Extended stay...

I ended up finding two possible sources for the name.  One was a sheriff in Essex, England.  A pirate-hunter pretty much.  The other was "Butcher" Harris.  A bloodthirsty bastard in WWII who actually diverted resources from military targets in order to slaughter German civilians.  I read one spot that when Dresden I think it was turned into a cyclone from the flames of the firebombing, he started trying to re-create that in other cities.  He was not interested, at all, in sticking to targets that were going to be hitting his troops or country.  He wanted to kill as many as possible.  He has a statue devoted to him now.  I hope it's vandalized regularly.

  I've heard of "bomber" Harris who was in command of the RAF's bombers during WW2.  Are we talking about the same person?  I admit that I know little about him. 

Sandy, like I say, there's about a zero chance of that keeping the UWRS at bay.  For starters, there wouldn't be much comic left to show if the UWRS gave up that easy    Second, like I say it grants effectively a sovereign status which can act as a justification and foundation for war declaration.

Plus, I'm sure the parchment wasn't free    TANSTAAFL 

Rocketman, look him up.  The guy was so happy with the firestorm he created the first time he kept trying to do it over and over again.  Thermal cyclones causing damage on the order of nuclear attack.  Intentionally and specifically targetting civilians.  No charges.  Despite the fact that he oversaw the murder of tens of thousands of people who weren't shooting.  Who weren't doing more than working in factories and shops.  Think many times the size of 9/11 in terms of loss of human life.  He was the British Osama bin Laden on that "offensive".  And the queen acted surprised that there would be anyone who wouldn't be happy at a statue dedicated to him.

Sandy, like I say, there's about a zero chance of that keeping the UWRS at bay.  For starters, there wouldn't be much comic left to show if the UWRS gave up that easy 

Well, in the current arc, you are mostly correct. However, EFT is not a "war comic." There will be mystery, humor, intrigue, adventure, wonder and romance in future arcs. We aim to create a full-service universe.

The other was "Butcher" Harris.  A bloodthirsty bastard in WWII who actually diverted resources from military targets in order to slaughter German civilians.  I read one spot that when Dresden I think it was turned into a cyclone from the flames of the firebombing, he started trying to re-create that in other cities.  He was not interested, at all, in sticking to targets that were going to be hitting his troops or country.  He wanted to kill as many as possible.  He has a statue devoted to him now.  I hope it's vandalized regularly.

Actually, the first and unplanned firestorm was Hamburg.  Dresden was the "Let's see if we can do it again, on purpose" target.

Arthur Travers "Bomber" Harris was the thug in charge.

Sandy, ooh.  This is gonna become sorta a frontierslife kind of story then, once the UWRS is fended off for awhile?

wdg3rd, *bows to your superior grasp of history* I only just heard about this fucker from looking the name up.  And only distantly recall the bombing of places like Dresden.  And don't recall it having been mentioned except maybe once or twice before, and I doubt during my years of schooling, that they intentionally firebombed much to start widespread blazes.  These "soldiers" should've been shot, drawn, and quartered by the families of the civvies they killed.  Instead they're history's heros.

And with events like that being the inevitable consequence of government, people still wonder why I can't be a minarchist anymore.  I can't.  Having to deal with a Somalia, if the worst of the naysayers are correct, for the rest of time would pale beside the prospect of knowing wholesale slaughter will, not even might, come again from government.  Is coming now, though at least the leadership admitted trying to slaughter the innocents en mass is overall ineffective as a strategy.  Not that it's too immoral for them, just ineffective...  Someone someday will forget that and ponder it all over again unless this juggernaut is blasted to the hell it's too horrible to have come from...

Sandy, ooh.  This is gonna become sorta a frontierslife kind of story then, once the UWRS is fended off for awhile?

The universe is full of wonder... and conflict. But if you get bored, you just let us know. 

And with events like that [Dresden et al.] being the inevitable consequence of government, people still wonder why I can't be a minarchist anymore. 

I'm with you there, my friend.

wdg3rd, *bows to your superior grasp of history* I only just heard about this fucker from looking the name up.  And only distantly recall the bombing of places like Dresden.  And don't recall it having been mentioned except maybe once or twice before, and I doubt during my years of schooling, that they intentionally firebombed much to start widespread blazes.  These "soldiers" should've been shot, drawn, and quartered by the families of the civvies they killed.  Instead they're history's heros.

No problem here about the amendment on quartering troops.  Happy to do so, as long as I can hang and draw them first.

