If there are adjustments we need to make as we move forward, we have an open ear.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
November 16, 2010
TSA: Despite objections, all passengers must be screened
[I seriously doubt whether her ear can open wide enough because I think the entire TSA (A Security Theater) should be forcibly shoved into her ear and left there.—Joe]
I believe it is a mistake for us to borrow $700 billion to make tax cuts permanent for millionaires and billionaires. It won’t significantly boost the economy and it’s hugely expensive, so we can’t afford it.
President Barack Obama
November 14, 2010
Obama Says He’s Committed to Middle-Class Tax Cut Extension
[Just the phrase “we can’t afford it” and the word “expensive” in reference to a tax cut tells you how out of touch with reality he is or desires to change your perception of it. The proper usage of those words is more like, ‘You can’t afford spending money on expensive items.” You use a different set of words to describe taking money from people at gun point.—Joe]
It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.
Samuel Adams
[There was a time when the defenders of the Second Amendment were in the minority. We fought on, even those many believed it was a losing battle, in part because we believed it was the honorable thing to do. We are now winning.
This quote reminds me of the famous Barry Goldwater quote which is also quite good.—Joe]
I couldn’t care less about truth and falsity or causation and correlation, or all that other double talk the pro-gun crowd like so much.
MikeB302000
November 12, 2010
Austin, Texas Murders Way Up
[We’ve known this for a long time but it’s nice for him to admit it. If only all the anti-gun people would do so it would make things a lot easier.—Joe]
How about we subsidize the gun safe business instead of pissing money down the ATFE-shaped rathole? If the VPC really wants to stop gun violence, offering low-cost gun safes would have more impact than supporting the Agency that Can’t Shoot Straight and/or introducing or tightening gun control legislation.
Robert Farago
November 12, 2010
Violence Policy Center: Great Landing, Wrong Airport
[The reason this approach is not taken is because the people that support the Brady Campaign and/or the VPC have a solution in search of supporting evidence. They are not searching for a solution to a problem.
It’s like someone looked at the crime rate among people with non-white skin compared to white-skin and used that as justification for laws such as curfews, registration, tracking, and even preemptive imprisonment of non-whites all the while claiming they were intended to “prevent colored violence”. Hence the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence would have a sister organization called “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Black Violence.” They don’t seem to understand that “preventing crime” in this manner is akin to claiming someone is “guilty until proven innocent” as well as infringing on a host of other guaranteed rights.—Joe]
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
John Adams
[The only way to accomplish this is to have very strict limits on the power of government. Hence a constitution of enumerated powers. Now we just need a way to enforce those constitutional limits to power.—Joe]
Medicine only works when those in the job WANT to work harder to help people, and that happens most consistently when both those served and the server receive benefit from the service. Medical providers aren’t mercenary per se, but when almost every decision you make gets parsed by multiple, NON-Involved people, the only compensatory mechanism is financial reward.
Bill
November 8, 2010
Comment to Following the U.K. medical model.
[Wife Barb works in the medical field as well and what Bill says both here and in the rest of his comment matches her experience as well. Government involvement in health care does not improve it. It subjects it to review by people that weren’t there and don’t have near the training that you do. It makes it time consuming and frustrating dealing with the bureaucrats rather than working with the patients. This increases the cost. This drives away those that are passionate about improving peoples lives. This retains people who can tolerate pushing paper and drives away those that find providing good quality medical treatment rewarding.—Joe]
I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.
Mahatma Gandhi
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.LXXXVII, p.394-5
[This was brought to you via email from Ry who was reminded of it via my Philosophy Questions.
The pacifist, or anyone, who claims, “Violence never solves anything.” Or, “Violence is never the answer” enables the murder or enslavement of themselves and/or their followers. Gandhi was smart enough to realize the principles he adhered necessitated this outcome.
The principles of Gandhi do have application in many situations but not in all. The consequence of not having a viable “Plan B” if non-violence fails in the face of violent oppression is the extinction of your society and perhaps your species. In the long run the pure pacifist guarantees the occupation of their place in history and the elimination of their existence in the future.
I am of the opinion there exist certain conditions which trigger a more Heinlein like approach to the situation. The Second Amendment guarantees we have the option available when it is needed.—Joe]
…just because something is fun, and scares away weenies, doesn’t mean that it’s stupid.
