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Heil to the
Chief; Real
Meaning of Security;
American
Splendor;
Let Them Eat
Dope; 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.
19-25, 2004.
Table of
Contents: (Click on
the name to go to that section)
Political Liberty, Life in Amerika, Ordered Liberty without the State;
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Articles showing a
positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.
The Free Market vs. the Draft
by Michael Badnarik from Antiwar.com
"Coerced military conscription -- also known
as the draft -- is perhaps the single most anti-freedom action
governments regularly take against their own citizens. The draft
represses indiscriminately by directly stealing not only the 'treasure'
of our citizens, but also by taking years of their precious time and --
in many cases -- their lives."
The First Law Of Nature Demands A
Second Amendment
by Sergei Borglum Hoff from
NewsWithViews.com
"In other words, it is you, the
individual that is obliged to make provisions for your own
safety by adhering to the First Law of Nature. You must respond
to this fundamental law, or perish. I recognize that this is
harsh news for the politically correct sensibilities of most
Americans, but this revelation is a simple fact of life.
Self-defense is the natural and honorable stance that we must
all promote."
The
People's Prosecutor
by Jennifer Gonnerman from The
Village Voice
In an Albany primary, a candidate
for D.A. attacks the Rockefeller drug laws -- and wins.
"Enacted by then governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1973, New
York's drug laws are among the most punitive in the nation.
Anyone convicted of selling two or more ounces of cocaine
receives at least 15 years in prison. Prosecutors typically
like these laws because the lengthy mandatory sentences give
defendants a powerful incentive to plead guilty."
Articles depicting
the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
Is It Happening Here?
by Charles H. Featherstone from
LewRockwell.com
"I can imagine an America, in the
not-too-distant future, where it will be virtually impossible,
and likely even criminal, to get a home loan, rent an
apartment, to attend school, start a business, get a job or
possibly even form a bowling league without first getting some
kind of government approval. I can see an America where it is
impossible to engage in any kind of unsupervised, voluntary
cooperation with anyone. I can see an American tyranny that
would, in effect, require what amounts to a security clearance
for all kinds of things...."
Not Targeting 'Assault Weapons'
by Don B. Kates Jr. from The
Independent Institute
"Successive studies by the
National Institute of Justice have found no effect of the
AW ban on crime. As Georgetown University anti-gun analyst
Jens Ludwig says, the AW ban is 'sort of like trying to
reduce motor vehicle crashes by banning cars with flames
painted on the side'."
Reinventing the Bushman
by Fred Reed from The
American Conservative
"They are pathetic without
knowing it. Being innocent of history, they live in
temporal isolation. Knowing nothing of painting,
literature, or music, they are aesthetically crippled.
Never having acquired a taste for reading, they are
incorrigible. This is remarkable. The society has
managed in a generation to overcome everything that
civilization has strived for, replacing it with --
nothing."
Some people
say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an
interesting topic.
by Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Advocates of fully
privatized security point out that in the real world, most of
the security we enjoy is purchased in the private sector. Vast
networks of food distribution protect against starvation,
private agents guard our homes, insurance companies provide
compensation in the event of unexpected misfortune, and the
locks and guns and gated communities provided by private
enterprise do the bulk of work for our security in the real
world."
Act Responsibly: Don't
Vote!
by Wendy McElroy from
LewRockwell.com
"Non-voting is a gauge of how
deeply alienated the average person is from the political
establishment. Sometimes political disgust converts
non-voting from an act of indifference to one of protest
through which people express a word that all politicians
fear: 'no.' Not just 'no' to them but to the entire
process."
Stupid Americans
by Mike Wasdin from
RationalReview.com
"They would have you believe
that only government can build roads, educate your
children, deliver the mail, provide police protection,
and pick up your trash. And the sheep are all too
willing to participate in this masquerade. We have
become a Nation of cattle, all looking to get our fair
share of milk from the government tit."
