End the War on Freedom

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - If I Ran the Zoo - Mr. Smith has already written a novel, Hope about how a Libertarian president would behave. If you haven't read it yet, stop right now, click the link, and order. This article reiterates that he would actually do those things if elected and adds a few ideas that have occurred to him since Hope's writing. [tle]

I'm ashamed Alex's first act as President wasn't to declare a tax amnesty retroactive back to 1913. Along with establishing a commission to investigate the Constitutionality of the Sixteenth Amendment and the possible illegality of its ratification, this would do more to restore confidence in our civilization than anything else I can think of.

How would revenues from this amnesty be replaced? They wouldn't be. The money belongs to the people who made it and nobody else. They will use it more wisely than anyone in the government, and even if they couldn't, it would still be theirs. In any case, the government has too damn much money, which is why it feels free to start a stupid, unneccesary war and to spy on and control the people it's supposed to serve.

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The next thing I'd do, my first day in office, would be to declare a "lockdown" on organizations like the IRS, DEA, ATF, OSHA, EPA, NSA, CIA, FBI, and any other government tentacle whose "franchise" consists of preventing Americans from fully exercising and enjoying their rights under the first ten Amendments to the Constitution. All agency activity would cease immediately, all cases and operations would be suspended indefinitely, all employees would be disarmed, report to work, and sit at their desks, twiddling their thumbs, while their past performances were criminally investigated and evaluated with regard to compliance with the Bill of Rights. Nuremburg Tribunal standards would apply and "I was just following orders" would be disallowed as a defense.

William Stone III at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Fall of the Republic - compares the in-process fall of the American FedGov with the Star Wars story. [tle]

The "current" Star Wars saga (episodes I through III) are also attractive from the libertarian perspective because of their detailing of the fall of the Old Republic. For students of history, this is essentially a retelling of the politics surrounding the War Between the States -- only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - Tithing to the Church of Green - seems that the enviro-whackos are doing everything they can to get ahold of GW's "faith-based-initiative" cash. Sounds to me like establishment of religion, environmentalism being basically a religion: a bunch of unlikely propositions accepted on faith.

Cryptome - John Gilmore vs. John Ashcroft, et. al - January 15 court transcript of Mr. Gilmore's challenge to the airline sekurity ID requirement. No conclusions yet.

"Laurie" via Adam Davis at The Topica Psychohistory discussion group - Swiss View - a report on the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. [smith2004]

This sweet little chalet village was during the WEF packed with about 3000 delegates and press, some 1000 Swiss police, another 400 Swiss soldiers, numerous tanks and armored personnel carriers, gigantic rolls of coiled barbed wire that gracefully cascaded down snow-covered hillsides, missile launchers and assorted other tools of the national security trade. The security precautions did not, of course, stop there. Every single person who planned to enter the conference site had special electronic badges which, upon being swiped across a reading pad, produced a computer screen filled color portrait of the attendee, along with his/her vital statistics. These were swiped and scrutinized by soldiers and police every few minutes -- any time one passed through a door, basically. The whole system was connected to handheld wireless communication devices made by HP, which were issued to all VIPs. I got one. Very cool, except when they crashed. Which, of course, they did frequently. These devices supplied every imagineable piece of information one could want about the conference, your fellow delegates, Davos, the world news, etc. And they were emailing devices --- all emails being monitored, of course, by Swiss cops.

Antiglobalization folks didn't stand a chance. Nor did Al Qaeda. After all, if someone managed to take out Davos during WEF week the world would basically lose a fair chunk of its ruling and governing class POOF, just like that. So security was the name of the game. Metal detectors, X-ray machines, shivering soldiers standing in blizzards, etc.

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Overall, here is what I learned about the state of our world: - I was in a dinner with heads of Saudi and German FBI, plus the foreign minister of Afghanistan. They all said that at its peak Al Qaeda had 70,000 members. Only 10% of them were trained in terrorism -- the rest were military recruits. Of that 7000, they say all but about 200 are dead or in jail.

- But Al Qaeda, they say, is like a brand which has been heavily franchised. And nobody knows how many unofficial franchises have been spawned since 9/11.

