End the War on Freedom

NASA - The Blue Marble - lots of nice satellite pictures of the Earth. Many that aren't on the linked HTML pages are available directly from the images directory. [heart]

Carlo Stagnaro at LewRockwell.com - Interview With Jeff Snyder - Mr. Snyder wrote the book, Nation of Cowards. This is long, but very good. Once again, the non-agression principle is all we need. [lew]

Your book is a strong case against utility. You state every individual has the right to keep and bear arms and, more generally, certain rights, no matter whether or not it leads to a more prosperous and peaceful society. Why?

I do not believe that rights are founded on prudential grounds, nor do I believe that individuals are entitled by society or their government to possess or exercise rights only so long as society or the state judges (whether rightly or wrongly) that the rights confer an aggregate net benefit upon society or the state as a whole. I have been concerned in many of my writings to demonstrate this, as well as the corollary proposition, that rights cannot be defended or justified on utilitarian grounds, since to undertake such a defense is to imply that rights require a utilitarian justification, and are therefore contingent on positive aggregate outcomes. By the way, I speak of social utilitarianism, normally expressed as "the greatest good for the greatest number," not of individual utilitarianism, that is, the notion that each individual acts to maximize his individual welfare.

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Many people agree with you, that anyone should be able to own and carry a handgun for personal defense. But what about military weapons? Don't you think it would be dangerous to let people be so strongly armed?

I do not wish to alarm you, but we already freely permit people to have military weapons and, what's worse, the people we permit to have these weapons are clearly the most dangerous people on the planet. I mean, of course, those in government. Do I take your question, then, to mean, that while we manage to live in the world with this state of affairs, the incremental danger of letting anyone else (who is so inclined) have these weapons would be simply too dangerous and intolerable, so that it is better to protect the monopolies enjoyed by those now in power?

I am sorry to be a little glib, but really I don't know how to answer your question. It is a sometimes unfortunate fact that we generally take the familiar, the status quo, as the proper baseline for judging all matters and see any change productive of uncertainty as an intolerable threat to our current comfort level. This is illustrated in the gun control debate all the time. People are concerned that, if concealed weapons permit laws are passed that allow any sane, law-abiding adult to carry a handgun for self-defense, these unknown strangers will be a danger to their community. You see, what do we really know about these people, and what training do these people really have? Yet ask them how much they really know about the police who are carrying not only handguns but also who have shotguns and, sometimes, semiautomatic rifles in their cars. What do they really know about the temper, character and personality of these people? What do they really know about their training? Basically, they know nothing about that. They know they wear uniforms that make them look "official" and that they work for a respected organization that is supposed to protect them, and this is enough. It is familiar; it is part of the ordinary fabric of life, so it is part of the baseline or background against which risks are measured, rather than part of the risk assessment itself. If you try to point out to them that they already live, quite comfortably and with scarcely a thought, with the risk they are supposedly worried about, they look at you like you are a madman. It is a failure of imagination. They cannot step off the baseline, cannot see the world apart from the baseline.

Really, would we any better or worse off if the individual right to keep and bear arms clearly encompassed the right to own tanks, fighter jet aircraft, stinger missiles, and suitcase nukes? I have no idea, but I think that the question is unanswerable except as a general indication of our beliefs about the nature of people. However, I will say that, at least here in the United States, historically, at least prior to the 1960s, except for the 1934 tax imposed on machine guns (which had the merit of doubling their cost to help keep them out of the hands of the disgruntled poor), I believe that there were no legal prohibitions against owning most military weapons. I am not aware of any instances during this period in which the absence of these legal prohibitions led to societal horrors. Perhaps almost all who are inclined to use these weapons against their fellow man are attracted to service in government, where it is socially acceptable?

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You write, "self-government, not war." What does it mean?

This is from an article I wrote titled, "The Line in the Sand," which addresses the question of when it is appropriate for people to take up arms against their government. Basically it means, don't wage war trying to reform the government, or to institute a new form of legitimate government; instead, ignore the state, accept and handle your responsibilities without trying to pass them off onto others, and govern yourselves through voluntary arrangements. That warrants some elaboration. First, I think it necessary to recognize and admit that perhaps the most important fact of the American experiment in limited government, with its Bill of Rights and express reservation of rights to the People, is that it did not work. I don't think any new, supposedly better institutional or structural elements of a reformed government will work either. Fundamentally, it is a problem of the nature of man, and his ready desire to use force to compel others to secure benefits to himself; fundamentally, this is a religious problem. If you create an institution with the sole legitimate power to compel others, nominally only for certain limited purposes, the power will eventually be used for any purpose. It's like building a car that can go 120 miles per hour, telling the driver he can only ever drive 10 miles per hour and expecting that he won't exceed the self-imposed speed limit.