Articles
demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
I
loathe democracy
by Andy Nowicki from The Last
Ditch
"I don't want to live in a
country where politics invades and permeates every facet of
our lives. I know it causes others to shake their heads in
dismay, but I for one feel encouraged when I see 'man on the
street' interviews in which people are not able to identify,
for example, the vice president of the United States. It
restores my hope that, in spite of the best efforts of
today's sinister would-be totalitarians, who want to insert
the state into every nook and cranny of normal family life,
the personal has most decidedly not become the political.
Instead, to the dismay of today's elites, the personal
remains largely personal."
We're at War not with a
State but an Armed Ideology
by Gene Healy from Cato
Institute
"We're not at war with a
state, but with an armed ideology with murderous
adherents in more than 60 countries. Responses
appropriate to a state-based threat will only rarely
be effective against a private, self-organizing,
adaptable enemy that can operate without state
support or central direction. Indeed, such responses
may exacerbate the problem, drawing new recruits to
jihad."
The Sorrows of CBS
by Charles Paul
Freund from Reason
"CBS's problem is
not merely that it was somehow 'misled' into
using crude forgeries in a report involving a
president in the midst of an election campaign;
its problem is that it dismissed criticism and
denigrated its critics without offering credible
substantiation of its original story. Indeed, it
adopted a pose -- now revealed to be utter
pretense -- that its documents had been vetted
adequately and that its critics were unworthy
pajama-wearing 'political operatives'."
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
"If You Harbor Terrorists, You Are a Terrorist"
by William Marina from
The Progress Report
"The average convicted
terrorist does not just waltz past U.S. immigration
authorities in this post-9/11 age of orange alerts,
'no fly' lists and shoe searches. ... Only political
influence exerted at the highest level could account
for terrorists reentering U.S. borders without
impediment, despite rap sheets extending back as long
as forty years...."
Democracy, Freedom, and the Market
by Richard M. Ebeling
from The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (FEE)
"From the time of the
ancients it has been understood that a democratic
majority can be as cruel and tyrannical as even the
worst imaginable dictatorship or oligarchy. The
entire history of the evolution of political
constitutions shows that governments, even those
duly elected by democratic majorities, must be
restrained in what they are permitted to do."
President Bush's
United Nations
by Anthony Gregory
from LewRockwell.com
"I thought the UN
was a coalition of the world's government
leaders and emissaries, representing every
crooked semi-socialist European government,
every despotic and murderous regime from Africa
and the Middle East, every kleptocracy from
Latin America, and every other coercive entity
that manages to dominate a geographic region of
the world. Why should Americans respect that?"
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
The Left's
Favorite President
by Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com
"But what we had
not imagined -- though we should have -- is
that a threat to liberty would emerge that is
just as great if not greater than the
socialist left, namely the nationalist,
warmongering, chauvinist right, that works in
cooperation with deluded evangelicals and
imperialistic Wilsonians of the
neoconservative school. What makes this enemy
particularly dangerous is that it is
associated in the public mind with
libertarianism because of the right's
superficial embrace of property rights and
capitalism."
Big-Government
Republicans
by Sheldon
Richman from The Future of Freedom
Foundation
"Convention
delegates can't be expected to listen to
speeches with too fine an ear, so they very
likely thought the president was making a
profound distinction between themselves and
the Democrats. He did nothing of the kind.
In practice, there's no big difference
between a government that does things to
'help people improve their lives' and one
that 'run[s] their lives'."
The Lynching of
Dan Rather
by Greg Palast
from Strike The Root
"During the war
in Vietnam, Dan's predecessor at CBS, Walter
Cronkite, asked some pretty hard questions
about Nixon's handling of the war in
Vietnam. Today, our sons and daughters are
dying in Bush wars. But, unlike Cronkite,
Dan could not, would not, question George
Bush, Top Gun Fighter Pilot, Our Maximum
Beloved Leader in the war on terror."
Articles
showing decentralized successes.
The Myth of the Tree Shortage
by Charles E.
