The government official is supposed to be our servant. When you are sitting across the desk from a representative of the Internal Revenue Service who is auditing your tax return, which one of you is the master and which the servant?
Milton and Rose Friedman
Copyright 1979
Page 298, Free to Choose–A Personal Statement
[This is an excellent book. However, you might want to have your blood pressure medication available.–Joe]
This isn’t the way counterterrorism is supposed to work, but it’s happening everywhere. It’s a result of our relentless campaign to convince ordinary citizens that they’re the front line of terrorism defense. “If you see something, say something” is how the ads read in the New York City subways. “If you suspect something, report it” urges another ad campaign in Manchester, UK. The Michigan State Police have a seven-minute video. Administration officials from then-attorney general John Ashcroft to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to President Bush have asked us all to report any suspicious activity.
The problem is that ordinary citizens don’t know what a real terrorist threat looks like. They can’t tell the difference between a bomb and a tape dispenser, electronic name badge, CD player, bat detector, or trash sculpture; or the difference between terrorist plotters and imams, musicians, or architects. All they know is that something makes them uneasy, usually based on fear, media hype, or just something being different.
Bruce Schneier
November 1, 2007
The War on the Unexpected
[This is the way real witch hunts happen. This is the way we lose our freedom and our rights are permanently infringed. And when you dig deep into what actually happened, with 20-20 hindsight, no one was really to blame. Everyone makes pretty reasonable decisions at every little step along the way. The problem is that most people don’t have any hard and fast principles. They have no underlying philosophy they have confidence in. They take “one day at a time”. And “today is a good day to ignore the Bill of Rights” because these are “special circumstances”.
What I think people don’t really get is that the Bill of Rights wasn’t written for “a sunny day in the springtime”. It was written, and expected to be honored, when emotions are running high and as a firm reminder of what the true limits to government must be. It was written with extraordinary deliberation by very smart people who knew the risks of a tyrant, a committee, a mob, a government under stress and running on high emotions. After due deliberation it can be changed but it should never be violated because tyranny often masquerades as doing good.–Joe]
If it hasn’t been said that complexity is the tool of the corrupt politician, I’ll say it here for the record. This post is a rewrite of a comment I made here. I thought it deserved its own post.
“…the ATF sent out it’s ATF State Laws and Published Ordinances. Ride Fast notes some numbers:
California, 67 pages, about 120,600 words of regulation.
Massachusetts, 18.5 pages, about 32,400 words.
Nevada, 6.5 pages, about 11,700 words.
Vermont, 1.05 pages, about 1890 words.”
(To those who have so far never cared about the issue enough to look into it; Vermont has historically had a right-to-arms policy close the original intent of the Second Amendment. For example, one may legally carry a concealed pistol without getting government permission. It is also worth noting that their violent crime rate is lower than those of surrounding states.)
Here are some contrasting numbers:
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: One sentence, 27 words.
The Congressional Oath of Office: One paragraph, 73 words.
I assume you’ve all looked it up and saved it, being concerned citizens and all, but to save you the trouble of going to your desktop and clicking on it, here it is again:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Human rights, honesty and reason are relatively simple. Obfuscation is complex.
The grade-school teacher who was jailed in Sudan for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad was met at London’s Heathrow Airport this morning by her son John and daughter Jessica.
Also good news is who helped her gain her freedom and come home alive:
But she was released a week early thanks to an intense British diplomatic effort led by two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords, who met with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir.
That there were Muslims helping to bring some sanity to the situation is very encouraging. I see also there were other Muslims working toward that same goal.
If you — my servant — are going to pass a law — and enforce that law using guns — and that law makes me and my fellow permit-holding constituents (who as I mentioned are more law abiding than the average person) so pissed off that we decide to shoot you dead over it — don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, you should rethink your position on that law?
That is the whole point of the Second Amendment, Duhrlene. When you are given the privilege of exercising the state’s privilege of force, you should do so with an armed populace at your back. It’s the American Way, and the more literal it is, the better.
