Food Freedom: A Talk With Kyle Turnblazer at Liberty Forge

I did an awesome interview with my friend Kyle Turnblazer over at The Liberty Forge about food freedom and taking care of your most prized possession: your body and mind. Wow! What a great talk. Please listen and share. I'm unable to embed the podcast here so head over to The Liberty Forge and listen there, and check out the treasure trove of other information there.

Guns, Culture and Government

Leaving our emotions at the door to get to the bottom of a complex issue.

Needless to say it has been impossible to avoid discussions, information, and, especially, disinformation and propaganda over the issue of mass shootings in America. There are outright lies, statistics, statistics out of context, statistics purposefully distorted, appeals to emotion, idiots sawing their rifles in half, and emotionally damaged people coming out of the woodwork to talk about how they almost became a killer. Hardly any of it, hardly anyone, has the courage or the energy to discuss the root of the problem. I think it can be safely said that anyone who tries to say this is a problem that can be solved by infringing on access to guns for private citizens is not a serious person. At all. Becoming hysterical is not an expression of seriousness.

I cannot honestly or seriously proclaim myself as someone who understands everything that is wrong with society or can prescribe a cure. However, although I am not an old man, I have been alive long enough to know that this is a relatively new problem, and have lived through times when this sort of thing never occurred, even though there were more guns and more dangerous types of weapons (fully automatic guns were only banned a generation ago). What has changed these last couple of decades?

I can only speak to my own observations and experience, and apply what I know and form a hypothesis. What I can prove beyond doubt is that the problem has not arisen due to easier access to guns, or more deadly guns being available. The laws are stricter. These weapons are not new. People kill every day, and in large numbers, using weapons other than guns. Hijacked airplanes come to mind. Fertilizer-based explosives. Automobiles at high speed driven into crowds. Knives. This occurs everywhere.

I suppose I should take a step back before moving on and talk about the undesirability and impossibility of living in a safe society. This #neveragain movement strikes me not only as an exercise in futility, but of derangement. Is there anyone who seriously believes they can eradicate violence from a society of hundreds of millions of people and growing? Or would it simply comfort them, would they not care at all, if the violence and death didn't end, just as long as it wasn't done with scary looking, noisy weapons known as guns? Safety provided by government is and has always been the alibi of tyrants. This argument is almost always completely lost on the gun grabbers. The gentle government who holds your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side. This is the natural consequence of generations of people who've systematically had their sense of ownership and responsibility beaten out of them. You don't own yourself, so you demand your owners provide safety and security. And when they fail, flagrantly, miserably, one could say purposefully, most people ignore it. Just keep blaming the guns. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

And, just as an aside, I have no desire to live in a society that is absolutely safe, even for "the children". I am not a head of cattle. Freedom is risky. And you do not have the right to impose your fears, warranted or otherwise, onto my life.