Category Archives: Freedom

Once Again, Ladies and Gentlemen…

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…Bill Whittle, or rather, not Bill Whittle but an essay written by Bill Whittle.  He’s an excellent writer to be sure, but his work is backed by research which makes it downright valuable.



In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.


That’s our argument.  Ronald Reagan said it in different words, but that’s the come-back to any and all modern “liberals” or “Progressives”.


I was a little disappointed by the lack of mention of education.  Talking with each other, yes, but that bloated, hateful, destructive monster we’ve been accustomed to calling “Public Education” has to go.  Just as our first amendment protects religion from corruption by government, so too must we protect education from corruption by government.  It is every bit as important.  Hillsdale College perhaps shows us one way to do that, but feeding the monster at the same time one is trying to mind one’s own business makes it more difficult.


Whittle wraps it up thusly;



We can do it. And we’re gonna do it.  We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.


Ok.  Good.  By all means, read the whole thing.

Not helpful

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This sort of thing is not helpful to the cause of gun rights (found on a towel dispenser in a bathroom). If this particular politician was signing orders to put people in cattle cars to send them to the “camps” then sure that would be appropriate. But we aren’t anywhere close to that.


When Alan Gura spent time with a bunch of gun bloggers at the NRA Convention last May I asked him what bloggers could do to help the civil rights war. He said (paraphrased), “Make guns fun. Don’t bring up or associate with Threepers. It scares people.”


I’ve elaborated on this sort of thing before and don’t see a need to elaborate further at this time.

Quote of the day–T-Shirt

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The economy is worse than a divorce.


I lost half my money and I’m still married.


T-Shirt
August 7, 2010
Seen on a t-shirt in a restaurant in Camdenton, Missouri this evening.
[I wouldn’t mind the temporary economic situation so much if it meant we were getting a divorced from an oppressive big government. But like the t-shirt says (after twisting the meaning a little bit), we are stuck with both.–Joe]

Real Men…

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…and women should have available, and know how to use, either a micrometer or a good caliper that reads in thousandths of an inch and/or hundredths of a millimeter.  I don’t see how a person could get through life without one.  They’re cheap and they last a long time.  A set of hole gauges and snap gauges is good also, but the calipers are essential.


That’s in my book.


Jeff Cooper wrote about some other things;



Before the young man leaves home, there are certain things he should know and certain skills he should acquire, apart from any state-sponsored activity. Certainly the youngster should be taught to swim, strongly and safely, at distance. And young people of either sex should be taught to drive a motor vehicle, and if at all possible, how to fly a light airplane. I believe a youngster should be taught the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat, unarmed, together with basic survival skills. The list is long, but it is a parent’s duty to make sure that the child does not go forth into the world helpless in the face of its perils. Shooting, of course, is our business, and shooting should not be left up to the state.


Or something like that.  I recall he had learning to handle a motorcycle in there too.


My son took it upon himself to row a boat across Hood Canal a few weeks ago without telling anyone.  We saw him heading over, until he disappeared from sight.


I was miffed.  That is, until I remembered some of the crazy things I did at that age (16) like piloting a canoe (two canoes, four people) up one side of Priest Lake in Idaho, by moonlight, and then navigating up the channel to Upper Priest Lake by starlight (after moondown) then landing and setting up camp on a low cliff.  We figured flashlights were for sissies, back then.  Nowadays I carry one.  Must be getting soft.


But I digress.  Being able to measure the difference between .678″ and .710″ can be pretty important, and it’s not complicated.  This sort of thing comes up often while talking to customers.  Most of them have the tools and the skill, but a disappointing minority do not.

Quote of the day–Edward Abbey

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The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.


Edward Abbey
(1927 – 1989)
[The same thing could be said of freedom. I wish we could get to that place in politics and public discourse.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Lyle @ UltiMAK

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Politicians who advocate liberty are the tools and puppets of “special interests” and are therefore stupid, weak and/or corrupt, whereas politicians who advocate statism do so out of compassion and concern for their fellow human beings and are therefore smart, strong and/or heroes.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
August 3, 2010
Comment to Gun cartoon of the day.
[Nominated for QOTD by Hank Archer. I agree.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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More interestingly, many Americans no longer even understand the concepts of loyalty and treason—again, not surprising, since for a few generations now they have been ruled by traitors, whose routine acts of betrayal are designed to benefit just about anyone—from Israeli arms smugglers to Afghani heroin dealers—except the people who supposedly elect them to office.


