Category Archives: Individual Rights

Updated: 'Take My Pound Of Flesh & Sleep Well'

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Individual Rights, Private Property, Taxation, Terrorism, The State

So wrote Joseph Stack, the pilot of a Piper Cherokee plane, before he crashed into an office building in Austin, Texas, that housed IRS offices.

What transpires when a government says to a desperate citizen, vaguely conscious of his natural rights, “Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide”?

What transpires when times get particularly tough. And they just take and take and take what’s not theirs to take. So Joseph Stack said, “Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different …”

However you slice it, there is no moral difference between a lone burglar who steals stuff he doesn’t own and an “organized society” that does the same. In a just society, the moral rules that apply to the individual must also apply to the collective. A society founded on natural rights must not finesse theft.

The founders intended for government to safeguard the natural rights of Americans. The 16th Amendment gave government a limitless lien on their property and, by extension, on their lives. Joseph Stack took his, in the hope of taking out some of them.

More here.

Update: Repetition is a theme on this blog. So I will cut-and-paste my last reply to the exact same moral equivalence the provocative, if repetitive, Myron has already advanced. How about coming at me with a new angle? I’m being made to go around in circles. Here goes from our last debate about anti-state violence:

MORAL/INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENCE. Conflating the causes for which McVeigh, for example, committed his cruel crime against agents and family of an oppressive government with the causes of the “Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin,” is akin to conflating MY causes with those of Myron’s taxonomy of the evil, again the “Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin.”

What sort of moral relativism is this? What kind of messy thinking is this? The causes and theories of the Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin were wrong on their logic and facts; McVeigh’s causes and motivation, if not his deeds, were right. What’s so hard about that?

Stack is justified in his anger against the shakedown agency and its agents who partake in pillaging their countrymen. He’s wrong to try and kill them. I feel so lame saying this, but it’s the safe thing to say. Incidentally, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC was more sympathetic than Fox’s statists on steroids.

Update III: Why No One Robs A 7-11 In Israel:

Feminism, Gender, GUNS, Individual Rights, Israel, Military

The adorable, armed girls of Israel (via Walter Block). (I’d be careful not to shortchange the redhead.)

Clearly, mowing down Israeli soldiers on and off base is not as easy as it is stateside. When a Jihadi committed fratricide last year at Fort Hood, murdering 13 people and maiming 31, Lieutenant General Robert W. Cone, commander of III Corps at that based, boasted: “We don’t carry weapons here, this is our home.”

Invert that and you’ll arrive at my philosophy, and that of most patriots.

Be it on the border or on base, the American treason class proves over and over again that it hates its own.

As hateful as they are to some of Israel’s enemies, Israeli politicians (there is no such thing as a Jerusalem Elite) simply don’t hate their own as much as Washington hates its underlings.

Update I (Feb. 15): Unlike the US Army—and contrary to the utter ignoramuses who’ve called Israel a “bristling Sparta” without ever having visited there—Israelis society, its armed forces especially, is very informal. There is no jumping to attention every second; uniforms are worse than casual (positively disheveled, I’d say), etc. Women—again, unlike our crazy PC military—don’t go into combat. They serve in auxiliary roles, as they should. This does not mean they are unable to drop a Jihadi.

Update II (Feb. 16): Van Wijk makes an astute comment. These Israeli girls carry rifles as naturally as other women carry handbags or pooches, or adopted, exotic ankle biters. That’s precisely what’s so good about the image.

Update III: “Hottie with Krinkov Uses Live Ammo On Attacker.” This is an ad, yes? Which means it’s not real, right? So in a phony universe, where everything comes alive provided it’s on TV or YouTube, a scantily clad bimbo shooting off a machine gun—in real-life probably a lefty who opposes what she’s doings—this is better than ordinary kids buying candy, guns strung across their shoulders?

Phony, stylized illusion (model filmed shooting a nice toy) is preferred over natural, organic behavior (Israeli lasses)?

I give up. Or perhaps the reader was just joking.

The attempts to demote the Israeli youngsters, a representative sample of tens of thousands of such kids in that country, is pathetic.

As reader Alan Butler notes, “the 2nd lady on the right has a 30 round magazine in her belt. Only seconds away from lock and load!!!”

The girls’ outfits indicate to me that they are undergoing basic training, which mean these sweet things are all of 18! Babies.

Shame on their detractors. Most of you, in secret, wish you had such daughters.

Updated: If Justice Samuel Alito Were Ill-Mannered …

Barack Obama, Constitution, Elections, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Law

He’d have cried out “You Lie” at the president during the State of the Union, last night. It so happens that Justice Alito is a gentleman, so he didn’t. All Alito did was gesticulate in surprise at the president’s audacious “misrepresentation ” of the SCOTUS’ invalidation of “a portion of the McCain-Feingold Campaign finance law.”

Writes Judge Andrew P. Napolitano:

“The 20-year-old ruling had forbidden any political spending by groups such as corporations, labor unions, and advocacy organizations (like the NRA and Planned Parenthood, for example). Ruling that all persons, individually and in groups, have the same unfettered free speech rights, the court blasted Congress for suppression of that speech. In effect, the court asked, ‘What part of ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech’ does Congress not understand?’ Thus, all groups of two or more persons are free to spend their own money on any political campaigns and to mention the names of the candidates in their materials.”

“Thus, as a result of this ruling, all groups may spend their own money as they wish on any political campaigns …”

“On Wednesday night, during his State of the Union address, the president attacked this decision by arguing that the ruling permits foreign nationals and foreign corporations to spend money on American campaigns. When he said this, Justice Samuel Alito, who was seated just 15 feet from the president, gently whispered: ‘That’s not true.’ Justice Alito was right. The Supreme Court opinion, which is 183 pages in length, specifically excludes foreign nationals and foreign-owned corporations from its ruling. So the president, the former professor of law at the one of the country’s best law schools, either did not read the opinion, or was misrepresenting it.”

For posterity:

Update (Jan. 29): Randy Barnett on “a shocking lack of decorum”:

“In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.”

The Defunct Foundations Of The Republic

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Democrats, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Natural Law, Reason, Republicans

From my new, WND.COM column, “The Defunct Foundations Of The Republic”:

“In the course of the agonizing debates over the soon-to-be-merged Senate and House health-care bills, Republicans cried out for partisanship, griped about procedure and said next to nothing about principles, an accusation that cannot be directed at the Democrats.

‘Health care in America ought to be a right, not a privilege,’ thundered Sen. Christopher J. Dodd. The Democrat from Connecticut was expressing sentiments that are par for the course in Democrat discourse.

Nancy Pelosi’s core beliefs vis-à-vis conscripting individuals into buying (or providing) a commodity at the pains of punishment came across loud and quirky. When the House passed its hulking health-care legislation, the speaker was asked where in the Constitution is the warrant for individual health mandates. Pelosi’s response was for posterity. ‘Are you serious?’ she shot back.

No, Democrats are not in the habit of hiding how they feel about the US Constitution.

As much as he dislikes the philosophical foundations of the republic, the president seems to know – and prattle – about them more so than do the Republicans. Here’s Sen. Barack Obama talking about the document Republicans discount and Democrats deem dated”…

The complete column is “The Defunct Foundations Of The Republic.”

My libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is back in print. The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

A Happy New Year to all,
ilana