Month: April 2013

Progressives Will Never Accomplish Their Expressed Goals Through Statism

Today’s political climate is so muddled with doublespeak and doublethink that it’s difficult to have any meaningful conversation. Consider the term progressive. The term indicates a forward movement for society that will hopefully mean a better future for everybody. People who identify themselves as progressives generally claim a desire to support the poor through government programs. They tend to advocate universal healthcare, a guaranteed living wage, welfare, and other programs supposedly aimed at ensuring everybody has the bare necessities of survival. In practice their goals tend to oppose one another.

One of the demographics often exploited by modern progressives is the homeless population. Progressives often claim that they want more government programs to help the homeless. Helping the homeless is a noble cause that I want to see society embrace. However, unlike progressives, I want to see voluntary methods used. Voluntary methods tend to avoid the hypocrisy that runs rampant in statist solutions. On the one hand progressives claim to want to support the homeless, on the other hand they support programs that make it difficult or impossible to help the homeless. There have been numerous instances where state officials used force to stop individuals from providing food to the homeless. Most of these instances were done under the guises of health safety. State officials claimed that there was no way to ensure the donated food met nutritional or safety standards. Instead of being allowed to partake in the generosity of giving individuals the homeless were forced to go hungry because some government thug in a city health department didn’t issue a stamp of approval.

Such an outcome in inevitable when medical costs are paid by the state. As I explained in my post about the state and its love of surveillance, the state has a vested interest in keeping its costs down. Programs that return little, no, or, worst of all, negative profit are either axed or retools to be more profitable. Military might, by allowing the state to expropriate from other states, and police, by allowing the state to expropriate locally, will always receive priority for funding. Healthcare, on the other hand, would normally cost the state money. In order to get around this issue states have done several things. First, most states that claim to offer universal healthcare also maintain an ever diminishing list of covered operations. Second, those states generally maintain a skeleton crew in the healthcare sector meaning the wait time for operations becomes great (and if you die the state doesn’t have to foot the bill for your operation). Third, and for this post most importantly, these states implement regulations aimed at reducing their healthcare costs. Any behavior that may incur healthcare costs by the state are made illegal. New York, being one of the most progressive cities in the United States, has continuously implemented prohibitions aimed at reducing the state’s healthcare costs. The most famous prohibition was the one placed on the sale of sugary drinks exceeding 16 ounces.

In addition to axing or retooling unprofitable programs the state also tries to shed itself of unprofitable population. A homeless individual, being without income and able to buy very little, is unprofitable for the state. They generally pay no income tax and very little, if any, sales or use taxes. Compounding the issue is their general lack of possessions. If you have a home, a bank account, or any other property you have value that the state can seize from you. Therefore you, in the eyes of the state, are profitable population. Just as a dairy farmer has an interest in maintaining the health of his dairy cattle the state has an interest in maintaining your health, so long as you’re not consuming so many of its available resources that you become unprofitable (in other words if you actually need a major medical operation the state would rather see you dead).

Here is where things come full circle. In the hopes of reducing healthcare costs the state ends up waging war against the homeless. In the state’s eyes donated food is a potential healthcare cost because it has set itself up to cover the healthcare costs of those who don’t have insurance or possession to seize. Homeless individuals don’t have insurance or possessions so the state is literally better off if the homeless are dead. Preventing the homeless of eating donated food reduces the state’s infinitesimal risk of caring for uninsured individuals who have nothing to steal. If homeless individuals end up starving to death the state has shed unprofitable population. In other words shutting down programs aimed at providing food for the homeless is a win-win for the state.

Herein lies the problem with progressives: their goals are mutually exclusive. By involving the state in healthcare progressives ensure that the state wages a war against the homeless. Voluntary methods of providing healthcare and helping the poor don’t suffer from such conflict of interests because the interests of the people involve is to help those in need. In other words those donating food to feed the homeless are doing so because they want to help feed the homeless. Since they’re not expropriating wealth they don’t suffer from helping those without wealth. I believe that most self-declared progressives mean well but their strategy ensures that their expressed goals will never be accomplished. Only through voluntary cooperation can people help one another. Once the voluntary component is removed costs will inevitably be faced by those who don’t want to face them. At that point the primary focus moves away from helping those in need to reducing costs.

The Real Reason Behind Universal Background Checks

Advocates of gun control are pushing to prohibit private sales through a scheme they are referring to as universal background checks. While the phrase universal background checks sounds like a method meant to prevent violent individuals from acquiring firearms it’s actually a method to turn more nonviolent gun owners into prohibited persons:

Public-opinion polls about “universal background checks” for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about “gun sales,” the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a felon. The trick is that the language under consideration applies not only to sales but also to “transfers,” which are defined to include innocent activities such as letting your spouse borrow your gun for a few hours.

