Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day—Henry Mencken

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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Henry Mencken
[I’m unable to find the date or the context but the ‘net seems unanimous in attributing it to Mencken.

Mencken makes a very important point whether it is a First, Second, Fourth, Fifth Amendment or natural rights issue. The oppressors make it difficult because they get to choose the “poster children” who will have standing to challenge the oppressive law. This is the main reason I am far more tolerant of the ACLU than many of those that I keep company with.—Joe]

Privacy issues

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Numerous times I’ve posted half-baked concerns about our increasing loss of privacy and the dangers and even extreme dangers.

Some people have brought up good points and/or asked good questions and I will respond to those people then share further thoughts I’ve had on the topic.

Acksiom asks (after I said having a twin could be useful to raise reasonable doubt about who did what):

Joe, what kind of situations do you have in mind where that would be appropriate?  I can’t imagine any where I would want to raise reasonable doubt by blaming another innocent person, so I’m curious.

What if your employer is extremely conservative/liberal and a picture shows up of you at a gay-bar or sex shop/gun range or Tea Party rally? There are lots and lots of things of this nature. In the mild case they are things like pictures of a drunk, topless, woman at spring break 10 years ago who now wants to run for public office or be a Sunday School teacher. In the worst case we are talking matters of life and death, Jews in the Attic, type of things.

Alan states:

Privacy is a recent illusion caused by growing population and increased mobility.  Technology is allowing the return to the historical lack of privacy that has been the normal human condition for thousands of years.

You can’t fight it any more than the RIAA or MPAA can fight file sharing.  Better to start thinking how we’re going to adapt to everyone knowing everything.

In regards to his first point, it’s more like millions of years but that doesn’t distract from the validity of his observation. What is different now is that we don’t have a small homogenous tribe. We have an exceedingly diverse population with a powerful government.

In regards to his second point I’m not entirely convinced it is possible create an environment where “everyone knows everything”. And as long as an imbalance of knowledge exists there are “issues”. I am convinced that he is right about the analogy with the RIAA and MPAA. The “privacy gene” is not only “out of the bottle” the bottle has evaporated.

Sebastian posted (three+ years ago):

But in an information based society government will be able to know a lot about its citizens.  Our government probably knows more about its citizens than any other government in history.  There won’t be much means to avoid that.  Conversely though, information technology also makes it possible to know more about our government than any other people in history.  I would encourage and recommend anyone who’s interested in this topic to read David Brin’s The Transparent Society.

Tam stated (several months ago):

I think David Brin had it mostly right in The Transparent Society: This genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and the only non-Orwellian outcome will be if everybody has access to it.

Sebastian echoes (last night),

One of the sources I look to in this issue is David Brin’s “The Transparent Society”. I don’t think Brin is right about everything, but the fundamental idea that the loss of privacy isn’t such a big deal provided it’s applied equally in society, I think is a reasonable concept.

I responded (three+ years ago) by saying the politicians and government employees should go first and we will see how well that works out. The only thing I think I need to add to that post is that they should add real time location information to the collection of public servant information available to the general public.

We are entering uncharted territory. Never before has their been societies this diverse able to know this much about everyone else. Sure, if you go back far enough (it would not be necessary but just to make the point stick go back to where the family tree branching off of the apes) people didn’t have privacy when they had sex or were defecating let alone where they were or what sort of god(s) they did or did not worship. But in those days, with a much more homogenous society, it may not of mattered.

I say “may” because I wonder if such an open society was almost forced to be homogenous at a communistic lowest common denominator level. Perhaps a capitalistic/competitive society requires certain levels of privacy to function. My hypothesis is that trade secrets, secret contracts, and secret finances are necessary for a competitive society. Stated in the strongest (but perhaps indefensible) terms, if you don’t have privacy you cannot “get ahead”. A corollary that follows (perhaps also indefensible) is that if there is no privacy then society is economically doomed to some sort of tribal communistic system. Did the rise of commerce, technology and industry only come about because various tribes had privacy from one another?

Now there may be at least partial solutions to the economic hazards of a completely open society. Patents, for example, are intended to protect information that cannot be protected by trade secrets. Written agreements can be kept private unless a court order demands otherwise. But there are still many vulnerabilities when facial images or location data of people entering corporate headquarters reveals a connection between two or more companies that didn’t used to be there. Or your employer tracking after hours employee location data discovers a handful of engineers getting together at a bank and checking out empty office buildings together.

