(…In The Deeply Confused Mind Of Meaghan Walker-Williams)

For more than a year now Meaghan Walker-Williams has been accusing the editors of No Treason of being Scientologists. Recently she clearly declared her suspicions:

Oh, btw Kennedy, the folks at Scientology’s FLAG in Clearwater stopped by, judging by sitemeter. You might be due for sec check real soon!

Casual Readers may want to check out John T Kennedy’s admission that he is a practioner of Scientology “tech” and his girlfriend Lynette Warren’s “warnings” to me, not to criticize her religion , Scientology, here on the prog-blog website. For More Info On Scientology’s Views On Abortions - and in fact COERCING women to have Abortions if they are low ranking Scientologists… visit the following website. ALSO visit HERE from Absinthe and Cookies.

(By the way, please follow her link and see if Lynette said what Meaghan claims.)

And:

A few years ago in a discussion, Kennedy and Warren let it slip out that they had a connection with Scientology, in that, during the middle of another weird situation occuring — See a mutual friend of ours was organizing a boycott of a Scientology Front Gun School called “Front Sight”,

[Here Meaghan again provides the link to her investigative piece that blew the lid off this story: No Treason Admits It’s Connection To The Dangerous and Criminal Cult Of Scientology. - jtk]

[…]

Now, I firmly believe that Kennedy and Warren are Scientologists based on their own admissions, and actions. And if other libertarians become aware of this, they will lose any credibility at all for anything they may be hoping to achieve. In Libertarian circles - not to put too fine a point on it… being a scientologist, (unless you are perhaps in South Florida, near Clearwater) - you are about as welcome as a KKK member at an African American Gospel Church Choir practice.

This really says so much about Meaghan’s psyche. Her wet dream is that I will lose credibility in libertarian circles. It reflects her own deep-seated fear of losing acceptance. It’s why Meaghan routinely frames her arguments with long explanations of who is on the good team, who is on the bad team, and who is apt to get their good-team credentials revoked if they don’t stop consorting with the bad team - but pronto!

The only problem with her fantasy is that I don’t give a rolling donut about credibility in libertarian circles.

So anyway, how did Meaghan discover that I’m a Scientologist? She’s already provided the links needed to explain her detective work. It all started back on Mike Schneider’s American Liberty forum. There was an argument about Front Sight’s suit against Diana Hsieh in which Lynette and I argued (among other things) that Hsieh had been harassing Front Sight. Meaghan wrote to Lynette:

You and John can play pattycakes nice-nice with any Scientologists that you want, and even promote Piazza and his business and you are even free to suggest that Hsiah has somehow done something wrong by merely questioning what’s going on with an organization
that she was involved in, and had financially contributed to.

In response to this I “let slip” the following admission:

No Treason itself has no connection with Piazza and we are not promoting Front Sight or Scientology. Furthermore, No Treason is in no way, shape, or form connected to or affilated with ANY religion– Catholic, Baptist, Buddhist, Scientology, Mormon, Muslim, etc. We have 15 contributors and I cannot tell you what religious backgrounds they all have as it makes no difference to No Treason. We do not ask, we do not care. Does No Treason use some of the
business technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard, the Founder of Scientology? Yes, and so do the following companies:

Allstate
Bell and Howell
Nissan
McDonalds
Getty Oil
Honeywell
Mattel
Ralph’s
Rockwell
RotoRooter
Pacific Stereo
Sunkist
Winston Tires
Del Taco
Wherehouse
Broadway Department Stores
Earthlink

Does the use of Hubbard Business Managment Systems connect or affiliate these businesses and governments (or No Treason) with Scientology? Of course not.

Predictably, this “admission” distressed Meaghan. I thought Schneider gave the game away when, within 24 hours, he revealed that the text was a direct cut and paste (with a few substitutions) from Piazza’s email to Hsieh, which was (and remains) posted on Hsieh’s web site. And indeed, this revelation did give Meaghan some pause. But she still couldn’t figure it out. She wasn’t the only one. We had fun stringing the group members along for days with evasive answers and non-denial denials.

Eventually I explained it all to Tim Starr:

As to the gag, I admit to being mildly puzzled as to why you and Mike would have bought it. The text was a direct swipe from the web site under discussion, something I could not have suspected to go unnoticed for long. It’s a rather strange way to reveal NT policy, isn’t it? You missed my confirmation that the revelation was not real, and that’s fine because I was trying to leave people the opportunity to miss it. But I never confirmed that it really was NT policy, it was just hanging out there all by itself. I would think that for someone who had some significant experience of dealing with me and NT, the outlandish idea that we were really using Hubbard Management Technologies to put out a blog would not be the simplest explanation of the revelation. The simplest explanation was that the post wasn’t serious.

