Science Fiction, Wars, and a Meaning to Life; Two Black Arrows; Why people don't think; Lenny; these articles have their titles and text in this color and are featured this week in -
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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;
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"We must wear tyrants down without wearing ourselves out! And we must also remember that every tyranny, every empire, every top-heavy government will eventually defeat itself with its own excesses. Our greatest roles will be first to give tyranny a push when it's starting to wobble and second to be ready to restore freedom in its place. Act too soon, act randomly, or act foolishly -- and we defeat ourselves rather than our enemies."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050401.html
"Changing the world one mind at a time is far more difficult than changing it by gaining power and executing all our enemies. But it is more consistent with our fundamental beliefs, and it is the more satisfying exactly because it is so challenging."
http://www.mises.org/story/1775
"Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances ... will work with Democrats and Republicans alike in both Houses of the Congress.... In the last Congress, efforts to bring that balance back to the USA PATRIOT Act, for example, as set forth in the SAFE (Security and Freedom Ensured) Act, enjoyed bipartisan support; and we expect that Democrats and Republicans in both Houses will support our efforts in this 109th Congress, too."
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=5376
"Chances are, if our Fifth Branch -- by which I mean America's Corporate Media -- runs true to form, it will only report on the two 40 caliber tools (the guns) -- rather than on any prescription drug which may have been the true co-conspirator."
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle312-20050327-03.html
"That the faculty of America's most renowned university considered the enforcement of a politically correct viewpoint more important than respect for free thought and the honest pursuit of truth speaks volumes about the status of free speech and academic freedom in higher education."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1484
"Prosecutors argued his practice amounted to a 'criminal enterprise' based on a 'conspiracy of silence' -- i.e., a conspiracy in which Hurwitz did not actually conspire with anyone -- because he charged for his services and should have known some of his patients were faking or exaggerating their pain. Judging from the comments of the jury foreman, Ralph Craft, the jurors did not really buy this theory. Perhaps they still harbored the legally unsophisticated notion that drug traffickers are people who engage in drug trafficking. But they convicted Hurwitz anyway, because they didn't like the way he practiced medicine."
http://www.reason.com/sullum/040105.shtml
"I trust in the self-interest motivations of most Americans to formulate organizational systems that will serve their practical needs. In a rapidly changing world that no longer tolerates the sluggishness of state systems that inhibit creativity and productiveness, men and women will instinctively find ways to profit from the removal of restraints."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer102.html
"[E]ven if we did assume that Capone paid the chief of police to allow his men to 'legally' take out a rival boss, that just proves that the Chicago police force is the most powerful gang in town, which exercises the 'authority' to punish uses of violence for which it has not given prior approval."
http://www.mises.org/story/1778
"In all the stuff I see about Auschwitz and the Nazis, nobody wants to grapple with the truth of why and where it all came from. First off, the Nazis aren't the first to commit genocide. Others have done it, too. But the genocides do have one common denominator -- they were all committed by the same INSTITUTION -- GOVERNMENT. Not the car dealers, grocery stores, florists, dry cleaners or any other PRIVATE institution."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/hull/hull2.html
"The interregnum since January's vote has seen the two victorious party coalitions, the Shia House and the Kurdish Alliance, locked in internal disputes over the precise composition of their ministry. And efforts to invite the Sunni Muslims, Iraq's third main group, into the new administration are proceeding at glacial pace.... Why, then, is the country not falling apart? Who actually runs Iraq, and does it, with its new federal model, even need a strong central government?"
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12725209%255E2703,00.html
"While most citizens easily recognize the three traditional branches of government, Antkowiak argues that the stability of our entire system relies on the existence of four distinct branches. In addition to the executive, legislative and judicial branches, he cites the jury as a fourth entity that is essential to the entire process."
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/mistick/s_317353.html
"He'd traveled around China and had had a good time, and he felt that the resolution of the situation across the straits -- whatever that resolution might be -- could and should wait another generation, with neither side making any potentially foolish moves."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jbrown.php?articleid=5383
"I'm actually of the opinion that the 'neo' part of conservatism has been overplayed. The problem is really just plain old conservatism. But speaking as a matter of history, the neoconservatives made two unique contributions to conservative ideology. They convinced conservatives and Republicans to make their peace with the domestic welfare and regulatory state. And they convinced the same groups that democracy represents a political ideal that can and should be imposed on the world. American fascism doesn't need these two additives to exist and thrive, but the inclusion of them helped round out the ideology, and helped it become particularly dangerous for the world."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/which-way.html
"Empires throughout history have experienced 'blowback,' and retaliatory terrorism is the unfortunate price the U.S. Empire will continue to pay for its unnecessary meddling in the affairs of other nations and peoples. When that terrorism comes back to bite the United States, the hysteria generated allows the U.S. government to institute Orwellian practices that are clearly unconstitutional."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1486
"The United Nations, which has ignored the deteriorating conditions in Zimbabwe, has invited Mugabe to address the 59th session of the UN General Assembly. In an act of astonishing cynicism, Zimbabwe was re-elected to the UN Commission of Human Rights in 2005. There the Zimbabwean delegation will join such ardent supporters of good governance as China, Cuba, Togo, Swaziland, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3723
"People are still trying to read the tea leaves, but it's interesting to note that both Paul Wolfowitz, just confirmed as head of the World Bank, and former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, posted to the United Nations, where he will doubtless be controversial if he is confirmed, have been moved out of direct policymaking roles inside the Beltway."
