Archive for the ‘Culture War’ Category

The Current Squatter

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Yeah, so maybe I’ll just put a link redirecting my visitors here to Mike over at Cold Fury until I can find the time to actually do some writing, because, I mean, damn:

Oh for Christ’s sweet sake — and no, that is most assuredly not a reference to our egomaniacal-shitheel Current Squatter:

Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,” Obama said.

A history lesson for the Narcissist In Chief: Mr Obama, The Berlin Wall was brought down by better men than you could ever dream of being. Ronald Reagan was a LEADER, and a great one; you aren’t even fit to stand in the shadow of the truck that carried his jockstrap to the laundry. Ronald Reagan played a very large part in the liberation of millions; everything you do will only serve to enslave and impoverish a formerly free and prosperous people. Reagan’s “Mr Gorbachev, open this gate…Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” will ring like a bell — or a call to arms — in the ears of liberty-loving men and women down through the ages. Your vapid, droning “uhh…umm..ahh…let me be absolutely clear…uhhh…umm…there are those who would have us…uhh..duhhh…drooooolllll…ME! ME! ME!” will be forgotten before you leave the national stage, which glorious day cannot come soon enough.

You refused to go to the wall because you don’t identify in the least with the courage, integrity, and dedication to freedom that liberated those millions from the tyrannical system you espouse, and you don’t consider it a victory, but a defeat. Because for you and your despicable ilk, that’s exactly what it was. You’re far more interested in building more of those walls, right here in America That Was, than you’ll ever be in tearing any of them down. The walls you’re building may not be of brick and mortar; they’re built instead of strangling overregulation, government encroachment, stifling of all dissenting opinion, and the thousand different slimy tentacles of a federal behemoth that has far outgrown its original mandate, its legitimacy, and its claim to the loyalty of its subjects. But they serve the same purpose. The so-called “soft” tyranny you’re perpetrating is still tyranny.

You are a disgrace, a loathsome toad. You are without honor, and without shame. You couldn’t even consider going to a commemoration of a truly historic event that promised you no spurious awards, or ill-gotten gelt for your Chicago cronies.

You are a sorry excuse for a President, a sorry excuse for an American, and a sorry excuse for a man. History will remember you neither kindly nor fondly. And it gives me no small satisfaction to know that of all the insults that could legitimately be hurled at you, that’s the only one that would ever really matter to you.

I just randomly deleted chunks so as not to quote the whole delicious thing.

Damn. Just damn.


And in case you think Mike’s being just a tad harsh, a tad overblown, this from Firehand, the other guy I want writing my blog for me:

But as he heads to Japan,Obama he promised a reporter that he will visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime in his presidency.
Hey, visiting the ceremony of the falling of the Berlin Wall would have been uncomfortable for him; he probably wishes the Soviet Union was still operating and crushing freedom. Whereas if he goes to these cities he can make some references to how mean and nasty the US was to Japan, which would fit right in as a continuation of his Apology Tour.

Obama’s shame for the country he pretends lead has nothing on the shame and disgust many of us feel for him.

“Watch Me Pull a Revelation Out of My Hat”

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Penn Jillette gets yelled at by his idol, and suffers self-doubt.


Headline stolen from Knowledge is Power, which credits American Digest, who comments, “This is a man who takes his role as a “citizen” and not as a “Republican” or “Democrat” seriously.”


I originally saw this over at the Anchoress, but failed to bookmark her. I’ve stumbled across her again, and find her comments on this video wise and worth reading, as I often do. Even though I am, yes, a militant skeptic, and she is a devout Catholic, she manages to show me the parts of her faith that make sense even to me.

Hey Kids! You Too Can Be Mindless Zombies!

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

So much juicy goodness, so little time. ACORN, the HHS, the NEA, the UN, Honduras, the 10th Amendment, AGW, all going bust. Big busts.

But the thing costing me the most stomach lining at the moment is this video:
[Direct link]
This, folks, is blatant political brainwashing of children. This is the cult of personality. This is worship of the man, not respect for the office. I’m uncomfortable with idolizing Presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. FDR gets far too much credit, and did enormous damage. [Wickard v Filburn. FDR, I spit on your "commerce clause", and I spit on you.] I can only shake my head at the canonization of JFK.

But this kowtowing of children — towards a sitting President who is, frankly, doing everything he can to wreck what remains of Constitutional America — this is appalling and sickening.

