David Aaronovitch thinks the unthinkable about the McCarthy period.

The hunt for the so called ‘Reds under the beds’ during the Cold War is generally regarded as a deeply regrettable blot on U.S history. But the release of classified documents reveals that Joseph McCarthy was right after all about the extent of Soviet infiltration into the highest reaches of the U.S government.

Thanks to the public release of top secret FBI decryptions of Soviet communications, as well as the release under the fifty year rule of FBI records and Soviet archives, we now know that the Communist spying McCarthy fought against was extensive, reaching to the highest level of the State department and the White House.

We reveal that many of McCarthy’s anticommunist investigations were in fact on target. His fears about the effect Soviet infiltration might be having on US foreign policy, particularly in the Far East were also well founded.

The decrypts also reveal that people such as Rosenberg, Alger Hiss and even Robert Oppenheimer were indeed working with the Soviets. We explore why much of this information, available for years to the FBI, was not made public. We also examine how its suppression prevented the prosecution of suspects.

Finally, we explore the extent to which Joseph McCarthy, with his unsavoury methods and smear tactics, could have done himself a disservice, resulting in his name being forever synonymous with paranoia and the ruthless suppression of free speech.

The programme airs Sunday at 13:30 on BBC Radio 4 (FM only).

Via Samizdata, which notes:

I distrust that last bit, about McCarthy’s “unsavoury tactics” being to blame for his failure. It was McCarthy’s fault that the Bolsheviks weren’t unmasked? I wait to be convinced that what saved the Bolsheviks of that time and place was Joe McCarthy’s ineptness. I prefer the more obvious explanation, which is that the very Bolsheviks who had, as McCarthy rightly claimed, dug themselves into the US government were the ones who stopped him.

This may also be available on the Web; I hope so, because it’s an important topic.

Today, The Armed Citizen received informal notice in the form of a media inquiry about a lawsuit against this website and its owners, David Burnett and Clayton Cramer. The lawsuit, reportedly filed in US District Court on July 20th, alleges that The Armed Citizen and its owners “willfully copied” original source content from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

According to news reports, Righthaven LLC has reportedly filed lawsuits against 75 other political websites and/or blogs without prior contact or attempt at resolution. The sites include FreeRepublic.com, the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The “offending” entries consist of six stories, some of which were short enough to qualify under the Fair Use Rule, out of nearly 4,700 entries. The six stories are still publicly available on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s website, to which we linked.

The Armed Citizen has been excerpting articles from newspaper, TV station, and radio station websites for a number of years. If any copyright holders decided that The Armed Citizen had exceeded fair use, they only needed to send us an email. Instead, in a bid to target and intimidate small websites, they have chosen to pursue legal action.

At this time, the future of The Armed Citizen is uncertain, and possibly in jeopardy, thanks to Righthaven LLC and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Their contact information is listed below.

Las Vegas Review-Journal
1111 W. Bonanza Road
P.O. Box 70
Las Vegas, NV 89125

Main phone number:
702-383-0211

Newspaper office number:
702-383-0264

Copy of Lawsuit (As forwarded by a reporter…The Armed Citizen has received no official notice of pending litigation.)

To e-mail David and Clayton, write to Tips@thearmedcitizen.com

Further information:
Las Vegas newspaper sues websites over use of content
Conservative website among 3 sued over R-J copyrights
LV Review-Journal may be violating law with selective copyright suits
REVIEW-JOURNAL SUES ITS OWN SOURCE

UPDATE: It turns out that the minimum amount of a controversy filed in federal court involving citizens of multiple states is $75,000 (which is something that I already knew). The lawyers are relying on us to “settle” because they know darn well that their actual damages aren’t even close to $75,000. They might have trouble proving $75 worth of actual damages. This is perilously close to extortion. Interesting discussion of this over here.

UPDATE 2: These lawyers have filed dozens of such suits, always demanding $75,000 (the federal controversy minimum)–and it looks like some people are starting to fight back. I wonder how many people like me showing up and demanding proof of $75,000 in damages before some federal judge tells these crooks to go chase ambulances, like other shysters.

UPDATE 3: I have taken down the entire Armed Citizen blog. It’s just too dangerous. And this blog may go away tomorrow as well. It’s just too dangerous. There are criminal enterprises out there prepared to use the law in ways that it was not intended.

