TSA

And people wonder why I won't fly anymore.

You have no right to a speedy trial

I’m speechless.

Marcia Cooke, Federal judge trying the case of Jose Padilla, has held that our Constitutionally-protected right to a speedy trial only comes into play when a suspect is actually charged with a crime. Before that time, Government officials can hold you in a cell indefinitely. So, if the government never wants to see someone come to trial, all they have to do is not charge them with any crime. I see. Well, that’s alright then. No possibility of injustice there.

Someone tell me…when is it time to revolt, again?

I’m waiting.

Public Schooling

Reposted from The Perfunctory Hero:

Public "Schools": Destroying Lives
Get.
Your kids.
The fuck out of.
Public "school".
This instant...


... if you really do love them.

Evidence.

It was pretty good while it lasted

The American experiment is over.

Gingrich

This is possibly the best speech I've ever heard.

Insanity

Alright, I haven’t posted here in a looong time, and frankly hadn’t intended to, but an item I ran across has incensed me so much that I just couldn’t stop myself.

The essence of the story is this: A passenger asks too many questions during the airline screening process, and is subsequently held, interrogated, bullied and threatened with arrest by government officials. The story is actually a bit scarier than that, but I’m wanting to focus on something else: the fact that simply asking questions makes you a suspect in our War on Terror.

Let’s think about this for a minute. What sort of person is likely to be asking awkward questions during a security screening? A terrorist? Good God, no. Asking questions is the last thing a criminal or terrorist is likely to do. “What if the terrorists are investigating the security system?” one might ask. What if they are? Again, the last thing a competent terrorist (and al Qaeda has shown that, if nothing else, it is competent) would do is to actually ask about the security; it might draw attention, and therefore suspicion, to themselves. No, what actual terrorists will do is send someone through the targeted checkpoint several times. Heck, make him a regular flyer; a familiar face. In fact, if he is going to ask any questions, it will be of the names of the screeners, so he can say, “Hi, Bob, how’s it going today?” He will become familiar; ingratiated; a no-threat. Someone that gets the most cursory pat-down, or gets to bypass the more intrusive measures, because he’s “safe.”

That’s the high-investment scenario. It’s risky, because you still might get caught when you actually have the weapon or explosive on you. Another is the shotgun approach: send a bunch of people through a bunch of checkpoints a bunch of times, so that you get a notion of what behaviors are safe, of what always gets checked, what usually gets checked, and what only rarely or exceptionally gets checked. Then, on der Tag, send twenty different people (carrying weapons, or explosives, or whatever) though twenty different checkpoints at twenty different airlines at as close to the same time as possible. Sure, some of them will get caught, and your terrorist ring is busted; but there is a strong likelihood, if you’ve done your homework, that several will get through to do the mission.

There are other possibilities, which I’m not going to go into here; this isn’t a terrorist training manual. Heck, for all I know, the two ideas above are horrible ones that would never work for some reason. The point is that no intelligent terrorist is ever going to ask awkward questions. They’re not interested in civil liberties. They’re not afraid of humiliation. Their only interest is to get through the process without calling attention and suspicion to themselves.

So if detaining and interrogating question-askers and rights-asserters doesn’t do anything to harm or deter terrorists, who does it harm?

Why, you and me, of course.

Even if we never fly on an airplane, it harms us. Intimidating, bullying and threatening someone who simply asks what his rights are has only one effect: to condition us never to question authority. It doesn’t stop terrorists. It doesn’t hurt terrorists. In fact, if, as President Bush claims, what the terrorists hate is our freedom, it helps the terrorists. By treating anyone outside of the norm as a suspect (note that I’m not talking about strange-but-quiet behaviors like what the SPOT program is targeting; SPOT is a good idea (UPDATE: er...or, well, maybe not)), we inculcate the idea that being in any way out-of-the-ordinary is criminal. By detaining those who question the system, we ensure that the system is never questioned. By refusing to publish the rules, we condition the people to accept whatever they are told.

How is this anti-terror?

It’s not.

It’s anti-freedom.

It’s anti-American.

Don’t for a moment think that this is going to end at the airline check-in counter. This is a precedent that will spread, and spread, until it ultimately dominates the American landscape, unless something is done.

Make no mistake: the American police state is here.

Humanitarian Intervention

A Libertarian friend of mine has on more than one occasion defended to me the belief that there is nothing wrong, and indeed something very right, about the United States using force in a foreign land to liberate oppressed peoples. For this reason he defended the Iraq war, regardless of the reasons it was actually fought, because it had the consequence of liberating the people of Iraq. I vehemently disagreed with him, yet somehow was unable to come up with convincing arguments why.

Tonight I watched parts 1 and 2 of the West Wing episode "Inauguration," in which the President is faced with just such a choice: to send troops into an African nation (I don't remember the name, but it was meant to be Rwanda) to stop the genocide of one group of people against another. And I believe I have my answer.

