Reflections  

Keep honking, I'm reloading — A flier campaign, sponsored by the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence, warns Florida tourists that residents can use deadly force, and cautions tourists not to argue with the locals. Although this is obviously intended to pressure Florida's most profitable industry to join the campaign against handguns, there is a good chance that it will have the opposite effect. I suspect that the locals would like it if tourists were a little more polite. After all, isn't the ultimate goal of the concealed-carry advocate to make civilization just a little more civil? — Tim Slagle

They're coming for your site — Think of the Internet as a frontier; better yet, as a homestead. In order to get a plot, a prospective homesteader must register the "address" he wants and then indicate his continued interest in the plot by re-registering each year. As with physical homesteads, the plot is "free": the expense comes in getting to the territory (having the necessary hardware: computer, modem, etc.) and improving the territory (software: web design programs, graphics programs, etc.). The only expense for the plot itself is the registration fee, which ensures our homesteader that his address is unique — when he gets to his territory, he won't find any competing claimants on it. Add in some general stores, some squatters, and some neighbors to trade with, and the landscape is complete.

The part of the Homestead Board is here played by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an American non-profit group. ICANN issues each unique address in two forms: one easier for computers to use (192.0.34.65); one easier for humans (icann.org). ICANN also administers the Top-Level Domains, like the .org above, or the ubiquitous .com — and, more contentiously, the country codes, like .ca for Canada. Collectively, these tasks are known as Domain Name Service, or DNS.

The United States doesn't own the Internet. No one does. But the U.S. does have some amount of control over it, and the restraint our country has shown in its DNS administration is remarkable. We have not used it as a political weapon (deleting, say, North Korea's .kp country code). We have not tried to tax other countries for allowing them Internet access (though the UN has, as yet another way to finance corrupt dictators).

Now the UN, and model states like North Korea, want DNS out of American hands, preferring control by a UN Subcommittee of Something-or-Other. To show how serious they are, they're deploying their favorite slogans, speaking of "American online hegemony" and "the imperialistic Internet."

What would happen if the UN gained control of DNS? A look at French policy is instructive — and bear in mind that I'm not using as my example a repressive regime. France has no First Amendment: speech is protected, except when it's not. Nazi paraphernalia falls in the "not" category; it can't be worn, displayed, or shown in France. A few months ago, the French government decided to ban from French webspace (any site hosted in France, or with the .fr country code) any websites selling or discussing Nazi gear, and also to ban any links to such sites. The homesteaders whose Internet plots were thus taken either closed down, or moved to U.S. webspace to take advantage of First Amendment guarantees. With DNS in American hands, that's the end of it. With DNS in UN hands, France could lobby the committee to vote that speech completely off the Internet, by cutting off any country that tolerated such websites. Once the Internet is turned into a political weapon — and the first instance will be for a Good Cause, like banning Nazi propaganda — it's not going to be used for surgical strikes. It'll be used as a blunt object, a stick to belabor those out of step with UN policy. So a country refuses to cough up foreign aid, or sign the Kyoto Treaty? No problem, cut their country off the Internet.

All this is set to explode at the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia (a country that has eagerly silenced online dissidents). The preparations for the summit have resembled a game of chicken, with various world reps threatening to "vote themselves power over the Internet," and the U.S. refusing to hear any proposal that would mean ceding DNS control. It is difficult to see how this will end, but easy to imagine the worst case: countries creating their own "Internets" and fragmenting the DNS, which would in effect boot millions of Internet homesteaders off their plots and turn them into refugees. And we all know how well the UN handles refugees. — Andrew Ferguson

Got a license for that baster? — In the October 2004 Liberty, I suggested, in a reflection that was supposed to be satirical, that state governments ought to implement sex licenses. As one must have a driver's license to operate a motor vehicle, one would need a sex license to legally get it on.

Indiana state Senator Patricia Miller recently took strong first steps toward making this happen in her state. She proposed changing state law so that "before intended parents may commence assisted reproduction, the intended parents shall obtain an assessment from a licensed child placing agency in the intended parents' state of residence."

The assessment was to include, among many other things, "a description of individual participation in faith-based or church activities." Also part of the assessment was — I swear I am not making this up — "intended parents' purpose for the assisted reproduction." In case, I suppose, you're only using that turkey baster for fun and not for godly procreation.

When the would-be parents finally made it through the red tape, the placement agency would "issue a certificate that the intended parents . . . are ready to commence assisted reproduction." Commence assisted reproduction? What is this, pillow talk with Data from Star Trek?

But the, ah, climax of the text is this: "An intended parent who knowingly or intentionally participates in an artificial reproduction procedure without establishing parentage [as this law requires] . . . commits unauthorized artificial reproduction."

Unauthorized reproduction. Reproducing without a license.

