Snowflakes in Hell

Kim du Toit brings up a lot of important points in regards to the thread yesterday:

I’ve lived in a state of near-revolution, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty. Want to go and visit your mother in the next town over? Imagine having to call ahead to the local police stations or military bases to see if the road is safe to travel on. (Add IEDs to this, and I think the picture becomes even clearer.) Has the Kmart been swept recently for explosive devices? Is anyone lurking over the road, waiting to shoot you when you come out to mow your lawn?

I think Kim’s clarity on this issue comes from the fact that he’s an immigrant, and has been much closer to actual civil unrest than any of us have been.  I would also imagine that people who grew up in a different culture also aren’t raised with all the American cultural myths.  Now, I’m not going to immediately bash on mythology.  Every society needs its mythology in order to define itself as a people.  But I think we do need to recognize when mythology starts getting its nose into the tent of reality.

One particular American myth is that of the clean revolution.  No one disputes that the American Revolution was just and necessary, but history tends to white wash the nastier bits.  One doesn’t have to look much farther than what happened to Loyalists both during and after the revolution to realize that it wasn’t clean. As Peter at Firearms and Freedom point out, even if you win your revolution, you’re still stuck with the same population that voted the original government into existence.  None of the ways to deal with that problem are pretty.

Our revolution was also risky.  The founding fathers, who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, would have certainly been executed if the revolution had been put down, but they also would have been in trouble had they lost control.  If it wasn’t for George Washington, we would be a backwater, just like many of the other American colonies.  History is not replete with men who willingly surrender great power.  Washington may not have filled the intellectual role in our nation’s founding that Jefferson or Madison did, and he might not have been the greatest general the world has ever seen, but Washington made his place in our history with these words:

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.

That is, in my opinion, one of the greatest acts in the history of mankind.  Not only for what it said of Washington’s character, but because men like Washington are so utterly rare in history.

For the people today who think about affecting a clean revolution, remember that your revolution will not change the people of the United States, who elected the government that you so despise, and we’d be extraordinarily lucky to be lead by another Washington.  The only clean revolutions are those that happen by the ballot box.

That’s why Bitter is pissed off about this whole thread, since she’s worked most of her adult life on affecting a truly clean revolution on this issue by convincing her fellow citizens to toss out the bums who vote for gun control.  It’s also why I love people like Breda, who bring in passion for the issue, and are eagar to share it with others.  If we had a thousand Bitters and Bredas scattered around the country, gun rights would be an unstoppable juggernaut.  We’d get our clean revolution.  This is where I make my contribution in the here and now.  What about you?

Robert Putnam received a hail of criticism when he released his book Bowling Alone.  Some of it, in my opinion, is justified, but there is a grain of truth in there somewhere.  I do not think that there’s been any great decline in America’s social capital.  The type of community we have here online is a great example of how social networking can change to adapt to changing technology. It’s perhaps a testament to my generation that I don’t know my next door neighbors nearly as well as I know many of you.  But I tend to agree with Putnam that our civil society is in trouble. One major criticism I would make of Generation X and Y, is that we’re probably the most civically disengaged generation in American history.

I don’t think that’s because we’re selfish, spend too much time on the Internet, or play too many video games.  New technology has been distracting people for a long time.  No doubt thousands of years ago, tribe elders expressed concern that Og was more interesting in spending all his time painting up the cave by this newfangled fire, and wasn’t showing any interest in participating the fish cleaning committee.  Putnam was quick to blame technology for the problem, but I don’t think it’s that at all.

When it comes to civic engagement, what has failed our generation is not technology, but government.  High taxes have ensured that people have less free time to spend on civic activity.  Big government has fostered a culture of “let the professionals take care of it” that strongly discourages citizen involvement and participation.  Our public schools, colleges, and universities no longer teach civics and government, and are more interested in turning out people who can fill jobs than they are turning out people who can think, and who can participate in civil society.  We care about issues, we have energy, but because of the lack of understanding of how civil society functions, it gets send in random and unproductive directions much of the time.

I don’t think this was an accident.  Those in positions of power benefit greatly from a passive citizenry.  Politicians like Barack Obama want to force the schools to make us civically engage, and tax us even more.  This is only going to make the problem worse, not better.  Politicians like Obama recognize the problem, but will never accept their philosophy on government is the problem.  The solution is always more government.  It’s always more guys like him either telling people what to do, or even more damaging, taking care of people so they don’t have to take care of themselves.  You will never hear the Barack Obamas of the world talk about tapping the resources and ingenuity of the American people, getting the federal government the hell off their backs, and let people self-organize and self-govern in order to solve problems.  It always has to be experts. It always has to be bureaucrats.  To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that we don’t need them, and their egos and ambitions won’t allow for that.

