Slave Mentality; Think Outside the Booth; Libertarian Anarchism; You Can't Take It With You; 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 Aug. 15 - 21, 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.
 
I am happy to receive addresses of potential readers of Ender's Review who might like to receive a few trial issues and an invitation to subscribe. Or, if you prefer, please, forward 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.
 
All Hail Free Trade (and Henry George)
        by Laurence M. Vance from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"The case for free trade is ultimately based on three principles. First, comparative advantage. Trade allows men to capitalize on differences in natural abilities and physical surroundings (climate, location, natural resources). Second, gains from trade. Trade is always beneficial to both parties--trade never harms one party at the expense of the other. And third, freedom itself."
 
Schools Shouldn't Play Doctor
        by Michael F. Cannon and Marie Gryphon from Cato Institute
"While special needs children in private schools can avoid such conflicts by choosing another school, public school students typically do not have that choice. A better way to help public school children with behavioral problems would be to let their parents choose the school that best fits their needs."
 
Growing Up Without Guns
        by Chris Claypoole from The Libertarian Enterprise
"People that take responsibility for their lives, for the daily decisions we each make and acceptance of the consequences thereof, are the real adults. The whiners that insist that they can pass laws to make everyone happy, prosperous and/or secure are the children living in a fantasy-land that puts Peter Pan's Neverland (no Michael Jackson jokes, please) to shame."
 
Life in Amerika
Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
 
The Star Chamber Is Back
        by Paul Craig Roberts from Antiwar.com
"If you think you still live in a free society, consider: The PATRIOT Act overturns the attorney-client privilege, and attorneys who aggressively defend their clients can be indicted for 'aiding and abetting terrorism.' Internet service providers who move to quash government surveillance of their customers can be charged with 'obstructing justice.' Parents who object to airport security personnel dragging away a frightened child to be searched can be arrested for 'obstructing a federal law enforcement officer'."
 

Hollow woman 

        by L.Neil Smith  from RationalReview.com
"So you see, this is the story of two hollow women. One, a nice bronze French lady, was kidnapped and raped by a government that was meant to defend everything she stands for. The other woman did it to herself. Which shows you exactly what 'moderation' and 'gradualism' lead to."
 
Kerry’s Energy Socialism
        by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Last week Kerry did what presidential candidates love to do: promise 'energy independence.' Run like the wind when you hear that term. It is a euphemism for the central planning of our economic activities. Kerry has not yet learned why socialism failed. ... Regardless of what Kerry says, government does not know best. Its economic record is dismal. Bush has no edge here. His energy plan also puts government at the center, handing out subsidies and tax incentives to those who pursue the administration’s objectives. Both are big-government men."
 
Ordered Liberty without the State
Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.
 
Think Outside the Booth
        by George F. Smith from Strike The Root
"If government exists, it will partner with special interests and expand its power. As it gets bigger, it attracts more special interests who have seen the wonderful bounty of plunder and privilege. It's a racket politicians and their cronies guard with fierce loyalty. That's why we have big government candidates on both tickets. Elections are a way of rubber-stamping the racket. Your vote adds ink to their inkpad."
 
The Slave Mentality
        by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com
"If we wish to put an end to the systematic exploitation and enslavement of people, we must confront the underlying premise upon which all of this is grounded: that our lives belong to the state, to be consumed in whatever manner and for whatever purpose state officials choose. We must confront and move beyond the delusional thinking that a responsible and meaningful life is to be found in participating in coercive governmental undertakings."
 
The Worst Case Scenario Under Anarchy
        by Anthony Gregory from Strike The Root
"Of course, if governments come to be, it would cease to be anarchy, and we would be back to square one. Strike The Root would be back in business, and we anarchists would return to our efforts to scale back the state – a task that would primarily entail getting people to abandon their acceptance of the institutionalization of violence."
 
Spreading Decentralism
Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
 
Allowing secession would make states more accountable
        by Charlie Arlinghaus from The Union Leader
"It will be a useful safety valve to require the town's decision to be ratified by each state legislature. However, each state should pledge to reject the decision only in extreme cases and make clear that each will accept towns joining and towns leaving. New Hampshire can take the lead by declaring its acceptance of Killington with the understanding that it would similarly accept a Granite State town's decision to leave."
 