Lyrics via Cold Fury, one of the many, many anti-socialist blogs reporting this today. I wonder how many minutes it will get on the evening news. How many inches in tomorrow’s paper.

I wonder if the teachers involved will be reprimanded and fired.

Anyway, lyrics of deceit, of enslavement, of culthood:

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

segue to

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say “hooray!”
Hooray Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)

I weep. “Think of the children”, indeed.

[Of course, the perpetrators of this event, in a public school, must be punished for advertising Obama's middle name, which is only ever done in an attempt to smear him as a Muslim. Right?]

And from Firehand at Irons in the Fire [again, one source among many], this from the public school that performed this despicable act:

Dear Burlington Township Families:

Today we became aware of a video that was placed on the internet which has been reported in the media. The video is of a class of students singing a song about President Obama. The activity took place during Black History Month in 2009, which is recognized each February to honor the contributions of African Americans to our country. Our curriculum studies, honors and recognizes those who serve our country. The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized.

If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me or Dr. King, Principal of B. Bernice Young School, directly.

Sincerely,
Dr. Christopher M. Manno,
Superintendent of Schools

To which Firehand comments:

Notice the recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized line; Translation:”You people weren’t supposed to find out about this.”

Another score for the public school system.

Firehand posted a link, but it’s gone now, along with the entire school website. Overwhelmed? Down the memory hole? Who knows?

[updated and expanded with links for the stuff I'm not covering, but think you should be aware of. Scary stuff, all of it, but at least we're pushing back. ]

Why, Sure He Can! He’s The One!

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Via the Sipsey Street Irregulars:
obama4As Mike and many of his commenters say, Islam, Communism, and Nazism are all variants of collectivism. Most peacenik types are inspired by Communist, or at least Socialist, ideology, although many are not aware of that.

So, yeah, absolutely: call him any of those things. You won’t be far wrong.

Updated: If They Can Tell You You Can’t, They Can Tell You You Must

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

I’ve been saying for a long time now that if the government takes the power to stop you from doing something, they also have the power to force you to do that very same thing.

Zombietime now shows how far it goes:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

I’ve been holding back, but I’m saying it now:

Very slowly, the wall of approval shielding Obama during his rise to power (and keeping him in power now) is beginning to crack. People who supported him and voted for him are beginning to realize who he really is. That’s all to the good, and I sincerely hope it’s not too late, although I’m beginning to fear it is. (And, in all honesty, has been since at least the sixties, very likely since the New Deal.)

As someone opposed to Obama from the beginning, as someone who desperately wants people to recognize the monster now sitting in the Oval Office for what he is, I know I should pat the newcomers to my camp on their backs, sympathize with them, let them know they’re welcome here on the barricades.

Not so fast.

I don’t feel sorry for you. I blame you. There is a horrible disaster looming, and it’s your fault.

You are welcome, here on the barricades, because you’re needed. Every single body taken away from Obama is a body fighting to hold back the tide of tyranny.

But understand: You are going to be scolded and ridiculed. It will be a very long time before anyone takes you seriously ever again, before anyone trusts you ever again.

You brought this down on us. Don’t be surprised when you get all the scut jobs and all the suicide charges. Don’t be surprised when the only thing anyone wants to hear out of your mouth is “I’m so sorry.”

My gods, I’m a latecomer on this, and I am far too weak to hold to my own principles. Anybody who takes me seriously is a fool, but please: you don’t have to trust me, but follow the links on my posts and see.


I need to clarify:

This isn’t about voting for a different set of candidates, or even changing your party affiliation. It’s not about tweaking your preferences on public policy. This is about changing your principles. It’s about opposing the very idea of “public policy”, as an unwarranted intrusion into the sovereignty of a free people.

It’s about rejecting almost all of the current accepted wisdom of American political discourse. The very vocabulary is corrupt: right v. left, conservative v. liberal, and of course, Democrat v. Republican. The real spectrum of political discourse is statist versus individualist, and the vocabulary has been hijacked and redefined by the statists. Use their words, lose the argument, and they’ve taken ownership of all the words.

It’s about defiantly, actively, deliberately, not voting for any of the damn bastards. The political class has hijacked the election process, and there’s not much daylight between the two parties any more. They’re not arguing about whether or not they should control your life, only about which aspects of your life they will control. And not much difference even there.