The Armed Citizen ran excerpts of news stories of armed citizens defending themselves. It was an astonishing resource, and its loss is a serious blow to those attempting to legitimize the right of the people to manage their own lives. I visited there occasionally, and the excerpts were just that, unless the story was no more than a few lines, impossible to excerpt meaningfully.

After the above post went up, Cramer followed with two more, preserved here for posterity in case they go away:

There Are Days It Just Isn’t Worth It

I’ve spent quite a bit of the last twenty years trying to make a difference in the political system. Garbage like this below makes me wonder if it is too late to solve this country’s problems, and maybe I should stop trying to make it better. It’s just not worth it.

The End

I’ve decided that the costs of liablity insurance are too high to make this continue to make sense, especially in light of sleazy garbage such as the Las Vegas Review-Journal lawsuit. (And ironically, we are supposedly on the same side.) America is enthusiastically headed into a cesspool, I’m not doing anything that is likely to even slow the downslope speed of destruction. Tonight I will download everything from the blog, and delete everything but this explanation.

Thanks to all the readers who have provided encouragement over the years. America is in a death spiral.

[The words that follow are my own; Cramer is in no way responsible for them and is not aware of them as I post.]

Cramer was one of the good guys; he exposed Bellesiles’ lies (I have the book, Armed America, he wrote in the aftermath of that, documenting that guns have been part of American culture since the earliest colonial days, and establishing that some of the earliest gun laws were aimed at the disenfranchised: slaves, Indians, indentured servants.) He helped write briefs for both the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court cases, and has had the heady experience of being quoted in the decisions.

The most distressing thing about this that he’s not being taken down in the fight with anti-gunners; it’s the damn copyright lawyers, and the thrice damned DMCA that gives them teeth. Cramer is not stealing the works of others in any significant way, he is clearly in the “safe harbour” provisions, but he is still being attacked, and not, I suspect, because of any concern about copyrights, but as outright extortion, simply in the hope that he will cave.

I sincerely hope he reconsiders, and begins blogging again. I could wish that he would blog, be damned to the thugs at the Review-Journal and their lawyers, and be prepared to go out shooting when they came for him, or even allow himself to be arrested as an act of civil disobediance, but he has a family and responsibilities I do not, and has already done far more for the cause than most.

And you know, I think that it is not his responsibilities that stop him. It’s that he thinks America is failing, as an enterprise, losing its compass, and that the fight is not worth the sacrifice.

I hope he’s wrong.

But I fear he’s right.

God speed, Clayton, little though that may mean coming from a skeptic like me.

I pray your light has not gone out, but is only dimmed, for awhile, until the vultures have passed.

Update:
Rob Allen at Sharp as a Marble has picked up on this; lots of good comments there.

No sooner had I posted my “elevator pitch” for liberty, but Billy Beck points me to Wendy McElroy’s excellent expansion of the idea, “A Legal Presumption of Competence.”

A core principle of the Nanny State is that people do not know their best interests and must be treated like children with the State acting as guardian. Indeed, that’s where the word “nanny” comes from. The Nanny State proceeds from the presumption that you are incompetent to administer your own life. Even fully-functioning adults are deemed unable or unwilling to make wise decisions and, so, the state rushes in to fill the void with extensive regulation of every individual’s personal health and safety.

How much transfat or salt can be in your fast food burger? You are too obese, too nutritionally ignorant, too addicted to McDonalds to be trusted. Should you smoke, drink, or chow down on sweets? Of course not! But if you do, then, like a good parent, the State will force you to bear the cost of irresponsibility by uber-taxing your minor vices and imprisoning you for the major ones.

The “wise parent” list scrolls on and on: wear a helmet while bicycling, don’t use saccharine, no public nudity, don’t loiter in parks, monitor your words to coworkers, don’t download porn, take a urine test at work, don’t drive too fast, take only approved drugs and only in the prescribed fashion, strap on your safety belt, pay a tax for the error of fast food, no smoking in public places, register your handgun, don’t use incandescent bulbs, recycle, homogenize all milk, buy health insurance. . . . And, recently, Maine was pushing to eliminate sex-specific bathrooms because separate “men’s” and women’s” rooms discriminate against your gender rights. Yes, where you take a piss is now a matter of state to be debated by legislatures, and all because they want to protect you. Happily, Maine has backed away from politicizing toilets.

