End the War on Freedom

Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament.

The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.

Even the Government had to concede that the expense of doing this – which it now admits will cost us £18 billion a year for the next 40 years – would be twice the value of its supposed benefits. Yet, astonishingly, although dozens of MPs queued up to speak in favour of the Bill, only two dared to question the need for it. It passed by 463 votes to just three.

One who voted against it was Peter Lilley who, just before the vote was taken, drew the Speaker’s attention to the fact that, outside the Palace of Westminster, snow was falling, the first October snow recorded in London for 74 years. As I observed at the time: “Who says that God hasn’t got a sense of humour?”

...

Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

Punishing crime is meant to guarantee to every person the fullest liberty he can realize that is also consistent with the full liberty of others. Government should exist only to protect the liberty of the individual, and protect his life and property from force and fraud. An individual must be free in the "pursuit of happiness," even to practice vices that others detest. An individual must be free to use his own judgment, his own body and his own property without restriction so far as the use does not interfere with another individual's quiet enjoyment of his own person and property.

Everyone wants to be protected against violations from other men. But no one wants to be "protected" from himself, since someone else is determining what "protection" is.

For long years afterward, Henry VIII, who used archers to good effect, himself, had to put up with exactly the same whining: the French and other aristocrats complained bitterly about this invention, the Welsh longbow, that nullified a lifetime of training with animals and equipment in which they had invested fortunes, and which could now be defeated by mere farmers using couple of sticks and a piece of string.

"It's just not fair!"

Do what they would, the age of armored knights was over, and that was a very, very good thing. It set up the psychology under which our ancestors, equipped with another revolutionary weapon, the flintlock Pennsylvania or Kentucky rifle, cast off the rule of kings altogether. Most Americans today don't appreciate what was really revolutionary about that rifle: compared with firearms that had preceded it, it was so simple in design and cheap to manufacture, every family could own one.

Politicians and bureaucrats still haven't gotten over it.

It has been often said that the "science is settled" on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.

...

Ross McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph, and coauthor of Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming.

Readers will note that the Constitution simply authorizes an enumeration, a counting of heads. Not an enumeration by race, Hispanic ethnicity, personal relationships, or by the manner in which a person occupies his/her home ("tenure" in census-speak). Not an enumeration by one’s labor force status, by health insurance coverage, by disability status, by level of education. Not an enumeration of the number of bedrooms, kitchens, cars, distances/times traveled to work, school. Not an enumeration of the amount of income made, or by the answers to numerous other nosy questions found in the American Community Survey. Just a simple counting of the number of people. Madison’s extensive notes on the 1787 Convention contain not one word about the delegates spending any of their valuable time discussing the issues of race, Hispanic origins, personal relationships, or plumbing.

In re Afghanistan, why, you might ask, is the world’s hugest, expensivest, most begadgeted military unable to defeat a few thousand angry tribesmen armed with AKs and RPGs?

Easy: Character. The men running the war are mentally the wrong ones to do it.

Think about this for a moment. Suppose that your boss at the lab or law firm or newsroom demanded that, when he entered the room, you leapt spasmodically to your feet, stood rigidly erect with your feet at a forty-five degree angle like a congenitally deformed duck, and stared straight ahead until he gave you permission to relax. You would think, correctly, that he was crazy as a bedbug. If he then required reporters to stand in a square so he could inspect their belt buckles, you would either figure he was a gay blade or call for a struggle buggy and some big orderlies. This weird posturing is not normal, nor are those it appeals to.

The presenters include the "director general of ecology commission at the United Nations" and the "copresident of intergovernmental panel on climate change." There's even a Nobel Peace Prize winner here. I arrive early and catch a panel discussion between two United Nations bureaucrats on global warming.

Then Doug Casey takes the stage...

First, he tells the students to ignore everything they've heard so far. The speakers are all government stooges with no idea how the real world works. "Their ideas are nonsense," he says.

Heads rise. Some students giggle in embarrassment.

Doug then explains how inflation, not bankers, caused the financial crisis... why democracy is a terrible way to organize society... how global warming is a hoax... and why most modern schools and universities are a complete waste of time if you're looking for an education.

I can't believe you believe in Global Warming

...

Politicians say the UN IPCC Summary Report was signed by over 2000 scientists. Therefore, they claim the Report must be true. In fact, only 62 reviewed the critical chapter 9, of which only 7 were independent of their government and only 1 endorsed the most significant statement. Global warming politics hinges on one signature!

In light of the many scientists who have firmly declared that global warming is a scam, hoax, pseudo religion and that human CO2 cannot affect our climate, all politicians who continue to support the global warming agenda are either irrational, insane or simply flaming liberal idiots.

