For Life -- New Toxic Fumes in the Hellbender Press

Eventually, the edited version of this column will probably be at http://www.hellbenderpress.com/. But don't wait! Pick up your hard copy at any of these locations, http://www.hellbenderpress.com/where, to read what Rikki Hall says about the sticky issue of spider webs, how Yarnell Perkins advises you deal with bad bosses, Kim Stephens' pitch for visiting the Racheff Gardens and so much more.

 

In the meantime, though, here's some toxic fuming.

For Life

The logical end? Death to all who aren’t!

by Scott McNutt

What is our most precious natural resource? What is the one thing that we must conserve at all costs? Air, water, arable land? Natural gas, crude oil, coal, ethanol? No, none of those things. It’s life, of course.

The pro-life movement defines life as beginning at conception. But that concept is ill-conceived. It gives short shrift to sperms and eggs. Are sperms and eggs dead? No, they are not. They are alive! So life begins the moment a single sperm or egg is produced. To be logically consistent, the preservation and propagation of every single human sperm and egg produced in the United States should be the pro-lifers’ goal. Instead of leading the world in gross national productivity, the U.S. should lead in gross national reproductivity.

"Be fruitful and multiply," God commands in Genesis 1:22-23. Does he say wait until some arbitrarily decided "age of consent"? No, He says procreate! He says bump those humps, honey! To go far enough in the pursuit of life, we must immediately sanction regular monthly testing of adolescents to determine when their sperm and egg production begin! Mandatory marriage and breeding must follow verification of fertility. Screw the "age of consent" (not literally screw, of course, because that would waste potential embryonic material), what we must establish is the "age of conception," when youngsters can begin to conceive more youngsters. As soon as they do, off with the clothes, into the bed, make with the whoopee!

But that’s not enough. For the sake of all those billions upon billions of unused sperms and eggs, all those little, living, almost human beings, we’ll have mandatory reproduction for couples beginning with the age of conception and lasting until fertility ends! And with drugs extending thenatural age limits of fertility, expect a lot of extra senior-citizen sack time.

And because sex should only be for purposes of propagation, all purveyors of material and products that emphasize pleasure over procreation will be banned. This ban would of course cover obvious pleasure-enhancement items such as lubricants, dildos, edible underwear and Barry White’s voice.

But it also means buh-bye, Sports Illustrated swimsuit special. Hasta la vista, Cosmo-variety "Eight Out-of-This-World Ways to Achieve Extraordinary Orgasms" articles. Jean Paul Gaultier’s provocative fashions? Out. Victoria’s Secret undies? Unh-uh. Mouth wash? If fresher breath makes you more sexually exciting, it’s gone. Anything that injects fun into the reproduction function is out. Your life-begetting must be dead serious.

The purpose of life is to beget more life, so all able should be getting begetting, or they’ll be getting the fate of the misbegotten! Those shirking better getting working! There’ll be whuppin’s and worse for all those who refuse to copulate whenever they are capable (within the bounds of holy matrimony).

Marriage is for life, death is for those who divorce, those who perform divorces and those who cause divorces! If a spouse dies? Mandatory remarriage and more breeding until reproductive capabilities are exhausted!

Speaking of death...The most extreme penalty must be enforced on any and all persons and products that in any way inhibit breeding (within the bounds of holy matrimony). Each egg is vital! Every sperm’s entitled! All who disagree? Thump ‘em with a Bible! Those unwilling to get in on the action? Each egg extracted! Every sperm subtracted! Then penalty of death exacted!

Death to those who can't reproduce! Death to those who don't have the necessary reproductive drive! Death to premature ejaculators! Death to masturbators!

Death to stem-cell researchers! Death to doctors who perform vasectomies! Death to those who tie tubes! Death to purveyors of prophylactics and contraceptives! Death to those who sell unnecessarily tight, sperm-count-reducing underwear! Death to those who display images of Barry White! (His voice is one thing, his image another entirely.)

Death to long bike rides and soaking in spas or hot baths, which can reduce sperm counts! Death to producers of artificial sweeteners, caffeine, food additives such as MSG, beer, wine, hard liquor, cigarettes, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, paint fumes, radiation, chemical cleaners, solvents, contaminated food or water, and stress, all of which may interfere with the natural reproductive order of things! Death to makers of fertility-rate-lowering low-fat cheese-food dairy products! Death to makers of vitamin C and all grain-based oils and hydrogenated oils, particularly cottonseed oil; all hormone-containing meat products and soy or soy products, including textured soy protein and soy protein isolate, which experts warn may lower testosterone levels and impair fertility!

So death to Illinois, the biggest producer of soybeans in the U.S.! Death to California, the biggest producer of dairy products in the U.S.! Death to North Carolina, the biggest producer of tobacco in the U.S.! Death to Iowa, the biggest producer of corn in the U.S.! Death to Washington, the biggest producer of hops in the U.S.! Death to Tacoma, Washington, 2004’s "most stressful place to live" in the U.S.! Death to TKI Foods, Inc., the biggest producer of private-label artificial sweeteners in the U.S.! Oh, the heck with it! Death to the U.S., one of the biggest producers and consumers of all things that prevent maximum reproductivity in the world!