It gets better. Read it all.

But especially read this:

There is a word to describes the situation in which another party claims ownership over the body of another: it is “slavery.” As such, the Nanny State is misnamed. Although it would like to project the image of a wise guardianship of children — a sort of stern Mary Poppins who uses a “spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down” — a more accurate image is that of a slave owner. One hand of the Nanny State may be wagging an admonishing finger at you but the other hand is holding a whip at-the-ready.

Slavery. That’s really what we’re talking about here.

Oh, and that’s not all from Beck:

The entire effect — if not the purpose — of a jaywalking statute is to strip the individual of that which he is born with: the principal device with which humans are able and naturally authorized to make their ways through the world.
…
Me? I know how to get across a street. My parents saw to that at an early age.

As usual, Beck gets right to core of the thing, and you should read every golden word.

This was his comment over at Radley’s Agitator article concerning a woman who got punched in the face by a cop over a jaywalking ticket.

John Venlet was talking about “Fort Sumters”, and I was talking about small individual actions, “candles not forest fires”.

This, folks, is what candles look like.

Also notice in the video that damn near every person in the crowd had a phonecam out. No effort to arrest the guy making this video, it would have been futile.

Imagine the woman quoting the Constitution, the law, the Declaration, Locke, Paine, Henry, Jefferson, or, hell, Beck, making a principled stand against a minor tyranny.

Now imagine everybody in that crowd with a gun on their hip, nodding their heads at every word she says and scowling at the cops.

Imagine that freedom, liberty itself, was politically correct.

Hahahaha! What a ridiculous idea! I slay myself sometimes.

What action, or further restriction of freedom, individual or otherwise, instituted by the federal government, would justify taking up arms against the United States government, crossing that line in the sand, firing the first shot?

This is a troubling thought to consider. I, for one, would prefer that taking up arms against the United States government need not be resorted to, but what will open the eyes of Americans to the fact that their freedom is under assault. What will be America’s Broken Arrow? Is there one freedom restricting action that could be instituted by the federal government that would awaken Americans to the systematic destruction of freedom taking place in America, causing Americans to rise up and say “No More?”

I’m hoping that never comes; I’m too old to survive a civil war. Instead, I’m hoping for a gradual awakening, for increasing numbers of individual resistance actions, and for increasing willingness of groups to engage in, not Fort Sumters, but simple quiet displays.

In comments at Clinch, I wrote, somewhat disjointedly,

Fort Sumter was preceded by a huge propaganda campaign, and many smaller actions, which inflamed the people of the South to support the opening shots. We are not there yet.

As noted by the Mercenary, there have already been two actions, Ruby Ridge and Waco, that might have qualified, but I think they didn’t work because the individualist right had not yet awakened. A similar action now might have very different results.

Had the Hutaree been massacred, that might have triggered it. Instead, the public reaction from the right was swift, loud, threatening, and the case against them has been mostly dropped. Five years ago, they would have disappeared without a trace.

Had Heller gone for D.C., that might have done it, or if MacDonald goes for Chicago, that might. (I know some are derisive of Heller and MacDonald, even of the SC itself — “Nobody tells me what to do.” I believe, though, that those cases are about tracking the government’s willingness to slip the leash, not about what we the people can and can’t do.)

Passive disobedience won’t yet work, I think, because it receives almost no coverage, and what little coverage there is is not encouraging. The media is not interested, is in active opposition, and is so ignorant they don’t even know what questions to ask. Nobody wants to go down unnoticed and alone.

As far as group actions go, I like the Open Carry movement, which sees opposition even in states where it’s legal. Gets attention, though, at low risk for participants.

Elsewhere, unarmed Holster Carry gatherings just see derision, but they’re few and far between. They might gain respect if they become widespread.

I believe the Tea Party movement must adopt a policy of OC or HC at public gatherings, just to get the media and the public at large to notice that we think something is wrong. People have got to get over the idea that staying quiet and being polite to the point of self-effacement no longer works. An OC Tea Party is practice, that’s all, as much or more for the Partiers as for the public.

These are small things, which I often see derided by the more committed, but the very first thing that needs to happen is for the non-committed to get accustomed to asking, politely and respectfully, to exercise their rights. Many don’t even realize they have rights that are being taken away. Should we have to ask? No, of course not. But we’re talking about folks accustomed to asking for the salt and pepper just to be polite, not because they actually need permission to season their food to taste. They’ll do no less for their rights at this stage of the fight.