I voted in the last election, for Palin and McCain. My shame in that act of betrayal has been growing apace ever since. When I voted for them, I didn’t vote against Hussein Obama and Idiot Joe, as I intended. I voted to accept the results of the election, and to abide by the policy of whoever won.

I won’t be making that mistake again. For the 2010 election, I plan to burn my voter registration card, and post video on Youtube.

Join me. Burn it down, starting with a little paper rectangle.

And by the way, to old timers like Billy Beck: I am so sorry.

[update 2]: Billy Beck links in (Thank you, sir!), and hammers home exactly what’s being done here:

What I would like you to think about is the assertion of “balance”, and consider the prospect that this man even now views your life — you, yourself — as anything more than an insect to be managed in his own personal laboratory. You can take that bet if you want to.

[He would] “take politics out of science” — from the seat of a “czar”. He has “wasted years” to make up — at bringing America into line with slugs and poofters the world over who have still never produced on the general level that our forebears did. He’s bringing “new regulations” that will prevent scientific advice from being influenced by politics — in a culture of euphemasia: the murder of truth by dissociation of the language from reality. What you’re seeing here is the assumption of science by politics. This is a wholesale expropriation of science by conceptual and linguistic perversion: the disclaimer of politics in a manifestly political arena arrives as a command to ignore the reality of politics as “scientific” motive.

Never before has the essential intellectual dynamo that sustains human life been so comprehensively in the hands of collectivist ideology in America. They have a lot to tear down, these nicely-dressed savages who would dictate the terms and conditions of your life.

And then he asks the killer question:

How can you wait until the next election while they’re doing that?

Honestly? I don’t know what I can do, other than educate myself, talk to folks, rant here, prepare. Burning my draft voter card has symbolic value only, and then only to those who see it. I never believed anything else.

You people thought Bush was “anti-science”. Well, he was, actually. But at least he mostly just tried to block specific lines of inquiry, and did it by withholding federal funding.

Obama, Holden, and the rest of the gang plan to eradicate scientific inquiry, except for a few “authorized” lines, change the words we use to talk about it, punish people who persist on their own and come up with the “wrong” answers. Most of all, though, the changes he is making in society at large will eradicate the wealth needed to fund schools, labs, and industry. It’s all deeply intertwingled. You don’t get to pick just the stuff you want; you have to have it all.

Dammit, I’m too old to go through a depression, to say nothing of a revolution.

“The Last Good Time”

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Lupo-leboucher makes the case that “The Edwardian era was the last era of high civilization”:

Everything we are today dates from the late Edwardian era. That era set the standards for what we have to work with in science, and most forms of useful technology we have now were in place or at least in their infancy in those days. European literature reached its heights then. The world was fully explored and mapped by then. In short, the Edwardian era defines us. It was the apex of European civilization in the same sense that the era of Pericles was the apex of Ancient Greek civilization. Anything you can’t trace to that era is almost certainly barbarism. Nothing important that wasn’t an obvious downfall has happened since then.

Edwardian manners and social custom were also a sort of peak of civilization. Now people are practically required to discuss their bodily functions, their emotional static, their insipid political beliefs, their sexual immorality, their petty swindles and all kinds of other disgusting personal facts no Edwardian would dream of boring you with. Edwardians understood that good manners consist of not embarrassing anyone else around them, and they would talk of sport, the weather, or some amusing joke. A man would doff his hat to a lady, and a lady would act like a lady, rather than a “feeble hybrid manikin dwarf, with all the defects and none of the strength of the male.”

The Edwardians were held up as figures of ridicule by 1960s reprobates. The Beatles entire aesthetic schtique was based on this. It’s because the Edwardians were everything the hippies were not; they were civilized, productive, refined, creative people who made beautiful things. If we are ever to progress as a society; that is the direction we must go on. It’s not going to be towards more sexual freedom; that has been an unmitigated disaster for everyone but those who cater to the consumer fetishes which “sexual freedom” has brought about. Progress will be in the direction of more restraint. Progress won’t be done by flabbby slobs in proletarian sneakers and t-shirts. It will be done by steely eyed men in elegant starched collared suits. Progress will not be in a direction towards ever more obscure and decadent musical styles. It will be towards courtly waltzes and classical operas. Of course, this all sounds ridiculous, not because what I am saying is false, but because we live in a time of decline where this will be as impossible as bringing the mighty spirit of a Republican Roman like Mucius Scaevola into the degenerate time of Diocletian.

