Molon Labe!
Page 10
" —had to settle right here in Lander!" laughs Kyle.
"Gosh, that makes me the lucky one, doesn't it?" quips Susan.
"Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. I will most assuredly remember your views as I work for you out in the pasture," he intones.
"Yeah, you'd better!" Susan replies, flicking a green bean. Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah! A maniacal cackle.
"Bondo!"
2005 USA privacy news
The revolution [of the liberal counterculture] will coexist until it attains hegemony. Then it will dictate. (at 196)
—Pat Buchanan, The Death of the West
All state issued drivers' licenses must be biometrically numbered to your thumbprint. Police cars are equipped with fingerprint readers linked directly to NCIC. Radio jammers begin to proliferate, and relay towers are increasingly sabotaged by outraged citizens.
We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which the other side contends only the king's men are allowed to use force or the threat of force, and that any uppity peasant finally rendered so desperate as to use the same kind of armed force routinely employed by our oppressors must surely be a "lone madman" who "snapped for no reason."
— Vin Suprynowicz, The Ballad of Carl Drega (2002), p. 36
The Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act II of 2005 prohibits: anonymous e mail, cell phone, and pager accounts (which must now be linked to your biometric driver's license number), alternative Internet banking (e.g., PayPal, etc.) without accompanying SSN, and coin paid pay-phone long distance calls (credit card based only).
A secret requirement of CALEA II is that all new cell phones are manufactured to covertly transmit GPS "here I am" NAM (number assignment module) signals even when turned off, as long as the phone is connected to outside power (such as a 110V AC adapter/charger, or 12V DC cigarette lighter power cord). Thus, the owner's movement may be tracked even when (he thought) he had turned off his phone. Also, the phone's mike may be surreptitiously activated without the owner's knowledge. Since the battery would not be discharged, the owner would never suspect that his phone was not only a mobile tracking device, but a silent On/Off bug as well.
The government against which our ancestors took up arms was a mild and distant irritant compared to the federal scourge that rules today. Constitutional restraints on tyranny are to our masters only a hazy memory as they exercise powers beyond the dreams of history's most famous dictators. Louis the XIV never required an annual accounting of every centime every Frenchman earned. He would never have dared then to demand a third of it in yearly tribute. Ivan the Terrible never told Russian merchants whom they could or could not hire, . . ..
— The Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip 2 (2001), p.611
2005 USA social news
[Treblinka's effectiveness was due to] the moral disarmament of the victim by means of skillful doses of panic and uncertainty. This disarmament forced the victim to make a certain number of minor concessions which led to others, which in turn brought him to a third stage, and so forth, until he received a bullet in the back of the neck with head bowed and hands joined in total submission.
— from Treblinka (1967), by Jean-Franτois Steiner, p. 44
Hier ist kein "warum." (Here there is no "why.")
— a Nazi concentration guard to a bewildered prisoner, quoted from The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff
A Tuscon .50 Caliber shoot scheduled three weeks before the amnesty's end is infiltrated by seven ATF agents anxious to identify possible noncompliant owners. Agent "Flash" Gordon Lorner bungles an erroneous arrest, causing a scuffle which escalates into a gunfight. Lorner loses. He takes a round of .357 SIG to the abdomen, lodging in his lower spine. The other six agents attempt to close down the event and arrest several men, but are beaten and driven off at gunpoint by a crowd of nearly 400 very angry spectators and exhibitors. President Bush exclaims, "This is why we needed to restrict those weapons of destruction in the first place!"
A wheelchair paraplegic with a colostomy bag, Lorner takes early retirement. He is soon drinking three fifths of Wild Turkey a week, blaming the known universe for his plight.
Lorner's shooter was later acquitted as having acted in self-defense.
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones... Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.
— Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
The US military is now fighting terrorism in a dozen countries. Islamic terrorist attacks in America increase, including a smallpox outbreak in L.A.
2005 Economic
Gold is $882/ounce, and silver is $16.39. The Dow is 5,814.
THE DEMISE OF
THE U.S. MILITARY
* * *
Our volunteer Army is spent
Exclusive to The Modern Jeffersonian, by "Whisk E. Rebellion" Summer 2005
For a government to project military force, its troops must be willing to kill and die. But why do troops kill and die? To serve each other. This has been true of soldiers since men have been soldiers. Read Gates of Fire (Pressfield), Blackhawk Down (Bowden), and Band of Brothers (Ambrose) to understand this.
Esprit de corps, comradeship, and unit cohesion are the reasons men voluntarily go into harm's way. Fighting for their country is a very distant fourth. However, to be induced to join the armed forces in the first place (assuming there is no draft) requires a love of country, and thus a willingness to fight and die for country.
Here, the United States Government and its Insiders have a problem. This isn't 1942. The Government and the country are no longer overlapping entities fighting a common foreign foe. Since the 1960s the USG (through primarily the State Department) has decreasingly supported the civic mythology of Truth, Justice, and the American Way to increasingly embrace Propaganda, Injustice, and Globalism. For the New World Order to transpire, the socialist elite (political and corporate) must first preside over the cultural and spiritual death of the USA. They must kill the heart of America and level her historic institutions. Without a national ethos we will have no choice but to accept internationalism, or so they believe.
The American people are, however, catching on. They are seeing the mitosis between their country and the Government, and are ceasing to join the military. Many of those already serving are not renewing their enlistments. The watershed administration for this was, of course, Bill Clinton's.
When Bush the Younger was narrowly elected President in 2000, the military and many Americans breathed a collective sigh. A Texan and ex-Navy reserve pilot, Bush was heir to the smoldering coals of patriotism. Here was a President who did not loathe the military. The events of 9/11 whipped that reviving blaze of patriotism into a flame . . . until the fuel ran out.
The fuel being a unified belief in country and trust in government. America had that during WWII, and even generally during the Korean War. The disaster of Vietnam and its domestic unrest emptied the bucket. The Reagan years restored a bit of it, but not even Bush the Elder's victory in Desert Storm could hold the gain. Our last patriotic fuel was spent during the Clinton regime. Americans simply gave up. George Bush and 9/11 revived the coals, but coals were all that were left to revive. Hatred of Bin Laden was not sufficient fuel. Neither was hatred of Saddam, nor of terrorism in general.
The soul of America had been burnt out and there remained nothing left to catch fire, especially after Bush so overworked our troops chasing phantoms around the world.
The politicians quickly understood this, hence their immediate clamor for a reinstituted draft. They need a draft because Americans have become unwilling cannon fodder for overseas meddling under the most silly of names: "Just Cause,"
"Righteous Thunde
r,"
"Iraqi Freedom," etc. Americans no longer trust the government, and feel that the American Dream has somehow, inexplicably, evaporated.
So, the United States Government and its Insiders have a problem. They have killed the goose — patriotism — which laid the golden eggs of voluntary enlistment, and they can't resuscitate it. Patriotism, like innocence or virginity, can never be reclaimed. Their reward will be an increasingly sullen and unfaithful populace.
A saturnine military with a correspondingly declining ability to project force.
In their eternal quest to absorb the country, this is what governments have never learned: if patriotism is destroyed, government will fall. Tamper with the love of country, and you've lit the fuse of revolution or devolution.
2006
2006 USA economic news
It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called "American" only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis.
— Trevanian, Shibumi, p.296
Reduction of interest rates does not stimulate the failing economy. Tax revenues suffer as profits and wages are down, so the Fed begins to again increasingly inflate the currency (i.e., FRN) supply. This unlawful and immoral corruption of the price equilibrium further unhinges the economy.
The tax-free "underground" economy (and its free-market banking substitutes, such as cash, barter, e-gold, encrypted digital cash, etc.) is the only thing keeping the country from sliding into an outright depression. As much as the USG would like to crack down on the "black market," they know that the implementation of a cashless system would suffocate the economy.
Gold is $1,170/ounce. The Dow is 5,247.
Wyoming
November 2006
Eighteen of Wyoming's 23 counties saw a general maintenance of the status quo, but 5 counties had a total change of government. Four counties elected a new slate of Republican officers, and Sublette elected an avowedly libertarian sheriff to replace an incumbent who hadn't seemed to care much for the Fourth Amendment. Local reaction in the five counties was a mixture of surprise and suspicion, especially due to the victory of several write-in candidates. The Hot Springs county clerk investigated the residency qualifications of several dozen new voters, but found that they were indeed "actually and physically . . . bona fide residents" in accord with Wyoming Election Code provisions 22-3-102(a)(iii) and 22-3-105(b). All had local addresses and Wyoming driver's licenses, as well as employment. The modest electoral hubbub soon passed.
Natrona County, Wyoming
November 2006
James Preston saves the revisions to his PowerPoint presentation. The post-electoral review meeting will begin shortly. He can hear muffled excited voices in the next room. After years of inaction and complaining, the events of the past several months were invigorating. He smiles at the memory of how it all had started. Over dinner seven years ago a colleague had blurted the line that forever changed Preston's notions of political strategy:
"Libertarians could actually get somewhere if they thought less like a national political party and more like a guerrilla army."
Preston chewed on this and came up with the idea of freedom-oriented individuals taking over Wyoming county by county. After exhaustive research he drafted the relocation plan and schedule required to pull it off.
The project was based on a known weakness of democracy: few citizens practiced it.
Of Wyoming's population, 70% were of voting age. Only about 69% of them register to vote in the general election, and of those only about 75% actually do — thus only about 52% of the eligible voters participate in democracy. These actual voters make up only about 36% of the general population, of whom only 50.1% are needed to win an election. What all this means is that just 1 Wyomingite in 5.5 controls politics.
This leverage was a double-edged sword: a comparatively small number of new relocators could edge out the thinly supported status quo. If nearly 100% of the relocators were voting eligible and registered, and if nearly 100% of them voted for their annointed candidate, then they could take the reins of government.
Concentration of numbers with a singular mission can accomplish most anything in politics. The concept was solid, and there were sufficient numbers of people keen to relocate to a freer state. All that was lacking was the planning and leadership to make it happen.
