The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Another Addition to the Blogroll…
…because I grok how this guy thinks. Rustmeister linked to my recent “Reset Button” post, and commented at length on the topic, and then got a comment of his own from The Mad Rocket Scientist, with a link to a similar piece. RTWT.
I don’t know about you, but I think he’s right – I worry the chaos will come first, as well.
Hell, I expect it.
Welcome to the blogroll, Mad Rocket Scientist.
Quote of the Day
Five years ago, when I told people that my eventual goal was to build a house out in the middle of nowhere that was totally off the grid, powered by solar panels, a wind turbine, with my own well and gravity fed water tower, I was a psycho right-wing militia type. Now, apparently I’m “environmentally aware” and “Green.” – Larry Correia, I’m not feeling warm fuzzies about this election…
RTWT. Most especially the opening paragraph that was almost the QotD.
I had an interesting lunch with a coworker today, an Obama enthusiast. We’ve traded barbs and had some extended discussions over our differences in political outlook in the past, and he acknowledges that some of my positions are, even to his worldview, not wrong.
He’s an open-minded kinda guy.
So he asked me, “How do we fix it?”
I’ve been thinking about it ever since. And tonight when I got home and checked the blog and the comments, I ran across this:
Kevin, if there is an honest history written of these times, it will agree with your premise that the gubmint school system was the essential mechanism by which the American people were tamed, neutered, and fitted with their slave collars.
Each of us has a sacred obligation not only to resist the coming Night, but to teach the ones behind us the difference between Night and Day.
See this quote from Fjordman here:
I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed, and perhaps shouldn’t be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies, it also has too many internal contradictions. If we define the “system” as mass immigration from alien cultures, globalism, Multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of “tolerance,” then this is going to collapse.
It’s inevitable.
The goal of Western survivalists — and that’s what we are — should not be to “fix the system,” but to be mentally and physically prepared for its collapse, and to develop coherent answers to what went wrong and prepare to implement the necessary remedies when the time comes. We need to seize the window of opportunity, and in order to do so, we need to define clearly what we want to achieve.
Let’s roll. – Cabinboy
So, what’s the answer? What went wrong? Assuming we get the chance, how do we correct the problems for Constitutional Republic of the U.S. V2.0?
I told my colleague the same thing that Fijordman said, the system cannot be fixed. Two hundred-plus years of entropy have eroded the mechanism past the point of repair. The basic design was outstanding, but nothing is ever perfect.
Unfortunately it started off with an inherent flaw, the acceptance of chattel slavery. Granted, the whole thing was a no-go without that compromise, but we’re still suffering the after-effects 219 years later. And, as pragmatic as the Founders were about human nature, I still think they underestimated human corruptibility and the human will to power. Back when I first saw Joss Whedon’s film Serenity, these lines struck me perhaps the hardest:
Sure as I know anything, I know this – they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They will swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that.
It faintly echos Robert A. Heinlein from my favorite novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.
In fact, I just had an argument discussion with a commenter on that very topic a couple of days ago. And I admit that to some extent I’m on the “stop people from doing as they please” side when I think they’re bats*!t crazy. Sorry. Guilty as charged. But at least I don’t think we can make people better.
But we have to design around entropy.
Back when I wrote Game Over, Man, I quoted Mike from the now-defunct Feces Flinging Monkey on the topic of our legal system:
Personally, I think that the (unfortunate) bottom line is that the future of our freedom ultimately rests with the court’s willingness to periodically reexamine the law. Lawmakers, and law enforcers, will always push the limits, and they will always win occasional gains. If the court is unwilling to revisit these issues over time and correct the damage done, then it’s “game over” no matter what we do. This makes it a little easier for me to accept changes in the law where the cost is low and the benefits are significant. If I can’t count on an occasional review, then the game is already lost.
I then went on to point out to him that no such review really exists. Judges who wish to (in Alex Kozinski’s words) “Constitutionalize their personal preferences” go ahead and do so, leaving honest and honorable judges below or on the same judicial level stuck with bad precedent. And if higher courts refuse to review (and they can), or worse, refuse to overturn (and they have), then cancer sets in, and cutting out that cancer later is painful and difficult, as we may be about to learn once again.
Second, as I noted in When Your Only Tool is a Hammer, and again Saturday in Pressing the “Reset” Button, Part II, the job description of legislator is “lawmaker“. It’s what they do. Rev. Donald Sensing put it quite graphically a while back:
A long time ago Steven Den Beste observed in an essay, “The job of bureaucrats is to regulate, and left to themselves, they will regulate everything they can.” Celebrated author Robert Heinlein wrote, “In any advanced society, ‘civil servant’ is a euphemism for ‘civil master.'” Both quotes are not exact, but they’re pretty close. And they’re both exactly right. Big government is itself apolitical. It cares not whose party is in power. It simply continues to grow. Its nourishment is that the people’s money. Its excrement is more and more regulations and laws. Like the Terminator, “that’s what it does, that’s all it does.”
