Quote of the day—Larry Sanger

Wikipedia, like many other deeply biased institutions of our brave new digital world, has made itself into a kind of thought police that has de facto shackled conservative viewpoints with which they disagree. Democracy cannot thrive under such conditions: I maintain that Wikipedia has become an opponent of vigorous democracy. Democracy requires that voters be given the full range of views on controversial issues, so that they can make up their minds for themselves. If society’s main information sources march in ideological lockstep, they make a mockery of democracy. Then the wealthy and powerful need only gain control of the few approved organs of acceptable thought; then they will be able to manipulate and ultimately control all important political dialogue.

Larry Sanger
Founder of Wikipedia
June 30, 2021
Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Codrea

I’d argue that one of the most in-your-face tyrannical phrases ever constructed is:

“RESTRICTED FOR GOVERNMENT OR LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY”

David Codrea
June 29, 2021
Second Amendment will be Nullified if ‘Common Use’ is Restricted to ‘Popularity’
[A far more appropriate, and almost never used phrase, is found here:

Law Enforcement Restrictions

Governments that are unfriendly to basic human rights are not allowed the use…

It appears most people are of the opinion that our public servants are actually masters of the public. This attitude needs to change.—Joe]

Quote of the day—@MyBoxMyChoice21

Zero humans need a weapon that powerful. Most have them to compensate for s.

@MyBoxMyChoice21
Tweeted on June 23, 2021
[The irony of someone having a user name asserting freedom of choice and making a tweet about others having no need to make choices for themselves is surely lost on someone so stupid they claim an AR-15 is particularly powerful or that it is used as a penis substitute.

But, such is the situation with people who have little or no respect for civil rights.

They have childish insults. We have SCOTUS decisions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

Political elites see California as their own little kingdom with their own special laws, and they plan to eventually spread those laws across America using California as the model. But, if such laws are overturned as unconstitutional, then the precedent actually works in reverse. Now, the leftists are concerned that an overturned gun ban in CA means more blue states will follow and their entire gun grabbing scheme will go out the window.

Brandon Smith
June 11, 2021
The Real Reasons Why California Leftists Are Terrified Of The AR-15
[The optimist in me sees the extremist gun restrictions in California gun as an opportunity. They have pushed things far past what normal people could possibly view as reasonable it makes it easier to get precedent set in our favor.

Once we have a firm defensive line we can then attack at whatever weak spot we chose and establish another firm defensive line. That is how we achieved shall issue concealed carry and how we are getting constitutional carry. That was mostly in the legislative domain but the same battle plan should work in the domain of the courts.

I would love to see, as Lyle demands, prosecutions of the perpetrators. But, the same reason California presents itself as an opportunity for us makes the prosecution angle difficult or perhaps impossible. The political jurisdictions with the best opportunities for prosecutions are the jurisdictions least likely to be friendly for prosecutions. We can escalate failures in the courts to friendly territory, but we cannot initiate prosecutions in friendly territory —Joe]

Quote of the day—Kat Timpf @KatTimpf

The government is made up of people in power who wanted to be in power and I think it’s important to remember that.

Kat Timpf @KatTimpf
Tweeted on June 25, 2021
[Never forget there are people who openly claim, “I was born to regulate.” There are also people who believe they are “born to rule”. They may be less public about it but they exist.

Power is addicting for these people. They get a thrill out of wielding power. And as time goes on to achieve the same thrill requires more and more power.

I suspect this was one of the reasons for the U.S. Constitution to have enumerated powers. Of course, as a practical matter, that didn’t last long.

A case could be made for nominations for political office to be made via lottery system. Perhaps then people would see the advantages of minimizing the power of government to the bare minimum of what cannot be done well via the private sector. But I suspect some other “lesson” and “solution” would be discovered to enable power hungry monsters to take over government.

