Go read it here.

That said, I find it sad to see one more nail put into the coffin of the American Experiment.  When Obama signs-off on Section 1021 (was 1031) of the NDAA, indefinite military detention of citizens will be enshrined in law.  The experiment has failed; but I have no schadenfreude for it.  No, in fact I’m angry – not simply because the sight of a once beautiful slut hitting the wall is a pointless and tragic waste – I’m angry because this Shredding of the Fifth Ammendmant is Stupidly Reckless and Evil.

Which may sound strange coming from someone who has openly stated his disbelief in the sacredness of Human Rights… and that’s exactly why I’m going to talk about it.  Because my stance is a bit more subtle than “Benjamin Franklin is spinning in his grave.”

When it comes to Human Rights (the Classical Liberal ones, not our modern UN claptrap), I just don’t buy into the belief that there’s anything special about them.  They are not written down on stone tablets; they are not a fundamental particle of nature; and for that matter, they’re not black and white.  It’s possible to have some freedom of speech, without having perfect freedom of speech.

Hell, human rights were never absolute, despite the poetic paens – as soon as that 200-year-old Bill was drafted, every single article was immediately whittled down to a reasonable level.  Fire in the Movie Theatre and all that.

But just because I don’t think they’re sancrosanct, doesn’t mean I’m against them – I love living in a Free Country.  When you’re part of the Alt-Tight, you’re not allowed to hate freedom of speech – it’s the only thing keeping us out of prison.  Freedom against sodomy laws?  Sign me up!  No, I loves-me some freedom of conscience, speech, association, and property.  In fact, in most of these cases I don’t think we have enough.

However, as a Civilized Man I must look beyond my own benefits; my pleasure is not an argument for legislation – Welfare Bums vote Liberal, because the left keeps them on the pogey, and they don’t care about anybody else.  We are better than that.  My support of the Fifth Ammendment – as well as the others – comes from a place of Reason.

Namely: you cannot have a stable society if you cannot predict the rules.

Any system of justice which is Consistent and Explicit is a good one – Don’t Do What Johnny Don’t Does – it’s easy to figure out, ergo I can live my life while avoiding The Fuzz.  If the system also has an accurate understanding of human nature, then that’s just a Bonus.

I mentioned freedom of speech and the Alt-Right earlier; I was half joking.  From what I can gather, this blog is arguably illegal in My Homeland – the key word being arguably.  As things stand in our Western Democracies, any spoken word beyond weather-related inanities is arguably illegal.  The right person just has to be offended.  And then it’s legality remains in question until an argument occurs.

Sex – there’s another one.  Where is the line between Consent and Rape?  Once upon a time we knew.  Now it’s a question of feeeelings.  Divorce?  Property?  Environmental – Trades & Tariffs?  Each one has been getting progressively more obscure.  It’s hard to tell if one is Obeying the Law anymore.

But this Fifth Ammendment shredding?  Now we’re truly in cuckoo land.

It is now possible to wind up in prison – indefinitely – merely because of an accusation (only available in the United States, coming to a Democracy near you soon!).  There is no way to prevent a false accusation – keeping your nose clean won’t do a damned thing.  We’re all of us, driving down the highway with a B.A.C of 0.11, one set of blinking cherries away from jail.

How can we possibly have a prosperous society under these conditions?  Already, entrepreneurs are afraid to invest in their businesses because of the jerking-about which the politicians are doing to the economy.  Now it’s not even safe to walk to work.

“We’ll only use it against terrorists.”

Ich bin ein Criminal – and don’t you forget it.

***

There’s one other aspect to this whole thing which is quite interesting; I heard it from commenter on another blog, (forget where) but I don’t think he realized the potential salvation in it.

Namely: the US government may have just given their stamp of approval to a military coup.  Some people are already petitioning for the Generals to do exactly this – pointing out that their Oath is to the Constitution (just as mine was to the Queen), and not the dog fuckers who are shredding it.

Whether this is a good thing or not really depends on what you think of the American military.

I can tell you that the Canadian Forces are full of good people; the only problem with Our Army is the elected representatives running it.  As I recall, Gen Rick Hillier (a Great Canadian if there ever was one) quit shortly after I did, silently, without explanation or fanfare.  I suspect his reasons mirrored my own – he got fed up with the political bullshit.