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=5421
"Here's an example: I regularly bike for fun, cardiovascular fitness and, hopefully, for a longer, healthier life. In my opinion, that's a good idea. That being the case, would you deem it proper for Congress to enact legislation requiring Americans to bike regularly or perform some other cardiovascular fitness exercise?"
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050330.shtml
"The notion that an all-powerful, centralized state should provide monolithic solutions to the ethical dilemmas of our times is not only misguided, but also contrary to our Constitution. Remember, federalism was established to allow decentralized, local decision making by states."
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/03/29/ronpaul.htm
"Adam Smith invented -- discovered is a better word -- the 'invisible hand' of the free market, but Leonard Read brought it to life for me. His wonderful story of the free market gathering the parts of the lead pencil from around the world, then delivering the finished product to my neighborhood -- for pennies -- brings a crystal clearness to the magic of the market."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6759
"[I]f you think about it, until we had the Internet, we didn't know what computers were really for. Now it's our communication, it's our commerce, it's our -- everything. I like to think that's what suborbital space tourism is; it's going to be a big industry. Just like personal computers. But it's mainly just for fun."
http://www.reason.com/hod/tb033105.shtml
"From what I am aware of, there appears to be great diversity among bloggers of just the kind that should matter to people, namely, diverse ethical, religious, political, economic, and related perspectives. Why care about the rest? Why is it so important to track whether women, blacks, those of Italian or Hungarian background choose to blog? What should matter, if anything, is whether people with different things to say take advantage of the medium."
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1783&id=78
"[B]y 1955 Du Mont's network was out of business, strangled in its crib by an FCC that was protecting not consumers but its old (and generous) clients, the radio networks, which wanted to get control of the burgeoning new medium before it seriously threatened them."
http://www.reason.com/0503/cr.gg.who.shtml
"How did we get in this situation where a president committed to tax cuts is considering a huge tax increase? The answer illustrates the old saw, 'Be careful what you wish for.' Bush started with privatization as his goal. So he wants to figure out how to fund the budget hole left by letting people save in private accounts some of what would otherwise be taken in Social Security taxes. And then he notices a juicy target: those who can well afford to pay the tax increase."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6756
"Subsidizing farmers to produce will result in a greater supply of food and lower prices, but the subsidy money must come from taxing ourselves. ... On net, disposable income doesn't increase. If the rich bear most of the tax burden, then subsidies could make food more affordable for poorer people. But this is hardly the intent or practice of most subsidies. Many farm subsidies drive food prices up, not down."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1477
"In short, war can give meaning and community -- and an intoxicating power -- to some people's lives. That makes it a religion, a false one based on hubris and being drunk with power. Power does more than just corrupt; it intoxicates. In The Lord of the Rings, it was that power that turned Smeagol into Gollum. The same thing could happen to people in reality."
http://endervidualism.com/bwallace/sf_wars_life_meaning.htm
"The authors mean 'nationalism,' when they say 'patriotism.' True patriots would oppose the Jacobin agenda of Global Cop and demand that America stick to its founding principles. But the authors cannot imagine America without 'its mantle of global leadership' and regard enslaving youth in the service of the state as a small price to pay."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03282005.html
"If through some miracle we were able to restore fiscal rationality, honesty and diplomacy to their rightful places in our government, then we could turn to reforming our foreign policies. First and foremost, we should get out of Iraq and demand that Congress never again fail to honor article 1, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution giving it the exclusive power to go to war." All prescriptions given are not as well targeted as the general analysis.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2042/
"As I read The Woman and the Dynamo, I pondered a question that has haunted me for years. Why has Paterson been so neglected? Or, more broadly, why did and does the libertarian movement -- or radical individualism in general -- not celebrate and embrace its fiction writers in the same manner as the Left?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0503r.asp
"Diamond, I believe, has discovered some very interesting 'demi-regularities' in the human past. But he has not realized that, quite apart from the search for such demi-regs, there is a different and quite legitimate discipline called history that concerns itself with discovering the particular antecedents of some unique going-on that explain its occurrence, based on critically analyzing artifacts from the past that have survived into the historian's present."
http://www.mises.org/story/1774
"The more important effect of home video -- and, even more so, of the Internet -- has been to create a wide and wild array of market segments, a diversity so dizzying it defies the very idea of a mainstream. A couple decades ago, feminists could argue plausibly that porn was partly responsible for the unrealistic body images they blame for bulimia and anorexia. Today, every conceivable body type has an online community of masturbators devoted to it."
http://reason.com/links/links032805.shtml
"The use of our armed forces to intervene in civil wars, ethnic cleansings and nation-building operations (for example, in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq) exposed how inappropriate an instrument they actually were for the foreign policy problems the United States faces. ... In light of the defeat in Vietnam and its effects, one shudders to think what the fallout will be from the Iraq disaster."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050327/news_lz1v27war.html
"[T]he answer to the problem of how to extract ourselves from this seeming quagmire becomes all too clear: announce a definite timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. This will focus the minds of squabbling Iraqi politicians on the imminent necessity of governing themselves."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5378
"One theory that is even worse in the Middle East is the Israelis taking action like that before we do. That's just a conjecture. The Israelis have used their influence before in that fashion. They've even threatened before at various times that if we didn't act forcefully they would have to use nuclear weapons."
