End the War on Freedom

# Sunni Maravillosa - Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival, by Butler D. Shaffer - a book review. Convinced me to order a copy. Get yours here. [sunni]

# John Cleese at Rense.com - To The Citizens Of The United States Of America - hehe. [clairefiles]

n the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

# Fred on Everything - Who Is Running This Choo-Choo Train? - Fred asks Bushnev why he is fighting this useless war. Useless for anything but killing good American and Iraqi patriots, that is. [lrtdiscuss]

Wars are marketed as involving moral principles or geo-strategic necessity, but they can become grudge matches, contests of vanity grown stubborn. A president who has led his country into a war has his ego on the line. He cannot easily say, "In the light of events, the adventure appears to have failed, and so we will return home." The world would regard him as a fool and a knave. Further, humble men do not become presidents. Such a man will struggle on desperately, unwisely, with no real purpose any longer than to avoid the personal ignominy of defeat. When his pride has been engaged he can't stop. For this men die.

One sees a similar approach in the gambler who, having lost his car, bets his house in hopes of redeeming himself.

...

Of course in material terms the United States will not be weaker. If driven out of Iraq, America will still be superior in remarkable aircraft and fast carriers and extraordinary submarines. But submarines are of use only in certain kinds of wars, which the enemy will avoid. The good ship USS Thundertrinket can destroy Japan, yes. It cannot defeat a few thousand determined men with rifles. Militaries seem never to learn this.

It is curious. The French, having underestimated both the enemy and the potential of guerilla warfare, got thrashed at Dien Bien Phu. The Americans, equally full of themselves, then went into the same country and got similarly thrashed. The French, having learned nothing, tried again in Algeria, with the same result. The Israelis tried to hold down southern Lebanon, encountering the same problems and equally losing. The Russians, having seen all of this, invaded Afghanistan and got thrashed. Now the United States is in Iraq. For militaries, the learning curve seems to be flat.

# Butler Shaffer at LewRockwell.com - What Is Anarchy? - many people are afraid of "anarchy", without realizing that they live most of their lives that way, and it works very well. [root]

Nor can we ignore the history of the state in visiting upon humanity the very death and destruction that its defenders insist upon as a rationale for political power. Those who condemn anarchy should engage in some quantitative analysis. In the twentieth century alone, governments managed to kill -- through wars, genocides, and other deadly practices -- some 200,000,000 men, women, and children. How many people were killed by anarchists during this period? Governments, not anarchists, have been the deadly "bomb-throwers" of human history!

Because of the disingenuous manner in which this word has been employed, I endeavor to be as precise in my use of the term as possible. I employ the word "anarchy" not as a noun, but as a verb. I envision no utopian community, no "Galt's Gulch" to which free men and women can repair. I prefer to think of anarchy as a way in which people deal with one another in a peaceful, cooperative manner; respectful of the inviolability of each other's lives and property interests; resorting to contract and voluntary transactions rather than coercion and expropriation as a way of functioning in society.

I am often asked if anarchy has ever existed in our world, to which I answer: almost all of your daily behavior is an anarchistic expression. How you deal with your neighbors, coworkers, fellow customers in shopping malls or grocery stores, is often determined by subtle processes of negotiation and cooperation. Social pressures, unrelated to statutory enactments, influence our behavior on crowded freeways or grocery checkout lines. If we dealt with our colleagues at work in the same coercive and threatening manner by which the state insists on dealing with us, our employment would be immediately terminated. We would soon be without friends were we to demand that they adhere to specific behavioral standards that we had mandated for their lives.

# H.L. Mencken - The Uplifters Try It Again - commentary on a 1925 proposal, in the pages of The Nation, to ban handguns. Mr. Mencken witnessed alcohol prohibition first hand, so he knew well that prohibition usually makes worse the problems it is purported to solve. [scopeny]

The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men.

The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation's proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed.

Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on display in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is already on the books --the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it there, of course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained, but the uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune of loud hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on the dotted line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to "have or possess" a pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at home, one may be sent to the hoosegow for ten years.

More, men who have done no more are frequently bumped off. The cops, suspecting a man, say, of political heresy, raid his house and look for copies of the Nation. They find none, and are thus baffled --but at the bottom of a trunk they do find a rusted and battered revolver. So he goes on trial for violating the Sullivan Law, and is presently being psychoanalyzed by the uplifters at Sing Sing.

With what result? With the general result that New York, even more than Chicago, is the heaven of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all other such armed thugs. Their hands upon their pistols, they know that they are safe. Not one citizen out of a hundred that they tackle is armed --for getting a license to keep a revolver is a difficult business, and carrying one without it is more dangerous than submitting to robbery. So the gunmen flourish and give humble thanks to God. Like the bootleggers, they are hot and unanimous for Law Enforcement.

# MK at Warblogging - On The Dawn - well said. What if they gave a war and nobody came? Hopefully, we'll see that happen should they reinstitute the draft. [warblogging]

Recruiters are being chased of campuses and jeered at in high schools. If the current trend holds we're going to find out what happens when you have a war and no one shows up. Mr. Bush is going to learn that while many Americans are content to stick yellow ribbons on their SUV's and say they support the war, just you try and take their babies from them for a war based on lies, greed, and twisted ideology.

Could this be it? Could this be the war to end all American wars?

Like many Americans I would shed my blood on the beaches of California to stop an invasion of terrorists determined to make Angelina Jolie put on a burka. If America was ever invaded or actually threatened, you would have millions of volunteers ready to defend our nation to the death.

# Mac-on-Mac is a GPL'd Macintosh virtual machine (VM) emulator that runs under OSX, and allows you to run Mac OS Mac OS Classic, Mac OS X, OpenDarwin or Linux for PowerPC in the VM. Installer is only 1.53 megs. Sound, Network, and USB/Firewire don't work yet, and there's no guarantee that you CD/DVD drive will work, either. Looks like it still needs lots of work. [wes]

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