But when it comes to the Americans, I wonder… there’s too many damned generals in that country, and they seem downright eager to develop Terminator Technology for use against farmers (and not just in Iraq).  There’s a lot of money at the top, and some very close ties to the Military-Industrial Complex.  I wonder…

But then again, it would be hard to screw up worse than Obama; and Starship Troopers is recommended reading on Marine bases…

I’m sure it will turn out for the best.

EDIT: Just ran into this video courtesy of Captain Capitalism linking to Complementarian Loners.  Tell me that this guy won’t be down with the military taking over.

The other night I found myself in the ignomious position of driving to my mother’s house to do laundry, like some sort of Univsersity student.  Not because I’m broke, mind you – though I am – I’d simply lost the damn card required in this era of Electronic Money and the Number of the Beast.  Coin-op washing machines are a faint and precious memory…

So while I was crusing along one of Calgary’s main-drags, tailgaiting an $80 000 minivan which refused to exceeded the speed limit, I Swear to Odin that the following stories came on the hourly news:

A Jewish/Muslim Alliance is protesting anti-bullying legislation which informs School Children that there are, in fact, six genders. Good Lord, I thought – wasn’t this the premise of a Heinleinian Dystopian Novel?

Next on, it seems that Helmets will now be necessary for skiing in Nova Scotia – a Province utterly free of Mountainous Regions.

Thirdly – if you drive through a CheckStop here in Calgary, and blow a 0.05 – which is below the legal limit of 0.08 – your car can be impounded for up to a month, without recourse, though you will not be arrested.

Fourthly – an MP was arrested that night for refusing a breathalyzer after having a glass of wine with dinner.

Every single time I turn on the news, without fail, it gets More and More Bizarre.  And it’s getting Bizarre at a Faster Rate.

It’s getting to the point where I’m not even angry over it anymore; nowadays I Laugh in Despair.  Truly, I am a Mad Man living in a Mad World!

And yet, in my current line of work, I’m constantly in touch with The Common Man – or at least, the common man who is also a small-business entrepreneur.  A nowhere do I see this constant insanity which seems to pervade, according to The Media.

A fellow Canadian Blogger pointed out some time back that 49% of the Canadian Population believes that we have too much immigration; a proposition which is so incredibly obvious that I once convinced a Mexican Immigrant of the Truth! of this statement, after only minutes of conversation (for the record, she was a Medical Doctor, not a Landscaper; Mexicans only landscape in places without winter) – but every political party wants to increase immigration, and your average Joe is ashamed of his Racism for being against it.

Your average blue-collar, white-collar, politically-bored and hard-working man I meet on a day-to-day basis is just as Sane as this Mexican Elite – no crazy at all!  Not a single one is as Pathologic as the nonsense reported by the Merchants of Mendacity.  What is it then, a trick?  A myth?  Normal People are Everywhere!

…at least, they are for 8 weeks.  That’s roughly the gestation cycle of The Worm.

It seems that folks will only talk sensible about what’s going on at any particular Time and Date.  Give it a few weeks, and they’ll say what the Talking Heads said; a few weeks and they’re buying it hook, line, and Stinker.

Let’s go back – waaaay back – and think about the smoking bylaws for a moment (a constant thorn in my side).  Back in the day, there were a lot of people against these things – even if they didn’t understand Private Property or other such Civilized Principles that our High School Teachers ‘forgot’ to mention…  Even years after those laws got passed, I could still talk to folks about the Insanity Of It All; and roughly 70% of the time the Signal Went Through.

Nowadays?  Bars have Always been non-smoking.  We’ve Always been At War with Islam.  That’s Just The Way Things Are.  You don’t want to go back to Monarchy, do you?  Democracy is the Wave of the Future.

Way back then, back when I was a civilian, back when the world was at peace, back when the sixties weren’t being re-enacted (this time Dirtier and More Destructive!), I used to have some Hope that the smoking bylaw would change; that me, the owner, and the other two dudes wouldn’t all have to step outside together to spark a dart, leaving his bar empty….  Surely this madness cannot last? I would say with a half-cocked grin.

It’s been 8 years.  And it’s getting worse.

Surely, we are living in the Cyberpunk Dystopia.  William Gibson is spinning atop his grave.

It’s lesser form, “I’m just doing my job,” brings to mind the incompetent half-ass; the man at the printing store who delivers $500 worth of stationary to you, with an obvious typo in the title – a typo you missed as you wrote the order in haste – which he didn’t think worthy of a telephone call to verify.*

For any Man of Red Blood, no explanation of the Nuremburg Defense is necessary: Right is Right, and Wrong is Wrong.  The very pathways of our souls are ordered along these lines.  Debates, perhaps, when the situation is particularly nuanced – but there exists a common sense as to what Justice means, as well as an acknowledgement that it is a social construct, existing objectively, outside of us; that it is not something subjective, ammenable to our whims and fancy.  There’s no need to write down what everybody knows.

But because we are Men, we have codified it explicitly.  The Canadian Forces Code of Conduct says:

…every member of the CF [Canadian Forces] has an obligation to disobey a manifestly unlawful order regardless of rank or position.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, if your CO commands you to execute a disabled enemy soldier, it is your duty to turn around and train your rifle on him.

Yet another document emphasizes just how serious Ethics are to a True Military Man:

QTC: You are an ambulance driver. Your military ambulance is clearly marked with the Red Cross. You are about to return to the front to pick up more wounded. A senior NCO approaches you and orders you to open up the ambulance so that he can load ammunition into it. You tell him that such action is illegal. The act of transporting the ammunition in the ambulance is illegal under the Law of Armed Conflict. True or false?

A: True. The use of a vehicle marked with a Red Cross for a military purpose is perfidy. Therefore, it is illegal to transport ammunition in an ambulance.

Now, I can’t say I’m a fan of the Law of Armed Conflict – it reeks of Univesalism, and the rampant Leftism of the UN.  There’s a callow vegetarianism to the whole thing, with an authorship coming out of the well-fed classes.  It lacks an understanding of aggression, violence, or the implications of total war, and yet…

And yet the soul of the document is bold statement, shouted out at the great unwashed masses of the world: “We are Civilized Men; we are Men of our Word.  We shall grant quarter to a defeated enemy, and respect the courage with which he fought.  We disdain the use of torture, indignity, and the savagery of chemical/biological weapons.  Violence is instrumental – not a principle.  We reject your Big Man State.  We shall fight you, and grind you into the earth… but we shall fight with Honour.”

This has been a principle I’ve lived my life by, in spite of Doctor Milgram; I always figured that the 65% who failed at morality were the cattle living in the suburbs, the doughy soy-bean people, the group which cops and criminals alike refer to as ‘citizens’ (not to be mistaken for Heinlein’s gun toting, meat eating, spaceship building, family raising Citizen).  I understood the world to be a place where the majority of Armed Men carried the Authority of the Karateka in their heart.

At least, that’s what I believed until a year ago; as I made my way through the distended bowels of that gluttinous beast known as the ‘Justice System’ I saw first hand the divergence of values between the militar,y and the government as a whole.

“Listen-” said the Probation Officer, after I pointed out, not just the cruelties and indignities, but the outright material harm she was subjecting an Innocent Man to; “I’m just doing my job.  We’ve all got a job to do.  I could have you put back in prison, right now, to await trial.  Is that what you want?”

Reading this article on The Spearhead got me thinking, again, on all of this; on just how Low and Contemptuous is the character of the modern Cop, Prison Guard, Prosecutor, Probation Officer, and Bureuacrat.

Events such as this – all too common nowadays – bring up discussions about the “militirization of the police force” – and in one sense, that discussion is bang on.  SWAT Teams have become paramilitary death squads, using weapons and tactics similar to what you’d find in Afghanistan.**  But there’s one important difference.

Before a Civilized Army attacks you, they declare war.  They are clear about their intentions; they are clear about their behaviour; they are clear about what led to the conflict.  And when they lock you in a POW camp, make no mistake – you are still resisting. You may have acquiesced for the time being, but you are still their enemy.  They know this; you know this.  And yet, chances are, you will be better treated than any two-bit crook locked up by the government which claims to represent him.

The acutal military at least has the civility to Declare War before grinding you under the heel of their boot; our Modern Police State bellows “We are your Friend!” whilst tasering you for no reason at all.