I’m certain as long as there is a need for governments there will be a need for the citizen option of rooftop vetoing government overreach.—Joe]

Important 4th Amendment case

The Bill of Rights isn’t completely dead:

Appeals Court Rules Aerial Police Tracking of Citizens Violates Fourth Amendment

The use of surveillance planes in Baltimore to track people’s movement for long periods without a warrant is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The case revolved around an air surveillance program run by the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) called Aerial Investigation Research (AIR). Beginning in 2016, BPD announced it would be using cameras attached to planes to conduct aerial surveillance to fight crime.

Quote of the day—Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan

Here’s how you take on #BigTech:

-Speed up the legal process to break them up.

-Take away their liability protections by killing Section 230 as we know it.

-Create a private right of action to sue the companies when they censor you.

We’re drafting a bill to do just that.

Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan
Tweeted on June 23, 2021
[I would like to see 1,000 old laws wiped from the books for each new law they pass. Even then, I would like to see serious discussion on how we can achieve the desired goals without any new laws.

That said, something along these lines does have some appeal.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gad Saad

Utopians believe that the world could be a perfect place except for this one group that is stopping the world from becoming a perfect place.

Gad Saad
May 31, 2021
Woke Ideology Mimics Precursors to Totalitarian Slaughter, Experts Say
[See also this YouTube video.

We are facing “Woke” and Marxist utopians infiltrated into government, schools, and many large businesses. They are accumulating power and each concession of power increases their lust for more.

History shows us this is a well worn path to genocide.

Prepare accordingly.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kevin Baker

Well, poverty won the war on poverty, and terror is still thriving…

I can’t wait for the war on guns.

WarOnDrugs

Kevin Baker
Posted on Facebook June 18, 2021
[Drugs are consumables. So it should be as easy as, “Just ban them an they will all be gone in a few months.” Right?

There are, at most, a few hundred active terrorists in this country. So it should be as easy as, “Just put them on a list, watch them, then arrest them every time they do something as innocuous as littering and they get a hint and leave or flip out and the cops can shoot them?” Right?

Guns are not consumables. They can easily last 100 years if properly cared for. There are something like 80 to 100 million gun owners in the U.S. in possession of hundreds of millions of firearms.

I know I’m not the first to have said this, but people are not setting new gun buying records nearly every year for the last 10 years with the expectation they would peacefully turn them in when they were banned.

Do the numbers and provide an estimate on the probability of success of a “war on guns”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tim Pool @Timcast

I already have the right to bear arms wherever I choose

its the criminal state and the police that prevent me from doing so

Tim Pool @Timcast
Tweeted on April 26, 2021
[And so is in most of the world for many decades. The people, world wide, have a lot of work to do once we set the example and have the criminals in our country taken care of.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

Gun control is the big line in the sand for most law abiding conservatives and moderates, and we have grown tired of the debate because it’s no longer a debate, it’s a imposition of ideology and cultism. All the facts are on the side of gun owners. All the legal protections are on the side of gun owners. All the moral dynamics are on the side of gun owners. As long as we stand our ground, there is nothing that leftists can do about it.

They can continue to lie, they can continue to threaten and they can continue exploiting emotional arguments, but they’ll NEVER get the guns.

Brandon Smith
June 11, 2021
The Real Reasons Why California Leftists Are Terrified Of The AR-15
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Milo Yiannopoulos@m

What happens in America in the next 50 years matters more to the human species than the Industrial Revolution. More than the Reformation. More than both world wars. We are living through the most significant time since Jesus Christ walked the earth.

Milo Yiannopoulos@m
Posted on June 13, 2021
[I’m willing to accept the hypothesis as plausible. But I’m going to need more evidence to be convinced.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson

Our 21st century revolutionaries are multibillionaires with flip-flops, tie-dye T-shirts and nose rings, but with the absolute power and desire to censor how half the country communicates — or cancel them entirely.

They don’t flock to campus free-speech areas; they are the campus administrators who ban free speech.

They don’t picket outside the Pentagon; they are inside the Pentagon.

They don’t chant “eat the rich”; they are the rich who eat at Napa Valley’s French Laundry.

They don’t protest “uptight” values, because they are more intolerant and puritanical than any Victorian.

They don’t believe in racial quotas based on “proportional representation,” because they are racists who demand underrepresentation of “bad” racial groups and overrepresentation of “good” groups. The color of our skin is their gospel, not the content of our character.

