Was Rand a Misesian?; Interview with Peter Hendrickson; Epicurean Roots; Red Corner; 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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"The frustrated taxman then turned to Dora-the-Yalie, 'Now, you look like a sensible young lady. Surely, you appreciate the need to pay for ...' 'To pay for war?" Dora harumphed, rising to head for the powder room. 'Torture? Detentions without trial? Don't even ask ...' Before she flounced completely off, she turned and added, 'But unlike the rest of these folks, I resist your taxes the way even your law says I can'."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050415.html
"When I became a victim of the thought police, I was genuinely surprised, and now I am afraid that my case has had a chilling effect on less established academics. Still, it is my hope that my fight and ultimate victory, even if they can not make a timid man brave, do encourage those with a fighting spirit to take up the cudgels."
http://www.mises.org/story/1792
"Costa Ricans seem fed up with corrupt officials, disenchanted with government mismanagement and with bureaucratic hurdles, and they seem ready for a change. The libertarians' success at presenting a principled alternative has been impressive already. People are taking notice. Whether the party's hopes of capturing the presidency in 2006 are plausible or merely quixotic remains to be seen, but clearly, something is afoot."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050415-17.htm
"The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as starting after a fertilized egg implants in the wall of the uterus, not the moment the egg is fertilized. Pregnancy tests won't even indicate a positive result before implantation; and it is worth noting that between 40 and 60 percent of fertilized eggs will, on their own, fail to implant. I guess that's viewed as nature's holocaust to some."
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/10/Columns/The_high_price_of_bir.shtml
"Meantime, what alternative plan would the Democrats offer? ...[T]he money managers at the Social Security Administration would invest the 'Trust Fund' directly into private stocks and bonds, 'to increase the rate of return.' ... Once they've 'invested' in you, you can't be allowed to fail, which means the federal bureaucrats would, de facto, manage all those companies whose stocks they had purchased."
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-10-Sun-2005/opinion/1005349.html
"For non-Christian men, the answer is easy: Avoid marriage at all costs. Marriage only weakens your legal and emotional positions vis-a-vis a woman, and since American women will freely provide companionship, sex and children upon request, to marry is to give up a great deal for what is literally less than nothing."
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43732
"Government is the POLITICAL means of achieving order. The market is the VOLUNTARY means of achieving order. The political process is entirely different from the market process. In a political order the power derives from the use of force. In a market order the power derives from the voluntary consent of the participants."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/macgregor/macgregor4.html
"I am willing to die or accept injury or loss to protect my family, my property, my rights, and myself. The reverse is true as well. I will initiate violence or force if I need to do so in order to protect myself and what is mine."
http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=468
"Only forcible government could ever conceive of using bombs, for the following reasons: Only forcible government enjoys a monopoly over the use of force for a given geographical area, which means other governments, if they bomb the area dominated by your forcible government, are unlikely to bomb very many of their own 'customers'...."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds245.html
"[T]heoretically at least, homeschooling seems tailor-made to the values and needs of business. It's a private, union-free institution in which the government plays only a minor role. It's an endlessly customizable approach to education that offers an alternative to the one-size-fits-all limitations of public school. It produces self-directed individuals who have learned how to acquire new skills without constant supervision or coercion."
http://www.reason.com/0504/fe.gb.homeschooling.shtml
"If a guy in Council Bluffs, Iowa, can check out my roof, so what? I don't love the idea that he's watching me. I'd certainly kick him off my lawn if he walked up with a camera. But anyone with a plane or a helicopter can see the exact same thing he can see on Google Maps. Granted, not everyone owns a plane or a helicopter. But not everyone's going to look up my home on Google Maps, either. There's sort of a balance there."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000997.html
"Although the FN 5.7 pistol can fire armor-piercing ammunition -- the type that will penetrate a modern bulletproof vest -- so can any other pistol on the market, many firing much larger and more powerful projectiles. According to Title 18, U.S. Code Section 922, since 1986 no one may manufacture or import armor-piercing ammunition for civilian use, nor may manufacturers or importers sell or deliver such ammunition to civilians without the permission of the attorney general. But should that be so?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0504e.asp
"On the one hand, we see a man who placed his faith not in bullets and bombs but in the everlasting love of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. On the other hand, we see a pack of political schemers, thieves, and murderers. Christian charity stood out in bold relief when the Church permitted Tony Blair and George W. Bush to come onto the Vatican's premises."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1492
"CIA director Porter Goss also engages in what George Orwell called doublespeak. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17, Porter Goss said, 'The United States does not engage in or condone torture'."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0516,hentoff,63104,6.html
"So when can we expect the U.S. government to shower millions in grants to 'pro-democracy' organizations in Mexico, which are mobilizing to defend Obrador? The answer is: never. ... Aside from being a welfare program for neocons, the NED [National Endowment for Democracy] is an instrument, not of the divine will to freedom, as George W. Bush would have it, but of a rapidly expanding American Empire."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5516
"Whether the rest of the people are edited out or simply not seen, something jumps out at you when you actually look at all of these interviews. The responses are always of a certain type.... You never see answers like: 'I think they all suck' or 'I'm not voting, and I hope they all die in a fire.' If you only go by the news coverage, all of America votes."
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21761/
"Most politicians who have honestly looked at the mess they have created know it is destructive and becoming more so. Republicans are afraid the left-wing press and the Democrats will call them soft on business, and, hence, are immobilized from taking corrective action. The Democrats are afraid of being called soft on crime or terrorism, so they are immobilized from taking a principled, corrective stand."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3735
"With large bodies of water as moats and the most formidable nuclear arsenal in the world, the United States hardly needs a security perimeter that stretches across the entire Pacific Ocean to protect it from China. If the United States continues to maintain an outdated Cold War-style empire, it is bound to come into needless conflict with other powers, especially China."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1494
"The New York Times suggests an alternative to the impasse: 'Pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for morning-after pills are inadvertently strengthening the case for providing them as nonprescription medicines on the open shelves. Such availability would allow women to get the pills promptly without going first to a doctor and then to a potentially obstructionist pharmacist.' That's the way to go."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0504d.asp
"We need a system of law that sorts out the rights and duties of employees, employers and customers. Fortunately, we have one. It's called the free market and contract law. Employees -- such as pharmacists -- decide what career to follow and where to look for a job. Employers ... decide what the rules are for people who choose to work in their pharmacies. And customers look for businesses that give them the services they want. No one is forced to do business with any other person, no one is forced to violate his conscience, no one can force others to do business on his terms."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3736
"The lifting of the embargo will only rid Castro of an excuse for the failure of his revolution and will lead most likely to a self-imposed embargo (ridding him of at least one excuse). Castro is well aware (unlike many exiles) that the lifting of the embargo will not only rid him of a very useful scapegoat, but it will also serve to loosen his grip on the Cuban people."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/antunez/antunez4.html
"[M]uch of the general misunderstanding of tax law is connected with, and supported by, misunderstanding about broader issues, such as governmental jurisdictional limitations. In learning the truth about taxation, a reader necessarily must absorb some rather startling revelations about these other areas, many of which interface with the average American even more pervasively than the income tax."
http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/hendrickson.htm
"Cracking the Code is fundamentally different from so-called tax 'avoidance' schemes. Why? Whereas the latter claim they will aid you in 'evading' the income tax, Hendrickson actually analyzed the IRS tax code and came to a stunning conclusion: Most Americans are not required by law to pay an income tax." Although Apr. 15th has passed for 2005, it will come again.
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/04/15/guest_eric.htm
"The millions of words in the tax code reflect hundreds of political battles, a war of all against all in which all our interests conflict with each another, in which one individual's gain is another's loss. The coin of the realm in this system is force. Those who can wield political power can simply take from others, with politicians performing the dirty work. No wonder this is a contentious society. No wonder society is so nasty. What should we expect from a system in which we each treat our neighbors as cash cows to whom we, via the Internal Revenue Service, offer not exchanges based on mutual consent but threats from government agents who can throw people in jail who don't turn over the loot?"
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/mediacenter/articles/ehudgins_tax-wars.asp
"They constitute what might be called an axis of evil in the foreign policy realm, one gifted with nearly unlimited resources in pushing their agenda of perpetual war and total power. Chameleon-like, they readily assume 'left' and 'right'-wing forms, appropriating the language of whatever audience they're trying to manipulate: they speak the harsh language of nationalism and super-patriotism as well as the more polite PC lingo of 'humanitarian intervention' and 'human rights' internationalism."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5562
"Truth serum. Mind-control drugs. These semi-anonymous offspring of CIA research have become so well-known, they require little explanation in fiction. Those of us who grew up in the sixties have a vague idea that the CIA started with LSD, but the truth is a bit stranger than that. The mind-control industry started in World War II in three different places: Dachau, Manchuria, and the Manhattan Project."
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle314-20050410-02.html
"U.S. commission on Iraq just the latest surge in a Niagara of whitewash, Eric Margolis says … Still, let's recall that the prime mission of presidential and parliamentary commissions tends to be not fact-finding but sweeping scandal under the rug and deflecting blame from politicians."
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/04/09/989932.html
"To be sure, Mises would find much to criticize in the personalism of John Paul, and John Paul was no Austrian economist. However, both profoundly believed in the protection of private property, the enforcement of contract, and the necessary relationship between commerce and civilization."
http://www.mises.org/story/1791
"When Congress mandated that U.S. bonds, instead of gold, be used as bank reserves, Congress centralized credit into the hands of the U.S. Treasury. This was done 15 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, in which it was explained that one of the conditions required to destroy private property in a country was the 'centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly' to issue bank notes."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/hargis/hargis2.html
"More immigrants have come to the United States than to all other destinations combined. Immigrants created new technologies, built great companies, enriched American cuisine and the American language itself. This was anything but 'isolationism.' America became a rich and influential country precisely because of a willingness to learn from everybody."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/powell-jim5.html
"[P]arents are figuring out what they can do to protect their kids from dishonest recruiters and Army propaganda as well as organizing to prevent a return of the military draft. There is a lot people can do to protect their kids."
