REPUBLIC REBORN

Great interview, which has almost reached 3 million views in the past week alone.

There has to have been thousands of books written on the woolly, will o’ the wisp topic of “liberty” over the years, innumerable debates, conflicts fought, wars, and oceans of blood spilled, all in its name. And despite all this, the foundational axiom of liberty is almost painfully simple to grasp. It is essentially this: that every single voluntary interaction, exchange, or instance of cooperation is permitted. All coercive acts are prohibited. All trade, all innovation, all entrepreneurship, every mode of living, every experiment imaginable, is permitted. I think that this is fairly simple to grasp for most people. But understanding only this does little to instill the sense of wonder and hope that this idea has created in all those people who’ve clung to it in the manner of the religious convert, or someone who’s seen the face of God or some similar occurrence. Those people, aside from understanding the foundational concept of liberty, have made the mental leap to using their imagination to envision a future built around this ideal. It’s only once your mind begins, almost of its own volition, to apply this principle of voluntarism to every aspect of the social world does it ignite the imagination, which is essential for the transformative effect to take place, which lights a fire inside the mind of the hapless individual in whom liberty was planted like a seed. Or maybe a time bomb?

All of that is why I believe that, for liberty to truly be achieved in our lifetime(one of many slogans from the Ron Paul era), its acolytes, activists, and prophets must use the power of imagination as their greatest tool. None of those massive treatises matter if we are unable to grasp and communicate in an imaginative way.

To effect liberty, all we need to do is steadily remove the legislative controls that bind us down without our even knowing it. The suppression of voluntary interaction is the greatest, and only true, societal ill, because it lies behind every problem we face. But the only way to effectively communicate this is by capturing the imagination of the public, guiding them to see for themselves, in their mind, what would be possible if only we made the leap.

The ideal of liberty is a real-world philosophy of hope, one that I would call the true “manifest destiny” of our species. Witnessing what we are capable of when we are given even a modicum of freedom is enough evidence to envision what we could accomplish were we free in an absolute sense. I think most people in this country are primed for it. They see now, with their own eyes, what cannabis legalization has accomplished in just two years. All it took was a removal of control, and human ingenuity, imagination, innovation, and entrepreneurship swept in and produced a real-world miracle. A miracle in the true sense of the word, a true revolution. True progress, blindingly rapid progress. This was made possible through simply removing controls that had been in effect for almost a century. Let’s now apply that simple principle to other aspects of our social world. Healthcare, for instance. It is a market currently chained to the ground by a mare’s nest of regulations and prohibitions, all designed to keep the politically-connected fat and rich. We don’t need to arrest anyone, or incite mobs in the street. All we need to do is remove the controls. Just imagine what would be possible.

We vastly underrate our potential as a species. Liberty is the key through what could be described as a dream-door to an unimaginably bright future. We’re ready for it, why not simply walk through?

On November 26th, the Scientific American published a wonderfully insightful piece by Jennifer Block, entitled, Doctors are Not Gods, wherein she criticized the elitist, and increasingly authoritarian, attitude of the healthcare profession, and the hatred that profession has for any non-credentialed promoter of healthcare at odds with their directives.

Well, the cowards at Scientific American quickly removed the piece, because it is not there anymore. In its place is the boilerplate, “The post that originally appeared here has been removed because we’ve determined that it doesn’t meet our editorial standards.”

Good thing it’s been archived then, and can be READ HERE.

I’d say that if a piece of writing is deemed dangerous or subversive enough for Scientific American to censor it, it deserves to be read in its entirety. But her eloquent take-down of oversensitive, over-credentialed Jan Gunter alone is worth it.

EDIT: Block mentions that Jan Gunter occasionally refers to Gwyneth Paltrow’s company, Goop, as part of some insidious “health industrial complex” that is taking advantage of gullible customers. Gunter apparently doesn’t understand to what “-industrial complex” refers. A purely private company operating in an open market, free of government regulation and privilege, isn’t deserving of the pejorative. What does deserve the label of “health industrial complex” is the hyper-regulated, guilded, privileged industry that Gunter is a part of. The medical establishment does not operate in an environment that is anywhere near a market. It is rife with monopolistic rigging and corruption. It exists in its present corrupt state only due to the privileges afforded to it by the government. Remove those privileges and the whole thing will dissipate.

This designation will accelerate research of medications containing the psychedelic compound. High Times has the story.

We are living in the midst of a therapeutic revolution, and as long as regulations and prohibitions are removed, rather than added, then the revolution will continue. The legalization of psychedelics will herald the extinction of the vast array of dangerous, mind-destroying pharmaceuticals, and the large number of people living in a mental hell will finally have access to truly safe and effective treatment.

Truthout:”Rep. Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo and D-New Mexico, and Rep. Denny Heck, D-Washington, introduced the House with the Remove Stain Act in June.

Both bills strip the Congressional Medals of Honor that were awarded to the 20 men in the U.S. 7th Cavalry. The soldiers murdered defenseless and unarmed Lakota men, women and children on December 29, 1890, also known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.”

It’s a tragic infection, yet one that has become manageable for many who are unfortunate enough to have contracted it. But the goal seems to be to eliminate or reduce it as much as possible, not “reduce the stigma” so as to make HIV-positive population feel better. The latter appears to be the goal of ‘Sperm Positive’, the world’s first HIV-positive sperm bank.

The push to normalize HIV seems bizarre in the face of the persecution of “anti-vaxxers”. They’ve been saddled with an unearned stigma, so why no concerted effort to understand and normalize their beliefs?

Now the many victims of the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix are having their day in court, with the taxpayers picking up the tab on the multi-million-dollar settlements.

Thanks to a FOIA request from the heroic organization, CrossFit.

The Vaccine Reaction has the story.

Amazing numbers from Marijuana Business Daily.