Category Archives: Terrorism

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: Beck Blasts Bush (But Praises Diablo)

Bush, Glenn Beck, History, Islam, Politics, Pseudo-history, Republicans, States' Rights, Terrorism

It’s official. Glenn Beck gets his own category/archive on Barely A Blog. He deserves it. In addition to his other attributes—you can now track my analysis of Beck’s progression as a force for liberty by clicking on the BAB Beck category—he is the only conservative, mainstream TV commentator to treat Bush with the contempt he reserves for Obama.

The tirade against “W” begins 3 minutes or so into the broadcast.

“Debt, spending; this was insane what G. W. Bush was doing. Spending us into oblivion. National security. How about you declare a war and fight to win? How about you secure our borders? … Some people wanted global warming. The rest of us wanted us out of the Middle East; use our own energy. The Republicans had a crack at it, but what did we get? GB, in his last year, lost 3 million jobs. Debt. Spending: How about $4.9 trillion? He increased discretionary spending almost 50 percent. Fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2000: Bush almost spent double than President Clinton. And who can forget the $550 billion prescription drug fiasco? He abandoned the free-market system to save it with a $700 billion TARP slush fund. … The border was left wide open. Corruption was rife. Oh, and global warming: the biggest schemes of all times not only supported by Republicans, but by leading Republicans. Lindsey Graham, Tim Pawlenty, John McCain. All pro cap-and-trade.

Update I Feb. 16): In the same program, Glenn conducted a devotional to Diablo—Abraham Lincoln—rejecting some of the most solid historical revisionism.

One of the reasons a volume like The Real Lincoln is so sound is that it does NOT refute historical facts; most historians agree about what transpired during the War of Northern Aggression; it’s the interpretation of these fact.

With Diablo it boils down to deciding matters of natural law: did the states create the union or vice versa (dah Diablo)? Was secession legitimate” Is it right to sic brother on brother so as to coerce the one to remain with the other? Suspend the Bill or Right?

The “Church of Lincoln” says “Yes” to all; we who are with liberty say NO.

A reminder that I’m not adjudicating Lincoln in this post; but Beck’s progress toward the founders’ freedoms. It’s one step forward, two steps back with Beck.

Update II: To follow on RG’s excellent post, this from my “Classical Liberalism And State Schemes”:

“We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.”

Update III (Feb. 18): This post went off-topic, because some would rather rehash their convictions despite the answers provided. So, in reply to,”Do you believe those 500 million people form a serious military threat against which we must defend ourselves?”

For one, there are about 1 billion Muslims in the world. In the previous post, I replied to the same question. I’m reproducing the update:

Polls show a respectable percentage of Muslims condone Jihadi pursuits (search for some fresh data; I like those). If equaled by as many Jews and Christians, liberals and libertarians and elements on the American Right always helping to make the “Islamikazes'” case would protest as loud as you lot squealed over placing a bug in Abu Zubaydah’s cage. Hence the issue of fifth-column immigrants.

Back in 2005, “a leaked Whitehall dossier revealed that affluent, middle-class, British-born Muslims were signing up to Al-Qaida in droves. Translated into official speak by Timesonline, only ‘3,000 British-born or British-based people have passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.’

And if that doesn’t allay unwarranted fears, ‘Intelligence indicates that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad or supporting such activity, is extremely small and estimated at less than 1%.'”

In other words, 16,000 homicidal sleepers are loose in England!

These figures, of course, probably replicable in the US, are statistically significant—stupendously so—given the barbarism they portend. It is over this sort of astoundingly consequential number that our liberal-minded readers are jumping for joy.

Such is the liberal mindset.

Update III: Murder By Majority (Or Mercy Killing)

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

Barack Obama needed a war he could call his own. In Afghanistan, OB has found such a war. A meaty presence in Afghanistan has morphed into an all-out onslaught, with the attendant slaughter of innocence.

It wasn’t a daisy cutter of the Bush era, but a Himars rocket, an acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, that killed at least 10 people, including 5 children, in Marja, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, to where Obama has taken his war.

The place is dotted with rural villages and villagers, so some are bound to be incinerated by American bombs. So far nothing about BO’s shame in the op-ed pages of the LA Times or the NYT.

Most Americans may approve of BO’s pet war, but murder by majority approval is still murder. Those Afghans who died today are involuntary conscripts—they get to partake of the wonders of American democracy only indirectly: a mob (of Americans) in a far-away land decided their fate. And by golly what a splendid job this mob has done.