Bill Whittle
November 4, 2010
What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights
[Freedom is scary for a lot of people, and it means that people who hate you can’t tell you what to do or how to do it, just because they hate you. It sucks for them, and it makes them angry. Hence, freedom pisses people off. Hence, if you love freedom, you have to come to grips with the fact that people are going to hate you. Embrace it, Little Grasshopper. Or as Zaphod Beeblebrox said after having a nuclear missile attack launched against his ship; “Man, This is Great! It means we’re really on to something if they’re trying kill us!”–Lyle]
That was the best thing about turning 16 years old. I could drive a car by myself and buy dynamite without my parents knowing about it.
Ry Jones
November 6, 2010
[A bunch of us were talking about how things used to be back when our country was a little freer. The quote above was one of Ry’s contribution to the conversation. This was said while making explosives to blow up some pumpkins.—Joe]
Somebody, somewhere, needs to shake us from this stupor of blind policy and blind obedience. I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t some test — a test of just how stupid Americans are. If TSA said that from now on we had to hop on one foot while humming “God Bless America,” would we do that too?
That’d be ludicrous, certainly, but how much more ludicrous is it, really, than asking people to remove their belts for purposes of walking through a nonexistent body scanner?
Patrick Smith
November 4, 2010
Airport security reaches new levels of absurdity–Here’s what happens when you refuse to comply with TSA’s “new rule.” Blue-glove groping, anyone?
[Smith, a pilot, attempts to go through A Security Theater. They tell him he must take off his belt. The following then occurred:
“But … What if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll have to go through secondary screening and a full pat-down.”
And so I opted for the secondary screening. Not that a pat-down is reasonable, either, but I did not want to submit to something that I felt was excessive and ridiculous without a reason or explanation.
I was asked to stand in a cordoned-off area, where I waited for several minutes as guards stood around looking at me. Finally a supervisor came over, wearing disposable blue gloves, to administer my secondary screening.
“Sir,” he said, “um, you still need to remove your belt.”
“What do you mean? I chose this so I could leave the belt on.”
“No, either way the belt has to come off.”
“What? And if it doesn’t come off?”
“Then I cannot let you through.”
So, it would seem, secondary screening isn’t really “secondary” at all. Instead of simply taking off my belt, I get a full, blue-glove groping and I have to take off my belt. Either that or I’m not allowed to fly the plane.
I could be wrong but I’m sensing that A Security Theater has almost reached the point where they are going to get slapped down a notch or two. They should be wiped off the face of the planet but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.—Joe]
When the People contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their Victory but new Masters.
George Savile
[This seems to be particularly true when the contention is via the ballot box.—Joe]
We have the belief that, through voting, our voice is being heard. How is my voice being heard if the ideas I cherish are defeated, and those I abhor prevail? How have I accomplished anything other than giving my consent to being ruled, potentially by someone my ideological opposite?
Well, I do not consent, and that is my vote.
Laurel
November 2, 2010
Check your premises.
[There is more than a little bit of truth to this but at the current time I’m not seeing “I do not consent” making a big impact or even the potential of a big impact. What are you going to do instead? Vote from the roof top on the day after? The last I heard that hasn’t started yet. Until it does voting seems to me to be the better alternative. And even if you do start applying “Second Amendment remedies” I don’t see voting with paper yesterday being a blocking issue for voting with copper jacketed lead today.—Joe]
Sounds like it’s time to put ’em up against the wall. Without the right to vote, there’s nothing left but direct force.
Michael Maio
Sunday 11/22/98 9:37 PM
SOC Libertarian Discussion
Microsoft Public Folder
In response to a report that the Federal Government concealed the results of an election to make marijuana legal for medical uses.
[I was reminded of this by what Alan said.
It’s something to keep in mind on this election day.—Joe]
When they left this afternoon, Randy said Dan insisted on being the last one out out of the house. He locked the door behind him ending 62 years of residence on the place.
Doug Huffman
October 30, 2010
[In the spring of 1927 our Dad was not quite four years old but he remembers coming back to Idaho with his Aunt Pet and Uncle Walt. His mother had died two years earlier from T.B. and his aunt and uncle took him to California for the winter while his Dad, Cecil, stayed in Idaho to complete the purchase of a new home and farm land. When they drove by his Uncle Frank’s home he asked why they didn’t stop because that was where they had lived before they went to California. His Aunt, Frank’s and his mother’s sister, told him they had a new home. They drove on for almost another mile and as they went around a bend in the road his aunt pointed out a house on the hill above them. “That’s our new home”, she told him. Although none of the original buildings from 1927 are still standing there are newer building visible in the map image below. On the left side of the image is the location of my Great Uncle Frank’s home. On the right side of the image there is sort of a ghost road that makes a bend through some trees to the east of some buildings. That bend in the road was the site of the county road until the early 1970’s and is the bend in the road where Dad first saw the place that was to be his home for 18 years when he was growing up.
