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Free
Hunter; Taking Responsibility;
Year Of The Slave; Why
the State is Different; 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 Dec.
28, 2003-Jan.
3, 2004.
Happy New Year! This week's
issue spans a year boundary and contains a new section: Deep Thought, for
articles that had previously found their
only home, if any, in the Miscellany section. This week one of
those "deep thoughts" addresses the New Year holiday.
Comments and suggestions on the content and structure of this review
are welcome. To accommodate
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with the subscription information at the bottom intact.
Political
Liberty
Articles showing a
positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.
No president is above the law
by Nat
Hentoff from Decatur
Daily Democrat.
"In the 2-1 decision, the
majority cited a 1971 Non-Detention Act by Congress, which itself was
a reaction to the widely criticized imprisonment of Japanese-Americans
in detention camps during World War II. The act unequivocally states
that, 'No citizen shall be ...
detained by the United States except pursuant to an act of Congress.'
"
Forget the War on Drugs Already
by Doug Bandow
from Cato Institute
"Why government tosses
pot smokers in jail while tolerating use of alcohol and
cigarettes, far more dangerous substances by most measures,
has never been obvious. There is good reason for people to
abstain from all of them; there is no good reason to imprison
them if people do not."
Libertarian Heroes of 2003
by Radley Balko from FOX
News
"I’ve
managed to find a few politicians who did a thing or two
right in 2003. The elected officials below aren’t perfect;
on the whole, some of them probably deserve more scrutiny
than praise. But each in some way took a stand (or several)
to limit the size of government, defend our civil liberties
or otherwise uphold the freedom of Americans at the expense
of the state."
Life in
Amerika
Articles depicting
the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
Herb Curb
by Jacob
Sullum from Reason
"If the FDA
allowed consumers to make this judgment for themselves,
different people would weigh ephedra's risks and
benefits differently, and some might decide to accept
the former in exchange for the latter. To prevent such
chaos, the FDA's experts on what's best for you are
stepping in to forcibly impose their judgment on the
entire nation."
Same As It Ever Was:
Libertarians Battle the Corporate State
by James Ostrowski from
LewRockwell.com
"To
return to the question we libertarians are so often
asked – what are libertarians going to do about the
poor – I hope you can see by now that this is the
wrong question. The better question is, why do you
support a system that is designed to benefit the
wealthy and powerful and which necessarily produces so
many poor and economically marginalized people?"
Some things I wonder
about
by Walter E.
Williams from Townhall.com
"Nobody
is forced to sell me anything at my preferred
price, nor are they forced to buy from me at my
preferred price. If we indeed transact, the only
thing a third party could conclude is that we both
saw ourselves as being better off than our next
best alternative, or why would we have voluntarily
transacted?"
Ordered Liberty
without the State
Some
people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is
an interesting topic.
Government Will Be Abolished
by Brad Edmonds from
LewRockwell.com
"Right
now, 279.something out of 280 million Americans believe it is
in their best interest to allow government to exist – to
follow its orders, pay whatever taxes it demands, and cheer it
on when it kills foreigners or when it kills those of our
countrymen it decides to kill. Americans will change their
minds about all that."
Return to Commonlaw and Myths About libertarianism
by Linda Haley from
MensNewsDaily.com
"This
view believes in commonlaw, restitution in cases of breach
of commonlaw, and a free market (within the confines of
commonlaw.) The closest we come in common modern parlance
is libertarian, and I find myself often in the
Libertarian/libertarian camp in most political discussions...."
Why the
State Is Different
by
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises
Institute
"A common
accusation against libertarianism is that we are
unnaturally obsessed with tracing social and economic
problems to the state, and, in doing so, we
oversimplify the world. If you let the people who say
this keep talking, they will explain to you why the
state is not all bad, that some of its actions yield
positive results and, in any case, the state should
not always be singled out as some sort of grave evil."
Spreading Decentralism
Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of
power.
Federalism Wins
by Randy E.
Barnett from Cato Institute
"In a single
landmark opinion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has
struck a blow both for those people whose suffering
requires them to use medical cannabis and for the
constitutional principle of federalism."
Criminals Owe
Debt to Victims, Not Society
by Wendy McElroy
from ifeminists.net
"...I would like to challenge a basic
concept in the law. Namely, that criminals owe a
debt to society. I believe an individual who
commits a crime owes a debt -- that is,
restitution -- to the individual who has been
harmed."
Taking Responsibility
by Mark Davis from LewRockwell.com
"An
unexpected thing happened in this process of
seceding from the system....
My son blossomed almost immediately and
he has excelled in his studies. The focus on
and desire for learning has increased
dramatically and he has learned to seek out
knowledge and truth by his own initiative."
