contents of my life, to question the meaning of liberty and freedom, what it meant to be and what it means today to be an American, and how best America might once again achieve the not too distant greatness of its past.

Politics, Economics, the search for the Good Life… what else is there to talk about?

So family, friends, and onlookers, please check in often, and do not hesitate to comment…   Though I don’t often bite, I may on occasion growl.

I encourage you to utilize the rss feed button on the right to feed this blog to your desktop.

Please note my most recent post is below.  This is a sticky post.

Spreading Democracy in Afghanistan

I have long railed against our War in Afghanistan… indeed, railed against our practice  of Perpetual War…. What we are doing there is simply wrong.

The neo-con idea of spreading democracy through the use of force, an idea taken up and run with by our current Nobel Peace Prize winning Democratic President, and condoned by the boy’s and girl’s club in Washington, is quite simply, ridiculous.

Destroying the homes, the lives, the possessions of the Afghani citizens that lived in this village does not promote their friendship, does not promote the idea of America as a peaceful, democratic society that deserves emulation.

Read this article.  Look at the photographs.

How Short-Term Thinking is Causing Long-Term Failure in Afghanistan – Joshua Foust – International – The Atlantic.

A Brief Discourse on Gibbon

I have recently taken up Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Written nearly two and a half centuries ago, it is a massive book, and remains an astonishing, insightful, quite relevant, and sometimes humorous work.  Over the next year, I intend to write a series of posts that will, I hope, enlighten for myself and the few that read this, both the history of Rome and its parallels with America today.

As we move into the new year, one wonders what it will bring.  Will it be a year of peace and good will among men?…   I doubt it.

The American Eagle soars across the globe, as did the Roman Eagle across the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago.  America’s  propensity for war, and perceived national gain by war, is to me an astonishing hallmark of the United States, this nation of  “Free People.”

Gibbon writes “…as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”

On this past New Years Eve, gathered with a few friends and family in front of the wide-screen to watch the ball drop in Times Square, a young female news announcer announced to several marines at her side and the world at large, “Thank you guys for “kicking butt” over there.”  “Kicking butt?” Like war is some sort of an athletic game?   What an idiot.  No journalist, her.  Just another popinjay  spouting jingoism’s for America’s  war machine.

Ah, me!  Perhaps I am just getting old, but the sheer idiocy of the majority of the media in this country both frightens and enrages me.  Perhaps I should heed Gibbons’ Persian prince who  “…never departed from the Sultan’s presence without satisfying himself whether his head was still on his shoulders,” and so employ the philosophy that it was the “part of the wise man to forget the inevitable calamities of human life in enjoyment of the fleeting hour.”

I just may give that a go this year.

 

America: The Land of the Free or A Nation of Slaves?

My people, my family, or at least lines of my family, have resided in America since the early colonial days.   They came for the promise of a better life, free from the political entanglements and intrigues , from European politics, and the shackles of class.  They came seeking, in a word, liberty, and here they found it, albeit at the expense of the eastern Native American tribes.  They understood at a deep, near subliminal level what freedom and liberty meant.

American’s today know the words liberty and freedom.  Indeed, our national anthem extols “the land of the free.”  Our politicians mouth the words liberty and freedom ad nauseum, but do Americans truly have a clear understanding of these words.  I think not.  We have liberty and freedom in this country only in so much as the government permits us.

If one has liberty, one has a right to one’s person and ones property, and along with that, the right to protect ones person and ones  property.  This is the fundamental libertarian or classical liberal principle of  self-ownership, and it is from this single fundamental principle from which libertarian ideology proceeds.   Another term for this state of liberty is individualism.  To better understand this idea of self-ownership, let us look at what it means to be a slave.  First, a slave has no right to his person.  A slave is property.  Before the civil war, many slave owners spoke of abolition (in a convoluted and disingenuous fashion, mind you) as an attack on property rights.  As property, as a slave, you have no self-ownership, you are owned by a “master.”  Your entire life is lived at your master’s bidding.  You work, you eat, you sleep when told, and the produce of your labor belongs to the master.  Even the children of the unions which the master might demand in order to create more beautiful or stronger slaves belong to the master.

In opposition to this, if one has liberty, one chooses where and when to work, where and when to sleep, with whom they sleep, and the produce of your labor is yours, and yours alone to do with as you please.  Given these two distinct states of being, where on the scale from absolute slavery to absolute liberty are Americans today, or can be no admixture of the two?  Is it possible for one tobe partly free or partly a slave?

