The House of David

Monday, November 09, 2009

Armed resistance

Out on the Right-wing fringe, and maybe not so far out, there is a movement for armed resistance to the Obama/Pelosi regime.

I do not necessarily mean by that: mutiny or revolution. I am including the Oath Keepers and the Sipsey Street Irregulars. Armed resistance entails standing upon support for the Constitution - whatever the current elected officials have in mind. The term "resistance" is inherently defensive - reactionary, if you like; no aggression is implied.

This isn't a pro-democracy blog. I fully support the Constitution as the reactionary document it is. That includes support of armed resistance against Washington's "progress". If I had thought that Bush had the attitude toward the Constitution that Obama's advisor Sunstein has, I would have supported armed resistance during Bush's years too. Peaceful armed resistance. Don't Tread On Me, says the snake, and I won't bite.

Every armed citizen is a free man, and endowed with the inalienable right and duty to resist tyranny - even if the tyranny is popular. (Keeping in theme here - remember that in Greek thought, tyranny was the endstate of democracy. Today, c.f. Venezuela.)

Where I part with the furthest fringe of the Right - the birther fringe - is that I do not pretend that we are an anti-Constitutional democracy now.

And there I give you my difference with ACCDF / "Active" and Pat Dollard. Dollard is showcasing Taitz propaganda and not maintaining his comments, and thereby offering a forum for seditious lies. Where I read politically-motivated falsehoods in a civil strife, I see people trying to turn the strife into a civil war.

I get the impression that if the civil war came and the rebels arrested me: the Oath Keepers would protect me, and Pat Dollard would have me against the wall.

Labels: constitution, enemies, liberty

posted by Zimri on 20:08 | link |

Thursday, November 05, 2009

I retract my vote for TX2009#9

I oppose eminent-domain for the purpose of revenue-grabbing. I don't oppose eminent-domain where someone has bought some land, and then the government finds out they need it for truly social purposes.

The classic example would be railways and highways. People settle all over the place. Later on, other people will need to get from one point to another, and despite the best efforts of city planners there is always some old coot who has set up his shack in the middle of things. There's not much the government can do other than to say, "here's some cash to get to another location, now get out".

In that spirit, there's the Gulf Coast. Says Janus, it's all "public". "Public" is a Newspeak expression which means that the State of Texas and, in some cases, USG are sovereign over it. Anyone who "owns" property along the Coast does not own it; he's got a certificate of tenancy (whatever the deed and title documents pretend). That gives the State certain rights.

I am fine with all that. This is an unstable coast; it is subject to tides and hurricanes and, depending on the mood of the Caribbean Plate, tsunamis. The various coastline governmental levels absolutely should be responsible for the coastline. The State of Texas also has an interest in suppressing the population there, so that said population doesn't clog the roads whenever the latest Ike or Rita threatens inland cities like Houston. The Gulf Coast is inherently a bad bet for "private property owners".

I have no hard criteria, yet, for how far this eminent-domain principle should hold elsewhere. I would extend it to San Andreas and other obvious tectonic faults. State-regulated watersheds, for the purpose of efficient water conservation, have a proven track record in New York State; I think I would borrow their model for the drier mountains West (especially as more people settle there). Tornado zones, though, I wouldn't accept as the State's excuse for a land-grab. Anyway at this point I know what I am and I am "haggling over the price", as Churchill might put it. I do reserve the right to haggle.

And I reserve the right to admit where I've haggled for too high a price. TX2009#9 was a frivolous recreational measure, "irrelevant" in the words of Janus. But against Janus I hold that in principle, private property shouldn't hold on the Coast. I voted "Nay" on it but I wish I had voted "Yea". Oh well, teach me to wait for the last minute before learning the issues; and at least it passed anyway.

Labels: apology, constitution, liberty

posted by Zimri on 16:31 | link |

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Military government in Texas

The military and civilian definitions of "order" differ; and in healthy nations there are strict roles for each, and even stricter rules for how they are to interact.

As a general principle, we don't want to live under martial law. Battlestar Galactica, in its second incarnation and earlier seasons, offered as good a reason as any: if the army is in charge, it becomes an occupation force, and an occupation force has to see the occupied civilians as the enemy. Eventually some punk will skateboard, or tag, somewhere it shouldn't and people will get shot.

Civilians revere the military when it's not ruling over them - and IMO, rightly so, as the enlisted servicemen and women have proven their loyalty to the people. Robert Heinlein understood that, and used this understanding in a bid to promote virtue in political society: that veterans should receive the franchise (and no-one else). This blog has had lukewarm-to-kind words to say about Heinlein's system here and here.

Somewhere between martial despotism and veteran aristocracy, we have the prospective of rule by military personnel who haven't yet earned their honourable discharge papers. This is the system which Texas has approved with its 7th constitutional amendment this year (hereby, "TX2009#7").

This is a VERY BAD idea, and even Heinlein wasn't proposing it. You can find a good argument in Janus's anti-endorsement.

I should have read the amendments weeks ago and raised a stink then. I did vote against it, and before that I directed readers over there; but that was clearly too little too late.

The Federal Government should implement a Constitutional clause which bans individual states from incorporating articles like TX2009#7. States which do as Texas has just done, have proven that they don't have the political wisdom to be States. A strict definition of honour would demand that our Senators and Representatives suspend their voting rights as long as TX2009#7 defines our State - and it's a sad observation of our current political situation that we can't afford to do that.

In the meantime the Oath Keepers, Sipsey Street Irregulars, Three Percenters and other pro-Constitutional groups need to get on this and see that Texas undoes its stupidity.

Labels: constitution, fascism, liberty

posted by Zimri on 17:05 | link |

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The petition process

In a post below, I laid out some problems with the petition process in many states as it stands now. I have now deleted its conclusion, which had some recommendations on what the State can do; because I've found critiques of its assumptions at Ace of Spades.

I posted my thoughts there but they bear restating here. Ultimately: if you're trying to influence an election by adding to the ballot, the same principle should apply as influencing the election by voting in it. i.e., secret ballot rules.

When the State receives a signed petition, they do need to keep a way to prove that the signatures aren't all from Mickey Mouse and Jive Turkey. Other groups have the right to know how the State proved or disproved that the signatures are real. However this does not necessarily mean that the State and his buddy, Saul Alinsky, have a right to know who all signed it.

We can borrow the principle from computer password protection. The login screen has a right to know that your password is correct. It does not have a right to know what your password is.

This is done through a "hashing algorithm". When you enter your password for the first time, it is turned into a hash before it goes to the database. No-one can get your password then, not even you. But when you log in, the login screen hashes your password, and compares that hash to the hash on the database.

It should be a federal mandate to demand identity hashing on all petitions.

Labels: constitution, privacy

posted by Zimri on 16:36 | link |

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Vote against

Via Ace, we're told that the First Amendment is going to be repealed within a military budget request.

If I were of a more mellow constitution, and a poor student of history, I'd just say, pass this thing; the stupid part will never pass Constitutional muster, and the important bit will pass. As an example, Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill...

... And there's your example right there. The Supreme Court refused to obey the Constitution. They proved themselves to be a council of kings. Our system was powerless against it.

That taught the rest of us a lesson: we can't let anti-Constitutional bills slide past. Every legislator has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. Since the anti-speech bill fails that test, no member of our political system should entertain it.

I call upon every Congressperson of either party to vote against this abomination. It is not a military bill in its present form. Congress should wait until they write a real bill; then they may vote for that. In the world of partisan politics: the Republicans have an issue that should work; that the Democrats are loading illegal provisos into a bill that ought to be about supporting our troops.

UPDATE 10/29: So much for that. It was always a vain hope. Rep. C.W. Bill Young's soul, if you were wondering, is worth $123,800.

Labels: constitution

posted by Zimri on 18:40 | link |

Monday, October 12, 2009

How Conservatives can question Obama's patriotism

Birtherism is not to be confused with Conservatives questioning President Barack Obama's American credentials generally.

By my definition of "Conservative", and their definition of "American" - Conservatives are being consistent. They even have a political-scientific point. Other nations have had problems with near-abroad foreigners migrating in and taking over. For two examples, Napoleon was born a Corsican and Hitler an Austrian. The law about natural-born citizenship has until now hindered would-be Napoleons.

But now we have a half-African (and half-moonbat), born in frontier Hawaii, raised in Indonesia, with little contact with Middle America. Noel at Cold Fury has more -

Obama is our first hyphenated-President in a way that even Catholic JFK was not. And not just as an �African-American�. He is the first to go completely through our educational institutions since the Hyphenated-Left has held sway. When academia teaches students to be loyal first to their own pigment or identity group and suspicious of the larger culture, that is the very definition of questioning patriotism.
Indeed, for all the hyperventilating cries of �How dare you question my patriotism!�, the Left has literally questioned the very basis of patriotism, the nation-state. And held up Internationalism as a higher value. He is an International-American.
He was exposed to Muslim cultures through his father and step-father; he�s a Muslim-ish-American. Who lived in Indonesia and traveled to Pakistan�a Third-World-American. He absorbed the vicarious victimhood of McCarthyism from all the socialists in his life. A Victim-of-America-American.
So why are you, as a Wondering-American, still scratching your head as to why he keeps siding against America and freedom, and with foreign governments, the UN, Third-World grifters, mullahs and Socialists?

I'm not wondering; Obama has been running this nation as a Third World province of the "international community". He has benefited from the Liberal loophole: since he's legally allowed to be President, he's playing on the same field as a generations-long patriot like John McCain.

It's annoying, and Conservatives have a serious case that Obama's election represents a failure in the birthright prerequisite for office. If we grant that it's a dangerous folly for anyone to call for Obama's ouster by mutiny as the birthers do, it remains legitimate to question whether the birthright law ought to be restricted further for future candidates. It is even legitimate to call Obama out as a Quisling, foreign in his own heart.

Because that's how he's behaved; and that's at least as equally dangerous a folly as birtherism, for a man of his background especially.

UPDATE 10/24/2009: added ColdFury's paragraphs.

Labels: constitution, fascism, nirthers, obama

posted by Zimri on 17:34 | link |

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Guardian Council

Here is a political idea I've been tossing around: to institute a Council of Guardians as part of the judicial branch. Like Iran, but atheist.

This council would be tasked with defining the physical assumptions of the State. It would be elected by the universities and civil service. To balance, strip the franchise to elect Senators and the like, from anybody taking a paycheck from USG. An elected official fron the Senate etc receives the right to challenge any given "scientific finding" of the Guardians; but said challenge must itself be falsifiable.

The physical assumptions of the State are then consulted in all policies and jurisprudential decisions. The Council itself, if consulted directly, may say "this will happen if you do / don't do X" or "if you want us to study Q then we need $y million". However the Council may not itself suggest policy, let alone give orders or levy taxes.

This maintains representative government; while keeping the masses from instituting something popular and stupid, like creationism. Civil servants and policy-making humbug-mongers get an outlet for their primate urge for status, but it's channeled into a separate track than the popularity contest of politics. Stupidities beloved of the Left, like carbon credits or race quotas, are subject to challenge from elected officials; but a rule is in place to prevent bogus challenges from a non-scientific background.

Labels: constitution

posted by Zimri on 20:24 | link |

Jurisprudence v. secularism

Conservatives in the USA claim that they support "strict constructionism" and "original intent" in a reading of the American Constitution. I've found a place where they contradict.

I've posted here and elsewhere a belief that "under God" / "In God We Trust" ceremonial deism amounts to a Congressional establishment of religion at the Federal level. This is a "strict constructionist" standpoint.

However, that standpoint need not have been the "original intent" of even the near-Voltairean Jefferson. No-one in the late 1700s had Clue One about the nature of this 13.7 billion year old universe, of this 4,567 million year old planet, and mankind's 100s-thousand year sojourn upon that. Atheism wasn't intellectually feasible in the 1700s; a strict secularist at the time would have been either a genius with a LOT of faith in the science of his day, or else insane.

Ceremonial Deism, as a 1700s lowest-common-denominator, has safeguards in the form of historical precedent against growing into full-blown Calvinism etc. So, we can agree to disagree on whether Ceremonial Deism must count as a religion.

(Originally posted as an appendix to New Zeal. I still won't tolerate the de minimis argument: "get a grip" etc. But that's out of scope and I've dealt with it elsewhere.)

UPDATE 11/19: "Strict constructionism" is how Western civil law works. I've since written on that here.

However one could counter-argue that the hermeneutic (interpretation-ethic) of Constitutional law is more akin to that of Islam: appropriate to the holy writ delivered to a Prophet. In that analogy original intent is the analogue of Prophetic tafsir. The notion is at least internally consistent and falsifiable by natural means, and for that I won't dismiss it out of hand. I insist only that we are clear about our axioms.

Labels: conservatives, constitution, secularism

posted by Zimri on 17:03 | link |