End the War on Freedom

Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com - Long Live Libertarianism! We haven't 'fallen' -- only the sell-outs have stumbled - A response to Francis Fukuyama's The Fall of the Libertarians. Illuminates Mr. Fukuyama for the war-mongering neocon that he is. [smith2004]

Libertarianism is an obstacle to Empire, and, as such, must be removed: conservatism, says Fukuyama in the War Street Journal, has "matured," and it's time to cast away the youthful chrysalis of libertarianism:

"Like the French Revolution, it derived its energy from a simple idea of liberty, to wit, that the modern welfare state had grown too large, and that individuals were excessively regulated."

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"The hostility of libertarians to big government extended to U.S. involvement in the world. The Cato Institute propounded isolationism in the '90s, on the ground that global leadership was too expensive. At the time of the Gulf War, Cato produced an analysis that argued it would be cheaper to let Saddam keep Kuwait than to pay for a military intervention to expel him--a fine cost-benefit analysis, if you only abstracted from the problem of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a megalomaniac."

Of course, the reality is that Saddam and Kuwait have kissed and made up, forming a common front, along with the Saudis, against the US. So it turns out that it would indeed have been cheaper -- in terms of lives, both American and Iraqi, as well as dollars -- to let Saddam keep Kuwait after all. As for weapons of mass destruction being in the hands of a Middle Eastern megalomaniac, I, too, am disturbed that Ariel Sharon has his finger on the nuclear trigger, but are we going to blame the Iraqis for that, too?

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The pro-war libertarians thought that, if only they allowed themselves to be properly domesticated, if only they bought into the globalist foreign policy agenda of the neocons, and stuck to economics and exotica like cloning and drug legalization, they would be left alone in peace. Let this be a lesson to them -- not that they can afford to learn it, as this point. I am reminded of what Murray N. Rothbard said of the Catoites back in the 1980s, when they were trying to pass off libertarianism as "low-tax liberalism": "They have sold out for a mess of pottage," he wrote, "without even getting the pottage in return."

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The real libertarianism, however, is alive and very well, thank you, flourishing as a result of the great work being done by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, as well as Antiwar.com's sponsoring organization, the Center for Libertarian Studies. We are reaching, every day, tens of thousands of people from practically every country on earth...

William B. Rogers at KeepAndBearArms.com - Reasoning With My Peers - a pro-RKBA doctor introduces the paper and slide show he used to attempt to make his peers recognize that they don't know enough to be pushing the slanted anti-gun message they've been pushed to deliver to their patients. I didn't read the talk, but I liked Powerpoint presentation. [kaba]

When doctors use the "medical model" to describe a social phenomenon, they get onto very shaky ground. For instance, when we consider the plague and how it was ultimately brought under control, we find the key was to recognize the "vector," that is, the animal that carried the infectious agent. It was a nice piece of epidemiological work. The microorganism that causes the infection is carried in fleas. But...the fleas are brought close to people by rats. The solution was actually easy: get rid of the rats and you get rid of the plague.

Apply the same logic to firearms injuries and the idea becomes: get rid of the guns and you get rid of the firearms injuries. Well actually even that line of thinking is politically bastardized. The analogy would hold up well if doctors realized that the "guns" are the equivalent of the "fleas." They are too numerous and ubiquitous, and attempts underway even now in England and Australia (and Washington DC and New York City) demonstrate that you simply can't get rid of all the guns. You can get rid of the legal guns, because law-abiding citizens will attempt to follow the law. But criminals couldn't care less if there is a law making the carrying of handguns illegal. In fact, as we all know (first by intuition and now by empirically valid data), when there are less legal firearms in a community, violent crime escalates markedly.

Getting rid of the fleas doesn't work, but getting rid of the rats might work. The "rats" in the firearms injuries phenomenon being "people" who don't use firearms properly, either due to lack of training or criminal intent.

Henry Lamb at World Net Daily - What's happening in U.S. schools? - if your kids are still going to government schools, maybe this article will convince you to homeschool or find a good private school. Now. [kaba]

The function of American schools has changed. Once, the function of the school was to prepare each student to reach his maximum individual potential. Now, school has become a process to modify behavior, attitudes and beliefs in pursuit of a "tolerant," (read: obedient) society.

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The result of the transformation is becoming clear: prayer, freedom, corporations, liberty, the Ten Commandments, national sovereignty, property rights -- and certainly, guns -- are all terms and concepts that have been demonized. Tolerance, cooperation and equity, are values that supplant individual excellence, individual achievement and individual responsibility.

Confronting the small arms pandemic - pandemic my ass. This is the kind of bass ackward thinking we're up against. A tiny portion of the population uses a tool to kill other people. Hence, ownership of the tool should be controlled. Sheesh. [kaba]

Motivated by something I read at kaba, I sent the following letter to my New York state assemblyman and senator:

S2279, S2302 (same as A9560), and S3746 (same as A941) are all bills that would make a well-needed dent in New York's blatantly unconstitutional gun laws. Please support them if they come to the floor or to any committee you sit on.

As I said in my letter to the editor of the Times Union, which they published on March 7, I believe that the second amendment to the United Status Constitution means that 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, machine gun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission. Any law to the contrary is unconstitutional, hence null and void.

Please do everything in your power to change New York law to be in conformance with the Bill of Rights, all ten amendments.

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