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Government Contractors;
Cat Stevens:
The Terrorist;
Collectivist Utopias;
Dr. Strangelove;
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 Oct. 3 - 9, 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 Libertarian candidate speaks up
by Chris Bull from GAY.COM
"Most people don't have a clue of the
difference between a right and a privilege. A right is something you do
without having to ask. A privilege is something you are allowed. You
don't have a right to walk on my property; it's a privilege I grant you.
You do have a right to form an intimate bond with another consenting
adult. It's not something anyone can grant you, not something anyone but
you and your partner should have the power over."
I Will Scrap My Begging Bowl, Will
You?
by Sergei Hoff from
NewsWithViews.com
"Be always mindful that American
politicians are excessively compensated public servants; not
ennobled dandies from the Royal court. Scrap the begging bowl!
Never kneel or stand in awe while instructing these servants on
their duties."
Badnarik arrested trying to crash debate
from RationalReview.com
"Libertarian Presidential
candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party Presidential
candidate David Cobb were arrested Friday evening when they
crossed police lines in an attempt to gain entry to the
presidential debate they had been excluded from at Washington
University in St. Louis, MO."
Articles depicting
the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
Kneeling in the Grass
by Bob Jackson from Strike The
Root
"Handcuffed, I watched cops from
two more patrol cars go through my car interior and trunk, as
passing motorist were given live entertainment on their way to
work. Fortunately, I had no 'legislated-against' objects in
the car."
Bush's Brave New World
by Sheldon Richman from The
Future of Freedom Foundation
"Thus the New Freedom
Commission recommendation that everyone be screened for
mental illness whenever he goes to the doctor and that
children be monitored for mental illness in the
government's schools is simply a plan to stigmatize people
for 'inappropriate' behavior and speech."
Fix the McCain-Feingold Law
by Jonathan Rauch from
Reason
"Apologists for the law
argue that groups can still broadcast their ads outside
of election season; they can still run print ads; they
can raise 'hard money' for their ads; they can simply
avoid all references to political candidates. All true,
and all irrelevant. For the government to justify
abridging a core civil right by pointing to other
activities that are still legal is, shall we say,
Putinesque."
Some people
say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an
interesting topic.
by Butler Shaffer
from LewRockwell.com
"All that has ever
been required has been a willingness of people to huddle in
fear, expecting the state to protect them from the exercise of
personal responsibility and control over their own lives. To
accomplish such ends, the individual need only give up the
self-ownership that was long ago ceded to a collectivist
ideology. Managers of the collectivist utopia are never without
fear-objects with which to petrify people."
Every Vote Is Sacred
by Jeff Langr from Strike The
Root
"Every vote for the president is
wasted. The system is corrupt. Stay home and exercise your
freedom as a human being to not vote for he who will oppress
you. Nothing will ever improve until you wake up. Your life
is not owned by those who lay claim to it."
Bavaria's Last Form of
Self-Governing
by Sabine Barnhart from
LewRockwell.com
"One of the last remaining
agencies of self-governing in all small communities of
Bavaria (and most of Western Germany) is the Field
Jury.... Members of the Field Jury ... are elected to
this life-long, voluntary post and must carry the secret
of the sign that is laid under every Grenzstein to their
death bed."
Articles
demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
Kurds
protest for autonomy, Kirkuk; South considers secession
by Barry Saunders from The
NewStandard
"Demonstration organizers
estimated 60 to 70,000 Kurds protested in Sulaymaniya on
Sunday, calling for an autonomous Kurdish state with Kirkuk
as its capital."
What Friends of Freedom
Can Learn From The Socialists
by Richard Ebeling from
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (FEE)
"Each of us, given the
constraints on his time, must try to become as
informed as possible about the case for freedom.
Here, again, Read pointed out the importance of
self-education and self-improvement."
If America Were
Iraq, What Would It Look Like?
by Juan Cole from
The Progress Report
"What if no one had
electricity for much more than 10 hours a day,
and often less? What if it went off at
unpredictable times, causing factories to grind
to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the
middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What
if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled
at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered
around 40%?"
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
7 Habits of
Highly Effective Imperialists
by James P. Pinkerton
from The American Conservative
"Today, the fighting in
Iraq is asymmetrical: our F-16s, their AK-47s. But
tomorrow, the asymmetrical action could shift to
America: their WMD, our cities. That’s called
'blowback,' and it’s a darn nuisance."
Diego Garcia: Paradise Cleansed
by John Pilger from
Antiwar.com
"To get rid of the
population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction
that the islanders were merely transient contract
workers who could be 'returned' to Mauritius, 1,000
miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their
ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries
bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office
official in January 1966, 'is to convert all the
existing residents ... into short-term, temporary
residents'."
