Category Archives: Liberty and Freedom
Geert Wilders – A Voice Crying in The Wilderness
Geert Wilders and The European Race against Time.
16TuesdayApr 2013
Posted by Defend the Modern World
I am not a moderate on the Islam-in-Europe debate. I do not want ‘European’ Muslims reformed, still less integrated. I oppose any kind of Muslim presence in Europe on the grounds of security and the preservation of liberal society. In my more sentimental moments, I long for a sublime evening of victory, when young Englanders toast with drinks and fireworks, a new, Muslim-free London.
So you see, my position has at least clarity on its side. What it lacks, still, is popular understanding or support. Who in Europe speaks openly such ideas?
“Lots of people!” might come back the answer, so let’s redesign the question.
Who in Europe with any power speaks such things?
The answer here is ‘a few’; a tiny clique, most members of it already familiar to one another, and to the rest of us. One of them is a Dutch politician named Geert Wilders.
Since 9/11, only Wilders has spoken clearly about the endgame of our confrontation with Islamism. While most are happy to state in a variety of new, tedious ways the nature of the problem, Wilders strides ahead into the (altogether more perilous) domain of how to fix it.
Who has the stomach to join him?
Not the Dutch apparently, who lamentably knocked the flame-haired hero out of the political mainstream in the 2012 election. The BBC said, at the time, that the Dutch had ‘bigger’ things on their mind than Wilders and his ‘fringe’ concerns….
Really? Like what? Europe, Taxes, Unemployment?
All of these will be become meaningless if Wilders is not re-embraced.
You see, the Islam/Europe battle is winner-takes-all. If the Muslims win, the Christians will be made extinct. If the Christians are to win, then Muslims must be made extinct from Christian nations. This understanding motivates the truest type of opposition to Islam in Europe. All others, however admirable, are falling short.
When Wilders elucidates his manifesto, mouths are typically left long and open. The politician is direct like a bullet, sharp like a meat cleaver and (most troubling for the bourgeois) entirely unconcerned with the sentiment of political correctness.
But however ‘horrifying’ they are, Wilders’ political views have behind them a very sensible moral realization – one that we must all, in time, heed for ourselves, and this is it -
Given that there are still many more Christians than Muslims in the Netherlands, the vital ethical measure concerns which option harms the greatest number – the forcible Islamisation of the 80% who do not currently profess Islam, or the Christianisation or expulsion of the 20% of the population who do, and the only sane, rational answer to this is the former. The second, though unpleasant, rescues us from the first.
Christopher Caldwell in his admirable but incomplete book ‘Reflections on the Revolution in Europe’, went so far as to defend the idea that native Europeans have a moral right to say who should enter their countries and who should not. Perhaps predictably, reviewers were violently shocked by this. Caldwell you see, is not some fringe lunatic, but a lead writer for the Financial Times of London. And yet here he was, openly promoting a selective immigration policy!
Such outrage as greeted Caldwell’s book, demonstrates how much work still has to be done on this debate. If people are shocked by the suggestion that future immigration must be modified for the sake of social cohesion, how distant they must be from the idea that previous immigration must be modified.
Perhaps they understand that there is only one way of modifying immigration that has already taken place, and that is deportation. Wilders, alone in the political class, has recognised this, and has spoken of his intentions to work towards that end.
If you find Wilders shocking now, then brace yourself for a surprisingly ‘shocking’ future. Islamisation in Europe is an entirely safe prediction, or as safe as can be made. The sturdy force of mathematics supports it. We know that the number of Muslims will increase, and because of those increasing numbers that the number of converts will also grow, and because of those conversions that the number of excited Islamists taking up arms will rise too. Information like this should terrify anyone who believes in a liberal, tolerant society.
After the 2012 elections, Wilders is politically alone. He is jogging on ahead, as if in a different race to those behind him.
But he isn’t, and if he loses, we all do.
D, LDN
From Defend the Modern World: http://defendthemodernworld.wordpress.com/
There’s No “Voting” on Constitutional “Rights” People! That is Why They Are Called “RIGHTS!”
Mark Levin: “There Are No Up-or-Down Votes on the Constitution!” (Video)
April, 10, 2013 — nicedeb
Mark Levin spent a good portion of his show, Tuesday combatting the notion that the Second Amendment is not under attack as Senators prepare to vote on the Democrat’s (as yet unseen) gun control package on Thursday.
He argued that the federal government does not have the power to propose any law that abridges or constricts the Second Amendment of the United States.
