Monday, March 08, 2010

The Folly of Working Through Channels

Wendy McElroy has been penning some wonderful essays lately.  Wendy adds to this body of thought provoking ideas in an essay titled Libertarianism as a numbers game, which buttresses my stance in regards to not voting.  From Wendy’s most recent essay.

What would have happened, do you think, if the likes of Paine and Jefferson had “gone through channels”? If they had petitioned the king, run for the local school board or a higher position, if they had tried to repeal the Stamp Act and other laws one-by-one. I suspect there would have been no America because there would have been no revolution, no vox populi repeal of government itself. Instead, the American revolutionaries went to the source of all real social change—the hearts and souls of men. They did the hard work and they showed how quickly a society could be turned around; it took something akin to 15 or 20 years for their ideas to create an expanse of freedom in the world.

How are you working to expand freedom?  Are you going through channels trod deep with futility, or individually acting, showing others that freedom is attainable through the action of individual men?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 11:13 AM
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Census 2010, the Constitution, and Compulsion

The Center for a Stateless Society posts a piece on the census written by Thomas L. Knapp titled Count, Dracula which I recently commented on at their site.

Roderick T. Long read Knapp’s piece and also commented, stating the following.

Although as an anarchist I don’t especially care what the Constitution says one way or another, it’s worth noting that all the Constitution authorizes is the mere conducting of a census; it doesn’t authorize mandating compliance, since forcing people to answer is not essential to the conducting of a census. (Private groups conduct surveys all the time without enjoying such power.) So as I read the Constitution (though of course the government doesn’t give a damn about how I read it), even if one accepts the Constitution’s authority there is still no legally binding obligation to answer any of the questions.

Will you allow yourself to be compelled, forced, by the government to complete the census form via their threats of fines?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 09:10 AM
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"Then and Now"

Most individuals, upon hearing mention of the word Holocaust, will “see” images in their minds of this evil, well except for possibly certain Iranians.

Photographer Alan Jacobs, working with The Auschwitz Museum, created a series of photographs which poignantly contrasts works of art created by inmates of Auschwitz and Birkenau, shortly after their liberation from this man made hell, with the photos taken by Jacobs in our contemporary time.  The series of art and photos are well worth viewing and reflecting on.

Then and Now

Via Fred Lapides’ GoodShit.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 08:56 AM
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Sunday, March 07, 2010

The Majority Is No Guide At All

Wendy McElroy reposts a short essay penned by R.C. Hoiles back in 1956.  The title of Hoiles’ essay is The Most Harmful Error Most Honest People Make. The meat of this short essay.

From a religious standpoint, it is attempting to serve two masters. It is a violation of the First Commandment, ‘Thou shall have no other Gods but me.’ The most common method is worshiping the divinity of the State, representing the majority. This attempt to serve two masters or have two standards of right and wrong—one for the individual and one for the group—is undoubtedly a result of individuals using as a guide what their contemporary environment regards as right, just and proper. They use this as a guide rather than eternal principles, eternal moral law that never changes with time or place to determine right from wrong. So the individual who intends to be guided by what is currently regarded as right by the majority has, in reality, no guide at all. The individual who is guided by moral law that never changes has a guide. He does not get into moral trouble. He does not injure his fellow-man. He was goodwill in his heart. He does not enter into any collusion to promote his own interest at the expense of another. he does not try to benefit one by injuring another. (bold by ed.)

Choose your guide wisely.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/07 at 11:19 AM
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A Non-proselytizing Note on Faith

The Trooper’s Girl has a post up titled Taildraggers, Spears & Kilts, which somehow ended up including the following thought, though the post itself actually is meant to draw you to a 2:35 viddie of a small plane in flight, with an experienced pilot at the controls.  The thought which is the impetous for my post.

What’s that? Indigenous people have always known God. They do not - GOD does not - need anyone to tell anyone else how to believe. Nor even if they ought to believe. I assure you there are times when I am quite certain that He simply cannot Be. But that is the course of faith and I think it is supposed to wend its way like a stream in a forest - you never see it, whole. You can lose it, backtrack, turn your back on it when a raging river sings a siren song...and you can pollute it. In the end, it is just you and that faith. Nothing else crosses that limitless sky. So why concern yourself with others? It becomes...sullied. Still, some people do feel that need and I try to look on it with a kind of patient regret.

Amen.

Oh, The Trooper’s Girl also has a new love.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/07 at 09:29 AM
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Soiled Detentions

John McCain and Joe Lieberman have introduced a bill into Congress under the title Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.

The bill is, I guess, meant to act as a wedgie deterrent threat to individuals who may be considering stepping onto an airplane with a bomb in their underpants, and to other such diaper clad, nonsense spouting individual belligerents nursing grudges against the United States.

The problem with the bill, as Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic points out in a piece titled A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully, is the language of the bill, as it currently stands, would allow it to be equally utilized against United States citizens and actual terrorists alike.

According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)

Be careful out there.

