Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
Simone Weil
[There was once a time, not so long ago, where people could not choose marriage partners where the skin color didn’t match. In most state people still can’t marry if the genders do match. This is not liberty.
The government in many states forbids the use of noise suppressors on firearms but requires their use on cars. This is not liberty either.—Joe]
This day is supposed to be some sort of special environmental day. But “no pressure”. They will just blow you up and splatter your body parts all over the room if you don’t go along with their agenda.
As the UK’s Telegraph says, “The environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.”
I see.
I would like for the environmental movement to know that they aren’t the only ones with explosives. And guns. Don’t forget the guns. And also, I have earth moving equipment. If needed I can bury bodies very, very deep.
So, with that in mind some friends and I went out and did a little practicing.
First we dug up the dirt. This was the first time Barron had driven a bulldozer. Here he porpoises through the dirt but later he was doing fine.
Here is the end result (after I smoothed things out):
As you can see there is room for lots of bodies should the environmentalist get as aggressive as they are threatening to do. And not only can we dig up the earth to dispose of their bodies but we could use the mounds of dirt over their bodies to use as shooting positions when we release more CO2 into the air when invite lots of people to shoot at explosives.
Here we set off some explosives, releasing CO2 into the air, with guns which also release CO2:
And we smiled as we did it (and don’t fail to notice the big, fuel guzzling, pickup):
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
John Philpot Curran
Speech upon the Right of Election for Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1790.
[Curran is also credited with “Evil prospers when good men to nothing.” as is Edmund Burke. But the quote cannot be definitely traced to either man.
This also reminds me of the quote which is most frequently attributed to the ACLU, “Liberty is always unfinished business.”
We see the effect of this truism all around us. “The active” are those who believe government is far more than a necessary evil (as I do). They believe it is a tool of good if not the source of all good. Hence they urge it on, run for office, and declare themselves “leaders” instead of public servants.—Joe]
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
D.H. Lawrence
[Some say we are quickly approaching the slave state. Others say we have already arrived.—Joe]
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
Daniel Webster
[And it continues to this day.—Joe]
The difference between Liberty and liberties is as great as between God and gods.
Ludwig Boerne
Fragmente and Aphorismen (1840)
[From The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985)
I think this captures why “they” don’t get it when we say, “We don’t have Liberty.” “They” look as us funny and tell us, “You have lots of liberties.”—Joe]
That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.
George Mason
June 12, 1776
Virginia Declaration of Rights
[The U.S. Constitution was heavily influenced by the Virginia Constitution. Remember, James Madison, the main architect of the U.S. Constitution was from Virginia. And Mason had his share of input to the Constitution as well.
The entire political philosophy of our country is based on government deriving it’s powers from the consent of the people. Hence I always find it a little irritating when someone refers to a politician as a ‘leader’ when they are actually servants.
It is more than a little irritating when the servants tell the People they are the only ones allowed to own and carry certain types of personal weapons.
And when the servants use the People’s credit to run up a massive debt giving money to people and organizations which they had no constitutional authority to give it it too it’s time to fire them and perhaps prosecute them.—Joe]
hope I have made it clear that my belief that the use of foreign law in our constitutional decisions is the wave of the future does not at all suggest that I think it’s a good idea. I do not. The men who founded our republic did not aspire to emulating Europeans, much less the rest of the world.
I wrote an opinion for the Court a few terms back [Crawford v. Washington, 541 US 36 (2004)], overruling an earlier case [Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990)], which had held that the confrontation clause is satisfied so long as the unconfronted testimony – that is to say, hearsay testimony – has “particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” The opinion pointed out that that the confrontation clause was designed precisely to prevent a procedure considered trustworthy by continental European nations, and others that followed the civil law tradition. “Examinations of witnesses upon interrogatories,” wrote John Adams, “are only by the civil law; interrogatories are unknown at common law, and Englishment and common lawyers have an aversion to them, if not an abhorrence of them.” As recently as 1993, for example, France was still defending its use of ex parte testimony before the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the defendant’s accuser in a drug trafficking case had a “legitimate interest in remaining anonymous,” and that the defendant’s rights were adequately protected so long as “the judge held hearings which enabled him to satisfy himself” that the witnesses stood by their statements. Should we have loosened up our confrontation clause, in deference to foreign opinion on this subject?
France permits suits against the executive branch only in an executive branch court called the conseil d’etat, whose members are appointed and promoted by the executive, and who regularly alternate between performing executive functions and adjudicating the lawfulness of other people’s performance of executive functions. Other European countries have somewhat similar systems, although the extent of their participating in executive functions may be more limited. This is a practice that Tocqueville contrasted unfavorably with our own, as long ago as 1835. Should we change our mind?
In No. 46 of The Federalist, James Madison speaks contemptuously of the governments of Europe who are “afraid to trust their people with arms.” Should we revise the Second Amendment because of what these other countries think?
