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The Shield and the Sword;
We Are the Creator;
Culture of Subservience;
Winslow Boy; these
articles have their titles and text in this color and are featured this
week in -
Ender's Review of the Web
Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the week of July 18-24, 2004.
Comments,
suggestions and discussion on
the content and structure of this review are welcome
at the ERevD:
EnderReviewDiscussion Yahoo group.
Feel free to jump in there at any time.
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this e-mail to those you think might be interested,
with the contact and
subscription information at the bottom intact.
Political
Liberty
Articles showing a
positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.
End the Two-Party Monopoly!
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD from LewRockwell.com
"The United States Constitution gives
Congress the authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of
federal elections. ... In order to open up the political process, I have
introduced the Voter Freedom Act (HR 1941). HR 1941 established uniform
standards for ballot access so third party and independent candidates
can at last compete on a level playing field."
Freedom to Read
by Jim Duensing from The
Libertarian Enterprise
"If we really want our freedom, we
need to vote out every single politician who ever supported the
Patriot Act, whether they have since recanted or not. We need to
replace them with statesmen who will not pass any
unconstitutional laws and who will work to repeal as many as
possible."
Grief, Outrage for Families of Dead GIs
by Jay Shaft from Antiwar.com
Speaking out: "Many families of
U.S. service members killed in Iraq say the pain of having
lost a loved one does not grow easier to deal with as time
passes. Some say it only worsens. More and more, the families
of men and women killed in Iraq are speaking publicly against
the war."
Life in
Amerika
Articles depicting
the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
Kicking the Bully's
Dog
by Butler Shaffer from
LewRockwell.com
"A moment's reflection should
cause one to realize that O'Reilly's remarks are directed ...
[at] mankind generally: if you do not conform yourself to his
visions for you; if you do not fully appreciate the pain and
misery the American government is putting you through for your
own good; you will be destroyed. Such is the meaning of
'justice' to Boobus Americanus!"
Keep your laws off my sex jokes
by Robyn E. Blumner from St.
Petersburg Times
"Admittedly this is tasteless,
juvenile stuff, but should it be against the law? These
are writers trying to come up with ideas for an
adult-themed sitcom. Should the courts really have a seat
in that room to police the process? And if the courts
belong there, might they also have a place in curating a
museum exhibit or rewriting a play?"
Hamdi and the End of Habeas
Corpus--The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
by Jennifer Van Bergen from
CounterPunch
"What happened to probable
cause of criminal activity? What happened to the Fourth,
Fifth, and Sixth Amendment protections? What happened to
innocent until proven guilty?"
Ordered Liberty
without the State
Some people
say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an
interesting topic.
MTV Joins
the Establishment
by Brad Edmonds from Strike The
Root
"Worse than the bad information on
specific topics, however, is the sinister underlying theme: MTV
wants its audience to join the mindless minions who make up the
majority of the voting public. Casting a vote for a candidate is
an undeniable testament that you believe forcible government is
legitimate. Your vote will be construed by whoever is elected as
your approval of his future actions in office. The more hip MTV
can make voting seem to be, the more the insidious assumption
that forcible government is morally valid will seep into the
unconscious mind of the masses."
Japanese Freedom vs American
Freedom -- Redux
by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers from
LewRockwell.com
"You think the government can
wave a magic wand and all your problems will be solved, but
that's where the problem lies: too many Americans want the
government to control too much of their daily lives. And
everyone should know by now that the government can't do
anything right."
A Screed on Need and Greed
by Gary Galles from Ludwig
von Mises Institute
"Coercion cannot eliminate
either need or greed. It only puts more power,
particularly the power to harm others, in the hands of
those centuries of experience have revealed are no less
likely to be greedy. The only thing that can ultimately
help individuals meet their "needs," without infringing
on others' ability to meet their own, is the opposite --
freeing them from the power others have to dictate to
them."
Spreading Decentralism
Articles
demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
Libertarian Amendments to the US Constitution
by Anthony Gregory from
LewRockwell.com
"I wonder why Senators would
bother amending a document that they already ignore every
day of the week. Since when have Senators cared about what
the Constitution says? Why bother changing it? At any rate,
it’s a good time for us good libertarians to ponder how the
Constitution could be improved. If government officials ever
followed the Supreme Law of the Land, such improvements
would translate into triumphs for liberty in our time. Here
are my suggestions."