Guarding the Empire
by Laurence M.
Vance from LewRockwell.com
"Current U.S.
foreign policy can only be described as
reckless, interventionist, militaristic, and
belligerent. This can lead to severe
consequences, as Chalmers Johnson has pointed
out in his incredible book 'Blowback: The Costs
and Consequences of American Empire', 'The
suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did
not "attack America," as political leaders and
news media in the United States have tried to
maintain; they attacked American foreign
policy'."
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
Wimblehack!
--The search for America's worst campaign
journalist has begun.
by Matt Taibbi
from New York Press
"It's tempting to
advance Wilgoren solely on the basis of the
fact that she weighs 500 pounds and has the
face of Ernest Borgnine, but -- Well--
Actually, yes, let's do that. As for Ann
Coulter, what is there to say? Like her
predecessor, Joseph Stalin, she has her funny
moments."
It's mutual
hatred, stupid
by George
Blecher from spiked
"Underneath the
hate and fear, however, I think there's an
even more basic -- and shared -- emotion:
disappointment. Disappointment in one's
public and private life, and disappointment
in the democratic process. Judging by the
diminishing number of voters in European
elections, it would appear that this
disappointment isn't limited to the USA."
Is Bush
Channelling Rove? -- What's the Frequency, Karl?
by Dave
Lindorff from CounterPunch
"Then again,
here's an interesting idea for the
Democrats, for a change: Equip Kerry with a
miniature, high-tech multi-frequency jammer
to keep in his own jacket pocket. At awkward
moments for the president, Kerry could just
press the button in his pocket and broadcast
a loud electronic squawk."
Articles
showing decentralized successes.
Economics and the Ordinary Person:
Re-reading Adam Smith
by Sam Fleischacker
from The Library of Economics and Liberty
"[I]t is that ability
to restrain our own self-love, and understand and further the
interests of others, Smith says, that distinguishes human beings
from other animals. So participation in the market fosters human
character, helps us develop a trait crucial to our ability to be
courageous, kind, or in any other way virtuous."
X-Prize
Proves the Power of Entrepreneurship
by Edward Hudgins from Cato
Institute
"Entrepreneurs who compete with one
another generate the dynamism of free enterprise. They cannot
simply offer adequate goods and services when competitors might
offer the excellent. Competition pushes entrepreneurs to strive
to satisfy and thus keep their customers."
Open Secrets:
How the government lost the drug war in cyberspace
by Michael Erard from Reason
"As in pre-Internet days, drug users
continue to share their experiences with each other, but when
these discussions take place online they're available
immediately to a wide audience that can respond quickly. … Other
similarly interactive sites serve as the memory of the drug
culture. The largest, most extensive of these is Erowid, which
covers a huge range of substances, from marijuana to absinthe to
morning glory seeds to obscure research drugs such as
5-Meo-AMT."
Articles
showing centrally planned disasters.
by Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Halliburton
makes a mockery of the term private enterprise. The profits
are private, to be sure, but the risk is socialized. It has
very little to sell you and me or any other member of the
consumer class. It has vast amounts of stuff to sell the
state, and what it produces it does with that goal in mind."
The Bumbling Brontosaurus of
Bureaucracy
by Bob Wallace from The Price
of Liberty
"The Stupid and Semi-Evil
Overlord finally lost his job because he was losing
employees, losing customers, losing money, and getting the
company sued. Had he worked for the government, [he]
wouldn't have lost his job. He probably would have gotten
a promotion and raise, just like the guys who organized
the raid on Waco."
Our Enemy, Leviathan
by Anthony Gregory from
LewRockwell.com
"Higgs explores in several
essays the US mercantilist-quasi-corporatist state,
obliterating the case for the Export-Import Bank and
showing how Big Government has often bolstered the profits
of Big Business through anti-competitive interventions
such as antitrust law, regulation and corporate
subsidies."
War is the ultimate State intervention in
society.
Benefits and Costs of the
U.S. Government's War Making
by Robert
Higgs from The Independent Institute
"In matters
of war making, as elsewhere in their wielding of power,
governments act in the interest of their own leaders,
with as many concessions as necessary to retain the
support of the coalition of special-interest groups that
keeps them in power. Libertarians, of all people,
understand that, in Randolph Bourne's now-hackneyed
phrase, 'war is the health of the state'."
A Memorial of Their Own
by Charles H.
