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Joecephus.com - Random musings from the land of the burning river.
  • Home
  • About
    • Comment Policy
  • General
    • News
    • World
    • Science/Tech
    • Economics
    • Sports
    • The Joecephus Daily
  • Music
    • Album Reviews
    • Liberty Songs
  • Beer
    • The Weekly Pour
  • Cigar Reviews
  • WTF?
  • Politics
    • Civil Liberties
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Civil Liberties, Culture, Politics

On Charlottesville, Hatred & Free Speech

August 16, 2017by JoecephusNo Comments

I was not paying much attention to social media this past weekend, as I was working on a home improvement project, so I only had a vague idea of the events that transpired in Charlottesville, Virginia. I made a few comments to twitter, mostly re-tweets and one asking anyone that agrees with the protestors to unfollow me, and emphasizing it with vulgarities.

It wasn’t until late Sunday and early into the week that I really started to dip my toes into the waters so to speak and get acquainted with the disgusting display that took place.

I really won’t discuss the actual events that transpired, only to say that as a lover of liberty that has long rallied against the watering-down and redefining of what it means to be a “right leaning” conservative I am disgusted that those hateful, racist “alt-Right” protestors and the movement itself gets associated with “conservative” or “libertarianism.”

I will say that I am even more glad that I gave up my former blogging domain name years ago of Right Wing Rebel. Though I mainly gave that up because I have come to realize that the left vs right political spectrum is complete hogwash.

My biggest concern over the Trump candidacy was the nationalistic sentiment that his campaign swept up. “Blood & soil” is the polar opposite of the very idea that our country is founded on, the idea that all men are created equal, and our endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But I don’t care to talk about Trump, Nationalism, or even racism really right now. What I really want to focus on, is something that has been brewing for a while now, but has really come to prominence these past few days and that is the “no free speech for fascists” or the “punch a Nazi” movement.

Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, recently asked the very valid question, “Do you really want Donald Trump deciding who gets free speech”?

She writes:

… if fascists are to lose their free speech rights, someone must take them. And if you believe, as many of the counter-protesters do, that the white nationalists and their brethren were emboldened by the presence of a man in the White House who sees them as part of his coalition, then why on God’s good green earth would you want to turn around and hand that very man the right to censor anyone whom he labels fascists? Because I can tell you right now, the list of folks that Trump and the restive-but-still-Republican Congress would like to silence sure won’t look like the list those sign-wavers have in mind.

Living in a truly free and open society, truly respecting the concept of individual rights and liberty, means having to accept things that you dislike. That also includes having to accept some things that you find morally reprehensible.

Forcing the ignorant, disgusting and vile into the shadows does not eliminate ignorance and hatred. It just sweeps it under the rug where it is allowed to fester and grow like mold and spread into something even more hateful and disgusting.

The American progressive movement always claim to be the ones of peace, love, understanding and free ideas… but the caveat is, you are accepted only as long as that peace, love and understanding comes with the same pre-packaged manufactured group-think “free” ideas that they share.

The image that struck me the most this weekend was of the black police office standing guard and protecting the ignorant racists behind him.

Think about that juxtaposition for a moment.

Barely a full year ago, a crazed black power ideologue gunned down law enforcement in Dallas, Texas, where the media incidentally didn’t go bash ALL BLM supporters and ALL progressives, they pointed it out for what it was an isolated incident.

Now that police office, who is both a black life and a blue life but more importantly a HUMAN life and who is hated by many hardcore progressives who think all cops are corrupt is protecting ignorant fools who also hate him, albeit because of the color of his skin.

Things are not clear-cut. There is not one side, or the other side. There is not only right or left. There is not just black or white.

The issues facing us are far more complicated then anything I can explain.

Hatred begets hatred, violence begets violence. Ignorance breeds ignorance and anti-fascism, at least these days, is more often then not — fascism itself.

Free speech, as long as its non-violent free speech, must be protected and defended to full extent, even free speech that you find repulsive.

I’ll close out with the words of pastor Martin Niemöller, who knows a little bit of this, having spent a few years in a real Nazi concentration camp.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Culture, Politics

Punch A Nazi

March 26, 2017by JoecephusNo Comments

This is glorious.

I’m not a Trump supporter by any means, but the reasons I oppose him are different from the social justice warrior progressives out there.

Politics

This Happens Frequently

February 10, 2017by JoecephusNo Comments

Civil Liberties, Politics

On #Calexit & The Right To Dissolve Political Bands

January 28, 2017by JoecephusNo Comments

This past week proponents of an independent California gained a small victory in their movement, as their Secretary of State Alex Padilla has approved a petition initiative to begin collecting signatures from voters.

