The "Science" is NOT "Settled"

Every time I hear a global warming alarmist parrot the mantra "the science is settled" I simply remember a few of my favorite things — namely the many failed predictions of that so-called "settled science":

Embarrassing Predictions Haunt the Global-Warming Industry

The big list of failed climate predictions

"Top scientists" blame their computers for predictions exaggerated by 300%

You get the picture — I could go on, but I see no point in invoking the alarmists' beloved tactic of ad nauseam repetition. Solid science is reasonably predictive. Alarmist pseudo-science is betrayed by its very failure to be reasonably predictive, which failure is not mitigated by either the frequency or the volume at which it is repeated that "the science is settled".

The Myth of Obligatory Jury "Duty"

As governments at every level in the US have steadily multiplied their methods of controlling the public in recent decades, those methods have invariably involved a plethora of fines and penalties — often for arbitrarily charged petty "crimes" — designed to milk the citizen-victims and top off the coffers of the politicians and bureaucrats running the government "service" show.

One aspect of this system involves compelling ever increasing numbers of victims to defend themselves, or plea for a discounted tribute — or sometimes their very freedom itself — in the appropriate jurisdiction's so-called "court of law" (where the defendant is commonly prohibited by the judge from citing or discussing ... the law). A jury trial becomes necessary when the victim doesn't trust a lone judge (on the payroll of the very jurisdiction seeking to enrich itself via "legal" forcible extraction of his property) to decide his case.

A natural consequent has been the conscripting ever more innocent citizens to perform a service for the jurisdiction in the form of jury "duty" — which both lends credibility to the whole affair and often predisposes the jurors against the accused as if s/he were personally responsible for their being so inconvenienced, which can't hurt the chances of an outcome that ultimately adds to the cash flow of the sponsoring jurisdiction.

Folks by and large comply unquestioningly with jury "duty" demands, though they might grumble about it or try to get excused. They're convinced it's their "civic duty" and believe that it somehow has always been this way, when in fact the conscription method — with threats of fines and other nasty punishments for failure to comply — is relatively new, and has never been necessary. But since forcing innocent people to participate lends some legitimacy to the charade, the practice isn't likely to go away in the foreseeable future.

But is it really obligatory? Do they really have the authority to demand that you serve them?

We don't think so.

In fact, over the past 10+ years, we have answered every demand for jury "duty" service by certified mail, politely and cheerfully offering to perform the demanded service, but only after the government entity making the demand first documents the lawful basis for the demanded "service" in the first place.

Involuntary servitude was outlawed in the US via the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. As a result, there is no valid law on the books anywhere in the US recognizing anybody — including any government at any level — as having the authority to unilaterally compel anyone to perform involuntary servitude.

Instead, the laws governments use to run their jury "duty" programs simply assume they have that authority without actually saying so. The statutes outline procedures, limitations, fines, etc., but they never actually state where the government in question got the power to compel its subjects to perform jury "duty" service. That's because they have no such power. It was never theirs legally, so they've merely assumed it to be theirs, and the legally ignorant public has unquestioningly gone along with the charade.

The typical summons speaks of a presumed "civic duty" (along with plenty of other patriotic-sounding stuff) and warns of penalties for failure to obey, nudging most targeted servants into compliance, but nowhere does the law actually indicate the source of any authority to command such service.

Many jurisdictions even offer an embarrassingly modest daily "fee" reluctantly skimmed off their bulging coffers, as if a unilateral demand for service at rate of pay below minimum wage and not agreed to by both parties somehow falls outside the realm of involuntary servitude, and is therefore legally justified.

But the bottom line ever remains that no one — not even a government — has the lawful power to compel service of an individual to which s/he has not consented to perform.