The story puts forth several scenarios where a nonviolent gun owner would become a felon under universal background checks. Since the language is based on the idea of transferring possession of a firearm any time you allow a friend or family member to borrow one of your firearms you risk becoming labeled as a felon.

This isn’t surprising to those of us who own firearms. Gun control advocates have been doing everything in their power to forcefully seize our property. Since outright bans haven’t been effective gun control advocates have begun using other more secretive methods to accomplish their goals.

3D Printed AK Magazine

Via The Firearm Blog I learned of some great news, Defense Distributed has successfully printed an AK magazine:

Since all but the most expensive 3D printers lack the ability to work with metal (that will change) you still have to supply a spring but the rest of the magazine can be printed. You can count this as yet another nail in the coffin of gun control. Advancements like this effectively render New York and Colorado’s recent magazine bans meaningless.

Head over to Defense Distributed’s website and download the plans.

Rand Paul isn’t a Libertarian

The hardest part about identifying as a libertarian is how poorly the general population understands the term. Here in the United States the term is generally applied to any self-declared conservative or Republican that pays lip service to small government, civil liberties, and the need for being fiscally conservative. Unfortunately the core of libertarianism, the non-aggression principle, is almost unknown outside of libertarian circles. This is why a man like Rand Paul gets called a libertarian:

Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), libertarians hope to become a dominant wing of the GOP by tapping into a potent mix of war weariness, economic anxiety and frustration with federal overreach in the fifth year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

I fail to see how a man who voted for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the amendment to the NDAA that placed additional sanctions on Iran, provided funding for a neoconservative that stated women rarely become pregnant from rape and wants to based policies on said statement, introduced meaningless drone legislation, and endorsed Mitt Romney is going to lead libertarianism in any way. Heck, Rand Paul doesn’t even consider himself a libertarian:

“They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my neck like an albatross, but I’m not a libertarian,” Paul says between Lasik surgeries at his medical office, where his campaign is headquartered, with a few desks crammed between treatment rooms.

Unlike his father, Rand isn’t a libertarian and we would all do well to stop referring to him as such.

You Keep Using that Word

Somebody needs to get Dianne Feinstein a dictionary:

Speaking to an audience of 500 people in her hometown of San Francisco, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that game publishers need to make voluntary actions to avoid glorifying guns and violence following the Newtown elementary school massacre in December.

She noted that Congress would take action if the industry didn’t do something, according to the Associated Press.

If the only options are do as the state says or do as the state says then voluntary action is impossible. Feinstein’s offer is coercion, she’s putting a gun to the heads of video game developers and threatening to pull the trigger if they don’t roll over and do as she says. I’m not surprised that Feinstein misunderstands what voluntary means since she is one of the most authoritarian tyrants out there.

Everybody is an Extremist

Are you a Catholic or evangelical Protestant? Then, according to the Defense Department, you’re an extremists:

The Defense Department came under fire Thursday for a U.S. Army Reserve presentation that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremist” religious groups alongside al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan.

The presentation detailed a number of extremist threats within the U.S. military, including white supremacist groups, street gangs, and religious sects.

I’m sure a lot of people are confused about this classification since Catholics and Protestants aren’t known for committing violent acts (now that the Crusades have concluded). The reason for this classification is simple:

More than half of all Americans identify themselves as members of those two Christian denominations. National Public Radio reported in 2005 that 40 percent of active duty military personnel were evangelical Christians.

The state has a keen interest in labeling everybody a criminal. With so many Americans identifying with Catholicism or Protestantism it gives the state leverage over a large portion of the population if those people are considered extremists. In addition to leverage the state has never taken too kindly to religions that compete with statism, which is likely another reason for labeling people who identify with other religions as extremists.

The ATF Wants to Know Who You Know

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) are legally prohibited from creating a database of gun owners (but they probably do it anyways) but they aren’t prohibited from creating other databases. Recently the ATF expressed interest in a database that would be able to list associations between individuals:

The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.

According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”

Primarily, the ATF states it wants the database to speed-up criminal investigations. Instead of requiring an analyst to manually search around for your personal information, the database should “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches” such as social security numbers (or even just a fragment of one), vehicle serial codes, age range, “phonetic name spelling,” or a general area where your address is located. Input that data, and out comes your identity, while the computer automatically establishes connections you have with others.

In other words the ATF wants a database that can give them a list of potential victims because, we all know, guilt in this country can be easily established by association. Instead of having one victim the ATF can get an entire list of victims.

An interesting side note to ponder is data sources. Obviously a database that is meant to display personal associations would need a great deal of data about individuals and their friends. While it is unlikely that anybody would volunteer such information for the expressed purpose of entering into a government database this information is already available through social media sites. Facebook and Google+, for example, are goldmines of personal information and both services make money by selling user data. In other populating the database requested by the ATF is simple because people have already provided such information to services that make money off of selling that information. Online anonymity is important because any information you provide about yourself is potentially for sale to those looking for it.

