Ender's Review: Feb. 6

To the Monopolists of All Parties; Question State Authority; Marvel of Cooperation; Barbershop 2; 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 Feb. 6 - 12, 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.

What Makes Conservatives Tick?
by Tom DeWeese from NewsWithViews.com
"The sound bites and instant labeling boxes us in and keeps us apart. If the shouting were to calm down, perhaps we might all find that the left and the right have some very common ideas."
http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom25.htm

Keep eye on Montana, the purple state
by Gloria Borger from New York Daily News
"Montana's voters may be as unpredictable as the Big Sky weather moving across the mountains: Why, for instance, would these reliable red staters approve the use of marijuana for medical reasons? Perhaps it's because they are reliably libertarian, very willing to allow a neighbor to do what he has to do to live his life."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/278398p-238514c.html

Book Review -- Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition by Jeffrey A. Miron
by Paul Armentano from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"In a country based on founding principles of individual liberty, there is no reason to give prohibition the benefit of the doubt. American tradition should make legalization -- i.e., liberty -- the preferred policy, barring compelling evidence prohibition generates benefits in excess of its cost...."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411g.asp

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

Generation Red, White And Gray -- If the children are the future, we're screwed.
by Alexander Zaitchik from New York Press
"This [Ward Churchill's thesis about 9/11] is a harsh and debatable case to make, but it is Churchill's right to make it. And if the idea that civilians should be punished for their governments resonated with anyone, it should have been Bill O'Reilly, who issued the prime-time fatwa against Churchill that started the ball rolling. Recall O'Reilly on Afghanistan: 'The U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble… If [they] don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.'"
http://www.nypress.com/18/6/news&columns/AlexanderZaitchik.cfm

On Handcuffed and Felonious Children
by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com
"Due process is a legal term and seems out of place for those of us who still view schools as places where literacy and math skills are taught. But those who call police rather than parents, who lay felony charges rather than issue suspensions, who damage a child's life over a butter knife they know was an innocent mistake ... these people bear responsibility for making the legal terms appropriate."
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0209.html

Prisons, Corporate Profits and the Drug War
by Debra McCorkle from Strike The Root
"Jonathan Magbie was sentenced to 10 days in a D.C. jail for possession of marijuana. Magbie was a 27 year old quadriplegic and a first-time offender. He needed round-the-clock care and a ventilator at night. His mother received a phone call on the fifth day of his incarceration informing her that her son had died from a lack of medical care. He had not been a threat to the public -- what was the point of jailing a quadriplegic pot smoker, paralyzed from the neck down, for ten days without adequate medical supervision?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/mccorkle/mccorkle2.html

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

Question State Authority
by Mark Davis from Strike The Root
"The state may be evil, but it is not necessary. If men were not able to organize a society where peaceful exchanges, as well as respect for property and persons are generally recognized, then the human race would have died out long before the elite discovered the controlling mechanism that is the state."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/davis/davis3.html

The Theory of Limited Government
by Per Bylund from LewRockwell.com
"Government will in time tend to serve the people acting as government rather than the people subject to government. Since government is the ultimate power in society (which, in a sense, is the purpose of government to begin with), there will be no one having the power to object to such development."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bylund1.html

Multiple Choice Government
by Lex Concord from The Libertarian Enterprise
"The biggest problem with our current government isn't its size, it's the degree to which it has succeeded in persuading people that it has a monopoly on the use of force and the provision of government services. Any monopoly government with democratic elections, no matter how limited by a written constitution, will only stay as limited as the voters want it to."
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle305-20050206-07.html

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

In The Shadow Of Fort Terror -- Only The Strong Survive
by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything
"It would all be illegal in the US -- the beer, the fireworks, the free-lance skyrockets, a religious festival, and especially having a good time. Violeta thinks it's normal. As a recovering Northern European, I'm just delighted."
http://fredoneverything.net/LifeInGuad.shtml

Iraq: Purple or Still Black and Blue?
by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute
"If given a real choice -- instead of the constrained option offered by a heavily armed occupying power to elect the leaders of a unified U.S.-like federation -- Iraqis might want a looser confederation, with increased autonomy for various ethnic/religious groups, or even a partition of the country into separate states. Leading experts say that federations are usually unsuccessful when a society's ethnic/religious fissures are strong -- as in the case of Iraq."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1463

