Two quick things:

1. In England a broke & jobless writer takes to the trees in an experiment in low-cost, low-impact self sufficiency. Very creative.

2. I think Joel “did” 419 better than I: “It’s Interesting Times Day!”

And a third:

3. Radley Balko also does today proud.

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Ragnar insisted in a blog comment last week that I’d better darned well come up with a great post on 4/19. Nothing like a little pressure there, eh?

Well, the brain’s not working too well and neither is the cursed up-and-down Internet connection here in the high desert boondocks. And WordPress has also gone cranky on me and twice erased portions of this post. So sorry, Ragnar, there will be no Great Thoughts coming from this direction today. Perhaps you noble readers will leap in and supply some GTs of your own in the comments section.

I’ve just got this little bit to say.

It would be a wonderful thing if more of the people who celebrate 419 (here and here among others) and more of those who celebrate 420 (here and here for instance) could open their eyes to each other, to their common interests, and to the fact that we all face the same utterly ruthless and unprincipled enemy.

Both 419 and 420 have worked some miracles lately. Who would ever have thought, just a few years ago that gun-rights activists would be winning the day in state after state? And anybody who ever watched the drug war worsen over the decades has just got to be in awe that 420 is pushing back so hard. Both gun owners and cannabis advocates are overcoming hostile government and unjust image problems. And in those two areas (if few others), both common sense and uncommon justice are beginning to prevail.

But we still have highwaymen prowling our streets. And we’re blasted with increasingly shrill bigotry like this and this and this and this).

Powerful voices try to drown out those who are doing nothing more than trying to restore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The shrillest voices actually cry for we, the disrespectful minority, to be charged with sedition or treason, or even rounded up and shoved into torture camps. (And, as Kevin Wilmeth points out behind one of the above hyperlinks, many of these demands for our heads are coming from people who claimed to believe, just a few years ago that “dissent is patriotic.”)

If I were to put on my optimism hat (and I’m sure it must be around here someplace, perhaps under that pile of dusty old newspapers in the corner), I could think that the shrillness of all that public loathing is in a weird way an encouraging sign. I mean, Bill Clinton actually knows that Stewart Rhodes’ OathKeepers and Mike Vanderboegh’s Three Percenters exist. That’s pretty darned remarkable in itself.

And the fact that so many public ranters are terrified of people who want only to peacefully protest or assert their rights … that says we might just have them on the run. I don’t make a habit of quoting the loathsome Limbaugh, but he may be right when he says, “We are living in their heads rent free.”

(I can’t seem to find my optimism hat, unfortunately. Should we ever actually put “the establishment” on the run on any large scale, I have no doubt they’ll concoct yet another Reichstag fire to suppress dissent and go after dissenters.)

I find I’m leaning more to the 419 side of things as I hyperlink. But I don’t mean to neglect the prejudices against the 420 advocates. While the 419s are suffering loud, hysterical name-calling in the media, the 420s … well, far too many of them are still being busted. So which is worse? To be screeched at hysterically in the media or be raided and brutalized by thugs?

Thing is, those two perils go together. And we’re all in this together. We need 419 + 420 and all the other numbers of good people — people who know that torture is immoral and corrosive, people who know that warrantless wiretapping violates the Bill of Rights, people who value free speech, fair trials, freedom of association, freedom both of and from religion, people who want the government out of their faces enough to realize (finally!) that it should stay out of other people’s faces, as well — to come together and know that, when it gets right down to it, we’re all agitating for the same fundamental thing and all being threatened and bullied by the same irrational, self-serving, self-perpetuating, and utterly ruthless force.

419 is good. 420 is good. But 419 + 420 (you will no doubt have noticed, even if you’re as math-challenged as I) is about twice as much. Add a few more numbers … like 1 and 4 and 5 and 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 … and pretty soon … we’ve got a movement.