Our revolutionaries hate dissent. They destroy any who question their media-spun hoaxes.

Truth is their enemy, and fear is their weapon. Sixties paranoid revolutionaries warned about George Orwell’s “1984,” but our revolutionaries are “1984.”

Victor Davis Hanson
June 10, 2021
This Isn’t Your Father’s Left-Wing Revolution
[There are some astute observations here.—Joe]

Quote of the day—George Skelton

All these bad guys are law-abiding until they’re not. Then they sometimes become heavily armed mass killers.

George Skelton
June 7, 2021
Column: An AR-15 is like a pocket knife? Maybe federal judges shouldn’t get lifetime appointments
[This is just one item which illustrates my point. From the same article is another item:

“The Bill of Rights prevents the tyranny of the majority from taking away the rights of a minority,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

Sure, but in a democracy, there’s also something called majority rule.

I sometimes give people such as him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they do not really understand the content and/or intent of the Bill Of Rights, right? Skelton makes it clear he understands and that he wants to do away with it.

He understands the BOR protects the rights of the minority from the will of the majority and he wants that protection eliminated. He understands innocent until proven guilty and wants to replace it with guilty until (never) proven innocent enough to own a common firearm.

Respond appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Bedard

The Biden administration’s new push to regulate highly popular AR-style pistols could net Uncle Sam billions in new tax revenue and rub out a small industry involved in the production of the firearms.

In a newly proposed regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, most owners will have to pay a $200 tax per weapon or radically change it or turn the gun in to be destroyed.

And because ATF said it doesn’t expect anyone to give up their guns, the money would roll in if the rule is adopted.

Paul Bedard
June 9, 2021
New taxes under Biden gun registration push will reach billions
[At first reading I laughed at the ignorance. Apparently this knucklehead had not thought of the option which will be taken by 90% or more—non-compliance.

But it’s possible he and others have thought of that and are telling the lie to try and sell the idea. You can imagine fellow Democrats saying, “Tax the knuckle-dragging gun nuts and use the money for funding abortions or health care for illegal immigrants just for the giggles.”

And a still darker option that is just as likely is the observation made by Ayn Rand:

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

And there darker options still. But many of those shadows are cast in the other direction.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Neo

A brand new day has dawned, in which the ACLU is in favor of civil liberties only for those who support the left, making the “civil liberties” in the title something like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Love, the opposite of what it professes to be.

Neo
June 8, 2021
The ACLU has made the name of the organization Orwellian
[Their distain for the 2nd Amendment is a concrete example.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Inez Stepman

He wants that unelected department staffed by trained academics, presumably by him, to have veto power over every municipal state and federal law in the country, if it creates, in his eyes, any kind of disparity between groups. And he wants that body to have veto power over who stands for political office.

I call it woke Stalinism … his position is that a group of unelected academics should have complete veto power over all laws in the United States, and kind of similar to how it works with the mullahs in Iran, to basically select the slate of candidates. The people may vote, but only on the candidates or among the candidates selected by people who think like Ibram X. Kendi.

Inez Stepman
June 4, 2021
Biden’s Proposed Funding of Critical Race Theory Puts US on a ‘Very Dark Path’: Inez Stepman
[We live in interesting times.

Complete elimination of disparity can only be achieved by death for all.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Francisco

All of which points directly to many Americans increasingly realizing that individual independence, sustainability, and resilience matters, and it’s not a big reach from there to deciding “if I’m taking care of myself, why do I need any of those people?” Official Washington can safely be left behind their patrolled fence, they’ll be superfluous, a theatrical performance only for each other.

We’re certainly not there yet, but I think I may be able to see parts of it from here. Don’t stop working toward the goal, and provide what assistance you can to those traveling the path with you.

Francisco
June 3, 2021
Comment to Quote of the day—Caroline Glick
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Why are anti-gun people so violent?