So for me, Priority Number One is limiting the number of laws, decrees, edicts, ordinances, precepts, proscriptions, regulations, and rules. Priority Number Two is periodic review of all existing laws, decrees, edicts, ordinances, precepts, proscriptions, regulations, and rules. ALL of ’em. That ought to keep the legislatures and courts busy enough to at least help with Priority Number One.
Honestly, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. So what are YOUR ideas?
“Whenever you propose a new law, imagine what the results would be if that law was enforced by your worst enemy or the stupidest person you know.” – Anonymous
A while back, a real b!t*h of a mother allegedly managed to humiliate a young woman by the use of a fake MySpace page to the point that the young woman hanged herself.
There doesn’t seem to be a law on the books for that, but, since Prosecutors are as fond of Law & Order (the TV series) as most of America seems to be, one in this case has decided to do the Jack McCoy route, and stretch an existing law to fit:
Internet suicide case goes to federal court
A Missouri woman accused of taking part in a MySpace hoax that ended with a 13-year-old girl’s suicide has so far avoided state charges — but not federal ones.
Lori Drew, 49, a neighbor of the dead teen, was to make an appearance in federal court here Monday, accused of one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress.
The charges were filed in California where MySpace is based. MySpace is a subsidiary of Beverly Hills-based Fox Interactive Media Inc., which is owned by News Corp.
Drew, of suburban St. Louis, Mo., allegedly helped create a fake MySpace account to convince Megan Meier she was chatting with a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.
Megan Meier hanged herself at home in October 2006, allegedly after receiving a dozen or more cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her. Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Meier.
U.S. Attorney’s spokesman Thom Mrozek said Drew is expected to enter a plea in federal court, then have her case assigned to a judge and be given a trial date. He said she would then be allowed to return to her home state pending trial.
Here’s what the law is for:
The statute used to indict Drew usually applies to Internet hackers who illegally access accounts to get information.
But:
James Chadwick, a Palo Alto attorney who specializes in Internet and media law, said he has never seen the statute, known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, applied to the sending of messages.
He said it was probable that liability for the girl’s death would not be an issue in the case. “As tragic as it is,” he said, “You can’t start imposing liability on people for being cruel.”
No, but a U.S. Attorney is going to try.
When Only the Cops Have Guns
If there was ever a case of “justifiable homicide,” this is it:
Police: Officer kills man who beat child to death
TURLOCK, Calif. — Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people’s attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.
Investigators on Sunday were trying to establish the relationship between the suspect and the child they say he killed Saturday night. The Stanislaus County coroner said the boy appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old based on his size, according to county sheriff’s deputy Royjindar Singh.
“It’s been a long night of wondering, ‘Why?’ — not only for the officers and the passers-by who stopped and tried to help out, but for anyone. Why would somebody do this?” Singh said.
Singh said the coroner does not plan to confirm the identities of the suspect and victim until Monday. Because his injuries were so severe, the child will have to be identified through a blood or DNA test, he said.
The suspect had a child’s car seat in the back of his four-door pickup truck. The truck caught the attention of an elderly couple at 10:13 p.m. Saturday because it was stopped in the two-lane road facing the wrong direction, Singh said.
As they got closer, the couple saw the man brutally beating the toddler behind his truck and throwing the child on the ground, according to Singh. Two or three other cars stopped, an unusual number to be passing through the remote area surrounded by a dairy, a cow pasture, a cornfield and a farmhouse, he said.
“What we got from witnesses is he was punching, slapping, kicking, stomping, shaking,” Singh said. “They tried to intervene and get involved, but their efforts really didn’t have an effect. The suspect was engaged in what he was doing. He just pushed them off and went back to it.”
A sheriff’s helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate the toddler, who was not breathing when they arrived. The boy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away…
Hope and Chénge
Since Ché seems to be a theme among Obamessiah supporters, I thought I’d do some posters for them:
No Thanks,
Keep the Chénge
Think that’ll sell?
Quite a while back I wrote a short essay on this topic, inspired by a question posed by Jay Solo:
Do you expect the “reset button” to need to be used in our lifetimes? For the sake of a common number, let’s define “our lifetimes” as the next fifty years. Hey, I could live that long, given my genes and medical technology.
