End the War on Freedom

Individuals do not need leaders. -- Keith Shugarts

My wife, Karla, went to the range with me yesterday. After listening to my lecture on Cooper's four laws of firearms safety, she fired eleven rounds from the .22 at a target at 25 yards and did well enough that I wish I had used good ammo instead of the cheap stuff, so that I could distinguish her shooting from the ammo's randomness. She found those eleven rounds quite stressful, and after feeling the shock wave from two rounds of .223 Remington, she decided to wait in the car while I fired a few more. She came to the range as a trade for me going to look at a house that we can't afford. Well, it's a start. Hopefully, there will be another time. And another...

ar15.com - The 1st Annual Black Rifle Convention - Friday, May 31^st - Sunday, June 2^nd at Heartland Lodge in Nebo, Illinois, an hour from St. Louis. Open shooting, sporting clays, machine gun rentals, blues band, firearms training, competition, horse trail rides, ATV rentals, vendor tent, $35 + lodging. Illinois is one of those nearly-fascist states that requires residents to have a firearms owner ID card (FOID). It appears that non-residents may legally transport an unloaded firearm in a case in their trunk. This may not be true of all the states you have to drive through. Fortunately, most of us can still drive across the country without being stopped, much less searched. How long will that last?

Peter J. Mancus at KeepAndBearArms.com - Liberty - a wonderful reminder that the Bill of Rights is a restriction on government, not a restriction on the people. As such, these rights are not subject to law-making or majority decisions. Violate them at your peril, oh tyrant. That's why the second amendment exists. To ensure that if you violate our rights, it will be at your mortal peril. Long, but worth reading. [kaba]

Historically, throughout all cultures, all civilizations, all races, and all continents, the Tyrant's Pattern, uniformly, has been this: demonize arms [swords, firearms, etc.] and their owners; agitate for the regulation, banning and confiscation of same; regulate same; register same; ban same; confiscate same; once the population is disarmed, consolidate power, incarcerate or murder potential hostile leaders; and impose genocide.

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Do you know us? Do you know our roots? Our world view? Our attitudes? If you did, you would tell modern day Gun Prohibitionists to shut up, and you would bar them from office. And, if they did not shut up, you would do as we did: hang them and burn them in effigy; smear excrement on their homes and places of business; refuse to trade with them; bar them from their courthouses; publicly mock them; drive them out of town; burn their property; and kill them, if need be. We stood up for our rights. We claimed our rights. We did not tolerate a public serpent. [For authoritative historical documentation that this is part of how the Minutemen and political activists treated those loyal to the English Crown, read: Robert A. Gross' The Minutemen And Their World, ISBN 0-8090-0120-9.]

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The primary purpose of the U.S. Bill of Rights was to legally place off-limits, beyond the control of civil authority and all majorities, certain rights--the rights specified in the Bill. In that sense, the primary purpose of the U.S. Bill of Rights was to take away civil authority's advantage, vis-a-vis citizens, of otherwise having absolute, boundless, unfettered, arbitrary control and unchecked power over citizens' their lives, their bodies, their property, their freedom.

Mankind's greatest achievement is the U.S. Bill of Rights, but only when adhered to, as written, and not diluted by interpretations that favor civil authority to the detriment of citizens. Mankind's greatest achievement is not the pyramids, not the World Trade Center, not the Panama nor the Suez Canals, not nuclear powered submarines nor super aircraft carriers, not stealth fighters and bombers, not the wonders of modern science and modern medicine, but the U.S. Bill of Rights. That Bill is the high water mark of all civilizations.

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The United States is not, and never was, a pure democracy. This is because our Constitutional Rule of Law system has many built-in countermajoritarian safeguards. Among these are: the separation of powers; staggered elections; the electoral college; bicameral legislature; advise and consent features; executive veto power; specified limits on Congress' powers; and the Bill of Rights.

Anyone who states that the United States is a democracy [meaning a pure democracy] telegraphs his or her ignorance and lack of political-legal sophistication and is unfit to be a ruler, or even to vote. They are Constitutional illiterates at best or schemers at worst.

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[Note: This point is important. Please pay careful attention.] The entire U.S. Bill of Rights, effective December 15, 1791, to date, per the U.S. Constitution, is part of the Supreme Law of the Land. As such, the entire U.S. Bill of Rights, per the express terms of the U.S. Constitution, as modified by that Bill, was, from the moment it was ratified, and still is, binding on all civil authority [federal, state and local] in the United States, regardless of what anyone else, including the U.S. Supreme Court, says to the contrary.

