End the War on Freedom

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. -- Gore Vidal

LewRockwell.com- Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Murder Rag (apologies to Country Joe & the Fish) - an old Vietnam War song updated for modern times.

And it's one, two, three, what are we waiting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop's Afghanistan
And it's five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates
Well there ain't no time to wonder why, whoopie they're all gonna die

Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com - The DC Horror Show - Subliminally sub-titled by its URL, whatnottodo.html, Mr. Rockwell writes at length about why more, not less, liberty is the answer to this, and every, crisis. [lew]

A government unconstrained by law, tradition, or public opinion is nothing short of despotic. Not everything can be justified in the name of punishment, prevention, and safety: not conscription, not the elimination of privacy, not killing innocents, and not the use of nuclear weapons that necessarily violate the tenets of just war. Yet one US Senator, no less, has called for the death of innocents on grounds that terrorists don't distinguish between military and civilian targets. In other words, we are being told to fight terrorism by becoming terrorists ourselves.

...

New regulations are being imposed that will dramatically increase the costs associated with air travel, some of them (like the elimination of curbside check-ins) making no sense whatsoever. The presumption is that the airline industry itself has no incentive in preventing hijacking. Well, perhaps if airline crews had not been barred (decades ago) from carrying weapons, this never would have happened. Perhaps if the airlines weren't so busy obeying preposterous government demands (like asking every passenger if our bags have been with us the whole time) and otherwise doing things the federal way, they could have designed some serious anti-hijacking measures that didn't also attack the paying customers. Leave it to the government to prohibit owners of airlines from defending their own property (and customers) when it is most necessary.

The coercion generated by the crisis first showed up in the harassment of gasoline retailers, who, trying to conserve resources in the face of a wildly gyrating spot-market price for gas, raised prices. To threaten them and investigate them gives us a clue into what government will do with its new powers: not go after difficult-to-find criminals, but the easy-to-find innocents who are just trying to make do.

...

Most likely, the turning point was May 12, 1996, when Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the UN, explained to Lesley Stahl of CBS that 500,000 dead Iraqi children, killed by US sanctions, was morally justified to get Saddam. "We think the price is worth it," were her exact words, words that were mostly unreported here but which rang out throughout the Arab world. She was then made Secretary of State. That was five years ago. We continue to bomb Iraq, often on a daily basis, and the sanctions are still on. We should not do unto others what we do not want them to do unto us.

Jude Wanniski at Polyconomics - The Mind of a Terrorist - Mr. Wanniski readdresses to Vice President Cheney a letter he wrote to Jesse Helms after the World Trade Center bombing in 1997. In it, he quotes Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was sentenced to life in prison for that bombing: [lew]

You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings. You killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, innocent people every single war you went. You went to wars more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people.

Barry Hess at Sierra Times - Come Fly With Me... More Freedom, More Security - an interview with the CEO of a hypothetical airline that has completely solved the terrorist problem. A solid bulk-head between the cockpit and passenger compartment, closed circuit cameras watching the passengers, and, of course, airline carry. [sierra]

What has proven to be the most unique thing about "Barry Air" is our allowance of our passengers to carry loaded firearms onboard the aircraft. Each passenger who carries discreetly declares the firearm.

If there are fewer than 20 firearms present on any flight, our flight attendants distribute them to randomly-selected passengers, to be returned at the conclusion of the flight. We approach it in much the same manner as inquiring about the customers' willingness to take on the responsibility of sitting in an exit aisle seat.

The Libertarian Enterprise has a new issue. L. Neil Smith's Morning of Horror and Vin Suprynowicz'es The Passangers Were All Disarmed are reprinted here. Worth the time if you didn't follow my links last week. Other things I liked:

• Letter from Brian Monahan - a historical account of cause and effect of the war making machine known as The State.

  Once again, politicians succeed by failing, "War is the health of the state" (Randolph Bourne), and innocents die.

• Letter from Charles Curley - airline carry, the PA crash, Congressional cowardice, and:

  Has anyone had the testicles (or ovaries) to observe that maybe we'll all be better off without half the damn Pentagon?

