A Bite of the Apple; Voting into the ozone; "Silence is Health"; 12 Angry Men; 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 Sept. 5-11, 2004.

 
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Political Liberty
Articles showing a positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.
 
We're here, we're queer ... and we're voting Libertarian
        Press Release from PR Web
"Some politicians think that the Second Amendment is obsolete. Some politicians think that the Second Amendment is for duck hunters and competitive shooters. But one presidential candidate knows who the Second Amendment is for: Everyone, especially those who, disarmed, face victimization."
 
Soldier for the Truth: Sgt. Samuel Provance
        by J. David Galland from Antiwar.com
"The road to Washington for this young Army NCO has not been pleasant. It has been a case study in how the Army deals with soldiers who struggle with conscience, when morality and the sense to 'do the right thing' win out over going along. What did Sam Provance do? He told the truth! In so doing he has indicted, as we come to learn, his military chain of command and many others...."
 
The Trouble with Republicans
        by Fred E. Foldvary from The Progress Report
"Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seek to make the fundamental changes necessary to make the U.S. safer and more prosperous. Neither party truly respects the U.S. Constitution and the American heritage of liberty. Fortunately, U.S. voters have the choice of voting for several of the non-establishment political parties."
 
Life in Amerika
Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
 
Demographics And Witlessness -- The Flow Across The Rhine-Danube Line
        by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything
"While Mexicans are good people, their dregs often are not. On average the immigrants are uncultivated, uneducated, and of low intelligence. One may not mention the matter of intelligence, but it is well known among people who pay attention to such things, and has implications for the future. America is getting those Mexicans least worth getting, the least assimilable, and getting them in circumstances that do not encourage assimilation. Unlikely to prosper, they show signs of becoming another unsalvageable underclass."

Lessons Learned

        by Mary Starrett from NewsWithViews.com
"Watch the news for bizarre events and then look deeper to see if the person who killed himself or others had ever taken psychiatric drugs. 99.9 % of the time they had. I also encourage you to read package inserts, do the background on these drugs and then ask yourself if it's a coincidence that these drugs are a factor so much of the time."
 
National Geographic Melting Down?
        by Patrick J. Michaels from Cato Institute
"Seven misleading statements in three pages. There are 28 more. When the truth gets this stretched, that's more than one person's work. Instead, it's a process, where scientists tell editors what they want to hear, editors don't check the facts and, ultimately, we all pay with very bad policies. Unfortunately, it's all predictable."
 
Ordered Liberty without the State
Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.
 
A Bite of the Apple
        by Bob Wallace from Endervidualism
"Scapegoating is when people say, 'I am good, and because I am good, I must project my imperfections elsewhere. Let's try you. That makes you evil and the cause of my problems.' It doesn't sound like much, but it is. The Nazis did it, and the Communists did it. In the 20th century I've read estimates of anywhere from 177 million to 200 million people dead because of State-sponsored scapegoating."
 
Liberal vs. Conservative from a Free Market/Freedom Perspective
        by weebies from Strike The Root
"The solution to ending this madness is for people to realize that the state is an obsolete, unnecessary evil. We do not need better people, or a different party, a liberal or conservative, at the head of Leviathan; we need the rampaging beast defeated before it destroys us all. The free market, and free choice, is the answer. Only then will we have the freedom that all people desire."
 
Legitimate and Illegitimate Authority
        by Bob Wallace from LewRockwell.com
"Freedom is not something given to us by politics and the State; their essence is to make people submit. Liberty is freedom from the State. Whence lies the 'lust for power' of which Fromm wrote? Let's try this again: 'I will give you all their authority and splendor, it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.'[said Satan]"
 
Spreading Decentralism
Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
 
Words Scribbled on Parchment
        by Mike Wasdin from Strike The Root
"All my life I have heard 'that's un-constitutional' or 'They can't do that, it's not in the Constitution.' Why did the sacred Constitution fail to protect our rights? Obviously, it's because words will never protect us. Just as Democracy is sold to us as some vast power that will save humanity, the Constitution is waved before our eyes as an immense bastion of freedom."
 
Chatroom Revolutionaries
        by Marc C. Johnson from Reason
"The only times in recent memory that the expatriate opposition has even gathered around the same table have been during periods of major crisis for those still in Iran -- when the regime has cracked down on dissent. Even when they do get together, it rarely results in any significant action."
 