Imagine what can happen in political campaigns. Knowing who is talking to who gives someone tremendous information about what sort of issue are going to be important and how much money is going to be involved. Sure that information all comes out eventually but when you have the info weeks in advance it will make a huge difference.

Imagine the implications for stalkers. Anytime they wish to go on the hunt they leave their cell phones 50 miles away and know exactly where their prey settled down for the night.

Imagine the implications for an abused spouse trying to hide from their ex.

On a governmental scale the events are less likely but the consequences are catastrophic. Here is a scenario I heard outlined this morning. Monitoring of your water, electricity, and data (Internet) consumption shows a step increase. Examination of your communication traffic might well show that one or more people had a decrease in traffic therefore they are likely
the new residents in your home. Examination of transportation expenditures could confirm it. This fails my Jews in the Attic Test.

Imagine a scenario where a government is deadly hostile to gays (gun owners, Jews, blacks, Tea Party “terrorists”, Christian Fundamentalists, whoever). Public records (while I support gay marriage I sometimes wonder if it is a greater risk than people realize), blogs, and social networks, are scoured to identify the individuals. The communication traffic is examined and the leaders are easily identified even without knowing the content of the communication. Location information is then used in synchronized snatches at 3:00 AM. The plans for the snatch in any realistic “transparent society” would still be opaque because it would be protected out of concern for “nation security”.

Do you think it couldn’t happen in this country?

If so you have forgotten about the black lists in the 1950s. And the Japanese, German, and Italian internments which held over 100,000, of which about 60% were US citizens, during WWII. And you aren’t familiar with the Palmer Raids. Okay, the Palmer Raids were at 9:00 PM, not 3:00 AM. You have me there.

Those events are just the tip of the iceberg and  without computers. Imagine what a government could do with computers and far, far, more detailed information about our location, habits, and social networks.

Someone in law enforcement once told me that the government has a list of everyone in this country who has training as a sniper and “keeps close track of them” in what sounded like nearly daily updates on their locations and somewhat less frequent updates on their attitudes toward high level government officials. How many high-power rifle shooters also have their names on some list?

In a “transparent society” what does it matter if there are lists like that, right? You can have your lists too! But some lists are scarier than others and will always be secret for “reasons of national security”.

Although some have advocated deliberately adding noise to your digital footprint unless this is automatically done by your own computer at near zero cost per transaction you are soon going to get tired of the game. And if FinCEN can’t pierce the noise they will just make it illegal. And, as a person with a Masters degree in communication theory where we learned to pull signals out of noise, I don’t think it would be that hard to detect the noise, pull out the true signal, and then give greater attention to those people.

A few years ago I mentioned to someone in the banking industry that I did almost all my financial transaction in cash. Checks, credit and debit cards where used far less than most people. I was told that, for certain, put me on a list.

Perhaps my view is biased by reading too many books like Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Plotting Hitler’s Death, and Bloodlands—Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, but I contend a “Transparent Society” is very risky. I still don’t have any good answers short of “dropping off the grid” which just doesn’t scale. I have some possible answers which I would be glad to discuss in private but I just don’t have the time to implement them let alone deploy them on a scale where it could make a material difference even if they were effective and could avoid being declared illegal when detected.

The one method of last resort, a doomsday plan, which appears to be the least distasteful if things get really bad are the Second Amendment remedies. But even without formal gun and/or gun owner registration our society is already transparent enough that a “first strike” on the top 10,000 or so gun owners/activists with follow ups on a few hundred thousand more (remember the numbers from the WWII internment camps?) might be sufficiently effective to neutralize even it.

I’m told I’ll never have to worry about that. I suspect most of the people that tell me that are absolutely correct but for the wrong reason. I’ll be in the “first pass”.

Let them start with John Kerry

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While I can understand the impulse if this were to be implemented I think it should be first applied to the likes of John Kerry who says stupid things like:

The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.

This was in regard to the Tea Party who he claims “held the country hostage” during the debt ceiling debates.

“Everybody knows”? I would like to suggest Senator Kerry reexamine the last election results in terms of how many people believe what the Tea Party candidates have to say.

No good answers

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Privacy is more and more a thing of the past:

In one experiment, Acquisti’s team identified individuals on a popular online dating site where members protect their privacy through pseudonyms. In a second experiment, they identified students walking on campus — based on their profile photos on Facebook. In a third experiment, the research team predicted personal interests and, in some cases, even the Social Security numbers of the students, beginning with only a photo of their faces.