Death! Death! Death! Until all are for LIFE!

It’s only logical.

Yellow Pages Justice -- new Knoxville Voice Column

 As always, check out the rest of the issue at http://www.knoxvoice.com/

Yellow-Pages Justice
The horror of a socialized legal system

by Scott McNutt

We in the United Private Sectors of Uncareica are well off, with all our needs provided through the free-market system. Under the UPSU Bill of Sale, Uncareicans can buy all the rights they want. But some people are always discontented. Periodically, some quack politician broaches the idea of a nonprofit, universal judicial system with all personal civil rights therein guaranteed. And every time some pol proposes this, it seems like a flock of parrots takes flight, all squawking the same damned “Socialized justice! Socialized justice!” refrain. What a bunch of bird droppings!

Don’t those birdbrains realize what “socialized justice” would mean? Who in their right mind believes the government can protect citizens better than citizens can? Consider all the basic societal protections we need: food and water quality and safety, traffic control and safety, construction safety, fire protection, environmental protection and more. As an Uncareican, you are a caveating emptor when you purchase any of these goods or services.

For example, the typical Uncareican buys his water, then tests it at home with his own water-quality-testing apparatus. But what if water quality were administrated by the UPSU government? Even if you could trust a bureaucracy to get the test right, how could you be sure they weren’t adding something to your water? Maybe something to brainwash you, like fluoride. Scary, right?

Oh, advocates of socialized justice will tell you not to be scared. They insist that all they want is for everybody to have some coverage in our judicial system. Everybody should have access to justice, regardless of their ability to pay for it, they say. They promise free justice to people who can’t afford legal representation.

And they’ll always bring up “the children.” “How will the poor children pay for their justice?” they’ll cry, tugging at your heartstrings like pitiful Quasimodo yanking on Notre Dame’s bell ropes. How can you resist? But you cannot treat rich people like chattel while you give legal representation to snot-nosed kids claiming to be have-nots.

Just as there’s no such thing as free healthcare, there’s no such thing as free justice. The real agenda here is justice redistribution. What they want is to take justice from those who pay their own legal bills and give it to the kids of deadbeat criminals who don’t. There is no justice in such thievery. Besides, socialized justice has never worked. Look what it’s done to the United States of America.

Our private legal system works fine. If somebody does something illegal to you, you just shoot 'em with your own God-given gun. Or, if you prefer, you can hire private police officers to catch your criminals and lawyers to sue them in the court of your choice before a judge you buy. The free market at work. Private enterprise at its finest. Respectful of personal rights, no lines, no waiting, no muss, everybody makes a profit – what more could anyone want? Anyone willing to pay for justice can get it. You simply get the justice you pay for.

Those who didn’t have the foresight to arm themselves to the teeth and to make enough money to retain the best counsel and bribe the best judges should not penalize those who did. If we nationalize the UPSU legal system, revenues going out will rapidly exceed those coming in. Then, we must either bring in more revenues (through taxes or borrowing) or reduce services (through rationing and/or elimination of justice).

Mr. and Mrs. UPSU Taxpayer, you are being asked to pay for your neighbor’s legal system. If you think your lawyer’s fees are too high now, imagine what they will be when you're paying for everyone else’s justice. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, “If you think justice is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s ‘free.’”

What will socializing the legal system really do? It will drive legal costs up and bring the quality of rulings down. Under a nationalized, “free” legal system, writs of habeus corpus will cost an arm and a leg, pleadings will be reducing to begging, motions will be stillborn, appeals will be unappealing, reversible errors will be mistaken, cross examinations will be vexed and verdicts will be verboten. Plus, taxes will be higher.

Right now, you need look no further than the yellow pages to choose a police force, legal counsel and courts of law to settle your case. But under a socialized justice system, forget about choice. When just anyone can bring charges against anyone else, the government will have all the police forces busy tracking down jaywalkers and sidewalk-spitters, clogging the system with piddly stuff like that. The government will treat everybody’s case the same, because a bureaucracy can’t distinguish between important and unimportant cases.

If criminals ever get caught, and the case actually goes to trial, it will be impossible for you to hire the best attorneys, because the government will force them all to work government-mandated cases. And there won’t be any private lawyers anyway, because, under government-set pay scales, no one will have an incentive to study law. In fact, hard-working, for-profit lawyers will all be run out of business.

Plus, it will be impossible for the wealthy to secure their preference of courts to hear their cases because the government will deem that too prejudicial to the accused or something like that. They’ll keep coming up with supposed “rights” of “victims” (especially children) that must be “protected” until the system is overwhelmed.

A concept like “equality of all before the law” is only a stepping stone to government-dictated law. Socialized justice will mean long waits and crappy service and being told by the government what justice you can and can’t have and when you can and can’t have it. It will mean shortages of justice and justice rationing. It will mean whole regions will simply run out of justice. And after socialization of the legal system will come the outright socialization of all business, followed by socialization of the press. Heck, they might even try to socialize healthcare.

This is the trend that socializing justice will set in motion. So it’s best to leave the law where it belongs: in the hands of private individuals with the money to pay for it.

Yes, justice for all…who can afford it. Especially the children.