Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day–Nicolo Machiavell

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It should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones.


Nicolo Machiavell
The Prince, Chapter XIX
[I suspect this is part of the problem people of liberty have. They don’t want to be disliked and are willing to make compromises to make other people less hateful of them. Tyrants and “progressives” have no problem with the hatred others have of them. It’s just not that big of an issue to people like leftists Bill Ayers (neighbor and family friend of President Obama), Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot. If they have to kill a few million people in order to create their utopia and are hated by some for that, what’s the big deal? It was for a good cause.


I think a little non-violent ruthlessness in pursuit of liberty might be a good thing. Someone that doesn’t fasten their seat belt or eats the wrong foods and is injured or gets ill at an early age should be considered an example of what not to do and left to the care of those that might see some benefit in helping them. Those examples are not justification to use the force of government (the point of a gun) to take from those that played the cards life gave them more carefully. We might be hated for that but the end result is a smarter and healthier society in more ways than one.–Joe]

The Revolution has Begun

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Just so we’re clear; No, I’m not kidding.


I attended a rally for Idaho Gubernatorial candidate, Rex Rammell last night in troy, and spoke with him for some time.  No arrests were made.  They fed us elk spaghetti.  Afterward, I told my older brother that Rex was either the best damned actor in all the world or he is for real.  I’m now convinced he is for real.  Rammell has fought the Idaho Legislature and won, he has defied state authority over his own property rights, had his livestock killed and taken by state goons, been arrested, fought that, and won, and he is now jacked up to fight for Idaho, within Idaho and with the feds, for liberty.  His plan is make Idaho an example for the rest of the states to follow.

Read his website and his Facebook page.  That’s not the half of it.  This is our guy.  I don’t care what state you call home, Rex wants be the one to show the rest of the country how it’s done, he’s willing to push back and to defy the powers that be in order to restore liberty based on America’s founding principles.  Among the agenda items in what he refers to as “The Cause” are; eliminating the Idaho income tax and creating a welcome environment for business to grow the economy, that will in turn attract more motivated people into the state to grow the economy, massively reduce the state department of education thereby eliminating the top-heavy system and relinquishing education control back to the locals, get everyone in the state off of welfare, and (get this) returning the two thirds of the State of Idaho that’s now federal land, back to the state.  If elected, he promises to climb aboard a bulldozer and use it to rip out some Forrest Service gates in front of the TV cameras.


He’s willing to “force them (the feds) out” of the state and he has a plan for doing just that.  “Gone.”  I don’t mean he’s going to sue on Tenth Amendment gounds or whatever.  That’s just a first step.  Rex is willing to do whatever it takes.  He’s been there before, as state goons were shooting his elk (with 5.56 mm AR-15s, the dipshits) right in front of him on his own property.  Don’t let his soft looks fool you.  He’s that skinny, quiet kid who’ll nail his targets at 1,000 yards and carry the water after the loudmouth bodybuilder has quit the fight.


Rex is a Mormon, and some will be put off by that.  Don’t be stupid.  Listen; he’s convinced that fighting for American principles is his calling in life.  That’s passion.  He has courage and a sense of purpose, and those are exactly what we need for this fight.  Make no mistake about it; there will be a fight and it will get ugly.  Best we start it from inside the system, with the constitution and founding principles of liberty as our guide.


If you’re one of those people, as am I, who’s been alarmed and disgusted at the direction this country has been going, and yet frustrated that there seems to be no one to vote for who’s serious, Rex is your candidate.  For years I’ve been watching the culture war in this country, hearing talk show host after talk show host, reading blogger after blogger, all chronicling the corrupt behavior of the Evil Party, and the cowardice, capitulation and corruption of the Stupid Party.  For years I’ve been saying; “OK!  I get it already!  Now what do we DO about it?”  Well this is what you do about it– you spread the word about Rex Rammell, attend his rallies, and support his primary campaign.  If you live in Idaho, you get at least ten people out with you and you vote in the primary election in May.


The Idaho Gubernatorial election will be decided in the May primary.  Rammell is up against Butch Otter, and the winner in the primary is going to be our next Governor.  Spread the word.  His campaign is running on a shoestring right now.  This Revolution can either splutter to a pause, leading to more and deeper pain, or it can roar forward.  It depends on you.