Carnegie Mellon researchers also built a smartphone application to demonstrate the ability of making the same sensitive inferences in real-time. In an example of “augmented reality,” the application uses offline and online data to overlay personal and private information over the target’s face on the device’s screen.

“The seamless merging of online and offline data that face recognition and social media make possible raises the issue of what privacy will mean in an augmented reality world,” Acquisti said.

Cloud computing will continue to improve performance times at cheaper prices, and online people-tagging and face recognition software will continue to provide more means of identification.

“Ultimately, all this access is going to force us to reconsider our notions of privacy,” Acquisti said. “It may also affect how we interact with each other. Through natural evolution, human beings have evolved mechanisms to assign and manage trust in face-to-face interactions. Will we rely on our instincts or on our devices, when mobile phones can predict personal and sensitive information about a person?”

This technology has profound implications for both good and evil. Surveillance cameras can scan our sidewalks for wanted criminals as well as political dissidents. And the app for your cell phone can do a background check on your daughter’s date or identify a TSA agent in line at the grocery store.

I worry about this but don’t have any good answers. It seems that about the best you can hope for is that you have a twin* such that you can raise reasonable doubt in those situations where it really matters.

* My twin was discovered by AntiTango.

Origins of progressives

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According to one source the origin of the term “progressive” came about in the late1800s:

The first citation of the term “progressivism” in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated to 1892, in England. At that time the St. James Gazette used it as a term of derision, equating it with “radicalism”. However, the St. James usage doesn’t suggest that a neologism was being coined for the occasion (nor does the OED say as much).

…

As it turned out, the identification of biological evolution with social advancement was based on confused and ultimately false ideas; but Spencer’s elaboration of an essentially inevitable and indefinite social progress proved extraordinarily popular — even among those who would today be described as conservatives. (Spencer and Sumner were both arch conservatives.) Among those most taken by Spencer’s ideas was the young Englishman Winwood Reade, who popularized them in The Martyrdom of Man. Reade’s book, originally published in 1872, was read so widely that it reached an eighth edition just twelve years later — shortly before the St. James Gazette would use the term “progressivism” in its pages.

In the U.S. the Progressive Party was formed in 1912 and supported many of the positions associated with progressives today. As a third party in the U.S. it did quite well but still withered and died as the other two major parties adopted the more popular ideas from them.

The progressives of Europe in the early 20th Century were a somewhat different origin. They were the students of Marx and Engels who believed a proper study of history would allow the prediction of the future. The end of capitalism and the rise of socialism and communism was inevitable. Those advancing communism were progressives and those opposed to communism were anti-progress. This “progress” could only come through revolution.

According to Timothy Snyder in Bloodlands—Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Stalin used this label in his exterminations of millions of people. He was advocating the inevitable progress of society and he and his supporters were progressives. Who could be against progress? Whoever such people were they were deserving of death. The utopia of a perfect communist society was just ahead and these people, these millions of murdered people, were a small price to pay to these progressives. They were starved in great famines caused by the seizing the food in the Ukraine, which was the food basket of Europe. Think about that. Millions of people starved to death in the major food production area of the continent due to progressives.

Millions more were arrested then sent to the Gulag after show trials or simply shot in the basements of the police buildings by the progressives of the Soviet Union.

In the U.S. progressives advocated for a vast increase in government power. In the USSR and elsewhere progressives used expanded power of government to murder tens of millions of people.

I see the social inequities which progressives use as their talking points. I understand the appeal of the “progressive” approach to social inequities. But progressives appear to not understand the terrible risks that have been demonstrated by their political ancestors.

I believe a much better term to describe their political persuasion is that advocated by Ayn Rand—looters.

Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

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Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all — inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.

Thomas Sowell
[I really like this. It translates into a “sound bite” rebuttal. Those that advocate for the equalization of outcomes cannot implement such a system without creating an inequality of power.-Joe]

The Top Video…

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…on this page is excellent.  I couldn’t have said it better myself, and that’s saying a lot.


John McCain should be out in a nice pasture right now, munching on sweet grass and chewing his cud.

Quote of the day—William Van Alstyne

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The essential claim (certainly not every claim–but the essential claim) advanced by the NRA with respect to the Second Amendment is extremely strong. Indeed, one may fairly declare, it is at least as well anchored in the Constitution in its own way as were the essential claims with respect to the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech as first advanced on the Supreme Court by Holmes and Brandeis, seventy years ago. And until the Supreme Court manages to express the central premise of the Second Amendment more fully and far more appropriately than it has done thus far, the constructive role of the NRA today, like the role of the ACLU in the 1920s with respect to the First Amendment (as it then was), ought itself not lightly to be dismissed. Indeed, it is largely by the “unreasonable” persistence of just such organizations in this country that the Bill of Rights has endured.

William Van Alstyne
1994
THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE PERSONAL RIGHT TO ARMS
[I’m reminded of the adage that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. Keep that in mind when the anti-gun people demand “reasonable gun laws”. They are anti-progress.

But beyond that there can little doubt that the “unreasonableness” of the ACLU has shaped the legal contours of the First and Fifth Amendments. Many could claim the protections carved out by the courts under pressure from the ACLU extend well beyond “reasonable” limits. We certainly have those that claim the limits of the Second Amendment are too broad now with essentially just one win under our belt. Extending the elimination of gun bans to non-Federal jurisdictions expands the domain but not the shape of the protection. What I’m curious about is if perhaps the ACLU blazed a trail for SAF, NRA, et. al. such that Second Amendment protections will advance to boundaries comparable to the First Amendment at a much more rapid pace than it took for the ACLU to get us where we are today. Will there ever come a time somewhere along the way where the majority of people will concede that the limits on the Second should be similar to the limits on the First and the mass of repressive anti-gun laws all across the land will suddenly topple over like dominos. Will our fight take 70 years? Forever? Or will it only be 10?

I don’t know the answer. But I am certain that the more we push that meme the greater chance it has of becoming reality.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Brinkley

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The point of citizen resistance isn’t to be able to kick your own government’s ass; it’s to make clear that it would spend more to oppress you than it would by leaving you free. (Granted, some governments take more convincing than others. But that’s an education problem.)

Paul Brinkley
July 18th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Comment to the post Brin on Heinlein on guns is dead wrong.
[Via email from Rich R.

And what better way to educate a government on the costs of oppression than by shooting back and/or shooting the tax collectors?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Veeshir

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And that’s why I’m rooting for an asteroid.

Veeshir
July 19th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Comment to Where America used to be
[Over the years I have given that same resolution a lot of thought. Probably far more thought than it deserves.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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Today I left a comment at Snowflakes in Hell on the post Land of the Used to be Free.

Sometimes I wonder if it was that I said something profound or if it was something so crazy that everyone just went silent after I said my thing. This is one of those times. I can’t see that it was all that crazy but then I don’t see anything all that profound in it either.

My brother and I had spent some time chatting on almost this same exact thing yesterday and so I had spent some time thinking about it during the long drive back to my bunker last night. And I incorporated some of those thoughts into my QOTD post yesterday. So I had my response ready from almost the instant I read the title:

The bigger problem, as Sebastian pointed out, is the erosion without consequences. In general the only way this problem can be fixed is for there to be consequences other than voter wrath. There needs to be fines and/or jail time for those that violate our rights and some body, such as the courts but perhaps not, that is specifically tasked with doing nothing but striking down laws that exceed the constitutional authority given to the legislature and/or executive branch.

But that’s not going to happen anytime soon or even perhaps ever unless we set up a new government on the sea floor, the Moon or perhaps Mars. Of course it could also happen if the mid-east gets turned into glass and the new inhabitants set up a different style government after it has had a few years to cool down to a soft green glow.

Another possible path to get out of the mess we are in is for the Federal government to go bankrupt and collapse sort of like the USSR did and we end up with only state governments. Many of those state governments would provide a much more free environment than that currently imposed by the Feds.

The most likely, but still with low probability, is that Feds get into such a poor financial situation that a new wave of politicians get elected with a mandate to scrape all the nanny state crap in an effort to cut expenses. With this entire departments and agencies (energy, education, housing, environment, agriculture, ATF, etc.) get disbanded and all their responsibilities go away too. Sort of a “scorched earth” policy where there is little or no discussion of “cutting back to the essentials”.

Forget a revolution. As my brother pointed out statistically the most likely form of government after a revolution is a dictatorship. I suspect there is a good reason for this. My hypothesis is that in general for a revolution to be successful there needs to be a charismatic leader. Charismatic leaders have a strong tendency to be narcissistic. Narcissists think they are entitled to all the attention and power the world can throw at them. Narcissists don’t give up their power easily. Revolutions and dictators go hand-in-hand.

