If I were a Democrat

I'd rebel against being told what to do by the media. They've already anointed John Kerry as winner in Wisconsin and the polls just opened. Joe Gandelman has some comments about disarray in the Dean camp.

I'm afraid I was raised with a touch of libertinism.

One must always make sure of the voluntary nature of one's partners, even when it seems obvious that they want to do what you want them to do.

Your editor needs to stop websurfing and get to bed.

What the hell was I talkin' about. Oh, yeah! This is what I'm talkin' about! As Willy said, "My heroes have always been cowboys."

Here's a guy with an attitude problem:).

from the leader (or whatever) of www.keepandbeararms.com



Disregarding Laws We Oppose
An Open Letter to San Francisco Civil Authority

By David Codrea
codrea4@adelphia.net

February 16, 2004

Dear Mayor Newsom (gavin.newsom@sfgov.org), Judge Warren (wsuperiorct@sftc.org) and Acting Chief Fong (sfpdpbaf@pacbell.net),

Mayor, I see you are authorizing city employees to perform homosexual marriages, Judge Warren, you are allowing them to proceed, and Chief Fong, you are allowing California law, as enacted by a vote of the people, to be publicly and repeatedly broken without making any arrests.

I'm not commenting on that issue, per se, so much as observing that you are all three instigating and abetting the violation of that law.

Judge Warren, you went so far as to state that you couldn't issue a restraining order to halt the marriages because, as Reuters reported, "there was not enough evidence presented showing that immediate damage would be done by allowing them."

Which leaves me with an interesting dilemma.

You see, I also belong to a group that is forced by social prejudices to keep a low profile—often times to hide my choices and practices lest I suffer disapproval and ultimately, life-threatening persecution by the state.

I am a gun owner and I live a gun owner life style.

I don't know if I was born with a tendency to be this way, or if it was an acquired disposition. All I know is, I don't see why I should be forced to change. Truth be known, I like owning guns, and am happy with who I am. I hope I suffer no repercussions by "coming out of the safe," but I just can't hide the truth any longer.

We gun owners have been living and working among you. Our kids go to school with yours. We may be your doctor, or minister, or your child's teacher. We may even work in city administration, or the courts, or on the police force. And we are sick of being abused for simply being who we are, all because of hoplophobic* prejudice and fear. We don't see any reason why we should have to put up with it any more.

Which brings me back to my dilemma and the reason I am writing you.

You have shown progressive thinking and tolerance for that which the majority condemns. So I was thinking of coming up to San Francisco and exercising my right to keep and bear arms, maybe showing up at City Hall with a state-banned AR-15 and a couple 30-round magazines, and also carrying several pistols concealed without a permit.

Yes, I know, it will be a violation of California laws, but you've shown that you're willing to disregard those when it serves your goals. And because I am a peaceable citizen, I should easily meet Judge Warren's criterion that no immediate damage would be done by allowing this.

So what do you think, if I visit your city and proudly display my lifestyle choices, can I count on your support? As a private citizen, don't I have as much right to disregard laws I find reprehensible as you public officials? Isn't that what equality is supposed to be all about, where no class of citizen enjoys privileges and immunities not extended to all?

How about it? You wouldn't have me arrested, would you?

Please let me know if I have your support.


Sincerely,
David Codrea

* Credit and gratitude to the peerless Col. Jeff Cooper for coining this term.

And while you're checkin' out other blogs

check out the Catholic Packer Fan from Ohio. I sent him a letter today comparing Drudge to the freeway shooter. It looks like they're both getting too bold. Is Drudge is trying to get called out as a fraud? A couple weeks ago he had some tabloid article about a little girl with X-Ray vision.

I expect to learn something

from this gentleman. He has been, to me, an inspiration, a scourge, an idol, an embarrassment and a role model. He's been teaching me things of all kinds since I was born.
He's my older brother.

But maybe it's a secret. I'm just awful with secrets.

The Mises Blog talks about the Grangers today.

Well, actually yesterday.

There was definitely a problem, but the politicians shanghaied the revolution. The problem was that the government gave monopolies to the railroads and eminent domained anybody who got in their way. They did the same for Rockefeller's pipelines. That's not mentioned in this article. Nope. It's that awful "unbridled Capitalism".

Munn v. Illinois is the first case that found in favor of the Grangers. I don't see much citing of the Constitution in The Opinion of the Court. Section 9 at least takes a Federalist position, that states are allowed to do many things the Federal Government may not.

JUSTICE STEPHEN FIELD's dissent in Munn v. Illinois

The declaration of the Constitution of 1870, that private buildings used for private purposes shall be deemed public institutions, does not make them so. The receipt and storage of grain in a building erected by private means for that purpose does not constitute the building a public warehouse. There is no magic in the language, though used by a constitutional convention, which can change a private business into a public one, or alter the character of the building in which the business is transacted. A tailor's or a shoemaker's shop would still retain its private character, even though the assembled wisdom of the State should declare, by organic act or legislative ordinance, that such a place was a public workshop, and that the workmen were public tailors or public shoemakers. One might as well attempt to change the nature of colors, by giving them a new designation. The defendants were no more public warehousemen, as justly observed by counsel, than the merchant who sells his merchandise to the public is a public merchant, or the blacksmith who shoes horses for the public is a public blacksmith; and it was a strange notion that by calling them so they would be brought under legislative control.

The Law, by Frederic Bastiat

I'm partial to this section: The Desire to Rule Over Others.

Another day, another opinion.

Encarta has a good article on Natural Law. I was looking up Jeremy Bentham's comment that Natural Law is nonsense on stilts so I could explain calling him a hose monkey last night.

"To live virtuously means to live in accord with one's nature, to live according to right reason."

I buy that.

"Because passion and emotion are considered irrational movements of the soul, the wise individual seeks to eradicate the passions and consciously embrace the rational life."

That's crap. Passions need to be examined and (I got a Jackie Chan cartoon going on behind me.) subordinated to reason, not eradicated.

Hey! A quote from Cicero! From De Republica:”True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. . . . There will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times.”

Wonder when that's gonna happen. The article goes on to blame Nazism on Bentham. Good boy!

