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?
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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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Wednesday, April 07, 2004 Hudson Was Wrong (If you're just coming to this site and reading top to bottom, skip down one post to figure out what's going on.) Well about three full days have passed since I asked that important question, and it's drawn a few comments and a bit of attention. So what have I learned? I've learned that the people who make up my audience are a damned pessimistic bunch, for one. The ratio of comments like this: "Okay, I'm thoroughly depressed now. Have we passed the point of no return? Are we on the verge of another Dark Age?" - Sarahto comments like this: "Though it may seem Pollyanna-ish, I believe that we have reached or are nearing the nadir of the current trough, and the upward side of the catenary approaches." - Mark Phillip Algerwas about, oh, 10:1. The one thing almost all the pessimists had in common was - no answers. Fûz, author of WeckUpToThees! suggests that we start committing civil disobedience when the campaign finance laws start kicking in, restricting freedom of speech. Not "Big Media" - us. You and me. But then Michael Williams of Master of None points out that we live in a system of lots of laws, but only random enforcement - just enough to put fear into others and keep us in our places. (Think RIAA enforcement.) Fûz might be right - but I doubt it. The most striking thing I found was apathy. This site has received about 1,400 hits since I posted "An Important Question." It drew 47 comments (not including my replies) from 22 respondents. I posted a link to the essay at AR15.com - surely a hotbed of the perennially pissed-off - which garnered 613 views, but only seventeen responses (two optimistic, the rest pessimistic). That's a signal of apathy, to me anyway. Interested enough to read, but not interested enough to bitch. And that defines the problem, as I see it. The vast majority are simply apathetic. We are, as a nation, impassive. We are indifferent. As I said in my letter to Rev. Sensing,ap•a•thy The overwhelming majority of the populace, I believe, is ignorant and apathetic. They might sense the loss of their freedoms, dimly, but they don't know and they don't want to know.We here in the blogosphere who are (supposedly) active and connected, have no consensus other than "Every day we get the choice between slavery and rebellion, and so far, most folks (are) ok with slavery." Well I'm not, but it does appear that way. As I wrote a long time ago, I believe that a "right" is what a majority of the population of the society I live in believes it is. This is pragmatically true, as opposed to ideally true. Ideally "rights" are concepts shared by all and revered, but practically that's untrue. You can stand before a magistrate and demand your rights, but in most societies throughout history your understanding of your rights wouldn't keep your head attached to your body, or in the 20th Century stop the bullet that ended your protests. I'm engaged in a discussion right now with Tim Lambert of Deltoid who professes to believe in a "right" to self-defense, while defending a philosophy that allows complete disarmament of the law abiding populace against agressors. Tim is hardly an exception in this world, now or historically. A respect for rights isn't natural, it's learned - and when we stop teaching our children about our rights, a reverence for them; when we neglect to educate the incoming generation as to what those rights are and why they're important and why they should be defended even against the seemingly most minor infringement, then apathy becomes entropy and our rights dissolve toward chaos. When we give the rights the Founders believed to be essential only lip service, suddenly we get all kinds of new "rights." A "right" to abortion. (Don't write letters.) A "right" to "freedom from gun violence." A "right" to gay marriage. A "right" to government provided health care. A "right" to... well you get the idea. And all those "rights" are eventually given equal weight - essentially none at all when the rubber meets the road. In 1776 a group of men, excellently educated (whether self-taught or formally) and with a new but common understanding of the rights of humanity, decided they'd had enough and stood up to be counted. They pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor and took up arms against an overwhelming enemy. These few men led many more who were angry but not so committed. Another Mencken quote (the man had so many): "It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause." We can't define a cause, though. Nor an enemy. "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Walt Kelly. Francis Porretto also said this: Violent revolution is a nasty prospect. Alongside the unpleasantness of it, there is also this: most revolutions in history have intensified tyranny, rather than ameliorated it. Alternatives are certainly welcome.I'm beginning to repeat myself, I think. Commenter Brian wrote: I'm coming to the conclusion that it's better to live outlaw like I did when I was a kid than to bother acting like I'm a citizen. The law seems to do nothing beneficial, and I've always been willing to break it.That echoes Francis in his next paragraph: There is a third way, and it can be applied to many of the usurpations of power that occur in American society: passive resistance, sometimes also called passive non-compliance. It is much less risky to its practitioners than civil disobedience, and it doesn't usually set the streets awash with blood. More, it has a good record of success, although when it wins, it doesn't always win everything one has hoped for.Francis then goes on to expound on what it takes to make passive resistance a successful strategy for manipulation of the government. But Brian, I think, has the right of it - screw strategy. Embrace freedom and accept that you could be imprisoned or killed and live free while you can. Teach your children about those ideal rights, and live them. Don't respect those laws that don't respect you, and be willing to pay the consequences of violating them if you get caught. So my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor stand ready to be sacrificed in the defense of my rights and the rights of those I love as I understand them. I am a citizen of this nation as much or as little as it protects and defends those rights under which it was founded, not as they are (mis)understood today. I will obey those laws with which I agree, follow those laws I am unwilling to suffer the penalty for, and I will disobey those laws I find egregious. This may mean that, at some time in the future, the State may decide to "selectively enforce" itself on me to make an example. At that time and at that place I will decide how to respond, for that choice is mine and always will be. In the mean time, I will agitate for those rights, making sure those in power remember that they swore oaths to defend them whether they understood them or not. I will continue trying to educate others so that they, too, understand what it is they are losing, what they are allowing others to throw away, and so they will hopefully not choose slavery. That's what I owe my grandchildren. Hudson was wrong, the game wasn't over. He died anyway - but he died fighting, not lying down, defending himself and his people. Like Hicks said, sometimes I want to take off and nuke the place from orbit - it's the only way to be sure - but I'm just a grunt and don't get to make those decisions. UPDATE 4/8 9:30AM: The Geek responds. UPDATE, 10:25: From the comments, Dano writes: I'm not sure I agree with your "apathy" conclusion, Kevin -- at least, not as applied to the readers of your post(s). The nation, overall, being apathetic ("fat, dumb and happy" comes to mind) I'll go along with. You asked for "ideas" and as I'm in the Pessimistic Camp, I haven't got any. Rather than comment and say "I don't know what to do," I merely read. It's going to get worse before it gets better (if it does) and I don't expect to see it get better in my lifetime. I'd love to be wrong.My response: Dano: | | |