“The 2nd Amendment like the rest of the bill of rights is part of the constitution”, he explained. “It exists as protection against usurpation by against the very congress that is now debating its very existence! The 2nd Amendment belongs to you and me! ….Like the rest of the Constitution. It’s not up for grabs! Is the Senate holding a Constitutional Convention?!”
He went on to say, “it’s important to realize that this Thursday, the Senate intends to vote on changing the 2nd Amendment without any pretense of going through the constitutional Amendment processes. The Senate is meeting as if its a Constitutional Convention and it can do whatever it damn well wants to do!”
An up or down vote on 2nd Amendment is unconstitutional,” Levin fumed. “There are no up or down votes on the Constitution!”
“On top of that, we have no idea what specific law is even being proposed”, he continued. “It’s Tuesday evening. We have no idea what they’re going to debate on Thursday. And yet, you have Democrats of course, and Republicans as well, insisting that we pass this law or that law without the benefit of a single hearing. Without the benefit of public notice of any kind. This is not ‘little r republicanism!’ He thundered, ”this is Democratic tyranny!”
From Nice Deb: http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/
Where we Are in The Battle Over Gun Rights
GOA: The Battle Will Take Longer than We’d Hoped
The Battle Will Take Longer than We’d Hoped
But there’s still a very good chance we can win!
“Gun Owners of America [has] been pressing lawmakers who may have wavered on this emotional issue of background checks.” – CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, April 10, 2013
We’ve been fighting these gun control battles for almost 40 years now. And we almost always win. But it’s almost always a nail-biter.
And so it is on Obama’s gun control agenda.
We’d hoped that we could stop the gun control bribe-o-thon early (and risk-free) by blocking the motion to proceed to the package. But thanks to sell-outs like Pennsylvania’s one-term senator, Pat Toomey, we’re going to have to take a different battle position and defeat the package at a later stage.
The Senate today overcame the Paul-Cruz-Lee filibuster and voted to move to proceed to Harry Reid’s gun control bill (S. 649). Where Reid needed 60 votes, the tally was 68-31. Click here to see if your Senator sold you out by voting to “move to proceed” to the bill.
Republican defectors who voted anti-gun were: Alexander (TN), Ayotte (NH), Burr (NC), Chambliss (GA), Collins (ME), Corker (TN), Coburn (OK), Flake (AZ), Isakson (GA), McCain (AZ), Heller (NV), Hoeven (ND), Kirk (IL), Graham (SC), Toomey (PA) and Wicker (MS).
So, here’s where we are. Right after the Senate proceeded to the gun control bill, Harry Reid used his privileged recognition to put a bunch of amendments in place. In Senate parlance, they are referred to as an “amendment tree;” and they contain the universal registry bill, the Feinstein gun ban, and the magazine ban. These will be voted on in upcoming days.
As for the Toomey-Manchin-Schumer universal registry bill, don’t believe the press’ efforts to sugar-coat it. If you have ever had an “Internet … posting” on (or related to) your gun, you can sell it only by going to a dealer and filling out a 4473 and getting the government’s approval. Only a cave man would be exempt.
And once you have a 4473? Well, the ATF is going from dealer to dealer, copying the information on these forms, and feeding it into a database. But, says Toomey, he’s against universal registries. This is where it would have helped if Toomey had consulted someone who knew something about guns.
Registration and violation of privacy.
First of all, Toomey’s anti-registry language prohibits photocopying the 4473′s, but it doesn’t prohibit going into the FFL with a laptop and copying all the information. Second, ATF takes the position that the data it’s accumulating in a database is not a “registry,” so Toomey’s ban does no good. Third, guess what the sanction is for violation of Toomey’s anti-registry language? Answer: Eric Holder has to choose to prosecute himself and his own department.
But this isn’t the only bad thing about Toomey-Manchin-Schumer.
Section 107 of the sell-out also waives any federal privacy prohibitions under HIPAA to sending the names of Americans with PTSD, ADHD, and post partem depression to the gun ban database. But that’s not all.
Believe in Jesus, hand in your guns?
Because private shrinks will be able to add patients names into a federal database of the mentally ill – without due process – you will be at their mercy.
As Red State editor, Erick Erickson says, “Activist mental health providers will probably be overly aggressive in adding people to the list. Give it five years in liberal areas and people who believe in the physical resurrection of Christ will probably get automatic entry onto the list.”
And as for veterans? Toomey-Manchin-Schumer reinforces the proposition that bureaucrats in the Department of Veterans Affairs can take away veterans’ rights without any due process. If a veteran has $30,000 to spend getting back the rights Toomey-Manchin-Schumer wrongly took from him, the sell-out creates yet another redundant money-trap for restoration of rights that shouldn’t have been taken away in the first place.