There you go.  I’ve never said much of anything nice about a politician before.  Most of them are sub-human scum.  If you knew me, you’d understand what a difference I see in this guy, to say anything positive about him.

Quote of the day–Rep. John Dingell

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Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.


Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)
March 23, 2010
Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air (after hearing the audio on the Rush Limbaugh Show).
[I am reminded of something I said a long time ago:



Does it ever strike you as odd that some of our servants demand that they have a monopoly on certain types of weapons?


I keep thinking that they must have either forgotten they are servants or intend to change the relationship.


I think the selection of which conclusion is correct should now be obvious.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Robb Allen

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The end was passed a long time ago. This is simply the epilogue.


Robb Allen
March 21, 2010
This isn’t the end
[I suspect, since I tend to be such an optimist, that while this may be the epilogue it may also be the beginning of something else. Kevin points out a hint of things which may come. Kevin has a tendency toward pessimism. I’m hoping for some change we can believe in.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Bob Walker

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Yesterday’s shooting, like earlier ones, dramatizes the need for tougher federal legislation. We must find a way of stopping the interstate loophole that now exists. Otherwise, would-be killers will continue to take advantage of our federal system.

Bob Walker
Feb 24, 1997
Statement of Bob Walker, Presidnet (sic), Handgun Control, Inc. Re: Shooting at Empire State Building
[Interstate loophole, newspaper loophole, the Terror Gap (and here), and of course the ever popular gun show loophole. Why don’t they just come out and say it? It is the federal system known as “The Second Amendment Loophole” that they have their panties all in a twist about.

After closing that they could start working on the First Amendment Loophole. Once they have that closed it should be a cinch to close the Thirteenth Amendment Loophole or at least enage in some “reasonable regulation” in that regard.–Joe]

Quote of the day–George Savile

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If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.


George Savile
Marquess of Halifax
[The accuracy of this can be seen by the present state of our country and the world.


Further evidence can be seen by statements like that of Doug Pennington of the Brady Campaign. He complains of the government forcing freedom on the citizens.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Maxim Gorky

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Lies–there you have the religion of slaves and taskmasters. Truth is the god of the free man.


Maxim Gorky
Russian novelist, playwright.
The Lower Depths (1902)
[From Wikipedia (link above), “The theme of harsh truth versus the comforting lie pervades the play from start to finish, as most of the characters choose to deceive themselves from the bleak reality of their condition.”


A passing thought of Half-Truth Henigan and company reminded me of this quote.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Thomas Paine

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The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself… All the great laws of society are laws of nature.

Thomas Paine
The Rights of Man
[I find it very interesting that there is a strong trend in those that support the Democrat party toward preserving nature and discouraging human intervention. Yet in human affairs there is a very strong tendency toward intervention in the activities of people and a general insistent on not letting nature take its course. It’s as if they have no coherent principles.

Yes, I’ve blogged about this before. And Kevin has a more recent post that is, in a slightly obscure way, on topic as well.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Otto von Bismarck

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Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.


Otto von Bismarck
[Or in the case of things like the Slaughter Solution it would be better to fine and/or imprison the makers and condemn the slaughter house as a toxic waste site.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Theodore Parker

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The design of the abolitionists is this,– to remove and destroy the institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed, ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions. What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this: that all men are created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another’s rights; of course no man may use me for his good, and not my own good also; of course there can be no ownership of man by man; of course no slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious doctrines that follow from it.


Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into the minds of the people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.


…


No “respectable” paper is opposed to slavery; no Whig paper, no Democratic paper. You would as soon expect a Catholic newspaper to oppose the Pope and his church, for the slave power is the pope of America, though not exactly a pious pope.


Theodore Parker
1810-1860
The Slave Power
[It seems to me that in addition to the parallels gun rights activists can draw from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the gay rights movement of the late 1970s we might be able to get inspiration from the abolitionists of the 1800s as well.


Exceptions might be made for the emulation of John Brown.