However, the stagnant stink of tyranny and defeat wafting from Obama is being noticed by his followers, now. They’re beginning to notice they were lied to about exactly what kind of change they were getting. His fellow Democrats are getting nervous; see the reluctance to face town meetings, and Etheridge’s panicked battery of a student videographer. That last is evidence that simply asking polite questions, on record, is enough to provoke an ugly response. If you want a Fort Sumter, we need to see a lot more of that first.

We need small, quiet, individual actions. Lots of them. Candles, not forest fires.

The Change Wind is rising. Small gusts, fitful, weak, but so the storm begins.

I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.

The interviewer was Tavis Smiley of PBS. You can watch the interview here.

It’s also important to know that Hirsi Ali lives under the constant watch of security guards, since her life continues to be threatened by Islamic extremists.

This was the woman who walked onto Tavis Smiley’s PBS show to promote her new book. Nomad calls on key institutions of the West — universities, feminists, and Christian churches — to wage a war of ideas against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

However, Smiley was in no mood to hear Hirsi Ali’s arguments that placed Islam in a bad light. He wanted to assert the old leftist claim that Islam is always and everywhere “a religion of peace.”

Look at this jaw-dropping exchange between Smiley and Hirsi Ali:

Smiley: But Christians do that every single day in this country. …

Ali: Do they blow people up every single day?

Smiley: Yes, Christians. Every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine — I mean I could do this all day long. There’s so many more examples of Christians — and I happen to be a Christian — that’s back to this notion of you idealizing Christianity to my read. There’s so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country where you live and work.

Beyond the irritating liberal arrogance is the complete ignorance of the facts involved here.
Let’s ignore momentarily the dozens of terror plots — all designed and organized by Muslim-Americans — that have been uncovered and thwarted by this nation’s security forces. I will instead direct Smiley’s attention to these attacks against Americans:

• 1993: The World Trade Center bombing in New York killed 6 people.
• 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing killed 20 and wounded 372.
• 1998: The bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania left 224 dead and 4,000 injured.
• 2001: On 9/11, 19 hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 perished.
• 2009: U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 at Texas’ Fort Hood.
• 2010: Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.

Uh, where’s a similar listing of Christian-inspired acts of violence, Mr. Smiley? The sweeping ignorance, or political blindness, of Smiley’s claim that “Christians do that (commit acts of terror) every single day in this country” is nothing short of astounding.

Unlike Islam, Christian scripture does not guarantee paradise to those who kill in the name of their faith. But the Koran does offer the fruits of paradise to “those who kill for Allah.” Suicide bombers have been lured to their deaths with this promise and the offer that they will be free from the fires of hell if they kill an infidel and, in the process, die.

[My emphasis.]

That last, right there, is the key that makes Islam so toxic. Even turn-the-other-cheek, meek-inheriting-the-earth Christianity can be perverted to excuse violence in its name, but Mohammed actively encouraged it, and led Muslim armies against the infidels in his own time.

Nevertheless, let me for a moment be the devil’s advocate.

First, if you want the list of Christian terrorist acts here in America, look up abortion clinic bombings and murders. However, note that these acts are committed not to force the Christian faith on others, but because the anti-abortionists believe that a wholesale murder of innocents is taking place. I happen not to agree with that, although it’s a close call, but if I did, I hope that I too would be doing everything in my power to stop it. Not to terrorize, mind, but to directly disrupt a human slaughterhouse. I hope I’d do the same against guard barracks in Nazi concentration camps or Soviet gulags or, um, Save The Earth re-education camps, should they ever come to pass.

Outside of America, look at Northern Ireland. However, while that conflict has a religious cast to it, the underlying conflict is one for political independence. It’s ugly as hell, and the actions involved are totally unjustified, but it’s not a war of religious expansion.

I’ll also note that both clinic bombings and the Irish fight have died down considerably in recent years. The practitioners have either fallen to attrition, or realized they were not getting the kind of sympathy they hoped for.

Second, although I don’t have a list to hand, I think there have been many nut jobs who do commit horrible crimes in the name of Christianity. Thing is, they are nut jobs, acting in direct contravention of the scriptures they cite, and they do not remotely have the support of mainstream Christian clerics.

