All of this good news on the Second Amendment front made me decide to dredge up a golden oldie and republish it, since I don’t have a lot of time write now for original material. Many new readers will probably be unfamiliar with it.

I often disagree with Bill O’Reilly, but I want to defend him.

A lot of smart people are bashing him on line, particularly in the blogosphere, but I think that this just proves his point. I think that he’s spot on with this erudite and well-reasoned editorial. This “Internet” is just too powerful.

When the Founders wrote the First Amendment, they could never have conceived a technology that would allow anyone to publish anything at any time, at almost no cost, and have it readable by millions instantaneously.

In fact, inspired by this work, I’m working on a book, tentatively titled “Publishing America: Origins Of The Free-Speech Myth,” in which my thesis is that very few people had access to printing presses in colonial times, and this notion of a long American tradition of a free press and individual freedom of expression is simply propaganda of First Amendment extremists. I’ve painstakingly gone over old probate inventories, and can show statistically that very few homes traditionally had means of printing and, such few as there were, they had mostly fallen into such a state of disrepair as to be useless.

Unfortunately, my pet iguana ate all of my notes, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’m sure the print nuts will employ their usual ad hominem tactics, and call me a fraud.

Anyway, it’s one thing to have free speech when the most effective means of communicating ideas is with a printing press that few can afford, and has to have the type carefully set by hand, and they have to be printed on expensive paper, and transported no faster than a horse can run, and distributed by walking door to door.

Such a laborious and expensive process as colonial-era printing ensured that potentially dangerous ideas were more thought out, and well edited, and could usually be easily traced to their author. So, given that the investment in publishing was so high, it made it much more likely that only responsible people would be publishing things, and that you wouldn’t have wackos running around spewing crazy or confused, even false or misinformed notions at innocent and naive passers by.

In that environment, it made perfect sense to grant an individual right to print things (to bear presses, as it were), because there was little danger of it getting out of hand.

But surely the Founders never intended for every single citizen to be able to exercise such a right–in their wisdom, they would have known it would lead to chaos and unfettered thought. They couldn’t possibly have imagined the rapid-fire distribution of dangerous ideas made possible by twenty-first-century technology. Why, some people might have even put forth the absurd notion that free speech is the right of everyone.

Had they actually anticipated the possibility that the cost of publishing could drop so dramatically, they would surely have made the First Amendment a much more explicitly collective right (like the Second), in which people would only have a right to free speech in a well-regulated state newspaper.

Let’s be reasonable–of course it’s fine to let people have typewriters, and copiers, as long as they don’t have a paper magazine of more than a quarter-ream capacity, and can’t print more than two pages per minute in high-density color. There are legitimate uses for such things–printing up book reports for school, making PTA meeting notices and party invitations, and the like. We respect the rights of those who wish to indulge in such innocuous, if pointless activities, long a part of the American cultural tradition (though it would certainly make sense to register such equipment, in case it’s stolen, or lest they’re used to express some untoward or scandalous thought).

Of course, we do need to outlaw the cheap Sunday-night specials, old manual machines still available in pawn shops, with sticky keys, that cause ink stains, and from which a large number of late term papers are produced by the criminal procrastinating class during the witching hours. But really, folks, chill–no one wants to take away your typewriters.

But the Founders would realize also, just as Bill O’Reilly and I do today, that no one, other than the police and politicians, needs the kind of “idea assault” publishing capability offered by word processors, blogging software, and even fifteen-page-per-minute ink-jet printers, which really have no legitimate use–they only propagate calumny and wrong-headed notions, tragically damaging innocent celebrities’ egos, sometimes permanently.

This past weekend, just to demonstrate how easy it is to lay hands on such dangerous equipment, I exploited the notorious “computer show loophole,” and went out to the big show in Pomona, California. There, I saw entire halls filled with purveyors of high-speed idea processors, rapid-fire printers, and even modems capable of transmitting thoughts at frightening rates, up to gigabytes per second. For only $4.99, with not so much as an ID requirement, let alone a background check, I was able to purchase an “assault keyboard,” with several internet hotkeys. It was fully automatic–holding down any key would result in a torrent of characters being spit out, hundreds per minute. I even saw teenaged children buying them.

Yet, when people propose sensible regulations over this, we hear hysterical cries about “freedom of expression,” and “from my cold, dead fingers.” But surely the far-fringe First Amendment absolutists are misreading it–there is a hint of a shadow of an umbra of a penumbra in there, easily accessed by referencing the Second Amendment. Bearing this in mind, it is more properly read with the following implicit preface: “A well-regulated press being necessary for the security of the State and self-important talk-show hosts, Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”

Clearly, viewed in the light of that implicit purpose clause, these were not intended to be individual rights, any more than they were in the Second Amendment, because obviously, the Founders wouldn’t have meant one thing by the words “the right of the people” in the one case, and a different thing in the other, particularly in two adjacent amendments.