An Unintended Consequence of Gun Control
        by Benedict LaRosa from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"We have ample evidence of how successful point defense by owners and inhabitants can be. During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, following the acquittal of the policemen charged with beating Rodney King, the National Guard and police refused to engage the looters and rioters. But several merchants -- mostly Korean -- used semi-automatic 'assault rifles' with high-capacity magazines to successfully fend them off and saved their businesses."
 
SKScapades
        by Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine
"Well, the upshot of that mature intellectual discourse was that half of Hardyville was soon trooping up a wooded hill on Marty's third-cousin's ex-wife-s land as Marty explained confidently, 'Y'see. It's exactly 10 paces from the leaning aspen tree with the sawed-off branch. That branch just points straight at it. Yessir, right straight at it.' We trooped on. There sure were a lot of aspen trees. None of 'em had sawed-off branches, though."
 
The New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
 
Pondering the Telescreen -- A Tale of Two Cities
        by Fred Reed from Strike The Root
"The content of television is neither merely banal nor merely commercial. This would not matter. Instead it is subliminally didactic, unendingly instructive. It has agendas unrelated to soap. Remember that the advertising and television industries are tightly entwined. Those commercials, seemingly almost invertebrate in their tiresomeness, in fact are the product of decades of manipulative experience by highly intelligent people who have studied the psychology of the audience."
 
Does Your Government Really Have an Interest in Protecting You from Terrorism? 
        by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute 
"President Bush's rhetoric also contradicts poll after poll in Islamic countries ... which indicate that those populations don't hate U.S. culture, freedoms, wealth, or technology, but U.S. foreign policy. So why does the president keep making such statements? ... [S]special interests ... lobby the U.S. government for intervention overseas to serve their interests."
 
Evolving Empire: Chalmers Johnson on Bush's Major Troop Realignment
        Interview with Chalmers Johnson from Democracy Now!
"I've spent a fair amount of time traveling in Indonesia. It's the world's largest Islamic country. And I guarantee you until very recently, Islam was carried very lightly in Indonesia. More or less the way an Italian man carries his Catholicism. Four or five years ago, 80% of the population were pro-American. It was one of the easiest places on earth to visit. Now 80% of the public distrusts the United States and is sympathetic to al Qaeda. T-shirts with pictures of Osama bin Laden are common on any kid in Jakarta today. Only George Bush could have brought about such a disastrous outcome."
 
Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
 
Debating Society
        by Brian Doherty from Reason
"It isn't that they fear what would happen if they allowed people to hear the radical ideas of a Jim Gray. It's that they [Establishments] are genuinely certain, so certain they'd never even think about it unless ordered to by a court, that it would be an utter waste of their time and everyone's. Because no one cares-at least, none of, you know, the 'normal' people do."
 
Rock the Non-Vote
        by Gene Callahan from LewRockwell.com
"I'd like to see a presidential election where only 5% or 10% of all eligible voters go to the polls. A turnout that low would be far more damaging to the position of the elite who run this country than would a few million votes cast for some minor-party candidate."
 
The Sins of Clinton vs. Bush
        by Paul Craig Roberts from Antiwar.com
"Lying about a sexual affair is just not on the same scale as lying about war. The petty penny ante real estate deal known as Whitewater pales into insignificance compared to the multi-billion dollar fraud of the Iraqi reconstruction contracts. This is not to argue that Clinton should be excused. It is to say that matters have become worse."
 
Spontaneous Order
Articles showing decentralized successes.
 
Price Gouging Saves Lives
        by David M. Brown from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"If we expect customers to be able to get what they need in an emergency, when demand zooms vendors must be allowed and encouraged to increase their prices. Supplies are then more likely to be sustained, and the people who most urgently need a particular good will more likely be able to get it. That is especially important during an emergency. Price gouging saves lives."
 
All We Have To Lose Are Our Parking Tickets!
        by Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com
"Government roads are shoddy, anyway. It amazes me that some people think they are a triumph of good government. Have these people ever driven on the same freeways I have? Do they really believe that these potholed abominations, constructed via unionized bureaucratic pork-filled government spending, are the reason we put up with confiscatory taxes, perpetual war, and arrogant government officials? "
 
Do Middlemen Earn Their Profits?
        by Stephen C. Miller from The Foundation for Economic Education
"The truth is that middlemen don't add costs; they reduce them. If they didn't, no one would use them. … Without the middlemen what's wasted is effort and time, which are perhaps the scarcest resources of all."
 
Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles showing centrally planned disasters.
 
Anti-Price-Gouging Laws Harm Consumers
        by Sheldon Richman from The Foundation for Economic Education
"How curious that people complain not only when the law of supply and demand seems not to operate, but also when it does. Price gouging is just a derogatory way of saying that prices rise in response to a surge in demand while supply remains constant or even shrinks because of a disaster."
 
Dr. Feelscared
        by Maia Szalavitz from Reason
"In their attempt to prevent prescription drug abuse, the DEA and the DOJ in effect have taken upon themselves the authority to regulate the practice of medicine, traditionally the province of the states. Worse, they have transformed disagreements about treatment decisions into criminal prosecutions, scaring physicians away from opioids and compounding the suffering of patients who have trouble getting the drugs they need to relieve their pain."
 
Rebuilding America: Domestic Policy
        by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Almost everything the federal government has touched for the last several decades is in crisis. The war on drugs: failure and destruction. Social Security: fraudulent and bankrupt. Foreign policy: led to 9/11 and massive assaults on civil liberties. Medicare and Medicaid: caused health-care costs to soar. Education: public schooling is worse than ever. Monetary policy: a plunging dollar in international markets. Federal spending: out of control."
 
War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in society.
 
The Wanna--Be State
        by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com
"Of course there are differences between states, some more or less evil than others, but during wartime, these differences are widely exaggerated in order to make us think of the enemy as less than human, a beast to slaughter rather than a population of people striving to get by and working to keep power at bay, a people very much like our own."
 
Another World, Possibly
        by Dave Mulcahey from In These Times
"Hardt and Negri argue the limits of war have been extended. No more of that liberal-modernist hoo-hah about war as the means of last resort. War is now 'the first and primary element, the foundation of politics itself.' The roster of acceptable enemies has been expanded from rival nations and political parties to include 'abstract concepts and sets of practices'."
 
Sorry, Our Bad -- The Washington Post still doesn't get it.
        by Matt Taibbi from New York Press
"For God's sake, Bush was up there in the fall of 2002, warning us that unmanned Iraqi drones were going to spray poison gas on the continental United States. The whole thing -- the 'threat' of Iraqi attack, the link to terrorism, the dire warnings about Saddam's intentions -- it was all bullshit on its face, as stupid, irrelevant and transparent as a cheating husband's excuse. And I don't know a single educated person who didn't think so at the time. The story shouldn't have been, 'Are there WMDs?' The story should have been, 'Why are they pulling this stunt? And why now?' That was the real mystery. It still is."
 
Bits of History
The Past seen with a fresh look.
 
9/11 Aftermath: Some things never change
        by Ralph Maddocks from Le Québécois Libre
"Heine or Brecht (the saying has been attributed to both) said that if you burn books today, you burn people tomorrow. Few at the time realised how true that statement was about to become. The man in charge of such activities, Dr Josef Goebbels, was officially Minister of Propaganda and National Enlightenment. As such he had two main tasks. Firstly, to ensure that nobody in Germany could read or see anything that was hostile or damaging to the Nazi Party, and secondly to ensure that the views of the Nazis were put across in the most persuasive manner possible."
 
Captain Bligh's Revenge
        by L. Neil Smith from The Libertarian Enterprise
"At Pitcairn, the Brits have gone too far, interfering in local marriage customs and trying to steal twenty lousy guns from a poor people who need them to feed themselves."
 
You will be Not be Voting for a Presidential Candidate in the November Election
        by Robert Greenslade from The Price of Liberty
"It is the electors of the party that wins the popular vote in each State who vote for the President and Vice President, not the people. In fact, the Constitution does not contain any provision authorizing the people to vote for a presidential or vice-presidential candidate. The legislatures of the several States have the constitutional authority to simply appoint their electors and completely exclude the people from the election process."
 
War and Peace
Articles showing the nature of War.
 
Interventionism leads to War, War generates more Interventionism
        by Chris Leithner from Le Québécois Libre
"Western politicians did these abominable and self-destructive things because they believed their own propaganda. For half a century, many people in France had bitterly resented and sought to avenge the results of the Franco-Prussian war; and since the late nineteenth century, many Britons had feared the growing ability of German industry to produce more and better products at lower cost. The result was a lengthy, extraordinarily vitriolic and quite effective campaign of anti-German and anti-Wilhelmine hysteria...."
 
