“There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights.
A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.”

—Ingrid Newkirk
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You probably heard about it. It was all the rage locally. And state wide. I suspect it might even have reached the national news market. Delivered in the most conde- scending tones, dripping with horror and disbelief.

Two local plain Mennonite farmers, kennel owners, over in Kutztown summarily exe- cuted eighty dogs. Seemingly for no reason. Shot them in the head and piled their carcasses outside their kennels.

Local reaction was swift and heated. The Humane Society issued a number of harsh, condemning statements. Letters to the editor expressed outrage. One letter writer excoriated the Amish and Mennonites for not believing that dogs have souls. A candle- light vigil was held one evening at some local park. One hundred people showed up. Men, women, children. They lit candles and read poems and sang songs of unity.

Lancaster County has a long tradition of dog kennels on farms. Dogs are big business. Depending on the breed, puppies are worth from several hundred to over a thousand dollars each when weaned. Many kennels traditionally have housed the dogs in cages. Not particularly a pastoral setting. Kept them confined for life, doing nothing but producing batch after batch of puppies.

In the early to mid-90s, animal rights groups and the Humane Society launched an organized resistance to these confinement practices. It started small, with only a few vocal people speaking out. By the late 90s, it had morphed into a formidable force. The kennels were labeled “puppy mills.” Once that label stuck, kennel owners might as well have packed it up. It would be only a matter of time before they’d be shut down.

Back when I practiced law, from 1997 to 2001, I developed a minor local reputation as an attorney who represented the kennel owners. Usually the fiercest resistance arose when a farmer applied for a zoning change to allow him to open a kennel. At the public hearings, opponents show up by the dozens and harangued the Amish guys for their cruelty.

The worst hearing I can remember happened around 1999, in Intercourse, PA. My boss, Jim Clymer and I represented two young Amish farmers who had applied for a special exception to open kennels. At the public hearing that night, about fifty dog lovers showed up, most from outside the area. Each was allowed about two minutes to express their opinions.

Tension pulsed through the air. The hearing began. Things got a bit loud. And heated. Some people spent their entire two minutes screaming at our clients, calling them cruel and inhumane. In that setting, two minutes can seem like an eternity. To his credit, the Township solicitor managed to keep order. He even had a state cop on standby, in case things got out of hand. No telling when violence might break out.

In the end, one of our clients was allowed a kennel, the other was denied.

I haven’t represented a kennel owner since. Not because I wouldn’t, but because I no longer practice law full time.

Since that time, anti-kennel forces have grown in numbers and influence. Billboards have popped up here and there. Some groups boycott Lancaster County altogether. Out of state letters to the editor appear sporadically, decrying the “puppy mills.” And last year, there was a rally in the Intercourse Park one Sunday afternoon. Some minor Hollywood celebrities showed up. If I remember right, Linda Hamilton (Terminator I and II) was among them.

Our good Democrat governor, “Fast Eddie” Rendell, decided to get in on the action. He implemented more stringent guidelines and harsher penalties for violations. Now we have several dozen dog-law enforcers running around harassing the kennel owners.

Which brings us back to the two plain Mennonite guys who killed their eighty dogs. Why did they do it? You don’t just go out and kill your dogs. They are investments. Worth a small fortune.

This is the inside story, at least as I heard it. Details tend to get a bit sketchy with each retelling, so my accuracy may be skewed. Another kennel owner in the county, an Amishman, a few weeks before found himself mired in some serious trouble. A nice lady showed up at his kennel to buy a puppy one day. He showed her what he had. She pointed to a sick one. She wanted that puppy. By law he wasn’t allowed to sell a sick puppy. He told her that. She begged and begged and promised she would nurse it to health. She felt a special bond to that puppy only. She would shower it with all the love it needed to get strong.

Finally he gave in. Sold the sick puppy to her. He shouldn’t have. It was a setup.

The next day, a gang of cops and dog wardens and a TV crew showed up at his kennel. The Amishman was arrested and led away in handcuffs. The footage was splashed all over the evening news and the next day’s papers. His dogs, worth thousands of dollars, were confiscated, his kennel shut down.

A few weeks later, a dog warden showed up at the two plain Mennonite men’s kennels. He found some violations. I don’t know what they were. Sick dogs, maybe. Some odds and ends of this and that. The warden said he would return in a few days to check again.

The two plain Mennonite men knew what had happened to the Amishman. They believed the same thing was about to be unleashed on them. They’d be led away in handcuffs, splashed all over the local TV news. And the newspapers. They determined this would not happen to them.

They called their vet. Asked if it was legal for them to shoot their dogs. He said it was.

So they did. All eighty of them. When the warden returned, they told him what they’d done. They were no longer in violation. They had no more dogs. No kennels either. The warden left, stunned. The vet was right. They’d broken no law. They were not charged with anything.

And that’s how and why it all came down.

It was a rash and stupid thing to do. Not to mention senseless and cruel. From the emotional backlash, a law very likely will be passed prohibiting anyone from shooting their dog(s). For any reason.

I was raised on a farm. We had cows, chickens, hogs, horses. And always a dog. Usually a cur, a mixed breed mutt of some kind. We raised calves. Fattened them. And come winter, we’d butcher one or two, along with a hog. Shot and skinned them. Cut up the meat. Feasted on fresh sausages and hamburgers. That was just life. We thought nothing of it.

But dogs were different. Our farm dog was always special. We would never dream of harming it.

Even then, there were times when we had to do what we had to do. Once, out in the fields, a farm wagon somehow ran over our dog. His name was Sluggo. We heard him yelping and ran to him, lying there whimpering, with a broken back. Struggling vainly to propel his limp hind legs. Titus and I held and cradled him. Tried to assure each other that the vet could fix him. Sluggo rolled his eyes in pain and cried. We knew then what had to be done. Someone fetched the .22 rifle. The spiteful crack, the bullet through the head, the limp body. We tenderly buried him.

We were upset and we were sad. But that was life.

Sometimes it’s necessary to terminate an animal’s life. Even a dog you love. I couldn’t imagine shooting eighty dogs in cold blood, just like that. I couldn’t do it, unless they were rabid or something, and attacking me as a pack. I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time hanging out with guys who could and did, like the two plain Mennonite farmers. Something about their makeup has to be screwed up just a bit.

But I’d hate to see a law prohibiting them from doing it. Even though dogs are special to many people, companions, like children, they are still animals. It would be a mis- take to grant them legal status as more than they are. (For that, I’ll probably get smacked around again like I was last week after writing about politics. Two strikes in a row. I shudder at the third strike, whatever it might be.)

The radical animal rights groups, like PETA and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) have worked tirelessly for decades to define all life on an even plane. A child is a dog is a cat is a fish is a horse. It’s all the same. People are just animals. Except for unborn human babies, who are just masses of tissue. Kill them all you want, for any reason or none, in the most brutal ways imaginable.

Their agenda was spawned in the pits of hell. And they have been quite successful in implementing it. Throughout all facets of society, through groups like the Humane Society. To them, the human race is a cancer upon the earth. The world would be better off if we all lived in caves. Or better yet, if we weren’t here at all.

Those who hate God love death. Except the deaths of animals. Killing animals will be verboten, criminally outlawed. And they are winning. They never give up. They never go away. And with incidents like the one described above, it’s no wonder. Any sane, decent person will recoil from such acts.

But still, one hopes that common sense and reason will prevail. PETA and ALF and all their minions must be confronted and vehemently opposed. Any person (with the possible exception of murderers and child molesters) is inherently worth more than any animal.

Including dogs.

And until people know this in their hearts, we will always be engaged on this battlefield.

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A few words on 9/11. It came and went yesterday. Like most of us, I’ll always remem- ber exactly where I was when I heard the news. The terrible dread deep down in the pit of my stomach. The disbelief. The horror of those planes smashing into the towers. The terrible loss of thousands of innocent lives.

How those of us in the office assembled in the little chapel in Gap a few days later. How we prayed, read scripture passages, and rang the great bell in the chapel tower.

The memories have receded with the passage of time. But they always jolt back on that fateful date. We now live in a different world.

While there is much legitimate debate on the course of action taken since that day, two facts are beyond dispute. We have not been attacked on our home soil since 9-11-2001. And we have lost a tremendous amount of personal freedom since that day.

On Tuesday night I arrived home late and settled at the computer with nothing more on my mind than working on this week’s blog. I turned on the TV, as usual, for a baseball game in the background to keep an eye on. It lit to a blank screen. I fumbled around and whacked on this and that connection to get it to work. Still nothing.

Mild panic set in. What would I do without the TV? I called Dish Network’s tech support and had a long unproductive conversation with some girl from India, who in halting English, with many long silent pauses, led me through an endless checklist of possible problems. I felt bad for her, talking to some irate American five thousand miles away. Of course, nothing was solved.

Might as well be Amish again, I decided as I hung up. No TV. What would I do, read a book? Mild waves of panic swept through me. Ah, but I still had my computer, and needed to work on the blog. So that’s what I did, in an unusually quiet house.

No baseball. No football. No nothing. Withdrawal set in. The next day, I was fortunate to convince a Dish Network service man to stop by and install a new control box. The old one had burned out. My disquieted spirit has settled. All’s back to normal. Football on schedule for the weekend.

