The Smallest Minority |
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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand "I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing." KdT
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Wahabism Delenda Est   
Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!   "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 4 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE  Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
BLOGROLL:
PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Kim du Toit Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk Personal Effects ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Call Me Ahab Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET Cowboy Blob Kim du Toit Mrs. du Toit Serenity Smoke on the Water The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler On the Patio Fodder of Ride Fast & Shoot Straight Rivrdog Say Uncle JimmyB, The Conservative UAW Guy KeeWee Mr. Completely Og the Neanderpundit USCitizen of Traction Control World Examiner Joe Huffman Chris & Mel John and Beth Donovan Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell DirtCrashr of Anthroblogogy Rob of The Kitchen Maj. Chuck Ziegenfuss of From My Position... On the Way! Matthew of Triggerfinger Sarah of Carnaby Fudge KevinP who maintains this excellent Wikipedia entry on the Joyce Foundation Dave Hardy Clayton Cramer Primeval Papa FURRINERS Kiwi Pundit The Policeman's Blog Free Market Fairy Tales Samizdata Musing The Second Version OTHER GOOD READS Baby Troll Blog The Winds of Change Sense of Events The Everlasting Phelps Knowledge is Power QandO Blog Radio Blogger THE PSYCHE BRIGADE Dr. Sanity Dr. Helen One Cosmos ShrinkWrapped Neo-Neocon Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred OTHER AZ BLOGS Useful Fools Zonitics Jackalope Pursuivant Primeval Papa DEPT. OF OUR COLLAPSING SCHOOLS Joanne Jacobs EducatioNation Teacher, Teacher The Irascible Professor OTHERS KIND ENOUGH TO BLOGROLL ME Adding to the Noise America's North Shore Journal Anthroblogogy Atomic Nerds Baboon Pirates Bad Dogs and Such The Bastidge Blognomicon Charming, Just Charming Chublogga! Classical Values Common Sense and Wonder Combs Spouts Off Conservative Scalawag The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns damnum absque injuria David Drake Digital Retrograde The Dougout The Emigre with a Digital Cluebat Empire of Dirt Ether Mind The Fabulous Mint 400 The Freeholder Heinleinblog Impearls Interested-Participant Isaac Schrödinger Josh's Weblog Keith Devens Kill Righty Libertopia The Liberty Zone The Liberty Papers Living in the Surreal World Mike's Eyes Miss O'Hara The Mind of Mog The Ministry of Minor Perfidy MonkeyWatch Adam Lawson NashvilleFiles Near the Salty City PervasiveLight Pierre Legrand's Pink Flamingo Bar Practical Penumbra The Passing Parade Right As Usual Rough Diamond Rules for Rulers Sharp as a Marble She Who Will Be Obeyed! The Speculist Sperari Striderweb A Trainwreck in Maxwell Upbeat Cynicism (Ian Hamet) The Warren Warthog's Rants Wasted Electrons Wheels within Wheels Wicked Thoughts  
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003 They Keep Making Better Fools I am an unabashed supporter of America. I truly believe that it's the best of all possible places to live, and that our form of government is superior to all others ever practiced. But it's far from perfect. It's a good distance from ideal. To be honest, it's got some significant flaws. When our Founders sat down and constructed our tripartite system of government with its checks and balances among the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches, they made certain assumptions (how could they not?) about the behavior of their descendants. First, after much wrangling, the Bill of Rights was attached. With that addendum, they recognized the risk of government infringment - even via popular, democratic government - and hoped that the Bill of Rights would remind the generations to come that some things should remain inviolate, even if it appeared to be a good idea at the time. With that change, I think, they hoped the Constitution represented the blueprint of a truly foolproof system of fair, representative government. I believe they felt that our system of a free press would act as an additional check on government corruption, and the idea of an armed populace would serve as the final one, given failure of all the other safeguards. But they knew, I think, deep in their souls, that nature keeps making better fools. In a recent post from Samizdata, Perry de Havilland notes that "Woodcutters cut wood. Politicians make laws." These simple truisms go a long way to explaining MP & blogger Tom Watson's support for passing laws regarding the use of fireworks. On his blog, and on this blog in our comments section, the Honourable Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East calls for more regulation and makes it clear that fireworks will simply be banned if that does not produce the desired effects. And yet when talking about an incident in which a woman was injured by some idiot throwing a firework he himself notes:This is something I've noted as well. The Frank & Ernest cartoon showing the two bums standing in a law library, staring at the stacks, where one says "It's frightening when you think that it all started with just ten commandments" is bang on the money.Granted the little thug that conducted this assault was breaking existing laws…and then proceeds to ignore that fact from then on. I do not know Tom Watson personally but I heard him speak in Houses of Parliament and he seems both affable and reasonable for a politician. But as Brian Micklethwait's article today says regarding the 'problem' of obesity, it is only to be expected that a person whose salary depends on passing more laws to, well, always insist on passing more laws. I can identify the flaw in the Constitution: The key to understanding the American system is to imagine that you have the power to make nearly any law you want. But your worst enemy will be the one to enforce it. - Rick Cookbut I don't see what we can do about it now. I think the flaw is that the Founders never thought that we'd forget that basic reality. It's not like we weren't warned: Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense, (1776), Chap. 1.Aside from the Bill of Rights, they made no provisions for that eventuality. They warned us in their writings, but didn't codify it in the Constitution itself. I guess they hoped we'd live up to their expectations, rather than down to their fears. We've had 214 years since the ratification of the Constitution with politicians endlessly making laws - some good, some necessary, but the overwhelming majority at best useless, at worst malignant. As I pointed out below (along with a highly appropriate political cartoon), Henry Louis Mencken in the 1930's described politics with deadly accuracy: The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.That's the flaw - when the only tool you have is a hammer, sooner or later every problem begins to look like a nail. If you have a body of people whose only power is to pass laws, then they'll pass laws. About anything and everything, but in large part to: A) enrich themselves and B) ensure that they keep getting re-elected by enriching the people who get them elected. As the cartoon says, "The power to take his money and give it to you." Not, of course, before taking his percentage off the top, though. And they'll pass law to make it easier to get re-elected, and harder to be unseated. And they'll pass laws to gather more and more power so that they can "Do something!" when the populace demands it. As Perry notes: And therein lays the problem at the heart of modern democratic states: so much of society has been made amenable to literal force (i.e. political action) that it makes little difference in the long run who is in control of the democratic means of coercion, the end result for civil liberties and several ownership (including self-ownership) will be the same. Face it, in Britain there is little to choose between Tory Michael Howard and NuLabour David Blunkett when it comes to which of them has abridged more civil liberties whilst serving as Home Secretary. Likewise, Janet Reno may have presided over the mass murder of a bunch of wackos in Waco, Texas, but is anyone really going to claim John Ashcroft is not continuing the process of shredding the much vaunted Bill of Rights?"Until enough people are willing to look to the moral basis of a law and simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of laws just because they are laws...." THAT is the basis behind Jury Nullification. That is the basis behind civil disobedience. But look, for example, at this comment left in response to the recent self-defense incident in NYC involving an 80 year-old man using a .38 revolver to defend himself against a mugger (Via Pervasive Light): The law is the law.Another poster, blogger Amy Alkon says: Regarding the charges against this guy, the law is the law. Guns must be registered.What we were protesting was the fact that Mr. Campbell had both of his firearms confiscated by The State, and was charged with not having them registered. But "Follow the Law" doesn't see a problem with that. In fact, he disavows Jury Nullification in a later response: And if you honestly think the law is just what the jury says then I guess all white juries letting off fellow whites for lynchings was ok, too. After all, the jury is never wrong and they decide the law in a vaccum.He's got a point. Jury Nullification is an evil thing when it condones evil. But that is a failure of The People, not The Law. "Follow the Law" is one of those who Perry protests against. One of the masses who is "amenable to literal force". He (or she) accepts the legitimacy of laws because they are laws - and so does Amy. Is there no point for people like this at which a law should rejected? How about when the punishment is ridiculously excessive? Like, say, ten years without parole for an 18 year-old because he had consensual sex with a minor? Confiscation of your very expensive personal property because you didn't get a $200 tax stamp? Having your land sold out from under you because - while the state conformed to the letter of the law - you didn't manage to pay your taxes on time? Having your school raided by the cops - and guns stuck in your face - because somebody was selling drugs in your school? And, of course, having your only means of self-protection confiscated because you couldn't afford the time and money required to even apply to the State for their permission. And those are only this week's examples. And what about the chilling of our freedoms by these innumerous laws? What about those of us unwilling to "do it happily and take our punishment?" As the "Geek with a .45" put it recently: The fact that things have gone so far south in some places that people actually feel compelled to move the fuck out should frighten the almighty piss out of you.And what other laws has Big Brother passed that you can think of that were done merely to protect us from ourselves? And we're supposed to "do it happily" and take our punishment "if we think" we are just. I don't fucking think so. Claire Wolfe was right - "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." The real problem with the Constitution? The Founders never imagined we'd become sheep. Postscript: Dave at Pervasive Light raised $1265 for Lester Campbell. I hope Mr. Campbell buys another .38 with some of it. | | |