Thanks to the recent vote in Great Britain to leave the European Union, which was dubbed #Brexit, California’s movement has taken on the hashtag name of #Calexit. The movement, which has gained steam after the the overall meltdown of the American Progressive Left after the election of Donald Trump, is not actually a new one. The Yes California Independence Committee PAC has been around for a couple of years.

From their website:

Yes California is the nonviolent campaign to establish the country of California using any and all legal and constitutional means to do so. We advocate for peaceful secession from the United States by use of an independence referendum to establish a mandate, followed by a nationwide campaign to advocate in support of a constitutional exit from the Union. By joining this campaign, signing up as a member, donating, volunteering, or otherwise supporting this important cause, you agree to these nonviolent principles.

While Yes California supports and encourages Californians to stand up and take direct action, to be bold, and to unapologetically demand the liberation of the people of California from its captors, we explicitly reject conduct or speech inciting open rebellion against the American government.

The idea of secession is not actually a new one in California, while the #Calexit people want to leave a Federal Government that they do not view as being attuned to their Progressive Political leanings, there is a much older movement within California’s more rural Northern State’s to breakaway and create the 51st State, The State of Jefferson.

I find it quite interesting that there is a group of people within California who feel that they are being bullied by the Federal Government & the Electoral College, who feel that they are culturally out-of-step with the rest of the Unites States — but who are completely oblivious the plight of their fellow Californians who feel the same way towards them.

Now, do I think that there is a reasonable chance that someday soon California will become a sovereign nation-state? No, I think there is about as much chance of that happening as there is of Donald Trump nominating Rosie O’Donnell to the US Supreme Court.

However believing that something is going to happen and believing in the right for that thing to happen are two completely different things. It was the inspiration for the name The State of Jefferson, who wrote the greatest declaration of secession of all time, otherwise known as the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas DiLorenzo, of the Mises Institute, wrote a few years back an article about the Jeffersonian secessionist tradition posted at LewRockwell.com:

Thomas Jefferson, the author of America’s July 4, 1776 Declaration of Secession from the British empire, was a lifelong advocate of both the voluntary union of the free, independent, and sovereign states, and of the right of secession. “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form,” he said in his first inaugural address in 1801, “let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.”

In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph priestly, who had ask Jefferson his opinion of the New England secession movement that was gaining momentum, he wrote: “Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern . . . and did I now foresee a separation at some future day,, yet should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family . . .” Jefferson offered the same opinion to John C. Breckenridge on August 12 1803 when New Englanders were threatening secession after the Louisiana purchase. If there were a “separation,” he wrote, “God bless them both & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.”

I am firmly of the belief that, while not everyone may realize it on a conscious level or express it in these exact terms, the human heart yearns for liberty. Supporters of a strong and all-powerful Federal Government will bring up the “…one Nation under God, indivisible…” part of the Pledge of Allegiance or say things like the Civil War and Texas v White ‘settled’ the issue of secession.

As far as the Pledge of Allegiance goes, while I truly feel blessed to have been born in the what is still the greatest country on God’s green earth, I pledge my allegiance to no one. I am a free man, nobody owns me and I am not subject to the rituals of blind devotion to the State because of a pledge written by a socialist decades after our Republic’s founding.

The United States of America came to be after the Thirteen Original Colonies successfully used the God-given right to self-determination in unshackling themselves from the chains that tied them to King George’s England.

Ron Paul in a 2009 CNN Interview said:

The biggest surprise to me was the outrage expressed over an individual who thinks along these lines, because I heard people say, well, this is treasonous and this was un-American. But don’t they remember how we came in to our being? We used secession, we seceded from England. So it’s a very good principle. It’s a principle of a free society. It’s a shame we don’t have it anymore. I argue that if you had the principle of secession, our federal government wouldn’t be as intrusive into state affairs and to me that would be very good.

We as a nation have endorsed secession all along. Think of all of the secession of the countries and the republics from the Soviet system. We were delighted. We love it. And yet we get hysterical over this just because people want to debate and defend the principle of secession, that doesn’t mean they’re calling for secession. I think it’s that restraining element of secession that would keep the federal government from doing so much. In our early history, they accepted the principles of secession all along.

As far as I’m concerned the Declaration of Independence clearly set the precedent and Texas v White is an unjust ruling that no free people should abide by. While the outcome of the Civil War did rightfully end the greatest evil ever perpetrated on mankind, the practice of slavery, it does not end the precedent set forth by the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.

Walter Williams, libertarian professor of economics at George Mason University wrote:

On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”

The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil – evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”

There’s more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.

With all that being said, as I have previously noted, while I believe in California’s right to leave the Union I seriously doubt that it will happen. Even if the #Calexit folks somehow manage to collect the required 585,407 valid signatures from registered voters over the next 180 days, they still face a long uphill battle in their movement.

