Author Archives: g4lt

Looks like the WaPo thinks that there ought to be an American Pirate Party. Given the constitution party fusion is rapidly unfusing, and the LP is somehow attempting to do a top-down crowdsourcing on farcebook, it’s looking more and more like the “Net Libertarians” are becoming politically homeless. Perhaps it IS time for an American Pirate Party, as the B&M parties just aren’t cutting it for the net generation anymore…

The recent universal background check defeat is not a symptom of a system that has gone awry. In fact, it is the system working EXACTLY as the founders intended. That’s right, the founders INTENDED that it be practically impossible for the majority’s passion of the moment to carry us into taking away essential liberties. In fact, the very term “tyranny of the majority” was coined by none other than John Adams, during the Constitutional Convention (de Toqueville later cribbed it, though he properly attributed it. The attribution never gets quoted though) and amplified on in the Federalist Papers. We can debate whether or not the system’s historically worked, but this one time, the system did exactly what we asked it to do; protect our essential liberties from ourselves. We keep hearing about this mythical 90% majority that wants to barter away our essential freedom (90% is pretty much the definition of an echo chamber, you typically can’t get 90% of the people to agree that the sky is blue), yet it wouldn’t matter how much of a majority wants to remove a freedom, so long as there’s one person that says “NO, you won’t have my freedom today” (a brave heart, if you will) that’s enough for the founders, and should be enough for any Constitutionally-elected official. Unfortunately, it seems that it isn’t, as literally within hours of this defeat, certain gun control advocates that shall remain nameless carped about how the system was broken, some of which should have known better. It is a sad state of affairs when an alleged Constitutional scholar can’t figure out that “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” doesn’t mean “well, we can infringe it with a background check, or a registration form, those aren’t REALLY infringements, amirite?”. The aftermath of this defeat of gun control also provided another “interesting” effect: there were numerous items on social media “doxing” the senators that voted against invoking cloture, on Facebook there’s a photomosaic of all the Senators voting against it conmingled with a photomosaic of the Newtown victims; on Twitter, they published the Senators’ Twitter handles . While these are pathetic attempts at “Doxing” (public airing of personal information, typically on one’s enemies, oftentimes spelled “d0x”), it provides a chilling reminder that the people that want you to provide further information to buy a gun via background checking or registration are the LAST people that can be trusted with that information. If they are willing to air Senators’ personal information just to make a political point, just imagine what happens when they want further concessions and they have access to YOUR information (Don’t laugh, it’s happened, a New York paper published the names and addresses of all registered gun owners in their area during the ramp up to this debate). In sum, the Constitution won, but it won’t be the last fight by a long shot.

see more…

see more…

see more…

Free State Project guys, I thought this whole infighting thing was for the tea party. Pull your heads out of your asses and act like adults for a change FFS. I mean really, you’d think that a group of people that’s been basically arguing with each other since its inception would learn how to disagree and still support each other.

see more…

see more…

see more…

see more…

Most Libertarians at least see Greens as “fellow travelers” in the third party game, and prolly some are secretly rooting for them as long as they don’t hurt the LP’s interests. Well, apparently, the Arizona GOP is encouraging homeless people to run as greens in order to split the democrat vote.

This is disturbing on many levels. First, that third parties somehow “steal” votes from the established two. If the LP is any indication, there is no theft of votes, as most LP people would rather not vote at all if the LP doesn’t run anyone. More importantly, this gives off the sense that a given party is ENTITLED to votes rather than having to earn them. Second, that third parties are somehow co-optable by the majors. see more…