Moved to NearlyFreeSpeech.Net

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 12 Sep 2004 12:00:00 GMT

From samizdata:

"The plans differ; the planners are all alike..." - Frédéric Bastiat

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Cesare Beccaria

# John Silveira at Backwoods Home Magazine - We don't need no steenking 2nd Amendment - great rant. Don't miss it. Good reminder that the Constitution and Bill of Rights don't give us rights, they give the government power and place strict limits on that power. Our rights exist independent of government. [madogre]

"Take it a step further. If the government passed a law tomorrow that said we didn't have the right to free speech, or the right to free worship, or freedom of the press, would those rights no longer exist, or would they be simply denied? If the Constitution is amended depriving us of our rights, do those rights cease to exist?"

"What's the answer?" Dave asked Mac.

"The answer, according to the guys who set up this country, is yes, we would still have those rights. We're just being denied them. Because of that, it's the way we have to look at the Constitution."

Bill rubbed his nose.

Dave said, "Okay, I never thought of it that way, but I'll buy into it for a moment."

"It may be," Mac said, "that in reality, rights are a figment of our imagination. But the Founding Fathers believed they existed and that's how this country was set up. Rights are something that come with being human. The Founders never believed we got them from the government. If and when the United States goes away, the rights will still be there."

Why a Bill of Rights?

"Then why have a Bill of Rights?" Bill asked. The question was posed as a challenge.

"You're not the first person to ask that. Men like Alexander Hamilton asked it. He and many others thought having a Bill of rights was dangerous."

"Dangerous," Bill laughed. "How could it be dangerous?"

"They were afraid that the existence of a Bill of Rights as a part of our Constitution implied that the government not only had the right to change them, but that any rights not listed there were fair game for the government to deny. And, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what has happened. The government seems to have set itself up to be an interpreter of our rights; it acts as if it is also the source of our rights, and whatever rights weren't mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the government has seen fit to declare exist only at its discretion."

# Yesterday, I moved my content to my new site at NearlyFreeSpeech.Net (NFS). Had to learn a little about Apache .htaccess files and fix one of my CGI scripts to use a different version of the Perl "Template" module, but mostly it was just waiting for the bits to go over the wire. I downloaded the free version of AceFTP to help me do this. I usually use command-line FTP or Ange Ftp from Emacs, but I needed to copy whole directory structures. This is the best Windows GUI FTP client I've seen to date. Rock solid. Good time-out behavior, tailorable handling of writing to an existing file. I also got puTTY, a tiny (368K) SSH and telnet client that works well and maps Alt to Meta properly for emacs. NFS supports SSH sessions to your account. They've got emacs and vi to edit content as well as a full suite of Unix tools. Very nice! The only thing missing is log files, and they're working on that.

I then switched billstclair.com to use my site at NFS. It hasn't propagated to my local nameserver yet, but it may have gotten to yours. You can tell if it's there because my home page will say "Welcome to my home at NearlyFreeSpeech.net", not Netherweb. I'll update both sites for a couple of days. NFS doesn't provide email storage, but they do forward email. The domain change has propogated to at least some SMTP servers; lots of my spam came in this morning through my ISP's mail server, forwarded from NFS, instead of the one at Netherweb.

# Fluid Dynamics Software Corporation - Fluid Dynamics Search Engine (FDSE) - a finally found a good CGI-based search engine for my web site. Google and the free engines I've used only do a partial index. Now I can index all 7,072 (and growing) pages of my site. The indexing process works hard to not run its CGI for more than 30 seconds at a time. It indexes until 30 seconds is up, sending output to the browser, then uses HTML redirection to pause for 15 seconds before continuting its calculations. Installation is simple. Untar the archive into a directory with CGI enabled (or untar on your PC and FTP the content up and fix the permissions), and point your browser at the admin page. No files to edit. Not one. The index file for my site is currently about 43 megs. I'm using the free version now, which only allows one search realm. I'll upgrade to the for-pay version soon, so that I can split up my site into different sections and allow you to search all or just one of them. Anyway, the "Search" button in the right-hand column of this page now uses FDSE, or click "Form" to bring up the search page.

Fluid Dynamics also makes a web authoring package (can you say "Edit this Page"?), a visitor tracking package, and a web site error handling package.

Fluid Dynamics Software develops CGI scripts that add value to customers' websites and, by extension, provide value to the Internet community.

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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