The Future of Europe: A Giant Free Trade Area or a Political Counterweight to America?
by Anthony de Jasay from Library of Economics and Liberty
"There is little doubt that hopes of enlisting the Turkish military to serve French design and will be disappointed, as were similar hopes in the past. The addition of Turkey will make Europe even more like a free trade area and even less of a political counterweight."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Jasaygiant.html

The New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power

The Emperor translated -- The State of the Union address for 2005
by David T. Wright from The Last Ditch
[Bush speaks] "My budget substantially reduces or eliminates more than 150 government programs that are not getting results or duplicate current efforts or do not fulfill essential priorities." {David T. Wright translates:] "My budget substantially reduces or eliminates a bunch of programs that help our political enemies, or at least people who don't contribute enough to our campaigns." [Bush speaks] "The principle here is clear: Taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely or not at all. (Applause.)" {David T. Wright translates:] "And as the most profligate spender since Franklin Roosevelt, I know what I'm talking about!"
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/dtw_sotu_05.htm

The US Government vs. America
by Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com
"The Pentagon is America. The Homeland Security Department is America. The Iraq War is America. George W. Bush is America. The imperial capital -- complete with snipers on the rooftops, armed battalions keeping the city in siege, and a power elite bent on running the world -- is America, and if you don't like it, you must hate America."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory59.html

An Unclaimed Price on his Head
by Ali H. Massoud from The Free Liberal
"Many Americans have serious doubts about the wisdom of continual interference in the affairs of other nations and alliances with dictatorial regimes. Bush apparently believes that he has the right to use whatever means he thinks necessary to accomplish his policy objectives regardless of the death, destruction, and injuries they cause."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000727.html

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

Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself -- As Things Fall Apart, Lie and Lie Again
by Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch
"There is no possibility of the US imposing its will on the Muslim world. By its behavior the Bush administration is confirming Osama bin Laden's propaganda and breeding more terrorists. Much better to address the causes of Muslim discontent…."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02122005.html

Not yours to give
by Walter E. Williams from Townhall.com
"I'd like to ask President Bush and members of the 109th Congress whether they've discovered the constitutional authority for charitable expenditures undiscovered by James Madison, William Giles, Presidents Franklin Pierce and Grover Cleveland, and Davy Crockett."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050209.shtml

Patriotism
by weebies from Strike The Root
"As mentioned earlier, the state is the biggest promoter of patriotism. The state, through appeals to patriotism, inculcates an attachment to the state, instead of the nation. The state advocates complete and absolute obedience to the dictates of its leaders as a sign of love for one's country."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/weebies/weebies5.html

Spontaneous Order
Articles showing decentralized successes.

A Marvel of Cooperation: How Order Emerges without a Conscious Planner
by Russell Roberts from Library of Economics and Liberty
"The price system, along with the profit we allow producers to earn for responding effectively to prices, keeps our economic lives orderly in the face of those changes. Teachers of economics, this one included, should be looking for ways to illuminate the unseen workings of that incredible system. It is a system that is often described as competitive. Yet it is ultimately a system of cooperation."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Robertsmarvel.html

Solving Problems in a Free Society
by Harry Browne from HarryBrowne.org
"Whatever difficulty you think might occur in a free market -- people afraid to buy products for fear they're unsafe, no way to raise the money for some huge project, people insecure for some reason -- it represents an opportunity for someone to solve the problem and make a profit for himself."
http://harrybrowne.org/articles/SolvingProblems.htm

The best of 'free minds and free markets'
by Franklin Harris from The Decatur Daily
"'Choice' hammers home a single idea: freedom works everywhere it's tried, from the economy to the culture to the bedroom."
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/books/050206/book1.shtml

Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Who Is Really Harmed by Tariffs?
by Robert Carreira from Foundation for Economic Education
"[W]e have a decision by the EU to raise tariffs on American brown rice, harming American rice producers, European rice consumers, European producers in other markets, and European workers. In retaliation for this, the U.S. government has responded by harming European producers of yogurt, cheese, fruit, vegetables, and spices, as well as American consumers of these products, American producers in other markets, and American workers. All this has occurred simply because the governments of Europe and the United States have decided to interfere with free exchange among the people of the world."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6631

Crime-Friendly Neighborhoods
by Stephen Town and Randal O’Toole from Reason
"Architects and urban planners who call themselves New Urbanists say their proposals, including developments that mix residential and commercial uses, have homes with tiny private yards and large common areas, and feature pedestrian paths, will solve all sorts of social problems, including crime. Yet the housing and neighborhood designs they want to substitute for the modern suburb almost invariably increase crime."
http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.st.crime.shtml

A Sweet Deal for the Sugar Industry
by Doug Bandow from Cato Institute
"The American people should end the sweet deal that the sugar producers enjoy at consumer and taxpayer expense. Americans certainly should ensure that the sugar industry doesn't restrict their choices any further."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3669

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

Paid to Fight, Paid More to Die
by N. Joseph Potts from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Admittedly, most recruits from such families [economically disadvantaged] would be likely to fail the entrance requirements for today's high-tech military, but for those families able to get a recruit into uniform, the prospect of coming into a quarter of a million all at once would arise where previously there had been no such prospect under any imaginable circumstances. Recruiters may expect increased flows, even if not of the very most desirable sort of candidates."
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1742

Questions For Those In Uniform
by Michael Gaddy from The Price of Liberty
"Considering the State and its mistreatment, duplicity, abandonment and killing of its military personnel, why do millions continue to serve with blind devotion? Could it be, 'serving my country,' is nothing more than the anesthetic, a hallucinogen if you will, we use to hide from our rational minds, the reality and pain of acknowledging the ruling elite does not give a damn about our military and their families."
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/02/09/gaddy.htm

Paranoia grips the U.S. capital
by Eric Margolis from Toronto Sun
"Rumsfeld has skillfully used terrorism hysteria to wrest control of intelligence and make the Pentagon supreme in Washington's bureaucratic power struggles. The Pentagon's new spy arm will be largely excluded from Congressional oversight or media examination."
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/02/06/922316.html

Bits of History
The Past seen with a fresh look.

To the Monopolists of All Parties
by Richard C.B. Johnsson from LewRockwell.com
"For most of our common history, people have lived as nomads in small hunter-gather societies or in territorially dispersed communities of low average population density where strict borders were not claimed or upheld. In such societies they developed their own set of moral standards and laws (but perhaps mostly not yet written but memorized legislation)."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/johnsson3.html

Our Forgotten Goddess
by Brian Doherty from Reason
"Libertarians influenced by these three women [Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand], either firsthand or secondhand, are working to craft an America that, if they succeed, will be living in books that it mostly has never read. It will be an America that, they all would argue, will be better, richer, freer, and truer to its own roots."
http://www.reason.com/0502/cr.bd.our.shtml

A More Powerful President Is the Last Thing We Need
by Anthony Gregory from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"In discussing Watergate, Cheney also appears to forget the more serious crime of Richard Nixon, which was considered during his impeachment hearings as a possible article of impeachment: the illegal and secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia, without a semblance of congressional or constitutional legitimacy."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502e.asp

War and Peace
Articles showing the nature of War.

An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Guatemala
by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Since the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials have consistently maintained that foreigners hate 'us' because of our 'freedom and values.' Rather than accepting that official mantra, Americans would be better served by studying the history of the U.S. government’s foreign policy, including its anti-democracy 'successes' in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile...."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502f.asp

Dresden: Don't apologise - understand
by James Woudhuysen from spiked
"Dresden needs to be understood, not apologised for. It demands a careful historical perspective about a unique set of circumstances, not an emotional spasm of wailing about the intrinsic aggression of all humankind."
http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA8B9.htm

An Anti-Imperialist's Reading List: Part Two
by Joseph R. Stromberg from Antiwar.com
"The US leadership chose to read Soviet policy as a cosmic challenge of life-and-death proportions, rather than negotiate solutions along the lines of the neutralization of Austria in 1953."
http://antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4728

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

Pioneer - Laura Ingalls Wilder : Feb. 7, 1867
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Laura, always active in various clubs and regional farm associations, was recognized as an authority in poultry farming and rural living, which led to invitations to speak to groups around the region. Following Rose's developing writing career also inspired her to do some writing of her own."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder

Futurist - Julian Simon : Feb. 12, 1932
by Stephen Moore from Cato Institute
"The two trends that Simon believed best captured the long-term improvement in the human condition over the past 200 years were the increase in life expectancy and the decline in infant mortality (see figures). Those trends, Simon maintained, were the ultimate sign of man's victory over death."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n2-1.html