Cecil, Walt, Pet, and Ollie (first a hired assistant and later Cecil’s wife), dad and his three cousins lived there from 1927 until 1945. The land was in another family’s hands until 1949 when Dan (Randy’s father—see the quote above) bought the land.
It’s bit off topic for this post, but Dan was a Jeep driver for General George Patten during much of WW II. I sometimes wanted to ask him about that but it always seems like there wasn’t the time to do that.
My brothers and I heard stories of the dogs, cats, cows, horses, pigs, crops, trucks, cars, and tractors of when Dad grew up on the farm. We lived about two miles west on another piece of property that Mom and Dad bought when I was five years old. A few times Dan asked Dad to come over and help fix or inspect the windmill or ask a question about the granary or another of the original structures that my grandfather and great uncle built.
In the late 1960’s Mom and Dad bought the land to the north of Great Uncle Frank’s place. It is on the northern end of this land that I build the Taj Mahal to manufacture and store the explosives for Boomershoot. The participants at Boomershoot park their vehicles and set up their shelters and shooting positions on the land adjoining the NE corner. This piece of land was given to my Grandmother Huffman, Aunt Pet, and Aunt Ada (sisters) by their father (and my Great Grandfather Carey) in about 1916.
In the map image below the shooters berm for Boomershoot is just under the “ce’ in “Nez Perce”. Shooters face almost directly south and shoot into a hillside that isn’t clearly a hillside in this image:
The pictures below are from about two weeks ago when my brothers and I walked around the farm where my Dad grew up:
This windmill was assembled and erected by my grandfather Huffman and Great Uncle Walt in 1940. It supplied the water to the farm until about 1972. Dad plans to restore it to functional condition.
This is part of the concrete foundation for the windmill.
This is the grain elevator Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Walt built in the granary which they also built.
We found old books in the original carpenter shop which had copyright dates in the 1930’s. One book that I opened had the names of my Dad’s cousins in it. Dad frequently told us stories of some of the things his Dad and Uncle Walt built in the shop. Things like Christmas gifts and a bobsled. Dad built a carpenter shop on our farm and when I climbed the ladder for the first time, a little over two weeks ago, into the shop my grandfather built, I knew my Dad had modeled his carpenter shop on the older one. And I recalled the bobsled Dad had built for my brothers and I.
Grandpa Huffman and Uncle Walt sold the farm because my Grandpa had heart problems caused by Scarlet Fever from much earlier and he wasn’t able to do the work the farm required. Grandpa spent the remainder of his life in California working as a carpenter, in a furniture store owned by one of his brothers, and was retired for several years before dying of a heart attack when I was about 8 years old.
Last Friday brother Doug and his wife Julie purchased the land with the buildings from Dan and his wife. The land on the south side of the road, also belonging to Dan and his wife, was purchased by my other brother Gary. This morning wife Barbara and I purchased the land from on the NW corner of South Road and Meridian Road from Randy and his wife. This land is directly south of the Boomershoot site and is part of the potential impact zone if stray bullets go over the hillside we shoot into.
This land deal is another reason for the light blog posting the last month or so.
It actually makes me as much sad as it does happy to have the land back in the family again. As Dan, Randy, and the rest of their family cleaned out the buildings and auctioned off the belongings they wouldn’t have a place to keep in their homes in town I imagined what it would feel like to do the same to the farm where I grew up. I could imagine what it would feel like to have Dad walk through the house we built when I was growing up. To have him lock the door and give the keys to someone else would be very, very painful. I know it was painful for Dan, Randy and their families. They put a lot of thought into it and rationally it was the proper decision to sell the place—Dan and his wife are at an age they can’t maintain the place anymore and have lived in town for the last few years.
They said it made it a little easier for them that it was a farm family and neighbors they had known for many decades but it was still a very hard and sad decision. They plan to come back in the spring and take pictures of the crops growing and I expect they will come back near harvest time to see that too. I know I would. And they will be welcome anytime.—Joe]
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H.L. Mencken
Minority Report, 1956
[Also note that security comes in two flavors. You can feel secure and you can actually be secure. Liberty has a strong tendency to make people feel less secure at the expense of true security. For example you can feel secure that the government will provide you with food and housing but your property will not be secure from government takings for redistribution. You can feel secure that the government will be able to find and extract a confession from criminals but the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures may be infringed or you may be compelled to testify against yourself or not have due process.
