Closer To The Heart

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When I was kid, I would watch a show called Connections. Even as a boy, I favored serendipity and chance as the most interesting historical forces. I also loved how he would pull all of these seemingly unrelated bits together into a single theme. That’s still with me and I struggle each week to do the same with the podcast. This week I may have stumbled onto a solution. Tying things together musically, rather than thematically may be the ticket.

One of the things I do with the blog is start with a subject line. Whatever happens to be on my mind at the time I start, I form a subject line and then write to it. I find it makes for quick work, usually about 30 minutes per post. For the podcast, I’m going to start with a musical genre or maybe a band and then keep that in mind as I select topics. Doing that this week made quick work of the process. I also like the result very much. This is a good show.

This Week’s Show

Contents

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

Google Play Link

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

31 thoughts on “Closer To The Heart”

  1. Z Man, I’m glad I’m not a Libertarian. As much as I enjoyed the thrashing you gave Matt Welch and his crew, it was hard not to have some sympathy for him for how badly you beat him. I had to look away.

  2. Enjoyed the podcast Z, surprised that you haven’t heard of Spandrell’s Bloody Shovel blog. Then again us fan boys need to remember that you’re entered to time off. Two of his best posts from my perspective are as follows https://www.google.ie/amp/s/bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/the-spectre-of-nationalism/amp/
    https://www.google.ie/amp/s/bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism/amp/
    The spectre of nationalism is interesting as it captures the attitude of official Ireland towards the EU perfectly, as if it is a benign deity. Similar to the inner/outer US parties embrace of the proposition nation nonsense. Both positions are slowly but increasingly coming under assault by the younger native generationa. Just hope it’s not too late and that my two young kids will still have a world with working plumbing to look forward to.

  3. will you comment on this #QAnon conspiracy nonsense? It’s running rampant on social media right now…as far as I can tell, it’s based on some postings by QAnon in the last few months that predict some sort of deliberate collapse of the economy engineered by trump, who will then use the army to build the wall…Qanon theorists (who are all MAGA trump personality cult adherents), believe that Qanon is some insider who is leaking this info out to us and that the omnibus bill is just trump playing 4d chess…

  4. I agree with your assessment of western women. Somebody (maybe a red-pill place like Heartiste) once said that feminism is just the world’s biggest shit test. (and we’re failing)

    I was in a mixed gender unit in the Marines for a while (hated it – much preferred my time in Infantry and Armor units). Despite (or because of) all the coddling, the women Marines always seemed to find important office work, or became the safety vehicle drivers whenever we marched with combat gear or did any kind of strenuous training. It was a joke that nobody called them on.

  5. Your understanding of libertarian thought is so ignorant that it’s appalling you even feel the need to have an opinion on it. Your view of libertarian thought is the same shit tier level of the right stuff feds. America isn’t and never will be a homogeneous society and yet you shit on the only way out which is total decentralization which is mind you the original intent of the American project itself. You’re totally locked arms with the smug liberal in that you have all the answers and are unwilling to let the pieces fall where they may. Reason Magazine is akin to what the Neo-Cons are to paleo-conservatism yet you have no issue summing up all of Libertarian thought as Reason.com. I’d like to think that you were more intelligent than that but obviously you’re not. It’s tragic i even have to comment on this because it’s so self evident that it’s like telling a retard the sky is blue.

    • Is your name “iron” because you got hit in the head with one and it left a permanent mark on your forehead?

  6. “Normative”. One of those words that pepper the abstracts which you read. The ruling elites in my yut made sure to impress me with the evidence that Warren Harding was a moron, the proof being that he coined a word–“Normalcy”.

    • Those who think that the claim that Trump and W. are and were low-IQ morons and that His Royal Blackness Barack I and Felonia von Pantsuit (ht: Kurt Schlicter) were like, the smartest people *ever* forget that the same was said about Reagan, and about JFK ….and that it goes at *least* as far back as Wilson/Harding.

      • Wasn’t it a hoot when somebody pulled Kerry and W’s grades from Yale (from the pre-inflation days) and it turned out W had a higher GPA than Kerry?

  7. We’ve done a better job discouraging cigarette smoking (still legal) than we have keeping people off of drugs. It’s one of the few subjects which I generally agree with Reason. What swung me was seeing the costs of drug enforcement.

    Massive federal and state enforcement agencies. Huge infringements on our rights to investigate and enforce laws against drugs. Mexico is now a failed narco-state. And my brother-in-law’s nephew is dead.

    The kid got hooked on pain-killers after an injury. Then was cut-off from pain-killers because of government rules. So he moved on to harder stuff, got clean and relapsed a few times. Got back into it and bought a stronger batch – and died.

    Sure people used to get hooked on opium and laudanum and will if the stuff is legalized. The difference to me is that pharmacists, not gangsters sold it. And cops weren’t breaking down doors and shooting people because of it.

  9. “Whiteness” and “White Privilege” are just substitutes. What they are really fighting against is Western Civilization. I mentally do the substitution when I hear this nonsense.

