William F. Buckley RIP

Bill Buckley died today, in his study, doing what he probably did best; writing. There will be plenty of time and days for fond reminisce, for the sadness of his leave-taking, and to do justice to this giant of two centuries as we mark his death.

But I'd like to tell my own Bill Buckley story. I had always been interested in politics. From the age of six, when my Mother gave me a book of bios of the presidents, I was hooked. As a youngster I saw it as great sport, and less, much less as ideology.

In 1964, about a week before the election I had followed with great interest with my six year old mind, I told my father Goldwater was a shoe in. I was also a smart ass very young. I knew that everyone in my parents circle was calling Goldwater crazy (in your gut you know he's nuts was a famous rejoinder then). But I knew next to nothing. Except the excitement of it all. The soap opera quality...the tears, the great victories, the sad but often needed defeats. They were all a part of what I thought this great sport was about.

I followed the tote boards on election nights as most boys might scour the box scores of last night's ball games. Slowly, I started to gather what these men were saying, but what they said still meant less to me than how they said it. All said, I was convinced by the nightly news guys that to be interested in politics, government...civics, was to be a good citizen. And yet, as I grew older, and a bit smarter, I recognized a very deep emptiness in my hobby. I had happened upon the concept of substance (somehow) and I wanted more. Was there really a difference between Nixon, Humpfrey, McGovern, Rockefeller, and all the rest who, be it said, did disagree on large, specific things. The War. Race. Law and Order.

But as I grew bigger I wanted to know more about everything. I even flirted with George Wallace because he was saying things that had meaning and was at least QUESTIONING the philosophy of government that almost all of the other men held. I was too. By the time I was fifteen, I wanted more. Not who was going to save the world, or reform the economy, or end the war. I needed to know what it was these men thought about. What was behind their ideas for government.

In steps William F. Buckley. Granted, it is hard to hoist oneself onto the shoulders of a giant to see the world more clearly. But, and I don't remember how or when, I was given a copy of National Review Magazine. And I was introduced to the world of conservative thinkers. Bill Buckley could write and speak to men in hard hats, blue jeans and white socks, popping open a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon, as well and clearly and easily as he could to his own set, the Park Avenue men in Brooks Brothers suits drinking in the evening martini.

Buckley was the first man to set me straight. The first man I found who was writing about the why's of politics, much less than the hows. I followed politics for a decade before I realized that ideas mattered. And on the shoulders of this giant, I took the ride, the intellectual ride of my life up through conservative valley, into Reagan land, and finally, when I saw (and I do believe WFB did as well) that the conservative movement that he had nurtured with his mighty philosophical heft and from his own unique pen, was going to disappoint us all, he moved as close as he could to libertarianism.

Just to look and listen to William Buckley was a trip, even if you hadn't a clue. But if you did, and you are one of us who wants to change the world, and has been at work at it for decades, tonight you'll shed a tear for this great, great, man.

Joe Postove

Now That Castro Is Out Of The Way

Fidel Castro submitted his resignation as president of Cuba today. I wonder who he submitted it to, as he is the one who takes all of the submissions (that is if he is still alive).


I think he's dead and his brother Raul wrote up a nice going away letter, and in a day or two the announcement will come that President Castro has passed from this earth. Of course as athiests, the communist there believe that he's all gone, with no soul to go anywhere.


Of course us godly people know that Castro is dancing around Hell's frying pan, as his afterlife will teach him the value of living a good pre-death life.


What now? The whores, gambling joints, sex shows and all of the other freedoms have not forgotten old Havana as a 90 mile off shore hot and saucy town that makes Las Vegas look like Branson. There is a problem. After Raul is overthrown by a libertarian revolution (oh the joy!) we would have to confront the fact that the Cuban people have forgotten how to behave in a free society. They know utter poverty, they understand, in their own way, what it is to be slaves in a slave state. And they also expect what is left of the socialist crumbs Fidel was able muster up, even after the Soviet Union closed.


These poor wretched people, most of whom have no real conception of a free society, need to be taught how to live. Before we can turn on the spigot, and turn Cuba into a free market, lovely vacation and business magnet, the people there have to unlearn 50 years of communism.


And learn liberty. Good luck amigos. May the REAL revolution, the one of ideas, come very soon.

Joe Postove

Primary In Virginia Today

The polling place was nearly empty this evening as I slunked in to cast my vote. I like it like that for two reasons. I can get in and out easily, and less voters makes mine count all the more.

