Posted on 05/22/2005 7:30:03 AM PDT by Dada Orwell
From NHfree.com Man Without I.D. Vows to Board Flight or be Jailed
Manchester, NH May 21, 2005
Inspired by New Hampshire's "outlaw manicurist," another Granite Stater is stepping forward to peacefully defy license-related laws. Thirty-five-year old Russell Kanning of Keene has announced he will approach a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at Manchester airport on June 11 and refuse to cooperate with the requirement to show ID. "I will either board the plane without I.D. or be arrested," he says. "In a free country you do not need government permission to travel."
Kanning has a ticket to Philadelphia and, if allowed to travel there, plans to celebrate by visiting Independence Hall.
Two months after the September 11th attacks, the Aviation Security Act federalized airport security nationwide and granted new police powers to the TSA. Now, an ID is mandatory to travel by commercial aircraft, passengers must travel alone past security checkpoints, and random full-body searches in public are considered normal.
Kanning stresses that he will not resist arrest or do anything that might be perceived as physically threatening. He says this act of nonviolent resistance will follow the model laid down by Gandhi, who used peaceful noncooperation to expel the British from India. "We will tell them everything we're going to do ahead of time. We are not going to disrupt the operation of the airport," he says.
Kanning says the parallels with Gandhi's situation go further than a shared belief in nonviolence. "In South Africa (where Gandhi's protests began), Indians had to have special I.D...so it's very similar that way, and he wanted to burn it...He was appealing to that same basic idea that we have rights to not have to have paperwork to be able to move freely."
Earlier this month another Gandhi admirer, Mike Fisher of Newmarket, used the Mahatma's techniques to protest business licensing. After announcing he would perform an unlicensed manicure in front of the state licensing offices, he carried out his promise, earned a brief trip to jail and received heavy regional media coverage for his viewpoint.
Kanning says Gandhi's and Fisher's examples inspired him to take similar action against the growing "surveillance state." He believes the Real ID amendment passed by the Senate this month will make things even worse. But he says it's important to stay positive. "The goal is we want to get to the point where we can travel without having to have paperwork so, this is the beginning of that. We see light at the end of the tunnel. "
Currently the plan is for Kanning to approach the security checkpoint at 12:30 PM. Journalists and supporters will want to be there by noon.
Summary:
What: Civil disobedience against ID requirements under federalized airport security. Where: Manchester Airport in New Hampshire (exact spot to be determined) When: Saturday, June 11 @ noon Who: Russell Kanning of Keene, NH, supporters from NHfree.com Why: To draw attention to the recent and continuing loss of privacy and freedom due to federalized airport security and National ID. How: By approaching a TSA checkpoint with a ticket but no ID, refusing to show ID, and refusing to cooperate with the law until arrested or allowed to board the plane. Contacts: You can find out more and post questions to the discussion boards at NHfree.com
"Well, I hope he's ready to review the "Constutional Gaurantee for right to Air Travel" with the judge and jury when the time comes."
According to the 10th Amendment any power not expressely given to the Federal government by our Constitution is reserved for the states or the people. I may have the wording a little off but the gist is that the individual and the states don't need the Constitution's blessing to do something...Federal government does.
His head and his heart are in exactly the same place. And both are very hard. And did anyone mention that he is a dorkhead?
His head and his heart are in exactly the same place. And both are very hard. And did anyone mention that he is a dorkhead?
"And guess what? Big Government control-freak, empire-building, money-squandering politicians will ensure we're perpetually "at war".
I'm interested: how did Big Government control-freak, empire-building, money-squandering politicians precipitate the war on terror?
The Constitution enumerates the legitimate powers of government. If it isn't clearly stated in the Constitution, then government is coloring outside the lines.
A free people have EVERY freedom not explicitly limited by the legitimate powers of government.
Our Founders were very VERY smart. They knew the world would change. That is why the Constitution LIMITS government, while giving people UNLIMITED freedom.
Any government official who fails a quiz on this topic should be summarily executed for capital stupidity.
Quintuply redundant.
The "war" is an excuse to bag and tag the sheeple. A noble cause perverted by control freaks. To hell with our government. They are no better than the Taliban.
That wasn't my point. My point was that now, and forevermore, every expansion of government, every spending bill, every stupid rule that screws up our lives - will be "justified" because we're "at war with the terrorists and if you don't agree/do/pay/submit, the terrorists win."
"Nixonian overreach"
Scuze me?
"That wasn't my point. My point was that now, and forevermore, every expansion of government, every spending bill, every stupid rule that screws up our lives - will be "justified" because we're "at war with the terrorists and if you don't agree/do/pay/submit, the terrorists win."
That seems to be a real danger, but it looks like a linear projection to me.
Another possibility is that we will win both the war on terror and the left's war on America.
"How do you know if a person driving a car who is not exhibiting criminal behavior is an illegal alien who doesn't have a drivers license?"
No, he's right, that could be done. Most of us are blissfully unaware of how much information there is in the public domain. Detectives and bill collectors are not.
The problem I see with it is that some people who shouldn't be doing it would want to: boneheads, bullies, etc.
But that's where the bond comes in. None of them would have enough money to keep posting those bonds over and over again, so the bad apples would weed themselves out (to mix metaphors).
Nixon invented the EPA.
"We are all Keynsians now."
Yeah, he got a bum rap in some ways, but he was no prize.
Either we strangle that inclination, or the United States stops - one or the other will happen. The Republican Party of Goldwater and to some extent Reagan is long dead and gone; don't be fooled by the name used by the new owners.
"Nixon invented the EPA..."We are all Keynsians now."
Okay, those are two big black eyes, but as you said he got a bum rap in a lot of ways.
I will admit that Bush has disappointed me on a number of issues.
No, but I think one of his 'friends' may have been there...
You do if you're on someone else's plane. We'll see how jailbirds fly.
Orwell saw the truth...
Ayn Rand had some thoughts, as well...
...from Atlas Shrugged-
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich—will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt—and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them.
But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.
Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood—money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves—slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers—as industrialists... - excerpt
Carolyn
And when the Jihadis detonate some suicide car bombs at elementary schools, malls, etc., what then? ID checkpoints for drivers, .5 mile "vehicle exclusion zones" around schools, malls, shopping centers? Fix the problem don't eliminate the freedoms. Terrorists are winning the airline battle, their job is to terrify, not win the war.
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