I have yet to meet the person with whom I agree 100 %.

I have to come clean here folks. I've let it go on this long so as not to embarrass Joe Bendelman (Oops! Sorry, Joe! That's "Gandelman") .or the guy from The Insight. I care about them and their credibility, and I want them to succeed in their endeavors. The joke has gone on long enough. The fact is, I'm hardly a Buddhist. I'm a Lutheran.
I am conflicted about the teachings of Ayn Rand as against those of Jesus, but for life in this world I think Ayn Rand was closer to right. However, unlike Rand, I don't see Jesus as a complete fool. I wouldn't be a Lutheran if I did. My only, and I emphasize only, problem with Jesus, is his apparent (according to the preachers I've heard) lack of emphasis on economic matters. St. Paul's teachings outright contradict the teachings of the great economists, as do some of the books of the Apocrypha. Bastiat provides something like a compromise. As does Lord Acton. That is why I endorse them. Bastiat's book is 76 pages long. The Law is, that is.
After reading everything Rand had to say (published as of 1997, there's more now) I was ready to write my own book. Then I read Bastiat's The Law and discovered that it had already been written. Anybody who has read The Law will recognize hubris in that statement, unless I qualify it with the addendum: better than I could imagine. Only Henry Hazlitt has managed to improve on Bastiat. I've recommended Sowell without reservation; Hazlitt and Bastiat also belong in that crowd.
Natural Law is to me a more inspiring concept than anything any preacher ever espoused. The clearest expositions of it I've found have been the the Declaration of Independence and the teachings of the Acton Institute and Ayn Rand. And Murray Rothbard.
Just so we're clear on this, I think Bentham is a hose monkey.

All that aside, I wish to strongly encourage anyone to cling to a belief-system, or religion, that promotes peaceful exchange, honest dealing, helpful cooperation and the pursuit of personal excellence.

With President's day coming up

I think it's appropriate to direct you to this (pdf sorry) article on Washington.

Now, frankly, I wouldn't have thought of it without the help of Ed Hudgins of the Objectivist Center.

Think about this:

"Washington exemplified the spirit of early America. He was in his heart and for
most of his life a farmer and an innovator who developed new crops and
agricultural techniques. He valued the production of wealth as a worthy goal in
life. But he also understood that the freedom to produce often must be fought
for."

Bringing up Stirner is one way I express my irritation.

(Stirner comment/quote here)

No, I get irritated when people talk about Morality as if it were understood that we all mean the same thing by it. Stirnerites believe in expediency not morality. It's almost impossible to discuss it with them. Expediency is "what works". I would say civil society is built on that now, but everything is just so jumbled up, it's hard to tell. Society is like geology: strata, intrusions, volcanos, rotten shit (I mean that literally)... you get the picture. Thomas Sowell has written three good books on the subject. Society grows on the fertilizer.

Well, I got the sitemeter to show.

Now I gotta figure out how to move it. For anybody who's wondering, I've been jacking around with this stuff for a while. When I had a spare moment. It's not that hard, I just don't have that much free time.

Supposedly there's a Sitemeter here somewhere.

Maybe it'll show up after I publish this. Hm.

Wow! That'll make it easier even

for me to shoot my mouth off!

Hopefully, I've just enabled commenting

by HaloScan.

I was just over reading Blogheckler

who was saying that you can stay on the Fresh list by hitting "republish" over and over. I was doing that yesterday in an effort to adjust my link list to get rid of the blank spaces. I don't imagine it hurts anything for them to be there, but I wish they were consistent.
That's a little embarassing. It's kinda like going to the bathroom and discovering the curtains are open.

Blogheckler has specifically set up shop to harass Amanda Doerty of Hot Abercrombie Chick. She seems to be ignoring him. I would.

I said the other day that she discusses Libertarian issues. It's primarily a harcore philosophy blog. In the comments section on her Solipsism post she was arguing with a Deconstructionist about The Cogito of Descarte. He did a good job demonstrating solipsism.
Language is only part of life and reality folks. Rocks, trees and bricks are what they are with no help from us and our grammar.

There are two things I'd like to do before the day is out:

Add Lileks to my links and introduce poor, innocent, new visitors, should I have any, to the Philosophy of Max Stirner. Lileks is not an adherent of Stirnerian Egoism, I'm sure.

Here's a good 'graph, from the Stanford site:

"It is also a mistake to think of Stirner as advocating a normative proposition about the value of self-interested action. Stirnerian egoism needs to be distinguished from the individual pursuit of narrow self-interest as it is conventionally understood. In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner discusses the important example of an avaricious individual who sacrifices everything in pursuit of material riches. Such an individual is clearly self-interested (he acts only to enrich himself) but it is an egoism which Stirner rejects as one-sided and narrow. Stirner's reason for rejecting this form of egoism is instructive. He suggests that the avaricious man has become enslaved to a single end, and such enslavement is incompatible with egoism properly understood."
....
"The popular but inaccurate description of Stirner as a ‘nihilist’ is encouraged by his explicit rejection of morality. Morality, on Stirner's account, involves the positing of obligations to behave in certain fixed ways. As a result, he rejects morality as incompatible with egoism properly understood. However, this rejection of morality is not grounded in the rejection of values as such, but in the affirmation of what might be called non-moral goods. That is, Stirner allows that there are actions and desires which, although not moral in his sense (because they do not involve obligations to others), are nonetheless to be assessed positively."

I'm annoyed by anti-gunners

Take a look at this.

It's not just the template, is it?

This guy knows some things about blogging, not to mention life, that I don't.

I checked him out because of the great name: On Fecklessness.

I keep trying to follow the thread of my own thoughts when

Blogger throws these things in our (collective?) face (What would a collective face look like? I think I saw that on the old Outer Limits).

I've got a Laugh In DVD running behind me. A Christmas present. And yes, I think it's funny. But distracting. If I manage to say anything cogent, drop me "a line".

My brother sent me an e-mail: Dear Al

I'm gettin used to my blogger site. Check it out. My address is starsplash.

Presumably: .blogspot.com.

If you don't like what I'm up to, just ream me a new one. I'm tough. You made me that way.