Making juries matter
again
by James N. Markels
from America's Future Foundation
"All that Blakely
requires is that every aggravating factor now be
proven to the jury instead of the judge. This is a
big change from the current procedure, but it can be
done. ... But what has actually occurred is an
important shift in emphasis back to juries."
Your Phone Is Phun
by Annalee Newitz
from AlterNet
"One VoIP provider,
a European company called Skype, does end-to-end
Internet phone calls that don't interact with
telecom networks at all. Phone calls done with
Skype are routed peer-to-peer-style across the
Net and are also completely encrypted. Good luck
trying to intercept a Skype phone call and
figure out what the people are saying without
spending a few weeks working on it. "
The New
World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
The Evolution of a New Myth
by Bob Wallace from
Strike The Root
"The State is eternally
trying to grow, Blob-like, and attack Society.
Therefore, the State is a monster. A monster, as the
archetype of the horror story tells us, is Evil
attacking Good, Chaos intruding into Order. The
Chickenhawks, who support the State attacking and
absorbing societies, are monsters. They may wear
three-piece suits and speak calmly, but they are still
monsters."
Global Eye -- Hard Reign
by Chris Floyd from
TheMoscowTimes.com
"He began his career as
a gun-toting assassin for the Baath Party, The New
Yorker reports, helping Hussein's bloody rise to
power. Allawi then went to London, where he acted as
Hussein's spy -- and enforcer -- on Iraqis living
abroad. For reasons yet unclear, the two thugs had a
falling out -- or perhaps Allawi got a better offer
from British intelligence."
'Just Give Me My
Son'
by Nat Hentoff from
The Village Voice
"We already know,
thanks to a low-level whistle-blower,
soldier-specialist Joseph Darby, of egregious
violations of American and international law at
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But we have no idea
what is happening to the huge number of ghost
prisoners for whom no American captors are
accountable. They all have disappeared."
Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
Buy This Book
Before it's Banned [James Bovard's
The Bush Betrayal]
by Claire Wolfe
from WolfesBlog
"While calling
himself a conservative, he presides over
unprecedented government expansion. While
calling himself compassionate he jails
millions of nonviolent Americans and
indiscriminately slaughters Iraqis and
Afghanis. While praising freedom, he wipes
rights off the map. While touting the virtues
of self-reliance, he subsidizes everything --
using other people's money. While effusing
about volunteerism, he expands programs to pay
incompetent 'volunteers' handsomely. While
praising free-market economics, he uses
subsidy and regulation, carrot and stick, to
turn the U.S. business world toward economic
fascism."
The era of
strategic deception
by Eric
Margolis from Toronto Sun
"This was no
intelligence failure. This was strategic
deception, a combination the Soviet KGB
called 'disinformatzia' and 'maskirovka.'
This was facilitated by an ideologically and
religiously extreme president; a Dr.
Strangelovian vice-president lusting for war
and oil; neocon ideologues and a cowardly
Congress that violated its most basic
responsibility to the nation."
Color Your
Opposition to the War But Stay Within the Lines
by Kristina M.
Gronquist from Strike The Root
"The lesson is
that if you want to go mainstream with your
opposition to the war in Iraq and get the
time of day, first and foremost you must
lace your argument with adulation for the
troops' heroism and patriotism. Steep your
words in the notion that war is a glorious
thing, even wars without cause. Don't talk
about dead Iraqis...."
Spontaneous Order
Articles
showing decentralized successes.
The End of Stock Options?
by Francis
Orzechowski from The Foundation for Economic Education
"In a real market
system, the question of whether or not stock options should be
counted as expenses would be immediately and easily answered. As
with everything market-related, the answer is rooted in individual
preference and demand. If investors value expense-sheet-line
policies for stock options, they will invest wholly or primarily
in companies that follow this practice. And in consequence, other
companies will find it in their best interest to adopt similar
policies."
A Vote Note
by Paul Hein from LewRockwell.com
"I point out that there is no other
corporation which puts people in high positions based upon the
votes of thousands of people -- not even shareholders! -- who
have never met them, know almost nothing about them, and even
less about the operation of the business."
The Fight
Over the Roadless Rule
by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren
from Cato Institute
"The only way to ascertain whether a
scarce resource is better used for this rather than for that is
to consider prices and consumer willingness to pay for those
alternative uses of the resource. Because public land is kept
out of the marketplace, prices don't exist and consumer
preferences are never put to the test. Accordingly, there's no
way to test the assertion."
Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles
showing centrally planned disasters.
Do Food Makers Want to Kill
You?
by Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Regulation then
as now is a form of mercantilism that benefits some at the
expense of others. And the some who benefit are not the
consumers. This labeling bill won't help those with food
allergies so much as reduce their own level of attentiveness
to what they eat, giving them a false sense of confidence.
It could thereby lead to more deaths, followed by more
regulation."
Free Martha! Free Bobby!
by Sheldon Richman from The
Future of Freedom Foundation
"In a free society, the
government may not tell people where they can travel.
Fischer did not go to Yugoslavia to plot attacks against
Americans. He went to play chess. Neither the U.S.
government nor the UN had legitimate authority to
interfere. Once again we have a case in which the
government refuses to let peaceful citizens alone.
Whatever one thinks of Fischer's past conduct or
inflammatory statements, he has done nothing deserving of
criminal indictment and imprisonment."
The Sheer Hypocrisy of U.S.
Trade Policy
by Jude Blanchette from The
Foundation for Economic Education
"Furthermore, if President
Bush means we can't have free-trade policies until the
rest of world does, that is a recipe for perpetual
protection. The pressure to protect some at the expense of
others will continue so long as governments are in a
position to dispense largess. The use of retaliatory trade
devices (tariffs, quotas, subsidies, etc.) is not so much
about 'leveling the playing field' as it is about buying
votes."
War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in
society.
by Bob
Wallace from Endervidualism
"In the
past, Ares was just the god of war. Today, if we apply
some libertarian theory about the difference between the
State and Society, he becomes much more than a mere
serial killer: he's now the god of the State. All
States, being based on coercion and the threat of
violence, are always about war. Indeed, they are always
at war, because no matter what it gets involved in, no
matter what its good intentions, it will only create
conflict."
It Can Happen Here
by Jonathan David Morris
from Strike The Root
"Picture it. It's
September 2nd in New York City -- the last day of the
Republican convention. George Bush is getting ready to
accept his party's nomination. Outside, marchers march
to the beat of an anti-war drum, whining for free
stuff -- like education and healthcare -- while cops
see to it that they only enjoy the First Amendment to
a reasonable degree. ... All is well on the home
front, it seems. Then something happens. A silence. A
boom. Bombs go off inside the Lincoln Tunnel. Vans
explode at opposite ends of the Brooklyn Bridge."
The Unveiling of the
National Security State
by Richard M. Dolan from
Phenomena Magazine
"It's been a long journey
to our current state of affairs. Not surprisingly,
wars have been a major catalyst. Most wars fought by
the United States have added power to the executive
branch, while whittling power away from the
legislature. This includes wars fought for high-minded
purposes such as the Civil War and World War Two,
mindless bloodbaths like World War One, and the dozens
of undeclared wars over the past half-century."
Bits of History
The Past seen with a
fresh look.
Sing-Song of the North
by Joseph
R. Stromberg from LewRockwell.com
"With
Southerners of traditional views or habits
marginalized in Southern universities, with nearly
every 'local' newspaper staffed by the usual suspects
and a few local clones, there is little need for
formal censorship. This situation is of course not the
fault of Beito and Nuckolls, but one wishes they would
notice it. Nonetheless, the long-standing New England
project of eradicating the opposition seems to have
entered its final stages, even if New Englanders are
not now running it."
Pledging to the Monster
by Bob Wallace from The
Price of Liberty
"Since the federal
government is composed of people, those saying the
Pledge are in reality pledging allegiance to those
who have control of it. So, when people are wounded
or die in wars, they're fighting for a handful of
people in charge of a disorganized criminal
enterprise that believes it should rule the entire
country."
Constitutional Futility
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
from LewRockwell.com
"The Constitution not
only sought to limit government with its 'enumerated
powers,' something that Pilon emphasizes, or the
system of checks and balances, but also with the
much more important doctrine of divided sovereignty.
That is, the citizens of the states, as well as all
other organs of government, were to have an equal
voice in constitutional matters."
War and Peace
Articles showing the
nature of War.
Exactly How Has Bush's
War Made Us Safer?
by
Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom
Foundation
"What U.S. officials
have never been able to understand is that people in
the Arab community tend to view the deaths and
injuries of their countrymen in much the same way
that Americans view the deaths of their fellow
citizens -- that is, not as 'war casualties' or
'collateral damage' or 'uncounted statistics' but
rather as real human beings with families and
friends, who are now dead or maimed as a result of
Bush's war."