When asked for documentation of the lawful basis of their "jury duty" demand, a clerk or "legal officer" typically responds, citing whichever statutes describe the process of jury selection, etc., but never a legal and authoritative basis for the demand of service in the first place. We've found that a polite, clear reiteration of our terms to be the most effective response, pointing out that the offer still stands, but the terms remain unmet. After a bit of back-and-forth correspondence (always sent via certified mail from our end), in every instance the exchange has ended with silence from their end, their demand for service having been quietly dropped.

To be honest, I half expected to be arrested and dragged in front of a judge to face "contempt of court" charges. But that never happened. In every single case, our patient and civil offers to perform the demanded service upon the fulfillment of our simple condition were met first with inadequate answers, and then with silence.

Having thus been selected for jury "duty" numerous times in over a decade, we've never performed such a service during that time or since, neither voluntarily nor under duress.

Charity for Police-State Parasites?

Recently I received in the mail an advertisement, soliciting donations to an organization supporting local (Houston) police officers. It featured a photo of a militarized Houston cop, all dressed up for military combat, automatic assault rifle and all — as if about to bust down some innocent citizen's door and shoot him — and/or his dog.

Why, I wondered, did they think that picture would motivate me to give money to help that guy? He's already drawing a parasitic wage, as he and his buddies routinely arrest and imprison local citizens for nothing more than possessing negligible amounts of recreational substances, and fining innocent, law-abiding drivers — to the tune of hundreds of dollars per "traffic stop" — for actions that neither harm nor endanger the persons or property of anyone. Untold heaps of taxes already go towards enabling him and his buds to dress up, not as policemen, but as assault troops. Yet somehow, this image was supposed to prompt me to voluntarily pay something extra?

The photo doesn't depict the kind of "police officer" I would picture serving and protecting me, but the kind I would fear a fellow citizen facing in one of numerous documented cases of "mistaken address" in which innocent citizens have lost their front doors, dogs, and lives to a combination of bureaucratic ineptitude and despotic bravado.

The $100 donation solicited by the mailer is rewarded with a vehicle sticker, identifying the donor as a supporter of police-state assault troopers. Houston traffic is already peppered with those stickers. Ironically, those drivers whose cars and trucks sport the trendy sticker probably feel a little safer, while I most certainly do not.

You Can't Outlaw Stupidity

There is a popular notion today that endless new laws must be enacted to constrain and control one side of the (formerly) free market (i.e., the sellers, often generalized into a single class or category of evil "robber-barons," "big corporations," or "greedy capitalists."), for the sake of "protecting" the other side of the (formerly) free market (i.e., the buyers, often generalized into a single class or category of "innocent victims").

The commonly typified scenario, then, is one of harmless consumers (buyers) being unfairly and helplessly victimized by immoral, predatory businesses (sellers).

The error inherent in this notion is the false assumption that one side (i.e., the buyers or "consumers") have some exclusive, unilateral "right" to participate in the market without risk, personal responsibility, or duty (e.g., to do any research, ask questions, pre-read contracts, teach their children, learn from their parents, etc.).

[Let's make it clear right up front that a truly free market, by definition, is the ideal "capitalistic" environment for exchange — both buying and selling. Both the seller and the buyer are capitalists, and both are greedy, in that each wants the best advantage he can get from any transaction. Let's dispense with the caricature of all sellers, and only sellers, as greedy capitalists. If anyone is ever "victimized" by another's "capitalism," it is also — always — equally by his own capitalism. And if anyone is ever "victimized" by another's "greed," rest assured that his own self-interest for the best possible advantage in the transaction (i.e., his own "greed") also played a role. His apparent failure to get what he wanted doesn't necessarily render the other party's "greed" more "evil" (or even more "capitalistic") than his own.]

This alleged "right" to participate in the market without risk or personal responsibility is purely an arbitrary invention of the popular imagination. However well-intended the assumption may be, it often turns out be driven far less by a genuine sense of fairness than outright laziness, jealousy, and (concealed?) greed. If some number of people organize themselves into a company (or, God forbid, a corporation) and prosper from their combined endeavors in the market, it's just a matter of time before one or more "victims" emerge to complain that the group somehow "profited" at their "expense."

