Maggie's Farm

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.  Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected.  No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

James Madison, National Gazette, 1792

Good grief (h/t Vanderleun). Where's the stable and the manger?

Liberty is the sovereignty of the individual.

Josiah Warren

Sunrise in the Catskills, 1826

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819

We'll recycle things from the archives, but nothing new during vacation break.

Here's my final big batch of Wellfleet architecture photos. Our prayer is that Wellfleet be never yuppified, and that it remain ramshackle, weather-beaten, weedy, and perfectly imperfect. Like Nantucket, before the Beautiful People discovered it in the 1980s as an alternative to the Hamptons.

Hatch's has been there since before I was a little kid, with the same sign with a Striper eating a lobster. If you ask them to keep some Toro (Bluefin tuna belly), they will have it for you the next day, if not sooner. It's the best food in the world (flash-grilled over charcoal, not as sushi).

This grand old boathouse on the harbor is a great place to rent for the summer, but it's booked years in advance, and it ain't cheap. Yes, that is�low tide. There is water against the pilings at high tide:

�Lots more photos below the fold on continuation page -

That piece we posted on semi-colons this week reminded me of this one from 2 years ago:

2008 coolest in 5 years. Too cold for my tomatoes, up here. They do not like these cold nights. Gonna get colder, too. Hey, Al Gore - mail me a new down comforter and a heater for my garden.

Chavez' bridge to the 19th Century.

What happens to the earth's cognitive surplus? Well, a lot of it goes into these internets, doesn't it?

Kingsfield v. Bainbridge

How hard is TIME pumping Obama? Seven covers! He is a media-created sensation. I guess he sells soap.

Jennifer Horn for New Hampshire

Evil racist videos at Classical Values

"We reject the pernicious belief, commonly held at our most highly esteemed institutions, that fighting our nation's battles is someone else's job." The Corner

Jim Cramer on natural gas and wind power

De Toqueville on the nanny state. A subquote:

It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.

After 40 years, the Left still doesn't get the eclipse of socialism. Socialism is tricky. To enforce it and to maintain it, not only do you need some guns but you need to make sure you do not punish achievers and risk-takers to the point that they quit, or climb over the wall and leave for more hospitable shores. Of course, your Wise Leaders always get all they can get - power, babes, money, cars, houses - because they deserve it for their selfless service to the ignorant masses. And, if ignorant, ignorant because of the government schools.

Too many good recent posts by AVI to link separately.

Gun control:

Why, it's almost enough to make someone think that gun control doesn't actually reduce violence, or do anything to instill morality in the heart of someone intent on murdering their fellow man.

Who knew?

Shit and alligators. Nice place, Florida. Caveat emptor, and quit whining and taking my money.

Hollywood conservatives to rally for McCain

Obama will lose "because he is a flake." Right. He cannot resist the spineless moral equivalencies, which are nothing but rationalizations for timid passivity.

Are schools "social service centers"? Why not try to teach the kids math first before trying to do something more difficult?

Gotta love these sorts of virtuous idiots. Pay off your conscience with $11, paid for with parents' tuitions. It's a con game.

Stealth technology: The Prius is killing off all the blind people. Memo to Toyota: It would be more fun to drive if you gave it a computer-generated Harley sound-effect.

One of our top ten most often-searched posts over the past couple of years is this one: a Do-it-Yourself Test for Sociopathy.

Related: A con man's story

Fall is coming. Today's B&G recipe.

Remember: Lots of gravy greases and smooths the insides of your arteries, and helps your brain think better too.

Do Liberals prefer their blacks needy and dependent, with themselves in the role of benefactor? One Lib confesses: I have White Fright.

A comment on Saddleback at Evang. Outpost:

I fully expected Obama to dominate the evening. This was the sort of event that Obama and his brand (for he has been marketed as a brand) have been molded for. His easy-going demeanor and impressive rhetorical skills are ideally suited to this format, often leaving the less polished but more authentic McCain at something of a disadvantage.

I was wrong. Obama's distinct failure to answer most of Warren's questions looked shoddy and unprofessional when compared to McCain's short and direct answers. While Obama gave long, rambling responses and even admitted his inability to answer the abortion question, McCain's every answer seemed to challenge Warren, as if he were thinking, 'That was hard? Is that the best you've got?'

Obama is polished (though much less so at this event), but McCain is Real. The generation raised on myspace and youtube may be largely unable to make this distinction, but time will show them that Obama's digital flair cannot compare to McCain's real-life experience and convictions.

Obama wants more "programs" for "activists". Good grief. Is this 1960? How about more programs for young entrepreneurs, who will produce instead of consuming?

One more time: Can we please see those records? Well, the truth will out.

Obama's favorables show steady decline since winter.

Is Obama running for Social Worker in Chief?

Watts says that the Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States report contains more advocacy than science: Skeptics win one. One quote from his piece:

This report’s contents and the “cart before the horse” way it was produced is the biggest official “crock” perpetrated on the American public I’ve ever been privy to. On a personal note, there are days when I struggle to keep doing this, at times I think I’ll just shut down the blog, turn off the surfacestations website, and return to a normal and hassle free life. Days like this keep me going.

You can thank Isabella Stewart Gardner. She knew what she liked. The Tragedy of Lucretia (1501):

"Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons."

That makes me feel insecure because I like to use semi-colons. Story at the Globe.

We visited the Sandwich Heritage Museum on Sunday. It's a great place to do nothing. There's no fun there. We had fun, but that's a different matter. We were not subjected to the trials of fun. We brought some along with us and had it.

From Sipp who, I strongly suspect, is like me in not being a Disney World sort of processed-fun person. Or a processed cheese person - except maybe on burgers. We should do a post on processed and packaged fun sometime.

Smokestack Lightning, 1964

A foggy morning at Newcomb Hollow, Wellfleet, 2 weeks ago

Despite its uselessness, squishy relativism remains a force in some sectors of society. It's dangerous because it makes people feel that they shouldn't evaluate anything. Dr. Bob explains the inherent contradictions. A quote:

I find it interesting that most every argument rejecting absolutes contains within its very language and structure, not to mention its premises, a framework of absolute assertions. And our subject does not disappoint: tossing around terms like “wise” and “fools” and “shame” and “credit”, qualitative words without meaning when there is no transcendent standard against which to measure them. What is shame if not the humiliation of rejecting an absolute good? Who is wise, and who a fool, if there is no standard of enduring and unchangeable wisdom by which to categorize one thusly? The lines of their straightedge are random and irregularly spaced — if there are measuring lines at all — yet they carefully measure and mark off “progress”, confident they have measured accurately. There is, of course, the inevitable rejoinder to all such foolishness which asks, “Are you absolutely sure there are no absolutes?” But beyond this childish rebuttal — childish, not in the sense of silliness or immaturity, but rather of unvarnished simplicity — there lies an even more evident and profound incoherence which can be discerned — from which a not-so-evident proposition emerges from the heart of anti-absolutism.

Read the whole thing.

I took this close-up of a clump of Indian Pipe (aka Corpse Plant) at the farm this weekend, in the Hemlock woods on the hillside. A fungus? Nope. It's a parasitic plant.