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"Large numbers of people in America are rallying to, learning about, and becoming excited about the idea of freedom. This is a first in my lifetime, and I am old enough to remember when Ike was president. I am not concerned that most of these people are not yet abolitionists; they are opening their eyes to reality, and embracing freedom as they understand it. That is a start, and without a start, one never gets anywhere."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/allport/allport5.html
"As my colleague Brink Lindsey argues in his new book, 'The Age of Abundance,' the shifting parameters of left and right in American politics amount to a trend toward a relatively libertarian center. This doesn't mean that polarizing far-left and far-right politicians can't run winning campaigns, it just means that positions on the ideological continuum are now closer to both social and economic nonintervention than they used to be."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8503
Book Review: "Liberty for All, is a direct and formidable challenge to the validity of laws that restrict the freedom of American citizens to peacefully live as they choose. … Rather than trying to use the law in the impossible quest of preventing anyone from being unhappy, [the author] maintains that law should be used only to protect life, liberty, and property against tangible, provable harm. "
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0704g.asp
"A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down."
http://city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html
"Mortified over the violent, corrupt, and increasingly degenerate nature of the regime that rules us, the Kuhns displayed, on their own property, a U.S. flag -- an item they had legally purchased -- displayed upside-down. This is a universally recognized distress sign, and the Kuhns' intent was to underscore the plight of our country, which is being destroyed by the regime."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/07/to-punish-and-enslave.html
"I've explained in the past that I think Singletary's death is drug war collateral damage. His death is the entirely predictable consequence of having crimes on the books that the police have to break in order to enforce, and of ratcheting up the stakes for those crimes by declaring a "war" on them."
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027992.php#027992
"Fathers can offer their children a sense of permanence, security and emotional support that a foster family (or a succession of foster care placements) cannot provide. Many foster children are pushed out of their homes and into a tenuous existence when they turn 18 and the foster parents no longer receive state subsidies. Fathers could be a valuable source of long-term resources and sponsorship for these young adults."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Sacks/glenn71.htm
"Egler said he believes the message on the sign he posted is at issue, not the act itself. He said he can show dozens of other examples of advertising on public property in the city, including U.S. Army recruitment posters, 'for sale' signs and other handbills tacked to public property that have not attracted the same attention."
http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/2346262
One early example from many in the article: "You must believe that they [talking heads of government] can be trusted to decide how much of your money they should use to pay themselves with and how often. In fact, they are so good that they deserve much better pensions than any you’ll ever see, such as full pay for life, a free car with driver, free body guards for life and subsidized vacations, all at their own discretion, and you must believe they have plenty of that."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/fontana/fontana1.html
"You'd be surprised how much of a difference a change of tense can make. 'Free market' makes it sound like such a thing already exists and thus passively perpetuates the Red myth that Corporatism and wanton accumulation of Kapital are the natural consequences of free association and competition between individuals. (It is not.)"
http://williamgillis.blogspot.com/2007/07/freed-market-one-of-tactics-ive-taken.html
"The great battle of our time is not the clash of civilizations. It is the battle among ourselves to relocate and reinstitute the sources of our own civilization in new and proper ways so that we may maintain that civilization. We will only win that battle when we greatly reduce our power, and thus the power of our political governments, to make law."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff157.html
"Tucker is correct that a change of employment can be a career growth opportunity. Tucker is also correct that it is best for relationships, including employment relationships, to end when they stop being mutually beneficial. Tucker works so hard to make these points, though, that he loses sight of how devastating such a financial upheaval can be for the ordinary person."
http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/723
"This story highlights one of the potential benefits of a decentralized, renewable power source like solar energy. One of the main advantages is that it can bring power to remote locations beyond the reach of the grid. With electricity comes a variety of opportunities for people in these areas to pursue opportunities and raise their standard of living. The fact that these people have localized control over their electricity production means that they are not reliant on a centralized provider, be it government or a regulated monopoly."