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...In The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke is about to enter the cave that "is strong with the dark side of the Force," Yoda says to him, "Your weapons, you will not need them." I would like people to understand, "Your rights, you will not need them." Rights do not make you free; only by acting free can you become free. The knowledge of the prior existence of rights is useful, as reminders of what men once were, what they fought for, where they drew a line against compulsion by their King or government; it helps us perceive that men one time conceived themselves as possessing a core dignity and autonomy that they would not permit others to lay hands on -- it helps us to perceive our baseline, which we would otherwise be blind to.

But to fight for the establishment of rights or for recognition of rights by one's government involves tacit subordination to the state. The struggle to make a government recognize a right works in favor of the state, because it implicitly sets up government as the arbiter of the existence of the right. If one will not act within the scope of freedom delineated by the right unless or until the state concedes it lawful to do so, why of course then there is no right and the state controls your conduct. Thus, the passage of concealed carry permit laws in the United States is an admission that the right to keep and bear arms no longer exists in this country.

But there is more to it than that. The whole notion of individual rights is fundamentally a bankrupt notion, and not because of the problem I spoke of before concerning whether or not the rights were really "God-given" but merely customary and subject to change. The notion of "fundamental rights" is correlative to the notion of legitimate coercion; it implies, and tacitly depends upon acceptance of subjection to a domain of coercive authority. You can be governed, except that government must leave you alone in such and such spheres of activity: free speech, free exercise of religion, bearing arms, etc. The "rights" analysis pictures envelopment in a sphere of coercive authority, with specified, limited pockets of freedom. It's the baseline problem! Why are just those areas of my behavior "protected" and not others? The fundamental question is not what rights do I have, but why may anyone exercise coercive authority over me in the first place? It is coercion, not freedom, which must be justified. If coercion is not legitimate, there is no need for "rights." Arguing "rights" is arguing from an acknowledged and accepted subordinate -- unfree -- position.

Paul Charnetzki IV at anti-state.com - Dispelling Anti-Anarchist Myths - a reasonable outline of the ideas in Lysander Spooner's No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority and the free-market justice ideas propounded in Hans-Hermann Hoppe's The Private Production of Defense. Especially well said considering Mr. Charnetzki's age: [anti-state]

Paul Charnetzki IV is an angry fifteen year old. He lives in Wilmette, Illinois, a yuppie suburb of Chicago. You can contact him, especially if you're willing to give him money or sexual favors.

Colonel Dan at Sierra Times - The Colonel's State of the Union Address - what a joy it would be to hear a modern president give such a speech! [sierra]

My fellow Americans, the state of our union is perilous. Over the years, power hungry socialists on both sides of the aisle have incrementally hijacked our government. Consequently, it has grown dangerously and destructively out of control--so much so that America is actually no longer the free nation it was intended to be. It's now time for us to reclaim our responsibility as the children of our forefathers and define freedom as the founders did. Here then is the view from my saddle on how I intend to free America from the grip of these hijackers.

Robert A. Waters at KeepAndBearArms.com - What's wrong with this picture? - more evidence that firearms are the best known self-defense method. But for some reason, the Brady Bunch still don't get it. [kaba]

It all started when student Christie Caywood organized a chapter of the Second Amendment Sisters (SAS) on the campus of Mount Holyoke College. A series of rapes at area universities had alerted students to the need for better protection since even campus security officers don't carry guns. Caywood's stated purpose for forming a campus chapter was to allow qualified students to carry concealed weapons on campus in order to defend themselves against rapists and other violent criminals. Within a short time, nearly fifty students had joined the group.

But Nancy Hwa, spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to "Prevent Gun Violence", criticized the pro-gun rights organization: "I don't know where they get the idea that [guns are] the number-one self-protection method," she said. "It's unfortunate that these groups are spreading misinformation about the usefulness of firearms for self-protection."

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