Category Archives: Freedom

Times up

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Last week Kevin posted My New Favorite Flag. I went over to have dinner and watch a DVD with son James recently. The Gadsden Flag on his living room wall reminded me of Kevin’s post so I told him, “There is a variation of that flag now. I saw it on a blog yesterday.”


“Oh?”, James said. James has a strong tendency toward cynicism and I could hear it in his voice this time.


I figured I would be able to put a little bit of a crack that cynical wall he puts up sometimes and so I described the flag to him, “Instead of the snake just being coiled it’s in the middle of a strike with the fangs bared. And instead of ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ it says, ‘Times Up'”. I’m sure I had a smirk on my face. That should break through I thought.


He didn’t even look at me. He just sighed and asked, “And where is there any evidence of anyone doing something about it being ‘times up’?”


“Let’s watch our show now”, I told him.

Our mission is to defend the homeland

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Chet came by my office today and started talking about “When we were kids.” We are about double the age of most of our co-workers and have a little more in common with each other than we do some of the other people. We both grew up on farms. He in Kansas. And, of course, me in Idaho. It gives us a perspective that “some of the younger folk” don’t really appreciate. We remember when most of the homes had outhouses instead of indoor toilets. And our parents lived through the “Great Depression”. We remember what our parents told us about what they and others had to do to make it through. I keep wondering if that will someday be referred to as “GD I” and this go around “GD II” but that is another story.

We talk about economics quite a bit. “What is it going to be like this time?”, we ask each other. Back then it was a world-wide thing too. That was what enabled Hitler to gain power.

This time it wasn’t economics that Chet wanted to talk about.

“Remember those old movies about WW II when the Germans would stop someone on the train and demand their papers?”, he asked.

My officemate had stepped out for bit and I knew we were going to have “a session”. I leaned my chair back and put my feet up on my desk and said, “Yeah. I remember.”

He continued, “We used to think how scary that was. How terrible it was they would do something like that. Right?”

“Absolutely!”, I agreed.

“There is an article in the New York Times today about how our government is doing that today on trains that run between New York City and Detroit”, he said.

I told him I had just read a blog post about that same sort of thing this morning. We chatted a while about it. Neither of us knowing what we could really do about it. “But it sure ain’t right.” we agreed. We always used to believe it couldn’t happen here. We were “special”. We were a free country and that sort of thing just didn’t happen here. It couldn’t happen here.

But it is. It is happening here, right now. And as Roberta X said this morning, Getting Used To It Doesn’t Make It Right.

My officemate returned and Chet left with us both shaking our heads in sadness.

I found the New York Times article and after I read it I went over the Chet’s office. “The government is claiming that if they are within 100 miles of an international border or the three mile limit off the coast they don’t need warrant or anything. They can just grab people they think are ‘of interest’ and demand they prove they are citizens”, I told him. “Right here in this office we are within 100 miles of the Canadian border.” I let it sink in for a couple seconds then continued, “Think of what 100 miles inland from both coasts, the Gulf, and both the north and south borders cover. I’ll bet 50% of the U.S. population is covered by that.”

Chet and I didn’t have much to say after that you wouldn’t have already concluded. We could be headed for some scary times. We talked about it for a couple minutes and went back to work. I think we just got used to it.

If it makes you feel any better about the whole thing–the agent in charge of the Rochester station told the New York Times, “Our mission is to defend the homeland.”

Yeah, I’m sure it is. I think I heard that line in a movie when I was a kid.

Quote of the day–Genesis

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We must throw the infantile model of “the people are under the cops as a
baby is under his or her parents” in the dustbin and instead transition to
a model of “you’re adults, you’re free to act as adults, and we both trust
you to be adults and assist us in our job of identifying crooks when necessary.
We also both believe in and support your right to stop the
thugs on your own in lawful self-defense should it become necessary, God forbid,
and we will not only cease and desist from interfering with that right we will
start encouraging you to exercise it.“

While there are few if any places in the United States where the victimless
crime view has been adopted, there are plenty where law enforcement both
respects the right of the people to self-defense and recognizes that
they need the common citizens more than the citizens need them,
especially if and when the government teat of “everyone can suckle all they
want” disappears.

Where I live is one such area in this country – if things get “really bad”
around here I’m quite certain the common man will be standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with local law enforcement agencies toward the same aligned
goal – stopping the Zombies from eating the citizens.

For Chicago to achieve that it’s law enforcement community is going to have
to quit treating the citizens like infants whom it can rob candy from any time
it feels like it.

Genesis
August 26, 2010
Janet’s Heart Is In The Right Place
[Via email from Chet.

