The True Value of the Bill of Rights

One thing you can always count on here in the United States is that whenever a man made tragedy occurs, a sizable portion of the population will blame the Bill of Rights. Within my lifetime the most egregious example of this occurred after the 9/11 attacks. Citing the need to protect the citizenry, the United States government picked up its systemic campaign against the Bill of Rights with a renewed zeal. Although some of the actions taken during that campaign were later reversed, the citizenry ended up with fewer rights post-9/11 than it had pre-9/11. But this campaign against the Bill of Rights isn’t unique to tragedies similar in scale to the 9/11 attacks. It manifests after pretty much every man made tragedy that receives national attention.

I’ve made my opinions of the United States government, and every other government, very clear. I believe that government as a concept is awful and should be done away with. Anarchy, the state of not having a state, is far better than giving a handful of individuals absolute power and letting them do whatever they please to everybody else. I also hold a worldview that can be described as egoist. I don’t believe rights are god-given, self-evident, or in any way objective. To me rights are a concept that exist exclusively in the imaginations of individuals. With both said, I believe there is merit in many of the Enlightenment ideas upon which the United States was founded. The idea that a government should be subservient to its people, even if it is an impossible one, is meritorious as is the idea that individuals enjoy certain rights.

For those who haven’t read up on the history of the founding of the United States, the first federal governmental system was codified by the Articles of Confederation (which, despite the name, is unrelated to the Confederate States of America). The Articles of Confederation established a weak federal government and left most sovereignty to the individual states. It didn’t last long. The event that sealed the fate of the Articles of Confederation was Shays’ Rebellion. Even though Shays’ Rebellion was successfully put down by the existing governmental system (specifically Massachusetts’ state militia), power hungry politicians used the event to demand a stronger federal government. This sparked off a debate between two camps: those who wanted a stronger federal government, who are known to us as the Federalists, and those who opposed the idea, who are known to us as the Anti-Federalists.

The Anti-Federalists pointed out, correctly as we known with the benefit of hindsight, that the federal government then being proposed by the Federalists would eventually become tyrannical. While the Anti-Federalists weren’t able to stop the creation of a strong federal government, they did managed to get a concession: the Bill of Rights. As I’ve explained on this blog numerous times, the Bill of Rights failed to restrain the federal government. But that’s not to say it was a complete failure. The Bill of Rights at least slowed the rate at which federal power expanded. It accomplished this by requiring the federal government to address the Bill of Rights whenever it expanded its power over territory addressed by the Bill of Rights. Since the Constitution gave the federal government ultimate authority over interpreting the Constitution, those addresses usually ended with the federal government authorizing its own expansion of power. But once in a while a judiciary stomped down an attempted expansion or at least established a number of caveats. What so-called rights we enjoy today are the caveats established by those rare judiciaries that didn’t rubber stamp whatever the federal government was authorizing itself to do.

Fortunately, the legacy of the Anti-Federalists continues. Even today after most of the so-called rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights have been caveated into near nonexistence, debates about rights are still generally over degrees. Most debates about speech aren’t about whether an individual has a right to free expression; it’s taken for granted that the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of expression. Instead the debates are about how far free expression can go before it no longer falls under the protection of the First Amendment. While the difference is minor in the long run, the fact that the debate is framed in a way that free expression is guaranteed has kept it in a state of slow erosion instead of immediate annihilation.

Had the Anti-Federalists not managed to get the Bill of Rights included in the Constitution, we would likely live in a different political world.

Without the First Amendment, we would likely be subjected to an extensive list of prohibited forms of expression that ranged from criticism of the government to pornography. The question of who qualified as a journalist would likely be answered and the answer would be only individuals credentialed by the federal government (or maybe even the state governments if the federal government was feeling especially generous).

Without the Second Amendment, there would likely be no debate over what types of firearms an individual is allowed to own. All individual gun ownership would likely be prohibited.

Without the Fourth Amendment, law enforcers would likely be able to conduct random searches of your dwelling without even needing to make up probable cause to get a warrant. Civil forfeiture, where property can be seized if a law enforcer so much as suspects it’s related to a drug crime, would be the norm rather than the exception.

Without the Fifth Amendment, there would likely be no limit to the number of times an individual could be charged with the same crime. The state would be free to bring the same charges for the same crimes against an individual as many times as it needed to get a conviction.

But that wouldn’t matter because without the Sixth Amendment, individuals charged with a crime would likely not enjoy a trial by jury. While the jury system here in the United has flaws (many flaws), it’s still a step up from a Star Chamber.

The true value of the Bill of Rights is that it puts the federal government into an awkward position. In order to maintain the illusion that it is governed by a system of laws (which is the illusion upon which its legitimacy in the eyes of the masses is built), it cannot simply pass a law that curtails an enumerated right. Maintaining that illusion requires that any law curtailing a right must be accompanied by a lengthy campaign to convince the masses that the amendment or amendments that address that right don’t actually mean what they say. Furthermore, the illusion requires the federal government to entertain challenges to the law on constitutional grounds. Once in a while the federal government even needs to temporarily concede ground and wait for a more opportune time to curtail that right.

Had human imagination never conceived of the destructive force we call government or had the majority dismissed the it for the bad idea it is, the Bill of Rights and similar declarations of rights would be of little value. But we live in a world where the majority share a mass delusion, a delusion that says we need to vest power in a handful of individuals to prevent a handful of individuals from taking power. So long as the majority of people suffer from that contradictory delusion, the Bill of Rights and the concept of rights have value even if both are, like government, figments of our imaginations. When you find yourself in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, sometimes the only way to survive is to play a game of make-believe yourself.

In Case It Was Unclear, This Is Fascism

Fascism has a number of defining characteristics including dictatorial powers, oppression of opposition, strict governmental control over the populace, and strong governmental control of the economy. All four characteristics were present in the executive ordered issued by Joe Biden this afternoon:

In an address made from the White House on Thursday, Mr Biden directed the Department of Labor to require all private businesses with 100 or more workers to mandate the jab or require proof of a negative Covid test from employees at least once a week. The order will affect around 80m workers.

Dictatorial powers? Biden issued this order by himself through an executive order. Oppression of opposition? This order is a direct attack on individuals who haven’t received one of the available COVID vaccines. Strict governmental control over the populace? If order every person who works for an arbitrarily large company isn’t strict government control over the populace, I don’t know what is. And finally strong governmental control of the economy? Biden just ordered every business with more than 100 employees to either force their employees to get a COVID vaccination or subject them to weekly testing.

Proponents of democracy should be appalled by this. Congress didn’t propose this. It didn’t debate this. It didn’t pass this. It didn’t get to say a goddamn word about this. It was a single man using a tool that I and every sane person has been warning about for ages: executive orders. An executive order is the antithesis of democracy. It creates dictatorships.

Those who claim to fight for the poor and downtrodden should be appalled by this. As Glenn Greenwald noted, this order is going to hurt the poor and downtrodden much more than the well off. And before somebody brings up the fact that COVID vaccines are free (and by free I mean paid for by the federal government with tax money and printed dollars), everybody knows that. The individuals in lower income brackets who haven’t received a COVID vaccine know that. They haven’t chosen to forego the vaccine because they’re ignorant of the cost. But they have chosen to forego it and that makes this order a direct attack against their autonomy.

Advocates of body autonomy should be especially appalled by this for obvious reasons.

In fact anybody who isn’t appalled by this is a fascist. They might not realize they’re a fascist, but they are one.

That ends my rant.

In case my feelings on the matter are unclear, I will close by giving my opinion on the COVID vaccines. If you want one, get one. If you don’t want one, don’t get one. It’s your body. You should be the only person who decides what to put in it.

Collective Punishment of Automobile Owners

Congress slipped a provision into the infrastructure bill that will requires vehicles developed after 2027 to detect if the driver is drunk:

The U.S. Congress is debating about a massive bill titled “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” and it includes a provision that makes it mandatory for cars in the future to have an advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology. What makes it interesting is that the bill actually stipulates 2027 as the year for its implementation, which is not very far. As Vice points out, these are not retro-fitted devices but actually standard fitments that go in during the manufacturing process.

I can’t wait until even entry level vehicles cost $100,000 (in today’s dollars, not in future dollars severely devalued from today’s money printing efforts) on account of all of the sensors needed to ensure that drivers aren’t drunk, high, tired, infected with a respiratory illness, dizzy, overweight (it takes more fuel to move around more weight and that makes Mother Gaia cry) or otherwise deemed unfit for the road. It’s always nice when politicians in Washington DC decide to punish everybody (in this case by increasing the cost of vehicles) for the actions of a handful of people.

The Collusion of Corporations and Government

The First Amendment is supposed to citizens from government censorship… unless those citizens are inciting a riot… or making a false statement of fact or saying obscene things or expressing themselves in any of the other prohibited manners. It turns out free speech in the United States is a fairy tale, but I digress.

Even though the First Amendment is a joke the idea it is supposed to enshrine, the freedom of expression, is one that seemed to enjoy majority support in the United States until Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. Those who didn’t believe Trump was able to win started looking for scapegoats as soon as his victory was announced. One of the most common scapegoats became social media. Trump’s opponents decided that misinformation spread by Russian bots on Facebook and Twitter was responsible for Clinton’s loss. It came as no surprise when they started demanding social media sites start censoring anything they deemed to be misinformation. It also came as no surprise when those social media sites, predominantly owned and operated by individuals who expressed a great deal of (deserved in my opinion) hatred towards Trump, complied. When sites like Facebook and Twitter started censoring pretty much any content expressing political beliefs slightly right of Mao, those who were being censored started screaming about free speech.

