Inspiring Action

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This is a bit of my episode with Haley Heathman in which we discuss the Liberty Alliance Network. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Penjammin: Please tell me more about the Liberty Alliance network.

Haley: Yeah. So I started the Liberty Alliance Network. I think it was like January of 2021. And it was, of course, as a result of the covid insanity. I was a little bit disappointed in people on our side that we were not doing enough to fight back against everything. I think by 2021, most of us on our side, in the circles that we run, we already knew. We knew enough to know that this was something wasn't right. And this was a garbage and a hoax and whatever you want to call it, plandemic. But nobody was doing anything. And I was really upset and disappointed that even people like us who should know better- We've spent our whole lives (maybe not our whole lives, but since we're libertarians) railing against government day after day after day, and here's the biggest government intrusion on our liberties in our entire life. And yet everybody was just kind of sitting on their thumbs like, “I don't know what to do.”

Penjammin: Yeah, even even the LP leadership was just like, the messaging was horrible [when] it was there at all.

Haley: Yeah. Right. And I was just like, are you kidding me? It was like, so we're all just, like, cosplaying here or something? We're just pretending to care about liberty, but we don't really? The problem with… libertarians but the right in general, I would say, we are not known to be good organizers or effective organizers. The left, of course, they can organize in a heartbeat, drop of a hat, they can get five hundred people out to protest not being able to kill babies in the womb, no problem. Us, we have to fight tooth and nail to get people involved in anything. So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to to start a network where we could start promoting each other and our organizations. And my goal is to inspire and encourage others to take action because that's what we need. We can't just sit here and be keyboard warriors. You got to get in the fight. You have to kind of get involved. And so maybe you might not be like the type that's going to go out and start your own organization, but you might want to join up with somebody else's. And you need to know where they are.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

You mad bro?

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Michael Landon. Remember him? I stumbled upon a documentary of Highway to Heaven and was struck by a particular slice of back-when. Someone asked an actress on the show if there were any stories of trouble on-set during filming. There was one anecdote. A couple of actors were causing trouble. Maybe they were showing up late, not knowing lines, being prima donna’s… I forget. But they were grating, very annoying. Apparently they caught on to the fact that they were pushing their luck and brazenly went up to Landon with the question: “Are you mad at us?” He responded, “No, why would I be mad at someone I’m never going to see again?” And apparently, they never worked there again.

It was a word choice though that struck me. When the interviewer asked the question about trouble on-set, that lady answered, “What? You mean like someone being a stinker?” You never hear someone called a “stinker” anymore. It seems the word retired decades ago. Well, it got me thinking.

Some behaviors are repugnant, but not for anything to do with the law or personal offense or immorality. They’re just obnoxious. They stink. And aversion to literal stench is healthy. Something similar is probably true with metaphorical stench as well.

To be sure, I don’t mean to defend snubbing either the truly destitute or a normally pleasant person just going through something. But I wonder if we’ve been arm-twisted into the idea that the only reason to avoid someone (or their behavior) is if there is some level of wrong-doing. What if they’re just obnoxious?

No one wants someone stinking up the conversation with pompous or nasty tones, innuendos of aspersion, gossip or other party fouls. We try to invite good guests, but even careful effort there is no guarantee. What else can we do? I suppose we can reward earnest wonder with engagement, rather than feed the trolls, and we can be our best selves and attract the like in kind. Again, no guarantees, just helps, but for me, that's plenty for me to get to work with. Failing that, there's the block button. At least for now.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Short and Sweet

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Who doesn’t like something extra nice crossing their feed? There’s so much nastiness to scroll through, and if it doesn't come directly, then it's indirect, by being quote-tweetedly shared by its critic. Seriously. Every June, vulgar visuals are broadcasted, not only by celebrants but by their critics.

And besides that, there’s the crazy complex busyness. The feed is a mess, posts with text commenting on a screenshot, all quoted-tweeted with yet more text followed by ellipses because the guy couldn’t be more concise—that kind of thing.

It has me missing the old creative constraints of 140 characters. (Yeah I’m one of those guys. I actually enjoyed the challenge. 🙂 )

So, a guy like me enjoys seeing the simple tweet of a short nice poem cross my feed. Limericks, I like. Haiku are nice, but for too many, they’re little more than interrupted prose. One old friend used to post nothing but three-lined shout outs, counting 5-7-5 syllables. I like to try for something with a little more of that traditional flavor. (To be sure, I have much room to grow and would like to.)

If you’d enjoy seeing the poetry I’m dropping on twitter, you can. At the end, I add a π, as a searchable endmark. (π reminds me of ποίημα / poiema, and it can also abbreviate Penjammin, so yay. 🙂 ) Anyway, it allows me to point you here: penjams.com/twitterpoems. Much of these are prompted poetry, written spur of the moment for fun and practice, but here’s a favorite haiku:

Morning mist floating
Up in early Autumn light…
Just pick a shape cloud!

Have a great week everyone.

-P

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Super Conservatism

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Often, I see my takes as not only conservative, but super conservative. Other conservatives may disagree from time to time, but that seems due to their accepting the compromise of yester year. Let me explain.

There's this article I read long ago: Why True Conservatism Means Anarchy by Alexander William Salter. The article ended with this line: “[T]he state is constitutionally hostile to conservatism. For the sake of preserving ordered liberty and protecting inherited faith and folkways, conservatives should reject the state’s legitimacy. Failure to do so is fighting a war on the enemy’s terms.”

Salter sees conservativeness as more of a preservation-orientation than a creed. This frees him up to sort inherited wheat from chaff. He makes two points regarding the modern state: (1) that it is a relatively new institution and (2) that conservatives, in defending the state, make a concession to the left of yore- something that they should draw from rather than concede. He explains: “The polylegal system of the High Middle Ages, in which the authority of kings, local nobility, trade guilds, free cities, and the Roman Catholic Church competed and often checked the abuses of each other, is an important example and one that should be of obvious interest to conservatives.” How many present-day institutions revered by conservatives (but not by anarchists) are compromises to leftists of long ago?

Well, to Salter, governing institutions need not include the pretended monopoly of legitimate force of the state. He also argues that such a monopoly makes the state particularly useful to anti-conservatives because those of a small exogenous culture might find forced influence of the common folk from on top to be easier than persuasion. And, well, there's more in the article: Why True Conservatism Means Anarchy over at theamericanconservative.com.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Free-will & Premortalism

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This is a bit of my episode with Dr. James Spiegel in which we discuss his article on the Premortalist Free-will Defense. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Dr. James Spiegel: . . . The free will defense is the other major response. And it says that a God would want human beings to have genuine relationships with one another and with God himself, and in order for that to even be possible, we must have significant moral freedom. Otherwise, we are automatons or robots or our actions (or potential behaviors) are so restricted that we can't really genuinely have loving relationships with one another. So God granted us a certain moral freedom, and as it happens, we have abused that freedom. And that's where all of these horrible things like murder and genocide and rape have come from. We've abused what was originally a good gift for a good end, and so it's our fault, not God's. That's the free will defense.

Penjammin: How is the premortalist modification to the free will defense- how is it different?

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.