Saturday, June 30, 2007

A Wolfman Among the Ironies

The Diamond in the Rough
I'm sitting here in the sky-high, semi-demolished offices of The Daily Growler and I'm fiery full of wanting to write but still a little too sawdust headed to concentrate too thoroughly on anything more high-brow than the game of baseball. I'm working on my favorite laptop today--I haven't used it in months--I've been working on the G4 Mac, which is performing these days as though that decadent chip these crooks put in these machines has been activated--you know, the chip blows out your hard drive or cooks the works so you have to run out and buy a newer model--a G5 in my case, which I'd love to have but don't really need since my G4's doing just fine for the time being (that's a noun; a place name; a place called time being--and that place called Time Being must be in the Land of Right Now, right?). But I love my laptop, a Toshiba Tecra--totally out of date but Toshiba laptops are so good and sturdy and smooth as glass to use, they last beyond the future shock of all the latest new models. All corporate creative geniuses love rebranding every six months--and this is true even in the pharmaceutical advertising industry, which I know a lot about since I am an advertising genius and have been since I was a toddler in my baby crib with my dad playing his Fats Waller records right in my baby ears. Brands must be changed every six months. It might just be a minor packaging change--you know to stay with the brand's iconic attraction but maybe with a new color background--and everything in the advertising world was originally conceived in PhotoShop--an application that has revolutionarily changed the art world--check out how many photographers and paint artists work in PhotoShop unabashedly these days--in fact, some of them brag on their Websites that they do work in PhotoShop--whose tools and effects are so recognizable to a person with a good ear for good art--a static sort of cultural mess the same as the recording industry is in now with all this iPod shit and MP3 rebrandings and upgrades and constant upgrading even if the upgrading apprears in the advertising as a tagline that simply says, "Now with more speed!" That's all you need to change a branding. "Now with more speed." The Yahoo looking for a new computer for instance maybe would see that tag on say the Apple Webpage--"The radically new Mac G1000 now has more speed!" Whoaa the Yahoo says, I just bought my Mac G1000-proto and already I gotta buy a new one--but, I guess so, 'cause I damn right want more speed." Yahoos!

Me, I resist being a Yahoo, dammit, a blind follower, a lemming, an obeyer just because I'm told I gotta obey--"This is a nation of laws..." No it's not; it's a nation of people, called "We the people" in the Constitution (I know it's moldy and rotten in a lot of places, but I don't want these last-standing, Custer-dumb white leaders messing with it and making it read where it's "I the People," F the rest of US.

So I was scribbling on the Toshiba laptop and as I was I was listening to the Yankees-A's game on The Daily Growler staff-use-only radio, a cheap piece of Commie Chinese, sweatshop-assembled crap. It was the fifth inning and the Yankees were losing 4-0 and were being hung out to dry by another of these young rookie pitchers these old worn-out Yankee stars can't figure out so they stand there and whiff away at every pitch that comes at 'em--they can't hit--they can't score runs--the irony: the Yankees have the highest on-base percentage in the Majors--and then Melky Cabrera got the Yankees's first hit and suddenly this F-ing piece of made-in-Commie-China crap radio develops the most agonizingly irritating buzz---Jesus--I flipped, yowled, yipped, and then went for some throats and they finally shut the son of a bitch off--F the Yankees--and, by the bye, they went on to lose today 7-0--as far as I know since I turned the damn game off in the bottom of the ninth with the A's leading 7-0. The Japanese whiz kid who some scout of the Yankees who's madly in love with bringing Japanese players to New York at millions of dollars only to have most of these Japanese kids prove total failures over here--especially the pitchers. The Yankees blew 40 million on a Japanese geek named Hi-dee-ho or some such name, you all remember him, won 6 in a row and was being trumpeted as the next Nelson "L"yan in the MLs and then never won another game, at least that's how it seemed to me--and soon that Japanese whiz was gone--totally disappeared, but with all his solid gold jiveass chains and a bank account chocked full of good old New York City hard-earned dollars spent at the Yankees games--5 million bucks a game going into George Steinbrenner's tacky Philistine pockets--and that don't include the teevee money, the concession monies--whoooo boy, the Yankees are a team that has plenty of money--they draw an average of 50,000 a game--and that, folks, is phenomenal. No other city in the MLB draws that well; the Dodgers draw well and the Mets are beginning to draw well, but the other cities--one doesn't really no, do one?

The Yankees are a team full of ironies this year--enough to drive a Yankees fan batty as old Albert Belle used to be--makes you angry enough you want to destroy poor old Kenny Lofton's boombox--or as Bob Marley sang, "I feel like bombin' a church...." That's being pissed the baseball lunatic way, a la Jim Piersall...Eddie Waitkus...Jim Bunning (now a US politician). First off, the Oakland A's came to New York having lost their last 9 out of 10 games--same as San Francisco had lost 9 in a row when the Yankees hit town and they beat the Yanks 2 out of 3. Irony #godzillion, the Yankees, who were supposed to be the hittingest team in baseball this year--and they still have three players hitting well over .300, and A-Rod is having a phenom year, 28 home runs and 78 RBIs and an on-base percentage of .400--and still this team can't score runs. The joke among Yankees diehard fans is, "Well, how many did the millionaires leave on base tonight?"

So I turned off the Yankee game and went out to eat. The Mexicans were there again and soon the cervezas were being sucked down like raw eggs on a hangover morning and we got to talking soccer and the Americas Cup down in Venezuela and tomorrow night Mexico meets Argentina and HOOOOOO-boy that's gonna be a big one--and I teased the Mexicans about how they're all gonna be in church all night tonight praying to La Senora to be with the superstitious Mexicanos and put a hex on those bloody damn Argentinians--bastardos! Mama mia, there's gonna be some Mexicans mucho borocho en la noche este Domingo and I will be one of them. By the end of the evening whether Mexico won or got their clocks cleaned we'll be singing those old La musica classicos--why, heck fire, I may even try to sing the coda to "Guadalajara"--Arriba!

And now it is evening and I'm back in mi adobe hacienda in the heart of Manhattan Island. All is calm. We are sitting peacefully waiting for the next al-Queda attacks--I got this gut feeling something really colossally stupid is gonna be dumped on us New York Citians again soon. According to the London cops--and they're never wrong either--remember the poor French dude from Martinique, wasn't it who the London cops shot because he looked like a terrorist?) (I've been to Martinique one time and damn I'd like to go back--it was a kind of a tragic paradise--though Club Med had pretty much contaminated it with "conspicuous consumption" even by the time I went traipsing across it with my young, bounteous wife, driving a Land Rover back when Land Rovers were still made in Merry Ole England by a company actually called Land Rover--and they also made the Rover, one of the finest cars ever built by the good car craftsmen of the British Empire--but now, the Land Rover is owned by Ford who's desperate to get rid of that branch of their failing company--the global marketplace was invented by American corporations; yet, in spite of all their jolly world-wide mergering, how come so many of them are now splitting and diversifying and selling off divisions and shit like that--Ford, Henry Ford was said to be the world's first billionaire, is now broke? Yep, folks, our whole industrial complex is broke--everything the American mixing-pot creative whizzes invented, you name it, we either invented it or stole the invention and said we invented it, has been sold at auction on the global marketplace of devious tricks and bamboozles. Just think of the billions and billions upon billions of dollars being flushed into the global marketplace. Just think of the billions upon billions of dollars this country wastes--look at Atlantic City and Vegas at the literally billions upon billions of dollars they fleece every single day off the Yahoos of the world who actually believe they are going to strike it rich in one of those El Dorado cities--and do you ever see a list of just how many people actually do win rich-making jackpots every year in AC and Vegas? Hell no. That list is too small to print. The only people getting rich in those two burgs are the Mafia, the various government agencies involved, and the various Mafia and government stooges heading up these personal empires--Vegas especially. Vegas is where you build a 10 billion dollar hotel one week and blow it to smithereens the next week and replace it with a 20 billion dollar hotel.

Currently the world is being covered with hotels. Have you been noticing this? New York City this year alone is getting 22,000 new hotel rooms. You figure 300 rooms to a hotel: that's 73 new hotels going up in this town. And god do I hate tourists. I've seen the tourist industry ruin New Orleans and ruin Santa Fe, New Mexico. The cultures are what make towns like those two unique in this country and yet the tourist industry wants to simulate these cultures, make them plastic samples of what was once a livable reality--I mean, you went to New Orleans at one time to soak in the culture there and the arts and crafts and musics that culture gave birth to--now you go to New Orleans to get drunk, act stupid, look polyester Yahooish to the bone, and certainly only respect the plastic souvenirs that now replica that old real culture in crummy plastics and when you flip 'em up and check their bases, yep, sure enough, there you read "Made in Communist China." We have successfully "junked" our country. We are the world's biggest junkies!

Now, go to the bottom of this post and read the latest bullshit about the "al-Queda" gas attack in London--in those new Mercedes cars--here's an article about it--please don't laugh you're ass off, it's serious business letting these bumbling cop types decide which of us is a terrerist or not--why, one day, we'll wake up and all of us we'll be considered Al-Queda--cop car sirens are wailing madly around NYC tonight--everytime London finds one of their sensational al-Queda bomb threats, the NYPD come out in pot-bellied, AKA-totin' force--"showing their presence." Such bullshit. But anyway, the truth about the faux al-Queda attacks are coming to the surface--go below and read.

thediscombobulatedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

A Word of Advice
Instead of wasting your time watching the Repugnican and Neo-Con points of view on Sunday morning "news" television--that of pig-jowled Tim Russert (he better keep an eye on his ticker--he's really plumping up--and he's a redface anyway--WATCH OUT, TIM, the big one may be landing on your heart's fat-clogged airfield anyday now) and old "Meet the Press" sponge-face Floyd or whatever his old has-been name is--they'll have Ed Rollin on this weekend maybe--or maybe they'll dig G. Gordon Liddy up--so, yes, instead of watching that shit, click on The Daily Howler Monday afternoon and read Brother Bob's catchy and very astutely witty comments on the manipulations of facts and lies that goes on voraciously every day on the media cock and bullshit commentary and whack-job shows--all with their breads buttered on the Repugnican and Neo-Con sides. The trouble with getting rich in this country: heart attacks and cancers. Joel Siegel, a guy I never ever took seriously, died today of cancer--nor did I ever take Roger "Valley of the Dolls" Ebert seriously either--and Roger is recovering from a bout with cancer--and he looks like holy warmed over shit now, too--or he had a stroke or something, naw, I don't really know what happened to that poor blubbery talentless boy who thought he had a great ear of filmmaking and what makes a film great or what makes a film a total waste of time, money, and energies (most of 'em, if you want my biased opinion).

I don't know; I just can't get it up for these guys's demises right now. My attitude is, well, at least these two dudes were filthy rich and got the best voodoo treatment possible in terms of medical care--though I'm sure Siegel died suffering the same pain the volunteers who cleaned up after 9/11 are suffering too as they die of cancer and they will soon totally be forgotten while Joel Siegel's bullshit legacy gets to live on in the spider-webbed confines of the ABC Network storage cesspool (their archives).

I heard one comment today on Joel Siegel by one of his cohorts at ABC or wherever it was he worked. I don't really remember; I'd lost track of him since he used to sometimes appear on the Howard Stern Radio Show and Howard would make fun of him maliciously greatly. Joel Siegel mimicked Jerry Colona and Avery Schreiber--look 'em up; they both look like Joel Siegel--Joel wasn't an orginal, in other words. Sorry, Joel, but you smoked cigarettes cause you thought they fit in your Hollywood-party-nightly lifestyle "Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette/smoke, smoke, smoke until you smoke yourself to death/ tell Saint Peter at the Golden Gate/that you hates to make him wait/ but you just gotta have another cigarette" [Tex Williams!!! And guess how Tex died?]

Such a phony F-ing world--except in Iraq and Afghanistan and Darfu and Northern Nigeria and in the Sudan and in Somalia and in the West Bank and in Gaza and in the Lebanon Palestinian refugee camps. Ain't no phony baloney in those places; it's real as real hell there.

mr.ps

for The Daily Growler

The Al-Queda Attacks in London

Gas canister bomb 'an amateur job'



James Sturcke
Friday June 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


The builders of the bomb found in central London today would have probably been "keen amateurs", an explosives expert said.

Patio gas cylinders found by police in the light green Mercedes would have been an unlikely weapon for experienced terrorists unless they wanted to create a fireball for the cameras, Sidney Alford, founder of explosives company Alford Technologies, told Guardian Unlimited.

As a readily available combustible material, the propane gas held in such cylinders might be considered by someone unable to source high explosives.

"If you are making a bomb and you are limited in the amount of explosives you can acquire you could easily get some gas cylinders of propane to add to them. They would give a more impressive fireball on TV," he said.

"They are probably keen amateurs who could not get their hands on the real thing and do not realise the limits of what they are doing."

The Metropolitan police's head of anti-terrorism, Peter Clarke, said there was also a "significant quantity" of petrol and nails in the car, as well as the gas. A witness reported nails were lying on the floor of the car, which Mr Alford said was another indication the bomb makers were inexperienced.

"Nails could be considered as an additional way of extending the potential damage and lethal range of the device but putting them on the floor is an incompetent way of building a bomb. They would go straight into the ground," he said.