The vast majority of people have a strong preference for feeling secure. Hence there is a strong tendency to give up liberty for imagined safety and get neither.
I was reminded of this by this video (via Alan and Ry who also points out this relates to Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson) from Bruce Schneier:
Schneier points out that even when there is lots of data available, such as with cigarette smoking, it takes a long time to get people to change their behavior. It should come as no surprise it has taken us decades to make progress on the gun rights front.–Joe]
The clock is ticking down and this election is very much in play. Those who resign themselves to thinking otherwise are their own worst enemies.
Here it is in simple terms: A vote for someone other than Rossi is a vote for Murray. A vote for Murray is a vote for Schumer.
Any questions?
Dave Workman
October 29, 2010
High stakes for gun owners in Tuesday’s Senate election
[Polls put Murray and Rossi very, very close:
Indeed, Republicans got a good poll in Washington tonight, although it comes with some qualifications. The survey, from Rasmussen Reports, gave Dino Rossi a 1-point lead over Patty Murray, the Democrat. Rasmussen’s previous survey of the state had given Ms. Murray a 3-point lead.
Now for the qualifications: Rasmussen has had a rather different impression of the state than other pollsters. Since Labor Day, Rasmussen and its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research has polled the state seven times; four of their polls put Mr. Rossi ahead. By contrast, there have been nine polls of the state by companies other that Rasmussen. All nine of them gave Ms. Murray a lead, although usually by small margins.
Murray has never seen a gun control bill she didn’t like. Rossi is a good guy on guns and good on the economic issues as well.
If you are eligible to vote in Washington state please vote for Rossi. Remember how things went for Rossi in his last election. He needs enough votes to make another election theft improbable.—Joe]
Where’s the First Amendment map– one that tells us where in the U.S. we may and may not practice free speech? The First and Second are actual parts of the constitution, but the abortion map is blue all over (to protect the children I guess) and you don’t need a permit.
Lyle @ UltiMAK
October 28, 2010
Comment to My CCW map.
[I like the way he thinks. I wish I had thought of that.
As gun owners are so accustom to tolerating the infringements that we sometimes forget what it would be like to have our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms respected instead of infringed. We still have a lot more work to do.—Joe]
Government should stay out of the way of businesses trying to make it in these tough economic times, or in any times. Instead, government has become one of the biggest obstacles we face. It’s bad enough Phoenix has attacked our free speech, but now they’re messing with our Second Amendment rights, and right before an election too. People who support this ought to be removed from office and punished for such malfeasance.
Alan Korwin
October 27, 2010
Phoenix Censors “Gun Safety for Kids”
[There is a lot more information on this event that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Korwin has been in contact with Assistant Phoenix city attorney Ted Mariscal to try and clarify what changes need to be made to the message. Mariscal says it needs to be changed to meet his satisfaction but won’t say what would satisfy him.
As Tam said, “So, where do I go vote… for whoever’s gonna fire you?”—Joe]
We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.
Robert J. McCracken
[This ignores the Vikings who probably were looking for plunder rather than liberty. The American Indians probably crossed the Bearing Strait instead of the Atlantic and my guess is they were looking for happy hunting grounds instead of liberty. But still he has a valid point.
We are mostly descendants of people who desired to be free from rulers in Europe. Sometimes they wanted to create new rules which stifled liberty such as the Puritans and the Mormons but there was plenty of space where they could pretty much leave each other alone. The First Amendment insists they leave each other alone and lubricates the interactions sufficiently that for the most part things move along fairly smoothly.
When newcomers or mutants come along and start creating new rulers in this new land it creates friction, resentment, and resistance at a subconscious level. It’s in our genes. This is particularly true in the west. Most of the people who moved to the western part of this continent in the 1800s were twice filtered for freedom. Once with the migration of their ancestors from Europe and then again with the migration across the plains and the Rockies.
Those in Washington D.C. who aspire to be our rulers should never forget our minds do not think the same as those who remained in Europe or even on the east coast. We are like a domestic animal bred and selected for a particular personality. They would be well advised to think of us as irritable sheep dogs rather than as sheep. We can feed and take care of ourselves if needed. And most importantly we have a vicious bite when treated like sheep to be shorn or butchered.—Joe]