Repealing gun owner protections.
What if you want to travel across the country? McClure-Volkmer allowed you to do that with an unloaded gun in the trunk (18 U.S.C. 926A). But, under the Toomey-Manchin-Schumer sell-out, unless you can “demonstrate,” to the satisfaction of the New York police (1) where you came from, (2) where you’re going, (3) that you’re legally entitled to possess the gun in the place you can from, and (4) that you’re legally entitled to possess the gun in the place you’re going, they will arrest you in New York.
The Toomey-Manchin-Schumer sell-out creates a Biden-like commission to insure that the cries for gun control continue.
Like sprinkles on a pile of dung, Toomey and Schumer steal some of the proposals we drafted and try to use them to get us to buy onto gun control. But it won’t work.
The gun movement is united against this disgusting pile of gun control.
Here is the new battlefield. Because of the Senate rules, many of the upcoming gun control votes will need 60 (out of 100 votes) to move forward. That will almost certainly be the case with the Toomey-Manchin-Schumer proposal. And because the entire Second amendment movement – GOA, NRA, etc. – is against the Toomey language, it virtually ensures his amendment will fail.
And if Toomey-Manchin-Schumer doesn’t pass, then Reid probably won’t have enough votes to overcome a second filibuster on the bill – as it would contain the original anti-gun language sponsored by Reid and Schumer. This all but guarantees that the legislation would die, as Republicans and a half-a-dozen Democrat Senators would then team up to keep the bill from getting the required 60 votes.
One last question or thought: Did we waste our time supporting the Paul-Cruz-Lee filibuster and fighting the motion to proceed? No, because we forced Obama to fire most of his ammunition, as he dragged his human props around Washington in an effort to exploit them for political gain.
If Obama had been able to wait to play this card until Toomey-Manchin-Schumer came up for a vote, that vote would be a lot harder for us to win.
But Obama has already played this card for his “they deserve a vote” theme. Okay, they’re getting their vote. But by the time we reach the vote on cloture on Toomey-Manchin-Schumer, Obama’s exploitation of the victims of Newtown will begin to be realized for the cynical exploitative political ploy that it is. And he will be less able to shift gears and use the victims for the theme “They deserve a ‘yes’ vote.”
ACTION: Click here to contact your Senators. Tell them to vote against cloture on the Toomey-Manchin-Schumer sell-out.
From Mad Medic: http://maddmedic.wordpress.com/
The United States Should Say The Same Thing…We Don’t Need You
Found at 90 miles: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/
Obama is “Happy” to Give Away U.S. Sovereignty to the United Nations – He is a Traitor
BREAKING: UN Passes Obama-Backed Arms Treaty – Update: White House Praises UN For Passing Treaty…
The Senate already voted to forbid U.S. involvement in the treaty … then again, we already know Obama doesn’t give two shits what Congress thinks.
Via The Hill:
The Obama administration joined 153 other nations Tuesday in approving an arms trade treaty opposed by the U.S. gun lobby.
Adoption of the treaty sets up a showdown between the White House and Congress, where a majority of senators have called on the president not to sign the treaty because it regulates small arms.
In one of the amendments to the Senate Budget last month, lawmakers voted 53 to 46 to stop the United States from joining the treaty.
The administration and treaty proponents say it would have no impact on the Second Amendment, since it applies to arms exports and not domestic arms sales.
Update: Now, will Obama sign it or not? His UN reps voted for it after he ensured its passage by dropping a consensus requirement, so I’m guessing he will.
Via Politico:
The White House is “pleased” by the United Nations General Assembly’s Tuesday vote in favor of a treaty to regulate the global arms trade, but isn’t yet worrying about clearing it through the Senate.
“We’re certainly encouraged by and pleased by the outcome,” press secretary Jay Carney said. The administration has not yet determined whether President Obama will sign the Arms Trade Treaty. With the treaty approved by the United Nations, Carney said the administration will begin a “thorough” review process to consider whether to sign it.
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
Yes…The United Nations is a Direct Threat to Our Sovereignty, Freedom, and Liberty
Texas Attorney General Vows to Fight “Unconstitutional” UN Arms Treaty, Calls It A “Dangerous Threat”…
Don’t mess with Texas.
Via The Blaze:
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on Tuesday vowed to use every means necessary to fight the “dangerous” United Nations global arms treaty that was overwhelmingly approved by the General Assembly on Tuesday.
Speaking to a group of reporters on a conference call, Abbott warned that the arms treaty “raises a red warning flag to anyone concerned about the liberties guaranteed to all Americans under the United States Constitution.”