In Part II, I’ll talk about how I think this kind of civic disengagement is affecting the gun rights movement.

Rachel Lucas talks about an English woman who was prosecuted for assault because she dealt with some hooligans who had been vandalizing a war memorial.  In the United States, I doubt, given the circumstances in the UK in regards to crime, you could find a jury who would be willing to convict this woman of anything.  This is why juries are important to any proper system of justice.

Many people may be technically guilty of a crime, but the rule of law itself is undermined if it’s applications don’t reflect the attitudes and values of the community it’s supposed to be protecting.

Tam points out that half of our Heller dissenters were put on the bench by Republicans.  By any measure, shifting the federal courts more toward the center has actually been one of the Republican party’s most stellar achievement, and even here, the best we can really say is “Well, Republicans tend to get it right about half the time.”  Really, the federal judiciary should be owned by conservatives right now, but it isn’t.  Yet moving the court rightward has been an accomplishment.

Republicans: even doing our best work, we’re still pretty damned incompetent.

GunPundit points to a picture I’ve seen making the rounds through forums and what not.  It shows an Iowa police officer holding a gun on a driver.  I’ve variously seen this attributed to police enforcing a checkpoint with excessive force.  Didn’t blog about it when I first saw it, because we had no context.   Well, here’s the context:

After being denied re-entry to a flooded neighborhood, Rick Blazek, 53, returned to his vehicle as a state trooper used his police vehicle to block the checkpoint, according to the news release.

“Blazek drove his vehicle toward the state trooper and struck the state trooper three times with his vehicle,” the release said.

Police told Blazek to get out of his vehicle, and when he refused, “the driver’s window was broken out because the doors were locked and Blazek was removed from his vehicle,” according to the release.

The trooper was not injured. Blazek, who was arrested and charged with assault on a peace officer with a deadly weapon, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The trooper in question was fully justified in drawing his pistol on the driver as they took him into custody.  Cars are deadly weapons.  Whether or not the police were justified in keeping a man from his home isn’t material.  You’re allowed to use force to overcome an unlawful restraint (different from kidnapping), but not deadly force.

Whether or not one can be kept from one’s home is a matter of emergency powers provisions under the Iowa Code, which seem to allow for “Control ingress and egress to and from a disaster area, the movement of persons within the area, and the occupancy of premises in such area.” and “A peace officer, when in full and distinctive uniform or displaying a badge or other insignia of authority, may arrest without a warrant any person violating or attempting to violate in such officer’s presence any order or rule, made pursuant to this chapter. This authority shall be limited to those rules which affect the public generally.”

So under the Iowa Code, the governor can prevent persons from entering a declare disaster area, and the police are empowered to enforce edicts issued under the Governor’s disaster powers.

Judge Kozinski’s wife responds to the latest incident of yellow journalism on the part of the LA Times.  Unfortunately, the lie is already halfway around the world.  I agree with Kevin.

Kevin Baker talks again about the “reset” button.  I’ve said previously, any pressing of said button will have to be instigated by a state government, rather than through actions of individuals or groups of individuals.  That gets hard when states basically suckle at the federal teat, but I don’t see any other way to stand up to the federal government that won’t end badly.  We already have some examples of states willing to make token gestures.  The big problem is, we’re not losing our freedom by the guillotine, but by death of a thousand cuts.  It’s hard to convince other people that “This encroachment has to be it.  The line has been crossed.”

Personally, I don’t think we’re there yet, but I think it’s not unwise to whip up some resentment of federal meddling in matters they have no business in, within state legislatures.  What Oklahoma has done is a start.

UPDATE: Maybe we don’t have it so bad.

Through Ricketyclick, I found this interesting civics literacy quiz.   Go see how you compare to most of the college freshman and seniors today.  I missed 4 questions, for an A.  I missed 19, 27, 36, and 58.   It’s a sixty question test.  I sometimes wish you had a pass a basic civics test to vote, but there’s probably no way to do that without it getting abused.

Joe tells the story.

It’s called security theater.  It shows the guy inside that the police are serious, that he can’t win, and that he should just give up.  It’s also very very fun to get decked out in surplus military gear and take the surplus M113 the feds gave you as part of their homeland security program for a ride.  I mean, they gave it to the department right?  Might as well use it!

