Vive la France!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 23 Mar 2003 13:00:00 GMT

From birdman:

"French President Chirac might have a rascally side, but he at least has better sense than to light a match to see what's in that gasoline tank called the Middle East." -- Charlie Reese

Russmo at The Libertarian Enterprise - Coalition of the Willing - cartoon commentary. Hehe. [tle]

MSNBC - U.S. soldier dies in Kuwait assault - and 13 injured. The radio reports last night were calling this a "terrorist" attack. Get a clue, folks. We're at war. The objective is to kill the enemy. Any way you can. Strangely, an American soldier is a suspect.

Don Lemon, AP, and Reuters at MSNBC - Antiwar protests around the world - 200,000 in New York. 250,000 in London (the speakers there were saying 1,000,000 when I listened). 90,000 in Paris. 200,000 in Athens, including a gasoline bomb outside the U.S. embassy. Smaller protests around the world, angry and violent in some Muslim countries. Includes a slide show.

Lowell Potter at Strike the Root - Operation Iraqi Freedom - Commentary on the coming establishment of Amerikan "freedom" in Iraq. [root]

New roads, bridges, and power plants will be the order of the day. Scrupulously supervised, free, two-party, democratic elections will be held. Western style law and order and its attendant bureaucracies will be duly established, internal revenue gathering maximized and streamlined, egalitarianism enforced, and unpalatable personal small arms caches liquidated. Iraqis will enjoy a new level of officially inspected and certified purity in their foods and drugs. A strict national census and mandatory personal identity documentation will ensure the public safety and well being, and compliance with the new freedom-oriented regulations of liberation.

Robert Fisk at The Independent - Minute after minute the missiles came, with devastating shrieks - an eye-witness account of one night of U.S. cruise missile and bomber attacks. [root]

Paulo Coelho at Z Magazine - Thank you, President Bush - you have strengthened your opposition. [root]

Thank you, because, without you, we would not have realised our own ability to mobilise. It may serve no purpose this time, but it will doubtless be useful later on.

Now that there seems no way of silencing the drums of war, I would like to say, as an ancient European king said to an invader: 'May your morning be a beautiful one, may the sun shine on your soldiers' armour, for in the afternoon, I will defeat you.'

Thank you for allowing us -- an army of anonymous people filling the streets in an attempt to stop a process that is already underway -- to know what it feels like to be powerless and to learn to grapple with that feeling and transform it.

Jeff Cooper's Commentaries - Springtime In The Boonies - spring is early, don't stop the rain; the "Dino pistol"; "Well it was tiresome to stand there endlessly holding our sword over our head"; a pistol should hit hard or hit very precisely; Bush says we're going to Iraq to liberate, not occupy; "One of the notable aspects of the democratic process is that one need not know anything about a subject in order to pass laws about it"; " gutter language reveals a paltry vocabulary"; soon no one will know anything about anything; choosing a household .22, or two; the targeting by anti-gunners of the .50 BMG cartridge; why do we whine when the boys march off to war?; shooting sticks; English recruits quiitting due to being yelled at; remember Lon Horiuchi; Gunsite student quality in decline; the "dim-witted cross-bolt safety"; hunting the leopard seal; "In this war of ideas we seem to have got into, our strongest weapon is ridicule"; trade in contraband weapons flourishing in the Balkans; the importance of a good trigger; the 25mm machine gun may succeed the .50 caliber BMG in shoulder-mounted repeating rifles, ouch; profiling for airport security; officer classification by Clausewitz; bear kills man in Alaska; save your dollars for a Steyr Scout; polypragmatoi; the four rules of gun safety; marksmanship still an important military attribute; "But I think it is high time we ruled the Ninth Circuit Court as unconstitutional in its own right"; overcooked Brussels sprouts; the appropriate end of Big Harpe; "it is against the rules to surrender before the war is started".

We hear of another hunting casualty from Africa due, as usual, to leaving the rifle elsewhere. In this case the hunter, having left his rifle in the car, ran across an irascible wildebeeste cow, who roughed him up considerably and failed to kill him only by chance, the cornada missing the femoral artery by a centimeter. You would think that people would not wander around the African bush unarmed- you would think. But then we are required to wander our city streets unarmed, which would seem the more dangerous course.

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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