Pissing on Holy Rags: Does the truth need to be watered down (no pun) to bring people to the freedom "movement"?
1. Girl urinates on cloth made in China symbolizing the US government.
2. Flag worshippers send immediate graphic and brutal death threats to this girl.
3. Many Americans are more upset about a flag being urinated on than by the babies their beloved government is blasting to gory bits every day in the Middle East.
WELCOME TO HELL. WHAT IS HELL MADE OF?
Ignorance.
Emily Lance, thank you for your service.
Of course, the story referenced above is that of one Emily Lance, a Philadelphian girl who decided to piss on a flag:
A Pennsylvania woman has received death threats after publicly sharing a video of herself urinating on an American flag.
Emily Lance, of Philadelphia, had a friend film as she urinated on to a flag submerged in her bathroom toilet using a GoGirl, a device that assists women in urinating while standing up.
(source.)
Now she's receiving death threats.
Social media users sent her death threats, suggested someone slit her throat and even offered to pay money for someone to kill her.
The "Movement."
A libertarian friend recently suggested via a Facebook post that Lance's desecration of the holy made-in-China 'Murica fabric was detrimental to the freedom movement, as it just caused statists to be further cemented in their...well...flaggotry.
I have to disagree. Not because this act of protest didn't rile up the statists, but because it did reveal many of their true personalities, and what's more, whether or not I feel that Emily Lance's act of protest was an effective one, the truth remains that she acted within her legitimate, nature-conferred capacity of self-ownership.
Ignorance.
I'd like to get back to this thing about ignorance. A friend of mine posted this meme today, and it got me thinking.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I think that's just about right.
When you have folks not caring about lives being ended massacre style at the hands of a violent state, but saying that a girl who urinates on a flag should be murdered, you are pretty fucking gone off the brainwashed scale.
Who cares about these dead kids!?!? This girl is urinating on a piece of fabric!!!
(source.)
Lance later responded to her detractors on social media saying:
“People are willing to MURDER someone over a flag. It’s so sad that people don’t realize how brainwashed they are.
Couldn't agree more, Emily.
(By the way, Bob Seger's "Night Moves" playing in the background of the video makes it all the more magic :))
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
Zealots get really angry when you damage their religious symbols. I'll never understand them.
The USA seems to be in the early stages of Nazi Germany. The foaming at the mouth nationalists are now in power, and they are raging around intimidating people. How soon until the Night of the Long Knives?
I cannot stomach being on FascistBook anymore because of things like this. I've burned a US flag before, and I burned a Quran and bible at the same time in the same video. The response? The bible thumpers were the angriest.
It was my property. I can do with it as I please. If me destroying my property makes you violent, you're the problem, not me.
Stuff like this though, the response to it more precisely, is one of the primary reasons I have seriously considered leaving the USA. I just don't see how it can be saved. How can the blind nationalism be reversed?
No one here seems to give a damn because it isn't their house being bombed or their children being blown to bits. Americans completely ignore the mass murder going on around the world. Should I even try to help them understand?
I'm no longer sure if I should bother. I feel like it is a lost cause. Those of us who "get it" are greatly out numbered too. The mindless idiots surrounding us will almost certainly not change either.
I hear you. I so hear you.
The way I figure, keep planting those seeds. I have seen a couple people come around to Voluntaryism so far, through debates and conversation.
I hear you, though. These rabid zombie types will not likely be swayed, until outnumbered.
I may not see that day, but it is worth the philosophical battle (and as you say, it may become a physical self-defensive one, too), as long as we stand on the principle of self-ownership, which is the way of nature/God/the universe/creator.
As for getting out of the US, it might not be a bad idea. I am not really sure. I agree with your assessment of the current climate there 100% though. It's certainly seeming like things are about to really turn sour.
Yep, if I didn't have children, I would just stay and fight it out. Because I do have children though, I feel torn over the decision.
Politic and Criminal is onething
The US will always swing right. The left will push just hard enough to get us to go hard right again. Just waiting for financial collapse to provide the trigger.
Still can't make up my mind whether the left knows what they are doing or are just clueless.
Left and right are destroying the center.
The left and right for me are liberty and tyranny. There is no center. Don't be distracted by false divisions. :) The whole purpose of the USA system is to keep people divided and arguing while their liberty is slowly taken away.
Well, that is confusing. By that do you mean that the left stands for liberty and the right stands for tyranny?
Further clarification -- do you mean the left and right as they stand today, or classically?
I mean what the scale should be. Replacing one tyranny with another is not helpful.
So extremes of left or right are both tyranny? Communism or Fascism, neither things that I want? I'm in agreement with that.