The
New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
Israelis against Sharon policies
are right
by John Nichols from
The Capital Times
"By
continuing to support Sharon's folly, the United
States crosses that border, and in so doing
encourages what some of the most respected members
of the Israeli military appropriately characterize
as 'missions
of oppression.'
"
Resolutions
by Bill Bonner from
LewRockwell.com
"Americans
look in the mirror this New Year's and like what
they see. They think they see superior men, with a
superior system...men with such big feet they will
not fall into life's pits and traps...men who know
how to get rich and how to run the world."
Year
Of The
Liars
by Justin
Raimondo from Antiwar.com
"Truth,
falsehood, it's all the same to this White
House. Denying everything, conceding nothing,
when caught in a lie they brush it off as
irrelevant. This kind of brazen arrogance,
combined with such power, has no real
precedent in world history: not even the
maddest of the Roman emperors, who claimed to
be divine, exhibited such a lordly disdain for
truth."
Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians
fomenting war.
Does
God Want Bush
Re-elected?
by Doug Newman
from Fount
of Truth
"Time
and again I hear that we must stand behind
him because, well, he’s a Christian. I have
been told more than once that because I do
not support GWB, I am ipso facto not
a Christian."
The George Who
Lost America, Redux
by Karen
Kwiatkowski from LewRockwell.com
"Can
George, Dick and Karl Rove turn this tide?
I don’t think so. The federal ship of
largesse, sloth, waste and arrogance is
already far from port. Its cheerful crew
guzzles free drinks and slaps backs,
steaming under full power in the opposite
direction of the solid rock of American
tradition and Constitutional values."
What's Wrong With Buying
Votes?
by John
Samples
from Cato Institute
"You
can be sure that each member of Congress
lets his or her constituents know who
brought home the bacon. We might like to
think this is 'politics
as usual,'
but it looks a lot like Congress is buying
votes with public money. In fact, they
are."
Spontaneous Order
Articles
showing decentralized successes.
Arm the Pilots
by John R.
Lott, Jr. from
LewRockwell.com
"There are many concerns that have been raised about
letting marshals or pilots carry guns, but armed pilots actually
have a much easier job than air marshals. An armed pilot only
needs to concern himself with the people trying to force their
way into the cockpit."
Is Science Behind
the Times?
by Patrick J.
Michaels from Cato Institute
"This change in
emissions is reflected in changes in the growth rate of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, which stabilized nearly 30 years
ago. That's right. While all scientists have glibly assumed an
exponential increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, that
stopped, in the statistical sense, three decades ago."
Is Los Angeles the Next Manaus?
by James Pinkerton from
Tech
Central Station
"Such
sudden wealth droughts have happened in the past;
technological change, for example, forced those who once
captained such industries as whaling, men's hats, and
telegrams to find new ways to earn a living. And of course,
for awhile, Manaus was mostly
a ghost town, before it made a modest comeback as a hub for
tourism."
Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles
showing centrally planned disasters.
A toast to the holiday?
by Radley
Balko from Washington
Times
"Despite the grand
and complete failure that Prohibition was, it's becoming
increasingly clear this holiday season that there are a
growing number of Scrooges out there who refuse to learn
the lessons of history. "
The Demand for
Order and the Birth of Modern Policing
by Kristian
Williams from Monthly
Review
"Despite its
initial plausibility, the idea that the police were
invented in response to an epidemic of crime is, to be
blunt, exactly wrong. ...
It assumes that 'when
crime reaches a certain level, the "natural"
social response is to create a uniformed police force.
This, of course, is not an explanation but an assertion
of a natural law for which there is little evidence.'
”
Ride the
Death Spiral
by Julian Sanchez from Reason
"New
benefits may be debated when first introduced, but ...become
near impossible to eliminate once in place. ...
But thanks to the corporate fictions we call 'countries,'
politicians can dodge the bullet--for
a while--via
rising debt."
War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in
society.
George W. Bush: Anti-Globalist
by Jim
Lobe
from LewRockwell.com
"The
administration's plans to privatize the Iraqi economy
while awarding lucrative rebuilding contracts to US
companies also flew in the face of the interests of a
global capitalist system supposedly based on
transparency and openness."
Life
During Wartime
by
Brian Doherty from Reason
"Still, even
the most imaginatively fearful can't help but notice
that if our nation is indeed crawling with al Queda
sleeper agents with the desire and ability to pull
off murderous assaults on our way of life, they are
sleeping suspiciously soundly."
The
Greatest Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
by Ivan Eland from The
Independent Institute
and Antiwar.com
"Giving
those bureaucracies the benefit of the doubt,
specific threats to certain places in the country
may have existed....
But why make all 285 million Americans fearful just
to increase security in a few 'threatened'
cities."
Bits of History
The Past seen with a
fresh look.
How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People
by Jim
Powell from Cato Institute
"Mounting
evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were
principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has
been developed by dozens of economists -- including
two Nobel Prize winners -- at Brown, Columbia,
Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the University of
California (Berkeley) and University of Chicago,
among other universities."