Dmitry Orlov
July 10, 2010
US Swaps Russian Spies for … Russian Spies
[Reading Kevin’s post, But What if Your Loyalty is to the Constitution? – Part III reminded me of the above quote in my collection.–Joe]

Encrypting mobile communication

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This is very interesting to me:

More than a million BlackBerry users may have key services in Saudi Arabia and
the UAE cut off after authorities stepped up demands on smartphone maker
Research In Motion for access to encrypted messages sent over the device.

BlackBerry’s Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf Arab region
but because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be
tracked locally.

“Certain BlackBerry services allow users to act without any legal
accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns,” the
United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a
statement.

…

India raised similar security concerns last week, and Bahrain in April warned
against using BlackBerry Messenger to distribute local news. As far back as
2007, France cautioned officials about using the services.

Indian security officials were concerned that BlackBerry’s encrypted data
could be used to coordinate acts against the state. They have clamped down on
mobile phone operators in the wake of 2008 attacks that killed 166 people in
Mumbai.

Sure, secure communications can “be used to coordinate acts against the state”. But secure communications can be used to secure the Jews in your attic too.

There is a lot of secure communications that goes on with Windows Phone 7 too. I wonder if any of it will run afoul of repressive government laws.

I may have to write an app for defeating such laws if things progress to far in that direction. It consumes more bandwidth but it’s possible to create communication channels that are essentially invisible while in plain sight and encrypt them as well. I’ve done this before with another app but sort of lost interest when we started winning the gun rights war in this country. I might have to fire up that project again.

Quote of the day–T

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You are all a bunch of bumbling morons. This is the information age, get a clue. You can’t keep people from doing things by innocuously passing laws as a band-aid or stop gap. In this day and age people are going to find ways to do things. You want to teach them something? Teach them to be responsible with firearms. THAT’S the key that’s missing in today’s youth. You want to know why kids blow up high schools? Because no one in this ‘nobody fails’ government will allow the two kids to duke it out behind the library in the third grade.

Unfortunately, by doing this, you folks have basically ‘screwed the pooch’ on an entire generation. I can only see one way to actually repair the damage, and this is it.

Step 1) Force everyone in the country to carry a handgun.

Step 2) Watch society get really polite, really quick.

In a couple of months all the psychos and gang-bangers will kill each other off and everyone will be happy.

Let’s just call that a win / win / win scenario.

– T
Referring to the Brady Campaign and “the Mayors coalition against private handgun sales”.
July 28, 2010
Complete and Utter Fools are trying to run our Government
[While there is more than a hint of truth in what he says I’m opposed to forcing everyone in the country to carry a handgun. I’m a middle ground sort of guy.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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The mid-1990s did not seem to me as the right time to voice such ideas. The United States was celebrating its so-called Cold War victory, getting over its Vietnam syndrome by bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age, and the foreign policy wonks coined the term “hyperpower” and were jabbering on about full-spectrum dominance. All sorts of silly things were happening. Professor Fukuyama told us that history had ended, and so we were building a brave new world where the Chinese made things out of plastic for us, the Indians provided customer support when these Chinese-made things broke, and we paid for it all just by flipping houses, pretending that they were worth a lot of money whereas they are really just useless bits of ticky-tacky. Alan Greenspan chided us about “irrational exuberance” while consistently low-balling interest rates. It was the “Goldilocks economy” – not to hot, not too cold. Remember that? And now it turns out that it was actually more of a “Tinker-bell” economy, because the last five or so years of economic growth was more or less a hallucination, based on various debt pyramids, the “whole house of cards” as President Bush once referred to it during one of his lucid moments. And now we can look back on all of that with a funny, queasy feeling, or we can look forward and feel nothing but vertigo.


Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[I had a conversation with a friend earlier this week and he was of the opinion (pharaphrasing) we went from “it was too early to shoot the bastards to it’s too late to do any good and it’s just a matter of riding things out as best we can as we auger into the ground”.


I can’t say that I have any factual basis to refute his assessment.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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The artist completely ignores all the issues of due process, inability to challenge your placement on the list, the criteria for being placed on the list, etc. It would appear the artist believes it’s “all about the profits of the gun industry” or some such thing.


As I said over in the comments at Sebastian’s place:



My model of his (and many other) claim of “gun lobby profits” and such things is that they can’t imagine individuals actually wanting a gun unless they are a criminal or they have been duped by the “evil corporations”. I could be wrong, but it seems to me a great number of them think in terms of “everything bad is due to capitalism” or even more general in that “freedom is the root of all evil”. Their vision of utopia is government planning and control of everything.


Because of this if they don’t get their way it cannot be “the fault” of the individuals. It has to be influence of the evil capitalists. Why do you think the “progressives” want to silence their opposition (most recently Fox News, in years past it was “Fairness Doctrine”)?


As one admitted Marxist told me, “I believe in the good of society over the good of the individual.” Society/Government/Intellectuals/The-Central-Committee should make the decisions. Capitalists with their influence are the only real threat to “Society” and they should always be suspect because their motives are money and not “the good of society”. Only those untainted by Capitalist urges can be trusted to be pure and good.


At least that is the way I see their delusions working.


The concepts of a “basic human right” and a “specific enumerated right” being denied by involuntary membership on secret lists somehow don’t make it past their filters.

Quote of the day–Ed Black

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Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be
credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the
ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner. To stay on the edge of innovation and
productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity,
innovation, and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our
country.

Ed Black
Fair Use Worth More to Economy Than Copyright, CCIA Says
President and CEO of CCIA.
September 12, 2007
[I’ve been doing some research into “fair use“. For the obvious reasons.

There may be other options as well as those I have seen discussed. I’ll report back if I find anything “interesting”.–Joe]

Boomershoot private party

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Some people from work followed me back to Idaho on Friday night.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the Breakfast Club in Moscow with Tim, Barron, and Janelle.


Hiep and Priyanka walking into the restaurant. Photo by Sharath.

We drove to the Boomershoot site and I told them the history, told lots of stories and gave them a tour. They found some .50 BMG bullets and seemed quite thrilled. The picture below is from on top of the berm where the 700 yard targets are placed looking back at the hay field to the shooting line.


Janelle, Barron, Tim (just barely visible behind the grass), Hiep, Sharath, and Priyanka.

I gave them a safety briefing on the chemicals (which consists mostly of telling them not to eat, drink, or snort anything) I had the people from Microsoft weigh the chemicals and my staff mix the explosives and package it into targets:


Sharath, Priyanka, Hiep.


Janelle, Tim (barely visible–he doesn’t want his picture taken because cameras will steal your soul), and Barron.

We ate lunch then placed the targets in front of the large berm at the tree line.


Sharath, Priyanka, and Hiep putting stakes in the ground for the targets.

One of the targets had something special on it (see also here).

I gave safety and basic firearm instructions while Tim, Barron, and Janelle placed the targets on the stakes. Sharath had never shot a gun before. Hiep had only shot one once and that was after he had three years of military instruction in Vietnam. Priyanka shot a gun for the first time last September and then in March took her parents (visiting from India) to the range on her own and taught them to shoot.


Targets ready for engagement. Photo by Sharath.

We then got back a few feet and let the visitors shoot the targets. There were many smiles and much exaltation.


Joe and Hiep. Photo by Sharath.

Hiep once told me he didn’t think private citizens should possess firearms. Only the police and the military should have access. I should ask if he still thinks that.

Boomershoot is a tool for teaching people from all over the world the joys of guns and explosives–the joy of freedom.

How’s that health care working out for you?

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I heard two different stories on the “health care reform” yesterday. I had lunch with an old friend. He has his own small business and with the downturn in the economy he is slowing sinking. He is looking for a contract job writing software and may end up leaving the Seattle area for a few weeks to “go do some coding in Iowa”. The new health care regulations aren’t helping him any either. He pulled out his Group Health identification card and told me, “I was paying $1000/month for this until they passed the bill. Almost immediately it went to $1500/month.”

That evening I had dinner with some other friends. One of them told me about explaining to one of his employees just yesterday that he is now required to offer her health insurance. He told her, “I’m required to offer you health insurance. So I’m doing that now. But if you accept I’m going to have to cut your hours back to 20 per week. At that point I no longer have to pay your insurance. If you sign this other piece of paper saying you don’t want the coverage you can continue to work 40 hours per week.

