End the War on Freedom

Touched by an Angel was incredible last night. It's one of the few TV programs that I watch on a regular basis. Tears flowed at the end of this show. (I talk tough, but I'm really a teddy bear.) Give it a try. CBS, 8pm eastern time, Sundays. A little overly sappy sometimes, but often heavenly. Besides, Roma Downey is a fox, and her Scottish accent gives me goosebumps (not really, but close).

From The Federalist Easter issue. I'm no fan of Christ. I consider Him to be an intermediate yogi who violated one of the prime directives and started performing parlor tricks, er... miracles. You too can learn these parlor tricks, but it won't improve your life one wit, likely the opposite. I will admit that it may have been His job to show the west that reality is much more maleable than our science would have us believe. But Christ's coming was a double-edged sword. Though millions have been saved by believing in Him, millions have also been killed in His name. If your belief in Christ makes you less tolerant of others, if you use it as an excuse to act from fear instead of love, I suggest that you rethink your understanding of His message. I also suggest that I follow my own advice. I fall into fear and hatred as easily as the next guy. In case you hadn't noticed. IMHO, turning the other cheek is much easier to do when you don't have children.

"Meaning no disrespect to the religious convictions of others, I still can't help wondering how we can explain away what to me is the greatest miracle of all and which is recorded in history. No one denies there was such a man, that he lived and that he was put to death by crucifixion. Where...is the miracle I spoke of? Well consider this and let your imagination translate the story into our own time -- possibly to your own home town. A young man whose father is a carpenter grows up working in his father's shop. One day he puts down his tools and walks out of his father's shop. He starts preaching on street corners and in the nearby countryside, walking from place to place, preaching all the while, even though he is not an ordained minister. He does this for three years. Then he is arrested, tried and convicted. There is no court of appeal, so he is executed at age 33 along with two common thieves. Those in charge of his execution roll dice to see who gets his clothing -- the only possessions he has. His family cannot afford a burial place for him so he is interred in a borrowed tomb. End of story? No, this uneducated, propertyless young man who...left no written word has, for 2000 years, had a greater effect on the world than all the rulers, kings, emperors; all the conquerors, generals and admirals, all the scholars, scientists and philosophers who have ever lived -- all of them put together. How do we explain that?...unless he really was what he said he was." --Ronald Reagan

I haven't said this in a while, maybe never here:

"The universe isn't bad for a high school science project. That Jehovah fellow has a promising future. If he can learn to control his anger." -- Bill St. Clair

Charley Reese at the Orlando Sentinel - Why I am not a libertarian - He didn't convert me, but Mr. Reese makes a darn good argument. He needs to learn about or remember the heart of libertarian philosophy, non-initiation of force. I saw no hint of that in his article. It makes liberty work. Making the distinction between freedom and liberty would also help. You are free. Absolutely. That's given by God and cannot be taken away. The only thing anyone can force you to do is fall down. What I'm fighting for is the preservation of individual liberty. A world where noone initiates force, ever.

Freedom is not a virtue per se. It can mean the freedom of the strong to bully and enslave the weak. It can mean the freedom to exploit the poor, to despoil the land and the water, to turn your back on the oppressed, the sick, the dying.

That's why, instead of a libertarian, I fall in with those old-fashioned conservatives who believe in ordered liberty, strict observances of the Constitution and a mind-our-own-business foreign policy. Don't confuse me with the neo-conservatives who like big government and imperialism as long as they run it. Most of those guys are just ex-Troskyites, anyway. And don't confuse me with chamber-of-commerce conservatives who say that anything good for big business is good for the country. That's horse manure.

Harry Browne at WorldNetDaily - Why Not Real Health-Care Reform? A needed reminder that health care was better and cheaper, much cheaper, before government destroyed it by foisting Medicare, Medicaid, etc., etc. on us. Get government completely out of health care and it could follow the lead of the freest industry in America, the computer industry, where prices go down year after year while performance goes up.

Stephen Young - Maximizing Harm is a new book about the war on freedom, er... some drugs. It started life as a cyberbook, which is still available. The print edition was expanded and updated. There's also a good links page. Barnes & Noble is selling it for $12.95. I ordered a copy. You can browse the book at iUniverse, its publisher, though it's a real pain loading images of the pages over a modem.

The drug policies of the United States have consistently made drug problems worse, not better. Fatal flaws in the policies ensure problems will intensify. While lawmakers have enough information to understand this pattern, not only do they ignore it, they strive to keep such information away from the public.

Actually, the amount of information challenging the drug war is overwhelming. Maximizing Harm gives a brief introduction to the central issues in the drug war: why it can't work; who gets hurt; who profits; why it doesn't just end; and who is working for peace.

Declan McCullagh at Politechbot - Epilogue: U.S. v. Jim Bell trial in federal court in Tacoma - a good summery, containing excerpts from Wired, Sierra Times, and Cryptome. My favorite was the email from Jim Burnes.

> That prompted an objection from Bell's attorney, Robert Leen.
> "(You're) asking the jury to draw an adverse inference from what
> was, at the time, an exercise of a constitutional right," Leen
> said.

Woops. Thought crimes and ownership crimes. Maybe we are slowly
being prepared for integration into a system like communist china.
(maybe we're half-way there)

bob lonsberry - Welcome Home, You Did Well - a good patriotic welcome home for the folks in the downed spy plane.

This wasn't a draw. This was an American victory.

And you have undone in less than a fortnight what it took a decade of military decline to do. You have tacked the chestnuts back on Uncle Sam.