Featherstone from LewRockwell.com
"It would be quite a
sight, one that would likely comfort the many true
believers, and one that would focus the mind and soul
on the goodness of the war, the value and purpose of
sacrifice, and the godly nature of American political
leadership, and the virtue of our God-blessed state."
Encounter in Fantasyland
-- Mr. Chimp and Dr. Win-the-War
by Henry Gallagher Fields
from The Last Ditch
"Sounding like the ghost
of Richard Nixon (remember 'Vietnamization'?), Kerry
says he'd pursue a policy of 'Iraqification,' training
the 'loyal' Iraqis to fend for themselves so that U.S.
troops could be removed in four years. FOUR YEARS! In
four years the Likudnik-inspired World War IV will
have spread to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and God
knows where else."
The Past seen with a
fresh look.
End of Another
Progressive-Era Relic
by
William Anderson from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"A
newspaper named the 'Arkansas Democrat' or the
'Hicksville Republican' was engaging in truth in
advertising. The principals of the 'New York Times' or
'Fox News', on the other hand, continue to try to
promote the fiction that they are 'unbiased' purveyors
of news."
Silver: The Precious
Metal That Spurred the Conquest of a Continent
by Douglas Herman from
Strike The Root
"By some estimates, half
of the coins in Colonial America were Spanish reales
(pictured, circa 1538). They were used not only as
coins but also as a trading, bartering or hoarding
commodity, as one would use silver or gold bars
today. Silver was the oil of its day; the economy of
the New and Old World both depended on it. Indeed,
Spanish dollars were made legal tender in the United
States by an Act of February 9, 1793, and were not
demonetized until February 21, 1857."
Here I Blog, I Can Do
No Other
by Doug Kern from Tech
Central Station
"The Protestant
Reformation opened the door to an efflorescence of
individualist thought and achievement, even as the
Counter-Reformation made the Catholic Church a
holier, more honest, and more Christian institution.
Internet commentators may do the same to the MSM
[mainstream media]."
Articles showing the
nature of War.
Resistance Is Futile,
Under-People!
by Bob
Wallace from Strike The Root
"In
Barnett's cheerful little fantasy, the idea of the
wogs fighting back doesn't really count for very
much. I suspect he's as puzzled as the Borg Queen,
wondering why they don't welcome us with open arms
and flowers strewn in the path of our tanks. If we
have to, he tells us, we can whup 'em but good with
our advanced technology. We sure whupped the
Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians good, to the
tune of 2.5 million to three million dead.
Afterward, we and our technology went home."
Uncle Sam will soon
want your kids
by Col. David H.
Hackworth from WorldNetDaily.com
"Oh sure, the Pentagon
suits will fight it. Volunteers tend to go with
the flow and seldom blow the whistle on military
stupidity, flawed tactics and self-serving
leadership. And draftees don't hesitate to make
waves and tell the truth. Not to mention
influential citizens with draft-age kids who'll
soon be demanding an answer to the same type of
hard question their moms and dads shouted during
the Vietnam War: 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did
you kill today?'"
No WMD but Plenty of
Death and Destruction
by Jacob G.
Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"No matter how tragic
were the deaths, injuries, and destruction on
9/11, those attacks cannot morally justify the
death, injuries, and destruction wreaked by the
Pentagon and the CIA on tens of thousands of
innocent Iraqi people."
Some people stand out
from the crowd.
Filmmaker -
Rouben Mamoulian : Oct. 8, 1897
from Books and
Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi)
"To me, the hope
of the future is in the arts. It's not in
politics. … Because the arts are the only
truly universal medium. The whole thing
should serve to remind you that man still
has a potential, that he's not just crawling
on earth. He still has wings and he can fly.
We need this reminder of faith, of optimism,
to reestablish the dignity of a human
being." -- Rouben Mamoulian: director of
'The Mark of Zorro' and 'Queen Christina'
among other films.
Actress -
Karen Allen : Oct. 5, 1951
by Patrick
Spreng from Karen Allen : An ACME Page
"Her career received a big
boost when Steven Spielberg selected her
to create the role of Marion Ravenwood in
'Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)'." She
also did very well in 'Starman (1984).' Which
is an Endervidualism movie
selection partly
because of her fine portrayal.
Inventor -
George Westinghouse : Oct. 6, 1846
from
georgewestinghouse.com
"George
Westinghouse, Jr., the son of a man who
made farm machinery in New York, may have
been the most productive inventor on
record. He helped perpetuate the
Industrial Revolution with his instinctive
drive to resolve social and commercial
obstacles. George's creations changed the
way society lived and how people traveled,
perhaps more than any [other] single
individual."