“That flag was raised when the United States agreed to the passage of the United Nations Arm Trade Treaty,” he added. “This treaty is a dangerous threat, not only to Second Amendment rights under the United States Constitution, but also erodes our constitutional liberties by placing more of the control of those liberties in the hands of bureaucrats at the United Nations.”
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
The Government Has Arrested a Patriot to Prove Their Point. T.L. Davis Asks the Question – Will we Stand With Him?
Iraq War Vet Arrested By Manipulative Liar
I was done with this blog. I had compiled all of the posts in one place. I had decided that I would offer a book of the compilation to those interested and would pack it away.Then, in the eleventh hour a message come over the transom (for those old enough to know what a transom is). It is another story of a veteran targeted by the system as was Nathan Haddad. This time, however, it is the NY SAFE Act that has been violated. This is a test case. Benjamin Wassell is the first to be charged under the NY SAFE Act.
I will contribute as before with Keith Pantaleon and with Nathan Haddad. I hope that you will do the same. None of us have any money, I know that. If we did, I would have used it to do much more than I have to date. I am constrained by life choices. I have taken some chances and incurred debts that have to be repaid. But, you know, there is always an extra hundred dollars somewhere that I can rob from collectivists to pay for special causes.
The government is apparently pushing hard on those closest to our hearts to see what we are made of. If we will abandon those servicemen, how will we ever stand up for each other? They want to test the most popular cases. If you understand Barack Obama and his ilk, you understand that they go for the strongest to discourage the rest of us. If they can put Nathan Haddad, a decorated solider, in prison doesn’t that send a message to all of us who do not have such a compelling story?
So, now they have targeted Benjamin Wassell. Injured in the Iraq War: OIF. From independent research, Wassell was arrested for selling an AR-15 and an AR-10 to an undercover police officer who lied to him about what he wanted the weapons for and who he was. He did not sell the weapons to someone who was a felon, he sold them to someone who lied about being a felon. He did not sell the weapons to a drug dealer as the Department of Justice did during the Fast and Furious/Gunwalker Scandal, for which no one has gone to prison. He did not sell them to someone who would use them to commit criminal acts approved of by this sham of a government as gun stores do every day when selling to police officers. Let me follow one cop and I will detail the several felonies they commit as routine duty.
I will contribute $100 to Benjamin Wassell’s defense. I will do it, because we cannot support these men enough to compensate for the work they have done in defense of this nation, but I would make one plea to those currently serving in the military: this is the future of the nation if you side with the government instead of the people. One day it will be you.
It is time to choose sides. With us or against us. With your government bosses, or with the people who deserve your loyalty. The people will never forget the servicemen who place themselves between the despots of other nations, but the oath comes with a greater obligation than just that. “All enemies, foreign and domestic.” Why do you think they chose those words? Why not just foreign enemies? It was because they knew there would be some domestic enemies that would have to be dealt with.
Benjamin Wassell is one reason I believe any restriction on gun purchases is a violation of the Constitution. If one recalls the time accurately, it was a time of duels, of men acting in defense of themselves and their property and sometimes that went beyond the strictly legal constraints, but each man knew of what the other encountered and was not held to a strict reading of the law, but rather the natural law, i.e. the law of common sense.
Regardless, all we have for information is that of the police officer who charged Wassell and to be honest, I think he is a liar as are most when they write reports.
Liberty is Never “Outdated”
Is Liberty Outdated?
The establishment media would have you believe that bitter clingers to the Constitution are tired old dinosaurs who won’t admit that the world has moved on without them. Brandon Smith isn’t buying it:
This argument is based on a series of lies, the first one being that American culture needs to “progress with the times” and shake off the dead skin of old and “unpopular” principles. Let’s set the record straight…
Some principles, like the liberties embodied in natural law and outlined in the U.S. Constitution, NEVER become outdated. They exist in the heart of mankind, and will remain as long as humanity remains. They cannot be erased, and they cannot be undone. They are inherent and eternal.
They can, however, be oppressed by those who seek to dominate the lives of others. This is what the establishment today calls “progress”. Their version of social order is not new, nor is it even clever. It is archaic, and has taken many forms, including oligarchy, aristocracy, mercantilism, monarchy, totalitarianism, despotism, fascism, socialism, communism, globalism, etc., etc. The goal is always the same; centralize as much power as possible into as few hands as possible while making the enslaved population as collectivized and dependent as possible.
The Liberty Movement is not some dying vestige of America’s past clinging to an antiquated philosophy. We are the new wave; the messengers of an ideal of freedom that in the grand scheme of history has been around for only a blink of an eye. Constitutional liberty IS the progress that humanity has been waiting for. We have only been led astray by those who would sell us on our own bondage.