Yesterday morning I got a phone call. It went something like this:

Caller (voice of a young woman): Is this Joe Huffman?
Joe: Yes.
Caller: I’m <full name>. I live in <state>. You have a tweet of mine on your blog. It says, “<two sentences giving insight into why the right to keep and bear arms is important>”. I still believe that. But even though I have deleted my twitter account people are still able to connect me with that tweet. I’m getting a lot of hate mail and death threats because of that. I’m only <age> years old. I can’t really deal with this. Can you remove that blog post?
Joe: I’m in meeting at work right now. If you will send me an email with a link to the blog post so I can find it easily I’ll take it down later today. Can you do that?
Caller: Yes. I can do that. Thank you sir.

This was the email thread:

Sent: Wednesday, June 2, 2021 10:19 AM
To: blog@joehuffman.org

Link to the post  <deleted>

From: Joe Huffman
Sent:
Wednesday, June 2, 2021 11:21 AM

The post is now gone.

It so terrible that something like this would generate so much hate.

If it would be of any use to you I can go through my log files and find the IP addresses of everyone (or during certain time frames) who viewed this blog post. Cyber security professionals (this is what I do) working with the police can use this information to (in most, but not all cases) find the person behind the IP address.

Regards,

Joe Huffman
Cell: 208-301-4254
Blog: https://blog.joehuffman.org/

Sent: Wednesday, June 2, 2021 11:22 AM
To:
Joe Huffman

Thank you so much for your help sir.

I find it very telling that both the anti-gun people are sending out death threats and that they are targeting a woman so young she cannot legally purchase a handgun rather than me.

Why are they so violent? It’s part of their nature.

Why are they targeting a young woman with her right to keep and bear arms infringed by the government rather than me? That is a rhetorical question. We all know the answer. And this gives us all the information we need to know about what they will do if we are disarmed.

I wish I could reproduce that tweet without increasing her risk. Her experience demonstrates the accuracy of her tweet.

Prepare appropriately.

Quote of the day—Caroline Glick

The polarization of opinion on Israel that we are witnessing in American politics between Republicans who support Israel and Democrats who oppose Israel, is an expression of a much larger division within American society. The heartbreaking but undeniable fact is that today you can’t talk about “America” as a single political entity.

Today there are two Americas, and they cannot abide by one another. One America – traditional America – loves Israel and America. The other America – the New America – hates Israel and doesn’t think much of America, either.

Traditional America believes that the U.S. brought the promise of liberty to the world and that even though it is far from perfect, the United States is the greatest country in human history. In the eyes of the citizens of Traditional America, Israel is a kindred nation and the U.S.’s best friend and most valued ally in the Middle East.

New America, in contrast, believes that America was born in the sin of slavery. New Americans insist America will remain evil and an object of scorn at home and abroad so long it refuses to exchange its values of liberty, capitalism, equal opportunity and patriotism with the values of racialism and equity, socialism, equality of outcomes, and globalization. For New Americans, just as the U.S. was born in the sin of white supremacy so Israel was born in the sin of Zionism. In New America, Israel will have no right to exist so long as it clings to its Jewish national identity, refusing to become a “state of all its citizens.”

Caroline Glick
May 28, 2021
Dark Clouds: Google, Amazon, Israel and the New America
[Via email from Paul K.

In recent months, more so than in previous years, it has been made more and more clear the conflict of visions (no, not this conflict of visions) may be irreconcilable via peaceful means. One vision is of collective rights, planning, and responsibility. The other is of individual rights, planning, and responsibility.

This collective rights and collective responsibility inevitably lead to individual injustice. The process of achieving equality of outcomes because a moral imperative and an easy sale to many people. Today we have calls for reparations. Even if this were conceded it would not end. Distribution of property equally or according to need will follow. Some time after that would be the demands for retribution. And so it would continue until the final true equality is clearly in sight and a remaining majority, or powerful enough minority, put a stop true equality.

The bottom line is that achieving equality of outcomes becomes an unending task because:

Full equality comes with death. And it should come as no surprise the political left is well acquainted with death on a very large scale.

This is the unspoken promise of the collective vision. Today, the collective vision is making itself more visible and more insistent on making “progress”.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]