But hey, it’s not like I’ve never fallen hook line and sinker for a gag. Early last year Lynette announced on whitewater that she’d taken a job with the GSA, and she gave a link to the GSA showing Lynette Warren did work there and revealing her work number and email. I bought it big time and privately urged her to kill the post because it would give weasels direct access to her professional life. In the newsgroup I tried to muddy the waters by posting links to a bunch of different Lynette Warrens, attempting to pass off her announcement as a joke. But the joke was on me of course, her link was no more legitimate than the ones I posted.

I laughed my ass off when she let me in on the joke.

I made her pay for it though. She’s still paying for it.

Meaghan read all of this four years ago. I answered her questions directly once the gag had run it’s course. She stopped accusing me of being a Scientologist until last year when she got pissed off about my exposé of her sock puppet theater and she went on the warpath.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. How could Meaghan imagine I was a Scientologist after reading those threads? Could it be that when she got angry it simply became easier to believe whatever she wanted to believe? Lynette and I were delighted and started googling the web for scientologist jargon to sprinkle into our responses to Meaghan. We let Lopez in on the gag and he eagerly joined in. It was all obviously way over the top but it worked like a charm! She became more and more certain that we were scientologists.

And now that she’s sufficiently pissed again she thinks an anti-Scientology crusade is just the thing to bring us to our knees.

NOW THAT’S FUNNY!!!

Update (11-7-06): The candy continues to spill out of the piñata as Meaghan ramps up her delusions.

Well what do you know? We’re back. The domain and site have been down since early Sunday morning. Naturally I’m in the market for a reliable web hosting service. Any recommendations?

Twelve days after 9/11 I wrote:

“You can absolutely count on the fact that this government will do far more harm to Americans than Arab terrorists ever will.”

I’ve yet to see any reason to revise that opinion.

My jaw dropped when I saw Beck trying to sell the idea that he’d intended no insult to Connie Du Toit:

“I cannot believe that anyone who’d heard me say that would have taken it for an “insult”, and besides: if I had intended to give insult, nobody would have mistaken it.

This is a mistake. The matter at hand was far too serious for an “insult” and I wouldn’t have done it. I didn’t do it.

Beck conveniently restricts that analysis to his use of the the word “woman” in addressing Connie Du Toit but that’s hardly the full context of his remarks. You only have to scroll down one post on Beck’s blog to find:

Here’s what: if this woman pretends to stand on her own two feet in a confrontation of ideas, then she should bloody well be able to take her slings and arrows like the rest of us. Especially after such a patently outrageous suggestion.

If she can’t do that, then she should stay in the goddamned kitchen.

The phrase “if this woman pretends to stand on her own two feet” is clearly intended as an insult. Then of course there’s the unfortunate “woman”->”kitchen” slur. Would he ever tell Kim to get back in the kitchen?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to net insults. I dish them out myself.

I was just shocked to see Beck try to walk away from this one in the space of a single blog entry.

A correspondent to Beck expresses shame for jumping through government hoops to use his car:

Shame at being forced to think and act like this. Shame at realizing this type of behavior was business as usual in the communist countries. Shame at being compelled to take a short cut that on principle I wouldn’t take with my family or friends in an analogous situation.

Beck answers:

The only thing that I have to add right now is something that Tim Starr and Ernest Brown brought to my attention several weeks ago, which is that submission is not the same as compromise.

It’s nice that Starr and Brown recently brought this to his attention but Lynette and I (not to mention Greg Swann) have been telling him the same thing for years. Most recently:

jtk3isme: you pay taxes billy, so it seems to me you can
Wm J Beck III: What did you say?
jtk3isme: i said you pay taxes
Wm J Beck III: I mean: is that really what you intended to say?
jtk3isme: yes
Wm J Beck III: What are you talking about?
jtk3isme: you pay sales tax and other taxes
Wm J Beck III: John… have you *never* paid attention?
jtk3isme: sure I have
Wm J Beck III: I wouldn’t pay *those*, either, if I could find a way to stop it, and this fact has a serious implication.
jtk3isme: you do pay them, which means you *can*
Wm J Beck III: I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I will set up a fucking robot to let you know every Saturday that I haven’t burned myself on the Capitol steps. Will you shut your fucking impertinent mouth then?
jtk3isme: not a bit of it
Wm J Beck III: No, sir: I can’t. They’re different things.
jtk3isme: one theft is in principle different from another?
Wm J Beck III: No, they are different in practice. However, let me put it to you this way: by your way of thinking, I just die tomorrow. Will *that* shut you up?
jtk3isme: No, it will shut you up.
Wm J Beck III: You’re implying a problem of integrity, and I know the solution. Is that what you’re looking for?
Wm J Beck III: That should be at *least* as attractive to everyone involved.
Wm J Beck III: Certainly, the punk Swann might be satisfied.
jtk3isme: I’m not implying any lack of integrity for paying your taxes
Wm J Beck III: Look, John: don’t try to bullshit me.
jtk3isme: I say it’s fine
Wm J Beck III: It’s *not*.
jtk3isme: no really it is okay to live in the world, be it good or evil
jtk3isme: they commit a crime but you do not by paying

My original commentary stands:

We’ve had the same discussion a number of times. Every time we do Beck chooses to construe it as an implicit attack on his integrity, as if I were saying he ought not be paying sales tax and other taxes. On the contrary, I’m saying that it’s fine for him to pay sales tax and it would be fine for him to pay income tax. I’m saying his behavior demonstrates that he judges that paying sales tax is better for him than not paying it - else he wouldn’t pay. His behavior demonstrates that he judges he should pay sales tax (which of course is not to say he should have to pay it, he shouldn’t) to get on with pursuing other values.

And he could pay income tax to get on with pursuing his other values.

Clearly Beck submits to vehicle inspection because he judges his life will be better for that submission under the circumstances. And clearly Beck submits to having his required papers inspected every time he catches a commercial flight because he judges his life will be better for that submission under the circumstances.

And that’s perfectly fine. But Beck explains to Richard Nikoley about how the state is killing him:

I don’t know what any of you ever thought was going to happen to me. I had to explain something to Lynette the other night, which ought to be available to a moment’s consideration by anyone in the custom of thinking. I’m forty-nine years old now, Rich. When I come to face the first serious systemic medical crisis of the sort that commonly happens to human beings approaching that part of their lives, there is going to be no way in this world that I will be able to deal with it in the way that every blinking asshole on the street assumes that such things should be taken care of.

All we’ve done is point out to Beck that he doesn’t have to die that way, that he could get plenty of decent medical care the same way he gets his car registered and the same way he gets to fly to a gig: by submitting to some injustice.

For this we get:

Do you understand? I had to point out to her some elementary facts involving the nature of production and the function of money in human life, because those two people — John and Lynette, who really do seem to care about me with a good deal of the emotive force of hysterics — have serious difficulty at bringing themselves face to face with real-live practical implications of a murderous society. Forever, I have been telling people: “This ain’t no disco. Ideas matter.” Their estimation of my personal devotion to an ideal of freedom rises almost to the level of resentment because I am so serious about it. And I appear to be the only one on the scene who is not fooled: I have always known — every step of the way — exactly where this, my life, was going in the present political circumstances, which have only darkened greatly in general since I took my first adult steps.

I’d like to ask Richard: Do you resent the fact that Beck refuses to pay income taxes while you pay that ransom to improve your life under the circumstances? Does it seem plausible to you that Lynette and I resent him for not paying income tax while we do pay taxes? And if it’s not plausible, then who’s exhibiting “the emotive force of hysterics”? And why?

I have an idea why. Principle does not require Beck to do without health care or the bulk of the fortune he could earn any more than it requires him to do without his car or air travel. Beck could still improve his lot in life dramatically by submitting to some injustices the very same way he already submits to others.

But at 50 it would be a very bitter pill to swallow - to concede, even implicitly, that he has foregone decades of production that principle did not require him to refuse.

Over at LRC, yet another person has signed up to the anti-immigration platform. Prof. Cox goes on a long list of reasons to oppose immigration, most of which have already been torn apart on this very site. So let’s cut to the chase, Prof. Cox. You’re standing on the border. A family of Mexicans is running for the fence. You’ve got the rifle scope trained on a mother running with her son. Do you pull the trigger?

And if you can’t, are you really willing to “defend the borders”? Make no mistake about it, you’re going to have to kill people to keep them out of America. People want in.

So, Prof. Cox, who would you kill?

Richard Nikoley noticed that something seems to be missing from the Girls Gone Wild prosecution: Actual victims.