Reading the whole piece may make you a prepper; it will certainly clarify why the governmedia is so keen on disarming us even as the DHS builds up massive stockpiles of ammunition. Catch it at either Alt-Market or Zero Hedge.
On a tip from Ghost of FA Hayek.
By Dave Blount at Moonbattery:http://moonbattery.com/
O’Sucka Cares Nothing About Your Liberty…
Found at Mad Medic: http://maddmedic.wordpress.com/
Where are the Patriots? We only See Slaves to Tyranny.
Found at American Digest: http://americandigest.org/
Finally…Someone With The Backbone to Stand up For Constitutional Liberty
Constitutional Security Force
Gilberton, Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler has already put it on the record that he will not participate in an unconstitutional gun grab. Now he has taken resistance a step further by organizing a Constitutional Security Force to defend America from tyranny, which at this point is far more likely to be imposed by domestic than foreign enemies. Freedom Outpost reports:
As I stated in the previous article, this is not a militia, but a reserve force that can be called upon to assist police departments at certain times.
Here’s the list of requirements to join.
So far, in just one week his small “reserve force” has grown to become a nationwide project, headquartered in Pennsylvania. As of February 16, 2013, Chief Kessler had five active chapters in Indiana, West Virginia, Texas, South Carolina, and Kentucky!
Four more chapters have come on board with contact information since then. New York, Florida, New Jersey, and Missouri all now have contact information for their respective states!
What an amazing thing to witness in these desperate times as people begin to stand up for freedom! To see one person stepping forward to do the right thing and how it is impacting others around the country is truly incredible. If you wish to support the efforts of Chief Kessler and the Constitutional Security Force, you can go here to help.
Without organized resistance, the rapid slide toward Soviet-style totalitarian collectivism will only continue to gather momentum. The gangrene of liberalism may have eaten so deep that America cannot be saved. But we won’t know for sure so long as true Americans are still breathing.
On a tip from A. Levy.
From Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
To The Commie Liberals Nothing is Sacred
Found at FIJAW: http://maddmedic.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/liberals.jpg
Why Don’t We Ban This Lunatic Commie Moonbat Instead?
Bloomberg Plans to Ban Styrofoam
Salt, soda, cigarettes, firearms, trans fats, baby formula — next up for suppression by the parody of a totalitarian tyrant who passes for Mayor of NYC: Styrofoam.
Bloomberg plans to use part of his Thursday State of the City address to push for a ban on Styrofoam food packaging. …
“One product that is virtually impossible to recycle and never bio-degrades is Styrofoam … something that we know is environmentally destructive and that may be hazardous to our health, that is costing taxpayers money and that we can easily do without, and is something that should go the way of lead paint,” Bloomberg will say, according to excerpts of the speech obtained by The Associated Press.
He said his administration would work with the City Council to ban Styrofoam food packaging from stores and restaurants.
Styrofoam, a.k.a. polystyrene foam, is one of the great wonders of modern technology that we have come to take for granted. It is used for packaging, and is especially useful for lightweight containers that retain heat.
Coming next: a ban on plastic. Or maybe the transistor. Or radial tires. Or the color orange. Who knows?
New Yorkers will now pay more for takeout food that doesn’t stay warm so that Bloomberg can congratulate himself on making their world a little less free. The rest of the country will have to deal with supplying products to its largest city in the face of bizarre restrictions that pile up by the day.
On tips from Wiggins, Byron, and wingmann.
By Dave Blount at Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
The Gradual Demise of Liberty and Freedom
and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance,
but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity. – de Tocqueville: Democracy in America
From American Digest: http://americandigest.org/
Capitalism Vs. Socialism
From FIJAW: http://maddmedic.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/capsoc.jpg
This Should Be Your Response When The Government Wants to Take Your Liberty and Rights…
Found at The Feral Irishman: http://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/
States Are Beginning to Take a Stand on Gun Laws and Excercise Their State Rights
Arizona Takes a Stand Against Federal Tyranny
Looks like I was right to abandon the People’s Republic of New York for the Great State of Arizona:
A Republican-sponsored bill barring enforcement of new federal guns laws sparked passionate debate in an Arizona Senate committee that ultimately passed the bill Wednesday.
The party-line vote moved the first of several anti-gun control bills introduced in the Legislature to the floor on the same day the U.S. Congress heard a plea from former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to pass new gun control laws.
