Mailvox: word games

BG writes of the Oshkosh gun seizures:


My friend BW doubted the story and tells me he called the assistant editor. This is what emailed me.

“This is the story reported on the news of the shooting and gun confiscating. It appears two search warrants were issued and the rest consented to the searches. The guns were returned to the citizens after ballistic test were performed to compare to the bullet when found. This I got from the city assistant editor of the Northwestern newpaper, yes I called and talked to her. The story was on the front page, but not the lead story. According to the police department, news channel and newspaper, the wisconsin gun owners assc. used this incident to boost membership and contributions. Looking at their play on words I would tend to agree. ”

Why wouldn’t the WGO use the incident to boost membership? The actions of the police department were outrageous and make very clear why the WGO is needed. The only play on words being performed here is by BW, who confuses a consent to a SEARCH with a consent to a SEIZURE. This is why the Constitution bans illegal searches AND seizures; if the two were identical, only illegal searches would need be banned. The two actions are completely different. When a policeman asks to search your car and you consent, you are not granting him permission to take your girlfriend’s purse or to remove the spare tire from the trunk.

The newspaper itself wrote: He [Police captain Jay Puestohl] acknowledged consent to search does “not necessarily” mean officers have consent to remove property. Puestohl also said nothing illegal was done by removing the firearms and that investigators needed to examine them. He declined to say on what grounds officers had the right to remove the firearms, though.

Puestohl’s wrong, of course, and it would have been more accurate for him to say “not” instead of “not necessarily”. It’s good that the police apparently had the good sense to eventually return the gun owners’ property – which is not reported in the original article, by the way – but just as a bank robber is still prosecuted even if he returns the money he stole, the policemen responsible should be prosecuted for theft.

Told you so


House Speaker Dennis Hastert says he’s committed to abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, but he does not expect President Bush to make it a campaign issue…. In an interview with the Associated Press, Hastert said he had talked in general terms with President Bush about his proposals.

“I think he’s on board on the litigation issue and the regulation issue,” he said. As for the tax proposals, however, Hastert said, “I think that’s a piece they don’t want to bite off in the campaign. They have other things they want to talk about.”

Clearly, this is a major priority for the President. It must be part of that super-secret second-term plan. Why talk about something that would be massively popular with the American people in an election campaign? Either Bush does not support the idea or he’s even more strategically incompetent than I’d imagined.

War is a racket

David Hackworth writes on WND:


For example, the CPA paid 74,000 guards even though the actual number of guards couldn’t be validated. On one site alone, 8,206 guards were on the payroll, but only 603 warm bodies could be counted. Elsewhere, more than $17 million was allocated to guards and the Iraqi army without one piece of backup paper. Pals in Iraq say this has been standard drill since the birth of “a very dysfunctional” CPA.

The report cites, “An improper $120 million disbursement was made in May 2004 because of miscommunication between CPA-OMB and Comptroller’s office.” In other words, $120 million went south, but was blithely rationalized as some clerks getting their wires crossed!

Well, what’s a missing $8.8 billion dollars anyhow…. This episode brought to you by the Coalition of the Willing and the taxpayers of the United States of America.

Mailvox: on voting your conscience

WA asks me to respond to David Kupelian’s article on the November election:


Christians, conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, constitutionalists, patriotic independents and other traditionalists: When you look at George W. Bush today and are dissatisfied – dissatisfied that he raised the federal budget sky-high, that he granted de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, that he doesn’t always follow the Constitution, that he invaded Iraq, that he hasn’t done enough to fight abortion and gay rights, that whatever …

What conclusion do you draw?

One conclusion is that Bush is a globalist, money-grubbing elitist Bonesman conspirator, or at best a clueless, sold-out puppet.

Another interpretation at the opposite end is that Bush is a general at war – a general who knows more than you do, who sees the lay of the land, who comprehends the odds, who knows what troops he’s got, and determines which battles he can and must win and which ones he has to concede, at least temporarily – even if it looks bad to his supporters.

As there is a plethora of information in support of the former which is also backed by the history of the ruling parties two factions, while there is absolutely nothing but blind trust supporting the latter assertion, I don’t see how any thinking being can possible conclude the latter. Every argument for President Bush’s re-election posits that he is a good and decent man, primarily because he claims to be a Christian. Well, so do the Archbishop of Canterbury and the gay Episcopalian priests, and I don’t hear any conservatives asserting that they are therefore genuinely good leaders worthy of support.

I pay very little attention to words and a lot of attention to actions. The irony of the pro-Bush conservative’s position is that he is forced to argue that the president does not have the political capital to enact policies that have far more popular support than the war on Iraq upon which he spent it all. If nothing else, this makes him at best a lousy political general in whom to place one’s trust. But I don’t think that’s the case, as I’m quite confident that he’s nothing more or less than a globalist tool, functionally identical to Jean-Francois and almost every other politician in the ruling party.