I was recently discussing with someone the concept of the Second Amendment as the government’s reset button. Ultimately a major reason it exists is so the populace cannot be prevented from being armed, or easily disarmed through registration or excess regulation for that matter, in case we must ever take back the government and start again if it gets out of hand or something akin to a coup happens and the imposters must be reckoned with.
It says that the government provides for the national defense, but we retain the right to self-defense, and to keep and bear the tools needed for that, including defense against the government if it ever turns its might inward or ceases to represent us at all. It’s not a separate entity, after all. It’s us. If it ceases to be us, it ceases to be in our control, it needs to be taken back into the fold.
Do you think this will ever be needed?
I left a comment there, and turned it into a post here.
My conclusion:
I’ve quoted Jefferson’s letter to William Smith several times recently, but this part is the one I find most interesting:
Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
It seems, in the main, that we aren’t informed at all, much less well. Lethargy? For the overwhelming majority, yes indeed.
Until it happens to you. Then you get pissed right quick, and wonder why nobody hears your side of the story.
I think a lot of people are getting fed up with ever-increasing government intrusion into our lives. With our ever-shrinking individual rights. More than one of Jay’s respondents noted the apathy of the majority, though, and I agree. Government interferes lightly on a wholesale basis, but it does its really offensive intrusions strictly retail. So long as the majority gets its bread and circuses, it will remain content.
But not everyone.
I then recounted the story of the Bixby family, of Greenwood, S.C. Son Steven Bixby shot and killed two Sheriff’s deputies who came on to his property over a 20-foot easement taken under eminent domain law. I concluded my previous piece:
Yes, these people were extreme. Killing two officers and then engaging in a gunfight with many more over 20 feet of property certainly is excessive.
But I don’t think this is going to be an exceptional case as time goes on.
I think more and more individuals will be pressing the “RESET” button in the future.
With about the same effect.
Yesterday, in a comment thread, I discussed the case of 72 year old Melvin Hale, who in 2000 shot Texas DPS trooper Randy Vetter to death when Vetter pulled him over for a seatbelt violation. Hale had stated previously that he would kill any officer who tried to cite him for not wearing a seatbelt. My correspondent “Adirian” stated about Hale, “Live free or die. He proves that some of us still mean it.”. Hale pressed the “Reset” button, just like Steven Bixby did. As of 2005, Hale was still alive at 77, serving a life sentence for Vetter’s murder.
So much for “live free or die.”
Still, I stated back in 2003, almost five years ago, that I thought more people were going to find their own personal limits with respect to government overreach and press the “reset” button individually. Today over at Rodger’s place I found the story of Stuart Alexander, “The Sausage King” of San Leandro, California. Mr. King murdered three meat inspectors, also in 2000, who, according to Rodger, were harassing Alexander until his limit was crossed. Under the view of surveillance cameras he himself installed, he shot three of the four inspectors, and pursued the fourth who escaped. Mr. King died of a pulmonary embolism while on Death Row.
In following that story, I found this Vin Suprynowicz column that collects a number of similar incidents in one place. Also included in his list are Carl Drega who in 1997 killed two police officers, a judge and a newspaper editor, and Garry DeWayne Watson who killed two city workers and wounded a police officer, also over an easement issue and also in 2000. Drega died in a police shootout. Watson killed himself.
Then there was Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado. He killed no one but himself, but he wreaked a lot of destruction with his armor-plated bulldozer in 2004. Heemeyer’s rampage was also over property rights.
So here we have seven incidents in which individuals reached their own personal “line in the sand.” Were they crazy, or were they just serious about defending their rights as they understood them against government intrusion? Most of them did, indeed, decide to “live free or die,” but what did their acts accomplish? I’d never even heard of Melvin Hale until yesterday, or Stuart Alexander and Garry DeWayne Watson until today.
I repeated as the conclusion to my first post on the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision yesterday that “Claire Wolfe Time” passed us by long ago. For those few of you unfamiliar, Claire Wolfe’s most famous quote is this:
America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
That’s the opening line of her 1997 book 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution. But she was wrong, and Jefferson was right. We should have pressed the “reset” button often – had a mini-revolution somewhere in the country about every 20 years or so – just to keep our political masters reminded of who it was who holds (now held) the reins, but after the one big one from 1861 to 1865, our stomach for it was (understandably) gone.
And now it’s too late. Instead of putting government back in its proper place, any overt organized resistance to government overreach generally results in government overkill these days.
In all, I think the normally pollyannish Peggy Noonan was right. There’s tough history coming.
