So Block Me!!! Ya Big Baby!

A number of months ago I decided to delve as deeply into the world of Twitter as I possibly could. The reasons for me deciding to do this are many and not really germane to the subject matter of this post. Thus far it has been generally successful. For reasons of my own I’ve decided to build a conservative following and to that end I’m gaining a lot of followers. I generally lean—well, way, way, way over to the right—being mostly Libertarian/conservative. So it comes natural to me to be able to collect a lot of those types of people. I can genuinely and sincerely speak the proper lingo and express the requisite beliefs to be accepted by the crowd on the right.

Now, no small part of the reason that I prefer the right is that they are more generally accepting of ideas and conversation than the left. They are most generally more tolerant than their leftist counterparts who would shout you down and/or block you at the first sign that you are not going to walk in perfect lock step with them.

While I’m kind of new at Twitter I’ve become very adept at surviving political discussions on Facebook. Ahhh, the many hours I’ve spent just trying to piss liberals off and get them to block me. When I find the really rabid ones I like to see how quickly I can get it to happen. I’m not certain what my record is exactly because it happened much quicker than I thought it would. I do know that it was less than twelve seconds.

On the flip side, I try to never block people. To date I think I've only blocked five times and I remember the details of each and every one of them. Maybe it’s just my experience at taking insults in the Navy, or life in general, but I like the idea of free speech. My skin is really quite thick although my critics would likely say my head is thicker. My only limits are that I don’t like it when someone attacks someone else’s religion who is involved in the conversation. I will not tolerate someone attacking my religion on my pages. I will not tolerate personal threats or threats and insults towards innocents such as the person’s family, and I won’t tolerate a person who is harassing in a spamming sort of way and making it so nobody else can have a conversation. Other than that the sky is the limit.

I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for personal insults, and to some degree actually like them in a debate, because they are usually the most obvious sign that I'm winning. If they can’t address the point they have to make it personal and attack you.

If someone happens to be a different religion I don’t mind. As a veteran I swore to defend their right to a different religion with my life and I prefer to be good for my promises. I never get insulted because someone believes something different than me. I get curious.

If someone supports Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or anybody else, whether it’s someone I could support or not, that’s okay. If they can talk to me and keep a civil tongue I will talk to them in a civil manner. That’s how we learn. That’s also how we beat the Main Stream Media. If they don’t want to be civil, well, I can do that too. Generally it’s not my favorite thing to do but I can, in so choosing, take someone right apart.

Generally speaking, if you call yourself a conservative or a Libertarian, and we agree on—oh I don’t know, let’s say seventy percent or more—I would call you an ally. You are someone who is sane enough to work with. But even if we disagree on everything, I wouldn’t call you an enemy. You’re still someone to talk to as long as you can remain civil. Then when others come along maybe they’ll be inspired one way or the other by the conversation.

So having the above ideas in mind you can imagine my disconcertion at having Twitter users, who claim to be conservative, who I’ve read down several pages of their feed, block me from following them for the slightest disagreement. Man some of these people are sensitive! Of course I fully expect liberals to block me. But conservatives? Some even say in their profile that they will block people who don't support the same candidate.

You don’t support Trump? Blocked! You do support Trump? Blocked! You don’t support Cruz? Blocked! You do support Cruz? Blocked! You don’t support term limits? Blocked! You don’t like Lincoln? Blocked! You’re not a Christian? Blocked! You don’t think there’s a Muslim waiting behind every corner to behead you? YOU’RE A PUSSY! Blocked!

Yes, that last one really did happen. I only pointed out that you are statistically more likely to die of a bee sting than a terrorist attack. It’s a fact. I never said I'm for terrorism or anything like it. I never said that terrorism wasn’t a threat because clearly it is. I never said that we shouldn't fight terrorism. I only said that I don’t live and worry every single second of every single day that someone wants to burn me alive, behead me or some such thing.

There is a simple fact of life that I’m always pointing out to people. “Just because we don’t agree on everything does not mean that I endorse what you conceive to be its most radical opposite.”