There’s a lot more; read the whole thing.

I don’t agree with every word; I think the casually-dismissed Internet will indeed have an impact on our society every bit as deep as the internal combustion engine, although certainly, an Edwardian sense of manners would make it much more palatable.

Boucher also mentions the Great War as breaking the dam, and I think he’s right on that point. However, I believe the underlying issue of the twentieth century was the downfall of the idea of a small, hereditary, ruling noble class. Unfortunately, what came out of the rubble was the idea that everyone should be common, which is the rotten core of socialism. My generation, the hippie generation, is at fault for bringing that about, and we boomers will be rightly excoriated for that in the history books.

Instead, what Boucher seems to be advocating is that every one should be noble. That was the great promise of the abundance brought about by the rise of twentieth century technology. I hope it’s not too late.


Ooh, this guy goes on my daily read list. Check out “The Most Important Article On Psychiatry You Will Ever Read“. It’s a fascination introduction to the way psychoactive drugs actually work, and it contains this piece of deliciously snarky wisdom:

One of the central themes of the postmodern critique of our values is that aesthetics must trump truth as long as aesthetics remains undefined. That’s the semiotic conundrum, why psychiatry is politics: the truth is demanded only when it supports a preset ideology.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Nothing. Let’s move on.

Herding Sheep

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Eric S. Raymond, hacker extraordinaire and author of the essential essay “Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun”, kicks the anti-gun movement right in the nuts:

Occasionally people will show up on the channel looking for project-related help. Some of them become semi-regulars on the channel because they’re often working technical problems for which the project is part of the solution. One of these guys hopped on the channel last night while we happened to be in the middle of a firearms digression, listened for a bit, and then started to spout.

“Why do you guys think you need firearms?” “Criminals will just take them from you and use them against you.” “They’re useless for anything but killing.” “You can’t seriously think they’re a deterrent against overreaching governments, the cops will just come for you you first.” And on and on and on, the same factually and historically ignorant babble civilian firearms owners are wearily used to hearing – as if civilian firearms had not been culturally and politically decisive in hundreds of struggles for freedom, from the American Revolution clear down to short-stopping Communist counter-coups in Russia and the Baltic States as recently as the 1990s.

I listened to the others on the channel offer polite, reasoned, factually correct counterarguments to this guy, and get nowhere. And suddenly…suddenly, I understood why. It was because the beliefs the ignoramus was spouting were only surface structure; refuting them one-by-one could do no good without directly confronting the substructure, the emotional underpinnings that made ignoramus unable to consider or evaluate counter-evidence.

The need, here, was to undermine that substructure. And I saw the way to do it. This is what I said:

“You speak, but I hear only the bleating of a sheep. Your fear gives power to your enemies.”

Ignoramus typed another sentence of historical ignorance. My reply was “Baa! Baa! Baaaaa!”

And another. My reply was more sheep noises, more deliberate mockery. And you know what? A few rounds of this actually worked. Ignoramus protested that he wasn’t a sheep. At which point I asked him “Then why are you disarmed?”

*CRACK*

The conversation afterwards was completely different, and ended up with ignoramus speculating about meeting with one of our regulars in his area to do things with firearms.

This needs to go around, and go around fast.

One of the most frustrating things about this argument is that we Second Amendment folk have won. We’re right, and the gun grabbers are hopelessly wrong, wrong, wrong. See my discussion of Raymond’s last important post on this point, “A Brief History of Firearms Policy Fraud“.

It doesn’t work, though, because most disarmament advocates didn’t arrive at their position by reviewing the facts. Instead, as one of ESR’s commenters put it, they “desire to prove they’re a good member of their political ‘tribe.’ So they’re going to stick with the approved stand and toss talking points at me to protect their identity and social connections. Actual content is irrelevant.”

Square Day

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Today is the anniversary of a classic act of defiance.

tiananmen

Sipsey Street Irregular, Mike Vanderboegh, recalls a much more successful, and much more hopeful, time of defiance in China:

The swarming activity, the intensity of life and work that kept busy half a million villages such as this one in the enormous territory of China, were the very force that the Japanese were powerless to annihilate or conquer. The Nipponese had succeeded, in the last few years, in pushing their way along roads and railroads, along the rivers. They had seized important towns. But the innumerable rural communities had remained out of their reach — even in the occupied area. They could not possibly take them all, subdue them all. Behind the enemy lines, in huge vacuums left between the scattered Japanese battalions, comparitively free villages continued to strive for survival: they provided a basis of operations for guerrilla warfare and were the backbone of China’s resistance. It was because the peasants had not submitted to the invaders and had stubbornly kept their hearts in the war that Japan, in spite of her overwhelming superiority in weapons, had been unable to bring the “Chinese Incident” to a victorious conclusion.
– Eve Curie, Journey Among Warriors, 1943, p. 366.