Mr Alford said that unless there were also explosives present the main impact of the device would be in the economic disruption caused by closing off the normally bustling shops, restaurants and businesses of central London.

"As the IRA knew, you do not need a real bomb to cause real havoc," he said.

Police said the "potentially viable explosive device" was made safe. Mr Clarke said that had it exploded there could have been "significant injuries or loss of life".

Friday, June 29, 2007

Head in a Gutbucket

Running Over Tarantulas
There is nothing in my head but sawdust...and I've had it soaking in a good book, too, and that didn't help. There's no sap in my incautious head. Yesterday afternoon I camped out with some Mexican friends at a table in a certain bar and los gritos were thick as the bullshit we were talking about as we racked back cerveza after cerveza mainly because the Mexico soccer team had kicked the shit out of Brazil the night before and last night the good ole USA who were just coming off an upset of Mexico got their asses kicked royally by Argentina--even though they were cursing Maradona's braggadocio ass all the way--ending up looking worse than Maradona's jockstrap after a tough match--losing 4-1--the first time the USA had been beaten that bad--and down in Venezuela, too, though it seems Hugo Chavez is visiting with Vlad Pootin over in the Democratic Republic of the Former Soviet Union--they're doing an "let's pool our oil and we'll have big dog oil we can sell the Commie Chinese, who seem to be the only successful Capitalist country going right now; now ain't that ironic?"

I just can't get anything creative out of my cranium today--even though the full moon is still looming lycophantically over my orb and I feel like growling, but nothing wants to bloom.

Baseball ain't helpin'--the Yankees are under an abysmal curse (the Curse of Bernie Williams)(add to that the curse of Gary Sheffield (yeah, he's over the hill--so what he's already hit 17 homeruns this year))--the Yankees have the great now-hitless wonder Johnny Damon and the suddenly babbling-idiot batter, Bobby Abreu--"Swing at it, Bobby!" and he does--and misses; and the Godzilla hitter from the great baseball Empire of Japan, Hideki Matsui, has turned to a dead octopus this year--and the pitchers, oh Jesus, please let me forget the Yankee pitchers--led by 44-year-old Roger "the Pizzling Rocket" Clemens who since leading the Yankee's back to championship prowess is 0-3 and for the first time in his life the other night against bumbling Baltimore he did not strike out a batter in a game. Go Rocket.

And Andy Pettite. Nice guy from Louisiana, but Leo Durocher taught us where nice guys finish and sure 'nuff that's where Handy Andy is ending up so far this year--like 3-6; and Mike "14-14" Mussina is losing this year--he's hapless and lacklustre--too old; and then the Wang sensation--he was the winningest Yankee--showed his El Duque side last night giving up 5 runs just all of a sudden after pitching 2-hit shut-out ball and then whack and "bawl four"--walking three in a row and then giving up a homerun--even though the Yankees lucked out and the game got suspended due to rain and will be finished in two months with the Yankees leading 8-5 in the bottom of the eighth.

The Yankees lost 3 to the lowly Rockies, and the Rockies haven't won a game since; the Yanks lost two to one of the worst teams in baseball, San Francisco; and then they lost 2 in a row to the catastrophically bad Orioles until the suspended game last night. It's worse than Little League baseball. It's pathetic. Yet, I'm such a baseball enthusiast I keep staying up with the Yanks--always knowing they could bust a move and still win it all--Boston always folds, folks--always, so Yankees fans don't worry about Boston--year before last was a fluke.

[I must add here the Yankees beat the Oakland A's tonight out at the Stadium. Mike Mussina pitched one of his "winning" games--he stayed at it for 7 innings and gave up the ball to one of the biggest big disappointments in the Yankees billion-dollar bull(shit)pen, Eric Farnsworth. Eric is about 6' 8" and looks mean as a pissed-off swine--glaring all the time--but he can't get the ball over the plate. So tonight he gets the first batter he faces out in the top of the 8th. Then he gives up a hit; then he walks a batter, two on, one out, and then he strikes out the next batter, 2 0n and tw0 out and Joe Torre pulls him and brings in the Mighty Mo, who hasn't pitched much at all this year--only 9 saves so far--this guy who is the greatest final inning pitcher of all time--the right thing to do if you know baseball--it works like this: even if you lose, at least you'll lose with your best and not a throwaway bum like Farnsworth. Mo struck out the final out and then went on to strike out the final out in the ninth for the first Yankee legitimate game win in many innings of moons. Even tonight though the Yankees won, they only scored 2 runs--can't hit for dick shit. But I'm a true baseball fan and I'll stay in there always wishing for that Subway World Series--and the Mets are looking great--and the Mets know Atlanta's not that threatening this year and the Dodgers will probably slide back some--just like crosstown, Yankee fans know Boston will skid--they always do...even year before last they skidded--beat Yankees in the playoffs, seventh game--Mo gave up the walk-off winning homer. Unreal--even from Boston's point of view--UNREAL. So's this year for the Yankees--UNREAL. But that's baseball.

See what I mean about my head being full of sawdust.

What Disgusted Me Today...Let's See...Where Do I Start?
How about let's start with hearing that Rupert Murdoch was going to buy the Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft Family--how disgusting is that. Rupert the glutton Murdoch; he'll end up down in Davey Jones's Locker one day like Robert Maxwell--oh, we've forgotten Robert Maxwell?

Bill Moyers trashed Murdoch and his buying the Wall Street Journal tonight on his PBS show--Bill's coming around--becoming an anarchist--seeing clearly you can't work within this system to change it--voting is bullshit--that's controllable--may the crookedest rich man win--and that "rich man" includes Hillbilly Hillary RodHAM Clinton. Disgusted me to hear Bill talked about he'd been disgusted, too, recently on seeing Hillary Clinton and Slick Willie are putting their already brown noses deep into Rupert Murdoch's old foul-inflamed asshole--yep, they're palsy-walsying around with Rupert, who Hill knows gives up the millions easy as pie in return for servicing his political needs--"How 'bout a blowjob, Hill?" "I beg your pardon, Rupert?" "Go ahead, Hill, give him a blowjob, it's all in game, baby," Slick Willie was heard saying as Rupert Murdoch took his checkbook out and started donated some big bucks to Hill's idiot campaign. What a loser she is. Sorry, folks, but she's a GOD-DAMN loser just like every Dumbocrat has been since George McGovern did his namby-pamby best to redefine the Dumbocratic Party--thanks to the wild insistence of the Mississippi Freedom Party--oh, but I'm talking ancient history here--history from the 1970s when these Neo-Con rats started feasting on the Constitution--turning it into a rat-chewed document of DOOM.

Nancy "Rich Bitch" Pelosi disgusted me when she said G.W. Bush wasn't worth impeaching. Wow, Nancy, then who the hell is worth impeaching? How about you? How about you and Conyers and Sanders and all you high-falutin' so-called people's politicians, Uncle Teddy, Chris Dodd, all of 'em, throw every damn politician in Washington, District of Corruption out of office. We need to impeach this whole government...'cept, you're not gonna do it working through the system.

Huey Newton said everything was politics.

And please remember that closing paragraph to Evander Spooner's Vices Are Not Crimes.

Al Queda's Back and Threatening an Attack on the USA Though First They Were Gonna Blow Up Some More Londoners--Why London?
Well, here we go again--two Mercedes were found in Picadilly Circus with cannisters of highly explosive--what liquid gas or something--something. I swear, al Queda can afford expensive cars to carry out their car bombings in, can't they? Mercedes supplied to them by whom? Do they steal cars? Where do all the cars you see on the Baghdad streets all day long come from? I mean, is there a Mercedes dealership still selling Mercedes in Baghdad? I know there's a car dealership in the Green Zone--can al Queda car bombers buy their cars in the Green Zone? And, I guess in Europe an al Queda operative could just go pay cash for a new Mercedes--I mean and then who sells these so-called al Queda dudes all these tons of explosive shit? Like the weirdo-foreign-looking whacko in Queens the cops busted yesterday for having hundreds of pounds of explosive potassiums in a storage locker--the cops saying they got clued into to this one by a dealer in Ohio who turned this guy in for buying so much potassium--of course, the Ohio guy went ahead and sold it to this big, fat, Turkish-looking clown--and then called the cops--led by Shanty Irish Ray Kelly, our highly praised little crooked as a snake at night NYC police chief.

I don't get it. Arms of all calibers are available all over the world, easy--seems like you just find one of those big, fat, greasy-looking, smarmy foreign-looking bastards and say, "Hey, Achmed, you got any nuclear-head missiles." "As a matter of fact, affendi, I do--right out of the Roosky Army, my friend, right out of the old Soviet arsenal. These missiles are a little rusty, but hey, they'll wreak havoc on the heretic dogs when you jihad with this shit."

You can't fight these plunderers, these plotters of destruction, wealth now, power now, these kind of people. New York City is getting slovenly abused by these nouveau-uncaring rich pests that suddenly have all the money in the world and not a god-damn care in the world. I saw a vanity license plate on a Beamer parked in front of my apartment that read "RichnBad." Oh boy, what an asshole; what pompous bastards. You can't beat 'em using the system.

Impeach everybody.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Thursday, June 28, 2007

From Out of the Past Comes the Thundering...

Going Back to Last July

Holy Hell Arrives Today

Another Judgment Day
It ain't the Apocalypse--no god would shew himself on a day like this here in NYC; today, in the fabulous sense, this town is gonna belong to Old Ned himself, spiked hooves and all, freshly cleaned red body suit, pitchfork all nicely sharpened, ready to bring the party of Hell to my town...the teevee weather babes and grinning idiot teevee weather dudes--are predicting temps of right at 100 today in Central Park. Trouble is, the temp is gonna freeze around a 100 for the next unshuffling of Doppler knows how many days, enough that it's causing all the teevee celebrity heads to squench their faces all serious and start warning us about the dangers of hot weather. It's always the same old shit advice, like, drink plenty of liquids and stay cool, especially you horribly old people, who as far as we Accu-Weather folks are concerned can just flat fry--"We are really more concerned about people's pets." Their attitude is "We got air-conditioners, baby, so we give a shit about the rest of you poor slobs, you ditchdiggers, roofers, homeless, old F-ers, pearl divers, flim-flammers, ConEd workmen. Besides, if our air-conditioners go out, we can helicopter to the Hamptons where we have back-up generators, baby"...except I saw where it's gonna get up in the mid-nineties all the way out Long Island to Montauk. I have never been all the way out to Montauk--the rich have always hogged the Montauk area. I've been as far as Southampton; played a gig there once with a Long Island blues band. I didn't particularly care for the crowd; mostly Lizzie Grubman types, you know, run your ass down in a split second should you piss them off by getting in their self-important ways. Hey, Lizzie almost killed fourteen people and I think she served a couple'a days in a private room in some women's facility. I see today, they have Boy George out picking up garbage because Boy has a heroin habit and just can't seem to keep from getting caught with a hay bale of heroin on him, but he usually gets off pretty lightly and certainly is never subjected to the harsh Rockefeller Drug Laws in New York, which are there to round up tons of black guys and throw them by the gaggles into the state slammers for 25 to life. Guys like Boy George and and babes like Lizzie Grubman don't have to worry about the Rockefeller Drug Laws when they're caught doped up--not that Lizzie was doped up the night she almost killed 14 swingers out on the Hamptons party circuit. Billy Joel drives drunk and wrecks his Corvette in the process and nothing happens to him. Russell Crowe throws his cell phone and cracks a bellboy's head open and nothing happens to him--he's given an extra Academy Award for being a good citizen. Halle Berry runs her Beamer over a person and leaves the scene but nothing ever happened to her. Matthew Broderick killed two people in Ireland while tooling his Beamer wildly fast around the lovely Irish countryside looped a little to the gills--he had his hot Hollywood babe-of-the-moment with him, I think. They were excused and left to go on with their "marvelous" lives while the two slobs he killed are buried and long forgotten.

How about old Mel Gibson? that fop--with the passions of Christ boiling up in him (that's Christ spelled "b-o-u-r-b-o-n") he got caught trying to sneak his Beamer back home while under the influence of alcohol and who knows what else. Seems Mel got a little hostile and anti-Semetic when the friendly L.A. cops were hauling his ass in. However, unlike Rodney King, Mel did not get the normal nightstick beating other drunken fools usually get.

Mel's kissing heavy ass as I type this, apologizing in his best little-boy voice, sounding a little like the good Reverend Jimmy Swaggart apologizing tearfully sincerely after he got caught whacking off to ho's in a seedy New Orleans motel. [Praise the Lard, by the way, Jimmy's doin' just fine down there in superintellectual Baton Rouge, Lawsbanana; he's not raking in as many tax-free dollars as he used to, but, hell, he's still got his mansion, his town cars, his Rolex watch collection, and his seedy little homey wife, who I one time saw in person and kinds got the hots for. God, I hate confessing that. ]

I've worked in Hollywood; the dope flows expensively free out there, just as it does in NYC; just as it does in the District of Corrupton where the solons make merryment every night coming home looped to the gills and needing one of those "little red pills" to get to sleep and then a shot of B-12 the next morning along with their wake-up tumblers of breakfast bourbon or cognac. Recall recently when Congressman Patrick Kennedy drove his Beamer into a wall, staggering doped or drunk and saying he couldn't remember what happened that led up to his crashing into a wall. Nothing happened to Patrick; same as nothing happened to his famous drinking Uncle Teddy who accidentally, yes, killed a girl--both drunk as skunks; and nothing happened to his cousin William who in an Uncle-Teddy-like fun drunk raped that celebrity-hounding woman down at the Kennedy playground in West Palm. Ah what a life to be privileged.