The Government Isn’t Us

Barack Obama, during one of his speeches urging the American public to support the state’s efforts to disarm them, tried to argue against the idea that the people need firearms to protect themselves from the government:

You hear some of these quotes: “I need a gun to protect myself from the government.” “We can’t do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away.”

Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. (Applause.) They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It’s a government of and by and for the people.

It’s interesting to hear a man that has personally ordered the murder of hundreds of people claim he is constrained. I also like how he tries to say that the government is legitimate because it was elected by “us.” I’m not entirely sure who he’s talking about but I certainly didn’t elect him or any of the other politicians currently occupying the country’s large marble buildings. They don’t represent me, my views, or my desires. Quite the opposite is true. They stand against everything I believe in. I am not the government, regardless of what Obama claims. If I was the government things would be different because my first and only act would be to entirely abolish the government. Interestingly enough that option isn’t available on any ballot so my views can’t be represented at the voting booth.

Obama can’t even claim the support of the majority of voters. During the 2012 presidential election Obama received 65,909,451 votes. According to the United States Census Bureau the number of eligible votes in 2010 (the most recent year data is available) there are approximately 229,700,000 [PDF] potential voters. That means Obama only enjoys the support of roughly 29% of potential voters. In other words the majority of eligible voters don’t support Obama and he therefore cannot claim to be elected by “us.”

Considering the majority of potential voters didn’t support Obama, the state accomplishes all of its goals by initiating violence against the general populace, and Obama has personally ordering hundreds of murders it’s pretty easy to understand why people feel the need to have some measure of protection against the government. It’s also easy to see why the government wants to ensure those measures are removed from the table. An entity that acquires wealth by stealing it from others has a vested interest in ensuring their victims are unarmed. This is true of muggers, burglars, scam artists, and the state.

The Need for Civil Disobedience

Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned has written up a post discussing what he believes is the best strategy to restore gun rights to the entirety of the United States. It’s an interesting read but I feel as though he left out a major point:

In nearly all other civil rights struggles in this country, it’s been a combination of Congress and the Courts acting to preserve liberties. The early Civil Rights Acts, authorized by Congress’ powers under the 14th Amendment, were intended to protect the rights of newly freed Blacks during Reconstruction. There have even been government agencies created for the protection of civil rights. Even today, under Congress’s enforcement powers found in the 15th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act provides for extensive federal oversight over state election matters and over state redistricting in states with a history of discriminatory behavior. There is ample precedent for Congressional involvement in the protection of civil liberties. I would propose that when the political environment improves for us, our focus ought to be on a comprehensive bill that restores Second Amendment rights to all Americans.

What precede those events? What has preceded every advancement cheered by civil liberty activists? Civil disobedience. The labor movement, civil rights movement, and gay rights movement all started off as massive acts of disobedience.

There is a reason all of those movements began as acts of civil disobedience, it’s the only effective strategy to gain or regain liberties under a state. As an entity that exists solely off of expropriated wealth, the state has a vested interest in increasing its power over the general population. Reducing the state’s power can only be achieved in one way, rendering it irrelevant. The state knows this, which is why civil disobedience has proven an effective strategy historically. Civil disobedience accomplishes two things: it allows the immediate exercise of desired liberties and it sows seeds of doubt in the minds of the general populace. One of those things directly leads to the other. By immediately exercising desired liberties it can be demonstrated that those liberties are not dangerous to the general populace. Fear is the state’s primary weapon and it uses it to gather popular support. During each of the above mentioned movements the state produced propaganda aimed at convincing the general populace that those movements were dangerous to society. When the propaganda was demonstrated to be false the general populace began supporting, or at least caring little one way or the other, about the movements.

It was upon that swing of popular opinion that the state realized it needed to begin damage control. Great swaths of the population no longer viewed the state’s power to regulate those liberties as legitimate and if the state didn’t perform damage control the population would soon begin to question the legitimacy of other state powers. What’s the best way to control such damage? Make people believe they control the state.

The only reason the state grants civil liberties is to convince the general population that they have some say in how the government works. When people began turning against the state’s implemented restrictions against blacks the state turned and passed legislation to undo its previous damage. By doing so the general populace became convinced that they controlled the actions of the state and the state way able to maintain its legitimacy.

If those of us in the gun rights community want to remove the state’s restrictions against gun ownership we need to start by performing acts of civil disobedience. The only way to win this fight is to demonstrate how ineffective the state’s power is. Until we have accomplished that no amount of begging, pleading, or petitioning is going to accomplish anything of value. Sure, we may gain an absolutely minor victory here or there but we’ll lose in the long run. The time for begging masters for scraps from the liberty table is over, if we want to feast on freedom we must ignore those masters, sit down at the table, and eat our fill.