Lev, I first learned about it in my early teens, when I read a novel "Slaughterhouse Five" by a writer who was to his death a liberal.  Happens Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden at the time.  (Never found any of his work worth rereading aside from his short fiction, most of which is in the anthology Welcome to the Monkey House which probably isn't in print.  (IS Dell still around?)

And with events like that being the inevitable consequence of government, people still wonder why I can't be a minarchist anymore.  I can't.  Having to deal with a Somalia, if the worst of the naysayers are correct, for the rest of time would pale beside the prospect of knowing wholesale slaughter will, not even might, come again from government.  Is coming now, though at least the leadership admitted trying to slaughter the innocents en mass is overall ineffective as a strategy.  Not that it's too immoral for them, just ineffective...  Someone someday will forget that and ponder it all over again unless this juggernaut is blasted to the hell it's too horrible to have come from...

I haven't pretended to be a minarchist since October 1991.  (I'll tell you why I kept up the pretense after 1978 over a beer some tine, either here in Jersey or after I escape to New Hampshire -- not sure of the break point in the current economy that La Esposa will be willing to make the move, she's a bit stubborn and she was whelped less than a mile from here).

Government delenda est.

Sandy,
Heh, with the forum here everyone gets to nitpick    But so far I'm not bored.  I guess it didn't sink in that the UWRS conflict can't be an eternal part of the storyline if it wasn't a set story arc.  It'd be like batman fighting twoface every episode for fifty years if UWRS were the only source of conflicts for the story 

Actually, that reminds me...  Shouldn't batman be in adult diapers by now?  Instead of the batmobile, he should have the batwalker.

wdg3rd,
I will clarify.  There are (probably) soldiers and even a few police out there I wouldn't mind hiring for private security.  These few individuals got in believing they were defeinding the freedom of their home and family, and often come back with emotional scars because of what this belief led them into doing and having done to them.  The butchers, however, that are the standard fare in governance are what they'd be defending that home against.  Finally.

There's also the college money and other benefits-seeker.  I don't hold as much of a distaste for this sort as the butchers.  Parasitical, but people do that in a governed nation.  Depending on how stable they were afterwards, would be whether I'd consider them reliable security.  After all, they have that private company mercenary spirit at least.

The rest, the sociopaths who get into the military so they can kill people without consequences, can go in a meat grinder for all I care.

I never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut, at all.  So I wouldn't know his readable from his unreadable.  If the bastards firebombed their own POWs, well...  I shouldn't wonder that they weren't charged with treason for attacking "their own" troops.  But even so.  It should be over the normal, if psychotic, line when it comes to that.

New Hampshire, by the way, is probably not a safe zone.  Remember, you're still dealing with the Federal interference even if you somehow got rid of what even NH is doing.  I'll just give something of an example of NH's issue.  I don't know if you've read this lever action essay, but LNS put forward the libertarian/conservative test.  It's simply the Lincoln Test.  The rule is simple.  Ask someone what their opinion of Lincoln is.  If they love him, they're either a conservative or a libertarian who hasn't been exposed to all the information yet.  I met a NH conservative who called himself a tenth amendment conservative.  Yet one of the reasons he loved Lincoln was because Lincoln Preserved the Union.  Despite the fact that the tenth is one of the things that should've been part of the Federal Government's requirement to allow secession.  Just because the FSP chose it doesn't mean you're going to be free of statist imperialist ideology.  Or Federal interference.  Or even state and local interference.  The nation has to go crazy before it can go sane again.

Sandy,
Heh, with the forum here everyone gets to nitpick    But so far I'm not bored.  I guess it didn't sink in that the UWRS conflict can't be an eternal part of the storyline if it wasn't a set story arc.

Of course, those UW goons might hang on for some time. No telling what mischief they might cause...

No foolies, no foolies.

Oh, and I can almost see and hear the BSoD in Guy's head at this point.  "This brain has performed an illegal operation and will now be shut down.  Should the problem persist, please contact the educational administrator responsible for it."

New Hampshire, by the way, is probably not a safe zone.  Remember, you're still dealing with the Federal interference even if you somehow got rid of what even NH is doing.  I'll just give something of an example of NH's issue.  I don't know if you've read this lever action essay, but LNS put forward the libertarian/conservative test.  It's simply the Lincoln Test.  The rule is simple.  Ask someone what their opinion of Lincoln is.  If they love him, they're either a conservative or a libertarian who hasn't been exposed to all the information yet.  I met a NH conservative who called himself a tenth amendment conservative.  Yet one of the reasons he loved Lincoln was because Lincoln Preserved the Union.  Despite the fact that the tenth is one of the things that should've been part of the Federal Government's requirement to allow secession.  Just because the FSP chose it doesn't mean you're going to be free of statist imperialist ideology.  Or Federal interference.  Or even state and local interference.  The nation has to go crazy before it can go sane again.

