Well today turned out to be one that revolved around food and politics. At the same time. I was pleased to have lunch with a new libertarian friend of mine, Adam. (A new friend. I don’t know how long he’s been a libertarian.) I always enjoys those one-on-ones. The lunch begins without any sort of agenda, and an hour and a half later you find your conversation miles from its origination. Of course the hot topics right now among libertarians and conservatives involved state sovereignty resolutions, gun rights bills passed by the states, the tea parties, and things like the Bill of Federalism. Adam read the bill for the first time at the table and was completely enthralled with it. He brings up a strong, significant objection to it though: if we call a constitutional convention, does that not open the whole constitution up for modification? We’re apparently only a few states’ requests away from actually having a constitutional convention. (As I understand it, unless a state recalls its request, that request stands permanently. Thus, all requests for a constitutional convention since our nation’s founding have tallied up to almost meet the threshold.) And since most state legislatures, who would appoint the delegates, are left leaning… that could open us up to some disastrous modifications to the Constitution. Yikes. I’ll be interested to see what professor Barnett says in response to this.

Then tonight I met with Ken Marrero of Blue Collar Muse and several other bloggers to have dinner with state Senator Ken Yager from the 12th district which is a chunk of East Tennessee (back where I come from). It was quite informative, but even better was the opportunity to form a relationship with one of the folks who represents Tennesseans. He certainly seems to hold the constrained world view, and regardless of where I might disagree with him, this means I know we’re forming our opinions based on the same basic understanding of the world.

I also met Jarod Scott, a younger fella with some political aspirations for 2010. I’m not sure how much he’s publicly announced, so I’ll keep mum for now. But I like him.

I’ll write more on things like this later, but I wanted to take a light dip in the pool of political commentary before jumping back in. I’ve been so busy with the tea party efforts in middle tennessee lately, specifically with helping start up the non-profit Tennessee Tea Party, I haven’t had time to really ponder and pen my usual political drivel. Have no fear; I’m sure I’ll be back to churning out the same old useless garbage in no time.

Yesterday at work, word spread like wildfire that Oprah has just given everyone in America free chicken. FREE CHICKEN! Woooo!

One of the girls at work got particularly excited and keep telling everyone, “Oprah dot com slash KFC!”

I called some friends, and several of us made plans to hit up the nearest KFC. It was across town, but that’s no matter. FREE CHICKEN!

After a 15 minute car ride, including the interstate, we walked into the restaurant. There was a little bit of a line, but only 4 people ahead of us.

Ten minutes later? Still 4 people. We start murmuring. “What’s going on here?”

I craned my neck around to see what was going on, and the employees looked like they weren’t aware of the economy and that they should be glad to have a job. What the heck… FREE CHICKEN!

Forty-five minutes later, we’re finally at the front of the line. Of course, the girl taking the orders is also the girl filling the orders. With gusto? Not at all. Apparently everyone else is on break. And staring at me.

At this point, I’m engaging in some serious people-watching of the employees. Then my attention turns to the manager, and she appears poised to break down and sob at any moment. Apparently she finds no pride in being a General Manager of a restaurant.

It was right smack in the middle of my sympathy that the GM then took her hand and transferred to it the excess snot from her nose.

Ohhhhh! So that’s why I haven’t been to KFC in years!

“Hey, so… the general manager just snotted her hand and didn’t wash. You two want to go somewhere else and get food?” Blank stares from the whole line. Mission accomplished. (It was the KFC at 5802 Charlotte Avenue in Nashville, just in case you’re wondering where you should never go for chicken, free or otherwise.)

Apparently my horrible experience with KFC and Coupon-gate (I’m the first, woo!) isn’t isolated, though I think the New Yorkers staging a sit-in and demanding free chicken probably took it too far. What sort of world are those folks living in that a franchise refusing to honor a coupon deserves the same treatment that folks a generation ago gave the lunch counters to achieve civil rights?

Something written so well to describe something written even better still should not be “improved” upon with my arrogant words. Therefore, I bring you the words of Joshua from The Only Willing Move:

I’m always on the lookout for neat aphorisms that nicely encapsulate important points of Libertarian thought. This is because I think Libertarianism argues from a weak position in modern society. There aren’t very many of us to begin with, and our views are rarely, if ever, given a fair hearing in the public forum, so anything that can get the point across sucintly is helpful.

Today I came across a true gem – from hacker Eric S. Raymond via the EconTalk Podcast.

Love doesn’t scale.

…

We classical liberals get a bad rap for being heartless – but it’s just because we understand this and everyone else doesn’t. Washington doesn’t love me, Washington can’t love me, Washington shouldn’t love me, and you know what? I don’t even want it to try. I don’t give two figs about any politician’s professed “concern” for “the people” or any of that jazz because I know that love doesn’t work that way. It’s piss poor motivation for keeping the trains running.