08:56 – I’m building chemistry kits today. As of this morning, our inventory of the CK01A kits is minus one. We’re also down to only six of the CK01B kits. We’re currently shipping a dozen or more CK01A kits a week and only three or four of the CK01B kits, so the priority today is to get some CK01A kits built. We’re also down to a couple dozen of the BK01 biology kits in stock, so Barbara’s priority this weekend will be working on those. Then I need to get back to building subassemblies for another batch of 60 of the CK01A kits.
09:39 – Towards a radical new theory of Anglo-American slavery, and vindication of free markets
There’s actually nothing radical or new about it, it’s not a theory, and most of my readers are probably already familiar with the essential points, but it’s still worth reading. The left has always tried to make classical liberals (nowadays called libertarians) the bad guys, just as they try to make the American Civil War about slavery. If you read Locke or Jefferson or any of the other 17th and 18th century libertarians, you’ll find that they universally abhorred slavery. If you’d asked a hundred Union soldiers what they were fighting for, at least 99 of them would have said “to preserve the Union”. If you’d asked if they weren’t really fighting to free the slaves, they’d have looked at you funny. Same thing on the other side. At least 99% of Confederate troops would have told you that they were fighting to protect States’ Rights. If you’d asked if they weren’t really fighting to keep their slaves, they’d have looked at you funny, because almost none of them owned even one slave.
One of my aunts forwarded this to me today. Normally I just delete before reading, but it gave me a chuckle. I decided that I could find a dog kennel in the back yard for ol’ Ahmed:
“A Canadian female liberal wrote a lot of letters to the Canadian government, complaining about the treatment of captive insurgents (terrorists) being held in Afghanistan National Correctional System facilities. She demanded a response to her letter. She received back the following reply:”
” National Defense Headquarters
M Gen George R. Pearkes Bldg., 15 NT
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa , ON K1A 0K2
Canada
Dear Concerned Citizen,
Thank you for your recent letter expressing your profound concern of treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists captured by Canadian Forces, who were subsequently transferred to the Afghanistan Government and are currently being held by Afghan officials in Afghanistan National Correctional System facilities.
Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinions were heard loud and clear here in Ottawa You will be pleased to learn, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating a new department here at the Department of National Defense, to be called ‘Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers’ program, or L.A.R.K. for short.
In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided, on a trial basis, to divert several terrorists and place them in homes of concerned citizens such as yourself, around the country, under those citizens’ personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and is scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence in Toronto next Monday.
Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud is your detainee, and is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of complaint. You will be pleased to know that we will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with your recommendations.
Although Ahmed is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his ‘attitudinal problem’ will help him overcome those character flaws. Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. We understand that you plan to offer counselling and home schooling, however, we strongly recommend that you hire some assistant caretakers.
Please advise any Jewish friends, neighbours or relatives about your house guest, as he might get agitated or even violent, but we are sure you can reason with him. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless in your opinion, this might offend him. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills either in your home or wherever you choose to take him while helping him adjust to life in our country.
Ahmed will not wish to interact with you or your daughters except sexually, since he views females as a form of property, thereby having no rights, including refusal of his sexual demands. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him.
You also should know that he has shown violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the dress code that he will recommend as more appropriate attire. I’m sure you will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the burka over time. Just remember that it is all part of ‘respecting his culture and religious beliefs’ as described in your letter.
You take good care of Ahmed and remember that we will try to have a counsellor available to help you over any difficulties you encounter while Ahmed is adjusting to Canadian culture.
Thanks again for your concern. We truly appreciate it when folks like you keep us informed of the proper way to do our job and care for our fellow man. Good luck and God bless you.
Cordially,
Gordon O’Connor
Minister of National Defense”
Lynn, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read that well written satire.
Thank goodness for the third amendment here in the USA!
Apparently, even the Third Amendment can be blatantly disregarded.
The proximate cause of the ACW was slavery, and the state’s rights issues were totally bound up in slavery. While only 25-30% of families owned slaves in the South, the farming population with ambition aspired to be rich planters, i.e. slaveholders.
Proximate cause? I don’t buy that argument, at least if you’re using it in the sense of a limitation on but-for. I’d call slavery at most the casus belli, but the real cause of the war was that the federal government was trying to violate States’ Rights, and some of those states decided they’d had enough.
Looking back at things 150 years past, it’s easy to forget that Southerners in particular identified with their states, not with the nation and most certainly not with Lincoln’s federal government. If you asked a Southerner his nationality back then, he’d reply South Carolinian, Georgian, Tarheel, or whatever. In 1860, even most Northerners self-identified as being citizens of their own state rather than the United States.
