000728.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 28 Jul 2000 12:00:00 GMT

[a couple of lunch-time updates at end]

{@Julian Heicklen Progress Report 7/27/2000} is an email I received about Professor Heicklen's progress to date in Centre County, PA with Marijuana smokeouts and court challenges. Good news! I salute you, Dr. Heicklen.

Sean Hackbarth is back at The American Mind after an 8-day hiatus. Welcome back, Sean. He chimes in on Napster. I agree with him that the way people are using Napster to trade copyrighted music is wrong. This is not Napster's fault, however. If I use a knife to kill someone, the knife manufacturer is in no way responsible. Sean likes GW's choice of Dick Cheney for Veep. He doesn't like Lew Rockwell's swipes at the coming GW administration. Just imagine what Lew would have said if he thought that algore had a chance at winning. About GW Lew has complaints. The prospect of an algore administration is much more frightening. Both GW and algore are socialists, but Gore has gone much further down that weary road.

Top SourceForge downloads for yesterday: [wes]

The Freenet Project (6521)
Open Source Napster Server (1932)

Wow! A tiny (0.8 x 2.7 x 0.5 inches) 640x480 digital camera that records about 1000 images on a 64Mb memory stick. [wes]

Keola Donaghy at Discuss.Userland.Com - Napster *not* ordered to be shut down: Reminds us that the judge didn't tell Napster to shut down their service. She just told them to disallow trading of copyrighted material. So Napster just has to create a registry of non-copyrighted material, songs that the creators have approved for distribution, and they can stay in business. Maybe they'll even take a dent out of the RIAA members' revenue. [mumble]

I just discovered today that I can control-click on links in Opera 4.01 to bring up the link in a new window behind the current one. Yay! I used to click and press control-tab to move the window to the back. Now it's just click, click, click, and I've opened my daily sites from my links page. (all the links on my links page open a new window).

timothy at Slashdot - Compressed Beyond Recognition: An MP3 Compendium: lots of pointers to stories on Napster including riaaboycott.org where you can sign a petition boycotting all RIAA members.

John Silveira at Backwoods Home Magazine - We don't need no steenking 2nd Amendment: a good accounting of why we would still have the right to keep and bear arms even if the second amendment did not exist. It is a basic human right, listed in the bill of rights only because it is important enough to mention explicitly.

"In other words," Dave said, "it's a question as to whether the rights of the citizens in China are at the pleasure of the government or if they have them but are being denied, or if the Jews had basic human rights in Germany even if Hitler didn't let them exercise them?"
...
"It may be," Mac said, "that in reality, rights are a figment of our imagination. But the Founding Fathers believed they existed and that's how this country was set up. Rights are something that come with being human. The Founders never believed we got them from the government. If and when the United States goes away, the rights will still be there."
The Founding Fathers felt we had a right to unrestricted travel. So, now we have driver's licenses, automobile registrations, and passports. They also felt we had property rights, so Civil Forfeiture or Civil Seizure laws, now exercised by the Feds and the states, are actually illegal under both the 9th and 10th Amendment.
...
And here's one more. It's Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria -- a Milanese criminologist whom he admired who was also his contemporary -- in On Crimes and Punishment:

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

...
I've got more, but I think that's enough. But I think you can see how the Founding Fathers felt about the right of individuals to have weapons. In fact, this whole debate over the right to arms is a recent one. In the last century, Americans would have been as amazed to find their right to have weapons a subject of debate as they would to have found their right to free speech or religion debated. There was no question to them, or to the Founders, that the right to keep and bear arms was one of the most fundamental -- perhaps the most fundamental -- of all civil rights.

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History

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