Over at Volokh, Jonathan Adler highlights the slow place the senate is taking on judicial nominations.  One thing stands out to me:

By comparison, a Republican Senate confirmed eight of President Clinton’s appellate nominees during his last year in office. Since January 2007, the Senate has confirmed eight appellate nominees, whereas a Republican Senate confirmed fifteen during President Clinton’s last two year.

Adler believes that judicial appointments need to be depoliticized, and I tend to agree (though, as I said, I’m glad the Democrats defeated Bork), but I’m reminded of something Dave Hardy said a while ago in a comment at The Bitch Girls:

Liberals as a general rule see government as a tool to solve problems. They thus are skilled at using it (albeit to create more problems than they solve). Their “best and brightest” go in for government work. When in power, they work to create a government system that will continue to work as they want it to.

Conservatives… well, the social conservatives believe in regulating morality, the libertarian ones don’t believe much in government at all. Their best and brightest stay far away from it. When in power, they at most use their appointments to pay off political favors (pay for work they really don’t want done) and maybe to try, largely in vain, to prevent further encroachments in the short time frame. The political appointments vanish when they lose an election, and there is no lasting imprint. They can’t create a career cadre that will respect liberty, because they have no interest in careerists who would waste their lives working for the government.

The Republicans did what they thought was fair, and the Democrats are doing what they think will win.  After all the judiciary is getting way too conservative for them already, I’m sure.  The Judiciary is one area I actually think conservatives have been able to make some reasonable inroads against Leviathan, but Democrats are starting to wise up, and do what they do best; use government effectively.

Get it, or we’ll fine you.  To me, the worst part of this whole fiasco is this type of system is likely to pass in other states.  All thanks to that conservative of conservatives, Mitt Romney.

I may not always be a huge fan of Justice Kennedy’s juris prudence, but holy crap did we dodge a bullet when the Democrats in Congress rejected the nomination of Robert Bork.

Bruce talks about Satan’s Snowballs.  It’s good to hear that Massachusetts of all places is considering repealing their income tax.  Bitter has more on this.

The FBI raids the Office of US Special Counsel Scott Bloch:

Investigators say Bloch is suspected of hiring an outside company to scrub his computer amid a federal investigation of alleged misconduct in his office.

The inquiry has been under way for more than a year and is looking into charges of intimidation and retaliation against whistle-blowers among staff members working in Bloch’s agency.

The Office of Special Counsel is responsible protecting the rights of federal workers and ensuring that government whistle-blowers are not subjected to reprisals.

And the Democrats want to put these people in charge of my health care?  No thanks.

The meme is going around.  I have pretty good faith in our system, so I wouldn’t make very many changes, other than this:

1. Fire all existing supreme court justices, except for Justice Thomas.  He can stay.
2. Nominate Eugene Volokh to the Supreme Court
3. Nominate Randy Barnett to the Supreme Court
4. Nominate Glenn Reynolds to the Supreme Court
5. Nominate David Hardy to to the Supreme Court
6. Nominate Orin Kerr to the Supreme Court
7. Nominate Judge Alex Kozinski to the Supreme Court
8. Tell Congress they can stick it on the advice and consent, and order that we only need seven justices.
9. Consolidate all federal law enforcement under the US Marshals.
10. Put Radley Balko in charge of the USDOJ with a life time appointment.

I figure the rest will kind of sort itself out.

I’m not angry, nor am I a renter.  I’m a homeowner with a mortgage, but these guys are spot on.  Here’s their YouTube video:

Hat tip to Clayton Cramer.

From Egregious Charles:

One of the problems with the Supreme Court’s role in enforcing constitutional boundaries that they are a panel of firefighters nominated by a pyromaniac and approved by an arsonist’s convention.

Certainly true, but I’m not sure I can think of a better way to select judges.

In Montana:

The Labor Department says recent job losses are behind an increase in the state’s unemployment rate.

Ya think?

Tam has a great essay assessing the damage.  I am no fan of the 17th myself, but tend to believe the pesky progressives were bound to create leviathan with or without it.  If we didn’t have the 17th amendment, I still believe we’d have a large and expensive federal government, but it would likely have been more difficult for the federal government to amass the power that it’s managed, and it probably wouldn’t have been able to amass so much of it.

The real problem is that our culture worships at the altar of democratic governance.  Power to the people, and all that.  Not enough stop and think that maybe the people, when they act collectively through voting, are actually pretty collectively stupid.

