Seven Tottering Pillars
Why the Coming Marxist “Color  Revolution” Will Fail in America

Over the past two decades, a series of so-called “Color Revolutions” have been organized to overthrow and collapse Eastern European governments such as Ukraine (“Orange”) and Georgia (“Rose”).  President Obama’s former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, formulated “7 Pillars of Color Revolution,” a list of seven preconditions needed in order to incite the type of revolution necessary to remove leaders. For some deluded reason, McFaul and others in the Bipartisan Transition Integrity Project (which is none of those things, except maybe a “project”) have convinced themselves that these revolutionary tactics will work on Americans. This indicates the level of either desperation (all their other options have failed to unseat Trump) or insanity (they think Americans are ignorant sheep easily persuaded to clump individuals into simplistic categories of race or income level) to which Trump has driven them.

This is bunk, and at the risk of giving McFaul and his ilk sufficient time before the election to alter their plans, here are seven reasons why the Seven Pillars of Color Revolution will not — and cannot— achieve their goals in the United States of America. Each numbered item is one of McFaul’s “pillars.”

1. Semi-autocratic regime (not fully autocratic) – provides opportunity to call incumbent leader “fascist”

            FAIL: As much as these cheerleaders for a coup try to label President Trump a “fascist/Nazi/worse-than-Hitler” tyrant, the majority of Americans can see that he follows the Constitution and is actually reducing statist burdens (taxes, regulations) on Americans. We can also see the fascistic/Bolshevik/statist/communist rhetoric and actions of the Democrats’ KKK-inspired race-hate domestic-terror criminal organizations such as AntiFa and Black Lives Matter™. Americans know who are the real fascists using Brown Shirt tactics to instill a climate of fear. Democrat governors and mayors have used COVID-19 to enact the most draconian, unconstitutional restrictions on their populace while turning a blind eye to — or even participating in — BLM™ coordinated  unrest and disruption.

2. Appearance of unpopular president or incumbent leader

            FAIL: Again, using Big Lie techniques to label Trump as unpopular belies his visible, palpable popularity, as can easily be measured by the attendance at his rallies. The attempt by the leftist lapdog press to make flag-waving, peaceable assemblies of Pro-American patriots of all colors appear “threatening” or “white supremacist” is pathetic when laid side-by-side with images of CHAZ/CHAD alt.statism zones, Democrat-run cities as protected havens for homelessness, drug abuse, public defecation, arson, rape, and murder, and undisguised, literal threats to burn the nation to cinders if Biden does not get elected. Americans made Trump popular — he remains so, despite the propaganda from movie stars and academic weasels.

3. United and organized opposition – Antifa, BLM

            C+: Here the seditionists have had some success. As long as the money flows from wealthy collaborationists who made their money thanks to the freedom ensured by the Declaration and the Constitution, these organizations will use Chinese-communist tech (WhatsApp, TikTok) to communicate and maintain their cellular structure. The fact that sheep-like collectivists can take collective action (more readily than can harder-to-organize freedom-loving rugged individualists) appears to give them the upper hand. But remember that a bunch of rugged individualists repeatedly repelled the collective might of the British Empire, the Democrat’s own Confederacy of slaveholders, the socialist/imperialist/fascist Axis of Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini, and the murderous Union of Soviet Socialist slaughter machine.

4. Effective system to convince the public (well before the election) of voter fraud

            FAIL: The only voter fraud most Americans are convinced will occur is on the part of the Democrats. Democrats have opposed every effort to reduce voter fraud, such as Voter ID (in a country where ID is needed for everything, they still push the “poor little old Black woman who can’t afford a free state ID card” fiction), purging rolls of dead or departed voters, or banning the practice of ballot harvesting. Americans know who has been enabling “the graveyard vote” since the 1960s. Now Democrats intend to send ballots to everyone in the phone book and take weeks to “count them until we win” (as Edward G. Robinson said in Key Largo). What could be more obvious?

5. Compliant media to push voter-fraud narrative

            FAIL: I was going to give an A– to this, since the Democrat/Media/Academia/Elite/Deep State coup-mongers do have most media outlets in their pockets. However, with popular belief in the veracity of the press at an all-time low (even COVID-19 has more supporters than CNN), it is nearly impossible for the media to whip up broad popular belief that Trump and the Republicans are responsible for any voter fraud or voter suppression when we hear the Democrats promoting a violent military junta in a disputed election and threatening to burn down all our institutions (literally, not figuratively) if Biden loses. Do leftists truly expect Americans to believe that they want to "save the sacred institutions of our democracy from Trump" by destroying the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, turning the Senate into a second House of Representatives, and granting statehood to Washington, DC? C’mon, Man!

6. Political-opposition organization able to mobilize “thousands to millions in the streets”

            D–: Democrats and their socialist billionaire masters may have convinced themselves that they can mobilize millions in the streets based on the few hundred they shuttle from city to city to organize and incite riots with the aid of criminal gangs, but the vast majority of 330 million Americans believe in self-defense and defense of others, not violent mob aggression against the innocent. They (the Militia that the Framers wisely enshrined in the 2nd Amendment) possess roughly 393 million firearms in their homes (compared to 4.5 million for the US military). The soi disant Resistance creates new gun owners every time rioters loot a business and burn it to the ground, or a 20-something AntiFa hood beats an old woman on a crosswalk, or a white girl on video screams racist epithets at a black police officer because she earnestly believes that Black Lives Matter but Blue Lives don’t.

Homes and businesses are the high ground. The streets are wide open and indefensible. Riot organizers should confuse neither patience with weakness nor silence with fearfulness. Americans have heard the ominous threats and seen the violent actions of America’s enemies — foreign and domestic — and know who surrounds whom.

7. Division among military and police

            FAIL: Some-but-not-all of the upper echelon/management of the military and local police may be elitist, politically motivated creatures in Democrat strongholds such as the Left Coast states, New York, and the Pentagon, but nearly all the grunts take their oath to defend the Constitution and to protect and serve the citizens of the United States extremely seriously. The attempt to create a schism between the military and the police fails precisely because those who join such organizations were attracted to the high moral values of those services. This is not like some other countries, where people who join a corrupt military or police do so to use their power to plunder or oppress.

No amount of “All Cops Are Bad Cops” scrawled on the walls of burning police precincts will set the military troops against the police. No accusations that our military forces are “storm-troopers” or “jack-booted thugs” will convince police to fire upon the National Guard. After all, the seditionists in the Deep State have made it clear that they feel no obligation to obey their oaths or the legal orders of the President, so why on Earth should they expect the troops to follow their orders to buttress an anti-American revolution?

