End the War on Freedom

Happy July! Got tickets and visa on Friday for trip to Ukraine (188K). This time they gave three year multi-entry visa. Former trips were six month single-entry visa. Leave July 12. Fly through Frankfurt to Lviv. Return July 20. Listen to English without articles during week with very smart guys. Learn Ukranian eventually, but language not one of strengths.

Nice fireworks display last night at Bousquet in Pittsfield. Glad I knew the back way home.

I'll do a little JPFO marketing today. I received the following email from Ken Holder, their webmaster (and L. Neil Smith's and TLE's and CCOPS', etc.). I wondered why Sarah Thompson's essay seemed familiar. I read Gran'pa Jack #7 a while back when it first came out. Good stuff! Thanks for the reminder, Ken.

Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 18:58:02 -0700
To: bill@billstclair.com
From: JPFO Webmaster <webmaster@jpfo.org>
Subject: Sarah Thompson's essay

Howdy Bill!

On today's 'blog entry you wrote:

Sarah Thompson at Utah Gun Owners Alliance - Raging Against Self Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality - This was referenced in the latest issue of Privacy Alert, Vin Suprynowicz'es rag. It's long. I only skimmed it.

Dr. Thompson and Aaron Zelman have put together a "Classic Illustrated" version as "Gran'pa Jack #7: Do Gun Prohibitionists Have a Mental Problem?" in a handy cartoon booklet format. See http://www.jpfo.org/gpjack7.htm

Ken Holder

--
Webmaster
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
http://www.jpfo.org/

Alwin Hawkins said:

Which reminds me- Today over at End The War, Bill quoted an article written by an ex-surgeon on the ''myths and truths of vaccination''. What Bill may not realize that getting your immunology information from a surgeon is like getting your Java tutorial from a motherboard designer; the data may be there, but a depth in understanding the information is probably lacking. This is a classic mistake that seems to be particularly common among physicians, assuming that expertise in one area confers expertise in others. Leads to delusions of adequacy...

I will admit that there have been few double-blind experiments showing the harms of vaccines. There are lots of personal stories however. And since the only thing I will ever experience is a personal story, I give them lots of credence. Especially when there's plenty of conventionally accepted evidence that childhood diseases are rarely harmful to healthy first-world children. I still believe that mandatory vaccination amounts to the systematic destruction of the natural immunity of the human race. A really bad idea.

Glenn Allport - Government is Not Compassion - A shorter version of this essay appeared in this month's Libertarian Party News. The rest of Mr. Allport's Paradise Model website looks worth reading, too. When GW uses the word "compassionate", he really means "socialist". Government cannot be compassionate. Only free individuals can be compassionate. In the twentieth century, governments of the world killed 180 million people. Not counting wars. No matter how you slice it, that's not compassionate. To create a truly compassionate society, we need to change how we treat infants and children. The notes at the end are worth reading.

Similarities between the typical parent-child relationship and the typical State-subject relationship run deep, and are not accidental. The average parent treats his or her children much as the average government treats its subjects — in an authoritarian manner, with a mixture of concern, neglect, and coercion, and with psychological or even physical violence "balancing" the affection. Schools and other institutions treat children in much the same fashion. This is seldom done intentionally or even knowingly, but it is done nonetheless. It has, down through the ages, created generations of damaged, unfree children who have grown into damaged, unfree adults — who have in turn created damaging, unfree societies.

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The Yequana tribe that Jean Liedloff describes in The Continuum Concept are a perfect example. Actually, they are an example that most people would be stunned by; the chasm between how the Yequana treat their children and how we treat ours — including how we, ourselves, personally, were treated — is so wide that I do not believe most Westerners can comprehend it. The difference is so great as to be almost physically painful to contemplate. And it is clearly this difference — the actual and appropriate level of compassion shown to infants and children; the constant contact during infancy; the profound, deeply-rooted sense that even children — even infants — are responsible beings who have sole authority over their own lives and actions, barring (for the youngest) only extreme dangers they are not ready to handle — it is this daily, hourly immersion in a highly social world where emotional health is both the norm and the tool with which such health is fostered, hour by hour, in every new member — it is all this which creates (or continues, more accurately) the profound and unquestioned respect for every person's rights that Liedloff observed.

In short, Yequana society — and any other which treats its young with real compassion and respect — creates exactly the understanding of human rights which big government, "socialist" or otherwise, systematically destroys.

Jean Liedloff's book, The Continuum Concept, is probably the most valuable reference to take away from Mr. Allport's essay, though I can't say for sure since I haven't read it, yet. I ordered a copy. Strangely, this is a part of the essay that was left out of the LP News version. continuum-concept.org is the book's web site. It's no substitute for the book, according to Mr. Allport, but worth a look. Here's the single customer review on Barnes and Noble's page for the book, typos preserved:

jon easton (jon_easton@mypad.com), a 23 year old stay at home father, June 15, 1999,
Parents say, 'they didn't give us a manual when you were born.'
But now-a-days it seems like anyone who can breath puts out a manual on How to raise the perfect children in 12 easy steps. This book reexamines many of the traditional and comtempary paths to child 'rearing'. The basis on which these methods are judged? A 'primitive', i should say instinctive, tribe in south america, that has little to none of the horrid problems which we have accepted as a matter of coarse in child development. This book is antropological, philosophical, self-help, and pratical help all wrapped in one. At the very least it will change you life, but also maybe even that of your family and child or child-to-be. If you buy no other books... or more importantly if you have been given the typical Dr Spock, pediatrician, baby shower crap, please buy and read this book immediately. You will only be sorry that you can't give a copy to every mother and father you know. We have a 1 and a half year old son and we have incorperated this philosophy into our lives, as much as possible and we are constantly bombarded with comments of how content and peaceful our son is. They say we 'lucked out'. But many continuum concept parents have reported the same. Jean teaches , I should say observes, that children have built in expectations and by 'chartering' to these we do not make our children dependent, as some books say, but independant and ready to move on to the next stage in their development. The ideas expressed in this book work, not because they are test methods to achieving a short term goal, as some child rearing methods, but because they realine you with your fully functioning and naturally time perfected machinism for leading a child to adulthood.