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• First thing … don’t forget: The eBay auctions for souvenir copies of Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet) and 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution end Monday morning. Thank you for all the bidding so far, and cheers to the charming young bidder who’s been leading the pack most of the week. Ah, but those last hours can be interesting …
• Daryl Gates. He was even worse than I realized. Especially read the bit from David Cay Johnston. Ugh.
• “Dead Dogs.” This is quite long and may be too painful for dog lovers to read. But its account of lethal stereotyping will make your blood boil.
• In better news, an MIT student has invented a cutting-edge medical device. For $3.
• I think this is good news, too. Only time will tell.
• My goodness. Has somebody been reading a copy of RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone? (Thank you, S. for sending that along.)
• Whatever else he may or may not be, Steve Wynn is a classy guy. (The headline isn’t the real story.)
• Last week we had really, really good lawmaking news out of Arizona: That state will become the third in the union to go to Vermont carry. Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law. Then came the bad. You’ve probably heard that the legislature passed and sent to the gov an alleged anti-illegal-immigrant bill that will make “Your papers, please!” a daily reality for anybody of the tan persuasion. Here’s a very balanced L.A. Times editorial on the pitfalls of the law, and an article explaining why even some cops don’t like — and might refuse to enforce — the measure if it becomes law.
• Finally, a couple of weeks back, 7,500 online shoppers unknowingly sold their souls to the devil. Not to worry; in this case he won’t be collecting. But really, that might teach us to read those dreary product-licensing agreements.

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Ding-dong, the Wicked Witch is dead. Daryl Gates, the man who created the modern SWAT team, invented the Big Brotherish D.A.R.E. program, and who said that casual drug users should be shot as “traitors” in the war on drugs, has died at 83.

Too bad it wasn’t decades sooner, before he had a chance to do so much damage, and too bad he left so many like-minded thugs to carry out his sick vision of law enforcement.

The SWAT team was a good concept for handling extreme emergencies. But being born in the mind of a violent, lying, racist, piggish man who saw innocent citizens as enemies to be slaughtered without benefit of due process, its catastrophic misuse was inevitable.

Gates is as responsible as any other individual for the police-state ruination of the country that once was the U.S.A.

Good damn riddance.

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After several years in which I believed I wasn’t likely to write another freedom book this side of the grave … I sorta kinda feel a book coming on. Not promising anything, mind you. Right now the feeling is like the one you get when a sneeze is coming on — but may or may not actually emerge.

If I do this thing, though, I already have a working subtitle picked out: “Everything you need to know.”

Yeah, I know. No freedom book can deliver that. But trust me, I’ll use that phrase to ironic effect.

I’ve already made some notes. But since you guys are the most likely audience, or the people most likely to gift the book to others to help them along the independence way, I could use your thoughts. What would you like to see covered in another Claire Wolfe book? (Assuming there is one.)

Can we start with general principles — e.g. freedom begins with mindset, you own your self, take care of your health, determine your level of risk aversion, be prepared, practice self-defense, etc.? Use the comments to tell me what you’d like such a book to cover. The topics can be ones that I’ve already “done” (there are always new slants) or ones I haven’t yet thought of.

Your opinions, please?

—–

P.S. Some of you know that I have, in fact, written another book lately. That book, Hardyville Tales (or whatever else the Duffys decide to name it) will be out soon, published by BHM. I’ll keep you posted about that. But that one is a compilation and expansion of existing Hardyville stories. Above, I’m talking about a new, from-scratch book project. Potential book project. Maybe.

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Via lrc.com comes an excellent bit of tax-day snark: “What Do We Do If the Rich Start to Leave?”

Good beginning of a good question. The writer, Bill Frezza, says, “500 American citizens and green card holders in the last quarter of 2009 said goodbye to America forever. Not many, but double the number of expatriations in all of 2008. Good riddance, other millionaires will take their place.”

He’s not real clear on what he means by the rich, or whether those 500 surrendered their citizenship or just slipped away, PT-fashion, to friendlier climes.* But it’s the thought that counts.

