Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper

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I am by no means sure that legalizing drugs would be a good policy, though there are some very good thinkers in the country who hold just that view. However, in view of the fact that the so-called drug war is used to justify the excesses of the federal ninja, it might be proposed that if we abolish the drug war, we could abolish the ninja too. The thing that keeps the drug trade going is the enormous amount of money involved. We must remember that both narcotics and stimulants were readily available over the counter during the Victorian period. We had very few junkies, and as far as I can tell, we had no ninja. One cannot turn the clock back, but we might give serious thought to some feasible means of turning it forward.

Jeff Cooper

Insights into Islamism

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Sean sent me this link and I pulled the following insights from it:

During his six months at the Colorado State College of Education (and thereafter in California), Sayyid’s hungry disapproval found a variety of targets. American lawns (a distressing example of selfishness and atomism), American conversation (‘money, movie stars and models of cars’), American jazz (‘a type of music invented by Blacks to please their primitive tendencies – their desire for noise and their appetite for sexual arousal’), and, of course, American women: here another one pops up, telling Sayyid that sex is merely a physical function, untrammelled by morality. American places of worship he also detests (they are like cinemas or amusement arcades), but by now he is pining for Cairo, and for company, and he does something rash. Qutb joins a club – where an epiphany awaits him. ‘The dance is inflamed by the notes of the gramophone,’ he wrote; ‘the dance-hall becomes a whirl of heels and thighs, arms enfold hips, lips and breasts meet, and the air is full of lust.’ You’d think that the father of Islamism had exposed himself to an early version of Studio 54 or even Plato’s Retreat. But no: the club he joined was run by the church, and what he is describing, here, is a chapel hop in Greeley, Colorado. And Greeley, Colorado, in 1949, was dry

…

Qutb is the father of Islamism. Here are the chief tenets he inspired: that America, and its clients, are jahiliyya (the word classically applied to pre-Muhammadan Arabia – barbarous and benighted); that America is controlled by Jews; that Americans are infidels, that they are animals, and, worse, arrogant animals, and are unworthy of life; that America promotes pride and promiscuity in the service of human degradation; that America seeks to ‘exterminate’ Islam – and that it will accomplish this not by conquest, not by colonial annexation, but by example. As Bernard Lewis puts it in The Crisis of Islam

‘This is what is meant by the term the Great Satan, applied to the United States by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Satan as depicted in the Qur’an is neither an imperialist nor an exploiter. He is a seducer, ‘the insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men’ (Qur’an, CXIV, 4, 5).

…

Qutb is the father of Islamism. Here are the chief tenets he inspired: that America, and its clients, are jahiliyya (the word classically applied to pre-Muhammadan Arabia – barbarous and benighted); that America is controlled by Jews; that Americans are infidels, that they are animals, and, worse, arrogant animals, and are unworthy of life; that America promotes pride and promiscuity in the service of human degradation; that America seeks to ‘exterminate’ Islam – and that it will accomplish this not by conquest, not by colonial annexation, but by example. As Bernard Lewis puts it in The Crisis of Islam

‘This is what is meant by the term the Great Satan, applied to the United States by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Satan as depicted in the Qur’an is neither an imperialist nor an exploiter. He is a seducer, ‘the insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men’ (Qur’an, CXIV, 4, 5).

…

The fact of expansion underwrote the mandate of heaven. And now, for the past 300 or 400 years, observable reality has propounded a rebuttal: the argument from manifest failure. As one understands it, in the Islamic cosmos there is nothing more painful than the suspicion that something has denatured the covenant with God. This unbearable conclusion must naturally be denied, but it is subliminally present, and accounts, perhaps, for the apocalyptic hurt of the Islamist.

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As a Sunni military man put it, Iraqis hate Iraq – or ‘Iraq’, a concept that has brought them nothing but suffering. There is no nationalist instinct; the instinct is for atomisation.

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We may wonder how the Islamists feel when they compare India to Pakistan, one a burgeoning democratic superpower, the other barely distinguishable from a failed state. What Went Wrong? asked Bernard Lewis, at book length. The broad answer would be institutionalised irrationalism; and the particular focus would be the obscure logic that denies the Islamic world the talent and energy of half its people. No doubt the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male. But we can dwell on the memory of those images from Afghanistan: the great waves of women hurrying to school.

…

What would happen if we spent some of the next 300 billion dollars (this is Liz Cheney’s thrust) on the raising of consciousness in the Islamic world? The effect would be inherently explosive, because the dominion of the male is Koranic – the unfalsifiable word of God, as dictated to the Prophet:

‘Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them in beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme’ (4:34).

Can we imagine seeing men on the march in defence of their right to beat their wives? And if we do see it, then what? Would that win hearts and minds? The martyrs of this revolution would be sustained by two obvious truths: the binding authority of scripture, all over the world, is very seriously questioned; and women, by definition, are not a minority. They would know, too, that their struggle is a heroic assault on the weight of the past – the alpweight of 14 centuries.

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I will never forget the look on the gatekeeper’s face, at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, when I suggested, perhaps rather airily, that he skip some calendric prohibition and let me in anyway. His expression, previously cordial and cold, became a mask; and the mask was saying that killing me, my wife, and my children was something for which he now had warrant. I knew then that the phrase ‘deeply religious’ was a grave abuse of that adverb. Something isn’t deep just because it’s all that is there; it is more like a varnish on a vacuum. Millennial Islamism is an ideology superimposed upon a religion – illusion upon illusion. It is not merely violent in tendency. Violence is all that is there.

They think of us as inferior, arrogant, and sinful. It might have been acceptable for us do so in isolation but we, the west, tempt and corrupt them. And even worse we have been destroying their culture via our temptations and demonstrating their inferiority. It’s sort of an extreme case of When Prophecy Fails. Not only must they increase their proselyting when their prophecy of superiority fails they must convert or kill the unbelievers.

The suggested solution here is interesting and worthy of throwing into our multiple front attack on Islamic extremism–liberate the women.

Quote of the day–William F. Buckley, Jr.

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The state is a divine institution. Without it we have anarchy, and the lawlessness of anarchy is counter to the natural law: so we abjure all political theories which view the state as inherently and necessarily evil. But it is the state which has been in history the principal instrument of abuse of the people, and so it is central to the conservatives’ program to keep the state from  accumulating any but the most necessary powers.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
[So why do conservatives think it is so important to get the state involved in sexual preferences and practices?–Joe]

Quote of the day–Emma Goldman

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If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

Emma Goldman
[I’m not quite that cynical but it does have a grain of truth in it. Think McCain-Feingold.–Joe]

Confronting your accusers

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Part of due process is being able to confront your accuser(s). Apparently that isn’t part of the law in some cases in the UK and this guy spent five years in jail before they figured out the accuser was a liar:

A father who served five years in jail for sexually assaulting a woman had his conviction quashed yesterday after new evidence suggested his victim was a liar who inflicted her own injuries.

Warren Blackwell, 36, embraced his wife, Tanya, outside the Court of Appeal in London, saying he would always love her for standing by him. But the ordeal made him “a very angry man indeed”.

“It took the police and the justice system nine months to convict me of a crime that not only did I not commit, but a crime that never even took place,” he said in a statement read by his solicitor.

And not only that she still can’t be named:

“It has taken almost seven years to clear my name.” The court was told that the woman, who cannot be named, had made strikingly similar claims of other sex attacks, had an ability to lie and a possible propensity to self harm.

…

Mr Justice Tugendhat said that when Parliament passed the law granting lifetime anon-ymity to complainants in sex cases it did not contemplate someone acting as she had.

“There may, in future, be another case in which she makes allegations against another man.”

We have a Constitution which was designed to prevent these sort of abuses by government. It’s too bad our government doesn’t abide by it. But at least it gives us a clear goal in our pursuit of regaining our freedom.

Magic vs. jihad

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Reader, friend, and Boomershooter Sean sent me a link to this article in the Weekly Standard, Return of the Tribes. It’s kind of a long article but all very interesting. Near the end is a section on Magic vs. jihad and from there Peters goes on to explain that “magic” is an essential part of dealing with people and how the magic of the forests and jungles in the hands of people that didn’t even have the wheel defeated the Muslim jihad that had swept through nearly every other culture the Muslim encountered:

The spread of Islam into Europe and Africa struck very different, but equally potent, barriers in the north and south. In Europe, it could not overcome a rival monotheist faith with its own universalist vision. In West Africa, Islam stopped, roughly five centuries ago, when it left the deserts and grasslands to enter the African forest, that potent domain of magic.

