Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day—Thomas Jefferson

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On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?

Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia, 1782.
From here.
[Translating to a simpler form, “Just because we haven’t yet rebelled due to the government overstepping of the constitution in the past doesn’t mean that we won’t hold the government responsible for those infringements in the future.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jon Agner

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The Second Amendment is not about hunting, it’s about an armed citizenry. That’s an unsettling concept for many people. For others, it’s a bedrock of security, constitutionally guaranteed.

Jon Agner
November 24, 2010
Guns and violence: McKelvey wrong on heritage, history
[Blacks walking around anywhere, anytime, without supervision instead of being slaves—that is an unsettling concept for many people. And it’s constitutionally guaranteed.

The problems is as minor restrictions on firearms ownership (or blacks/Jews/gays/whatever) increase the people least in need of restrictions will be affected the most and those that would have abused their freedoms will be affected the least. Hence minor restrictions cause more harm than good. Extensive restrictions are blatant infringements and while they might repress certain aspects of the original problem they create their own disastrous consequences.

And that is the basis of the conflict and why there cannot be a reasonable compromise. A society can choose freedom or suffer the alternative.—Joe]

TSA as the Berlin Wall

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There are many obvious parallels which could be draw between the TSA and Berlin Wall. The restrictions on travel, freedom, and of course the infamous “Papers!” line from movies about Nazi Germany.

But I want to point out a less obvious parallel—the way the Berlin Wall fell.

On November 9, 1989 there was a misunderstanding between the politburo and their spokesman about a change in travel policy. This was amplified by the media getting the message even more messed up (don’t they always?). The media ended up saying, “The borders are open to everyone” instead of some East Berliners will be allowed to cross if they have proper permission (presumably if they were politically connected and had close relatives to stay behind as hostages).

Crowds of people gathered at the wall and demanded the border guards immediately open the gates. The guards were overwhelmed (no injuries as far as I know) and let people through with little or no checking of papers.

The same thing could happen with the TSA. The only reason they have power over us is because we give them that power. We could ignore their demands for our papers, push their scanning machines aside, and walk straight to our gates and board our planes. If 10s of thousands did it all on the same day the game would be over in a matter of hours.

The guards at the Berlin Wall had machine guns. The TSA just have their uniforms and our timidity.

A chilling effect

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Via Say Uncle and Alan I found this:

The memo, which actually takes the form of an administrative directive, appears to be the product of undated but recent high level meetings between Napolitano, John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA),and one or more of Obama’s national security advisors. This document officially addresses those who are opposed to, or engaged in the disruption of the implementation of the enhanced airport screening procedures as “domestic extremists.”

The introductory paragraph of the multi-page document states that it is issued “in response to the growing public backlash against enhanced TSA security screening procedures and the agents conducting the screening process.” Implicit within the same section is that the recently enhanced security screening procedures implemented at U.S. airports, and the measures to be taken in response to the negative public backlash as detailed [in this directive], have the full support of the President. In other words, Obama not only endorses the enhanced security screening, but the measures outlined in this directive to be taken in response to public objections.

The terminology contained within the reported memo is indeed troubling. It labels any person who “interferes” with TSA airport security screening procedure protocol and operations by actively objecting to the established screening process, “including but not limited to the anticipated national opt-out day” as a “domestic extremist.” The label is then broadened to include “any person, group or alternative media source” that actively objects to, causes others to object to, supports and/or elicits support for anyone who engages in such travel disruptions at U.S. airports in response to the enhanced security procedures.

For individuals who engaged in such activity at screening points, it instructs TSA operations to obtain the identities of those individuals and other applicable information and submit the same electronically to the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division, the Extremism and Radicalization branch of the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (IA) division of the Department of Homeland Security.

The way I read this is that people exercising their specific enumerated right of free speech will be reported to the Department of Homeland Security. Doesn’t that constitute a “chilling effect”? Can the entire chain of thugs all the way up to Obama be charged with violation of 18 USC 241  and/or 18 USC 242?