And if slavery was so important, why did Lincoln not even bother to issue the Emancipation Proclamation until halfway through the war, and why, when he issued it did it not apply to slaves held in areas under Northern control? Pretty damn cynical, if you ask me, to free only the slaves in areas he did not control.
Even growing up 50 years in the North, our public schools taught us that the Civil War was fought over States’ Rights and that the North attempting to abolish slavery was merely the last straw for the South. The truth is and was that almost no one on either side cared much about the slaves. Lincoln personally did not like blacks, something he had in common with most whites on both sides. That war was fought over who got to control things, not over any moral issue or any concern for the slaves.
It’s true, the Fugitive Slave Act was a horrible violation of the rights of the northern states….
The north certainly didn’t fight the Civil War to free the slaves, but the south certainly started to to keep them. They said so clearly at the time; any other justification is after the fact prettying up of the Slaveowners’ Rebellion.
“That war was fought over who got to control things, not over any moral issue or any concern for the slaves.”
There it is. Plus the profits involved for the Great Eliminator’s cronies among the railroads and banksters. And the deliberate destruction of the South’s economy.
“…any other justification is after the fact prettying up of the Slaveowners’ Rebellion.”
And arguments with these phrases tend, I’ve seen, to devolve into accusing people of being ‘slaver apologists.’ There ain’t a whole of ‘prettying up’ anyone can do in regard to the War Between the States; it was a horrible, atrocious and obscene mess, instigated mainly by Northern business and radical abolitionist interests. Nearly a million dead and countless others maimed, for what? So the North could dictate forever the way this country would be run and we see its results even now.
And if slavery was so important, why did Lincoln not even bother to issue the Emancipation Proclamation until halfway through the war, and why, when he issued it did it not apply to slaves held in areas under Northern control?
As I understand it, the delay was caused by a number of factors, including the need to build a consensus that it was legal. It only applied to the areas in rebellion to make it legal – it was a confiscation of property from those in rebellion, something that could be done in wartime. That’s why the 13th Amendment was needed.
“…it was a confiscation of property…”
Pretty much the whole object of the whole bloody exercise, a cynical and savage use of brute force against fellow American citizens, against a sovereign people in their own sovereign states, who had every right to secede, as the New England states had started to do decades earlier. The Great Eliminator and his thug henchmen and fellow war criminals, Grant, Sherman (who said he’d make the South howl and then did) and Sheridan, among others, left us a million dead and an economy in shatters and a subsequent war of attrition and mayhem against First Nations peoples in our West, followed by more imperial wars in the former Spanish colonies and then on to Europe and another century of war and atrocities. “War is the health of the State,” said the late Randolph Bourne. And we’re proving it again today around the world and at home.
It was all about the slaves by the time I went through public school, ten years after RBT and OFD.
Just received one of these.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CXACPN0/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I plan on installing some media server software and turn the box into a media server. It does indeed work as described.
Alas! Nobody in the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) would have the balls to actually write, let alone send such a letter. But I live in hope. The civility of the letter rings true though.
The American Civil War, as it was presented in the Ontario curriculum in the late 50’s, early 60’s, made slavery the major issue. State’s Rights was a side issue. In fact, the issue of state’s rights and the Civil War was an important factor in the writing of the British North America Act that created Canada. I suspect that most non-Americans don’t really understand the issues leading to the Civil War (and possibly most Americans now). I’m certain that without a good grasp of the issues, the politics of the U.S. makes no sense at all.
Okay, if slavery wasn’t the issue what states rights were the southerners trying to protect? Slavery, before the civil war, always seemed to be at the base of southern complaints. There was even talk of an “un-amendable amendment” preserving slavery forever. Whenever new states were to be admitted the south was always trying to balance slave and free states, even get Cuba in as a slave state IIRC.
I did American History in Year 12 of high school (up to the end of the CW, perhaps including Reconstruction as well) and 1st year uni (only up to 1860.) If I ever do a PhD in American History it will be on Reconstruction for sure. It’s the topic that has always most interested me most.
FWIW, my American history (60s and early 70s) was also quite clear that the American Revolution was 100% about slavery. It’s only as an adult, looking back, that I realized this did really did not make sense. It’s the meme following from MLK and the black rights movements; today it is simply the PC answer, and anyone who questions it will immediately be classified as a racist.
Incidentally, did y’all see where a bunch of Caribbean countries are going to sue European countries for slavery reparations? Of course, it’s the usual nonsense: they are suing over events some 200 years old. But hey, extorting a settlement is still worth a try as a get-rich-quick scheme.
If they get the dough it will undoubtedly end up in some dictator’s Swiss bank account.