Iraqi Resistance Shifts From Saddam to Allah
        by William S. Lind from Antiwar.com
"Last spring, the Marines made a deal with the Ba'ath Party in Fallujah: Keep the place quiet and we'll let you run it while keeping our hands off it. As has so often been the case in the history of war, it was the right move, too late. Throughout Iraq, the balance had already swung away from the Ba'ath and any other forces that might have been able to re-create an Iraqi state, to non-state, Fourth Generation elements."
 
The New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
 
'Night and fog: Disturbing resonances between regime and reich'
        by Chris Floyd from Portland independent media center
"You think it's not true, you think it's not coming, you think 'it can't happen here.' But it can, and it is, right before your eyes. George Bush's United States is clearly in a proto-fascist condition. Of course, there's no such thing as direct equivalence between historical events. The same dangers never come around again -- not in the same form nor with precisely identical content."
 
Enemy of the State
        by Mike Wasdin from Strike The Root
"I can now comprehend the fact that there is no possibility of freedom in this Country. It's too late. Call me a bad American, but I am ashamed and hang my head low when I think of what America has become. ... Who appointed the United States nanny for the rest of the world? What an arrogance we must depict. The experiment is over, freedom lost, tyranny won."
 
Chechen Attacks on Russia: A Harbinger for the United States?
        by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute
"The continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has inflamed radical Islamic passions all over the world -- bringing in money and recruits -- and could lead Islamists to further attack the U.S. homeland. Al Qaeda has been more active since September 11 than it was beforehand. Al Qaeda could very well try to inflict as much pain on the United States as the Chechens recently did on the Russians. What happened in Russia should be a warning to the United States."
 
Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
 
Goebbels Rallies the People
        by Harry Browne from HarryBrowne.org
"Political parties are a dangerous phenomenon. They remove the power to think for oneself. Individuals who become Republicans or Democrats no longer evaluate issues according to fixed principles. They care only about parties. Their worst fear is that the opposition party will win the next election."
 
Well, That Was Fun -- Huge, ineffectual protests make me proud to be a white middle-class coward
        by Matt Taibbi from New York Press
"That conformist expectation still exists, and the same corporate class still imposes it. But conformity looks a lot different now than it did then. Outlandish dress is now for sale in a thousand flavors, and absolutely no one is threatened by it: not your parents, not the government, not even our most prehistoric brand of fundamentalist Christianity."
 
How I learned to relax and love the duopoly
        by Brad Spangler from RationalReview.com
"The Republicans, with their ardent support for limited government, and the Democrats, with their superb dedication to civil liberties, gave us the Patriot Act and similiar legislation. While the Patriot Act is a draconian expansion of governmental power that makes a mockery of the Bill of Rights, just think how much worse it would be if the Republicans weren't so firmly in favor of limited government and the Democrats weren't such living bulwarks of defense for civil liberties -- for that is what they tell us they are."
 
Spontaneous Order
Articles showing decentralized successes.
 
The Consumer Is Sovereign
        by Arthur Foulkes from The Foundation for Economic Education
"To a casual observer it may appear that the entrepreneurs are the 'captains of industry' -- deciding what is and what is not produced. But they are actually just servants to the consumer, who through (as Mises put it) 'buying and…abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the farms'."
 
Jobs Come and Go
        by Walter E. Williams from Cato Institute
"Finding cheaper ways to produce goods and services frees up labor to produce other things. If productivity gains aren't made, where in the world would we find workers to produce all those goods that weren't even around in the 1970s?"
 
The Profit Motive
        by Jesse Walker from Reason
"Yet even a distorted market needs consumers, and if an underserved group of listeners is big enough, someone will notice them. That's why Spanish-language formats boomed in the '90s. And that's what's happening with the unexpected marriage between Clear Channel and Air America."
 
Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles showing centrally planned disasters.
 
Swift Boat Censorship
        by Anthony Gregory from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"The corruption in politics is caused by much more than campaign donations, and the same politicians who are easily corrupted by outside money cannot be expected to pass any laws that would disrupt the racket they have going. Put simply, campaign-finance restrictions do not threaten the power of the ruling class; they limit the voice of the people."
 
A Child Left Behind
        by Daniel Ernst from LewRockwell.com
"By the time John Dewey had written his famous treatise 'Democracy and Education,' the idea of state-sponsored education was generally accepted. Dewey simply refined the ideas promoted by Mann: students should become tools of the greater society, not liberally educated, self-sufficient citizens. The battle between state and individual had been lost."
 
Grandparents Can't Trump Parental Rights
        by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com
"With no pleasure, I conclude that such rights do not exist. Ask yourself: If grandparents cannot claim the legal right to be included in the life of a son or daughter, how can they claim a right to be included in the life of that son or daughter's offspring?"
 
War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in society.
 
Another Perverse Consequence of the 'War on Terrorism'
        by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Ask yourself: What could be better from the standpoint of the military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned us about? When Russia begins attacking nations, just as its predecessor the Soviet Union did, the U.S. Department of Defense will have a new official enemy -- Russia, or communism, or the former Soviet Union, or an unsafe world, or whatever else is necessary to keep NATO and the Department of Defense in high cotton for the foreseeable future. What a surprise!"
 
In Defense of Flip-Flopping
        by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com
"Now, agree or disagree with Kerry, it is not political gamesmanship to decry a war that a nation is currently fighting. In fact, it is one of the most difficult political stands to take. You are subjected to smears, lies, and every manner of threat. People say you are guilty of treason and sedition, and suggest that you are undermining the war effort. You are blamed for inspiring the enemy to kill our troops. It is said that you have no faith in the nation state and that you are unpatriotic. Truly, criticizing a current war is one of the most difficult -- even courageous -- things that a public official can ever do."
 
Body Count 1001 -- Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?
        by Stan Goff from CounterPunch
"It's so the oxygen thieves who run the US Empire can chase after their grandiose delusions in drawing rooms, surrounded by an army of servants attending to their every whim, and so the class they represent can continue to accumulate money. That's why a thousand ripped up bodies have been shipped home--boxed and draped in bright new flags to sanitize the obscenity."
 
Bits of History
The Past seen with a fresh look.
 
The Origin of the Income Tax
        by Adam Young from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"The income tax lived up to its nature during World War II, devouring American wealth and liberties like a swarm of locusts, where it became the nearly universal tax we know today. In 1940, fewer than fifteen million tax returns were filed. Just ten years later in 1950, the number would be fifty-three million. In 1939 the income tax raised $1 billion. 16 years later it would raise $19 billion. The state had found its most fertile harvests -- middle class and working-class taxpayers."
 
Government Interventionism in Ireland
        by Scott McPherson from The Future of Freedom Foundation
from Part 2: "Government interventionism, of one form or another, was the dominant creed in the early 20th century, and Ireland's intellectuals, like so many others around the world, succumbed to the belief in salvation through government control."
 
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
        by Rex Curry from The Price of Liberty
"The popular use of the Shirtwaist story is misplaced, and the fire is a warning to employers and employees to beware of the misdeeds and negligence of other employees. The Shirtwaist fire shows the need for private fire departments instead of government-run fire departments."
 
War and Peace
Articles showing the nature of War.
 
Why al-Qaeda is winning
        by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online
"At the Republican convention, while the Republicans were harping on September 11, Bush said the Iraq war was 'his' war, part of a mission from God to bring freedom to the repressed. 'Terrorists hate America because they hate freedom.' Wrong: 'terrorists' (in fact national resistance movements) hate America because America's imperial policies are the antithesis of freedom."
 
Cato on the Evils of War and Standing Armies
        by Laurence M. Vance from LewRockwell.com
"Like the American Brutus, Cato also spoke out against the evils of standing armies. This subject was a particular concern of John Trenchard. ... Cato’s Letters No. 94 and 95 are both devoted to the subject of standing armies. ... Sometimes it is standing armies in general that are warned against...."
 
No case for internment
        by Vox Day from WorldNetDaily.com
"Such blissful ignorance of the realities of World War II military production is sublime. ... Even if those sneaky, treacherous Japs could have destroyed 50 percent of the West Coast production facilities, the war effort would not have been slowed, much less crippled."
 
Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out from the crowd.
 
Filmmaker - Elia Kazan : Sept. 7, 1909
        from Pegasos
"Many of Elia Kazan's works have social or political theme[s]. From 1945 to 1961 Kazan was one of the giants of American cinema...." His "On The Waterfront" and "Wild River" are exceptional, among his many great films.
 
Actor/Comedian - Peter Sellers : Sept. 8, 1925
        from PeterSellers.com
"The incredibly versatile Sellers could slip in and out of characters with surprising speed. His genius was displayed through his depiction of multiple characters in 'Mouse' [The Mouse That Roared (1959)] as well as in several other films throughout his career. 'Dr. Strangelove' (1964), considered Sellers' best film, earned him his first Oscar nomination in 1965."
 
Musician - Buddy Holly : Sept. 7 1936
        from VH1
"Buddy Holly is perhaps the most anomalous legend of '50s rock & roll -- he had his share of hits, and he achieved major rock & roll stardom, but his importance transcends any sales figures or even the particulars of any one song (or group of songs) that he wrote or recorded."
 