The lesson to be learned is that revolution is a very, very risky business for those that value liberty. The founders of this country chose their revolutionary leader with extraordinary care. Read some books on George Washington. He had the charisma to lead but he had something else that is probably not only rare but is overlooked by those looking for a leader for their revolution. He was extremely principled. That is an extremely rare quality in our politicians today. The system virtually guarantees people of principle cannot be elected.

Hence we are in a situation where Douglas Adams nails it in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” The same probably can be said of revolutionary leaders.

Quote of the day—Orrin G. Hatch

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When I became chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, I hoped that I would be able to assist in the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, rights which have too often been eroded in the belief that government could be relied upon for quick solutions to difficult problems.

Both as an American citizen and as a United States Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the approach of those who believe to solve American problems you simply become something other than American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free institutions, the fact that an American citizen can boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the more reason to resist any erosion of our individual rights. When our ancestors forged a land “conceived in liberty”, they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against government interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.

Orrin G. Hatch,
Chairman,
Subcommittee on the Constitution.
FEBRUARY 1982
THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, R E P O R T OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION
[And those that do not value this right have no desire to be free. May their chains set lightly upon them, and may posterity forget that they were our countrymen.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeffrey R. Snyder

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Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.

At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment “is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.

This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America’s gun owners will not go gently into that good, utopian night: “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” While liberals take this statement as evidence of the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses, word processors, and television cameras. The republic depends upon fervent devotion to all our fundamental rights.

Jeffrey R. Snyder
1993
A Nation of Cowards
[What of the “moral right to govern” when it commits crimes to justify imposing illegal restrictions on gun dealers? It should be no different than a fireman sets fires so they can put them out. It goes beyond losing “the moral right to govern”. They should go to jail or it means those that wish to be our masters, instead of our public servants, have nothing to lose when they attempt to change the relationship. If they get caught and told not to do that they just try something else. There must be a punishment for those that violate their oath of office because otherwise the erosion of our rights will only stop when there are no more rights to be eroded.—Joe]

Ok, That Is Pretty Cool

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I’ve come to shrug my shoulders at the various “flying car” ideas out there.  Most of them have never flown, and probably never will, despite having the flight specs listed on the their web sites.  There are of course helicopters and auto gyros, but I don’t know of any highway rated ones.


This one is already in the air and the road, and seemingly ready to go.


I want the option of putting floats on mine, and skis, plus four wheel drive, and it needs to able to carry four people, the dog, and a week’s worth of camping supplies for the family, my tools, several rifles and a couple thousand rounds of ammo.  I’ll have to wait for the “F150 4 x 4” version, and then get it used, ’cause I can’t afford a quarter mil.  You early adopters will no doubt be a great help.

TSA gets frowned at

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They should be sent to prison for deprivation of rights under the color of law but a Federal Judge frowning at the TSA and telling them to get public comment on the body scanners is better than nothing.

Quote of the day—bob r

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If you cut out the tumor, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you kill the rabid dog, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you cut out the gangrene, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you remove the mudslide from the road, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you remove the nail from the tire, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you remove the excess fat from your ass, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you remove the worm from the apple, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you remove the slug from the garden, what is it going to be replaced by?

If you remove the hornet nest from the entry way, what is it going to be replaced by?

bob r
July 14, 2011
Comment to Random thought of the day in response to ubu52 asking, “If TSA goes away, what is it going to be replaced by?”
[As Say Uncle has said, “Same planet, different worlds”.

ubu52, and many others, have completely different base assumptions about the world we live in, politics, and human nature than I and the people I usually associate with do. This makes it hard to have meaningful discussions let alone share the same government.—Joe]

Gambling with Societal Stability

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That title reads like it’s from one of the pathetic doctoral theses that students are forced to write, and that no one will ever read, doesn’t it?


No, I’m talking about gambling, or “gaming” as a business.


Gambling, it was said, should be outlawed because of the horrific problems that can result from it.  Some people, lured by the prospect of easy money, cannot control themselves, and so on.  And so gambling was outlawed.  To save us from ourselves.  It’s based on the thoroughly Marxist tenet that says; if we’re allowed to make our own decisions, we’ll surely mess up everything.  Because we suck.


Oh, but wait; there can be a lot of money to be made in gambling, so we should have a state lottery!  Cool!  Think of all the sweet, sweet money!