Linked via The Independent Institute.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/07 at 08:55 AM
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Friday, March 05, 2010

"An Armed Society is a Polite Society"

Robert Heinlein must be credited for the title to this post.  The complete quote is as follows.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

I thought of this quote after reading the following headline.  USA Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the Worlds Standing Armies Combined

The article also includes this information.

14,033,824,000 billions rounds of Ammo
Assuming each gun buyer bought 1000 rounds of ammo for each purchase, and you and I know that it is way, way more than that, that would be easily 14,033,824,000+ billions rounds of ammo fired by USA gun owners.

I must say, that in my errand runs today, ninety-nine percent (99%) of the individuals I interacted with were very polite, but then of course so was I.

Linked via Jeffrey Quick, who titles his post on this subject Got gunz?, and then quips.

Why hasn’t any firearms trade association given Obama an award for “salesman of the year”?

I say, got manners?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/05 at 02:22 PM
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Laughable Census Data Privacy Assurance

Here’s a headline regarding census data privacy from sixteen (16) hours ago.

Gov’t offers new assurance census data is private

Here’s a headline from Scientific American from two (2) years ago, Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II. Here is the opening to the Scientific American article.

Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

How are you feeling about the government assurance on census data privacy, now?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/05 at 08:00 AM
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Motiveless Shooter or Clueless Government Officials?

From an AP article on the Pentagon shooting, posted at Yahoo! News under the headline Official: Pentagon shooter was well armed.

Keevill said he did not know the shooter’s motive.

“I have no idea what his intentions were,” he said.

And this statement, which precedes the above quote from the article, seems to add weight to the clueless side of the equation.

Noting that Bedell was wearing a suit, Keevill said: “There was no indication based on the way he was dressed that he had hostile intent."

Posted by John Venlet on 03/05 at 07:22 AM
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Thursday, March 04, 2010

Polishing Away the "Patina of Legitimacy"

Wendy McElroy has posted an interesting essay titled All politicians and candidates threaten my freedom. The title to the essay, itself, speaks a truth which should be self evident, but Wendy expands on this in a thoughtful manner, and in a manner which I would hope bring about deep, personal, individual reflection about what exactly is occurring when you mark an X on a ballot.  From Wendy’s piece.

The foregoing description of a “just” politician doesn’t describe any currently existing one. All politicians today assume office with the claim of having jurisdiction over the lives of people who did not vote for them, of people who opposed them or did not vote at all. The question for libertarians is: how can one human being properly assume immense power over the freedom and person of unconsenting others. If rights, like freedom of speech and association, are inalienable and equal-to-all, then how can you cast a vote that transfers control over my rights to another person? Especially, how can you do this against my will and over my protest? For a libertarian, the answer is clear. You cannot transfer or nullify another person’s rights by making an X on a ballot. All you can do is enable a power-seeker to assume a patina of legitimacy when he claims jurisdiction over and uses force on the unconsenting.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/04 at 02:32 PM
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Census 2010 Civil Disobedience, Sort Of

Census 2010 is quite close to hitting full stride, now that U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves’ dog sled ride is over, and the fifteen thousand dollar ($15,000.00) totem pole commerating Census 2010 has been carved and raised.

Census 2010 forms are now being delivered to homes across America by more conventional means than dog sleds, and individuals are considering whether to simply complete the census form, partially complete the census form, or simply ignore it.  I’ve encouraged Americans to skip Census 2010 as a form of polite, civil disobedience on multiple occasions in these pages, but each individual must decide for themselves whether they will complete the census form, partially complete the census form, or toss the census form into the round file.

What I would like to address is the partial completion of Census 2010 forms, which Diana Hsieh, amongest others in the blogosphere, discusses.  What is suggested, in these various discussions, is partial completion of the census form, i.e. answering only the question asking the number of individuals living at a certain GPS marked address.

While I appreciate the reasoning behind partial completion of the census form; providing the census bureau only the number of individuals living at a certain address; I think providing only this information is providing the State with exactly the information it most covets in order to maintain its aura of power and appearance of largesse.  To wit:

Census information affects the numbers of seats your state occupies in the U.S. House of Representatives. And people from many walks of life use census data to advocate for causes, rescue disaster victims, prevent diseases, research markets, locate pools of skilled workers and more.

When you do the math, it’s easy to see what an accurate count of residents can do for your community. Better infrastructure. More services. A brighter tomorrow for everyone. In fact, the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion dollars of federal funding each year is spent on infrastructure and services like:...

You’ll note in reading the above, which is taken from the How It Affects the Nation page of the Census 2010 website, that it is the count of individuals which is deemed most important to the census bureau, i.e. the State, in order to determine wealth redistribution policies, the number of representative overlords allocated per state, how to create more government serivces rather than less, and other assorted and sundry State instituted programs/legislation/etc. leading to that utopian “brighter tomorrow for everyone,” oh yeah!  Thus, if individuals only provide the census bureau with the number of individuals residing at a certain address, the bureau is being supplied with the exact information it most covets to maintain and expand their control of individual American lives, and the State will gladly thank you for your compliance.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/04 at 08:46 AM
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Hiding the Truth is Standard Procedure

I am not prone to conspiracy theories as I think said theories mostly gain legs, analogy wise, via the old adage to test the doneness of spaghetti by throwing it against the wall and see whether it sticks.

