Month: November 2004

The Supreme Court’s Impending Dilemma

The Heartless Libertarian has done an outstanding job of collating the pertinent posts around the Blogosphere concerning the possible hearing by the Supreme Court of the recent 9^th Circuit decision in US v. Stewart, which I wrote about in “Game Over, Man. Game Over”. In Stewart, my favorite 9^th Circuit Justice Alex Kozinski (and no, I’m not being snarky – I mean it) wrote the majority opinion that the defendant could not be charged with possession of a machinegun because he had made the machineguns himself, and not purchased them in interstate commerce (basing the decision on the limiting power of the commerce clause of the Constitution.) You need to read the decision to understand the reasoning – and it’s eminently logical.

There was a dissent to the ruling, one based upon a previous Supreme Court decision, Wickard v. Filburn from 1942 – a decision that, for a layperson such as myself, appeared to be a Federal power-grab of unprecedented blatancy and scope. In Wickard the Court proclaimed that a farmer was in violation of interstate commerce law by growing wheat for his own personal use because it meant he wouldn’t be purchasing it in interstate commerce. Essentially the ruling said that everything anybody did or grew or made or mined “affected interstate commerce” and was therefore legally subject to Federal regulation.

Anyway, Heartless Libertarian’s post on the topic, Extremely Important Supreme Court Cases, is comprehensive. Go read and be enlightened as to the crack that decades of flawed legal decisions have wedged SCOTUS into. I expect they’ll have to be very creative to dodge this one.

Of course, like they did with US v. Emerson and Silveira v. Lockyer, they could just deny certiorari, but it’s the Justice Department asking that the case be heard.

Should be interesting.

More Freakin’ Fascinating Reading from Eric S. Raymond

Eric put up a new essay yesterday, Islamofascism and the Rage of Augustine, inspired by a comment at the Belmont Club. I don’t have sufficient historical or religious study to judge the overall accuracy of Eric’s premise, but it rings true to me from the knowledge I do have. Interesting excerpts:

It was Augustine’s theology of sin and grace that sharpened that tool into a blade. In a nutshell, it reduces to this: (1) We are all sinners, broken and wrong. (2) To escape this condition, we must not only obey authority but internalize it. (3) Even if we succeed at (2), only the whim of divine authority can save us, and that whim is beyond human ken. The tyrant can never be called to account, and to act against him is to be damned.

Worse: in Augustinean theology, the intention to sin is as bad as the act. It is not sufficient to behave as though we believe when we really don’t. It is not even sufficient that we allow authorities to coerce us into believing absurd things or performing atrocities in God’s name. We must conform not only outwardly but inwardly, become our own oppressors, believing because it is absurd. The God-tyrant can never be rejected even in our own minds, or we are damned.



—



The alliance now forming between the Islamo-fascists and the hard left should surprise nobody who understands the deep structure of either belief system. Both are, fundamentally, designed as legitimizing agents for tyranny — memetic machines designed to program you into licking the boot of the commissar or caliph that stomps you. But outside of a tiny minority of the brave (Robert Ingersoll) or the crazy (Nietzsche) Western intellectuals have averted their eyes from this truth, because to recognize it would almost require them to notice that the very same deep structure is wired into the Gnosticized Christianity of “Saint” Augustine — and, in fact, historically derived from it.

Hence the shared Christian/Islamic propensity for putting unbelievers to the sword for merely unbelieving. You will search in vain for such behavior among post-Exilic Jews, or Taoists, or animists, or any other world religion. Only a religion which is totalitarian at its core, fundamentally about thoughtcrime and sin and submission, can even conceive of a need to murder people wholesale for the state of their unbelief. The massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve and Stalin’s liquidation of the kulaks were of a piece, both jihads against thoughtcrime.

RTWT. Discussion would be appreciated. I do wonder where Protestantism comes into play here, because with the rise of Luther, as one of Eric’s commenters said,

(T)he Roman Catholic church was basically an institution that had been developed to enforce European feudalism. After Martin Luther it tried for a century to exterminate Protestantism with military force, but failed. Since the mid 17th Century it has not known what to do with its self.(sic)

Protestantism, in my mind, is a much more “live-and-let-live” form of Christianity, though it does have a tendency to fall back on fire-and-brimstone-burn-in-hell-heathens! mode from time to time. Reader Sarah has commented here several times on the cultural benefits of Protestant Christianity in the move towards individual rights and freedom, and I am, in general, in agreement with her.

I wonder, do any of the Islamic sects represent a “protestant” form?

Post-Modernist Youth Rebellion – the ‘Neckie’ Movement

Beverage Warning – don’t drink and read this at the same time.

Via Instapundit, please go read the comic genius of Iowahawk in his post, Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values

Trust me, it’s worth your time.

Oh, and when you’re done with that one? Read Orthodox & Heterodox’s Red state, blue state, me state, you state, too.

How does Glenn find all this stuff?

Movie Recommendation – The Incredibles

Go see it.

Now.

See it twice. The first time for the story. The second time to marvel at the animation.

Oh, and stop celebrating mediocrity, dammit.

Go see the film. You’ll understand.

The Telegraph‘s Latest Advice – Learn to Defend Yourself

Novel, eh wot?

This week’s London Sunday Telegraph has an article on self defense. Here’s some of the highlights:

Imagine the worst. It’s 3am, you’ve been woken by a strange noise in the kitchen. Sleepy-eyed and scared, you go downstairs. Before you can reach for the light switch, you come face-to-face with a burglar. What do you do?