Tomlinson from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"From the stump
landscapes of the early 1900's, the southern forests have
recovered to become one of the wood baskets of the world. ... It
is because the southern forests are privately owned. ... Each
landowner managing his own lands (and doing it very well as the
Assessment shows) for his own perceived self-interest."
When Freedom
Seekers Meet
by Logan Brandt from Liberty
Magazine
"I had landed in a rational universe
where people let one another be, but were at the same time eager
to share their knowledge and interests, their 'being.' I felt
proud to be human, hanging out with all these different and
wonderful people. As we shared our stories and grew closer, I
felt that these people were going to be successful."
Playing by
the Rules
by Donald Boudreaux from The
Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (FEE)
"A market economy gets its momentum
from consumers seeking and seizing better deals, and from
entrepreneurs struggling to make better deals available. Some
better deals are small (for example, shaving a few cents off the
price of bags of frozen broccoli); others are large (for
example, the personal computer replacing the typewriter).
Without the urge or the incentive or the ability to seek, seize,
and struggle for better deals and higher profits, the economy
wouldn’t just stop, petrify, fossilize. It would crash."
Articles
showing centrally planned disasters.
Did Business Want
Campaign-Finance 'Reform'?
by Sheldon
Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Politics
attracts money because government is powerful. There is a
simple way to make corporate executives and other 'special
interests' indifferent to political campaigns: strip the
politicians of their power to favor or hamper private
interests. Short of that, nothing will succeed in keeping
money out of politics."
Governments Should Stay Out
of Wireless Networking
by Michael Tseng from The
Foundation for Economic Education
"Currently, consumers enjoy a
wide range of choice among private ISPs. If the government
steps into the market, consumers will be able to eschew
its ISP (though their taxes will subsidize it), but how
long will the other companies be around if they have to
compete with government's below-market prices? Before
long, the government ISP may become the only service in
town -- in other words, a monopoly."
Taxation with Representation
by Jonathan David Morris from
The Free Liberal
"After all, when you complain
about taxation without representation, you're really only
saying taxation with representation is a-ok. But it isn't.
Taxation is how politicians exploit our hard work and
labor in the first place. Without taxation, they wouldn't
be able to hand out homeland security jobs in return for
sexual favors, or prosecute millionaire homemakers for
kangaroo crimes in kangaroo courts. They wouldn't be able
to fund the U.N., or keep U.S. troops in over a hundred
countries, or leave a brainwashed child behind."
War is the ultimate State intervention in
society.
Self-Healing
by Butler
Shaffer from LewRockwell.com
"The
establishment has its new 'adversary,' the international
'terrorist,' against whom will be arrayed all the
weaponry and other systems that defense contractors will
be able to create, at great profit to themselves. And
your sons and daughters will continue to be offered up
in sacrifice -- as will your income -- in service to
what the historian Charles Beard called the 'perpetual
war for perpetual peace'."
The
Gods Must Be Crazy
by Mike Wasdin from
Strike The Root
"I have no doubt that if
'God' were to speak to Bush, and tell him he needs to
attack Canada, that a war would be underway. There is
nothing scarier than a lunatic who believes he is
doing the 'Lord's' work, especially when that lunatic
has his finger on the nuke button. We are all just a
Bible passage away from extinction. If war is the
health of the State, then God is the Physician."
A Debate at Last?
by Alan Bock from
Antiwar.com
"[M]ore principled antiwar
Americans should take advantage of the opening he
[Kerry] has created to make the debate broader and
bolder -- including challenging the apparent
bipartisan consensus that the United should be
intervening in and stationing troops all over the
world, and trying to remake countries that displease
us. That is a formula for virtually perpetual war...."
The Past seen with a
fresh look.
Weimar and Wall Street
by Robert
Blumen from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Weimar
Germany's monetary collapse is perhaps the most
infamous episode of inflation gone mad. In 1923
Germany, prices rose on an hourly basis. Wage earners
were losing purchasing power because the prices of
goods were rising faster than their incomes could be
adjusted."