It would appear abolitionists had similar problems with the mainstream media and Democrats as we do now.–Joe]

Why gun owners are angry

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I actually did the outline for this post in January of 2009 but it wasn’t until I read something Sebastian posted that I decided to procrastinate on something other than this post.

There are many reasons why gun owners are angry. Let me enumerate a few of them (I actually removed about a third of the items from my outline in the interests of time and space):

Goldilocks guns

I’ve blogged about this before. The anti-gun people want to outlaw guns that are “small and easily hidden”. They want to outlaw guns that are large and powerful. They want to outlaw guns that are “deadly accurate”. They want to outlaw guns that can be used for “spray shooting from the hip”.

You would think that perhaps a gun that fires an intermediate cartridge and is of medium weight and is not easily hidden would be acceptable to them. Nope. Such a gun was called an “assault rifle” by the Germans during WWII. The anti-gun people, utilizing their talent for twisting words and preying on the ability of the public to be easily confused, banned “assault weapons”.

This is why we sometimes talk about Goldilocks Gun Control (more here). It’s like the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears with a twist. There are guns the anti-gun people think are too big and too small, but there aren’t any guns that are “just right”.

What if the government treated religions like that? Are some sects of Catholicism or Judaism too orthodox? Or maybe the Baptists are too fundamentalist. Are their religions too modern or “new age”?

These are specific enumerated rights and our public servants have not been given constitutional power to take guns or religion, in common use, away from the people.

Attempting to take away something that has been guaranteed by the U.S. Government has a tendency to make the victim angry. If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop doing things like this.

The SKS is accurate, the “gun show loophole”, and other lies

I’ve blogged about this before. In the article I quoted in that link every statement of fact was wrong yet the press published it as if it were completely true. The anti-gun people tell lie after lie after lie, after lie, after lie. Even when they tell the truth it is only half-truths (see also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). One might reasonable think they are merely ignorant but if that were true you would not find that in each and every case the half-truth benefits their case. And still the press believes them!

Constantly lying about the law, firearms, and gun owners has a tendency to make gun owners angry. If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop lying.

1000 round arsenals

To anti-gun people and the press even a hundred rounds of ammunition found in the trunk of a car or in someone’s home is cause for concern. If the police decide to search someone’s car or home the finding of a few hundred rounds of ammunition it nearly takes the breath away from the talking heads in the media. If it was within a few blocks of a school they make sure the implication is that each one of those rounds could, and should, be translated into the intent of the gun owner was to kill at least that many children.

This fascination with the number of rounds of ammo reached the point that in 1994 the U.S. Congress was contemplating requiring an Arsenal License for people that had more than 1000 rounds of ammunition.

I’ve got news for these clueless bigots. When I shoot in a pistol match I carry about 80 rounds in magazines on my belt. When I go to the local pistol match the minimum number, assuming zero misses, of rounds needed is 150. Typically I would take at least 300 for each gun that I was going to shoot. If I am going to the range for practice it is about 400 rounds per handgun and 100 for a rifle. If I were to go to a regional match I would take at least 1000 per gun. If I were to attend a weekend class the minimum round count is typically about 1500.

The anti-gun proponents might claim that I am somewhat out of the ordinary in my ammunition consumption. They might point out someone that has been hunting every year for a decade and has always brought home their deer and is still working on their first box of twenty rounds. If someone needs 100 rounds to go hunting they shouldn’t be hunting they might say.

It’s not about hunting. It’s about being the best you can be at shooting fast and accurately. And I’m not particularly special in my ammo needs. When the other gun bloggers and I went to Blackwater Todd Jarrett told us he had 250 or 300 thousand rounds of loaded ammo and another 650,000 rounds of components. Nearly a 1,000,000 rounds in the hands of one consumer is unusual. But 1000 rounds is not.

1000 rounds and they want to require a special license? I can put 1000 rounds of .22 LR in my coat pockets. Do I need to license my coat?

If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop the talk of requiring expensive and hassle intensive requirements for common everyday activities.

Licenses, regulation, and restrictions

What if the government demanded that all homosexuals be registered with the state? How about all Muslims, Catholics, or Jews? Or how about mixed race couples?

Here’s how it might work: If you wanted to have a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex the state required you to obtain a SSIC (Same Sex Identification Card), get eight hours of training, and pay $50 every three years to renew your license.

Do you think that might make a few people angry? Do you think people might claim that was unconstitutional? If you answered yes to both those questions then congratulations! You have an I.Q. above room temperature!

That is what gun owners have to put up in many states in order exercise the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

It gets worse. Continuing the same analogy you wouldn’t be allowed to have a relationship with someone that was too fat or too skinny. And if they were of above average “capacity” they would be banned from having a relationship with anyone but a government employee.

And of course just because you have the license doesn’t mean you could actually have any contact with your loved one outside of your home. Assuming the local government where you lived “allowed” you to have the relationship you would have worry about the ever changing laws in the next city and the neighboring states. Your SSIC is valid only in a few states and even then it could change at any time. And it is your responsibility to make sure all your paperwork (if it is even possible to get the proper paperwork) is in order.

And to top it off many simple, victimless activities that of no consequence in one jurisdiction are a felony in another.

Then assuming you have successfully navigated all the government restrictions you still have to worry about which businesses are willing to do take your money when you just want to have a bite to eat or a cup of coffee. And all the people that want people of your kind all killed has to weigh on your mind as well.

If they don’t want us to be angry they should give the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms the same respect they give the specific enumerated right to freedom of association.

Registration of guns

I don’t think I have ever seen a fictional cop show on television where firearms were not registered. They just assume that is the way it is and that is the way it should be. Fortunately that is not the case except for a handful of states. But the media creates an expectation that it is perfectly normal for all guns to be registered and the owners licensed.

Of what benefit is it for guns to be registered? I’ve blogged about this many, times before. It is exceedingly costly and contrary to what you see on T.V. and at the movies it has near zero impact on solving crimes. So why do the anti-gun people still insist on gun registration? It turns out it is good for something–Confiscation.

If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop trying to register firearms when we all know the only “benefit” of firearm registration is the eventual confiscation of those firearms.

One gun a month

Who needs to buy more than one Bible a month? Why do Bible owners get all upset about the minor inconvenience of restricting people to just one Bible a month? It would cut down on trafficking of Bibles from states with lax Bible laws to those with strict Bible laws.

Never mind that the only way to make sure someone only buys one Bible a month is if all Bible transactions are recorded and each Bible is registered.

If they don’t want us to be angry they should treat firearms ownership like Bible ownership. It’s an essential part of exercising a specific enumerated right and the government has no constitutional authority or business in restricting sales any more than they do for the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, or the Communist Manifesto.

Safety isn’t the issue

If there were a very clear correlation between highly restrictive gun laws and lower violent crime, suicide, and/or accidental injury or death by gunshot then we could have a meaningful discussion about the merits of firearm regulation. But despite over a 100 years of gun regulation in this country there still isn’t any conclusive data any of the gun laws have improved public safety in any of the instances where they have been implemented.

If they don’t want us to be angry they should be able to demonstrate a benefit or tell us the real reason for infringing on this specific enumerated right.

Self-defensive–the most basic of human rights

There is no right more universal than the right of self-defense. Every creature for all time has claimed the right of self-defense. It is the most basic and most important of all rights.

Despite the right of self-defense being so universal the anti-gun people want to remove the most effective tools of self-defense from the people that need them the most. Removing the tools of self-defense from the general population completely changes the relationship between government and the individual. It is like the farmer that dehorns his cattle. He does that to prevent them for hurting each other in fights. But then he takes responsibility for their defense from predators. He provides their health care, their food, and manages their reproduction. He also neuters nearly all the males and slaughters them as he sees fit. That is not a functional model for a free society.

If they don’t want us to be angry they must stop treating us like cattle.

Prevention

Who could possibly have a problem with an organization with a name like The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right?

They don’t want to take your guns away, they just want to prevent gun violence.

What if their name were “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Slander” and they demanded free expression and speech be restricted to your own home, registration of anyone that wanted to exercise free speech–in their own homes, and you must submit to frequent police inspections of your home?