- The global economy is in very very very very bad shape. Last year when WEF met here in New York all I heard was, "Yeah, it's bad, but recovery is right around the corner". This year "recovery" was a word never uttered. Fear was palpable -- fear of enormous fiscal hysteria. The watchwords were "deflation", "long term stagnation" and "collapse of the dollar". All of this is without war.

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For a minority of the participants there was another layer of AntiAmericanism that focused on moralisms and religion. I often heard delegates complain that the US "opposes the rights of children", because we block all treaties and UN efforts that would support sex education and condom access for children and teens. They spoke of sex education as a "right". Similarly, there was a decidedly mixed feeling about Ashcroft, who addressed the conference. I attended a small lunch with Ashcroft, and observed Ralph Reed and other prominent Christian fundamentalists working the room and bowing their heads before eating. The rest of the world's elite finds this American Christian behavior at least as uncomfortable as it does Moslem or Hindu fundamentalist behavior. They find it awkward every time a US representative refers to "faith-based" programs. It's different from how it makes non-Christian Americans feel -- these folks experience it as downright embarrassing.

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The world isn't run by a clever cabal. It's run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. A few have both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive -- especially about science and technology. All of them are financially wise, though their ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock investing. They pay close heed to politics, though most would be happy if the global political system behaved far more rationally -- better for the bottom line. They work very hard, attending sessions from dawn to nearly midnight, but expect the standards of intelligence and analysis to be the best available in the entire world. They are impatient. They have a hard time reconciling long term issues (global wearming, AIDS pandemic, resource scarcity) with their daily bottomline foci. They are comfortable working across languages, cultures and gender, though white caucasian males still outnumber all other categories. They adore hi-tech gadgets and are glued to their cell phones.

Welcome to Earth: meet the leaders.

Walter Williams at World Net Daily - Affirmative-action bake sale - Some UCLA students made a point about affirmative action by holding a bake sale. [smith2004]

In early February, Bruin Republicans organized a campus cookie sale -- but not your ordinary cookie sale. They offered cookies at different prices depending on the customer's race and sex. Black, Latino and American Indian females were charged 25 cents for a cookie, while their male counterparts were charged 50 cents. White females were charged a dollar. White males were charged two dollars. Asian males and females also were charged two dollars a cookie.

Students selling the cookies assigned themselves nametags. Some of the name tags read "Uncle Tom," "The White Oppressor" and "Self-Hating Hispanic Race Traitor." Chris Riha, third-year business economics student participating in the Affirmative Action Bake Sale, said that the students decided to one-up their detractors by assigning the names themselves. That's what minorities who disagree with racial preferences are either called, or thought to be: an "Uncle Tom" or self-hating black or Hispanic.

Campbell Clark at The Globe and Mail - Lawyers reach deal in dispute over gas purchase - somebody please terminate these a-holes' commands. [smith2004]

The edge of Pohénégamook is cut off by the border with Maine, although the four French-speaking locals who live on the U.S. side must go into Canada to do almost anything, including walking to the nearest street.

Residents of Pohénégamook have filled up their gas tanks for years at a station about 15 metres inside U.S. territory, often without reporting to U.S. Customs.

The gas station is just beside the Canadian customs post, and while its pumps are in the United States, its driveway is in Canada and leads to a Canadian road. The U.S. customs station is one kilometre out of the town, next to a Canadian lumber mill; those who do report to U.S. Customs first must drive back through Canadian territory before they get to the gas station.

There is nothing behind the gas station but the woods of northern Maine. But on Oct. 11, hours after the customs post had closed, a U.S. border patrol officer arrested Mr. Jalbert as he filled up. When authorities discovered his hunting rifle in his truck and a minor criminal record for breaking windows when he was 19, he was suddenly facing three federal felony charges in the United States.

Alexander Daube at The Libertarian Enterprise - Nullification Returns Power to Juries--Where it Belongs - a short history of jury nullification, the right and duty of jurors to vote their conscience and acquit when someone is brought to trial for breaking a bad law. [tle]

"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."--Thomas Jefferson

"Jurors should acquit even against the judges' instruction...if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong."--Alexander Hamilton

"The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."--John Jay, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

"It is not only his [the juror's] right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."-- John Adams, second U.S. President

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