Accordingly it is equally clear that we need to implement what would obviously have been the Founders’ intent had they foreseen the Internet, and immediately pass some laws to get this thing under control. Let’s do it for the children.

Particularly Bill O’Reilly.

Iowahawk has penned a new musical. A comedy, natch, but not one for the kids.

[Evening update]

The ‘Hawk just can’t leave Amanda alone. Now he has her updated resume. Not to mention a photo essay of a frigid Wisconsin road trip and a rave review (presumably with tongue firmly planted in cheek) of the new Fox News comedy show.

Iowahawk found an early copy of David Bell’s essay, before the spoilsport editors got hold of it.

So why has there been such an overreaction? Unfortunately, the commentators who detect one have generally explained it in a tired, predictably ideological way: calling the United States a uniquely paranoid aggressor that always overreacts to provocation.

In a recent book, for instance, political scientist John Mueller evaluated the threat that terrorists pose to the United States and convincingly concluded that it has been, to quote his title, “Overblown.” But then he screws up his whole awesome argument by adding that the United States has overreacted to every threat in its recent history, including even Pearl Harbor. Rather than trying to defeat Japan, he argued

It was sixty two years ago that General McAuliffe gave his legendary response to the German surrender demands during the Battle of the Bulge. On the sixtieth anniversary, I described how today’s media would have treated the matter.

Iowahawk has dredged up the first draft of Kofi Annan’s deranged US-bashing speech.

First, in today’s world we are all responsible for each other’s security. Against such threats as nuclear proliferation, climate change, global pandemics or terrorist accountants plotting UN audits from their safe havens in failed superpowers, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over others, and their private financial records. Only by working together can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves, and perhaps a nice comfortable villa in Switzerland. Let

WASHINGTON (APUPI) The media and political pundits lauded the preliminary results of the months-long commission to determine the true ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle today.

“This has been a troubling national issue, since the nation’s founding. Several legislatures have attempted to proclaim the value of pi, in order to simplify mathematics for our students, but the effort has always been viewed as partisan and controversial,” stated the introduction to the initial report, released today.

It was a long-standing controversy, viewed by many as a policy quagmire, that has been finally almost been laid to rest by a compromise report from a panel of distinguished experts from all sides of the political spectrum. The goal was to inject some “realism” into the debate, and because the blue-ribbon commission had equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, no one can any longer claim that the recommendations provided are partisan in any way.

“Obviously, there has been a lot of dispute over this issue over the years,” said the commission leader, Lincoln Chafee. “We wanted to ensure that we could generate a report and recommendations that most could accept, regardless of their self-contradictory, and trivial pabulatory nature.”

Many had argued for a value of 3, claiming that this was the simplest number to use in calculations, and one that most students would have a prayer of remembering. Others thought that this was a laudatory goal, but that it would be too incongruent with the actual ratio to be useful, arguing instead that the number should be determined to be 3.142, which would be close enough to usually generate actual useful results, but not too difficult to recall. Another group thought that the value should be 4, to ensure that the number would not suffer from self-esteem issues by being too low.

One extremist radical contingent, dismissed by the mainstream members of the panel, insisted that it was an irrational number, computable only by adding an infinite series, and unable to be completely memorized by any human being. This was obviously an unacceptable solution, politically, since given its infinite nature, it wouldn’t have been able to even be printed in the report in its entirety, let alone made statutory law.

Everyone was pleased when the determination was made to take an average of all of the members’ positions, arriving at the value 3.45 (after throwing out the suggestions of those favoring the irrational solution, since adding it in would have made the final solution unprintable and unmemorizable as well).

“We expect that the president and Congress will quickly act on our recommendation once we finalize it, since it was made on a bipartisan basis, and based on months of discussion between washed-up diplomats, spongy former Supreme Court justices, and also-ran wishy-washy politicians,” said a spokesman for the group.

“Of course, there is one more key step to determining the final number,” she added.

“We have to ensure that this will be an acceptable decision to the world community. Therefore, before we finalize our report, we want to sit down and get the opinions of Iran and Syria, and incorporate their thoughts into the results. We’d like to include Israel as well, but we fear that, like those on the panel familiar with actual mathematics, they’ll be too unrealistic. And irrational.”

[Copyright 2006, by Rand Simberg]

And thanks to Andy McCarthy for the inspiration.

