000614.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 12:19:22 GMT

Back on May 23 I pointed at Netherweb, a $10/month web hosting service. Well, yesterday I got an account: wws.netherweb.com. I plan to store my pictures there. They're getting too big for my Tripod site, and they make my "EditThisPage" database very large, so it takes a long time to prepare to download. Once I update the few pages I have that point to lots of large pictures, I'll delete the pictures and ask Brent to compact my database. Hopefully, that will make backing it up easier to do.

So far, Netherweb seems pretty nice. It supports sub-domains, POP3 email accounts, mail aliases (addresses that forward mail somewhere else), nice statistics, CGI (but no Java servlets), mailing lists. My one complaint right now is that the only way to get on a mailing list is for the receiver to send email. It really should be possible for the administrator to seed the mailing list with the initial names. I won't know about speed until I've used it from the office T1, and I won't know about accessibility until I've used it every day for a month or so. Signing up was easy via a web form. It took about half a day for the Netherweb staff to process my request. Then I was live.

Sean Hackbarth of The American Mind is back from his camping and fishing trip in Canada. Welcome home, Sean. [mind]

Liz Michael at Sierra Times - The Revolution Has Started: Here Are Your First Orders: Prudent advice on how to prepare, rationally and peacefully, for the coming revolution. "First Order: Buy Guns". [sierra]

But understand this: constitutionally, no law of the United States, or a separate state or locality, is actually legal, if it infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms in any way. There is no provision for registration. There is no provision for excluding even criminals from firearms ownership, believe it or not. The right is broad and absolute.
There will be government officers telling you otherwise. But you are not breaking the law through promoting firearms ownership. The GOVERNMENT is breaking the law by violating the Supreme Law of the land, the Constitution of the United States. And if we are to make other people believe it, we will have to begin to act like it.

J. Neil Schulman at Sierra Times - Sillygisms: nice to see something new from J. Neil. If the second amendment were repealed, we would still have the right to own weapons for self-protection. [sierra]

I'm seeking a society where property rights enable people who disagree with each other's lifestyles to live in peace with each other. I want a society where a gay bar can peacefully coexist next door to a Seventh Day Adventist church -- and as long as the blow-jobs are kept behind the closed doors of the gay bar, and the Seventh Day Adventists keep their prayers for the souls of the gay men on their side of the property line, they can live as neighbors. I want a society where channel 44 is Jimmy Swaggart and Channel 45 is Baptist Babes in Bondage--and I can unsubscribe to whichever channel I find offensive. I want restaurants and bars to be free to cordon off smokers' sections and non-smokers' sections -- and saloon keepers are free to make a rule that in the smokers' section you have to smoke. It is only respect for the demarcations of private property that enables people who despise each other to coexist. For many people, it is only the fear of retaliation for violating someone else's rights that motivate respect for them. In the real world, there is no respect without deterrence.
Each of us has the right to defend the rights of life, liberty, and private property, if necessary applying violence against those who threaten or first use violence to violate those rights. A right that cannot be exercised is no right at all. A right which is not yours to defend belongs to no one.

Bruce Shapiro at Salon - The hyping of domestic terrorism: Yet another bogus excuse for the Big Brother Nanny Police State. Vomit. [faisal]

The National Commission on Terrorism's warnings are a con job, with roughly the veracity of the latest Robert Ludlum novel. Evidence of this fraud comes not from civil libertarians or American friends of some guerrilla army, but from the top G-man himself: FBI Director Louis Freeh.

Bobby Unser at National Policy Analysis - Saving Your Own Life Shouldn't Be A Crime: the author narrowly escapes with his life from a sudden blizzard only to be fined for inadvertently entering a wilderness area. [market]

J.D. Tuccille at civilliberty.about.com - The Times' own brownshirt: an analysis of articles by Thomas L. Friedman about the Microsoft disembowelment and the Elian Gonzales kidnapping. [market]

So Friedman's ideal world is one where people can be penalized for being disrespectful toward the government, where government whims are enforced with violent raids, and where journalists who try to cover the proceedings are clubbed and threatened.

J.D. Tuccille at civilliberty.about.com - The Second Amendment in Court: concerns the case of United States v. Emerson (PDF), in which Joe Emerson became a felon the minute his wife got a restraining order against him. 18 U.S.C., 922(g)(8) makes it illegal to possess any firearm or ammunition while under such a restraining order. District Judge Sam Cummings agreed with Mr. Emerson's lawyers that this law is unconstitutional; it violates the second and fifth amendments. Cummings agrees with the gun culture that the second amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms. The government is appealling, of course. This may finally be a case where the supreme court has to rule on the true meaning of the second amendment. They have never done so. [market]

John Stossel at ABCNews.com - Medical Marijuana Case Leaves John Stossel Saying Give Me A Break! Mr. Stossel covered Peter McWilliams on 20/20. Peter's May 28 update is here. He repeats the story of what happenned to the signers of the Declaration of Independence, which you should read if you haven't. He's bankrupt, and is asking people to join PayPal and send $5 of their $10 joining bonus to him. [market]

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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