[...] person tied with the government and big business, you can host your fundraisers, your private partie [...]…

All of the news and more information is on the blog I put together for my mom and dad here: http://www.willowpondbb.wordpress.com

And you can always email me if you want to know more details, or anything else.

Cheers,

Peter.

The state is a symptom of aggressive, defective minds.

Bastiat was right:
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

But he failed to include the threat backing the thing: “Or else.”

“The pursuit of coercive power over others will someday be universally recognized as a symptom of profound mental illness.”
– L. Neil Smith

Actually, I think it would be better as an album title. But I like the way you think, Radley.

But you hit the nail on the head. What sense does it make when one is one’s own oppressor? Pure insanity.

Democracy is cannibalism in clown make-up.

That is *precisely* the meaning of owning property. The only condition is that you don’t prevent others from doing as they wish with *their* property.

“Too often, the ethical-political meaning of individualism is held to be: doing whatever one wishes, regardless of the rights of others. Writers such as Nietzsche and Max Stirner are sometimes quoted in support of this interpretation. Altruists and collectivists have an obvious vested interest in persuading men that such is the meaning of individualism, that the man who refuses to be sacrificed intends to sacrifice others.

“The contradiction in, and refutation of, such an interpretation of individualism is this: since the only rational base of individualism as an ethical principle is the requirements of man’s survival qua man, one man cannot claim the moral right to violate the rights of another. If he denies inviolate rights to other men, he cannot claim such rights for himself; he has rejected the base of rights.”
– from Nathaniel Branden’s “Counterfeit Individualism”, Chapter 18 in The Virtue of Selfishness

#36 bobzbob

Zoning laws are always local, so the requirements have been set by the neighbors through the local process. If you don’t like them, get your neighbors to agree to changing them, and you can.

Ah, another advocate of the tyranny of the majority. Anything done in the name of the majority must be ok because, after all, democracy is simply the will of the people.

Except democracy, above all else, is almost always the tyranny of a few with the vast majority completely disinterested (unless it directly affects them).

One of the worst things about our education system is that it glorifies democracy as if it, by itself, guarantees freedom. It doesn’t. All democracy does is convince the citizenry that it has sanctioned its own oppression (which is pretty fucking sneaky, when you think about it).

I can understand where you’re coming from, but as someone who has attended the LSS for a few years, I can attest that your concerns about the use of the property interfering with others don’t hold in this case.

To get to the main ‘grounds’ you drive (slowly) through a wooded area along a small private road for a couple of minutes. Once you’re through there’s an open area with a place to park cars, the guest house (with the fire pit for cooking attached), a man-made lake that take up about a quarter of the area, and a green where the main tent for the speakers is set up. The entire area is surrounded by woods and quite distant from the nearest neighbour’s residence (although I have no idea where property lines run).

It’s always felt like a large gathering of friends, and part of its charm is that the whole family pitches in, with the Parents Jaworski cooking up (now banned) fabulous meals for the participants in the guesthouse kitchen and firepit. The idea of it needing to comply with government licensing requirements is about as offensive as the health inspector showing up at a large family potluck and demanding the food be discarded unless it has been prepared in a regulated food-service environment.

I should also note, that while I don’t run the books, my understanding is that the seminar fee is cost recovery at best and for years losses were covered out of pocket by Peter Jaworski and friends. It has always been a labour of love to bring together freedom-minded individuals to argue, learn, and enjoy each other’s company. It has never been pulled together with the purpose of raising funds.

It is possible to run a seminar without using the Jaworski’s property (the ILS runs one in Windsor), but it is nothing like the casual, intimate experience of the Liberty Summer Seminar. To regulate it like a large corporate function is both absurd and tragic, since it will probably kill a unique, much loved event. Oh, the meta-irony.

The gummint (those wonderful folks who invented the fiction that they serve “the us” out here in real, real land) . . . got their blood money in taxes and fees. But they cannot stop there. They love making rules and giving orders. Getting paid for what they love doing the most.

However, unlike the federal leviathan (Canada or the US), local gummints are many times more Stalinist than the feds. State and/or provincial gummints are barely any better.

Unfortunately, folks who bee-otch are quickly labeled as quacks who oppose some great(er) principle or another. The great(er) “priniciple” is simple—do as we tell you citizen, and write that tax check, too.

There is nothing in any social compact that gave Clarington cause for what they did.

Except . . . they proved the social compact no longer exists in reality, if it ever truly did.

Move along, citizen, there is nothing to see here.

One weekend event might not be disruptive, but if you allow this activity then you would have to allow the next guy to have a weekly event that attracted 1000 people and was.

Actually those folks should have resettled in upper BC!

If any event actually greater than 13K aw ft per person to host, I can’t imagine why anybody would ever allow a sports stadium to exist!

I’ll take the 9 years actual experience over some pencil pushers computations and suppositions, any day of the week!

I’d bet those parents pay some pretty hefty taxes to be able to call that land theirs. That is NOT for FREE!

Hey fix it by putting up a mosque for the weekend! That’l shut em up!

What if I want to invite 100 of my closest friends to a party at my place, and we don’t disturb the neighbors (no noise, no taking all the parking within a 1-km radius) and obey all local fire safety regulations?

What if we decide to do a potluck supper and everyone brings a dish?

What if the party lasts only one or two hour, so it’s unlikely more than a few people will need to use the bathroom?

Basically, when do the bureaucrats come in? 50 people? 10? More than 2?

You seem upset that someone used their OWN property to generate a profit. Everything I’ve seen in the article indicates a very reasonable event- 40acres is a LOT of land for this sized event. This doesn’t sound like a wild, high school kegger. If people were disturbed- there are ways to deal with that. If property was damaged, there are ways to deal with that.

‘The argument that it’s “non profit” is a red herring. People paid to attend, as such it’s a commercial enterprise, with the proceeds going to a non profit organization. This is no different from charging admission in the hopes of making a profit. This differentiates it from a ‘family’ get together.’

Classic bureaucratic bullshit. It’s none of your business ‘why’ these people chose to gather. You’re trying to restrict voluntary gatherings by qualifying what you feel are acceptable reasons to gather.

‘If the guy had any sense at all, he would have know this, and stopped holding his get together on his parent’s property when it became big enough to require exceptions to the zoning laws.’

Classic bureaucratic bullshit. ‘If he had any sense…’

‘THE LAW isn’t stopping Peter Jaworski from holding seminars, it’s just saying that he can’t use his parent’s land to do it for free anymore.’

More bullshit. The zoning restrictions may force them to stop. They were able to keep costs down and guests were able to attend an event inexpensively. Camping and not needing to rent a facility keeps costs way down. They already incurred bullshit bureaucratic expenses by having to cater the event…

‘I’m all for freedom, and I’m all for the Institute for Liberal Studies having seminars on private property to drum up support. But I’m also all for the protection of the OTHER land owners by having reasonable use restrictions in place.’

Bullshit. Re-read this paragraph. You use ‘freedom’ when you should use ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘reasonable’ when you should use ‘bureaucratic’.

#26 TDR
Also, Bob, I don’t know where you got the number of 125 in attendance…the article says there were 72 paid attendees. Not saying you’re wrong; just saying I don’t see the number.

You are correct. My mistake. I most have translocated the admissions price (125 bucks) with the attendance.