Friday, March 14, 2014

Fistfights, Gunfights, and the Wild West

Fist Fights, Gun Fights, and The Wild West
 
            Being Libertarian means wanting the population to have the freedom to do whatever it wants so long as actions do not harm or interfere with the wants and needs of others.  It is as simple as that! Government has insinuated itself into every aspect of life.  Do-gooders, and Liberals have taken it upon themselves to control every action and even thought in everyday life to the degree that it takes a law degree to even keep up with it. What seems in the beginning to be a simple law, or regulation ends up being an attack on the very fabric of American life.  Let’s take gun control for instance.
 
            The second amendment is very clear.  I’m going to paraphrase here.  There are two simple statements.  One, you need a militia to protect the populace in time of attack.  That militia has to be regulated to a military standard.  What is a militia? A militia is a military group made up of  nonmilitary people who primarily do other things beside play army.  This organization is for defending the country from attack.  Now this is opposed to an army which is professional people who attack other nations in war to impose the will of your nation on them. It is assumed that the people called up in time of crisis to for this group already have guns, hence we lead directly into the next line of the amendment. Key phrase here: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The right of the PEOPLE.  The people make up the militia.  The people always exist. The militiaexists temporarily in time of crisis.  Once the crisis is over the militia goes away.  See how simple that is?
 
            Liberals can’t seem to distinguish the difference between people and militia, but then, they can’t distinguish the difference between men and women or babies and puppies either so it all follows true. But, we are asked, if everyone has a gun we will just have the wild west.  Well, little imports to Texas, I hate to be the first one to tell you this, but the wild west just wasn’t that wild.  Austin, Texas was no wilder than the Five Points in New York. When open carry was the norm bankers and store clerks did not routinely carry a gun.  The tellers in the banks wore suits and sat behind cages doing transactions while the bank hired a man with a Winchester to sit in the lobby.  Now comes the freedom part, the part where the government doesn’t need to get involved.  If a teller decided to bring a hog-leg to work one day he would have the perfect right, except he may be met at the door by the president of the bank and informed that the bank did not want him packing at work.  Now, he had the perfect legal right to have his gun on the way to work but the business owner did not want him to bring it into the building because that is why the bank is paying someone to guard the bank!
 
            From here let progress to another issue.  Let’s say, just for example, there is a bar in Austin. People frequent said bar and smoke and drink every night of the week.  There usually is standing room only. Suddenly the city passes a law saying that no bar can have smoking.  (This really happened, folks.) All of the sudden you have clean air and a broke bar.  Why? Because people who drink on Friday night usually smoke.  In fact, there are special air conditioning units to clean the air and keep everybody’s eyes from watering.  Let me explain the Libertarian alterative to this.  Why don’t we let the bar owner make bar decisions? What a revolutionary idea! Now, I know, I know, this doesn’t fit the liberal mind set with second hand smoke and yada yada yada. But a bunch of old bikers aren’t worried about second hand smoke! What if, now work with me here, what if the bar owner considers a non-smoking area? And just for the sake of argument, what if a lot of people like the drinks and food and that area begins to have to expand? Then, the owner thinks that maybe, just maybe, he could have the smokers out on a big patio and have the non-smokers inside. Wow! Power to the people! Suddenly, you have a bunch of old bikers on the porch (which is where they want to be anyway) and a flock of yuppies inside (because they think it’s cool to come to this particular bar) and everybody is happy, and you don’t have to have a law regulating the air in a biker bar! As the dynamic changes the owner will know what to do. 
 
            Now, back to open carry (work with me here.) Let’s say that open carry was the law of the land.  Bikers could roll up on their Harleys with their guns but, it is a house rule that those guns could not come on the bar’s property because common sense tells us that drinking and guns don’t mix!  Just like it really was in the proverbial “wild west!” I can hear it now. “Oh, God, Wilbur!  Do you know how many shootings there would be with people ignoring the rules and bringing guns anyway?” Do you know how many shootings there are now with the current Texas 51% law? Yeah, there’s a law people. Even if you have a license to carry a gun you can’t carry that gun into an establishment that makes 51% or more of its income from the sale of alcohol, and I just know that everyone strictly adheres to that! Give me a freaking break! I’ve played to too many bars to swallow that one.  And for the record, the only friend I’ve ever had who died in a bar’s parking lot was killed by a Bowie knife! 
 
            Let the people regulate the people.  Good old capitalism usually handles everything and the only people who don’t like that are the losers who can’t make it on their own and need Big Brother to hold them up! Food for thought friends, just food for thought!
 
 
 
 
Wilbur Witt
Austin Texas



Thursday, March 6, 2014

PoDunk Texas

                                                       PoDunk Texas
                                                          by Wilbur


     I was raised a Liberal Democrat. We were taught in school that being liberal was a good thing. I accepted Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and the Great Society with glee because Mr Cole, my high school civics teacher told me that was the needed change for the country. Then I graduated high school and moved out into the world. By the time Reagan came along I was shifting to the right. Back in the day nothing came easy in Texas. To use a Texas slang we were "PoDunk!" While cars were rolling off the assembly lines in Detroit and common workers were collecting $8.00 per hour I got a raise working in a pool hall from .50 per hour to .75 per hour and had to learn to shoot pool to buy my baby, Wilbur, milk! On the streets of Killeen I learned there was absolutely no free lunch.

     Now, looking back, I've made three fortunes. I'm working on a fourth and I'll get there. Detroit is in ruins and why is that? Detroit is the product of that same liberal thinking Mr Cole instilled in me back in 1969. 

     In Nashville I learned that if you write a good song the record labels will beat a path to your door. I heard malcontents moaning the blues down at Shoney's every day, going on about how unfair the system was, and that people of little or no talent got all the breaks because of their connections with Roy Acuff, but another friend, Johnny Carter Cash told me no one could be more connected than he was and he couldn't write a hit to save his soul! I wrote over 3,000 songs, some I thought were pretty good, and could never get a cut. I didn't have it. What I did have was a peculiar talent for raunchy country comedy and after a brief discussion with Ray Stevens one day while we were standing in line at a grocery store I became Weird Wilbur. Acuff-Rose put severe restrictions on material streaming out of Music Square so Michael Lee Davis and I formed our own label and sold albums at concession during my shows out on Briley expressway RIGHT across the street from the Grand Ol Opry!

     John Brandt had a day job at United Artists and that company rented it's space from Steve Dreamstreet who slipped us a key and during the night we slipped into the state if the art studios and recorded and mixed "Weird Wilbur Rides Again" which you can find to this day on iTunes!

     I came back from Nashville and my wife and I began real estate and stock investments. Before it was all over we owned four houses, three near Austin and one in Killeen where I currently reside. 

     When I hear someone say,  " I don't got no chance cause I'm black. I got to get a special deal," I literally laugh right IN their face. I am white trash that never owned a car before I was 25 years old and even then it burned oil!  I went from feeding my family on a $17 meat pack from Well's Slaughter House to flying back from California and some IRS agent asking for a check for 1.5 million dollars and looking at me like she had good sense!

     And yes, I, by that time, was a very conservative Republican. There are people who are content to stand in line and wait for Obama to hand them their daily bread and then there are people like me who drive by the welfare office in a Mercedes on the way to Logan's Steak House for lunch.