Oh, but they say, free speech does have restrictions on it. You can’t legally falsely shout, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. True. But you aren’t prevented from doing so by having a state approved gag installed prior to entry of the theater. If you cause injury through the irresponsible exercise of your freedom you are punished for the irresponsible actions. The same should be true for firearms.

If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop trying to prevent us from exercising our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

Harping on the harm and blind to the benefits

The anti-gun people completely ignore or dismiss the benefits of firearm ownership. They constantly remind us of the harm but that only tells part of the story. It’s another half-truth they tell to further their cause.

Comparing to other causes of death: There is one child killed with a gun for every one million+ guns in this country and there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential swimming pools. Similar comparison can be made for car ownership.

Pro-gun people recognize that firearms are sometimes used for evil purposes and that accidents happen as well as the many benefits. The anti-gun people only see solutions while we see trade-offs.

If they don’t want us to be angry they need to acknowledge gun ownership brings benefits to society not just hazards.

Penis jokes

Many anti-gun people claim that men who own firearms have small penises and are trying to compensate with a firearm. The examples are almost endless. One could make a strong case that many anti-gun people appear to be developmentally retarded at about age of nine or 10 where children make jokes and insults about bathroom activities, bodily wastes, and penises. There are numerous examples here, here, here, here, and here.

What if women who wanted the right to vote or for equal opportunities in the workplace were laughed at and told they were just experiencing some penis envy? Do you think that would result in some anger?

If they don’t want us to get angry they should grow up and discuss the topic seriously.

Conclusion

If other specific enumerated rights were treated like firearms ownership there would likely be riots in the streets. But gun owners haven’t rioted. They haven’t called for the murders of those that insulted them. Yet similar infringement on rights has or would likely cause a major social disruption. And despite remarkably good behavior under some extremely adverse circumstances the instances of gun owners striking out in anger at these abuses is extremely rare. And what do we get for this good behavior despite substantial reasons for being angry? They use that anger as further justification to infringe upon our rights.

I think of those people who claim our anger as reason for more infringement the say way as I would a child who murders his parents and then asks the judge for leniency in sentencing because he is an orphan. After their conviction under 18 USC 241 or 242 I think their sentences should be doubled because they brought the problem on themselves.

Quote of the day–Chris Cox

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“Honesty” is not a word that comes to mind when one thinks of Michael Bloomberg, nor when one thinks of Frank Lautenberg. “Hypocrisy,” on the other hand, is a perfect fit. Lautenberg once spoke disapprovingly of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of people on the basis of mere allegations during the “McCarthyism” period of the 1950s and “an utterly ruthless enemy . . . who has absolutely no sense of propriety or decency while it wages war against innocent people.” But that was in 2003. If Lautenberg’s reverence for civil liberties were more than pretense, he would never have introduced S. 1317.


Chris Cox
NRA-ILA Executive Director
January 23, 2010
Gun Owners Under Watchful Eyes
[The summary of S. 1317 is “A bill to increase public safety by permitting the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to known or suspected dangerous terrorists.”


The Bloomberg gang, Brady Campaign (and others) call it a “Terror Gap” that people suspected of supporting terrorism be denied the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms without due process. The due process of being able to confront their accusers and defend against the accusations in public court is an extremely important protection. You don’t want to live in a society where you can be denied your right to practice your religion, a jury trial, or the right to not incriminate yourself because your neighbor anonymously calls in a tip. It could be that the neighbor is just pissed you are in a mixed race marriage, you are gay, or you didn’t mow your lawn last week.


In a sense Bloomberg and The Brady Campaign are correct in their naming of this. Our government is less able to terrorize it’s citizens without the secret lists so in that sense the government has a “terror gap” compared to some other countries. I must conclude Bloomberg and The Brady Campaign wish to enhance the terror capabilities of the U.S. government to get it on par with other well known governments with secret lists such as the former USSR, East Germany, and Nazi Germany.


Before anyone is denied their freedom they must given a chance to defend themselves in court or else we don’t have freedom.–Joe]

How do you measure fairness/justice?

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In response to the QOTD here;



“How do you measure fairness/justice?”


It’s not terribly complicated.  First, you determine whether someone’s rights have been violated.  If so, you hold the perpetrator accountable, with restitution as a priority.