To be sure, there are times when unethical and underhanded tactics are invoked, but these are already commonly addressed in common law justice. Things like genuine fraud, failure to execute one's part of a contract, and theft don't need new "consumer protection" laws, price controls, or government agencies for their correction. In fact, these things only serve to muddy the waters of justice by putting unwarranted distance between all parties in the market and their direct, personal responsibilities for their own choices and actions, while making the market itself generally less free — for everybody.

Buyers, incidentally, also can (and do, though perhaps not often enough) organize themselves for the purposes of self-education, sharing information (good or bad) about sellers, and taking combined legal action against sellers who have defrauded them, as a facet of a healthy free market at work.

The greatest threat to the modern consumer is his own naive and baseless presumption of a "right" to make decisions and/or take actions driven essentially by stupidity and/or ignorance — without having to deal with the consequences. The old Latin maxim "caveat emptor" ("buyer beware") will always be relevant in a free market, because no one (least of all government!) can truly guarantee anyone else a "risk-free" experience in the market.

The best person to protect you is you. Nobody cares more about your advantage in any given transaction than you do. Nobody has more to gain from that advantage than you. And nobody has more to lose than you. So why should anybody else have to do your homework or guarantee you won't suffer for not having done it yourself?

So the next time someone you know gets — for example — buried by a mountain of high-interest credit card debt, before rushing to blame the "greedy capitalist corporation," consider first the "victim's" greedy insistence on having something without paying for it and the "victim's" willfully becoming — and remaining — a party to a contract involving obscene interest rates. And ask yourself exactly why that "victim" is somehow "entitled" to act with such stupidity and ignorance without having to deal with the consequences.

Then ask yourself whether you would prefer to see that "victim" (and therefore in some measure the whole consumer community) truly learn from his mistake, gaining valuable maturity and wisdom, or the inevitable alternative — a "nanny" government invoked to "protect" him (at the expense of the whole consumer community) from the consequences of his choices — ultimately resulting in a nation of perpetually irresponsible, unaccountable, (and still) stupid babies.

Gun Hysteria from Maryland

I recently sent an article entitled 'Gun Control Claims More Victims' to my distribution list, which elicited the following response from a big-government statist in Maryland:

Oh right... so the next time some one pulls a gun out and starts shooting we should all pull out our guns and start shooting back, of course no one can aim like sh*t so by the time the smoke clears everyone would be dead from all the missed shots... that would just be great! Just like an old John Wayne movie.

These are not rational people who are going to be deterred by fatal consequences.

I got a better idea... all the gun people move to Texas, secede from the states and leave us in peace.

Guns Kill People! Remove me from your list!

Which got me thinking ... then researching...

It's noteworthy that Maryland does not have a policy of granting concealed carry permits to law-abiding citizens except for rare cases approved by the state police.

Texas, on the other hand, is one of 39 states that issue such permits, provided the applicant passes a rigorous background check and undergoes training in safety and the law, which some 289,000 Texans have done.

So taking into account that law-abiding Marylanders are disarmed by their government (supposedly making Marylanders 'safer'), a quick look at The Washington Post's take on gun ownership by state and the FBI's crime stats by state reveals that Texas gun ownership is roughly twice that of Maryland, yet Maryland's violent crime rate nevertheless stands at roughly 30% higher than that of Texas, and the murder rate in Maryland is roughly 60% higher than in Texas.

So Texas has more guns, but less crime, than Maryland.

No wonder the guy resorted to an outburst of irrational hyperbole — that's all he's got, since neither sound logic nor empirical data lend any support to his prejudiced dogma.

Go figure.

(Not that seceding isn't still in Texans' best interest.)

The "Will" Served by the Army is Not "National"

On February 28, 2008, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Army had just rolled out a new operations manual "putting stability operations - nation-building - on par with combat."