The Science is Settled

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As we all now know, if you want to answer a question scientifically, you take a poll.  That’s the New Scientific Method.  Scientific American magazine took such a poll regarding anthropogenic Gluball Worming (that’s Kim Du Toit’s term, IIRC) and since they didn’t like the results, it would seem Reasoned DiscourseTM has kicked in.  I suppose the New Scientific Method will have to be amended – you take a poll of Open Society socialists only.  Then you’ll get the right results.

This from Hockey Schtick, which has ostensibly maintained a link to the unwanted results.  Take it for what you will.  Do your own investigation.  Myself, I find it hard to believe even though I know the left like the back of my hand and therefore such things should come as no surprise.  I heard of this poll on the Dennis Prager show last week, and figured I should share.

I used to subscribe to Scientific American, until I received the impression that desperate academics were using it merely as a vehicle for getting published.  I got tired of wading through so much evidence of non-inspiration, just to find the few interesting tidbits.  Still I’ll give them credit for being the only place I’d heard of superfluids, pre internet.

To me it’s not terribly important one way or the other.  The left has been crying “Wolf!” for generations now and it has worn thin, and worn out, for me decades ago.  The planet Earth was supposed to run out of oil in the 1980s, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism.  The “Population Time Bomb” was going to get us by then too, we were told as elementary school students, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism including forced population controls.  The planet was going to freeze up in a new ice age, we were told back in the 1960s, and then it became Glueball Worming, and now it’s “Climate Change”.  Those are just a few highlights, but this crap has been non-stop for what – about 150 years?  They’ve lost control of the narrative now.  What will happen as a result?

I figure it’ll have to get more down to the point – It’ll have to be plain old threats from the left at some point.  When the spoiled child’s attempts at lying and manipulation fall flat, the all-out tantrums come next.  The best we can do I suppose is ignore them, but when they start breaking things it gets difficult.

Google and privacy

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Via email from Chet:

In the past I have said I don’t mind private business getting overbearing as much as I do the government doing so. But when an industry leader uses the invasion of your privacy to it’s advantage without repercussions the rest of the industry is almost forced to follow along or get left in the financial dust. And once the technology is deployed and a profit can be made selling it to the government someone will do that too. It won’t matter how evil it is (read IBM and the Holocaust), if the price is right, and with a government involved the price could be you (or your company) continuing to survive, the information will be abused.

There needs to be repercussion for companies who do this. The “noise” and the boycotts need to start before the information is abused.

I know a lot more than I am at liberty to say and it hurts to bite my tongue this hard…

Note: Full disclosure—I work for Microsoft who is a competitor of Google.

Security Theater gets attention

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Via email from Kris comes this link and an image from Gizmodo which I continued following to find the artist here. This is the image:

http://assets.arlosites.com/stills/17587011/2a87999b00.jpg

Also from Kris is this collection of TSA bumper stickers:

On the more serious side is Bruce Schneier (via Chet) with my favorite section being:

There’s talk about the health risks of the machines, but I can’t believe you won’t get more radiation on the flight. Here’s some data:

A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth.

More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.

Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.

Nate Silver on the hidden cost of these new airport security measures.

According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit. That’s the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.

Hidden costs… That is something that is difficult to get across to many people. Just like gun control. Ban all the guns and the total crimes committed with firearms will probably go down but the crime rate may actually increase because having unarmed or poorly armed victims enables crime. It appears that is just too difficult of a concept for some people.

I’m not sure how to handle this problem. If they didn’t have (or threaten to have) the force of government behind them it would be fairly easy to ignore them and let Darwin take care of them. But that isn’t the way it works. They can use government to force us all to back over the cliff trying to avoid a nut case in front of us who pops up and says “Boogie! Boogie!” once every few years. We should just allowed to carry our guns and put a bullet in his head when he shows himself.

It seems people are beginning to realize the price they are paying for the security theater but will they be willing to embrace freedom and self-reliance?