It should excite far more interest than it has that a warrior faith with an unparalleled record of conquest and conversion dead-ended when it reached the realms of illiterate tribes that had not mastered the wheel: In the forests of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam could not conquer, could not convert, and could not convince. On their own turf, local beliefs proved more powerful than a faith that had swept over “civilized” continents.

His thesis is that essentially all people need magic in their lives. In our country we have our own substitutes for it. As Sean rightly surmised this would push a button of mine. Magic???? We don’t need to stinking magic! Well… maybe I don’t but most people do and failure to take this into account will result in unexpected results when you deal with them.

As Barb points out at times I am frequently bewildered at the unexpected results when I deal with people. Apparently it’s not that they are stupid, as I would like to claim, but that they believe in magic. I guess I can buy that. From airplane security to gun control to socialized medicine they all believe in magic not realizing it’s nothing but a comforting illusion.

Quote of the day–John Stuart Mill

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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

John Stuart Mill
[This reminds me of the famous quote by Churchill.–Joe]

Quote of the day–George W. Bush

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Today, America is fighting a war that is testing our Nation’s resolve. We are once again answering history’s call with confidence, and we know that freedom will prevail. Our brave men and women in uniform have stepped forward to fight our enemies abroad so that we do not have to face them here at home, and we are grateful for the courageous individuals bringing terrorists to justice around the world.

We are also confronting the extremists in the great ideological struggle of the 21st century. September the 11th made clear that, in the long run, the only way to secure our Nation is to advance liberty and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. By working together with our friends and allies, we are helping spread the blessings of freedom and laying the foundations of peace for generations to come.

George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
September 7, 2006
Patriot Day 2006

Quote of the day–Henry Ward Beecher

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The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

Henry Ward Beecher
[Which is why we are supposed to have a limited government with enumerated powers.–Joe]

Quote of the day–John F. Kennedy

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There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

John F. Kennedy
[Appliciable to freedom activists as well as our fight against Islamic extremists.–Joe]

Proof by ridicule

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I just love it when people attempt to prove their point without addressing your point, supply facts, or even present a logical argument.

Probably my favorite of these techniques is proof by ridicule. I just became aware of someone addressing some of my writings in this manner as in, “Incidentally, this is the stupidest thing i’ve read so far today.” An earlier, even more blatant case is here.

Another methodology that gets high praise from me is proof by vigorous assertion–as in this case.

I would like to ask, “Who do they think they have positively influenced in this manner?” But I know that expecting people to be rational is irrational and that a great many people will think such methods are irrefutable when it allows them to continuing to believe what they want to believe. This is, of course, just a minor variation of Paul Simon’s acute observation.

Still, the people in the “undecided” category will have a greater tendency to “vote your way” when presented with such proofs by people that lack sufficient character to admit they were wrong. It can be frustrating but it’s not a fruitless exercise if it’s a public debate. One-on-one you might as well walk away from it. As Dale Carnegie said, “Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.”

Another applicable Dale Carnegie quote on this topic will be used for the QOD tomorrow.

Quote of the day–Clayton Cramer

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Osama bin Laden and his fellow jihadis may well have figured out that the only way that they can continue to feel good about their place in the world is by reducing the West to the same level of desperate impoverishment as the Arab world. This also explains the left’s alliance with bin Laden almost from the beginning–they also share this resentment that the West isn’t desperately poor (but not enough to give up their private jets and Ferraris).

Clayton Cramer
September 3, 2006
A Dark Thought as We Approach The Fifth Anniversary of 9/11

The “Right” to Enslave

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First:  Thank you, Joe, for allowing me to post on your blog.  The trouble is I have this terrible habit of writing whole essays (but I did get freedom, gun rights and sex into a single issue):

Years ago I had a conversation with a man who considered himself a libertarian– one who had been reading Ayn Rand’s definitive work, “Capitalism”. He persisted in trying to convince me that “state’s rights” might properly involve the right to “allow” slavery if the people of that state so choose. It took some doing before I could get him to admit that just maybe, there can be no right to enslave, because such a “right” involved the blatant violation of rights.

I ran across two examples of this kind of silliness today.  One was in a discussion of self protection rights. A state “shall issue” concealed carry law, it was asserted, would take away “local discretion”, or to put it another way, it would deny local governments the “right” to ban the carrying of concealed guns. In another discussion I heard of the practice of removing a girl’s clitoris being described as though it were a right, or as a “traditional cultural practice” that certain peoples had a right to exercise.

