Mar. 13 - 19, 2005

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Vin Suprynowicz & Scott Bieser Interview; The Anarchist Inside; Perfecting Wastrelsy; Duck Soup; 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 Mar. 13 - 19, 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.

The Born-Again Individualist: Fox News Channel's Judge Andrew Napolitano

      Interviewed by Nick Gillespie from Reason

"Here's what is legal. All speech is absolutely protected, no matter what it says, when there is time for more speech to rebut it. The First Amendment presumes that we rational adults, Americans, will decide what we want to watch on television and read and listen to."

http://www.reason.com/0503/fe.ng.the.shtml

Defendant Rumsfeld -- Secretary of Defense sued for torture while media cover Michael Jackson trial

      by Nat Hentoff from The Village Voice

"On March 1, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed a historic lawsuit, Ali et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense of the United States of America, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (the defendant's home state)."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0512,hentoff,62266,6.html

Pistol-packing mamas, and daughters, take increasing aim

      by Emily Sweeney from Boston Globe

"It was a typical practice session for members of the Second Amendment Sisters, a national women's gun rights group. Since it was founded in 1999, the Texas-based organization has grown to about 10,000 members in 30 states, said Lee Ann Tarducci, the group's director of operations. According to the group's website, www.2asisters.org, 17 million women in the United States own guns, and that number is growing."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/03/13/pistol_packing_mamas_and_daughters_take_increasing_aim/

Life in Amerika

Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

Perfecting Wastrelsy In Messico - Journal Of A Human Value-Subtracted Tax

      by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything

"They say clothes make the man, a frightening thought but one that seems to hold true. You wear a coat and tie to the drone farm every day, worry whether the knot is tied right, feel humiliated if you get a ketchup stain, and pretty soon you turn into a very worried creature."

http://www.fredoneverything.net/GuadCelebration.shtml

Doomed By Special Rights

      by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Why these people rule has nothing to do with their wisdom. It is due solely to their power. And if you think about the level of silly back and forthing that goes on in these Supreme Court hearings, you can get the sense that they know far less about the Constitution than the local high-school civics teacher. Truly, they sometimes seem to be making it up as they go along."

http://www.mises.org/story/1772

Censorship and Mind Control

      by Ron Beatty from The Libertarian Enterprise

"For several years now, the 'moral majority' has been agitating for more censorship on the airwaves. With Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' at last year's Super Bowl, they finally have the trigger they need to push their agenda forward."

http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle310-20050313-06.html

Ordered Liberty without the State

Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

The Anarchist Inside

      by Thomas L. Knapp from Strike The Root

"While some would hold (incorrectly, I maintain) that the stateless society is an unachievable goal, how much more unachievable is the elimination of every last vestige of human independence? Look around you. If you meet a hundred people today, 99 of them will, upon close examination, prove to be anarchists."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/knapp/knapp1.html

Violence and the State

      by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com

"The state's relentless efforts to regulate and micromanage the lives of people frustrates goal-directed behavior and, as a consequence, produces the anger and violence that manifests itself in so many sectors of modern society."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer99.html

Dark Satanic Cubicles -- It's time to smash the job culture!

      by Claire Wolfe from Loompanics Unlimited

"Quit listening to that little mechanical corporate-state whisper that tells you what you're supposed to consider important -- that tells you jobs are supposed to be the central focus of your life. Quit listening to that voice that tells you you're happy when your entire body and soul are screaming at you that you're unhappy."

http://www.loompanics.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/Articles/darksatanic.html?L+scstore+ckrd3585ff813181+1108492644

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Rushin' and Rantin' with Reactive Ralphie

      by Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"Because freedom lovers tend to be bad at organization and centralization of effort, we should make a virtue of our decentralization. A virtue of our invisibility. Decentralization, after all, is the one thing our highly centralized command-and-control opponents utterly fail to understand."

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050315.html

When elites use ad hominems

      by Tibor Machan from The Yuma Sun

"When prominent scholars from very prestigious organizations lash out at various ideas with venom, you know those ideas are making an impact. And they should. Free market fundamentalism, like Criminal justice fundamentalism (a la the ACLU) or human rights fundamentalism (as per Amnesty International) can indeed be a wonderful thing and attacking it in such uncivil ways may give it something of a boost."

http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/articles/story_15483.php

Offshore accounts: No longer an easy option

      by Doug Casey from WorldNetDaily.com

'I expect the U.S. to come up with a regime of foreign exchange controls at some point in the fairly near future. The smartest diversification is to buy real estate; they can't possibly make you repatriate it. And, as I've pointed out numerous times over the years, some has been (and remains) an outstanding investment."