And in the microscopic chance that such a battle might occur, it will be simple for average Americans (see Militia, above) to identify the aggressor and outnumber them 87 to 1. 

The Collapse of the Seven Pillars

What socialists don’t understand — and have never understood — about what makes America exceptional is that we are a nation of free-thinking, sovereign individuals, no matter how much statism-loving Democrats and vapid RINOs may have eroded our individual rights over time. A handful of Americans may be corrupted by the politics of class- or race-envy promulgated by Marx/Lenin/Hitler/Stalin/Mao and their handmaidens in academia, the press, and the Deep State. Far more numerous, though, are ordinary Americans — even among our youngest — who understand the importance of the individual, of each individual’s right to self, to freedom, to private property, and to the equal liberty of others. That has kept America strong and the Constitution in effect for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. The desperate, violent thrashing of a dying collectivist mysosophy may seem frightening, but it will never be daunting to Americans. 

We’ve toppled these pillars before. And we can do it again.

 

An Unplanned Life — A Movie Review

The current intellectual conceit is to begin a scholarly paper with a statement of one’s biases, so here are mine: as many of you know, I wrote the novel Solomon’s Knife, in which I proposed fetal transfer (transoption) as a solution to the pro-life/pro-choice schism over pregnancy termination. I wrote it because I believe in genetics, so I believe that a fetus is something unique: a recombinant DNA experiment in which a man’s sperm and a woman’s egg mix together to create an entirely different individual. And — as a libertarian — I believe in an individual’s right to life and self-ownership, which includes both a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy and the right of a baby not to be killed. The only way to reconcile this seeming clash of rights is to recognize that a woman has the right to expel the fetus, but not to kill it, just as a homeowner has the right to evict a tenant but not murder him. And, on the other side, anyone has the right to rescue that expelled fetus, but not to force the woman to carry it to term.

So you can call me anti-abortion if you want, but the word abortion must be broken down into its two concepts: terminating a pregnancy and terminating a life. Since I also believe in science, innovation, and human ingenuity, I believe that a technological solution to this impasse is possible. In my novel, it was non-destructive surgical transfer of the fetus from a woman who does not want it into the womb of a woman who does. Two reproductive problems solved with one baby. Prenatal adoption. Transoption.

I’m also compelled to offer a Spoiler Alert: stop reading here if you haven’t figured out that the film I’m reviewing is anti-abortion and its main character goes from pro-choice to pro-life by the end of it. Hope that doesn’t ruin the movie for you...

Enough of that. This is a review of the new motion picture Unplanned, the story of how the based-on-real-life character Abby Johnson went from being the 2009 Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year and director of a busy abortion clinic in Texas(!) to a faith-based anti-abortion activist, virtually overnight. Abby, played by Ashley (90 Minutes in Heaven) Bratcher, has had two abortions — one as a teenager and one while married to a man whom she was divorcing — so she sees no problem getting a job at the local Planned Parenthood clinic.

As her job titles and responsibilities climb, she (and we) are gradually let in on the secrets of the abortion industry: the ultrasounds that are used to determine the size of the fetus (and thus the cost of the abortion); the standing order that no one is to call 911 for any patient medical emergency (to avoid negative optics); and the ultimate horror — which shocked and haunted the otherwise indefatigable Abby (and which netted the film its unprecedented R-rating) — using ultrasound imaging to guide the suction tube toward a 12^th-week fetus as it frantically and futilely attempts to kick itself away from the device’s deadly pull.

Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon — the writing team responsible for God’s Not Dead and its sequel as well as the cult-classic vampire movie The Insatiable — team up to write and direct Unplanned. The film is superbly shot by Drew Maw and tautly edited by Parker Adams and Dana B. Wilson. The score — by Blake Kanicka — deftly jumps between extremes of tense, terrifying edginess that recalls (but does not emulate) Bernard Hermann’s Psycho score, and soaring warmth and even humor at all the right emotional pivot points.

A standout performance from Robia (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Scott as Cheryl, Abby’s boss, takes her from passionate supporter of a woman’s right to choose to a cold, calculating, bottom-line-obsessed dollar-chaser in the eight-year story arc. Emma Elle Roberts and Jared Lotz portray abortion protestors who are not angry, not accusatory, but ready to engage with Abby to the point where they exchange daily greetings and discuss their simultaneous pregnancies despite the vast moral and philosophical gulf that separates them. Tina Toner plays a dead-in-the-soul clinic employee to understated — yet chilling — perfection. The movie is not without its humorous moments, however, one of them being Cheryl having no problem with a pregnant director of an abortion clinic: seeing Abby that way, she muses with a wicked smile, will convince them that they’ll never want children.

Ashley Bratcher’s performance as Abby, though, is the one that deserves the most praise. It is a rare film of any kind that can play totally fairly with both sides of a controversy and have an actor that can convincingly inhabit two rhetorical extremes with equal aplomb. It is far easier to create straw men (or — more appropriately here — straw women) to spout ignorant, bigoted, or even nonsensical lines the writers set up for the protagonist to knock down. Such films and novels rarely ring true and almost never change minds. They are the stuff of propaganda. In Solomon’s Knife, I tried to present the best arguments the pro-choice and pro-life factions could muster regarding abortion and human rights. I did not expect to see such even-handed treatment from faith-based, conservative Christian filmmakers any more than I would a film made by secular progressive socialist feminist filmmakers. But I sat in awed amazement at the fair-minded, non-judgmental treatment of Abby Johnson in both phases of her life. (Admittedly, the screenplay was adapted from her biography of the same title, so she undoubtedly provided the most sympathetic portrait of herself at each point of her journey.)

It’s easy to understand how a college-aged Abby could receive a pamphlet from an enthusiastic Planned Parenthood advocate and have it all make sense to her in an Our Bodies Our Selves cultural framework. We see her volunteer at the organization that promised her it was working toward reducing the number of abortions by promoting contraception. Her passionate defense of her choice seems natural and deeply felt, and the conflict between Abby and her Christian parents, husband, and friends is evenly balanced without caricature or specious reasoning on either side.

From there, though, each step up in the organization comes with incremental compromises and little self-deceptions that become bigger and bigger until — when Cheryl announces that their new, 7,800 square-foot clinic will be able to perform abortions seven days a week, up to the 24^th week — Abby is forced to realize that Planned Parenthood’s true goal is to ratchet up the number of abortions as high as possible. Abortion, Cheryl fiercely tells her, is the low-cost, high-margin product that pays their salary, their 401k match, their health insurance. “Non-profit,” she declares, “is a tax status, not a business plan.”