I tend to conceive of liberty as a positive term, as an absolute term because it encompasses the simple and singular right of self-ownership.   Slavery, however, may have numerous states in which it more nearly approaches liberty, or is further removed from liberty.

I am told that it takes the average American about four months of their labor to work of their debt to pay their income taxes.  This is simply an indenture, a form of slavery.  The government decides how much of my hard earned money they want to take, and they take it under threat of  my punishment, of my imprisonment.

Now, some would say, the government does good things with that money… they build roads and ports, they protect our shores from invasion, they feed the poor…, but let me ask a question.  If your neighbor came into your home, put a gun to your head, and told you to give him one third of all your money, but not to worry, that he was going to go out and do good things in the community with it.  What would you do?   After writing the check to avoid being shot in the head, and after your neighbors departure, you would go to the phone, call the police, and have him arrested.  Theft is theft, no matter how it is carried out.

A gentleman by the name of Frederick Bastiat called this “legalized plunder,” and that is precisely what it is.  There is no moral coherency between the government and the people.  The government operates under a different set of rules.  They are the master, and we the slaves.

America… a nation of slaves

Airport Security: Let’s Profile Muslims

It is refreshing to see a Muslim American propose the utilization of profiling as a methodology to combat domestic terrorism.  One does not have to be a rocket scientist to recognize that the majority of attacks on airliners have been perpetrated by Muslims, some American born, some not.  The article below is by an American Muslim that has been judged an “Uncle Tom” by some in her community.

Airport Security: Let’s Profile Muslims – The Daily Beast.

Our Shepherd, The TSA

The TSA is an abomination that needs to be abolished.  In all the years of their existence, they cannot claim to have prevented one terrorist act.  They have, however, molested millions of children, grandmothers, etc., and are now spraying everyone with radiation with their body scanning devices to “keep them safe”.

They claim that the new “enhanced pat-downs” are in response to the “Underpants Bomber.”  Certainly you remember him…  the Nigerian, Umar Abdul Mutallub…the terrorist that managed only a weenie roast on Northwest Airlines flight 253 when he tried to ignite plastic explosives hidden in his underpants.  Freaking brilliant!

Of course,  the CIA had been informed of this young lad’s terrorist proclivities by his father, no less.  The CIA did, to their credit, add him to one government database as a potential terrorist, but failed to have him added to another that would have prevented him from flying into the US.  Are these guys good, or what?  I mean, do any of these myriad of agencies interact with one another?  So, in response to the government’s ineptitude we get from them… more ineptitude.  Freaking brilliant!

The last time I looked at the Bill of Rights, the fourth amendment stipulated that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”

Now, the big government bonehead types that run our government, the courts,  and the TSA may assume that it is “REASONABLE” to search me, native born, military veteran,  and tax-paying citizen, because I “MIGHT BE A SECURITY RISK”… I heartily disagree.   The right to unreasonable search “SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED!”

Janet Napolitano tells us that we all “… need to learn our roles. ” That is, the government as shepherd and we as their sheep,  and the majority of Americans buy into this big government as protector mentality.  If you believe  this crap, I say remember Randy Weaver, remember Waco.  The government is neither your friend or protector.  George Washington said it best when he said that “Government is not reason.  It is not eloquence.  It is force, and like fire, a fearful master and a dangerous servant.”

Benjamin Franklin once remarked, and I paraphrase, “Those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither, and will have none.  And that, my friends, is not only correct, it truly is “Freaking Brilliant!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Longest War

When will the Great Men realize that Afghanistan is a quagmire?   As our dear boys spend their blood in those god forsaken mountains,  billions of our tax dollars are channeled out of the country into private accounts, elections are rigged, warlords are enriched with  profits from poppy production.  Sweet Jesus!

The idiocy of this war is mind boggling.

Afghanistan Not Vietnam?.

America’s Great Divide… The Wealthy and Everybody Else

Is America still the “Land of Opportunity” or is it quickly becoming the land of the Super Wealthy and everyone else?  The statistics quoted in this article argue for the former.

Big government and big business are not our friends.  Read the article below.

30 Statistics That Prove The Elite Are Getting Richer, The Poor Are Getting Poorer And The Middle Class Is Being Destroyed.

