May 8 - 14, 2005

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The Other Insurrections; No Room On the Spectrum; First, Suppose You Might Be Wrong; Road Warrior; 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 May 8 - 14, 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.

"Cartoon Libertarians"

      by Garry Reed from The Loose Cannon Libertarian

"If Gandhi was right, 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.' We've already been through the ignore stage. ... So bring on the ridiculing! And don't worry about the people who believe the cartoon libertarian definitions."

http://www.freecannon.com/CartoonLibertarians.htm

Book Review: Restoring the Lost Constitution — The Presumption of Liberty

      by George C. Leef from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"This book reminds me of a great symphony on which the composer labored for years, poring over passages again and again to get them just right. Restoring the Lost Constitution is clearly the product of many years of research, thought, and writing by a legal scholar of the first magnitude."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0501h.asp

A nation of civics illiterates

      by Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times

"If we want to find an antidote to the malaise, narcissism, apathy and determined ignorance that has afflicted our body politic, this is it. The curriculum teaches students the philosophical underpinnings of the great American experiment - the ideas of John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu and Sir Edward Coke, among others - and imbues them with critical thinking skills needed to understand, appreciate and challenge the workings of government."

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/08/Columns/A_nation_of_civics_il.shtml

Life in Amerika

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

Your Blog Will Be Investigated Soon

      by John Samples from Cato Institute

"I am writing to inform you that the Federal Election Commission has voted unanimously to support my recommendation that there is 'reason to believe' that you have violated federal election law. Pursuant to that finding, the Commission has opened an investigation of these violations."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3763

True Patriots Should Worry More about Freedom at Home

      by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"[T]he lower legal standards for intelligence collection of the secret court can now be applied to criminal investigations other than those for terrorism or espionage, further undermining the Constitution's guarantee of a 'probable cause' standard for search warrants."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1508

Black and White and Full of Crap

      by Ted Rall from uExpress

"We shouldn't blame the White House for producing lies; that's what politicians do. But we expect better from the media who disseminate them."

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20050510

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

No Room On the Spectrum: Why the 'Left' and 'Right' Are Only Two Wings of the Same Bird of Prey

      by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com

"If we are to understand the fundamental nature of political thinking, we must distinguish it from the kind of thinking that transcends politics. To confine the choices in our social arrangements to the state-serving options provided by this traditional linear model, is to condemn humanity to the familiar vicious circle of choosing between 'Republican' and 'Democrat,' or 'Labor' and 'Conservative.' Through such means, people continue to delude themselves that they are running the political system, totally oblivious to the fact that if their votes could affect a fundamental change, the electoral process would be declared unlawful."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer104.html

Lawyers, Guns and Money

      by Wolf DeVoon from anti-state.com

"Anarchists are people. We find it easy and natural to fall in love, laugh, conceive kids, work for a living, keep pets, chat with neighbors, watch TV, and everything else that normal people do. No one begins life ex nihilo or sprung from the head of Minerva fully armed. Life is a series of challenges and blunders mixed with difficult decisions. No matter where you start, no matter who clings to your emotional jacket sleeve, the core issue is always autonomy and moral independence."

http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=476

The Death of Politics

      by David MacGregor from Strike The Root

"Politics is the mechanism for achieving goals by edict, by force, by voting. The market is the mechanism for achieving goals via the division of labour and voluntary cooperation - tapping into the human character traits of profit seeking, competition, self interest and a proven history of trading - of 'making a deal'."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/macgregor/macgregor7.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

The Other Insurrections

      by Jesse Walker from Reason

"If Latin Americans, in the words of Business Week, 'are taking to the streets, rather than the ballot box, to register their political grievances,' that's no reason to mourn. The power to disobey unjust laws and unjust rulers is an essential part of political liberty."

http://www.reason.com/links/links051105.shtml

Privateers and mercenaries

      by Doug Casey from WorldNetDaily.com

"[I]n addition to misidentifying the enemy, the Americans are using the wrong weapons to fight. High-tech weapons were in order to fight the old Soviet empire, but they're completely inappropriate for a guerrilla war, where the fighters are immersed into the population."

