Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies

I had not heard the name Peter Thiel until today. But the Google millionaire has just shelled out a down payment on a very interesting idea: seasteading.

Tired of the United States and the other 190-odd nations on Earth?

If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.

With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities “with diverse social, political, and legal systems.”

“Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world,” Thiel said in a statement.

What a great idea! If governments won’t leave you alone, leave them behind. Of course, there are many questions to answer. How do you stay out of international politics? How do you defend your new ocean based colony?

The idea has been tried before and failed. It will be interesting to see what happens when Google employees are involved.

Sandy Froman tries to make the case for McCain

I am NOT a McCain fan despite the ads that Google keeps dropping on this blog. However, Sandy Froman, the current leader of the National Rifle Association, does have a point when she states:

That’s why the 2008 presidential election has unprecedented importance for gun owners. Despite their campaign rhetoric purporting to support the right to keep and bear arms, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are categorically opposed to our Second Amendment rights. Hillary Clinton opposed the 2005 tort reform law that saved the American gun industry from bankruptcy. Barack Obama has declared his opposition to all concealed carry laws. He has refused to repudiate his answer to a 1996 questionnaire, where he answered “yes” to a question asking if he supported laws banning “the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” And Senator Obama’s true contempt for gun owners came out when he described us as “clinging” to our guns out of bitterness.

You can read the full article titled Guns and Judges: Electing the Supreme Court in 2008.

Long story short is that McCain would be more friendly to gun owners than either of the total socialists. McCain is only a half-hearted socialist. For the record, I am not an anti-socialist. I think strong social networks are vital to the health of any community. However, when social networks and societal support systems are run by governments, they generally suck, for lack of a better term.

I am not interested in mediocrity, particularly when it is being forced on me in lieu of other choices I may once have had available.

McCain might well keep some pro-2nd amendment people in the government in the short term. In the long term though, the anti-individualists will keep chipping away at all the things that make people flee other places to come here – choice, opportunity, freedom and most especially a mindset of rugged individualism.

Anyone who is truly interested in self-defense and individual rights already has an escape plan. McCain isn’t going to save this country from anything. Only private citizens acting together can do that.

Bullets and Bibles

This is a departure from my normal blog entry – I don’t usually do video blogging. Ever since I came across a news story about a soldier’s Bible stopping a bullet, I’ve been curious to see for myself if such an event could occur, and how likely it would be.

This weekend, I fired a variety of pistols and a rifle at a dummy that had a Holy Bible and then a Holy Quran as his sole means of protection from the projectiles. The results were, at least in my mind, illustrative. The end result of my experiment is that I am much less confident in using the 32 ACP pistols in my collection as primary defensive weapons – although they are the easiest to conceal I’m afraid they would be useless in many situations.

The resulting video should be taken for what it is worth – some will be entertained, some will be bored and some will be offended. If you fall in that latter category may I suggest you go and quietly pray in a corner? Also, I believe I call my SA XD 40 a revolver at one point in the video. I know that technically that is completely incorrect. It’s just a mental hiccup on my part. I have minor issues with reversing 6 and 9 sometimes and I occasionally say revolver when I mean automatic. Crossed circuits I guess.

If anything else going on is technically incorrect or stated poorly, please feel free to comment. I always want to learn and improve.

Obama is the man

I don’t mean that in the sense that he is a good guy, or a politician I support, or someone I admire because Barack Obama isn’t any of those things. He is the man in the sense that Barack Hussein Obama has locked the Democratic nomination. The writing is on the wall and the wrangling that is still going on is a pointless waste of time. Barack is the dude who will be running against John “2013″ McCain for leadership of this rudderless ship we all share called the United States of America. I am sure Hillary Clinton will play some sort of prominent role in the new administration should Obama find himself elected.

I once thought that the worst thing that could happen to the United States would be Hillary Clinton as President. I’m not really in that mindset any longer. A Barack Obama presidency won’t be significantly different from what we could have expected under the reign of Hillary Clinton. Although I have a strong personal dislike for Ms. Clinton and I cringe and feel like ranting every time I hear her grating, ego laden voice on my car radio, the broad goals of either individual are the same – a socialist nation where the common them is mediocrity. John McCain would lead us down the same path if given the opportunity.

I envision a time when the United States finds itself in the situation Mexico is in today. Instead of guarding our borders against those who want to come here for the myriad opportunities we will be guarding them against those who want to escape in order to be able to make their own choices.

And that is the only key point you need to know about all three of these powermongers: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have one common theme – they want to make choices on your behalf. A life bereft of choices is a life without joy. Remember that on election day.

All you can count on if you vote Democrat or Republican is fewer choices in the coming four years.

America’s decline is Bush’s fault says Michael Hirsh

This morning I came across an article by Michael Hirsh whining about “America’s decline.” An Unnatural Disaster compresses the history of our great nation and draws simplistic conclusions.

In many articles and in book after book American “declinists” nowadays tend to portray America’s reduced stature as a largely natural phenomenon. Never mind that on the eve of the Bush presidency we were still seen as the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Decadent powers always wane in influence, and it seems we’ve just been doing a lot of waning very quickly. As other countries around the world partook of the ideas we pressed on them in the post-cold war era—free markets, democracy—they started to prosper and catch up to us. Meanwhile we grew fatter (literally) and more spoiled. It was all very organic.

While I tend to agree that this country is on the decline in many areas including morality, education and the stability of basic social systems, Hirsh provides no metrics for this purported decline. Hirsh is also tragically short-sighted and foolish in his conclusions.

In a nutshell, he blames President Bush for the “waning influence” of the United States.

That is the decline in America’s position in the world from where we were when George W. Bush inherited power on Jan. 20, 2001, to what he will bequeath to the next president eight months from now.

Mr. Hirsh conveniently overlooks our long history of interventionism that began in earnest after World War II. Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, intervened in Kosovo. We’ve been bribing and bullying to get our way for decades. George W. Bush is just continuing a well established tradition of forcing ourselves on the rest of the world. Hirsh continues, blaming the devaluation of the dollar on poor decisions by the Bush administration (which somehow includes Wall Street in Hirsh’s mind).

Now America’s economy is in the process of “de-leveraging”—shrinking in borrowing power and thereby reducing its impact around the world as foreign funds pull their investments from dollars or redirect them into euros or “baskets” of several currencies. As European and Asian financiers and economic officials have come to learn the truth about the subprime debacle, they’ve become leery about ever trusting Wall Street’s or Washington’s advice again. Yet had anyone in Washington been paying serious attention, the worst of the credit crunch—and loss of prestige—could have been avoided.

The economic downturn has little to do with George W. Bush and much more to do with a national attitude the values instant gratification over responsible spending. Ultimately, it is the apathy, slothfulness and poor value choices of individual Americans themselves that are to blame for any “American decline.”