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0329-20.htm
"Van Gogh's influence on expressionism, fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh
"On December 26, 1908, finally given the opportunity to compete for the heavyweight championship in a fight in Sydney, Australia, Johnson dethroned the reigning champion Tommy Burns. Johnson defended his championship against five white fighters over the next two years. ... Billed as 'The Great White Hope,' Jeffries fought Johnson in 'The Fight of the Century' on July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada. Johnson soundly beat Jeffries."
"She loved being with Eckstine's orchestra, where she became influenced by a couple of his sidemen, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, both of whom had also been with Hines during her stint. Vaughan was one of the first singers to fully incorporate bop phrasing in her singing, and to have the vocal chops to pull it off on the level of a Parker and Gillespie."
http://www.mp3.com/sarah-vaughan/artists/100650/biography.html
"Comedy was Lenny Bruce's way of pursuing a free life. Lenny Bruce was not politically correct. Lenny is not politically correct, perhaps even less so now than when it was made. The freedom of expression is seldom politically correct, but it is absolutely essential to a free society."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/lenny_1974.htm
"He's no leftist, and many CounterPunch readers will wince or groan at his more Randian soliloquies about the evils of government, but in The Black Arrow (Mountain Media, 2005), radical libertarian scribe Vin Suprynowicz has written a rollicking, only barely futuristic novel in the Jack London Iron Heel mold, that paints a picture both dire and optimistic."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04022005.html
"Set in a very possible near-future, The Black Arrow combines style and substance into an inspired and inspiring story of how a determined individual who is willing to risk everything for his freedom can inspire others and change the course of history."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/delsignore93.html
"People like the Parrs who manifest superiority in some area are viewed as a reproach to those who are mediocre, so they would be reviled by society if their superiority were known. Thus the Parrs have become part of the government's Superhero Relocation Program, through which they tenaciously attempt to blend into suburbia."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0504b.asp
"The FDA is deciding whether they will allow non-prescription sales of the morning-after pill Plan B. What do you think?"
http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4113
"Consider the possibility that last-minute, unprecedented political pandering was based on a false premise that the religious right put George Bush in the White House for a second term; that this myth stemmed from early exit polls in the 2004 election, where some pollsters included 'values' as one of the reasons Bush would be reelected -- and what voter would ever have denied that? -- when actually it was because of a combination of John Kerry's personality problem, Osama bin Laden's favorable review of Fahrenheit 9/11 and the fact that American presidents have never been changed in the midstream of a war."
http://www.nypress.com/18/13/news&columns/krassner.cfm
flash animated cartoon
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0513,fiore,62654,9.html
"Once I recall asking a question of a supervisor, with the preface 'I'm sure this is a dumb question ...' -- he answered, 'The only dumb question is the one you don't ask.' I thought that was a pretty good answer, and I hadn't even asked the question yet. Unfortunately, it seems that commonly practiced contemporary educational methods uniformly reflect an unquestioning faith in the conventional wisdom of the 'shut up and listen' approach to molding young minds."
http://www.rationalreview.com/guest/040105.shtml
"The projections of gloom and doom by eminent scholars merit news coverage. The politicians respond to the incessant drumbeat by holding hearings and writing legislation for funding or regulation. What sane scientist would testify that global warming may be no big deal? After all, it's currently so big a deal that the new budget proposes spending $4 billion researching it."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3725
"And if I want to watch '2001' and relive the experience, I don't have to wait for movie theaters to bring it back. I don't even have to wait for it to come on TV. I can just pull it off the shelf, rent it or (soon if not now) download it off the World Wide Web, a magical land of computerized information where newspapers, radio programs and TV networks, libraries and other government agencies, and millions of gifted amateurs provide just about everything I need to know about the world - and Google and Yahoo! and other sources provide a convenient way to search for it."
http://www.greenbaynewschron.com/page.html?article=130664
"I’ve always thought you can tell a lot about someone by examining their bookshelves. But I believe even more can be determined when you observe which books are stacked on a person’s bedside nightstand. There lie the books they read again and again, the books that give them comfort and inspiration, the books they live with and live by."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/conger9.html
"I'm done trying to pick a side here. I've been avoiding a Terri Schiavo column since the first time I heard about her. Now you know why: Both sides are wrong. People want to make this out to be a huge political crisis."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000938.html
"At first glance the case of Terri Schiavo can look like a horrible miscarriage of justice. This is understandable. Reasonable and compassionate people are reluctant to believe that a brain-damaged young woman has no hope of recovery, and they naturally want to err on the side of life."
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