Post 9/11:
Questioning the Ends and Means of Violence
by Kristina M.
Gronquist from Strike The Root
"The futility of
pursing policies where 'the ends justifies the
means' reflects all around us. The violent
strategies chosen by our government, not properly
questioned by a compliant and uninformed
mainstream, will blow back to haunt us, for in
destroying human lives in other parts of the
world, we destroy parts of ourselves; ultimately,
we sow our own destruction."
Civil War In Iraq?
by William S. Lind
from Antiwar.com
"The resulting civil
war may still have Sunni vs. Shi'ite aspects; in
fact, it is almost certain to include that fault
line. But there will be many other fault lines as
well, some within the Shi'ite and Sunni
communities, some cutting across them. At the
physical level, this works to the 'government's'
advantage, in that its relative power increases.
But at the moral level, virtually all the other
factions have greater legitimacy than the
'government'."
Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out
from the crowd.
Artist - Edward
Hopper : July 22, 1882
by Edward
Lucie-Smith from Artchive.com
"Edward Hopper,
the best-known American realist of the
inter-war period, once said: 'The man's the
work. Something doesn't come out of
nothing.' This offers a clue to interpreting
the work of an artist who was not only
intensely private, but who made solitude and
introspection important themes in his
painting."
Flyer -
Amelia Earhart : July 24, 1897
from
AmeliaEarhart.com
"Defying
conventional feminine behavior, the young
Earhart climbed trees, 'belly-slammed' her
sled to start it downhill and hunted rats
with a .22 rifle. She also kept a
scrapbook of newspaper clippings about
successful women in predominantly
male-oriented fields, including film
direction and production, law,
advertising, management, and mechanical
engineering."
Artist -
Edgar Degas : July 19, 1834
from Degas
Expo-shop.com
"In his
sculpture, as in his paintings, he
attempted to catch the action of the
moment, and his ballet dancers and female
nudes are depicted in poses that make no
attempt to conceal their subjects'
physical exertions."
Culcha'
Books, Movies, TV,
Media, Music, poetry, etc.
by Cat
Farmer from Endervidualism
Poem.
From the Author's note: "Does a person create his
own reality? We each have a hand in creating
realities for other people, and other people's hands
are all over our realities -- we do not create
reality in a vacuum. If God exists, He lets us be to
freely create our own realities and invite Him into
them as we choose (or not). Creator, create thyself
-- and mind thy own reality! "
The NEA's News from
Nowhere
by Charles Paul
Freund from Reason
"The ... two-century
debate over high and low culture has declined as
the middlebrow values that supported that debate
have faded .... [W]e may well have finally
dispensed with aristocratic cultural norms and
highbrow standards of cultural value. ... The
novel (like the bulk of commercially generated
cultural artifacts) really was instrumental in the
process of Western individuation."
Taking Sex Differences Seriously
by Bernard Chapin
from Strike The Root
"The author cites the
opinions of heavyweights like Gloria Steinem and
Gloria Allred on the topic of sex research. They
believe that making inquiries into the
discrepancies between men and women is downright
dangerous to all women and anti-American in spirit
[!]. Yet, one could make a strong case that
unearthing what others purposefully ignore is
intrinsic to what it means to be an American."
Special
Movies
More
than our usual weekly amount of movie
reviews
by Tom Ender from
Endervidualism
"'Let right be done' is the
phrase that most simply sums
up this story. Insisting
that right be done and the
costs that are often
associated with pursuing
such a quest are also the
central themes of this
superb David Mamet film,
based on the outstanding
Terence Rattigan play. With
a screenplay written and
directed by Mamet and
excellent portrayals by all
the actors, this production
of Rattigan's story shines
out with timeless truths set
in a not long bygone era."
A Class Act
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
from LewRockwell.com
"Fighting
crime is a purely private
activity, and Spiderman
himself functions as a
kind of private vigilante,
making up for the failures
of the supposed 'public
good' provisions that the
state never gets around to
providing. It is these
themes
[in Spiderman 2] --
the chaos of the city, the
inability of government to
stop crime, our dependence
out private solutions --
that connect with us."
The Movie Moore Should Have
Made
by Michael Ewens from
Antiwar.com
"The skeptical viewer may
ask near the end of the
film: What about Kosovo?