In November of 2002, the Council of Europe approved what was called “an additional protocol to the convention on cybercrime,” which would make it illegal to distribute anything online which “advocates, promotes or incites hatred.” A spokesman for the United States Department of Justice said – quite correctly – that this country could not be a party to such a treaty because of the First Amendment. If all of Europe thinks that such a provision does not unduly limit speech, should we reconsider? And I could go on.
If there was any thought absolutely foreign to the founders of our country, surely it was the notion that we Americans should be governed the way that Europeans are – and nothing has changed. I dare say that few of us here would like our life or liberty subject to the disposition of French or Italian criminal justice, not because those systems are unjust, but because we think ours is better. What reason is there to believe that other dispositions of a foreign country are so obviously suitable to the morals and beliefs of our people that they can be judicially imposed through constitutional adjudication? And is it really an appropriate function of judges to say which are and which aren’t? I think not.
Justice Antonin Scalia
February 21, 2006
Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute.
Emphasis added.
[If the founders of our country wanted the supreme law of our land to emulate Europe they could have done so. If people today want our laws to emulate Europe they can push through the constitutional amendments to make those changes. And if in the process they infringe on fundamental human rights they can deal with the consequences.—Joe]
Magnificent…will terrify and appall jackbooted stormtroopers everywhere, and even more so the whimpering media geeks who squat to lick those boots.
Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph
1996
From the back cover of Unintended Consequences by John Ross.
[If you haven’t read Unintended Consequences then you don’t really understand the gun culture.—Joe]
The Brady Campaign has very little to feel good about these days so they are doing a lot of crowing about the Federal district court judge who dismissed the Montana Firearms Freedom Act case.
While most observers agree that we will not win this case that doesn’t mean it is a losing action. As I said in the comments over at Say Uncle’s place:
From the Missoulian
“We’ve believed all along that the federal District Court cannot grant the relief we request. We seek to overturn a half-century of bad precedent,” Gary Marbut, MSSA president, said in a statement. “Only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that. In that light, the pending dismissal by the District Court means little except that we are now free to move to the next step of the process.”
The Brady Campaign may ultimately be able to claim victory but not without more work. They are crowing now because it will be a while before they can crow for a real victory.
…
I don’t think “restrictions are defeated before they start” via lots of guns is a workable strategy. As an example look at machine guns. There were lots of them in private hands prior to 1934 and now there aren’t. Also consider legislative attacks such as trigger locks, “safe storage” laws, restrictions on carry that start with schools and public buildings then progresses to banks, parks, churches, vehicles, and “public spaces”.
While the Firearms Freedom Act has a low chance of ultimate success it is an integrated part of the SAF firearms civil rights judicial strategy.
I used to play a lot of chess which gives us a way to view this. Suppose you have a slight material advantage say 15 pieces to their 12 pieces. You increase your odds of winning by trading down an equal number/quality of their pieces for yours. When the odds are 3 to 1 in your favor you are far better off than when you were at 15 to 12.
Think of it this way–we have far more money than the anti-gun side. Suppose we have 10 x as much money and resources as they do. Suppose they need to spend half as much as we do on each front as we do in order to defeat us. The more fronts we attack on the less they have to spend on any one front. Even if we attack on a front they can easily win they must spend resources on it. This makes it easier to win on more fronts.
By forcing them to divide their resources we can create much better odds for success on each of the individual attacks because we have sufficient resources that our multiple attacks do not suffer from division.
There are other reasons as well but discussion of those in public would not be in our best interests.
Please add to that what Idaho Governor Butch Otter said about the ruling:
Governor Otter said that decision is consistent with Molloy’s wolf ruling, and together they highlight the lack of regard that the judge has for states’ rights under the 10th Amendment.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll find some relief from the appellate court,” he said. “But if not, we’ll keep fighting to protect our right to self-determination.”
I’d rather pay most feds to do nothing (or snort coke, watch daytime TV, drink booze and buy whores) than pay them to do what they’re doing now (in addition to snorting coke, drinking booze and buying whores that is). That’d be a step in the right direction, say, for a while, before they’re indicted.
If I had my full ‘druthers I’d see them stripped of their citizenship, packed into crates, stuffed into transport planes, flown over Venezuela (or Cuba, North Korea, etc.) and dropped, along with their supporters in Congress. Parachutes optional, depending on donations from the private sector. I’d suggest using them on the front lines in battle, but I wouldn’t trust them in that capacity. They’d most likely throw up the white flags and then side with the enemy against our real troops. The whole tar and feathers thing seems unnecessarily messy and time consuming. We have work to do after all, and if we could simply get rid of them as quickly as possible, we could get on with living our lives in peace. If they’d go voluntarily and then mind their own business for the rest of their lives, that would be the ideal, though we all know that’s an impossibility – statists, who understand nothing on Earth but deception and brute force don’t ever quit until quitting is the only option left. Even then, we see what happened with Jim Jones and his dupes. If they know they’re going to take the big fall, they’ll take as many as possible along with them. That’s axiomatic and it goes for the whole statist society.
Lyle@UltiMAK
September 30, 2010
Comment to Random thought of the day.