Speaking of football, how ‘bout them Jets? Brett Favre is 1-0 as the starter. He wasn’t spectacular, just got the job done. The big test will be this weekend, when they face the vile Brady-less (Kansas City obligingly shattered Tom Brady’s knee last Sunday.) Patriots in New York. They win that, they’re going somewhere.

But probably the biggest game of the week will be the Cowboys-Eagles on Monday night. Go Cowboys.

“…..extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

—Barry Goldwater
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You could feel it pulsing through the air last Friday. A mighty wave of relief and high excitement after McCain chose his running mate, Sarah Palin. An almost audible sigh from all the conservatives out there from coast to coast. Now they could get on board and support the ticket. Now they could get energized. Now they could feel good about the election. Now they could march forward to victory again.

As someone who for years has brayed loudly about the importance of voting, and as someone who voted twice for Bush the Younger, I completely understand the relief and excitement. The very idea of an Obama administration for the next four years instills anxiety and panic into even the staunchest heart.

And Sarah Palin has impeccable conservative credentials. She’s beautiful, smart, and unafraid to stand up to corruption, wherever it hides. Well spoken too. A lifetime NRA member. She hunts. Skins and guts her own kill. She’s pro-life. Likable. And that speech she gave at the convention, wow. She’s real. I like her. Almost enough for even to crusty old cynic like me to stop and take a second look.

It was a bold and brilliant stroke by McCain. Floundering in the polls, and floundering from lack of support from the conservative base, he unveiled his choice the day after Obama’s historic acceptance speech, effectively stealing the limelight and the wave of accolades the Demoncrats had expected. Obama’s three point bump disappeared almost instantly.

McCain, I believe, will be the next president. When it comes right down to it, and in the privacy of the voting booth, a lot of people will not be able to bring themselves to vote for a vacuous empty suit with a Muslim-sounding name like Barak Obama. Might not be the way it should be, in a perfect world. But it’s the way it is.

Especially now that McCain has given the famished conservative base a positive thing, a real reason to turn out for him. My prediction: McCain/Palin in an electoral landslide.

If they win, it will be without my vote. I’m not participating. At least not in the two major parties. I may vote for Chuck Baldwin or Bob Barr. Or write in Ron Paul.

It’s been a long journey to this point. Now I’m here. Comfortable with my decision. Entering the door that only a few short years ago I would have considered the gateway to paranoia. My eyes are open. I have my wits about me. And I believe I’m right.

If McCain wins and becomes president, the conservatives who voted him in will be muttering and swearing at him from the day of his inauguration. McCain is McCain, and no conservative. Bristly, snarling, half senile. He loves the accolades of the main-stream media. The same people who reached impossible new lows this week in their reprehensible attempts to destroy Sarah Palin. He’ll reach across the aisle. Forward the Demoncratic agenda. Like global warming. He’ll expand federal powers. They all do. He’s predictable only in his unpredictability.

And Sarah Palin won’t be the energetic, dynamic governor of Alaska anymore. She’ll be his vice president, supporting all his policies. Leviathan will devour her, and she will become as corrupted as any mainstream politician you see today. A shame too, because she is today what she seems, a strong woman of character. But you can’t serve Leviathan and not become corrupted. It’s simply not possible.

In four years, the only changes will have been for the worse. More freedoms frittered away. More federal goons invading every aspect of our lives and privacy, turning this country into an occupied zone. More wars, entered into for no real national security reasons. More lying, stealing, killing, more destruction of innocent lives.

When that time comes, I’ll try to refrain from saying “I told you so.” Because I’m telling you now.

It’s all a farce. They need your votes. Will do and say anything to get them. Recruit someone like Sarah Palin to get you aboard. After it’s over, you’ll be forgotten faster than your wacky uncle at the family reunion. And as ignored.

The system is corrupt. The deck stacked. A shell game. I see no reason to legitimize a corrupt system by participating in the voting process. For me, voting would give tacit approval of the slime pit that is the oppressive state.

I first began to feel that something was seriously amiss back in the early 1990s. Waco and Ruby Ridge. But then I was very busy with life, pursuing education and so forth, and did not pursue in-depth studies or reach many concrete conclusions. Other than a vague unease about state powers that can and will destroy lives and property for no discernable reason, except to instill fear.

After law school, I supported forlorn little groups like the Constitution Party. But even then, I almost always voted Republican. Might as well vote for someone who has a chance to win, I figured. No sense throwing my vote away.

And so it went, until the Levi Stoltzfoos travesty unfolded this year in our local court system. (A Wrongful Prosecution) I watched with rising disbelief and increasing rage. As he was convicted and sent to a maximum security prison, among hard core violent criminals, for up to fifteen years. For committing no real crime.

He was prosecuted by a Republican Attorney General. Convicted and sentenced by a Republican judge. In conservative Lancaster County.