http://www.abetterearth.org/blog/id.4192/news_detail.asp
"In the absence of industry bureaucrats, there is no need to obtain an operating license or a franchise to provide service; supply is free to meet unbridled demand. There are no legacy rules or government-sanctioned monopolies that would make investment unprofitable, or label certain technologies or markets off-limits. Lacking government lawmakers to create pork projects, mismanage funds, and engender budgetary shortfalls, there are no industry taxes to nickel and dime companies to death, nor any user fees or surcharges on consumer bills. "
http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2007_09/vasquez-somalia.html
"A massage therapist who operates schools in 11 different countries says it's time for states to change laws that he argues discriminate against non-western techniques."
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20070801/NEWS/108010079
"[I]t’s too easy for me, I realize, to become angered, outraged, offput by the actions of the various Police around today, mushrooming as they are. Mr. Logsdon (and others like him) offer delightful reminders that it doesn’t have to be so. Hell, no. On the contrary, he gives me a friendly nudge as if to twinkle, 'You’re free to dance through life even if "they" expect you to cringe and crawl'."
http://taranjordan.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/happy-attitude/
"Two years ago, in an article entitled 'It Can’t Happen Here,' Congressman Ron Paul cautioned, 'We are not yet living in a total police state, but it is fast approaching.' A lot can happen in two years."
http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=489
"If the people were not afraid, either of the government itself or of some threat from which the government purports to protect them, they would not submit to being fleeced and bullied as they are by their rulers, and the government would collapse."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs63.html
"What is ominous about the petition is how broadly the Justice Department views the government’s power to tax. These views are hardly consistent with limited government and low taxes, but unfortunately they are consistent with what U.S. courts have held since the country was founded."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0704b.asp
"Left-wing British historians complain bitterly about the ‘game laws’ -- legislation which forbade farmers to shoot game such as pheasants or deer, who fed on farmers' crops. The game were to be ‘preserved’ for the benefit of aristocratic hunting-parties. Thus the ruling elite made the lower classes pay for elite leisure pursuits -- hunting. No such 'class' legislation exists today, of course, in this, the enlightened early 21st century...Or does it? "
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/41364.html
"After months of revelations about his ham-handed attempts to politicize investigations and prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys and sections of the Department of Justice he heads, after his repeated refusals to cooperate with Congress and his deliberate attempts to deceive the House and Senate judiciary committees, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has invited impeachment to an extent rarely seen in the long and sordid history of executive assaults on the rule of law."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=218996
"Conscription advocates are few but emboldened. Presidential contender John McCain is a longtime fan. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) suggested reinstating conscription to ensure equal representation of all economic classes in the military. The Bush administration has defended the AVF, but its time in office is short. If the next administration, either Republican or Democratic, insists on expanding the military while continuing to occupy Iraq, it might see conscription as an easy out."
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=11376
"I was reading the other day that Ron Paul and John McCain were the only Republicans interested in the GOP version of this concept. I get why the others think it’s ridiculous—and believe me, if I could see a McCain-Paul debate without those other jokers, I’d be perfectly happy with it. But it surprises me how shortsighted the rest of the GOP field is being. Most of these guys are out of touch as it is. Do they really want to cement that reputation by taking a pass on YouTube?"
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002898.html
"U.S. policymakers should understand that managing the problems in the Middle East will require the engagement and support of the rising powers in East Asia. And there is no reason why Washington cannot walk in the Middle East and chew gum in Asia at the same time."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8624
Larry Harvey: "I'm excited about the Google thing and have been from the beginning. But what we've ended up with — it was hyped a little. It was called a World's Fair. And I'm here to tell you; it's not exactly a World's Fair. We've got a little over thirty exhibitors in this space at the base of the man. And the great majority are DIY projects by participants — burners — with no business profile whatsoever!"
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/08/02/has-the-man-infiltrated-burning-man/
"Historical costs, sometimes called sunk costs, are irrelevant to decision-making because they are costs that have already been incurred. That's something that's not intuitively obvious, even for some trained economists. … The only costs relevant to decision-making are what economists call marginal or incremental cost; that's the change in costs as a result of doing something. That cost should be compared to the expected benefit. "
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/07/economicthinking.htm
"Climate change isn't just about how humans affect the environment — it's a question of adaption, too. One scientist at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., says humans are the most adaptable species on Earth."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12344547
"The team were stunned to find large amounts of methane gas seeping out of the nearby seafloor, and even more surprised to find that the reefs appear to be fuelled by the gas. Specialised bacteria consume the methane, and the sponges suck in the bacteria. ... Johnson believes his team has discovered something new. 'Everybody is feeding off the methane,' he says. 'It's a whole ecosystem that people didn't know about'."
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn12390?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn12390
"In a world of voluntary market arrangements, one seldom uses the word (except when explaining why one did or plan to do something). If you really 'needed' something, rather than saying it you would simply buy it or earn the resources to do so. Need would result in not mere complaining but rather in actions that benefit others as well. When public policy is discussed, though, 'need' is resurrected as a weasel word by whoever wishes to avoid paying for what he wants -- a return to the paternalism of childhood -- and it should therefore raise a warning whenever it is used."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1470&year=2007&month=7
"The deterioration of our infrastructure, a pre-existing condition of which the lethal collapse of the I-35W bridge is a particularly painful symptom, is not a result of inadequate 'public financing,' as many insist. 'Public' -- meaning 'government' -- financing always results in skewed priorities."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/08/imperial-collapse.html
"Forensic scandals have been troublingly common of late, with phony experts, fake results, and incompetent testing recently uncovered in Virginia, Maryland, Kansas, Illinois, and Texas, to name just a few. Courts need to take a more active role in weeding out the Michael Wests of the world before they ever take the witness stand."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121671.html
"The basic economics of supply and demand suggest that legally enforcing a wage-price above the natural market wage is likely to cause unemployment among low-income and entry-level workers: that is, those who most need steady employment and those trying to break into the labor market to begin their working life."
http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=395&wherefrom=email
"If you want to know the meaning of a new policy initiative ... ask yourself, cui bono? The first answer, in this case, is the American armaments industry: those U.S. 'aid' dollars are poured into the coffers of major U.S. military contractors and a host of minor ones, and the money stream flows, in turn, in the direction of certain political candidates. Palms are greased, politicians are bought, and the military-industrial-neocon complex marches on. The War Party is always feeding itself: that's why we have the most bloated military establishment in the world, with 'defense' expenditures exceeding the combined military budgets of the next 30 spenders."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11379
"Warmaking is a state enterprise, regardless of what the state's leaders may claim about its benefits to the people at large. And because the U.S. state has an undeniable history of mendacity, only a fool would take its claims at face value in any event. ... [T]he American people have no greater interest than the preservation of their own liberty, and nothing threatens that liberty so greatly as the U.S. state's engagement in warfare."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2004
"Faith in the State is strong even though the State commits every wrong we are taught not to do. We are taught to respect individuals and their property, and to treat others with courtesy. The State, however, views individuals as members of a collective, as figures in statistical studies, as collateral damage. Does the fact that one person is able to figure the State out as a teenager while it takes another 40 years to see the light make the former more virtuous than the latter? Can we condemn one for not having the education, experience, and perspective of another?"
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2632
"Herbert Spencer ... saw the evolution of society as a conflict between the peaceful voluntary structures of industrial society and the regimentation and bias toward state action inherent in war and militarism. War is a both an activity and frame of mind that values conformity and the acceptance of orders over the primacy of the individual."
http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2007/08/mario-rizzo-on-.html
"Federal officials insist that the Oklahoma City bombing case was solved a decade ago. But a Salt Lake City lawyer in search of his brother's killers has dug up some remarkable clues—on cross-dressing bank robbers, the FBI, and the mysterious third man."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/07/in_search_of_john_doe_no_2.html
"Despite pleas throughout the 1920s by journalist H.L. Mencken and a tiny handful of other sensible people to end Prohibition, Congress gave no hint that it would repeal this folly. Prohibition appeared to be here to stay -- until income-tax revenues nose-dived in the early 1930s. From 1930 to 1931, income-tax revenues fell by 15 percent. In 1932 they fell another 37 percent; 1932 income-tax revenues were 46 percent lower than just two years earlier. And by 1933 they were fully 60 percent lower than in 1930. With no end of the Depression in sight, Washington got anxious for a substitute source of revenue. That source was liquor sales. "
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121674.html
"[T]he Roosevelt Myth is more than a simple error of fact; it has a normative component that makes it one of the most pervasive and harmful in contemporary America. Forty years ago, historian Arthur Ekirch, Jr., wrote that 'the years 1929 to 1941 transformed the traditional values and attitudes of the American people, conditioning them to look, as never before, to the national state as the basic arbiter and fundamental factor in their lives.' ... Amity Shlaes' new history of the Great Depression aims to address these issues."
http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2007_09/sandefur-shlaes.html
"Matt was a great libertarian champion. He did especially fine work for the Second Amendment, for online freedom, against government surveillance of every type, and on many other issues. He had the best libertarian email list of the 1990s: he helped rally and inform folks on many good causes. "
http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/08/01/matthew-gaylor-champion-of-freedom-rip/
"For this president is at once a true believer who sees himself leading a great war against evil, and a shrewd politician who wants to escape the blame for his Iraq disaster. Hence his refusal to cut America's losses -- and the very real possibility that he might roll the war dice yet again, this time in Iran. If the world blows up as a result, that will just prove that he was right about the evil jihadists."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/07/31/faith_war/
"A few years ago, a think-tank in Los Angeles asked me as an historian for my views on the coming war with Iraq. I replied, I was against the war as almost all wars lead to unanticipated and unintended consequences. Often so amazing as to be beyond human imagination at the time they are started. "
http://www.lewrockwell.com/adams/adams13.html
"[S]everal weeks before his farewell address, Washington succinctly stated his nonintervention policy ... That concept of America staying out of the internal business of other countries is long gone. From Guatemala, Iran and Cuba to Chile, Vietnam and Iraq, 'preventive war' and 'regime change' are painted as humanitarian intrusions."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/reiland/s_519545.html
"The president is experiencing approval ratings worse than any in modern history and for a longer period of time. The signs of restlessness are everywhere – from the surprising strength of a fringe antiwar Republican candidate, Ron Paul, to the enduring appeal of a first-term, antiwar senator, Barack Obama, on the left. If there’s an emerging theme, it is a serious rethink of American intransigence and overreach in global affairs."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article2158135.ece
"Until 1828, it was believed that organic substances (i.e., protoplasm) could only be formed under the influence of the vital force in the bodies of animals and plants. Wöhler proved by the artificial preparation of urea from inorganic materials that this view was false. Urea synthesis was integral for biochemistry because it showed that a compound known to be produced only by biological organisms could be produced in a laboratory, under controlled conditions, from inanimate matter."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_W%C3%B6hler
"What the world knows as the psychologically realistic American acting style can be traced back to the enduring influence of Mme. Ouspenskaya."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0653642/bio
"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/Gen-Smedley-Butler.htm
"He was educated in schools in Maryland and Virginia, but he never graduated from high school. " [I like Mila 18, a story of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, best of his writing.]
http://nvnv.essortment.com/leonurisbiogra_rxiq.htm
"As popular culture has moved away from the mid-20th century faith in the establishment – and through the easily lambasted years of Bush I, Clinton and Bush II – the Simpsons has been there to put a lot of it into perspective, indeed serving as a propelling force, urging Americans not just to laugh at their leaders but also to deconstruct leadership itself, to question authority beyond questioning the particular authoritarians."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory142.html
"You'd think -- you'd hope -- that with the Federal Five up to their knees in pig poop on the Widow Harbibi's ranch, Hardyville could settle into a nice, peaceful period. We could maybe take our time to get to know our new neighbors…."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070730.html
"The story is largely a satire about spin, about talking. But whereas Buckley 'chickened out' at the end of his novel, Reitman remains true to its libertarian themes."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/07/thank-you-for-smoking.html
"Jack Kirby may have been The King, but my favorite comic book artist as a kid in the ’60s was, hands down, the great Steve Ditko."
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/08/steve-ditko-revisited.html
"Aasif Mandvi gets his awareness raised at the Live Earth concert with some help from Bon Jovi. "
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=90863
"An emergency coalition of deities from several major world religions is still sorting through the wreckage of a tragic bus accident that claimed 67 lives Friday in the culturally diverse Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/64643
"[A] clandestine team of tireless libertarian anarcho-investihackers, using a variety of conventional and 'alternative' analytical tools, have uncovered similar [to the Gay Bomb] surreptitious government projects. The following data was gleaned from heavily redacted documents obtained through the little-known Freedom of Information About Really Stupid Wasteful Military Boondoggles Act."
http://www.freecannon.com/GayBomb.htm
"Who does this cat think he is to play God? God doesn't poop in a box."
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=90879
"Fiat currencies are subject to much criticism, particularly by Austrians. However, they are not criticized because they cause undesirable economic distortions in and of themselves. Rather, they are criticized because, unlike commodity monies such as gold, they can be created from nothing, so are highly susceptible to artificial expansion and manipulation. This expansion, as the Austrian theory of the business cycle shows us, is the source of economic distortions that lead to unsustainable booms, followed by inevitable busts."
http://www.mises.org/story/2640
"Mises acknowledged that there is much more to know about the world than abstract economic laws and the broad particulars of "the economy." We also need to understand certain details of our present social lives -- and to understand the present we must understand the past. Hence, the importance of studying history."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1479
"Scholars in antiquity began counting the ways that humans have sex, but they weren't so diligent in cataloguing the reasons humans wanted to get into all those positions. Darwin and his successors offered a few explanations of mating strategies — to find better genes, to gain status and resources — but they neglected to produce a Kama Sutra of sexual motivations. Perhaps you didn't lament this omission. Perhaps you thought that the motivations for sex were pretty obvious. Or maybe you never really wanted to know what was going on inside other people's minds, in which case you should stop reading immediately."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/31/healthscience/31sex.php
"There are two basic ways to argue for the objectivity of self-ownership. The first is to argue that there are basic facts of existence that entail self-ownership, and the second is to argue that there are no coherent alternatives to self-ownership. We will explore each approach in turn."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/shahar/shahar1.html
"If you say on the web that Jews are smart, you get furious mail saying no they aren’t, no they aren’t, no...they...are NOT, in a rising scream. This leaves the writers in the interesting position of saying that Jews control publishing, television, the press, retail, wholesale, Hollywood, Wall Street, international banking, the research institutions, the schools, and the universities. But they aren’t very smart. "
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Jews2.shtml
"Aren't public libraries a violation of copyright law as interpreted by the Recording Industry Association of America? I mean, here are people who buy one copy of a book and share it with hundreds and thousands of people, stealing royalties from the authors who otherwise would reap the benefits of selling that book over and over again to those readers."
http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2007/08/free-libraries-and-riaa.html
"Marxists and left-anarchists distrust government, albeit for differing reasons than ourselves. Still, these reasons do not matter, as such. The pertinent point is that Marxists and left-anarchists share an important commonality with libertarians. All that differs in our respective ideologies is the economic nature of our desired societies."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/awuku/awuku3.html
" Fewer businesses are now planning to move to Windows Vista than seven months ago, according to a survey by patch management vendor PatchLink, while more said they will either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/31/Businesses-have-second-thoughts-about-Vista_1.html
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