I know I’ve written about this one before, but I’m going to recycle it.
Book that left a lasting impression. Why?
I was a bit concerned I wouldn’t get through this audiobook before I was set to write on this prompt today.
I finished listening to it yesterday.
The book? How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World.
I’d decided I wanted to read it again, for the first time since probably 1999, as Jo Jorgensen was running for President.
As I said, I voted for Dr. J. this year, despite some very deep reservations about her campaign team ran the campaign.
I handed out Harry Browne campaign literature on campus in 2000. Dr. J. had been his running mate in 1996, but had kind of fallen off the LP screen. She was off in South Carolina teaching psychology.
I had, myself, fallen away from the party after 9/11 happened in my next-to-last semester in college. I’d voted specifically against John McCain, and for George W. Bush, in Virginia’s open primary in 2000, and voted for Harry Browne in the general election.
If you live in a locality that’s been controlled by the Democrats since the Union occupiers moved out in 1876, you normally need to vote in the Democratic primary just so you can have any bit of a vote for some of the local office.
That’s kind of where I was when I lived in Norfolk. Living here in Alexandria, it’s the same sort of thing.
These localities haven’t had an elected Republican in more than a centaury. If you cared about seeing your local sheriff replaced, you had to vote in the Democratic primary.
How I Found Freedom is really not a political book, but it does describe some of the things that really flavor my politics.
Nobody rules you but you.
When I moved up here, I was actually using one of the tactics straight from that book, a book I hadn’t read in twenty years.
Get to zero, then build the life you want starting from zero. I was actually picking through some of my writings from probably 2015 until early this year, really, which was the idea of Get To Zero.
No debt. Few, if any, commitments that would keep me from being free do to what I want to do.
Dr. Jorgensen’s campaign was actually a decent re-statement of what Harry Browne ran on in 1996 and 2000. She’s been on campus, isolated from the world, and some of the things her campaign did this year really show that.
As for other things the book teaches, I wonder how much of it overcome by history. In the world of COVID-19 lockdowns, is there really anywhere where you can go to live the life you might want to live?
I don’t know.
So. News.
There’s this on what Justice Alito said about the lockdowns. I’m actually listening to this at the same time.
The chances of me getting COVID-19 are near zero. The chances of me dying from it are smaller, still.
Is there anywhere where I can still be free?
I really don’t know.