The response from those in support of social media censorship (those not being censored), like every other expressed political opinion following Trump’s election, was predictable. They purposely misconstrued the concept of free speech for the First Amendment and haughtily pointed out that the First Amendment only protects against government censorship.

Short of a revolution, which in the absolute best case is only temporary, nothing can stop the erosion of a freedom. Free expression is no exception. The concept of free expression has been eroding in the United States since the country’s founding, but accelerated significantly after Trump’s election. Now we have reached the inevitable point where the government is directly involving itself in censorship:

In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken — or we’re working to take, I should say — from the federal government: We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.

Private companies are no longer the only ones involved in censorship. The federal government is admitting, openly no less, that it is flagging content it deems problematic for Facebook (with the implication that Facebook will remove the flagged content). There is a term for a political system where corporations and the government collude. Consider looking up that term your homework assignment.

As with any government grab for power this one comes with justification:

Asked what his message was to platforms like Facebook regarding Covid disinformation, Biden said “They’re killing people.”

“I mean they really, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that’s — they’re killing people,” Biden said on the South Lawn of the White House.

Biden was echoing earlier comments from White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

The justification is always safety (and always nonsensical). Air travelers must submit to sexual assault, either in being molested or virtually stripped naked by government agents, under the auspices of keeping air travelers safe from terrorists. Gun owners must fill out government forms and ask for government permission in order to buy a gun under the auspices of protecting the populace from gun violence. Every year representatives in Washington DC argue that effective encryption must be made illegal under the auspices of protecting children from rapists and human traffickers. Now the government has decided it needs to choose what is and isn’t appropriate to post on Facebook under the auspices of keeping the populace safe from a virus.

Defining Police

Those who identify themselves as left leaning are screaming about the need to defund the police and replace them with social workers. Those who identify themselves as right leaning are screaming about the rise in crime and blaming it squarely on the policies being advocated by the left. But neither side is stopping to consider the nature of policing. The policies being advocated by leftists assume police are peacekeepers. The policies being advocated by rightists assume police are law enforcers. The truth is police are tasked with both jobs, which creates a problem because the two jobs are mutually exclusive.

You cannot have law enforcers be peacekeepers or vice versa. This is because laws, with only a few exceptions, have nothing to do with peace. Consider the prohibition against cannabis. What tranquility is shattered by individuals growing, selling, buying, and smoking cannabis? None… until it’s made illegal. Once those activities are declared illegal, law enforcers are tasked with initiating violence against anybody growing, selling, buying, or smoking cannabis. Tax evasion is another example. How does avoiding paying taxes interfere with peace? It doesn’t… until law enforcers get involved.

The only way to fix policing is to separate the jobs of peacekeeping and law enforcement. However, this solution will never be achieved through politics because the State depends on one entity performing both jobs. It depends on law enforcers to enforce its will. Without law enforcers the State has no power. But a populace would not normally accept law enforcers with open arms because law enforcers necessarily prey upon the populace (laws exist, after all, to transfer wealth from the masses to the political class). So law enforcers are also assigned the job of peacekeeping. As peacekeepers police are legitimized and accepted by a populace.

While the left screams about the need to defund the police and the right screams about the need to bolster the police know that the only solution is to abolish the State.

Taking on the United States

Whenever politicians push for gun control, they like to act as though would-be revolutionaries are the only proponents of gun rights. In his latest obligatory push for gun control Biden had the following to say:

If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.

He’s talking about a military with submarines suffering chronic premature mechanical failures, seamen who can’t avoid playing bumper boats with commercial ships, fighter jets that can’t fly, and recruitment rates so abysmal that standards have to be lowered so overweight individuals can be taken.

Imperial Rome at the height of its power the United States is not.

Mostly Harmless Opinions

I’m of the opinion that actions speak louder than words. Opportunities for people to turn their talk into action always interest me because it shows me whether somebody is honest about their stated intentions. Needless to say, yesterday’s Trump rally in Minneapolis was such an opportunity.

When the rally was announced I immediately thought of two expressed beliefs. The first is that Trump is the second coming of Hitler and his supporters are Nazis. The second is that Nazis must be destroyed with violence. If one drew a Venn diagram of people who express these beliefs, there would be a lot of overlap. Trump and his supporters coming to town provided the opportunity for the people in that overlap to demonstrate their beliefs.