In both cases, there is desire to define the protection of Liberty (the right to bear arms, or the right to keep your body parts) as “taking away local discretion” as though local “discretion” (to impose force upon individuals) is the same thing as Liberty. Lets apply that position to some other hallmarks of a free society: Nation-wide Emancipation denies “local discretion” regarding the keeping of slaves. The First Amendment takes away “local discretion” regarding the confiscation of computers and printing machines or the forced shut-down of local radio stations, and it takes away “local discretion” to ban Jews from owning land.

I guess we’re not “free” after all if we don’t have “local discretion” to ban or confiscate anything we want, or to cut various body parts off of anyone we want, so long as it gives us the sort of “Culture” we desire for “Our Community” and what about “democracy” after all? (Is anyone else reminded of Jim Jones at this point?)

Such an attitude is rooted in a fairly complete lack of principles and a total ignorance of the U.S. Constitution and history. Government’s job, in the uniquely American sense, is to protect us from force and fraud, to ensure our right to life and property, and to ensure our right to peaceable, voluntary association and exchange with others.

That’s it. Whether government has “local discretion” or “regional discretion”, or “global discretion” to control us, rob us, allow our neighbors to cut pieces off us, or enslave us, the outcome is going to be very much the same—violation, stagnation, decay, and suffering.

Government, properly, has only responsibilities. We as individuals retain all the discretion, and we as individuals, or as collectives, do not have any “right” to initiate force or fraud upon anyone, no matter how wonderful and “Cultured” it might make us feel. Is that so terribly difficult to understand?

Quote of the day–Benjamin Franklin

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We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.

Benjamin Franklin
[Gun owners, are you listening? Anti-war activists, are you listening?–Joe]

An Invitation to Islam

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I just watched An Invitation to Islam. While the very first of it has English subtitles most of it is in English. My favorite parts was where the guy says:

Islam is the only religion acceptable to God.

…

God recognizes no separation between religion and state.

…

He has no need for the legislatures and parliaments which you in the west have, to put in mildly, used to legislate yourselves into a prison of your own making. Who in his right mind would want to legislate himself to death like you have done to yourselves?

This is the religion that executes teachers who dare to instruct women, stones to death women suspected of adultery, and beheads homosexuals.

We must Destroy Their Culture.

Monitoring

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From the Chicago Tribune (and here):

In a documentary taped earlier but scheduled to be broadcast Sunday on the BBC, Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch, said that “thousands” of British Muslims are now being monitored by police and intelligence agencies.

And from The Observer:

Police are investigating a network of terror training camps across Britain which they fear are nurturing a new wave of home-grown Islamic extremists. The investigation is linked to raids late on Friday in which anti-terrorism officers arrested 14 people.

Yesterday police also sealed off a school in East Sussex run by an Islamic charity, Jameah Islamiyah, in the grounds of which The Observer understands the jailed cleric Abu Hamza secretly ran terror camps, training young militant Muslim men to use firearms.

…

A counter-terrorism official described the arrests as part of a ‘new plank’ of attack against Islamic terrorists in Britain, one that targets their ‘upstream’ activities. ‘It is not just about disrupting specific plots,’ the source said. ‘It is about closing down their opportunities to plan these attacks. Those that set up terror training camps are very much in our sights.’

The source said they were not just talking about military-style camps, but bases where religious extremists ‘bonded’ and indoctrination took place preparing young extremists to become suicide bombers.

The source refused to quantify the number of camps they were investigating, but confirmed there were likely to be several around the UK, both in metropolitan areas and remote rural regions.

The Observer understands camps have operated in some of Britain’s most isolated areas including Scotland, Wales and the Lake District. There has long been speculation that Abu Hamza operated a training camp in the Brecon Beacons in Wales and an unknown location in Scotland. At least two of the 7/7 bombers were known to have gone on white water trips in North Wales before their lethal attacks in London, and the use of activity-based training camps are suspected of playing a pivotal role in preparing young extremists.

At first glance this might seem reasonable. But what of the precedent being set? What if it were Jews being monitored and their firearms training being investigated in Germany in 1938? For those that don’t pay that much attention the German Weapons Control Act of 1938 forbid Jews from owning firearms.