A way bigger question is how many of the potential rich, or the hard-working professionals, or the scientists, medical people, and folks out there on the cutting edge of technology are going to leave. Already a lot of America’s scientists and entrepreneurs are from other countries. They come here to get educated. They get their green cards and stay. One day, whether because of taxes, onerous regulations, or growing official xenophobia … they’ll quit staying.

Back in the 1970s, maybe 1980s, you used to hear the term “brain drain” a lot in news stories about the UK. They were rapidly losing their “best and brightest” to other, freer, less tax-heavy countries. Now you don’t hear the term any more, but look what the UK has become — a land of servility and surveillance. The brains have already done drained, leaving politicians, bureaucratic nannies, yobs, working-class immigrants, and the bowed and obedient “citizens” behind them

How many exits does it take for that to happen? How many departing thinkers and doers?

I don’t know. But it’s a question I’m sure we’ll need to contemplate soon enough.

You can call it “running away” all you want. I call it the same sort of grace that drove my original German ancestors here before the Revolution, the same sort of self-preservation that later drove my Scots-Irish and Irish ancestors to leave their homes. Doesn’t matter whether the motivations were religious and economic (as with those stubborn German dissenters) or adventurous and economic. Or just-plain economic.

I know, sometimes it’s worth standing against an evil tide. Sometimes it’s admirable. Sometimes, as with so many heroic gun-rights activists lately, you can actually — oh, my stars & garters! — push back and make progress. Sometimes, though, when things are so bad in so many ways and you don’t make a strategic retreat … well, you just end up like The Order of the Star.

Hm. How many of us are here, and how much more freedom did we have for a while, because somebody (or a lot of somebodies) ran away?

—–

* Technically, “going PT” would mean giving up U.S. citizenship, since the U.S. is one of the few nations that imposes income taxes on citizens who live outside the country. But that’s a step a lot of PTers have been reluctant to take.

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It’s a tee-shirt! No, it’s body armor!

Or maybe it’s body armor made from tee-shirt material. You be the judge here and here.

I don’t suppose we’ll be wearing bullet-resistant tees any time soon, but it does sound as if more comfortable, flexible, and inexpensive body armor is in the works. Among other things.

(H/T Pat)

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Week or two ago, somebody asked me if I had any copies of my books for sale. I had to say no. I don’t usually keep copies around & I told him that any I had would be packed away in trunks.

Got curious about those trunks. And while it’s true I don’t have any of my current books, I stumbled upon some out-of-print treasures and decided to release a few of them to the wild via eBay. To wit:

A brand-new, never-read copy of 101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution and

A brand-new, never-read first edition of Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet).

AND … if you win an auction, I’ll autograph your book to you personally. Just know that these are being sold as collectors items and fun reads. The info in them is not up to date.

I’m starting both auctions at $9.99, which is waaaaaaay under what ordinary, non-autographed used copies of these rarities sell for on Amazon or eBay. And just a tiny fraction of what a new copy goes for. So … go wild & crazy. :-)

I found fewer than a dozen old books overall — 4 copies of Don’t Shoot, 2 of 101 Things. I’ll probably sell more copies of Don’t Shoot in the next few weeks or months, but I may keep that last copy of 101. Not sure. Depends on how much somebody wants it.

—–

Also: I just received a copy of Depression 2.0: Creative Strategies for Tough Economic Times by Cletus Nelson.

This is an attractive, inexpensive how-to guide for hard times published by Process Media — a relatively new venture by Adam Parfrey of the underground publisher Feral House. Very practical, useful book on surviving hard times. Might make a good gift for somebody who’s just coming to grips with the current reality and doesn’t have as much preparedness experience as some of us do. OTOH, it could also be a good info-booster for even a more prepared type. The fact that it features a multi-page interview with yours truly is a small bonus.

If you buy a copy via the Amazon link above, I get a commission, but otherwise, NFI in the book. Parfrey was one of the publishers who picked up selected Loompanics authors when Mike Hoy closed his late, great, outrageous publishing enterprise. Paladin Press (those nice people) got me. Parfrey grabbed Jim Hogshire, among others. Lifesavers, those brave publishers.

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