99.9% Libertarian; or, We miss you, Kate Smith
Posted in LFA Flashback by R Lee Wrights on September 5th, 2008 by Della Croft
Remember those old Ivory soap commercials? A bar of soap floating in a bathtub of water, demonstrating that it was 99.9% pure. No one knew why we needed pure soap or what was in that other 0.1%, but the real advantage of soap that floats was obvious; you didn’t have to reach into cold, dirty bathwater to retrieve it.
It took a little while, but finally it occurred to someone that even an ice cube made with water from Boston Harbor would float, so perhaps the fact that this soap floated was no indication of its purity or even that it was good for us. Using the word pure to conjure up visions of something pristine and unpolluted, the Ivory soap people sold millions of those floating bars.
The notion of purity is something that has always interested me; it can be used in so many ways. We can be pure of thought, pure of action, purely ridiculous and some of us can be purely evil. The one constant is that each and every one of us is purely human - changeable, fickle, and impossible to pigeonhole. Get two humans in a room and you can count on three opinions on any topic. If there was any good to come of the events of September 11th, it was that we put aside our differences for a few moments and stood as one. All across this country we sang off-key renditions of God Bless America, waved flags, and cried - together.
A few years ago I had the great honor of penning a resolution that was sponsored by the Libertarian Party of Forsyth County (North Carolina), which was eventually passed and adopted by my hometown’s Town Council. So, I decided to see if we couldn’t get the same resolution sponsored and adopted by some of our other affiliates. What began as a local endeavor quickly grew into a national movement. I am proud to report that the US Constitution Resolution has either been adopted or being considered for adoption in over half the states in the union. Every effort is a local one.
I’ve finally made up my mind on this November’s election. I don’t know why it has taken this long. It was right in front of me!
There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.
1. Sleep in your cubicle under the desk on a purple yoga mat.
“Stepdads beat biological fathers in parenting, study says.” “Stepdads do better than real dads in ‘fragile’ families.” “Stepfathers make better parents.” This is how dozens of major newspapers and media outlets are reporting a new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family which compares stepfathers to biological fathers.
My wife and I have been doing the “snowbird” routine in Southern Arizona again this winter. Being interested in local “goings on”, we have noted that, unless one lives under a rock, one cannot avoid hearing and seeing stories about drug arrests and seizures. On an almost daily basis the local news outlets run an item about another “record” seizure from across the border (62 miles from Tucson) by the Border Patrol, the DEA or a local enforcement agency (sometimes all three combined after a multi-year investigation).
For two months we have been subjected to the media’s latest meal ticket: the Enron collapse. While the investors, shareholders and employees have been burned pretty badly, it has become embarrassingly obvious that the media’s real concern is to find political scandal in what is otherwise only a spectacular business collapse. Finding no improper political influence on the part of the Bush White House with which to make scandal, the media then does a 180 and screams that they are at fault because they didn’t exert their influence.
“The right of the state to deal with the entire subject (health care) can assuredly not be gainsaid. The physician is a social instrument.” This is just one of Flexner’s statements that bespoke a deep socialist paternalism. It could have been made by John Dewey, the radical socialist educator and Flexner’s contemporary. In retrospect, Flexner was a cog in the wheel of socialism and an authoritarian one to boot.
Harrold, Tex. School district trustees and Supt. David Thweatt deserve accolades for changing school policy to allow staff and teachers to carry concealed handguns to protect against school shootings, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