The statist will attempt to argue over what is and is not a right, and who possess the right (the individual or the collective, or some sub set of the collective).  Ayn Rand has a couple of quotes that nail it;



“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” – Ayn Rand (copied from Kevin’s site)


I’ll paraphrase this next one from memory, because I don’t have the book handy;


“Any proposed ‘right’ that demands the violation of another’s rights is not and cannot be considered a right.” – Ayn Rand.


Next the statist will declare these truths to be too simple, that you’re being too simple-minded seeing the world in such black and white terms, and that only in navigating through complexity can we come to some semblance of economic and social justice, etc., etc.


Eventually it degrades into a contest of push verses shove, as the snarling, hate-filled statist is more than willing to start the pushing (or more likely to have someone else start the pushing for him, the typical statist being a coward as a rule).


There is no reconciling the two visions of society (statism, verses the property rights model on which this country was founded) and any attempt to do so will only delay the inevitable reckoning, prolonging and deepening the pain and destruction along the way (the traditional role of the Republican Party).  Our only sensible plan of action is to defeat the statists at every opportunity, relegating them to the woodwork of society where they belong (along with the cockroaches and spiders).


Our biggest problem is that the statist’s goal is much simpler than ours.  They want destruction and decline of civilization.  The free man wants to create and build over time.  He might spend a lifetime carving out his niche, and building a life for himself and his family, while the statist can wipe the whole thing out in a moment.  Building is difficult and time consuming, and it takes planning and creativity, while destruction is simple and quick, and most any idiot/loser can do it.


With that in mind, a more specific and urgent course of action is presented.  The leftist/statist power infrastructure needs to be dismantled, and the individual statist power brokers (perpetrators) have to be held personally liable.  They have to pay a price or they will not stop.  There’s your “Social Justice”.  Anything less will prolong the problem and deepen the pain.  Investing our hopes and resources in the traditional Republican Party model of going along and trying to run the statist system more responsibly, is nothing but a recipe for disaster.


We’ve too often accepted the leftist premises or their claims to compassion and justice, when their goals are just the opposite.  We’ve reached a radical situation by sitting back for generations, allowing the leftist radicals to have their way.  Closing a few dozen federal departments, including education, and shutting down hundreds of programs might seem radical or extreme to the inattentive.  So what?  The level of government intervention we’ve reached is in itself extreme or radical, compared to the vision of the founders.  The status quo is what’s extreme.  Getting back on track is not, even if means passing out a million pink slips to federal and state employees.

Quote of the day–caller on the Glen Beck radio show

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The people that do the equalizing will never equalize themselves.


Caller on the Glen Beck radio show
March 11, 2010 7:50 AM PST
She was born in Yugoslavia.
[No matter how true and how obvious from history this is many people still want “economic justice” or “fairness” imposed by the government.


I’ve been trying to come up with a good response to this. The best I have been able to do is, “How do you measure fairness/justice?” Followed up with something like, “If you can’t express it in numbers then it’s just opinion.” in the most condescending tone I can muster (Barb says I do this tone very well).


But perhaps this caller who has a more intimate knowledge of how these work is a better response.–Joe]

Coolidge Almost Got It Right

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In response to the QOTD;


Ah, but Mr. Coolidge, and the Republican Party leadership, apparently never understood the game.  The assertion that building up the weak is the Left’s goal is one thing.  Taking that assertion at face value is another.  It’s the Big Mistake of the 20th century, and has resulted in perpetual confusion (to say nothing of the stagnation, decay and destruction around the world).  The preponderance of the evidence regarding the Left’s goals points elsewhere.  Their objective is statism for its own sake, and the tactic, stated openly in some circles time after time, is to bring down “The System” so it can be remade– “Redistributive Change” in Obama’s own words, and it’s been said in other ways throughout the generations.


Republicans, as they occupy themselves trying to understand and argue the details, the costs and so on, of the “healthcare” bills, are demonstrating their utter cluelessness (or is it their complicity?).  “Why, this could end up funding abortions with taxpayer dollars, and that would be bad, and I’m not so sure we can afford this other bit over here…”


That’s not the point, Skippy.  The point is, the whole thing is a massive power grab.  What more do you need to know, for crying out loud?