Not that it makes much of a difference. Today, I voted for peace, freedom, individualism, and Americanism. I voted for Ron Paul. I felt some saddness as I plunked my finger over his name, and prayed that the machines were not rigged. I live in a cheap apartment in a rich neighborhood, so naturally most of the votes will be Democrat. I can't say if the rich liberals here in Ghent near downtown Norfolk will go to Hillary, or Obama. The time has long passed when I can explain to rich liberals of the chi chi set, that they are voting not simply against their class (I do that all the time...No poor man ever gave this poor man a job) but also aginst the economic system that made them fat and rich in the first place.

I find, in all these political days, we must weather a sense of powerlessness, in that skin color, sex, experience, and cleverness seem to rule the debate. Our forefathers had not much political experience. And they created a great nation. We have an electorate that is too often seduced by form over substance.


Oh, Lord, please save us from the liberal guilt that is destroying our nation!

But I have digressed. I voted for not just the only man who has articulated the framework that our founders set down for this nation. I voted for Paul, who has toiled in the fields of liberty for so long with the ideas of Rand, Friedman, Goldwater, Rothbard, Von Mises, and so many other libertarian thinkers who have inched (Back!) oh ever so slowly into our collective mind. People know about liberty now, many of us. We understand that there is a movement called libertarianism.

That is a major step. It's like telling people there is a bible out there. Now we have to get them to read it. The idea(s) of Ron Paul and the libertarian movement are so powerful (agree or disagree) and wide ranging, that if those of us who have understood the criminality of our government for so long can continue to spread those ideas and not get too discouraged that Ron Paul won't be our next president, then there is a place called hope.

Baby steps are steps.Toward freedom and peace and away from statism and wars.

And so we begin again everyday, if need be.

Joe Postove

5th Avenue vs Clark Bar

After I finished my paper route this morning I stopped into 7/11 (this is a different one than my regular near the house. I am getting tired of the easy familiarity of the staff there and their interest in my eating habits and why I don't smile more at 6 in the morning) to pick up some breakfast.

The sandwiches are having a contest whereupon you peel off a sticker on the box, you get a free extra piece of garbage that they want to promote. I have no objection to that, except that sometimes you get gum and then other times you win a neat extra, like a hot dog, or a big bag of chips. I cheat and peel off the sticker before I get to the counter. I'm no fool. I'm not going get stuck with the shit they can't give away when there are goodies like chips and candy bars that I would rather toss down my gullet.

Which brings me to candy bars. Today I won a free candy bar that I was unfamiliar with, so the Chinese lady who runs the place said "take any candy bar...Any one you want". This sounded against the rules, but that's ok. When the Chinese lady says I can take any candy I want, I do as she says.

I wanted a Clark Bar, an old reliable that you can eat anywhere, even the opera or in court. I picked up my prize, took her back to the van along with my chicken salad sandwich, carrots, and pretzels, and proceeded home.

If you have read my blog before, you know that food in my bag does not usually get all the way home, that I usually play with it, and eat some, before I haul it into my apartment. I unwrapped the Clark Bar, greedily, but with the experience of someone who had eaten this type of candy bar before. It tastes something like a Butterfinger, but is firmer, and of more resolute form.

I am driving along, eating my free candy, messing with the radio, when to my great astonishment I looked at the wrapper, which was brown like a Clark Bar, but which instead said 5th Avenue! The whole time I was eating a 5th Avenue, thinking it was a Clark Bar!

I thought about it; shoved the last bit down my throat, and said to myself, in whisper, "isn't that something".

Joe Postove

Politics, Train Wrecks, And Civilization

It was sweet yesterday as Fat Tuesday and Super Tuesday fell on the same day.

A day and night of drunken recklessness, encouraged by the government ruled the day. And then there was the Mardi Gras.

I like politics. I also like train wrecks, the bad guys winning in the movies, and sacks of money (from whatever source) appearing at my front door.

However, politics is the failure of civilization. It is the inability of the race to form society in a way other than using the only institution with a legal monopoly on the use of force. But we political rubberneckers love the chase. Those who have the best and shiniest campaigns, the cleverest commercials, the tight little sound bytes that mean as little as possible. And which candidate can pander to the most people with the best one liners and jingoisms and not even themselves see the sad rediculous miasma that the political class is putting us poor citizens through.

As said in an earlier column; libertarians engage in the political process not to make government better. We play this awful, awful game with one and only one, express purpose; to reduce the size of government. To roll it back to the purposes expressed in the constitution. That neither king or president or the mob of democracy is the sovereign, but rather man as an individual. Men and women free to pursue their lives in ANY way, as long as they do not infringe on that same right of every other man and woman.