Any collectivism for any reason is tyannical. As soon as one person has another's will forced upon them, it is unethical and wrong.
I agree
I am not a fan of pissing on things, but this fierce young woman has done a great service to some in the liberty movement by exposing the brainwashed insanity that occupies the same space as we do.
An acquaintance of mine, a 22 yo guy from Romania, told me that people's reaction to Emily's stunt opened his eyes and he was done sitting on the fence when it comes to speaking his mind about liberty and his own anarcho-perspective.
All the things he was unsure of or undecided on were swept away or illuminated by the hatred directed against a young woman...for pissing on a piece of cloth.
If you'd asked me before this, I would have said that lovers of liberty don't need to inflame other people's passions to get our point across. But now, I'm thinking this was a great thing, not to educate others, but to put things into perspective for us.
Even Chang agrees...
Well said! And very encouraging man!
@kafkanarchy84 I absolutely understand your point, however I think that acts like this enrage so many people because the flag is a symbol to them of the sacrifices made by so many of our veterans and public servants. I do not approve of this type of activism...i.e. the destruction of symbols be they flags, religious texts/symbols or the like but I do support the individuals freedom of speech and expression. Provided their actions are not physically harming others or their property. Thanks for bringing up this discussion and allowing everyone to express their thoughts. If we could have true discussions without being offended to the point of closing down we would go along way in addressing the issues facing the world today.
I hear you, and I 100% respect your position that you do not approve of this type of activism. To be honest, it is not my style either. As two people who "get it," we can talk about it, and even disagree on some things, perhaps, without threatening to kill each other, and I love that!
Exactly....without civilized discussion that aims to resolve differences the gap between grows wider and becomes even more difficult to traverse. Ain't Liberty grand!!!!! At least the parts that haven't been stripped from us lol. Hope you have a great weekend.
I agree. The destruction or desecration of a flag or holy book is in reality a harmless act, yes, but it pisses people off, and generally, pissing people off is not a way to win them to your side. Was there really any government addict who saw this video and then was like "waaaaait… taxation is theft!"
Win them over with arguments. And don't shove the arguments in their faces, but make them easily-accessible when they're ready. That's how the liberty movement eventually won me over, and I know I'm not alone. Were I as I was a decade ago, this video wouldn't have swayed me either.
I like the way you outlined the fundamental problem being ignorance. There was a time when I was a flaggot (sort of). I wish I knew the answer to how to get people to drop their worship of the State. I couldn't even define what it took for me to drop it other than a willful effort to learn.
As always, these are very interesting times.
You said it. They truly are.
She should have wiped her ass with it and called it "performance art" and then gotten a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
People have been taught to revere and respect the flag, but are not taught to revere and respect what the flag represents, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "All men are created equal" We are free to exercise our will without obstruction by others, even if it "pisses" them off.
The flag represents government and the principles of political plunder. Nothing more. Why else would the government decide what it looks like, and use it as their branding on literally everything they do?
It is sad that our country, name and values have been perverted to fulfill their ends. It used to be a govt. "for" the people now it is a govt. "of" the people. And as our society has become more and more centralized, we become subservient to the state, propping it up as our savior, pretending that the state affords us rights and the state provides for us. The flag represents govt., that is absolute, the government has changed and expropriated that symbol from sovereign people.
It was always a government of the people for and by the political class. It was never representative of the general populace.
Government is antithetical to society. Everything it has is stolen, and everything it does is backed by a threat of violence.
Thats true, if i decide not to pay taxes, then here comes the men in black to take me away by force. The problem is there are other governments around the world like china, that want absolute control. So we have to at this point in history have government at some level just to defend ourselves. If you could establish global anarchy at one time, it would be like hitting a reset button. But as time passes on, people will form groups for defence against neighboring groups, and then establish group rules and then in turn enforce them. So I'm not even sure you could ever have a world without government, as much as we'd like, all we can do is limit it's scope. And my argumemt would be the constitution came the closest to that point, although it has flaws. And maybe just the idea of it brought us one step closer to sovereignty, even if it never existed, and to that point, I would say that's what the flag is supposed to represent.
Well said!
Thank you sir!
WTF is she weeing with ? is that like some transgender gadget.
Clearly some people take their flags very seriously, not so much for me. Cheers
It never took a political movement for me to pee in my clothes, but all the power to this person!!
Flippen great post!!! And well done to Emily!! Reposted. The world today are so brainwashed and are thus so blind to see the pain the world is really in. Why care about people carelessly having sex and aborting their unborn children or ISIS still being a threat, men and women who served their countries who has been discarded and forgotten but hell brakes lose when a woman urinates on a peace of cloth...they are the ones that forgot what their countrie's flag symbolizes!!
Thank you.