End the War on Freedom

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- President Theodore Roosevelt

Celebrated America's birthday yesterday with a trip with the kids to the range. Christopher and I shot traps. I killed 21 of 25 birds, quite good for me. Then up to the rifle range, where I supervised Victoria's 100 rounds of .22 while Christopher fired 60 rounds from the AR. Then we shot some pool and watched Predator, an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, at the club. It was a perfect pond afternoon. Victoria put about 20 fish in the pond's toy storage chest before pouring them back in the pond. Sparklers and some smokeless-powder burning after dark. A small amount of powder in a coal bucket makes a bright flame two or three feet high. Yowza!

# L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Fifth of July - a classic from 2001. [root]

Whenever you hear, sometimes for several days before and after the Glorious Fourth, itself, and maybe half a city away, the wonderful snap, crackle, and pop! of illicit firecrackers, occasionally punctuated by the lovely wheeeee! of contraband pop bottle rockets, what you're hearing (although the distant rocketeers are probably unaware of it, themselves) is the real celebration of American independence.

What follows -- the inevitable sirens -- remind us who the enemy is, and who they have always been, since that other summer day in 1776.

# Lysander Spooner - No Treason - today is also a good day to re-read the master of anarchist thought. [root]

# George Paine at Warblogging - Two Hundred and Twenty Eight Years - glorious Independence Day rant in response to an "America, love it or leave it" asshole. [warblogging]

Thomas Jefferson, in America's Declaration of Independence, wrote of a "decent respect for the opinions of Mankind."

There once was a time when America showed a decent respect for the opinions of Mankind. There was a time when nations throughout the world named their streets for American leaders. John F. Kennedy Strasse. The city of Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, was once called Wilsonovo Mesto -- or Wilson City -- after President Woodrow Wilson. There was a time when great statesmen gave speeches about respect for Mankind, when cheering throngs greeted American presidents in cities around the world, when President Kennedy famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner".

But now America's good names has been dragged through the dungeons of Abu Ghraib, through the destroyed houses of Baghdad, through the blood of innocent children in Basra. America's good name has been tarnished terribly by President Bush's appointees' horrific memorandums on the use of torture. The world stands by and looks at America with a look of horror on its face. It sees in America something that it has once seen before -- a great nation invading helpless and unthreatening sovereign nations, a nation torturing its enemies, a nation stifling dissent at home. It sees in America something that it hoped would not surface again. The world looks at America -- the same world that once wrote in Le Monde that "We are all Americans now" -- not in awe and reverence but with awe and terror.

# Sunni Maravillosa at The Price of Liberty - Speechless - with the destruction of the fifth amendment in the case against Dudley Hiibel, the supremacists have completed the legal destruction of the Bill of Rights. Sunni is depressed. I don't blame her. [price]

The magnitude of the task before those of us who love freedom has been revealed, in the yawning indifference of Americans to this decision. I wonder how many of us are checking our "Claire Wolfe clocks", and saying something like, "Wow -- how did it get to be half-past time to shoot the bastards without me noticing?"

On June 21 the Supreme Court killed any pretense that may have remained of protecting the Constitution, and thereby U.S. citizens, from abuse at the hands of the state. And most of America scratched, belched, and turned on the TV.

# unstructuredreality at The Claire Files - A New Beginning, What's the Story - a guide or course about claiming your sovereignty, how to become and remain a free person under the law. Most interesting. I don't know if it will work. [clairefiles]

# Wade Star - New Beginning - the contents of the posts above, and more, is available from LawLearners.com as a series of Microsoft Word files. The last link on the page is to this 457K zip file, containing everything. [google]

# Donald W. Scott at Nexus Magazine - Mycoplasma: The Linking Pathogen in Neurosystemic Diseases - AIDS, cancer, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, all may be caused by crystalized mycoplasma intentionally culled from the Brucella bacterium. Doxycyclene treatment may cure it. [smith2004]