In the meantime, Death rules all around the world, but it's especially thriving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and plus the considerate Israelis got some more revenge for those two stupid soldiers of theirs who got themselves kidnapped by the Hezbollah. Israel loves picking on the Hezbollah with one of the world's most well-equipped armies thanks to "you know who"--YOU, ME. One of their U.S.-made missiles, it is reported as I type this, blew apart 40 Palestinian women and their babies yesterday when there was supposed to be that famous truce that Condo-leasing Rice mangled while she was on a junket to that part of the world. Way to go, Israel; humanitarian mission accomplished. Jewish humans defended. Arab dogs DEAD. Oh don't you know how both the U.S. and Israel would love to use old Adolph's final solution on all Islamics? It's our god is bigger than your god bullshit and it will never end--ever. Such bullshit; when peace is so damn simple. Just turn your weapons into ploughshares and rebuild your nations on the Garden of Eden model. F money. Let's use unity as wealth--as in commonwealth.

thegrowlingwolf Sits Comfy but Panting in His Ovennish Digs
The temperature right now in the cool old city of New York is in the raging nineties; stuffy air, but F it, "bring it on," I've four fans blasting away and doing great jobs, man. I'm cool as a slightly soggy cucumber and think I could take it if it goes up to 105, which the gleeful excited teevee weather jocks are having a ball with by exclaiming "Temperatures COULD climb to 105 tomorrow in certain parts of the tri-state area"-- and they are warning about death from the heat every second or so; still trumpeting concern for the elderly and pets. Not much concern over any other class of folks. The best they can come up with statistically with their threatening "deaths from the heat wave" is around 150 and that includes so far over the whole damn country which is experiencing 100+ temperatures from the Pacific Coast all the way over to HERE and has been for several weeks now. No special reports about global warming, oh no. No explanations why gas prices just rose again at the pump, to over $3 a gallon steady now. I have seen the SUV drivers staying home; New York City streets are clogged as the normally are with SUVs and taxicabs. More people died from war TODAY than have died from the total extent of this current heat wave. They are still counting the DEAD in New Orleans from Katrina--do you remember New Orleans? A city in southern Louisiana, I think...wasn't it?

Flipped around the ordinary teevee dial and caught Geraldo; now there's a great specimen of mankind--he screwed Mrs. Jacob Javitts while poor old Jake was hidebound bolted into a wheelchair and being kept droolingly alive on a respirator--still Geraldo's one of our "top leading newsmen," at least according to him he is. Fox is still giving old Geraldo a chance. Remember when Geraldo was bragging about being addicted to sex? That's after his big "tell-all" book came out and made him enough money to gloat comfortably for another few years, this F-ing Puerto Rican boy from the Upper East Side of NYC who at one time, along with current teevee fat boys, Felipe Luciano (he found the Young Lords) and Pablo Guzman, were marching up and down First Avenue as the Young Lords back in the last days of the Vietnam protesting, late sixties. Hell, I think Felipe saw his brother shotgunned down. It's hard to believe those three gung-ho for freedom are now babbling the phony bullshit of network teevee as the way they make their fine livings--OFF THE MAN, baby, the MAN who continues to rule us no matter how heavy we protest.

Geraldo today started off by being pretty damn rough on the Hezbollah for "hiding behind the skirts of women," which would thereby justify Israel's blowing to pieces 40 women and children yesterday in an unprovoked missile attack on a southern Lebanon area; Hell, according to Geraldo, those women and children had Hezbollah terrorists hiding behind their skirts and soiled diapers and the Israelis weren't fooled by it, same as our gyrenes blew away grandmas, young girls, babies, and the crippled elderly in VietNam using the same excuse, "Hey, they got Cong grenades hidden in their pussies, even the baby girls."

Geraldo, you poor punky old publicitiy-seeking fool, the Palestinians are simply rebelling the same way you rebelled when you were a Young Lardass; they are rebelling against the oppressive nature of to them an occupying force that intruded into their homelands in 1947 under a UN charter put together by mostly the US and Britain, two countries that refused Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany during and at the end of WWII. Hypocrites! All F-ing hypocrites of the worst Machiavellian kind. "If taking power means killing your grandmother, then granny dies." That's their attitudes. When you possess so many weapons of mass destruction as Israel and the US, your desire to KILL is heightened to a pompous pious point, enhancing your thirst for blood and guts and scattered limbs and scattered eyeballs and brains soaring you way up and with boiling hate in your eyes allows you to aim your weapons of mass destruction at any target you deem a target, like right into the midst of a hospital, a school, a family neighborhood, directly on target and then BLOOOEY, 20-times the destruction of a Baghdad-style car bomb--one of them just took out another 20 or so in Baghdad as I type this. [Have you ever seen the actual figures of the number of Israelis over the years who have been killed by Arab terrorists [remember the Japanese terrorists that blew up Tel-Aviv Airport one year a long time ago?]. Horrible images of threatening Apocalypsical creatures dangle like lures in front of these warmongers's revengeful minds; justification for the eradication of a people builds in their war-hardened hypocritical hearts, and the fiendish urge to KILL MASSIVELY boils up in their fetid souls just like some mens's dicks get hard as rocks when they go over the top in a hopeless battle. Yep, folks, we am nat'rell-born KILLERS, just like all the other animals, and even some plants. NATURAL-BORN KILLERS UNITE TO KILL OR BE KILLED.

The killing of our youth in armies is ceremonial, don't you see?

How about some lines from Rimbaud's A Night in Hell--the last few lines:

I ought to have a special hell for my anger, a hell for my pride-- and
a hell for sex; a whole symphony of hells!

I am weary, I die. This is the grave and I'm turning into worms,
horror of horrors! Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your
charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle
me with fire!

Ah! To return to life! To stare at our deformities. And this poison,
this eternally accursèd embrace! My weakness, and the world's cruelty!
My God, have pity, hide me, I can't control myself at all! I am
hidden, and I am not.

And as the Damned soul rises, so does the fire.

Seems like a hell of a great verse for an Ivesian-type song.

thegrowlingwolf
For The Daily Growler

From the 2006 Archives


And Now From Iraq--Let's See How the Surge Is Doing

One American soldier was killed Thursday and another was wounded by a roadside bombing during a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

To the south, two policemen from separate commands said villagers had reported finding 20 beheaded bodies near the Sunni Muslim village of Um al-Abeed. The village is near the city of Salman Pak, 15 miles southeast of the capital.

Villagers said the victims were all men aged 20 to 40 and that their hands and legs had been bound, the two officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. [From Yahoo News, June 28, '07]

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Ignorance Is Such Wonderful Bliss

How Dumb Can We Get?
I was watching the Congressional hearings on whether or not Christy Todd Whitman committed a crime that should send her to the hoosegow when she declared New York City air probably cleaner after 9/11 than it was before--and that even at Ground Zero (I like the way Christy kept refering to it as "The Pile"--yeah, the pile of mixed crap, mixed asbestos (and you know asbestos (the Johns-Manville Company--whose heir, Tommy Manville, was a playboy back during the 40s--he married 11 times, maybe 12, but he married more even than Little Mickey Rooney, who was married 8 times--9 or 10 by now, I'm sure) was layers thick in that worthless piece of crap government building center old pompous-ass, high-and-mighty Nelson "Kill Everybody You See Move at Attica" Rockefeller forced on New York Citians--it was supposed to be a state office building wasn't it?--all I know is the Japanese architect who designed it and was building it got so frustrated with the corporate developers F-ing with his original designs he quit the project)), cooked human remains, and just think of all the rats, mice, roaches, and god knows what else that was deep-fried in that horrible but successful military attack against New York City and especially the World Trade Center. I've often wondered, did the CIA keep biological warfare samples in their huge secret offices in those Towers?--who the hell knows was in that air?--oh God, I'm started off on another tangent--it's the tangentialities of life that I love to explore--but there are so many of them--though they all lead to the same destination--the destination the Ignorant are leading us into and confusing us with all of these evidentiary hearings--the truth must be made evident--see? What bullshit. There's no such thing as truth--there's reality--there's a lot of evidence that there's "right NOW"--the reality of where we're at in terms of progress, advancement, common understanding....blah, blah, blah--so back to Christy Todd Whitman (my grandmother warned me about women with three names--OK, so my grandmother was talking about women poets with three names, but it's the same thing with women with male ambitions--like Christine (please! it's only Christy when she's celebrating a big win) Todd Whitman or Hillary RodHam Clinton (by the bye, to hell with the RodHAM once Slick Willie takes over her campaign; then it's gonna be "Just Plain Hill" (and a by the bye within a by the bye (God, I love these convoluted parenthetical mazes I naturally create), they aren't trotting out Chelsea 'cause she's porked up as my sources tell me (actually one of my Flint, Michigan, friends clued me into it)--she's a fatty like her daddy used to be till he had his heart attack--and like her mommy was getting (talk about being "hippy") until her campaign cosmeticians (including the nip-and-tuck doctors, I'm sure--at We the People's expense, by the bye) got a hold of her and did several makeovers on old Hill till they have her at least cosmetized enough to look fairly better than the old dry, pasty, big-hipped, mean-browed Senator Hillary. Whatever Hill looks like on teevee, remember, it's a lie, not really what she looks like up close and personal. I can see Hill looking pretty God-damned wrecked waking up mornings--bet she doesn't sleep with Bill, what'd'ya bet? Though, I'll be honest with you, Hill looks like an easy make to me). (That's one of the greatest parenthetically riddled paragraphs I've ever composed. I'm so proud of myself(ves). Where's my Pull-it-Zer Prize?)

So they held these Congressional hearings and they trotted out private citizen Christine Todd Whitman and the then head of FEMA (Federal Emergency Miscalculating Assholes) and they begin questioning them about the comments they made at the time that seemed to assure New York Citians of the air quality of the city after 9/11 had settled down to its final wrecked state, especially commenting about the air down at that end of Manhattan where the Trade Center buildings used to be, "The Pile," as the Feds want it called--and which Christine Todd Whitman kept calling it over and over to the point it became the obnoxious squealings of a cornered Bitch, and Christine Todd Whitman, oh yeah, is a Rich Bitch--you bet she is, with a huge estate in New Jersey--I forget now how her husband got them as rich as they are but certainly she spent millions to get elected to that what 100,000 buck-a-year job, and then most certainly as Governor of Jersey she added several millions of kickback, cream-off-the-top, payoff monies she got as governor of New Jersey (where all the big pharmaceuticals have their plants and their R&D setups and some have their headquarters--and these rich assholes are lavish spenders when it comes to politicians--lavish and I do mean lavish) (New Jersey governors are usually rich people--including current governor James "Billionaire Big Daddy Loose, No Seat Belt Needed" Corzine--suddenly so good'a man now that he survived his own pompous stupidity--barrelassing in his several-SUV caravan down the New Jersey freeways (gas guzzling SUVs to boot) 90 mph and him not wearing a seatbelt and how many New Jerseyan's have had to pay out big unfair fines when the Jersey troopers pulled 'em over for not wearing their seatbelts while the governor does as he pleases--hey, he's so important--he's in a hurry--and his helicopter was in the shop--oh no--and now he's lucky to be alive he's making all these new laws--even the Governor's gonna have to wear a F-ing seatbelt now, except unless he excuses himself from wearing it).

Then Georgie Porgie Bush called Christine Todd Whitman to Washington, District of Corruption, and he said, "Christeeeen, ah, what the hell do I call you, darlin', Christ or Christy...heh, heh, heh, a little jokin' there, Christy, baby--and she's not a bad lookin' rich bitch either, boys, but anyway, due to her faithful contributing to MY campaign and her expertise on the environment (New Jersey has maybe the worst-quality air in the whole Union), I'm makin' her head of that left-wing-leaning EvironMENTAL (heh-heh-heh) Protection (can I call it a condom? heh-heh-heh, I gotta millyon of 'em) Agency--didn't I disband that agency?--turn it over to FEMA, oh, yeah, but I disbanded FEMA didn't I? er--oh, I haven't done that yet?--shit, well anyway, as Unka Dick would say, 'Fuck that,' and Christy or whatever the hell you wanna be called, I know you're gonna do a heck of a job. And now I'm goin' down to my faux ranch for some rest and relaxation, F the rest of you peones." [Remember, our "president" speaks fluent Messkin][and off camera and mic, the phony "president" was heard saying, "Hey, SS dude, get out of the way, I'm checking out Christy Todd Whitman's ass; has she got one?"]