My Blog is in love with this gals blog

Hot Abercrombie Chick.
She wants it to sound dirty.

But it's really serious discussion of our, we libertarians', favorite issues.

It's important to read her explanation of her blogname,

"But really, why can't a person identify herself both as a "hot Abercrombie chick" and at the same time as a thinking, intelligent person? Maybe I help to dissolve the blonde-preppy-girl stereotype somewhat, and maybe not. But in either case, I am the same person, and I can continue to be amused people's reactions."

But don't let her kid ya. It's apt. She's got pictures.

Following the InstaPundit around like a puppydog

A bit of a refutation of those who think we're shorting Science.

Damn!

I fully intended to link this! I think I got it from The Moderate Voice, but here's InstaPundit's link.

Here's another one, also thanks to InstaPundit, a defense of Bush by a fellow Guard pilot in the same unit. It jibes with the timelines I posted.

My only question is, why can't Bush say these things?

I'm afraid this is too true

Yet not so true as to signal an impending catastrophe. From IndyMedia:

"We are now entering the age of Empire once again, the age of not just any typical empire, not a Roman imperial project as the Romans themselves benefited by Rome. No, this American-led (militarily) but Western (Northern/Western) commercial empire, and all empires are commercial, is a corporate empire. Corporatism is its fundamental ideology, not religion, not nationalism (though nationalistic rhetoric must be used on the ignorant masses that know little of such things), but a new secular religion with mammon as its god, free markets (read managed competition between only the largest monopoly enterprises) and democracy as its shill, its cover, its myth. Freedom for the Iraqi people, while freedom slips away in America, in Great Britain, in every nation on earth?"

I doubt the power of these Monopoly enterprises, except possibly for the banks which directly benefit as the first recipients increases in the money supply. These organizations turn over and so do the people in them. It's true that corporatists use the language of free markets as cover, as well as using public-private partnerships, managed care, and a phony form of privatization to cover up sweetheart deals for cronies. By which I mean illicit cooperation between politicians and/or bureaucrats which squelches the competitors of a favored business, thereby creating either an open or de facto monopoly.
But we are not yet at the stage of Soviet Russia, Communist China or Baathist Iraq.
We're not even at the stage of present day Europe, and it's Big Labor squelching their economies. Or economy, as it were.

Mammon isn't so much a threat unless you include powerlust in its definition. A great many people in the world today make their living by providing products and services for the comfort of others, beyond food, clothing and shelter. Comforts were provided for poorly in the controlled economies, and the masses lived very poorly and sometimes died.

A message from Ron Paul's Liberty Committee

February 10, 2004


Should the U.S. Constitution be amended to allow for the
appointment (not election) of members of the U.S. House
of Representatives? If your answer is "no" then you
need to take action today.

To get more information and to take action, go to
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/hr2844.htm .


Kent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
www.thelibertycommittee.org

Pop-up protection?

I use my middle finger...

to right-click on my mouse on the toolbar button. Once you do that, it's a piece of cake.

No doubt she said and did many things I disagree with

but Shirley Chisholm was a great woman.

What brought that up? I was reading the Moderate Voice and felt like saying something moderate. Well, moderately moderate. Maybe a little effusive. Too much, you think?

Anything I want to say,

Thomas Sowell said it first and better. If he didn't, Walter Williams did.

Sowell quotes Winston Churchill, "[W]e must banish revenge against an entire race from our minds."

I want to be more like Williams and Sowell.

Anybody familiar with Mylene Farmer?

Absolutely beautiful music, haunting melodies, astounding voice.

In 1991, my wife, who is a French Teacher, off-and-on, went to France and brought home a tape of hers. Since my wife has left me to my own devices as far as learning French goes, I thought I'd take that tape and try to understand the lyrics.

Oy.

I didn't know such a genre as Splatter Pop existed. Splatter as in splatter movie, like Friday the 13th or Jason vs. Freddie or whatever that's called.

Oh, well

Lileks quote of the day:

Little kids are lucky, if all goes well - they have no idea how much you love them. It might scare them if they knew.

Before I toddle off to bed

I gotta tell ya that Joe Gandelman did, indeed, choose my blog as his site of the day today.

Now I gotta do links for the Northfield comments.

My stepson just called from S. Carolina

and told me about a story he read in the Charleston Paper that I missed somehow. Apparently, they've found an H-bomb off the coast 100 miles from Savannah:

H-Bomb off coast: Danger or Dud?

In 1958, a damaged Air Force plane dropped a nuclear bomb into the ocean near Savannah. The bomb was never found. Now, bomb hunters from Georgia think they know where it is. They fear terrorists could find it, too.

BY TONY BARTELME
Of The Post and Courier Staff

Northfield is a state of mind.

[Remind me to find the Northfield story to link to the previous post. I don't like to put links in the titles because they get bleeped up if they're too long.]
[Back to what I started to say.]

Kinda like Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion. I saw some dude criticizing L. Neil Smith for his position supporting the anti-Federalists rhetorically asking, "hasn't he ever heard of Shay's Rebellion?" Shay's Rebellion was indeed a crisis, but the Hamiltonian solution we ended up with was an over-reaction, I believe Smith would say. The delegates were sent to what became the Constitutional Convention to amend the Articles of Confederation, not to completely revamp the arrangement.

It's a funny thing, when you look at it, that all these rebellions, including the Granger Movement, and even the James Gang were reactions to unfair actions of governments; either unfair taxation or unfair grants of monopolies (it is still a controversial matter how to do either of those things fairly; along with subsidies, regulations and protective tariffs).

I haven't prepared an outline for a major Den Beste-style essay, here, although the subject deserves it. Murray Rothbard covers all this, I believe, in Conceived in Liberty. So I hear anyway. I can't afford that set of books yet.

Without further study, my comments at this time would be that:

1. Shays Rebellion was resolved before the Constitutional Convention. The Confederation handled it, though

2. the monied interests didn't learn their lesson as evidenced by the Whiskey Rebellion. It was pretty much the same crap even under the Constitution.