It’s instructive to note that in all the news stories I’ve seen on the matter, not a one mentions an actual “underage” plaintiff or complainant.

Welcome to the Phantom Zone.

Consider the Warren Jeffs’ case. The media talk night and day about 12 and 13 year old girls married off to old men but all the state has produced so far is a case about a 16 year old married to a 28 year old man. Marrying these two gets Jeffs on the FBI’s Most Wanted list right next to Osama Bin Ladin. But all right thinking people know it’s about 12 and 13 year old girls because otherwise why would he be up there with Osama?

Welcome to the Phantom Zone.

Consider the fact that the state has yet to produce a single living, breathing human being who heard Roberto Alpizar say “bomb” before the air marshals blew his brains out, even though you can find plenty of witnesses from the plane. Doesn’t matter, all right thinking people know he must have said “bomb”, because why else would they blow his brains out?

Welcome to The Phantom Zone.

And don’t even get me started on The Phantom Tollbooth Run. All right thinking people know those three Muslim medical students were up to no good because what else could explain their day-long televised standoff with half of the nation’s peace officers?

Welcome to the Phantom Zone.

The protection racket gets a seal of approval over at BitsBlog.

On Monday he offered,

The right to life itself, simply to live, has been upheld to a greater extent than anyone thought possible five years ago this morning… Think back to your thoughts and feelings on the middle of September, 2001. How did you envision your immediate future? Did you even dare to conjecture a long-term future?

I dared, Bithead.

On the morning of 9/11/01, I was a passenger on American Airlines flying from Connecticut to Los Angeles. My travel plans were disrupted at the halfway point, but I was not in the least bit pessimistic about my future on that day or in the weeks that followed. My biggest concern was - and is - that the Government’s reaction to 9-11, and the inevitable hysteria about it, would amplify the State’s invasion into my life. I was right.

Government seeks to disarm me, confiscates my property, and invades my privacy. The Terrorists represent less a threat to me than the DEA, ATF, or FBI. That was so five years ago and it’s doubly so now.

The previous post on Randy Barnett caused me to revisit my copy of Restoring The Lost Constitution. Just to recap, it’s widely claimed that Barnett’s book is a refutation of Lysander Spooner’s No Treason - The Constitution Of No Authority (*). Just for fun, I had a look at the Index of Names, looking specifically for all of the references to Spooner’s classic piece to see for myself just how neatly Barnett was able to demolish Spooner’s arguments. So how many times do you suppose that Barnett refers to Spooner’s No Treason in his 300-odd pages?

Get ready for it: once. In the introduction, he refers to having read No Treason years ago and finding it “unanswerable” at the time. Barnett then implies a few sentences later that this first impression has since changed. And that’s all he’s got to say about that. All of the other references to Lysander Spooner listed in the index (all seven others) are references either to Spooner’s Unconstitutionality Of Slavery or to Barnett’s writings on that same work. For perspective, Robert Bork is indexed as being mentioned in nine places.

Just in case that wasn’t clear: In Restoring The Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett refers to Robert Bork in more places than he refers to Lysander Spooner.

I personally find this brevity to be quite striking.

(*) Update [9-11-06]: It’s come to my attention that not everyone knows that Barnett’s book purports to be a refutation of Spooner. A couple of quotes ought to clarify matters. First, Barnett gives us an introduction to Spooner (first page of the book’s Preface):

In his best-known work, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870), Spooner argued that the Constitution of the United States was illegitimate because it was not and never could have been consented to by the people on whom it was imposed.

Then Barnett makes this odd claim (pages xiii and xiv):

Whether or not Spooner was right in this assessment of the constitutionality of slavery, his argument opened for me an entirely new position: a defense of original meaning rather than original intent that could withstand the well-known critique of originalism. The final missing ingredient was an answer to Spooner’s later charge [i.e., as laid in No Treason — ed.] that the Constitution was without authority because it lacked actual consent. My answer to Spooner’s challenge is presented in Part 1 of this book.

Randy Barnett writes:

The conclusion I reach is that there can be a prima facie duty to obey the law if it is made and enforced by procedures that provide sufficient assurance that the laws it imposes on nonconsenting persons are just.

Well the last time I was down at the courthouse I was immediately bounced simply for saying that I would not convict anyone being tried under an unjust law. And I know they routinely convict people under unjust laws down there.

Since justice is not a standard which jurors are permitted to employ, why would I think my rights are protected?

