Ender's Review: Jan. 9

Danger of Science; A Case for Conscientious Objection; States, War, and Peace; Inherit the Wind; 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 Jan. 9 - 15, 2005.

Table of Contents: (Click on the name to go to that section)
Political Liberty, Life in Amerika, Ordered Liberty without the State;
Spreading Decentralism, The New World Hegemon, Politics by Other Means;
Spontaneous Order, Nonspontaneous Disorder, War Is The Health Of The State;
Bits of History, War and Peace, Great Individuals In History;
Culcha', The lighter side, Deep Thought, Miscellany.

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Political Liberty
Articles showing a positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.

Bob Gets Government ID
by Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine
"Although the federales have been busy for a decade now, making it harder and harder to get a drivers license without all sorts of silly 'complying,' in this sinful state all you have to have to get an Official Government ID card is a birth certificate. And Bob had his birth certificate. Carefully prepared in advance."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050115.html

Ed Thompson on Democracy and Liberty
by Ed Thompson from The Free Liberal
"Consider this: If you participate in limiting the rights of others today, there will undoubtedly be someone who feels justified in limiting your rights tomorrow. This is how totalitarian governments come into being. And I believe government in America today, at all levels, is dangerously close to taking this serious misstep. Strong communities develop from the dedication and persistence of strong individuals. Government can do the greatest good by just getting out of the way."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000628.html

Make No Mistake
by David Borden from StoptheDrugWar.org
"The Booker and Fan Fan rulings will undoubtedly help many who are now ensnared in a system that Congress long ago compelled to act unjustly and stripped of its options for showing mercy. The drug warriors who led that travesty, and the prosecutors who used and abused the opportunities it provided, have been dealt a major blow and disappointment, and that is 'a good thing,' as home living guru turned federal prisoner/justice reformer Martha Stewart might put it."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/370/makenomistake.shtml

Life in Amerika
Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

Data-mining for civil liberties?
by Nat Hentoff from Washington Times
"An unintentionally amusing fallout from the ACLU leadership's disrespect for the free speech of its internal heretics was a letter to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, from Aryeh Neier, a former executive director of the ACLU. With the endorsement of the ACLU leadership, Mr. Neier upbraided the Times for placing the 'minor dispute' about databasing members and donors on its front page, and suggested the newspaper 'should seek an opportunity to make amends to the ACLU'."
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050109-102909-8919r.htm

Paul Denounces National ID Card
by Dr. Ron Paul from LewRockwell.com
“Nationalizing standards for drivers licenses and birth certificates, and linking them together via a national database, creates a national ID system pure and simple. Proponents of the national ID understand that the public remains wary of the scheme, so they attempt to claim they're merely creating new standards for existing state IDs. Nonsense!"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul229.html

Social Security: Follow the Math
by Michael Tanner from Cato Institute
"The Social Security payroll tax is already 12.4 percent of wages, or one eighth of a worker's total annual wages. It is the biggest tax the average household must pay. Roughly 80 percent of American families pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in federal income taxes."
http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-14-05.html

Ordered Liberty without the State
Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

How to Grasp the Third Rail
by Jim Davies from Strike The Root
"If we achieve a Zero Government Society then Social Security will be merely one program that gets trashed along with all the rest, so that question is relevant only if somehow Social Security is to disappear before that happy day arrives; and the method is not too hard to see."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/davies/davies2.html

Crossroads: Introduction -- The road to serfdom and the road to freedom
by Andre Sanchez from anti-state.com
"Freedom is, in essence, one thing: power. And what is power? Power is the ability to act effectively. Freedom is not being allowed to act effectively; it is the ability to act effectively. With this in mind, think, what is tyranny, what is serfdom? Serfdom is powerlessness."
http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=454

Evolution of an anarchist/libertarian
from bearman45's blog
"I still remain very patriotic. However, my definition of patriotic has changed, quite drastically. I have come to truly understand the old T-shirt slogan, 'I love my country, but fear my government'."
http://americaindenial.com/?q=node/71

Spreading Decentralism
Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

The Sorrows of Old Werther
by William S. Lind from LewRockwell.com
"Rationalism, or more broadly modernity, believes in nothing. Belief is the opposite of rationalism. Fourth Generation war is triumphing over the products of rationalism because people who believe in something will always defeat people who believe in nothing at all."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind54.html

Californians Dreaming of Secession?
by Susan Jones from CNSNews.com
"The Committee to Explore California Secession, also known as Move On California, says it hopes to bring people together to consider the merits of an autonomous and independent California."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200501%5CNAT20050111c.html