Musician - Bob Marley : Feb. 6, 1945
from bobmarley.com
"The tiny Third World country of Jamaica has produced an artist who has transcended all categories, classes, and creeds through a combination of innate modesty and profound wisdom. Bob Marley, the Natural Mystic, may yet prove to be the most significant musical artist of the twentieth century."
http://www.bobmarley.com/life/story/

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

Barbershop 2 - Back In Business (2004)
Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"Seldom is a sequel as good as the movie on which it is based. However, I believe Barbershop 2 – Back in Business to be at least as good as the original Barbershop."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/barbershop_2_2004.htm

Neal Stephenson's Past, Present, and Future
Interviewed by Mike Godwin from Reason
"Stephenson has a substantial libertarian following as well, and not merely because the decentralized, post-statist social systems he describes in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (1995) are so radically different from modern government. The Baroque Cycle is, among other things, a close look at the rise of science, the market, and the nation-state, themes close to any classical liberal's heart."
http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.mg.neal.shtml

Duke, Where's My Car?
by Jonathan David Morris from The Free Liberal
"Everything rests on its real star's rooftop, though. And, by 'real star,' I of course mean the Duke boys' orange Dodge Charger -- the General Lee. Oh, it'll be there, all right. And no doubt it'll soar through the air as our folk heroes outrun the law and save the family farm from the land-grabbing Hogg. But that's a given. The make-or-break question here is this: Will the General Lee sport a Confederate flag on its rooftop? Or will it receive a politically correct, postmodern paint job?"
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000718.html

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

Madison Avenue fumbles
by Matt Taibbi from Salon (subscription or single ad view required)
"$80,000 per second. That's how much Fox charged America's richest companies to turn last night's Super Bowl into a small masterpiece of waste and insipid mediocrity -- one of the ad industry's worst performances ever."
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/02/07/commercials/index.html

Infographic
from The Onion
Columnist Crackdown
http://www.theonion.com/infograph/index.php?issue=4106

Paul Pry, All-American
by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers from LewRockwell.com
"Paul Pry and his wife Laura had lived in their neighborhood for over 24 years now. Sweethearts since they were teenagers, they married in 1981. Now, they had three children, Bob, Richard, and Tricia. Bob and Richard were both university students now and Tricia was just finishing up her senior year at high school. Life was fair for the Pry family."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers124.html

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

Why waste money, endanger civil liberties?
by Keith Hoeller from Seattle Times
"Indeed, in 2003 I was a member of a scientific panel put together by the psychiatric survivor group Mindfreedom to challenge the American Psychiatric Association to provide conclusive scientific evidence that any mental illness had a biological cause. Despite an exchange of several letters, the APA failed to do so."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002175516_hoeller10.html

Mises Debunks the Religious Case for the State
by Laurence M. Vance from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"The religious arguments for socialism and war are really arguments for the state. Conservatives who decry the welfare state while supporting the warfare state are terribly inconsistent."
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1736

Idiots at the chalkboard
by Vox Day from WorldNetDaily.com
"Many a parent has wondered aloud what sort of idiots were teaching the anti-intellectual poison that currently passes for a modern public school curriculum, but I doubt that most ever considered that the pejorative might be more literal than metaphorical."
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42742

Miscellany
Articles not easily classified

America Not Among Top Ten Freest
by Chuck Baldwin from NewsWithViews.com
"[W]hen one considers the innumerable permits, fees, federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes, property taxes, assessments, zoning laws, land-use regulations, building codes, animal protection laws, environmental laws, ad nauseum, ad infinitum that are part of America's everyday life, it becomes easily apparent that the American dream has become an American nightmare!"
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin215.htm

What's In Popeye's Pipe?
by Dana Larsen from AlterNet
"The only Popeye strip to ever explicitly refer to the pot/spinach connection was published in the 1980s by illustrator Bobby London. The comic showed Popeye and Wimpy picking up a load of 'pure Bolivian spinach'."
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21206/

We Are the Borg
by Julian Dibbell from The Village Voice
"Even before Google's IPO bathed the company in cash, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were vowing 'to make all of the world's information accessible to anyone with a Web browser,' and Page was openly contemplating how cool it would be to have a Google chip implanted in your brain."
http://www.villagevoice.com/screens/0507,dibbell,61019,28.html

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