Now, all of sudden, and just because the government owns it, gambling is WONDERFUL!  Why, look at all the things it funds!  Think of The Children!


The Washington State Lottery has been running radio ads telling us of all the beautiful, wonderful, loving things that the lottery does for all of us and our community.  They quote the happy winners and urge us to gamble like there’s no tomorrow, imploring us to ask ourselves with the catchy phrase; “Who’s world could YOU change?”


See, you cops and you in the justice system and you legislators; this is how the remaining shreds of respect for the law, and law enforcement, are being eroded.


It’s the worst, most destructive thing in the world when WE deoit, but it’s the very definition of beauty and all things holy when YOU do it.


I have a friendly tip for you in this regard–  FUCK YOU!  You’re not helping to stabilize your communities with this sort of crap.  You’re helping to de-stabilize your communities with the enforcement of laws that punish people who HAVEN’T violated anyone’s rights.


This, ladies and gentlemen, is why, if we’re going to de-criminalize drugs, we must keep the drug trade as far out of the hands of government as possible.  This is the sort of crap that led to the creation of the BATFE following the horrors of Prohibition, if you know your history.


If we follow that horrid model, let’s see; “We gave some of the gambling to Indian tribes, so maybe we can give the pot trade to…hmmm…maybe the Hispanic Americans?  Maybe the poor white trailer trash?  Or should they be given the meth trade?  Oh what the hell, lets have the government play the role that used to be played by the syndicated crime gangs that the government created with substance laws in the first place.  Sure—they own it already, by rights.  Fine, now what about prostitution?”


I’ve been asking the question for years; haven’t we learned a single thing from the Prohibition era?  Now I’m wondering.  Maybe we did learn something from Prohibition.  Maybe we learned that there’s a ton of money and power to be gained from making certain things illegal, causing a bunch of crime and chaos, ratcheting up the law enforcement and reaching for more “tools” for said enforcement, then when it’s so far out of control that the people are saying they’ve had enough and they’re demanding “something” be done, government takes it over where the gangs left off.  State pot dispensaries, AND we still have all the 4th amendment incursions we had during the drug “war” AND we still have the DEA.  “Top down, bottom up, inside out” (that model fits perfectly here, so if you haven’t heard of it, you had better start googling it.  We’re being set up).  And you people think it’s a freaking great idea.  Suckers.  Fools.  Dupes.  You think you’re for freedom, and you’ll be begging for this shit, as an improvement.  Just as it was planned.  The BATFEM, here we come.  You’ll call for it, thinking yourself clever, but you’re just someone else’s Stradivari.


On the other hand, we could have a free society, like we were promised after the Revolution.  Now which would you rather?  A free society, or a government-run, hypocritical shit hole with different rules for different groups of people and still different rules for government-run businesses?  We fought a revolution over much less than this, and defeated the most powerful military in the world in the process.  Americans tend to think freedom is worth fighting for.  It’s in our blood.

Random thought of the day

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Barron suggests people show the TSA some verbal disrespect if you happen to meet them when they are not in a position of power over you.

I can’t find much fault with what he suggests. Perhaps it is just a waste of time. What I wonder is how much of this it would take before it would cause the turnover rate to noticeably increase. Beyond that how much would it take before the TSA would be shut down? And how many people would it take to accomplish this? This question can be generalized to other disliked organizations (not even restricted to governmental organizations).

If you say there are some organizations that can’t be eliminated this way then you don’t have enough imagination. Hypothetically the level of force can be scaled up to any level so in the extreme case this would be deadly force. And for small enough organizations, say a few dozen, one could imagine that a single “activist” could eliminate the entire organization and not get caught. Hence, in this extreme case one person could rid the planet of one hated organization by themselves.

At the other extreme you have one individual frowning at a single member of the hated organization composed of millions. The effect of which could not possibly be measured.

In between these two extremes there must be some level of force and number of applications of that force that results in the organization being disbanded. Could it be possible to determine what the minimum force and minimum required number of applications without going up against the TSA? Surely there is data that could be extrapolated from. If nothing else interviewing people that divorced their spouses or quit their jobs would provide some hints.

Suppose we had the numbers and we knew, for example, that the organization would disband if one of the following were true:

  • 50% of the organization were verbally abused every day for one month
  • 10% of the organization were physically assaulted at least once every month
  • 1% of the organization were murdered each month.