I was fairly certain that the rally would pass by with minimal violence and from the linked story it appears that my prediction was accurate. There was only one arrest by 23:00 and I have found no serious injuries or deaths reported. If the overlap group was at all sizable and the people composing it were truthful about their beliefs, shouldn’t there have been blood in the streets? Shouldn’t there have been hospitals packed with combatants? Why wasn’t there? I’ve come up with three potential explanations.

The first is that the overlap group is actually quite small. While this is possible, my personal experience leads me to believe this explanation is the least likely.

The second is that the people in that overlap who opine that Nazis must be destroyed with violence don’t actually believe that Trump and his supporters are Nazis. If they believed that, they would have used a significant amount of violence against them.

The third is that the people in that overlap who opine that Trump and his supporters are Nazis don’t actually believe that Nazis must be destroyed with violence.

Regardless of the explanation, yesterday reinforced my belief that a lot of people hold mostly harmless opinions. When the opportunity to act on their words presented itself, they back down faster than Apple after being given the stink eye by China.

Tyranny in New Zealand Isn’t Beginning

In the wake of New Zealand’s announced gun ban I’ve seen a lot of pro-gun people stating that this is the beginning of tyranny in New Zealand. However, tyranny in New Zealand isn’t beginning, it’s already well established. Yesterday I posted not just about the new gun ban but about New Zealand’s law that grants the government permission to lock somebody up for up to 14 years for publishing objectionable material. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that the government not only gets to jail people for posting objectionable material but it also gets to define what is objectionable.

None of this is new either. There is a long tradition of censorship in New Zealand, including filtering Internet traffic. As an amusing aside, New Zealand’s Internet filtering came almost immediately after its government promised not to implement Internet filtering:

In March 2009, the Minister for Communications and IT, Steven Joyce, stated that the government had been following the controversy surrounding Internet censorship in Australia, and had no plans to introduce something similar in New Zealand. He acknowledged that filtering can cause delays for all Internet users, and that those who are determined to get around any filter will find a way to do so.[5] Later in July of the same year, it was reported that the Department of Internal Affairs had plans to introduce Internet filtering in New Zealand.[6][7] The project, using Swedish software, cost $150,000.[8] February 2010 saw the first meeting of the Independent Reference Group, who are tasked with overseeing the responsible implementation of the DCEFS.[9] In March 2010, a year after Joyce stated that there were no plans to do so, the Department of Internal Affairs stated that the filter was operational and in use.[10] Tech Liberty NZ objected to the launch of the filter, but DIA defended the system and noted that trials over two years showed that the filter did not affect the speed or stability of the internet.[11]

Free speech, which is usually considered a cornerstone of a free society, hasn’t existed in New Zealand for a very long time. Banning firearms is just another step in the direction New Zealand has been traveling for a long time now.

Keeping the Slaves in Their Place

Not only is New Zealand punishing gun owners, it is also punishing slaves who expressed themselves improperly:

The United States is unusual in offering near-absolute protection for free speech under the First Amendment. Most other countries—even liberal democracies—have more extensive systems of online and offline censorship. That difference has been on display this week as New Zealand authorities have begun prosecuting people for sharing copies of last week’s white supremacist mass shooting in Christchurch and for posting hate speech in the wake of the attack.

[…]

Distributing objectionable materials online comes with stiff legal penalties. One man—the 44-year-old owner of an insulation company with alleged neo-Nazi sympathies—has been arrested and charged with two counts of distributing objectionable materials in violation of New Zealand’s Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. He is being held without bail and could be sentenced to as much as 14 years in prison for each offense.

If you want to judge some of humanity and find them wanting, go to the comments section of that story and read all of the comments by the fascists who support this nonsense (or, just as bad in my opinion, believe the punishment is too severe but otherwise support the law).

I personally object to the ideas expressed by white supremacists and pretty much every other type of collectivist. I’ll even remove their garbage from my site. However, I object even more strongly against the idea that a government should be allowed to punish somebody for what they say, even if it’s the vilest thing imaginable. But I learned long ago that I’m a rather rare breed because I believe individual freedom trumps the demands of the unwashed masses (often referred to as democracy).

Putting the Slaves in Their Proper Place

Once again proving that the concept of due process isn’t acknowledged even in so-called liberal democracies, the overlords in New Zealand have announced that in the aftermath of the Christchurch attacks they’re not just punishing the shooter, but they’re also punishing every gun owner in the nation:

New Zealand will ban all types of semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles following the Christchurch attacks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said.

The announcement comes less than a week after 50 people were killed at two mosques, allegedly by a lone gunman.

Ms Ardern said she expected new legislation to be in place by 11 April, saying: “Our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too.”

Just because you had no hand in the commission of a crime doesn’t mean you can’t be punished. Now the slaves in New Zealand will join their counterparts in most of the other Commonwealth nations in being all but entirely disarmed.