Finally, undoubtedly many Christians do commit ordinary crimes, but not in the name of Christ — the Roman Catholic Mafioso is a classic stereotype. However, the attraction of this stereotype in fiction is precisely the huge disconnect between the professed faith and the daily life.

“Uh, how about the Spanish Inquisition? Galileo, dude!” The Inquisition was indeed brutal, but it was only carried out against other Christians, not as a weapon of evangelism against other faiths. And even the Catholic Church eventually realized that the Inquisition was not only against scripture, but counterproductive in practice, actually turning people away from the faith. It forced Western Civilization to grow the hell up.

The Islamic Jihad is the only longstanding and still very much active, program of violence against non-coreligionists, is strongly rooted in scripture, and is endorsed, advocated, and managed by the highest ranks of the Muslim clergy. It spreads an oppressive creed of utter intolerance towards the highest ideals of classical liberal, and even neo-liberal, political ideology. (Except statism. Neo-liberals love them their statism.)

And it is vastly more promiscuously lethal than the anti-abortionists, or even the Irish Republican Army, ever dreamed of being.

Smiley here is covering for evil on the largest scale. He is not hiding Nazis in his attic, he’s openly shilling for them.

He calls himself a Christian, but in fact is calling for the eradication of the faith he claims to serve.

Shame.

The Jewish homeland is, in fact, Israel, and has been “since time immemorial”:

There are archaeological remains that attest to this fact. The holy books of the Jews and the Arabs also confirm this. So Jews don’t have to go back home ~ they are already home. The Jews in Europe, Asia, and America are in the Diaspora because they were summarily expelled from countries throughout the ages. The term “wandering Jew” comes from the historical facts that Jews were expelled from England in 1290; from France in 1393; from Berne, Switzerland in 1427; and from Spain in 1492, to name only a few places.

In her book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, author Joan Peters, proves with historical data and other archival information that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews. In fact, the blurb of this 1984 book relates that:

A hidden but major Arab migration and immigration took place into areas settled by Jews in pre-Israel Palestine; that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots; that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948; there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time. . . .

Recently, filmmaker Pierre Rehov created the film entitled “The Silent Exodus” about these Jews who were kicked out of their Middle Eastern homes. Between 1946 and 1974, there were a million of forgotten Jewish fugitives expelled from the Arab world. These Jews had been living in Arab lands for thousands of years but their homes were stolen from them; they literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs when they fled. They were received in Israel. They did not remain refugees; they had no special United Nations agency to assist them. Israel welcomed them and they rebuilt their lives.

Related, and linked here for reference, “Genetic Evidence Shows Common Origins of Jews“, by David Bernstein at the Volkh Conspiracy. From The New York Times:

Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, even though each community also carries genes from other sources — usually the country in which it lives.

But note this comment by Bernstein:

I don’t think that Zionism, etc., depends on whether Jews really have common genetic origins or not, anymore than Palestinian identity is any more or less real depending on whether, as some claim, a large percentage of “Palestinian Arabs” had immigrated rather recently from other countries in the Middle East. But I do think that manipulating history for ideological purposes is bad…

Thanks to feelthy Joooo Rabbi David Nesenoff for having captured her vile poison on his flip-cam. Gonna have to get me one of those.

As many have said, this remark exposed a long and fiercely held prejudice, one which was tolerated by her fellow reporters because in their true hearts, they agreed with her.

Some have expressed regret that her long career ends in such ignominy, just shy of her ninetieth year.

It should have ended long ago. All of her work should now be seen in the glaring light cast by Rabbi Nesenoff.

It’s all of the same cloth, all from the same inkpot, off the same ribbon. Every word.

You can die now, Helen, — but frankly, I hope you live a long time, alone, reviled and hated as you so richly deserve. You did huge damage to the nation and profession that sheltered you.

It speaks poorly of her peers at Hearst that she was allowed to resign; she should have been fired.

Drudge front page, via KisP.

Everybody’s Favorite Cute and Cuddly Mustelid:

Ding Dong: …you’d better BELIEVE the left had to purge her fast, lest we wonder how many of them agree with her.

Follow the link for Weasel’s perfect graphic.

And of course, those of us who have been paying attention for the last nine or ten years know that they all agree with her to some degree. She’s just the first pus to squirt out of the abscess, is all. Gods know it’s long overdue for lancing.