http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese04122005.html
"When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: 'We think the price is worth it.' But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1457630,00.html
"Jean Baudrillard, in his book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, argues we have entered a new age of warfare. It's no longer hand-to-hand. It's radar and images on TV screens and buttons pushed and missiles launched. It's spectators in the Coliseum. The US is so strong militarily, and so technologically advanced, that the wars we engage in can't really be called wars anymore. If a Rottweiler kills a Chihuahua , is that really a fight? That's what Baudrillard meant when he wrote the war 'did not take place'."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/wallace/wallace16.html
"It was in Florence that Leonardo had his greatest following, and it was during his years there that he painted such classics as the Mona Lisa. In 1506 Leonardo obtained temporary leave from the Florentine Republic in order to return to Milan, where he was to finish certain projects which he had left incomplete due to his earlier hasty departure. In Milan he once again came into contact with the French, who repeatedly asked the Florentine Republic to extend Leonardo's leave."
http://www.leonardo.net/south.html
"The son of a farmer, Woolworth aspired to be a merchant. He worked for six years in a drygoods store, where he observed a passing fad. Leftover items were priced at five cents and placed on a table. Woolworth liked the idea, so he borrowed $300 to open a store where all items were priced at five cents."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Woolworth
"By the early 1920s she was one of the most popular Blues singers in vaudeville. ... Her rendition of 'St. Louis Blues' with [Louis] Armstrong is considered by most critics to be one of finest recordings of the 1920s."
http://www.redhotjazz.com/bessie.html
"Many Americans who might have believed at this movie's release that Red Corner showed the differences between a 'corrupt Chinese system' and the very different American system may have a different view if they watch this again now keeping in mind the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib events involving USA treatment of foreigners."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/red_corner_1997.htm
Grandpa Vanderhoff (Lionel Barrymore) on the income tax alone makes You Can't Take It With You a film worth watching.
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/04/taxman-cometh.html
"The afternoon sun was coming through the window behind him, falling on a blue-green folder that rested, without any apparent purpose, on the edge of a maple-colored shelf, like an endless descriptive passage in a book of treacly life lessons. It was Tuesday. We had always met on Tuesdays, because we both were free between 3 and 4 on Tuesday afternoons."
http://www.reason.com/links/links041305.shtml
"As someone who has followed Matt Taibbi's work for a number of years, there are a few things I can say about this writer. The first, and perhaps most important, is that he is not a deep thinker. He knows almost nothing about politics or anything else, and this is borne out in his reading habits; he consumes about five hours of sportswriting a day, stopping only when he is forced to go to work."
http://www.nypress.com/18/15/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
"A living will is a legal document that provides directives for your medical care in the event that you are physically unable to express them. Here are some things to keep in mind while creating a living will...."
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4115&n=10
"Fed up with the pesky regulation of poisonous chemicals, Tom DeLay left the exterminator business and became a Congressman." Flash Animated cartoon
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0515,fiore,63095,9.html
"One important message in the writings of both Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt, is that ideas had consequences, and that the future of freedom will depend on an improved understanding of free market ideas. 'Rand picked up that challenge and attempted to provide economic enlightenment to her readers through the story of Atlas Shrugged'."
http://www.mises.org/story/1790
"Those influenced by Epicureanism include Hobbes, Mandeville, Hume, Locke, Smith, and many of the British moralists up to the 19th century. They not only discussed the Atomic theory, but Epicurean ethics, his views on the origin of society, on religion, his evolutionary account of life, and other aspects of his philosophy."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050415-14.htm
"All subgroups of libertarianism believe they hold true to the non-aggression axiom. How can this be? Surely when separate divisions assert different claims, some of them must be distorting or misinterpreting the axiom? This may be true, but it is not an accurate description of the debate amongst the libertarian factions. The debate is not in regards to the non-aggression axiom itself but rather to the terms which it applies to; murder, rape, and theft."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/damico1.html
"The question, then, is 'Is it still too early to shoot the bastards?' Somewhat surprisingly (particularly after having co-authored The State Versus the People with Aaron Zelman), Wolfe is still answering in the affirmative -- but that doesn't mean she's meekly accepting the increasing totalitarianism."
http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/wolfe.htm
"Three decades of studies clearly establish that the violence in abusive relationships is often initiated by women, and that women are responsible for a substantial portion of domestic violence at all levels of severity. Pretending that only men abuse gives women license to abuse and creates more violent relationships."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Sacks/glenn19.htm
"So if you have to wait in long lines, be harassed and miss your plane, what's it to them, considering the docile passenger response? Many Americans accept the TSA policy, saying that it makes them feel safer. I'd ask those Americans how much safer they would feel seeing an 88-year-old arthritic man, barely able to walk, given the treatment."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050413.shtml
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