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The conflict between Statists [godless or god fearing, with or without a belief in inalienable rights] and Patriots [godless or god fearing, with a belief in inalienable rights derived from a Creator or Nature, and a strong commitment to maximize Individual Liberty per a Constitutional Rule of Law,] is growing. This conflict appears to be moving toward a flash point that will trigger overt insurrection and civil war. Many Patriots believe that many Statists have an agenda: to eliminate the idea of a Creator [or Nature] as the source of rights and to make a godless civil authority the sole source of rights. Statists believe X. Patriots believe Y. It remains to be seen how long X and Y can co-exist. A key challenge in our life time is coming to terms with this Statist-Patriot conflict. What Statists and Patriots believe appears to be 100% irreconcilable.

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The right to carry a hand held weapon for lawful self-defense and for lawful defense of others in a public place, without a CCW permit [other than the Second Amendment,] and without having to first get anyone's permission to do so, is a fundamental right.

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Civil authority's power to promote the general welfare stops cold, 100%, at the Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment's "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Hence, the right to self-preservation does not require getting anyone's permission or license first. The entire CCW permit concept and system, therefore, is 100% Constitutionally infirmed and totally illegitimate. That system is an unequivocally clear prior restraint infringement against the right.

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It is axiomatic that lawful defense of one's self, one's family, one's loved ones, and one's fellow citizens, in a public place, is an innate right of all mammals, which is, and has long been, recognized throughout the world.

Most animals come equipped with natural means of self-defense, e.g., claws, teeth, powerful tail, thick skin, keen senses, extreme agility. Human beings, however, lack such natural weapons. Thus, to deny to human beings the right to carry a suitable weapon to preserve bodily integrity is to deny human beings an ability already extended to dogs and other mammals and to reduce human beings to a status below animals.

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Know guns, know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.

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Burn this into your psyche: An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject--and worse: a piss ant. Civil authority has to take a citizen seriously. Civil authority can ignore, flatten, incarcerate, and execute a piss ant. Which would you rather be: a citizen or a piss ant?

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Citizens who really believe in the inalienable right to life and liberty, and that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to arms that shall not be infringed, act like it. They pack a sidearm without a CCW permit. They go public with that fact. They defy civil authority to arrest them. If arrested, they defend in court. If the jury does not cut them loose, and if they lose on appeal, the militia, if active, musters, and does whatever needs to be done to correct a miscarriage of justice. Otherwise, Liberty is toothless.

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When firearm confiscation begins, as a good citizen, it is incumbent upon you to surrender your guns--bullets first.

evhead - Pal No More - Ev is dropping PayPal and moving to credit cards. Hard to blame him. [wes]

There's a new Libertarian Enterprise issue: "Gung Hay Fat Choy!". Articles I liked:

• Enron Schmearon! by James J Odle - Enron and campaign finance "reform".

  In prior years, in more intellectually honest times, people at least had the decency to call things by their proper names. Influence peddling was considered graft, bribery or outright corruption. Today, colorful expressions such as 'seeking access' or 'providing input' are used instead. In prior years, in more intellectually honest times, when government planners sought to centrally plan all of public life, the practice was termed 'communism' or 'socialism.' Today, its called 'capitalism' or the 'American Way.'
  
  But we don't live in intellectually honest times. We live in an era where partisan spin doctors are running amok - twisting our very perceptions of reality from the normal, clear-headedness of logical thinking into the lunatic self-deception so common among the denizens of the District of Criminals.
  
  ...
  
  In the early '90's, during the shameful years of the CLINTON INFESTATION, the Hildebeast of New York, Senator Hitlery, held private confidential meetings with her cronies and attempted to centrally plan all of our health care needs. Deserving everything, she was soundly thrashed for her totalitarian efforts at the hands of talk radio hosts and listeners.
  
  Clandestine national health care plans. Clandestine national energy plans. There is no moral difference between the two activities.

• This Time It Has To Cost Them Something by L. Neil Smith - L. Neil proposes a phone call and letter writing campaign against the concept of the driver's license. A good idea. I may even join in. I doubt it will do squat, however, until we get enough of us to drive without license or registration and defend ourselves, with extreme prejudice, when threatened for doing so. I have been tempted to remove the plates and stickers from my car along with that pesky metal vehicle ID tag. So far, I haven't done it. Now that would be a real protest.

  Since September 11, I've been getting e-mail from half a dozen different sources, almost every day, concerning the pressure being felt in many quarters to create and implement a system of national identification.
  
  Bush's gang claims it doesn't want such a program, but they've proven to be about as trustworthy and truthful as Bill Clinton. Those generating the most pressure are the heads of corporations that would manufacture whatever it is Americans would be required to carry, to demonstrate that our existence had been inspected and approved by the government. The same kind of creatures once manufactured manacles and torture instruments for the Inquisition, and poison gas for Nazi death chambers.
  
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  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and anybody who wants to run or hide must have something seriously wrong with him, so lock him up in a padded cell and put him on a Thorazine drip until he's a good citizen once again. Clearly we have come to a point in history at which we're going to have to decide whether this will be the Century of Authority or the Century of Liberty, the Century of being disindividualized and turned into mindlessly obedient cattle, or the Century of the Bill of Rights.
  