The unfortunate thing is that people get themselves worked up into an emotional state. Emotions are a great thing to experience when there is reason behind them. We don’t need to go all logical and become like Spock all the time. Laugh if there is reason to laugh. Cry if there is reason to cry. Get angry if there is reason to get angry. But when emotions take the place above reason, you are in what I call the “reaction zone.” You don’t think. You react emotionally.

So, if I don’t support Trump and you do, please don’t go off all half-cocked and say that I must hate America for not supporting your guy. If I make a reasoned argument against term limits (as Alexander Hamilton and other Founding Fathers did) please don’t call me a Pelosi supporter. If I say I don’t like Lincoln please don’t do the liberal thing and say that I must hate black people and support slavery. Don’t react. Just ask me why. I’d be more than happy to tell you. I may have actual reasons for what I believe that would be helpful to you which aren't based on some radically conceived extreme opposite.

If those who support smaller government and more personal liberties want to win their righteous fight for the survival of America as she was founded, we’ve got to have the strength to stick together and support each other on the big things. Our freedoms are completely dependent on our abilities to have and discuss other ideas. It is antithetical to the concept of freedom to expect people to agree on everything, and yes, that does include supporting a different candidate for president that you might not agree with. That’s what makes us more tolerant than the left.

If, however, you can’t handle the fact that I don’t support the same guy as you, if you can’t be big enough, or have spine enough, to tolerate the thought that I’ve got a slightly different idea on some subject here or there, then…

JUST GO AHEAD AND BLOCK ME YA BIG BABY!!!

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part 6, The Incompetence of Liberalism

Note: I originally wrote this article after the mass shooting/terrorist attack in San Bernardino. While this article is somewhat dated the underlying principle, that liberalism is incompetent and tends to defeat itself, is still true. 

At a time on a day when most other authors in the blogosphere are hard at work on the most recent of the public mass shootings—San Bernardino being the one on the top of the news at the moment—I find myself just too much in the mood to think of other things. Any other things. Not that the shooting is unimportant because certainly it is. Sometimes these things happen and you can just tell that the ramifications will be broad and long lasting.

Yes, I suppose if I had better survival instincts as an aspiring author I’d be out there talking about Radical Islam and the potential connections to Farooq Saeed. Or I could talk about how the death obsessed Liberal leftists freak shows think the only thing to do is ban guns; because that’s always so successful, in spite of the fact that California has really strict gun laws. I could talk about my own theory involving how so many of these mass shootings are done by people cranked up on powerful psychiatric drugs.

But as important as all of that is; you know what? I’m just not feeling it today. So instead, just to get us started on what I do want to write about, let us ponder the words of a great American soldier and hero.

“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” — General George S. Patton

If you are into military strategy this is pretty simple in concept. For those who aren’t I will take some time to explain before we get into my favorite topic of defeating that rabid disease infecting the governments of earth known as Liberals. Indeed the above quote by the estimable general was inspired because, in part, of the defeat of the Liberal known as Adolf Hitler.

According to Wikipedia — “The Atlantic Wall was an extensive system of coastal defense and fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defense against an anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from Great Britain during World War II. Hitler ordered the construction of the fortifications in 1942. Almost a million French workers were drafted to build it ... The fortifications included colossal coastal guns, batteries, mortars, and artillery, and thousands of German troops were stationed in its defenses.”

This so called wall stretched all the way from the northern tip of Norway clear down to Spain and covered one thousand six hundred seventy miles. Got that? None of it could move. All of it was fixed fortifications. It was composed of troops manning guns too big to take to where the action was unless the Allied invasion of Europe didn’t happen to be right where they were.

The length of the stretch of beach in Normandy where the Allies came ashore was, Utah to Sword beach, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty miles. Giving the “superior” German engineered guns an average of ten effective miles on each side of the landing zone, that would put one thousand six hundred miles of guns and troops out of range for combat. Thousands and thousands of troops, guns, bunkers, and supplies costing billions of dollars at today’s rates were just sitting there quietly on the beach during the invasion with nothing to do but pig out on warm beer, sauerkraut, and schnitzel. As far as stopping the invasion there was absolutely nothing they could do except ponder the supposed greatness of their fuehrer. As a result the Allies punched through the Atlantic wall and achieved a solid foothold on the continent after about four and a half hours of really tough fighting.

Many World War Two historians, both professional and amateur, consider this to be the greatest military blunder of all time. I as one of these concur most fully. I’d go a bit further though—and consequently much closer to the point of this article at the same time—and state that it is my most emphatic and humble opinion that it’s a damned good thing somebody did not successfully assassinate Hitler. Had that particular dummkopf gone to the great bratwurst factory in the sky early in the war, he might have been replaced by someone in the ranks who was just a little less idealistic and a lot more deadly and competent. The German generals were brilliant, from the militaristic point of view, at accomplishing as much as they did in spite of the lunacy of their orders.

That’s the reason we aren’t speaking German. There was an incompetent boob at the top whose authority and leadership was considered to be so brilliant that people took his word as the most brilliant of laws and not to be questioned. And in that consideration was sown the seeds of their own eventual destruction. Or putting it another way; Hitler, with his own mind and hands, made possible the conditions of the defeat of Germany. He couldn’t have been more destructive of his own ends had he intended to be. Tragic and catastrophic as it was while it was in action the “Ten Thousand Year Reich” only lasted about twelve years.

Throughout history there are a lot of these brutal dictators who come in, bust the place up, and then die quickly to the sounds of cheering formerly oppressed countrymen. Sometimes they last longer and sometimes they don’t last quite as long. But there is one thing they all have in common. “This too shall pass.” And depending on how bad they are they seem to pass more quickly on average.

Take a look at that. Most of the ones we think of as the worst didn’t last very long. When they passed the bounds of their own countries and started on the conquest and destruction of other countries, most of the rest of the world ganged up on them and put them back in their place. Quickly.

Yes, some like Castro continue to hang around for far too long. Then there are the tiny but deadly few, like Mao, with tens of millions of deaths to his credit. Both of those guys kept their insanity within their own borders though.

There’s no shortage of iron fisted dictators to mention in the history of the world. But if I were in the life insurance business I would never, ever even begin to consider covering any of them.

In the fact of their high mortality rate we have the single virtue of tyrants. Most of them piss so very many people off in their despotic rampages that it’s an extreme hazard to be anywhere near them. Just as much for the sake of what they might do to you as what might happen should you get caught in the wake of an assassination attempt involving explosives.

People often don’t have the choice of being trodden on by tyrants who don’t give a damn about little niceties like human rights. But they never like it. With everybody that they step on they make another enemy who is out to see the end of their rule, if not their very life. The worse they are the quicker it seems to come on average.

Yes. There are a lot of things wrong with the world today. But I tend to be a big picture kind of guy and look at the broader view of humanity. The old saying that twenty percent of the people cause eighty percent of the problems applies here in that the world won’t suffer the extremely violent tyrants for long. And the tyrants themselves very often set up the circumstances that lead to their own demise.

We could debate forever about the issues of President Bush invading Iraq and never really get anywhere as to whether it was a mistake or not. There is plenty to say about it and the causes and consequences of that war. But the singular thing that cannot be denied is Saddam Hussein, for all intents and purposes, committed suicide. Oh sure he was captured and hanged by his enemies, but prior to that he did everything to make the world and his countrymen very angry at him. He did everything to make people come after him and nothing to soothe their fears and hatred of him. The same kind of thing applies to Muammar Gaddafi.

Radical Islam is a problem that needs to be handled but I don’t worry too awful much about it. Oh certainly there will be people who think me naïve or uninformed for this opinion, and I’m okay with that. However I find it a particularly comforting thought that these kind of demented psychos often sow the seeds of their own destruction right into their own vicious actions. They are their own worst enemy.

The worst of Liberalism is based on an almost total lack of sense and thus tends to defeat itself if they have enough rope. All that's necessary on our part as decent people is to help it along.

Follow the links below for the rest of the series:

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part One

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Two

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Three

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Four

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Five

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Six

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Seven

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Eight

The Anti-Liberal Techniques: Part Nine