But isn't that terrifying? There is NO centralized scheme to feed us all! No one is being forced to produce any food, or ship it anywhere. There is NO guarantee that YOU will have anything to eat tomorrow! No one is making sure we all have food! AAAAH!!!

So why do we? Why do we have, not merely enough food to survive (which by itself is an impressive accomplishment), but a huge variety of high-quality, low cost food, even in places hundreds of miles from where most kinds of food can be grown? There wasn't even a big, centralized, concerted effort TRYING to make that happen. So what made it happen?

A guy in Florida, who figured out a new way to keep bugs off his oranges, made it happen. But not by himself. A guy who started a little trucking company in Texas, who figured out how to make things run just a bit faster and more efficiently, made it happen. But not by himself. A farmer in Iowa, who put in the extra time to cultivate that extra field, made it happen. But not by himself. MILLIONS of individuals, not governed or guided by any central plan, most of them not even aware of the rest of the picture, made it happen. But if there was no master plan making them all do what they do, and making them all work together in harmony, what could possibly have made it all work?

Simple: the quest for PERSONAL GAIN. The amazingly complex arrangements, intricate organization, ongoing adaption and problem solving, all come from what is often termed "greed." (This is nothing new to those familiar with "Austrian" economics.) The self-interest of millions of individuals, most of whom know only their tiny little piece of the big picture, is capable of doing what no centralized plan ever has, or ever could.

Books are most often dedicated to the one person, or persons, who made the project possible – to those who inspired and informed the author. This book has a forward thanking all the folks who have assisted me in my project, among these my long-suffering wife Rosey, my kids, other gunnies and fellow workers in the thankless task of trying to restore our tottering constitutional republic.

But I think it is appropriate to dedicate Absolved to "Waco Jim" Cavanaugh and Agent Jody Keeku of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the twin unintended inspirations for all my recent work. For the coterie of my Internet friends, neither needs an introduction. For the rest of you, the very moniker of "Waco Jim" should tell you the larger portion of his sins. Keeku was the principal agent of David Olofson's frame-up and imprisonment. Whether my novel is a prescient glimpse into a bloody future or a "useful dire warning" that is heeded, is entirely up to the likes of them and to the corrupt politicians who hold their leashes.

It is they who, by their conduct, will absolve us of the necessity of any further obedience to an oppressive regime. As I point out in Absolved, if the law no longer protects us, then they will find to their sorrow that it no longer protects them either. The choice is theirs. So I dedicate Absolved to them and their thuggish fellow gang members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. As Ho Chi Minh once observed, "Cherish your enemies, they teach you the best lessons."

I hope they understand that before it is too late.

The War on Drugs is over. Drugs won. It's time to stop wasting money, destroying lives, grinding up the Bill of Rights, and giving greater and greater power to the jackbooted thugs, in an unnecessary and futile attempt to enforce one group's ideas about what chemicals and vegetables some other group ought to manufacture, cultivate, distribute, purchase, possess, and consume. Repeal the drug laws, and prices will drop a thousandfold, driving most participants out of the business.

That pack of grifters, thugs, and spies called the United Nations has to go. Their openly-advertised antipathy toward the American Bill of Rights (take a good look at the Colt Python sculpture in front of their headquarters to see where they stand on the Second Amendment) would be more than reason enough, but the Third World's slavering lust to loot the United States (even further than it's already been looted by the Obama Administration) makes it absolutely imperative. Kick the vermin out, raze their building to the ground, and then construct something useful (an indoor shooting facility would be nice) in its place.

...

Above all, keep your religion in your pants. If it makes you happy, I'm happy for you, but—like whatever else you have down there—nobody cares about it but you. If you don't like to drink, smoke, or consume cheeseburgers, then don't drink, smoke, or consume cheeseburgers—and stop bothering those who do. The same goes for drugs. If you don't care for same-sex marriage, don't marry somebody of the same sex. (If you feel that your marriage is somehow threatened by gay people getting married, it must be a pretty weak and fragile thing.) If you don't like abortion, don't have one. If you don't like evolution, then don't evolve—unless you've got that one covered already.

Victim disarmament—what its advocates call "gun control"—is more a matter of projection on their part than protection. They know their own hearts and minds. They fear that they lack the self-control and self-discipline necessary to use a weapon safely, responsibly, and effectively. On the other hand, guns possessed by private individuals who are fed up with police incompetence, corruption, and brutality have reduced violent crime dramatically over the past twenty years or so.

It would be nice to have an accurate, digitally-signed law resource on the web. Nicer, though, would be to have laws that are not obviously unconstitutional. The First Amendment's "Congress shall make no law", the Second's "shall not be infringed", the Fourth's "shall not be violated", the sixth's "speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury", and the entire idea of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are now just legal jokes. Until the "law" is brought back into alignment with the obvious meaning of the Constitution, it no longer matters. The rule of law is dead in America.