So Christine Todd Whitman got up before this panel of bloated, pig-jowled, mix bag of Congressional knotheads and soon they were raking over the evidence trying to find out if Christine Todd Whitman knowingly lied to the people of New York City about the quality of the air immediately following 9/11--well, OK, not immediately--maybe a day or two or three later--saying it was fine, no problem, take a deep breath--except on 'The Pile' and then she said, well, maybe on The Pile you better put a handkerchief over your nose--the asbestos, you know. Already the ignorance is showing even before the hearing starts. Jesus X Christy Christ these people have to be the dumbest of us there is--why do we elect these boobs?--I'm talking both parties--dumb as nailheads; I mean DUMB--dumb but gettin' rich--all 'em, getting rich at We the People's expense.

So the extremely dumb Jerry Nadler, he's the representative for the district the WTC and "The Pile" are in--and he's still that district's representative, and he starts peppering sweet, honest, and filthy rich Christy with assinine questions you know Christy Todd will never give an honest answer too-- so she stands tough, like a man--in fact, the older she gets the more she's looking like a man--like Rudi Guiliani, her hero--like Howard Stern, yeah, the radio so-called shock jock who got Christy Todd Whitman elected governor of New Jersey through his radio show's listeners in Jersey--she admitted that herself after her election--and she starts fielding the "hot" (cliche questions really) ground balls Nadler starts hitting at her--"Did you or did you not say the air quality around 9/11 was fine and no problem--didn't you say that, 'yes' or 'no'?" "Representative Nadler, " Christy mannishly barks, "I warned everybody about the danger of the Pile; I was standing outside The Pile warning these crazy volunteer workers, these young screwball idiots who kept flocking down there to help, I warned them, I passed out a pamphlet that warned them that they should at least hold a handkerchief over their noses--and we were warning them to wear masks and respirators but these silly kids laughed at us and said they could hear people screaming among the debris and foul air and they didn't have time to run back home and get their masks and respirators...." "Excuse me, Christy, baby, you weren't there." "I was there in my heart, sir, I'll tell you that, plus I know who I am blaming for the foul air around The Pile, sir, it's the TERRERISTS, that's who; that's who we should be blaming for this, the Terrerists, they caused this and as far as the scientists and there were many who tested that air, hundreds of times, all assured me that was of 'breath deep' quality, not contaminated in the least bit--that's science--the workers themselves and the terrerists are to blame for me saying the air in lower Manhattan was cleaner after 9/11 than even before--or, hell, why blame me, blame Rudi Guiliani, that pompous bastard."

It got so dumb Christy ended up indicting the Terrerists (I use George W. Bush's pronunciation of the word as the correct spelling of his kind of terrorists) and the volunteer workers and Mayor Guiliani (and she's right there--the NYC Fire Department wasn't equipped to handle such a rescue mission because of Rudi's many cuts in the departments funding--like equipment cuts, like cutting a safety rope they needed in order to more successfully rescue people trapped on roofs and high windows and things, plus he never gave them a contract)--I mean, folks, and 9/11 was a military event--this was like a successful military attack against the World Trade Center--they'd warned they wanted those buildings destroyed because they represented the EVIL world of modernism to the Islamics--the EVIL of American Capitalism and Christianity and backing of Israel--blah, blah, blah--the rescue units should have been controlled by the military--except where were the military on that day? For one, they were making sure the Bin Laden family was packed on special planes and flown out of the country--recent documents revealed that Osama, the good Saudi son, paid to have his family flown out of the US--Osama Bin Laden, remember him? Son of a bitch, can you conceive of such shit?--how do you know to fly the Bin Laden family out of this country?--how do you suddenly so tactfully and successfully gather them up, there was a shit load of them, too, and ship them out of the country?--how, you ask? so they couldn't be questionned maybe about what had happened?--and where was our air force on that day? Why they were flying our scared shitless Commander in Chief from his reading My Pet Goat to grade school kids in his brother's State of Florida out to the safety of the SAC headquarters base in Nebraska. The military aides cleaned the "president's" pants out--got 'em some Air Force duds--and from then on the War on Terrerism began--first against Osama Bin Laden but then suddenly doing a 360 and blaming Saddam Hussein and his rascally Iraqis--"We need a strong show of power now," Unka Dick was shouting from his private bunker in Virginia, "We gotta blast some damn A-rabb country to smithereens for this...hey, how 'bout Iraq? Afghanistan ain't got nothin' but poppy crops worth billions, but Iraq has oil we need for the energy to keep our power rolling--how 'bout we capture Iraq and use it as a power stronghold, a central location where we can now dominate the Middle-East--with, of course, a hands off of Saudi Arabia and Prince Bandar Bush and his step-brother Osama--in fact, I've been invited to a tiger hunt at Osama's private hunting lodge in Pakistan."

And oh that Pakistan! A military dictatorship mind you. And now there is evidence they are developing new nuclear weapons, missiles with nuclear warheads, that kind of nuclear technology and that even NOW as we continue to struggle to survive Pakistan has an estimated 55 nuclear devices ready to try out on some yet undecided human beings, though I don't think they're gonna use them on their Islam brothers and sisters, do you? India maybe? but not an Islamic nation--

I could easily predict a use of nuclear warfare before too long. We insist that nuclear energy is the only alternative energy we have--the Sun, oh no, there's no energy from the sun, besides, it's too expensive to use sunpower or windpower--can you believe that crock of shit we're handed?

The solution to Christy Todd Whitman, the War on Terrerism, the War in Afghanistan (great crop of opiates coming over this year--a lot of young people gonna be facing some Prison Industry time after they've gotten themselves addicted and on a SWAT team's list--and soon the CIA is gonna be gettings our poor out-of-work young blacks and Latinos hooked on heroin--yep, it's coming in more and better than ever--old heroin only 40% pure--this Afghan shit coming in--90% pure. Does horse kill? Naw, it just makes you a slave to being a field slave in the billions-of-dollars-a-year the private prison industry in this country needs to maintain its profits and keep its shareholders smoking illegal Cuban cigars are private, WHITE-only clubs around the world. I'll bet Hillary Clinton owns some private prison stock--I'll bet she does; you know America's Mayor, Rudi (Goombah) Guiliani does--hell, he has his own security company--like Marvin Bush had his own security company--why, hell, Marvin Bush ran the security at the World Trade Center--his contract running out the very day they were blown down--9/11--and Marvin Bush can't be held responsible for any security and alarm fuckups that happened that day. "You can't sue me. I'm a Dubai citizen now anyway--me an Neil."

Blah, blah, blah.

These people are so ignorant. I wish their fucking gods would come and take them--Please, and leave this old wolfman behind--we get rid of religious bullshit, we find we've been living in Paradise all along.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

If You Haven't Read Spooner's "Vices Are Not Crimes" Yet, Go Back and Read It--It's Brilliant, Brilliantly Crafted, Great AntiAuthoritarian Thinking
or, if you don't like to read long essays, here's the last paragraph of it--pretty revealing for something written in 1875, the last time the US was bordering on corporate takeover.

6. Except those great crimes, which the few, calling themselves governments, practise upon the many, by means of organized, systematic extortion and tyranny. And it is only the poverty, ignorance, and consequent weakness of the many, that enable the combined and organized few to acquire and maintain such arbitrary power over them.
from Lysander Spooner's "Vices Are Not Crimes"--see The Daily Growler June 24th post.
And thanks to the great soul at wood s lot for running our Spooner tribute.

By the Bye
The Supreme Court, 5-4, took out of the McClain-Feingold campaign fund reform bill the part that said corporations could not run ads hinting at their supporting a certain candidate. The Supreme Court (a bunch of truly dumbass 2nd-story lawyer-types with such a huge right wing they fly totally lopsided and vulgarly through our already vulgar laws--systematically throwing the ones favoring We the People out the window--F us) was simply reenforcing that amendment to our "great" Constitution (written by a slaveholding Virginia aristocrat white man) that makes corporations the same as people--yep, you guessed it, Exxon-Mobil is a US citizen just like you and me and all those Muslim terrerists, like the Philly pizza-boy world-takeover plotters.

Oh what fools we mortals be!

Monday, June 25, 2007

The Daily Growler Gossip & Grapevine Edition

In the Wind
Yes, the wind smells like fart wind--the earth may be farting all over us...the Sun is certainly torturing us--light now, but just wait in a few years all you satisfied people the Sun will teach us who's the true boss of this galaxy, who's the true God of this galaxy. In sunlight we were hatched; at the same time in darkness creatures were also hatched--creatures that have to be blind to survive--the colorless creatures of the deepest and coldest pits of our wonderful ocean system--yep, the one we are trashing--they say there's millions of tons of plastic garbage floating 'round our ocean system; the Gulf Stream--which is dissolving--it's what keeps places like Ireland from icing over--is choked with tar and oil balls, some as big as basketballs--it's choked also with plastic garbage--like plastic jugs and bottles, plastic kitchenwares, plastic garbage cans, plastic toys, plastic packaging--shrink wraps, plastic bags (fast food restaurant bags)--this shit doesn't deteriorate, folks, it just keeps on floatin' along.

Human-animal hybrids are definitely their own worst enemy besides being the worst enemy of all our other beasts cousins and forefathers and mothers, even our protozoan mothers/fathers (they mate with themselves--that's where we get our IDs from)--and also the planet earth's worst enemy--except we don't think we are gonna successfully destroy the evil earth (the home of all the evil and darkness and devils and heathen practices)--and even all the pig-jowled white-blubbery Holy Roller Christian preachers say "Gawd ain't gonna destroy the earth; his son's coming back out of the clouds on a big white horse (from Heaven's best stables, we'll bet) to become King of the Earth"--which will automatically push the button that releases the trapdoor under this instinct-turned-into-a-legend character called the Devil ("Up jumped the Devil in a brand new Cadillac...") pops open and flushes Old Ned right on down the shute that leads straight to Holy Hell, the Lake of Fire (now a gated community being hawked by teevee's own Eric Estrada--it's somewhere down in Arkansas--where else could Hell be?) and then that's that and King Jesus takes over with good Christians like Adolph Hitler and Dick Nixon as his consultants--oh, and by then George W. Bush will certainly be King Jesus's Commander in Chief. We ask, by the bye, who is the keiko-muckity muck of the Holy Roller hierarchy now that Brother Jerry "Pass the Lard" Falwell's been called home to sit at the feet of Jesus and Big Daddy and to receive his Utopian uptown mansion?--"Yep, Jerry old pal, your mansion (designed by Saint Tammy Fay Bakker) is right down at the Deep South end of Solid Gold Boulevard (Father Flotsky Boulevard) at the corner of Rare Emerald Street (Dr. Gene Scott Street). Go, my blubbery son, and enjoy your mansion we've saved for you up here--and try some of Minister Louis Farakhan's She-bazz Fried Fish and Chicken from his take-out place he runs with Brother Lester "Axhandle" Maddox-- while you're down that way--or there's Rabbi Schneerson Lehman's BBQ Rib Joint down there, too; or, hellfire, Jerry, my boy Jesus runs a place called Fish and Loaves down there, all his virgin wives run it--oh, Jerry, baby, you wouldn't need a Protestant would you?...heh, heh, a little God the Father humor, Jere, of course I mean prostitute--how 'bout one of Mary Magdalene's girls coming over to break you into your new big lonely mansion?"

So don't worry, we're not going to destroy the world, just work like dogs to try and destroy it. So, folks, keep on letting the Korean deli owners give you tons of plastic bags--plus those big plastic bottles of Poland Spring we elites have to drink now that Perrier has been proven to be Paris tapwater that's been electrified to give it its bubbles. Human animals are fascinated by bubbles, ever notice that?

Interesting Dude
Rocky Anderson, the Mayor of Salt Lake City is an interesting qwerky kind of dude--Salt Lake City--that's in Utah-Mormon Territory--a beautiful city actually, and weirdly populated, too--why it's the great-dumbass Oren Hatch's home state--and the somewhat home state of presidential front-runner Mitt "More than One Wife's True Democracy" Romney--but the Mayor of Salt Lake City is a Dumbocrat, though he's not very proud of that right now, and he's an outspoken critic of Georgie Porgie Bush, our never honestly elected "president" (if there is such a thing as an honest election--and we at The Daily Growler know there is nothing honest in this Capitalist life we Americans are forced to endure--it's all lies--all fiction as thegrowlingwolf has recently started growling). The Mayor of Salt Lake City--his name is Rocky Anderson--is pissed at the Dumbocratic Party for being ninnies instead of following the people's mandate in the Nov. 2006 elections to get us out of Iraq and to also go ahead and impeach the Bush-Cheney assholes ASAP--to which Nancy "Rich Bitch" Pelosi started saying in her forced-man-like way of speaking--tough bitch talk--"Oh no, impeachment is not on the table...oh no, no, no, in fact, I'm sticking my pretty nose up Georgie Porgie's dark and smelly ass and doing some heavy brownnosing because I'm a tough bitch woman who admires handsome men like George W. Bush and handsome Slick Willie Clinton..." and she swoons over rich evil men like Unka Dick and she swoons over men in uniforms and she's into guns as substitute penises, which, since she has 5 kids or so, I'm sure she's very familiar with the importance of having a penis, the bigger the better--we, apologize--but this is why she is ineffectual as a leader of an impeachment movement--especially since the Dumbocrats are getting richer and richer off all this war--they try and still see the War in Iraq as righteous the same way they accept the War in Afghanistan as good and righteous and moral and it's OK to get rich riding this out-of-control stock market that is zooming daily inspite of bankruptcies, foreclosures, the national debt, etc. being at their highest ever points--personal debt also is out of control--and the stock markets keep zooming up and correcting themselves always in favor of the big-money gangs--of which Nancy Pelosi (the richest woman in California) is a member--that's how she makes her wealth (her paper worth)--now Billy Jeff and Hillary RodHAM Clinton are rich, too, though nothing like Princess Nancy...oops, we apologize--Princess Diana, that precious spoiled fool brat, is America's princess...what a joke it is to see Tiny Brown talking about Prince Hairy Dick and Prince Billy Boy--Tina Brown, that English bitch who almost ruined the American spirit of the New Yorker, if she didn't--we're sure old Harold Ross is rollin' over in his prairie-state resting place, kissing these little privileged brats and young fops bony asses, but in that British know-it-all attitude--"I say, I'm sure Prince Hairy and Prince Bonnie Billy are sophisticated enough to bear up under the salacious things they are subjected to about their dear sweet mother, on whom I have recently finished a book, by the bye...oh yes, it's in the stores now...about America's princess and what a poor sweet little naive regular-old-girl-type girl she was--I mean, dearie, she went out and let the stable boys at Buckingham have some royal you-know-what--now that's being just a regular gal--sure she had affairs with the more elite, too, but I'm sure Bonnie Prince Charles has set them down and explained to them why he chose to bang the rather common (equinish-looking) looking Camilla Parker Bowels out in a mud field rather their mother's nice long tall and pretty well-built body and certainly willing to open those divine gates to so divine a man in Buckingham's scented silk sheets."