The concept of Right and Wrong as Abstract Ideals has flown out the window long ago; we’re back to the scoiety of the Big Man.  The legal system has grown capricious, schizophrenic; Right has become a question of Might – be it from the barrel of the gun, or from back-room politics.  Might makes Right, and Lies rule the day.  You show me a corrupt cop getting fired, and I’ll show you a bigger, stronger, better connected Media Conglomerate who took issue because the Innocent Victim had a sympathetic nature – a Media Conglomerate who turned a blind eye to the past hundred victims; members of the Unfavoured Class who wound up “bleeding from the forehead” as the cops like to say.

The book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (review) is a compendium of Legal Insanity.  Its eponomy based on the fact that – yes – thanks to excess legalislating, we all commit three indictable offenses per day, but it gets worse: most of these crimes lack the element of mens rea.  In other words, you don’t have to have evil intent, and your ignorance is no excuse (a premise which only makes sense when the laws are sensible).  Just piss off the wrong cop and you will find out, first-hand, what a Horror prison is to the Free Man.

So if I could offer one piece of advice to any of you Good Folk out there, it would be this: never leave your house without some cash in hand, your phone in your pocket, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

You never know who’s going to be taken next.

* The inverse of the lesser form is LFCA TC Meaford motto: “Never pass a fault.” If you see something that’s all fucked up – you stop and fix it.

** I lie, there are two important differences: the second being that SWAT Teams are utterly incapable of dealing with a trained, alert, and determined Man of Violence.  Their tactics – the cowards! – assume docility in the target.  Anything more dangerous than a gangbanger with his blat-blat is utterly beyond them.

Two big stories bouncing around the Interwebs; the first, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is the Occupation of Wallstreet.  The streets are swarming in New York, police are beating down White Women (and the police state is finally noticed), there are allegedly similar events happening in other cities, and…

…the Press isn’t reporting on it.

Or so I hear at least; my television serves the roll of Ceremonial Fireplace, and I still haven’t bought one of those digital-whatzit-boxes which I apparently now need, so I’m going by word of mouth on this one.  If word of mouth can be believed, then it is a far more trustworthy source than actual journalists; that Other Wiki would certainly seem to bear this concept out.

The Event is certainly not the protests themselves – they’re interesting, in a way, like the Tea Partiers who are nearly as willing to dump on Bush as on the Golden Child – they suggest a sort-of nascent awareness by the masses that they’ve been sold out (though undoubtedly they think the sale happened sometime this century).  But ultimately they’re a waste of time, they’ll change nothing, and the people reporting on them are already aware of what’s going on.

Sad to say, but it’s not big events that change the course of history – it’s a combination of latent, uncontrollable forces, and the stupid, insignificant spats which trigger the shift.  If you have any sense you’ll stay away from these crowds, and study the forces at play.  We don’t know where it’ll happen, or when – I suppose it *might* happen when a squad of Noble Policemen open up on the protesters with live rounds – but it’s going to happen, we aren’t going to trigger it, and you might as well keep your head down, well before the bullets start flying.

The world’s shit; wear a hat.

No, the protests themselves aren’t the event – the lack of reporting on it is.  Now it’s hard to say how unique this is – as a student of History, I am constantly running into the quandary of trying interpret a story which was written by the victors – but Kent State would seem to suggest that there used to be some level of integrity in our Bardic Caste.

I think it’s safe to say that the those days are gone.

The second story is the one from Mexico.  You know the one.  All those dead bodies you keep hearing about?  Laid out like a Christmas Turducken?

Yeah, well, that’s because of this bullshit war on drugs…

No

But they’re all Colombian Cartel murders, aren’t they?  That’s what I saw on Breaking Bad.

Yes, the murderers are from the drug cartels – but the real question is who the victims are.  The first ping on my radar happened when I heard half of them were female.  Then it all fell into place:

They aren’t drug runners – they’re social media bloggers.

You see, the journalistic class in Mexico is so terrified of the Cartels, that they refuse to report on it (and who can blame them?  At least their motives are Human, unlike our own University-fed Bastards).  The Common People of Mexico, then, in need of some sort of forewarning when there’s an hour-long gun fight at the local mall, have turned to Facebook and Twitter for their news – and it is the Citizen Blogger, posting of these dangers, who is being beheaded, be-armed, and be-gutted by the Cartels, left dangling atop overpasses as a warning to others.

