maineyankee

[maineyankee]

The Second Word in Gun Violence

Sheriff Billy Woods of Marion County, Florida, holds that children who commit violent crimes need to be held accountable and calls for parents and schools to take more responsibility in raising children. He criticized “society,” “school districts,” and gun law rhetoric after announcing the arrests of two juveniles, one of whom is 12 years old, in connection with the killings of three teenagers in…

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#gun violence #guns

[maineyankee]

On Taxes and Licenses

A tirade against taxes, recently posted on Facebook, recalls something I encountered several years ago when I sought information from my home state about professional licensing. The Facebook post, which sets out initially to describe the scale of the number one billion, contains the following (unedited) list of taxes and “fees” (a euphemism for taxes). I make no attempt to polish the list or add…

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Wealth from a Child's Perspective

I stumbled onto this essay today, one that I had composed in 2003 — 20 years ago — and had forgotten. Since then I have published articles on money and wealth both at this page at AlbertJayNock.org and at this page at Poor David’s Almanac. I understood money in pennies and even in quantities as high as a few hundred dollars.” There is enough here, though, to offer it as a stand-alone article,…

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Is This Forgiveness?

I didn’t realize until now that The Onion leans toward the delusions of collectivism — (left, new liberal, socialist; choose your flag).  Inasmuch as I read a clip from it perhaps only a couple times a year I hadn’t looked at it enough to notice.  Plainly, though, it struggles to deliver satire as effortlessly as does The Babylon Bee.  Maybe the subjects that lend themselves so easily to the…

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George Orwell's1940 Review of Mein Kampf

George Orwell’s1940 Review of Mein Kampf

It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German…

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#collectivism #Hitler #Mein Kampf #Orwell

[maineyankee]

Ukraine: A Settlement

If you don’t condemn Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as a villainous tyrant, if you don’t call for regime change in Russia, and if you don’t demand that the rest of the world arrest and prosecute him on charges of mass murder, you may as well call him Vladimir the Great and prepare to applaud his next conquest. In a speech he was giving in Poland on March 26, 2022, Bystander-in-Chief Joe Biden…

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[maineyankee]

The painting by Ilya Yefimovich Repin is titled “Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Sultan of Turkey” and this is the story behind the painting: Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV to the Zaporozhian Cossacks, A.D. 1676: As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors;…

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[maineyankee]

Ukraine and Your Future

Ukraine and Your Future

It’s only three weeks into Russia’s murderous assault on its neighboring country, but Ukraine fatigue is already setting in. If you are one of those Americans, ignorant of that region’s geography and history and feeling sorry for the Russians killed in Ukraine’s resistance, this brief piece will not untangle your confusion. It may prod you to some research, though, and that is to be…

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[maineyankee]

DOES MY MASK HURT YOUR FREEDOM?

DOES MY MASK HURT YOUR FREEDOM?

If I were motivated to take such an interesting journey, I could step out my back door and hike 55 miles through the Maine woods to the border with Canada without crossing a paved road.  (I’d reach U.S. 1 just before the border, to be precise.)  Since I’m a wildlife biologist and Registered Maine Guide, this particular hike does not entice me.  My feet have trod plenty of forestland and I can…

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#freedom #mandates #masksandvaccines

[maineyankee]

Facebook's Yawning Arrogance

Facebook’s Yawning Arrogance

It has been a long time since I was last reminded how small and insignificant I am. In spite of its pretensions to virtue and social responsibility, Facebook is really just the modern face of corporate greed and manipulation. I need to use it as I originally started out doing, to make connections — (I’m still “bumping into” old childhood acquaintances) — and just stay clear of its bulldozer…

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#Facebook #fraud

[maineyankee]

America's Slide Toward Fascism | George Smith

America’s Slide Toward Fascism | George Smith

The article that is linked below may be the best analysis of what our rulers in the United States will never understand about their responsibility to govern.  All of what Ayn Rand has to say, in this piece by George Smith for libertarianism.org and republished at fee.org (the Foundation for Economic Education), are thoughts that have stewed in my mind but never come to words, at least not words…

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#Ayn Rand #libertarian

[maineyankee]

Banned in Boston

My regrets for the length of this piece, first published at DamnYankee.com, but so much is at stake and much needs be said.  I originally wrote this as a letter to The Weekly Standard after reading its 2006 article, “Banned in Boston – The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty” by Maggie Gallagher, 05/15/2006, Volume 011, Issue 33. The magazine did not publish or…

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#adoption services #Catholic Church #gay marriage #Mass\achusetts politics

[maineyankee]

Invincible Ignorance

In Chapter One of Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, AJN remarked: The net profit of my first few years of life appears to have been a fairly explicit understanding of the fact that ignorance exists…  This understanding came about so easily and naturally that for many years I took it as a commonplace, assuming that everyone had it.  My subsequent contacts with the world at large, however, showed me…

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Money

I’m looking at a ninety-two-year-old man right now. He is sitting across the room from me. He was born before the stock market crash of 1929, before the Great Depression. Before World War II. Calvin Coolidge was President when Dick Noyes drew his first breath. My wife of 46 years is his daughter. We have just passed the vernal equinox of 2021 and this man is still breathing. Herbert Hoover had…

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You Call Yourself a Christian?

You Call Yourself a Christian?

First there was this meme, challenging me to explain to my supposedly oppressed friends why I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton for President in 2016. A mem is that “unit of communication” invented in 1976 by the unregenerate Richard Dawkins. Now comes another one, this time asking: “Why, when Jesus talks about feeding the poor, it’s Christianity but when a politician does it, it’s Socialism?” …

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#Albert Jay Nock #Christian #Christianity #feeding the poor #socialism

[maineyankee]

Six Disastrous Assumptions

“A government ought to know how to levy taxes.  But if it doesn’t know how to collect them, then a man is a fool to pay them.”  -J. P. Morgan in what has been termed the indiscretion of a lifetimeJ. P. Morgan in what has been termed the indiscretion of a lifetime “People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made.”attributed to Mark Twain Morgan’s boast and…

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#Covid-19 #lawmakers #lawmaking #pandemic

[maineyankee]

A Well-regulated Militia

The time is approaching when we will be compelled by an act of Congress to register our firearms. We are continually reminded that “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That part is clear to everyone except those promulgating law in Washington, D.C. Few people, though, understand what is meant by the first part of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.…

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