You and your commander in chief.

bob lonsberry - When Lightning Strikes Twice - Cameron Platt sounds like a good cop to me, but he got in hot water when the lawbreakers he busted happenned to be Salt Lake City's mayor and his chief of staff. Well told, as usual. I submitted the following comment, which I doubt Mr. Lonsberry will print. I hope he at least reads it.

Thanks for telling this one, Bob. Cameron Platt, I salute you.

But Bob, you just had to get in the obligatory drug warrior nudge, didn't you? "Drug-riddled streets" my backside.

The war on freedom, er... some drugs, is the primary reason that people don't respect the cops anymore. They steal your car because they find a single cannabis seed, sometimes a seed that they put there. They steal your money because you're carrying more than anyone but a drug dealer could possibly legally have, whichever amount they decide that is today. They break into the wrong apartment and kill innocent people, for defending themselves. They kidnap and imprison peaceful folks whose only crime is inhaling a harmless vegetable. Yes, cannabis (aka marijuana) is harmless. If you don't believe it, you've swallowed the lies. Cannabis prohibition is 100% lies.

Educate yourself, Bob. You're a smart guy, a guy who seems to care about freedom. The drug war is orders of magnitude more harmful than any of the plant extracts it claims to be fighting. It is rapidly turning America into a police state.

There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise, "Declare The Pennies On Your Eyes":

• Letter from Angel Shamaya: Raises for Traitors - Booof. Powerful stuff.

  Shout down your public servants. Make them obey their Constitutional Commands.
  
  Or bury your head until they come to chop it off.

• Letter from Ward Griffiths: Dogmatic Libertarian Altruism - Good commentary on non-initiation of force.
• Letter from Steve Trinward: Reply to Joel Simon - good commentary from a writer and songwriter on Napster. Bottom line, he agrees with L. Neil's take of a couple of issues ago.
• Another Letter from Steve Trinward - this is actually from Steven B Cox, a pseudonym for a Bail Bondsman who comments on his experience with citizen arrests.

  Also, in certain states such as Texas, armed security officers and private investigators ARE sworn officers and have police powers when on duty, but again, they are privately employed and fully liable for their actions...As it SHOULD be. None of this police state "Oopsie we goofed and shot your family oh-darn but you can't touch us" crap.
  
  ...
  
  Government Efficiency....kinda like "Military Intelligence"

• Jeffrey in Fedland by Jeff Schwartz - One man's experience getting a U.S. passport. At least four out of ten of his rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights were violated in the process. He got his passport on the same day he applied but was left with a bad taste in his mouth. And how!
• Waco Justice by Bill St. Clair - I'm still not sure it was a good idea to submit this, but now it's done. The idea is shocking until you get used to it. That's why I never wrote it down a year ago when I first had it. Couldn't keep it in this time. Hope the hate mail isn't too bad. Hope the feds don't come down on me. Hope my wife doesn't come down on me. I don't really think my idea will ever happen, but writing it sure let out some steam.
• Hey, Peking ... Duck! by L. Neil Smith - A great idea for how to accelerate the fall of communism in China: beam libertarian thought to the Chinese people via Radio Free Europe. One thing a libertarian president could get out of the way and let happen. There's a lot more here than just this idea. Go read it.

  Just imagine the history-making repercussions of a two-hour radio version, in Cantonese, of H. Beam Piper's classic Lone Star Planet (aka A Planet for Texans), which makes a plausible argument that the assassination of would-be tyrants is simply another of the many checks and balances of a healthy political system. Now, try to imagine George III and his minions underwriting something like that.
  
  The longer I live, the more appreciation I have for the Chinese people and their culture. I'd like very much to help those individuals among them who want to be free. I believe that, if they're provided with a steady stream of information, consisting mostly of the fact that each and every one of them owns his own life, an unimaginably better world will be the result.

SAS/AIM - Armed Informed Mothers Rally, Mothers' Day 2001 - The Second Amendment Sisters are holding Mothers' Day rallies (Sunday, May 13) in many states. This page tells you where and when. The rally in Albany NY starts at noon at the Egg in Empire State Plaza. There's a Free Republic thread about it. [kaba]

Robert X. Cringely at I, Cringely - Data, Know Thyself - Mr. Cringely waxes eloquent about XML. He doesn't actually tell you what it is, just repeats the party line about how great its applications will be. DJ asked for a simple XML explanation. Cringely's article isn't it. XML is a mechanism for describing structured data as (usually) human-readable text. That's it. Nothing more. With proper standardization, which is starting to happen, this mechanism can become very powerful. That part is what everybody crows about. XML itself is incredibly simple. If you know HTML, you know most of what you need to know about XML (except that every tag needs an end tag unless it ends with "/>"). Tags, attributes, content (the text between a leaf-level start and end tag) are 95% of the problem. Then there are namespaces, which I've never bothered to read about, and multiple different schema definition languages, again something you usually won't care about. Occasionally you'll need an entity definition (e.g. "&lt;" for "<") or a CDATA section. That's all there is. Everything else is standards for using XML and software to parse it. XML is a very simple alphabet. There are thousands of books written using that alphabet and more are being written every day. Becoming conversant in all these towers of Babel is a complicated task. For XML itself, xml.com's What is XML? is probably a reasonable place to start. As you can see, I'm no XML expert, but I ascribe to what I remember learning from Joe Weizenbaum in 6.030 in 1974 (my freshman year of college): if you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't really understand it. [MfM]

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