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"There is no necessary dichotomy between "idealism" (i.e., having and upholding principles) and the "real" world. Indeed, without the former, the latter would be an even more cramped, miserable, and dreary place than it now sometimes is. "
http://www.russellmadden.com/Ideal_and_the_Real.html
"'I feel free today. I was let off the leash,' Abraham said after Tyler agreed to a stay and set a trial date of Aug. 16. Tyler also ended joint custody of Abraham between his parents and social services officials."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072501216_pf.html
"Like noxious fumes and traffic snarls, a well-placed road sign can't be ignored by a driver, he said. Tens of thousands of cars can stream beneath an 'Impeach' or 'U.S. Out of Iraq' banner before it is ripped down, usually by a passerby or road crew."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/25/overpasses_become_activists_podiums/
"What we are learning in our times is that no essential sector of life can be entrusted to the state. Energy is far too important to the very core of life to be administered by a bureaucracy that lacks the economic means to provide for the public. How it should be organized should be left to the markets. We can't say in advance. Whatever the result, you can bet the grid would not look like it does today, nor would its management be dependent on the whims of political jurisdiction. What we need today is full, radical, complete, uncompromised deregulation and privatization. We need competition."
http://www.mises.org/story/2264
"Surely America isn't the most criminal culture on earth. Why does the United States have the most prisoners? The main reason is too many laws. More prisoners are locked away for drug violations than all violent crimes combined. It used to be perfectly legal for anyone to walk into a store and buy heroin or cocaine. Then the progressives took over in the early 20th century and began waging a war on drugs, which blossomed under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, when marijuana became nationally illegal. People have a right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It is an affront to the founding principles of America to lock peaceful people into cages just because they consume or sell drugs."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1775
"It doesn't seem to matter much to the blood-maddened revenge seekers that I am a native-born, third-generation American or that I served in the US Army and fought as an infantry officer in Desert Storm. Or that the only bullets I've ever launched in anger and with intent to kill were against Arab Muslims. In other words, people just like myself. That sure doesn't matter to the racist Arab haters, though."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/massoud/massoud2.html
"They do not personally need the state in the welfarist (or any other) sense, but they need it as protection or leverage in order to stop 'the others.' People in general are really anarchists who for some reason distrust most other people. They cannot figure out how a society would function with so many 'weirdos' and potential enemies out there, so they tend to favor coercive predictability over uncontrollable freedom."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bylund8.html
"While it is impossible to predict the precise shape and form that the 'security industry' would take within the framework of a private law society -- just as it is impossible to predict the specific structure of almost any industry under such hitherto non-existing circumstances -- a significant number of fundamental structural changes as compared to the status quo of state-provided security protection can be predicted."
http://www.mises.org/story/2265
"Many people also accept the state due to government brainwashing and coercive state education. Government schools don't tell nor teach our children how to think, or reason, or properly make sense of the world around them. Schoolchildren are taught to value government and are never taught to question the statist status quo. Evidently, state education is a social construct and isn't a part of nature or material reality. Therefore, a widespread acceptance of the state cannot be attributed to human nature."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/awuku/awuku2.html
"I believe that the current 'war on terror' is a desperate effort on the part of the state to forcibly resist decentralizing processes that threaten the established order. I prefer to think of this campaign as a 'War for the Preservation of Institutional Hierarchies,' or simply a 'War for the Status Quo.' The nation-state is fighting for its very existence against the decentralized life forces by which human beings sustain themselves."
http://isil.org/resources/fnn/2006sept/prague-spkr-txt/butler-shaffer.html
"If the USA cuts funding for Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, if it stops browbeating countries for wanting the same weapons the USA itself has, if it pulls out of Iraq, and declares neutrality in all conflicts in the region, we can see how effective 'Islamo-fascist' terrorists are. We'll see how much support they'll have among their own people and in the international community. It won't be much. We'll instead find that people over the world will actually start liking us again."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1899
"Something fun is happening in the mountains of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Many signs suggest it is going to spread through Alberta, Western 'Canada,' and Alaska, as well as into other parts. There is a movement afoot, toward greater freedom, self-sovereignty, and prosperity."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle377-20060723-02.html
"There is never mention that the threat to Israel's existence is a canard, and the true enemy of its people is not the Arabs, but Zionism and an imperial America that guarantees the Jewish state as the antithesis of humane Judaism. The epic injustice done to the Palestinians is the heart of the matter. While European governments (with the honourable exception of the Swiss) have remained craven, it is only Hezbollah that has come to the Palestinians' aid."
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=404
"Was it so long ago that prominent conservatives vigorously opposed Bill Clinton's power grabs and his trampling of due process? Or was there a hidden asterisk noting that government power should only be limited when Democrats occupy the White House? Now security trumps--or, in reality, political promises of security. Or perhaps, like the prior proclamations of fidelity to limited government, the fixation on safety is simply another ruse to smear liberals and spur donations."
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_07_31/feature.html
"We should keep in mind that much of the weaponry for the Israeli government's bombing campaign has been provided by the U.S. taxpayer, compliments of the U.S. foreign aid. Thus, while opposing an immediate cease-fire in the conflict that is bringing untold suffering to innocent people in Lebanon, Bush simultaneously is rushing to offer U.S. foreign aid to Lebanon to alleviate suffering that is an indirect consequence of U.S. foreign aid to Israel. That's what passes for moral principles in the U.S. Empire."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0607e.asp
"To the feelgood fanatics of London and Washington, leftwing and rightwing alike, they must be the subject of every verb and the world its object. They are the children not so much of Palmerston and Disraeli as of the crusaders, the conquistadors and the Comintern, blessed with massive moral assurance. The idea of leaving wars to resolve themselves, states to find their own leaders and regions to evolve their own equilibrium is to them not just mistaken but immoral."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1828081,00.html
"Contrary to the warnings of the do-something buffs, U.S. interventions in the Middle East have likely unleashed more anti-American terrorism and more pressure on energy markets than they have prevented. The fact is that with the Cold War over, there is no longer any global superpower to challenge American interests in the Middle East or provide aid to Israel's enemies, so the U.S. should tread more lightly there."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6545
"Although the Americans have run into a quagmire in Iraq, they finally realize, at least theoretically, that they can't defeat the Iraqi insurgency through military means. They are attempting to negotiate their way out, but it may be too late. (The Sunni insurgents deliberately attacked the Shi'a in order to start a sectarian civil war, which is now raging.) Unfortunately, the Israelis are even further behind the slow Americans in coming to terms with reality."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1773
"[W]hen you add up all the seconds that are lost by all the people of the country in all their cash transactions over the course of an entire year, the loss of time amounts to something. To this, my reaction as an economist is, if it were really true, people would figure it out and do something about it on their own. Why do we need a law? Actually, people have figured it, and are already doing something about it, namely, using 'give a penny, take a penny' trays at convenience stores and elsewhere."
http://www.mises.org/story/2254
"I oppose government support of these, and all 'causes' because the more we rely on government, the more we encroach on the conscience of the dissenting individual. Why should people be forced to pay for things and promote ideas that can easily be provided for privately? Why should they be compelled to fund activities they believe are immoral, unethical, or just plain stupid? The dissenting minority may be deluded or prejudiced, but the same may be true of the majority. That's why the free market is the best form of 'democracy' there is."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson-jl/wilson-james31.html
"There is a major change coming that will catch most investors by surprise: the end of the U.S. dollar as the de-facto world reserve currency. Play it right and you can make life-changing returns."
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1154098980.php
"Imagine if the money you made and saved were good as gold -- a truly independent medium of exchange that was not subject to political manipulation, confiscation, or depreciation. The wizards at the Fed would not control our destinies, Congress's appetite for spending would be curbed, and the president would be a bit more cautious about embarking on wars that would cost political capital. It would be the world of Treasure Island, where the only criminals we would need to worry about owned boats, not fleets, and where the pirates sang about rum, not national anthems to the glory of the state."
http://www.mises.org/story/2263
"For years, child welfare agencies have been stained by accounts of children beaten, starved and murdered while in foster care. Once dismissed as aberrations or blamed on a single social worker, the incidents are increasingly recognized as the tragic consequences of systemic failure. A recent lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, Calif., places blame squarely on the system."
