End the War on Freedom

Jerry Pournelle - Pluck the Yew - Dr. Pournelle gives a short history of flipping the bird and the expression that goes along with it. Sounds like an urban legend to me, but entertaining anyway. [pournelle]

Wiley Clapp at Shooting Times - Colt's Match Target HBAR rifle galloped through 10,000 rounds of PMC 55-grain FMJ .223 ammo like desperados coming through the rye - a former marine fired 10,000 rounds through Colt's $1200 civilian-legal AR-15. In 2.5 days. He cleaned it after each 1,000 rounds. He damaged the barrel in 9,000 rounds, likely due to overheating, but still managed to shoot the last 1,000 rounds by switching ammo.

Finally, as the round count approached 4000, the log broke apart and fell into two halves. Thus, I can confidently give you one of the most useless pieces of trivia imaginable--it takes 4000 rounds of .223 ammo to cut a two-foot-diameter log in half. I even verified it by putting up another log and watching it fall in two pieces after just over 4000 more.

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I think we wrecked the barrel by shooting too much just a little too fast. At times the barrel was literally smoking, and that's indicative of too much heat and friction. If we had slowed down and stretched the shoot over a longer period of time, that barrel might have lasted for the full 10,000 rounds and possibly another 10,000. Who knows? It's a fine little rifle that fell into the wrong hands.

But there is just a little more to this story. I came to the shoot with a kit bag full of the parts that might break -- springs, pins, extractors, ejectors, etc. I never opened the bag. This fine Colt rifle fired 10,000 rounds without one malfunction of any kind. Not a single part broke; not a single failure of any part of the system was experienced.

Walter E. Williams at WorldNetDaily - Who may harm whom? - private property is the key to a free society. [kaba]

In a dictatorship, it's the dictator who decides. In a democracy, it's mob rule. How is it decided in a free society? In a free society, the question of who may harm whom in what ways is decided through private property rights.

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What about cigarette smoke harming others? In a free society, as opposed to a dictatorship or mob rule, the matter is resolved through private property rights. If you own property, be it your house, restaurant, airplane or workplace, another does not have the right to smoke on your property without your permission.

Alternatively, in the house, restaurant, airplane or workplace that I own, another doesn't have the right to prohibit smoking. If you don't like the fact that smoking is permitted in my restaurant, you can go elsewhere. Similarly, I can do the same if you don't permit smoking.

Jim Duensing - An Open Letter to American Airlines - Mr. Duensing will not fly again until airport "security" is taken out of the hands of the nazis.

I knew that I had to submit to these terroristic tactics, because I did not have enough time to get to my destination any other way than flying. I complied with the orders of your agents, but that was not sufficient for them. I did not comply gleefully with a smile on my face. In fact, as I thrust my wallet toward the CSS I uttered the words "f***ing Nazis" in disgust. As I write this, I still believe I exhibited an extraordinary amount of self-control given the abuses I had just suffered. But, I regret having used vulgarity. So many more appropriate words could have preceded the term Nazi. I do not regret using the term Nazi.

The CSS seemed confused by my comment; after all he was just following orders. He asked me "Who's a Nazi". To ensure there was no confusion, I looked right at him and said "You are". His only response to this was "MP's".

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Nothing done to me that day could or would have prevented me from hijacking that plane were I so inclined. If prisoners in maximum security penitentiaries can obtain or fashion weapons, surely weapons could be fashioned from the items on board an airliner. For instance, a broken liquor bottle, the sharp edges of an aluminum can which has been broken in two, the metal buckle of a seat belt whipped around and used as a club; any of these and more could be used to execute the kind of attacks which were carried out on September 11th.

What would have prevented the attacks of September 11th is allowing passengers the means to defend themselves. If just one person on each of those four planes were armed and trained, think of how many people would still be alive today. How many children would have mothers and fathers? How many parents would still have their children? Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, people. They would all be alive today. If it saves just one life your airline should return to your policy of allowing firearms in the hands of passengers.

Brian Fitzgerald - The profits of doom - commentary on an LA Times Story about the "Predator" unmanned military airplane. This is a frightful weapon. Care to guess how long it will be before you see one in your back yard? It'll soon be time to stock up on anti-aircraft guns, eh? Brian includes Eisenhower's farewell address in which Ike warns about the military-industrial complex. I agree with his comment that Ike is "the only Republican president in 50 years to be deserving of any respect." I believe that Jimmy Carter was the only Democratic president in 50 years to be deserving of any respect.

Joseph Sobran at LewRockwell.com - The Myth of 'Limited Government' - A review of Hans-Hermann' Hoppe's Democracy -- The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order.

We are taught that the change from monarchy to democracy is progress; that is, a change from servitude to liberty. Yet no monarchy in Western history ever taxed its subjects as heavily as every modern democracy taxes its citizens.

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Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.

T.L. Knapp - Rational Review is a new libertarian e-zine that Mr. Knapp intends to publish on the 1st and 16th of each month. Columnists are Mr. Knapp, Steve Trinward, & R. Lee Wrights. Scott Bieser is contributing his cartoons. They accept advertising. Added to my links page.

Vin Suprynowicz - Ending the anachronism of racial labels - part of The Libertarian series. Ward Connerly is attempting to put on the California ballot, an initiative making it illegal for any government agency to collect statistics on race. Vin thinks this is a good idea. I agree.

Visitors from other cultures find this Anglo-Saxon fixation on racial labeling equally strange. Iranian immigrants report with a mixture of humor and dismay that -- en route to settling in America -- they have found their respective government ID cards describing them as "black" while resident in England, "Asian" while living in Canada, and finally "white" upon crossing Niagara Falls. When a Singaporean newspaper reporter of mixed English, Chinese and Filipina heritage earnestly asked what box to check under "race" when applying for her Arizona press pass in Phoenix, recently, the sheriff's clerk took one look at her and told her to check "Hispanic" -- the one race with which the reporter was pretty sure she shared no ties whatever.

Rick Claw at The SF Site - Geeks With Books: Censorship Is a Four Letter Word - Mr. Claw is afraid, but not of terrorists. He's afraid of the rapidly advancing Amerikan police state. And rightly so.

Ever since the events of September 11 I've been scared, but not for the reasons you might suspect. Flying doesn't scare me. There is still a much better chance of getting hit by a car than dying on an airplane. And let's not even discuss the odds of a terrorist taking over a plane. If I'm to die that way then so be it. I'm not particularly worried about a plane hitting a building either.

This isn't meant to belittle the terrorist acts. It was a tragedy beyond the imaginings of our finest horror writers. In this arena, Lovecraft is a lightweight. You want to know what really scares me? An administration that seems bent on ignoring the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights by crushing any vocal opposition to what is quickly becoming an authoritarian regime. Men like George W. Bush and John Ashcroft have forgotten the very document upon which our government is founded.

Terry Jones at Guardian Unlimited Observer - I remain, sir, Haggard of the Hindu Kush - after 3 months of war, huge expenditure of our stolen tax money, and riding roughshod over our civil liberties, Osama bin Laden, the supposed target of all this mayhem, is looking "haggard". [cafe]

So keep up the good work, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, let's see if we can continue in this vein and perhaps - at the cost of only another few billion dollars, a lot more innocent lives, many more civil rights, and the stability of the Middle East, India and Pakistan, and perhaps a Third World War, we might even be able to make Osama bin Laden frown.

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