One aspect of Europe that I found markedly superior to the USA when living there was the far more astute attitude of the populace towards the politicians. They know the politicians are all corrupt, whereas in the United States we insist on excusing them on the basis of “stupidity”. When individuals and institutions succeed repeatedly at achieving what they set themselves, for good or for ill, stupidity is unlikely to be involved.


Kerry would betray the unborn, betray our youth, betray both the haves and the have-nots, betray us all. With inspiring rhetoric and fanfare, he would unravel what remains of our national sovereignty, leading us down the road to servitude, poverty and insecurity in a thousand smothering ways – all the while piously thinking he was ushering in a new era of peace.

And this is different from George Bush in precisely what way? If you want to vote for a winner, go ahead, vote for whoever is ahead in the polls on November third. But don’t try to pretend to me or anyone else that principle is involved. If your strongest argument after four years of governance is “don’t think, just close your eyes and trust”, you don’t have a leg to stand on.

I’d rather switch than fight

Several of you have asked what I would do, if faced with a situation like the one in Oshkosh. I think it’s important to first understand that everything, literally everything, takes longer than those who see what is coming expects, and so it is a huge mistake to overreact directly to a simple probe and confuse it with the real thing.

It is wise, however, to use it as a warning and begin to prepare for the less desirable eventualities. My personal preference, as modeled by some of my intellectual heroes like Ludwig von Mises, is to simply leave. Anywhere is preferable to a society in the process of radical transformation – see South Africa and Russia for details. At no point in history has a society ever successfully resisted the suicidal urge to drown itself in chaos, and while there is one factor operating in America’s behalf – never before has a population been so well armed – it’s not difficult to envision an event that would lead the public to clamor for its own disarmament. If it is not too bizarre to apply a principle of socionomics here, I would not be surprised to see just such an event sometime before July 2006.

Of course, it’s not possible for many people to leave, nor are many who could leave inclined to do so. To those who stay, the principle of misdirection in all things is key. As it relates to the current subject, if they want guns, make sure you have some openly purchased guns for them to seize. Let them have them, behave in an appropriately servile manner, and take any action you deem appropriate later.

What most people don’t understand is that the police and government are terrified of the public. They know they are massively outnumbered. That is why they behave so arrogantly, like teenagers working themselves up to spray paint a street sign. And they are right to be afraid – in Peru, the police were afraid to even leave their homes as the initiation rite for the Shining Path was to shoot dead a uniformed policeman on the front steps of his house. It is not mass riots and demonstrations that they fear, for those can never be so large that they cannot be controlled one way or another.

What they fear is the quiet, invisible violence of places like Northern Ireland, where the entire British Army was finally forced to agree to a truce that was a de facto victory for the IRA. This is why the Bush administration is secretly trying to negotiate a deal with the Ba’ath and Sunni leaders, as they know that the foreign jihadists can be defeated with Iraqi help, but that the indigenous resistance will never be overcome now that the hearts-and-minds campaign has clearly failed. Government, however totalitarian, always depends on the consent of the governed, regardless of whether that consent is given freely or fearfully.

Perhaps these concerns are unfounded. I admit to the possibility that they are. However, I’ve never found it helpful to assume the innocence of government actors in any situation. Their interests seldom align with mine, and when they not only fail to answer my questions honestly but seek to evade them, well, I consider that sort of thing to be a red flag. It never hurts to be prepared.

Testing, testing

And the gun seizure tests begin:


Police evacuated citizens from their homes within a quarantined area near Smith Elementary School Saturday night (July 17, 2004) to conduct a broad gun sweep of the neighborhood following the shooting of Oshkosh police officer Nate Gallagher. Residents reported returning home from area shelters — where they were herded by police — to find their guns gone. Others watched in awe as police took their firearms after giving police consent to search. Some were told by police their firearms would be subjected to ballistics tests, and would be returned.

“However, the bullet that hit officer Gallagher was not found,” said Corey Graff, executive director of Wisconsin Gun Owners Inc. “So how can police conduct ballistics tests if there’s no bullet with which to match the results? It defies logic.” Graff said the biggest issue is what he calls the department’s “Guilty-until-proven-innocent” posture towards citizens….

Warrants for searches were issued for at least two homes, (perhaps more) but homeowners in the area reported having all their firearms taken by police. Some witnesses said the whole neighborhood was evacuated by force and citizens were being told – not asked, but told – to hand over their guns. Some weren’t even asked.

What I’m wondering is if this little incident was ordered by the Oshkosh police, or if it was ordered by others interested in learning just how willing Americans are to submit to having their weapons seized.

Mailvox: discuss amongst yourselves

Res Ispa puckers up:


How about timing your blog to post a thread about the Monday article at 12 eastern when WND updates to the Monday edition? Being in the mountain-time zone I generally read the Monday WND before going to bed Sunday night. I would love to have the opportunity to make acclamation, glorify and pay homage to your superior abilities as a wordsmith and ingratiate myself to the genius that you are.