Nevermind that we almost never have a real grasp of the nuances of the particular situation, and therefore have every likelihood of making things worse in the region rather than better. Nevermind that no one ever thanks us for helping; that we make no friends by intervening in other people's business. No, the real reasons to keep our dick in our pants are twofold. First, not only do we not make friends through foreign intervention, we are almost certain to make enemies. For when we intervene for one group of people, we are intervening against another. If we don't mind having a National Security State; if we don't mind living in constant fear of attacks from random people who hate us with blinding passion, then this is not a problem. But the larger reason is simply that "liberty," "tyranny," "oppression," and "liberation" can be rather slippery words, especially when other people, with their own agendas, are using them about you. What I mean is that "liberating the oppressed" and "helping the helpless" really have no limit. How "oppressed" do you have to be to rate military intervention by the U.S.? It seems an easy call when there are millions dying, but what about when there are only thousands? Hundreds? Perhaps there is no mass murder, but people are being pulled out of their homes and tortured. What then? What if a people simply lack the right to protest government policy? Is that a legitimate criterion for invasion? The point is that this path can easily lead to world hegemony, with the U.S. (or the U.N.) dictating to all nations exactly how they will treat their citizens. Is this the world we want to live in? If we think people hate us now, wait until we have intervened in half of the regions on Earth.

No, the answer is not intervention. It's liberty. One of the stories told in the West Wing episode I mentioned was that mothers were stationing themselves in front of attacking tanks in an effort to preserve their people. What if those mothers had tanks themselves? The answer to oppression and genocide is not invasion; it is not intervention. It is simply allowing people to defend themselves, and any individuals who wish (as happened in the Spanish Civil War) to assist in that defense. It is impossible to commit genocide against a well-armed people. Instead of sending them troops, sell them guns! If a people is so oppressed that even this is impossible, then allow American citizens to arm themselves and help out on their own. But the notion of selling oppressed peoples weapons goes against our grain. Why? Is it because we don't like guns? No, we don't mind at all if we have them. No, this bothers us for a darker reason: We prefer to do the job for them instead of selling them weapons to do it for themselves because we want to retain control. We want to be in charge. Providing weapons to a people gives them power, and we don't want that. In fact, we in America would be quite happy if we were the only nation on Earth to possess weapons of any kind. That's why we prefer intervention to assistance.

No, the only sensible answer is the same most sensible answer to almost any political problem: More freedom. Not enforced freedom, not freedom at the point of a gun, but the freedom for people, individually, to do as they think right.

1/27/05 Letter to Nightlife

The following letter was published in the January 27, 2005 edition of the Carbondale Nightlife.

Communism has gone—not quite a distant memory, but even now there are high school graduates and college students who have no clear memory of the time when the Earth lived under the constant threat of global thermonuclear war.
Communism is finished—oh, it still lives on in places like China and Korea, but China is opening up to free markets more and more each year, and North Korea is starving.
The Soviet Union is history—and yet we are less free than we were 15 years ago.
The Cold War is over—but Americans are being held in military brig indefinitely without trial.
Twenty years ago a push of a button could have started a nuclear war that would have destroyed our civilization—but today, you cannot check out a library book without fear that the FBI won’t secretly demand your library records.
Today our biggest threat is terrorists who might blow up a building or two—whereas twenty years ago we faced a nation with the will and firepower to raze our entire country to the ground. And yet now we have “airport security” and “no-fly” lists; now we have warrantless searches and secret courts; now we have “Total Information Awareness” and mass arrest and deportation of foreigners.

The Cold War was won. Democracy and capitalism were definitively shown to be superior to absolutism and communism. Victory over the Soviets was supposed to bring us a new era of peace, prosperity and freedom. So why do I miss the “good old days” when I could fly in an airplane without being treated like a criminal? Because of a few barbarians with boxcutters?
If, as our President says, the terrorists attacked us because they “hate freedom,” then they are winning. Let me say that again: The terrorists are winning. Not through any military superiority, but by our own hands, through the actions we have allowed our government to take to make us more “secure.” We are less free today than we were on September 10, 2001. To the extent that that is true, to that exact degree, we are losing this war, and will continue to lose it.

Right now, at this very moment, there is an American citizen sitting in prison who has been there for more than two years. He has not been brought to trial. He has not been given access to counsel. He has not even been formally charged with any crime.
Think about this for a moment. Forget about airport security checks, no-fly lists, TIA, TIPS, PATRIOT Acts and all the rest, and consider the fact that an American citizen is being imprisoned indefinitely without trial on the sole basis of the signature of the President. The right of habeas corpus—to have the charges against you read in open court, in order to protect against false or malicious imprisonment—is one of the oldest and most sacred of our rights. It is the only individual right written into the original, unamended Constitution. And our President has wiped it away with the stroke of a pen.
What does this mean? It means that any President, now or in the future, can declare any American an enemy combatant and have that person locked up indefinitely without any jury having to hear that person’s case. Yes, this means you. And you. And you. And me. There is no legal barrier any longer to the President doing this whenever he chooses. Except, of course, that useless, unenforced, old-fashioned document called the Constitution of the United States. But that document doesn’t seem to have much effect nowadays.
This sort of power is completely inappropriate to the President of a free, democratic Republic. It is far more appropriate to a dictator.
Does that frighten you? Do you fear the consequences of calling our President a dictator in public? Your very fear is a measure of how far we have fallen in this supposedly free country. This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. If we don’t become brave—and soon—we will not remain free for much longer.

Jim Syler
Vice President
Students for a Libertarian Society