Welcome to the Fun-Free
University
by David Weigel from
Reason
"'In loco parentis' has
been rejuvenated and returned. Administrators have
tapped into the devaluation of personal
responsibility illustrated by smoking bans and fast
food lawsuits, coupling it with bullish political
correctness. The resulting dearth of individual
liberties on campuses would have seemed impossible
to college students of 25 years ago."
The
Colonial Venture of Ireland
(in four parts)
by Wendy McElroy from
The Future of Freedom Foundation
from Part 3: "The newly
recruited forces for Ireland wore dark caps and
khaki pants, earning them the name 'Black and Tans.'
It became commonplace for IRA prisoners to be
tortured and sometimes killed, but the Black and
Tans did not confine their attacks to the IRA. For
example, in retaliation for the killing of 17 of
their own, they burned down the center of the city
of Cork."
Articles showing the
nature of War.
Why We Cannot Win
by Al
Lorentz from LewRockwell.com
"Because
the current administration is more concerned with
its image than it is with reality ... soldiers are
dying here and being maimed and crippled for life.
It is tragic, indeed criminal that our elected
public servants would so willingly sacrifice our
nation's prestige and honor as well as the blood and
treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and
un-Constitutional."
Are We in Saidad or
Baghgon?
by Tom Engelhardt
from Tom Dispatch in Antiwar.com
"Iraq is, in this
sense, Vietnam but transposed to the cities – to,
that is, an urban jungle. And as the foliage
protected the guerrillas in Vietnam ... so the
alleyways, side streets, buildings, markets,
mosques, the unfamiliar urban terrain, all offer a
protection which evens the odds slightly in an
asymmetric war in Iraq."
Destroying the
National Guard -- "I Think a Lot of Guys will Break
Down in Iraq"
by William S. Lind
from CounterPunch
"The real scope of the
damage of Mr. Rumsfeld's decision to send the
Guard to Iraq--40% of the American troops in Iraq
are now reservists or Guardsmen--will probably not
be revealed until units return. One of the few
already back saw 70% of its members leave the
Guard immediately."
Some people stand out
from the crowd.
Musician - Ray
Charles : Sept. 23, 1930
from
RayCharles.com
"The road to
greatness was no picnic, proverbial or
literal. In fact, while earning his dues
around and about Florida, he almost starved
at times, hanging around at various
Musicians' Locals, picking up gigs when he
could."
Animator -
Jay Ward : Sept. 21, 1920
by Donald D.
Markstein. from Toonopedia
"Excellence in animation
was never the studio's strong point. 'Crusader
Rabbit'
was virtually nothing but a series of
still drawings, and Rocky's show was no
prize production either. What makes them
stand out is the wit that went into them."
Anti-segregation activist - Mary Church
Terrell : Sept. 23, 1863
from The
African American Registry
"An articulate
spokeswoman, adept political organizer,
and prolific writer, Terrell addressed a
wide range of social issues in her long
career, including the Jim Crow Law,
lynching, and the convict lease system."
Books, Movies, TV,
Media, Music, poetry, etc.
Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"[T]here
is really more to Harvey's form of 'heroic
individualism' than merely being his own person. It
definitely is not Randian in style, but Harvey Pekar
and Howard Roark have some very important things in
common. Harvey probably wouldn't agree with every
detail of Roark's (Rand's) politics; but, like
Roark, Harvey also has struggled to implement his
own vision. Instead of striving in architecture,
Harvey works in comics, but both Harvey and Howard
have built their own success in life against great
odds. Harvey has done this in the real world."
Authors Ridley
Pearson and Dave Barry dig up a pirates' plunder in
their Peter Pan prequel.
by Adair Lara from
San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate
"That very morning
when they agreed to write the book together, the
friends [Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson] started
riffing on the backstory J.M. Barrie never filled
in for us. [']How can Peter Pan fly? Why doesn't
he get old? What is the story with his missing
shadow? Oh and how did Peter meet Captain Hook?
