The Free State of PIG is off life support. We aren't fully recovered but we're working on it. Porcus' life derailed completely, but he's slowly pulling himself back from the brink. COVAD19 is the least of his issues. I'll keep you posted.

Hambo - that would be yours truly - is in slightly better shape. Last year - Labor Day-ish- I tripped in a grocery store parking lot and broke both of my shoulders. DON"T TRY THIS AT HOME! I am now, belatedly, ready to revive PIG.

On a personal note, I am forced to question my sanity. Some of you have questioned it for years. I feel like I am trapped in a nightmare. I keep trying to wake up, but it isn't' working. When I dozed off, America was enjoying historic prosperity. We were firing on all cylinders. Uncle Sam had his mojo back and it felt damn good. We the people seemed to have that 'fuck off Sparky, I'm an American' attitude working again.

The shining city on the hill never looked better.

COVAD19 changed all that. From sea to shining sea America looks like the set of a zombie movie. When faced with this challenge, America tucked tail and ran away. Instead of mounting a vigorous counterattack based on our intellect we hid under our beds and begged for a Nanny State solution. We are looking for help in the wrong place. For a challenge of this magnitude, we need the creative power of the marketplace.

Dr. Hurd writes:

Leading up to coronavirus, it's clear that many people had abandoned reason. On that point, if no other, nearly all factions could agree.

Reason enables you to handle a crisis. It allows you to consider the source of information of those telling you about the crisis; to digest the facts without acting rashly or inappropriately; to place confidence in your OWN mind, not just the minds of others, to determine what makes most sense to do.

If reason hadn't been largely abandoned by most people, we would not be in the crisis we're in now. The media would not be able to convince most of us to PANIC, PANIC, PANIC, FOR GOD'S SAKE PANIC!!

Coronavirus would be a concern. It would be a major stress, for sure. But we would not have placed responsibility for every last decision in the hands of a bunch of career politician Governors and a lone career bureaucrat of 50 years who happens to have an M.D. and lives in the Swamp of Washington D.C.

I'm not saying government would be irrelevant. We don't live in a state of anarchy, and we need a government to protect basic rights. During a crisis, individual and property rights become more precious and important than ever before. We need businesses and individuals to be able to THINK and therefore FUNCTION. Instead of clamping down on business and individuals, we might have invited them to THINK, judge, make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. We might have used government to enable them to do so, through tax and regulation vacations; instead, government came down with a heavy-handed fascist-like sledge hammer and in the span of two short weeks has managed to literally nuke our amazing world economy.

Do you feel safer? Do you feel healthier because of this? How about your mental health — even if you're not physically sick?

Whatever the solution, it can't be THIS. But any rational alternative starts with THINKING. If you're unable to exercise that necessity during stress, you will tend to leave the job of reasoning to others. Big mistake!

The problem with abandoning reason is that you lose your independence. If you're unable or unwilling to think or reason, then you're counting on the guy or girl next door to do your reasoning for you. "I don't know what to do. What are these other people doing?" But they're just as paralyzed and uncertain as you are.

So, by default, you allow that one career bureaucrat doctor in D.C. and your local mayor or Governor to decide your entire fate and future for you. Everything. For all time. You never heard of that government bureaucrat doctor three weeks ago, and you never would have trusted these career politician governors to so much as babysit your child before coronavirus. And now they control everything, for the foreseeable future. THINKERS would never have let this happen, not even this far.

You never should have abandoned REASON, people.

@

We lost touch with our identity as Americans.

It's my considered opinion that too many native born Americans have lost their way. The Nanny State's siren song of artificial rights and safety nets that 'spare' us the essential, character building, life lessons is destroying us. Those life lessons, those blows, that the Nanny State absorbs, are vital when it comes to forging the American character. We have become fat, lazy and much too complacent, while the Nanny State chips away at our birthright of inalienable individual liberty. We are, in short, our own worst enemy when it comes to the erosion of that rugged individualism that is the solid foundation which gives being an American its unique meaning.

We've lost our way, but the situation isn't hopeless. Many - perhaps most - of America's legal, front door, immigrants harken back to the essence of what it means to be an American. They don't want a handout. They don't want a safety net. All they want is their chance to become that self-reliant, that self-made individual, an American.

What is an American? If you still don't know, ask any legal immigrant. Ask any of those determined individuals who walk that long, torturous, path that ends at a ceremony where they are sworn in as a certified American. Ask those eager immigrants who dip their toe into those teeming capitalist waters with that donut shop, convenience store, dry cleaners or gas station. Ask that endlessly patient individual who is on that years long waiting list, ready, willing and eager for permission to realize that dream of becoming an American.

What is an American? An American is a dreamer, an innovator, an arrogant, swaggering pain in the butt, who dares to tell the rest of the world: "I'm living proof that there's a better way."

When we surrendered to our fear we lost some essential items. Here's one of them:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Here are a few more American essentials that vanished:

Amendment [I] Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment [II] A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment [IV] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched,and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment [V] No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Amendment [VIII] Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment [IX] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment [X] The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Amendment XIV [1868] Section 1--All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State whereinthey reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

I'll close this out with an oldie but goodie which sums up my nightmare

Whatever happened to that place called 'America'?
Source: Hambo's Archives

Given the direction our nation is headed, I feel like we've lost some vital part of what makes us who, what, we are. For the lack of a better word, I call it 'America', in this piece from my personal archives. This rant only identifies what we've lost.

In my current state of mind, I won't even pretend to tell how we'll ever get it back. We are, I'm afraid, in the 'things have got to get a lot worse' phase of an eventual, albeit a long way off, return to what we once were, that shining city on the hill.

I can tell you one thing, that's etched in stone. There's no room for that place called America in the brave new world that's being imposed on us by George Soros and his shill, a Marxist Messiah named Barack Hussein Obama.

America was a nation that one of its presidents called a 'shining city on a hill', a nation that showed the world what sovereign individuals working together, voluntarily, could accomplish.

It was a marvelous place that encouraged an individual to strive to achieve the maximum degree of success.

It was a land conceived in liberty where each individual was afforded the opportunity to go as high and as far as his talents, energy. and intelligence would take him.

It was a nation where an individual's great achievement and success were celebrated and cited as an example of what could be accomplished when a person focused all their energy, intellect and talent on a single goal.

It was a land where inalienable individual liberty reigned supreme and the government's primary function was to maximize each individual's birthright of unimpeded freedom.

It was the first nation that deliberately imposed limits on its own national government with a constitution that clearly defined the handful of legitimate functions the national government was allowed to perform.

It was a land that invited the free exchange of ideas, all ideas - noble and profane - a land whose inhabitants welcomed the vigorous debate that ensued.

It was a land where an individual had the inalienable right to decide how the fruits of his life's work would be distributed after his death.

It was a land where a man's rightful property could not be stolen by the government and handed over to another individual.

It was a nation whose inhabitants elevated self reliance, and individual accountability, to virtues.

It was a nation with a notoriously robust sense of humor populated by individuals who were famous for cracking a joke no matter how dire the situation.

It was a land where an immigrant arrived on its shores knowing that success wasn't guaranteed, but the opportunity to make something of yourself was available to anyone willing to put in the hard work.

It was a land where each newcomer added the best of himself to the land he now called home in exchange for the right to call himself an American.

It was a unique place, a nation the likes of which had never been seen before and hasn't been seen since.

What ever happened to that place called America?

If you spot America wandering aimlessly in the uncharted wastelands, tell it to phone home, because We the People are trying to bring it back where it belongs, as that shining city on the hill.

Get up off your knees. Reclaim the liberty that is our birthright..