Doubtless it occurs to no one at AP, let alone the U.S. Army, that "nation building" (whether disguised as "stability operations" or anything else) is not a constitutionally permitted function of the federal government, and (therefore) not a constitutionally permitted function of the U.S. Army - no matter what George W. Bush (or any other usurper occupying a public office) may claim (whether via "executive order" or otherwise).

The notion of soldiers occupying foreign countries as "stability" enforcers brings to mind troop deployments of the Roman, British, Nazi, or Soviet empires — each of them a blight on humanity, bloated with depraved arrogance and hypocritical self-righteousness, and subsequently eradicated by men's refusal to live indefinitely under the rule of totalitarian despots.

But exactly when and how did such an enterprise, radically contrary to both the Constitution and the principles of the men who composed it, come to be an accepted role for Americans in uniform? Americans were never asked to vote on whether or not the Armed Services should serve some function besides defending their own country. Nor are taxpayers advised as to what the swelling national debt created by such operations will truly cost them and future generations.

Yet Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV suggests in the AP article that the Army is an "instrument of national will."

There is no question that the Army has long been an instrument of a will — somebody's will — but much of its deployment in the past century or more (and all the more vividly during the past decade) could hardly be characterized as the carrying out of some American "national will," when the nation was never permitted an informed or expressed will on the matter in the first place.

No expression of a fully-informed American "national will" was behind American military invasions and/or occupations of Korea (1950-present), Vietnam (1964-1973), Cambodia (1970), Lebanon (1982), Grenada (1983), Bosnia (1993), Somalia (1992-1993) and dozens of other constitutionally unauthorized actions.

And no expression of a fully-informed American "national will" currently stands behind the American military's invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't doubt that General Caldwell genuinely believes the Army is an "instrument of national will" any more than I doubt most of the Army's soldiers genuinely believe they are "serving their country," no matter what (or whose) orders they are following.

The truth of the matter is that the Army is an "instrument" of the "will" of "the government" (not to be confused with "the nation" or, more appropriately, "The People"). Likewise, the troops themselves are serving "the government" (again, not to be confused with "their country" or "The People"), and "the government" and its Army are being used unaccountably as "instruments" of a "will" that is actually indifferent (if not wholly contrary) to national (or popular) sentiment.

That American officials (elected and otherwise) and their minions in the military-industrial-congressional-media complex nevertheless persist in pretending an American "national will" is behind their bankrupt misadventures abroad is a grand fraud.

That Americans persist in quietly acquiescing to such fraud is nothing short of a grand tragedy.

Delusions of the 'Christian Right'

It's downright remarkable that so many in America who profess Jesus as their Lord can simultaneously display a measure of indifference (bordering on contempt) for the truth, to whatever extent that it doesn't fit their political ideology. Instead, these believers practice a brand of politics largely rooted in political and historical illiteracy at best, and baldfaced revisionism at worst.

At its core, the traditional Christian faith has historically held the truth in high esteem. He who is worshipped as Savior and Son of God identified Himself as truth incarnate (John 14:6).

Christians are instructed by Scripture to lay aside falsehood and tell truth (Ephesians 4:15, 25) and to rejoice in the truth (I Corinthians 13:6). They are warned that it is the wicked who won't love or believe the truth (II Thessalonians 2:10,12), that failing to embrace truth renders one vulnerable to myths (II Timothy 4:4), and that it is the noble-minded who study to verify what they hear (Acts 17:10-11).

The Savior Himself said "Take care what you listen to. By your standard of measure it will be measured to you..." (Mark 4:24), and warned that "every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment" (Matthew 12:36).

Yet each day, professing Christians can be observed unquestioningly embracing — in casual conversation, in print, and on the airwaves — an entire framework of political beliefs based largely on highly questionable (often downright false) statements originally spawned by one 'conservative' pundit or another.

Unwittingly compartmentalizing their professed love for the truth, and spurning subjective critical analysis, these 'Christians' champion the tenets of a political ideology having little more basis in truth than the 'godless Communism' once targeted as the nemesis of the 'Christian Right.'

Among those tenets (but seldom advertised as such) are...

Statism (at home) & Imperialism (abroad)
How exactly is a 'conservative' or 'christian' version of bloated, expansive, fiscally bankrupt, power-hungry, unaccountable government somehow better than a 'liberal' or 'godless' version of bloated, expansive, fiscally bankrupt, power-hungry, unaccountable government?

(Hint: It's not.)

It boggles the mind that the Founders, amidst a culture heavily influenced by Christian principles, had the wisdom to call for severely limited government, especially on the national level, while today's professing Christians glibly acquiesce to the ever expansive federal leviathan, on the grounds that a professing Christian is supposedly at the helm.

Roman worship of both the State and its Caesars was rejected by the early Christians, and they were persecuted as non-conformist rebels. In stark contrast to this, many American Christians today idolize the State and its Caesar, mislabeling it 'patriotism' -- and are quick to unleash a rather unchristian brand of venom on any who disagree.

Christian 'conservatives' once called for government that was fiscally responsible, less intrusive, and (therefore) generally smaller. Today they mindlessly beat the drums of war on terrorism, war on drugs, etc., oblivious to the truth that most of what the federal government is doing (including every 'war' [all of them being lost, incidentally]) plunges ALL Americans further into debt for the sake of a corporate and/or political agenda that has nothing to do with the actual, genuine interests, security, or liberty of the American People or the Constitution.

History and current events only corroborate the truisms that 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' (Acton), and 'that government is best which governs least' (Paine? Jefferson?), yet such truth seems lost on today's Christian 'conservatives' who all but demand that the federal government become bigger and more powerful, both at home and abroad.

The Welfare State
Professing to despise the government-enforced redistribution of their plundered wealth to the poor, minorities, and 'illegal' aliens, American Christians by and large turn a blind eye to the wholesale channeling of the State's booty to huge agricultural and manufacturing corporations in the form of subsidies, government contracts, and import tariffs.

Having recently controlled both the White House and both Houses of Congress for four full years, 'conservative' Christians' party of choice conspicuously failed to enact even a scrap of legislation deconstructing any significant part of the very same socialist welfare system they're unwilling to share with society's dregs. Socialized education, healthcare, and food stamps remained unaffected amidst a cacophony of dissent over hungry (but mostly hard-working) 'invaders' from abroad and a perpetual class of sluggards from within.

(Jesus said, 'You always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them' [Mark 14:7], but today's 'conservative' Christians, by and large, appear content to accept wasteful, inept, and heavily corrupted government 'charity' at the barrel of a gun as a substitute for personally doing good.)

The Warfare State
With a mere shadow of an understanding of the 'just war' concept, most American Christians seem convinced that it's 'just' (not to mention downright normal) to send and expend military hardware and lives throughout the globe for everything BUT defending the country or its Constitution. Whether due to willful ignorance or abject denial, they don't seem to recognize that such activity as the very essence of imperialism — the mere mention of which truth is often rewarded with jerk-o-the-knee derisive epithets like 'unpatriotic,' 'unamerican,' and 'leftist.'

The Founders laid down strict limitations on the use of military force, and plainly advocated a live-and-let-live policy of friendly, free trade made possible by our peacefully minding our own business. Republican presidents have a history of abandoning that policy — to the detriment of The People they presume to govern — beginning as far back as Lincoln himself. The questionable sloganeering traditions of 'support the president!' and 'support the troops!' regardless of the mission is standard fare among American Christians today, much as it was in vogue among the faithful worshippers at Rome's statist altar.

[It's noteworthy, as the 2008 presidential election primaries are ramping up, that among both Democrats and Republicans only a couple of candidates unequivocally advocate a policy of peace and the withdrawal of American military from their present quagmires in the Middle East. Equally noteworthy is the fact that one of them — a professing Christian (with a solid, corroborating track record) — has received more financial contributions from U.S. military personnel than any other candidate.]