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Try asking anyone under 30 if they know what the phrase "Papers Please!" denotes

It's just two words... It's a lot of things.

It's when the Military place soldiers in a natural disaster area such as New Orleans after Katrina requiring you to show military ID or proof of government authorization, to avoid arrest, or having vehicles impounded

It's an attack onAmerican birthright citizenship

It's two words that succinctly describe America's dark future.

Personal and Professional Encounters with Surveillance

anti-state.com: May I See Your Papers Please?

It's what Mr. Hiibel of Nevada went to jail for refusing to comply with

It's what police do now to ordinary people minding their own business.

It's congress work on the REAL ID act

It's a name given to a section of an Arizona law upheld by the Supreme court.

It's the name of a complaint against changes the US is making starting this Fall 2013 to further restrict the free travel of Americans and greatly increase the difficulty of US citizens getting passports

It's the name of a dystopian video game about communist immigration control.

It's the name of an anti-TSA blog

It's a request you comply with when asked by the police; otherwise, you face immediate arrest.

• Texas 77 year old Grandmother arrested after refusing to show ID
• Police arrest for refusing to show ID while on private property
• Exhibit 1
• Exhibit 2: According to the Supreme Court, the police may arrest for failure to identify
• Arrested at Circuit City for refusing to show ID: "It all started when I refused to show my receipt to the loss prevention employee at Circuit City, and it ended when a police officer arrested me for refusing to provide my driver's license."
• I follow the blog of a guy who walked across the country (California to New York) last year. He was arrested in Greencastle, Indiana last summer, after a prison worker called the police to report him as a suspicious person after they exchanged words while he was walking past the prison complex.
• Florida Cops Tase man for refusing to show ID
• Refusal to show id in Georgia (arrest)
• Man in Arizona arrested for refusing to surrender firearm to officers who refused to show their own ID

That's also the most amusing part - at least Ayn Rand was consistent in her disdain for helping others in need.

She never had disdain for helping others - voluntarily and logically, not through government force or irrational guilt.

The religious right will quote the Bible left and right when it suits their agenda, but then try to avoid one of the most important messages of the New Testament, which is to... wait for it... help others in need. I wonder how Jeebus felt about the 47%?

In the United States, the "religious right" is only slightly bigger than the "religious left", mostly due to the historical cultural trend popularly called the "protestant work ethic". In other countries it can be the other way around.

And, although I'm an atheist, I've read the Bible (and Asimov's commentary, etc), and I don't seem to recall Jeebus ever running for political office on the platform of stealing from the rich to finance his popularity with the poor. He was for voluntary charity through irrational guilt, and if anything he was an enemy of the state.

--libman

Jesus was a liberal

He was an voluntaryist / anarchist.

This has happened at a minimum in England, New Zealand, and the United States. There are still easily findable references to a U.S. pornstar named Melissa Bertsch having to testify in court several times (once in England involving a military officer) about how old she was in a set of pictures.

(The English military officer in question was found not guilty, IIRC, though I can't find the outcome online. In another case in the U.S. the prosecutor wanted to keep prosecuting even after it was disclosed that the images were of a 20-year-old woman because the defendant thought it was child porn.)

In New Zealand, there was a recent (within the last few years) case of someone convicted for having had a collection of pictures of a model who was over 18, but looked younger. I can't find the reference. It was of interest because it was clearly presented that the model was over 18, and the court decided that it didn't matter. I don't remember the sentence, I'm afraid, though the Wikipedia page on the general laws implies that it may have just been a fine in that situation -- but note the relatively large number of countries on the list.

Quick question, who does the government kill? The competition. Always.

Who was the government in Judea? Herod father and later Herod the son. Who was the imperial government there? Rome.

Who tried to kill Jesus? Herod the father when he was young (the flight to Egypt story). Who later tried to entrap Jesus into being nabbed as a rebel or Caesar denier/tax resister? Herod and the Pharisees. Who later conspired to kill and who actually killed Jesus? Bingo, Rome... mostly at the behest of the local government, that being the man's own people. Sort of like the county or state governments escalating his case up to the Supreme Court (or at least a Federal court) and then having the man executed for pissing on some statute or other and really upsetting the status quo (namely the rich Jews were pissed off that the rabble rouser was going to start a revolt, that would lead to an actual revolution instead of the usual revenue inducing bloodshed they were used to... so they had the man removed... resurrection or not, the historic part is likely to have happened in some form or other, betrayals of this type have always occurred when the people were promised a few breadcrumbs from the master's table in exchange for the life of a man who said "work for it and its yours, but YOU have to do it." Seems self starting impulses are about as common in history as they are today.