However as long as the odds are, I do tend to agree with Marcus Ruiz Evans, one of the Founders of Yes California, who said “America already hates California, and America votes on emotions.”

The election of Donald Trump sure proved that.

Politics

Congratulations Democrats, You Created Trump

January 22, 2017by JoecephusNo Comments

While on the campaign trail last October after then-candidate Trump insinuated that he may not accept the results of the election, the main stream media and the democrats rightfully attacked him for it. Sen. Hillary Clinton said “…by doing that he is threatening our democracy.“

That was on the campaign trail, the day after the election democrats were singing a different tune. On the night of the election, after Trump had surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the victory, Clinton refused to come out and address her supporters at her election watch party. All her distraught supporters heard from the campaign was a statement from John Podesta saying there would be no comments until all votes were counted.

Finally, only after President Obama has called her urging her to concede and after Trump had delivered his victory speech, did Clinton call Trump and offer her concession.

For the next few weeks many on the American left proceeded to attack our republic’s system of government calling for the end of the Electoral College.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein raised millions of dollars to pay for recounts in Wisconsin and Michigan, only to end up deepening her campaign’s coffers while strengthening Trumps margin.

Then they claimed that Russia interfered with American democracy by affecting the results. They didn’t mention that the only “interference” was exposing the lies and deceit of the Democratic Party. They basically said, pay no attention to the truth about their actions that the Wikileaks emails exposed, just pay attention to Russia.

The same people who openly mocked Trump for suggesting that he may not accept the results, were now saying that Russia “rigged” the election in his favor.

Imagine their reaction had Clinton won, Gary Johnson had raised money for recounts and the Republicans has insinuated that the election was “rigged” in Hillary’s favor.

Donald J. Trump has done something that a whole lot of people, myself included, never thought that he would even come close to accomplishing. He has been sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. The biggest reason this has happened?

The hypocrisy of the so called “progressive” American left.

Not only did they sit by and cheer on Obama as he continued doing all of the things that they hated George W. Bush for, things that they called Bush “literally Hitler” for — they gave him a fucking Nobel Peace Prize and painted this fake narrative of him as this honorable and respectful man of peace and justice. They were completely quiet for 8 years of endless war, drone strikes and bombings in more countries than his predecessors, the killing of more innocent civilians than his predecessor. Not a peep as the Obama administration doubled down on the illegal, anti 4th Amendment spying of American citizens by the NSA.

They continue to spread the ridiculous and completely false notion that his was a presidency full of transparency and devoid of scandal.

They were quiet as he used the power of the Federal Government through the IRS to attack political enemies, even after they were caught destroying the hard drives with evidence. Not a hush from the American left as the Obama Administration was caught selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Crickets, when they were proven to fabricate a story that the Benghazi massacre was a response to “some video.” They ignored the fact that his secretary of State bypassed National Security protocols and set up her own private email server and destroyed the evidence when caught. Actions that would at the very least would not allow anyone else to ever hold the position of mailman yet alone the highest office of the land.

The American left applauded the growth of government through Obama’s bypassing of congress and appointment of czars, his vast imperial powers through his unprecedented use of executive orders and the growing activism via the legislation from the bench of his judicial appointees.

Now that someone you don’t like has those same powers at his disposal, you “peaceably protest” by throwing rocks at banks and spitting in the faces of law enforcement officers?

The “progressive” American left has poisoned the waters of political discourse by screaming false alarms of racism, sexism, any other “-ism” you can think of and so-called privilege at every turn.

When you continue to irresponsible label half of the country as racists and bigots don’t act all surprised and proceed to cry like spoiled little babies when they don’t vote along the same lines as you.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump either, I opted out of being forced to choose between the eviler of two lesser’s and voted for Gov. Gary Johnson. In that my conscience is clean.

That being said the way leftists are reacting over Donald Trump is sickening. I am embarrassed for you.

If the “progressive” American left really wants to know why Donald Trump is President?, all they have to do is to look in the mirror.

Civil Liberties, News, Politics

On Free Speech & the Right To Burn Old Glory

November 29, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

Early this morning, President-elect Donald Trump took to social media to announce his desire to take a piss all over the Bill of Rights. “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Is what he posted to twitter.

That belief is a slap in the face to those who truly value our liberty.

In the 1989 US Supreme Court case, Texas v. Johnson, a split court (5-4) held that burning an American flag as political protest is a form of symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.

At a demonstration during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Gregory Lee Johnson, a member of the evolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, was involved in a political demonstration that turned violent. The demonstrators marched through the streets, shouted chants, destroyed property, broke windows and threw trash, soiled diapers, beer cans and various other items, and held signs outside the offices of several companies. At one point, another demonstrator handed Johnson an American flag stolen from a flagpole outside one of the targeted buildings.

Johnson was charged with violating a Texas law that prohibited the desecration of a venerated object. He was convicted, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined $2,000. He appealed his conviction to the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas, but he lost this appeal. On appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals the court overturned his conviction, saying that the State could not punish Johnson for burning the flag because the First Amendment protects such activity as symbolic speech.

The case eventually made it’s way to the Supreme Court and in their decision the court found that the right to free speech does not end at the spoken or written word, but also includes “symbolic speech.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, in his concurrence expressed the sentiment that sometimes standing up for liberty, means standing up for things that you don’t agree with.

The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases.

Our colleagues in dissent advance powerful arguments why respondent may be convicted for his expression, reminding us that among those who will be dismayed by our holding will be some who have had the singular honor of carrying the flag in battle. And I agree that the flag holds a lonely place of honor in an age when absolutes are distrusted and simple truths are burdened by unneeded apologetics.

With all respect to those views, I do not believe the Constitution gives us the right to rule as the dissenting Members of the Court urge, however painful this judgment is to announce. Though symbols often are what we ourselves make of them, the flag is constant in expressing beliefs Americans share, beliefs in law and peace and that freedom which sustains the human spirit. The case here today forces recognition of the costs to which those beliefs commit us. It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt.

img_20161129_131043This morning after seeing, Chairman of the Libertarian Party, Nicholas Sarwark post his own brief thoughts on flag-burning to Facebook, I went ahead and shared my own updated version of that

I want to make this clear, I believe that the act of burning the American flag is a sick and disgusting thing to do. Furthermore, I believe that individuals who purposely desecrate the flag are asshole’s of the highest order.

I just believe that, you either believe in liberty or you don’t. Those flag burning assholes have the same right to burn Old Glory as I have to think they are assholes for doing it.

I will defend their right to be assholes until my dying breath.

In a conversation about the topic with a co-worker, I was accused of being “lukewarm” on the issue and told that burning a flag is disrespectful to the brave soldiers who died for that flag.

To that I said, only tyrants lock people in jail for the victimless crime of burning a piece of cloth. No man died for a piece of cloth, they died for the idea that that piece of cloth represented. Amongst those ideas, as our founding fathers so eloquently put it is that we “… are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

To lock someone up for burning a flag, makes us no better then the type of despots we claim to have opposed, if we start doing that… then those soldiers who many claim “die for the flag,” will truly have died for nothing.

Politics

The Taste Of Crow And Thoughts on the 2016 Election

November 9, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

During the 2012 Republican Presidential primary, when Donald J. Trump flirted with the idea of entering his name into the race, but ultimately decided not to run, I did not give it too much thought. He’s the type of person that loves attention and the flirtation was just a way to drum up some extra viewers for his NBC Reality television program.

Then early on in this year’s cycle, I didn’t take his candidacy seriously “He’ll drop out before the debates,” I thought. Then the debates started and I thought, “he’s a circus clown, no one is going to take him seriously as a candidate.”

Boy was I wrong.

Not only was Donald Trump taken seriously as a candidate by the American people, not only did he win the Republican Party’s nomination, something this #NeverTrump Republican thought unfathomable — he actually went ahead and won the whole damn thing.

trump_acceptance

On Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath of office to the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. I of course will have to learn to like the taste of crow, because I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell of him getting elected.

At no point in the election process did I even entertain the thought of supporting Donald Trump. As an American citizen that values our sacred duty to cast our votes in our republic’s election process, staying home was just not an option.

Despite some misgivings with him and despite a whole lot of misgivings with his running mate Governor William Weld, I cast my vote for Governor Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and for that I hold no regrets, my conscience is clean.

One day later, its morning again in America. Today the sun still came up over our already great nation, that doesn’t need to be “made great again,” because it already is. Today also, the day after the elections are over, there is another sacred duty that we, as a people have. That is to gracefully, respectfully and with honor accept the results of our Republic’s election process and to wish success to our new President.

There will be plenty of time to hold President-elect Trump’s feet to the fire, there will be plenty of time to fight some of the anti-liberty beliefs that he has expressed, but that is not what this post is about and that is not what this day is about.

The amount of sadness and anger I have seen over the results of this election is just shear madness. On one end, as a libertarian (with a small “l”) It just proves my belief that the President, ANY President has too much power. On the other end it shows what kind of sore losers we have become.

I’ve seen people, and I don’t mean irrational young millennials, but people in the 60’s who should know better, ending relationships with family members over disagreements. It’s maddening.

I don’t know who the original author is, but I saw the following posted on Facebook today and thought it great.