I am certain we must Destroy Their Culture. But unless there is some probable cause (does being Muslim constitute probable cause?) I’m uncomfortable with widespread monitoring. Yes, I realize this is the U.K. we are talking about in this case but in many cases restrictions on human rights in the U.K. are a predictor of things to come in the U.S.

Sometimes it’s tempting to teach them a lesson

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Airport security is getting a lot of attention recently. And as I have often noted it doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny. Here is more data supporting my point:

NEW YORK, Sept 2 (Reuters) – The Transportation Security Administration is suspending installation of the only airport checkpoint device that automatically screens passengers for hidden explosives due to problems with the system’s reliability, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

“We are seeing some issues that we did not anticipate” with the devices known as “puffers,” the Times quoted Randy Null, the agency’s chief technology officer as saying.

Duh! It’s an insolvable problem.

They are trying however. I’m actually surprised at the level of effort they are putting into it–without realizing they can’t solve the problem:

Spread out on a table at the Transportation Security Laboratory outside Atlantic City last week, like a dim sum meal, was a collection of small dishes with samples of the explosives people here are working to defeat. They included Semtex, TNT, C4, British RDX and dynamite – several of which are popular among suicide bombers and have been used in successful airline plots – along with liquid explosives in bottles marked only “A,” “A1” and “B.”

Scientists and technicians carefully stuff these raw materials into computers, small electronic devices, shoes and cigar boxes, building every imaginable bomb and then testing them on detection equipment.

“We do our best to try to figure out all the options before someone else does,” said a laboratory technician who would identify himself only as “Mr. T” in accordance with a laboratory policy of not identifying staff members.

Criticism of the Homeland Security Department and the Transportation Security Administration is not so much directed at the 190 federal employees and contractors at the laboratory here, or at Susan Hallowell, the chemist who runs the place.

They are spending millions and millions of dollars on this and yet I am virtually certain that with a team of no more than five people and a couple hours of work by each team member we could shut down all commercial air traffic in the U.S. for a several days without breaking any existing explosives laws or anyone getting physically hurt (economic damage would be rather high however). Repeat once a week or so and within a couple months they would abandon their expensive and stupid attempts at preventing explosives from getting on planes.

But the problem is that most people really don’t appreciate being taught a lesson–especially if it makes them look incredibly stupid. If we were identified as their teachers, unlikely but possible, the odds are that the thanks we received would be in the form of free room and board and a “spouse” that rented us out several times a day for a couple packs of cigarettes.

Legal versus justice system

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This started out to be a comment to SayUncle’s post on jury nullication but ended up being a blog post instead.

We have a legal system. Not a justice system. I’m not saying this is avoidable, it’s just a statement of the facts.

IMHO our legal system is an approximation to a justice system. That given I fully agree there are lots of laws that need to be eliminated or changed. There is more than one path to that end. There is the obvious path through the legislature and is to be preferred but there are alternatives as well.

One alternate path to legal change is jury nullification. After I was on a jury I talked to the prosecutor about this very issue. Read about it here if you want.

Another path that is less palatable is demanding the vigorous enforcement of unjust laws. If fornication is against the law (it was in Idaho the last time I looked), so demand the unmarried child of the prosecutor, or police chief living with there significant other be prosecuted. Make a big stink about it such that it gets in the papers. Make it such that the law enforcement community of that jurisdiction comes out and literally says, “We will not prosecute cases under this law.” The law is, in essence, stricken from the books in that jurisdiction. The down side is that if you can’t find someone that is “conviction proof” to make the stink over you might end up with lot of “innocent” people convicted. If you can fill the jails with “innocent” people the legislature will fix the problem because of the population at large will demand it. But, in essence, you will be creating martyrs for your cause. You should get their permission to be martyred before doing so. It is considered very rude to martyr someone without their permission and could result in their own version of justice being visited upon you.

Quote of the day–George W. Bush

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Despite their differences, these groups form the outline of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology. And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam.

George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
In a speech to veterans at an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City.
August 31, 2006

Released felons and RKBA

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SayUncle brings up an interesting point. I don’t bring it up very often, but my position has long been that if someone has proved themselves so dangerous to society they can’t be trusted with possession of a gun then they can’t be trusted with a can of gasoline and a book of matches either. Either lock them up and try to keep them from possessing any weapons or let them out where they have access to all types of weapons. Prohibiting them from possession of a firearm just doesn’t make any sense to me.