Somalia? What about every
other military
intervention in the name
of 'humanity' or
'democracy'? Is this
intervention, though
grander in scale, any
different? Antiwar.com has
consistently maintained
that each war is always
sold as something it isn't
by similarly exploiting
fear, morality or
patriotism. It is
interesting to think where
these documentaries were
during those similarly
damaging wars."
The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons,
parodies, food, popular music
and other things to amuse.
Eat This Book
by N. Stephan Kinsella from
LewRockwell.com
"One of the nice things
about 'Soup' [There's
a Government in Your Soup: Why There's Too Much
Government in Your Kitchen, and What You Can Do About It]
is that as you read it, you cannot help but regain your
love of food, and at least temporarily quell some of
your guilt. Moreover, Edmonds helps to explain how, as
usual, government meddling makes food worse."
Study: Majority Of
Americans Out Of Touch With Mainstream
from The Onion
"According to a study
published by the Popular Culture Research Group
Monday, the majority of American citizens are out of
touch with mainstream American society. 'We're unsure
exactly what these figures may mean, but the
implications must be far-reaching,' Mannheim said."
Bush Proposes Commission
To Read 9/11 Report -- Panel Would Prepare Cliffs Notes
Version
by Andy Borowitz from
BorowitzReport
"While stopping short of
naming possible candidates for such a panel, Mr. Bush
said that the commissioners should represent both
parties and 'know what a lot of long words mean.'
After finishing reading the book, Mr. Bush said, the
panel would then publish a 'Cliffs Notes' edition of
the book 'to enable those who don't have the time to
read the entire book to sound like they read it'."
Deep Thought
Scientific
and scholarly studies, philosophical essays,
in-depth and longer articles.
A Culture of
Subservience
by Scott McPherson from
The Future of Freedom Foundation
"If an American president can
state, without any fear of
criticism, that each and every
citizen owes two years of his
life -- his life! -- to another,
and establish, at the stroke of
a pen, a government bureau to
promote that agenda, then how
far can we be from instituting
the kind of 'national service'
regime common under statist
governments around the world?"
The Therapeutic State -- "A
House of Aces"
by
Thomas Szasz from The Freeman
"The
masses of mental patients are,
and have always been, poor and
imprisoned -- that is, confined
against their will.
Psychiatrists deny, and have
always denied, this. They
maintain (as they must, to
justify their practices) that
'mental illness is like any
other illness' and that mental
hospitals are like medical
hospitals, to which patients are
'admitted' and from which, after
successful treatment, they are
'discharged'."
Too Awful to Read? Susan Jacoby on
Herbert Spencer
by Roderick T. Long from
LewRockwell.com
"The most popular stereotype
of Spencer has always been
that he opposed aid to the
poor and needy, on the grounds
that such assistance
interfered with the process
whereby natural selection
weeds out the unfit. Jacoby
duly repeats the stereotype.
Unfortunately for Jacoby --
and her many, many
predecessors in this calumny
-- Spencer never held any such
view."
Miscellany
Articles not
easily classified.
Monetary Policy without
Money
by Richard M. Ebeling
from The Foundation for Economic Education
"Why haven't people
understood this better? Because for decades
economists, the media, and the Federal Reserve have
defined 'inflation' as a general rise in prices,
rather than the increase in the money supply that
enables an economy-wide increase in spending that, in
turn, brings about an upward pressure on prices in
general."
In Honor of Claus
Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
by Jørn K. Baltzersen
from LewRockwell.com
"On this day we should
honor heroes who stand up for liberty. We should
honor the Germans who risked -- and even gave --
their lives for freedom in Germany, Europe, and
the world under the Hitlerite regime. On this day
we should especially honor the heroes of July 20,
1944, with Count von Stauffenberg being the head
figure. They stood up for the honor of the land of
Goethe."
Free health care
by Walter E. Williams
from Townhall.com
"Health care can have
a zero price to the user, but that doesn't mean
it's free or has a zero cost. The problem with a
good or service having a zero price is that demand
is going to exceed supply. When price isn't
allowed to make demand equal supply, other
measures must be taken. One way to distribute the
demand over a given supply is through queuing --
making people wait. Another way is to have a
medical czar who decides who is eligible, under
what conditions, for a particular procedure -- for
example, no hip replacement or renal dialysis for
people over 70 or no heart transplants for
smokers."
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