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43349

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Conservatives and the Second Amendment

      by Anthony Gregory from The Libertarian Enterprise

"Conservative gun rights enthusiasts are hilarious in their apparent convictions, because they still go on about how the Second Amendment will protect us from a despotism that they and their elected politicians have already put in place. All of the rights that the Second Amendment is supposed to guard have been taken out of commission without a fight."

http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle310-20050313-02.html

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri: Charge Him or Release Him

      by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The governmental power exercised in the Padilla and al-Marri cases will be a back door to military control of our nation. While the American people might not realize that, Pentagon officials most certainly do, which is why they are fighting tooth and nail in federal district court in South Carolina aggressively opposing al-Marri's petition for a writ of habeas corpus."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0503h.asp

Handmaiden of the State

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"The Iraq war is only the most obvious case of a U.S. government propaganda blitz that utilized the 'free' press to validate and legitimize a not-so-hidden agenda. The coverage of recent events in Ukraine is another example of the same phenomenon."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5187

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Two decades later, '1984' is all around us

      by Vin Suprynowicz from Las Vegas Review-Journal

"The only thing the modern Democratic Party can find to 'oppose' are such irrelevant cosmetic features as the churchgoing habits and adopted Texas drawls of the ancient Connecticut banking family known for more than a century as the Prescott Bush clan, while shrieking about 'tax cuts for the rich,' when this other set of elite millionaires who hasn't done their own grocery shopping in decades secretly defines any private-sector slob who works hard enough to own a house as 'rich'."

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Mar-13-Sun-2005/opinion/774547.html

Morning in the Islamic World?

      by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"In all of the aforementioned cases, enhanced democracy may very likely unleash forces detrimental to human rights and liberty. Just because a country has an election doesn't mean that it will become a republic that respects the rights of its citizens, especially those in the minority. After all, Adolf Hitler was the democratically elected leader of Germany."

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1480

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

      by Harry Browne from HarryBrowne.org

"Maybe Libertarians don't win electoral races. But those races often provide the only opportunities for Libertarians to appear on radio and TV to inform Americans that we don't have to have a country in which government continually gets bigger, nosier, and more oppressive -- and that we don't have to have a government that is continually waging war against someone."

http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/ConservativesAndLibertarians.htm

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Poor Countries Need The Benefits Of Economic Freedom

      by Bradley Doucet from Le Québécois Libre

"When people are allowed to make their own decisions about what to buy and sell on the open market, they will by and large make their decisions based on the most efficient use of resources, and wealth will grow. When property rights are protected and people are allowed to keep the product of their efforts, they will have an incentive to work harder and smarter, and again, wealth will grow."

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050315-18.htm

String Theory and Land Rent

      by Fred Foldvary from Free Liberal

"So we have a grand unified theory of social disorder. Social strings have gotten broken! If we wreak DNA strings, we get sick or monstrous living beings. The economic strings are broken, and we get economic diseases: inflation, unemployment, congestion, poverty, instability, war! ... The remedy is, as Henry George stated, association in equality, where all the strings of the social tapestry are equally self-owners."

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000871.html

When It Comes to GDP 2 - 1 = 2

      by Pierre Lemieux from The Independent Institute

"As its name says, gross domestic product tries to measure what is produced within the borders of a country. It includes exports, which are produced domestically, and takes no notice of imports, which are produced in foreign lands. GDP is, by definition, the sum of all value added within the national borders."

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1481

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

The FDA Can't Be Reformed

      by Arthur Foulkes from Foundation for Economic Education

"The past year or so has been tough on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ... All of this has led to negative publicity, congressional hearings, and (of course) calls for a bigger budget and more authority for the FDA. But giving the FDA new powers and more money will only make things worse. The agency is beyond being 'reformed'."

http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6734

The Failed Compromise

      by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com

"Wall Street has paid many millions to think tanks that were willing to operate as fronts in the political push to make investment in the stock market mandatory. And what do they have to show for it? They won't get their 'private accounts' but even worse, the rest of us will not get genuine reform."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/failure-of-compromise.html

Senator Reid Has No Social Security Plan

      by Michael D. Tanner from Cato Institute

"Maintaining the long-term solvency of the system is far from the only problem. Social Security is set to provide today's workers with abysmally low returns on their 'investments.' The program unfairly penalizes African Americans, working women, and others."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3712

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

A Perfect Fit -- Wolfowitz at the World Bank

      by Jude Wanniski from CounterPunch

"If you want to know how Professor Wolfowitz got the job, follow the money. That's what the World Bank is all about. ... On paper, its function was to lend money to developing countries to help them grow. Its real job has been to serve the interests of the major money-center banks and the multinational corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank development projects."