Whatever the outcome it makes things worse for gun control. We should be able to draw the parallel between security on an airplane and security in schools, office buildings, and college campuses. If this is what it takes to make things safe on an airplane why should it take any less to make a dorm room “safe’?

How many people do you think will be tolerate this sort of “security” every time they enter a building or any other “gun free zone”? I don’t know the answer but we should start asking the question.

Update: I forgot about Rob’s email that I had saved away:

And from Mike:

Quote of the day—Tamara K.

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What you mean “us”, Kemosabe?

The day you’re standing there watching while some anonymous McDonald’s washout of a rent-a-cop is giving Michelle and the girls a full TSA probulation at Andrews AFB before y’all jet off to Martha’s Vineyard or Madrid is the day you will show a shred of leadership on this issue.

Until then, you can put a sock in it. Until the Presidential Junk gets a fondlin’, you’re just talking out your teleprompter.

You first, Barry; you first.

Tamara K.
November 21, 2010
Step up and show some leadership, Mr. President.
[Today is privacy day at The View From North Central Idaho. I received email about stuff that I just had to share. It will be up in a few minutes. Tamara sets the tone.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle Keeney

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Victimhood is cherished by the left. As one of their media of exchange it is like gold to them. It is one of the highest forms of existence, for which they all long, to which they all aspire, and which they would have us all attain at their hands as payment in kind.

Lyle Keeney
November 21, 2010
Comment to Quote of the day—Kurt Hofmann
[This is in regards to Virginia Tech gun control victim Colin Goddard representing the Brady Campaign.—Joe]

TSA admits 4th Amendment violation

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Via Alan we have this admission from the TSA:

“No one likes their Fourth Amendment violated going through a security line. But the truth of the matter is we are going to have to do it.”

I am reminded of a quote by William Pitt the younger, “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

TSA, it’s time for all of you to go—preferably after having been convicted of 18 USC 242.

Quote of the day—Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

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If there are adjustments we need to make as we move forward, we have an open ear.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
November 16, 2010
TSA: Despite objections, all passengers must be screened
[I seriously doubt whether her ear can open wide enough because I think the entire TSA (A Security Theater) should be forcibly shoved into her ear and left there.—Joe]

Quote of the day–President Barack Obama

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I believe it is a mistake for us to borrow $700 billion to make tax cuts permanent for millionaires and billionaires. It won’t significantly boost the economy and it’s hugely expensive, so we can’t afford it.

President Barack Obama
November 14, 2010
Obama Says He’s Committed to Middle-Class Tax Cut Extension
[Just the phrase “we can’t afford it” and the word “expensive” in reference to a tax cut tells you how out of touch with reality he is or desires to change your perception of it. The proper usage of those words is more like, ‘You can’t afford spending money on expensive items.” You use a different set of words to describe taking money from people at gun point.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Samuel Adams

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It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.

Samuel Adams
[There was a time when the defenders of the Second Amendment were in the minority. We fought on, even those many believed it was a losing battle, in part because we believed it was the honorable thing to do. We are now winning.

This quote reminds me of the famous Barry Goldwater quote which is also quite good.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert Farago

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How about we subsidize the gun safe business instead of pissing money down the ATFE-shaped rathole? If the VPC really wants to stop gun violence, offering low-cost gun safes would have more impact than supporting the Agency that Can’t Shoot Straight and/or introducing or tightening gun control legislation.

Robert Farago
November 12, 2010
Violence Policy Center: Great Landing, Wrong Airport
[The reason this approach is not taken is because the people that support the Brady Campaign and/or the VPC have a solution in search of supporting evidence. They are not searching for a solution to a problem.

It’s like someone looked at the crime rate among people with non-white skin compared to white-skin and used that as justification for laws such as curfews, registration, tracking, and even preemptive imprisonment of non-whites all the while claiming they were intended to “prevent colored violence”. Hence the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence would have a sister organization called “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Black Violence.” They don’t seem to understand that “preventing crime” in this manner is akin to claiming someone is “guilty until proven innocent” as well as infringing on a host of other guaranteed rights.—Joe]

TSA is hot topic

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I’ve been reading the posts on varies blog and people have been sending me email of videos (thank you Rob) and links.