The bill co-sponsored by [the aptly named] state Sen. Don Shooter, four other senators and several members of the House of Representatives would bar enforcement of new federal laws affecting semi-automatic firearms or high-capacity magazines. It also makes any federal official trying to enforce such laws guilty of a felony and allows the state Attorney General to defend anyone prosecuted for violating federal gun laws if the gun was made in Arizona, among other provisions.
The bill was based on similar Wyoming legislation. All it needs is a signature from Governor Jan Brewer, who has stood up to Obama before.
The party line vote means that even in the state that produced Barry Goldwater, Democrats can be relied on to side with federal tyranny against both states rights and the Bill of Rights.
On a tip from IslandLifer.
They Can and They Will Take Everything You Hold Dear
Your Government can and will – as a matter of fact under Obama – they want to screw you over. They are making plans to take your guns and your freedom and slap your ass in a concentration camp if you so much as blink in disagreement. Ann Coulter gave the definition of “Universal backgrond checks last night on Hannity. I don’t always agree with everything she says but this was right on:
First, Registration.
Then, Confiscation.
Finally, Extermination.
Could not have been any plainer. They can and they will. Don’t you doubt it for a second. Obama and his cronies are evil and ruthless and will stop at NOTHING to accomplish their communist objective. ZTW
Picture found at 90 miles: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/
Alabama The Most Conservative State in The Nation
Alabama has won the title of the most conservative state in the nation, followed closely by North Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, and Utah, a new Gallup poll reveals.
Rounding out the Top 10 reddest of the red states are Oklahoma, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Arkansas.
Alabama took the crown after a majority of residents — 50.6 percent of those polled — told Gallup they identified their ideology as conservative.
Read the rest of this article at Newsmax. Link is below.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/gallup-conservative-states-alabama/2013/02/01/id/488476#ixzz2Jg7xBnet
Anti-God = Ok. Anti-Mo = Not Ok. Today in Bizarro America.
A Tale of Two Ads: Govt Accepts Anti-God ad in Michigan
Same Ad with Muhammad, DENIED
This ad ran on Detroit SMART buses here
While the ads may offend some, SMART’s Beth Dryden tells Shea they met the system guidelines and were vetted by their legal department.March 3, Crain’s: Additionally, because the ads are what SMART considers “viewpoint-neutral content” the agency can’t reject them, she said. That’s because a government agency cannot censor such content, which is protected by the First Amendment.
Got that? Good.We submitted the ad below to this same transit agency in Detroit/Dearborn, SMART, and we were DENIED. This ad was rejected:
The proposed advertisement submitted by Pamela Geller has been reviewed under SMART’s content policy. SMART, consistent with its review process, also reviewed the referred-to website: thetruthaboutmuhammed.com. Consistent with its policy, with the Sixth Circuit opinion in AFDI v SMART, and consistent with other law, SMART declines to post the advertisement.
Our message parallels the atheist ads. Since they were accepted, I modeled this ad after theirs, to see if the freedom of speech applied to criticism of Islam in our cowardly and politically correct age. This is the same government agency that refused to run our “Leaving Islam?” ads that were designed to help Muslim girls who wanted to lead more Western lives escape dangerous devout households. SMART refused. My legal team, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center and I sued. We won. They appealed to the 6th circuit court (a sharia-sensitive court). The Sixth Circuit said that the ad was a political ad — SMART doesn’t run political ads. So in my quest to fight on, I wanted to point out their hypocrisy as we go back to court. This rejection does just that. We fight on.
Billy Hallowell over at The Blaze has the exclusive:
Conservative’s Anti-Muhammad Ad Rejected by Detroit Transit System — But Can You Guess Which Ad Was Accepted?
Religious advertisements have been known to spark intense debate. Consider the anti-God billboards that are regularly posted by non-theist groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Atheists. But it isn’t only non-believers who invoke controversy with their messaging.
Pamela Geller and her American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) have also come under intense scrutiny for subway and bus ads that target Islamic extremism. Now, the AFDI is embroiled in a new battle over a proposed anti-Muhammad ad that was rejected this week by Detroit’s Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) bus system.
In an e-mail to TheBlaze on Tuesday evening, the AFDI president noted that, while SMART previously accepted an “anti-God” atheist ad from the Detroit Coalition for Reason (DCOR), the public transit company has rejected her organization’s ad. This is particularly interesting, seeing as the AFDI modeled its design almost entirely after the DCOR’s banner.
“Our ad, same ad, with one word flipped, was rejected,” Geller told TheBlaze.
The original atheist design featured clouds and the words, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” The organization’s web address was also present to the bottom left of the ad, sending Internet users to a web site that encourages people to “shine the light of reason” and to reject faith and religion.
