Survival Arts

And there's the rub: "He should be tried".

The last time someone tried that, they were labeled "right wing militia extremists", isolated, and taken one at a time.

So long as we are stuck acting as individuals, we cannot win. Even the Idaho court that attempted to try Lon Horiuchi for unlawful taking of life had that case taken from them by the federal court and summarily dismissed by declaring "He was acting under orders."

One of the reasons that I like Unintended Consequences is that the one "acting alone" just isn't caught because he never acts publicly. That is the only way I see such an effort working. I haven't read Hope yet, but if that single individual were the President they might just be able to act publicly long enough to make a difference. No one else would be allowed to act in public long enough.

Which brings me to the Free State Project, where it's not an individual acting publicly, it's many individuals all at once. That has a chance of not being deliberately marginalized the same way that "White Separatist" Randy Weaver, or the "Right Wing Militia Gun Nut" Montana Freemen, or the "Cult" Branch Davidians were.

The individual states are not helping. No federal agents are being prosecuted in California for violating California law when they persecute marijuana users who abide the Prop 215 medical use law.

Darn, I'm ranting again.

Hey Russell, neat Turing number test on postings. Was there a problem with automated spam or is this just feature creap?

Curt-

Curt,

Unfortunately, you're probably right. The "Unintended Consequences" route is the only one that has a chance of working, unless the Free State project in New Hampshire or Boston's Wyoming version manage to secede without being destroyed, which I doubt.

Russell,

Thanks for quoting me.

-Bill

Bill,
Secession is certainly the logical extreme. Having a populous generally educated in their rights, a judiciary who know they will be booted from office if they do not rule consistant with those rights, and a police who simply ignore Federal whatever (or little or no police at all), would make things very interesting.

The Ludwig von Mises article from yesterday, on the "wild" West, was interesting in this perspective.

It would also be interesting to see if any state *could* seceed without being violently re-unionized. It has, after all, been tried once already.

Curt-

Curt asks:

> Hey Russell, neat Turing number test on
> postings. Was there a problem with automated
> spam or is this just feature creep?

The former: automated spam is on the rise, and that feature eliminates it in its present form.

For readers of this blog entry and its comments who aren't familiar with "Unintended Consequences", read my review of the book from last year.

Also for those readers, here's a link to the Free State Project.

Bill,

You're most welcome; you often say quotable things on the smith2004-discuss list, which are very usable here. Thank you.

The problem with 18 USC 241 is prosecutorial discretion. One interesting thing about England is that anyone can prosecute.