In business and especially with the gubmint you do not, I repeat, NOT - "DEMAND" - anything. You 'respectfully request' and use phrases like 'with all due respect'...Len Savage can be right as rain here but he's acting like an ignorant knuckle dragging ass by "demanding".
Yeah, it's not pragmatic and he's making us all look bad!
The guy did say "please" and "thank you." That's the only manners that really count.
ReplyDeleteAsking for WHAT?
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I'm surprised the man is still alive. People have been raided and shot dead while "resisting" for less.
After three or four polite letters REQUESTING that law officials obey the law, I think plain speaking is in order. THEY could have handled this like professionals and ladies and gentlemen, but they chose to prove that what we think of them is correct. Now they're famous.
I think things happen more or less the way they're supposed to.
There are resisters who are martyred, and there are passive innocents who are martyred just as surely. If people pay attention, one martyr can change the world. Or one hero who survives.
This is why ATF and others don't go after the gangs in any meaningful way. The real criminals WILL respond, in a meaningful way that can't be filed and ignored.
Savage has hardly been impolite. He has every right to demand his property be returned.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the commenter is correct in that behaving like you have rights is the best was to run afoul of a government institution.
Isn't that what we complain about all the time?
I think the proper response to the atfu is yes massah...Toby bad...don't whop Toby massah...Toby bad.
ReplyDelete...because politeness has worked so well with these sickos in the past.....
ReplyDeleteCondor 51? I thought Condors were extinct.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes,what a good little commie prag!
Just WOW, this "person" has the nerve to call himself an American? Did the BATFECES "respectfully request", backed up by a warrant, Mr. Savage bring his property to their offices? Or did they come and take it by force? If I am mugged and my wallet is stolen, should I "respectfully request" the thug give it back? Sans cash, of course.
ReplyDeleteLen, knows very well what he's doing. He's a very bright guy and I'm sure has had legal advice on this matter and that legal advice has more than likely read the letters before Len mailed them off.
ReplyDeleteNo question in my mind Len is baiting ATF to do something stupid. I'm sure ATF knows this and would like nothing more than to crack the whip on Len, but they know better. Nevertheless, ATF has to do something on this matter because as they can see Len isn't going to go away. But all this is ATF's own doing, they played a game and their hand is being called.
This leaves ATF with two options. Do they do the right thing or do they do the wrong thing.
Aha, another pragmatist discovered. Begging is so unbecoming in an outward appearing man. Once one realizes there is less there than meets the eye, one can then understand the beggar mentality of pragmatists.
ReplyDeleteAs for his bona fides, mine were much the same. Except, after polite correspondence, I made demands. The COE was cheating and I called them on it.
I was involved during the last 2 1/2 years of it and immediately realized that my company had trained the COE to expect there would never be any substantial resistance to their abuse. I told my superiors because of what they had done, we would end up in court, they didn't believe it, until they were staring bankruptcy in the face. Fortunately, the whole time I was involved I was building a legal case at the same time I was building the project.
Yeah, we ended up in court. Nobody beats them in their system, right? I beat them twice. Saved the company I worked for from bankruptcy and got them reimbursed for several million dollars.
I did end up not working for them, though. I quit right after they informed me that I "fought too hard".
Funny thing about that, it is the only way we would have won, it is the only way the company could have survived, and my correspondence, demands and all, were considered by the judge to have constituted enough reason for the defendant to avoid court proceedings by doing the right thing. At the time I quit the ruling hadn't come down.
They (my people) also thought I had overstepped in my testimony when I called the chief witness for the government a liar and offered to prove it with a backboard and some chalk. No one took up that challenge, because he was a liar and he was lying, despite all the PHD's behind his name.
That was the last thing the defendant wanted was to have an uneducated lay person prove that their expert had to have known he was committing perjury.
A couple years later the company asked me to come back and pull their asses out of another hole. I did, for a time, but decided I just didn't like them enough or respect them enough to continue.
One of finest compliments I ever received came from this second experience. I was invited to join NASA as an engineer by their project manager (facilities). However, due to government regulations requiring a college degree, I was ineligible. But the man fought tooth and nail for an exception for me. I will always consider that one fine compliment.
It was a definite monetarily disadvantageous decision, to leave my company, but I still owned me. Pragmatists will never understand that. None of them have outgrown their need for a daddy.
Almost four years of "polite" and "requests" accomplished not a damn thing. It took one uneducated hick who would fight back to get justice. That hick (me) was unappreciated by all concerned, even the people whose business he saved. Such is the never-ending saga of life among pragmatists.
I find it obscene that Mr. Savage's far inferior inferior takes it upon himself to vilify a man for a stance he himself has not the courage to even contemplate.
Talk about bitter envy!
"In business and especially with the gubmint you do not, I repeat, NOT - "DEMAND" - anything. You 'respectfully request' and use phrases like 'with all due respect'."
ReplyDeleteDear England,
With all due respect may we please have our independence.
Respectfully yours,
Thomas Jefferson
Nah. Screw that. Get your asses out and now.
Am I the only one that see the irony about a blogger posting 'notes from the Resistance...' and loves to show the micro % of Peace Officers that are bad/wrong/evil/untrained/whatever is telling all his readers, to bow and scrape before the masters of the ATF, so we, as gun owners, dont look bad? WTF OVER.
ReplyDeleteEither Grow a pair, or shut up.
I do believe in being polite. I also believe that:
ReplyDelete"when one is positioned correctly to kiss another's ass, one is in perfect alignment for another to shat upon one"
"We the people" have been bitching about ATF abuses for years. ATF's anti-constitutional actions are documented history.