Preston understood the shrewd organization the Wyoming project required and recalled his MBA program study scheme. Taking 15 credit hours per semester, he endeavored to pull a 4.0 which meant A's in every class. But not all A's were alike. A for A, a 90 was the same as a 100. Thus, it made no strategic sense to make high 90s in four courses but allow the fifth course to be dragged down to a B+. Better to spread out the semester effort in order to make low 90s in all five courses. So, Preston kept a running weekly account of his grades so that he could calculate just how much or little effort each course required in order to land a low 90. For example, if he had a 96 in Managerial Finance before going into the final exam (which was 25% of the course grade), he knew that he could make as low as a 72 on the final and still get an A for the class. Thus, he could use some of that study time for another class which needed a higher grade on its final exam.
So, his study load was spread exactly as needed — neither too thick nor too thin in any course. After two semesters he had perfected his system, and began to take 18 credits. The faculty and students thought him crazy for shouldering six courses (and all on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so as to give him 4-day weekends), but he managed the burden just fine. Privately, he thought such a heavy course load was the best way to keep him fully interested in his studies. Only challenges kept him interested.
Wyoming was such a challenge.
He would need fresh and accurate county data regarding population, percentage of eligible voters, percentage of registered voters, historical vs. expected voter turnout, absentee voting numbers, etc.
The relocators had to be coordinated and then "posted" wherever they were most needed. He was under no illusion as to the difficulty of directing the immigration of thousands of freethinking and independent Americans. Having once chaired a libertarian conference, he likened it to "herding stray cats." To command staunch individualists as a collective had never been done, but that was precisely what the project depended on: loyal allied troops under a General Eisenhower. Some soldiers would have to drop behind enemy lines before D-Day, others would have to hit the beach under fire, and still others would land only after the beachheads had been won.
It was a monumental undertaking. It had never been attempted, much less accomplished. The stakes were grand, but so was the prize — a free state.
Preston's dozen key people had assembled in the game room. Trophy heads from Wyoming, South Africa, and Tanzania covered much of the north wall. A rifle rack stretching across the entire 24' length of the west wall was filled with historical, military, and hunting long guns. Preston was especially proud of his chronological collection of semi-auto battle rifles. Not carbines, but full-power rifles. Beginning on the left with a Model 1890 7mm Mexican Mondragon, it extended to a 6.5mm Cei-Rigotti, a .276 Pedersen T2E1, a 1939 gas-trap M1 Garand, an M1941 Johnson smuggled back by a WW2 USMC paratrooper, an SVT40 Tokarev with Finnish capture stamp, an AG42B Ljungman, Walther G41(W) and G43, an FN49 with Luxembourg crest, a MAS 49/56, a TRW M14 with welded selector switch, a Spanish CETME 7.62, a BM62, a SIG 510-4 and SG542, a 50.63 para FAL, an HK91, a 1961 Portuguese variant AR10 with an American TELKO semi-auto lower, and even a 1980s HAC7 from the defunct Holloway Arms Corp. Most unique was a 1954 Brazilian copy of the G43 in .30-06, one of just 300 made.
Most of them had their original sling and
bayonet, as well as other accessories when available. All were in at least 90%, if not 95% condition. Many gun collectors thought Preston's wall a more complete collection of battle rifles than even the Buffalo Bill Firearms Museum in Cody.
One gap left to be filled was a .308 Ljungman, the FM59. Only ten were converted in 1959, and just three made it to the USA. The other seven were in Europe. The last known price for one was $8,650 in 2002.
Also, he very much wanted an FG42 but they were Class III full-auto guns, and Preston didn't want to go through the ATF hassle. (Some relocated Canadians with money and CNC mills were toying with the idea of making a semi-auto version, and Preston had lined up to buy one of their first guns.)
Some rifles were duplicate models just for shooting, like the .308 Korean War Tanker M1 Garand converted by Smith Enterprise.
Preston's favorite medium game rifle is a .308 M98 Scout, with a custom laminated wood stock and a Burris 2-7x Scout Ballistic Plex scope in a Leupold Quick-Release mount.
The first big game rifle he took to Africa, now relegated as a loaner for friends, was a Winchester Model 70 Classic Super Express in .416 Rem Mag topped with a Burris 1.75-5x20mm (3P#4 reticle) in Talley QD rings.
His favorite big game rifle (a gift from father) is a Dakota 76 African in .450 Dakota topped with an illuminated 1½-6x Zeiss. A custom rifle case in Cape buffalo hide was a gift of his wife Juliette. His best friend and hunting partner chimed in with a hundred handloaded 500gr Swift A-Frames. His son and daughter had a handsome buffalo hide sling made. The rifle was Preston's most prized possession. He was found admiring it at least weekly.
Preston smiles as he enters the game room, it being full of his favorite rifles, hunting memories, and friends.
"OK, we've got excellent footholds so far. Five sleepy counties which nobody paid much attention to. We also have Senate District 1 and House Districts 2, 20, 27, and 40. Excellent work, people!"