  Regrettably, the time to "draw a line in the sand" with regard to schemes for national identification was almost exactly a century ago, when politicians in some of the more puckered states decided that this newfangled automobile thing was a dangerous fad that had to be discouraged.
  
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  As with licensing automobiles, licensing drivers serves purposes that are markedly different from what the government advertises for it. First and foremost, it's a matter of revenue, meaning that once again, the government has taken away your right to travel as you like -- along with that of everybody else -- and generously offers to sell a little bit of it back, if and only if we're good little boys and girls.
  
  Secondly (for the time being) it's a means of social control by which government agents can scrutinize your physical movements and other behavior. The wiser and more cynical of Leviathan's minions will often admit to the first charge and claim that permit in your wallet and the tags on your car are merely proof that you paid the tax. But if that were true, there would be no need for the giant alphanumerics on the tag, or for your photograph or fingerprints on the permit. What they are, in fact, is police state tracking systems, and once again, we see that we are not simply human beings with inalienable rights, or citizens of the United States, but unknowing subjects of the Empire of Lies.
  
  ...
  
  What do you think would happen if legislators began getting phone calls and letters -- a few per week, from every county in the state -- demanding that they cease requiring and issuing drivers' licenses, on the grounds that the system has been abused and it's about to get worse?

• A Foolish War -- King George's Nightmare by Keith Shugarts - a well-needed reminder that a standing army is unconstitutional.

  A cold late winter wind dances its way down a darkened Pennsylvania Avenue, past two spectral entities enjoying the view of a light anxiously flickering to life in the window of a white palace. The palace surrounded by fence, gate, and guards. The occupant of that palace, a man, rises from a nightmare. His body moist with the sheen of fear sweat. In a panic, he calls for his sycophants and co-conspirators to attend him. They rise up out of their darkened lairs to rush up the flights of stairs and stand by his side, wondering if they'd have to reassure him that there were no pretzels in the room. Upon entry into the sacred chamber, one darkly dressed minion scurries around the room to check and see if there are any nude statues to cover. Another mumbles something about terrorist warnings thinking to himself that he's got to get more well known. Most though are cooing to the whimpering King. The King's mouth moves with little strength and the words flow out with small enthusiasm. "They were here again, whispering about the abuses, about the mockery we have made of the Constitution," the King says pulling his knees up to his chest.
  
  ...
  
  Most of the restrictions on the military contained within the Constitution exist within Article 1, Section 8. In Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the section dealing with congressional powers, there exist several powers and restrictions placed upon Congress regarding the founding and forming of the military. This was done to deny the United States government the ability to create a permanent military, to restrict the use of any military action to that of defensive, and to deny the government the excuse to steal money from its citizens through the use of taxes.

Colin McMillen - My Run-In With The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - now they're stopping serial cables at the border because of some bogus DMCA excuse. [cowlix]

Ron Paul in the House of Representatives - Congressional Record, 2/13/02 - Dr. Paul speaks out against the Shays-Meehan campaign finance "reform" bill. [kaba]

Mr. Chairman, this so-called ``reform'' legislation is clearly unconstitutional. Many have pointed out that the First amendment unquestionably grants individuals and businesses the free and unfettered right to advertise, lobby, and contribute to politicians as they choose. Campaign reform legislation blows a huge hole in these First amendment protections by criminalizing criticism of elected officials. Thus, passage of this bill will import into American law the totalitarian concept that government officials should be able to use their power to silence their critics.

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I urge my colleagues to listen to Professor Titus and reject this unconstitutional proposal. Instead, I hope my colleagues will work to reduce special interest influence in Washington and restore integrity to politics by reducing the federal government to its constitutional limits.

Doug Fiedor - Congress Vs. Airport Security - some reflections on our new federalized Airport Security Service. [kaba]

Seeing military troops standing around was certainly not very comforting, though. Many were probably not old enough to get into a bar yet and surely none were of age to get a reasonable auto insurance rate. All would have been arrested in a heartbeat for carrying a weapon in public outside the airport. But, there they were, acting like they were ready to corral the traveling public and conquer a civilian airport.

A couple of the PFCs noticed my smile when I realized they were in the very same predicament some of us were in one night on guard duty in France 38 years ago: no bullets. Back then, we were "attacked" when a wild bore with a nasty attitude wandered on base. I was the only one with bullets and all I had was the old Army 45 caliber sidearm.

Dorothy Anne Seese - Freedom in America: it's real isn't it? - are we facetious yet? Would be funny if it weren't so true. [kaba]

I do know that as long as I stay inside my condo unit, obey all the laws, do whatever the government says, and fill out all the forms I'm asked to fill out and tell the truth, then I'm free to sit in here and read, or cook, or even work at the computer.

Freedom is easy when you just do as you're told!

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