It should come as no surprise that Abby bolts from this bottomless pit of death and misery to join the opposition: the Coalition for Life and its 40 Days for Life prayer vigils. I’ll leave a couple of plot twists at the very end for you to discover, with an “oh wow!” endnote that is the pro-family match of any closing-credit Easter egg in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If you wonder how anyone could ever work in an abortion clinic, maybe this refreshingly balanced tale will explain how it can happen. If you are puzzled that anyone could believe a tiny fetus is something more than a bit of tissue — that it is an individual, genetically distinct human being with a right to life granted by “Nature and Nature’s God” and defended by the Constitution — you might find Abby Johnson’s sojourn illuminating.

Don’t just plan to see Unplanned. See it today.

Pro-Choice / Pro-Life Intersectionalism

The following essay is part of a series of articles I wrote in 1991, called Perspective Inversion, long before blogs or even the World Wide Web existed. I’ve updated this two-parter with some recent research (which my being a Ph.D. now forces me to cite and reference…) and present it with an upgraded Pro-Life/Pro-Choice Alliance orthogonal chart.

CHOICE vs. LIFE

   Both sides of the abortion battle are fighting for human rights. Pro-Choice people struggle to defend a woman’s right to control her body. Pro-Life people crusade to protect the life of the child within. It is this apparent clash of rights that has led to explosive confrontations and vicious opposition. The question, though, should not be whose rights shall be sacrificed to whom, but how can we protect the rights of everyone simultaneously. The conflict stems less from evil intentions on one side or the other than from the tragically flawed outlook that abortion is the same thing as pregnancy termination. It is not.

WHAT EACH SIDE WANTS

   In order to reconcile these two warring factions, it is necessary to ask what each side truly wants. Pro-Choice advocates seek the unconditional right of a woman to end her pregnancy. The method to achieve this has always been abortion, or the intentionally fatal removal of the fetus. Pro-Life advocates assert that a “preborn” is a human being with full rights to life. To protect this life has traditionally required full-term delivery of the infant. Therefore, supporting reproductive choice required the death of fetuses, and protecting the lives of fetuses required forcing motherhood on women.
   Is this terrible choice necessary? Must a woman choose to kill or be enslaved?
   I believe that there is a radical new possibility: pregnancy termination without fetal death; freedom of choice for women and protection for the fragile lives they carry. A fusion of both rights.
   I believe that abortion is a moral dilemma that has a technological solution. To see what such a solution might be, though, requires that Pro-Choice and Pro-Life proponents both allow the scales to drop from their eyes in order to view the question from a new angle. A perspective inversion, as it were (that is, after all, the title of these articles).
   What if a means existed to remove a fetus from one woman and place it—still alive—into the uterus of another? Such a technique already exists on a primitive scale (it is called non-surgical ovum transfer). What if that fetus could be placed in an artificial womb or high-tech incubator? Or frozen cryogenically for later thawing and implantation? Would this not satisfy both the truly Pro-Life and the truly Pro-Choice? For such a solution to be satisfactory requires that members of both movements identify their true desires.

PRO-LIFE OR ANTI-FREEDOM?

   The Pro-Life position comprises two sub-groups: a minority who merely desire that fetuses not be harmed whether or not a woman wants to give birth to it, and a (usually religiously-rooted) majority who demand the additional power to force the woman to see her pregnancy all the way through despite her objections. I believe that every woman has an absolute right to terminate her pregnancy at any point. Human rights are equal and reciprocal, though, and carry with them responsibilities. If a parent has no right to enslave her children—to force them to feed and protect her—then a child (or a self-appointed “spokesman” for a fetus) has no right to enslave its mother—to force her to feed and protect that fetus against her will. To demand forced motherhood — when there is an alternative — is indeed to demand slavery.

PRO-CHOICE OR ANTI-LIFE?

   Similarly, the Pro-Choice position comprises two distinct sub-groups: a minority who want simply the right to terminate a pregnancy by whatever means are available, and those who demand the additional privilege of destroying the fetus. I suggest that a fetus—being genetically different from the mother—is a distinct human being, separate from the woman even though temporarily trapped inside her. The chorionic membrane is a barrier it builds between it and its mother and should be respected as a threshold no one has the right to breach with deadly intent. To demand a fetus’s death — when there is an alternative — is indeed to demand murder.

WHEN RIGHTS COLLIDE

   I agree with the Pro-Choice camp that pregnancy is similar to trespassing. It is a woman’s right to determine if and when a fetus—whether originally “invited in” or not—has overstayed its welcome. She has the total right to “evict” the trespasser. Where I break with the majority of Pro-Choice people, though, is my belief that no one has the right to kill that trespasser when a non-lethal means of eviction exists.
   How can I support both a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy and a fetus’s right to life? Abortion — by definition (“bad birth”) — results in the death of the fetus. Pregnancy termination, though, does not by itself require a death by abortion. Abortion is the sloppy, easy method of pregnancy termination. It is currently the only method of pregnancy termination because nobody has researched alternate, non-lethal methods. The reason for this is grounded both in ignorance and misguided self-interest.
   When I was writing a novel about this in 1987 (Solomon’s Knife), I realized that non-technological factors had created a scientific roadblock to research in non-destructive pregnancy termination. Since the prevailing judicial opinion is that a fetus is not human if a woman does not want it, there is no medical impetus to develop pregnancy termination methods that would keep such legally non-human tissue alive.
   No one on the Pro-Choice side is going to rock the boat. Since women already have the judicially granted right to an abortion, developing an alternative might, in their eyes, confuse the issue. And though the Pro-Life side recognizes the humanity of the fetus, they are so overwhelmed by the horror of a million and more annual deaths that the only answer they see in the short term is to outlaw any and all pregnancy terminations and ban all research into birth control methods, including non-lethal ones. They can imagine no other alternative to abortion and feel that compelling the mother to continue with her pregnancy by force of law is a small price to pay to protect those incapable of protecting themselves. They are wrong. Killing is killing and slavery is slavery. To label killing “abortion” or slavery “maternal obligation” does not diminish the enormity of either.
   What neither side has fully realized is that technology stands on the brink of making the entire abortion controversy moot.

• —Electromechanical wombs—human incubators—are in development (Partridge, et al., 2017) that will allow fetuses to be brought to term without forcing motherhood on the unwilling.
• —Uterine transplants —There has already been the successful transplant of a uterus from one woman (deceased) into a woman who was born without one (Ortiz, 2016). While this is not the same as a fetal transfer, one can envision this method or the artificial womb above being used to save the life of a very immature fetus in the event of the death or incapacity of the mother, where premature birth would not be an option.
• —Cryogenic techniques already exist to preserve oocytes and embryos (Edgar & Gook, 2012) and it is not pessimistic to expect that the refinement of freezing techniques or the development of nontoxic cryoprotectants may someday allow for the successful freezing and revival of a fetus. This would allow a woman who may be unwilling or unable to be pregnant now to resume her pregnancy later or put it up for adoption by another willing recipient. Many women who rush into abortion regret their decision months or years after the irreversible act. A “fetus bank” would allow women a chance to reconsider, with the option of “birth abeyance” until later in life.
• —Fetal Transplant — A woman who does not want to give birth at all could transfer her fetus to the womb of a woman who does, thus solving two reproductive problems at once and saving a life as a bonus.

   In my novel, I call this medical possibility transoption, the option of transferring a fetus from a woman who, for whatever reason, does not want to give birth, into a woman who does, or into an artificial womb, or into cryonic suspension.
   Abortion prohibition, like any other prohibition, never worked and never will. Women have been, are, and forever will be forced to make hard decisions about pregnancy. If the decision requires the end of a pregnancy, women will seek it regardless of the legal risk or the mortal threat to the fetus. And babies will still die from abortion, legally or illegally. The only solution to this tragic choice is to find a life-preserving, rights-preserving alternative. This is a battle that will not be won in the legislature or the courts. It will not be won by bombing clinics or jailing protestors. This battle can only be won in the realm of medical technology. And I possess enough faith in humanity to believe that women—if given a choice—will freely choose life over death.
   Abortion kills the fetus, yet medical technology is reaching the point where a fetus could be removed from a woman who does not want to be pregnant and implanted into a woman who does, or frozen for later implantation, or brought to term in an artificial womb (Hamzelou, 2017). I contend that these are solutions both Pro-Choice and Pro-Life factions need but have not sought.
   Ironically, the greatest impediments to the life-saving solution of transoption are those who ought to be most pleased by its possibility. Certain Pro-Life advocates will reveal their true agenda if they denounce transoption as yet another interference in nature’s — or God’s — way. The possibility of saving lives is secondary to these people. They would rather make criminals of women by outlawing abortion than find a way to allow them the choice of non-lethal pregnancy termination.
   On the other side are the Pro-Choice advocates who fear that transoption would make abortion less attractive and thus rob them of their privilege of destroying utterly the contents of their wombs. They would rather have millions of women endure the guilt and doubt that accompanies abortion than seek a surgical technique that would end unwanted pregnancies yet still protect what many see as a tiny, defenseless human life.
   Once we have separated the two factors of fetal death and pregnancy termination, we see that there are not two groups in contention but, rather, six.
   On the Pro-Life side, there are those who would firmly oppose any form of pregnancy termination, even if the fetus’s life would be spared. These people are what I would call the Anti-Choice woman-enslavers. Their opposition to transoption reveals their true colors. There are Pro-Life proponents, however, who are opposed to abortion yet are profoundly troubled by the idea of using laws to restrict a woman’s freedom of choice. These people are nonetheless comfortable with the idea of adoption and might readily accept the concept of prenatal adoption, which is all transoption really is. These people I call Mere Pro-Life and would view transoption as a godsend.
   Among the Pro-Choice supporters are those who feel that if a woman does not have the absolute privilege of destroying her fetus, she has no reproductive freedom. To demand a dead fetus, though, when a pregnancy could be otherwise terminated is to demand the right to prenatal infanticide. Once again, their reaction to the concept of transoption reveals a secret agenda. Such people are the Anti-Life advocates of the “right” to bury one’s mistakes. The overwhelming majority of women, though — the ones who actually receive abortions — have always been troubled by the necessity of choosing between their freedom and their baby’s life. For them, the Mere Pro-Choice, transoption offers choice without guilt, freedom without death, and a way to change a pregnancy termination from a life-extinguishing to a life-affirming action.
   The most hideous position is what I call Anti-Life/Anti-Choice Fusion. These monsters would force a woman to destroy her unborn child against her wishes. These are the killers who administer government population-control programs in such tyrannies as Nazi Germany and Communist China and North Korea, where State-mandated abortions are one more category of oppression enforced at gunpoint.
   Both the Mere Pro-Life and Mere Pro-Choice factions who are troubled by their positions need only to discover the possibility of transoption to move toward the sixth position: the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice Alliance.

   There is no contradiction between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice once the irrational advocates of Anti-Choice and Anti-Life are jettisoned. Pro-Life/Pro-Choice is the only position that consistently defends all rights of all parties to a pregnancy, no matter what their age or sex. Reproductive freedom and preborn life are not fatally incompatible but are both part of the spectrum of human rights.
   If the parties to the abortion debate wish to seek detente, I would urge an immediate end to any legal and social obstacles to research that might develop pregnancy terminations that preserve fetal viability. I would urge Pro-Choice and Pro-Life activists to lay down their prejudices and work together for a life-affirming, choice-enhancing, and rights-preserving solution. The price in human suffering and death we have paid for the past several decades has been far too high.

References

Edgar D. H. and Gook, D. A. (2012). A critical appraisal of cryopreservation (slow cooling versus vitrification) of human oocytes and embryos. Human Reproduction Update 18(5), 536–554. doi:10.1093/humupd/dms016

Hamzelou, J. (April 25, 2017). Artificial womb helps premature lamb fetuses grow for 4 weeks. newscientist.com [Web site]. Retrieved from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2128851-artificial-womb-helps-premature-lamb-fetuses-grow-for-4-weeks/

Ortiz, F. (March 8, 2016). First U.S. woman with uterus transplant looks forward to pregnancy. scientificamerican.com [Web site]. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-u-s-woman-with-uterus-transplant-looks-forward-to-pregnancy/

Partridge, E. A., et al. (2017). An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb. nature.com [Web site]. doi:10.1083/ncomms15112

Republicans Must Return to Their Abolitionist Roots

The total repeal of Obamacare is the only rational, consistent, and moral course open to Republicans. Such an action would follow the Abolitionist tradition that led to the founding of the Republican Party. In 1854, former Whigs, ex-Free-Soilers, and a handful of anti-slavery Democrats founded the Republican Party in the midst of a burgeoning Abolitionist movement. The demand to abolish slavery was not nuanced or couched in gradualist arguments. Slavery was a moral outrage, and despite the Democrats’ protestations that slaveholders would lose the benefits of forced labor and millions of slaves would be suddenly homeless and unfed, Republicans abolished slavery. Every Republican in congress voted for the 13^th Amendment. Only 19 Northern Democrats did, and not a single Democrat voted for either the 14^th or 15^th Amendments.

Republicans freed the slaves even though Democrats threatened — and ultimately resorted to — violence, insurrection, and civil war. Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan to act as domestic terrorists. Democrats seceded from the Union. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, prevailed against the Confederate States, made whole the nation, and abolished race-based slavery for all time.

Democrats, though, never really gave up on the oppression and control of blacks. Within half a century of their defeat, they had instituted odious Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, placed a Klan sympathizer in the White House, re-imposed segregation in the military and larger society, and — under the banner of Progressivism — instituted a subtle, sly form of universal slavery called the income tax. In 2010, Democrats continued their relentless progression toward total control over the individual with a new form of involuntary servitude: forcing every American to buy health insurance whether they want it or not, need it or not, or can afford it or not. The Affordable Care Act was designed to bring a sixth of the American economy under the control of the federal government.

Obamacare is a noxious and moral outrage. It is odious to the Constitution, to the free-market pillars of our nation, and to the individual rights to property, choice, and self-ownership. Everything that was wrong with health care before Obamacare was the fault of government control. The degree to which the government interfered with the triadic relationship among doctors, patients, and insurers was the degree to which the health-care system suffered. Obamacare expanded to near-totality the harmful effects of government control while almost entirely eliminating the few remaining ameliorating factors of choice and freedom in health care.

Few think that the health care provided by the VA or Medicare or Medicaid is quality health care, yet Obamacare was intended to bring the same low-quality, high-cost, and cruelly bureaucratic health-care rationing to every American — by force of law and pain of punishment. Obamacare was intentionally designed to fail, to drive insurance and health-care costs so high and restrict access so drastically that Democrats and the media hoped they could declare free choice in health insurance dead and announce the dawn of single-payer, totally socialized, centrally controlled health care — a goal of theirs since the dawn of the Progressive Era a century ago.

Outright repeal of Obamacare — Abolition — is the only position every single solitary Republican should take. Slavery was not “repealed and replaced.” It was not “reformed” or “fixed.” No Republican wrung his hands over whether abolition would “negatively impact” the cotton market due to the “uncertainty” created by freeing the slaves. No Republican vacillated out of concern that newspapers might cover them negatively for not “crossing the aisle” to seek a “bipartisan solution.” When righting a wrong, none of these considerations matter — they are only excuses to continue the abuses.

If this were 1863, would Senator Shelley Moore Capito be arguing that she “didn’t come to Washington to hurt people” such as slaveholders and their families or to deprive blacks of the room, board, and health care they received on plantations? Would she say “I don’t think it’s constructive to repeal a law so interwoven with our [economic] system without having a replacement in place”?

Would Senator Lisa Murkowski demand that a slavery-replacement plan be considered at the same time as the 13^th Amendment? Would she say “the Senate should take a step back and engage in a bipartisan process to address the failures” of slavery and use taxpayer dollars to bail out the plantation owners to “stabilize the individual markets”?

Would Senator Susan Collins worry that emancipation from slavery would “affect the most vulnerable”? Would she say “We should not be making fundamental changes in… a program that’s been on the books for [hundreds of] years without evaluating what the consequences will be”?

Would Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put a two-year delay into the 13^th Amendment to allow time to find a bipartisan replacement plan for slavery?

No! All of them would have been drummed out of the nascent Republican Party as gutless compromisers perpetuating the enslavement of millions. Consequences be damned, the only solution to a moral outrage is its utter and immediate abolition. Abolitionism is the root of the Republican tree and its greatest strength. Abolition is absolute. It cannot be disguised as anything else. Abolitionism defies all attempts to compromise, appease, sell out, or betray.

Abolition must always be the first and only position when Republicans and freedom-lovers of any stripe encounter a moral evil such as Obamacare.

Abolish Obamacare.

Completely.

Now.

_____

Victor Koman is the author of several award-winning novels, including Solomon’s Knife and Kings of the High Frontier. His Ph.D. was conferred by Capella University in 2016.

Does Obama Accept Blame For Aurora?

This article was originally going to ponder President Obama’s off-the-cuff remarks in Roanoke. While revealing his belief that government is the fountainhead of all opportunity, he also exposed the serious flaw of Statism: if the individual is not responsible for his own success but is rather dependent on the existence of the State, then why isn’t everyone successful? Obama implied that teachers and roads and bridges and the Internet (all in his mind government creations) are responsible for an individual’s success. So why isn’t everyone successful?

In fact, if Obama’s sworn enemy, the 1% (who nonetheless donate millions to his reelection), were truly successful only because of government, then government has a 99% failure rate and should be abolished immediately as a horribly wasteful experiment.

That’s what this article would have been about. Then came Aurora. A dropout from a doctoral program planned an elaborate solo terror slaughter of a dozen people who did nothing to him but attend a midnight movie that he decided to attack.

The tragedy was immediately and cynically exploited by Democrats such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who demanded gun bans--another failed statist plan that leads to such disarmed-victim killing fields as Columbine and Aurora. The counter-argument--that there weren’t enough guns inside that theater that night--barely gets any coverage at all amid the cries to surrender essential liberties in the name of illusory security.

So now the question is this: if President Obama thinks the State is responsible for the success of businessmen, is it also responsible for the murders in Aurora? After all, the killer used the Internet to order his ammunition and he didn’t create the Internet. Government research created the Internet so that he could buy ammo on it. He didn’t invent ballistic armor--somebody else made that happen. He didn’t pave the road that he drove on to the Century theater--somebody invested in roads and bridges. He didn’t think up the explosive devices on his own--government schools gave him the scientific training and research skills to learn how to make bombs.

If individuals are not responsible for their own success--if the State makes individual virtue possible--then individuals are not responsible for their own evils. The State makes individual vice possible, too. So if Obama wants the electorate to think that government is the engine of success and he--as president--deserves praise for individual success, then he must also accept responsibility for mass murders such as those in Aurora. If not, why not?

Marine Disciplined for Stating the Law?

Marine Sgt. Gary Stein is facing separation hearings for running the Armed Forces Tea Party Facebook page. One of the statements he made was that he would not obey an illegal order from Barack Obama. However, he is fully in accordance with both his oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and the Universal Code of Military Justice section 16c(1)(c):

Lawfulness. A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States, or lawful superior orders or for some other reason is beyond the authority of the official issuing it.

The Founders recognized that an American's fealty should be to ideas and to Liberty, not to Authority. Any authority--even a president--is subservient to the central principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and any order that contravenes those principles is invalid and need not, must not, be obeyed. This UCMJ section was taught to me by Lt. Skinner, who contrasted an American soldier's obligation to disobey illegal orders with the the lack of any such option for a German soldier in WWII. "I was only following orders," he pointed out, was not a valid defense for any member of the American military.