Agorism: It’s Time to Get Our Minds Right
Agorist Philosophy Overview
by “FSK”
As originally posted on: FSK’s Guide to Reality
September 13, 2007
I’ve been reading a bit about the philosophy of agorism, and it seems attractive to me.
The philosophy can be summarized in one sentence: “I want to do useful work, get paid, and not have to report it for taxation, confiscation, and regulation.”
Let’s start with a specific example. Suppose you don’t like the US government’s policy of aggressive wars in Iraq and other countries. You can vote, but voting is ineffective due to various corruptions in the system. The income tax means that the government confiscates 50%-95% or more of everything I produce. Productive work supports the government, even if I disapprove of its activities. I am unable to do any useful economic activity without supporting things I find objectionable.
The government’s policy is completely ridiculous. Citizens may not perform work without reporting it for taxation, confiscation, and regulation. I object to that requirement.
The fundamental goal of an agorist revolution is the creation of wealth that the red market can’t confiscate. This is the only type of revolution that has a legitimate chance of succeeding, because the participants would be profiting and undermining the government at the same time. The red market derives its power by leeching wealth. Creating unconfiscatable wealth undermines the red market’s power.
Currently, the only type of grey market work available is low-paid unskilled labor. The agorist wants to create a grey market for highly-skilled, high-paid labor.
The agorist says that all governments are inherently illegitimate. A government is merely a group of people conspiring to take away my property and my rights. Government employees benefit handsomely from this arrangement, because the salaries and pensions they receive are higher than they would get in the private sector. The people who control large corporations benefit from this arrangement, because their market position is frequently endorsed by the government and its regulations. Wealthy campaign donors love the government-granted perks they get. The Federal Reserve’s policy of inflation benefits the financial industry at the expense of everyone else. Government is merely a group of people conspiring to confiscate the wealth of the productive part of society.
The agorist says that all the functions of government could be more effectively performed by the free market. You can have a private justice system. You can have a private police force. Everyone knows that government is up for sale, manipulated by the wealthy. Why not do away with the pretense completely? Let’s privatize everything.
Why should the government have a monopoly on violence and justice?
For example, instead of paying a 50% income tax, maybe I can pay 2%, or even a fixed fee, to a private police force who will insure my property is protected. The police force would utilize a private justice system, to make sure that they don’t use force needlessly. If two people have a conflict and are subscribing to different police forces, then the incentive is for the businesses to resolve the dispute peacefully rather than violently. If a private police force was misbehaving, then it would be perfectly acceptable for people to start seeking alternate vendors. Some people might pay for protection by several police forces simultaneously, to prevent monopolies from forming.
Suppose there’s no intrinsic legitimacy given to the government. It’s perfectly legitimate to use force to defend yourself, if someone attempts to confiscate your property. Imagine what would happen if tax collectors were met with armed resistance from everyone? What would happen if everyone ceased voluntary compliance with the taxation system?
Right now, the vast majority of people are compliant with the taxation system. That means that red market workers can afford to expend vast resources tracking down violators. It needs to make sure that violators are caught so that the penalty for tax avoidance makes the risk unattractive. However, with taxation rates of 50%-95% or more, tax avoidance starts to be attractive, if it can be done with relatively low risk. I’m not just counting direct noticeable taxes. There are hidden taxes and regulations, which also cost money.
What’s the real risk of getting caught? It’s hard to say. You only hear about the people who got caught. The people who get away with it don’t come forward and admit it, do they? There’s no source of reliable statistics, so you can’t quantify the risk.
How would you make the transition to an agorist economy? There is a problem, because people aren’t going to want to give up their government-granted perks. They are going to resist change as much as they can. People are reluctant to avoid paying taxes and following government rules. However, if there’s a profit to be made, people might be convinced.
The key is to develop a system that allows people to perform productive economic activity without reporting it for taxation and confiscation. The Internet is a useful tool for this, because it would allow people to share information efficiently. It wouldn’t be too hard to write software that would facilitate an agorist economy.
The standard financial system is designed to frustrate attempts to perform economic activity without reporting it for confiscation. Transactions larger than $10,000 must be reported to the government. Repeated small transactions are also reportable. Besides, who wants to trade with worthless paper money? An alternate financial system would need to be developed. This way, transactions can be performed without reporting them to the government. People could still settle transactions with paper money or silver or gold, if they really wanted to. I think the Social Credit Monetary System is the best solution.
Whatever system is developed would need to be as decentralized as possible. As much as possible, information should NOT be stored on a centralized server. A centralized server represents an attack point. As much as possible, communications should be encrypted.