[Thursday morning update]

Lileks isn’t kind to the commission recommendations:

Imagine a government report on organized crime, demanding the following:

* The Mafia

In honor of tomorrow’s sixty-fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I’ve dredged up a sixty-year-old Routers piece on who was really behind it…

December 7, 1946

HONOLULU (Routers) Five years after the sinking of the battleships in Pearl Harbor, many still question the official government story of what happened on that fateful day, and who was responsible. Some believe that the Roosevelt administration did it themselves, deliberately, making it look like Japanese religious fanatics were responsible, in order to drag the country into a war that they could get by no other means, to benefit arms merchants and the Jews.

The controversy has been renewed by a recently released film documentary, titled “Loose Ships.” It makes a compelling case against the Shinto extremist theory, citing inconsistent eyewitness reports, mistaken radar readings, and structural analysis of the sunken battleships.

“It makes no sense to think that Japanese Shintoists could have done this,” explains one of the film’s producers. “Shinto is a deeply spiritual religion, derived from Buddhism, worshiping nature. A Shintoist would never have desecrated Pearl Harbor with all of that leaking and burning diesel fuel and oil. It is fundamentally a religion of peace.”

He points out that many eyewitnesses saw American planes in the air that day, and that the radar images that many claim, preposterously in his view, were of the attacking Japanese aircraft, were actually a squadron of American B-17s on its way to Hickam Air Force Base, perhaps to take part in the plot. The Truman administration itself has admitted that there was a group of bombers in the area that morning, on its way from the mainland, though a War Department spokesman claimed that it was too far away and in the wrong direction to appear on radar at that point in time.

The documentarian went on to expand on his theory. “We don’t think that Japanese aircraft would have the range to get here all the way from Japan, but if by some miracle they did, it was probably to protect Honolulu, in which many Japanese live, from the administration plot. That’s probably what people were seeing.”

Some have examined the wreckage of the Arizona, and claim that it wasn’t brought down by aerial bombs, but by charges planted on the ship beforehand.

“Look at those two huge circular holes in the front and rear of the sunken ship,” he said. “No bomb is big enough to make a hole that size, and do it so cleanly. It was obviously a shaped charge of some kind. It’s just not possible to take down ships that big with the little bombs that are carried in those little Japanese airplanes.”

“They killed thousands of sailors for their filthy war, and many of them died a long and horrible death in air pockets. And take a look at the roster of the people who died on the Arizona. How many Jewish names do you see there? I think they were warned ahead of time. And how do they explain the radio transmissions that were picked up with cries of ‘Torah, Torah, Torah’?”

“It was all part of the Zionist neo-liberal conspiracy to drag America into a needless war of choice.”

In response to suggestions that the Japanese used aircraft carriers, and that many of the Japanese planes were torpedo bombers, and that the large holes were the empty sockets for the gun turrets, that were removed afterward, he scoffed. “That’s all just Franklin Delano Rosenfeld administration propaganda,” he sneered knowingly.

Some enterprising and innovative people have carried the analysis further. In one sequence shown in the documentary, a man built a wooden model of the ship in his pond, and filmed himself dropping lit firecrackers on it from above, to demonstrate how preposterous was the notion that ships could be sunk by bombs. They seemed to have no effect other than a slight scorching of the deck, and the sturdy little toy remained afloat.

He was proud of his own small part in uncovering the cover up. “Other than the fact that the ship is wood, which is much weaker than steel, and I used firecrackers instead of iron bombs, and that there was no ammunition magazine aboard to explode, this is a perfect simulation of what the Roosevelt administration claims happened to the Arizona. But there the ship floats, to show to one and all the administration’s lie. And how convenient of Roosevelt to die a year and a half ago, so he can avoid having to answer these questions.”

[Copyright 2006, by Rand Simberg]

Smash has the story on the latest outburst of Amerikkkan imperialism.

Frank J. says that the military needs to get back to basics:

I, for one, know the military – and especially my brother – would like this policy a lot better. Actually, if the people shouting “Chickenhawk!” all the time got their way and only people in the military made decisions on wars, that’s exactly what would happen. My brother, like many Marines, joined the military to kill evil foreigners, not to build schools. Do you have any idea how few casualties we’d take if our sole goal was to go into a country, kill all the readily available targets, and leave? Do you also know how much cheaper that would be? Plus, if we actually just left Iraq right after we had that infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner, the whole Middle East would be talking about that huge Iraq military win because we totally kicked the crap out of Iraq. The only reason the conflict doesn’t look like a clear-cut victory is because we stayed after the crap-kicking to try and make friends.

America is big; we don

Indiana Jones has been denied tenure.

It hardly surprises me. In fact, it reminds me of this lawsuit.