I am now scared and worried about our children and our children’s future. Not because of who or who was not elected as our next president, but because of YOU. Our children will not have direct contact with whomever is in office. They will, however and sometimes unfortunately, have direct contact with you and the offspring you are raising. The society our children are growing up in is full of coddled, entitled and ungoverned people.

Quit teaching your children to be little cry babies when something doesn’t go their way. Teach them how to learn and grow from an unpleasant outcome instead.

Quit teaching your children to gloat when it does go their way. Teach them to be humble instead.

Quit teaching your children to put blame on others. Teach them they are only truly responsible for their own actions instead.

Quit teaching (or badgering rather) your children they should or shouldn’t believe in things because that’s your political view or religious view. Teach them to believe or feel however they want to. Teach them to be an individual.

QUIT being your kid’s best friend. Teach them the meaning of no instead. Teach them to work for what they want instead. Teach them what rules are and how to follow them instead.

Our children do not look to the president or any other elected official for a leader. They look to YOU, their parent for guidance and leadership. So if you want a better future for them, then start making one. Raise your children into adults you would want to lead our country.

I and many people like me did not want Obama to become President. 8 years and two-terms later, our Republic still stands. When Donald J. Trump leaves office and makes room for his eventual replacement, our Republic will still stand.

It’s a great day to be alive and it’s a great day to be an American.

Politics

A Break From Bashing Trump, To Bash Progressives

September 17, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

It has come to my attention, as of late, that I have been a little overboard in my bashing of the Republican Party Presidential nominee.

So, as a registered Republican and a liberty-loving conservative, in an effort to show loyalty I will use this post to bash progressive Democrats and their idiotic progressive beliefs.

Can you believe the progressive agenda that the Democrats want to push on our republic?

They want to destroy small business and cause the price of goods and services to go up like crazy by increasing the minimum wage? Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

trump_hillaryThey believe that “everybody has got to be covered” and show support for the countries of the world that have single-payer health care system. And get this, when asked whose going to pay for it? They say “The governments gonna pay for it.” Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

They believe in ridiculously burdensome high taxes on the job creators, causing them to not hire as many workers and not produce as much goods. When talking about taxes they even say things like, “If you look at actual raise, some very wealthy are going to be raised…” Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

How about their hatred of the First Amendment. They say things like “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws…” So much for freedom of speech under those progressive Democrats huh? Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

How about their love of the baby murdering organization founded by an evil racist, Planned Parenthood? They say things like it does “good work for millions of women” and they slam the “so-called conservatives” who disagree. Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

How about the way they want to force private business owners to hand out government forced paid maternity leave? Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

They want to drastically increase Medicaid, Medicare, social security and infrastructure spending massively. Racking up even more trillions of dollars of debt, and kicking that debt down the line for future generations to have to deal with. Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

Or how about their silly slogans like “Hope & Change,” or “I’m With Her,” or “Make America Great Again.” We all know that progressives believe that America is not great and only they (through big government) can make it great again. Who in their Conservative loving mind would agree with that?

No Real Conservative Republican in their right mind could support those progressive Democrat ideas. It’s a good thing we have a real Conservative Republican as our nominee… oh wait, those are all Donald Trump beliefs.

Man are we screwed, America.

General

Choose Wisely

September 10, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

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This is why I am voting for Gary Johnson.

I too was caught up in the “we’ll light up their world like the 4th of July” emotion that swept the Nation after the heinous actions of radical extremists on September 11th.

But after 15 years, what has the countless wars brought our Republic other then thousands of grave-sites that were filled way too soon.

I support the brave men and women of our Armed Forces and those who have lost friends and family in our “war on terror.” Yes Saddam Hussein was an evil vile man, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were evil. But is the Middle East any better off today for our actions? Are we better off today for our actions?

I think if anyone takes the time to honestly think and reflect upon that question, the answer would be a resounding NO.

Culture, Politics

Trump, Pence & Putin – Friends Forever

July 28, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

Comedy Central’s @midnight with Chris Hardwick, recast The Golden Girls with Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Vladimir Putin and Little Fatty, I mean Kim Jong-un. The result is hilarious… and scary.

News, Politics

The GOP Has Become Everything It Hates

July 23, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

During his acceptance speech this past Thursday night in Cleveland, at the closing of the 2016 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump used the word “violence” a total of eleven times. The word “freedom” was used just once, and it was used in context of “freedom” from free international trade.

In contrast Sen. Ted Cruz, in his speech on the Convention’s third night, used the word freedom twenty-one times and the word “violence” just once.

Trump’s speech, which clocked in at 1 hour and 15 minutes, was a full on display of a spoiled egotistical madman demanding to be anointed into the highest office in the most powerful nation in the world. The Republican Party’s nominee painted a picture of an America that is under siege from urban crime, terrorism and rampant immigration.

Trump’s portrait is of an America that is fraught with rising homicide rates, filled with Americans being killed by those entering the country illegally. It was a portrait of an America that looks more like the events of the Purge film series then the America I see everyday when I step out of my door to head to work.

Trump’s entire speech was completely devoid of any substantial details as to how he would get anything done, just threats and points on how the government should be made bigger and stronger and given more authority with him at the head of it controlling every part of American life.

It has become a sad occurrence over the course of the last few Presidencies that political figures have been likened to evil dictators of the past. The code pink left during the administration of George W. Bush had constantly compared him to Hitler, leftist ideologues have a long history of trying to compare Republicans to Nazis, and they have always been wrong.

Republican’s have always, or at least have claimed to, stand up for the limited government, free market principles outlined by our Founding documents — principles that are against everything the Nazi’s (National Socialists) stood for.

Enter Donald Trump.

In 2016 the Republican Party has abandoned all pretenses of being the principled party of limited government, free people and free markets. This could not be anymore evident by the uproar over Sen. Ted Cruz’s great convention speech and the warm embrace of Donald Trump.

Cruz_2016RNCSen. Ted Cruz urged Republicans to “Stand and speak, and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom… (so that) we will be able to say, ‘Freedom matters… ‘” and Trump’s supporters took it as an attack on their candidate. What does that say about Trump’s base, it says that they know that Trump is not a person of conscience or is principled enough to defend the Constitution.

Now under the reign of Donald Trump, the Republican Party now embraces liberal concepts of federal wage controls and fighting the “gender wage gap.” Trump’s Republican platform embraces a “do as I tell you,” message to private business and anti-free trade policies that will increase the cost-of-living for all Americans.

Some of the same useful idiots who were attacking Bernie Sanders for his socialist policies are now embracing Donald Trump for openly supporting those same policies. In the same way the hardline enforcers of long gone socialist regimes attacked anyone who would dare speak ill of the Dear Leader — Trump’s New Republicans have gone nuts on Ted Cruz for standing up for liberty, because if you are not for Trump you must be defeated.

Trump laid out an argument for unlimited government under a single man, but don’t worry he’s not a tyrant, he’s a “Republican.”

Thanks to the Republican party, a party that helped to fight the Cold War, Donald Trump is frighteningly close to achieving his vision for Trump style National Socialism. Donald Trump is a threat to not just everything that the Republican Party was founded on, but he is an threat to everything our Founding Father’s held near and dear. The Republican Party itself and the misguided idiots who claim to be liberty loving conservatives, yet look at Trump through the eyes lovestruck teenage girl looking at the latest teen idol, deserve just as much blame for allowing this to happen as Trump has for leading the charge.

Congratulations Republicans, you have become everything you have claimed to hate. It’s not Socialism, its “Republican Socialism”.

Culture, World, WTF?

Japanese Donald Trump Commercial

June 18, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

This is either one of the greatest videos in the history of the internet, or one of the worst. I can’t quite tell.

Politics

Progressive At Heart: The Trump Tapes

January 22, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

What the fuck has happened that 7 years after the tea party movement started, many of the same people who called themselves liberty loving small government conservatives are now fawning over a progressive democrat authoritarian like sailors on shore leave at a strip club?

 

Culture, Politics, WTF?

The Trump Youth

January 15, 2016by JoecephusNo Comments

I remember back during Barack Obama’s first term, cringing in disgust when video of grade-school children being taught a song praising the President made the rounds. It was very reminiscent of the Hitler Youth and fit in pretty well amongst the cult of personality that was built up around Obama.

It couldn’t happen on our side I thought.

Enter the USA Freedom Kids, who performed at a campaign rally for Donald Trump this past Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida.

The brainwashed girl group is the brainchild of 53-year-old Florida ‘businessman,’ and one time 80’s Hollywood stuntman, Jeff Popick.

I don’t know what’s worse the three poor girls brainwashed and forced to perform, the Trump talking point lyrics of the song, or the fucking idiots in attendance smiling and clapping at the creepy performance.

I want to try write my next statement to make sure that there is zero chance that my thoughts on this get misinterpreted.

If you support the Donald Trump campaign and further more if you enjoy and support the this vile and disgusting propaganda in support of his campaign, not only are you a complete fucking moron — but that piece inside of you that makes you a decent human being, is probably missing.

Furthermore, to call this act “the USA Freedom Kids,” is a fucking joke. The Donald is just about as far from advancing the cause of Freedom as you can get, except of course maybe Bernie Sanders, but at this point I’m not even sure anymore.