And, dag nab it, I can’t find the link, but someone’s noted that it’s wrong to suggest that HT’s comment is as bad as encouraging blacks to return to Africa. It’s far worse. Blacks did indeed come from Africa, but Israel is the Jewish homeland, and has been since the flight from Egypt. The only reason they’re in all those other places was the Diaspora, being driven from Israel by the Babylonians and from Judea by the Roman Empire.

If any people has the right to occupy a given land, it would be the Jews in Israel.

No sooner do I post the above update, but I come across this from Billy Beck, as always striking his own path with the strict theodolite of principle:

Let me point out that I, too, have urged the Jews to leave Israel. They should come to America. This is the land for them. Among the matters that their culture has been known for across all their history is their grasp of money as technology: concepts put to work on material life. Nowhere in the world has there ever been such a home for such a thing as this one. This was an element of America when “the New World” was still a only gaseous dream of scripture.

I am, cautiously and with great respect, going to disagree on this point. I like there being at least one other place on the planet populated by people who think like this, and I love it that it’s one of the most successful outposts of capitalism, even though, or even because, it is “in the middle of hundreds of millions of howling savages specifically intent on bringing them to ghastly murder”. No bigger “Fuck You!” to the dark evil of Islamic ignorance and hatred can I imagine.

I agree with Beck in that I want our foreign aid to stop going there, but then, I want to stop foreign aid to just about everywhere. Either produce something we need and set a fair price, find another market for your crap, or be taken over by someone else who gets it.

Foreign aid ruined Africa, turned it into a bloody abattoir, and the Islamic Middle East’s been driven insane by profits from an industry it doesn’t understand and didn’t establish.

Israel, I’m convinced, has been weakened by the Socialist cancer precisely because it didn’t have to stand on its own. It might have needed a little pump priming, but the time for that is long past. Now all they need is a strong ally to take their backs against the savages.

I don’t want America to be the only capitalist nation; I want that idea to spread. I want America to face strong competitors, because that’s how we will grow stronger.

Bravo Israel, I say: I don’t believe they deserve the land because a non-existent God gave it to them, but because unlike their neighbors, they clawed an actual, modern nation out of a hell of sand. They earned it, and if they want to stay there, more power to them.

And yet again, I don’t know where I saw this:

HT is being lauded for her confrontational questioning. However, that’s only because, whoever she confronted, she attacked from the socialist left.

Nobody who attacked from the right would have been allowed to remain in the press corps. There have been a few conservative members, but compared to Thomas, they’ve been models of polite deference.

Senator Bruce Patterson

If the Republican Party had a shred of integrity, they’d disown this mustachioed thug.

The right to a free press doesn’t belong to you, traitor. It’s not the government’s privilege to hand out licenses.

It’s our right to not only read the news but to report it, asshole. You don’t get to decide who of us is worthy of any right. That’s what “right” means.

Keep your filthy socialist mitts off it, and remember:

The Second Amendment is ours too. People like you are why.]

My email out to Michael Steele, RNC Chairman:

You want more Tea Partiers to become Republicans?

Shame and shun Republicans like Michigan State Senator Bruce Patterson, who recently introduced a bill calling for the licensing of journalists.

I’ve largely abandoned traditional news media precisely because they are blatantly the publications organ of the socialist Democrats. Many “reporters” are incompetent boobs to boot.

And yet it is precisely these so-called professional journalists Patterson wishes to protect.

He is not on the side of liberty. He does not respect the Constitution.

And yet, he is allowed to call himself a Republican.

Call him out. Condemn this bill, even though it is “merely” a state bill; the mindset that owns it is intolerable to America, and should be intolerable to you.

As long as it is not, as long as the Republican party still calls Patterson one of its own, I will never be a Republican, donate to the Republican party, campaign for a Republican candidate, or do anything other than spit at the Elephant Who Never Remembers.

The time for broken windows looms. And it’s not only the Demoncrats whose windows will be broken, come the day.

This is why we have a First Amendment. And frankly, it’s why we have a Second Amendment as well.

This Wouldn’t Be Happening If Obama Were President!

That may be the single cruelest truth I’ve ever seen concerning anyone’s effectiveness.

It’s not enough to get the votes, [pretend to] take the oath, sit in the Oval.