And who is Captain Hook?' "
Invasion of the Do-Gooders
by Bob Wallace from
The Price of Liberty
"Customer: Since the
law was just passed this morning, I didn't know
anything about it, so I don't have any
prescriptions! And I don't need them, or want
them!
Bureaucrat: The government will be the judge of what's best for you! We own you, you know! Now open up! (produces funnel)."
Day of the Bad
Guy Do-Gooders
by Catfarmer
from The Price of Liberty
"Daisies are on
the endangered list now, because they're
likely to go extinct - young maidens like to
pick them and pull their petals off, saying
'He loves me, he loves me not.' It's cruelty
to plant life, and a protected species at
that!"
Humor, satire, cartoons,
parodies, food, popular music
and other things to amuse.
by Matt
Taibbi from New York Press
"It is hard
to say just what effect these drugs would have when
administered in a normal course of treatment, but I have
to think that if kids are having suicidal thoughts after
taking them, it might very well be that they are not
taking enough of them, not mixing them with hard
alcohol, and not knowing enough to chase the crashes
with valium or vicodin or even, in a pinch, a whole
bottle of Ibuprofen." Hard Satire.
Today I bench pressed
4,082,331.33 centigrams!
by Dave Barry from
International Herald Tribune
"You think I want to have
muscles like that, so women will look at me and think:
'Wow! I would like to see HIS syndicated column!'"
What Do You Think? --
Antidepressant Use In Children
from The Onion
"Kids with depression see
through all the bullshit that everyone else accepts.
The Prozac just gives them the clarity of mind to
follow through with what they need to do."
Scientific
and scholarly studies, philosophical essays,
in-depth and longer articles.
by Bill Kauffman from
The American Conservative
"Roth writes in sodden cliches:
for instance, FDR 'inspired
millions of ordinary families
like ours to remain hopeful in
the midst of hardship.' This is
Time-Life prose. There is not a
felicitous sentence in this
book; nor is there a spark of
wit or a single subversive
thought. The literary critics of
the Department of Homeland
Security will pronounce it fit
for best-sellerdom."
The Freedom Quiz
by Russell Madden from Atlas
"Given that quizzes are
popular fodder in mainstream
publishing, I thought I would
offer one of my own for Atlas
readers. It's easy! It's fun!
It's nonfattening! Simple
'yes' or 'no' answers.
Uncomplicated scoring.
Rewarding insights and
possibilities for personal
growth. What more could one
desire?"
The Nationalization of the
American People
by Jacob G. Hornberger from
The Future of Freedom
Foundation
"How can conscription honestly
be considered different from
slavery? With conscription,
the state has the authority to
seize a person and require
that he work for the state for
room and board plus some
government-approved stipend.
The fact that the person is
free to vote, marry, complain,
and send letters to the editor
is irrelevant. What matters is
that the conscript has now
been placed in the same
position as the slave."
Articles not
easily classified.
Wage Gap Reflects Women's
Priorities
by Wendy McElroy from
ifeminists.com
"If this is true, then the
wage gap is not a problem to be solved. It is merely
an interesting statistic indicating that men and
women, when offered a level playing field will tend to
express different priorities and, so, end up at
different places. (This is a crude generalization, of
course, and says nothing of individual men and
individual women.)"
What Does a Body
Good?
by Radley Balko from
Tech Central Station
"Perhaps the real
lesson here is that government ought to stay out
of the obesity fight altogether. Choosing what we
eat each day is not only an intimate and personal
decision, it's a very important one, with obvious
repercussions on our health and happiness.
Guidance and influence for those decisions should
probably come from parties whose main interest is
our health -- our doctors, for example."
A Little Gun Talk
by L. Neil Smith from
The Libertarian Enterprise
"I'm presently
hankering after a five and a half and a ten. But
what I've recently rediscovered is that the best
all-round choice you can make if you want a good,
reliable, sturdy weapon and you don't want to
start a collection, is a five-inch double action
revolver."
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