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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 05 Jun 2000 12:00:00 GMT

Imagination Does not Exist

You should come close to me tonight, wayfarer
For I will be celebrating you.

Your beauty still causes me madness,
Keeps the neighbors complaining
When I start shouting in the middle of the night
Because I can't bear all this joy.

I will be giving birth to suns.
I will be holding forests upside down
Gently shaking soft animals from trees and burrows
Into my lap.

What you conceive as imagination
Does not exist for me.

Whatever you can do in a dream
Or on your mind-canvas

My hands can pull - alive- from my coat pocket.
But let's not talk about my divine world.

For what I most want to know
Tonight is:

All about
You.

The Gift, Daniel Ladinsky

Kenneth Smith at Reason Online - Loaded Coverage: How the news media miss the mark on the gun issue: Guns are used a lot more often to prevent crime than they are to commit it, usually without a shot being fired. But you wouldn't know that listening to the news media. [picks]

Joel on Software - Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back! To win customers, you've got to eliminate all the barriers to entry. One of the barriers to entry is a perceived inability to opt out. Good examples: Excel vs Lotus 123, PayMyBills.com stealth lock-in, Barnes & Noble's couches and chairs, ISPs should offer mail-forwarding if you opt out. [latte]

Angus Glashier is running his picture of the lovely Catherine Zeta Jones again today. Yum!

There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise. Choice morsels:

Letter from Mark Rogerson: incensed by the abolition of the fourth and fifth amendments contained in the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, Mr. Rogerson proposes shutting down most of the federal government. Good idea.
Bill Gates Needs Ritalin by Michael Haggard - wonderful exposition of why gifted kids are now drugged with Ritalin and why this is the same reason that the justice department decided to destroy Microsoft.
As I sat with one particular child who is being pushed into government drug control (less commonly known as chemical restraint) I considered the school's motivation. We played a two hour long, complicated game in a room full of human distraction. He never became distracted in our two hours. In fact, he showed better concentration than I did. Through conversation he proved intelligent and imaginative.
But I saw what the school feared in him. He asked questions. He wondered why things were so. Life, to him, was to be understood and enjoyed - not accepted and endured.
Rediscovering the Fourth Amendment by Vin Suprynowicz - This was Vin's 4/21 editorial: Pat-Down Search. Worth a re-read. Applauds the supreme court for, this time, upholding the fourth amendment in overturning the conviction of Dewayne Bond. Mr Bond's bag of methamphetamine was discovered when a Border Patrol agent felt his luggage at an "immigration checkpoint" (he was travelling on a bus from California to Arkansas).
As little as 50 years ago, American movie audiences could be expected to hiss and boo as the Nazi Gestapo agent was shown insinuating himself through the passenger cars of some European train, ominously hissing, "Papers, please?"
Only in totalitarian police states (Americans then understood) were citizens subject to random searches -- or any requirement that they show their "papers" at the mere whim of a suspicious government official.
...
If the War on Drugs cannot co-exist with the Bill of Rights, then it is time to call a halt to the War on Drugs for that reason, alone.

Al & Bill vs Electrolux by Minority Mike - compares his mother's Electrolux vacuum cleaner to algore and Komrade Klinton.

Dan Dall at Sierra Times - When do Rights become Privileges? If we require a license to keep and bear arms, we have converted a God given right into a government given privelege. And what leviathan gives, leviathan can take away. What's next, a license to speak or to create a web page or to go to church? [sierra]

Dr. Michael S. Brown at Sierra Times - Canadian Gunfight Headed For Dramatic Showdown: Canada may give us a preview of what would happen if America tried to register guns. Naw, it'll be much bloodier here. [sierra]

Andre Goldman at Laissez Faire City Times - Justice Without Force, Part 3: Parts 1 and 2 described the ideas. This part goes into detail. Includes how to establish free-market criminal law as well as commercial law. Also includes a longish screed on why you should want a free-market justice system, and answers a few of the obvious "I don't want it to work" questions. He was preaching to the choir in my case, so I can't tell how well he did. You'll have to find that our for yourself.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair