Category Archives: Individual Rights

Diplomatic Immunity From The Dangers Of Occupation

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government, Individual Rights, Islam, Just War, Terrorism, War

Our government’s only legitimate function is to protect American lives, one by precious one. Yet under “W,” ordinary Americans were regularly beheaded in the theaters of war Genghis Bush launched. None of their representatives stateside bargained for their lives or staged showy Congressional hearings to probe their forsaken security.

“President Bush sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to haggle for his countrymen.”

The helpless faces in televised pleas of Americans such as Private First Class Keith Maupin, Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, and American engineers Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong; the depraved indifference of my countrymen to their plight—these haunted me throughout 2003-2004, documented in columns such as “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS.”

Now, Republicans are attempting to saddle a war president by any other name—Barack Obama—with the blame for the “resurgence” of terrorism in America’s occupied territories, when the same anger was evinced by the occupied under Bush, and it will persist under future Republican leaders.

One voice of sanity on foreign policy is “departing Congressman” Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Kucinich, who will be sorely missed, made a cameo today during the “House Hearing on Attack on U.S. Consulate in Libya,” where he asked about al-Qaida’s presence in Libya. Lt. Col. Andrew Wood said: ‘Their presence grows everyday. They are certainly more established than we are.'”

More from Kucinich via Reason:

Departing Congressman Dennis Kucinich said at today’s hearing on security failures in Benghazi that rather than engaging in partisanship Congress ought to look at its role in failing to curb American interventionism as what led to the terrorist attack in Benghazi on 9/11, saying extremists exist and are more powerful in Libya because the U.S. “spurred a civil war” there, “absent constitutional authority, might I add.”
Kucinich blamed “decades of intervention” on the rise of extremists in the region and asked why no lessons from Iraq were drawn on Libya.
“Interventions do not make us safer,” Kucinich said, “they are themselves a threat to America,” before asking how much more Al-Qaeda there is in Libya now than before the U.S. intervention (the only answer he got was that they have a bigger presence in Libya than the U.S. does.” He also asked how many surface-to-air missiles were still missing since the U.S. intervention. Between 10 and 20,000, according to one of the witnesses.

A Republican Dick Called Carlson

Classical Liberalism, Elections, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Journalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

Journalism being what it is these days, this StarTribune report, and most other “reports,” failed to mention the “Where” in their lead story: Over which Senate seat are Kurt Bills (approved by Ron Paul) and Dick Carlson (endorsed, possibly, by the reality TV community) bickering.

(Perhaps we were expected to infer the information a journalistic lead should impart from the name of the newspaper doing the reporting: The Minneapolis StarTribune.)

In any event, Ron Paul stands for sound money, limited government (with respect to welfare and warfare alike), individual liberties and property rights. Unable to deal a blow to the constitutional principles of the American Founding Fathers, a dick called David Carlson—a Republican whose rival Ron Paul has endorsed—is choosing to fight filthily. The political battle is over the U.S. Senate seat of the senior United States Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar.

WATCH:

I’m David Carlson, and I approve this message because you have the right to know.

The transcript that follows is courtesy of Daily Kos, which, predictably, doesn’t care much about a country buckling under debt, regulation and central planning, just so long as its countrymen are coerced into sharing a single worldview.

Kurt Bills is a disciple of Ron Paul, and now he wants to be our U.S. Senator. What would America have looked like if we had President Paul and Senator Bills? Well, ‘states’ rights first’ means no Civil War to free the slaves. It means women and minorities aren’t voting. We don’t have integration and open schools. Kurt Bills own school could be all male and white. Ron Paul even stated, “Saving the Jews was absolutely none of our business” and that Adolf Hitler was initially a positive force for Germany! In Ron Paul’s and Kurt Bills’ America, black veterans who are unwanted in a restaurant can be told to leave. Ron Paul even said Martin Luther King Jr. seduced underage girls and boys and was a gay pedophile. Kurt Bills, a devoted supporter of Ron Paul, has already had our senate race called the most mismatched in America.
Minnesota, let’s make the battle for our senate seat a serious race and not put up another unelectable, radical candidate. Say no to Ron Paul and Kurt Bills.

From the Star Tribune:

[Carlson’s ad] will not have a wide viewing. Carlson said he spent a few thousand dollars to run it in the western and southwestern suburbs. But it could make a mark on Bills, who has struggled in his quest to unseat Klobuchar.