'If a book could save the world, this might be it' --- john holt.

Steve France at AlterNet - The Anguish of the Drug War Judges - Judges are victims of the drug war, too. Used to be they could use their discretion in sentencing. Mandatory sentencing laws have taken that away. Many of them feel like they're being forced to commit atrocities. The real criminals get off or get light sentences for ratting each other out. The small fry rot in prison for years for doing almost nothing. [grabbe]

Jack Wenders at Laissez Faire City Times - The Hypocrisy of Volunteerism - Makes a good distinction between voluntary activity, where everyone wins, and volunteerism, where the "volunteer" loses. Of course, what the glitterati themselves do is not the volunteerism about which they pontificate. It is good old-fashioned marketing. Meanwhile, they're steering the rest of us towards coercive volunteerism, socialism by any other name...

But for those at Philadelphia, activity must be sacrificial—or have the appearance of being sacrificial—to be considered voluntary and therefore worthy. If I make you better off by making me worse off, that is good. However, if I make both of us better off, that is not. This view escapes all logic. The support for volunteerism comes from the same mindset that supports the massive redistributional activities of modern democratic governments—that it's OK to take from some and give to others to satisfy some abstract, collectivist, supra-human, view of the world. Sacrifice is popular because it is redistributive.

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The sacrificial, nothing-in-return, approach to human association, now called volunteerism, has been tried for decades: we called it socialism, communism, fascism, statism, collectivism, or whatever. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, both determined by others, the government or the gliteratti. Because non-remunerative, sacrificial, associations are doomed at the outset to be few and very inefficient, societies based on them were such a flop that, ironically, they had to resort to massive coercion to survive even temporarily. And truly voluntary exchanges were made illegal.

Pierre Lemieux at Laissez Faire City Times - The Nice State: All Heaven Will Soon Be Breaking Loose - Mr. Lenieux traces the evolution of the state from nasty to "nice": the Protective State, the Redistributive State, the Social State, the Sanitary State.

The goals of the Sanitary State require the abandonment of the traditional rule of law, based on punishment after the fact, and its replacement by wide-ranging, benevolent, a priori controls. The Sanitary State is the ultimate Nice State, which controls individuals for their own good. The Nice State hates open violence, resorts to it only in last resort, and tries to make individuals as peaceful and quiet as possible. The Nice State is quiet tyranny, soft fascism, oppression with a smile.

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"What has always made the state a hell on earth," wrote German poet Friedrich Hoëlderlin, "has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven." A good antidote is offered by Patrick Henry's famous 1775 speech: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" [6] All school children should learn this by heart. We must reclaim the right to wrath. Otherwise, all heaven will soon be breaking loose.

Las Vegas Review-Journal - Judge rules against drug law - A Reno judge ruled that a law banning substances that could be used to make methamphetamine was vague and unconstitutional. The DA will appeal. One small victory in the war on freedom, er... some drugs. [unknown]

DRCNet - Oregon Pro-Pot Smoker Ad Starts Media Frenzy - Jeff Jarvis and Tracy Johnson decided to take out a radio ad saying that they smoke pot and that's OK. They could find no radio station that would air it. So they converted it to print and tried mass transit. No go. None of the mainstream newspapers would take it either. It was finally printed in the Willamette Week, an alternative newspaper. Now they're being asked to appear on talk shows. Jeff and Tracy, I salute you. [unknown]

Jerry Pournelle at Byte - PC Expo: Day 1:

It's late, and I have a press breakfast tomorrow. So far I have seen two technologies that make it possible to do things this year I couldn't do last year: stream movies by wireless (802.11a); and record the movie on my own DVD (Panasonic DVD-RAM/R). I've also seen a lot of improvements that will make my life easier, like USB-2, and the new big Maxtor hard drives.

Faster, better, easier to use, and cheaper. That's the theme, and it's a pretty good one.

Jerry Pournelle at Byte - PC Expo: Day 2:

Bottom line on the Blackberry: At about $350 for the unit and $40 a month flat rate for the service, it's probably not worth it to me at this stage of my life; but if I spent more time on the road, and in meetings, and at shows, I'd grab it like a shot. It really does work well and painlessly, and I find that two-thumbs typing is a lot more intuitive than I would have believed. And I am very glad to have had it to use during the show.

...

I still say if you need a good printer, figure out which Hewlett-Packard will do the job, then buy the next grade up from there. It will last you for years, and it won't be too much printer for long. I know there are other purchase strategies, but you won't regret that one.

...

If you can view a movie you can record it...

Message to the movie industry: Welcome to the future. Book publishers and the recording industry have had to live with this for years.

...

It was a good day if exhausting. The show theme holds, mostly: Everything is from a little to a lot better, considerably easier to use, and from a little to a lot cheaper. That translates to a better world, even if New York City outside the show room seems stuck in the past. But that too is another story.

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