Sgt. Gary Stein should not be forced out of the Marines for stating, promoting, and defending one of America's most fundamental concepts: that every citizen must learn, understand, and defend Liberty, even if that means defying the State.

Post Office Cancels Santa

[Merry Christmas, everyone! To celebrate the day, here's something I wrote in 1991, but is just as timely today...]

I have a vice to admit. I collect stamps. Blame my father for introducing me to philately at an early age. I don’t have the full-bore habit, though, if you know what I mean by bore. I’ll occasionally buy plate blocks when an interesting stamp appears. So when I heard that the Post Office (nobody really calls it the United States Postal Service) had issued a booklet of five different Santa Claus stamps, I eagerly rushed out to buy them.

These stamps are lovely, all right. They even tell a little story: Santa drops down the chimney, checks off items on his list, delivers the goods, waves at us by the fireplace, and flies away in his sleigh. What wonderful stamps with which to spread holiday cheer! I rushed them home to show to my 7-year-old. Her reaction was not the one I had anticipated.

“Why do they have Santa on a postage stamp?” she asked suspiciously.

“It’s Christmas,” I said in that bewildered parental tone.

“You said someone has to be dead to be on a stamp. Is Santa Claus dead?”

That hit me from left field. I almost exposed the entire centuries-old Santa conspiracy by saying, “Well, honey, the law doesn’t cover fictional characters.”

“You mean Santa’s not dead, he just isn’t real?”

Aieee! My mind raced. “No, muffin. I mean, uh. . .” She could tell I was concocting a whopper. “I mean the, um, pictorial representation of Santa Claus--who really is a real person living at the North Pole--is an imaginative interpretation by an artist. You see, it’s OK for the Post Office to print stamps reproducing artwork, and these are stamps made from paintings of Santa.” Did it work? Had I buffaloed my little impressionable one?

Her eyes narrowed. “Every stamp,” she said in a sternly patronizing tone, “is made from artwork. Paintings of living people aren’t allowed either. The Post Office is either saying that Santa Claus never existed or that he’s dead!”

I had to come clean with the kid. Here was an agency of the federal government undoing everything Jack Albertson had done in Miracle On 34th Street when he took the sacks of mail addressed to Santa Claus and delivered them to Jimmy Stewart filibustering in the Senate chambers. (Or did Stewart fly the mail to Paris with Donna Reed? I’ve got to stop watching those Stewart/Capra marathons.)

I had to come up with an explanation. Maybe if I told her Santa had the misfortune to carry some gifts wrapped by Libyan elves. . .

“Sweetheart,” I said, sitting her down. “I want you to brace yourself for a shock.” She looked up at me with her large, innocent blue eyes. “You’re a big girl now,” I said, “and big girls have to face the truth, no matter how painful it may be.”

Her voice caught in a tearful sob. “You mean. . .?”

“Yes, Vanessa, the Post Office lied. The mean old postal commissioner, whose name, I believe, is Ebenezer-something, decided that if he couldn’t force everyone to give him an extra cent for each letter they mail, he would tell all the girls and boys that Santa was dead. Yeah, that’s it! And he didn’t get that extra cent, so he tried to ruin Christmas for all the little boys and girls. The newspapers are calling it Santagate. Garry Trudeau is drawing a few strips about it.”

She looked crushed, as if all faith had been stolen from her. She ran to her room, crying, “I’ll never ever believe in any federal agency ever again! And I’ll seriously question any statements issued at the state and local level, too!” Her door slammed. I heard sobbing.

Feeling like the grandfather of all Grinches, I half-heartedly made some eggnog and sat in front of the fireplace, staring in gloom at the gaily decorated Christmas tree desiccating by the hearth. Nothing could break my mood.

My wife finally consoled me by saying, “She may have lost her faith in the government, darling, but at least she still believes in someone who offers her something for nothing.”

That’s true! And he delivers overnight and never loses a package.

The Yoga Studio -- Episode Three

And the trilogy is complete! In this episode, Caitlyn (Vanessa Koman) receives The Bus Talk from her boss Rachel (Tiffany Chandon). We've all received these pep talks before, but Caitlyn gives Rachel the backtalk we'd all like to spout. Look for the return of Leandro Cano as Bobby! (And look for Leandro on CSI: Miami this Sunday in the episode Blood Sugar!)

The Yoga Studio -- Episode Two

Vanessa and I have finished Episode Two! In this one, a nerdy guy (Rob Downs) interrupts Caitlyn (Vanessa) and Miss Laura (Allison Horack) and turns the Yoga Studio upside down with his Tolkienesque antics. Hilarity ensues. Never has a squeak toy been put to better use. And, yes, she globed the video.

The Yoga Studio -- Episode One

I've been working with my daughter Vanessa on her new web-series The Yoga Studio, and the first episode is now on her website. I served as the Director of Photography (i.e., it was my camera and I refused to let go of it) and the Editor. Vanessa, though, was the real powerhouse behind the project. She wrote the scripts, hired the actors, filed the SAG paperwork (including Taft-Hartley for the non-union members), and directed each episode as well as starring in them. We've taped three episodes and they will all be posted between now and Christmas. I had fun editing them with iMovie and using iDVD to create DVD versions. Check it out at WatchTheYogaStudio.com.

Anti-Capitalist Film Makes Cameron a Billionaire

I finally -- reluctantly -- gave Jim Cameron, Regal Entertainment, and Imax my $16.50 to see Avatar in Imax 3D the last week before it got booted out by Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland so that I could knowledgeably explain why I knew I wouldn’t like the film before I saw it.

Let me state that I am a big fan of Cameron’s films. I love the Terminator series and think Aliens is the best of the four in that series. Whenever True Lies is on, I have to stop and watch it. And, yes, I cried at Titanic. But then again I cry at Muppet movies, so take it for what it’s worth. The man’s a brilliant master of visual storytelling. And that is the big reason why I am so upset with Avatar. I knew that I would dislike the film as soon as I learned bits of storyline as the hype began last year. Aliens are the beleaguered good guys enduring invasion. Check. Earth people (specifically, American Earth people) are the venal, rapacious invaders. Check. One man defies his people to save the aborigines. Check. Scientists always seek Truth and never twist their research for grant money or to please the government. Check. And businessmen will always opt to exterminate potential trading partners, have no respect for life or property, and are bereft of morality. Check.

Other reviewers have already made the more-than-obvious parallels with Dances With Wolves, Disney’s Pocahontas, Ferngully, and a bunch of others. And I’m probably writing this late enough that most of my coming points have already been made by others, but I think the problem with Avatar is endemic in American culture, and highly damaging.

George Lucas understood the importance of removal from reality in writing fantastic fiction. Star Wars originally took place “in the year 3000”, but moved to “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” not merely to make it sound more like the opening of a fairy tale, but to remove it from any connection with 20^th Century Earth. In that way, the elements of the story become a template that can apply to any viewer’s outlook. What was the Empire? To one, it might be an analogy for the British Empire versus the Rebel Alliance of the 13 colonies. To another, it might be evil Corporate America vs. heroic union organizers. Roman Empire vs. Christianity. In other words, you can’t pin Lucas down to a particular current political viewpoint. He’s merely for liberty and against tyranny -- it’s up to the viewer to choose the analogues.

Cameron’s mistake (and I use the word advisedly, since Avatar is one of the highest-grossing films of all time) is an artistic one: making a fantasy film too specific. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings will be timeless because they are not bound to any specific historical matrix. James Cameron has chosen to plant Avatar squarely in a specifically 21^st-Century American matrix. In other words, the ex-Marine mercenaries we see are obviously American ex-Marines; the corporate weasel is obviously an American corporate weasel; the native-loving scientist is portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, the same actress who played ape-loving Dian Fossey. This allows viewers only one template: the film is only an analogy to American corporate rapacity, American military brutality, and 21^st-century environmental insensitivity.

In Lord of the Rings, one could look at the destruction of Isengard’s forest to build Sauron’s war machine as a critique of Nazi, Soviet, or American war economies (or insert your own government) having a deleterious effect on the environment. The choice was up to the viewer. It did not alienate anyone watching it (except maybe for foresters and arms dealers). Avatar alienates, making it less universal or lasting in its appeal (said, again, with a grain of salt, since it’s made a billion bucks plus my $16.50).

Cameron protests that his film is not anti-military. Why, he purposely made his hero a Marine to show how the finest attributes of honor and defense of the weak enabled him to defy orders and slaughter his own people. In this, though, Cameron engages in several liberal conceits.

Liberal conceit #1: The highest form of patriotism is treason. This is the theme, too, of Dances With Wolves. The liberal creed seems to be “My country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, join the other side and kill as many of your countrymen as you can.” For all the horror we are supposed to feel at the callous way the Americans kill Na’vi without any awareness of their individual sovereignty (and certainly no discussion of their property rights), Cameron’s “Good Marine” Sully (and Costner’s “Good Cavalryman” Dunbar) had no compunctions about slaying his former comrades en masse. Are we supposed to cheer that massacre? I’m reminded of the brilliant deleted scene in Goldmember where the wife of the beheaded henchman receives The Call and has to tell her son that his father has died at the hands of super-spy Austin Powers. “No one ever thinks about the henchman’s family!” she wails. Similarly, we are not supposed to feel anything but satisfaction at the mass slaughter of all those other Marines. (OK, ex-Marine mercenaries, but Sully himself says there are no ex-Marines, so he’s killing fellow Marines, Q.E.D.) (Semper fi indeed.)

Liberal conceit #2: Native populations live in wise, eternal harmony with the land; White Americans relentlessly destroy nature for short-term profit. Right. Would someone like to explain why -- shortly after the arrival of humans in North America -- all the megafauna vanished? Chinese dudes cross land bridge, look at mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats, and say “Get in my belly!” (pace, Fat Bastard). You could argue that they learned from their errors, I guess, but why aren’t Americans given the same indulgence? It took 10,000 years for Indians to learn to live with the land. Europeans have only been here 500 years or so (900 years for Vikings). What Cameron portrays as a Na’vi prayer acknowledging the Circle of Life (when killing an animal for food or self-defense) could just as easily be interpreted as the Na’vi version of liberal hypocrisy: acting all apologetic and spiritual (and believing it, of course, with all your heart), but still getting what one wants by killing. Hey, I didn’t hear any prayers to Eyah (meant to sound similar to Gaea or YHVH?) when the Na’vi were dispatching fighter pilots by the score with armor-piercing arrows. If the Americans prayed to Eyah while bulldozing the Tree of Souls, would that have made it better?

Liberal conceit #3: Only a white male newly minted liberal convert can get these disorganized, unfocused, superstitious ethnics to recognize the threat they face and only a white male neo-liberal possesses the wisdom and savvy to guide them into victorious battle (isn’t that how we lost the Vietnam War--a bunch of liberals telling the military how to fight?). This is the same conceit displayed by Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves and (forgive me, Sarah Jessica) Matthew Broderick in Glory (the story had to have a white guy as the lead character to make it more “accessible”) (Hollywood code for “we want more than 12% of the population to see it”). This is the same messianic complex that leads liberals to think that they are the only ones wise enough and smart enough and pure enough to prevent destruction of the entire planet by car exhaust, the only ones who can end the business cycle by dragging us into socialism/fascism, the only ones who can tell us what to eat/drink/drive/smoke/read/think, and the only ones who can mobilize the masses to push for social change (which is why they don’t think the Tea Party people are really a grass-roots people’s movement and must be an evil corporate plot).

At least in Return of the Jedi it was the Ewoks’ own idea to run off and attack the stormtroopers, and they did it with their own skills, tactics, and weapons. They didn’t need Luke telling them what to do.

Was the decision to bash American business, slander the American military, and ignore the American conservationist tradition intentional on Cameron’s part, or is such self-loathing so endemic that it didn’t even occur to him that he was attacking the very corporate structure that made him a mega-millionaire, the military that has kept him safe both from communists who delight in slaying the wealthy and the intelligentsia after they have served their purpose and from Islamic jihadists who delight in killing everyone, and the American inclusiveness that made Hawaii a state, preserving vast swaths of its natural beauty for location filming on Avatar?

I said sympathy for your enemies was dangerous. It’s everywhere, even in children’s films. When I saw the trailer for How to Train Your Dragon, in which the young hero discovers that dragons aren’t the monsters his elders made them out to be (because naïve youngsters full of Hope and Change always know better than their elders, who actually may have experienced a few dragon attacks), I thought Yes... that’s just what the dragons want you to believe... Islamic terrorists love Americans who think that their jihad on the West is merely a reaction to American imperialism -- they are the current version of the “useful idiots” Lenin used so well to drag Russia into a tyranny worse than that of any tsarist.

I didn’t dislike the film per se. Artistically, it was superb. Pandora looks like a fun world (if you can survive the Deathworld-like fauna). The plot is tried-and-true (some might say clichéd and worn-out). And Zoë Saldana’s left breast stole every scene it was in. But the anti-American, anti-business, anti-military, anti-reason sub-text turned me off completely. It was superfluous to the basic storyline; the villains could have been anyone. They did not have to be from Earth at all. (I recall the super-hit Independence Day made the rapacious invaders non-humans and the heroes the US military.) They did not have to be capitalists at all. Didn’t fascists and communists invade the lands of native people and rape and pillage them? And wasn’t it, oh, I dunno, American military men and women who fought and died to liberate those lands? Who’s leaving Haiti after weeks of sweltering work keeping quake victims from dying, only to sail down to Chile to conduct more rescue and relief work? Would that maybe be the Marines? Hmm. Odd thing for them to do. From watching Avatar, I’d swear they’re supposed to go in there and murder everyone.

And I don’t like seeing movies disingenuously engineered to give me that utterly false impression.

Science Quibbles With Avatar

Science quibbles: I’ll skip the bogus flying mountains except to say that if you grant the premise, you still have to explain how such small rocks can have huge waterfalls cascading off of them. Even if they were made of sponge, they’d drain in a few minutes at that rate.

As someone who still owns every piece of glow-in-the-dark plastic from when I was a kid, I loved the phosphorescent night life. However... I think that the only time you would have “night” on a moon orbiting a gas giant would be when the planet is between Pandora and its star. Think about how bright our own moon is at night: when it’s full, you can read by it. And it only fills half a degree of the sky. From the look of it, Pandora’s gas giant covers about 60 degrees. Imagine that much starlight being reflected from a high-albedo cloud world -- it would be as bright as day.

In the film, it’s stated that Pandora has lower gravity than Earth, and that would explain how the banshees can fly by flapping instead of soaring, but then one should be consistent: everything that falls would have to fall at a much slower rate of acceleration, yet it seems that everyone and everything falls at an earthly rate on Pandora (to be fair, it would be a much slower-paced film if they did that...). I did like the zero-G in the opening scene, though.

One thing I expected to see but didn’t: after all the talk about how all the life on Pandora was electrically connected in a gigantic neural net, I was expecting the white male neo-liberal to be the one to figure out how to harness that power into a directed-energy weapon, with plasma bolts shooting from the Tree of Souls.

An Agorist Primer Now In Paperback!

Just in time for ChristmaSolstiChannuKwanzEid, the paperback edition of An Agorist Primer is now available from KoPubCo! The book is the same size as the hardcover keepsake edition, but is a third of the cover price (less, actually, because of our 20%-off Christmas Sale price). If you have wanted to read or give this amazing book but could not afford the price of the hardback, now is the time to order. Copies are at the printer and should arrive this coming week and will be shipped as soon as in hand. Give the perfect gift this season — the gift of liberty!

The book is not yet available on Amazon.com, but you can order it now from the publisher. And don't forget our Christmas With an Attitude shop on CafePress! We have bumper stickers, t-shirts, and tote bags with snarky, in-your-face (well, in-everyone-else's-face) slogans. Check it out!

Mere Americans

I don't recall that, during World War II, any Christians in the U.S. Army agonized about being forced to fight other Christians in the armies of Mussolini or Hitler, or of occupying Christian land where they were not welcome. I don't remember any Japanese in the 442nd worrying that they were fighting the Axis, of which Japan was a part. We were all mere Americans fighting enemies of America.

In fact, I don't recall any Shiite Muslims having any compunctions about killing Sunni Muslims (and vice versa) during the Iran-Iraq War (the "impossible" war among Muslims). So why would anyone in the press try to excuse the mass-murderer/traitor's actions by pointing to his fear that he would be forced to fight fellow Muslims? First, as a Major and a psychiatrist, he would never be fighting anyone, and second, he was a native-born American assisting American warriors in their battle against sworn and declared enemies of America. That should be enough for anyone in the Army. What he did was treason — pure, simple, and inexcusable. Motivation is irrelevant.

Dr. K's Videobook -- Part One!

Working right up to the weekend before I went in for my knee surgery, I recorded my videobook of Dr. K's Sure-Fire Instant Weight-Loss Secrets in High Definition. During my rehab and recovery, I managed to edit it in iMovie and upload it to YouTube (in three parts). The book is humorous (in case the title didn't tip you off) and I hope I've captured that in my role as "Dr. K." Here's Part One:

Goin' Cyborg -- Martin Caidin Would Be Proud

Call it the advent of the .04 Million Dollar Man. This October (when Friday the 13th fell on a Tuesday), I was rendered unconscious with a Michael Jackson Propofol cocktail, taken into a darkened room, and masked men sliced my right knee open like a hock of mutton. Joints split, ligaments sundered, bone sawn, they implanted a titanium device inside my living flesh, making me 6% less human and beginning my slow assimilation into the Borg.

Heck of a body piercing!

Physical therapy is daunting, but there's no way I'm going to fail to gain the total range of motion allowed by this thing. I still want to hike the John Muir Trail one of these days!

Hey, At Least He Didn't Throw His Shoes!

Sure it was a breach of protocol to shout "You Lie!" at the President as he prevaricated in front of Congress, but I thought it was a great liberal trait to "speak truth to power". Is it no longer acceptable to Question Authority? And is it not rude of a guest of Congress to lie as boldly as Barack Hussein lied to their collective faces?

I say Joe Wilson has more guts in his larynx than the entire Republican minority has in its collective body.

This should have been the Republican response. It should be the response of the American People. Well said, Joe Wilson, well said.

Secrets of Weight-Loss Revealed!

Just uploaded my latest book to KoPubCo. It's a parody -- a first for me -- of weight-loss books: Dr. K's Sure-Fire Instant Weight-Loss Secrets. Check it out at http://www.kopubco.com/secrets_pb.html. If it sells well, I plan to write and publish short humor books on other topical subjects. Remember, laughter burns 78 calories an hour!

An Agorist Primer Available in PDF!

In response to numerous calls within the agorist movement to create a pirate Acrobat PDF edition of the KoPubCo hardback of Samuel Edward Konkin III's classic introduction to Counter-Economics, An Agorist Primer, KoPubCo has decided to undercut those attempts by releasing the free, authorized PDF of the complete book, available here. The PDF is created directly from the original InDesign proof of the hardback and is thus the authentic, correct, and complete electronic version. It looks great, prints out cleanly, and the primary link to use is below. Accept no substitutes!

Use this link and image source in your own blogs and web pages:

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<i>An Agorist Primer</i><br>
by SEK3 <br> <i>FREE PDF!</i></a>
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An Argument for Glass Ceilings in Politics?