She clarified, “So I could work 20 hours per week and not have health insurance or I could continue to work 40 hours per week and not have health insurance, right?” “That’s right”, he said. “Unless you can talk Ruth out of her raise. We just don’t have the budget for any additional expenses.”

As Sebastian rhetorically asks on a slightly different topic, “Who could have predicted this?”

Another step closer to GATTACA

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Entire human genome sequencing for $100.

My estimate is that the potential for GATTACA is only another decade away.

NRA versus Brady Campaign in an alternate reality

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I have been thinking about the Brady Campaign story that the Heller and McDonald decisions are really a good thing for their side. They claim it has, “Taken the extremes in the gun debate off the table, and given us the opportunity to decide what kind of gun restrictions make sense in our communities”.


This is based on the premise, as proposed in Chapter 3 of Half-Truth Henigan book Lethal Logic (I really need to finish up that review) that freedom activists use the slippery slope threat of a complete gun ban as justification for opposing all restrictions on firearms.


Okay… lets turn this around and see if it still makes sense with the tables turned.


Let us suppose that in some alternate reality there is an evil NRA and the the good guys are the Brady Campaign. The opposite of a complete gun ban is not what the Brady Campaign claims as “any gun, anyplace, anytime”. It is mandatory gun ownership, training, and subsidies. Suppose Washington D.C. and Chicago had the evil NRA’s dream of a mandatory hour a day instruction and/or practice in firearm use from age 5 on up. All guns, ammo, and ranges for the mandatory practice are supplied at taxpayer expense. Furthermore all people were required to purchase at least one each of a shotgun, bolt gun, semi-auto rifle, semi-auto pistol, revolver, sub-machine gun, heavy machine gun, and (with subsidies for those who needed help) a mini-gun. Other political jurisdictions varied in oppression with California only requiring one hour a week of practice and citizens over the age of 21 only have to purchase one handgun and one semi-auto rifle while Vermont implemented the good Brady Campaign ideals saying, “Do what you want, just don’t hurt anyone else or their property.”


Now suppose Alan Gura, still working for the Cato Institute, takes D.C. and Chicago to court and gets the mandatory purchase requirements for eight different firearms thrown out as violating the Constitution. The justices also say “This narrow ruling should not be interpreted as saying all mandated training or purchases of firearms is unconstitutional”.


Would the evil NRA be justified in saying this furthers their goals? Would it be reasonable to claim, “This has taken the extremes off the table and has given us the opportunity to decide what kind of mandatory gun ownership and training laws make sense in our communities”?


The answer is no. The U.S. Constitution is about limiting government. It gives enumerated powers to government and guarantees specific enumerated inalienable rights. In pushing the D.C. and Chicago government as far as they did the evil NRA was able to violate the rights of the people in those jurisdictions. Those governments had clearly gone beyond their constitutionally granted powers and was oppressing the people. What the ruling does is throw into question all requirements of firearm ownership and training because those requirements were a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom.


And, back in our reality, the Brady Campaign supported complete ban on firearms in D.C. was a violation of a guaranteed freedom. When that was overthrown it put into question all similar restrictions on freedom. It does not enable everything short of a complete ban.

Quote of the day–Sheriff Richard I. Mack

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Washington powercrats want to create an unarmed nation. It’s all pretty simple. They are uneasy about a gun-toting constituency that believes in a constitutional right and duty to resist oppressive federal government. They continually assume additional power not granted them by the Constitution. Efforts to repeal the Second Amendment are underway.

…

A day of reckoning is inevitable. Will guns be outlawed and taken away, leaving little vestige of constitutional freedom? Armed Americans (hopefully) will not submit willingly. On the other hand, a disarmed citizenry will have no choice but to behave like sheep. The pioneers of freedom who wrote the Declaration of Independence were considered traitors by a despotic British government, but they were not sheep. Neither did they intend their descendants to be.