Now we look at the problem from a different perspective, the moral acceptability of the actions. Suppose the organization were the Police Battalions moving through Poland and the USSR in 1941-2. Morally any level of force would be justified because of the defensive of innocent life. On the other end the organization might be activists for a Pro-Choice/Life organization and even though they might stir up some strong emotions it would be difficult to justify using force beyond verbal abuse.

Now comes the tricky part. How do you measure the moral tradeoff in quantity versus level of force? That is, for the example at hand, suppose that you could end the TSA by slapping a single TSA agent. Probably one could justify that. It would be worth violation of moral principles because you stopped the violation of other principles by the TSA. Very much like using deadly force to defend innocent life from those that take it.

So is that how one should balance the moral scales? Force must be in proportion to that applied by the hated individual or organization? That works when the numbers are one on one. But what when the offenders number in the 10s of thousands and they offend hundreds of times per day and will repeatedly offend into the endless future? How are the scales of morality balanced now? What can be justified as the weight of those millions of offenses stretching on into eternity are balanced against a small number of greater offenses? Is one person suffering a vigorous slap the moral equivalent of 10 full body pat downs and five nude body scans of the innocent victims?

Closely related is another question. How many people would someone have to kill before a law were changed or broken law ignored? Imagine some criminal is holed up in a building, surrounded by the cops, and the negotiator tells him to surrender. The criminals says he wants to consider his options and asks, “How many people do I have to kill to be allowed to go free?” The negotiator says, “It doesn’t work that way. You will not be allowed to go free no matter how many people you kill.” The criminal says, “You lack imagination. Obviously if I kill everyone else on this continent I will go free. But I don’t want to do that. That would be too terrible and too difficult. But if it were somewhat fewer I might consider it. So I want to know what the number is.”

So what is the answer? If the “right people” people in the executive branch, down through the local police force, are killed that would probably do it too. That number might be relatively small. Perhaps a few hundred. It would be exceedingly immoral of course. But posing the question fascinates me because of the implications. It appears that if an extraordinary evil is perpetrated against, perhaps, some very small number of people then the entire fabric of our society could be changed.

9/11 was a crude example but that data point supports the hypothesis. The people who were murdered were, for all intents and purposes, chosen at random. And although it had profound changes on our society the response was different from that intended by the attackers. But what if the people attacked were individually chosen for their position of power and it was believed the attackers could do it again at will and probably never get caught? The attackers don’t have to put themselves into positions of official power. They just have to have “veto power” over the lives of those who wield it.

Our society and political system is perhaps far more fragile than we would like to believe. It’s resilience is extremely dependent upon being able to almost completely thwart those that would exercise “veto power” and get away with it.

Update: Mexico probably has a lot of data that could be used to answer the questions.

No guns for Negros

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This is a JPFO video via Full-Scale Tactics:

The JPFO almost always puts out good stuff.

Quote of the day–Ilana Rovner

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Stung by the result of McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010), the City quickly enacted an ordinance that was too clever by half. Recognizing that a complete gun ban would no longer survive Supreme Court review, the City required all gun owners to obtain training that included one hour of live‐range instruction, and then banned all live ranges within City limits. This was not so much a nod to the importance of live‐range training as it was a thumbing of the municipal nose at the Supreme Court. The effect of the ordinance is another complete ban on gun ownership within City limits.

…

The ordinance admittedly was designed to make gun ownership as difficult as possible. The City has legitimate, indeed overwhelming, concerns about the prevalence of gun violence within City limits. But the Supreme Court has now spoken in Heller and McDonald on the Second Amendment right to possess a gun in the home for self-defense and the City must come to terms with that reality. Any regulation on firearms ownership must respect that right.

Ilana Rovner
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[The entire ruling could be summed up as telling the city and the lower court that they reversed, “You suck and we hate you.” It’s pretty brutal. As a hint, Rovner, above, was the more sympathetic of the judges. While concurring that the preliminary injunction should be issued against the city she didn’t go quite as far as Kanne and Sykes did.

It was a pleasure to read. There was agreement with so many things we have been saying for decades. That the anti-gun people have dismissed these arguments almost without discussion and to now have a court rule with us is an extreme pleasure. Most importantly they explicitly and repeatedly use the First Amendment as an analog to the Second Amendment. I will not restrain from saying, “We and many others told you so!”

See also Sebastian’s post on the topic.

As a side note which may have some relevance, while an infant Rovner and her mother immigrated to the U.S. from Latvia to escape Nazism.—Joe]