End the War on Freedom

"Build a man a fire and he will be warm for one night; set fire to him and he will be warm for the rest of his life." -- Terry Pratchett

Exciting morning today. The wind blew a tree over the secondary road that connects to our long drive way. The base of the tree was near the south side of the road. The top of the tree was resting on other trees on the north side. There was enough room to drive under the tree on the north side of the road. Even our van fit, just barely. No power this morning, of course; a friend said that she saw a wire in the pond. But I made it to work.

Charley Reese at LewRockwell.com - Muslims Are Good Folks - why we should not classify other Muslims with the tiny fraction of those who share the religion and use it as an excuse to do wrong. [smith2004]

There are 6 million or 7 million American citizens who are Muslims. Muslims have been in this country since the late 19th century. If you don't already, you should make an effort to get to know Muslims. You'll find that they don't fit the stereotypes created by mean-spirited propaganda or superficial news coverage.

Racism is a monstrous injustice because it imposes a stereotype on millions of innocent individuals. The only real solution is education and broad experience. It seems to me that God creates individuals one at a time, and it is the human mind that insists on grouping and classifying them. We should resist that temptation.

Sergei Borglum Hoff at Liberty for All - The Federal Police Invasion Forces Are Coming: Defend State Sovereignty - Mr. Hoff demands that local police and sheriffs defend us from the federales. Long piece. I didn't read the whole thing. [kaba]

To principled state and local peace officers:

I have walked in your shoes and confronted the dilemmas that you face. The majority of people understand that honor and decency guide the actions of most local officers. Citizens are also well aware of the dangers and sacrifices related to your vocation. You deserve our gratitude. However, consider well, the present direction of the law enforcement profession. Recognize the injury done to your family, neighbor, state, and nation as a result of the unconstitutional conduct by legislators, federal police agencies, courts, administrators, and an alarming number of fellow officers. Ultimately, it is you--the individual officer--that must judge right from wrong. Never enforce unconstitutional laws, or obey orders that are repugnant to your sense of justice. The liberties and welfare of the people are far more important than employment security. You must decide whether your loyalties are to the people of local communities and the Constitution or to federal bureaucrats and their police invasion forces. You have also sworn to uphold your State Constitution. The sovereignty of your State must be defended! You are morally compelled to defend fellow citizens from federal police assaults, and purge your ranks of those who willingly violate human rights. Look upon your predicament with care. Your responses will be patriotic and courageous or subversive and cowardly. You must defend or condemn the people and Constitution. There is no middle ground for you. Stand with dignity and in contrast to the majority of politicians today. Honor your oath of office! Like us all, you must look into the eyes of your own children, and answer their questions. Your family and neighbors have entrusted their lives and freedoms to your expression of loyalty. You have chosen this vocation with honor in mind; serve throughout your career with valor, and then leave with a noble heart.

...

The law enforcement profession is advancing out of control with no signs of reversing this trend on the horizon. There are no indications that the Bush administration and Congress have any intentions of initiating meaningful change. Our President has simply added to this already ponderous, incompetent, and disloyal bureaucracy, 900 floundering FBI agents, and one more massive flimflam authority (170,000 employees) called the "Department of Homeland Security," eagerly dominated by his executive predator, Tommy-Gun Ridge as the appointed Protections-Don. The outmoded, inefficient police agencies receive a face-lift here and a tummy-tuck there, but the reality is that their combined federal police invasion forces need a major liposuction. Because of falsified "compelling state interests" and the lack of resistance from the submissive majority, we can now look forward to one more unchecked and unconstitutional federal authority with an enormous potential for human rights abuses. While I have not yet decided upon an eye-catching color-code designating the level of threat from our President's new "Department," the people have nonetheless been warned. Although not a color, black appears dismally appropriate.

...

It is the duty of Sheriffs--chief law enforcement officer in each county--to protect local residents from federal malfeasance. When demanded, federal agents are required to seek the consent of all County Sheriffs prior to conducting investigations, or executing warrants in local jurisdictions. If such activities are not constitutionally supported and federal agents refuse to obey the lawful commands of the Sheriff to cease and desist, they are liable for arrest--as is any other citizen--and can be criminally prosecuted under state law. Most Sheriffs are either ignorant or fearful regarding this lawful duty of office.

...

If not already aware that the Declaration of Independence was directed towards King George the Third, I would be convinced that the signers were addressing our own suffocating government. Our government--in its oppression of the people that formed it--has far exceeded the tyranny of Britain. As a citizen of this misused nation, my duty requires that I ask if it is now time for "the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government"? Do we the people need a second Declaration of Independence?

Carey Goldberg at The Boston Globe - Nicotine studied as treatment for brain disorders - the active ingredient in cigarettes may turn out to have medicinal uses. [smith2004]

Scientists reported yesterday that nicotine seems to diminish mental impairment stemming from stress or an underactive thyroid -- the latest in a growing body of evidence that the long vilified substance may help people with brain disorders ranging from Alzheimer's disease to schizophrenia.

