The Tao of Libertarianism

June 27, 2007 at 01:53 PM | categories: ron paul, liberty rants | View Comments

I first read the Tao Te Ching five years ago. I was at a different stage of my life and it didn't really have a very strong affect on me. I think I dug way too deep into it and I didn't understand its plainness. Today I read the Tao of Ron Paul and am reminded of the Tao, but this time I think I get it.

Chapter 57

If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.

Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.

老子 Lao Tzu (~600 BCE)

It is amazing to me that something written 2500 years ago can apply so well to today. We cannot solve our problems with more government -- not now, and at no time in the past. There is precedent to this fact that spans all of history if we simply bother to look.

A vote for Ron Paul is a vote of confidence in ourselves; confidence that we can take care of ourselves without force. A vote for any of the other current presidential candidates is a vote of incompetance. To vote for anyone else is to believe that humans are flawed and cannot accomplish anything productive on their own - that we must mold their very lives so that they may not fail.

To any action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If our leaders subsidize all our needs and desires, we become lazy, less productive and we take away from the same source of wealth that our leaders drew upon in the first place. If we attempt to endlessly police the world, it will blowback in our faces. If we attempt to lower crime by prohibiting certain items, we will simply create more criminals at the cost of $600 per second.

There is a natural order to a peaceful and civil society. This is called the Tao. Government is not the Tao.

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OpenSSH with True VPN

June 14, 2007 at 05:54 PM | categories: python, linux | View Comments

I've been using port forwarding with OpenSSH for a long long time. I have a very large .ssh/config file where I setup all my remote services. What I did not know until today though was that OpenSSH supports a true VPN mode that makes multiple port forwards unecessary.

What that means is that I can access my server exactly as I would locally no matter where I am. No fuss... Easy. Sure. there's things like OpenVPN.. but ssh is (pre)installed on just about every computer I use.

I've updated my OpenSSH tutorial with all the details, as well as an easy to use python script for setting it all up. See the heading called "True VPN".

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LOLPython

June 06, 2007 at 01:17 PM | categories: python, geek humor | View Comments

IN MAI time GIMME localtime LIKE TIMEZOR

IZ __name__ KINDA LIKE "__main__"?
    VISIBLE "YOUZ GOT CHEEZBURGERS?"
    CATURDAY CAN HAS FIV
    TODAYZ CAN HAS TIMEZOR THING LOOK AT SIKS!
    YOUGOTZ CAN HAS raw_input THING
    IZ YOUGOTZ OWN lower THING KINDA LIKE "yes"?
        IZ TODAYZ KINDA LIKE CATURDAY?
            MYLOOPZ CAN HAS THR33
            WHILE I CUTE?
                VISIBLE "TODAYZ CATURDAY! I GETZ ALL YOUS CHEEZBURGERS!"
                MYLOOPZ THROWZ AWAY ONCE
                IZ MYLOOPZ SMALL LIKE EASTERBUNNY?
                    KTHXBYE
        NOPE?
            VISIBLE "O RLY? CAN I HAS YOUS CHEEZBURGER?"
    NOPE?
        VISIBLE "I SAW WHAT YOU DID, YOU ATE MY CHEEZBURGERS!"

Yea, you're probably saying to yourself, "WTF IS THAT?"

It's LOLPython, the geekiest, funniest thing I've seen all week!

The LOLPython interpreter translates a variation of LOLCode into standard python. LOLCode itself is pretty neat, but because LOLPython is based on Python, it automatically inherits all of the Python library too. Here's the above code after translation:

from time import localtime as TIMEZOR 
if __name__ == '__main__' :
    print 'YOUZ GOT CHEEZBURGERS?' 
    CATURDAY = 5 
    TODAYZ = TIMEZOR ()[ 6 ] 
    YOUGOTZ = raw_input ()
    if YOUGOTZ . lower ()== 'yes' :
        if TODAYZ == CATURDAY :
            MYLOOPZ = 3 
            while 1:
                print 'TODAYZ CATURDAY! I GETZ ALL YOUS CHEEZBURGERS!' 
                MYLOOPZ -= 1 
                if MYLOOPZ <= 0 :
                    break 
        else :
            print 'O RLY? CAN I HAS YOUS CHEEZBURGER?' 
    else :
        print 'I SAW WHAT YOU DID, YOU ATE MY CHEEZBURGERS!' 
1337 Cat Tellin like it is
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