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A Dangerous Game of Dress-Up
Rob Blackstock, May 4, 2007 Reprinted with permission from http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/blackstock7.html. Videos and other links noted herein are available on the referenced website. This past weekend found me in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase and home of Lasyone's, the restaurant which makes the world's greatest meat pies. The residents of Natchitoches were having yet another music festival (there are more festivals than work days in Natchitoches) and revelers had arrived from all over. Lined up along one side of the ancient, brick street was an immense gathering of motorcycles and their owners. Nearer to Cane River Lake were several horses accompanied by riders. Looking from the motorcyclists covered in leather, fringe, tee shirts with appropriate logos, and bandannas, to the horsemen wearing hats, boots, buckles and spurs, it suddenly dawned on me why both motorcycling and horseback riding are so popular. Both activities allow grown men to play dress-up. When I was young, Harley riders were a hard lot. Tattooed, dirty, often possessing a criminal record a mile long, they were people to be avoided at all costs. Today, most Harley riders you see are professionals with a career, a mortgage and 2.6 kids. Riding a Harley and wearing the officially licensed merchandise allows them to pretend to be something they are not; a gang member, feared by decent folk. A desperado of the open road; an easy rider. Weekend cowboys are no different. If a person honestly loved to be on the back of a horse and that was all there was to it, there would be no reason to spend $100 on a Stetson and a giant belt buckle. Those accoutrements allow the rider to escape reality and assume a new identity; a lone cowboy riding the trail, looking for doggies lost from the herd. Weathered, grizzled. A dangerous hombre. See? Playing dress-up. I imagine that many a modern day Heck's Angel would throw his palm pilot down in complete disgust were he to hear me say such a thing. "Just wait until I finish the Davidson account," he would roar, "and then we'll see who's playing dress-up!" Vroom! Vroom! There is nothing wrong with playing dress-up. If you want to dress like a Confederate soldier and march around a field all weekend, go ahead. There is absolutely no harm in doing so. My great fear is that there is another group playing dress-up today, and their actions do cause harm. The militarization of the police How many of you remember the TV show SWAT from the mid 70's? Robert Urich and his team would roll into a dangerous situation in their big, blue van with the best theme music this side of Peter Gunn blaring in the background. As a child, I loved it. It appears that many other people my age also loved it. Since the early 80's, the number of SWAT team deployments has increased from approximately 3,000 per year to more than 40,000 every year. 40,000. Really. A 13-fold increase in 25 years. Why? SWAT teams are now used by police departments to perform jobs that normal, uniformed officers once handled.
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But it doesn't stop there. Once a police department forms a SWAT team, the military attitude is adopted by the other members of the force. Today, we see not just SWAT members, but patrolmen moving about our towns wearing jump boots and flak jackets, just like the military. Unfortunately, once a person adopts the military mindset, the focus is no longer to assist, to help and to be the peacemaker, but rather to intimidate, to force and to destroy. Look at what happened in MacArthur Park this past Monday. Police in riot gear (read: military garb) decided to disperse an overwhelmingly peaceful demonstration and assaulted with batons and rubber bullets everyone who did not cower and flee at their coming, including the female reporters attempting to film the despicable scene. Watch this video until the end and you will be reminded of China's Tiananmen Square as paramilitary-police batter a man attempting to support an American flag while another policeman uses his baton on a woman splayed in the dirt. I fear things will become even worse in the future. The paramilitary-police are now being glamorized on TV once again. But this time the shows are not fiction as they were in the 70's but real life episodes. Dallas SWAT on A&E TV follows the (surprise) Dallas SWAT team as they carry out no-knock warrants on unsuspecting bad guys. The videos provided in the preceding link allow the viewer to watch the SWAT team pump themselves up, destroy private property and drag dangerous perps from their homes. I'm still trying to understand why the police have a tank... probably to protect us from drug-dealing Soviets. Nothing good can come of having the military patrolling our streets, and make no mistake, the police are becoming militarized, and doing so with the help of the Federal Government. How long before our towns are nothing more than caricatures of old Nazi movies where citizens rush home lest they be approached by soldiers asking for identification? ("Papers please!" But it must be spoken with a German accent. Also, any movie with "papers please," must also have the line, "You are veak, Fader, Veeeak!") Maybe I'm overreacting. But I don't think so. Since the Supreme Court threw out the "knock and announce" rule concerning police who serve warrants, there is nothing to stop SWAT teams from tearing off the side of your home, dragging you and your family out of your