With that said, I point to the latest revelations of hiding the truth emerging out of Washington, D.C.  That revelation is headlined as follows, BREAKING: ‘Anti-Lobbyist’ Obama Administration Recruited Left-Wing Lobbyists to Sell Bogus ‘Green Jobs’, and the story informs Americans that the green jobs so heralded as being just over the horizon if Amercia would just invest billons of dollars in wind energy are a fantasy.

I think that this newest revelation regarding government malfeasance in manipulating data of so called green initiatives, if not actually in bed with the foolishly named “climategate” revelations, with cap and trade filling out the threesome, reveals something dark and forboding, not only about the United States but all governments currently in power throughout the world.

Hiding the truth, which is more commonly called lying when an individual is caught in the act of hiding the truth, is now standard procedure for States throughout the world to maintain and expand their control of individual lives and businesses.

Link to bogus green jobs story via Instapundit.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 07:07 PM
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Looking Straight at the Problem Which is Obama

Malone Vandam, in a post titled Why America is nervous, points to and quotes from a Victor Davis Hanson piece titled Obama Fatigue.

Hanson’s piece is definitely worth a read, but Vandam’s comment, after reading Hanson’s piece, are point on and a must read.  Vandam’s complete comments follow.

Hanson is good throughout that piece, but still, like almost everyone writing about Obama, he’s averting his eyes to some extent. This president is not just the Democrats’ version of George Bush. There’s something so wrong about him that it’s nearly impossible to miss. What that thing is has nothing to do with his race. In fact, he is helped by being nominally black. It distracts the mind and the eye from the more fundamental problem: the sense that this man has no respect for America or Americans and, worse, means to bring harm to this country under the mask of a political messiah.

Yes, he’s an amateur in the wrong sense of the word, he can’t lead and wouldn’t know where to lead if he could, he’s cheesy and deft at being cheesy, and he creeps out anyone prepared to look the situation in the eye. But that leads to something else. It leads to a burning existential reality: he is being reckless with our lives and our future and he does not or cannot care.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 02:55 PM
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is a Crybaby

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, according to this article, is crying to the government for more regulatory oversight over one of its competitors, Google.

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google as his company strives to lessen its rival’s dominance of Internet search.

In an appearance Tuesday at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. He didn’t specify the alleged misconduct.

How unfair of Google to be so successful and to have such a dominant search engine capability enabling Google to rake in millions of advertising dollars, so naturally Microsoft CEO Ballmer wants the government to strong arm some of the market profitability into Microsoft’s pockets, with the support of other jealous search engine companies.

The article also informs us that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is against government intervention in the search engine advertising market profitability.

"I am actually not interested in government intervention in anything,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told reporters during a Tuesday lunch to celebrate the company’s 15th anniversary. “I think for the most part markets work. I don’t wish antitrust on anyone."

Which could make one think that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is a principled individual, but, alas, that is not the case at all as is evidenced by this sentence from the article.

Yahoo also lobbied regulators to oppose the agreement that would give Google the electronic rights to millions of hard-to-find books.

One of the last quotes from Ballmer in the article is the following.

"There is an advantage to having the power of two, as opposed to the power of one,” Ballmer told the crowd at the Search Marketing Expo.

Yeah, and the advantage of the power of two is that it would allow Microsoft to gang up on Google, since the one to one battle for success in maximizing search engine advertising revenue is being sorely lost by Microsoft.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 02:22 PM
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Civil Disobedience Can Be Rewarding

Civil disobedience, as Thoreau advocated, though recognized and admired by many individuals, is seldom put into action by individuals due to fear of the State for whatever act of civil disobedience may be contemplated or acted on.

Though the State should fear its citizens, that is seldom the case, as is amply illustrated by the State’s continued intrusive control of individuals through various forms of legislation, all of which carry some penalty for non-compliance to install the fear the State so badly needs to control individuals.

With that said, here is an act of civil disobedience wherein the State loses and the civil disobedient individual is rewarded.

A nurse who was handcuffed when she refused to draw blood from a drunken-driving suspect has settled her lawsuit against a Chicago Police officer for $78,000, according to city records.

Here’s a quote from the nurse’s attorney.

"It is important to remember that nurses work for hospitals and not the Chicago Police Department,” Hofstra’s attorney Blake Horwitz said Tuesday. Horwitz said his client understands the need for officers to obtain blood samples, but “it just has to be done through proper means."

Horowitz’s quote begins well, but then wanders off course when he concedes the State’s force backed request would be legitimate if “done through proper means.”

Handcuffed nurse settles for $78,000

Viddies of arrest at linked story.

Via The Obscure Store.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 12:20 PM
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