Update I: THE MIGHTY TALIBAN.

“I don’t think you can really describe them militarily. It seems like a few guys taking potshots … and not terribly effectively, with some exceptions.”

That’s NYTs correspondent ROD NORDLAND describing the Taliban on the PBS News Hour today.

His Boy Obama and his General get top marks for mercy killings. When Bush finished off civilians it wasn’t nearly as kindly as when McChrystal does it under the divine inspiration of BO:

Remember “the — the wedding, one of several, actually, that was bombed a year or two ago,”? … “the Bush administration, you know, they just — it took them months to ever admit they had even done anything wrong.”

Barack, by contrast, is positively killing these kids with kindness:

“They were so quick to announce that, in fact, that it turns out they exaggerated, apparently, the number of civilians they killed. It turned out it was actually only nine, and there were also three Taliban in the house who were shooting from the house, and thereby, at least arguably, making it a legitimate target.”

To listen to NORDLAND, you’d think that BO brought back from the dead three civilians thought dead.

In fairness to this correspondent, the NYT was all for the previous warbot’s war as well.

During Bush’s war, “Fox News was able to create the perception of a parallel universe in Iraq replete with big (nuclear) bangs and miraculously materializing al-Qaida terrorists because its Hollywood-inspired vision resonated with viewers. The ratings provided proof. By popular demand, MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times (This means you, Judith Miller) adopted a similar faux patriotism devoid of skepticism and serenely accepting of every silly White House claim.”

Everything is as it is in the USA.

Update II (Feb. 16): Thanks you Van Wijk for reminding the errant folks that, as I put it, “Our adventurous foreign policy might be a necessary condition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient one.”

Update III: I loathe rehashing arguments I’ve already won on this space many times over. Alas, this is the human condition.

Myron: Polls show a respectable percentage of Muslims condone Jihadi pursuits (search for some fresh data; I like those). If equaled by as many Jews and Christians, liberals and libertarians and elements on the American Right always helping to make the “Islamikazes'” case would protest as loud as you lot squealed over placing a bug in Abu Zubaydah’s cage. Hence the issue of fifth-column immigrants.

Back in 2005, “a leaked Whitehall dossier revealed that affluent, middle-class, British-born Muslims were signing up to Al-Qaida in droves. Translated into official speak by Timesonline, only ‘3,000 British-born or British-based people have passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.’

And if that doesn’t allay unwarranted fears, ‘Intelligence indicates that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad or supporting such activity, is extremely small and estimated at less than 1%.'”

In other words, 16,000 homicidal sleepers are loose in England!

These figures, of course, are statistically significant—stupendously so—given the barbarism they portend. Over this sort of astoundingly consequential number, our Myron is jumping for joy.

Such is the liberal mindset.

Man With The Reverse-Midas Touch

Barack Obama, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Markets, Government, Labor, Propaganda, Terrorism

The excerpt is from “Man With The Reverse-Midas Touch,” my new WND.COM column:

I’m really looking forward to hearing a speech by someone who is involved in innovation, knows America’s place in the world market and has fiscal responsibility. And I hope that Obama is listening very carefully when Steve Jobs speaks tomorrow.

“That was Penn Jillette on the eve of Barack Obama’s first, much-anticipated State of the Union address. The celebrity libertarian magician was making mischief with one of Larry King’s stock
questions.

It takes a magician to know one. On the day of Obama’s State of the Union sermon, Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., launched a magic mobile device called the ‘iPad.’ Perhaps Jillette thinks that the solution to America’s economic inertia lies in visionary producers like Jobs, and not in vain, profligate politicians like the president.

Technology is certainly a task for which Obama and minions are singularly ill-equipped. But that has not stopped them from tinkering – and attempting to bend industry in ‘green’ directions.

‘We should put more Americans to work building clean-energy facilities,’ Barack boomed last night. “You can see the results of last year’s investments in clean energy – in the North Carolina company that will create 1,200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries.’

Not according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Against its politically correct instincts, the IEEE was forced to ‘cast stones at a wide selection of … poorly conceived technology projects.’ One of these was Government Motors’ Chevrolet Volt, ‘a car known as a plug-in hybrid because it will get most of its power from the wall socket in a garage.’

You see, unless the Big O issues a mandate compelling Americans to purchase the commie car, the Volt won’t be making money. …”

Read the complete column, “Man With The Reverse-Midas Touch.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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