Why I'm anti-intervention, but not anti-war
        by Mick Hume from spiked
"I am anti-intervention -- but I am not anti-war. There have often been just wars that were worth fighting and the Americans and British have fought theirs. Pacifism is for masochists, and the meek are less likely to inherit the earth than to be left lying in it. In a week when all are quoting the Olympian wisdom of Ancient Greece, it is worth recalling Aristotle's observation that sometimes circumstances mean 'we fight wars that we might live in peace'.
 
Repositioning on the Titanic
        by Alan Bock from Antiwar.com
"But as long as the United States (or its foreign policy elites) considers itself the policeman, sheriff, democratizer, stabilizer, peacemaker, nation-builder or whatever of the world, a certain number of troops are inevitably going to be stationed in semi-permanent garrisons overseas."
 
Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out from the crowd.
 
Writer - Edna Ferber : Aug. 15, 1885
        from Appleton Public Library
"Ferber was a prolific and popular novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for So Big, the story of a woman raising a child on a truck farm outside of Chicago. Others of her best known books include Showboat (1926), Cimarron (1929), Giant (1952) and Ice Palace (1958)."
 
American Frontiersman - Davy Crockett : Aug. 17, 1786
        from AmericanWest
"Davy Crockett stands for the Spirit of the American Frontier. ... When he was forty-nine years old, he died a hero's death at the Alamo, helping Texas win independence from Mexico. For many years he was nationally known as a political representative of the frontier."
 
Editor/Writer - Hugo Gernsback : Aug. 16, 1884
        From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Gernsback started the modern genre of science fiction by founding the first magazine dedicated to it, Amazing Stories, in 1926. He also played a key role in starting Science Fiction Fandom, by publishing the addresses of people who wrote letters to his magazines."
 
Culcha'
Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.
 
You Can't Take It With You (1938)
        Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"'You Can't Take It With You' is about 'doing your own thing.' However, it is set and was made in a period long before the sixties. From Grandpa's rejection of the income tax (a priceless scene in itself) to the frequent lighting of fireworks, this movie is permeated with an anti-establishment aura. All the characters are funny, vivacious and very much their own people."
 
Empire for Art's Sake
        by Jesse Walker from The American Spectator 
"'Empire,' the volume's foreword declares, 'doesn't refer to any one thing, but to a vast matrix of forces and counterforces'; it has no center, is linked to virtually everything, and 'has become an aesthetic, a conditioning, a psychology, a lifestyle.' Put that way, it sounds sort of vague and pseudo-intellectual. Wrap it in a Kevin Bacon joke, though, and all those 'forces and counterforces' suddenly seem to take form."
 
Deconstructing Michael Moore
        by Emiliano Antunez from Strike The Root
"Cuba's educational system is one of indoctrination where any spirit of individual freedom a child may have is obliterated and destroyed. The most distinguishing fact about Cuba's health care system that the Twinkie-loving Moore so ardently defends is that most of its doctors are driving cabs or busing tables."
 
Books Special
Books and topics related to Books
 
Rise of Empire
        by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com
"Amid the plethora of recent books on the rise of an American empire, and the veritable flood of magazine and newspaper articles on this topic, the Caxton Press, of Caldwell, Idaho, has done us all a great service by republishing the very best critique of the imperial impulse: Ex America, by Garet Garrett."
 
Property Rights Are Human Rights
        by John Seiler from LewRockwell.com
"Your home and business are not safe. Government can grab them at any time using anti-property redevelopment laws, paying you a pittance. Government then can give your property to a private company to develop as a mall or theme park. That's the frightening story told in 'Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain', Steven Greenhut's new book."
 
Dean Koontz: The killing machine
        by Tim Cooper from Independent Digital (UK)
"His novels are meticulously researched, yet he does not take notes or use the internet. 'I've never gone online -- never even sent an e-mail,' he announces proudly. Koontz prefers to do his research the old fashioned way, collecting books on all sorts of obscure subjects from genetics to medicine -- and anything to do with criminology -- and talking to experts in whatever field his is exploring."
 
The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.
 