“You have to react quickly,” warns Martin Beale, a self-defence specialist and home security adviser. “The choices are simple: fight or flight.



“You must know this in advance, to prepare yourself as much as you can. Will you run or will you stand your ground? What if the burglar is armed? Condition your mind to say: ‘If this happens, this is what I will do’.

“To disarm an intruder, you need great presence of mind and skill. Even soldiers who are trained to kill cannot always find it within themselves to fire their weapons in anger.

“If you are going to start something, you will have to finish it – you aren’t going to get a second chance.

“If he is determined to beat the daylights out of you and you hurt him but only slightly, he will be a wounded animal and who knows what will happen?

“If you are going to go for it, you have to go for it 110 per cent. If you cannot frighten him off, you have to disarm him and hit him until he cannot move.”

All good advice. But here’s more of that oddly British mindset:

Mr Beale, 45, who is the managing director of Praetorian Associates, a team of former military personnel who provide security services to prominent individuals around the world, and equip international police forces and special forces with body armour, says that there are many ordinary household objects that can serve as defensive weapons.

As opposed to offensive weapons? They’re just weapons. How they’re used defines the intent.

Perhaps it’s just me, but that oddity of defining anything that can be used as a weapon as either “offensive” or “defensive” just weirds me out.

Here’s the kicker of the piece, though:

While Mr Beale stressed that knowing how and when to fight back against intruders was important, there was no shame in choosing flight. Fighting back contradicts police advice, which is for householders to escape to a locked room and dial 999. Also, under the current law, which, according to an ICM poll in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, 70 per cent of the population view as inadequate, householders who resort to self-defence could find themselves charged with assault and even sued for compensation by their burglars.

To some extent this is true even here, but not carried to the point it has been in British courts. And not in states like Texas where “excessive use of force” against a burglar gets you a pat on the back.

Anyway, go read it. It’s pretty good advice no matter where you live.

As to progress on laws making force against home invaders less legally risky? Well Telegraph writer Peter Pindar penned a poem on the upcoming election (ah, alliteration) and here are the pertinent stanzas:

We need more policemen on the beat,

Said Dee, to cut down crime.

Said Dum: We’ll put police on the street,

So vote for us next time.

Ask Dum or Dee for laws to boost

Householders’ self-defence;

See how they settle down to roost

Securely on the fence.

Yup. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, as one letter to the editor explained:

Do not be fooled into accepting David Blunkett’s support for your campaign (Opinion, Nov 7). He is a master of the comforting word and a complete lack of action. When interviewed, he always sympathises and tut-tuts about how bad things are – remember that he was going to “nail” the hooligans who had been freed by a Portuguese court – and nothing ever happens.



Remember that he has been Home Secretary for more than three years therefore he has all the power to make or change the law. The fact is that this Government has condoned if not supported greater rights for the criminal.



I suggest that you ignore him until he proposes what he will do and when. Everything else is hot air. – Michael Ollerenshaw, Bowdon, Cheshire

Another writer had a rather snappish comment about the Chief Constable of Lancashire:

I would like to congratulate Paul Stephenson, the Chief Constable of Lancashire, on probably the most crass remark to emanate from a senior police officer so far this century when he said of your ICM opinion poll: “We will consider the survey to establish how its findings can help us to understand people’s fear of crime.”



Perhaps someone could point out to him that it is not his job to understand the fear of the victims but to catch the criminals. Better he should spend his time (generously paid for by us) considering how to achieve this end.



Even more disturbing is the fact that he is a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers. Does that mean he is typical of that august body? Are they all sitting around considering the fear of victims rather than catching criminals? No wonder people are afraid. – John Dawson, Taunton, Somerset

You tell him, John!

That seems to be it on the self-defense front from the Telegraph this week. Ah, well.

The Modern Puritans

“The thought occurs to me that politically, the Left is the modern Puritans – they want to live life their own way and make sure everyone else does, too.” – Donald Sensing

I have been struck by the reaction of the Left after the election in blaming their loss on rampant homophobia and right-wing religious zealotry. They are, in large measure, accusing the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy of wanting to create a Fundamentalist Christian Theocracy, and I was reminded, ironically enough, of the Reverend Donald Sensing’s comment quoted above.

I was reminded of it because the Left seems to me to be exhibiting its repeated tendency towards psychological projection, defined as:

A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits.

The externalisation of internal unconscious wishes, desires or emotions on to other people. The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. The would-be adulterer accuses his wife of infidelity.

And the closeted Puritan is convinced that the world wants to impose an alien theocracy upon him.

Just a Reminder,

Don’t forget to purchase at least 100 rounds the week of the 19th.

And wish Kim a happy birthday while you’re at it.

Carnival!

This week’s Carnival of the Vanities (#112!) is up over at Let’s Try Freedom! And yes, I have an entry this week. But there’s much more, so why don’t you go give it a read?

Rant and Quote of the Day



From Acidman:

You’d have to scour Jesusland far and wide to find a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist preacher more sanctimonious and intolerant than a northeastern liberal.

Read the whole thing. I wouldn’t change a word.

Talk About “Keeping Up the Pressure!”

I said below that London’s Telegraph newspaper needs to keep the pressure up on the government if they want to get legislation passed “to grant home owners an unqualified legal right to fight back against burglars who invade their property”. Specifically I said “In any kind of representative government, the only thing that gets their attention is the blinding spotlight of public scrutiny.”

I’d say they understand that tactic implicitly.

Go look at their latest salvo. Pictures are worth thousands and thousands of words, in this case.

Hat tip, TFS Magnum – and go read her blog, too.