So get rich quick off these horrible killing wars like all the politicians and corporate executives and lobbyists and government-patsies and even big-star generals, Bill Gates...

Hey, we have a question, why can't the American people have the same job security as the members of our government? Why can't Americans have the same kind of great health coverage we give these birds. Look at Unka Dick--this son of a bitchin' rich bastard has had 5 heart attacks and wears a pacemaker--he just got a new upgraded one--expensive fucking health bills if you've got that bad a heart condition--a look at him--we mean, come on, he goes bird-shooting all over the world, he's always having to go over to kiss the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia's ass constantly--also going on his famous unannounced drop-in to the Baghdad war zone--still drinking--and he's very well taken care of, the best heart doctors in the world taking care of him and what do you bet We the People of the USA are paying for his health coverage as vice-president--hell, this tinhorn bastard still gets a pension from his days in Congress--so why can't we have such great health coverage. Castro gets it, too, so it ain't got nothing to do with whether you're a commie leader or an authoritarian leader.

So the Mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, says he's pissed off at the Dumbocrats for not impeaching this troop of clowns now running this nation into the ground--blatantly, and right in front of our noses--mocking us all the while to do something about them! Fuck off, the vice president says; and then the phony president chimes in with his Fuck off --those Fuck offs are meant for We the People, folks. No matter what we want, we ain't getting it from our politicians who are all the same and we don't care what color their skin is--they are all the same; they are all liars--big-time liars.

The trouble with Rocky Anderson, he claims he's a personal friend of Mitt Romney's and he just can't believe his old pal Romney who Rocky sez is a progressive is saying the things he's saying, like doubling the size of Gitmo--it's not the Mitt Rocky knows--Rocky seems to really like Miz Romney, too.

Here's another problem with Rocky. He met Mitt when Mitt was head of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics yeah back a decade now--they worked together on putting that Winter Olympics together. Wasn't that a very scandalous affair, the way they bought off the Olympic Committee members to get them to vote for Salt Lake City? We think there was. So what ho, Rocky old boy?

Check out the mayor's website: http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/mayor/

Isn't It Interesting
How there are no campaign discussions on whether Bush-Cheney-Rove stole both elections--2000 and 2004, which we all know they did--it's so obvious--and that the Dumbocrats actually won both those elections--and how neither Dumbo candidate, Al "The Loser" Gore (now the darling of the liberal blog-writing Dumbocrats) or John "The Double Loser" Kerry, made any kind of backbone stance against the Blitz Krieg Repugnicans--and especially the counts in Florida and Ohio where there was without a doubt tons of voter fraud with the owner of Diebold, the company that was running all the electronic voting machines, standing up and openly saying he would make sure Bush won Ohio--and by God, Bush did.

The Dumbos are rich wimpy rich men and women--and as such they are Plutocrats, same as the Repugnicans and their very Plutocratic form of running a government.

The cry of the Neo-Cons is "LOWER all wages! Produce MORE and MORE. Lower all wages again and again. Push the US economy into the garbage can with all the fucking plastic that goes with it. BRING BACK THE OLD PLANTATION--when the white man could actually own human beings and could force them to eat the shit right out of his ass if he so wanted. Old Massah's shit has to be caught and preserved same as the Dalai Lama's once was in old time democratic Tibet."

50 Greatest Sports Jerks of All Time (from CBSSports website)
Go to: http://cbs.sportsline.com/columns/story/10236485
Our favorite was Albert Belle the baseball player:
44. Albert Belle -- This from former New York Times baseball writer Buster Olney: "It was a given in baseball circles that Albert Belle was nuts. ... The Indians billed him $10,000 a year for the damage he caused in clubhouses on the road and at home, and tolerated his behavior only because he was an awesome slugger. ... He slurped coffee constantly and seemed to be on a perpetual caffeinated frenzy. Few escaped his anger -- on some days he would destroy the postgame buffet ... launching plates into the shower ... after one poor at-bat against Boston, he retreated to the visitor's clubhouse and took a bat to teammate Kenny Lofton's boom box. Belle preferred to have the clubhouse cold, below 60 degrees, and when one chilly teammate turned up the heat, Belle walked over, turned down the thermostat and smashed it with his bat. His nickname, thereafter, was 'Mr. Freeze.'"

franny&zoe, the two-headed girl reporter
for The Daily Growler



Sunday, June 24, 2007

Vices Are Not Crimes

One of the Great Essays of American (Pure American) Literature From the Pen of Lysander Spooner--The Daily Growler Brings You the Whole Damn Essay

Vices Are Not Crimes

A Vindication of Moral Liberty

by Lysander Spooner, 1875


I

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.

Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

In vices, the very essence of crime - that is, the design to injure the person or property of another - is wanting.

It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.

Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

II

Every voluntary act of a man's life is either virtuous or vicious. That is to say, it is either in accordance, or in conflict, with those natural laws of matter and mind, on which his physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being depend. In other words, every act of his life tends, on the whole, either to his happiness, or to his unhappiness. No single act in his whole existence is indifferent.

Furthermore, each human being differs in his physical, mental, and emotional constitution, and also in the circumstances by which he is surrounded, from every other human being. Many acts, therefore, that are virtuous, and tend to happiness, in the case of one person, are vicious, and tend to unhappiness, in the case of another person.

Many acts, also, that are virtuous, and tend to happiness, in the case of one man, at one time, and under one set of circumstances, are vicious, and tend to unhappiness, in the case of the same man, at another time, and under other circumstances.

III

To know what actions are virtuous, and what vicious - in other words, to know what actions tend, on the whole, to happiness, and what to unhappiness - in the case of each and every man, in each and all the conditions in which they may severally be placed, is the profoundest and most complex study to which the greatest human mind ever has been, or ever can be, directed. It is, nevertheless, the constant study to which each and every man - the humblest in intellect as well as the greatest - is necessarily driven by the desires and necessities of his own existence. It is also the study in which each and every person, from his cradle to his grave, must necessarily form his own conclusions; because no one else knows or feels, or can know or feel, as he knows and feels, the desires and necessities, the hopes, and fears, and impulses of his own nature, or the pressure of his own circumstances.

IV

It is not often possible to say of those acts that are called vices, that they really are vices, except in degree. That is, it is difficult to say of any actions, or courses of action, that are called vices, that they really would have been vices, if they had stopped short of a certain point. The question of virtue or vice, therefore, in all such cases, is a question of quantity and degree, and not of the intrinsic character of any single act, by itself. This fact adds to the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of any one's - except each individual for himself - drawing any accurate line, or anything like any accurate line, between virtue and vice; that is, of telling where virtue ends, and vice begins. And this is another reason why this whole question of virtue and vice should be left for each person to settle for himself.

V

Vices are usually pleasurable, at least for the time being, and often do not disclose themselves as vices, by their effects, until after they have been practised for many years; perhaps for a lifetime. To many, perhaps most, of those who practise them, they do not desclose themselves as vices at all during life. Virtues, on the other hand, often appear so harsh and rugged, they require the sacrifice of so much present happiness, at least, and the results, which alone prove them to be virtues, are often so distant and obscure, in fact, so absolutely invisible to the minds of many, especially of the young that, from the very nature of things, there can be no universal, or even general, knowledge that they are virtues. In truth, the studies of profound philosophers have been expended - if not wholly in vain, certainly with very small results - in efforts to draw the lines between the virtues and the vices.

If, then, it became so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is, and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult, in nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends, and vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left free and open fro experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself, what is, to him, virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man's whole right, as a reasoning human being, to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," is denied him.

VI

We all come into the world in ignorance of ourselves, and of everything around us. By a fundamental law of our natures we are all constantly impelled by the desire of happiness, and the fear of pain. But we have everything to learn, as to what will give us happiness, and save us from pain. No two of us are wholly alike, either physically, mentally, or emotionally; or, consequently, in our physical, mental, or emotional requirements for the acquisition of happiness, and the avoidance of unhappiness. No one of us, therefore can learn this indispensable lesson of happiness and unhappiness, of virtue and vice, for another. Each must learn it for himself. To learn it, he must be at liberty to try all experiments that comment themselves to his judgement. Some of his experiments succeed, and, because they succeed, are called virtues; others fail, and, because they fail, are called vices. He gathers wisdom as much from his failures as from his successes; from his so-called vices, as from his so-called virtues. Both are necessary to his acquisition of that knowledge - of his own nature, and of the world around him, and of their adaptations or non-adaptations to each other - which shall show him how happiness is acquired, and pain avoided. And, unless he can be permitted to try these experiments to his own satisfaction, he is restrained from the acquisition of knowledge, and, consequently, from pursuing the great purpose and duty of his life.

VII

A man is under no obligation to take anybody's word, or yield to anybody's authority, on a matter so vital to himself, and in regard to which no one else has, or can have, any such interest as he. He cannot, if he would, safely rely upon the opinions of other men, because he finds that the opinions of other men do not agree. Certain actions, or courses of action, have been practised by many millions of men, through successive generations, and have been held by them to be, on the whole, conducive to happiness, and therefore virtuous. Other men, in other ages or counties, or under other conditions, have held, as the result of their experience and observation, that these actions tended, on the whole, to unhappiness, and were therefore vicious. The question of virtue or vice, as already remarked in a previous section, has also been, in most minds, a question of degree; that is, of the extent to which certain actions should be carried; and not of the intrinsic character of any single act, by itself. The questions of virtue and vice have therefore been as various, and, in fact, as infinite, as the varieties of mind body, and condition of the different individuals inhabiting the globe. And the experience of ages has left an infinite number of these questions unsettled. In fact, it can scarcely be said to have settled any of them.

VIII

In the midst of this endless variety of opinion, what man, or what body of men, has the right to say, in regard to any particular action, or course of action, "we have tried this experiment, and determined every question involved in it? We have determined it, not only for ourselves, but for all others? And, as to all those who are weaker than we, we will coerce them to act in obedience to our conclusions? We will suffer no further experiment or inquiry by any one, and, consequently, no further acquisition of knowledge by anybody?"

Who are the men who have the right to say this? Certainly there are none such. The men who really do say it are either shameless impostors and tyrants, who would stop the progress of knowledge, and usurp absolute control over the minds and bodies of their fellow men; and are therefore to be resisted instantly, and to the last extent; or they are themselves too ignorant of their own weaknesses, and of their true relations to other men, to be entitled to any other consideration then sheer pity or contempt.

We know, however, that there are such men as these in the world. Some of them attempt to exercise their power only within a small sphere, to wit, upon their children, their neighbors, their townsmen, and their countrymen. Others attempt to exercise it on a larger scale. For example, an old man at Rome, aided by a few subordinates, attempts to decide all questions of virtue and vice; that is, of truth or falsehood, especially in matters of religion. He claims to know and teach what religious ideas and practices are conducive, or fatal, to a man's happiness, not only in this world, but in that which is to come. He claims to be miraculously inspired for the performance of this work; thus virtually acknowledging, like a sensible man, that nothing short of miraculous inspiration would qualify him for it. This miraculous inspiration, however, has been ineffectual to enable him to settle more than a very few questions. The most important to which common mortals can attain, is an implicit belief in his (the pope's) infallibility! and, secondly, that the blackest vices of which they can be guilty are to believe and declare that he is only a man like the rest of them!