He thinks, and I hope, that a similar day of reckoning will happen right here in the U.S.:

The United States of America comprises 3.79 million square miles or 9.83 million kilometers. In that immense space are upwards of 306 million people. We are the third largest country in the world by land area and by population.

There are also, in that immense living space and formidable population something on the order of 250 million firearms in private hands.

Clausewitz wrote that in military affairs, “quantity has a quality all its own.”

Now do you understand the would-be American tyrant’s insoluble conundrum?

Now do you begin to grasp the military problem of subduing that many people, spread out over that many square miles, with that many firearms?

And most importantly, now do you begin to understand your inherent power? Do you begin to realize how silly it is to worry about the federal government’s perceived power and your own perceived weakness?

And yet, within fifty years, within the lifetime of many who fought the Japanese, the above confrontation took place.

As I said in comments:

This would make me feel a lot better if Mao hadn’t then succeeded in doing as bad or worse to China than Japan would have.

Your argument is a good one when it comes to foreign invasions. However, when the people themselves dismiss all opposition as wild-eyed racism, when they attack self-defense as uncivilized violence, when they deride simple decency as religious fanaticism, when they not only cheer the bully on but declare a would be dictator as their savior, all bets are off.

When, to fit the day, a man faces down a line of tanks in the city square, and the crowd angrily throws him aside because he is blocking the parade…

…Then, there will indeed be blood, one way or another.

I believe the three percenters will be enough. I hope so. I see signs that far more than three percent are waking up, and beginning to see the threat.

Please, that enough of them wake up in time.

I hope Mike, who has looked more closely, and more harshly, than I at the chances for an American resistance, answers me. I hope he refutes me, trounces me, proves me utterly and irrevocably wrong.

Oh, Happy Day!

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Drew M. at Ace of Spades writes, “A day to reflect upon debts we can never repay.”

In comments, I responded:

“Debts we can never repay”? Of course we can repay them — by catching the torch as it is thrown to us, by exercising and enjoying our liberty, by killing and dying in our turn, as necessary, and passing the torch on when we fall. It seems like such small things we do, typing on our blogs, arguing around the barbecue, cleaning the damn gun after a visit to the range — and yet, that is exactly what they died for. It is the nature of liberty that every man’s share is tiny, yet every grain is worth the man, and the liberty of all men together is infinitely worth whatever we must give.

Happy Memorial Day.

Go to Ace’s and watch the video there on those who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Trivia: The last Tomb is for Korea.

My understanding is that there have been no subsequent Tombs because all the Fallen have been identified.


Links to those who say it well today:
Ambulance Driver:

When the smoke from the grill blows into your eyes, try to imagine the terror of the young pilot as the smoke fills the cockpit of his F4 Wildcat, spiraling into the sea off Guadalcanal.

If you’re traveling today, think of the passengers of United Flight 93, for in a field outside Shanksville they became the first soldiers in our war on terror.

Strategy Page:

104,366 Reasons the U.S. Never Need Apologize to Europe

In alphabetical order U.S. Military European Cemeteries….

With photographs. I ask you, please: is there any other nation with so many military cemeteries in so many countries, placed in gratitude by the hosts, and not imposed by the invaders?

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs hosts these pictures, along with some thought-provoking captions, on an article concerning President O’s trip to Dresden, very likely to apologize for how mean we were to the Germans in last century’s unpleasantness. Instead, suggests Ms. Geller, “Europe owes us an apology for squandering our blood and treasure on a morally bankrupt transnational gobbledy goop EU wallowing in pathetic collectivism.”

Rescuing Providence links to They Have Names.

Insty links to Memorial Day History.

David Codrea of The War on Guns dedicates his Gun Rights Examiner column today to a dirty uniform.

The Name In The Stone. Go. Read.
Via House of Eratosthenes, one in a list of terrific links.

Music for the day: “Ashokan Farewell“. This video uses it as the background to the reading, on Ken Burns’ Civil War miniseries, of Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife, Sarah, written a week prior to his death at Bull Run.

