Quote of the day–Paul H. Blackman

There is certainly a tendency for nation with restrictive gun laws to authorize additional powers to the police to violate the ordinary rights of privacy … .

Paul H. Blackman
From the book From My Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), page 130 by Sheriff Richard I. Mack.
[I would like to believe that as we push back the infringements on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms that we can also make progress on our infringed rights to be free from unreasonable search, seizure, and our right to privacy. Can the people at large be educated to understand the general principle of limited government is applicable to both the keeping of arms and the right to privacy? Generalization appears to be a difficult thing for most people. They don’t seem to understand political principles. They get involved in “issues” without understanding the principles. The “War on Drugs” is no different in principle than a “War on Guns”, or a “War on Poverty”. Yet you rarely see people espouse positions that are philosophically consistent.

Oh well. One issue at a time is all I can handle. And taking on the issue of philosophical inconsistency is just too big and too nebulous.

The TSA is next on my list after we essentially win the battle over guns. It might be a decade or so but I think we will get there.–Joe]

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5 thoughts on “Quote of the day–Paul H. Blackman

  1. “Can the people at large be educated to understand the general principle of limited government is applicable to both the keeping of arms and the right to privacy?”

    The answer is yes, but not so long as the majority are educated in a coercively funded system. Since public education lives on coercively extracted funds, they will, generally, tend to advocate for coercive funding. A public education system that widely promotes understanding of the general principle of limited government is a system that is advocating against its very survival. To expect public education to teach American Principles is asking them to work against their self interest.

    I was talking with a WA State University professor the other day. She explained that, although she’s come to hate every minute of it, she will continue to do it because of the high salary and benefits. In other words, she’s making far more in public education than she ever made, or apparently could ever expect to make, in the private sector. She’s depending on the coercive state system to provide her retirement. Would you expect her to reverse course and start advocating for her own financial demise by promoting free market principles? Some people of unusually high character might do so, but the vast majority never will, especially given that they have all been indoctrinated in the superiority of the coercive system for many years before they entered it as paid employees. Many of them have never known any other way of life, as they’ve been in the system continuously since kindergarten.

  2. I’m with you. The TSA is a bloated monster. I’m just waiting for the next terrorist wannabee to tape a bomb to his undies and then everybody will have to take off their pants to go through security.

  3. Can we teach people to value and defend all basic, personal rights? Maybe. It tends to work better if we get them to believe they have a vested interest in the preservation of those rights (and they do, whether they are willing to admit to it or not) themselves, rather than be clubbed over the head with it… And, likewise, for some people it may be well and truly too late, in that they are so very wound up in the belief that people can be made… better.

    Unfortunately, the odds are good that the process is going to be slow and tedious – just observe how long it has taken us to build up the beach-head we now somewhat enjoy regarding firearm-related rights… and imagine how long it will take us to dispose of such things as the NFA and the GCA.

    But it is worth it.

  4. “- just observe how long it has taken us to build up the beach-head we now somewhat enjoy regarding firearm-related rights…”

    I’ll make an observation here. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the instant the major voices in the pro 2A movement stopped apologizing, tap dancing around the fundamental principles and quit making excuses and exceptions, stopped trying to cooperate with the antis so as to appear reasonable, we started making strong headway. Those of you watching this in the ’80s and ’90s will possibly see what I mean. No?

  5. I see TSA as the “Symptom” and Homeland Security as the “Disease”. Remember 9/11 happened as a result of a FBI “Epic Failure” to communicate, yet why weren’t they placed under DHS? Perhaps someone thought that by creating “Separate but Equal” National Cops, BOTH could rise to the occasion. Same thinking must be the reason there’s a “National Intelligence Director”, yet CIA wasn’t included in the mix. But it seems that the only stuff that has risen to the occasion is the stuff you flush after you wipe.

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