[The only thing I would add is they should get a fair trial first. But I guess that was sort of implied in the “stripped of their citizenship” line. And please note that each individual need not have their own trial. They don’t seem to have any regard for the individual so why should the individual have any regard for them independently of their collective? It probably could done at the department/agency level. Department of Education, Department of Housing, etc.—Joe]
I used to work in biometrics. In the first few minutes of a biometrics class in about 2004 the instructor quoted numerous people, going back about 30 years, each saying biometrics would be reliable “in ten years”. When I actually looked at the data for various biometric systems I was rather shocked by the failure rates. And those were in cases where there was no deliberate attempt to defeat the system. I attended a conference on biometrics and I invented a new biometric system (no, I can’t talk about it—a certain government agency says that information is restricted). It became quite clear to me that every biometric system in existence could be defeated if you knew it was being used. And furthermore it was unlikely that any system could ever be undefeatable.
Hence, I am not surprised experts are coming to the same conclusion I did several years ago:
Biometric systems — designed to automatically recognize individuals based on biological and behavioral traits such as fingerprints, palm prints, or voice or face recognition — are “inherently fallible,” says a new report by the National Research Council, and no single trait has been identified that is stable and distinctive across all groups.
I’m sure no one will be surprised that Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson is now firmly committing herself to “Reasoned Discourse”:
After careful thought and reflection about the direction my blog has taken since I asked questions and got answers from the “gun guys”, I have changed the purpose of my blog. As stated in my last post, I have found that most of the comments were just not getting the two sides of this volatile issue to a place where a thoughtful discussion could take place. Though the title of my blog indicates that I would like to have a discussion, I am not sure that is possible.
…
But after spending the last few weeks reading and responding to the many comments written on my blog, I realized that, rather than coming closer to an understanding, we have become further apart.
…
[M]y intention for my blog will not be a discussion but rather a way to keep the issue front and center and to urge those who can do something about gun injuries and deaths to put this issue more towards the top of the agenda.
She is right, it isn’t possible to have a discussion with a bigot who is incapable of distinguishing truth from falsity. And we should not dignify her bigotry regarding a specific enumerated human right by engaging her on her turf.
Let’s just say, “There are ways to defeat this” but I’m not happy about having to do it. It would be MUCH better to defeat it at the legislative level rather than at the technological level:
Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.
Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
…
James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.
“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”
But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.
It is “Necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers”?
What about the erosion of private communication? It used to be one could have a conversation in their home, while walking across the field or down the road and the conversation was technologically guaranteed to be just between those present. They are now demanding a technological guarantee to eavesdrop on any private conversation, anytime, anywhere.
You can have my crypto keys when you reanimate your cold dead hands.
The press is the only weapon with whose aid the Party every day speaks to the working class in the language of the Party.
Joseph Stalin
Contribution, Pravda, c. 1917
[From The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985) .
Stalin was referring to the Soviet press but it generalizes quite well.—Joe]
As Tam said, “This is too beautiful to not link it…”
You must watch that video.
The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority…it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people.
Frank I. Cobb
January 1920
La Follette’s Magazine.
[Some people should get over it and just accept that the Declaration of Independence claims sedition is required under some circumstances and the Bill of Rights deliberately enables it.
The only people that could possibly object to this are those that aspire to be slaves or tyrants. Such people and their opinions should be given all the respect they deserve.—Joe]
Via Alan we have this chilling scenario proposal:
The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.
What’s next?
I think I can guess.
First, total control of the money. You will no longer need cash because all the financial transaction will go through the government via your ID card.
After that you will no longer need money because the government will just take care of everything in their database. The government can assign you your living space and will have food other things delivered (or not) as the government thinks you need it.
They should have shot a bunch of politicians while they still had the tools to do it.
I was considering competing in the contest (via Say Uncle) but then I saw the Judging Criteria included this:
Externalities (such as noise pollution, public relations, etc.) imposed onto other businesses which may locate aboard the same seastead and to the overall seasteading movement.
What I had in mind might have “rocked the boat” a little bit.
Now if Microsoft would set up shop offshore someplace where we wouldn’t have to pay such high taxes I’d be near the front of the line to volunteer for the transfer.
Via Roberta I discovered Obama’s popularity is still quite high—in China.
Click on the first picture to see the text “The revolution isn’t success comrades, we must continue to be studious.”
In that last picture I had to look up “RMB”. It refers to the Chinese currency.
I find it “interesting” that under the Obama administration many Chinese believe U.S.A. stands for “United Socialists All”.
Obama and his friends should be aware there are such things as counter-revolutionaries. And the body counts (via Alan) might end up a little different if the gulags, famine, and torture start being implemented in this country.
I know that the members of the Gun Club at Microsoft picked up over 100,000 rounds of ammunition just yesterday. And how many of those rounds do you think went to capitalistic freedom loving people? And I wonder how many the Socialists at Microsoft picked up.
I would like for the Socialists to do the math before they engage in a purge. Math lessons can be “difficult”.