Ground Zero mosque debate is about common sense, sensitivity to 9/11 vics, not religious freedom

Religious freedom is enshrined in our constitution.  I believe that all may believe what they would believe and should worship as they please.

This being said, however, it is a bad idea to put a Mosque near ground zero. After all, it was Jihadist Islamists that committed the horrendous act of plowing airplanes into the twin towers, destroying them and in the process killing themselves and nearly three thousand others.   To build a mosque on this site would be seen by many in the Arab world as a victory for the terrorists.

To build this mosque is a slap in the face of the victims families.

Let the mosque be built, but not at ground zero.

Ground Zero mosque debate is about common sense, sensitivity to 9/11 vics, not religious freedom.

To the Right of the Bell Curve

Jake the Dog

Over the course of our lives, we may, if fortunate, meet someone along the way who, by their clarity of thought and intellect, the force of their convictions or moral certitude,  or through the cultivation of their faculties and capacities, are set so far apart from us mere mortals that in their presence we are most always  in a state of awe.

The uniqueness of these types of individuals truly stretch the definition of what it means to be human.  They are outliers on the Bell Curve.  They pull us all to the right of that curve, and as a species we are all the greater for it.  Yet, as human nature might have it, we feel also in some ways both diminished and humbled by it, for we are shown our own limitations.  Because to exist in their presence is like living in the light… We seem but  shadows in in comparison,  yet shadows filled with wonder and joy. We feel undeserving of them.

Until recently, I had not considered that the phenomenon of which I have been writing might also extend itself into the animal world, but friends, I am here to tell you that it does.  A little over a year ago, Jake the dog entered my life, and he has enriched me in ways that before his coming would have been simply unfathomable.

I work away from home four days a week, and when I return, the wife might scowl, proffer her hand and ask “Where’s the check?” (might being the operative word here), and the kids might ignore me, but there is not a bone in Jake’s body that does not wag.  He puts his paws on my chest and kisses me, then goes directly to his toys, pulls out something and “asks” me to play.

He is the smartest damn dog I have ever seen.  If I tell him to go outside and pee… well, he  goes outside and pees.  My children don’t mind me that well.  Not that I tell them to go outside and pee mind you.  In Vermont we go to the bathroom inside the house and cook outside… at least in the summer.  As a matter of fact, this is a complete reversal from my  life in Kentucky as a young man, where we peed outside and ate inside.  So much for progress, but I digress.

Yes, Jake the dog is a very special animal.  Aside from being extraordinarily beautiful, he is also strong and athletic.  He will trot alongside my bike for ten miles smiling the whole way.  He is ready to go anywhere, anytime to do anything at a moments notice.  You cannot throw a ball that he cannot catch in his mouth.  I have considered trying to teach him to pitch, cause if he could, I’m thinking a multi-million dollar salary as a short-stop for the Red Sox.  Yes, he is that good.

He likes to catch a frisbee over his shoulder, but if he can’t he doesn’t mind doing an amazing somersault in the air to grasp it between his teeth.  He does this with such aplomb and ease that it is mind-boggling, and his humility is simply astonishing.  You can’t make a bad throw with a frisbee or a ball as far as he’s concerned.  He’s just happy you’re throwing the damned thing.

He has nearly ruined my self image of cantankerous curmudgeon.  I feel a certain shame in admitting it, but if he wants to sleep in bed with me and the wife… well, he sleeps in our bed.  I do not have the heart to deny him.

He is a hell of an animal, and I feel almost undeserving of the attention that he gives me.  He is a vessel of such grace, kindness, love and friendship, that I feel truly privileged to walk this earth with him.

So my friends, I say lift a glass to the Jakes of our world and their equivalents in the  human category.  We are enriched and ennobled by their presence among us, and though they might sometimes  remind us of our weaknesses ,our frailties, our inadequacies, we are much the greater for their existence, and perhaps better frisbee throwers as well.

The Growth of Government

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” Thomas Paine

Our nation has seen many changes in the last sixty years, and few for the better.  Federal power has become more centralized.  More and more Washington seems a government distant and out of touch with the wishes of average Americans, and my how it has grown.

As a non-productive enterprise, growth of government puts a damper on our economy.  The only thing that government produces is more government.  While  it acts as a machine for consumption it adds nothing to our market economy.   Large government impoverishes us.

Read David Brooks op-ed piece below.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Technocracy Boom – NYTimes.com.