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,205560,00.html
"It is a form of 'involuntary servitude,' although not comparable to slavery or the military draft. Compulsory jury duty cannot be justified by pointing to the right of trial by jury, just as the military draft could not be justified by the power of Congress 'to raise and support Armies.' It is a legitimate function of government to provide for the 'common defense,' but not to compel citizens to serve."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6546
"Although I generally eschew quarrels with fellow libertarians over doctrinal matters--my crucial dispute is with the government, not with other libertarians--I draw the line at the question of war and peace. In my judgment this issue is fundamental; it well-nigh defines a genuine libertarian ideology. Professed libertarians who support an aggressive warfare state are, in effect, giving up the ship."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1774
"They were discussing how best to treat the shock and trauma suffered by Israeli children under the bombardment from Hezbollah. The meeting concluded with an agreement that the psychologists would reassure the children with the statement: 'The army is there to protect us.' And so, the seeds of fascism are unthinkingly sown for another generation of children, children like our own. "
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=9436
"The American people need to understand what everyone else in the world understands: The Bush Regime is empowering the Israeli state to push out its borders by stealing land from other people. This Israeli policy is the source of the Middle East conflict."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07242006.html
"[T]he power of the Fed goes beyond that of ordinary cartels and government-granted monopolies. Not just a parasite on one industry, the Fed can magically drain real wealth from the entire economy. Since 1913 it has removed 95% of the value out of the dollar, and thus out of the bank accounts of those foolish enough to use the dollar as a 'store of value.' The Fed makes the political faction which wields it invulnerable to market forces in the bond market. Anyone who knows Fed policy ahead of time gains the Fed's power to vampire wealth from those who create it. No political candidate or party can stand against the power of Money Itself."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/walker/walker1.html
"For all 14 regime changes, Kinzer assigns blame to the smug American belief that we are the most righteous people in the world and that we are obliged to force our version of righteousness on nations we judge to be backward -- especially if they have a bountiful supply of minerals that our corporations want (i.e., oil in Iran, copper in Chile). In short, our military conquests have been launched under the glorious banner of Bible-thumping Christian capitalists."
http://www.alternet.org/audits/39416/
"On July 19 the Associated Press and Reuter's reported an 'amazing find' at a museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania: A copy of a letter dated March 16, 1861, and signed by Abraham Lincoln imploring the governor of Florida to rally political support for a constitutional amendment that would have legally enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo104.html
"A Hezbollah success against the hated Israelis will give governments throughout the Islamic world a stark choice. They can either snuggle up as close to Hezbollah and other Islamic 4GW entities as they can get, hoping to catch some reflected legitimacy, or they can become Vichy to their own peoples. Since the first rule of politics is to survive, I think we can look forward to a great deal of the former."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind102.html
"[T]hey are doing their best to expand the conflict by pronouncing it World War III or IV and urging U.S. participation -- specifically, by bombing Iran or Syria. Instead of seeing this ultimately as a dispute between the Israeli government and the Palestinians, the neocons insist on twisting the latest violence into a global war of 'Islamo-fascists' against the 'free world.' This is nonsense."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0607d.asp
"In giving unconditional support to the invaders, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. has to answer this question: how does it further American interests? The answer is, it doesn't. Quite the contrary: it strengthens the deadliest of our enemies, the terrorist network associated with Osama bin Laden, and threatens to recruit Hezbollah -- the 'A-team' of Middle Eastern paramilitary factions -- into a worldwide Islamic insurgency directed primarily against the United States."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9430
"When visitors to England from the southern United States began to spread rumors that Ellen desired to return to the security of her former home in Georgia, she issued what became a famous disclaimer: 'I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than to be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent'."
http://www.georgiawomen.org/_honorees/craftes/index.htm
"His influence on modern crime fiction has been immense, particularly in the writing style and attitudes that much of the field has adopted over the last 60 years. Chandler's protagonist, Philip Marlowe, has become synonymous with the tradition of the hard-boiled private detective, along with Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler
"Character actor [Keenan] Wynn was born into a famous show-business family. One in particular is his father, Ed Wynn. Keenan was the one to help to push his father to also become a well-known character actor."
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0943978/bio
Romantic Dramedy stars Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain, Finlay Currie, Hume Cronyn, Walter Slezak, Sidney Blackmer; screenplay written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. "German playwright Curt Goetz created the original story, but director Joseph L. Mankiewicz adapted Goetz's play for the screen. Like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, later made into a movie, Mankiewicz takes on witch-hunters of the era. However, Mankiewicz also adds establishment medical practice to his set of targets."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/people_will_talk_1951.htm
"I don't remember when I was first introduced to Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking, but it was at a fairly early age; and like many young girls, I was captivated by her free spirit. But Pippi, as she's more widely known, sank deeper into me than I realized. It took rediscovering her, via reading The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking aloud to my daughter, to begin to appreciate her influence. From becoming a Thing-Finder to saying, 'We shall see what we shall see', and beyond, there's no doubt my youthful exposure to Pippi helped me become the individualist I am."