The Everlasting Phelps
June 24, 2004
Shooting Up the Capital
[Regarding banning firearms from government meetings such as legislative sessions and city council meetings. See also the comment here. At numerous times I had thought about posting something along these lines but hadn’t put it in words. Phelps articulated my thoughts quite well.–Joe]
Those who believe that individual rights are more important than public safety often side with reduced gun control laws. On the other hand, those that think other individuals are unable to control their own behaviors, and therefore the law needs to influence the gun supply, would certainly side with increased government control of firearms.
Dan Cunningham
Strive For Balance In Gun Control
[This is just the beginning of his half-truths, incorrect assumptions, and outright falsehoods. He apparently does not realize it’s possible, or even more likely, to have both freedom and safety then goes on to create the case for his bigoted beliefs.–Joe]
We hear it said of an ugly guy, “He has a face made for radio”.
Woopie Goldberg has performed brilliantly as an actor in television and in movies. Her personal commentary however, has been nothing you couldn’t hear at the espresso and chi tea bar in any local natural foods store any day of the week. Hence it is no surprise that her radio show is being axed. I believe she still has a future in acting. Therein she has talent.
There remains a significant part of society that can’t seem to understand how radio is a business (the business of selling advertising) and that in business you must have something to offer that people, you know, want.
Hint: If you have no respect for those who made it big in the business, you just might be on the wrong path. “I’m gonna be just the opposite of that really, ultra successful guy” might not be the best business plan. Success, one would think, is the best teacher.
And here’s a hint just especially for those on the Left: We’ve all heard your message every day for our whole lives, as long as we can remember. You’ve gotten your message out, and that is your problem. A lot of people are sick of hearing it because most of it has something to do with how wrong, greedy, stupid, evil, and endangered we are– the air we breathe is killing us, the food we eat is killing us, oil is killing us, a shortage of oil is killing us, farming is killing us, starvation is killing us, fat is killing us, dieting is killing us, carbs are killing us, disease is killing us, antibiotics, vaccines, and the drug companies are killing us, freedom and prosperity are especially killing us, poverty is killing us, the good economy is killing us but really the economy sucks, terrorists are killing us (but it’s our fault) and the war against terrorists is killing us, and everything, absolutely everything, is killing women and children, the elderly and the minorities the hardest– and how some form of socialism (government-enforced coercion) is the answer to absolutely every problem, real or imagined.
Does that about sum it up? Who needs to tune into a radio show to hear that when we hear it everywhere else every day?
More-of-the-same day in and day out nagging and finger pointing and blaming America and our Liberty for the world’s problems isn’t something a lot of people are going to pay money to have broadcast in their name. But you don’t, and won’t, get it anyway.
The teacher who let her students name a Teddy Bear Muhammad was convicted and sentenced to 15 days in jail and will be deported. At least she doesn’t have to endure the whipping that was on the list of possible punishments. I thought this was pretty extreme but figured it would be a good lesson for those that think we need to “reach common ground” or some such thing with the Muslim extremists. I couldn’t have imagined what a lesson this would actually be.
But it turns out the sentence Gillian Gibbons received is considered much too light for the locals. They are demanding her execution:
Thousands of protesters, many brandishing clubs and swords, took to the streets of Sudan’s capital Friday, demanding the execution of a British teacher who let her students name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Gillian Gibbons, 54, was found guilty Thursday of insulting Islam and sentenced to 15 days in jail. She was spared the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.
That angered many in Khartoum, who rallied in Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace. Protesters waved sticks, knives, axes and swords.
“Kill her, kill her by firing squad!” they chanted. “No tolerance, execution!”
Here is a picture of the evil heretic. I hope she gets out alive.
To be fair, there are some Muslims who are responding appropriately:
In Britan — where Muhammad is now the second most popular name for baby boys — the reaction had been shock and disbelief, from both non-Muslims and Muslims.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said Sudanese authorities had “grossly overreacted.”
“Gillian should never have been arrested, let alone charged and convicted of committing a crime,” he said.
But the Sudanese behavior invokes an opposing extreme response in me and others.
I often get frustrated wondering “What are they thinking? Do they actually think? Are they capable of thinking?”