I salute all of you Honest Souls with the cojones to pull this off; male and female alike.

The era of Internet blogging is here, with all of its inherent pitfalls – Egypt was just a test-case, little more than your typical revolutionary cell-structure powered by the Interenet.  Iran could have been either, I’m not certain that Revolution made so much of a difference.

Besides, both were Autocratic regimes – you don’t expect Free Press there.

What we have now is the utter Failure of our Free Press to report; not just twisting due to ideological biases, but outright saying that black is white.

Enter the Blogger – and this is going to cause lots of problems.  I know this; I am a Writer, after all, and Writers are deeply dishonest people.  You’ll notice I didn’t cite any facts in this post? (“Facts, what facts?  If the media, the arbiter of facts, is demonstrably shown to not report facts, than do we really have such ideological Strong Points, or are all our houses built on sand?”) If you pay close attention to my writing, you’ll see that I write nothing but the Truth – but only in the most Dishonest way possible (must maintain my Integrity, after all).

Rumours are going to start spreading like wildfire – they already are, particularly in the Economic arena – and we will no longer have that institutional guarantee of authenticity we once relied upon.  Those who still read newspapers, and expect your sources to be cited are naive at best, and fools at worst.

Shit, it’s almost like going back to the Paleolithic.  Interesting times, isn’t it?

Anyone else wanting a “Pro Choice, Legalization, Gay Marriage, Scientific, Net Neutrality, Atheist” politician?

Hah! I’ll bet you know twenty of these guys. Which isn’t to say that I disagree with him – far from it. I just think he’s wrong.

However, this does provide the perfect opportunity to dispense a few Red Pills (more like Nerd candies, than Horse Pills), without having to summon up the Spectre of Feminism (I’ve grown temporarily bored with the whole topic, and besides, it’ll all be done with by end of decade).  So let’s break his hopes down, one by one, until nothing but sand remains.

Abortion

Now before I get started on this, could I address my fellow bloggers about this?  You’re listening?  Okay, here’s my request – please stop talking about the morality of abortion! You don’t have anything new to say.  I don’t have anything new to say.  Wiser heads than ours have Debated this topic, and if I’m curious I’ll find the arguments.  Quite frankly, 95% of our opinion is due to squick factor, not reason, and if I visit you to read about economics I don’t want to read about dead babies all of a sudden.

The implications of abortion – discuss those, certainly!  But please, please, please – stay away from the morality of it.  Either I already agree with you or I just don’t care.  It’s in Poor Taste.

*Ahem*

I find it amusing that our Idealistic Indoctrinate brings this up as one of the Six Points.  Correct me if I’m wrong… but has there been a Pro Choice candidate in the past thirty years?  That ship has sailed, and if there’s one thing the history of Conservatism ought to have taught us, it’s that things don’t get less Liberal over time.  Oh, some of ‘em’ll talk about it, sure – when the Religious Right gets tired of the Reps and switches to the Dems, they’ll talk about it too – but noone’s going to do anything about it.

Cancel government funding to Planned Parenthood?  Maybe.  But they’ll make it up elsewhere, and Roe vs Wade will never be overturned.

So why does he bring it up?

Look!  There’s a culture war!  Doesn’t matter if we’re trouncing them, they’re so EVIL that they want to take away a woman’s right to choose!  Pick up your arms, brothers!

Heh, nothing like sincere hatred.

Legalization

Take it on faith, brothers – this one isn’t going to happen.

The past three Presidents (at least) have been for using - but legalization is the furthest thing from their mind.  Decriminalization for the Green One, maybe, but never legalization.

Quite simply – drug laws turn the majority of us into Criminal Scum, and they couldn’t be happier with that.  Why do you think MADD is so eager to effectively criminalize alcohol, even when it increases Drunk Driving Deaths?  Because it ain’t about fairness, or justice, or freedom, or utlitarianism – it’s about control.

Stupid People get caught using drugs – and prison guards need jobs.  The only hope for legalization, is if they realize what a great opiate weed is for the unemployed and revolutionary.

Gay Marriage

Go ahead and get married; marry your dog for all I fucking care.  My question for the Simple Scholar is – why do you care?

