The Zero Intelligence Follies

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 10 Oct 2003 12:00:00 GMT

From kaba:

"Making history is more fun than repeating it." -- Angel Shamaya

Yahoo! News - Teenager In Trouble In Inhaler Incident - save a life, go to jail, in the Amerikan nanny state. This happenned at Caney Creek High School. The principal is Dr. Greg Poole, gpoole@conroe.isd.tenet.edu. The address is 16840 FM 2090, Conroe, TX 77306. Phone: 936-231-3330, 832-482-6212, fax: 936-231-7702. The original Click2Houston article is here.

A teenager was disciplined for sharing medication used to treat asthma, but he said it saved his girlfriend's life, News2Houston reported Wednesday.

Andra Ferguson and her boyfriend, Brandon Kivi, both 15, use the same type of asthma medicine, Albuterol Inhalation Aerosol.

Ferguson said she forgot to bring her medication to their school, Caney Creek High School, on Sept. 24. When she had trouble breathing, she went to the nurse's office.

Out of concern, Kivi let her use his inhaler.

"I was trying to save her life. I didn't want her to die on me right there because the nurse's office (doesn't) have breathing machines," Kivi said.

"It made a big difference. It did save my life. It was a Good Samaritan act," Ferguson said.

But the school nurse said it was a violation of the district's no-tolerance drug policy, and reported Kivi to the campus police.

The next day, he was arrested and accused of delivering a dangerous drug. Kivi was also suspended from school for three days. He could face expulsion and sent to juvenile detention on juvenile drug charges.

I sent the following email to Dr. Poole:

To: gpoole@conroe.isd.tenet.edu
Subject: Brandon Kivi
From: "Bill St. Clair" <bill@billstclair.com>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 10:47:10 -0400

Dr. Poole,

I read on the internet the story of the possible expulsion and imprisonment of Brandon Kivi for sharing his asthma inhaler with his girlfriend, possibly saving her life. Thank you for enforcing your school's zero intelligence policies. The next time this happens, I'm sure your students will follow the rules and allow their friends to die. Get a clue, mister. Brandon Kivi deserves a medal of commendation for helping his friend, not arrest and expulsion. Make it right or resign in disgrace. You have no other moral choice.

Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com

L. Neil Smith - No More @#$%^&*! Ping-Pong - a little lesson in the non-difference between the two branches of the Boot on Your Neck Party. Why you should never vote for the Demlicans or Repubocrats again, and an endorsement of Michael Badnarik as the Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate. The link is to the Yahoo smith2004-discuss mailing list, which requires a free membership to read. My copy, which doesn't, is here. There's another copy here at Rational Review.

After Roosevelt and his collectivist advisors failed to end the Depression, after Republicans managed to purge the Constitutionalists in their party by letting them be smeared as "Isolationists", real differences between the two parties began to vanish. World War II was thoroughly bipartisan. Eisenhower's value to the owners and operators of America wasn't so much that he ended the Korean War Harry Truman had started (he didn't, really), but that he managed to do so without much criticism of the Democrats.

From then, there wasn't "a nickel's worth of difference" between Republicans and Democrats. Each worked a different side of the street, but played Ping-Pong with the other, using the American people's wishes, hopes, dreams, and aspirations as the ball. People would get tired or frightened of Democrats in power and elect Republicans. Then they'd get disappointed or discouraged with Republicans and vote for Democrats. Back and forth, back and forth. At each turn, Americans found themselves with less real wealth and many fewer freedoms than they'd had at the previous turn.

We just saw it happen again in what my Discordian friends call "Califnordia". Gray Davis of Socialist Party A couldn't repair the damage his colleagues on both sides of the aisle have done to that poor state over the past half century. Arnold Schwarzenegger of Socialist Party B will find himself helpless, too. The fact is that nothing can clean up the mess both parties have made there, short of the Big One finally reducing the entire state to rubble.

...

Instead of a peace dividend, we got the Brady Bill, the Semiauto and Adequate Magazine Bill, and just so smirking leftists won't feel left out, we got Homeland Security and the USA Patriot Act. Guantanamo -- the name once stood as a bastion of freedom -- now means the same thing, essentially, as Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and Belsen. Anyone who wishes it were different -- and voted for Republicans or Democrats -- wasted his vote.

...

The main message libertarians have to communicate to voters is that it's time to stop wasting their votes. It's time to stop playing Ping-Pong with Republicans and Democrats. It's time to stop being robbed, and seeing our children brainwashed, kidnapped, and murdered.

...

The only way they can do that (assuming that they don't want to join the majority of Americans and simply stop voting) is to put their votes "in escrow" until Republicans and Democrats straighten up and fly right, by refusing to vote for either of the two, and voting for some third party -- any third party -- instead.

My choice, of course, despite the many and grievous faults I've chronicled over the years, is the Libertarian Party. And the choice to put my vote in escrow (the truth, of course, is that Republicans and Democrats will never straighten up and fly right) will be sweeter if I can vote for a candidate I really respect and admire.

Claire Wolfe - National Depression Screening Day - this is the first I've heard of this. And it was yesterday, so I missed it. Boo hoo. Not! A new way for the legal uppers dealers to push their dope. [claire]

But if we're miserable as an everyday matter, before we go down to the intersection of Prozac Road and Zoloft Highway to catch a ride, maybe we ought to ask whether we could make life choices that would lift us into happiness, rather than just medicating over whatever bad choices or bad conditions we're living with. And if we feel we have no choices, maybe that in itself is a problem about which ... we should make some choices?

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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