Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Is America in danger of "creeping totalitarianism"? No. There's no such thing. [OpinionJournal] Mr. Taranto provides a fine example of how hard conservatives have to work to miss the point at times: The East German example is typical, for there is no such thing as "creeping totalitarianism." No totalitarian regime has ever come to power without political violence--revolution, invasion, civil war, coup d'Žtat, terrorism or some combination thereof. (Hitler became chancellor through the democratic process, but it took an act of terror, the Reichstag fire, to transform Germany into a dictatorship.) Gee, Mr. Taranto, do you suppose crashing airplanes into large office buildings counts as political violence? comment () trackback ()  9:44:51 AM     Freedom Insurance. Warren Tilson at anti-state.com - Freedom Insurance - an interesting non-violent idea for making it expensive to enforce political "crimes". [anti-state] One of the first things that the activist will do is find out all they can about the arresting officer(s) and the prosecutor. They will then organize peaceful protests at the residences of these people, the ads will mention these people by name and ask if they know anything about freedom or the Constitution or their oaths to the Constitution. In addition their families will be sought out and asked questions such as: "Do you support your husband when he violates the rights of others?" "Did you know your daughter was acting illegally and in violation of the Constitution she has sworn to uphold?" [End the War on Freedom] This sounds like a good way to wind up in prison. As Jim Bell discovered, doing to the Feds any of the things they do to us peasants is a Federal crime. comment () trackback ()  9:37:09 AM     HyperCard Forgotten, but Not Gone. Apple is famous for great software, but HyperCard, one of its best, is programma non grata within the company. Remarkably, the 20-year-old programming environment still has a strong following. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News] It's a common theme in science fiction for an advanced civilization to collapse, with the survivors losing the ability to produce the technology of the fallen civilization. This has happened sometimes in history as well; for example, the huge Chinese sailing ships of the early 15th century and the Korean ironclad warships of the 1590s. I see HyperCard as a modern real-world example of this, along with the Newton and the outlining program MORE. comment () trackback ()  9:18:15 AM

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