There is a lot more of interest in the post. He explains why the cops are so hated in some areas of the country, why this is a bad thing, and how to fix it.–Joe]

Quote of the day–American Mercenary

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If government is the source of rights, then the government can take those “rights” away. Don’t believe me? Reference; China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, USSR, and Burma.

Government can and will take your life. Where the hell are your “rights” then?

Here is a base truth; Government does not create, government meddles in the form of regulation and redistribution of human activity.


American Mercenary
August 28, 2010
ubu52
[As I have said before, governments cannot grant or create rights. They can only protect them or infringe them.–Joe]

Quote of the day–James Madison

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If men were angels, no government would be necessary.


James Madison
[But if there were no government who would give us our free medical care, free food, and subsidize our housing? I don’t think this Madison guy knows anything at all about the true business of government.–Joe]

Quote of the day–ubu52

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Food and water are basic human rights. I can’t believe anyone would argue that they aren’t.

ubu52
August 24, 2010
Comment to Crap for brains
[This came up in the context of a “right” to health care. She supported her claim with a link to the UN declaration of “Human Rights” which includes this statement:

  1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and
    well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and
    medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the
    event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of
    livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All
    children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social
    protection.

Hence it is not about someone depriving someone else of food, water, or air. This is about some government (people with guns) taking goods and services from some set of people and giving it to others.

And she “can’t believe anyone would argue” against that viewpoint? An “interesting” and totally naive perspective. I would like to remind anyone that believes such a thing that 100+ million people died in the last century because of attempts to create just that type of utopia. If she and others would like to volunteer themselves for the next experiment doomed to failure I only request they take it to some place where my family and friends don’t have to contend with defending our lives and property and disposing of the rotting flesh.

–Joe]

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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There is anecdotal evidence that the banning of traditional ammunition would have an adverse impact on government bureaucrat populations.

Tamara K.
August 26, 2010
No.
[If properly expended I’m pretty sure Tamara and friends have enough “traditional ammunition” on hand to make a noticeable impact on said populations.

I would also like to make mention of the fact that I’ve seen her shoot a rifle offhand at targets 200 yards away:

You don’t want her to “saddle up and bust caps” unless you have a surplus of body bags and bureaucrats with a desire to have them matched up.–Joe]

All the easier to strip search you

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So. You thought you could avoid those intrusive airport technological strip searches by not flying on a commercial plane? You thought they were just were doing that to “other people”? You thought it was okay to look the other way as your Fourth Amendment rights were violated when you flew on an airplane. It was all in the name of “safety”, right?

Via Andy Greenberg (via an email from Chet), coming to your neighborhood soon:

Gee, I wonder why they didn’t show any people in that video? Oh! Andy has some pictures of that too:

That is through vehicles. I would expect the walls of your home will be just as revealing. Imagine what you look like when you are just walking down the sidewalk.

Expect lots of “security sweeps” for the womens basketball and volleyball tournaments. We can’t be too careful with our precious women at risk.

The phrase “concealed means concealed” now means nothing. And since we let them get away with it at airports what’s so special about a public street now? Some terrorist could kill just as many people at the convention center as they could on an airplane. So why shouldn’t the convention center have the same security theater as the our airplanes?

I’ve pointed this out before but what Pastor Martin Niemöller said about the Nazi’s and what Sebastian observed, “What goes around comes around.” is very true.

You play a very risky game when you make exceptions to fundamental principles.

Quote of the day–Paul H. Blackman

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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]

Crap for brains

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Someone has their tin-foil hat on too tight and is asking if the NRA funds the Brady Campaign.


The answer is no.


I would like to point out that the NRA people have lots of things to do besides get involved in politics. They have instructors to train, classes to create and teach, they have events to put on, they have ranges to help design and build. If gun control activists and politicians were to go extinct the NRA would have lots of things to do that probably would be a lot more fun that wading through the mud with the politicians.


On the other hand–if the Brady Campaign were to get a universal ban on firearms in this country they would have to move on to knives and sharp sticks. So if they had millions of members and were in fear of their money drying up they would be more likely to fund the NRA (or some other pro-freedom group) as their boogieman.


While I’m pointing out people with crap for brains–Here are a couple more examples:


dissentus:



The more important matter here, however, is the fact that these people have the guns. The mistake that we on the Left make is our advocacy for gun control. Make no mistake about it, when the working class rises up to take their rightful place as the ruling class, there will be people on the Right with guns, and they will not hesitate to shoot. Wisdom would therefore dictate that the Left not be left with only rakes and hoes to defend themselves.