A good article that details the problems with excessive government and corruption in The Garden State.  Something we Pennsylvanians have to watch out for, as our state government continues to grow as well.

Hat tip to the geek.

SayUncle points out that Wyoming is telling the feds to go to hell in regards to a lot of their less-than-civil-rights-respecting laws.  Montana did a similar action with federal gun laws.  These are largely symbolic gestures, because despite all this, Montana and Wyoming are still committed to being a functioning part of the United States.

But what if they weren’t?  What if the federal government crossed the Rubicon of gun control?  We often like to think that the federal government will meet mass resistance should the “knock on the door” ever come, but they probably won’t.  Lone individual action will not be how an onerous federal gun measure will be successfully resisted.  No doubt some individuals will try, with the end result being those individuals end up dead, possibly along with their families.  I don’t think the answer to the “Crossed Rubicon” problem lies in relying on that possibility.  The knock won’t likely come from men in jack boots, disarming people to ship them off in cattle cars and toss them into ovens.  It’ll come from a happy, smiling government that wants to take care of everybody, and surely you don’t need guns in such a happy utopia.

Most non-sociopathic human beings have powerful mental programming that prevents them from going against the tribe.  It’s easy to say “I’ll shoot any son of a bitch that comes for my guns.” from the comfort of a lounge or living room.  It’s quite another thing to actually do it; to put a fellow countryman in the cross hairs, one that’s likely to represent a government that looks more like Sweden than 1930s Germany, and actually pull the trigger.  It is not something the vast majority of law abiding people are capable of doing.  I have no doubt some will, but the numbers will be very small, too small to make any difference in the end.  Such action will likely strengthen the resolve of those who want to bring us paradise.

Whether we realize it or not, Wyoming and Montana are showing us how it could be done, effectively done.  They key to resisting an unconstitutional federal government is state action, but something more than mere symbolic action.  What if, for instance, Montana declared that federal gun control was invalid and unconstitutional, and threatened to arrest any federal agent who entered Montana to enforce it?  How far would the federal government be willing to press Montana?  What are other Americans willing to sacrifice in order to impose gun control on states that don’t want it?  In this hypothetical scenario, Montana would have to be deadly serious about enforcing their edicts.  Attempts by the federal government to impose control over the situation would need to be met with quite real threats of secession, along with the attendant violence that could go along with such an audacious move. Montana would essentially be asking the nation a very serious question “Are you so intent on gun control that you’re willing to risk the cohesion and integrity of the United States, and to risk violence against the citizens of several of our states to enforce it?”  Unless Americans change greatly, the answer to that is probably going to be no, and it would offer a peaceful way for the federal government to retreat back across the Rubicon.

This scenario offers three very important things — It offers people, who want to resist, the legitimacy of a functioning, lawful government to rally around, as an alternative to dying in a desperate, lone action.  It offers a means of collective confrontation with the federal government that wouldn’t have to turn violent except as a final resort, and finally it offers an opportunity for the proponents of gun control to back down from the brink.

The question second amendment advocates need to be thinking about isn’t “Where’s the line in the sand where I start shooting.” but “Where’s my line in the sand where I start lobbying my state government to stand up to this crap?”  We have to keep the spirit of defiance alive in our state cultures.  Secession has a lot of negative connotations to many people, since the last time we did it, it was in defense of slavery, but its possibility a critical aspect in the balance of power between the federal and state governments.  It is the ultimate trump card, one that must be played with utmost care, but it must be kept in play.  That’s tough in an age where all the states suckle at the federal teat, but if we’re to remain under a federal government limited by the a constitution, more states have to start acting like Montana and Wyoming, and be willing to tell the federal government to go to hell, with all the terrible consequences that statement could have if they were to one day be serious about it.

A government which has the power to do unlimited good, has the power to do unlimited evil.  GeekWitha.45 tries to explain that to one of his acquaintances.  It’s a good read.

… there are folks that want to put these people in charge of our health care.

There’s a movement to increase the pay of federal judges, currently being lead by Justice Roberts.  I agree that we probably should be paying federal justices competitively.  Here’s why:

The cost of not [addressing the pay disparity] will be a decrease in the quality of an increasingly important judiciary — and a change in its perspective. Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from the private sector — from the practicing bar — and 35 percent from the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

Absent competitive pay, the only reason someone has to take a federal judgeship is to power and prestige associated with the position, or a lack of ability in the private sector.  That’s probably the type of person we don’t want sitting on the bench.