beds, seizing your belongings and shooting your pets while giving you little or no notice as to these invaders' identity. Amusingly (or not), several newspaper investigations have shown that less than half of all no-knock warrants have resulted in contraband or arrests. I'm sure that fact is comforting to people who have watched helplessly as their small children were seized and handcuffed by armed men wearing black hoods. Until we, the honest citizens, say "no more!" to an armed military in our streets, things will only get worse. How long before we are the occupied territory? How long before we are the ones trapped behind the "blue" curtain? How long before our neighbors are "disappeared" in the night? Maybe I'm overreacting. But I don't think so. Rob Blackstock teaches economics at Louisiana Tech University and is the Senior Economist for American Economic Services. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com I can remember when city cops wore blue uniforms. I recall my misgivings when they started wearing black ones. They reminded me of Nazi thugs in the World War II movies. — editor
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From the
Nesting Urge to the Wander Lust
Sam Aurelius Milam III During the early part of my life, I was subjected to propaganda concerning the infamous feminine mystique. It began with my parents. "Son," Poppa solemnly intoned, "You’ll never understand a woman." "You’ll never understand a woman," my mother commented. For many years, I believed it. Eventually, it occurred to me that I understood women quite well. Keep in mind that everybody's different, that most characteristics exist to some degree in each individual, and that the proportion of such characteristics is different in each individual. That said, some generalities nevertheless apply. Whether the modern brainwashed career women like it or not, the inherent purpose of their gender is to reproduce. That nesting urge is inherent in them and it mandates that they demand security. Most of women's behavior follows from that mandate. Historically, they've sought security by trying to attach themselves to good providers. Having acquired one, it was necessary that a woman be able to control him. Otherwise, his productivity might not be directed to her benefit. Over the ages, the reflex to control men became inherent in women. Even illicit affairs aren't exempt. Indeed, women have often found lovers easier than husbands to control. They've often obtained sweeter largess from the lovers, with less effort. Over the ages, women have evolved an arsenal of instinctive techniques, both attractive and abusive, for controlling men. The attractive techniques, for which a woman's primary weapon is her body, are useful for most men. We all understand them and little more needs to be said about them except that, especially for a woman's husband, they might eventually lose some or all of their effectiveness. When that happens, there's a strong temptation for a woman to use her abusive techniques, for which the primary weapon is her mouth. It takes an extraordinarily good woman to resist that temptation. Since most women use the techniques, those techniques deserve a little further comment. Many abusive techniques are possible. Simple nagging will often do the trick. For a more obstinate man, a woman can accuse him of shameful things that are untrue and do it in such a way that he can disprove her accusations only by doing what she wants him to do. "If you cared about the kids at all, then you’d ...." "If you really loved me, then you'd ...." "If you were a real man, then you'd ...." are examples of the abusive technique that will usually shame a man into compliance, although they'll probably lose their effectiveness after a while. They also tend to disable the attractive techniques. If the abusive techniques cease to be effective, then it's time for a change in sources of security. After that, a woman is likely to decide that the government is a better bet than a man. That, in fact, is the best of all possible arguments against female suffrage. There are two inevitable consequences of female suffrage. First, voting women will create a welfare state to provide them with security. Second, they'll create a police state to enforce the welfare state. The nesting urges of enfranchised women will make such developments inevitable. So, divorces, welfare programs, and enforcement programs will increase as women are allowed to vote. After that, the government will provide the security. It will force a man, divorced or not, to pay a woman’s expenses. If he resists, then he'll be treated like any other domesticated beast of burden that ceases to respond to the reins. Resisting the reins, he'll be subjected to the spurs and to the whip. A bachelor's life, however, is a man's natural condition. Social scruples and feminist legislation notwithstanding, we have two good feet, a nine month head start, and a wander lust. If women understood us as well as I understand them, then they'd notice that the harder they push us, the further away we get. They could motivate us with love. Then, maybe we'd all live happily ever after. Instead they abuse us, which activates our wander lust. As James Elroy Flecker said, "We travel not for trafficking alone: By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned." Sometimes, the hotter winds that fan our fiery hearts are women. For PayPal payments, use editor@frontiersman.my3website.net. Back issues are available at http://frontiersman.my3website.net/. Also see Pharos at http://pharos.my3website.net.