http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/lindgren.htm
"Russo's new film, which runs about 1 hour and 40 minutes, and opens in some theaters today, sports the incendiary title 'America: Freedom to Fascism' and describes what Russo sees as the nation's descent from a constitutional republic to a bureaucratic state, where the IRS and police have run amok. There may be some truth to this claim. Given the drug war, the Patriot Act and National Security Agency surveillance of dubious legality, there are plenty of examples for Russo to cite, and he makes the most of some of them."
http://news.com.com/2061-10790_3-6099842.html
New contributor Retta Fontana offers a lighthearted Essay on some perhaps previously unanticipated and perilous consequences of free trade for life in America. "My husband is no cheapskate, really. However, after ten years of prompting by me, he decided to go out and buy new underwear. For several days afterwards he was terribly grumpy. When he started complaining about the elastic in his new undies being too tight, I suddenly understood his bad attitude. He was indignant when I implied it was due to the tight underwear."
http://endervidualism.com/retta/cheap_labor.htm
"Is the cartoon industry trying to create a toddler army of working automatons?" If Comedy Central's player doesn't work for you try a YouTube Alternate. (BTW, notice that The Daily Show managed to run the content of a Winston commercial? Gutsy!)
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=72237
"Wikipedia, the online, reader-edited encyclopedia, honored the 750th anniversary of American independence on July 25 with a special featured section on its main page Tuesday."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902
"It is too glibly asserted that we 'know' what the Constitution really means. The Constitution is a historical document, and people divine 'its' meaning from their view of the epoch that produced it, which is in turn influenced by their moral and political values."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=658
"Allowing a group of individuals who self-select to have a drug outside of a research setting may not provide data that is of use to others who desire rigorous, scientific information about risks and therapeutic effectiveness, but calling this a 'waste' because we 'don't learn anything' treats some individuals as though they are nothing but means to the ends of others. Essentially, this argument says that a particular individual should not be able to receive a disease therapy that might possibly benefit them, unless their doing so produces data that is of use to other individuals or groups of people. If no data that is useful to other people is produced from an individual's use of the therapy, there is no justification for allowing them to have it."
http://www.mises.org/story/2245
"The legacy of Jefferson and Paine and Washington and Franklin and all the revolutionaries we revere absolutely depends on this distinction: Freedom is not a commodity delivered via a spigot you can turn on and off - you don't defend liberty by 'temporarily' suspending it."
http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/07/common-sense-approach-to-world-war-iii.html
"Now that the story is completed, here's a handy-dandy place to get all of the episodes from the beginning ... and keep your ears open for future announcements!"
http://imaginarybomb.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=112770
"If you want to get angry and scared and frustrated, just focus on all the things that are out of your control, like how the vast majority of people are content to suck at the teat of nanny government in exchange for a false sense of security. But if you focus on what you can do, and go do it, you empower yourself."
http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/richardson.htm
"The war of ideas is never over: If today a majority is content to let the Vast Machine run their lives, tomorrow a handful of people will read this and decide not to be content, and they will share this little essay with a handful of others or, even better, write or speak these thoughts in their own words. And that's just the beginning."
http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/07/refuse-to-be-afraid.html
"We are not supposed to talk about how Lipitor -- as well as all statin drugs -- oftentimes may present side effects far worse than the problem (or supposed problem) it is supposed to solve. Since cholesterol is a huge component of memory function, users of statins are experiencing myriad memory problems, including amnesia and early Alzheimers disease."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/decoster/decoster115.html
"The solution to the crisis in the Middle East is not easy, but it is simple--and the alternatives are stark. We must outgrow our addictions to the false gods of history--be they religious, political or national. Giving the modern equivalents of witch-doctors access to 21st Century weapons has become far too dangerous."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/molyneux/molyneux1.html
"What could you do if you controlled a network of thousands of computers -- or, at least, could use the spare processor cycles on those machines? You could perform massively parallel computations: model nuclear explosions or global weather patterns, factor large numbers or find Mersenne primes, or break cryptographic problems. All of these are legitimate applications. ... The reason these things work is that they are consensual; none of these projects download software onto your computer without your knowledge. None of these projects control your computer without your consent. But there are lots of software programs that do just that."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/07/bot_networks.html
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