The U.N. Must Die
I have yet to hear anyone afflicted with the "gun control" disability dial 9-1-1 and specify, "Now please be sure to send the kind of cops who are disarmed. If you can't do that, we'd rather you not send anyone at all to stop the men who are holding my daughter at knifepoint, because in this household we don't believe that guns ever solve anything. -- Vin Suprynowicz
From Opinion Journal via GOP News & Views:
A suicide bomber at a supermarket in the West Bank Jewish town of Efrat was foiled when a gun-toting Jewish woman shot him, the Jerusalem Post reports. The terrorist managed to set off one explosion, but 'further tragedy was averted when a woman shopping in the packed supermarket apparently saw the terrorist trying to set off a second explosion and shot him twice in the head from close range.' Sources in Bethlehem identify the bomber as Muhammad Ashimali, whose father says he wanted to be a martyr. He got his chance--and thanks to the gal with the gun, he didn't take anyone with him.
I bought a copy of USA Today yesterday. The left-hand page on the inside of the back cover of section A contained the LP Drug-Czar Ad to which I referred yesterday. It is now hanging on the wall next to my desk. Hopefully, the crooks in the District of Criminals will at least notice.
Keith Preston at anti-state.com - Democracy As Tyranny - great review of Hans Hermann Hoppe's book, Democracy: The God That Failed -- The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order.
Essential to Hoppe's thesis is the concept of "time- preference" which is used as a means of describing the degree to which a person prefers instant or delayed gratification. Someone with a "high" time-preference values instant gratification to a larger degree and is less willing to forgo immediate pursuit of pleasures or consumption of goods for the sake of some future goal like savings, investment, health, maintaining resources for unforeseen disasters, etc. Likewise, someone with a "low" time-preference is more willing to endure short- term sacrifices for the sake of some future goal. A person with a "low" time-preference is "future- oriented". The more goals one has for the future the more one must work, save, invest, produce and delay gratification in the present. One must maintain a relatively high level of self discipline, personal responsibility and cooperation with others in the process. Consequently, in a society where overall time- preferences are low the general level of productivity, responsibility, cooperation and civility will be high.
Hoppe describes government as having the social effect of raising time-preferences and reducing expectations for delayed gratification. Government is characterized as having essentially the same effect on society as natural disasters or crime. Both natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes and crimes such robbery and theft diminish the individual's immediate supply of goods thereby raising time-preferences and reducing the amount of resources available for allocation toward future goals. Government achieves a similar effect through its activities of taxing the resources accumulated by the individual, devaluing the unit of exchange ("money") through inflationary monetary policies and restricting the use of resources through regulations and prohibitions. All of this serves to reduce the overall level of productivity and cooperation by reducing the supply of goods available for savings, investment and exchange. Indeed, government is described as having a worse effect on these values than natural disasters or crime as government aggression against and confiscation of individual resources is continuous and ongoing while natural disasters and crime are sporadic and temporary.
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Democracy is described by Hoppe as providing incentive towards irresponsible and predatory behavior among both the political class and the general population. A monarch achieves his position by inheriting it. The question of what the character of a particular monarch will be is largely a roll of the dice. A monarch may be a vicious predator, a harmless mediocrity or perhaps even a relatively competent and fair-minded individual. Democratic rulers, on the other hand, come to power largely on the basis of selling themselves to voters. To be effective at this, a successful politician must be, for the most part, an unscrupulous demagogue.
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Hoppe points out that until the commencement of the First World War in 1914, only a handful of Western nations were democracies-America, France, Switzerland and, nominally, England and the Netherlands. All other European nations were monarchies. Since 1914, monarchy has completely disappeared in favor of universal democratization. The subsequent century has seen a massive growth of government, bureaucratic proliferation, increasingly brutal and all-encompassing wars, exorbitant taxation, inflation and currency devaluation, centralization of government, the accumulation of enormous public debts, a breakdown of family and community solidarity, increased mediocrity among the intellectual classes, the rise of totalitarian ideologies such as communism and fascism and an overall increase in crime, economic dependency on the state, personal irresponsibility and ethnic and cultural strife.
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Hoppe favors elimination of the state completely in favor of a system commonly referred to as "anarcho- capitalism" which he alternately describes as "private property anarchy", "natural order" or "private law society". Under such arrangements, all government functions would be privatized including police, courts, streets and defense. The state's armed forces would be dismantled in favor of private mercenaries, militias and guerillas. The state's monopolistic judicial system would be eliminated in favor of competing arbitration agencies. Government-run police forces would be abolished and private police services would operate on the basis of fee-for-service or private contractual agreements. The construction and maintenance of streets and roads would be the prerogative of private companies. All taxation and legislation would be abolished.
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - The Voucher Debate and the Failure of Federal Education - separation of school and state. Now.
The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in the now- infamous Cleveland school vouchers case. At issue, at least in the Cleveland case, is whether publicly-funded vouchers can be used by children attending private and parochial schools. While the court will focus on the tenuous argument that a "separation of church and state" renders vouchers unconstitutional, the larger issue for all of us is whether the federal education system needs to be scrapped. After all, if centralized Washington control of education was working, parents wouldn't be clamoring for vouchers in the first place.
Martin Fletcher at The Times (London) - Swiss Right fights UN 'threat' to neutrality - Switzerland will have a referendum next Sunday on whether to join the commU.N.ists. They and the Vatican are currently the world's only hold-outs. It appears likely that the vote will be for joining, by a small margin. Really bad news. I sent the following letter to debate@thetimes.co.uk: [lew]
Switzerland should definitely not join the U.N. As a matter of fact, the United States, Great Britain, and every other country whose citizens care about liberty and national sovereignty should leave the U.N. as soon as possible. As originally created, the U.N. was a wonderful place for countries to get together and peacefully discuss their differences. It has transmogrified of late into an organization doing its best to create a global socialist dictatorship, hell bent on disarming everyone but its own jack-booted thugs. We don't need no steenking world police state. The U.N. must die.
Guest writer (Terra, Sol) at Samizdata - What's truth got to do with it? - talking about gun rights to anti-gun nuts is preaching to the deaf, dumb, and blind. Yep. [samizdata]
Independent News - The Disappeared - the story of one almost-certainly-completely-innocent Muslim man who was disappeared by the United National Socialist States. The Constitution says nothing about citizens. The right to a speedy public trial applies to all residents, not just citizens. But then, the Constitution is just an old faded piece of paper that the District of Corruption uses every day as toilet paper. [lew]
Sierra Times - Second Amendment Activist Arrested During Media Interview - Charlie Puckett, the commander of the Kentucky State Militia, has been arrested by the b.a.t.f. He has a good lawyer. They are asking for donations to his legal defense fund. [kaba]
Jack Weigand - 'Dude', Don't Get a Dell - Dell cancelled Mr. Weigand's order without even telling him because of the name of his business. Looks like the beginning of the end for Dell (I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron 8100). [kaba]
On the 26th I placed another call this time to cancel the order. After a few hours I got a call back, with this amazing reason for the delay. It seems someone in Dell had already canceled my order, when I asked why I was told Dell was afraid I was going to use the machine for illegal purposes. When I asked why someone would think that I was told it was because of the name of my business "Weigand Combat Handguns Inc.". Because I am involved in firearms I might be doing something illegal.
DrJava "is an integrated Java development environment that supports interactive evaluation of expressions. Though it is under active development by the JavaPLT research group at Rice University, DrJava is stable and is currently being used by students, teachers and other developers. A Java 2 v1.3-compliant Java virtual machine is required." I haven't tried it. [meat]