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44235

Why there is a Second Amendment

      by Ron Beatty from The Libertarian Enterprise

"[M]uch as I hate to say it, government misconduct is a substantial reason for private citizens to own very large caliber weapons, 'assault rifles' or other politically incorrect items. For those of us in the gun culture, it is no secret that many federal and state agencies have engaged in cultural genocide against us, often committing illegal acts, using fraudulent search and arrest warrants to justify these acts."

http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle318-20050508-03.html

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

The End of America: May 10, 2005

      from Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership

"The Real ID Act blackmails state governments into turning their drivers licenses into a draconian tool of the federal homeland security apparatus. If states refuse, their citizens lose such 'privileges' as being allowed to board an airplane, enter a federal building, or apply for social security."

http://www.jpfo.org/alert20050511.htm

Iraq Falls Apart -- And in Washington, the center cannot hold

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"The worldwide wave of anti-Americanism created by our actions -- the invasion of Iraq, the threats to Syria and Iran, the arrogant posturing that has turned even the president's Russian soul-mate against us -- is properly laid at the White House's doorstep. Instead of keeping us safe, U.S. foreign policy is endangering each and every American, at home as well as abroad."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5936

The UK Election -- New Labour's Persistent Retreat from the Free Market

      by Norman Barry from Foundation for Economic Education

"New Labour said it was different. In 1997 it claimed it had abandoned all that twentieth-century socialism. It changed its constitution to say that it had given up on the nationalization of the means of production and exchange even as a long-term goal for some state-planned utopia. It promised not to tax and spend, or persecute business."

http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6881

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Fred To Save Country -- Megalomania And Evolutionary Reflux

      by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything

"[P]otential voters would be required to find the United States on an outline map of the world. This would eliminate half the public. Ask them to find Japan and you would be down to ten percent. Then I'd have them read a randomly chosen paragraph from the Constitution and see whether they had the foggiest idea what it meant. Few would."

http://fredoneverything.net/Aristocracy.shtml

Social Security Demeans Workers

      by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The modest government-regulated accounts proposed by the president may be intended to prevent imprudent investment, but what they are sure to do is stifle entrepreneurship in the production of innovative retirement-planning services. Besides that, government supervision of retirement accounts will set the stage for influence over, if not heavy-handed regulation of, the capital markets."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0505c.asp

The Devil's own?

      by Vox Day from WorldNetDaily.com

"No man can judge another man's heart or his soul. That is for God alone. But we can, as Jesus Christ told us, know the tree from its fruit. And while I did not believe the president's qualified claims to being a conservative during his 2000 campaign, I saw no reason to doubt his religious faith."

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44174

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

How not to be poor

      by Walter E. Williams from Townhall.com

"In 1999, the Bureau of the Census reported that 33.1 percent of black children lived in poverty compared with 13.5 percent of white children. It turns out that race per se has little to do with the difference. Instead, it's welfare and single parenthood. When black children are compared to white children living in identical circumstances, mainly in a two-parent household, both children will have the same probability of being poor."

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050511.shtml

The Myth of the Level Playing Field

      by Sam Bostaph from The Future of Freedom Foundation

“'Playing fields' in the production of economic value are never 'level.' Some individuals or firms have absolute advantages; some have comparative advantages. In an intervention-free market economy, each works to secure such a position against his competitors to maximize profits."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0501e.asp

India vs. China

      by Deepak Lal from Cato Institute

"Unlike the Indian, the Chinese policy elite has fully embraced capitalism. The new (often Western trained) mandarins who run the Chinese state recognize, as many in India still do not, that this is the only route to both prosperity and power for their nation -- and like mandarins of yore, it is the Chinese State and not any ideology that they serve."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3767

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Launch Technology

      by Jim Davidson from The Libertarian Enterprise

"Isn't that special? Burt Rutan invents a safe way to fly people into space on routine, airliner-like operations, winning a ten million dollar prize posted in part by an Iranian multi-millionaire. Virgin Galactic plans to operate its commercial spaceflight services within the USA. Yet, the USA government won't let the British nationals even look at the designs for their spaceships. A great way to put a wet blanket over a $5.8 billion industry and smother it. What's next?"

http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle318-20050508-05.html

School Accountability Accounting

      by Neal McCluskey from Cato Institute

"[P]ublic accountability has failed to erect a wall around the state of nature. Instead of keeping corruption and marauders at bay, poor parents and their children, as well as taxpayers who pay for the schools, have been locked into failure and corruption."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3760

Bush's Impossible Social Security Plan

      by Robert Murphy from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Why do you ever use any portion of your present income to pay your expenses? You should 'obviously' take your entire paycheck and put it in the stock market, where it will earn a higher rate of return than if you spend it. And don't worry about what this decision will do to your present lifestyle -- just use your credit card in the meantime, until the benefits of your new saving catch up with you."

http://www.mises.org/story/1813

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

An Interview with David Graeber -- Without Cause: Yale Fires An Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar

      by Joshua Frank from CounterPunch

"[T]he normal reaction of global elites when thrown into a panic is to go and start a war. It doesn't really matter who the war's against. The point is once you've got a war, the rules start changing, all sorts of things you'd never be able to get away with otherwise become possible, whether in Haiti or New Haven."