“To me, freedom is everything,” Popick said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “That’s what this group is about. That’s what I’m about. Freedom for everybody. That’s the inspiration.”

For the past seven years now, the so-called philosophical “right,” have argued that President Barack Obama does not care about the law. Dear Leader, is what I and many others who are opposed to his actions have called him. An authoritarian, a dictator and emperor is what we have called him.

Now, many of those same people are gravitating like flies on shit to Donald Trump who is all of those same things we’ve hated Barack Obama for, albeit wrapped in the American Flag.

My initial thought during the early stages of Donald Trumps latest flirtation with the Oval Office was to laugh and call him a circus clown. However, the more and more his popularity grows, as a lover of liberty, I am downright terrified for what the future may bring with a Donald Trump Presidency.

We should not laugh, we should not joke, because the truth is Donald Trump is a bigger threat to liberty and the American way of life then Barack Obama ever was.

As the great Jeffrey Tucker wrote this past July after witnessing a Trump speech:

It’s not too interesting to say that Donald Trump is a nationalist and aspiring despot who is manipulating bourgeois resentment, nativism, and ignorance to feed his power lust. It’s uninteresting because it is obviously true. It’s so true that stating it sounds more like an observation than a criticism.

I just heard Trump speak live. It was an awesome experience, like an interwar séance of once-powerful dictators who inspired multitudes, drove countries into the ground, and died grim deaths.

His speech at FreedomFest lasted a full hour, and I consider myself fortunate for having heard it. It was a magnificent exposure to an ideology that is very much present in American life, though hardly acknowledged. It lives mostly hidden in dark corners, and we don’t even have a name for it. You bump into it at neighborhood barbecues, at Thanksgiving dinner when Uncle Harry has the floor, at the hardware store when two old friends in line to checkout mutter about the state of the country.

The ideology is a 21st century version of right fascism — one of the most politically successful ideological strains of 20th century politics. Though hardly anyone talks about it today, we really should. It is still real. It exists. It is distinct. It is not going away. Trump has tapped into it, absorbing unto his own political ambitions every conceivable bourgeois resentment: race, class, sex, religion, economic. You would have to be hopelessly ignorant of modern history not to see the outlines and where they end up.

For now, Trump seems more like comedy than reality. I want to laugh about what he said, like reading a comic-book version of Franco, Mussolini, or Hitler. And truly I did laugh, as when he denounced the existence of tech support in India that serves American companies (“how can it be cheaper to call people there than here?” — as if he still thinks that long-distance charges apply).

Let’s hope this laughter doesn’t turn to tears. Read More…

Associating Donald Trump with “Freedom,” is like associating Miley Cyrus with modesty. True conservatives have worked tirelessly for decades to dispel the lies propagated by liberals that those opposed to their ideals are akin to Nazi’s and fascists — when in fact it is they whose ideals resemble both Hitler & Mussolini’s versions of National Socialism the most.

Now in 2015, a large swath of fucking assholes are ready to throw that all away by supporting the totalitarian ambitions of Donald Trump.

A world where Donald Trump is the only answer to the garbage that comes from the progressive left, is too scary a thought to fathom — it is not a place that I want to live.

Culture, Politics

On Donald Trump & My Divorce From Conservatism

December 19, 2015by Joecephus2 Comments

I’m not a prolific blogger by any means, the closest I got to blog stardom was with my old and long-since shut down Right Wing Rebel site, when I got quoted by the official website for the Presidential campaign of the late, great Fred Thompson.

I’m fine with that, I never stared blogging in an attempt to become one of the next great voices in Conservative new media. I started blogging because I like playing around with web design and sometimes feel like I have something interesting to say that I want to get out.

I haven’t really done much of either lately.

Lately there has been something gnawing at me and festering deep inside that I just had to let out.

I am no longer a Conservative.

I have Donald Trump and more importantly, his supporters to thank for my new-found revelation.

Now, truth be told its been something that has brewed for a while now, years actually. I’ve alluded to this in the past without actually coming out and saying it before. I’ve written blog posts about “The death of Conservatism,” many times before after being inspired by the likes of John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. I’ve just could never make that last step, that final push until now.

It just took the reality TV star Presidential Campaign of the Donald and the love and devotion of his adoring supporters to be that final nudge that would push me over the cliff.

The_DonaldThank you Donald Trump. For now I have seen the light.

If Conservatives, many of whom I once thought I respected could actively support Donald Trump in his quest to win the Presidency, then it has finally happened. Conservatism is truly dead and buried.

Just about the only thing that Donald Trump has going for him is that he is an asshole. Apparently there are those who have claimed or do claim to be “true conservatives” who have such a deep seeded desire to see an unfiltered, loud-mouth, tell it like it is type in the White House — that they have completely bought in to the idiocy that is The Donald.