3. Leftist analysis often does a good job of identifying the problems and some of the underlying causes, though they never quite get to the root cause (our governments are made up of fallible human beings whose powers must be limited to keep any of us from causing too much harm; no System will ever overcome the simple human fact that wise people die and ignorant people are born).

Here's a Libertarian solution

Kudos to a fella from the state that gave us Jesse James, from the state that gave Jesse Northfield. We'll give you that for a nickname: James (Northfield) Butler.

Thank God it wasn't worse and the right guy got it. Or bought it or whatever.

Here's something people should read:

A good time-line of the Vietnam War. Compare to this timeline of the President's service.

This serves as a sort of follow-up to my previous post on the subject, but as I said then... Well, Mr. Bush appears to have had character problems back then. I wonder what Bush would say, and would have said then, about Nixon's war policy.

Lileks, paraphrasing Nixon,

says, "We're all Valentines now."

If you don't read The Back Fence, start now. But keep in mind: if you do, you will be his.

I like to comment on the interesting twists

the Internet takes. My home page is EconLib.org; on Arnold Kling's EconLog he has a nice comments section, unlike me--I'm too G.D. cheap, and one of the commenters used his Amazon page as his home page. Dave Thomson, who is no relation to my favorite radio talk show host, but apparently is my kind of libertarian. I wonder if I can link my page at Amazon.

Here's a quick quote from his review of John Stossel's Give Me a Break: "Is Osama bin Ladin an inadvertent beneficiary of our misguided drug war? The author contends that this is indeed the case. My only complaint is that Stossel didn't devote more attention to this most important theme. I personally believe that the war on terrorism is being severely compromised by the anti-drug coalition."

As a student of Ayn Rand and E.G. Ross, believe that one of the positive things I can do is find heroes. John Stossel is a libertarian St. George battling the Leviathan of big Government and abusers of power throughout the land. Although, I must admit that Dave Thomson sets a more reasonable standard for me, with 210 book reviews on Amazon.

Working... Here's a bit on F. A. Hayek from my old homepage.

Working... Here's my list of Amazon reviews. They all need some editing. They were all written during my heaviest drinking days. Unfortunately I need to change a diaper right now.

The Moderate Voice's

Joe Gandelman directed me to this document at CalPundit which speaks poorly to President Bush's account of his service record.

A defense is that the war was pretty much over and the Reserves weren't punishing anybody for taking off, but it's not much of a defense. Compassionate conservatism maybe.

Why are my links double-spacing all of a sudden?

What makes me tolerant

is not that I overlook other people's sins, it's that I see their virtues. And I remember my own sins.

What makes me a Libertarian is that I don't believe that people should have part or all of their lives taken away for mistakes that didn't result in the destruction of part or all of someone else's life.

We used to have a frontier, where people could go to start over when they had screwed up their lives completely. Restorative justice, as Dr. Mary Ruwart advocates, in which victimizers restore the damage they've done to victims and not this bogus victims-forgiving-victimizers crap (I believe in forgiveness, but not for criminals who have not demonstrated repentence by their actions), is the only solution in a more crowded world, with no escape hatch.

Here is an attitude of mine that I wish were more generally shared:

My hatred is a shallow fleeting thing. I can't hold on to anger, envy or jealousy. I can do pride and gluttony pretty well, and I've managed to disgust people with those traits, as with drunkeness and lust. Is that all the Seven Deadly Sins? (I was a bit afraid to click on that link myself.) Oh, I'm way too slothful to be greedy.

My advice? Procrastinate in sinning.

Slight Correction

Miyamoto Musashi claims to have learned all he knew by practice and reflection. Sounds like Zen to me, or at least the Taoist aspect of Zen, yet he claims to have had no instructors, so I suppose that whatever Zen he absorbed was from the cultural milieu of the Samurai in Medieval Japan. There is that wonderful emphasis on the pursuit of excellence I so admire.

Anybody got any problems with this set of principles (from the Ground Book, linked above)?

Do not think dishonestly.
The Way is in training.
Become aquainted with every art.
Know the Ways of all professions.
Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
Pay attention even to trifles.
Do nothing which is of no use.

My Buddhist fans will be wondering

"What the hell? The-Insight said this guy had something to offer Buddhists."

Well, in a way, everybody has something to offer Buddhists. Not that Buddhism is devoid of content (although, as I understand it, Nirvana is). I've got something for you all at home. Be patient. I'll get it up here soon.

My favorite Zen saying is, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep."

I believe it was Miyamoto Musashi, who found a truly unique way to apply the teachings of Zen, who put this image in my head: a small child, holding his father's finger, upon seeing a flower doesn't think, "I must now release Father's finger in order to grasp this pretty thing." The child simply does it.
This insight is useful in life when it is time to move on.

I apologize for the prolixity of the previous post.

Message from Life #1:

For every hour that you hold a baby on your chest, you add a year to your life.

I'm absolutely convinced. Of course, you have to be committed to whatever your role is in successfully rearing said baby to adulthood. I would suggest that any attempt at a shortcut would work about as well as taking up smoking, drinking and womanizing.
Sadism doesn't work like love.
Sorry about the downer. When I love somebody, I kind of go nuts about their security.

Maybe I'm speaking out of school

but Joe Gandelman, of The Moderate Voice has suggested that he may mention me as his Blog of the Day someday soon. (Of course, by blurting it out in this childish way I've probably - forgive the expression - queered the deal.) Let me just say, Gandelman has a great blog, and is absolutely even-handed with his slaps at the two major parties. I obliquely suggested that the Libertarian Party wasn't entirely free of foibles worthy of a biting remark or two as well. [Ooh! That needs commas or something.] And they could use the pub. Some of their - all right our (even though I ordinarily disavow collective responsibility, I did, indeed, join this team voluntarily) publicity stunts are pretty unsatirizable [if I don't know how to spell it, spellchecker is no help], the publicity itself constitutes sufficient ridicule. Madison and Jefferson would weep.

I believe I've already indicated my blog of the day: Keith Burgess-Jackson's (and I cursed my parents for my last name!) The AnalPhilosopher. My knees get weak when I think that he and I could be said to be engaged in similar activities.