It is my sincere desire to osculate your gluteus maximus until you achieve a Limbaugh-sized ego and you obtain your own radio show challenging him for superiority of all things conservative. This is a two part strategy:

1. establish the Vox Day pundit groupie fan club

2. get a guy with a Minnesotan accent nationally syndicated

Hey if they’ll put Don Cherry on the air why not you?

That last bit would have been more meaningful to me if I had any idea who Don Cherry is. Anyhow, that’s not a problem, assuming that I don’t forget. So, we’ll see. As I’ve repeatedly stated, I have no desire for a radio show – those little MP3 experiments taught me that – although I might be interested in some sort of Internet broadcast thing once that technology becomes feasible.

I don’t really have any more to say about immigration at the moment, but in case anyone is interested in harping on today’s column or slapping my wrist with a “bad libertarian, bad!” this would be the place.

Too good to be true


A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation’s current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.

“People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans,” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday.

“Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy. But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security abroad,” Hastert declares in SPEAKER: LESSONS FROM FORTY YEARS IN COACHING AND POLITICS…. “By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it here instead of forcing it out to other nations.”

It would be delightful to see the income tax fraud shut down and the IRS banned, except that few government agencies are ever closed, and in any case, some agency will be assigned to see that businesses are collecting the sales tax. Still, that would be far less intrusive than the current system of enforced financial nudity. However, this theoretical second-term policy will be opposed by Republican and Democratic state leaderships alike, as it would play havoc on many state revenue systems that piggyback off the Federal income tax.

The fact that this is coming from a Republican leader with a book to sell in an election year makes it more than a little dubious. Sure, it’s remotely possible that someone in the Republican leadership has looked into the issue and been convinced that the present tax system is wholly indefensible in both legal and Constitutional terms – I think there’s now six former IRS agents, (who know a lot more about the realities of the situation than the pro-tax idiots on the Internet), who have switched sides and joined the tax honesty movement – but this would hardly mark the first time that Republicans have pulled a bait-and-switch on the public.

Since the IRS is an executive branch agency, the President could shut it down tomorrow with an executive order. It’s his call. As for the income tax, the law doesn’t require filing it anyhow, it requires nothing more than “voluntary compliance”. (Granted, the IRS will try to steal your bank account and garnish your wages if you don’t comply voluntarily, but that doesn’t mean their actions are legal. Quite the opposite.) If the President does something in that vein, I’ll take this seriously, otherwise, it should be taken no more seriously than that old vow to shut down the Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts. Having failed to deliver time and time again, Republican promises no longer bear serious consideration.

Pro-democracy terrorists

Rainer gets it backwards:


I agree with you on this, [the mistake of nation building] and I think that it is going to be very difficult to establish a democracy here. However, I don’t think that it is a matter to be thrown away. Just because some terrorists don’t want it doesn’t mean that nobody should get it.

The problem isn’t that the terrorists and their allies don’t want democracy, it’s the US administration and their appointed puppet Allawi that don’t want democracy. A free and open vote in Iraq would likely elect the more radical Islamic elements which are currently allied with the foreign al Qaeda fighters. In fact, Debka is reporting that the US administration is now in secret negotiations to bring the Ba’ath back into government, along with the Sunni leaders, in order to split them from the foreign jihadists:


Since the first week of July, the Bush administration has been immersed in a secret, high-wire diplomatic exercise aimed at bringing down the level of Iraqi insurgent attacks on US troops, or perhaps halting the violence altogether, by coming to terms with the enemy. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report exclusively that the initiative is being carried forward by a prominent non-Iraq Arab figure as intermediary on behalf of the highest White House echelons. His identity is top secret for reasons of security. (Our editors have his name but promised to preserve his anonymity in return for this exclusive).

All that can be said at this time is that the intermediary is not based in Iraq; he goes over for delicate negotiating sessions in the Bush administration’s name with Baath guerrilla leaders, militia commanders and heads of the great Sunni Muslim tribes and clans. At all times, he is in direct communication with the White House.

The only three Americans in Iraq privy to this negotiating track are Robert Blackwill, the president’s senior adviser on Iraq, US ambassador John Negroponte who is not personally involved, and the commander of American forces in Iraq, General David Casey, who is in charge of security arrangements and any changes on the ground arising from progress in the talks. The only two Iraqis kept informed are prime minister Iyad Allawi and deputy prime minister for security Salih Barham.

DEBKAfile adds: the negotiating track began with a preliminary condition: Baath and Sunni leaders must undertake to disengage from al Qaeda and other foreign Arab fighters.

Still think that we’re on the side of freedom and democracy in Iraq? I don’t think so. I’m not sure precisely what model George Bush and company are hoping to construct but they’re not even pretending to create a constitutional representative democracy, much less a true government by, of and for the people over there.