http://www.counterpunch.org/wanniski03172005.html

The Eyewitnesses Must Be Crazy

      by Teresa Whitehurst from Antiwar.com

"No speeding? No flashing light? No warning shots? What Ms. Sgrena and Mr. Berlusconi don't seem to realize is this: You'd have to be crazy to disagree with the U.S. military."

http://www.antiwar.com/whitehurst/?articleid=5194

Wolfowitz at the World Bank's Door

      by William Norman Grigg from The New American

"In Somalia, 'the very absence of a government may have helped nurture an African oddity -- a lean and efficient business sector that does not feed at a public trough controlled by corrupt officials,' wrote Peter Maas in the May 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Tele-communications, transportation, and shipping companies were organized up to provide services to the liberated private sector. Internet cafes have sprung up in Mogadishu. Private security firms helped businessmen protect their investments and property."

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_996.shtml

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

The Conservative Welfare State

      by Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com

"In many ways, Bismarck is the inspiration behind America's greatest socialist experiments: Social Security, Medicare, and nationalized public schooling. The German tyrant saw the people he ruled as a collective social organism, to be molded, conditioned and regimented toward the furtherance of Prussian nationalism and the consolidated state he envisioned."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory67.html

Democracy May Be Breaking Out, But Is Freedom?

      by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"We often hear democracy described as a system in which the majority rules, but the rights of the minority are protected. But this is glib. If the rights of the minority are truly protected, does the majority truly rule?"

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0503g.asp

A Long View of Short Careers: The Case for Voluntary Term Limits

      by Patrick Basham from Cato Institute

"Congressional tenure became important when the introduction of the seniority principle for congressional committee membership changed the dynamics of obtaining leadership positions. Consequently, between 1860 and 1920 House members' average tenure increased from four to eight years, and it has continued to rise ever since."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3709

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

The Jeannette Rankin Story

      by Stephen Bender from LewRockwell.com

"'War is nonsense -- bring the boys back forthwith.' When it was suggested to her that this might be interpreted as surrender, she answered: 'Surrender is a military idea. When you're doing something wrong, you stop.' The Vietnam War, she held, was a unilateral war, and with a unilateral war you can have unilateral peace… But how were we to get the boys home, she was asked on another occasion. 'The same way we got them in, by ships and planes'."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/bender/bender7.html

Restarting the Antiwar Movement

      by Ralph Nader from CounterPunch

"The anti-Iraq war movement showed its power before the war putting millions of people in the streets. We were years ahead of the growth of the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era. Now that the Iraq war and occupation have unfolded all of the predictions of the anti-war movement have come true...."

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader03142005.html

Dealing with China

      by Alan Bock from Antiwar.com

"In real terms Taiwan has long been independent from the mainland. But both sides have played a delicate game of make-believe for decades -- the mainland because it believes it will eventually reclaim Taiwan as a province and Taiwan because it long maintained that it was the legitimate government of China and would eventually resume its rightful place in charge."

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=5257

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Radical Thinker -- Joseph Priestley : Mar. 13, 1733

      from Chemical Heritage Foundation

"He was Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), a mild-mannered stutterer and radical thinker who wrote more than 200 books, pamphlets, and articles that challenged commonly accepted views on science, politics, education, and religion."

http://www.chemheritage.org/exhibits/ex-jp04.html

Dental pioneer - Lucy Hobbs Taylor : Mar 14, 1833

      from Kansas State Historical Society

"Medical schools at the time would not allow women to enroll. A determined Lucy soon turned her ambitions towards dentistry. Lucy or 'Dr. Lucy' as she was referred to by her patients, was the first woman dentist to practice in Kansas."

http://www.kshs.org/people/taylor_lucy.htm

Anti-Imperialist - Oswald Garrison Villard : Mar 13, 1872

      by David T. Beito from History News Network

"[H]e bitterly dissented from the foreign policy of the Roosevelt administration in the late 1930s. He was an early member of the America First Committee which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. He broke completely with The Nation, which he had sold in 1935, because it supported American intervention. At the same time, he became increasingly repelled by the New Deal bureaucratic state which he condemned a precursor to American fascism."