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank05132005.html

The Warmonger's Beatitudes

      by Laurence M. Vance from LewRockwell.com

"It is a shame that some of the same Christians who have found comfort and direction in the Beatitudes can also be found making apologies for the state and its wars. Rather than be a hypocrite, they should rewrite the Beatitudes so as to make them more in line with their theology."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance42.html

Why the State Celebrates Its Failures

      by Grant M. Nülle from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"As vast quantities of blood and treasure are expended abroad, Washington politicians win plaudits domestically for their warmongering, and government contracting at home and abroad burgeon, on what basis is this imperial project -- financed by foreign lenders and American taxpayers -- justified?"

http://www.mises.org/story/1811

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Geronimo, Cochise and Osama bin Laden

      by Douglas Herman from Strike The Root

"'You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts. Speak Americans . . . I will not lie to you . . . do not lie to me,' said the Apache in a moment of candor and diplomacy. Despite his reasonableness, Cochise fought with unbelievable cunning and ferocity -- 'terrorism' we would call it today."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/herman/herman13.html

What is the "Dark Side" and Why Do Some People Choose It?

      by Mark Thornton from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"As I have shown in previous essays on episodes one and two, Lucas constructs his Star Wars movies with images and details from our history. These connections are a key to his success because it provides a rational basis for his science fiction. In recent episodes he showed how an evil empire emerges from a constitutional republic via expanding mercantilist polices, bureaucracy, and political manipulation using images from Roman and British empires as well as Nazi Germany."

http://www.mises.org/story/1818

Tired of Empire?

      by Alan Bock from Antiwar.com

"Back in the day, many Britons of notable talent and ambition considered a lifetime of service to the empire overseas to be not only thinkable but desirable. The colonies often provided more opportunity not just for adventure, but for personal enrichment -- not to mention a better climate -- than the potty little island from which the imperial majesties oversaw the empire on which the sun supposedly never set."

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=5938

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

The Reality Gap -- The Myth of US Invincibility

      by William S. Lind from CounterPunch

"You cannot predict the outcome of a war just by counting up the stuff on either side and seeing who has more. Such 'metrics' leave out strategy and stratagem, pre-emption and trickery, generalship and luck. They leave out John Boyd's all-important mental and moral levels. What better example could we have than the war in Iraq, which the Pentagon was sure was over the day we took Baghdad? Can these people learn nothing?"

http://www.counterpunch.org/lind05122005.html

Soviet pride, shame

      by Eric Margolis from TorontoSun.com

"In 1939, the 20th-century's leading military thinker, Maj.-Gen. J.F.C Fuller, urged Britain not to go to war over Poland, but await the inevitable war between Germany and the U.S.S.R. that would destroy them both, then liberate Europe. Otherwise, he warned, Stalin would emerge the victor. Hitler was declared 'the supreme evil' and ideological war declared. Fuller was pilloried and ignored."

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2005/05/08/1030757-sun.html

Was WWII Worth It? -- For Stalin, yes

      by Patrick J. Buchanan from Antiwar.com

"If Yalta was a betrayal of small nations as immoral as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, why do we venerate Churchill and FDR? At Yalta, this pair secretly ceded those small nations to Stalin, co-signing a cynical 'Declaration on Liberated Europe' that was a monstrous lie."

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=5899

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Chemist - Antoine Lavoisier : May 8, 1794

      from Wolfram Research

"His Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry, 1789) was the first modern chemical textbook, and presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the Law of Conservation of Mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston."