For example, in my mind people are not consistent when they expanded the meaning of the 1st Amendment to include things that did not exist (such as the Internet) at the time of the writing of the Bill of Rights. Yet those same people intend to negate the 2nd Amendment by excluding things that didn’t exist at the time of it’s creation. What’s up with that? Are you insane?
This article helps with a certain aspects of those types of questions I have had.
In interpreting the Constitution, judges pay attention to social practices, and not only to judicial precedents. If federal and state governments have long regulated gun use, creating a tradition of such regulation, many judges would be reluctant to invoke the original understanding in order to upset that tradition. Tushnet finds that, since the Civil War, gun regulation has been common–and it has rarely been challenged on constitutional grounds. He concludes that the last century and a half shows a simple pattern: “A substantial body of laws regulating weapons possession and a small number of opinions addressing Second Amendment objections to such laws, with no opinions from appellate courts invalidating any modern regulations, and an apparent lack of interest by the Supreme Court in taking fundamental Second Amendment questions.”
[…]
In Tushnet’s view, there is an evident conflict between the original understanding and the legal arguments based on judicial precedents and social practices. He urges that in the face of such conflicts, the original understanding tends to yield. In the context of free speech, for example, we have gone far beyond the original understanding, protecting commercial advertising and even political dissent in ways that would have astonished the founding generation. Tushnet thinks that if we reject originalism, we will probably conclude, on the basis of social practices and judicial decisions, that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right.
This gives me a model to conclude they aren’t entirely insane. It does sort of make sense. I worry about the Supreme Court in the D.C. v. Heller case considering the impact on all the people that deserve to be locked up but prosecutors only charged them with gun violations because it was so much easier than proving they had committed some violent crime. If the Court comes strikes down the D.C. law there will be lots of people in jail appealing their convictions. The disruption to society could be significant. The historical aspect of the laws and our society have to be somewhere in the minds of the justices.
But translating the logic above to an analogous situation will make my take on this clear:
In the deep south during the last century there was a long history of social practices, judicial precedents, and traditions of regulation of people of color. Therefore it is entirely appropriate during the 1960’s the courts should have rejected the original intent of the 13th Amendment and allowed whatever law the states and cities thought were “common-sense” for their situation.
Not!
There is only one correct way to handle this. If a government entity wants to implement a law that violates some original intent of the Constitution there is a proper way to go about that. They can amend the constitution to allow non-original intent. Anything else is a rationalization, an extremely serious threat to our enumerated powers form of government, and death to freedom.
There’s some serious talk going on about increasing the oppression of gun owners in Europe:
Against the backdrop of deadly school shootings in Finland and Germany, European Union legislators Thursday overwhelmingly backed tough new gun control rules they said they hoped would prevent Europe from becoming a gun-friendly culture like the United States.
Under the new rules, hammered out in 18 months of negotiations between the European Parliament, national governments and gun advocates, individuals age 18 and over will be able to buy and own a firearm, provided they are not deemed a threat to public safety. Individuals under 18 will only be able to obtain a gun for hunting or target shooting under the supervision of a licensed adult.
To plug holes in the current system, in which the registration of guns is not consistent across the 27-member bloc, each member state will be obliged to set up a computerized database of firearms, including details about their model, caliber, serial number and the names and addresses of both the seller and the buyer. The data must be kept by authorities for at least 20 years.
European legislators of all political stripes said the new rules were essential to prevent Europe from embracing the gun culture of the United States, where the right to bear arms is written in the constitution.
“We in Europe have a different culture than in the United States and we do not consider the freedom to buys weapons a human right,” said Gisela Kallenbach, a German member of the European Parliament from the Green group, who helped draft the proposed law. “All European cows are registered Europe-wide, so why not guns, if it can save lives? Civil liberties can be sacrificed if we can prevent people from being killed.”
How appropriate. A German who wants to sacrifice civil liberties to prevent people from being killed. That was done once before by the Germans in 1938:
§1
Jews (§5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 1333) are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.
The only question is, which lives will they be saving? In 1938 it was the Nazi lives that would be saved by sacrificing the civil liberties of the Jews.