Hope you enjoyed the paraphrase, I'm not really that hard and set about digging up verse. I got the gist of it, I'm not a rabbi or a priest, so I don't make a habit of rote memorization, no more than any American kid makes a habit of memorizing our own Constitution or even the Declaration of Independence, despite swearing loyalty to said documents upon taking any form of government job or tax/wealth redistribution handout job. But at least your life or health isn't endangered or threatened by my lack of memorization, while it most certainly is by those who take an oath and never deliver on their word.

http://anti-state.com/redford/redford4.html A very nice view of the Bible, one I hadn't looked into since I walked away from the Church. That being said, this fellow seems quite positive that Jesus was intended as a liberator, not as a ham fisted patriarch for a corrupt church (one of which he faced in his day and age) and a totally irreparable construct (government) of which there were equal amounts of samples in his day also.

That link should help you out a bit, if it hasn't been changed, it posts a very good view on what I mentioned... he seems far more apt to quote bible verses which you should enjoy.

I've read the Bible in several different languages and have found incongruencies in all the translations, so if the translations are THIS piss poor with professional and highly paid translators in today's day and age when language is largely standardized (as are the translation tables for most of the mainstream languages) one has to wonder how piss poor the translations were from SPOKEN Aramaic/Hebrew to WRITTEN Greek, and later Written Latin, and yet again Written French/Spanish/Portuguese and finally Written German and English (and no, I don't speak them all, nor read them all). Nevermind those nasty little things like shifting "newspeak" meanings of all the languages in question, which immediately casts the light of doubt on any kind of job translators would've done.

Needing to make a profit is quite an incentive to not be inefficient, actually.

Without taxes, the government has no money. (People, as a rule, aren't going to give money to the government if they don't have to) Thus, no real power. Since the gov. doesn't have money, no police. With no police, no laws.

That was actually one of the positives, from my perspective.

Of course, the people can put together a militia, but then who pays them?

Whoever wanted them in the first place

Do you force people to serve?

No

Or do they only protect those willing to pay?

That's up to them.

Pretty soon you have rival militias wandering around enforcing thier own laws; in a word, anarchy.

Again, that's what I was shooting for.

Of course, anarchy is very unstable (I know, I know..) so groups end up combining (voluntarily or not) and you end up with the US becoming a group of independant states.

Not neccesarily a forgone conclusion. There are plenty of examples of anarchies that have lasted for several generations. Likewise, many governments don't last more than a week or two.

And then someone comes in and conquers us and we end up paying taxes again :-)

Or someone doesn't and we don't. Either way, we're spared taxation for awhile.

No, the system we have is far from perfect, but I really don't see the total abolition of taxes bringing about much improvement. Of course, if you have the answers worked out, I'd be happy to hear them; I'm always willing to save money :-)

Actually if you're looking for more fully flushed out theories on how all of this will work the site Anti-State.com is an excellent resource.

First of all, I am not trying to advocate anarchy. I subscribe to the Libertarian school of thought which advocates limited government. But hypothetically speaking, yes, security services could very well be run by private organizations. There is loads of theory on this, and some of it is very interesting. See anti-state.com if you are interested. For an intro to Libertarian philosophy, see libertarian.org.

It's a good thing you didn't try to fit libertarian/market anarchist groups in there. I can't wait to see what happens when Lew Rockwell or Anti-State get popular enough that they have to worry about these kinds of problems. Then again, from National Review to Free Republic, the right has been losing eyeballs and minds to the market anarchists in droves....heck, even Sierra Times hardly links to the Freep anymore, and they're as 'conservative' as the libertarian.net gets (more so than Backwoods Home Magazine, although to their credit they have still resisted calls for National ID cards (though the article in question was written by a Cypherpunk and not one of their regulars). Smash the State, and have a nice day!

If you buy gasoline, you support international terrorism!

Buy American!



A hysterical public service message from your friends at the ministry of truth.
-- Yes, we do think you're that stupid.

Perhaps you aren't aware of this, but some of us actually don't like the government's "other duties".

Otherwise we'd all be waiting at the DMV for a LOOOONG time to get our liscences renewed because of the war on terrorism.

Or we could just get rid of licenses entirely.

Perhaps you aren't aware of this, but some of us actually don't like the government's "other duties".

Otherwise we'd all be waiting at the DMV for a LOOOONG time to get our liscences renewed because of the war on terrorism.

Or we could just get rid of licenses entirely.

Anarchy is the answer to all of lifes problems.