A Statement Of Principles

I am a huge fan of Maggie's Farm and suggest that you read it routinely in case you do not already do so. This should give you an excellent idea of what to expect there:

People ask me why we seem so predictably and boringly preoccupied with the health care and climate change issues.

There is a simple answer: Those are the two topics which are currently being exploited to the max by Leftist totalitarian-minded folks, who believe themselves to be our moral and intellectual superiors, in their endless efforts to control our lives and to chip away at our freedom and our dignity as sturdy, intelligent, competent, free-thinking adults and families in a free nation with (semi-) free markets.

In history, the battles against central powers were fought on different fronts and, in the future, they will be fought on new fronts that have not been concocted yet in the Gramscian and Alinskian laboratories. It will never end. If Stalin's holocausts didn't end it, if the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't end it, if the evidence of Cuba and North Korea didn't end it, if Pol Pot didn't end it, if the turn of China and Russia to Capitalism didn't end it, if the countless failures of centralized control economies didn't end it, if the attempts to turn Euroland back to free markets and greater freedom didn't end it, if the pathetic return of Euroland to an imperial EU doesn't end it, if the countless failures of hugely-expensive but failed yet immortal government programs didn't end it, then nothing will ever end this battle.

Power, unlike wealth, is a zero-sum game. It is in the nature of governments, which we fully accept as necessary evils, to accumulate power and funds from the citizens - and to regard citizens as children or as subjects. This seems to be something that occurs regardless of the form of government. Some people seem born to seek power over others, some wish to be security-minded subjects, and others simply seek mastery of their own lives. We prefer the latter pursuit, with God's grace, while fully aware that this mortal life we hold so dear may be often full of sound and fury, but signifying little in the end beyond our relationships with the Deity, our family, and our friends.

Without wanting to sound or to be grandiose, people like us at Maggie's and similar sites aim to be perpetual revolutionaries, freedom-fighters, Tea Party Indians, Tom Paines; the minor heirs of our heroic forefathers, attempting to stay true to their ideals of the dominion of individuals seeking their own goals without the oppressive weight of an intrusive government. At least, that is what we aspire to be in our small way.

Individual freedom in relation to the State is close to sacred to us. We pay the State dues to protect us from external enemies and from internal criminals, for justice under law, plus for just a few other minor things. Otherwise, we want to be left alone and to take care of ourselves as best we can in a culture in which every person exercises their morals, their integrity, and their concern for their neighbor by the Golden Rule.

Live and let live, but don't tread on me.

We demand that individual freedom and liberty be part of every political equation - a Constant, like Avogadro's Number. The Constitutional Amendments lX and X remain real and valid to us - delusional though we may be.

We at Maggie's do not even feel entirely comfortable with the notion of "rights." We dislike and distrust the use of the word "rights" in America. In our view, the worthy subject of discussion is that of government powers and their prescribed limits. We the people need no "rights," as the US was conceived. We are free human beings. Free to fail, free to speak, free to do stupid things, free to take risks, free to succeed in our goals - if we have any- free to do almost any damn thing we want to. Yes, maybe we are crazy idealists and maybe we are foolish rubes who produce nothing but superficial cant and pointless rant.

However unheard a voice we at Maggie's may be in the big world, we will use it to resist insidious political maneuvers and manipulations until we turn senile or die - or run out of things to say.

If the latter comes first, we'll cheerfully turn our focus purely on things like shotguns and recipes and wildlife and fishing and salt marshes and architecture and history and philosophy and art and pretty girls and boats and travelogues and God and all of the other joyful, interesting, and delightful things in life.

By the way, if you have friends who might like Maggie's, email our link around. We do not like to be cybersluts (hmm - maybe we do), but we do not want people who might enjoy our eclectic offerings to be deprived of our humble efforts. Let people know that we exist, because our readership is our only reward for our enjoyable efforts here on ye olde Farm.

Doing so would be the finest Christmas present for us.

Telecommuting

Over the years I have been steadily increasing my geographical independence from "the office". Five months ago I was issued a top of the line BlackBerry with unlimited minutes which has enabled me to "slip the surly bonds" of the office completely. And since I can tether the BlackBerry to my laptop I can connect to the Internet and work anywhere. With gas prices soaring to new record highs there is no time like the present to telecommute - being there virtually is, in many ways, better than being there.

From Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld:

"Evolutionary biology teaches us that evolution happens not by constant, steady change, but in sudden leaps and mutations. Likewise the evolution toward being able to work from anywhere. A recent tectonic shift -- in this case, high gas prices -- is making the world safer for extreme telecommuting.

A Reuters report today highlights organizations that are cutting back the number of days employees are required to physically show up at work because of soaring gas prices. Even employees who are required to be on-site in order to work, such as janitors, are being cut down to four-day workweeks to save gas. White collar workers, of course, are being allowed, encouraged or forced to stay home once a week or more often and telecommute.

One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that's accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it's OK once a week, why isn't it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with "casual Friday" -- its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, "extreme telecommuting" -- working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback -- becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you're out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn't really matter where you are, does it?

The last remaining barrier to the general acceptance of "extreme telecommuting" is purely cultural -- it's our irrational clinging to obsolete rules for how we work. As the cultural barriers fall, more of us will be freed to work from wherever we please, something which mobile technology and Internet communication already enables.

To me, that's the silver lining in high gas prices. "

Yankee Ingenuity

On a lighter note, MSNBC reports the following story:

STRATFORD, N.J. - In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq. American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq. Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.