And that was the catalyst that triggered my mind to break free from the chains that bound it. The scales fell from my eyes. And now I see.

How could a thing like Levi’s conviction happen?

It could happen because the state (defined as all levels of state and federal power) exists for one thing, and one thing only: The increase of its own power by whatever means necessary, at the expense of individual liberty. That’s it, in a nutshell. It’s that simple.

The state will do anything in its primal pursuit of raw power. Anything. It will kill. Ruby Ridge, Waco and countless unconstitutional drug raids on homes in which innocent homeowners were killed defending themselves. It will steal. Levi Stoltzfoos’ money, a tidy sum of $500,000.00, was confiscated and never returned. It will intimidate and terrorize. Remember the INS goons who seized Elian Gonzales from his sobbing relatives and returned him to Castro’s loving arms. It will harass. Try flying from any major airport and dealing with the TSA thugs. It will destroy. Try disputing the IRS sometime.

The state does not have a “social contract” with its citizens. Instead, it imposes a one-sided contract of force and fear. By implementing a myriad of laws that are impossible not to break. The state, if left to its basic nature, which it always strives mightily to attain, will devour all liberty. And after its citizens are consumed, it will devour itself.

At every level, when state power increases, freedom and liberty decline. Free markets wilt. Production declines. Taxes increase.

I have not yet firmed up a solid coherent system of thought, other than this: Liberty is ALWAYS better than oppression. A weak government is ALWAYS better than a powerful centralized government. And the free market can accomplish any task far better than the state can. Any task. Far better.

It’s far better, to paraphrase a founding father (Jefferson, maybe), to deal with an excess of liberty than the effects of oppression.

I expect many, if not most, of my readers to be appalled at my conclusions. Maybe I’ll lose some of you. I would have been appalled too, a few years ago.

I’m not telling you what to do. Vote or don’t vote, as you will. But do some research for yourself. Read.

Read Lewrockwell.com. Check it daily. You won’t agree with everything they post. I don’t. But the site has had a tremendous impact on my thinking.

Read Lew’s columns. And others on the site. Read Doug Casey. Karen Kwiatkowski. Ron Paul. Gary North. William Norman Grigg. Dig into their archives. Read the books of Claire Wolfe and Jefferson Mack and Ragnar Benson (Paladin Press ). And others. These people are rational, coherent and write better than I could ever hope to. Check them out. Decide for yourself.

Recently, I read Albert Jay Nock’s scholarly book, Our Enemy, the State. An old time classical liberal, he is not widely known today because of his implacable opposition to socialism and all other forms of state oppression. But his works are quietly making a comeback, and every serious student of politics should read this book. As should any-one who cherishes liberty.

So check things out for yourself. Don’t just give me the tired old knee jerk responses about the “lesser of two evils.” The lesser of two evils is still evil. Embracing darkness to fight darkness is an exercise in futility, a long-term policy of defeat. And exactly what the state would prefer you do.

Give up. Embrace it. Participate. Support it as it grows and envelops you. Chokes the life from your freedoms. Until there are none left.

I won’t do it anymore. Not this time. I’m done.

I will be free. If not physically, at least in my awareness and in my mind. From this day on.

All that said, I’m not planning on heading for the hills. I’ll keep living in the world, in society, in the space allotted me. Working. Pursuing my dreams. Cooking out with my friends. Watching football. Writing. Speaking my mind. And yes, paying my taxes. All the stuff a normal forty-seven year old single guy would do. And enjoying to the fullest all but the taxes part.

I’ll still listen to Rush. And Glenn Beck. I enjoy their shows. Their hilarious parodies. Love to hear them bash the Demoncrats and liberalism in general. But I’ll be listening to their own perspectives and conclusions with a jaundiced ear. Won’t accept what they say on their credibility. Because that’s diminishing every day.

I still respect Rush in many ways. His cheerful, optimistic outlook in the face of great adversity has taught me much about living for today and allowing tomorrow to be what it may. Without stressing about it too much. His outlook on life has influenced me a lot in these last eighteen months, and I’m grateful to him for that.

But ultimately, even he is an apologist for the state. One of the best.

As a Christian, and a postmillennialist, I believe that Christ’s Kingdom here on earth will prevail. In history. Here on earth. I don’t expect complete victory in my lifetime. (I expect to die someday. For me, that will be the “end of the world.”) Or in the next few generations. Maybe not for fifty generations. Or more. My perspective on time is finite. God’s is not. And in the right time and place, His people will rise to lead. Lead, not rule and oppress.

But they won’t do it by participating in our current corrupt, thuggish two-party system.

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Now to close on a normal, happy note. Congrats to my nephew and namesake Ira Lee Wagler and his fiancé, Rosa Miller on their engagement. The wedding date has not yet been announced.