Schools exist to teach chil­dren two things: con­for­mi­ty and sub­mis­sion to author­i­ty. Any­thing else a child learns is com­plete­ly inci­den­tal. This is why bul­ly­ing per­sists. Forc­ing chil­dren to go to school and be around bul­lies is part of train­ing them to believe they have to sub­mit to hor­ri­ble peo­ple for the rest of their life. 

Ror­shak

A few days ago I found the notice on the left in the pho­to above in my apart­ment build­ing. The notice states that some­one from the local gov­ern­ment will be con­duct­ing an ille­gal search of my apart­ment build­ing tomor­row. This isn’t the first time some­thing like this has hap­pened. About ten years ago, a sim­i­lar notice appeared and I took the day off from work to keep the “inspec­tor” from get­ting into my apart­ment with­out a search warrant–which, nat­u­ral­ly, he didn’t have. After a bit of the expect­ed veiled threats and attempts at intim­i­da­tion and trick­ery that inspec­tor gave up and left, and I’m hop­ing that the one tomor­row will go as well.

The two pages of Kore­an text next to the notice are a trans­la­tion of the Bill of Rights, with the Fourth Amend­ment high­light­ed. I found this on the web­site of a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion called Jews for the Preser­va­tion of Firearms Own­er­ship, which has trans­la­tions of the Bill of Rights into many dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Most of my neigh­bors were born in Korea, and many speak no Eng­lish, so I fig­ured it was like­ly they wouldn’t be aware that they have the right to refuse war­rant­less search­es of their homes. Hope­ful­ly read­ing the trans­la­tion of the rel­e­vant US law will help at least some of them stand up for them­selves and their lib­er­ty.

Update: This time around the inspec­tor took “get a war­rant” quick­ly and with­out mak­ing a fuss.

Right­ful lib­er­ty is unob­struct­ed action accord­ing to our will with­in lim­its drawn around us by the equal rights of oth­ers. I do not add ‘with­in the lim­its of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it vio­lates the rights of the indi­vid­ual.

Thomas Jef­fer­son

How many fed­er­al laws would I be break­ing…. …if I sug­gest­ed that the world would be a bet­ter, clean­er place if this per­son and all his syco­phants choked to death on cans of caf­feinat­ed alco­hol?

I note that Sch**er adds a nice incon­gru­ous touch:

Let This Serve as a Warn­ing to Any­one Who Tries to Ped­dle Dan­ger­ous Bev­er­ages to Our Kids, Do it, And We Will Shut You Down

[The Ulti­mate Answer to Kings]

Nat­u­ral­ly I don’t spend much time in gov­ern­ment build­ings, but I know that both pris­ons pub­lic schools and cour­t­hous­es have drink­ing foun­tains. I don’t think there’s any bev­er­age on Earth that’s killed more peo­ple than water…