PGPi

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 08 Mar 2002 13:00:00 GMT

From samizdata:

If somebody starts shooting a gun at me, don't expect me to defend myself with a condiment. -- Steve Daniels on pepper spray

Heard on the JR Show last night:

Little Annie is in her back yard filling in a large hole in the ground with dirt. Her nextdoor neighbor peeks over the fence and asks, "What are you doing, Annie?" Annie says, crying, "My goldfish died. I'm burying him." The neighbor says, "I'm sorry to hear that, Annie, but why did you dig such a big hole for a little goldfish?" Annie replies, still crying, "He's inside your cat."

Nice halucinography from Reverend Fallingstar. I especially like Easter Egg. [anodyne]

Michael Gilson De Lemos at LewRockwell.com - Arrivederci, Svizerra - Mr. De Lemos lived in Switzerland between the ages of 12 and 14. He talks of all the things he liked about it, in the past tense, as they will soon be now that Switzerland has joined the commU.N.ists. [lew]

Switzerland had no increasingly theoretical US-type Habeas Corpus -- but automatically compensated the falsely accused per day in jail. Police saluted citizens on addressing them versus the SOP abusiveness, impunity, calculated impertinence of US police.

...

No one seemed to know the Swiss President's name -- the government was not considered that important. A poll at the time asked Swiss what was the essential interaction with government. The response? Father-son militia target shoots.

Charley Reese at The Columbia Daily Tribune - Americans must stand firm against 'war' - will the real terrorists please put away their red, white, and blue flags. [lew]

The president likes to use self-defense as a rationalization. Well, I believe in self-defense, but self-defense does not extend to killing people who some think might be a threat in the future. How do you think you would fare if you killed somebody and told the police: "Well, he wasn't attacking me, but I know he doesn't like me, and so probably some day, he would have attacked me. I just decided to take him out as a precaution"? You'd be charged with murder one.

...

We need to rebel. We need to send a message to Washington that without a formal declaration of war by Congress, we aren’t serving in the armed forces. We need to teach our children that one takes a precious human life only in defense of other human life or our liberty but never just to achieve a political or corporate objective that has nothing to do with the defense of our country or our liberty.

Hans Herman Hoppe at The Ludwig von Mises Institute - The Private Production of Defense - PDF file. Why Hobbes was badly wrong about the need for the state. How the non-statist security model would work. Insurance agencies replace police. [lew]

Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief.

I will demonstrate that the idea of collective security is a myth that provides no justification for the modern state, and that all security is and must be private.

...

The empirical evidence thus seems clear. The belief in a protective state appears to be a patent error, and the American experiment in protective statism a complete failure. The U.S. government does not protect us. To the contrary, there exists no greater danger to our life, property, and pros-perity than the U.S. government, and the U.S. president in particular is the world's single most threatening and armed danger, capable of ruining everyone who opposes him and destroying the entire globe.

Andrew Orlowski at The Register - PGP deep-freezed - NAI shrugs - Network Associates hasn't found a buyer for Pretty Good Privacy and is no longer selling licenses. No problem. You want the freeware from PGPi anyway, though I don't know if anyone is keeping it working in newer OS versions. [grabbe]

John Ashcroft has been drumming the beat recently, reminding the tech industry that a "lucrative surveillance state" (in our Tom's words) can be built from the ashes of the September 11 attacks. This obviously doesn't extend to personal privacy software. Are we the only people who find the neglect of PGP somewhat fishy?

Aaron Zelman at JPFO - Speech to NRA Board - Sherman, set the way-back for May 23, 1994. Mr. Zelman was right back then, and he's still right today. There can be no compromising with gun grabbers. Compromise equals genocide. Don't do it. [jpfo]

Joel Spolsky - Nothing is as Simple as it Seems - Why you should design things before implementing them. [joel]

I'm sorry to disappoint you. Yeah, I know, you read Kent Beck and now you think it's OK to not design things before you implement them. Sorry, it's not OK. You can not change things in code "just as easily" as you could change them in the design documents. People say this all the time and it's wrong. "We use high-level tools these days, like Java and XML. We can change things in minutes in the code. Why not design it in code?" My friend, you can put wheels on your mama but that doesn't make her a bus, and if you think you can refactor your wrongly- implemented file-copy function to make it preemptive rather than threaded as quickly as I could write that sentence, you're in deep denial.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"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."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair