Ron Paul: Boston Police Tactics 'should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself'
Former congressman Ron Paul is not going gently into that good night:
Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.
These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.
Whole thing over at LewRockwell.com.
Speaking of Lew Rockwell, the new Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has come under sharp attack by James Kirchick at The Daily Beast, Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest, and Jamie Weinstein at The Daily Caller for being comprised of what Weinstein describes as "at least one 9/11 Truther and two of the most well-known apologists for Iran's theocratic government in the United States." You can read the responses from Rockwell, Tom Woods, Butler Shaffer, and John Glaser.
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My big problem with the Boston lockdown is that it's not justified by the fact that armed killers were on the loose...because given the number of unsolved murders nationwide, there are armed killers on the loose in every American city every day of the year.
you're either with us, or you're with the terrists!
But, you are the terrists!
They spent over $300 million to catch one murderer, who was already wounded and on foot.
And the failed at it. They only caught him after they gave up, admitted they couldn't find him, and lifted the lockdown.
It wasn't to catch a murderer. They don't give a shit about a mere murderer. A cop was killed. That's why they shut down the city.
It's true.
You can kill 3 and maim 150, but kill one mall cop...and it's on, motherfucker!
No, it has to be a proper LEO, not a rent-a-cop. Where I live, the campus police of the state-owned colleges have statewide jurisdiction just like the state police.
That's fucked up...
They tried to push a bill through in Nevada to give public school police category 1 status which would give them jurisdiction anywhere.
Luckily that failed and they're limited to school property and surround streets.
Same here. Campus cops at state colleges have the authority of a state trooper.
I once heard a town cop say "my badge says state of [whatever]...." acting like it wasn't a stretch for him to fuck with people anywhere in the state with the complete blessing of the local pigs.
It does depend on the state. In some states a sworn LEO has the power no matter where in the state he is at.
As I understand it, UConn police are technically state police in terms of powers. Which is absurd. And I've had them haul me in before. Luckily, they are clueless morons just like the state police, so they're just as easy to fool.
Epi, may I ask what they hauled your ass in for?
Someone had falsely accused me of a vandalism that occurred. It was totally something that could reasonably be pinned on me but I didn't do it, so I just talked around them for a while and they let me go.
Ah. Good for you. My brother in law had to dish out $1000 for a lawyer to fight a false claim by a stoner and his drug addict, temperamental father who accused him of assault. The kid was roaming around on his property late and night and he followed him in his truck ON HIS LAND and clipped him gently with the review mirror.
Anyway, the Crown through it out of court while the cops knew all along they were jerkoffs.
Side mirror not review mirror. Ugh.
Hey, you know Jim?
I'm really glad that when and where I went to college the campus security were not police. It was great to be able to walk into a freshman dorm with a big box of liquor and say "uh, this is for someone else" when the Public Safety guy asks you what you have there.
Yep, A U of Louisville DPS officer gave me a ticket off campus.
That's how it is in Georgia. UGA police are considered state police, and their jurisdiction is within something like 150 yards of any university property.
True of some places here, too. By a quirk in the rules of the local cop academy being co-located with the local juco, my pops was the CinC of the campus cops at a previous job.
He considered it his number one priorty to make clear to those knuckleheads that their one and only mission was campus safety. And by campus safety he meant that anyone drawing a gun on campus -- unless they saw a person not in uniform firing first -- would be fired and fuck the union. If they were doing anything beyond responding to an on-campus break in or car accident or girl with a flat tire/dead battery, they were to call him first. God, they hated him.
I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes standard practice when there is a cop killer on the loose.
They already shut down whole portions of cities for their stupid funerals.
But they don't do that regularly when a cop gets killed either. There was some other element here.
There was a media circus to keep entertained.
They spent over $300 million...
If that estimate is true, then the city likely did more total economic damage than did the bombers. At least they didn't kill any innocent people...
It wasn't spent, it was lost due to all of the businesses being shut down.
True, but the bombers only shut down the businesses in the immediate area of the marathon finish line. The PD shut down all the rest.
I think some of it is new toy syndrome. After 9-11, the government and state and local police really did a lot of hard thinking about what were previously unthinkable scenarios. And in doing so they came up with the most extreme things they could do in response. And that makes sense. If you have a truly extreme circumstance, you need to think about an extreme response.
So they all go out and train for this. They all train for the worst case scenario and the most extreme reaction to it. That is all well and good except for one thing; once you train to do something the natural instinct is to then do that thing. So instead of the extreme measures being the response to extreme circumstances, they have become the response to anything. The FBI and the Boston police have spent the past 12 years thinking about dealing with Nukes and Pandemics and huge biological attacks. And they have a big box of toys and tactics and plans to use in such circumstances. So here come tweedle dumb and tweedle dee blowing up the Boston Marathon. And the FBI and Boston police went immediately to their box of toys and deployed them all.
They did this not because they have some bigger motive. They did this because this is how bureaucracies work. Once a bureaucracy trains and plans to use certain means and methods, it is going those means and methods at the first opportunity, common sense and proportionality be damned.
This is an excuse, John. You are excusing their immediate lapse into thuggery and martial law. If they will do it over this, they will do it over anything.
If they will do it over this, they will do it over anything.
They only did it because on of their own had been killed.
We saw that with Dorner.
We also see it with the much greater response to a police officer being wounded or killed compared to a "civilian" being wounded or killed.
I really don't think it was primarily because of the cop that got killed in this case. Cops get killed often enough and you don't see this happen. Even in the Dorner thing, where the cops definitely went over the edge, they didn't shut down most of a major city. I think John's explanation is probably about right. And that is bad and worrying enough.
It is not an excuse. It is what is going on. And yeah, they will lapse into thuggery in a heartbeat. That is why they are so dangerous and why you have to on top of them all of the time.
What this shows is that we would have been better off not doing any of the planning and grants and such that we did post 9-11. I don't think any of this crap is actually going to improve the response in a not shit big emergency. In an emergency your plans are never any good anyway. And the whole thing is based on the assumption that if the government doesn't do something no one will, which is of course bullshit.
So we haven't done ourselves a damn bit of good in reacting to real emergencies. Meanwhile we have amped up our state and local police to the point that they will deal with every bombing, no matter how small, in the same manner they would deal with a nuke.
The lockdown was not because of the bombing. It was because they killed a cop.
No it was because they killed a cop and it was "terrorism". Once you use that word, all of the plans and toys come out.
The lockdown didn't start until a cop was killed.
But cops get killed a lot. But they don't get killed by terrorists on the lose a lot. They don't lock down every city where a cop is killed.
But cops get killed a lot.
Not is this brazenly. It's not often that someone walks up to a cop and shoots him in the head before he has a chance to react. That must have scared the shit out of the fuckers.
They definitely locked it down because a cop was killed, but they were only able to get away with it because of the word "terrorist". If it were a "normal" criminal they wouldn't have been able to get the lockdown and search approved.
They also didn't know who they were chasing or how armed they were until a cop got killed. I'm sure the dead cop added to their confused rage, but it was not the deciding factor in how it all went down.
I would also add that a lot of this over response is the legacy of Katrina. After Katrina every single police chief, governor and LEO and fed bureaucrat in the country's greatest fear became being Mike Brown. I can say this because I have seen it. After Katrina, any reaction to an emergency that didn't immediately go to 11 was unthinkable.
And the media coverage of Katrina was nothing but weeks and months of the idea that people are stupid and helpless and only a federal response can ever accomplish anything.
The legacy of that is in some part the reaction in Boston. What you call oppression, the bureaucracy calls ass covering.
What you call oppression, the bureaucracy calls ass covering.
Nice one, I'm gonna have to steal this line.
john, I'm really appreciating your analysis today. Thanks.
Sadly, this is the new normal. Because no one is outraged over cops BLATANTLY violating the 4th Amendment (of course 90% of the population has no idea what the 4th Amendment is) it has now become precedent. It will be done EVERY time there is ANY bad guy in ANY neighborhood. And try finding ANYONE who is pissed off about it. Fuck, even Reason doesn't seem to upset based on the lack of articles on the subject. The public has done nothing but cherr the Jackboots.
This is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause.
It will be done EVERY time there is ANY bad guy in ANY neighborhood.
Only if the bad guy is a cop killer.
Why would they limit themselves to that?
If only there were something that placed limits on government power.
Or cheer.
Isn't that a Padame quote from AOTC? Ack I'm referncing the star wars prequels!!!!
They did it in Waco 20 years ago, and when the anniversary came up recently, it was actually kind of hard to find any reference to it in the media. NPR gets credit for remembering to mention it, but the corporate media, not so much.
This was worse. Waco was just the feds. This was feds, state and local.
Well, Canada declared martial law during the October Crisis in 1970 here in Montreal. The pigs in the FLQ had just killed a politician and kidnapped another and the government sent in the army.
But this time it happened in a real country.
Zing, eh?
Whoa....eh!
'Scuse me for trying to culture this joint a little.
Once a bureaucracy trains and plans to use certain means and methods, it is going those means and methods at the first opportunity, common sense and proportionality be damned.
It doesn't help that now they have to justify the bigger budgets that come along with all of their shiny new toys. So they have to use them otherwise someone might eventually figure out that they're comlpetely wasting taxpayer money and cut them off.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!! What am I saying? Cut them off? That's just crazy talk! Nevermind.
You mean James Kirchick doesn't like Ron Paul? Shocking!
One of the fascinating things is that Kitrich's expose of the racist newsletters that Ron Paul published. He removed the name of the fellow who authored one of them. That author works for Forbes magazine now. His name is James B Powell.
Clearly Kirchick was interested in providing his readers with all the facts relevant to the matter rather than merely writing a hatchet job, so I'm sure it was an oversight.
So he knew who authored the letters and left that out? That is the sleeziest thing I have ever heard.
He knew who had authored *one* of them.
It's important to note that there were several newsletters.
And, the whole stupid affair has the stamp of Murray Rothbard's attempt to build a pro-liberty coalition from marginalized people who would be willing to oppose the progressive juggernaut (full disclosure I am a Rothbardian and love the guy).
Rothbard had a rule that became known as Rothbard's Law: "People tend to specialize in what they are worst at."
He used to use Milton Friedman's approach to Central Banking as evidence of this.
I submit Rothbard also illustrated his law - except for him it was politics. The pathetic thing is that Ron Paul's approach of being a nice guy ended up doing far more than any coalition with Buchanan ever could. And Murray's manic politicking only served to undermine him.
I knew Rothbard's filthy paw prints were all over them. But if he knew the author of one, he should have included that information and gone to that guy for an explanation. Why leave that out other than to just unfairly smear Paul as the author?
That's a rhetorical question, right? 🙂
Yes
I don't know. The good faith I have for Ron Paul is slowly evaporating as he continues to associate his "brand" with bat-shit insane Dominionists (Rushdoony and North), Neo-Confederates (Block, et al.), and paleoconservatives-in-Libertarian-clothing "Israel Lobby" conspiracy theorists. It's quite possible that Paul might agree, explicitly or implicitly, with any of those ideologies. If so, he is no friend to liberty.
Dude, if you think Walter Block is a NeoConfederate, you are a fucking loon.
Seriously....
What is a Neo-Confederate?
Apparently, it's someone who argues that the Confederate States had a legal right to secede.
They did. Secession is a poor reason for war. Slavery would have been a good reason to go to war over, and I would have supported a war decision on that basis.
Unlike some, I don't believe that slavery could have been solved peacefully by buying all the slaves. I think if we wanted to free the slaves at that point in time, we would have needed to go to war.
The difference is that the war would have been waged for the sole purpose of freeing the slaves, and after the war the Confederacy should have been allowed to go their own way. Forcing the Confederacy to rejoin the Union was wrong.
Of course, what I'd LIKE to have happened is unlikely, but there is quite a difference between disagreeing with our reason for waging war, and supporting the Confederacy.
"They did." - I'm not sure what this sentence refers to.
Both Spooner and Block are wrong.
They had a legal right to secede. That doesn't mean I support their secession decision, but I don't think dissolving those political bonds was illegal.
Just because you have the legal right to be an asshole doesn't mean that you aren't still an asshole. The south had the right to secede, but they seceded for extremely non-libertarian reasons.
This is true.
People keep repeating that as if it's holy writ, but it's not necessarily true. If we want to argue the legality of succession, which, to be honest, is not something I'm very interested in doing, one can argue that the acceptance of the Constitution was entering into a union, in perpetuity. A contract between two or more consenting parties can have a obligation for any amount of time, even forever. I don't see anything particularly unjust in that. Indeed, if the Founders foresaw the need for succession, wouldn't they have explicitly put the legal mechanisms for such a process in the text of the Constitution or within the original Bill of Rights?
Again, one could argue that a right of succession is one of the powers mentioned in the 10th.
The burden of proof rests on you. Where in the Constitution is the power to suppress succession delegated to the Federal Gov? And why would this contract be in perpetuity with no right of recision? The key words you stated were "can have an obligation". The fact is, there IS no obligation.
As for the reasons the South succeeded, I'd be pissed too if the Fed Gov slapped tarrifs on a bunch of imports to protect special interests in the North that ultimately effected MY product exports through counter-tarrifs.
Your neo-Confederate link goes to an article about Lysander Spooner?
Somebody who generally prefers more localized government to large, centralized, national or international bureaucracies.
Think Think League of the South.
Says the man, if I remember correctly, who denies the Armenian Genocide is historical fact.
Now tell me that I don't have the super-secret Rockwellian decoder ring to inform me that Block didn't believe what he wrote.
This has nothing to do with his opinions on the Confederacy.
Except the quote is a condemnation of the Union and not support for the Confederacy. He doesn't need to have supported the Confederacy to think the Union went to war for a bad reason.
"Says the man, if I remember correctly, who denies the Armenian Genocide is historical fact."
I thought this was referring to Block, nevermind. I'm not trying to get into any Armenian genocide debates.
Nah. HM probably was scanning the thread and saw the comment that started off with the fact I am a half Turk, and stopped reading there. Which kind of explains how he could shit all over himself with his mischaracterization of Walter Block.
It seems, like Block, you like to ignore context when it suits your purposes.
OH MY GOD!
You are a fucking loon.
Where have I denied that the genocide occured?!? Why don't you go find the comment where I did...
I wish you the best of luck in your quest! I should warn you that someone will probably find the Amulet of Yendor before you succeed.
I said "if I remember correctly" if you didn't I apologize for confusing you with someone who did. It must be the Turkey connection I have in my mind with your handle.
Now are you going to address my argument or are you content to just question my sanity?
I did address your argument above. Apparently to you anyone who thought the South had a legal right to secede, including abolitionist leader Lysander Spooner, are neoconfederates.
I can only conclude that your definition of neo-confederate is so expansive as to be meaningless.
But that's the point. I don't give a fuck whether or not the South had a "legal" right to secede. That's sophistry to cover up that the South had a complete lack of a moral right for succession.
You don't have a legal, nor a moral, right to secede if that includes disenfranchising the individual rights of certain members of the population. Justice in a federated republican form of government demands that the federal government protect its citizens from the mob of the majority.
You don't have a legal, nor a moral, right to secede if that includes disenfranchising the individual rights of certain members of the population.
How does this apply, though, when those members were already completely disenfranchised? Shouldn't your argument make southern colonies' decision to join the US just as problematic as southern states' decision to leave it?
ABSOLUTELY! The compromise on slavery that the Founders were forced to make was a dolorous blow to the Republic that has yet to be healed.
This is absolutely true HM, but has nothing to do with the issue of secession itself. That I'm glad the slaves were freed by the Civil War has nothing to do with my dislike of our reason to go to war, and vice-versa. I judge each part separately, I don't feel one justifies or condemns the other.
You don't have a legal, nor a moral, right to secede if that includes disenfranchising the individual rights of certain members of the population.
Heroic Mulatto,
Those individuals were already disenfranchised. So they did indeed have a legal right to secede. Morally, neither they nor the Fed government were superior.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you please elaborate?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you please elaborate?
Sure. The blacks were already disenfranchised, so the south seceding did not disenfranchise them; they were already disenfranchised.
As to the Fed government or the southern states moral, actually immoral, positions, they were the same: they both allowed for the owning of human beings.
I see. My answer to that is "yes and no." It might be a technicality, but with the Fugitive Slave Laws, and the well-documented kidnapping of Free Blacks, you can argue that previously free Black people were disenfranchised due to the actions of others.
That's true. The difference is that the Federal government actually woke up. When the Feds attempted to do the moral thing, Lincoln gets called a "monster" by folks like Block.
When the Feds attempted to do the moral thing, Lincoln gets called a "monster" by folks like Block.
I am not sure the Feds were trying to do the moral thing. I think they were trying to keep the southern states in the union. The Emancipation Proclamation was not issued until 2 years into the conflict. Lincoln, to me, is neither a monster nor a saint. He was someone who was simply caught up in the times and did the best he could.
Here is a pretty good book on the fourteenth amendment.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/ind.....&Itemid=27
So basically you're alright with abrogating peoples' rights as long as they're bad guys, correct? The moral right to secede exists completely separate from the lack of a right to keep slaves. Freeing the slaves has nothing at all to do with preventing secession. War to prevent secession is wrong, even if something good (ending slavery) comes from it. Those are two separate issues, there is no need to conflate them
Who was being disenfranchised? The slaves were already nonenfranchised, secession didn't change that. If you're saying we should have gone to war over slavery, I agree with you. But that doesn't make going to war over secession a good reason for war.
Where we disagree is that in this historical instance the impetus for succession was hand-in-hand with wanting to continue the institution of slavery. To judge the morality of the action separate from its historical context is a bit intellectually dishonest, in my opinion.
No we don't. I fully agree that they seceded over slavery (mainly).
I'm not judging the morality of the action separate from the context, I'm just saying that secession is a right. They had a right to do so, just like I have a right to speak.
Just because I have the right to do so, however, doesn't mean it's alright to insult people or speak in favor of torture. Similarly, their right to secede doesn't mean they were morally correct in their decision. I don't take a stance on whether they were wrong to secede(though I do on the reason; it was a disgusting reason).
But here's the thing, the authors I mentioned before don't often include such nuance when they argue for the South's justification in succession.
After all, why not argue for State's Rights using the Vermont Republic succession movement, or the imposition of monogamy laws when Utah joined the States, or even the annexation of Texas? All of those examples would bring up the same points without the historical baggage of slavery.
Yeah, whatever other arguments there are to be had about secession and the relationship of states and the federal government, the Confederacy was fighting to preserve slavery and gets no sympathy from me. Anyway, the past is the past and it's dumb to argue about at this point. We might as well fight about whether it was right for the Normans to take over Britain.
Oh no disagreement there Zeb. I don't feel any sympathy for the Confederate government, which is pretty much the point this argument started from, that thinking they had a right to secede isn't the same thing as support for the Confederacy.
And as you say, arguing about the past doesn't change it (sadly).
Oh ho, Zeb - you aren't one of those Saxon apologists, are ye?
"Now are you going to address my argument"
Honestly, I don't see why he should considering you started your argument with an inaccurate portrayal of his beliefs.
I have no dog in this fight by the way, I just think it's rude to do what you did then demand anything from him.
But calling me a "loon" is the conduct of a gentleman of the highest order?
Go sockpuppet somewhere else.
Who said anything about being gentlemanly? It's H&R. That's a completely separate issue from your inaccurate statements of his beliefs.
I didn't make any statement concerning his beliefs. I said "if I remember correctly." That is an admission that I could be remembering incorrectly, which tarran was free to confirm. Which he did.
I feel a lot of people have a bee in their bonnet about Armenia-gate, but excuse tarran for opening his response by implying that I'm a kook, is that I unapologetically spoke heresy in the Church of Paul.
Whatever.
The fuck? YOU'RE the person who brought up the Armenian genocide. I don't recall ANYONE saying a thing about it except in response to your claim that tarran doesn't believe it happened. And WE have "bees in our bonnets"? Stop bringing up irrelevant shit and then claiming it shows we're freaking out.
And Ron Paul ALSO doesn't enter into this conversation at all. We've been arguing about Blocks' purported support for the Confederacy, not anything about Paul.
HM, based on this thread, you are a fucking loon. You tried to smear somebody with a false ad hominem and then accused them of not addressing your argument.
Geez, how many sockpuppet accounts do you have tarran?
Now you really ARE acting like a loon. Anyone who disagrees with you is tarran in disguise?
With the same exact accusation?
C'mon, son!
You got me HM. My repeating the wording of a previous accusation is OBVIOUSLY proof I'm either tarran or being told what to say by tarran. Can't escape your iron logic.
Ummm...I never called you a sockpuppet, darius...unless your name is really sgs or Brandon.
Maybe you're a bit loony-toons, eh?
Dude, when you say
you're obviously making a claim that using the word "loon" against you is proof of sockpuppetry.
How else am I supposed to take when I had just used the "exact same accusation"? C'mon, son!
Well, you look at the time stamps of the two comments and realize that unless I have psionic precognitive abilities, I couldn't have been referring to you 5 minutes before you posted your comment.
Uh, what? Your response to my calling you a loon is DEFINITELY after I called you a loon. And your response indicates a belief that people calling you a loon are sockpuppeting for tarran.
To expand. You made a claim that the people who disagreed with you were sockpuppeting for tarran. I called you a loon. Then you implied that calling you a loon (using "the exact same accusation") was evidence that they were sockpuppets. Since I had just called you a loon, I assumed this applied to me as well.
No, you misunderstand. @ 1:01 I refer to sgs and Brandon's Borg-like similarity in argumentation. @1:06 You call me on it. @1:09 I, assuming you know I'm talking about the two previous posts remark that the similarity in argumentation is uncanny. @1:12"You're so vain/You probably think this post is about you..."
I'd like to get back to the discussion, now, ok?
Sure thing.
HM, bro, you are coming off a little loony. Dial it back, man.
Remember, tarran called me a "loon" because I stated that Block has expressed Neoconfederate sympathies. I know, right? Completely loony to suggest that someone affiliated with the LvMI, of which a senior fellow has built a carrer out of polemics against Lincoln and the Union, and another member, who, by his own admission, was heavily involved with the founding of the League of the South, could have Neoconfederate sympathies.
Completely meshuggah.
I understand your position. That was the original argument. When I said you were coming off loony, it was in reference to the sockpuppet accusations. Now, back to your argument.
I enjoy a little libertarian on libertarian violence. 😉
I do too, EDG!
As far as DiLorenzo goes, I have never heard him say anything normatively supportive of the Confederacy, particularly about slavery. The closest I have ever heard him come was one lecture (on the economic history of the confederacy) where he said the Confederate constitution had some clauses that repaired defects in the U.S. constitution, but went on to trash the thing for being economically messed up.
Again, saying Lincoln is a tyrant who had no right to invade the South doesn't make someone a neoconfederate anymore than saying Hitler was a tyrant who had no right to invade the Soviet Union makes one a neo-Stalinist.
Are there some real scumbags associated with LVMI? Yes. One even quotes a Nazi anthropologist while writing about culture. And, while Thomas Woods is very coy about his views on race, I find it interesting that when one drills down into the accusations against him, in the end one either ends at people casting his opposition to Lincoln as being secret evidence of his racism or the fact that he met with racists.
And, of course, you didn't mention those guys at all initially, but used Walter Block as your example of a neoconfederate, which is comically ignorant.
So frankly I doubt you are coming to this with any depth of knowledge other than "ZOMG! Anti-Lincoln = NeoConfederate" based on the childish arguments, and tu quoques you've been throwing around.
Thanks for playing, my fellow neo-stalinist.
This is an apple, and this is an orange. Educate yourself on the difference, please.
Actually, I wrote (Block, et al.), but you seem found of cherry-picking today. And you still haven't provided any counterargument to my observation, using Block's own words. Your only defense of Block has been to call me loony and have a hissy fit in the corner.
Believe me, when it comes to depth of knowledge, you haven't learnt half of what I've forgot. Especially considering you've proven you have no idea what a tu quoque argument actually means.
Yes, HM, you have triumphed. I ride off because I am quaking at your threats to bite my legs off. 😉
Listen, I don't want any ill will between us, because I think you're a good egg. I apologize again for implying you didn't believe in the Armenian Genocide. In the back of my mind, I was remembering this post of yours, which could be construed that way. However, you clarified your position and I believe you. In that, you have done more than Block ever has in clarifying his beliefs, which was the original point I was making concerning Ron Paul.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that I had to refute your baseless charge that Walter Block was a neoconfederate.
Of course, that is impossible, since I can post hundreds of non-neoconfederate essays, and you can always argue that there must be one more lurking out there unknown to us.
However, I'll add to the essay you linked to, which is an attack on the North with other attacks on the North.
And I urge you to read his essay on reparations for slavery.
Note how the neo-confederateness drips off his pen as he writes that the southern slave owners should have been fined heavily for their crime of holding people in bondage, and that there is a moral case for forcing their descendants to pay reparations for slavery.
Well, if you call someone a "loon" for arguing that Block is, then, yes, there is an onus on you to explain why that is so. What you should have done 2 hours ago is post the first essay, which actually addresses my argument, though I still disagree with him.
As for the second essay, you're confusing Neo-Confederate-ism with "racism/White Supremacy". (I look forward to reading the essay in its entirety when I get the chance.) I have never argued that Block is a racist of any stripe; however, he, like most others in his particular intellectual circle, argue that Southern succession was justified, and that the Lincoln administration was not justified in its actions. The justification of succession is the sine qua non of the Confederate cause and identity. If you argue that the South was justified in succession circa 1860, you are arguing from a Neo-Confederate standpoint.
If Block, or Paul for that matter, are uncomfortable with that appellation, then perhaps they should consider doing more to distance themselves from the "scumbags" (to use your term), which is all my point was originally.
So, abolitionist Lysander Spooner, Walter Block and I are all neo-confederates! This is amazing news!
Do you feel dirty for having associated with scum like me?
Spooner can't have been "neo-" as he was around during the original.
If one argues that a group of states, located in the South, were/are justified in forming their own nation called the "Confederate States of America", what are you supposed to call that belief? Neo-Canadianism?
Seriously, when Block writes shit like this:
What is one supposed to think? The "First War of Southern Secession"? When is the second one going to occur?
"They had the right to do so" /=/ "they were justified in doing so". Defending their right to do so is NOT the same thing as supporting their secession.
If Texas, for instance, decided to secede today, I think they would be well within their rights to do so. That doesn't mean I want Texas to secede.
All Block is saying is that them seceding was well within their rights to do so. POINT TO ME where in that quote he defends the decision itself, and not just the right to MAKE the decision.
In this case, I disagree. Through his essays, Block, whether he is aware of it or not, is providing intellectual support to their aspirations. Whether he is a "fellow traveler" or just a "useful idiot" is of little consequence.
And again, unlike your example with Texas, Block writes that things would have been better if the South had successfully left the Union. Look at the last sentence of the first essay of his I linked to, "When and if the US ceases to imprison the Confederacy, we will be in a far better position to bring about world peace; or, at least, to help put out many local conflagrations." "Imprison the Confederacy"? Really? Yet, it's loony to suggest that Block has Neo-Confederate sympathies? Give me a break!
He provides support for the legal and philosophical BASIS for the aspirations, not for the idea that secession is the right choice.
Uh, whether he supported their actual goals or not is the ENTIRE POINT, as that's what separates a "neoConfederate" from just someone who thinks they're within their rights to secede. Block wasn't a NeoConfederate PRECISELY because he never claimed support for the cause of secession. Don't try to pretend the crux of the argument is irrelevant to it.
HM, I don't know what else you can call forcing a political group to maintain ties against their will. If Britain had succeeded in keeping us a part of it, WE would have been "imprisoned" as part of Britain. None of that proves he supports the actual political cause of secession, which WOULD make him a NeoConfederate.
In this case, in order to accept that definition, you have to accept that the Confederacy was a legitimate political group. If you accept that group's legitimacy, you are offering it a form of support, even if you don't agree with that particular group's aims.
Walter Block being an anarchist, views all nation states as being illegitimate.
So is he still a neoconfederate in your eyes?
I am aware that he's an ancap. One has nothing to do with the other. I would argue his justification for Southern succession betrays his anarchist beliefs and supports the mob-ocracy that brought the Confederacy into being.
So just so we're clear, you believe anyone who believes secession is a political right is a NeoConfederate?
No. See @4:47. However, someone who has a curious fixation on the "Southern cause" when discussing the right of succession clearly qualifies.
Probably because the Confederacy is used as "proof" that secession isn't a right. The natural place to start defending a right is the case of it where the mainstream is vehemently against it. And the Civil War is that place.
If you haven't noticed, going for the hardest example to defend is a definite trend with Block. He did the same thing for pimps, drug dealers, and loan sharks (among others) in Defending the Indefensible. Even though drug dealers, pimps, and loan sharks can be pretty loathsome, he defends their rights anyway. However I wouldn't assume that means he supports drug violence, forced prostitution, or breaking people's legs.
Saying they were a legitimate state ONLY supports that they're a legitimate state (if they exist at all). It DOESN'T mean I support their breaking away, and it DOESN'T mean I support anything they do. Geez. I support the principle of secession itself, and I don't retract that support just because some groups that take advantage of it repel me.
You act like my support for the idea of secession as a political right is itself an evil thing. Do you also think support for free speech is support for racial slurs? It certainly lends support to people that use them, even if I don't agree with their particular aims.
My support for a right is NOT contingent on who is using that right.
No, I'm not. We're discussing secession purely within the context of America circa 1860. Again, if we're just discussing States' Rights and the right of secession, Vermont, Utah, and Texas all make better examples, no?
That has nothing to do with this. You're making the claim that Walter Block is a NeoConfederate simply because he writes about the application of secession to the Confederacy.
The only logic I'm seeing here is that "support for secession provides support for the Confederacy, therefore anyone who supports secession as a right is a NeoConfederate". Which is absurd reasoning.
No, again, you're ignoring the historical context of the Southern secession. One can claim the right of succession for a legitimate reason and for an illegitimate reason. Block, himself, acknowledges that in the first essay tarran posted. Where I disagree with Block and agree with Machan is that the Confederacy's claim for succession was illegitimate.
Block's counterclaim is a (true) tu quoque where he claims the Union didn't have the right to deny the Confederacy's succession on the grounds of slavery due to slavery being legal in many jurisdictions in the North. I find the laundry list of prerequisites Block places upon the North before it, in his view, could act to be absurd.
In short, to argue that, in 1860, the Confederacy had a legitimate reason for exercising its right to succession is a Neo-Confederate argument, in that it justifies the creation of a nation-state based on the ideology of the Confederacy. To argue against Neo-Confederate-ism says nothing about one's view point about other successionist movements.
I call the notion that people are justified in seceding from any nation state at any time one of the manifold political positions contained in the philosophies of "libertarian anarchism" and "individualist anarchism".
You apply those principles to the question whether a set of slave owning states should be permitted to secede from a nation-state that permitted slave owning and would have continued to practice it after their departure, it's a fucking no brainer.
I stand here before you claiming that the people in the south had a right to secede from the United States.
So what are you going to do, HM? Are you going to associate with me and thus open your self to a charge of being a neo-confederate?
As I wrote @2:17
I maintain that it is dishonest to ignore the moral entanglement inherent in the Confederacy's decision to exercise its right of succession.
Furthermore, your line of argumentation ignores the many Southerners who supported the Union. What of their right to freely associate with the North? By all accounts, the various State conventions to vote on succession weren't free as Unionists were under threat of violence. Indeed, many expressing sympathy to the Union (before the war) were lynched. As citizens, wishing to remain in the Union, the Federal government was obligated to protect their interests when they were unjustly disenfranchised.
And not all Americans supported secession from Britain, I guess that means support for the American Revolution is morally impermissible!
Hear that guys, we never should have tried to leave Britain! Supporting that just means we're hypocrites!
No, I'm not biting that bullet.
I'm not going to argue that Britain didn't have a right to use its military to protect the interests of its Loyalist citizens.
I'm glad we can agree you're a NeoLoyalist.
Well, I do have a 2nd passport to a Commonwealth country. 🙂
Oddly enough, every time I bring up secession, some wag claims that the question was resolved at Appatamox against my favor. Perhaps people bring up the confederacy because it actually was the most 'succesful' secession attempt, and thus the elephant in the room when one is discussing the subject?
I do appreciate how you are walking back from your original claims.
So, Walter Block is not a neocnfederate because he is an anarchist and didn't think the Confederacy had moral authority. Neither am I (phew). Lysander Spooner gets a miss too, not only because he argues much the same way we do, but also because he lived in the 1860's, so his arguments are converted from being neo-confederate to merely being confederate ones (some thanks to the guy who tried to help John Brown ignite a slave rebellion). Neither is Di-Lorenzo thanks to his anarchism. And wait, Thomas Woods is an anarchist too! This is awesome!
As to the people who wished to remain in the Union, I don't give a shit, anymore than I give a shit about my poor Tory ancestors who fled to Canada after the War of Independence (and whose issue fled back to the US after a failed rebellion in the 1830's).
And oddly enough, not giving a shit was Sherman's attitude towards those people too. 😉
I'll go ahead and repost this down here:
The Confederacy is used as "proof" that secession isn't a right. The natural place to start defending a right is the case of it where the mainstream is vehemently against it. And the Civil War is that place.
If you haven't noticed, going for the hardest example to defend is a definite trend with Block. He did the same thing for pimps, drug dealers, and loan sharks (among others) in Defending the Indefensible. Even though drug dealers, pimps, and loan sharks can be pretty loathsome, he defends their rights anyway. However I wouldn't assume that means he supports drug violence, forced prostitution, or breaking people's legs.
Reposting HM's comment (or the bulk of it) down here, since it seems to be the crux of his argument about Block:
The term "Neo-Confederate" obviously expresses political alignment with the Confederate States, a political entity whose characteristic feature was legal chattel ownership of human beings, slavery.
The only reason to call an argument "Neo-Confederate" is to discredit it with an implication that favors slavery. The term "Neo-Confederate" simply isn't used to convey other aspects of the antebellum South Southern hospitality, or Calhoun's theory of limited government, or import tariffs and cotton exports.
It is quite possible to describe an argument for secession without resorting to freighted terms like "Neo-Confederate".
It is patently absurd to call Block or Spooner Neo-Confederates.
Woods was not "heavily involved with the founding of the League of the South."
Huh? Woods was present at their founding meetings, by his own admission (you can look that up at Lew's blog), and contributed to their newsletters.
Woods can minimize his contributions, but that's pissing on one's leg and telling you it's raining.
Apparently, I loom large.
In HM's defense, you guys largely made all the points I would have made, had I not been sidetracked by an SMS conversation with the cute Armenian woman I started dating last week.
I can see why he thinks he is beset by my sock-puppets*.
*I did participate in the sockpuppeting harassment of Edward back in the wild days before registration, but haven't since then.
If I recall correctly, HM is the guy who admitted baking the blood of Armenian children into his matzoh.
Note that I said "if I recall correctly," thus acknowledging that I might be wrong.
And it's delicious.
Perhaps you would have defended your argument better if you weren't so distracted.
Not that I blame you, of course.
Wow, a Nethack reference. I didn't expect that.
Although, on second thought, it's strange I don't see more of that around here.
It's actually a Rogue reference.
Nope, it was nethack. I've never played Rogue.
According to Wikipedia, it was a part of both Rogue AND Nethack. I only looked at the Rogue entry when I made my previous comment.
Rogue:
Nethack:
Ack, server squirrels! What I meant to say was that applies to Rothbard too. He was horrendous at fusionist politics, always trying to find the most horrible people to link libertarianism to.
I do wish Rothbard had stuck to economics. His Conceived in Liberty is a pretty good history as well. Understanding where he is writing from, of course.
It's a real pity, because it will forever taint the real good he did.
I know him only from his articles, books, and a couple of videos on youtube, and so I am speculating when I write what follows:
I think Rothbard enjoyed politics, had a very reckless exuberance that he drew strength from, and in his youth was panicky at how classical liberalism and individualist anarchism had been all but snuffed out.
His coalition building was both fun and the product of desperation. You are all alone in a hostile world? Find allies, and band together with them! Like Kahane allying himself with the nastiest mobsters in the face of federal prosecution, he welcomed any ally he thought couldn't be bought off.
These are great qualities for a political saboteur, but not for a builder.
Ron Paul, in comparison, is a builder. He is unfortunately really reticent about throwing allies or employees under the bus (see Eric Dondero for example). But if you look at his political maneuvering, he unswervingly follows an unwavering course while being very polite.
Rothbard was a builder too... in the long run, the LVMI will have a massive impact on evangelizing freedom throughout the world. The LVMI online library is a massive achievement that has huge impact, and yet mostly goes unremarked.
I hope that in 100 years, it will be Rothbard the economist and not the tyro political power-broker that will be remembered.
Ron Paul 2016, eh? Oh yeah, fuck James Kirchick at The Daily Beast, fuck Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest, and fuck Jamie Weinstein at The Daily Caller.
Does anyone else think the lockdown only happened becuase they killed one of the king's men a cop?
Yes.
Up to that point there were no lockdowns.
The Watertown PD are a street gang. They are used to robbing helpless, complaisant, unarmed travelers at gunpoint whom they waylay on the roads radiating out from the center of town. They are not used to anyone fighting back, and didn't know how to cope with it.
BTW Jason Collins = first gay black President
First? LOL.
Has a "lockdown" of a large population like that ever happened before?
North Korea?
Of course, I meant in the United States.
I'm sure there was shit like this back during WWII. Didn't they have curfews and "lights out" drills and such back then?
A fair point, but war at least is a little more justifiable than a 19-year old bomber on the loose.
I think they knew that German bombers could never reach our cities. Yeah, this was probably a bigger over-reaction, but the precedent is there.
Anybody remember the Vietnam war protests? I know the National Guard shot some folks, but did they ever shut down a whole town?
I think they knew that German bombers could never reach our cities.
I though most of the lights out drills were conducted in coastal cities, and the fear was more of possible German U-boats on the east coast, and of Japanese U-boats or even the Japanese carrier fleet approaching the west coast.
THE GERMANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR!
I saw the movie, and Belushi said so.
what part of WAR on Terrorism, don't you get?
The part that's declared?!?!?!
Has a "lockdown" of a large population like that ever happened before [in the US]?
Post Katrina NOLA.
This is the first citywide lockdown of a second-tier city which was not the result of a natural disaster.
"Forced lockdown of a city."
Never happened.
Danger in the shape of somethin' wild.
Officer dressed in black, he's a hungry child.
No one knows who he is or what his name is.
I don't know where he came from or what his game is.
Lockdown in the city,
Lockdown in the city,
Runnin' wild and lookin' pretty,
Lockdown in the city.
True, any criticism of this, or referring to it as a "lockdown" and the comments section immediately gets flooded with comments claiming to be from Boston residents and expressing thanks to the police for saving them.
Nobody was marched out at gunpoint; grateful, terrified residents were escorted to safety.
I honestly was nauseous as people were cheering the cops.
And I still feel nauseous as the buses, radio ads and billboards proclaim "Boston Strong", as if we should feel pride in cowering in fear as armored thugs rampage through our homes.
I'm nauseous at the horrible grammar of the ersatz phrase "Boston Strong".
I can understand people having an emotional reaction.
Of course, since this is America, they had to beat it to death by repetition and by oversaturation in an attempt to squeeze every last drop of ersatz sentiment out of it.
Boston Bitches?
[Otter and Mrs. Wormer are in the supermarket vegetable section]
Eric 'Otter' Stratton: Mine's bigger.
[Marion looks questioningly at him]
Eric 'Otter' Stratton: My cucumber. It's bigger. I think vegetables can be very sensuous, don't you?
Marion Wormer: No, vegetables are sensual. People are sensuous.
Eric 'Otter' Stratton: Right. Sensual. That's what I meant. My name's Eric Stratton. People call me Otter.
Marion Wormer: My name's Marion. People call me Mrs. Wormer.
Eric 'Otter' Stratton: Oh, we have a Dean Wormer at Faber.
Marion Wormer: How interesting. I have a husband named Dean Wormer at Faber. Still want to show me your cucumber?
The irony of "Boston Strong" is amazing.
They call themselves strong for living in a place where armed self defense is basically illegal, where they huddle in their homes obeying orders from their masters, praying that one of the king's men will save them.
To think this is where the Revolution started. Pathetic.
If it's any comfort, Sarc, the revolutionary movement can be said to have arisen simultaneously in the then-colonies. Yes, the first shooting incident happened in Boston, but could have happened anywhere.
Boston was the most radical though. New York and the South had a lot of pro British. The British shut down Boston harbor for a while and put thousands of troops in Boston for good reason. And once the war started, after the British evacuated Boston, they gave up on ever taking New England back by military force. There was just no way to rule it. The British war plan was to take back the rest of the colonies leaving New England too isolated to function as an independent country thus forcing it to come back to the empire.
Boston was the most radical though.
My homeboy Patrick Henry would beg to differ.
He was one guy Tonio. There were a whole lot more loyalist in Virginia than there were in Massachusetts.
I disagree. The ideological center for the Patriots was always Boston, mainly due to population density. Most of the policies that the Patriots disagreed with, the Stamp Act, Quartering of Troops, etc. disproportionally effected urban seaport cities, like Boston, New York, Richmond and Charleston.
Many rural colonists in the Southern colonies were fearful of the British use of Black soldiers who were promised emancipation for their service (e.g. Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment), which, again, would have disproportionally effected the Southern theater of the war. In addition, the plantations of the Southern colonies had a stronger economic and political connection to the British Caribbean, which was a Loyalist stronghold.
Actually Charleston and Savvanah were full of loyalists and both fell very quickly. There were tons of loyalists all over the South. One of the biggest mistakes the British made was not using loyalists as soldiers. The British Army were assholes and didn't think the colonials were worthy of being employed. As a result of that loyalist militia activity was disorganized and never got off the ground until it was too late and what there was was destroyed at King's Mountain.
As far as New England, rural New England was in complete rebellion. After Lexington and Concord, the British Army never left Boston. There were simply too many people with guns in the country side willing to shoot at them. The British Army could move just fine through the countryside of New York or New Jersey or the South. But it couldn't in New England because the entire place was in revolt.
Go back and look at why the British adopted the Southern strategy after leaving Philadelphia. They did it because they long since had figured out that there was no retaking New England. But they had a shot at taking the South and the mid Atlantic afterwards.
That's true, but you have to remember their experience with the Colonial "militia" during the French and Indian War. With the exception of a few, most of them were rabble that couldn't fight for shit.
With the exception of a few, most of them were rabble that couldn't fight for shit.
They couldn't fight in nice, orderly rows and columns of troops like the British demanded of them. Turns out they were pretty good at hiding in trees and picking off British soldiers in nice bright red uniforms as they walked by in nice orderly rows and columns.
They were also good at deserting, going AWOL, and raping and looting French villages.
Jus' sayin'
If you are going to rape and loot, would not a French village be the place to go?
We're talking New France, though; full of burly, hirsute fur-traders and lumberjacks. Not the France France of 'Allo 'Allo!
To think this is where the Revolution started. Pathetic.
This.
The Boston Strong meme is bollucks.
BUT...I don't think it's relevant whether the citizens are armed or not in this case, unless you're advocating a vigilante position.
To be sure, there's probably less cowering in fear with an armed population.
Though, we would have probably seen the same outrage that occurred during Katrina, with door to door confiscation of arms.
"cowering in fear"
Projection.
That doesn't even make sense.
You are projecting your belief that a reasonable percentage of the people who went along with the request to stay home were "cowering in fear".
Is there even a shred of evidence that we were dealing with an overly fearful residency?
Look, the manhunt was WAY over the top. But it's not unreasonable to want to have the police force you're paying for do their job. And there was immense pressure...from the populace...to do this job...which in my view was far more rooted in revenge and not fear.
My point was that they'd have felt a lot less constrained to stay in their homes if they were generally armed. We lost something important when we deferred our right to defend ourselves to law enforcement. Despite the legality of guns, that's largely true, in practice.
"My point was that they'd have felt a lot less constrained to stay in their homes if they were generally armed."
Why? Can't a reasonable argument be made that staying low increases the chances of a successful manhunt? I don't see how an armed populace implies a different handling of the situation.
You mean the successful manhunt that worked only when people were released from the lockdown?
I'm not saying that a truly voluntary "Stay in the house for a while" request would've been so awful, nor am I advocating vigilante justice. But I think the scope of this lockdown is extremely troubling. Why not do it country-wide if another 9/11-level attack happens?
I'm sick of the pretexts used to shut down civil liberties.
"But I think the scope of this lockdown is extremely troubling"
I agree that it hints at a troubling future. But until there's actual force used during a "lockdown", we're just engaging in speculation.
I don't want to sound all apocalyptic, but I was shocked when I heard about the lockdown. It's hard to tell how much they were enforcing it, but the news seems to be that at least some people were detained for some amount of time for just being out of their homes.
Another question is whether searches were conducted legally.
Another question is whether searches were conducted legally.
I believe this falls under the category of "How dare you question our brave first responders! They put their lives on the line every day! Who the fuck are you to criticize them? What the fuck? They're hunting terrorists for fuck's sake!"
My point was that they'd have felt a lot less constrained to stay in their homes if they were generally armed.
I don't know. Armed or not, I probably would have stayed inside and layed low. Not out of an irrational fear of running into the bomber, but out of the very rational fear of being shot by a cop with an itchy trigger finger.
I'm with you, Loki. If I knew there was a gang of armed thugs roaming around my neighborhood just itching for a fight, I certainly wouldn't go out in public unless I had to.
We all know what would happen. I'd be out walking about, minding my own business and they'd find me, shout conflicting orders, then shoot me for "resisting". Yeah, I'm not all about giving some cops paid vacation while they "investigate" why I had the nerve to walk around my own neighborhood.
"I don't think it's relevant whether the citizens are armed or not in this case, unless you're advocating a vigilante position."
Huh?
A killer is wandering around trying to avoid the cops, possibly looking for someone to take hostage or take advantage of in some way, and you dont see the relevance of an armed populace?
If you cant see it on your own, nothing I can say will explain it to you.
If you cant see it on your own, nothing I can say will explain it to you.
Some things are so obvious that if someone doesn't get it, they never will, making any explaining a waste of time and energy.
Harp on it all you want. An armed populace wouldn't have influenced the police response one iota. So bringing self-defense into a discussion of the reasonableness of the "lockdown" is introducing a completely irrelevant topic for your own masterbatory pleasure.
That "Whoosh!" sound you just heard was the point going right over your head.
I don't think it's relevant to the question of justifying the reaction of the Boston Police.
Who said it was? You are responding to an argument that no one made while completely missing the point. And here I thought no one could be as obtuse as Tulpa. Guess I was wrong.
"They call themselves strong for living in a place where armed self defense is basically illegal, where they huddle in their homes obeying orders from their masters, praying that one of the king's men will save them."
You chose the slander an entire city on the premise that if they were armed and had chosen not to co-operate, then that would have been true strength.
Armed or disarmed is irrelevant. And they weren't praying for anyone to save them. You're projecting your own fantasies of liberal weakness onto an entire population.
Whoosh.
Being as I actually live within 2000 yards of where the guy was caught, MP, I can provide you with some insight.
Sarcasmic has accurately described my neighbor's fear and their servile attitude towards the police.
What you call a slander I call an accurate characterization of my neighbors' reaction.
One could say the King has learned his lesson.
"I honestly was nauseous as people were cheering the cops."
THIS 100% MOTHERFUCKING PERCENT. I was listening to the police scanner that day, and they were apprehending 70 year old grandpas at gunpoint for thinking they had a killswitch
The amount of force that was shown, the scaring of people to stay inside their homes, the shutdown of a city the suspect was never in that day....and people still sung praise for authority (even when it wasn't them who found him)
After that day, I'm seriously worried for this country. If 3 dying caused that kind of response, imagine what 300 dead would cause.
what if you knew her and found her dead on the ground? Tin soldiers and Obama's coming...
If 3 dying caused that kind of response, imagine what 300 dead would cause.
That's not what caused it.
A peasant killed one of the king's men. Until that peasant is found, all peasants are considered guilty until they prove they are innocent.
The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city.
Didn't the National Guard participate in this farce too? If so, I'd change "military-style" to just plain old "military".
Army National Guard:
Boston, Baghdad. What difference, at this point, does it make?
The Guard did. But in fairness, the Guard is a state asset and they are supposed to be used for state law enforcement and emergencies. The Guard actually belonged in the middle of this more than they belonged in Baghdad.
The guard is a state asset when used domestically; when they're sent overseas they are nationalized, ie are part of the US Army.
I know. But they were being used in Title 32 status here.
Agreed. But the Guard is still a military, regardless of which civilian authority it answers to.
Clearly, how one interprets the actions of the Boston military separates those concerned with the tendrils of dictatorship slowly erasing the planet's last great experiment in human liberty and the rest who don't give a single fuck about the future of freedom and would rather fit snugly into whatever cushion-lined crate granted them by their overlords.
You do have to think that if this went down in Houston or Atlanta, there would've been a lot more: "The police are asking that everyone secure their property and refrain from shooting strangers on sight. Please call 911 and report any suspicious persons and await police response unless you are in physical danger."
So, I'm still not clear on what legal force the "lockdown" had. Initially it sounded like a request that could be refused. What happened to anyone who decided to go outside? Surely there were some people who don't hear the news in the morning and just got up and did their thing as usual.
I'm wondering the same. I remember all/most of the businesses were closed down for the day. At that point, there's not much for an individual citizen to do outside of his home. Maybe that's why everyone "voluntarily" stayed indoors?
Surely there were some people who don't hear the news in the morning and just got up and did their thing as usual.
Yeah. Maybe this guy.
Dunkin Donuts employees did.
They were specifically ordered to go to work by the king's men.
Just in case you didn't hear the rest of the story.
A buddy of mine lives in Cambridge, ignored it, and went to work. NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED.
check again. I'm sure he's dead.
That's exactly what I thought. Libertarians are always talking about how coercive measures like a military draft are not necessary, because in a real emergency, everybody will cooperate voluntarily. And then an example of that occurs, and instead of loudly proclaiming, "See? We were right!", they mischaracterize the situation as one in which force was actually used or threatened.
Libertarians don't claim that "everybody will cooperate voluntarily" in a real emergency.
We claim that if an emergency response requires coercing innocent people to act a certain way then the response if flawed.
That's putting the cart before the horse. People are judging libertarianism; libertarians aren't judging everyone else. The point is that libertarianism doesn't produce adverse results. "What if people do the wrong thing in emergencies without being forced?" Well, they don't, and this is an example of how they did the right thing in an emergency without being forced.
It's like in England when a rape case was solved by everyone on a block's voluntarily submitting DNA samples. People are not mean-spirited, they want to solve crimes and want to help in other emergencies too.
Freedom isn't free. The constitution is not a suicide pact.
Not when there are monsters under every bed.
There's also Warty. If that's not a call to trade freedom for safety, I don't know what is.
Maybe that's why everyone "voluntarily" stayed indoors?
Plus that whole, "ON THE GROUND, MOTHERFUCKER! ON THE GROUND!" thing.
So you're swallowing the media description of this as a "lockdown"? Hey, if it sells papers....
The projection of force in Boston didn't even catch the remaining suspect and it didn't stop him from getting away in the initial confrontation. And there is no way the cops had any probable cause to just go busting into random peoples' homes. They could have just knocked and asked to talk to the people in the homes.
Anyone have any links to stories about people being forced out of their houses or subjected to forced searches of their homes? I don't doubt it, but I'm having a hard time finding any actual stories that aren't just talking about how awesome the police are. Apparently one cop got some milk for some people.
I don't doubt that there are good "Coming together" stories--there usually are in moments of crisis like this.
There's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MezLoczjfY
Daily Mail has an article with video.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....ds-newsxml
the new Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has come under sharp attack by James Kirchick at The Daily Beast, Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest, and Jamie Weinstein at The Daily Caller
They must be doing something right.
Jamie Weinstein either has an unusual definition of "9/11 truther" or a reading comprehension problem.
He alleges Eric Margolis is a truther because he wrote an article that itemizes some of peculiar aspects of 9/11. Margolis concludes the article with the following:
"So what, in the end, can we conclude? 1. We still do not know the real story about 9/11. 2. The official version is not credible. 3. 9/11 was used to justify invading strategic Afghanistan and oil-rich Iraq. 4. The attacks plunged America into wars against the Muslim world and enriched the US arms industry. 5. 9/11 boosted pro-Israel neoconservatives, formerly a fringe group, into power, and with them America's totalitarian far right. 6. Bush's unprovoked war against Iraq destroyed one of Israel's two main enemies. 7. 9/11 put America in what may turn out to be a permanent state of war with the Muslim world ? a key goal of the neoconservatives.
But I've seen no hard evidence to date that 9/11 was a plot by America's far right or by Israel or a giant cover-up. Just, perhaps, the Mother of All Coincidences. In the end, it may just have been 19 angry Arabs and a bumbling Bush administration looking for someone else to blame."
Aren't points #1 and #2 the definition of "Truther-ism", though? Just that there is something the powers-that-be saw fit not to tell us?
I'm not an expert on this peculiar conspiracy theory, but 911 Trutherism proclaims that Cheney, Bush, and their neo-con henchmen actively conspired to pull off 9/11 in spectacular fashion. Truthers pretty much all agree that the three WTC towers were fitted with explosives and that's why they fell as fast as they did. They also share peculiar theories on the Pentagon attack.
My take on history leads me to think that #1 and #2 apply to just about everything to some extent, but I certainly am not a 911 Truther.
I suppose, however, that it makes as much sense to call Margolis a truther as it does to call Block a neo-Confederate. Which makes as much sense as calling folks who think there was an Armenian genocide anti-Muslim Islamophobes.
The fact is that all three are nothing more than name-calling. There are people who hold ideas that can properly be called 9/11 Truther, neo-Confederate, or Islamophobic. They are usually happy to acknowledge their association with such ideas.
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