  10. That shotgun hobo idea is ridiculous, especially when just dressing them up like cops works much better!

  11. I think I fully tapped out on the libertarian viewpoint (at least on drug legalization) when I read of a heated exchange between a sheriff of a small Appalachian town wiped out by Oxy and Roxies, and some scumbag lobbyist for the Sacklers/Purdue pharma. This bug man was lecturing the rural sheriff about the free market and the sheriff interrupted him, “Your free market is killing my community.” Some people have the iron will to resist all temptation, some are basically human jellyfish, and the rest are somewhere in between. Limiting access and socially sanctioning things that can kill people is a good idea, as a general rule. I don’t want to live in a world (or at least a community) where some abstract “principal” allows a company to bribe doctors into saying something’s not harmful, and then chastises people who get addicted and die as making the wrong personal choice. Incidentally the DEA has wide latitude in shaping policy with lobbyists on how much of a schedule ii drug gets produced per year. They could choke off supply at the source, quite easily, but they won’t, because they want millions of pills on the street to make it easier for them to seem like they’re heroes when they catch dealers further down the food-chain with thousands of pills. You’d be surprised, incidentally, how many cops and doctors are pill heads, or maybe not.

    Re: Marijuana legalization, it’s a classic case of what the Derb calls “Narrative Collision.” All these “green” growers know damn well how growing marijuana leeches minerals, consumes tons of energy when grown hydroponically and wrecks water tables when grown outdoors, and they don’t care (it’s a lot worse than your lawnmower). Also, you have to apply Moore’s Law of Exponential Growth to marijuana cultivation, because every two or three years someone makes a much stronger strain (for which no experimental data is available). We’re to the point where these mad scientists are basically creating smoke-able schizophrenia and a hallucinogen that has nothing to do with your daddy’s weed.

    • There’s an interesting documentary on this called “How To Make Money Selling Drugs” and it is mostly from a libertarian point of view. There’s no arguing that the war on drugs has warped American society in some very bad ways. On the other hand, the proliferation of recreational drugs has warped American society in profound ways too.

    • I keep my bookmark and still peruse occasionally at LewRockwell.com. Even with their paleo bent and respectful writers like Rockwell, Tom Woods, Tom Delorenzo, and even our host here and a few others, I can’t play around with their anarcho or whatever ideology.

      And it is an ideology which demonstrates cult like reactions. Hail Arby’s for the latest sandwich ( what, no local delis near you guys.) Amazon is just everything, fuck your local merchant and his money grabbing high prices. One of the regulars there was looking for a quick graphic design for his blog and asked for submissions ( I loathe that, my profession). Found a cheapy for $10 overseas and done in a day. Hail the free market.

      Screw them along with the Reason crowd and every other lost political soul that identifies with them. All due respect to a few at Rockwell.

      • Another fool who equates libertarian thought with Reason.com. That’s like saying Samuel T. Francis is a moron because of whatever Bill Kristol said.

        Hans Hermann Hoppe – Libertarian ubermensch
        https://youtu.be/KD6efV3dEPs

        Here’s Steve Sailer talking at Hans Hermann Hoppe’s “Property and Freedom Society” but you morons keep your focus on some leftist morons over at Reason Magazine.

        https://youtu.be/jYE93MhFhGk

        • Well you are no winning me over with that.
          It’s not just Reason but hey, good luck with all that.

        • With that nasty personality of yours it;’s no wonder that your average Libertarian can’t get elected dog catcher. I’ve met other libertarians like you and no one likes them, they are nasty and creepy.

          You guys have never grown up and certainly have no understanding of people.

    • Thanks for the laugh.
      I saw somewhere recently that prior to prohibition Minneapolis had 400 bars, after the Volstead act, it had 800.

      Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit et al have certainly wiped out homicides by banning guns.

      • Starting a sentence “Most weed” is like saying “Most illegal immigrants.” Even though statutes have gotten laxer and decriminalization is probably a fait accompli where it isn’t already the law, there’s a ton of weed (actually many tons) still being grown outdoors, that isn’t factored into the equation for the same reason the taxman can’t tell you how much moonshine is made in illegal stills per year. And, due to the onerous state and federal bite that’s going to be put on marijuana once it’s totally legal (if that happens) that’s going to encourage an underground economy (re: outdoor growing) even more. Good marijuana is hard to grow, but decent marijuana will grow if you just broadcast the seeds in a field and ignore them.

        • All I was doing was pointing out how the weed industry has changed since the 1970’s. I live in Cali and this subject is in the news all the time. In the 80’s the feds developed airborne technology that made it easy to find — and therefore destroy — large outdoors grows. Plus there is the constant danger of some other group coming in and taking your crop, in addition to pests and so forth.

          Then of course there is the fact that the hydro grown weed is of much higher quality than the outdoor stuff.

          But you cranky old fukks keep huffing and puffing about the past — it’s what you do best.

    • Spot on about the last part. One of my cousins is a reasonably famous animal geneticist. Did his PhD out at Cal in the early 80s. He envied all the plant guys because, on the side, they were all working on improving the various pot cultivars to improve potency, determine optimal grow cycles and hydroponic techniques. Unlike all the other “poor” grad students, these guys always had money in their pockets. You can thank them for getting us away from the old “stems and seeds” stuff we grew up with.

    • That’s a keeper of an essay. Only things have changed with the PRC and they have cash to spare these days. But I say, let them pour trillions down the black hole of Africa.

  15. YES. “Connections” is brilliant, as are the two sequel series and “The Day the Universe Changed.” Everything documentary that followed owes its existence to James Burke. Should be required viewing (as should “Yes, Minister,” for those unfamiliar with the way the political class is united against the rest of us).

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