I like this one best (thank you Kris):

clip_image002

Like I have said before, next on my list is the TSA. I wish I had the time and money to work on them full time. As I have said before I think I could have a lot of fun with them.

Quote of the day—John Adams

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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams
[The only way to accomplish this is to have very strict limits on the power of government. Hence a constitution of enumerated powers. Now we just need a way to enforce those constitutional limits to power.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bill

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Medicine only works when those in the job WANT to work harder to help people, and that happens most consistently when both those served and the server receive benefit from the service. Medical providers aren’t mercenary per se, but when almost every decision you make gets parsed by multiple, NON-Involved people, the only compensatory mechanism is financial reward.

Bill
November 8, 2010
Comment to Following the U.K. medical model.
[Wife Barb works in the medical field as well and what Bill says both here and in the rest of his comment matches her experience as well. Government involvement in health care does not improve it. It subjects it to review by people that weren’t there and don’t have near the training that you do. It makes it time consuming and frustrating dealing with the bureaucrats rather than working with the patients. This increases the cost. This drives away those that are passionate about improving peoples lives. This retains people who can tolerate pushing paper and drives away those that find providing good quality medical treatment rewarding.—Joe]

If You Have to Ask…

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…you clearly haven’t been paying attention.


The Political Insider (requires registration for e-mail alerts) is fielding a poll, trying to find out who we want for the next Republican presidential candidate.  It’s all multiple choice, with the usual suspects.  There are some general opinion questions too.  The one that really got me is; “Do you think the tea party represents the Republican Party?”


Oh boy.  First; No, or I sure hope not.  But that’s not the proper question.  The proper question would be; “Do you think the Republican Party represents the tea party?”  The answer is; “Hell No, that’s why the tea party exists.  Get it?”


That, you Insiders, is the problem, and so the tea party is trying to overrun the Republican Party, co opt it, and bring it into line.  The other question I did not see is; “What should be the primary goal of the Republican Party over the next several years?”


The one, simple answer is; “Get rid of socialism and purge the socialists from American government payrolls.  All of it.  All of them.”  We’ve had enough.


They didn’t give us the opportunity to answer in our own words, so I deleted the message.

Quote of the day–Mahatma Gandhi

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I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.


Mahatma Gandhi
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.LXXXVII, p.394-5
[This was brought to you via email from Ry who was reminded of it via my Philosophy Questions.


The pacifist, or anyone, who claims, “Violence never solves anything.” Or, “Violence is never the answer” enables the murder or enslavement of themselves and/or their followers. Gandhi was smart enough to realize the principles he adhered necessitated this outcome.


The principles of Gandhi do have application in many situations but not in all. The consequence of not having a viable “Plan B” if non-violence fails in the face of violent oppression is the extinction of your society and perhaps your species. In the long run the pure pacifist guarantees the occupation of their place in history and the elimination of their existence in the future.


I am of the opinion there exist certain conditions which trigger a more Heinlein like approach to the situation. The Second Amendment guarantees we have the option available when it is needed.—Joe]

Quote of the Day – Bill Whittle

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…just because something is fun, and scares away weenies, doesn’t mean that it’s stupid.


Bill Whittle
November 4, 2010
What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights
[Freedom is scary for a lot of people, and it means that people who hate you can’t tell you what to do or how to do it, just because they hate you.  It sucks for them, and it makes them angry.  Hence, freedom pisses people off.  Hence, if you love freedom, you have to come to grips with the fact that people are going to hate you.  Embrace it, Little Grasshopper.  Or as Zaphod Beeblebrox said after having a nuclear missile attack launched against his ship; “Man, This is Great!  It means we’re really on to something if they’re trying kill us!”–Lyle]