Spousal insurance rights?  Deathbed decisions?  Okay, I’ll grant you those – though I question why it’s so important that the Government get involved here – but weren’t the Conservatives (those evil, fag hating Conservatives) proposing something called Civil Union?  What’s the difference, exactly?  Why do you care so much about it? Gays have so many rights that they have a parade each year.  They can call it a Marriage, the bureaucrats can call it a Union.  Potato Po-tah-to.

The cons are upset because they think marriage ought to perform the socially function of spreading the pussy around, so that all the Betas get laid, and work hard at their mind-numbing job.  You?  You’re equating this to Human Rights, or something…

Welcome to the 21st century: weird sex is Officially Licensed, drunk sex is an Assault.

Scientific

Funny thing, that Science – officially it’s a method, a process, a routine you apply when you want to figure out why your car won’t start.  But our Enlightened Aristocrat seems to think it’s a Book of Knowledge.

On the one hand, you have Quantum Mechanics, Genetics, Evolution, and even Galileo’s Laws of Motion (created despite government) – on the other, you have Psychology and Global Warming (the ones who’re funded by government).  Hmm – how about we start studying genetics and pre-labelling people for criminality, just so we have a trifecta?

Imagine the beauty of a government which chose to leave science alone all together.  Separation of Church and State didn’t go far enough, if you ask me.

Net Neutrality

So – instead of having greedy Telcos selling their services to us as if it were a cellphone (and throttling free riders like Netflix), you’d rather have a joint task force from the CIA, FBI, and FCC monitoring things?  Here in Canada, it’d be CSIS and the CRTC – and those bastards banned Ren and Stimpy, for Christ’s sake!

Atheist

My friend, they’re all Atheists – the sort who attend church.  I’m afraid they’re much closer to Pol Pot in their views, however, than they are to this fine bunch of Rationalists.

Conclusion

Hmm… I’m smelling a troll.  After considering your Six Points, I suspect you were describing Barack Obama.

But then, Doublethink really is the perfect troll, isn’t it?  Perhaps you’re just a Naive Neophyte after all.  One for the History Books indeed.

At first I kept myself amused by playing with any of the equipment I could get my hands on, and then by casing the security systems and examining the door locks, but the security guards – complete with tazers, handcuffs, and multitools (they were far better equipped than the old men you see guarding our military bases; the closest thing they have to a weapon is a radar gun) were quick to notice a Free Man standing in their midst, and ordered me to head across the street to the bar, where my drinks were served by a young Asian girl in a bikini.

The whole experience was jarring, particularly in a place called an ‘Emergency Room’. Several other customers – I mean, members of the proletariat – decided they’d waited long enough and left, one whose progressive alcoholism had resulted in a seizure, and another who was complaining about a swollen appendix – presumably of the opinion that either A) once their case worsened the ambulance would give them prompt attention, or B) dying at home in the loving glow of their televisions would be preferable to waiting in this stale, halogen-lit environment with nothing for entertainment but a single cathode ray tube playing a CBC report about how the Premier of one of our East Coast Provinces made it a habit to visit New York for his medical needs.

I chatted with one of the nurses, and she told me that they’d recently converted one of the storage closets into a patient room. They now stack their equipment along the walls.

But ranting about make-do solutions like that, the ratty-looking desks and tables, the Windows 95 Operating Systems, and the general 3^rd World vibe to the place misses the point. Having brand new mahogany desks and MacBook Pros (that’s what House uses to read his spreadsheets, isn’t it?) aren’t going to make a lick of difference with the treatment you get. The reason I mention them however is because of the mindset they imply – Fuck You if you have a problem with it, it’s not like you have anywhere else to go. Veterinarians may be expensive, but at least they know which side of their bread is buttered; that’s why you get things like comfortable seats, decent magazines, and prompt service when your ferret catches the flu.

Long story short, my friend got better despite the medical service he received. I spent a week helping him out, jumping through pointless bureaucratic hoops, and raging impotently at his Kafka-esque system which retains the right to judge me Psychologically Unsound without any sort of Due Process.

I hear something similar’s been happening in the US. I’ll get to that next time.

