Dude, it was your suggestion, I am merely and unsnarkily interested in what you have to say. So it’s up to you, you already know my position on private property.

Viz your healthcare post. The nineteenth century private charity thing on healthcare didn’t work too well for my ancestors nor for most other folk’s ancestors which is why governments got involved in the provision. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to directly fund the healthcare insurance of somebody who can’t afford it. I would though like you, me and others, to give up small contributions to those who can’t afford it and with a method that minimizes free-loaders. Tell me how the Church prevents free-loaders and you’ll understand why the “gummint” got involved!

Smitty: Dude, now come on, don’t be shy. I can tell you are really, really smart and I look forward to learning stuff. And, besides the subject is intriguing and my guess is D.W. would love to read it too.

Just for your records, I aint giving up my property rights any time soon, not even to someone who asks politely.

I can only wish that the contretemps with the State DOT could have escalated to them ignoring your permit fee request and coming anyway , only to be served a Cease and Desist Order by you, duct taped to the end of your 12 gauge…..while you were wearing a Happy Face Tshirt.

What is highly entertaining is the fact that the DOT actually had someone maintaining they were doing a Historical research tour.

I would be very interested in seeing you expand the above sentence, either in a FPR Blog if possible or in a ‘comment.’

Re:”property rights:”
Ten or fifteen years ago the State of Ohio, Dept. of Transportation, called the wife and says, “We’re coming on your property to do a historical survey in preparation for a highway which may be going across or near your land.”
So the wife’s not happy and says “what do you think?” and I says, “Only if they buy a permit.” (We’d been involved in the permitting of a hazardous waste facility). So the next day they call back and the wife tells them they gotta buy a permit, for $1,000. (I figured that was a fair price, considering license plate fees, property taxes, hunting tags, fishing tags, ect.) The bureaucrat at the Dept. of Trans. gets her pants in a knot and starts ranting and raving (she didn’t see the humor of my fee proposal!) and threatens the wife with a lawsuit, whereupon the wife says, “See you in court.”
Well, the sheriff called a few weeks later whining about me not getting along with the state boys but that was it, the matter was over. ALL of my neighbors had quietly and meekly given in to the will of the State.

So, I figure I won’t cede my property rights to some church or guild or committee or gummint and if I must, well then the game’s over anyway and we’re living in Amerika and it’s lock and load time.

You have a perfect thing to contribute to this sordid venue…a full essay on your day with Ginsburg at the VMI

Cheeks, you live far too close to the Federal District not to be worried. Volcanos are but pikers in comparison to that Krakatoa of Graft and Best Intentions Gone Armed and Dangerous. For the record, I “tolerate” these distributist reveries because I find them interesting when compared against the flatheaded excesses of the last 30 years. I grant myself a little license to explore it because I think they have a snowball’s chance of hell in actually getting one of these systems up and running like they did @ Mondragon. Here in this lapsed-republic, the citizen heartily embraces “collectivization” in thought, transgression and consumerism ….following the turbid stream right into penury but if anybody mentions the word in an economic sense, they wet their panties and jump for mommas lap and start sucking their thumbs.

“As to the VMI…..one of my treasured possessions is a little black and white photograph of cadets, in dress uniform, scratching their heads in disbelief as they read Ginzburgs “Howl” in class. Cripes is it rich.”

Good grief, DW, where on Earth did you get that?

Because I remember exactly when that happened. You see, one of my roommates belonged to that rare and dubious breed, the VMI English major. There were not many of them, at least at that time, so anytime some man of letters or another was invited to school to speaker or do whatever that sort does, all of them are involved in it in some way or another. So when we were seniors, somehow Ginsburg got invited to come to the I, and he had to give him a tour of the school. I had never heard of him at the time, but we all got an education, the general reaction was “WTF?!!” Followed by many, many jokes about the soundness of English majors. I think the whole thing was worth it, because he put on some public poetry reading one evening, and the Commandant and his wife went, dressed to the nines, clearly ignorant about who Allen Ginsburg was, and he read Howl. The strained discomfort multiplied by basic Southern hospitality not to make a scene, was priceless.

According to my roommate Pete, on the tour Ginsburg was rather intimidated by the place and what went on there, which surprised me, I thought it’d turn him on or something.

Re: this: “Lastly, in the issue of “owning your piece of the planet unencumbered by the unjust impositions of the State”…this status covers a large ground extending from an exclusive ownership that is predatory and extractive, leaving a mugging in its wake and then there is the proper and right honorable end of the spectrum…the property owner acting as steward in a respectful effort at stewardship of his or her own in concert with their fellow. This is a serious issue and at current, the trend favors the more dysfunctional muggers and corporatist exploiters concerned primarily with rapine in the service of short term profit.”
There are laws that define land usage. If we can’t enforce those laws, then perhaps we can’t enforce any laws and we already exist in a state of anarchy. The right to private ownership of property is the ground of liberty. It was in the eighteenth century and it is today and damn well worth fighting for…don’t ya think?

As a good, fallen away Catholic I have a fondness for the Pope other than when he speaks of grand world councils.

“Needless to say, in our case, 200 years of a democratic republic seems to be evolving a new class of receding brains at the helm and all of it without the great art and music frequently produced during earlier times…”
No, palsy, I don’t agree at all. The problem is not republicanism rather the rise of sundry distortions: socialism, progressivism, alienation, and the loss of meaning of the founding symbols: liberty, freedom, federalism, justice.

The problem is we didn’t follow Jefferson’s dictum and shed a little blood every twenty years or so. If we’d hung a couple of dozen congressmen/senators, bankers, and regulators over this latest wet dream and left their bodies to rot on lamp posts our bettors might have gotten the message.

So, for me, it’s no go with Catholic Distributism (socialist succotash!) but no hard feelings, palsy. We can argue over this, not that I like to argue!