We have actually already had a few assholes occupy the Oval Office, the current Asshole-in-Chief and his two predecessors come to mind. The thing with the Donald however, he’s the first candidate in quite a long time to come close to sniffing that Oval Office air that actually talks like an asshole.

The thing is that no matter what measuring stick you use, there is no way in hell that The Donald is a Conservative, not by a long shot. He’s not even a Republican.

John McCain has fantasized about and even flirted with the idea of changing political affiliation for a long time. The Donald has actually done it. As a matter of fact he has switched political allegiances more times than rapper Sean Combs has changed names.

He’s done it about five times since the 80’s, he’s switched parties three times since 2001.

Hell in 2008 The Donald actually supported the Barack Obama campaign.

“I was his biggest cheerleader,” the reality TV star told Sean Hannity on FOX News in 2011. “If you go back three years, I’m saying, ‘Do a great job.’ I wanted him to do a great job. I still want him to do a great job.”

We are to believe that somebody who just a few short years ago supported Barack Obama is a true, dyed-in-the-wool conservative?

How about the way that the Donald has made some of his billions. An integral part is by using the strong-arm of the government to level whole neighborhoods, destroying homes and small businesses so he can build another huge building.

Yeah, the authoritarian use of eminent domain, that’s very conservative all right.

In 2000 he supported gun control, abortion, higher taxes and socialized medicine, now some of the same so-called “conservatives” who called Mitt Romney a “flip flopper” are saying that the Donald “evolved.”

In 2012 he said that Mitt Romney of all people was too harsh on illegal immigration,

Yet today, his brain-dead sheeple think he’s going to deport all the illegals and build a giant wall.

You are bigger idiots then Obama’s supporters if you believe that.

The only reason that anyone supports the Donald is because he is a walking, talking big fuck you to the establishment media and to the elites in both parties. That desire to stick it to the establishment, is so strong that his supporters are blind to the fact that Trump is not one of us. He doesn’t believe in liberty, he doesn’t believe in the Constitution or anything for that matter other than in his own damn self.

He is completely devoid of any Conservative principles and bases all of his decision-making on whichever direction the winds of populism are blowing.

I’d say don’t be fooled, but it’s too late. I can’t believe that there are many Conservatives, whom I respected that have bought into his garbage.

Barry Goldwater is rolling in his grave. Which brings me to the predicament in which I and many like-minded people find ourselves in. Where do I fit in the current state of the Conservative movement.

The answer is, I don’t.

Dale Watson, one of my favorite country music singers, hates country music. I know that may not seem to make any sense on the surface, but when you dwell deeper into it — it makes perfect sense. Dale Watson used to fight for the tradition of Country music, but in recent years has decided that war is a losing effort. Country music has changed.

bro_countrty_bro

Bro Country Fan? Donald Trump Supporter? Not much different, both are devoid of any intellectual integrity.

Watson is old school country music in the Merle Haggard, George Jones mold. The stuff that get’s played on country music radio today is a far, far cry from that. Sadly, when the general population today thinks of “country music,” they think of Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and other such pop garbage.

Watson knows he doesn’t fit in with that.

Via The Lincoln Journal Star:

Dale Watson didn’t want to come up with a new tag for the music he champions and plays. He didn’t have a choice.

A hardcore Texas honky tonker, Watson watched as real country music was pushed to the margins in Nashville as the Music City labels pumped out contemporary country that’s influenced as much by hip-hop and ‘70s mainstream rock as it is by Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Faron Young.

“We were cast out,” Watson said in an interview from Austin. “It was occupied country music. They took over the name, they took over the house. We were left out in the field. We were too country for country and not rock enough for rock ‘n’ roll. We didn’t have a home.”

So Watson created a place for honky tonk, western swing, rockabilly and outlaw country.

“If anybody wants to know where what used to be called country music is, it’s in a home called Ameripolitan, right on the corner of original street and roots boulevard,” he said. Read More…

The current state of Conservatism has been infected, much like “Country Music” has been ruined by flat-billed ball-cap wearing, “bro-country” douche-bags. Conservatism has been infected by its own set of douche-bags. Donald Trump supporter’s are like drunken Bud Light fueled Luke Bryan fans destroying the venue after a show.

True Conservatives have been cast out from the movement. I find myself being too conservative for conservatism and not libertarian enough for libertarianism.

I don’t know what to call myself moving forward, “liberty republican” or “republitarian,” or something else altogether. I just know I’m no longer a Conservative… and I’m all right with that.

About Me

Foul-mouthed & tattooed, ‘small l’ libertarian Lover of heavy metal, outlaw country, cigars & craft beer. Broken-hearted fan of Cleveland sports.

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