If there are any Libertarians in South Florida

these people could use a good political philosophy.

"In downtown Miami on Saturday, about 100 Haitians rallied in support of Aristide's ouster, waving Haitian flags and chanting "Aristide must go!" Advocacy groups estimate about 300,000 Haitians live in South Florida."

Notes on an article

by Keith Burgess-Jackson. Lest you get the wrong impression, KBJ is a conservative, and my points take off from his and travel in the same general direction.

"To a conservative, humans are imperfectible. They are corrupt by nature, always prone to doing evil, and in standing need of oversight and correction. (You don't have to be religious to believe this, although it helps.)"

It's funny that Marxists, and any other believers in dialectical reasoning, never consider that we engage in dialectic every day with everyone we know, and that this by itself might constitute the great social corrective we're all seeking.

"One engine of correction is the state, which is why conservatives are not anarchists. Another engine is tradition, which, to a conservative, is simply accumulated wisdom, the very embodiment of reason. Yet another is religion."

Like Federalism--powers are divided. We Libertarians wonder why we can't just keep on dividing them down to the individual level. Individualize sovereignty!

"Conservatives, who oppose many liberal causes, are benighted, whereas liberals are enlightened. Conservatives are not just wrong; they are willfully and perversely wrong. They are intransigent. They are bigoted, prejudiced, superstitious, and vile."

It's funny that the most intentionally intransigent, willfully and perversely ignorant people in our society, inner-city gangsters, are the darlings of the left. Of course, conservatives refuse to accept their proper status as victims of the power structure.

Oop! The baby's calling.

All right! That's it!

The AnalPhilosopher is getting a link on my blog!

Acton sent me their magazine

Religion and Liberty as a premium for donating. Professor Russell Hittinger is interviewed on the subject of Natural Law in the present issue. I was particularly impressed with this quote:

"...I am very inclined to look for the good sense in our western habits and institutions. I view even the most adamant secularist positions as part of our common culture. A Christian can take a more inclusive view of the quest for truth. Christ is our redeemer by the cross, but he is also the second Adam, and hence the consummator of human history."
..... .....
.....*****.....
“Property, not conscience, is the basis of liberty. For the defence of conscience need not arise. Property is always exposed to interference. It is the constant object of policy.”
— Lord Acton

A quote from Frederic Bastiat:

courtesy of The Acton Institute (even though I own and have read his complete works, I'm just contriving to make sure The Acton Institute gets mentioned):

"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."

I am one who believes that Morality and Religion

are separate matters but here's a different take: the United Deist Community. I've read Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen, so I have some tendency to respect their views.

This guy here

may be what I'm looking for. A philosophy prof giving it away for free.

Check out this article.
It's an analysis of the illogic of Bush's critics.

This paragraph is a great synopsis of the article:

"One thing - maybe the most important thing - young philosophers learn is charity. Before criticizing an argument, make it the best it can be. This is the fundamental fairness of the philosophical method. It is what turned many of us away from law, where fallacy, sadly, is rewarded. The philosopher cares deeply about process (the relation between premises and conclusion) and only incidentally, if at all, about the result. Too often in the debate about war in Iraq I have seen not just failure to put the best face on an argument but a seeming insistence on putting the worst face on it. This principle of charity in interpretation is nothing more than an application of the Golden Rule, to wit: If you would not like your own argument reconstructed badly - the easier for the critic to dispose of it - do not do so to the arguments of others. Be fair. Be charitable. Be honest. Do not contribute to the degradation of public discourse. "

Joe Soucheray

links to this picture as the greatest sports picture ever. He doesn't need any help from me, but here's a great bit of philosophy from the article:

"Clearly, they'd been to war against each other. And now it was over and everything was OK. There it was - self-respect, mutual respect, respect for the game - hard evidence of an ideology in the snap of a camera. One man's team had lost, but it was a picture of two winners."

Sorry, I had to get out and work on my self-esteem.

Purely an individual matter, I assure you.

What did I do? I walked down the stairs, out the door around the freeway side of the complex to a blocked-off street that doesn't get plowed, about a third of a mile through almost knee-deep snow, back on the street for almost a mile, looped around a small lake and back the way I came. I ran up the stairs two at a time. All the snow shovelling has apparently got me into shape.

I had a lot of aches and pains when I started. When I got back, they were gone and my legs were pumped.

By-the-way: this guy's worth reading. "The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week", By George Mannes, TheStreet.com Senior Writer.

Collective effort is useful

to accomplish specific tasks. But it isn't a good idea to conscript everybody to stop what they're doing and start doing any one other thing.

More later. I need to get out for a walk.

I am enjoying the articles

on this site: The American Enterprise. I particularly liked The Fatal Conceit Always Fails which illustrates the economically proven principle that Central Control doesn't work as well as individual freedom.

Note to AM1280

Rush Limbaugh was right about Live and Local. Local local local is the foundation of a great radio station.

Hey!

I just checked the schedule and it looks like Tax Payers League Live is on from 9:00 to 11:00 now! So I don't have to wallow in self-pity when I get up at my normal time on Saturday! Yeah!

People, I want it understood

That I love Dave Thompson. And my favorite TV station KSTP has put him in direct competition with my second favorite radio station The Patriot. Although am1280 has nothing up against Dave directly. Their best live-local show is Tax Payers' League Live with David Strom. I want I recorded somewhere that I love that show! But I can never get up early enough to listen to it. That means "Get Strom better hours!!!"

The funny thing is, KSTP TV has both of these guys debating on alternate weeks on a show called At Issue with (multiple Emmy Award Winner) Tom Hauser. It's a great show. You should watch it.

Let's see if this works.

Soma Juice.

Victory!!!

While trying to get my Soma Juice link to work

I ran across this entry from my archives:

A little William Graham Sumner for ya.
link courtesy of Mises.org:

Society, therefore, does not need any care or supervision. If we can acquire a science of society, based on observation of phenomena and study of forces, we may hope to gain some ground slowly toward the elimination of old errors and the re-establishment of a sound and natural social order. Whatever we gain that way will be by growth, never in the world by any reconstruction of society on the plan of some enthusiastic social architect. The latter is only repeating the old error over again, and postponing all our chances of real improvement. Society needs first of all to be freed from these meddlers-that is, to be let alone. Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine-laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty....