UPDATE: In a comment at Xavier’s on the Melvin Hale incident, Oleg Volk writes:
This is a good reminder that ALL LAWS come down to the state’s willingness to imprison or kill non-compliant people. Minimizing the sheer number of laws would reduce the number of conflicts people have with those who pass those laws and those who enforce them.
I left a comment of my own that hasn’t posted yet, but basically, “minimizing the sheer number of laws” isn’t in the job description of lawmakers. When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.
Not All the Education News is Bad
Via Kitchen Table Math I found this piece about the Washington Math Science Technology Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C. An excerpt:
Mr. Boykie (director of development and fundraising) calls the school the “best kept secret in DC” because it has never received much publicity, despite its tremendous academic successes with a student population that is 100 percent low-income: a rigorous curriculum, including AP courses; an extraordinarily high graduation rate, with nearly all graduates receiving scholarships to attend college; and the rare achievement of adequate yearly progress. In addition to their success on standardized tests, WMST students have racked up top honors at math, science, and JROTC competitions. Giant trophies, as well as college acceptance letters, pack the display cases in the front lobby.
The general public may not know much about WMST, but parents certainly do. Its reputation among parents is so strong that most of the 400 students commute from far-away neighborhoods, some traveling for as much as two hours each way. Parents are willing to overlook the school’s lack of a gym, a library, and sports teams because they know that their kids will graduate knowing how to read, write, do math, and understand technology.
(My emphasis.) The piece ends with “Here’s hoping that it won’t remain a secret much longer.”
What I fear is that as soon as it gets some good publicity, the Teacher’s Unions and the Department of Education will move swiftly to destroy it.
As the Japanese say, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
Heller Observations
Concurring Opinions has an interesting post up, What to Watch For in D.C. v. Heller, a compendium of ten items the author Rick Mike O’Shea thinks we should pay close attention to when the decision is finally handed down. (I concur with his belief that it will be one of if not the last decisions released by the Court this term, on or after June 23.)
To me, the most interesting points raised are, of course, the questions of how the court will address U.S. v. Miller (and I expect both concurring and dissenting opinions to split on this, creating a nightmare of dicta for future courts to wade through), whether the Court will address the level of scrutiny at all (I’m voting for “no”), and – one I hadn’t really considered, the question of standing. As Concurring Opinions notes:
The Supreme Court litigation in D.C. v. Heller has been so rich and important that one forgets about the accompanying cross-petition for certiorari, Parker v. D.C. The Heller litigation originally involved six different plaintiffs, each raising slightly different challenges to D.C.’s gun laws. However, the D.C. Circuit panel dismissed five of the six plaintiffs (all but Dick Heller) under an unusual standing doctrine that the circuit had adopted in an earlier Second Amendment case. This is why the case was recaptioned from Parker to Heller when it reached the Supreme Court.
When the District of Columbia petitioned the Supreme Court for review of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion granting judgment in Mr. Heller’s favor, plaintiffs’ counsel cross-petitioned for review of the denial of standing to the other five plaintiffs. The cert petition on the standing issue, still captioned Parker, has been waiting in limbo on the Justices’ desks for seven months, while the Court has granted cert in Heller and held briefing and argument on the Second Amendment merits issue.
I predict that if the Court holds for Mr. Heller on the Second Amendment issue, it will consider this to be quite enough work for one day without also wading into the tangled complexities of standing doctrine. It will “GVR” (summarily Grant, Vacate, and Remand) the Parker part of the litigation back to the D.C. Circuit, which will have to reconsider the question of Second Amendment standing for the other plaintiffs, in light of what the Court says about the nature of the Second Amendment right in Heller.
One thing about cases like this that has always irritated me is the standing argument – that unless you can show that the law has directly adversely affected you, you have no standing to sue. That was the grounds on which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Hickman v. Block – they said the Second Amendment didn’t have anything to do with an individual right to arms, therefore the plaintiff had no standing to sue. In his dissent to the denial to re-hear Silveira v. Lockyer en banc, judge Kleinfeld wrote:
The panel opinion holds that the Second Amendment “imposes no limitation on California’s [or any other state’s] ability to enact legislation regulating or prohibiting the possession or use of firearms” and “does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms.” The panel opinion erases the Second Amendment from our Constitution as effectively as it can, by holding that no individual even has standing to challenge any law restricting firearm possession or use. This means that an individual cannot even get a case into court to raise the question.
H. Wayne Fincher decided that the only way he could challenge the Federal machinegun ban was to get arrested for violating it. There’s something wrong with a system that essentially demands that you break a law before you can challenge its Constitutionality.
But Mr. O’Shea is right – I don’t expect SCOTUS to touch that ball of worms.
George Bush Hates White People
Ravenwood makes a very valid observation.