Weigh down the economy with debt, entitlements and restrictions, then blame what remains of the private sector.  Take advantage of the chaos and the public demands for an altogether new approach that they hope will ensue.  They’re telling us every day; “Never let a crisis go to waste” is only part of it.  The other part is their understanding that they can manufacture the crises.  Chip, chip, chip, chip, and sooner or later even the hardest stone will crumble, after which (they believe) they can swoop in and take it all.


So far as I can tell, the Republicans have been playing along for decades.  “Oh, but you’re crazy, Lyle.  Look at the differences between Republicans and Democrats!  Are you willfully blind, or what?  Surely you must be mad!  Look!  Just look!  LOOOOOOOOOK, MAN!”


Uh huh, and there’s a world of difference between that “good cop” and that “bad cop” too.  The bad cop is a real, dangerously scary, out-of-control sonofabitch, but that good cop– why, he’s a sweetheart!  Look at him!  Just look!  He brings you coffee and food and he talks nice.  He doesn’t like that bad ol’, meany mean bad cop at all, either.  No Sir, not at all.  Such a nice fellow, and he really cares.  He listens.  He understands.  He’s my advocate in this time of uncertainty.  I want to work with him, by golly gosh oh gee.  Yessiree.  No doubt about it.  Without him, that bad cop would have beat the living shit out of me by now, for sure.  Man, am I lucky to have Good Cop!  Wow!  Thank God!  This must be an angel sent from Heaven to deliver me from despair!


Right.  Both cops are working to take you to the same place after they’re finished with your sorry, dumb ass.


OK; got that out of the system.  Now I’m all ears.

Half-truth Henigan is at it again

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Brady Campaign Lawyer Dennis Henigan claims:

Of course, it is true that the exercise of free expression, for example, also can create a risk of violence or physical injury. If that risk becomes sufficiently great, the courts will deny the protection of the First Amendment altogether. But the core exercise of freedom of expression is unlikely to pose serious risks of physical harm, particularly lethal harm. The same cannot be said about the Second Amendment right.

…

It is unclear whether the high court will declare the Second Amendment right as “fundamental” as the other rights that have been applied to the states. But even if it does, it should confront the hard reality that this “fundamental” right is also the most dangerous right of all.

I agree that guns can be dangerous. But it is far from the most dangerous right. I would like Mr. Henigan to do the arithmetic on how many people have been murdered based on the following books:

And that is just off the top of my head with a couple seconds of thought. And when have U.S. courts denied protection of the First Amendment to these books? If “guns kill” then surely these books can be blamed for the deaths of approximately 100 million people just in the 20th Century.

If books “responsible” for the deaths of many millions can be afforded protection under the First Amendment the Second Amendment can surely afford protection for firearms in common use.

As is usual Henigan only tells half the story. The half he tells is true. But he wants you to overlook the ugly truth of how dangerous ideas and the free expression of them is. And it is an outright lie that the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is the most dangerous. In fact, had the murder victims of the governments built upon those last two books been armed the body count of the 20th Century would most likely have been much lower.

The “hard reality” is that the right to keep and bear arms protects us from those that exercise their First Amendment rights.

Quote of the day–Daniel Johnson

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Guns in bars. No background checks at gun shows. No permits to carry required. No restrictions on how many guns a person may buy (in some cases now it’s one per month).


What Americans don’t seem to understand is how crazy they look to most of the rest of the world. The reason they don’t understand is because of their one-thought tyranny.


Americans are tyrannized by 1776, The Second Amendment, The Bill of Rights, The Constitution and other colonial-era artifacts. They have been brainwashed into believing that those are the only thoughts there are. This is not freedom. Freedom means having a choice. If they could accept that there are other ways of thinking then they would have a choice! That’s what freedom is about and what many, if not most, Americans don’t understand.


Daniel Johnson
February 24, 2010
The Tyranny of the American Mind
[Tyrannized by The Bill of Rights? At first glance I thought it had to be satire. But no. I don’t think it is. I think it more closely represents something from Nineteen Eighty-Four:



WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.