Actually, some information needs to be public. A database listing who trusted whom would need to be public and shared to be useful. On the other hand, maybe a trust database should be private, because it would represent a list of people for red market agents to harass. All transaction records should be private. Ideally, transaction records should be destroyed when completed, so red market agents can’t confiscate them.
There would be an important check that ensures people follow the rules. Just like in the BitTorrent economy, any user who misbehaves would be banned and denied a valuable resource. New users would be admitted only if another user vouched for their trustworthiness. The distributed nature would make it hard to shut it down, even if spies did infiltrate it.
Suppose there was an effective system for facilitating productive work without reporting it for taxation. With such high confiscatory taxation rates, there would be a huge incentive for people to work under such a system. The goal would be to avoid government detection as much as possible. As more productive people started working in this grey market economy, the power of government would decrease.
If the system was sufficiently distributed, there would be low risk even if you got caught. Red market agents might find out about some of your transactions, but not all of them. You could pay back taxes and fines on some of the transactions, and still come out ahead overall.
An agorist grey-market economy would also benefit because it could avoid compliance with all government regulations. It would not need to spend productive effort on regulation compliance. Its only wasted effort would be that spent avoiding detection by red market enforcers.
Ideally, an agorist economy could offer lower prices and higher wages, compared to the white market or pink market. The ability to avoid taxation and regulation should cut expenses by 50% to 95% or more.
Some pink market practitioners have their salaries artificially raised by the red market. For example, doctors need to waste a lot of money on education and spend years training. The supply of doctors is restricted by the red market. A license is required to practice medicine. A grey market doctor would not need the licensing requirement. He would only need to spend a year or two learning what is really needed to help his patients. An agorist doctor would not earn as much as a pink market doctor, but he would save the hassle of years of medical school and a residency. An agorist doctor would not have to deal with HMOs, Medicare, and insurance companies. The free market would help people decide which doctors are good and which are no good; people will share information about their experiences. Currently, the supply of doctors is artificially restricted, so there’s no mechanism for incompetent doctors to be removed from the market. The agorist doctor won’t get busted for “practicing medicine without a license” if his customers don’t turn him in to the red market. Besides, patients can always go to a pink market hospital if they have a problem their agorist doctor can’t handle. Eventually, the agorist hospitals would be better than the pink market hospitals.
Switching to a grey market agorist economy might be necessary for survival. A hyperinflationary crash of the dollar could happen at any time. A substantial amount of untaxed economic activity would facilitate such a collapse.
It probably is not possible for a person to satisfy all their needs in the grey market. However, the larger percentage of their economic activity that they can hide, the more they will benefit. If someone operated both a white-market business and a grey-market business, that would facilitate concealing their grey-market activities. On the other hand, you might be better off not having any official business at all. The IRS frequently cracks down on small business owners; registering yourself as a business owner might just be making yourself a target.
The red market derives its power solely by leeching off the productive members of society. Without them to push around, its power would rapidly collapse.
An agorist revolution has a legitimate chance of succeeding. The agorist market participants would be profiting from their activity. They would be undermining the government and making a profit at the same time. They would profit more than white market participants, because they would be unencumbered by taxes, inflation, and regulations. In that sense, once an agorist movement gets started, it would be self-sustaining. With a leaderless organization structure, it could not be easily shut down by infiltration or force. The agorist needs tools for effective operation, plus a certain number of participants.
An agorist revolution would probably be a peaceful one. Agorist market participants can hide their activity. They would appear to be normal, productive, nonviolent citizens. Agorist market participants would tend to resolve their differences peacefully, both to avoid the attention of red market enforcers, and because non-initiation of violence is part of the philosophy. By the time the agorist economy is large enough to be noticed by red market enforcers, it would have viable systems for competing and replacing government institutions. The agorist market would step in smoothly as the government loses power. The violence would come from red market participants, trying to crack down to preserve their position. However, a large number of red market workers might simultaneously be employed by agorist protection agencies. Typically, corporations infiltrate government by subverting Congress and the President. An agorist movement would infiltrate government by subverting the low-level line workers.
An agorist revolution, once started, would be self-sustaining. The participants would be profiting from their actions.
A lot of websites I read are philosophizing and speculating. I am ready to start writing tools and start using them. I would like to be a participant in an agorist economy, if only I knew other people to trade with! My primary skill is writing software. That’s the skill I’d be offering in trade. Initially, I’ll just write the code I think is needed and release it into the public domain.
Summarizing, I want to do productive work, get paid for it, and not have to report it for taxation and confiscation.