"Evil only needs good men to do nothing in order to succeed"
I choose to do something. Do You?
Len Savage
Bradley, you can't really be that oblivious to the concept of irony, can you?
ReplyDeleteBradley must be new.
ReplyDeleteThe pragmatists -- those who believe working within the government's vast and arbitrary system is the most effective way to REgain our rights -- have led us to this point: where we have to constantly but carefully remind our government EMPLOYEES who works for whom. Carefully, because they can have us behind bars TODAY with just a word to the right person.
About that micro-percentage of cops who are bad... maybe that's true. OUR problem with that is, the GOOD cops ALLOW it. The chiefs allow it. The mayors and city councils allow it. No violation of policy. No wrongdoing. Acquitted on all charges. Sometimes there are riots, because SOME people know where the line SHOULD be and WILL NOT tolerate it. A shame that so far it's a race-based response, because most people are vulnerable at any time. If a cop is having a bad day, everyone has a bad day. Could YOU keep your job like that? Me neither.
Mr. Savage is building his legal case very carefully, documenting everything. I hope he prevails, and that the people jerking him around lose their jobs and get charged with malfeasanse and deprivation of rights under color of law. If the Waco killers didn't, it seems unlikely that these people will. Either way, it's a very public case freedom advocates will be able to refer to when our Declaration is written. The original one talked about petitioning for redress of grievances and being spurned from the foot of the throne, and worse abuses resulting. Shortly after that, the war of WORDS was over.
As a reasonable person, I hope our overseers will develop some empathy for us, the powerless, and stop destroying what self-determination and dignity they still allow us. One day, they may be in a nursing home unable to feed themselves. Will they gloat about all the people they put out of business and in prison, or will they finally understand: "So THIS is how it feels to be at the mercy of EVERYONE"?
Lawmakers in many places are REQUIRING police to make arrests now for things that the officer on the scene used to have discretion about. A domestic shouting match sometimes needs a cop to only be a social worker, to listen to both parties and calm them down. Now, SOMEONE's going to jail regardless. They USED TO be able to warn people not wearing seatbelts about the danger, and issue them a ticket for it only in conjunction with a traffic violation. Now if they observe you not belted, it's a primary offense and you're getting cited. Concealed gun without a permit, or the "wrong" type of gun without papers, or a gun that can be modified by testers to BE the wrong kind? "Hey, I understand, but my hands are tied." [looks out of the corner of his eye at his partner]
ReplyDeleteIf the freedom-loving officers try to work within the system by giving people a break, the strac (STRictly ACcording to regulations) ones will turn THEM in. That's how Germany and Russia did it. Or the captain will wonder why Officer Goodguy's arrest numbers are so much lower than everyone else's.
Politicians govern (or rule, as the case may be) by THEORIES. Since they think they're the best and brightest, of course their theories are best for everyone. They don't get the disconnect that if they have to FORCE it with fines and armed men, maybe it's NOT the best theory.
Robert Mugabe has a theory: He can be president of Zimbabwe for his entire life. He allows only his supporters to have weapons. He prevented his former election opponent (he withdrew because of death threats against people who planned to vote for him) from traveling to a conference in South Africa last week by seizing his passport.
Unopposed, politicians can remake a city or nation in their own image. Whether those who aid them share their vision or are just scared of losing their jobs or being jailed or executed is just a matter of degree. Those who rule by intimidation, coercion and fear are ALWAYS wrong and must ALWAYS be opposed. By whatever means it takes.
A libertarian writer once got a notice from his town that if he didn't cut his lawn the town would send a crew to do it and charge him for it. He wrote back to say that while he felt that the workers had no choice but to do as they were instructed, that would not keep him from shooting them, and their supervisors, and the town officials who sent them. Because if he allowed it, then his land -- and anything on it -- was no longer his, but theirs. (This was before the Kelo ruling)
There's a man who knows how to set boundaries.
The county left his grass alone.
H.G. Wells said "The first man to raise a fist is the one who has run out of ideas."
He was a pacifist and hoped that everyone would someday value the ideas of others equally.
His "War of the Worlds" is somewhat of a fable, because the invincible Martian invaders are defeated by the most humble of Earth's creatures: bacteria.
Imagine. In "The War of the Worlds," humans win against superior alien minds and might because of germs. In "1984," Big Brother wins because people are afraid of ...other people.
"A boot stamping on a human face ... forever."
Am I the only one who sees the irony of someone who posts anonymously telling me to grow a pair? I don't cotton to ignorant rudeness.
ReplyDeleteBradley, newbie--a good rule of thumb--look around and figure out the lie of the land before committing to keyboard. You just introduced yourself to every regular here by tripping on your own dick--and doing so indignantly at that.
The way I see it, you have three choices: You can do a little research on my background with Len Savage--go ahead, enter his name in this site's "search" bar--and then reenter as a friend, you can just go away, or you can contact me personally about what kind of pair I have and how exactly you intend to make me shut up.
I've been thinking of this situation and how to apply it to a situation that makes it clear to pretty much anyone.
ReplyDeleteLets say Ford Motor Company came up with a new car that got five time better fuel mileage. But they needed to take this to the EPA and the EPA would give the OK on it if they like it. So Ford gives the EPA a working model and the EPA changes the car to something else. The EPA rejects it saying it puts out too much smog. Ford objects to this and the EPA tells Ford if we can change this design than other people can and this will cause unhealthy air. So the EPA rejects a way of saving natural resources. Which in fact is what Len's device does, it saves natural resources and the energy to make the ammo.
Of course this is insane and clearly shows we have people who have allowed the power trip of their position in government to go to their heads.