Carlson is “a 30-year-old former Marine Corps Sergeant,” which gives you an idea of the kind of constitutionally ignorant foot-soldiers for the state the military so often produces.

Shit Happens. Live With It, Or Be Prepared

Constitution, Crime, GUNS, Individual Rights, Law, Liberty

Trust RT to present a cool-headed, reasoned antidote to the hysteria that ensues, invariably, in mainstream media, each time the reality of evil asserts itself.

Reason magazine Senior Editor Brian Doherty did a good job on RT America in explaining the errors of the thinking behind the clamor for gun control, and central management of risk, vis-a-vis the Colorado ‘Batman’ screening massacre, earlier today.

These events, and gun murders in general, are rare and getting rarer every year, says Doherty, who is the author of a book about guns. This, despite the fact that all states have liberalized their gun laws, many more Americans are carrying weapons—and four million Americans each year apply for gun-ownership licenses.

Alarmist news headlines notwithstanding, gun violence has plummeted by half, says Doherty.

There will never be a policy prescription that will preempt or stop the lone “lunatic” from carrying out his evil intentions.

Policy prattle is futile. Let us talk, instead, about readiness, in the event the next coward thinks he will meet with no resistance.

UPDATE III (1/1/021): Abortion And A Woman’s Title In Her Body

Abortion, Conservatism, Ethics, Feminism, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property

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It is clearly untrue to say that a paleolibertarian is one who always opposes a woman’s absolute dominion over her body, as a poster on Wendy McElroy’s Facebook Wall has implied.

Abortion is one hill I do not care to die on; I’ve committed enough professional Seppuku over the years. However, I have repeatedly stated that, for a classical liberal (at least), “it’s [highly] problematic to say that by virtue of her fertility, a woman loses a title in her body.”

To repeat, for me, abortion is not the hill to die on. It seems prudent not to come out on this issue. Division of labor and all that stuff; I’ll leave it to Wendy McElroy, who, I am sure, agrees that “libertarians can agree that no state funding, local or federal, should be allocated to such a procedure.”

Otherwise, here is Wendy’s brilliant articulation of self-ownership. Watch Wendy on Stossel’s, 7:28 minutes in:

Wendy McElroy: As far as I’m concerned, this is my skin. Everything beneath this skin belongs to me, or I don’t own anything. I am a self-owner-

John Stossel: Even if there is a living being inside you?

Wendy McElroy: If there is a living being inside me, I’m glad you used the word “being” and not “individual with rights,” if there is a living being inside me, it exists on my breath, it exists by my, the blood pumping through my veins, by the food I eat. It is within my skin, and if you say to me that there, that I do not have jurisdiction over my body, that, in fact, society or someone else has jurisdiction, the, the word that describes someone else owning my body is slavery.*

UPDATE I: Glad people have remained civil on Facebook, so far. That’s the way. Always. However much one disdains the procedure, you can’t get away from the fact of self-ownership. You have no right to take custody of another person’s body. They either own themselves or don’t.

You can’t “own” your body in conjunction with other busybodies.

UPDATE II (July 21):

From the hopeless Facebook thread:

Your tortured analogy, MW, does not hold or even come close. Any reasoning about this fraught topic must proceed, at the very least, from a correct analogy. This is why this debate cannot proceed from logic. People lose their logic (or perhaps they never had the ability to reason to begin with) when it comes to abortion. Enough, now folks. The most honest position the anti-a-woman’s-right-in-her-body proponents can advance is this: a woman, by virtue of her biology, does not have total title in her body. As a propertarian, I find this position untenable, but agree that individuals who hold it will try to finesse it. So this is the final word. “Respek,” as Ali Gi would say.

JV: This is what I mean by a lack of reasoning faculties on the topic, and plain dissembling. What irks here is not only that I said, “enough,” and this is my Wall. But that you, JV, frame your “distinguishing” argument” as exhaustive. The initiation of force is most certainly not the only distinguishing feature between the mother and the fetus. (Unrelated: there is a prerequisite for Facebook Friendship.)

UPDATE III (1/1/021):

Libertarians view women as having dominion over their bodies! My comment, then, is on the cultural specter of females freed from men, morality and tradition: how quickly they turn into diabolical libertines. Most women need traditional strictures to balance exhibitionism and promiscuity.