“Sarah, do not mourn me gone.”


Google has once again failed to modify their logo to mark the day, as they do with every other conceivable celebration, but this year they have placed a tiny yellow ribbon beneath their search field. No good, Google. The whole yellow ribbon movement pretends to mourn the fallen to declare the fight not worth the prize. They think “support the troops” means “surrender and bring them home so they can be charged with war crimes”.

In contrast, here’s Ask.com’s home page:
ask-poppies-w500Note the “Why do we celebrate Memorial Day?” link.

On the origins of the yellow ribbon:

The “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” was from a corny 1973 pop song by Tony Orlando about a convict whose done his time and is coming home. Rather than bust into his old girlfriend’s home saying “I’m out bitch, get in the bedroom”, the song asks her to “Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Old Oak Tree, if you still want me”

I will honor no horny convicts today with yellow ribbons. The poppy is the proper symbol.

Today I celebrate in all due solemnity those who have fallen in defense of my liberty.

Pharyngula whines about chaplains. Any day but today, sir.

Handcuffed for Playing with Toys

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

The normally very amusing website FML carried this entry today:

Today, I went to a dollar store with a couple friends to buy cap guns to play with. We were having a lot of fun with them, and took them onto a bus. 5 minutes later, three cops got on, handcuffed us, and sternly talked to us about the dangers of guns. We got arrested for toy guns. We are 17. FML

As I write, the voting is going against the poster, 11,668 votes for “You deserved that one” versus 3,467 “Yes, your life is F*ed”.

I responded there:

I’m assuming that, absent the toys, the level of rowdiness involved would have deserved no more than the driver shouting, “Hey! Settle down back there!”, and that if he did, you obeyed the order. Horseplay on buses is quite properly frowned on; it’s very annoying and often unsafe.)

So, assuming that it was the toys that triggered the police action:

Yes, you are f’d.

So are we all.

If there’s no law against doing something, you shouldn’t be arrested for doing it. (And yes, if you are in handcuffs, or otherwise not free to leave, you are under arrest for many legal purposes.) No, just “freaking people out” is not a criminal offense, because there is no way to predict what will freak people out.

I’m sure the cops knew these were toys, not guns, because a cap gun bought from a dollar store will be brightly colored and obviously not a gun. Unfortunately, all too many cops believe that they ought to be the Only Ones With The Guns, and that not having a badge automatically makes you a suspect, and that suspects ought not to possess or carry even toy guns.

I completely believe this story, because I read so many like it, all the time. For instance, there’s a whole sub-genre of incidents just involving students, from grade school to high school, being suspended, expelled, even arrested, charged, and convicted, for violating school anti-violence policies, by doing such things as wearing pro-second amendment t-shirts, bringing a paring knife to cut an onion as part of a demonstration, having a tiny gun-shaped charm on a key ring, pointing a chicken finger at another student in the cafeteria and saying “Bang! Bang!”, or, so help me, drawing a picture of a gun as part of an in-class assignment. (And do I really need to point out that many of these are First Amendment violations as well?)

Then there’s the school that changed its mascot, because the front-hall mural showed a Minuteman carrying a rifle….

Moving from toys to real guns, there are many, many instances of people getting arrested and charged for open carry in jurisdictions that explicitly permit open carry. Often the charge is “disorderly conduct”, in response to some sheep calling 911 in a panic because he sees a citizen peaceably going about her lawful business with a Constitutionally-protected tool secured to her belt. (Pop quiz: Name the only other class of tools explicitly protected by the Constitution. Hint: it also involves little slugs of lead, a.k.a., “movable type”.)

In 2005, the Texas Legislature amended a state gun control law to make it clear that unlicensed concealed carry in one’s car was specifically permitted. Here in Houston, Harris County DA Rosenthal responded by saying, essentially, “I don’t like it and will prosecute citizens following the law.” (Incidentally, the original law against carrying a firearm, openly or concealed, like many gun control laws, was a Jim Crow measure specifically intended to disarm uppity blacks, and was never meant to apply to white folk.)

This is not a run of the mill FML; this is blatant, grossly unconstitutional oppression.

arrestedgun, I’ve posted this at my website; if you would like expand on your story, particularly if you have documentation, such as a written warning, please leave a comment here or there.

Oh, look, here’s a story from another comment about some kids who were arrested while making a movie using toy guns with the orange tip colored black.