If nothing else, New Hampshire in its current form is a vast improvement over New Jersey.  I saw a poster in our town hall here bragging about how New Jersey was the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.  If you look at the chart in the back of Boston's Gun Bible, 2nd Ed., you can see that New Jersey is #50 on the list when it comes to the Second Amendment.  The book isn't at hand, so I forget New Hampshire's place in the list, but it's in the single digits.  Yes, I'm familiar with Neil's essay.  Read it when it was first online and later in bound form.  I've known Neil for quite a while and he has eaten my chili.  There is wide variety among the people in New Hampshire.  Some of them are wet-their-pants liberals (and a few of those happen to be related to me, but I refuse to let the flaws in my personal gene pool affect my decision) to some of the most hard-core anarchists I've ever met -- and I'm not talking about immigrant members of the Free State Project, I'm talking about people I went to high school with.

In New Hampshire, open carry is legal anywhere except in a courtroom.  Of course, there are places it is dangerous to carry, and these tend to be areas the Feral government has claimed as its own, such as Manchester Airport.  A concealed carry permit costs ten bucks and takes a week.  Like Neil, I'm pretty much a single-issue voter, and it's the same issue.

In New Hampshire, open carry is legal anywhere except in a courtroom.  Of course, there are places it is dangerous to carry, and these tend to be areas the Feral government has claimed as its own, such as Manchester Airport.  A concealed carry permit costs ten bucks and takes a week.  Like Neil, I'm pretty much a single-issue voter, and it's the same issue.

     Indiana is not too bad either.  Get fingerprinted.  Send in a twenty nine dollar money order if I remember correctly and you get you concealed permit in about six weeks.  Good for four years.  Since I already had a (former) secret security clearance from the government and went through two combat pistol courses from a nearby defense academy, I knew I wasn't going to have any trouble.

My brother, the army officer, is more moral than I am.

You might want to reconsider your view of the common military man.  Most career soldiers aren't psychopaths.  Many, my brother included, volunteered to serve.  I'd even argue most, but I don't know what the ratio is between them and those joining to escape their present circumstances.

I won't argue the politics.  I'm ambivalent on several points, but my brother joined to give back.  I believe firmly he's of the majority.

As for Lincoln...
I don't know...we could be speaking spanish or french, (or 'proper' oxford english,) if he'd not done so, but the people who succeeded him in death were, in my humble opinion, thieves who raped the south for personal gain, and precipitated the continued radical racism into the middle of the last century.  I believe that if it weren't for the ones who followed Lincoln, there would not BE a distinct black culture now, just as there isn't a distinct irish, german, or italian culture in mainstream america today.  THOSE cultures were allowed to assimilate and leave harlem.

...Though, I AM amused that one Lee fought FOR washington to put down a rebellion, and then his descendant fought AGAINST Washington DC in support of one...

My brother, the army officer, is more moral than I am.

You might want to reconsider your view of the common military man.  Most career soldiers aren't psychopaths.  Many, my brother included, volunteered to serve.  I'd even argue most, but I don't know what the ratio is between them and those joining to escape their present circumstances.

Not sure who you're asking to reconsider their view.  I've known a number of ex-military guys, and I found them to be as "moral" as the next guy.  I have a nephew who joined the marines a few years ago as a 17 year old, and has seen 2 tours of Iraq.  That kid was likely heading to prison prior to joining.  Now, he's an upright kind of guy.  All in all, the experience has been a positive one for him.  On the flip side, I know a guy who served in the army, and when he got out, joined the Bandidos (a very large motorcycle gang in Texas notorious for all manner of bad behavior) and had a rough time of it.   He straightened his life out around the time he started studying Aikido.

Bottom line, everyone walks their own path even when it looks like the same one. 

As for Lincoln...
I don't know...we could be speaking spanish or french, (or 'proper' oxford english,) if he'd not done so, but the people who succeeded him in death were, in my humble opinion, thieves who raped the south for personal gain...

Lincoln set the standard. He raped the Constitution and made war on the South. The deaths of thousands of innocent humans are on his hands. Bullet in the brain? He got off easy.

As for soldiers wanting to "give something back," I don't think anyone, or at least very few, has fought or died for his country since the American revolution. Many have fought and died for the special interests which the government serves, but their efforts have only damaged freedom, their countrymen and themselves. (Yeah, I know, it's a minority opinion, but like everyone else, I AM a minority.)