{"id":11649,"date":"2010-03-24T15:00:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T22:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=11649"},"modified":"2010-03-24T15:00:32","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T22:00:32","slug":"cultivate-your-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11649\/cultivate-your-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultivate your garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of caterwauling these days. I used to be a libertarian, and still have many friends who hew to that line of thinking. In recent days, my Facebook page has been awash in complaints and claims that the country has turned a corner, that the best years are behind us, and on and on. I had to chuckle. <\/p>\n

This is all nonsense. First, it’s a narrative awash in nostalgia for a period when, presumably, peoples’ individual liberty was more or less respected, when the free market more or less reigned, and when the government was small and limited. <\/p>\n

Let’s be clear. This country has never had a truly limited government, and if you think so, you should tell it to the victims of chattel slavery, to the men conscripted into armies to fight wars, to those who lived in the Jim Crow south, to those interned at places like Manzanar.<\/p>\n

And before you start on about how universal health care is a diabolical plot to destroy your liberties, please take a moment to think about the hundreds of thousands of human souls confined to American prisons for the crime of selling, transporting, or using what politicians have defined as “controlled substances.” <\/p>\n

Or the couple hundred thousand held in detention this very day because the U.S. government says they crossed a political border to earn a better living for them and theirs. <\/p>\n

There are a lot of injustices in the world. Universal health care, however corrupt and ultimately ill-fated a project that may be, falls pretty far down my list of crimes. Your mileage may vary.<\/p>\n

I got out of libertarian politics because, it seemed, a lot of it was built around a commitment to protect a set of institutions that privileged a certain middle class, bourgeois status. Libertarians would go on and on about the horrors of the capital gains tax, or the injustice of Social Security, or stupid regulatory rules. <\/p>\n

But while many of them would give lip service to the idea of ending deep injustices – like the war on drugs – so few Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of caterwauling these days. I used to be a libertarian, and still have many friends who hew to that line of thinking. In recent days, my Facebook page has been awash in complaints and claims that the country has turned a corner, that the best years are behind us, and on and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-real-estate","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":384,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/384\/blogoff-post-7-weblog-review-in-the-trenches\/","url_meta":{"origin":11649,"position":0},"title":"Blogoff Post #7: Weblog Review: In the Trenches . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Kevin Boer's In the Trenches weblog is a serious place -- notwithstanding Kevin's creation of a predictive betting market for the Sellsius\u00b0 101 Blogoff. Kevin believes in math, and it shows. His weblog is awash in charts and data, and he doesn't hesitate to create his own metrics where none\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15666,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15666\/building-the-perfect-beast-a-round-up-of-my-recent-technology-posts\/","url_meta":{"origin":11649,"position":1},"title":"Building the perfect beast: A round-up of my recent technology posts.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Caveat lector! The words you are about to read are unvetted, unhomogenized and unlicensed. One of my longer-term projects is to write essays on reasons why you should dismiss the things I have to say. I've only done two so far: You should dismiss me because I don't care if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11574,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11574\/i-hate-my-theme\/","url_meta":{"origin":11649,"position":2},"title":"I hate my theme…","author":"Damon Chetson","date":"March 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In some ways, my stengths - I love to tinker with eletronics, am Internet savvy, know a little about marketing - are my weaknesses: I like to do things myself, or at least like to fully understand exactly what someone working for me is doing so that I could take\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18400,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/18400\/overnight-news-if-you-can-sell-an-idea-with-a-bumper-sticker-you-can-sell\/","url_meta":{"origin":11649,"position":3},"title":"Overnight News: If you can sell an idea with a bumper sticker, you can\u00a0sell.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"We are awash in copy about copy-writing. 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I thought this was so weird, because my work completely dominates my attention. It's all I think about, it's all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18028,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/18028\/overnight-news-if-ibuyers-sell-slowly-and-weakly-in-an-impossibly-easy-market-how-much-worse-will-they-do-when-the-worm-turns\/","url_meta":{"origin":11649,"position":5},"title":"Overnight News: If iBuyers sell slowly and weakly in an impossibly-easy market, how much worse will they do when the worm\u00a0turns?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Real estate is kids and dogs, but real estate sales is entrepreneurs. 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