Civil Obedience Considered Harmful

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 27 Sep 2003 12:00:00 GMT

From stanleyscoop:

"Civil disobedience... is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." -- Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit, p.45

From my log file, looks like someone at the U.S. Census Bureau was looking for me, they did a Google search for my name exactly:

bcccache6-1.tco.census.gov - - [24/Sep/2003:12:15:45 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 7568 "http://www.google.com/search?q=+%22Bill+St.+Clair%22&num=50&hl=ga&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&sa=N&tab=gw" "Mozilla/4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)"

The Price of Liberty - is a new web site edited by Susan Callaway. She introduced it in this Claire Files Message Board thread, saying that it would be available October 1. Only the mission statement and editor's email address are available now. Looking forward to more. [clairefiles]

The Price of Liberty Mission Statement

The price of liberty is far more than simple vigilance. The price includes the integrity to accept complete personal responsibility for our lives, safety, property and welfare. The price that so many find hardest to pay, however, is the integrity to leave everyone else alone to do the same.

We cannot change human nature, and we cannot legislate/force others to be honest, thrifty, safe or intelligent. They must do it on their own or bear the consequences, and nobody has the right to do anything about it but defend themselves from aggression.

The purpose of this new web site will be to define the terms, discuss the application of those terms to our quest for liberty, and to explore the ways in which we may achieve liberty in our own lives with a legacy of justice for our children.

Political and news commentary is welcome, and we will have a lively reader's forum, but we will not publish or post anything that calls for the initiation of force, government intervention of any kind, or makes personal attacks on anyone.

Kim and Connie du Toit - National Ammo Day - the site is back after a long hiatus. This year, Kim and Connie are pushing a National Ammo Week. But the official day is still November 19, Kim's birthday. They ask everybody to buy at least 100 rounds of ammo, or the equivalent in reloading supplies. Join the Buycott. Buy ammo on November 19, or during the week of November 15-23.

Oleg Volk - Self-defense: a basic human right - I've been to this site many times, but never added it to my links page, till now. If you' haven't been there, and looked at every page, drop everything and do so now. [geekwitha.45]

Few issues have been more hotly debated recently than gun ownership. On one side are those who wish that all guns begone, on the other, millions who would fight to keep them. No matter which side of the debate you take, read on. You might glean some insights or just be entertained.

The text of H.R. 3125, the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act of 2003", sponsored by Ron Paul and others, is now available from Thomas.

H.R. 3193, the companion to S.1414, "To restore second amendment rights in the District of Columbia", has been introduced in the House by Mark Souder of Indiana. It has 62 cosponsors. The bill text is not yet available from Thomas (but the text of S.1414, which is likely very similar, is available).

Tin Foil Hat Linux is a bootable floppy distribution useful for encrypting and decrypting files on a machine that may have a hardware keystroke logger. Copy files that you want to encrypt or decrypt to a floppy, boot up Tin Foil Hat Linux. Encrypt or decrypt, storing the results on the floppy, and use the floppy from your regular OS. From the distributed readme.txt. [clairefiles]

What Tinfoil Hat Linux protects against ....
***************************************************
* Worms & viruses
The OS doesn't support networking, all binaries are compiled staticly, and all non-root partitions are mounted with no-execute permissions. A hash of the NVRAM is displayed at boot time.

* Data retrieval
All temporary files are created on an encrypted ramdisk which is destroyed on shutdown. Even the PGP keyfile information can be stored encrypted on the floppy.

* Keystroke monitoring.
THL has gpggrid , a wrapper for GPG that lets you use a video game style character entry system instead of typing in your passphrase. Keystroke loggers get a random set of grid points, not your passphrase.

* Power usage & other side channels.
If you start the Paranoid options, a copy of GPG runs in the background generating keys & encrypting random documents. This makes it harder to determine When your REAL encryption is taking place. See the TEMPEST section below.

* (some) User stupidity.
If you use THL, it's very difficult to leave a plaintext file on your hard drive by accident.

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History

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