Forward Vision

Hamiltonian Empire Halfway to Outlawing Voluntary Healthcare

It’s a little hard to describe how I’m feeling as the Hamiltonian Empire moves toward prohibiting outright the free exercise of medicine across the 50 states. What I want to know is: in a world of such willing slaves, where is a freeman safe? To which land am I expected to retire in lieu of this — the original land of liberty?

If my simian contemporaries cannot perceive their own chains, how can I begin to teach them to pick the lock? The voter seems satisfied with the notion that there is a healthcare “crisis” and without an Imperial intervention, there would be people dying in the streets. Will anyone ask why the governments of our sovereign states cannot handle the matter? Surely because they would not come to such a coercive conclusion! The states are in a market, competing amongst themselves. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has preempted this drive to ‘universal healthcare’ and is suffering the consequences. Costs are rising, care is suffering, and desirable residents are leaving for other states. Coercionists always seek the highest plane of power to project their edicts because they know that individuals have a natural drive to be free. The other advantage is that the citizens are more easily duped by matters ‘elevated’ to ‘national’ level. They can be convinced that the sound rules of interpersonal respect — do not hit, steal, or murder — no longer apply. They can be convinced that there are complexities to the issue that can only be understood by the likes of Nancy Pelosi.

Until you morons of the left and right figure out that “federal law” is just another way to say “no escape,” you will continue to sink into poverty and despair. And worse, you’ll drag the innocent and enlightened down with you.

I often wonder, at moments such as these, whether the classical liberal tradition was too hasty in embracing another universal — suffrage.


FW: Gun Control Kills

If this video doesn’t make you cry, you may be a tin man:

I found the video through ‘Austin Gun Rights Examiner’ Howard Nemerov’s article about how gun control at Fort Hood allowed Nidal Hasan to take so many lives.


Climate & Culture

I stumbled upon a very interesting article on a hypothesis I’ve ruminated upon for some time: the idea that climate and geography profoundly affect culture. It may seem obvious, but few thinkers allow its implications to color their judgments.

America is a great case-in-point. Founded under a universalizing, Enlightenment-era liberal ideology, Americans have internalized a peculiar lack of attachment to place. (For more on this, visit the wordsmiths at Front Porch Republic). However, I have noticed in my late-night, pajama-clad research sessions, that warm States are different than cold, and coastal States different than inland.

I determined that despite my love of warm weather, the trade-offs were intolerable: high crime, corruption, dishonesty, and disease.

Meanwhile, coastal areas appear to be wealthier, more sophisticated, and to have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes their cultures widely envied and imitated.

Anyway, making such generalizations is certainly a troll-baiting exercise, but it’s just food for thought.

For the record, I admire the politics of the Mountain West, which is not coastal, and Texas, which is not cold. But we’re looking for tendencies here…


Attention, Libertarian!

The sage Lew Rockwell wrote this piece in 1996, during another one of those tribal conflicts we call federal presidential elections.

It is important reading for those of us who quickly call ourselves ‘libertarians’, accepting the pessimism and hopelessness that hangs on that label. It reminds us that we are part of a proud tradition that has proven its success and popularity worldwide since the Age of Enlightenment, and even back to antiquity: liberalism. (more…)


Forward: Why I Prefer Two-Dollar Bills

The $2 Bill

The $2 Bill

Briggs Armstrong, a student at Auburn University, came up with a great way to raise awareness about the harm done by the Federal Reserve: pay only in $2 bills.

Here’s why I prefer $2 bills:
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Religion: Friend or Foe?

Is religion a friend or a foe?

Watching the movie Traitor this afternoon, I gained new insight into the value of religion, in this case Islam. While in a Yemeni prison, the protagonist gives a fellow inmate his rations after a bully had thrown the other man’s rations onto the ground. The bully then confronts the protagonist, telling him “I decide who eats and who starves.” The protagonist fights the bully and his gang alone and, though adept at combat, is overwhelmed. However, other inmates notice his good deed and his daily prayers. The next time the gang confronts the protagonist, the other Muslim inmates come to his aid, and he is left alone.
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The Western Standard of Secession

The Western Standard, a Calgary-based journal of libertarian and conservative thought, wrote an article on the conflict in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It brought to light the fundamental issues of the caucasian conflict. My comment, lengthy enough to be a post itself, is reprinted here:
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Forward: A Sane Voice on Travel Security

Aug 05
1 Comment

The National Post’s editorial board wrote a piece that pretty well elucidates my response to the Greyhound Bus attack in Manitoba.

I’m glad someone in this nutty world isn’t calling for more ’security measures’ every time something bad happens.

Why are the NDP wrong on every issue? I hear they now want to take ownership of your organs, unless you specifically opt-out.

Don’t get me started on the issues down south. Have you ever heard of millimeter wave scanners? They’re coming to an airport near you to digitally expose your spouse’s and children’s naked bodies. Someone ought to arrest those creeps at the TSA, each and every one of them. More on that later.


Just A Bunch of Sign-Waving Blimp Renters…

The Campaign for Liberty’s Shadow Republican Convention is moving on up – to the Target Center! I’m so excited for all of us, and if I wasn’t moving so close to the date, you bet I’d be there. I expect our revolution to light up Minnesota (to be clear, that’s a metaphor).

My favorite part of the article linked above was where Paulites were described as “loud and sometimes rowdy, usually young, sign-waving blimp renters.” They might as well have called us ‘wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tube men.’ I guess there are worse insults…

Whatever his strategy, Dr. Paul moved liberty from an ignored concept to a ridiculed concept. So, according to Schopenhauer, we’re on the map! Now, we must face violent opposition, and finally acceptance. I sure hope I live to see that last one.

P.S. Did you hear Dr. Paul just received a huge advance for his memoirs? Congratulations, Doc; you deserve it.


Tunnels to Freedom

This article should clear up any misgivings about how private transit companies would expand their networks. If the legal environment was such that companies could homestead land deep underneath others’ property, then I’m sure private enterprises would be building subways in every American city. That’s how it was in New York, back when the largest subway system in the world (after the Tube) was built entirely by private companies.

For the sake of our lungs and lifestyle, get the State out of transit. All they do is suffocate mass transit and build highways through our neighborhoods. Jane Jacobs, you should have been a libertarian.


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    About This Site


    Mike Vine is a classical liberal / libertarian, anti-federalist, secular humanist, and distinguished caretaker of the Remnant.

    Forward Vision is meant to be a catalyst for human progress.

    From kindergarten, most of us are conditioned to accept the status quo, keep our heads low, and go with the flow. This is your one-stop-shop for a whopping dose of "snap out of it!"

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