It required some fifteen or eighteen hundred years to enable him to reach definite conclusions on these two vital points. Yet it would seem that the first of these must necessarily be preliminary to his settlement of any other questions; because, until his own infallibility is determined, he can authoritatively decide nothing else. He has, however, heretofore attempted or pretended to settle a few others. And he may, perhaps, attempt or pretend to settle a few more in the future, if he shall continue to find anybody to listen to him. But his success, thus far, certainly does not encourage the belief that he will be able to settle all questions of virtue and vice, even in his peculiar department of religion, in time to meet the necessities of mankind. He, or his successors, will undoubtedly be compelled, at no distant day, to acknowledge that he has undertaken a task to which all his miraculous inspiration was inadequate; and that, of necessity, each human being must be left to settle all questions of this kind for himself. And it is not unreasonable to expect that all other popes, in other and lesser spheres, will some time have cause to come to the same conclusion. No one, certainly, not claiming supernatural inspiration, should undertake a task to which obviously nothing less than such inspiration is adequate. And, clearly, no one should surrender his own judgement to the teachings of others, unless he be first convinced that these others have something more than ordinary human knowledge on this subject.

If those persons, who fancy themselves gifted with both the power and the right to define and punish other men's vices, would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find that they have a great work to do at home; and that, when that shall have been completed, they will be little disposed to do more towards correcting the vices of others, than simply to give to others the results of their experience and observation. In this sphere their labors may possibly be useful; but, in the sphere of infallibility and coercion, they will probably, for well-known reasons, meet with even less success in the future than such men have met with in the past.

IX

It is now obvious, from the reasons already given, that government would be utterly impracticable, if it were to take cognizance of vices, and punish them as crimes. Every human being has his or her vices. Nearly all men have a great many. And they are of all kinds; physiological, mental, emotional; religious, social, commercial, industrial, economical, etc., etc. If government is to take cognizance of any of these vices, and punish them as crimes, then, to be consistent, it must take cognizance of all, and punish all impartially. The consequence would be, that everybody would be in prison for his of her vices. There would be no one left outside to lock the doors upon those within. In fact, courts enough could not be found to try the offenders, nor prisons enough built to hold them. All human industry in the acquisition of knowledge, and even in acquiring the means of subsistence, would be arrested: for we should all be under constant trial or imprisonment for our vices. But even if it were possible to imprison all the vicious, our knowledge of human nature tells us that, as a general rule, they would be far more vicious in prison than they ever have been out of it.

X

A government that shall punish all vices impartially is so obviously an impossibility, that nobody was ever found, or ever will be found, foolish enough to propose it. The most that any one proposes is, that government shall punish some one, or at most a few, of what he esteems the grossest of them. But this discrimination is an utterly absurd, illogical, and tyrannical one. What right has any body of men to say, "The vices of other men we will punish; but our own vices nobody shall punish? We will restrain other men from seeking their own happiness, according to their own notions of it; but nobody shall restrain us from seeking our own happiness, according to our own notions of it? We will restrain other men from acquiring any experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary to their own happiness; but nobody shall restrain us from acquiring an experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary to our own happiness?"

Nobody but knaves or blockheads ever thinks of making such absurd assumptions as these. And yet, evidently, it is only upon such assumptions that anybody can claim the right to punish the vices of others, and at the same time claim exemption from punishment for his own.

XI

Such a thing as a government, formed by voluntary association, would never have been thought of, if the object proposed had been the punishment of all vices, impartially; because nobody wants such an institution, or would voluntarily submit to it. But a government, formed by voluntary association, for the punishment of all crimes, is a reasonable matter; because everybody wants protection for himself against all crimes by others, and also acknowledges the justice of his own punishment, if he commits a crime.

XII

It is a natural impossibility that a government should have a right to punish men for their vices; because it is impossible that a government should have any rights, except such as the individuals composing it had previously had, as individuals. They could not delegate to a government any rights which they did not themselves possess. They could not contribute to the government any rights, except such as they themselves possessed as individuals. Now, nobody but a fool or an impostor pretends that he, as an individual, has a right to punish other men for their vices. But anybody and everybody have a natural right, as individuals, to punish other men for their crimes; for everybody has a natural right not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on the earth. And government has no rightful existence, except in so far as it embodies, and is limited by, this natural right of individuals. But the idea that each man has a natural right to decide what are virtues, and what are vices - that is, what contributes to that neighbor's happiness, and what do not - and to punish him for all that do not contribute to his; is what no one ever had the impudence or folly to assert. It is only those who claim that government has some rightful power, which no individual or individuals ever did, or ever could, delegate to it, that claim that government has any rightful power to punish vices.

It will do for a pope or a king - who claims to have received direct authority from Heaven, to rule over his fellowmen - to claim the right, as the viceregent of God, to punish men for their vices;

[Comments by David T. Freeman: It is most unusual that Lysander made the above statement. All things considered: It won't do for anyone to punish anyone else for their vices, unless the person being punished has specifically requested (authorized) the punisher to punish him or her! So-called "kings," "popes," etc., are really liars, impostors, and parasites. Their claimed "right" and "authority" from "God"/"heaven" is an absurdity which was used to dupe the masses of gullible people whom they "ruled." See Lysander's The Constitution of No Authority for his own, real views on this.]

but it is a sheer and utter absurdity for any government, claiming to derive its power wholly from the grant of the governed, to claim any such power; because everybody knows that the governed never would grant it. For them to grant it would be an absurdity, because it would be granting away their own right to seek their own happiness; since to grant away their right to judge of what will be for their happiness, is to grant away all their right to pursue their own happiness.

XIII

We can now see how simple, easy, and reasonable a matter is a government for the punishment of crimes, as compared with one for the punishment of vices. Crimes are few, and easily distinguished from all other acts; and mankind are generally agreed as to what acts are crimes. Whereas vices are innumerable; and no two persons are agreed, except in comparatively few cases, as to what are vices. Furthermore, everybody wishes to be protected, in his person and property, against the aggressions of other men. But nobody wishes to be protected, either in his person or property, against himself; because it is contrary to the fundamental laws of human nature itself, that any one should wish to harm himself. He only wishes to promote his own happiness, and to be his own judge as to what will promote, and does promote, his own happiness. This is what every one wants, and has a right to, as a human being. And though we all make many mistakes, and necessarily must make them, from the imperfection of our knowledge, yet these mistakes are no argument against the right; because they all tend to give us the very knowledge we need, and are in pursuit of, and can get in no other way.

The object aimed at in the punishment of crimes, therefore, is not only wholly different from, but it is directly opposed to, that aimed at in the punishment of vices.

The object aimed at in the punishment of crimes is to secure, to each and every man alike, the fullest liberty he possibly can have - consistently with the equal rights of others - to pursue his own happiness, under the guidance of his own judgement, and by the use of his own property. On the other hand, the object aimed at in the punishment of vices, is to deprive every man of his natural right and liberty to pursue his own happiness, under the guidance of his own judgement, and by the use of his own property.

These two objects, then, are directly opposed to each other. They are as directly opposed to each other as are light and darkness, or as truth and falsehood, or as liberty and slavery. They are utterly incompatible with each other; and to suppose the two to be embraced in one and the same government, is an absurdity, an impossibility. It is to suppose the objects or a government to be to commit crimes, and to prevent crimes; to destroy individual liberty, and to secure individual liberty.

XIV

Finally, on this point of individual liberty: Every man must necessarily judge and determine for himself as to what is conducive and necessary to, and what is destructive of, his own well-being; because, if he omits to perform this task for himself, nobody else can perform it for him. And nobody else will even attempt to perform it for him, except in very few cases. Popes, and priests, and kings will assume to perform it for him, in certain cases, if permitted to do so. But they will, in general, perform it only in so far as they can minister to their own vices and crimes, by doing it. They will, in general, perform it only in so far as they can make him their fool and their slave. Parents, with better motives, no doubt, than the others, too often attempt the same work. But in so far as they practise coercion, or restrain a child from anything not really and seriously dangerous to himself, they do him a harm, rather than a good. It is a law of Nature that to get knowledge, and to incorporate that knowledge into his own being, each individual must get it for himself. Nobody, not even his parents, can tell him the nature of fire, so that he will really know it. He must himself experiment with it, and be burnt by it, before he can know it.

Nature knows, a thousand times better than any parent, what she designs each individual for, what knowledge he requires, and how he must get it. She knows that her own processes for communicating that knowledge are not only the best, but the only ones that can be effectual.

The attempts of parents to make their children virtuous are generally little else than attempts to keep them in ignorance of vice. They are little else than attempts to teach their children to know and prefer truth, by keeping them in ignorance of falsehood. They are little else than attempts to make them seek and appreciate health, by keeping them in ignorance of disease, and of everything that will cause disease. They are little else than attempts to make their children love the light, by keeping them in ignorance of darkness. In short, they are little else than attempts to make their children happy, by keeping them in ignorance of everything that causes them unhappiness.

In so far as parents can really aid their children in the latter's search after happiness, by simply giving them the results of their (the parents') own reason and experience, it is all very well, and is a natural and appropriate duty. But to practise coercion in matters of which the children are reasonably competent to judge for themselves, is only an attempt to keep them in ignorance. And this is as much a tyranny, and as much a violation of the children's right to acquire knowledge for themselves, and such knowledge as they desire, as is the same coercion when practised upon older persons. Such coercion, practised upon children, is a denial of their right to develop the faculties that Nature has given them, and to be what Nature designs them to be. It is a denial of their right to themselves, and to the use of their own powers. It is a denial of their right to acquire the most valuable of all knowledge, to wit, the knowledge that Nature, the great teacher, stands ready to impart to them.

The results of such coercion are not to make the children wise or virtuous, but to make them ignorant, and consequently weak and vicious; and to perpetuate through them, from age to age, the ignorance, the superstitions, the vices, and the crimes of the parents. This is proved by every page of the world's history.

Those who hold opinions opposite to these, are those whose false and vicious theologies, or whose own vicious general ideas, have taught them that the human race are naturally given to evil, rather than good; to the false, rather than the true; that mankind do not naturally turn their eyes to the light; that they love darkness, rather than light; and that they find their happiness only in those things that tend to their misery.

XV

But these men, who claim that government shall use its power to prevent vice, will say, or are in the habit of saying, "We acknowledge the right of an individual to seek his own happiness in his own way, and consequently to be as vicious as he pleases; we only claim that government shall prohibit the sale to him of those articles by which he ministers to his vice."

The answer to this is, that the simple sale of any article whatever - independently of the use that is to be made of the article - is legally a perfectly innocent act. The quality of the act of sale depends wholly upon the quality of the use for which the thing is sold. If the use of anything is virtuous and lawful, then the sale of it, for that use, is virtuous and lawful. If the use is vicious, then the sale of it, for that use, is vicious. If the use is criminal, then the sale of it, for that use, is criminal. The seller is, at most, only an accomplice in the use that is to be made os the article sold, whether the use be virtuous, vicious, or criminal. Where the use is criminal, the seller is an accomplice in the crime, and punishable as such. But where the use is only vicious, the seller is only an accomplice in the vice, and is not punishable.

XVI

But it will be asked, "Is there no right, on the part of government, to arrest the progress of those who are bent on self-destruction?"

The answer is, that government has no rights whatever in the matter, so long as these so-called vicious persons remain sane, compos mentis, capable of exercising reasonable discretion and self-control; because, so long as they do remain sane, they must be allowed to judge and decide for themselves whether their so-called vices really are vices; whether they really are leading them to destruction; and whether, on the whole, they will go there or not. When they shall become insane, non compos mentis, incapable of reasonable discretion or self-control, their friends or neighbors, or the government, must take care of them, and protect them from harm, and against all persons who would do them harm, in the same way as if their insanity had come upon them from any other cause than their supposed vices.

But because a man is supposed, by his neighbors, to be on the way to self-destruction, from his vices, it does not, therefore, follow that he is insane, non compos mentis, incapable of reasonable discretion and self-control, within the legal meaning of those terms. Men and women may be addicted to very gross vices, and to a great many of them - such as gluttony, drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, prize-fighting, tobacco-chewing, smoking, and snuffing, opium-eating, corset-wearing, idleness, waste of property, avarice, hypocrisy, etc., etc. - and still be sane, compos mentis, capable of reasonable discretion and self-control, within the meaning of the law. And so long as they are sane, they must be permitted to control themselves and their property, and to be their own judges as to where their vices will finally lead them. It may be hoped by the lookers-on, in each individual case, that the vicious person will see the end to which he is tending, and be induced to turn back. But, if he chooses to go on to what other men call destruction, he must be permitted to do so. And all that can be said of him, so far as this life is concerned, is, that he made a great mistake in his search after happiness, and that others will do well to take warning by his fate. As to what may be his condition in another life, that is a theological question with which the law, in this world, has no more to do than it has with any other theological question, touching men's condition in a future life.

If it be asked how the question of a vicious man's sanity or insanity is to be determined? The answer is, that it is to be determined by the same kinds of evidence as is the sanity or insanity of those who are called virtuous; and not otherwise. That is, by the same kinds of evidence by which the legal tribunals determine whether a man should be sent to an asylum for lunatics, or whether he is competent to make a will, or otherwise dispose of his property. Any doubt must weigh in favor of his sanity, as in all other cases, and not of his insanity.

If a person really does become insane, non compose mentis, incapable of reasonable discretion or self-control, it is then a crime, on the part of other men, to give to him or sell to him, the means of self-injury.1 There are no crimes more easily punished, no cases in which juries would be more ready to convict, than those where a sane person should sell or give to an insane one any article with which the latter was likely to injure himself.

