My family came over the the New World from Great Britain. They were at Jamestown and on the Mayflower. My kin were at the heart of building this nation, carving it from the wilderness that met them.
Some were looking for new opportunities and others fleeing religious persecution, but my family roots are in Merry Old England.
And I want to see Great Britain as a free society, though I’ve talked before about how it’s not.
The way they view free speech is a problem, but it gets worse.
Let’s start with a couple of screenshots. Yes, these are real.
That’s right. The counter-terrorism unit shows up at this girl’s door, takes a replica sword from her, demands to know about her politics, and then tells her to watch her mouth online.
That is not a free society in the least.
In fact, I’ve argued elsewhere that this only happens in a society where they know the population has no means to resist.
However, this is still ultimately about speech. It’s theoretically possible that someone said something so egregious that even the police in a libertarian society would feel some duty to investigate, and since Britain is not a particularly libertarian society by anyone to the right of Lenin’s definition, it’s possible that there was something there.
But the stupid doesn’t end in counter-terrorism cops showing up at someone’s door because of their politics.
Oh no, it’s also a problem to help build memories with your grandchildren.
A farmer has been ordered to pay out £3,500 in costs after a neighbour secretly filmed him riding a tractor with his grandchild in the cab.
Video footage taken by a neighbour captured the moment Howard Walters, 78, allowed one of his grandchildren to illegally ride in his tractor.
He was spotted with the pre-teen child in the tractor cab in January 2021 as he fed cattle on his farm in South Wales.
Mr Walters had already been issued with a prohibition notice by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after admitting to inspectors he allowed his grandchildren to ride in his tractor.
However, just two months later, he was filmed by his neighbour breaching the terms of that notice.
A HSE inspector who investigated Mr Walters said the law was 'very clear', as children under 13 are specifically prohibited from driving or riding on or in any agricultural machine, including the tractor cab.
Now, I’m well aware that agricultural accidents are real and farm work is particularly dangerous, all things said and done. However, inside the cab of a tractor is probably one of the safer places to be.
Legions of American kids have grown up in and around the cabs of tractors with their fathers and grandfathers. They’ve learned how to farm from the generations that came before and they developed a love of agriculture because of it.
Others just built memories that they could hold onto.
I’m sorry, but this is beyond ridiculous. I get that he knew it was illegal and did it anyway, but it shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.
Nor should there have been a busybody neighbor interested in recording the whole damn thing.
This was a country that once had the ability to just roll into a place and just decide it was now a British possession. Now, they just look at your life and decide that is a British possession.
What’s more, there are people who think this is a good thing. They’re not interested in fighting back because they aren’t the people who are being punished. They’re not the victims of the police state.
Not the victims yet, anyway.
See, sooner or later, these folks are going to cross a line themselves. You can’t have that many laws and not see regular people run afoul of them sooner or later. That’s by design, as Ayn Rand noted in Atlas Shrugged:
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”
In this country, the average person commits three felonies per day. The UK has a lot more laws than we do and no Constitution to truly protect the rights of the people like we do.
They are all rulebreakers to some extent, and sooner or later, the counter-terrorism unit is going to come knocking on someone’s door over more than a replica helmet and some words on the internet.
Great Britain hasn’t been that great in a while, but now they something else entirely.
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My father was a doctor in a small city. During the 1960s a lot of the doctors bought some land in the country to relax on. My father bought 160 acres in 1963 when I was 8 (I think he got it for $2,000). The following year he got an Allis-Chalmer tractor that was so old it had to be cranked by hand to start it. I grew up riding on the fender. I was driving it by the time I was 10 although I wasn't strong enough to start it.
Later my father replaced it with a 1959 Ford tractor. We had some horses and planted a few acres in corn for feed so I learned how to plow and cultivate. At one point my father was trying to get up a hill with the corn planter attached but it was too heavy so he told me to hang onto the front grill to give it more weight. That was a bit too far and I refused after the first try.
But I survived all that and have a lot of good memories about driving the tractor, cutting trees with a chain saw, riding a motorcycle (when I was 13), rowing and swimming in the pond. I'm sure that all of that would be illegal today.
I finally sold the land last year for an ungodly profit.
Someday busybody neighbors are going to find out it's unhealthy to snitch to the authorities about what your neighbors are doing because no one will care what happened to them.