I really like this image.  It neatly sums up my feelings about the current political climate with a minimalist, visceral approach.  But at the same time there’s an implicit premise here which can be used to justify the current regime.  It’s best summed up by one Ed Giorgio:

“We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’”

[Sources indicate that after the interview Giorgio proceeded to savagely rape a howler monkey before defecating on the Bill of Rights.]

With monsters like this in government, we’re lucky to have clear thinkers like security expert Bruce Schneier out there spreading the gospel.  As he has frequently said:

Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don’t have to accept less of one to get more of the other… Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control… If privacy and security really were a zero-sum game, we would have seen mass immigration into the former East Germany and modern-day China. While it’s true that police states like those have less street crime, no one argues that their citizens are fundamentally more secure.

Most people won’t just accept a radical statement like that.  After all, the government’s told us that it’s a dichotomous choice, and why would they lie to us?  So with that in mind I’ve designed a little thought experiment to demonstrate why liberty is positively correlated with security, it’s not the inverse.

I seem to remember reading a while back about how Great Britain was going to mandate GPS trackers in your car so that the police could monitor you, and send out automated tickets any time you exceeded the speed limit (I believe there was even talk of installing throttle-governors connected to the GPS).  I can’t seem to find anything confirming that, but with the way things are already going over in Oceania, it wouldn’t be out of place.

So for sake of argument let’s just posit some form of draconian speed-limit enforcement, rather than any specific mechanism.

The immediate effect of this would be fewer speeders; this will probably make the roads safer, and at the very least it won’t make them more dangerous.  So far so good.

But what about the secondary effects of all of this?  Right off the bat the number of violations is going to skyrocket.  A subset of the people fined will no longer be able to afford their increased insurance rates, and this in turn will lead to a greater portion of drivers without insurance…

And then you have the people who will figure out how to avoid being noticed; whether they do it by cutting the GPS out of their car, or by installing some sort of electronic box under the dashboard is irrelevent.  As Ian Malcolm once said, “Nature finds a way.” Now, of course this process of avoiding detection will be made illegal, so these drivers, just like the uninsured, will be Riding Dirty.

With the current system most people speed, but they almost always take responsibility when they get into an accident; even ignoring the moral motivations, it’s generally wiser to take a hit to your insurance premiums than risking a charge of “Fleeing the Scene of a Crime.” But if you’re riding dirty – if a simple fender bender can result in criminal charges – your moral principles are going to suffer some extraordinary pressures.

Thanks to these laws you’re neither safe, nor secure.

Now let’s consider things in the opposite direction.  Here in North America we’re used to being ambushed; speed traps, holiday blitzes, and artificially-low speed limits are the norm – you don’t often get patrol cars pulling you over, its the predations of the traffic cops you have to worry about.  Their measure of success is quantity, not quality of tickets issued.

So let’s say that, instead, the police looked at how safe driving conditions were throughout the city. “There have been a lot of speed-related accidents on Route 9,” or “I was driving along Highway 2, and it seemed to be a little to chaotic to me.” Then, instead of setting up secret ambushes, the cops openly announce where they’re going to ticket, and why.  Allow the drivers to understand what’s going on, and make them an active participant; an ally, not an enemy.  After all, aren’t we all invested in road safety?

When you take away freedoms, when your country goes from being Governed to being Ruled, you wind up alienating a segment of the population.  Censor Hate Speech and you drive it underground, turning its advocates into martyrs; ban drugs and the producers/distributors become criminals, who resort to violence instead of the courts; outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them.  By signing a bill into law, you turn ordinary moral, gainfully employed citizens into anti-state rebels.

Minimum wage proponents love to hold up examples of low-income people, now able to afford X, as proof that their law worked; economists are hard pressed to list all the jobs that weren’t created because the owners couldn’t afford to pay so much for employees.  The Security/Liberty equation is similarly difficult, since the anti-Freedom advocates only look at the easily quantifiable side of the equation – the number of tickets and violations recorded.  But in this case the devil isn’t in the details – it’s in the statistics: “Look at how many drunk drivers our Checkstops have pulled over – what do you mean their net effect has been to increase drunk driving deaths?  Do you seriously expect me to believe that banning guns increases violent crime?”

Not to mention that I’ve only covered the immediate side effects of these laws – who knows what the cops’ll do with this power five years down the road?  You know that the old saying “Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile”?  It goes double for government.