XVII

But it will be said that some men are made, by their vices, dangerous to other persons; that a drunkard, for example, is sometimes quarrelsome and dangerous toward his family or others. And it will be asked, "has the law nothing to do in such a case?"

The answer is, that if, either from drunkenness or any other cause, a man be really dangerous, either to his family or to other persons, not only himself may be rightfully restrained, so far as the safety of other persons requires, but all other persons - who know or have reasonable grounds to believe him dangerous - may also be restrained from selling or giving to him anything that they have reason to suppose will make him dangerous.

But because one man becomes quarrelsome and dangerous after drinking spirituous liquors, and because it is a crime to give or sell liquor to such a man, it does not follow at all that it is a crime to sell liquors to the hundreds and thousands of other persons, who are not made quarrelsome or dangerous by drinking them. Before a man can be convicted of crime in selling liquor to a dangerous man, it must be shown that the particular man, to whom the liquor was sold, was dangerous; and also that the seller knew, or had reasonable grounds to suppose, that the man would be made dangerous by drinking it.

The presumption of law is, in all cases, that the sale is innocent; and the burden of proving it criminal, in any particular case, rests upon the government. And that particular case must be proved criminal, independently of all others.

Subject to these principles, there is no difficulty convicting and punishing men for the sale or gift of any article to a man, who is made dangerous to others by the use of it.

XVIII

But it is often said that some vices are nuisances (public or private), and that nuisances can be abated and punished.

It is true that anything that is really and legally a nuisance (either public or private) can be abated and punished. But it is not true that the mere private vices of one man are, in any legal sense, nuisances to another man, or to the public.

No act of one person can be a nuisance to another, unless it in some way obstructs or interferes with that other's safe and quiet use or enjoyment of what is rightfully his own.

Whatever obstructs a public highway, is a nuisance, and may be abated and punished. But a hotel where liquors are sold, a liquor store, or even a grog-shop, so called, no more obstructs a public highway, than does a dry goods store, a jewelry store, or a butcher's shop.

Whatever poisons the air, or makes it either offensive or unhealthy, is a nuisance. But neither a hotel, nor a liquor store, nor a grog-shop poisons the air, or makes it offensive or unhealthy to outside persons.

Whatever obstructs the light, to which a man is legally entitled, is a nuisance. But neither a hotel, nor a liquor store, nor a grog-shop, obstructs anybody's light, except in cases where a church, a school-house, or a dwelling house would have equally obstructed it. On this ground, therefore, the former are no more, and no less, nuisances than the latter would be.

Some persons are in the habit of saying that a liquorshop is dangerous, in the same way that gunpowder is dangerous. But there is no analogy between the two cases. Gunpowder is liable to be exploded by accident, and especially by such fires as often occur in cities. For these reasons it is dangerous to persons and property in its immediate vicinity. But liquors are not liable to be thus exploded, and therefore are not dangerous nuisances, in any such sense as is gunpowder in cities.

But it is said, again, that drinking-places are frequently filled with noisy and boisterous men, who disturb the quiet of the neighborhood, and the sleep and rest of the neighbors.

This may be true occasionally, though not very frequently. But whenever, in any case, it is true, the nuisance may be abated by the punishment of the proprietor and his customers, and if need be, by shutting up the place. But an assembly of noisy drinkers is no more a nuisance than is any other noisy assembly. A jolly or hilarious drinker disturbs the quiet of a neighborhood no more, and no less, than does a shouting religious fanatic. An assembly of noisy drinkers is no more, and no less, a nuisance than is an assembly of shouting religious fanatics. Both of them are nuisances when they disturb the rest and sleep, or quiet, or neighbors. Even a dog that is given to barking, to the disturbance of the sleep or quiet of the neighborhood, is a nuisance.

XIX

But it is said, that for one person to entice another into a vice, is a crime.

This is preposterous. If any particular act is simply a vice, then a man who entices another to commit it, is simply an accomplice in the vice. He evidently commits no crime, because the accomplice can certainly commit no greater offence than the principal.

Every person who is sane, compos mentis, possessed of reasonable discretion and self-control, is presumed to be mentally competent to judge for himself of all the arguments, pro and con, that may be addressed to him, to persuade him to do any particular act; provided no fraud is employed to deceive him. And if he is persuaded or induced to do the act, his act is then his own; and even though the act prove to be harmful to himself, he cannot complain that the persuasion or arguments, to which he yielded his assent, were crimes against himself.

When fraud is practised, the case is, of course, different. If, for example, I offer a man poison, assuring him that it is a safe and wholesome drink, and he, on the faith of my assertion, swallows it, my act is a crime.

Volenti non fit injuria, is a maxim of the law. To the willing, no injury is done. That is, no legal wrong. And every person who is sane, compos mentis, capable of exercising reasonable discretion in judging of the truth or falsehood of the representations or persuasion to which he yields his assent, is "willing," in the view of the law,; and takes upon himself the entire responsibility for his acts, when no intentional fraud has been practised upon him.

This principle, that to the willing no injury is done, has no limit, except in the case of frauds, or of persons not possessed of reasonable discretion for judging in the particular case. If a person possessed of reasonable discretion, and not deceived by fraud, consents to practise the grossest vice, and thereby brings upon himself the greatest moral, physical, or pecuniary sufferings or losses, he cannot allege that he has been legally wronged. To illustrate this principle, take the case of rape. To have carnal knowledge of a woman, against her will, is the highest crime, next to murder, that can be committed against her. but to have carnal knowledge of her, with her consent, is no crime; but at most, a vice. And it is usually holden that a female child, of no more than ten years of age, has such reasonable discretion, that her consent, even though procured by rewards, or promises of reward, is sufficient to convert the act, which would otherwise be a high crime, into a simple act of vice.2

We see the same principle in the case of prize-fighters. If I but lay one of my fingers upon another man's person, against his will, no matter how lightly, and no matter how little practical injury is done, the act is a crime. But if two men agree to go out and pound each other's faces to a jelly, it is no crime, but only a vice.

Even duels have not generally been considered crimes, because each man's life is his own, and the parties agree that each may take the other's life, if he can, by the use of such weapons as are agreed upon, and in conformity with certain rules that are also mutually assented to.

And this is a correct view of the matter, unless it can be said (as it probably cannot), that "anger is madness" that so far deprives men of their reason as to make them incapable of reasonable discretion.

Gambling is another illustration of the principle that to the willing no injury is done. If I take but a single cent of a man's property, without his consent, the act is a crime. But if two men, who are compos mentis, possessed of reasonable discretion to judge of the nature and probable results of their act, sit down together, and each voluntarily stakes his money against the money of another, on the turn of a die, and one of them loses his whole estate (however large that may be), it is no crime, but only a vice.

It is not a crime, even, to assist a person to commit suicide, if he be in possession of his reason.

It is a somewhat common idea that suicide is, of itself, conclusive evidence of insanity. But, although it may ordinarily be very strong evidence of insanity, it is by no means conclusive in all cases. Many persons, in undoubted possession of their reason, have committed suicide, to escape the shame of a public exposure for their crimes, or to avoid some other great calamity. Suicide, in these cases, may not have been the highest wisdom, but it certainly was not proof of any lack of reasonable discretion.3 And being within the limits of reasonable discretion, it was no crime for other persons to aid it, either by furnishing the instrument or otherwise. And if, in such cases, it be no crime to aid a suicide, how absurd to say that, it is a crime to aid him in some act that is really pleasurable, and which a large portion of mankind have believed to be useful?

XX

But some persons are in the habit of saying that the use of spirituous liquors is the great source of crime; that "it fills our prisons with criminals;" and that this is reason enough for prohibiting the sale of them.

Those who say this, if they talk seriously, talk blindly and foolishly. They evidently mean to be understood as saying that a very large percentage of all the crimes that are committed among men, are committed by persons whose criminal passions are excited, at the time, by the use of liquors, and in consequence of the use of liquors.

This idea is utterly preposterous.

In the first place, the great crimes committed in the world are mostly prompted by avarice and ambition.

The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments, to plunder, enslave, and destroy mankind.

The next greatest crimes committed in the world are equally prompted by avarice and ambition; and are committed, not on sudden passion, but by men of calculation, who keep their heads cool and clear, and who have no thought whatever of going to prison for them. They are committed, not so much by men who violate the laws, as by men who, either by themselves or by their instruments, make the laws; by men who have combined to usurp arbitrary power, and to maintain it by force and fraud, and whose purpose in usurping and maintaining it is by unjust and unequal legislation, to secure to themselves such advantages and monopolies as will enable them to control and extort the labor and properties of other men, and thus impoverish them, in order to minister to their own wealth and aggrandizement.4 The robberies and wrongs thus committed by these men, in conformity with the laws, - that is, their own laws - are as mountains to molehills, compared with the crimes committed by all other criminals, in violation of the laws.

But, thirdly, there are vast numbers of frauds, of various kinds, committed in the transactions of trade, whose perpetrators, by their coolness and sagacity, evade the operation of the laws. And it is only their cool and clear heads that enable them to do it. Men under the excitement of intoxicating drinks are little disposed, and utterly unequal, to the successful practice of these frauds. They are the most incautious, the least successful, the least efficient, and the least to be feared, of all the criminals with whom the laws have to deal.

Fourthly. The professed burglars, robbers, thieves, forgers, counterfeiters, and swindlers, who prey upon society, are anything but reckless drinkers. Their business is of too dangerous a character to admit of such risks as they would thus incur.

Fifthly. The crimes that can be said to be committed under the influence of intoxicating drinks are mostly assaults and batteries, not very numerous, and generally not very aggravated. Some other small crimes, as petty thefts, or other small trespasses upon property, are sometimes committed, under the influence of drink, by feebleminded persons, not generally addicted to crime. The persons who commit these two kinds of crime are but few. They cannot be said to "fill our prisons"; or, if they do, we are to be congratulated that we need so few prisons, and so small prisons, to hold them.

The State of Massachusetts, for example, has a million and a half of people. How many of these are now in prison for crimes - not for the vice of intoxication, but for crimes - committed against persons or property under the instigation of strong drink? I doubt if there be one in ten thousand, that is, one hundred and fifty in all; and the crimes for which these are in prison are mostly very small ones.

And I think it will be found that these few men are generally much more to be pitied than punished, for the reason that it was their poverty and misery, rather than any passion for liquor, or for crime, that led them to drink, and thus led them to commit their crimes under the influence of drink.

The sweeping charge that drink "fills our prisons with criminals" is made, I think, only by those men who know no better than to call a drunkard a criminal; and who have no better foundation for their charge than the shameful fact that we are such a brutal and senseless people, that we condemn and punish such weak and unfortunate persons as drunkards, as if they were criminals.

The legislators who authorize, and the judges who practise, such atrocities as these, are intrinsically criminals; unless their ignorance be such - as it probably is not - as to excuse them. And, if they were themselves to be punished as criminals, there would be more reason in our conduct.

A police judge in Boston once told me that he was in the habit of disposing of drunkards (by sending them to prison for thirty days - I think that was the stereotyped sentence) at the rate of one in three minutes!, and sometimes more rapidly even than that; thus condemning them as criminals, and sending them to prison, without mercy, and without inquiry into circumstances, for an infirmity that entitled them to compassion and protection, instead of punishment. The real criminals in these cases were not the men who went to prison, but the judge, and the men behind him, who sent them there.

I recommend to those persons, who are so distressed lest the prisons of Massachusetts be filled with criminals, that they employ some portion, at least, of their philanthropy in preventing our prisons being filled with persons who are not criminals. I do not remember to have heard that their sympathies have ever been very actively exercised in that direction. On the contrary, they seem to have such a passion for punishing criminals, that they care not to inquire particularly whether a candidate for punishment really be a criminal. Such a passion, let me assure them, is a much more dangerous one, and one entitled to far less charity, both morally and legally, than the passion for strong drink.

It seems to be much more consonant with the merciless character of these men to send an unfortunate man to prison for drunkenness, and thus crush, and degrade, and dishearten him, and ruin him for life, than it does for them to lift him out of the poverty and misery that caused him to become a drunkard.

It is only those persons who have either little capacity, or little disposition, to enlighten, encourage, or aid mankind, that are possessed of this violent passion for governing, commanding, and punishing them. If, instead of standing by, and giving their consent and sanction to all the laws by which the weak man is first plundered, oppressed, and disheartened, and then punished as a criminal, they would turn their attention to the duty of defending his rights and improving his condition, and of thus strengthening him, and enabling him to stand on his own feet, and withstand the temptations that surround him, they would, I think, have little need to talk about laws and prisons for either rum-sellers or rum-drinkers, or even any other class of ordinary criminals. If, in short, these men, who are so anxious for the suppression of crime, would suspend, for a while, their calls upon the government for aid in suppressing the crimes of individuals, and would call upon the people for aid in suppressing the crimes of the government, they would show both their sincerity and good sense in a much stronger light than they do now. When the laws shall all be so just and equitable as to make it possible for all men and women to live honestly and virtuously, and to make themselves comfortable and happy, there will be much fewer occasions than now for charging them with living dishonestly and viciously.