Predictably, the senator withdrew the proposed legislation shortly after bloggers got hold of it and had a field day. "The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission," she explained. It's easy to dismiss this as a crazy right-wing idea that would have been limited to one state, had it passed, and would in any case have been repealed or struck down before long. Maybe. But if a fascist-friendly U.S. senator like Rick Santorum gets in on the act, what now seems comical could become truly frightening. — Patrick Quealy

The Japanese Diet: cut taxes and sell the post office — Historically, you know, we have a couple of grievances with the Japanese. First, healed over like an old wound, are the events of December 7, 1941. In the usual American tradition, we won that war but lost the peace. Next was the Great Scare of the 1980s, when armies of U.S. economists, with teary eyes and downcast faces, predicted the mortal wounding of the U.S. economy. The Japanese system — a partnership of government and business — would flourish. They'd steal our jobs. It was the '80s version of outsourcing. You'd need a wheelbarrow of U.S. greenbacks to buy ten yen. Japanese conglomerates, partnering with banks, would eat us up like tuna sushi; the Tokyo Stock Exchange backed by big government was the golden brick road to wealth. The economic undertakers, leaning on their shovels, predicted our demise. Thankfully, we rejected the Japanese model and stuck with our halfway capitalistic system.

But now that the Liberal Democratic Party, led by Junichiro Koizumi, has scored a landslide victory, they too are rejecting old models. They plan to begin their reign with an innovation that should challenge American politicians: they intend to privatize their post office!

Handing over ownership from the Japanese government to shareholders will take about twelve years. The Japanese Postal Service is more than a vanilla Post Office. It's a bank. A huge one with US$3 trillion in assets and 270,000 employees. The bill to accomplish this immaculate transmogrification passed the lower house of the Diet months ago and seemed destined to become law, but the Upper House rejected it — provoking the new elections and a mandate for Koizumi. The objective of the new government is to downsize itself; take those 3 trillion dollars, and invest them for consumers.

Hmmm, sounds like our social security discussions, does it not? And, in the meantime, our postal monopoly rumbles on. — Ted Roberts

Bread and debit cards — In his 1845 autobiography, Frederick Douglass describes "the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders to abandon this practice," he wrote, "I have no doubt that it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves."

What was this insidious practice that kept the slaves from revolting? Was it the threat of being sold, the practice of separating babies from their mothers, the capriciousness of selling slaves who tried to escape? No. It was Christmas. "The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery," Douglass wrote. "They do not give slaves this time [off] because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it." He describes the levity of the holiday week, when slaves were given their clothing allowance for the year, an extra allotment of food, and enough time and whiskey to get thoroughly drunk. "The object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of its dissipation. . . . Thus when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder . . . cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty."

Slavery is no longer legal in this country, but a paternalistic government artfully employs some of the same methods to keep down an insurrection among the poor (regardless of ethnic origin), providing just enough of an allowance in welfare benefits to give its recipients a sour taste of a fraudulent freedom. Forty years of the "Great Society" has not improved the lot of the poor; it has only made it worse. One study reveals that over $6.5 trillion have been spent on welfare programs in the past 40 years, yet millions of Americans live below the poverty line, more than ever before, with poor education, poor skills, and little hope for improvement. The amount spent on one year of incarceration could provide a four-year college education, yet many turn to crime because their skills are simply inadequate for a job that offers a living wage. Clearly, the Great Society has been a great disaster.

Now we are preparing to spend $200 billion in government money to rebuild the southern coast. Like Santa Claus, government leaders are getting the credit, but the money is coming from you and me. Already the government has followed Douglass' model for keeping down an insurrection: when victims of the hurricane and flood complained of how the government mishandled the evacuation, they were handed debit cards worth $2,000 — just enough to avoid an immediate insurrection. The money was intended to buy temporary housing, food, clothing and other necessities, and I'm sure that many, if not most, spent the money carefully. But charges are appearing on these debit cards for everything from lap dances to Louis Vuitton handbags — and that's only the L's. The point is that throwing money at a problem will not make it go away. Money should be combined with community support, education, and job training.

The existence of emergency-relief agencies, funded by taxes, creates an implied contract between the government and its residents to take care of them. Like it or not (for those of us who believe in free-market solutions), the government failed to honor its contract. Don't impute to me a racism that does not appear in this article — the government failed in its contract with the poor and elderly who are white, as much as it did with the poor and elderly who are minorities. What I am saying is this: why does this surprise anyone? Government inherently fails to deliver. It has unchecked powers to tax, unlimited appetites to spend, and unnumbered hands stretched out to pocket money in between. It destroys the incentive to work and the incentive to be grateful. It provides just enough to keep a person alive, but not enough to give a person dignity.

Douglass concluded his treatise on the evil nature of benevolent holidays by saying, "When the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a deep breath, and marched to the field, feeling . . . rather glad to go, from what our masters had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery."

Let us hope that the victims of Hurricane Katrina do not march back into the filth of the welfare system. We should recognize that the real heroes of the past few months have been the private corporations and churches and the semi-private relief organizations who were on the spot immediately, assessing damage, handing out food, bandaging the wounded, providing housing, and giving millions and millions of dollars of their own free will and choice. Even more money could be given by private citizens if they weren't already spending staggering percentages of their paychecks on taxes for agencies that will always drop the ball and then scurry around trying to pick it up again before anyone notices. Compare that to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Wal-Mart, celebrity fundraisers, and countless church and civic organizations, including neighborhood kids sponsoring lemonade stands. Government has had 40 years to produce a Great Society; let's give the free market a fair chance to find solutions. — Jo Ann Skousen

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