Visit North Korea!
        from Bureaucrash
"We would like to invite you to visit our communist paradise. Are you tired of the prosperity associated with living in a capitalist country? You'll find none of that in North Korea! We have noticed that the streets of capitalist countries are filled with comrades protesting the unjust economic system they are subjected to. We have built this site for you. On behalf of our beloved leader, Kim Jong-il, we'd like to invite you to stay for a weekend, a month, or the rest of your life."
 
Bush Finally Gets Oval Office Just The Way He Wants It
        from The Onion
"After four different color schemes, a Tiki phase, and more than three years spent rearranging furniture, President Bush has the Oval Office set up just the way he wants it, the chief executive said in an informal press conference Monday."
 
Troop Adjustments
        by Mark Fiore from The Village Voice
A handy field guide to realignments and redeployments
 
Deep Thought
Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles.
 
Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections
        by Roderick T. Long from LewRockwell.com
"First of all there's the moral question: why does one gang of people get the right to be the only ones in a given territory who can offer certain kinds of legal services or enforce certain kinds of things? And then there are these economic questions: what are the incentives going to be? Once again, it's a monopoly. It seems likely that with a captive customer base they're going to charge higher prices than they otherwise would and offer lower quality."
 
For a lesson in humanity, turn to Thoreau not Tressell
        by Martin Kettle from The Guardian
"'Why should we be in such a desperate haste to succeed,' is how Thoreau puts it, 'and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away'."
 
Methuselah Mouse
        by Ronald Bailey from Reason
"But why would anyone want to lengthen the lives of mice? ... The idea is that if scientists can reliably lengthen the lives of mice, then they will be well on their way to figuring out how to do the same for people. The underlying insight is that, in a sense, humans are just big mice, since 99 percent of a mouse's 30,000 or so genes have direct counterparts in humans."
 
Miscellany
Articles not easily classified.
 
Unlocking a Cure for Cancer -- With Pot
        by Paul Armentano from LewRockwell.com
"For the past 30 years, U.S. officials have willfully ignored clinical research indicating that marijuana can inhibit the growth of certain type of malignant tumors. However, the recent publication of a trio of clinical studies and a pair of scientific reviews have effectively blown the lid off 'Cancergate,' and revealed that pot's medical value may be far greater than ever presumed."
 
DNA technique protects against 'evil' emails
        by Danny O'Brien from New Scientist
"Chung-Kwei deals with common spammer strategies to dodge pattern-recognition schemes, such as replacing the s with a $, as in 'increa$e your $ex power' using its built-in tolerance for different, but functionally equivalent, DNA sequences."
 
The Story of Human Sacrifice
        by Bob Wallace from LewRockwell.com
"Hubris is bad enough for an individual. It's far, far worse when it afflicts entire societies. And it reaches its peak when people believe society and the State are the same thing. The word for that is 'fascism': everything, as Mussolini said, inside the State, nothing outside. When that happens there will always be orgies of destruction. That was the history of the 20th century, which was the century of worship of the Idol of the State. And idols, of course -- like Moloch -- are always hungry and always need human sacrifice."
 
Please feel free to forward this to anyone (or any list) who you believe might be interested, leaving the contact and subscription information below intact.
 
Or if you know of prospective readers, but don't wish to send this to them yourself, please e-mail their addresses to me at  TomEnder@free-market.net  and I will send them a message with a link to the latest issue and invite them to subscribe. 
 
Each week immediately after Ender's Review is posted at Endervidualism a small plain text note (~5K) containing a few links to the web site copy of this Review will be sent to ERevNote subscribers while I'm also posting the entire HTML object to the  EnderReview group. I hope all these vehicles will fit the differing needs of  Ender's Review  readers.
 
The newest option is ERevNote: a new e-mail list used for distributing a small plain text note sent out weekly. That reminder note contains a few (5) links to the Endervidualism web site copy of Ender's Review and will be much smaller in size for those of you with limited in-basket space and/or those desiring plain text e-mail.
 
Archives for ERevNote are available to the public at - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ERevNote/
or subscribe to the mailing list by sending a message to ERevNote-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
 
Alternately, you may elect to receive a copy of the full HTML object (110-120K) in your in-basket.
Archives are available to EnderReview members at -  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EnderReview/ 
or subscribe to the mailing list by sending a message to EnderReview-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
 
.