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/10744.html

Culcha'

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

Duck Soup (1933)

      by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

"This film is the Marx Brother's masterpiece and the apex of their movie accomplishments. The musical and political spoof was directed by Leo McCarey and written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. It is a comedy classic that will shine as long as the memory of the 20th century State stays fresh in people's minds. Of course, the Marx Brothers are always funny, but this movie has such a wealth of comedy material because government is the natural supplier."

http://endervidualism.com/agora/duck_soup_1933.htm

Gonzo Revised -- The slightly delayed postmortem

      by Matt Taibbi from New York Press

"He told this story so well that it made you laugh out loud. And only an idiot -- a Buckley or a Schwartz -- could argue that the hero in this story somehow represented the 60s counterculture, or a vanished liberalism. If that were true, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas wouldn't be funny anymore -- and it definitely still is, and will be for at least the next hundred years. What Thompson represented was the individual who couldn't fit in, the person who wanted to believe but couldn't, the terminal incompetent who could never quite find his way home."

http://nypress.com/18/11/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

Heinlein's Wisdom as Taught by Sergeant Taylor

      by Ali Hassan Massoud from The Libertarian Enterprise

"Starship Troopers is actually a love story on two levels. First about love of community, family, and friends and the deep-seated atavistic need men have to protect their people from those would harm them. The second level being the Platonic but deeply felt bond that soldiers develop for each other as they fight, kill, and die together in that defense."

http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle310-20050313-03.html

The lighter side

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

Justice Dept. Considering Torture In Space -- 'Thinking Outside the Box,' Gonzales Says

      by Andy Borowitz from Borowitz Report

"Acknowledging the legal barriers to torturing detainees in U.S. custody, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed today that the Justice Department was exploring the feasibility of torturing prisoners in outer space. According to a Justice Department memo, lawyers for the department are exploring whether interrogation methods banned by the Geneva Conventions would be legal if used on a space station orbiting the earth, or perhaps on the moon."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1087

Neverland Ranch Investigators Discover Corpse Of Real Michael Jackson

      from The Onion

"During a search for evidence at the Neverland Valley Ranch, investigators discovered a corpse that has been identified as that of Michael Jackson, Santa Barbara police officials announced Tuesday."

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4111

Karl Rove Loves Jeff Gannon

      by Paul Krassner from New York Press

"Crimmins, a political satirist and activist, has gone from writing for Dennis Miller to writing for Air America Radio. About Miller, Crimmins now says, 'Listening to his act is no longer something we look forward to; it is more like getting stuck in the back seat of your pop's station wagon while he lectures you on "Americanism" through 30 miles of heavy traffic'."

http://nypress.com/18/11/news&columns/krassner.cfm

Deep Thought

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

Interview: Vin Suprynowicz and Scott Bieser

      Interview by Sunni Maravillosa from Sunni's Salon at Endervidualism

"SUNNI: It's good to see The Black Arrow getting well-deserved acclaim from several people. I imagine you're getting a lot of private feedback too. Are you pleased with its reception so far? VIN: All the notices have been positive. You can't complain about that." This item is long but also very extensive and interesting.

http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/vinandscott.htm

Are Monetary and Banking Crises Inevitable in the Near Future?

      by Edwin Vieira, Jr. from NewsWithViews.com

"Economic theory also teaches that any scheme of fiat currency and fractional-reserve central banking is just as inherently flawed, incapable of permanent existence, and inevitably doomed to disaster as all-around, full-blown socialism, because fractional-reserve central banking systematically subverts the free market's structure of prices through expansion of currency and credit--which results in redistribution of wealth, misallocation of scarce capital, and collapse in either depression or hyperinflation followed by depression."

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin2.htm

Anarchism & Justice: Part I -- III. Justice, Property, and Rights

      by R.A. Childs, Jr. from The Last Ditch

"Now since actions involve things, or entities, freedom of action will necessarily involve claims to the entities involved in the action, i.e., we cannot discuss freedom of action or rights without reference to property and ownership. And the widest principle of all is the principle of human social relationships -- the principle of justice. It is the philosophy of justice alone which will enable us to fill in the skeleton, so to speak, of the remaining principles."

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/childs_aj_03.htm

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

The IRS vs. Ragnor Danksjold

      by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Have you ever noticed how public (i.e., government) schoolteachers and textbooks extol the virtues of America's Founders in the 1770s for being tax rebels -- you know, people who broke the law by avoiding taxes on tea, tobacco, et cetera (Remember the Boston Tea Party?); but today the rebels' successors are treated as evil, immoral beings for depriving the government of money to support its welfare-warfare state?"

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0503f.asp

Congress Loves Baseball

      by Jonathan David Morris from Free Liberal

"Critics say the MLB needs Congress to get involved here, that they can't clean up their act on their own. But when was the last time Congress actually solved a problem? Wait. Let me clarify: A problem they, themselves, didn't cause? Go on. Name one. I'll wait."

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000875.html

Anti-intellectualism at Harvard

      by Walter E. Williams from Townhall.com

"The only debate among scholars isn't whether these patterns exist but whether they reflect acculturation or genetics. A substantial body of work suggests genetics. The fact of business is that we do differ genetically by race and sex, not only in intelligence and aptitude, but in physical ways as well."

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050316.shtml

 

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