Sheriff Richard I. Mack
From My
Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), pages 156 and 157.
[This book was written in the mid 1990s. That was a very dark time for the future of gun ownership. Now, with gun control well on it’s way to the dustbin of history, freedom activists are considering moving on to issues such as food control. My work with gun control won’t be done until there are successful prosecutions of anti-gun politicians and law enforcement people for violation of 18 USC 242 and donating money to the Brady Campaign is as socially toxic as membership in the KKK is today.

I think my next cause will be the elimination of the TSA (A Security Theater) or the war on some drugs.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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The artist limits “the solutions” by posing “the problem” as he does. Just as we would, and should, if we pose the problem as a civil rights infringement problem. I’ve posted on this general topic before (and here).


As a wise engineering manager once told me, it is more important to define the problem than discover a solution. We can’t let the anti-freedom bigots define the problem.


Alan Gura spoke about this some with us bloggers at the NRA convention this year. He is of the opinion the NRA is an expert at legislation and lobbying but that in our current situation civil rights lawsuits are most effective. This is not to say that we can’t have two or more solutions to the same problem but that we should recognize the problem can be framed multiple ways and that depending upon the framing we change the solution set. And with those changing solution sets it may be that a different set of experts are needed.

Why are Brady Campaign supporters so violent?

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In the Facebook thread here a commenter points people at his blog post on the McDonald ruling:

Stern Dixon

Read my
log post on today’s Supreme Court ruling: http://wwwtoecheesecom.blogspot.com/
Yesterday at 11:35am

And the response? It’s typical:

Suzanne MacDougall Avila

to the
above poster, take your H&K 93, shove it up your ass and pull the trigger.
Yesterday at 12:46pm · 2 people
Sara L. Messenger

Sara L.
Messenger

Could
have said it better myself Suzanne, he has to be a nut.
Yesterday at 12:52pm
Sara L. Messenger

Sara L.
Messenger

You are
sick.
Yesterday at 12:56pm
Sara L. Messenger

Sara L.
Messenger

I am not
mad but, people like you who shoot off their mouths don’t need guns.
Yesterday at 12:57pm
Suzanne MacDougall Avila

Suzanne MacDougall Avila

Thank
you, Sara. He’s not even worth arguing with. He can take his filthy mouth and
his guns somewhere else.
Yesterday at 1:20pm

There is lots of other stuff worthy of comment in the thread as well. I particularily liked the irony of this one:

Richard J. Osborne

Repeal
the Second Amendment. It belongs on the scrap heap of history along with the
provisions of the Constitution that protected slavery.
Yesterday at 9:04am · 5 people

If they can repeal the Second Amendment then people could repeal the 13th Amendment as well. For some reason they can’t seem to grasp the principle of freedom.

Quote of the day–Wayne LaPierre

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We are practical guys. We don’t want to win on philosophy and lose on freedom. The end question is, can law-abiding men and women go out and buy and own a firearm? Today the Supreme Court said yes – anywhere they live!


This decision cannot lead to different measures of freedom, depending on what part of the country you live in. City by city, person by person, this decision must be more than a philosophical victory. An individual right is no right at all if individuals can’t access it. Proof of Heller and McDonald will be law abiding citizens, one by one, purchasing and owning firearms.


The NRA will work to ensure this constitutional victory is not transformed into a practical defeat by activist judges, defiant city councils, or cynical politicians who seek to pervert, reverse, or nullify the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision through Byzantine labyrinths of restrictions and regulations that render the Second Amendment inaccessible, unaffordable, or otherwise impossible to experience in a practical, reasonable way.


What good is a right without the gun? What good is the right if you can’t buy one? Or keep one in your home? Or protect your family with one?


Here’s a piece of paper – protect yourself. That’s no right at all!


Victory is when law abiding men and women can get up, go out, and buy and own a firearm. This is a monumental day. But NRA will not rest until every law-abiding American citizen is able to exercise the individual right to buy and own a firearm for self defense or any other lawful purpose.


Wayne LaPierre
June 28, 2010
Statement by Wayne LaPierre Executive Vice President, NRA and Chris W. Cox Executive Director, NRA-ILA Regarding U.S. Supreme Court Decision McDonald v. City of Chicago.
[SAF also has a statement. Tomorrow’s QOTD will come from it.


Expect the NRA and SAF to be racing to file cases within minutes or at most hours, from now. I’m placing my money, literally, on SAF.–Joe]