Elections don't equal legitimacy
by Ralf Dahrendorf from The Taipei Times
"It is vital to remember that elections alone do not guarantee legitimacy, even if they are seen to be free and fair. Americans find it hard to understand this, as do others in the lucky democracies of the Anglo-Saxon world. For them, legitimacy simply means that voting and counting votes happens according to undisputed rules. What is legal, they think, is also legitimate."
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2005/01/15/2003219508

The New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Augusto Pinochet and the Conservative Threat to America
by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"What danger does the U.S. conservative mindset that supported Pinochet and his military regime pose to us Americans? Well, here it is, bluntly and directly: CIA and Pentagon officials are now arresting, torturing, and disappearing (i.e., 'renditioning'} people in different parts of the world, just as Pinochet was doing."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0501d.asp

Will the U.S. Senate Endorse Torture?
by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute
"[A]lthough terrorists who kill innocents don't deserve to be protected by the conventions, it may be smart U.S. policy to afford them such protection. In the future, other nations could label U.S. forces as 'terrorists' to deny them the shielding against torture provided under the conventions."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1446

The two faces of America
by Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times
"One side is demonstrated by the American response to the tsunami-devastated regions of the Indian Ocean, where our military helicopters and personnel are rushing food, medicine and other relief supplies to the victims, and the American people are digging deep to keep donations flowing. The other was played out last week in a Senate hearing room as White House counsel Alberto Gonzales tried to win the job of attorney general by explaining away his part in approving American atrocities."
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/09/Columns/The_two_faces_of_Amer.shtml

Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Trading principles for victory gets you neither
by Anthony Gregory from RationalReview.com
"The Libertarian Party has nominated some questionable, non-radical moderates in the past -- never with the expected electoral results to show for it, much less any benefits to liberty. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that the LP manages 10% of the vote with a moderate candidate. What kind of compromise will be tolerated in hopes of getting 20%? 35%? Before you know it, the LP might as well be the GOP."
http://www.rationalreview.com/guest/ag011105.shtml

Big Bull Mouse - In response to Marshall, and his grand plans.
by Matt Taibbi from New York Press
"Wittmann calls himself the 'Bull Moose,' and his blog, bullmooseblog.com, is one of two blogs funded and maintained by the Democratic Leadership Council. The other, as previously noted in this space, is the no-less-loathsome newdonkey.com, maintained by the noted corporate whore and windbag, Will Marshall."
http://www.nypress.com/18/2/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

No Semblance of Accountability
by Alan Bock from Antiwar.com
"Are we so accustomed to being misled by our political leaders that we don't expect any better, that we greet yet another example of government failure with mute resignation? If so, we have come to a sorry place in our political life."
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=4398

Spontaneous Order
Articles showing decentralized successes.

Reimportation of Medicines: Free Trade Is the Issue
by Jude Blanchette from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
"With few exceptions, it seems as though the entirety of the conservative movement and even some libertarians have come down in favor of a ban on pharmaceutical reimportation. This is unfortunate. Reimportation is nothing more than free trade in pharmaceuticals, and there are no good grounds for the U.S. government's interfering with it. "
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6543

The Seen and the Unseen: The Costly Mistake of Ignoring Opportunity Cost
by Anthony de Jasay from Econlib.org
"Public expenditure is seldom totally useless; its usefulness, however modest, is 'what is seen' and this is one reason why even such expenditure can be so popular. The public tends implicitly to believe that 'what is not seen' does not even exist…."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/JasayunseenB.html

Remitting Disaster -- Let disaster survivors get back to work -- in the USA
by Will Wilkinson from Reason
"Some pundits have excoriated the United States government for failing to win the government money-pledge numbers game. But Americans know that private charity can often help the needy better than the government. We also know that helping people to become independent is better yet."
http://www.reason.com/hod/ww011405.shtml

Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Zimbabwe's Agricultural Mess
by Steven Tennett from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
"As with every socialist venture of this sort, such as the 'experiments' in Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Cambodia, Zimbabwe's land reform program -- characterized by its chaotic 'fast track resettlement' scheme -- has led inevitably to starvation, misery, and poverty. It is only the degree of destruction that differs."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6539

Greedy or ignorant
by Walter E. Williams from Townhall.com
"The fact of business is, pharmaceutical spending actually lowers total health-care spending. It often replaces expensive and invasive surgical procedures and the time spent in the hospital. For example, in a yearlong disease-management program, Humana Hospitals studied 1,100 congestive heart failure patients. While pharmaceutical costs increased by 60 percent, the medications reduced hospital costs by 78 percent -- a net savings of $9 million."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050112.shtml

Tsunami of the Absurd
by Patrick J. Michaels from Cato Institute
"The way we now fund science, issues compete with each other for the monopoly largess of our one research provider, the U.S. government. In order to twist Uncle Sam's ear, the problems -- global warming, AIDS, chemical threats -- are cast in the starkest possible terms."
http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-10-05.html

War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Murray N. Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part I
by Joseph Stromberg from Antiwar.com
"Without attempting to justify Austrian theory here, let me just say that if the free market is a 'natural order' which can tackle the wants and needs of real human beings, it follows logically that states can add little or nothing to human welfare."
http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4296

The Lust for War
by Bob Wallace from The Price of Liberty
"Cowardice, ennui, sloth, dehumanization and murder, the worshiping of the idols of self and State. . .those are the sins of the Chickenhawks who lust for war."
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/01/13/wallace.htm

Chile: Socialism, Dictatorship, and Liberalism
by Ryan McMaken from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Americans are taxed by their government to pay for American troops in over 100 foreign nations and to pay the interest on a massive debt financing wars and military interventions in every corner of the globe. ... 'They hate us because we're free' is the mantra of the global interventionists, yet one can only wonder why cities like Copenhagan, Santiago, Wellington, and Singapore are not near the top of every terrorist's 'to do' list"
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1719

Bits of History
The Past seen with a fresh look.

The real Jack Johnson
by Allen Barra from Louisville Courier-Journal
"Johnson, writes Ward, 'was both more and less than those who loved and hated him ever knew. He embodied American individualism in its purest form; nothing -- no law or custom, no person white or black, male or female -- could keep him long from whatever he wanted. He was in the great American tradition of self-invented men ... and no one admired his handiwork more than he did'." I suspect this article is not intended to be flattering to Johnson, however I especially liked it.
http://www.courier-journal.com/features/books/2005/01/09/books-unforgivable0109-6267.html

The Great White Way
Carrie McLaren interviews Daniel Kevles from AlterNet
"Though steeped in the kind of racist and anti-immigrant beliefs generally associated with right-wingers, eugenics ideas were at least as likely to be advocated by social radicals and progressive thinkers as by conservatives. ... For those with socialist leanings, eugenics reflected a privileging of society's interests over those of the individual."
http://www.alternet.org/rights/20990/

Paid Enough to Buy the Product
by William Anderson from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Payment of such a wage makes sense only when it results in substantial cost-cutting elsewhere, and in Ford's situation, that was exactly the case. The company's costs associated with turnover and training had become overwhelming, so by increasing pay and cutting working hours, Ford was able to realize substantial savings that were greater than the added amount of daily wages he was paying."
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1714

War and Peace
Articles showing the nature of War.

A Case for Conscientious Objection
by Andrew Young from Strike The Root
"War violates principles most Americans hold dearly. It forces people to kill under false pretenses and denies the sanctity of human life. Governments, ours included, show reckless and wanton disregard for the lives of their own citizens during war, even though they always claim that war serves the public interest. It never does. Americans should oppose war at every opportunity and vow never to participate in it."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/young-an/young-an2.html

What's Our Biggest Problem...the Insurgency or Bush?
by Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch
"Suck the invader in, and make him unsafe on every street and in every building. Blow him up in his own fortified bases. Their strategy has worked. Ours has failed. The question is: are Americans smart enough to realize this? Our government is not smart enough. The occupant of the Oval Office is drowning in hubris and delusion."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01122005.html

Can You Imagine?: Hussein Was Right & Bush Was Wrong
by Harry Browne from HarryBrowne.org
"UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said the conclusions stated in the report were basically true -- that Iraq no longer had dangerous weapons. Colin Powell dismissed the report, calling it a 'catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions.' Of course, as we now know, the information was recycled because it happened to be true, and the omissions were flagrant because U.S. officials had done the omitting."
http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/HusseinWasRight.htm

Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out from the crowd.