Nicotine researchers caution that the findings by no means offset the health ravages of smoking. But for years, a growing number of them have been exploring the aid nicotine may offer people with dementia, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and more.

"Yesterday's poison can be today's therapy," said Dr. Jerry J. Buccafusco, a pharmacologist and researcher at the Medical College of Georgia.

Cal Thomas at TownHall.com - Three strikes and you're broke - restitution is better than retribution. But you knew that. Nice to see it in a conservative rag, though. [trt-ny]

Violent and dangerous offenders should be locked up and, in capital cases, executed. But violent offenders are just 49 percent of the prison population. Again, according to BJS, the rest of the prisoners are behind bars for property crimes (19 percent), drug crimes (20 percent) and crimes affecting the "public order" (11 percent). This half of the prison population ought to be doing something else besides sitting in prison and costing the law-abiding money.

We do retribution well. We should be focusing on restitution.

If I steal your TV set, putting me in prison won't get it back. Making me pay a fine to the government (whose TV set was not stolen) won't restore your set, unless you have a very low deductible on your homeowner's insurance, which will undoubtedly go up if you file a claim. It would be better if the law required me to work to earn the money to buy you a new TV set and to pay you, not the government, a fine for your inconvenience and trouble. I should also be forced to pay court costs.

Such an approach would have a number of benefits. First, you would get your TV back. The victim should always be the law's primary concern. Second, forcing me to acknowledge that I have wronged a person and not the state (which is a non-person) can help change my view of other people's property. Third, it would save taxpayers the cost of incarcerating me. And, fourth, making me pay the person I have wronged is a far better and more proven method for changing my life and behavior than putting me in prison where statistics show I am more likely to become a better criminal than a better citizen.

Eric Raymond - Communism and the Jews - some non-politically-correct truths about Jews that will likely get Mr. Raymond labelled as an anti-semite. He's no such thing of course. And neither am I. Truth is not politically correct. Bravo, Mr. Raymond! [eric]

Anybody who thinks I'm arguing for a conspiracy theory should check their meds. No, there is something much simpler and subtler at work here. Inherited religious myths, even when they no longer have normative force, influence the language and conceptual frameworks that intellectuals use to approach other issues. The mythologist Joseph Campbell once noted that thinkers with a Catholic background like mine gravitate towards universalizing mysticisms and Protestants towards individualist redemptionism; he could have added that thinkers with a Jewish heritage tend to love messianic social doctrines. (One can cite exceptions to all three, of course, but the correlation will still be there after you've done so.)

Thus, assimilated Jews have a particular propensity for constructing secular messianisms -- or for elaborating and intellectualizing secular messianisms invented by gentiles. But you can't say this sort of thing in academia; you get called a racist if you do. And you especially aren't allowed to notice the other reason movements like Communism sometime look not unlike Jewish conspiracies -- which is that the IQ bell curve for Jews has a mean about a standard deviation north of the IQ bell curve for Caucasian gentiles.

In cold and sober truth, in any kind of organization where intelligence matters -- even the Communist movement --, you are going to find a disproportionate number of Jews with their hands on the levers. It doesn't take any conspiracy to arrange this, and it's not the Jews' fault the goyim around them are such narrs (Yiddish for "imbeciles"). It just happens.

But only people like me who don't give a shit about being castigated for political incorrectness are willing to even whisper these things. Because that's true, anti-anti-Semites can't counter anti-Semitic muck-spreading with the truth; instead, they have to pretend that none of the historical patterns around which anti-Semites have constructed their paranoid delusions have any basis in fact at all.

This is denial, and leaves the good guys in a damn weak position against anti-Semitic racists, who by distorting the record only a little can not only feel they have the truth on their side, but in some nontrivial ways actually be justified in that belief.

Unlike the anti-Semites, I mostly like the cultural traits that led so many Jewish intellectuals to Communism -- including one I haven't mentioned yet, the urge to transcend ethnic tribalism and order the world according to a Law. But if the road to a Christian hell is paved with good individual intentions, the road to totalitarian hell is paved with communitarian idealism. It's a tragedy that in Communism Jewish idealism, messianism, and intellectualism nourished a monster that turned on the Jews and killed so many of them.

Scientific American - Powerful Plastic Memory Device On the Cheap - a gigabyte in a cubic centimeter. Write Once Read Many (WORM). Uses "a polymer material known as PEDOT". Under development by Sven Moller and his colleagues from Hewlett-Packer Laboratories. They expect five years to commercialization. [grabbe]

Jeff Quinn at Gunblast - Glock's New Model 37 .45 G.A.P. - Glock's new pistol cartridge allows them to fit 10 rounds in a grip with a noticeably smaller circumference, hence easier for the small-handed to hold. [gunblast]

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