Guns N' Roses vs. Oktoberfest
Email from my dad:
Read your blog and if freedom means you can perform for an audience while breaking the law and while being soused, inspite of the majority opinion. Then I want no part of Libertarianism either.
Evidently their fans have no problem with GNR being soused, and they're the only ones whose opinions matter. As for "the law", it's a red herring here. What business is it of the State if people choose to drink onstage? Seems like the only ones with a legitimate interest are the audience, the band, the promoters hiring the band, and the owners of the venue. Everyone else needs to butt out. Certainly "majority opinion" has no relevance here; if that's the moral and legal arbiter, why don't we just shut the band down? What we're dealing with here is a Christian blue law. I would also add that YOUR SON has drunk onstage many times, had open beer cups, lifted them up to "Ein prosit". Different state laws and social context here, but BY THE LAW (which is what you're considering sacred), the Joe Wendel Ensemble, doing an Oktoberfest in Maine and doing their usual Oktoberfesty things, would be CRIMINALS. Now, as a German-American, do you think the state has a legitimate interest in stamping out German-American cultural expression?
And while I'm picking on that email:
It scares the beJesus out of me to see Bush kissing up to Pelosi and Reed.
That was a foregone conclusion back in '99...you Pugs should have ran from that "compassionate conservative" crap the minute it left his mouth. IN PRINCIPLE, Bush is as Commie as Pelosi; he's just more "moderate". He still thinks your money is there to help the disadvantaged (or to be more precise, our children's money). It might be marginally better to be raped with 5" rather than 9". but it's still rape, and it's not conservative.
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: November 13, 2006 12:32 AM
He might be more commie:
He believes in Exporting the Revolution. Pelosi et al. merely believe in Enforcing the Revolution against Domestic Counterrevolutionaries.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: November 15, 2006 01:42 PM
Well, the question there is whether the revolution he's exporting ("democracy") is socialist, or even necessarily statist (i.e., is it more statist to have a democratic Iraq, or a Saddam-led Iraq? And if Iraq falls into 3 pieces, is that a more statist or less statist outcome, given that there would be more STATES, but each one more responsive to the populace?)