Okay, I feel like an idiot. I posted the "friday night report" on Thursday night and went all day today thinking it was Saturday. In fact, I didn't bother putting money into the parking meter because I thought it was Saturday, so when I came out to my car I found I had a parking ticket. Dan and I got into my car and I said I don't understand, I specifically checked to see that the sign said the meters weren't enforced on Saturdays. That's when Dan said, "It's Friday." DUH. Sometimes I'm an idiot.
Today was fairly uneventful, i.e. boring. No real creationists came by, but we signed up a lot of people. We also found out that HB 5606, the Michigan bill that contains the open door to teaching ID by local school districts, passed the House yesterday and is on its way to the Senate. So now we've really gotta shift into high gear to try and get the bill amended. Dan came by and we got some dinner. It's been a really long day that started at 6 am so I plan to sit on my brother's couch the rest of the night and do as little as possible.
I also see that Harry Browne has passed away, which makes me very sad. My condolences go out to his family and especially to Jim Babka and Perry Willis, who were friends and compatriots to Harry. He will be sorely missed. By the way, Missouri is now considering a resolution that is unreal in its implications. I'll write more on that when I get home tomorrow. Here's the link to the resolution. I'll post the text below the fold:
Whereas, our forefathers of this great nation of the United States recognized a Christian God and used the principles afforded to us by Him as the founding principles of our nation; andWhereas, as citizens of this great nation, we the majority also wish to exercise our constitutional right to acknowledge our Creator and give thanks for the many gifts provided by Him; and
Whereas, as elected officials we should protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs while showing respect for those who object; and
Whereas, we wish to continue the wisdom imparted in the Constitution of the United States of America by the founding fathers; and
Whereas, we as elected officials recognize that a Greater Power exists above and beyond the institutions of mankind:
Now, therefore, be it resolved by the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-third General Assembly, Second Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, that we stand with the majority of our constituents and exercise the common sense that voluntary prayer in public schools and religious displays on public property are not a coalition of church and state, but rather the justified recognition of the positive role that Christianity has played in this great nation of ours, the United States of America.
I don't really know how far this bill has gotten and I'm too tired to do the research now. More on it later.
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Since you have proven beyond doubt in this space that materialism is a fallacy and it is God's will that is the cause of and solution to all of life's queries, I maintain that the irreducible complexity that is the confluence of events that created Eve from Adam, the oil from the dinosaurs Cain and Abel herded in their spare time, the floods that pressurized the ordered elements in our earth that formed the mineral layer that became the steel of your car, the divine inspiration bestowed upon Henry Ford and whoever invented the Wankel rotary engine that allowed you to drive to the parking spot, the Angel Gabriel (or one of his most holy agents) who moved that UPS van mere minutes before your arrival to free said spot, and most of all to John L. Slurpee... Christian, inspired visionary, and sugar syrup pioneer whose nectar of the divine pulled those last three quarters from your pocket proves His Will created, designed and therefore made it be so that you should park in said spot on a Friday with no quarters for the meter.
If it were not for the left-wing agenda in this country and their reliance on the economic policies that have strayed from the Divine Word of Our Lord, you would not have received a ticket. In the spirit of eye-for-an-eye, God should have willed another to park in your garage for an equally inconvenient amount of time.
We must fight this secularism.
What really irritates me more than anything else, is that people like that can't even realize that their endorsement of religion will inevitably exclude most types of christianity. They truely believe that all christianity is pretty much just like theirs, and that the differences are only in the details. The complete disregard for the rights of others, whom they knowingly and willingly trample on, never ceases to amaze me.
I just want to say thanks for the short mention of Harry. I hope you have a little more to write when you are able. The first I heard of this was listening to Penn this afternoon. He mentioned Harry had died, and I went to PL and saw that Sandefur had a short post as well. I'm pretty bummed out about it. When I first began to awaken to my libertarian nature, Harry's views and recorded speeches were one of the number one things I sought out. Sandefur is right when he states that Harry had the ability to convey libertarian ideas better than most. Like all of us, he certainly wasn't perfect and some of his views and political stances didn't gell 100% with me, but I admired him greatly and he was just as important a voice to me in my move from marxism to libertarianism as Carl Sagan was when I was shedding my Christian upbringing for a strongly atheist outlook.
I highly doubt Harry will be remembered properly in any major papers- most likely his obituaries will be religated to the libertarian sections of the internet. CNN will make no mention; nore will any other news source. This is what makes me the most sad. Despite how you feel about the LP (and make no mistake, I think they are an embarassment), this man has gone far too quietly into the night. He deserves far more rememberance than he's likely to get.
BG--don't you know anything? The Slurpee was invented by John Thompson in 1966 and introduced at the World's Fair. See www.myslurpeecup.com. Other than that, wonderful post. You're one of the one that 'get it'.
I'm sorry but that is too funny!
I saw the Missouri bill on the religionlaw list this afternoon too. Between this and the propsed abortion ban, I'm suddenly very depressed about my state. Sure, we've got a lot of rednecks and fundamentalists, but they're usually backward in a charming way, not a scary one.
They have the role of elected officials completed inverted. Their role is not to "protect the majority", but to protect the minority's right to express their religious beliefs.
Well that's how they manage to deceive themselves into the belief that they're democrats.
I was never a fan of Browne, and the corruption in his campaign (see http://www.libertysoft.com/liberty/timeline.html) was pretty much the last straw for me with respect to the Libertarian Party. Although I'd already switched my voter registration to Independent after Marrou's issues, I still voted for him. These incidents showed that the LP could be just as dishonest and sleazy as any other political party.
Browne had Scientologists working on his campaign (see http://www.discord.org/~lippard/casey.html), he lied about how he would spend campaign funds (spending more on "consulting" fees to staff than on the advertising he said he was going to purchase--see http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/2/2/14302/91040 and the Liberty coverage), and made ridiculous claims about how he would grow the LP and win votes (see http://www.libertysoft.com/liberty/features/62strategy.html). In 2000, the Arizona LP put L. Neil Smith on the ballot for president instead of Browne, and that was my last vote for an LP candidate for president.
I never read Browne's books, but wasn't he an advocate of the same "invest in gold now, before everything crashes" thesis that has been pushed for decades by folks like Doug Casey (another apparent libertarian Scientologist)? Perhaps it will eventually be accurate, like a stopped clock (certainly the last couple years have been good for precious metals and commodities), but I suspect most investment newsletters are successful for the same reason quack health remedies are successful--it's not that they work, but that they tout their successes and explain away their failures.
According to local papers and the email I received from the sponsor, the Missouri resolution won't make it on the calendar, much less to the House floor for debate. I think this was just an exercise in political grandstanding...