When someone takes a weapon from you it’s an exceedingly rare circumstance that your safety will be increased. It’s someone else’s safety that might be increased.
What’s the problem with registration? Registration is a problem because those records were used by the Nazis to find all the Jews with firearms and experience with firearms. Firearms registration fails my Jews in the Attic Test. Firearms registration enables scenes like this:
The European Union doesn’t want to be a “gun-friendly culture”, instead they want to be tyrant-friendly culture. How many tens of millions of people must be murdered before they learn their lesson?
But, first, a little background – for those of you who have more to do with your time than memorize old, obsolete and unused Constitutional dicta – the 2nd Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
As I said, Ho Hum. How seriously must I (or anyone, for that matter) take a sentence so overwhelmingly categorical, yet which has never been used to overturn any gun regulation, ordinance or law in the 200-plus years since it was adopted?
Bryan Miller
November 29, 2007
Supremes take on 2nd Amendment – Yawn
[It’s overwhelmingly categorical and never been used to overturn a law since it was adopted, therefore we shouldn’t take it seriously and can enact laws that violate it without concern to the constitutionality of the law. Interesting logic. So, Mr. Miller, do you advocate treating the 13th amendment in the same way?
Section. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
If so then I claim you, Bryan Miller, as my slave. Maybe then you will suddenly recognize the utility of the 2nd Amendment. Or maybe since the 13th amendment is only 142 years old it’s too recent to discard. If it needs to be 200-plus years old before we can start ignoring it then I’ll let my great-grandchildren know that your descendants gave up their 13th Amendment rights on your say so. As my descendants, with guns, take possession I’m sure your descendants will “thank” you for giving up your 2nd Amendment rights earlier. The point is that just because a law hasn’t been overturned recently the constitutional provision against such laws is obsolete.
And, Mr. Miller, it’s obvious you haven’t read this book which demonstrates the Supreme Court has upheld the legal tradition and historical record of private gun ownership, self defense, and armed self defense, since the country began.
My take on Miller’s “yawn” response is that is the best spin he can put on what he thinks is impending doom.–Joe]
Once again, Walter E. Williams finds a way to articulate an idea with roughly ten thousand times the clarity I or most anyone else could muster. I’m sure most of you read Walter’s column regularly (what red-blooded, thinking American doesn’t?) but this one deserves special attention.
Government allocation of resources enhances the potential for human conflict, while market allocation reduces it.
True of course, but he explains the how and why of it. It should be a primer course in every elementary school, but then, it’s a piece favoring a free market in education:
For a public school system, teaching free market principles would be suicide, wouldn’t it?
All in the name of the War on a Noun:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as American icons and infringing on people’s privacy.
Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel don’t need warrants to access hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, putting them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.
[…]
When going to private residences, for example, they are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress.
Still and video cameras? Photos? Maps? Discontent with the United States?
I would get so many “hits” it would peg their meters even before they got to the guns, ammunition, and explosives.
I believe that forced charity is no charity at all, and forced virtue cannot claim credit for itself anymore than a eunuch can claim credit for chastity.
Marko
this i believe.
November 21, 2007
[Via Tam. It’s a great post and covers numerous important topics. I think son James will appreciate it greatly.–Joe]
We must win or else life under such a regime will not be worth living:
KHARTOUM, Sudan – A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Muhammad, her school said on Monday.
Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where the Liverpool woman was being held.
Teachers at Unity High School in central Khartoum said Gibbons, 54, made an innocent mistake and simply let her pupils choose their favorite name for the toy as part of a school project.
Police arrested Gibbons on Sunday at her home inside the school premises, said Unity director Robert Boulos, after a number of parents made a complaint to Sudan’s Ministry of Education.
Boulos said she had since been charged with “blasphemy,” an offense he said was punishable with up to three months in prison and a fine.
[…]
Gibbons, who joined Unity in August, asked a girl to bring in her teddy bear to help the second grade class focus, said Boulos.
The teacher then asked the class to name the toy. “They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Mohammed. Then she explained what it meant to vote and asked them to choose the name.” Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad.
If you were just the least bit selective in your data collection you could great really paranoid about big government. Check out this story (via email from Tony) Children herded like cattle into Maryland courthouse for forced vaccinations as armed police and attack dogs stand guard. And Local 2 Investigates Police Secrecy Behind Unmanned Aircraft Test.
Instead of paranoid, I think we should be “very skeptical”, “keep your powder dry”, and keep your training up to date.
If for some reason it ever becomes necessary to take down one of those planes do it while it is on the ground. If it’s already in the air then take out the communication gear on the ground.
I’ve often said the socialists think of the common person more as cattle to be dehorned, vaccinated, milked, and slaughtered than as people. The “central committee” or the “enlightened leaders” need to keep watch and do what is best for the common good. The right of the individual is unimportant next to the right of society as a whole. It’s time give up on these outmoded ideas and work for good of the collective. Those that resist are outlaws or insane and society is completely justified sending them to the work and reeducation camps. It’s for the good of society.
Yeah, right. And that is Why Boomershoot.
Update: This post is starting to get legs. The vaccination story above is obviously bordering near hysterical. I figured there was a grain of truth in it and the whole forced vaccination concept bothers me. Here are some more dispassionate versions of the same story:
Most of the articles just barely, at best, mention the protesters. The Christian Science Monitor has the best coverage of that angle:
But protesters outside the courthouse say that the summons to the courthouse amounted to a campaign of intimidation, and that parents weren’t adequately informed of their rights as parents or possible risks to their children.
“I think it’s offensive that the government would forcibly vaccinate kids. Individual rights are a good thing, and when you’re dealing with health issues, informed consent is an important value,” says Donna Hurlack, a Virginia gynecologist protesting outside the courthouse.
“There was a feeling of intimidation. Children were basically put in that building, lined up and given vaccines without any information given to parents about how to monitor their children for adverse vaccination reactions,” says Barbara Loe Fisher, president and cofounder of the National Vaccine Information Center, which advocates for more parental rights in immunization.
None mention the police and dogs but I found one picture that confirms that angle (from the Associated Press article above):
My best take on it is that the facts reported in the original article I linked to were probably correct. Yes, the spin on it was extreme but his point is valid. It was a forced vaccination. People were threatened with jail (point of a gun) if they didn’t comply. They were being treated a lot like cattle.
When I watched this video (via Dooce) I thought of it as a lesson on the concept of Monopoly of Force. Lions are the “King of the Jungle”, right? Don’t they represent government? The buffalo are the numerous “armed citizens”. The crocs must be criminals since they hide under the water like that and then disappear again when their opportunity slips away.
Yeah, I’m not normal.
Not only should the president order the execution of the turkeys, he should kill both gobblers himself. With his bare hands, while wearing a loin cloth. He should then rise, his body glistening with sweat and blood, and take a bite out of its head and display it proudly to the American people.
SayUncle
November 22, 2005
My Platform
[While I strongly agree with the sentiment, and wouldn’t even mind the loincloth angle, I would be disappointed if he broke up a sweat or got blood on himself killing a turkey with his bare hands. In fact because the whole point of this it so show how manly he is to our enemies I’m thinking it should be a hog instead of a turkey. In which case if it was only bare hands I’d betting on the hog. So, I’d let him wimp out and him use a knife and/or a club. Now let the sweat and the blood glisten and our enemies cower.–Joe]
The NRA is the equivalent of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior. If they don’t deal with the NRA, they will find out the hard way who the equivalents to Malcolm X are in the pro-rights movement.
Kristopher Barrett
November 19, 2007
[From the comments of this post. He was educating Michael D. Barnes, President of The Brady Bunch, who claimed the NRA was extreme.–Joe]
I sometimes wish I could output snark like this:
The report follows recent news that screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed 75% of the fake bombs that investigators tried to smuggle onto planes during tests two years ago. The excuse from TSA officials: The tests were difficult and designed to trip up screeners. Whereas Al Qaeda will doubtless hide its bombs in brightly marked packages.
But then I would probably want to use it for occasions that would jeopardize my job and marriage.