Most of the people I know with guns or are activists for gun owner rights just want to be left alone. They want the government to back off to it’s constitutionally authorized limits. The constitution does not create or grant that there should be a “ruling class”. There are public servants and not much more.


7514328:



Congressmen, Senators, HMO’s and health insurance companies have profited for far too long. They are the causation of the current health care crisis. Get rid of the health insurance companies and the millions of illegal aliens and problam fixed. Free health care for all US citizens. Its a moral right. Not to be profited by anyone. Its genocide by the health insurance companies. They need to pay for their racketeering scheme for turning ours healths into national profits.


“A moral right”? If they had said “A Human Right” or a “Natural Right”I would have known what they were talking about and been able to tell them they didn’t know what they are talking about. But a moral right is meaningless to me so I guess have to address them at that level.


There is no such thing as a free lunch. You no more deserve free health care than you do free food. And that’s not just because I derive profits from a farm and a wife who works in the health care field. Do you demand the grocery stores to give you food for free? Isn’t food a more basic need than health care? Until you demand free food you are nothing more than a hypocrite. And the instant you demand free food you expose yourself as a communist. If you believe communism is the appropriate political philosophy then go join or create a commune. There is nothing in the laws of this country that will stop you and your friends from doing the same test (and achieving the same result) as millions of other people have done over the last 150 years. And if you are smart enough you will avoid killing yourself and a few tens of millions of people in the process.

Quote of the day–Kristen Comer

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As long as we allow an individual right to trump public safety, families are going to lose their loved ones.

Kristen Comer
Executive Director Washington Ceasefire
January, 2010
Press sounding ‘Taps’ over Kline legislation, hearing turnout could cinch bill’s demise
[Comer
is referring to the Second Amendment and the Washington State
Constitution protections of the right to keep and bear arms. But think
about that quote in terms of other specific enumerated rights–Include
the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments. If someone is
willing to disregard and advocate the destruction of one guaranteed right why not another or all of them in the name of “public safety”? That mindset,
that opposition to freedom, is what I want exposed and politically
exterminated. I want membership in those type of organizations to be as
socially unacceptable as the KKK is today.

The famous Benjamin Franklin quote comes to mind.

I find it interesting that Comer’s blog
has not had an entry in over a year. Even when she was “active” it was
only about one post per month. A search of their web site for her name
reveals only one hit not a blog post–from 2008. And neither she nor her
title are list on their “About” page with other staff members. Has she
been muzzled? Are they demoralized? If it was “just” funding surely they
could maintain a blog. I manage to make at least one blog post per day
without any funding (the advertising here earns something like
$1/day).–Joe]

Quote of the day–Michelle Obama

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Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual.

Michelle Obama
February 18, 2008
YouTube video: Michelle Obama: “Barack Will Require You to Work.”
[There is more than a little truth to that statement. It won’t be by him “allowing” it. It will because he and his freedom hating associates were removed from power.

Recent polls indicate we are making decent progress toward the desired goals.–Joe]

Communists like Obama but hate guns

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People’s World is a communistic propaganda organization:



The People’s World / Mundo Popular is a national, grassroots newspaper and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker. Published by Long View Publishing Co., the PW reports on and analyzes the pressing issues and struggles of the day: for workers’ rights, peace, equality, social and economic justice, democracy, civil liberties, women’s rights, protection of the environment, and more.


The PW is known for its partisan coverage. We take sides – for truth and justice. We are partisan to the working class, racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women, youth, seniors, international solidarity, Marxism and socialism. We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views.


Since the first issue of the Daily Worker came off the press in 1924, our press has been in the battles of the U.S. working class and people’s movements. From the battles of the unemployed and the campaigns to organize the CIO, through the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s and ’70s to the struggles that have given us the “new” labor movement, to the people’s upsurge that elected our first African American president, and now the growing movement for a progressive, people’s agenda – we’ve been there.


They seem to really like President Obama and think he is “brilliant“.


They claim opposition to gun control is the covert platform of the Republicans and are opposed to it:



Derail gun control. Pander to the National Rifle Association, white supremacist, and the “cowboy” element of society. Ignore the terror that illegal guns have wreaked in our inner cities.


Private property and capitalism are, of course, also a covert platform plank:



Religiocize Capitalism. Write it into the Constitution. Make private property, profit and exploitation a commandment from God.


When the people advocating a political philosophy responsible for over 100 million dead in the 20th century praises President Obama and is opposed to gun ownership and private property it sort of makes you think, doesn’t it?