Revolutionary Hero - John Hancock : Jan. 12, 1737
from ushistory.org
"The dignity and character of John Hancock, celebrated by friend and enemy alike, did not suffer for his love of public attention. He was a populist in every sense, who held great confidence in the ability of the common man. He also displayed a pronounced contempt for unreasoned authority."
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/hancock.htm

Mathematician/writer - Sofia Kovalevskaya : Jan. 15, 1850
by Becky Wilson from Agnes Scott College
"An extraordinary woman, Sofia Kovalevskaya was not only a great mathematician, but also a writer and advocate of women's rights in the 19th century. It was her struggle to obtain the best education available which began to open doors at universities to women."
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/kova.htm

Singer/songwriter - Jim Croce : Jan. 10, 1943
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The posthumous release included two hits, 'Time in a Bottle' (written for his newborn son, A.J., who is now an accomplished musician and songwriter in his own right) and 'I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song'. Several releases since have sold moderately well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Croce

Culcha'
Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.

Inherit the Wind (1960)
Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"If this movie were only about teaching evolution in public school it would be interesting, but it is about more than that. This movie deals with some very large issues: free thought, free speech, science vs. religion, nonconformist individualism and others; it barely touches on the issue of 'public education' -- which was really the root of the problem for Scopes/Cates."
http://www.endervidualism.com/agora/inherit_wind_1960.htm

Yay! for Michael Crichton
by Bob Wallace from LewRockwell.com
"I can imagine a radical environmentalist trying to relax on an ocean cruise and making the mistake of picking up a copy of Michael Crichton's new novel, A State of Fear. I suspect the next thing that would happen is the book being hurled into the ocean."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace197.html

John Locke Lite -- The strange philosophy of a “left libertarian”.
by Tom G. Palmer from Reason=
"Libertarianism Without Inequality is a good example of the dead end so much contemporary political philosophy has reached. Rather than being informed by history, jurisprudence, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, or even a close knowledge of classic texts, it posits outlandish examples as the central tests of all theories. "
http://www.reason.com/0501/cr.tp.john.shtml

The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.

"Still in charge"
by David T. Wright from The Last Ditch
"Adapted from glorious propaganda of a peaceloving, fraternal, democratic, progressive U.S. ally in World War II."
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/dtw_poster02.htm

What Do You Think? -- Human Rights And The U.S.
from The Onion
"According to Amnesty International, the U.S. is no longer the world's human-rights leader. What do you think?"
http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4102

The Office of Truth Enhancement
by Mark Fiore from The Village Voice
"…because sometimes the truth is not enough."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0502,fiore,60041,9.html

Deep Thought
Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles

The Danger of Science
by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"The debate over whether economics is a Science is not merely academic. In our age, when Science is the reigning deity, the pronouncements of its High Priests resemble irresistible prescriptions. Measurement and prediction in the natural sciences have led, quite properly, to greater control over the natural environment. But can we tolerate this in the social environment?"
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0410b.asp

John Lott responds to the recent report critical of his work
by John R. Lott from The Volokh Conspiracy
"Either academia and the government have wasted tens of millions of dollars and countless man-hours on useless research (and the panel would like us to spend more in the same worthless pursuit), or the National Academy is so completely unable to separate politics from its analyses that it simply can't accept the results for what they are." [NB: These are not mutually exclusive. The full report is available here in PDF format.]
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_01_07.shtml#1105644864

The Best Religion
by weebies from Strike The Root
"As promised at the beginning, I will now reveal the best religion (drum roll, please). The best religion is the one you decide to voluntarily associate with…. The state, with its reliance of force and coercion, is our true enemy."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/weebies/weebies2.html

Miscellany
Articles not easily classified

New Report on Maternal Homicide 'Crisis': Myth-making and Manbashing
by Glenn Sacks from NewsWithViews.com
"Unfortunately, alarmist claims of pregnant women being victimized by male partners are not new. For example, in 1993 Time magazine and many major newspapers reported that, according to the March of Dimes, domestic violence was the leading cause of birth defects. This claim was later found to be completely fictional, and was retracted by Time and others. "
http://www.newswithviews.com/Sacks/glenn16.htm

Liberate Us from the Educators
by Scott McPherson from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"For 12 years, children are force-fed a diet of subjects they often neither understand nor care anything about, but must digest in order to avoid the wrath of their teachers. Schools are typically unresponsive to the most basic needs of students (except perhaps to label the child a problem and administer the appropriate behavior-modifying drugs), and, despite claims that they foster individuality, they instead demand rigid uniformity."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0501c.asp

Domestic Violence Law Fuels Big Government
by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com
"The Act seeks to create new gender attitudes through the social engineering of society. The most aggressive example was also VAWA's biggest failure to date: namely, its attempt to revise the judiciary system in order to benefit women."
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0112.html

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