We do not want a better government! We want a better world, free of the wars, socialism, and folly writ so large, that if the men who ran our United States ran Sears or Wal-Mart the same way, they would long ago have been jailed.

It's about freedom. And civilization, given the chance, is only really civilized when it is free. Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was quoted once as saying "taxes are the price we pay for civilization". The initiation of force is not civilized. The picking of our collective pocket is not civilized. This is not civilization, it is ransom. And we have been kidnapped.

All we really want is ourselves back. I'm voting for Ron Paul next week. I refuse to be a part of a system that would astound and dismay our founders.

So, I'll watch all of the train wrecks, and car crashes and the run up to November with the same childlike intensity that our minders at CNN and FOX love so much. I can't help it.

But I would rather people consider the idea of true liberty, an ideology of individual human sovereignty that is not dead as long as the men of the mind can compete with the men of the brawn. And it is the men of the brawn who, Democrat or Republican, are begging for your blessing.

Save the blessings for yourself. If freedom is important to you, that is.

Joe Postove

Carl Wilson

Ten years ago today, on Febuary 6th, 1998 the world lost one of its greatest voices.

Carl Wilson died that day, and on that day the Beach Boys essentially ended as a band. They continue on with Mike Love and company playing the hits and gaining the crowds. But the soul of the Beach Boys is gone, and so is the heart of the group.

Amazingly, the band survived the decades long mental illness of its leader and perhaps greatest living rock and roll composer, Brian Wilson.

It was Carl, through the death of brother Dennis, intra group squabbles, Brian's illness and changes in the tastes of the public who held the band together. When he died, so did the Beach Boys.

Carl Wilson was a conscientious objector during Vietnam. That is not surprising considering his bird-like gentleness of spirit. Any man who could sing "God Only Knows" couldn't possibly kill people.

That beautiful voice that carried Brian's dream, so often, to fruition, was like no other.

And no other will ever be like Carl Wilson.

Joe

Earl Butz RIP

Earl Butz, former agriculture Secretary in the Nixon and Ford administration's has died at the age of 98.

I never like to "its about time" for anyone, and I won't for Butz. But at 98, I'd say "good enough Earl, time for permanent bedtime". But that's me.

He made his name not as a popular cabinet member under two presidents, but in a crude, but funny joke that he told Pat Boone and Jimmy Dean while touring the mid-west. Most newspapers would not repeat the joke word for word because of its crudity, but we here at "Libertarianism And Things" feel a need, deep down inside, a hot soulful need to repeat Butz story that made him the butt of many a joke, particuarly on Johnny Carson's show, and in pay toilets and men's sauna's around the world.

Butz said: "There are three things that the colored people like more than anything, and that is tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit".

Duh! Like who doesn't? But after telling that crude joke to Pat and Jimmy (!), word leaked out (oh those damn leaks) , and he was fired days later by Gerald Ford. The fact that he lived to 98 is testament to....good luck. I'm sure Earl spent many sleepless nights, tossing and turning, rolling the whole thing around in his head..."why oh why did I do such a stupid thing"? It was because he was stupid.

He was in relatively good health until about two weeks ago when he was trapped inside a pay toilet in Chinatown wearing a pair of wingtip shoes. He had just come from the proctologist. He last had sex in 1977.

Oh the irony.

Joe

Brucie Is Syndicating My Blog

My oldest friend, Brucie Friedman thinks my blog is so great, he is sending it to all of his friends, via email express, and now I have to kill him.

It's not that I don't like the attention and the comments on my writing, but I get really nervous when I know people are looking at my stuff on a regular basis, and judging me. Jesus "Crackers" Christ, it makes my pussy flip flop, and I don't mean that in a good way.

I was sort of considering retiring from show business sometime this year, but now with all of Brucie's friends looking at my blog (in their stinking underwear...and only God knows what else goes on in front of their computers) I guess I'll have to blog all the time, even when I don't have anything to say...like now.

I was going to butter up my ass for my Friday night enema, but now I am so nervous, I have to go to the pay toilet across the street from my apartment. There's one down the hall here, but I like to jump on the ding ding bells there, and they have Upper Ten in bottles. The only problem with that is the man who runs the station makes you stay there until you finish your drink so you can get your deposit back.

So tonight, I'll eat an Eskimo Pie, Jump on the ding ding bells, make evening plop plops, and then come home and cry myself to sleep.

Thanks, Brucie!

Joey Postove