*****
And don't forget this explication of Natural Law:

Almost all legislative effort to prevent vice is really protective of vice, because all such legislation saves the vicious man from the penalty of his vice. Nature's remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according, to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set up on him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. Gambling and other less mentionable vices carry their own penalties with them.

To go along with my previous comment

about the Drug War, here's an economic analysis of the matter.

Sorry, been kinda busy.

I've spent my computer time answering emails from my family. We're rather widely dispersed.

I just gave a guy permission to link to my site under Religion/Buddhism. I find that hard to believe. When I find out how he plans to use my blog here, I'll link back. I do assume it's not nefarious; I've been known to indicate that I've studied Eastern Religions a bit on the side, as in my mention of [can I link my archives? I think I can, I think I can... Yes! ] Satori experiences and posting of the complete Soma Juice poem. And this. They do, indeed, grow on you.

I had to read quite a bit of my archives to find these things, and I find that I like myself better now, than I did when I started. My notion of myself had grown cynical.

Mary Ruwart is the Advocate for Self-Government I most admire.

I love her Short Answers column on The Advocates site. Here's some of what she has to say about immigration:

"Immigrants leave their culture behind and come to a land where the customs and language are often very different. They have a great deal of courage and perseverance to undertake such a move. They are more likely to be `makers' instead of `takers.' However, if our system rewards loafers rather than producers, our country will deteriorate as both native-born Americans and new immigrants choose welfare over work."

I'm afraid I have to agree

that this is disturbing.

Secret trials? The drug war is not a real war. The only reason it's violent is that there is no legitimate, peaceful way to enforce contracts.

We need to have our courts dealing only with issues of personal and property damage.

Here's an article about Clint Eastwood.

See if you can figure out why I like him.

We haven't heard the last of this guy.

It seems government schools aren't about pursuing excellence.

Marquis Harris is a real inspiration.

Key passage:

Recently, I interviewed with a school in one of the metro Atlanta counties, only to receive an e-mail from the principal stating, "Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become. However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Good luck."

A real live human being is an "unrealistic expectation". "People can't do these things. Don't expect to be like this guy. He's not really human. You need to emulate the janitor instead."

Andy, at the World Wide Rant, has some amusing comments.

Here's a real life illustration

of Natural Law.

Our intellectuals like to pretend that Political Science is brain surgery. Here's Ms. Arunga's formulation:

"To do what is right makes sense, to do what is wrong throws society into chaos, and the only way to end the chaos is to do what is right."

Here's how John Locke said it: "Although the State of Nature is a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of License.... The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal or independent, no right to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty or Possessions."

And a further clarifying statement from Roderick T. Long, "Lockean equality involves not merely equality before legislators, judges and police, but, far more crucially, equality with legislators, judges and police."

To get back to June Arunga's point, I'm especially glad that she used the word "chaos" as the consequence of doing what is wrong. Doing wrong throws your life into chaos. That is the test of whether you're following "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God." Is your lifestyle sustainable without having to engage in constantly escalating efforts to control situations and squelch others who would oppose you?

A Letter on Reparations from Edwin Locke

of the Ayn Rand Institute:

A Chicago federal judge was right to dismiss a lawsuit brought by
descendants of slaves against corporations that profited from slavery
in the 19th century, but the decision did not go far enough. The judge
left the door open for further litigation, by implying that it might
be legitimate if the plaintiffs could show actual links to the
companies in question. No such door should have been left open,
because such lawsuits are without merit in principle.

Slavery was abolished in the United States nearly 140 years ago. Those
who were slaves are long dead. If claims could be made by anyone who
had long-dead relatives who were harmed by someone, then everyone in
the entire world could claim compensation for such victimization. But
people who were not themselves the object of harm have no right to
make any such claim.

And who would be responsible for such unjust compensatory payments?
People who are now living who had no role in causing the harm. If
people who were not themselves harmed can force people who were not
responsible for any harm to pay them "compensation" for the suffering
endured by others, then the result is not justice but a double
injustice.

Edwin A. Locke
Ayn Rand Institute

2121 Alton Parkway, #250
Irvine, CA 92606
United States
(949) 222-6550 ext 226

Life and Bread

10 below today.
I'm relaxing at my computer here listening to "The Best of Bread" CD. I didn't realize just how much that group fit the phrase "THE SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE!!!" for me.
I was complaining that we didn't have any way to play our LPs and I really wanted to hear Bread's "Everything I Own", "Diary", "Make It With You", "The Guitar Man"... Heck, I figured that was it for them. There wasn't any more.

My wife found this CD at Target. That gal knows how to please a guy. I think I'm in love.

Man! They must have had a song in the top 40 through the whole decade of the seventies. Every one of these songs evokes myriads of good memories. If they weren't playing on the radio, or Ron's record player, I was singin' one or the other of them in a tree out in the woods. I didn't even know that "Truckin'", "Down On My Knees" and "Mother Freedom" were Bread songs. I knew "Lost Without Your Love" was. I absolutely took these guys for granted. What beautiful music!

A reprise of the family newsletter.

The results from Aliina's check-up today:

24 3/4" and 14# 4 oz. No apparent allergies, diseases, rashes... Growin' like a weed. Cute as a bug's ear! (Whattaya mean, conceited?! I'm not talkin' about myself here!)

This is a breast fed baby. My wife ain't gainin' no weight! 600 calories/day my behinder! You should see what she eats! We go to Taco Bell and my jaw drops at what she thinks is an acceptable order!

Hey! We went up north last weekend. Tower, Minnesota regularly records low temperatures lower than Embarass, MN. In fact, although Embarass has an annual average temperature more than one degree lower than any other town in the lower 48, the lowest official temp recorded is -57 degrees in Tower. Tower is at the same elevation (a major factor in this contest) and 5 miles southeast of my inlaws cabin/house. Guess where I frickin' was.

Tower airport recorded -39 degrees.