You actually have to Be President, and Zero isn’t. He’s a good actor, but that’s not enough. It would help if he had competent advisers, but all he’s got are sycophants and blue sky *spit* experts.

Via Jules Crittendon.

…and then, immediately after posting the above, I click on the next tab in my browser and find The Anchoress saying this in response to Chris Matthews’ remark that “. . . this idiotic cerebral meritocracy has got to step aside and let the people who do things take over….”

And that is the problem in a nutshell. Our government is top-heavy with people who have never “done” anything.

The Obama administration is loaded down with academics and lawyers who have spent their lives theorizing about things like economics, markets, social order and crisis management–and criticizing methods with which they disagree–but who have little practical experience in doing.

The Anchoress’ remarks indicate a certain sympathy with Chris Matthews: “…it seems that Chris Matthews’ heart is breaking, too.” No sympathy here. He’s one of the reasons Barry Hussein Zero is in office; I blame him, and frankly, I rejoice in his heartbreak. He deserves far worse.

She also has a very moving clip of Rep. Charles Melancon (D-LA) breaking down as he reads a statement concerning the oil spill. There are still some in Washington, even Democrats, who understand the tremendous burden they accepted when they took office.

She also has this, from the Republican Senatorial Committee:

Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, I agree with all of it.

No, they still don’t get one thin dime, not so much as a yard sign.

They could have stopped this with an effective campaign for a strong Republican candidate. They wimped. They tried to be weak Democrats. They couldn’t even handle a marginally acceptable Vice-Presidential candidate like Palin.

They carry their share of the blame. I’m holding them accountable, all right.

I’m struck by the confusion evident from both Bennett and Norris. They have no idea whatsoever what just happened. Norris doesn’t know how to frame her questions, and Bennett has all the answers that he knows should have worked.

There’s several illuminating passages, but what I want to write about today is an exchange that didn’t happen, the question I wanted to ask that would never have occurred to Norris.

The constituency that abandoned him comes off as ill-informed and inarticulate. It’s easy to guess that this fits with how NPR and the establishment powers view the Partiers. However, it’s also no doubt accurate; the Tea Parties are still inchoate, still fragmented, still with no cohesive, organized platform, still with no clear principles.

Moreover, our political vocabulary has become so debased that it is almost impossible to coherently criticize what has been happening for the last several decades in terms most people have been trained to understand. That vocabulary has been constructed by those we want to criticize, and it’s devilishly hard to use against them.

Which leads us to this exchange:

NORRIS: About one-third of the Utah GOP convention delegates were part of the Tea Party movement. Did you do a good enough job as a senator of representing their interest? Many of them felt like they were ignored by Washington, even by the representatives within their own party.

Sen. BENNETT: When you talk to them and said, well, what did I do that didn’t represent you, there was never – other than, well, you voted for TARP and that was unconstitutional – as I say, I could talk that one through with them, and oh, well, maybe you did the right thing. Someone would say I’m not troubled about TARP. You’ve just been there too long.

NORRIS: What do you make of that? How do you respond to someone who feels like you’ve been there too long?

Sen. BENNETT: There really is no response. Some of my supporters would report conversations they would have. One in particular said to this woman: Who are you voting for? She said: I’m voting for Cherilyn Eager. Why? Well, she loves the Constitution. All right, Senator Bennett loves the Constitution. Yeah, but Cherilyn Eager loves it more. And finally, my supporter said, well, I guess there’s nothing I can say to you. And they said no, because I want somebody who really, really loves the Constitution.

And here, I wanted to thumb the transmit button on the radio and ask, “If you love the Constitution, Senator, what’s your favorite enumerated power?”

In my fantasy, the scene changes, dreamlike, and I am now confronting a generic politician at a town meeting or Tea Party. In the minds of most politicians, I suspect, “Love the Constitution” is a meaningless phrase, sort of like, “uphold and defend” or “enemies foreign and domestic”. It’s just one of those things you have to say to take office so you can ruleguide your flock taxpayers constituents to healthy, safe, and productive lives; get yourself some kickbacks, and maybe enjoy some of that intern nookie.

I let him stumble for a bit. He probably thinks, “the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” but of course he can’t say that out loud. Maybe he takes a stab at providing for “the common Defence and general Welfare”, or “securing the blessings of Liberty”, or even securing “life, liberty, and [the] pursuit of happiness” for the people.

