End the War on Freedom

From a message by Edifice Wrecks in the smith2004 Yahoo group (free account needed):

A well-regulated population being necessary to the security of a police state, the right of the Government to seize and destroy arms shall not be infringed.

Fred's M14 Stocks... and More is a business I found in Shotgun News. Fred sells M14 stocks, targets, and accessories. He likes the M14. I like his attitude. One of his products that appeals to me is on the Riflemans Accessories page: 25-Meter Targets w/Freds Guide to Becoming a Rifleman.

Cheyenne Brass sells bullets and new & once-fired cases.

There's a new Libertarian Enterprise issue: "Anarchy, Slaves, and Death". Articles I liked:

• Letter from Barbara Cunningham - guess what. If you support the death penalty, you are not pro-life. Anti-abortion maybe, but not pro-life. Personally, I think that neither abortion nor execution is any of the state's business. If a woman want to scrape out a part of her body, and until it comes out and starts breathing, I consider an unborn baby to be part of its mother's body, ain't nobody's business but hers. If I witness someone threatening my family or stealing my property, his life is forfeit, to me and only me. In that moment, I decide whether to allow him to continue breathing.
• Letter from Jack Jerome - disarming the Afghan people is a really bad idea. It's what the commU.N.ists want, but they want that here in the U.S. of A. as well. If we validate the concept, we'll have a hard time telling them not to do likewise when our turn comes.
• Letter from Curt Howland - Mr. Howland dares Jonah Goldman to make him a conservative by concinving him that there is any situation whatsoever in which the initiation of force is right and moral.

  However, unlike anyone else in history, according to your article, I will tell you what it is you don't get: Non-initiation of force.
  
  I must assume that "initiation of force" was part of the "blah blah blah" part of the libertarian philosophy you itemized. It is, unfortunately, the crux which makes the distinction between "conservative" and "libertarian". It is also what differentiates "liberal" and "libertarian", since the difference between "conservative" and "liberal" is merely the ends which are used to justify the use of force against others.

• Would Hayek Have A Shotgun Rack In His Pickup Truck? by Joel Simon - Guess what? Lots of red-neck Texans are libertarians. But they neither know nor care about the label.

  Then again... Maybe we'd better look at that definition again. "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."
  
  Well, I believe that. I believed it before I'd ever heard of El Neil, or of libertarianism for that matter. It's why I got along so well with the folks I knew in Pampa, even though I never did care much for rodeos. They believe it, too.
  
  What we want from government is - nothing. We want to not have to think about it very much. And we want to be secure in the knowledge that it's not thinking very much about us.

• The Slave Psychosis by Jim Duensing - The nazis were quite popular in Germany. Treat them very harshly here. Before it's too late.

  Face scanning technology has already been installed at domestic airports and major sporting events and the state driver's license systems are well on their way to creating a de facto national identification card. We have slid all the way down the slippery slope and gone over the greased cliff.
  
  ...
  
  The Slave Psychosis appears in those who repeatedly employ the defense mechanism of rationalization to deal with the anger accompanying the infringement of their autonomy.
  
  The process starts the first time an individual's rights are infringed by a governmental agent. It could have been the first time a governmental agent took their money, violated their privacy, made idiotic demands of them, etc. It is a natural human reaction to be upset, even enraged, at such procedures. However, those who developed the Slave Psychosis temporarily suppressed their anger, because it would do no good to express it. Indeed, expressing it could cause problems. For instance, a security supervisor with a grade school education could threaten to arrest you and search your bags for calling her and her cohorts Nazis.

• A Letter To Pat Buchanan by L. Neil Smith - How socialist party A and socialist party B have royally screwed things up by following some of the libertarian prescriptions for a free society. Why open borders are not the problem.

  If we libertarians were in charge of things, Pat, there would _be_ no welfare state, no social "services" to expand explosively, all of which are blatant violations, not only of the underlying principles of libertarianism, but of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, as well. The crime rate would be lower than that of the 19th century for the same reason it's fallen in double digits in places like Florida, and lowest of all in Vermont. There would be no prohibition -- nor even any regulation -- of the acquisition, ownership, and defensive use of weapons.
  
  ...
  
  What hallucinatory concoction gave you the notion that genuine libertarians have any interest whatever in advancing the fortunes of the party of Nixonian wage-price controls, the War on Drugs, the Brady Bill, the adequate magazine ban, and recently the destruction of due process in the name of "antiterrorism", and the insane and murderous slaughter in Afghanistan? The same smoking materials, perhaps, that make you believe the GOP is a party of small government and individual liberty?
  
  Let me make it perfectly clear, Pat, once and for all, that the only interest libertarians have in the Republican Party is seeing it crumble and vanish, so that there'll be one down and only one left to go.
  
  ...
  
  And I can also say we're the only train headed in the direction you claim you want to go, and that you'd damn well better hop aboard. It should be simplicity itself to defend the existence of your poor, precious party, Pat. Just be better than we are on all of the issues that count. Enforce the Bill of Rights stringently, energetically and enthusiastically. Declare "Peace with Honor" in the illegal War on (some) Drugs. Repeal, nullify, or otherwise dispose of the 25,000-plus laws that presently deny Americans their rights under the Second Amendment.
  
  In short, abolish the welfare/warfare state.

Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com - The Tali-Boy: Made in the USA - commentary on the coming show trial of John Walker Lindh. [grabbe]

Meanwhile, as the Justice Department mobilizes its apparently limitless resources to prosecute a deluded nutball who's proved more of a threat to himself than to anyone else, Ashcroft has issued yet another security "alert" -- as if to remind himself, as much as us, of the real danger. Having focused the resources of his department on the Tali-boy, I guess the long-promised investigation into how US law enforcement and intelligence agencies managed to miss a conspiracy that was at least five years in the making will have to be delayed -- perhaps indefinitely. Or, at least, until one day, years from now, when we come upon an item buried in the back pages of the Saturday paper, reporting that some obscure government commission has just released a report "proving" that no one was really culpable, and that the agencies involved need "reform."

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