Do you know what that means? New Years day, and several days thereafter, I was in Oklahoma, where temperatures were in the 60s. Two weeks later I was experiencing temps 100 degrees lower. And, yes, I had things to do outside while they were like that. I had six layers on my upper body and three on the lower.

Oh, by the way, Rosie cross country skied her first mile in that weather (once it reached 10 below.

I finished that weekend talkin' Flintlock Rifles with my buddy Dan, who with his wife Stoni, got us involved in Rendezvous reenacting, which harks back to the activities of the French Voyageurs in this area and throughout the Northwest. He expressed doubts about those temperature readings, but I didn't tell him about the WELY weather reports. You don't interrupt Dan when he gets going, he's too damn entertaining.

Here you go.

...[I]n France, for example, where environmental laws make energy so artificially expensive that citizens can't afford to run air conditioners and typically don't even own one, 13,000 people (mostly seniors) died in a recent heat wave.

I guess some might say those poor souls are in a better environment now up in heaven. Perhaps that's the sort of environmental "improvement" the ecology movement has in mind for the rest of us.

Free the Martians!

What a beautiful vision of the exploration and settling of Mars! The vision is sketched and some practicalities discussed. A few caveats:

"Until Mars is turned into private property, the only alternative means of exploring and exploiting that planet is through the forced service--in other words, the enslavement--of others: either the explorers who develop land that is later expropriated from them or the taxpayers who are forced to pay for that exploration."
...
"If no private organization wants to explore Mars in the absence of government financing, then-unless there is a valid military need-Mars should not be explored."

Just so you know. From here.

posted to rec.crafts.brewing by Fred Hardy
GERMANY"S PURITY LAW

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following is an English translation of the Reinheitsgebot (German Purity Law) adopted in 1516, the oldest provision still enforced to protect the consumer. This is taken from the article "History of German Brewing" by Karl J. Eden, published in 'zymurgy' magazine, Vol. 16, No. 4 Special 1993.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We hereby proclaim and decree, by Authority of our Province, that henceforth in the Duchy of Bavaria, in the country as well as in the cities and marketplaces, the following rules apply to the sale of beer:
"From Michaelmas to Georgi, the price for one Mass [Bavarian Liter 1,069] or one Kopf [bowl-shaped container for fluids, not quite one Mass], is not to exceed one Pfennig Munich value, and

"From Georgi to Michaelmas, the Mass shall not be sold for more than two Pfennig of the same value, the Kopf not more than three Heller [Heller usually one-half Pfennig].

"If this not be adhered to, the punishment stated below shall be administered.

"Should any person brew, or otherwise have, other beer than March beer, it is not to be sold any higher than one Pfennig per Mass.

"Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities' confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.

"Should, however, an innkeeper in the country, city or markets buy two or three pails of beer (containing 60 Mass) and sell it again to the common peasantry, he alone shall be permitted to charge one Heller more for the Mass of the Kopf, than mentioned above. Furthermore, should there arise a scarcity and subsequent price increase of the barley (also considering that the times of harvest differ, due to location), WE, the Bavarian Duchy, shall have the right to order curtailments for the good of all concerned."

The Problem with modern America,

From Democrats, Poverty, and Rich Bashing, by Tibor Machan:

Many of the poor and even not so poor have accepted the phony idea that to get rich requires stealing from those who have more than they do. Many Americans have indeed reverted to a zero-sum idea of economic progress, one that ruled the world prior to the emergence of capitalism. This view had tied all wealth accumulation to conquest. Leaders of countries relied not on vigorous production, free trade, and commerce so as to generate wealth but on invasion, murder, and robbery.

Comment on Dave Thompson's topic.

Since I was 12, I longed to be sexually abused (as long as physical damage was not involved) by women. If this is a shock to anybody, they are bizarrely and willfully naive.

"Our Steve"--Economic Isolationist.

Steve doesn't notice that the creative destruction of the Free Market has continued to replace the money making enterprises in America's economy right along. There have been politicians bitching about Trade Deficits since the 16th Century. They were Power Mongers and courtiers who said that, not economists.

We had a Revolution to get rid of them.

I went to the first Townhall.com MeetUp.

But I missed the second one. I was out of town.

No, come to think of it, I had a Girl Scout meeting I had to go to.

It was a complete waste of time, except that I got to taste the new cookie. It was all right I guess. Maybe women will like them. All the women I know have to over-complicate things. Dude! Trefoils are fine! Thin Mints! Those things with the caramel and coconut! The sprinkles aren't necessary! Up the taste of the strawberry and underplay the taste of the frosting!

One of my favorite sayings is "it ain't magic".

The guy who started the Unofficial Thomas Sowell Fan Page says he doesn't have Dr. Sowell's email address. Time me now....

Hmm. I guess it wasn't so obvious. If you hit "contact" on this page, you can email him. I don't know if he'll answer though. I guess he didn't think my letter was worth his time.

Cousin April sent me one of those "Remember when...?" messages.

I thought this was the most important comment:

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed
to be proud of myself.

A quote from Lew Rockwell.

From his new book Speaking of Liberty:

In the absence of the capitalist economy and all its underlying institutions, the world's population would, over time, shrink to a small fraction of its current size, with whatever was left of the human race systematically reduced to subsistence, eating only what can be hunted or gathered. The very institution that is the source of the word civilization—the city—depends on trade and commerce, and cannot exist without them.

I've just added The Library of Economics and Liberty

to my links.

Tom Sowell wrote

In The Vision of the Anointed(subtitled: Self-Congratulation as a basis for Social Policy):
The link may give you trouble, but it's easy to find any book from Laissez Faire Books' main page.

Third party decision making by surrogates for "society" offers no a priori reason to expect a closer approximation to omniscience. On the contrary, such surrogates not only lack the detailed and direct knowledge of the innumerable circumstances surrounding each of the millions of individuals whose decisions they are preempting, they lack the incentives of direct gain and loss from being right or wrong, and they have every incentive to persist in mistaken policies (from which they suffer little), rather than admit to being wrong (from which they could suffer much).

By the way, I just ran across Cantillon's Essai at Econlib.org which I've made my homepage. Oddly enough, it's listed under Hayek. Oh, I guess that's an essay on Cantillon written by Hayek. Cantillon's Essay is here.

Post Holidays physiocratics

Our dear brothers from the Mises Institute add this great insight into "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God."

Key quote:

Indeed, it is in the autonomous family—and only in the family—where the pure socialist principle actually works: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

It is personal love that the communists try to imitate with their political policies. Humans are incapable of loving people they don't know. We can muster that caring for a few moments, but we're not capable of maintaining it for any great period of time in the absence of the object. The evolutionary cause of our ability to care for people we've never met is the need to learn from the experiences of others through stories.

Stephen den Beste points out this article:

Power and Weakness, by Robert Kagan. A disturbing view into the mindset of Europeans. What if your doctor had this view of your treatment for a deadly condition:

Europeans insist they approach problems with greater nuance and sophistication. They try to influence others through subtlety and indirection. They are more tolerant of failure, more patient when solutions don't come quickly. They generally favor peaceful responses to problems, preferring negotiation, diplomacy, and persuasion to coercion.

As opposed to this one:

Americans tend to seek finality in international affairs: They want problems solved, threats eliminated.

I don't want my doctor to forgive himself when he loses me, if another doctor could save me.

I think it was Jefferson who said, "the only thing required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing." The EU and the UN epitomize the do nothing approach.

As the Holidays approach

I find myself unable to devote much time to by blog.

II Chronicles 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

I am meditating on this today.

I was just checking out Kant's

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. I see this - the third paragraph:

First, as concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition,
its very concept implies that they cannot be empirical. Its
principles (including not only its maxims but its basic notions)
must never be derived from experience. It must not be physical
but metaphysical knowledge, viz., knowledge lying beyond
experience. It can therefore have for its basis neither external
experience, which is the source of physics proper, nor internal,
which is the basis of empirical psychology. It is therefore a
priori knowledge, coming from pure Understanding and pure Reason.

I see why Ayn Rand metaphorically threw Kant's philosophy across the room. He begins his observation of reality by accepting the bonds of his terminology. It is certainly acceptable to attempt to use the verbal tools available to describe what you find. Metaphorically speaking, great things were done before the advent of modern machinery, but this looks like he's insisting that it is illigitimate to use anything but hand tools.

The article cited in the previous post

deserves a little fisking.

Not the Peikoff article, there is little there to disagree with.

This here paragraph, from Puritan Humbugs and a History of Christmas Bashing, by Jeff Westover, deserves [some] debunking, by a better historian than I, but I don't see any around here, so....

Here's the paragraph in full:

It must be noted that the England described by Dickens was not all that exaggerated. Scrooge may have been a fictional character but his attitudes were based in fact. These were terrible economic times and the budding Industrial Revolution turned minds to work – and not to holidays or the celebrations of them. Families of workers struggled mightily to make ends meet, working seven days a week and enduring horrific working conditions. It was an era of child labor and success was measured by the amount of work accomplished and money earned.

I don't quibble with the first two sentences. I'll check up on the economic situation as soon as I can. I don't doubt that the Protestant Work Ethic, or rather, Puritan teachings about how life is a vale of tears and we're supposed to suffer--"turn your laughter into mourning" the Good Book says--led to a great deal more suffering than "the pursuit of happiness", a competing English Enlightenment concept, ever did.

It's that sort of dilemma that makes Objectivists atheists.

Well, I'll carry on with this later.

Yeah! The Dow cracked 10000!

Even if it is just because the Fed and the Treasury are pumpin' out credit and cash by the ton, it's still cool.

All right, that pretty much restores everything.

Whoa! A little template trouble there!

Leonard Peikoff tells us

Why Christmas should be more commercial.

Santa Claus is, indeed, the anti-Christ.

Non-puritan Christians need to realize the degree to which Puritan teachings have infected their theology and ignore them.

Thomas Sowell performs his usual, Bastiat-like, service to America.

In today's article at Townhall.com he explains how stupid the "elites" are who think WalMart is a problem to be solved. "The very idea that third parties should be deciding whether a particular business is good for the whole country shows incredible chutzpa."

He offers this beautifully eloquent refutation of those who think we little people are under the "power" of Walmart: "I can't remember ever having bought anything from Wal-Mart and there is not the slightest thing that they can do to make me."

Always read Sowell.

I think I'll start taking this Rebecca Hagelin more seriously as well.

I'll analyze this further when I get the chance.

Hey! I went to the Townhall.com Meetup.

Hey! That's me! The bald guy with glasses on the left! The Minneapolis, MN Meetup Photos. Of course, in the second picture, I'm the bald guy with glasses on the right.

I like to read

Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Larry Elder every chance I get. You can find them at World Net Daily, Townhall.com, Drudge and Capitalism Magazine. Their articles are all good today. Look for "columnists".

And check out this interview of T. J. Rodgers, founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor.
Windows Media files. It's fantastic! What a hero of Free Minds and Free Markets! And a Packer fan to boot!

"It doesn't matter to me if I'm buying from a multinational company,

as long as they give me what I want." said Mr. Carrillo, an administrative aide, who lives three blocks from a Wal-Mart. From the New York Times.
(Link requires registration)

This is the best news ever.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.

I was reading Mises.org

while I waited for this machine to finish up a job it's doing for me.
Check out daily article: Economics Lost in Translation. It updates Mises' 1956 book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by means of a review of Bill Murray's movie Lost in Translation.
It sounds like it covers a lot of the same ground as Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed.
I bought three copies with the thought that I'd give one each to Bob Davis and Dave Thompson at KSTP-AM.

For those who were wondering about the name of my daughter,

It's Finnish.
One of the characteristic traits of the Finns that I know is a tendency toward chauvinism. At least it's characteristic of the Finns whose company I've enjoyed, which must mean that I share the trait with them.
All the non-chauvinistic Finns I've met seemed to suffer from an inferiority-complex. Or something--they were all given to excessive drinking and drug abuse (as opposed to moderate drug abuse).
BTW, I think it's possible to use intoxicants moderately and responsibly--I can't seem to do it, I tried for years, but I don't deny that it's possible.