It appears “Reasoned Discourse” has broken out in the comments.



(graphic stolen from Robb Allen)


Numerous comments have been deleted. Ah, yes. Canadian “freedom” where they have official and unofficial censors.


Oh, and if you are interested in that sort of thing there is a picture of a tricked out SKS being held by a women in a bikini in Johnson’s article.


H/T to jonjayray.–Joe]

The implications are frightening

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You don’t have to think about this very long before you get a chill up your spine:

Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws on Wednesday, the first case to hold the company’s executives criminally responsible for the content posted on its system.

The content was a YouTube video posted by some random person. Google took the video down within two hours of being notified that it was in violation of Italian law. Still, some Google executives are now convicted criminals in Italy.

I keep waiting for the day that someone gets convicted in some restrictive country for daring to post a picture of a woman with her face and/or ankles exposed on their website. Or perhaps for providing firearms training videos on the Internet in China.

And don’t forget similar things have happened in this country even before the Internet.

Somewhere there is one or more governments which would send you to prison for something you do as a normal everyday activity–freedom is a never ending battle.

Remove the battery

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As a software developer deeply involved in providing location information to applications running on cell phones I have some advice if this concerns you:

Amid all the furor over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program a few years ago, a mini-revolt was brewing over another type of federal snooping that was getting no public attention at all. Federal prosecutors were seeking what seemed to be unusually sensitive records: internal data from telecommunications companies that showed the locations of their customers’ cell phones—sometimes in real time, sometimes after the fact.

…

Prosecutors “were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device,” said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston. “And I started asking the U.S. Attorney’s Office, ‘What is the legal authority for this? What is the legal standard for getting this information?’ “

Those questions are now at the core of a constitutional clash between President Obama’s Justice Department and civil libertarians alarmed by what they see as the government’s relentless intrusion into the private lives of citizens. There are numerous other fronts in the privacy wars—about the content of e-mails, for instance, and access to bank records and credit-card transactions. The Feds now can quietly get all that information. But cell-phone tracking is among the more unsettling forms of government surveillance, conjuring up Orwellian images of Big Brother secretly following your movements through the small device in your pocket.

…

The tracking is possible because either the phones have tiny GPS units inside or each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint a phone’s location to areas as small as a city block. This capability to trace ever more precise cell-phone locations has been spurred by a Federal Communications Commission rule designed to help police and other emergency officers during 911 calls. But the FBI and other law-enforcement outfits have been obtaining more and more records of cell-phone locations—without notifying the targets or getting judicial warrants establishing “probable cause,” according to law-enforcement officials, court records, and telecommunication executives. (The Justice Department draws a distinction between cell-tower data and GPS information, according to a spokeswoman, and will often get warrants for the latter.)

…

Al Gidari, a telecommunications lawyer who represents several wireless providers, tells NEWSWEEK that the companies are now getting “thousands of these requests per month,” and the amount has grown “exponentially” over the past few years.

Of course this is a two edged sword. If they can use your cell phone as evidence you were at a given location then you can use it to show you were not at some location. Leave your phone at work/home or in a friends car if you need to take supplies to your Jewish friends in the attic.

My advice is that no matter how careful you are with the applications you install or “disabling” the GPS or location services that isn’t good enough. The cell phone company will still know where your phone is within a few hundred yards anytime it is turned on. And with some phones it’s possible for you to think it is turned off when it actually is still functional at a level sufficient for your cell phone service provider to get location information.

As a friend of mine in the cell phone manufacturing business once told me, “I don’t know exactly what’s in the phone software. But I do know the phone only has one battery.”

Quote of the day–Justice Richard B. Sanders

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The Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Richard B. Sanders
Supreme Court of the State of Washington
State of Washington v. Christopher William Sieyes
February 18, 2010
[This probably should be the quote of the year. But I’ll I expect similar words will be used in the Chicago gun case.

Still nothing from the Brady Campaign. They must be off in a corner someplace sobbing, drinking Tequila or contemplating that bottle of whiskey and sleeping pills. I’ll give them another slap by adding another chapter to my review of Lethal Logic tomorrow.–Joe]