God's Charges

 ...gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto Pharaoh king of Egypt...
Exodus 6:13

God delegates all authority to be used for a purpose. Rulers have authority over cities and regions and nations to be a terror to evildoers. Bishops and elders have authority over congregations for their teaching and guidance. Husbands have authority over their wives, and fathers have authority over their children, but not so they can do whatever they want with them. If Moses had ordered Pharaoh to let the Ethiopians go or if he had led the Hebrews in armed rebellion, he would have overstepped his commission. He was granted authority over Israel and Pharaoh solely for the purpose of bringing Israel out of Egypt. Husbands and fathers and mothers also hold their authority conditionally. Men may not order their wives and children to lie or steal, and mothers may not severely treat their children.

Girly Men for McRomhuckiani

Yep. All Muslims want to kill all Americans. We have to be over there so they don't come over here. Whatever.

I've met a few Muslims, and as far as I could tell, none of them wanted to kill even a single American. In fact, some of them seemed like pretty decent people. What's really amazing is that none of them were terrorists. They were just ordinary people trying to make a living right here in America without shooting anyone or blowing anything up.

Terrorists are bullies, and like all other bullies, they harass you for one of two reasons: to provoke a fight or to prevent a fight. Call them the Fighting Bully and the Intimidating Bully. Saddam Hussein seemed to be of the latter sort. So too are most governments, including those of Afghanistan and Iraq. They use violence to cow and pacify. For the most part, we have absolutely nothing to worry about from them. They make a lot of noise about the Great Devil in the West, because we are a useful tool to keep their people in a state of perpetual fear. It's the same way Washington uses al Qaeda and the Taliban. They scream and threaten, and their people might dance in the streets when our buildings burn down, but most of them aren't so stupid as to want real war with us. If you stand up to the Intimidating Bully, he will almost always back down. If he doesn't, then spill some blood. Learn to speak his language, and he'll start to listen.

If the media reports are to be believed, then Osama bin Ladin is the other sort of bully, the kind who wants to fight. They pick at you until you lash out, providing them with a public excuse to try to really hurt you. This is the kind of bully who won't back down if you stick up for yourself. Unfortunately, he's almost always more than you can handle, or at least he believes he is, which is often just as bad. You can do one of two things with the Fighting Bully. You can put him down hard or you can change the rules. Don't give him the reaction he wants. Give him something completely unexpected. Does he want a military showdown? Offer him Jelly Bellies with one hand, while your other hand pays someone else to knock him over the head from behind.

The Bush method of dealing with terrorists is stupid. If the party line on 9/11 is accurate then a war in the Middle East is exactly what al Qaeda wanted. Iraq was never a threat to the United States, neither was the Taliban. Operation Iraqi Freedom never had anything to do with anyone's freedom--especially not ours--and everything to do with pride and greed. Ron Paul's take on foreign policy is exactly right on this. If you aren't going to declare war and execute it ruthlessly, then get the heck out. Offer Afghanistan some Jelly Bellies and issue some letters of marque and reprisal. Smuggle in a few truckloads of Cosmo every month. That would really teach them.

Now we have two probably unwinnable wars going on, wide open borders, and every reason in the world for a thousand and one Arabian terrorists to want to cross them. We went over there so we wouldn't have to fight them over here? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

The truth is that Bush and company want to keep you scared. They make up boogeymen so you'll cower under your blanky and cry for Big Brother to make you safe. They never intended to free Iraq or to defeat terror. They intended to promote terror, because Bush is every bit the Intimidating Bully.

The Means of Vexation and Oppression

The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance and protection to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land.
-Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

Sound familiar? Nothing has changed except the technology of oppression. The "great Barons" of today still protect each other while they pretend to be enemies. They still use the Franklins at the EPA and the IRS to ride the backs of the common man. Minding one's own business–even minding the law–is no protection against thugs. They believe that, since they write the laws, they are free to ignore them whenever it suits. You cannot live through a single day without breaking some law, without tripping over one of the many blocks placed for that very purpose.

Nenastnyj vs Ron Paul

SecureWorks' Joe Stewart recently revealed that the culprit behind October's Ron Paul spamming was a low-level spammer-for-hire known as nenastnyj. I'm not saying there's a vast neocon/communist conspiracy or anything, but using the same transliteration system taught by the Defense Language Institute, nenastnyj is a Russian word meaning "rainy." The botnet software used by nenastnyj was also Russian--or at least CIS--and probably controlled by a server in one of the CIS nations. The likelihood of this all being coincidence is fair, since DLI has probably trained tens of thousands of Russian translators over the years and is almost certainly not the only entity to teach this particular system. It might even be taught by Russian universities. I just thought it was interesting enough to share.