He pauses, and I ask, “Want to know my favorite power?”

He is wary, but nods.

“The power of the people to keep and bear arms.”

“But…but…that’s not a power, that’s a…that’s why we have the National Guard!”

One of the debasements I’m talking about is the blurring of rights and powers, but what that usually does is to dilute rights and disguise tyranny. For instance, there’s the supposed right to health care, something which is really an individual responsibility, but which has been converted to an excuse to exert control. You also often hear that the police have the right to search you under various circumstances, but that’s not a right at all, it’s a delegated power. The cleverness here is that “rights” are good things. When something is declared a “right”, we automatically nod our heads.

I want to blur in the other direction, but in so blurring, reveal:

The purpose of the Constitution, as I see it, is to define the structure of our government, to define its powers, and to limit those powers, primarily in the Third through Eighth Amendments.

The first two Amendments, however, create the fourth branch of government which balances the other three: We, The People. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments bolster that branch, but those first two Amendments give us specific powers, in keeping with the overall purpose of structuring the government. They are not delegations, though; they are reservations. (To clarify: We often say that the Bill of Rights does not grant those rights, but merely protects natural rights we possess independently of any government or mere document, and that’s true, in our private lives. Here, however, I speak of The People as that virtual Fourth Branch, which must have its powers enumerated.)

We rule here, not our elected officials; they can only lead, using powers that come from us, powers that we delegate to them but do not necessarily give up ourselves, even if we only exercise them via the light reins of election.

The First Amendment is all about reserving to us, the people, the power to decide the direction of the Nation ourselves. Freedom of Religion preserves our consciences, our power to decide for ourselves in our own minds what is right and wrong; Freedom of Speech is our power to express our consciences and persuade our fellows; Freedom of Press is our power to subpoena the government and its agents and make their words and deeds public, to inform ourselves about the world at large, and to broadcast our knowledge, ideas, and opinions to an audience larger than our voices can reach; Freedom of Assembly is our power to debate and decide in aggregate, and to form ad hoc congresses and committees; Freedom of Petition is our power to grab our elected and appointed watchdogs by the scruff of the neck and scold them when they chew the furniture, piss on the rugs, bark at the moon, or snarl at family, friends and neighbors.

The Second Amendment reserves our power to shoot the damn curs when they go rabid and attack us.

When you consider the First and Second Amendments in this way, attempts by the government to limit or infringe those rights are exposed as attempts of one branch of government to usurp the powers of another. It is as if during the State of the Union address, soldiers equipped with riot gear and rifles stationed themselves around the chamber, while the President announced a list of bills he wanted passed….

In any event, the First and Second Amendments at least protect protect personal rights, and thus cannot be lightly dismissed. Instead, they have been simply redefined, and their original purposes deliberately obscured and forgotten.

The First Amendment has been debased by trivializing and debasing the activities it was meant to protect: Freedom of Religion converted to freedom from morals; Freedom of Speech converted to freedom of cussing; Freedom of Press to freedom of porn; Freedom of Assembly to freedom of riot; Freedom of Petition to freedom of whining.

The attack on the Second Amendment continued the strategy of debasement. First, it was redefined as the freedom to decorate our mantles with antiques, to punch holes in paper from yards away, and to shoot Bambi’s Mom. This last was brilliant, as it converted providing food to cruel sport (something that evil, capitalistic entrepreneurs made possible by turning food into a commodity). That approach was then extended to convert a right of the law-abiding and peaceable to an excuse for the criminal and racist, an excuse which obviously must be abolished. Meanwhile, the right of self defense was dismissed as corrupt bourgeoisie vigilantes oppressing the poor and disenfranchised. There’s also been an attempt to redefine it as the right of the State to protect itself against us, although that “collective” interpretation is beginning to crumble.

In these ways, our competency for self rule has diminished from the fundamental assumption the Constitution was meant to defend, to a fantasy that only the deranged even mention.

In these ways, language meant to protect our right to self-sovereignty has been defanged, defamed, and demolished, making it impossible to even talk about our power to rule ourselves.

In these ways, we have been debased from citizens to mere subjects.

[I really want to go through the Bennett interview line by line; it exemplifies perfectly why the traditional parties and media are so lost.]

Also see:

Right and Left