Books, Movies, TV,
Media, Music, poetry, etc.
Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"Dr.
Strangelove was released in 1963 closely following
one of the hottest periods of the Cold War. It is a
movie about nuclear war, a shadow that still haunts
the world today. The direction by Kubrick is
brilliant as are the portrayals by a truly great
cast. Peter Sellers plays multiple parts in this
film and is outstanding in each. … Although Dr.
Strangelove is an incredibly dark film, it is at the
same time extremely funny. In addition, it has
characters, and scenes involving those characters,
which have become cultural icons."
Philip Roth, Be
Ashamed of Yourself
by Bob Wallace from
LewRockwell.com
"'The Plot Against
America' is actually a very bad science-fiction
novel, of a sub-genre called 'alternate history.'
Roth should have stayed with his specialty,
'quasi-pornography.' In 'Plot', Charles Lindbergh
beats FDR for the nomination in 1940, and becomes
President. Now would have happened if this
eminently sane event had come to pass? Lindbergh,
a true patriot who was an anti-interventionist in
the mold of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, would have kept the US out of World War
II. There would have been peace, Roth forbid."
Visions of Water --
Outsider art and H2O
by Jesse Walker from
Reason
"It's a loose theme,
and I'm not sure it all ties together, but the art
is too good to quibble about that. From the
automata of Carlos Zapata to the surreal and
lovely paintings of Christopher Moses, there's a
lot of amazing work on display. To my taste, the
best entries -- better even than Ho Baron's
sea-monster sculpture -- are the mixed-media
creations of Tom Duncan."
Humor, satire, cartoons,
parodies, food, popular music
and other things to amuse.
Mr. Language Person lowers
the boom
by Dave Barry from
International Herald Tribune
"Listen, people: You should
never, ever have to utter the words 'Grande Supremo'
unless you are addressing a tribal warlord who is
holding you captive and threatening to burn you at the
stake."
What Do You Think?
The Contractors
by Mark Fiore from The
Village Voice
What do Lockheed/Martin,
Halliburton, Boeing, Carlyle and Raytheon have in
common?
Scientific
and scholarly studies, philosophical essays,
in-depth and longer articles.
Big
Business and the Rise of American
Statism (1971)
by
Roy A. Childs from
praxeology.net
"Some of the men in larger
businesses supported and even
initiated acts of government
regulation while others,
particularly relatively smaller
and more competent competitors,
opposed such regulation. Thus we
have a clear-cut case in
American history that
contradicts Marxian theory: the
lines of battle and conflict
were not drawn merely over the
issue and criterion of
individuals' relation to the
means of production, but on much
more complicated grounds." This
is not a new article, but it is
new to the web. It is also long
but well worth the time
investment.
The myth of 'infant determinism'
by
Dr Helene Guldberg from spiked
"Love is based on, and expressed
through, spontaneous emotional
interactions. If we are led to
believe that we need to follow a
set script in order to engage
with children in a
non-destructive way, then
ultimately we will be held back
from expressing loving,
compassionate and empathic
feelings."
Searching for Purpose in a Brutal
World
by Bretigne Shaffer from
LewRockwell.com
"Whether you believe that
private space flight will be
the salvation of free
societies, or is merely the
harebrained vision of
techno-crackpots is beside the
point. What matters is that
there are activities going on
right now -- creative
endeavors, some of which will
fail and some of which will
succeed -- that have the
potential to alter the course
of history in powerful,
positive ways."
Articles not
easily classified.
by Cat
Farmer from Strike The Root
"The Nazi
death camps were full of people whose names were 'on a
list' of the politically disfavored . . . so was the
Bastille. Every gulag and internment camp has been
constructed for the purpose of containing some
unpopular minority. Once upon a time, we--US here in
the USA --were better than that."
On Presidents and
Plant Life
by Jonathan David
Morris from The Free Liberal
"Good evening. I'm
Jonathan David Morris, and I'm here with two very
distinguished members of the plant life community
-- a bush and a tree -- both of which live and
work in the mulch outside my house. Tonight, these
mostly inanimate objects will weigh-in on Round
No. 1 of the Bush/Kerry debates, adding their own
thoughts on behalf of the candidates."
Survey of the Bill of
Rights: Articles 9 and 10
by Ron Beatty from
The Libertarian Enterprise
"The Constitution and
Bill of Rights are the documents which embody the
social contract that defines our country. Just as
in any contract, there must be a meeting of minds
for that contract to be a valid, binding
agreement. If this is not the case, the contract
is null and void, especially if one party to the
contract has altered or changed the contract
unilaterally."
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