Fun Rifle
# Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - Ashcroft, Bovard, the Patriot Act, and the Truth - A debate in Hardyville, including actual statements by John Ashcroft and actual retorts by James Bovard. They weren't, of course, actually in the same room. Too dangerous. You know what happens when matter and anti-matter meet... [claire]
I gotta give you the picture of these guys. Mr. A looks like the kind of storefront preacher who wears plaid pants and moonlights as a used car salesman. He looks, to tell you the truth, exactly like the kinda guy who'd anoint himself with Crisco. Mr. B also looks churchy, though I gotta say not religious, and definitely for sure not pious. Bald on top and generally scraggly, he looks like the kind of Medieval monk who'd hang around quaffing ale in taverns, instead of praying in the abbey. So you could see, even before they opened their mouths, that these guys weren't exactly a matched pair.
Sure enough, Ashcroft started off like the preacher-man, gazing kindly down on his benighted flock: "The Founders," he crooned, "believed debate should enlighten, not just enliven. It should reveal truth, not obscure it. The future of freedom demands that our discourse be based on a solid foundation of facts and a sincere desire for truth."
No croons for Bovard. Whipping a cheap cigar out of his vest pocket and pointing it at the AG, he hooted, "Mr. Ashcroft, your lofty sentiments are uplifting -- until one remembers that you issued an order largely gutting the Freedom of Information Act a month after 9/11. You say you're all in favor of a 'solid foundation of facts' -- but you're opposed to permitting Americans from learning what the feds are up to? This is not quite what the Founding Fathers had in mind!"
# GeekWithA.45 - Nation of Cowards, Revisited - The Geek was well aware of Jeff Snyder's essay, A Nation of Cowards (mirrored here), but he just discovered the book of the same name. As I've written before, I agree with him. Required reading, at least once a year. [geekwitha.45]
# Butler Shaffer at LewRockwell.com - What Is Anarchy? - it comes from the Greek anarkhos, meaning "without a ruler". Good article about how the things that work in the world do so without any state-imposed laws. Or as I say it, "Rules, but no rulers. Order, but no orders." [ferran]
# Claire Wolfe - New book National Identification Systems: Essays in Opposition - A review of a new book ($45), opposing for many reasons the concept of a National ID. [lrtdiscuss]
Carl Watner assembled and edited the essays with assistance from Wendy McElroy. Contributors include both academics and many people you'll recognize from the freedom and privacy movements -- including Carl himself, privacy maven Robert Ellis Smith, Charlotte Twight, Sunni Maravillosa, Patty Neill (!!! -- her satiric essay demanding national ID numbers for all politicians), and me. I'm proud to have contributed two essays of my own and an excerpt from The State vs the People, co-authored with Aaron Zelman.
Previous Posts:
Happy Birthday to Christopher and MLK
Your Life in a Parachute...
Firesign Theatre, Sony's QRIO
Miserable Failures: GW, Moore, and Hillary
CAPPS II: Coming to an Airport Near You
Lux Lucre, RIP
Secret Courts and Forbidden Speech
It CAN Happen Here
Ohio CCW, No More Airplane Bathroom Lines
Conscription is Slavery!