Culcha'
Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.
 
12 Angry Men (1957)
        Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"Henry Fonda gives what may be one of his finest performances .... [This film] focuses on timeless qualities of human nature in both the characters of the jurors and those of the witnesses .... This film shows that if a large enough cross section of the population is used to obtain a representative jury, some of the best features of people working in groups can be achieved."
 
Historia Discordia -- Meet Kerry Thornley, the second Oswald.
        by Brian Doherty from Reason
"Kerry Thornley lived and died in obscurity. But while few people noticed, he invented one of the 20th century's more influential religions, helped launch '60s-style sex-and-nature neopaganism, and was a major force behind the first modern libertarian 'zine."
 
Global to Local: The Social Future as seen by six SF Writers
        Organized and with commentary by John Shirley from Locus Online
Though I think this interview could definitely have been improved by the addition of F. Paul Wilson, L. Neil Smith, J. Neil Schulman and others, it is still interesting. They probably underestimate the robustness of Earth's "biome." I also find it intriguing that Norman Spinrad embraces "syndicalist anarchism." Although I'm not a syndicalist, when I was younger I often read and enjoyed his writing. I particularly enjoyed his comments and quoting of Lenny Bruce.
 
The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.
 
Voting into the ozone
        by Dave Barry from International Herald Tribune
"So this year many states are switching to electronic voting machines, which use computer technology - the same reliable, foolproof technology we use in the newspaper industry to wwr )(%$(AT)!(AT)hkjhou((7%$ error error deleting everything from dawn of time. Whoops! It turns out that things CAN go wrong with computer technology."
 
A Nation Remembers
        by Mark Fiore from The Village Voice
Animated cartoon
 
Hundreds Of Republicans Injured In Rush To Discredit Kerry
        from The Onion
"While squashed toes have been the most common injury, the more dramatic include the skull and spine fractures suffered by an elderly senator who was trampled in the mad dash to smear, bash, and cast aspersions on Kerry. Many of those bearing sound bites also have dislocated joints in those places where their fingers were pried from microphones."
 
Deep Thought
Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles.
 
"Silence is Health"
        by Claire Wolfe from Loompanics Unlimited
"People who furthermore spread irrational fear -- encouraging others not to seek information, not to read controversial books, not to express honest opinions, are twenty-first century quislings. They do the enemy's work for him. A nation that tells itself 'silence is health' becomes a nation where few dare criticize leaders or challenge brutal, unjust policies. So injustice and brutality prevail."
 
The A Priori of Ownership: Kant on Property
        by Marcus Verhaegh from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Kant's account is oriented much more strongly toward issues of fairness to individuals:  specifically, toward describing universal conditions for fair treatment of others quite apart from the question of what increases overall societal 'utility' or 'happiness'."
 
The Doctrine of "Unequal Exchange": The Last Refuge of Modern Socialism?
        by Anthony de Jasay from Library of Economics and Liberty
"Here, the retreating defender of socialism is driven to the last resort. Exchange may well be voluntary, free of duress in any strict sense, and both parties may well be gainers. Admittedly, the positive theory stops short at this point. Nevertheless, all is not well and for the socialist, it seems imperative to inject a normative judgment into the argument. For even if both parties to a voluntary exchange gain, are their gains equal? Surely, under capitalism there is no mechanism, but under socialism there should and would be one, to restrain the freedom of contract and 'correct' exchanges that are 'unequal'."
 
Miscellany
Articles not easily classified.
 
No News Is Good News
        by Jonathan David Morris from The Libertarian Enterprise
"It's the people who think they're 'making a difference' by supporting politicians who will give your money away. It's the gung-ho political junkies who will send your kids to war. These are the people we need to look out for. Apathetic couch potatoes? Well, they're more like the Monkees; they're too busy singing -- dancing, channel surfing, or whatever -- to put anybody down."
 
Clinton Got Quick Care, Unlike Canadian Heart Patients
        by Michael Cannon from Cato Institute
"Truth be told, presidents and senators will never have a hard time getting medical treatment. Esmail and Walker report 'a profusion of recent research reveals that cardiovascular surgery queues are routinely jumped by the famous and politically-connected.' It's the rest who have to wait."
 
Sold Down the River
        by Bob Jackson  from Strike The Root
"[T]he man who is your master will sell you down the river every time because that is what comes naturally to a master -- to use you for all you are worth. If you choose to have any members of the human race for your master, whether you are talking about a cult leader or the gang of individuals ruling a nation, they will wring out of you whatever benefits to themselves that can be had."
 
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