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American Flag Lapel Pin
Jim Sullivan American Flag Lapel Pin wearing in this country is finally waning. You don't see as many as before on men's suits and sports coats on the street or on TV. Thank goodness! Many Americans, including myself, are just plain worn out and sore from being poked in the eye, so to speak, with those pins. Conservatives, by and large, and the odd Liberal, have been wearing them to imply, seemingly, that they're in full support of the Iraq War, the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, President Bush, and the American way. Who did those people, mainly Republicans, think they were impressing? Perhaps themselves? The lapel pin certainly didn't impress liberals or progressives. And those pins surely didn't shame us into going along with this administration's inane war policies! The pins did, however, irritate us with their implications. When you come down to it, aren't we all Americans? Do we need a flag on our lapel to prove it? I don't think so. Admittedly, if you're a member of, say, the Elk's Club, the Lion's Club, or the Rotary Club, all fine organizations to which I don't happen to belong, then it makes sense and is fine with me if you wear your membership lapel pin. Not everyone, of course, is a member. Therefore, wearing the pin is one way to tell the world that you belong. However, if everyone is part of the same group, like Americans, then what's the point of wearing a membership pin? Is it to let others know that you're a super patriot? If so, then keep in mind what Samuel Johnson, the English dictionary writer and author, once famously said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!" In my opinion, the conservatives' arrogantly flaunting the American flag on their lapels is dividing our nation. Oh, it isn't the only thing that's causing the major rift between left and right on the political spectrum, but it certainly is a major factor. That's because it implies that the wearer is a better American than a non-wearer. By the way, if those conservatives are so much in agreement with the current U.S. chief executive, then why don't the super patriots wear their flag pins around the world? I haven't seen any statistics about it but I'm willing to bet that few conservatives wear their emblems outside of our borders. And they'd be wise not to. Thanks to the Iraq War, Americans aren't too popular overseas these days. Finally, instead of wearing something like a lapel pin flag to show others that you're a true-blue, red-blooded American, why not do something worthwhile and meaningful for the country to indicate how you really feel? You could do any of several things: join the Army, pay more taxes to the federal government, or increase your savings. ... or support this newsletter. — editor
Goofs Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by BLA, of Schertz, Texas. Last summer on Lake Isabella, located in the high desert an hour east of Bakersfield, California, some folks, new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get their brand new 22 ft boat going. It was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power was applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putted to a nearby marina, thinking someone there could tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out drive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water he was laughing so hard. Under the boat, still securely strapped in place, was the trailer. Stray Thoughts Sam Aurelius Milam III Diagnosis — When somebody consults a psychiatrist, his problems are probably all in his head. Not Cost-Effective — For most people, owning a watchdog will cost a lot more than any burglar is ever likely to steal. For PayPal payments, use editor@frontiersman.my3website.net. Back issues are available at http://frontiersman.my3website.net/. Also see Pharos at http://pharos.my3website.net.
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Acknowledgments My thanks to the following: Sir James the Bold; SantaClara Bob; Lady Jan the Voluptuous; Lord Jeffrey the Studious; and my mother. — editor
— Elementary School Student
Dear Elementary School Student It's a kind of nut. Changing Times
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