I’m tired of watching people claim Randy Barnett has answered or refuted Spooner’s arguments against constitutional legitimacy when I don’t see that Barnett has made a micron of progress against the fundamental arguments of the mature Spooner. I made my case most concisely here.

The following is the full text of a post that Micha Ghertner blogged at Catallarchy about 13 months ago. The post quickly vanished from the site but I happened to have it in an open browser window and I saved it.

Use of the “A” Word by Micha Ghertner

Randy Barnett just finished giving a talk to the Cato interns. During the question and answer period, I asked the following:

People like David Friedman have no qualms using the “A” word. You do. You couch it in terms like “polycentric legal order,” when what you really mean is anarchy. Do you do this so as not to scare the children? What’s the point in doing so when anyone who reads your book can easily figure out what you stand for?

Some argue that by making your position explicit, you will turn off much of your potential audience, who reflexively dismiss the anarchist position as absurd. On the other hand, until respected legal thinkers such as yourself carry the anarchist torch proudly, people will continue to associate the word “anarchist” with bomb-throwing wackos.

Barnett’s answer was pragmatic: he said he wants to get a bit more done as a professional academic before he risks his reputation. He stressed the importance of being honest - the term “polycentric legal order” does accurately describe his position, though it doesn’t describe it in the clearest way possible.

Interestingly, Barnett noted that it is not the case that anyone who reads his book can easily figure out what he stands for. Sandy Levinson recognized his anarchist underpinnings; the rest of the participants had not made the connection. Following this, Barnett made a sort of Straussian argument: by using the term “polycentric legal order” instead of “anarchy, “he can communicate with the radical libertarians who are “in the know” on one level, and with everyone else who still believes he is a fine, upstanding citizen on another.

While I can’t fault Barnett for being pragmatic about his career, I don’t think I’d be able to live two lives, so to speak. First, I think it’s important to challenge the popular misconception that no right-thinking person would ever oppose government in its entirety. And to do that, public intellectuals who happen to be anarchists need to be as open as possible about their beliefs. Second, and perhaps more importantly, actually engaging in the semantic debate is vital if we want to get people thinking about markets and states, exit and voice.

To put it bluntly, the libertarian critics of the word fear that when normal people hear it, they will immediately associate anarchy with chaos. And they should! Because that is what they have been taught. The government is the source of all regulation, and thus, the source
of all order. Right?

When anti-market fundamentalists whine about “unfettered capitalism” and the “unregulated market,” what are they trying to say? They are telling us that under laissez faire, there will be nothing to stop the powerful from exploiting the weak, the rich oppressing the poor, and so forth. They see only electoral voting as a mechanism of regulation. They see only voice. They do not see exit. They do not see market competition as a mechanism of regulation.

There is no such thing as an unregulated free market. All markets are regulated. The absence of electoral voice - the absence of the state - does not imply chaos. It implies order by exit, by competition - unplanned and spontaneous. A Catallarchy. In order to get people to think about alternative forms of regulation apart from voice, we need to have this debate. And the best way to spark that debate is to wear the anarchist label proudly.

[Emphasis added - jtk]

Those who seek to understand what Barnett is really saying ought to be aware that he is apparently intentionally obscure about his true position.

At Lewrockwell.com:

We principled libertarians have no problem recognizing the difference between what is right and true, with what is likely and what we can get away with. They are different questions. But strategists have trouble seeing past strategy and “what works”. If a principles-based libertarian says, “public education is unjustified and ought to be abolished,” a typical reply of a tactician-activist is “but that is not practical” or “but that is not going to sell with the average person”. In other words, the activist makes the mistake of confusing what will sell with what is true. But the committed activist too often relegates something that will not sell now, today, as useless, and in effect as untrue – or, more to the point, he adopts the view that what is true does not really matter; only results matter. Sure, both inquiries – what is the best strategy to achieve liberty? what is liberty? – have their own value and roles. But they are not the same.

The only thing I would add to the above analysis is that this activist mindset, the focus on what will sell to the great mass of men, is the result of focusing on a collective solution (specifically mass persuasion) to the problem of liberty. Libertarians can avoid the problems Kinsella points out by focusing on individual solutions to liberty rather than collective ones.

In fact, libertarians will do better in general to focus more on individualism and less on collectivism. Not only will individualist solutions not get you into the ethical trouble that collectivist solutions will, but sometimes the individualist solutions will actually produce a little liberty for you. And that’s a bar that collective solutions to the freedom problem haven’t yet been able to cross.