Day 316: A week of disability

It’s Day 316 of The Oligarch Olympics and Day 76 of Ohio’s Boo-Hoo Curfew.

Deb and I are well. Maybe it’s the vitamins.

We both have four-wheel-drive trucks, so when winter comes to Second Chance Ranch we don’t log a whole lot of snow-removal time — because we really don’t have to. Sometimes we totally ignore our short driveway and wait for the white stuff to melt.

But there are other reasons to move snow. Yesterday, for example, I was expecting a FedEx delivery and broke out the shovel. The snow-on-rain-on-snow encasing our driveway and front walk meant that I wasn’t shoveling as much as I was chopping and hacking at two or three inches of ice.

I managed to clear a four-foot-wide path up the driveway, from the street to our front door. Out of respect for a hard-working delivery driver it was the least I could do — and trust me, I did the least necessary. It wore my old ass out.

It was around 6pm when FedEx showed up. I watched out the window, dumbfounded, as the driver pulled past our driveway, threw on his flashers, got out and walked across our snow-covered front yard to the door. He dropped the package, turned around and took the same path back to his truck.

No good deed….

Oh, speaking of snow, I gotta say that few things make country folk smile as much as seeing those big East Coast cities (or any big city) get buried under two feet of the stuff. Makes our day.

This is also Day Seven, for me, of being “disabled” by the planet’s biggest social-media platform. I still suspect it’s a permanent ban, despite my having a clean account up to last Wednesday. I’ve received no word from my “betters,” one way or the other.

That doesn’t bother me a bit.

One reason for my unconcern is that Ubi Libertas blog has been seeing more than twice as many readers since Wednesday than it did before I got caught in The Purge. A lot of you have chosen to share snippets and links, which is gratifying.

You’re making a difference, People.

It should go without saying, but I’m gonna say it now anyway — I won’t change a damned thing. I refuse to censor myself for “cancel culture,” not even for this blog’s readers.

As for those leftist nannies, like the one who “reported” me to Thinkpol last week, I think it’s important to remind ourselves why they’re trying to shut us down — they fear us. And they should. They’re incapable of battling us on the field of ideas, and so their answer is trying to silence us.

“Either America survives and the Left is defeated, or the Left survives and America is defeated. It’s as simple as that. We are in a civil war.”

Dennis Prager, July 4, 2020

This is America versus the Left. It’s Liberty versus its archenemy. It pits their hysteria against our Reason, putting their transformation at odds with our foundation.

The Left has political power. It controls the Permanent State. It dominates popular culture. And despite that, it can’t silence us. Still we refuse to bow.

Is it any wonder that they hate us?

That leads me into something else I’ve been thinking about for a while. The picture I just painted — the anti-American Left in charge of much of our world — is maddeningly accurate. Technology and media, entertainment and sport, finance and the State, all are firmly in the grasp of enemies of traditional Americans.

There’s one thing the Left doesn’t control — and it won’t, because it can’t.

The individual.

For all of the canceling and reimagining and fundamental transforming of America, the Left traffics in collectivist horseshit. And while we can’t avoid being affected by their attempts at social engineering, not completely, as individuals there’s no need for us to be at the effect of it.

When we’re driven by culture, we submit to it. We lose. But when we choose and act as individuals, independent of culture, we create our own power. We win.

The Founders knew this. They built a new nation on a foundation of individual Liberty. They understood that the individual, although the smallest of building blocks, was the strongest and most essential component for creating a just, free society that would last.

(By the way, and in case you missed it, you also just learned why collectivism always yields a weak, short-lived result.)

So resist being frustrated by the world whirling around you and focus on what you can control. Make independent choices and take actions like the born-free American you are. Seek out like minds. Do business where your values are honored.

Don’t go along with the herd. Stand out. Speak up. Lead. Disobey. Be an individual, dammit — a free individual, the kind of block on which can be built a strong family, a strong community and, in coming years, a strong America for our children and grandchildren.

Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.

#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath

(Header image: The compass app on my mobile phone lets me use the built-in camera to capture a photo of the heading, along with other location data. I grabbed this shot in Muskingum County last August, from the comfort of my camp chair. For the record, I had to put my beer down.)