• Letter from Kent Van Cleave - a letter to the editor that Mr. Van Cleave says was printed in two local papers and two big nationals.

  The sweetest revenge against America will be watching the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave become, by our own hand, the Land of Papers, Please, and the Home of Staying Home.

• Letter from David H. Young - And the second amendment will set them free. Bravo! Mr. Young is new to TLE or he wouldn't apoligize for this kind of language. Welcome, Mr. Young.

  The emperor has no clothes. At the moment, neither do we. But I'm going shopping.

• Letter from Jeff Schwartz:

  I want to get a grassroots movement together to flood President Bush and Congress with requests to change the law so that the FAA is required to recognize State CCWs.

• Letter from Bill Stone - Mr. Stone's site isn't up yet. I've had two ideas over the last few days for dealing with these terrorists: draw and quarter, nail up crucifiction style and flay alive.

  I just registered the domain name deadterrorists.com.
  
  I'm going to put up a site that shows various, graphic ways that the people responsible for this act might be punished.

• Letter from David F. Nolan: Grave New World - Police State America and future tragedies could be avoided by simply ending U.S. imperialism. I'm not holding my breath.

  Already, a great majority of the American people are willing, even eager, to accept new restrictions on their freedoms in order to "combat terrorism." And the politicians are only too eager to oblige them, even as they mouth platitudes about "freedom under attack."
  
  Of course, it is those very politicians -- the Bushes and Clintons of the world -- who stirred up the hatred that enabled despots and terrorists around the world to rally their followers to attack innocent Americans. The primary blame for the grisly acts of terror which stunned the world yesterday lies with those who perpetrated them, coldly planning and executing complex and coordinated schemes to kill thousands of innocent victims. But it is America's "bipartisan" foreign policy that set the stage for these events.

• It Didn't Work by Victor Milan - the police state security measures we live with every day in America didn't work. They will never work. They can't work. Don't let them get worse.
• It Can't Happen Here? by Jeff Elkins - One man's vision of America's coming fascist regime.

  Look for increases in SWAT budgets in most US communities. Expect 'dynamic entries' by these storm troopers to increase in the name of 'combating terrorism.' This will also bleed over even more into the duties and weaponry of the 'street cop.' Don't be surprised to see Officer Friendly armed with a fully automatic MP5 and dressed in black when he asks for your papers.
  
  ...
  
  The Republic is dead. Prepare yourselves for Empire.

• September 11, 2001: Gun Death Day by William Stone, III - I wish I had the balls to do what Mr. Stone suggests. It would entail either going to jail or being willing to kill some cops and get killed myself. Maybe the former is a good idea. Start carrying openly, in a holster like in all the old Westerns, don't resist when arrested, demand a jury trial. Unfortunately, they'll probably shoot a good number of us just for having a gun. Maybe I should start political carry. Get a realistic toy gun and carry it around in a holster. Heck, just the empty holster would make a good point. I may buy one today.

  It's important that we understand the truth of this: a few dozen guns -- that's ALL -- would have prevented everything that occurred.
  
  Just a few guns. That's all.
  
  The fault for the events of September 11 -- hereafter referred to as what it was: "Gun Death Day" -- can be laid squarely at the feet of the 20,000-plus Unconstitutional and immoral gun laws in this country.
  
  By extension, the fault of Gun Death Day can be laid at the feet of every power-mad, autocratic, would-be dictator who ever wrote or voted for a gun law.
  
  ...
  
  It's time to IGNORE the gun laws. It's time to intentionally VIOLATE the gun laws. It's time to say to yourself, "Starting today, I am a freeman, and that's how I'm going to live."

• While Norman Leared by L. Neil Smith - More Guns, Less Crime. The simple solution to our problem.

  One of the features of The Probability Broach that was fun to write, and just as significant as my prediction, in the same book, of the Internet as we now know it, was a scene in which the hero, a cop from our world, boards an aircraft with his friends and is startled when representatives of the company merely want him to demonstrate that the ammunition in the guns he carries is designed not to harm the aircraft.
  
  I confess that I got this idea, way back then, from an episode of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker proposes arming airline passengers to prevent hijackings. Norman Lear obviously thought the notion represented the very height of right-wing absurdity. But somebody tell me -- now -- how an aircraft full of well-armed people could be hijacked and used against civilization the way five were today.
  
  I'm not the only one who's thought of this. I have messages from others, including my good friend Tom Knapp, who would agree with me that everyone who died today, or was injured, in any of these attacks was, first and foremost, a victim of Thomas Dodd, Howard Metzenbaum, Pete Shields, Sarah Brady, Charles Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Diana DeGette, and anybody else who ever strove to disarm victims of crime -- not to forget Norman Lear himself who's spent most of his overly long life ridiculing everything that made this culture prosperous and safe.

Michael Z. Williamson at KeepAndBearArms.com - An Examination of Airport Security - Contrasts airport security in America and Kuwait. I must admit, if we're going to bother with something we call "security", we might as well do it right. My take: each airline should set their own security regulations so that there is a market to determine what works best. My personal opinion is that Mr. Hess has it pretty much right in the article above. Sniff for bombs and encourage concealed carry by passengers and crew. [kaba]

Jeff Head - A Red Blooded American Message to Islamic Terrorists - Mr. Head trots out part of his archive of military weapons pictures to make a point to the monsters who attacked America last Tuesday. [kaba]

You will not have long to revel in your abominations.

We will bury our dead, mend up our wounded, soothe and comfort the broken hearted, beseech our God ... and then we will come amongst you as a Lion amongst sheep.

Jeff Head - Attack On America! September 11, 2001: The Day of Infamy - a good summary of the atrocity with lots of images and only a little bit of commentary.

We will tend to our dead, our injured and our heart broken. We will seek supplication from our God, the Almighty Creator. Then we will tend to business. The enemies of this nation will rue the day that they raised our righteous indignation and ire. A swift, terrible, just and lasting retribution WILL be exacted for this atrocity, this unspeakably horrific act ... count on it, so help us God!

Finally, a last word to those amongst us who would use this terrible and atrocious act by foreigners to limit our civil rights, to limit our freedoms, to punish all Americans in the name of "added security". NO! Do not even think of it or go there. The anger of the American patriots is aroused. All Americans who cherish liberty and are willing to stand in any way to defend it and to maintain it are patriots. Such activities to infringe on liberty will be seen for the attempts to further the socialistic and Marxist agendas that they are. They will not be tolerated.

Russ Howard - Late on the national day of prayer: It's time to end the game - Mr. Howard says it's time to eradicate the terrorists. All of them. He's also another strong voice for airline carry. [kaba]

Those were the days when any American citizen could buy machine guns by mail order. Yet the America of 1940 was a safer place to live by far than the America of the last 33 years, during which thousands of gun control laws have rendered many Americans into pathetic nine-one-one herd animals, defenseless against rapists, murderers, and now terrorists.

How much of what's left of our Bill of Rights, our privacy, and our right to defense of self, family, and community is going to be gutted in the name of "security" by patty-cake politicos like Diane Feinstein who helped cause these problems to begin with by giving us open borders, victim disarmament, and international meddling in every foreign dispute? How much of the coming "war" will be directed against our own liberty here at home rather than a real war against terrorism?

Assuming we have a real war on terrorism, once finished, we should heed more closely the advice of George Washington, and stop trying to be the world's policeman when we can't or won't even defend our own borders.

Rick Miller at KeepAndBearArms.com - An Open Letter From An American - Well said. [kaba]

Be afraid, enemy of freedom. Be very afraid.

We will hunt you down, no matter how long it takes. We will allow you no rest, no refuge, and show you no mercy. We are committed to your extinction. We are filled with a terrible resolve.

You tried to make history, and now you are doomed to repeat it.

Doomed.

May God have mercy upon you.

We won't.

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