Weekend Open Thread

I suppose we could all do a lot worse than just calling this place TBFKADW — “The Blog Formerly Known as Dean’s World”. Anyway, I think DE will come out of hibernation one day and will roar back to blogworld hyperactivity.

I had been promising Dean for a couple of years or more in emails and phone conversations that I would start contributing postings here. Can I still do that under the present setup? If so, I promise to come up with stuff occasionally that I think you will all disagree with. That’s what aging contrarians are for, isn’t it?

I surely wish the late SMA were still around for these online discussions. He was a man who impressed me.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

(Well, here we are at going on 8am on November 1. Which means I survived Halloween night. Which means you Irish lads/lassies didn’t do me in. [It was you Irish lads/lassies who brought the world this Halloween stuff as part of the general Celtic cultural baggage, wasn't it?])

MLS, that was a well-written description of modern liberalism you commented here. But based on that, I’m not sure that anybody could tag me at all, except maybe as Old Man Harris. Read on, and draw your own conclusions:

1) Guns and our right to own them are not only constitutional to me, but bordering on holy. How else could you describe a guy who keeps not just one but two federally-registered Thompson submachine guns, model M1A1, designed for use in World War II, in addition to an AR15, a couple of Browning Hi-Power 9mms, and a genuine Remington-Rand Typewriter Company 1943 Colt Automatic Pistol, model M1911A1?

2) I favor areawide/countywide land use planning and zoning designed to restrict urban sprawl from eating up what’s left of our farmlands and open spaces in urbanizing counties such as Dane in southern Wisconsin, along with light rail transit to get a significant number of automobiles off the arterial highways feeding into Madison and choking up the traffic in that isthmus-based city.

3) I want all illegal aliens — meaning anybody who came into the United States illegally — picked up and dumped back where they came from, along with their children. Furthermore, I want all instruction in our schools to be conducted solely in the English language. I want nobody here starting up or maintaining a divisive culture that threatens the Anglo-Saxonism for which this country was founded in the age of enlightenment of the 18th century. Further, I want immigration restricted largely to Europeans and others whose cultures are most likely to dovetail with our own.

4) I want the national and state prison systems more or less emptied of everyone except persons convicted of violent felonies, judged too dangerous to be let loose in civil society. Prisoners so released should have all their civil liberties restored to them, including the same right to keep and bear arms as I enjoy.

5) I want no more involvement of US armed forces in foreign wars without a specific declaration of war by the Congress of the United States. And if that, I want any such war pursued to the unconditional surrender of whatever enemy gang, enemy state, or enemy culture we have taken on. In other words, if terrorism is to be used, I want our armed forces to be the deadliest and most threatening terrorists in human history. Which was exactly the way our greatest generation and our foreign allies won World War II. Further, the primary task of our armed forces should be that of guarding the entirety of our land borders and our coastal waters from encroachment by smugglers or enemy aliens.

6) I want reform of the tax collection systems of this country that would make the 50 state departments of revenue the main agents of collections of tax money, for federal as well as state and local use. The role of the US Internal Revenue Service would thereafter be limited to arranging quarterly and annual collections from the states; enforced, of course, by the police powers — and if necessary, the military powers, of the United States government.

7) Choices of sexual identity or sexual persuasion, and of female reproductive rights, should be left for the 50 individual states to determine, as based on the preferences of their voting citizens.

The american nation and government should be brought to realization that we are engaged in a protracted conflict with a significant segment of the Islamic civilization, more threatening to non-islamic cultures and societies than Hitler’s nazi empire or Lenin’s and Stalin’s communist empire ever were, and guarded against accordingly.

9) Some large scale national and international projects I want to see accomplished:

a. A land bridge across the Bering strait from northwest Alaska to the northeast corner of the Chukchi peninsula in the northeastern corner of russian Siberia. The bridge would be designed to carry an all-weather covered railway and a summer-only auto and truck highway joining the two hemispheres.

b. Manned exploration of Mars, and the beginning of a planned terraformation of that planet to eventually sustain a significant human population.

c. A national directory of email addresses, along with a national change of e-address (NCOE) system, under general direction and management of the United States Postal Service.

So. What am I? Liberal? Conservative? Libertarian? Radical? All of the above?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Kevin,

We appreciate your presence on Dean’s World. But there would never have been a Dean’s World blogsite without the work of many, many years poured into this project by Dean Esmay himself. He has his shortcomings. But over some seven years, I’ve had time to come to understand the better angels who undoubtedly mount guard over him. Which is quite and admission coming from an Apatheist like me.

So why don’t you give it a try to treat him for what he has become — a man who made a small online world for maybe hundreds of posters and commenters on just about any topic? We don’t want to lose you, and we sure as hell do not want to lose Dean. Which means, try to find a way to politely and quietly drop any and all ultimatums.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI