Artists: Support your local farmer!
At the end of October I will be meeting with my customers as they pick up their delicious custom-reared, grass-fed, humanely-treated organic petit beef and pastured pork. I would like to wear a shirt with a simple farm logo on the pocket.
However, I am remakable unartistic.
Is there an artist out there who would do a simple line drawing of the missus and I in an American Gothic pose with Bonnie between us?
Has anyone noticed that Sadie’s advertisment seems to be specifically designed to exclude the Minister of Propaganda:
“Political leanings falling between moderate and conservative”
Sadie, I think the MOP would make a great co-blogger at Fistful of Fortnights. He could be the Bruce to your Cybill.
Mrs. Smallholder has always been a big fan of firearm control.
The Foreign Minister will recall our heated college debates over the Second Amendment. I was always firmly convinced that the “well-regulated” part of the Second Amendment gave the (state) government the power to, well, regulate, firearm ownership and use. But I admitted that rifles and shotguns ought to be available to the citizenry (not as a right but as a reasonable tool). Mrs. Smallholder wanted to get rid of all the guns.
It is remarkable what farm life will do for you.
When the Maximum Leader and I were decrying the New Orleans gun seizures on the phone, we digressed, as we are wont to do, toward self-protection laws.
Evidently, Louisiana law says you may not use force to stop property crime.
In Virginia, you can shoot a burglar who is in your home. The assumption is that you have a reasonable concern about the safety of your family in the midst of a property crime.
In Virginia, you are also allowed - nay, required - to shoot dogs harassing your livestock.
So I posited the question to Mike: If I looked out my window and saw cattle rustlers trying to load Bonnie into the back of their truck, would I legally be allowed to shoot them?
The Maximum Leader and I regretfully concluded that I would probably get in serious legal trouble because the thieves were not physically inside my domicile.
My dear pacifist wife, th one who didn’t want me to get the .307, piped up from the peanut gallery:
“Who cares if it’s legal? If someone tries to steal our cow, shoot them. We’ve got pigs. Who’s going to know?”
The Volokh Conspiracy did a series of articles about the confiscation of firearms in the aftermath of Katrina. The local (state?) government’s actions in this case enrage me.
First of all, going door to door to collect guns will not accomplish the object of the seizure: to keep jackasses from shooting at rescue/relief workers. The proper response to people who shoot at Red Cross convoys is to kill them.
If the Smallholder clan was less German and more Cajun, and happened to live in the Big Easy, you can be assured that we would have evacuated (or at least the wife and kids - depending on how low my putative Lousiana farm land was, I might stay to save the livestock). The lives of my family come first. Always.
The people who stayed were stupid*.
But let’s assume that the Smallholder clan had ridden out the storm. As the incompetence and “Lord of the Flies”ishness of the evacuee shelters became apparent, I would not take my family there. If we had (and we would) drinking water and food, we would stay put rather than expose the kids to the disease and brutish nature of our fellow survivors.
And then one day the police show up at my door and demand that I turn over my 307? When there are looter and pillagers and rapists and lion and tigers and bears (oh my!) running amuck and amock?
No.
Not just no.
Heeeeeellllllll no!
I wouldn’t confront the officer (you always lose), but I would lie and say we didn’t have a firearm in the house and thank the Good Lord that there isn’t any national firearm registry.
Almost makes a guy want to join the NRA.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader does not wish ill to befall North Carolina, or Southeastern Virginia… But he did hope that Tropical Storm/Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ophelia might have made landfall and quickly progressed northward over land.
Mainly because we haven’t gotten a drop of rain at the Villainschloss for nigh on 3 weeks. It is nasty dry out there. Mrs Villain’s garden has given up the ghost and your Maximum Leader’s rose bushes are on the virge of being cut back and prepared for winter….
Need rain…
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has written twice about useless think tank reports becoming new over the past week. Well it seems great minds are thinking alike. See Dan Dresner and Virginia Postrel.
The “decadent phase” of think tanks? Your Maximum Leader has to get in on some of that action.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Britney Spears-Federline has named her baby.
Congratulations Britney! You’ve just given birth to a Volunteer State Blogger! No not that one. This one. Your Maximum Leader likes Preston Taylor Holmes. He’s funny.
Carry on.
This is what is wrong with agricutlure today.
Government subsidies of the family farm don’t help small farms - they overwhelmingly go to big corporate businesses that are bad for farmers, the consumers, the animals, the low wage workers, and the environment.
My cousin owns a remarkably similar facility in Wisconsin - 1400 cows and a dozen imported workers.
“Teabow Farms, about five miles north of Frederick, has a herd of 1,820 animals, of which 950 must be milked daily. There are 18 hired hands.”
The article doesn’t explain what the land base is. But if this is typical of a milk factory, then the base is disproportionately small. An acre of grass can absorb the nutrients deposited by a cow over the course of a year without runoff and leaching into water systems. My cousin has 1400 milk cows and 1400 heifers on 200 acres. Mmmm. Manure lagoons! Smells like… victory… for the banks! And e coli in the drinking water.
Note the number of non-milking heifers. Half the herd. It takes two years for a heifer to grow large enough to calve and produce. So this means that a half the heifers are calving each year - so the cull rate of the milking cows is 50% - most cows last only two lactations, long enough, on average to produce her replacement (half the calves are relatively worthless bulls). Cows aren’t culled willy-nilly. Living conditions are so atrocious that the cows are breaking down at this rate - ruptured udders, blind teats, blown-out knees, disease, etc. In fact, at this rate of turnover, it doesn’t make sense to control diseases like Johnes that don’t affect milk production until a cow is four or five years old - but on these mega farms, they’ll be dead before Johnes stops the flow of liquid. The fact that Johnes is incredibly painful way before the milk dries up is irrelevent.
We need to get government out of agricultural subsidies (admittedly almost impossible given the way the Electoral College and Senate magnify the power of farm states). If we didn’t subsidies the giant industrial factories, economics would tilt towards sanely-sized FAMILY farms.
The government that governs least governs best.
Somebody (Sadie?) give Fabienne some smelling salts.
A major problem in urban areas is anonymity. Kids, teenagers and adults are more likely to try to get away with immoral behavior if they believe they can hide behind a mask (figuratively and not literally) and not be identified by witnesses.
In a small town, school, subdivision or canton, people know each other. If my kid steals your apples, you’ll let me know and I can correct his moral lapse. If your kids are annoying the neighborhood with loud music, we’ll talk. Knowing from the get go that their actions can affect other people - a knowledge enforced by both parents and the entire community - helps kids learn to empathize with others.
When I taught in Baltimore (and with the afternoon program in Harrisonburg), I saw a many, many kids who really did not perceive other people to be human beings - they saw other people as instruments to be callously used, manipulated, taken advantage of, or harmed. I haven’t seen many kids who live in attentive communities suffering under this delusion.
Does church make people good?
Or do good people generally go to church?
The Maximum Leader’s mea culpa and Phin’s comment had me flashing back to working in Baltimore.
The citizenry of Baltimore is very religious.
And would have acted much the same way as the citizens of New Orleans.
I was constantly stunned by the melodramatic proclomations of Christian belief from kids who were dishonest, selfish, profane, promiscuous, drug-using thugs.
I also have many friends who are not religious but who hold themselves to a very high moral standard. A good example would be my good friend the Minister of Propaganda. He’s honest, hardworking, generous, loyal… well, he’s a walking book of virtues except for that whole celibacy thing.
So, in my experience, the term “churchgoing” doesn’t necessarily equate with “moral.”
In many areas, churchgoing folks do tend to be good people as well. But are they good because they believe in God or because basically good people get involved in community activities like church?
Maybe the breakdown isn’t religion - maybe it’s a rural vs. urban thing.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been thinking about a comment from a he threw together a short while ago. He feels the need now to restate, that is to say, restate more clearly, the point at which he was driving. He must do so lest you all start to think that your Maximum Leader is going to start making Pat Robertson-esque pronouncements about how God will use the weather to punish the unrighteous.
In this post your Maximum Leader started off by snarkily commenting on the sometimes useless studies presented by news organizations as news. In this case specifically it was a study by the Brookings Institution showing that married couples provide more financial stability, and stability in general, for families than single parents.
Your Maximum Leader stands by his comments that we didn’t need another study to inform us of that which any marginally politically engaged person has known was the case for the past 40 years. But after those comments your Maximum Leader needs to start restating.
As your Maximum Leader has said on many prior occasions, he sometimes posts without proper editorial review of his own work. He posts some rather loosely thought out opinions. In most cases your Maximum Leader has favoured commenting quickly at the expense of editorial clarity.
He did not do himself, or you dear minions, a service by that modus operandi today.
It would seem, upon review, that he implied that the chaos, disorder, lawlessness, and other wretched fates to befall New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina may have been the result of a certain Godlessness exhibited by the residents of New Orleans. A Godlessness not duplicated in Mississippi.
That was not meant to be the thrust of where your Maximum Leader’s comments were going.
A snarky, yet deserved, comment from our own Minister of Propaganda caused your Maximum Leader to re-read his post and think again about what he wrote. Upon review he can see where the idea he wanted to write about became muddled.
The idea that your Maximum Leader wanted to more clearly articulate was not that the Hurricane devastated the non-religious more than the religious; although that interpretation can be easily made from what he wrote. (It is also an interpretation not borne out by any facts.) Moreover, he wanted to point out that the reaction of the population to the privations and destruction that resulted from the Hurricane could, perhaps, be judged by the moral beliefs of those affected by the Hurricane. This is to say that one could use going to church as being an indicator of reaction. The more likely a person was to go to church the less likely they were to become part of a roving mob looting stores, firing guns at the National Guard, and terrorizing their neighbours. It is an imperfect indicator, but your Maximum Leader will maintain a useful one. Church attendance is not the only indicator.
Your Maximum Leader meant to speak much more broadly, and perhaps plainly. He believes that there were many contributing factors to the descent into lawlessness we saw in New Orleans. Let him describe some of them.
The first is basic human nature. When one is no longer constrained by the police powers of “the state” there is a temptation to also throw aside all of the contraints of civil society and act only out of self-interest and self-satisfaction. This is the Hobbesian in your Maximum Leader coming out. He firmly believes that we all have the potential to devolve into brutish thugs acting only to satisfy personal desire. But that potential is held in check by a number of factors. Many of which were absent or degraded in the population of New Orleans.
The second factor is civil society. That is to say those elements of human association outside of the immediate control of “the state.” Civil society, for the purposes of this discussion, is interaction with neighbour, being part of a community, cooperating with others and interacting with others using unwritten, but learned, guidelines for conversation and behaviour. Broadly speaking being a part of civil society is being what used to be called civilized.
It is somewhat ironic that the word civilized has at its root the word for “city.” In the case of New Orleans after the storm the city was most uncivilized.
Your Maximum Leader stated a moment ago that when one is unconstrained in behaviour by the power of the state that it is often civilized behaviour that constrains his actions. But in New Orleans civilized behaviour was not a constraining factor. Why?
To begin there always has been a hedonistic streak in New Orleans. It wasn’t called “The Big Easy” for nothing. New Orleans was a refreshing change from traditional America in many respects. It was one of those places where you could “let your hair down” and cut loose.
Laissez les bon temps roulez! You always heard that in New Orleans. Let the good time roll! Order that extra appetizer at dinner. Don’t share that sinfully delicious dessert. Have another drink. Visit another strip club. Flash your tits to get some beads. Hook up with a stranger. No one cares if you fall down drunk in the streets. We could all be dead tomorrow. At any moment life as we know it could end.
Contained in those common phrases is a kernel of naive hedonism that should not be overlooked. “Everything we know could be gone tomorrow so live it up today.” New Orleanians prided themselves for living according to that belief. They founded a tourist industry on it.
The problem is that suddenly one tomorrow everything was gone and it was no longer possible to live it up today. Your Maximum Leader believes that a life of living for the bon temps contributed to the fall of civilization in New Orleans. When the party ended no one knew how to react. So many fell back on human nature. A nature that is opposed to constructive, cooperative interaction with others.
Beyond the historic hedonism of the city one cannot overlook poverty. The strain of urban poverty in New Orleans has always been characterised by corruption, crime, and (for the past 40 years) dependency. New Orleans is famous for corruption and petty crime. Your Maximum Leader has seen people shaken down on the streets of New Orleans by the police. (They’ll take $20 from you now to save themselves the effort of doing paperwork for some petty offence.) Your Maximum Leader has seen reports that the overall crime rate in New Orleans is many times higher than the national average. Crime, corruption and hedonism seem to walk hand in hand in New Orleans.
Dependency in New Orleans has taken many forms. Dependency on federal, state, and local welfare and assistance programs. Without those programs functioning you have a substancial population that is angry and filled with a sense of entitlement. Add to anger and entitlement a natural disaster that takes away whatever a person has and threatens their life and the results become Hobbesian.
Where dependency on federal, state, and local assistance programs becomes the norm, traditional support groups (churches and civic associations) suffer. In the case of churches, there is a great societal benefit reaped from church attendance. That benefit is the inculcation of moral values and belief in behavioural absolutes in congregations. A belief in something greater than, and outside of, oneself is a powerful motivator to behave in an acceptable, civilized, way.
And that brings your Maximum Leader back to where he started… In areas outside of New Orleans, areas that didn’t have the same culture as New Orleans you didn’t have the same reaction among the populace to the destruction wrought by Katrina. The traditional bonds of civilization held in places like Biloxi, Waveland, and Pascagoula. There is, your Maximum Leader thinks, something to be said about that.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader asks you, “Do you have what it takes to be very Sexy Sadie’s Co-blogger?”
Sadie is looking for a co-blogger. Not a guest blogger mind you. A co-blogger. Sort of like a friend with benefits… Only it is really like a blogger with no benefits… (So to speak.)
Sadie asks only that you fill out her form and tell her why you want to join the par-tay.
Your Maximum Leader thinks there are a few other questions she should ask…
(more…)
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maxmum Leader sees that the hottest story on the news wire right now appears to be Britney’s baby.
Yes. Britney violated the laws of God and Nature and reproduced with a complete waste of DNA. Now their baby boy has been brought into the world. No update on the name. The article says Preston was one choice. Some other tabloid article a while back suggested Vegas as a name.
Either way the kid will be screwed up.
Carry on.
Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees on the new wire that a Brookings Institution/Princeston study shows that marriage improves a couple’s financial situation and increases familial stability.
Haven’t we known that for about 40 years now? Indeed, if you read even part of the transcript of the press conference announcing the study findings you will see time after time that speakers on the panel comment that the findings are not new news.
The press conference transcript shows there is a lot of discussion concerning going to church and how church-going men and women seem to have more stable families when the get married and are less likely to have children out of wedlock. Many speakers also discussed parenting, and marriage classes as helping a lot.
Your Maximum Leader doesn’t doubt the effectivness of classes. But he wonders when the hell did you have to have a class to teach you all you needed to know about marriage and parenting? Oh yes… Classes were needed right about the same time that traditional morality was sacrificed on the altar of relativism and diversity and children no longer had the benefit of observing marriage and parenting first-hand.
Perhaps some of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans can be traced to a similar root cause. An acquaintance of your Maximum Leader’s just returned from Waveland, MS. He was there to move his family from the Mississippi gulf coast to his home in Virginia. These people lost nearly everything. As they put it, “We lost everything, except what was in our attic. Have you seen the stuff in YOUR attic recently?”
When asked about looters and the breakdown of civil society they responded that they didn’t see anything like what happened in New Orleans. A group of people did loot a strip mall in their town. But the concensus was that the people responsible were “not from round here.” They said they formed “watch groups” by neighborhood and made sure that “they knew anyone coming into or going out of” their neighborhood.
Now these people from Mississippi are not rich by any extent. They are white, black, hispanic. But they didn’t return to some Hobbesian state when the hurricane hit. They describe themselves as “good God-fearin’” people. Perhaps that had something to do with it.
Carry on.
