Angels and Demons
# L. Neil Smith at Rational Review - Hollow woman - the Statue of Liberty and Gale Norton. [smith2004]
Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and an infestation of other bureaucrats made a ceremony of reopening the Statue of Liberty week before last, following about $7,000,000 worth of police state alterations. Frankly, I've been busy and wasn't aware that, since September 11, 2001, it had been closed to the public for reasons of "homeland security."
In an Associated Press story, Norton had said screening procedures -- much like those at airports -- and a reservation system to reduce long lines would be implemented once the monument was reopened in late July.
Hail, hail Fredonia!
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So you see, this is the story of two hollow women. One, a nice bronze French lady, was kidnapped and raped by a government that was meant to defend everything she stands for. The other woman did it to herself.
Which shows you exactly what "moderation" and "gradualism" lead to. Without principles which you will adhere to and defend no matter how difficult it becomes (this being the definition of radicalism), you're like a ship without an anchor or rudder, adrift and lost. Gale Norton, once a prominent member of the Libertarian Party in the state where it was born, now earns a handsome but repulsive living telling lies and making excuses for the nastiest, ugliest, most murderously collectivistic administration this poor nation has ever had to suffer under.
And when it finally opens up the deathcamps, she'll stand by the gate to welcome us. She'll smile and wave, and we can say we knew her when.
# Paul Armentano at LewRockwell.com - Unlocking a Cure for Cancer -- With Pot - cannabanoids are a potential cure for brain and other cancers. This has been known since 1974, and was verified in 1996, but the U.S. government and media have blocked the stories. After all, everybody knows that pot is bad for you. [lew]
# PapersPlease.org - Gilmore v. Ashcroft is an account of John Gilmore's legal fight against the requirement to show ID to travel. He filed his case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on August 16. Read Carnival Booth for a very simple explanation of why banning some people from airplane flights because they are suspected terrorists is a really bad idea, bad that is if your goal is to catch terrorists and not simply to control everybody else. Which should tell you why the government is so much into these so-called security checks. They could care less about catching terrorists. They want to control the rest of us. Very nicely done web site. [picks]
# Ryan Singel at Wired - Flight ID Fight Revived - more on John Gilmore's case. The ID requirement is a secret regulation, declared by the government to be unreviewable by the courts. The appeal demands that it be made public and that the court rule on its constitutionality. Bravo, Mr. Gilmore!
Gilmore says he does not have a state-issued identification or driver's license and that the identification rule, unlike searches for weapons in carry-on bags, does not make the country safer.
"I'm not willing to show my passport to travel in my own country," Gilmore said in an interview. "I am not willing to have my rights taken away by bureaucrats who issue secret laws in the dead of night."
The identification requirement dates back to the Clinton administration, which put the measure in place just after the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Terrorism was initially suspected as the cause of the disaster, though it was later determined that a faulty fuel tank was to blame.
Civil liberties advocates say that they are now backing Gilmore's challenge both because the stakes are high and because the political mood in the country has shifted since 2002.
# George F. Smith at Strike the Root - Think Outside the Booth - some good arguments for not voting. [root]
Government has learned that it invites rebellion if it tries to abridge freedoms directly. It's much easier to use other methods, and in the case of voting, it can continue its course of growth by offering candidates who are twins on the issue of big government. Supporters of both parties will see to it we get candidates of the right religion, ones who pray at the altar of state power. They won't outlaw other parties, but they'll put plenty of legal obstacles in their way. In a sense, the major parties have cartelized government by restricting effective competition.
Rather than take away the vote, then, government has simply taken away any meaningful vote. It accomplishes the same end and leaves people complaining, but not rebelling.
Yet, your vote is very important to the government. The more votes it has, the easier it can claim legitimacy. Voting is your way of blessing the institution of government itself.
Instead of Bush or Kerry, imagine if we had Hitler and Stalin as candidates. Would you vote then? But of course we wouldn't know how horrible they were until they were turned loose in office. It's not that Bush or Kerry are necessarily bad men, but government gives them the power to cause great harm. Why give anyone that power?
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If a private security firm had been on watch on 9-11, do you think it would still be in business? That's scarcely a question. Its management would be in jail and its stock would be worthless. But the monopolistic security firm we're forced to deal with took more of our wealth, curtailed our liberty, and stirred up hell.
# Fred Reed at Strike the Root - Pondering the Telescreen: A Tale of Two Cities - on the evil of the glass teat. [root]
No dictator has every enjoyed such a tool for social control, for near absolute power over what people see, over the news, over a culture. Like the bite of a leech, television is painless. Two decades later, the country is unrecognizable.
We underestimate the box. It is tasteless, dumbed-down, and commercial, yes, yes. All the adjectives apply. We have heard them. We agree with them. But we miss the point. We miss the point because the fare is so contemptible: Nothing that stupid can be dangerous.
Oh yes it can.
