Taking Oaths Can Be Dangerous Business

Just looked over some old class mates from High School and beyond. My 6th cousin runs the 1st plank of "The Communist Manifesto" in the town where I grew up (code enforcement). Nicest guy you ever met. But I almost killed one of his employees a few years ago in my front yard. He was harassing my neighbor for having a flat tire on his minivan in his own driveway. I grabbed the sun glasses off the pricks face, my right hand wrapped around my pocket knife still in my pants pocket. It was all I could do not to follow my oath from Ft. Dix not to kill him in the street right there. The police, who came out, consisted of another guy I went to school with.

I guess I read too many books and sat in too many class rooms to go home.

Gene K. Chapman

"State Forced Collectivism"

In 2015, I found myself in one of my email debates with Dr. Noam Chomsky, asserting that he was not in fact an anarchist or libertarian socialist, as he asserts.  I proposed that his endorsement of national health care via the state constituted "state forced collectivism."  Dr. Chomsky, the world renown linguist that he is, returned the phrase back at me, seeming to suggest that he'd never interacted with the term before.  Sensing that I'd pinned his proverbial ears to the wall with it, I knew I needed to gain assurance of my footing.  I asked my associates to verify, and we found 1 1/2 pages of google references to the term, mine included.

In about 2000 to 2001, I remember hearing my Congressman Dick Armey, whom I'd been interacting with at the time on pushing for new hours of service regulations in the trucking industry make a talk on "collectivism."  I later would combine this "collectivism" with "state force," as I knew there were ancom or libertarian socialist positions that are not practical in my opinion, but nevertheless do not include the violence of the state in their definition.

I do believe that I coined the term, state forced collectivism around 2003 for the English lexicon.

Gene K Chapman

A Buddhist Teaching I Live Under

One of the great teachings of Buddhism that has guided my life is that we should desire many things but require nothing. It gives me great peace.

I desire to sleep atop the Great Pyramid in Egypt and watch the sun rise, like a man I met in Washington, D. C. once told me he did; however, I am content to never seeking a passport to accomplish the trip in order to respect my life committed to Truth. No man has the right to tell me I must be numbered to travel.

I would love to take my paints and place Lake Powell on canvas before I die, but I am content to sit in a jail cell should conscience require.

G. K. Chapman

The Best Investment Today

As many of you know, I am a longtime student of Warren Buffett and do on occasion get a note from him. But the greatest investment advice I ever heard was from James Brown, the Godfather of Soul: "Bury your money in the woods." Eddie Murphy related this wisdom on a tv show years ago, and I think it good advice in the present monetary system for a morally conscience investor.

Let me put it this way: My mother also relates a story of how her grandmother had a small four acre spot in Lake Dallas, Texas and took care of lots of surrounding people during the Great Depression with her hogs and chickens, etc. Another one is coming with the Central Banking System we live under. Inflated central banker money caused the last depression and it will cause the next one.

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm