Tag Archives: freedom

Hostility

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In an article more centered on relations between Ukraine and Russia and Ukraine’s ending of its “nonaligned” status, Nick Shchetko and Alan Cullison had this remark in noting that Ukraine’s move

drawing a quick rebuke from Moscow, which has accused the West of bringing hostile forces to its borders.

No. Moscow is…not describing accurately…the situation. The only hostile forces on Russia’s borders are Russia’s own, looking out, and Russia’s own on the outside of Russian borders, looking further out.

If Russia doesn’t want hostile forces on its borders, all it has to do is stop behaving hostilely. Full stop.

An Excuse to Stall?

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In a city with a history of denying Americans their gun rights?

[Washington, DC] does not know how long it will take to process those requests [for concealed carry licenses].

“There’s no internal guideline for how long the process should take at this point,” DC police Lieutenant Sean Conboy told a Free Beacon reporter today.

Yeah. Because in the six years since DC v Heller and the four years since McDonald v Chicago and the two years since the Seventh Circuit’s Moore v Madigan gave a strong hint, it’s unreasonable for the DC cops to figure out how to assess and issue CCWs.

And there’s this:

There is still confusion about how people will complete the required 16 hours of classroom training and two hours of range training. Conboy said that the city is still working to officially license a trainer….

And there’s the matter of public firing ranges in DC: there aren’t any.

Hmm….

The 2nd Amendment is quite clear. In light of the erosion of it, it’s time to give it back its teeth. I don’t like Federal laws in general, but here’s one I could get behind: all police departments—every single one of them—must issue concealed carry licenses absent a compelling reason(s) (e.g., the applicant is a felon) for not. There must be a deadline on the application’s favorable ruling, too: if no necessarily derogatory information is turned up (that felony conviction, for instance) within a reasonable time frame—say 28 days, or 42 days—the department must issue the license.

The PRC and Language

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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

So says the People’s Republic of China government, too. Here’s the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, on banning puns from news media, other programming, even advertising:

Radio and television authorities at all levels must tighten up their regulations and crack down on the irregular and inaccurate use of the Chinese language, especially the misuse of idioms[.]

After all, puns and idioms could lead to “culture and linguistic chaos.” Can’t have that. Order, dammit. Especially the government’s definition of order. The PRC government’s incumbents do clearly understand that language is thought.

Free Speech, PRC Style

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During visits to more than 20 schools, the regional paper [Liaoning Daily] wrote last week, it found exactly what it said it was looking for: some professors compared Chinese Communist Party co-founder Mao Zedong to ancient emperors, a blasphemy to party ideology upholding Mao as a break from the country’s feudal past. Other scholars were caught pointing out the party’s failures after taking power in 1949. Some repeatedly praised “Western” ideas such as a separation of powers in government.

“Dear teachers, because your profession demands something higher of you, and because of the solemnity and particularity of the university classroom, please do not speak this way about China!” implored the article….

Yep.

Recall, also, the PRC’s ongoing suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, in cynical repudiation of its commitment to the Hong Kongese and the Brits as part of the turnover agreement between the Brits and the PRC.

Privacy and Government

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…and government shoe-squeezing.

The No. 2 official at the Justice Department [Deputy Attorney General James Cole] delivered a blunt message last month to Apple Inc executives: new encryption technology that renders locked iPhones impervious to law enforcement would lead to tragedy. A child would die, he said, because police wouldn’t be able to scour a suspect’s phone, according to people who attended the meeting.

The naked panic-mongering is something we’d expect to get out of the press, but for a high-ranking government official to spout such nonsense is…unseemly. For Cole to masquerade his extreme outlier as the trend that must result, though, is dishonest. But it’s all good—DoJ must be able to snoop into Americans’ communications on DoJ’s own recognizance. Because, of course, no American administration would abuse its discretion.

This comes on the heels of another DoJ overwrought claim.

Last month, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said new Apple and Google encryption schemes would “allow people to place themselves beyond the law.”

This is the risk a free people take; it’s a risk the free American people have said repeatedly we’re willing and anxious to take. Because such encryption schemes also would “allow people to place themselves beyond an overreaching government.” Which overreach the crocodile tears and manufactured crises of Cole and Comey demonstrate this government is committing.

Give up some freedom—some privacy from government snooping—in order to have security? Pssh. Without the freedom, without the privacy from government snooping, there can never be any security.