They say ‘Big Brother’–I say ‘Party Time’

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Other bloggers say:

I say it’s Party Time.

There are many, many other options. Here is just a very small sample:

If I could get some custom made they would say “TSA = A Security Theater”.

Big Brother wants to spends millions on technology that can be defeated by $20 worth of plastic you can by online.

I have had mine for several years. Do you have yours?

Go to your corners!

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This reminds me so much of when my brothers and I were very young and our mother would tell us to go stand with our noses in the corner after we got in a fight:

The Justice Department has settled a turf war between two federal law
enforcement agencies.

A recent audit by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found
nationwide conflicts between the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives over which agency is in charge for federal explosives
investigations.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler wrote a memo to FBI Director
Robert Mueller and Ken Melson, currently the top-ranking official at the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, laying out the new framework.

Grindler’s eight-page memo calls for the FBI to be the lead agency for
domestic terrorism explosives investigations as well as explosives probes with a
link to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. ATF will be the
lead agency for everything else in the explosives realm.

Grindler also ordered the two agencies to do a better job of coordinating
their work on explosives investigations.

The new document says that the two agencies will develop a plan by Nov. 1 to
consolidate explosives training, with the goal of starting joint training by
early next February.

While I am of the opinion the ATF should not exist at all and the FBI should be not be involved in 90% of the stuff they are involved in I suppose this is a generally a good thing. It is less likely criminals will benefit from the turf war.

But still I think of it as sort of like Germany attacking Russia in 1941. Germany shouldn’t have been attacking anyone but if they are going to do it anyway you want them to do it to the most evil of your neighbors.

Gun cartoon of the day

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It seems to the people on the left believe everything boils down to money/greed. There apparently is no such thing as principles. There are no such thing as inalienable rights. There apparently are no solutions that do not involve more government control. It is apparently inconceivable that less government control could be the solution to the problems they claim to be concerned about.

Either they are either incredibly narrowed minded, incredibly stupid, or incredibly evil. Most are not all that stupid. Other than a few politicians I don’t think they they have that high a percentage of evil in their midst. That leaves narrowed minded.

With such narrow minded and evil people in positions of power our current economic situation should not be a surprise to anyone. The only thing that will surprise me is if the future does not hold a lot of government caused deaths.

The school massacres have been caused by excessive government and the economic collapse, political unrest, and starvation ahead of us will result in many, many more deaths. Will this be the final lesson that will ever need be taught that attempting a socialist/communist utopia is a really, really bad idea? Or is it true…

Quote of the day–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I wonder if this contributes to why we have such a terrible situation with our government. Politicians, and to a large extent the populous, want to be rulers when the Constitution and the more Libertarian citizens expect them to direct the affairs and policies of the country within very limited constraints. Those who would be rules see it is easy to be what they want to be and those who would govern within the given limits while managing to take the heat from the press and people who want “money for nothing and chicks for free” realize the job is going to be tough with few thanks.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dennis Henigan

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According to the “just enforce current laws” argument, we should, for instance, tolerate the “gun show loophole” in federal law that allows criminals to buy guns from private sellers at gun shows without background checks, because we can always hire more federal agents to track down the criminals after they get the guns. Doesn’t it make more sense to require background checks to block gun sales to criminals in the first place?


Dennis Henigan
August 5, 2010
Obama Gun Policy: Fear and Fallacy
[Mr. Henigan,


Perhaps you missed that day in law school when they talked about “prior restraint”.


To answer your question, Dennis, only if you are of the opinion it also makes sense to block book sales to political and religious extremists, and cosmetics and revealing clothes sales to women with a known history of prostitution. Would you support a sister organization that advocates for the registration and licensing of lipstick? Should we give book and cosmetics sales enforcement to the ATF as well?


We could work on completing the entire alphabet for them. Alcohol, Books, Cosmetics, Drugs, Explosives, and Firearms (ABCDEF) is a pretty good start, don’t you think?


The entire premise of your organization, to prevent “gun violence”, is incompatible with a free society. It’s time for your organization to be shut down and for you, your co-workers, and your supporters to admit your crimes, and apologize for the decades of bigotry that have cost the lives of thousands of people.–Joe]

Government Schools

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That’s what I thought of when I saw this video, linked from THR.


It gets pretty sappy for my tastes (OK, extremely sappy) but you need only watch it through about 1:33.

If things had gone just a little differently

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If we had lost the Heller case there would have been no McDonald case. And things could have gone downhill like they did in the U.K.

Then with a serial stabber in the news we could be getting media releases from the VPC and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Knife Violence demanding stronger knife control.