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Lavoisier.html

Writer - Daphne du Maurier : May 13, 1907

      by Richard Kelly from dumaurier.org

"While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love or fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery."

http://www.dumaurier.org/obituary.html

Bluesman - Robert Johnson : May 8, 1911

      from The African American Registry

"As a singer, a composer and as a guitarist of considerable skills, he produced some of the genre's best music and the ultimate blues legend to deal with. Doomed, haunted, driven by demons, a tormented genius dead at an early age, all of these add up to making him a character of mythology."

http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/879/Bluesman_of_myth_and_reality_Robert_Johnson

Culcha'

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

The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) (1982)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

"The Road Warrior is one of the best action films ever made. The stunts are not done with computers but with stunt actors. The action / adventure story itself is exciting and also shows that honor, keeping one's word and holding to agreements (contracts), is an essential part of the basis of civilization."

http://endervidualism.com/agora/road_warrior_mm2_1982.htm

The History of Rock and Roll

      by Russell Madden from Atlas Magazine

"John Lennon's long, bespectacled face emerged from the shadowed interior of the van and into the harsh white light of the midday Vegas sun. Dark, polarized sunglasses protected his eyes from the glare. Brown hair draped causally onto his shoulders." Short Fiction.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/History_of_Rock_and_Roll.html

R. Crumb in Heaven

      by Brendan Bernhard from AlterNet

"Almost 40 years after such riveting creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Whiteman and Angelfood McSpade sprang fully-formed from his drug-addled skull, Crumb is now in his second decade of cultural canonization."

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21991/

The lighter side

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

Strangers On A Train -- Is that a severed finger in his pocket, or is Tom Delay just happy to see me?

      by Matt Taibbi from New York Press

"A little past nine a.m. in the waiting room of the Albuquerque Amtrak station. Taking the long way back to Los Angeles and then Santa Maria to cover the Michael Jackson trial. Spent the weekend in New Mexico visiting an old girlfriend. She made me sleep on the couch."

http://www.nypress.com/18/19/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

Don't Luke Now: Episodes VII–IX

      by Michael Atkinson from The Village Voice

"First George Lucas said there'd be three trilogies, now he whines there'll be only two, but don't believe him. How can you leave Luke and the Ewoks dangling like that? How can you say no to another billion dollars?"

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0520,jumpcuts1,63993,20.html

Report: Scientology Losing Ground To New Fictionology

      from The Onion

"Created in 2003 by self-proclaimed messiah Bud Don Ellroy, Fictionology's principles were first outlined in the self-help paperback Imaginetics: The New Pipe-Dream Of Modern Mental Make-Believe. ... 'Sure, it's total bullshit,' Jurgenson added. 'But that's Fictionology. Praise Batman!'"

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4119

Deep Thought

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

First, Suppose You Might Be Wrong...

      by Cat Farmer from The Price of Liberty

"I've long thought that the Hippocratic Oath's stipulation, 'First do no harm,' was a fine motto befitting those who sincerely undertake to be healers and physicians. It appears the political version might be, 'First do every harm imaginable, and congratulate yourself tirelessly on your record of service to society afterward'."

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/05/12/catfarmer.htm

On the Dictatorship of Relativism

      by Fred Foldvary from The Free Liberal

"Few people truly seek to learn and understand a universal morality. Many look in the wrong places. As the philosopher John Locke wrote, the law of nature has to be discovered using reason. Locke also writes that this law 'teaches all mankind, who will but consult it.' Any open-minded human being can discover the law of nature, the universal ethic, using reason, but he has to have the right premises and to use valid logic."

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001044.html

Why humans grow old grungily

      by Jon Turney from New Scientist

"My attic is a sad sight, a jumble of frayed carpet offcuts, half-empty cans of congealed paint, broken videos, dead computers and inoperative exercise bikes. Just the thought of dragging it all to the dump tires me out. Something similar is happening inside my body's cells - at least according to a new theory about why we age. The rubbish is piling up, and while I could clear it all out, that would take a lot of effort."

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18624991.400

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Oral Sex On The Rise

      by Paul Krassner from New York Press

"Ironically, the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health cites a study of 12,000 youngsters indicating that teens who pledge virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had vaginal intercourse."

http://www.nypress.com/18/19/news&columns/paulkrassner2.cfm

Runaway Bride Lost in Junk Journalism

      by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com

"Except for the purpose of fraud or other crime, she has a legal right to disappear, to run out on a wedding. The alternative is to require people to inform authorities about their whereabouts and movements, as they were required to do in the Soviet Union."

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0511.html

Parents: The Anti-Recruiter

      by Teresa Whitehurst from Antiwar.com

"Parents and teachers who care about kids should study each of these appeals and inoculate naïve, trusting teens against their seductive powers. Don't let the military become your child's parent by filling his or her unmet needs -- fill as many of those needs as you can, before it's too late."

http://www.antiwar.com/whitehurst/?articleid=5885

 

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