XXI

But it will be said, again, that the use of spirituous liquors tends to poverty, and thus to make men paupers, and burdensome to the tax-payers; and the this is a sufficient reason why the sale of them should be prohibited.

There are various answers to this argument.

1. One answer is, that if the fact that the use of liquors tends to poverty and pauperism, be a sufficient reason for prohibiting the sale of them, it is equally a sufficient reason for prohibiting the use of them; for it is the use, and not the sale, that tends to poverty. The seller is, at most, merely an accomplice of the drinker. And it is a rule of law, as well as of reason, that if the principal in any act is not punishable, the accomplice cannot be.

2. A second answer to the argument is, that if government has the right, and is bound, to prohibit any one act - that is not criminal - merely because it is supposed to tend to poverty, then, by the same rule, it has the right, and is bound, to prohibit any and every other act - though not criminal - which, in the opinion of the government, tends to poverty. And, on this principle, the government would not only have the right, but would be bound, to look unto every man's private affairs and every persons personal expenditures, and determine as to which of them did, and which of them did not, tend to poverty; and to prohibit and punish all of the former class. A man would have no right to expend a cent of his own property, according to his own pleasure or judgement, unless the legislature should be of the opinion that such expenditure would not tend to poverty.

3. A third answer to the same argument is that if a man does bring himself to poverty, and even to beggary - either by his virtues or his vices - the government is under no obligation whatever to take care of him, unless it pleases to do so. It may let him perish in the street, or depend upon private charity, if it so pleases. It can carry out its own free will and discretion in the matter; for it is above all legal responsibility in such a case. It is not, necessarily, any part of a government's duty to provide for the poor. A government - that is, a legitimate government - is simply a voluntary association of individuals, who unite for such purposes, and only for such purposes, as suits them. if taking care of the poor - whether they be virtuous or vicious - be not one of those purposes, then the government, as a government, has no more right, and is no more bound, to take care of them, than has or is a banking company, or a railroad company.

Whatever moral claims a poor man - whether he be virtuous or vicious - may have upon the charity of his fellow-men, he has no legal claims upon them. He must depend wholly upon their charity, if they so please. He cannot demand, as a legal right, that they either feed or clothe him. and he has no more legal or moral claims upon a government - which is but an association of individuals - than he has upon the same, or any other individuals, in their private capacity.

Inasmuch, then, as a poor man - whether virtuous or vicious - has no more or other claims, legal or moral, upon a government, for food or clothing, than he has upon private persons, a government has no more right than a private person to control or prohibit the expenditures or actions of an individual, on the ground that they tend to bring him to poverty.

Mr. A. as an individual, has clearly no right to prohibit any acts or expenditures of Mr. Z, through fear that such acts or expenditures may tend to bring him (Z) to poverty, and that he (Z) may, in consequence, at some future unknown time, come to him (A) in distress, and ask charity. And if A has no such right, as an individual, to prohibit any acts or expenditures on the part of Z, then government, which is a mere association of individuals, can have no such right.

Certainly no man, who is compos mentis, holds his right to the disposal and use of his own property, by any such worthless tenure as that which would authorize any or all of his neighbors - whether calling themselves a government or not - to interfere, and forbid him to make any expenditures, except such as they might think would not tend to poverty, and would not tend to ever bring him to them as a supplicant for their charity.

Whether a man, who is compos mentis, come to poverty, through his virtues or his vices, no man, nor body of men, can have any right to interfere with him, on the ground that their sympathy may some time be appealed to in his behalf; because, if it should be appealed to, they are at perfect liberty to act their own pleasure or discretion as to complying with his solicitations.

This right to refuse charity to the poor - whether the latter be virtuous or vicious - is one that governments always act upon. No government makes any more provision for the poor than it pleases. As a consequence, the poor are left to suffer sickness, and even death, because neither public nor private charity comes to their aid. How absurd, then, to say that government has a right to control a man's use of his own property, through fear that he may sometime come to poverty, and ask charity.

4. Still a fourth answer to the argument is, that the great and only incentive which each individual man has to labor, and to create wealth, is that he may dispose of it according to his own pleasure or discretion, and for the promotion of his own happiness, and the happiness of those whom he loves.5

Although a man may often, from inexperience or want of judgement, expend some portion of the products of his labor injudiciously, and so as not to promote his highest welfare, yet he learns wisdom in this, as in all other matters, by experience; by his mistakes as well as by his successes. and this is the only way in which he can learn wisdom. When he becomes convinced that he has made one foolish expenditure, he learns thereby not to make another like it. And he must be permitted to try his own experiments, and to try them to his won satisfaction, in this as in all other matters; for otherwise he has no motive to labor, or to create wealth at all.

Any man, who is a man, would rather be a savage, and be free, creating or procuring only such little wealth as he could control and consume from day to day, than to be a civilized man, knowing how to create and accumulate wealth indefinitely, and yet not permitted to use or dispose of it, except under the supervision, direction, and dictation of a set of meddlesome, superserviceable fools and tyrants, who with no more knowledge than himself, and perhaps with not half so much, should assume to control him, on the ground that he had not the right, or the capacity, to determine for himself as to what he would do with the proceeds of his own labor.

5. A fifth answer to the argument is, that if it be the duty of government to watch over the expenditures of any one person - who is compos mentis, and not criminal - to see what ones tend to poverty, and what do not, and to prohibit and punish the former, then, by the same rule, it is bound to watch over the expenditures of all other persons, and prohibit and punish all that, in its judgement, tend to poverty.

If such a principle were carried out impartially, the result would be, that all mankind would be so occupied in watching each other's expenditures, and in testifying against, trying, and punishing such as tended to poverty, that they would have no time left to create wealth at all. Everybody capable of productive labor would either be in prison, or be acting as judge, juror, witness, or jailer. It would be impossible to create courts enough to try, or to build prisons enough to hold, the offenders. All productive labor would cease; and the fools that were so intent on preventing poverty, would not only all come to poverty, imprisonment, and starvation themselves, but would bring everybody else to poverty, imprisonment, and starvation.

6. If it be said that a man may, at least, be rightfully compelled to support his family, and, consequently, to abstain from all expenditures that, in the opinion of the government, tend to disable him to perform that duty, various answers might be given. But this one is sufficient, viz.: that no man, unless a fool or a slave, would acknowledge any family to be his, if that acknowledgment were to be made an excuse, by the government, for depriving him, either of his personal liberty, or the control of his property.

When a man is allowed his natural liberty, and the control of his property, his family is usually, almost universally, the great paramount object of his pride and affection; and he will, not only voluntarily, but as his highest pleasure, employ his best powers of mind and body, not merely to provide for them the ordinary necessaries and comforts of life, but to lavish upon them all the luxuries and elegancies that his labor can procure.

A man enters into no moral or legal obligation with his wife or children to do anything for them, except what he can do consistently with his own personal freedom, and his natural right to control his own property at his own discretion.

If a government can step in and say to a man - who is compos mentis, and who is doing his duty to his family, as he sees his duty, and according to his best judgement, however imperfect that may be - We (the government) suspect that you are not employing your labor to the best advantage for your family; we suspect that your expenditures, and your disposal of your property, are not so judicious as they might be, for the interest of your family; and therefore we (the government) will take you and your property under our special surveillance, and prescribe to you what you may, and may not do, with yourself and your property; and your family shall hereafter look to us (the government), and not to you, for support: - if a government can do this, all a man's pride, ambition, and affection, relative to this family, would be crushed, so far as it would be possible for human tyranny to crush them; and he would either never have a family (whom he would publicly acknowledge to be his), or he would risk both his property and his life in overthrowing such an insulting, outrageous, and insufferable tyranny. And any woman who would wish her husband - he being compos mentis - to submit to such an unnatural insult and wrong, is utterly undeserving of his affection, or of anything but his disgust and contempt. And he would probably very soon cause her to understand that, if who chose to rely on the government, for the support of herself and her children, rather than on him, she must rely on the government alone.

XXII

Still another and all-sufficient answer to the argument that the use of spirituous liquors tends to poverty, is that, as a general rule, it puts the effect before the cause. It assumes that it is the use of the liquors that causes the poverty, instead of its being the poverty that causes the use of the liquors.

Poverty is the natural parent of nearly all the ignorance, vice, crime, and misery there are in the world.6 Why is it that so large a portion of the laboring people of England are drunken and vicious? Certainly not because they are by nature any worse than other men. But it is because, their extreme and hopeless poverty keeps them in ignorance and servitude, destroys their courage and self-respect, subjects them to such constant insults and wrongs, to such incessant and bitter miseries of every king, and finally drives them to such despair, that the short respite that drink or other vice affords them, is, for the time being, a relief. This is the chief cause of the drunkenness and other vices that prevail among the laboring people of England.

If those laborers of England, who are now drunken and vicious, had had the same chances and surroundings in life as the more fortunate classes have had; if they had been reared in comfortable, and happy, and virtuous homes, instead of squalid, and wretched, and vicious ones; if they had had opportunities to acquire knowledge and property, and make themselves intelligent, comfortable, happy, independent, and respected, and to secure to themselves all the intellectual, social, and domestic enjoyments which honest and justly rewarded industry could enable them to secure - if they could have had all this, instead of being born to a life of hopeless, unrewarded toil, with a certainty of death in the workhouse, they would have been as free from their present vices and weaknesses as those who reproach them now are.

It is of no use to say that drunkenness, or any other vice, only adds to their miseries; for such is human nature - the weakness of human nature, if you please - that men can endure but a certain amount of misery before their hope and courage fail, and they yield to almost anything that promises present relief or mitigation; though at the cost of still greater misery in the future. To preach morality or temperance to such wretched persons, instead of relieving their sufferings, or improving their conditions, is only insulting their wretchedness.

Will those who are in the habit of attributing men's poverty to their vices, instead of their vices to their poverty - as if every poor person, or most poor persons, were specially vicious - tell us whether all the poverty within the last year and a half7 have been brought so suddenly - as it were in a moment - upon at least twenty millions of the people of the United States, were brought upon them as a natural consequence, either of their drunkenness, or of any other of their vices? Was it their drunkenness, or any other of their vices, that paralyzed, as by a stroke of lightning, all the industries by which they lived, and which had, but a few days before, been in such prosperous activity? Was it their vices that turned the adult portion of those twenty millions out of doors without employment, compelled them to consume their little accumulations, if they had any, and then to become beggars - beggars for work, and, failing in this, beggars for bread? Was it their vices that, all at once, and without warning, filled the homes of so many of them with want, misery, sickness, and death? No. Clearly it was neither the drunkenness, nor any other vices, of these laboring people, that brought upon them all this ruin and wretchedness. And if it was not, what was it?

This is the problem that must be answered; for it is one that is repeatedly occuring, and constantly before us, and that cannot be put aside.

In fact, the poverty of the great body of mankind, the world over, is the great problem of the world. That such extreme and nearly universal poverty exists all over the world, and has existed through all past generations, proves that it originates in causes which the common human nature of those who suffer from it, has not hitherto been strong enough to overcome. But these sufferers are, at least, beginning to see these causes, and are becoming resolute to remove them, let it cost what it may. And those who imagine that they have nothing to do but to go on attributing the poverty of the poor to their vices, and preaching to them against their vices, will ere long wake up to find that the day for all such talk is past. And the question will then be, not what are men's vices, but what are their rights?


NOTES

1. To give an insane man a knife, or any other weapon, or thing, by which he is likely to injure himself, is a crime.

2. The statute book of Massachusetts makes ten years the age at which a female child is supposed to have discretion enough to part with her virtue. But the same statute book holds that no person, man or woman, of any age, or any degree of wisdom or experience, has discretion enough to be trusted to buy and drink a glass of spirits, on his or her own judgement! What an illustration of the legislative wisdom of Massachusetts!

3. Cato committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Caesar. Who ever suspected that he was insane? Brutus did the same. Colt committed suicide only an hour or so before he was to be hanged. He did it to avoid bringing upon his name and his family the disgrace of having it said that he was hanged. This, whether a really wise act or not, was clearly an act within reasonable discretion. Does any one suppose that the person who furnished him with the necessary instrument was a criminal?

4. An illustration of this fact is found in England, whose government, for a thousand years and more, has been little or nothing else than a band of robbers, who have conspired to monopolize the land, and, as far as possible, all other wealth. These conspirators, calling themselves kings, nobles, and freeholders, have, by force and fraud, taken to themselves all civil and military power; they keep themselves in power solely by force and fraud, and the corrupt use of their wealth; and they employ their power solely in robbing and enslaving the great body of their own people, and in plundering and enslaving other peoples. And the world has been, and now is, full of examples substantially similar. And the governments of our own country do not differ so widely from others, in this respect, as some of us imagine.

5. It is to this incentive alone that we are indebted for all the wealth that has ever been created by human labor, and accumulated for the benefit of mankind.

6. Except those great crimes, which the few, calling themselves governments, practise upon the many, by means of organized, systematic extortion and tyranny. And it is only the poverty, ignorance, and consequent weakness of the many, that enable the combined and organized few to acquire and maintain such arbitrary power over them.

7. That is, from September 1, 1873, to March 1, 1875.