Remembering Karl Hess
by
Gary Galles from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"2003 was
the 80th anniversary of the birth of
Karl Hess, a beloved libertarian and public
intellectual who was involved in most of the
political debates from the 1960s until his death
in 1994."
'The Weekly Standard' Feigns Objectivity
by Thomas J.
DiLorenzo from LewRockwell.com
"He [Lincoln]
promised to support Southern slavery
through the Fugitive Slave Act, supported a
constitutional amendment to assure that Southern
slavery would have existed long past his own
lifetime, advocated 'colonization'
or deportation of blacks, denied that blacks
should ever be given basic citizenship rights,
etc. "
War and Peace
Articles showing the
nature of War.
Memoirs of a 'Racketeer
for Capitalism'
by Ralph Nader from
CommonDreams.org
"The
famous journalist, Lowell Thomas, saw fit to
introduce General Butler's book 'War
is a Racket' for
a Reader's Digest condensation. The General was no
pacifist when it came to defending the U.S.A. He
just didn't like bullies and corporate greed
sending American soldiers abroad to slaughter or
be slaughtered."
Draft
the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone
by
Paul Jacob from Townhall.com
"Furthermore,
the correct principle is the one underlying the
current All-Volunteer Force: Free men and women
will defend their freedom. And, additionally,
that precisely such a life and death decision
should not be compelled by the government in the
name of 'shared
sacrifice,'
but made from one’s own conscience."
The War Prayer
by Mark
Twain from Antiwar.com
"An aged stranger entered and moved with
slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his
eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body
clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his
head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy
cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face
unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness."
Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out
from the crowd.
Writer - Stan
Lee : Dec. 28, 1922
by Frank
Houston from Salon.com
"Lee
is a modern myth-maker. Unlike Tolkien,
his mythology exists in an imagined
present. Unlike Lucas, his characters are
deep and existential. Lee's vision is at
least as humanistic as it is magical...."
Actress -
Jo Van Fleet : Dec. 30, 1919
from The
Voyager Files
"...[A]s
Arletta, the ailing mother of Cool
Hand Luke, propped up with pillows
and chain smoking in the back of the ute,
muttering 'Ya
know, sometimes, I wish that people was
like dawgs, Luke'
or as the wizened matriach refusing to
leave her island home in 'Wild
River'
" - Jo Van Fleet was a great acting
talent.
Her portrayal in "Wild River"
is one of my all-time movie favorites.
Philosopher
- Marcus Tullius Cicero : Jan. 3, 106 BC
by Edward
Clayton from Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"To
prepare for this career, he studied
jurisprudence, rhetoric, and philosophy.
When he felt he was ready, he began
taking part in legal cases."
Culcha'
Books, Movies,
TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.
I Have a Dream
by Lady Liberty from Sierra
Times
"Perhaps
so many people are caught up in the fate of Middle
Earth because they recognize, even if only
subconsciously, some kind of a parallel to our own
reality. After all, there most certainly is
something bad in a not-so-distant place, something
that is seeking to curtail more more and more of
our freedoms, something that is gaining more power
and authority over all of us almost daily."
Letter to a Critic
by Ronald F.
Maxwell from LewRockwell.com
"It is hard to miss the extreme hostility
that some critics (which based on your latest
comments now include yourself) have shown
towards this film. It goes beyond
movie-reviewing. It's as if the film hit a raw
nerve or scraped at an open wound."
The Deerslayer, the Bootmaker, and
the Violin Player
by Scott McPherson
from The Future of Freedom Foundation
A fable about the division of labor and
voluntary contracts as opposed to central
planning and coercion, in two parts.
Part One -
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0309f.asp
Part Two -
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0310d.asp
The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons,
parodies, food, popular music
and other things to amuse.
2003:
A Dave odyssey
by Dave
Barry from The
Miami Herald
"It
was the Year of the Troubling Question."
Dave Barry's year in review for 2003. It is several
web pages linked together, starting with the following
page.
What Ever Happened To
Peace On Earth
by Willie
Nelson from The Austin American-Statesman
Willie writes a new antiwar protest song.
America's Obese
Children
from The
Onion
And
what is Congress doing to "solve" the problem?
Deep Thought
Scientific
and scholarly studies, philosophical essays,
in-depth and longer articles.
Bridging the 'two cultures'
by
Mark
Lythgoe
from spiked
From the moment we are born
(and sometimes before) we
place our blind faith in the
scientific method. Whether
it's brushing your teeth or
fastening your seatbelt ready
for a long-haul flight, you
trust in the scientific
method.
The Dogmatic Determinism of
Daniel Dennett
by Eyal Mozes from Navigator
"Dennett defends a
particular form of
determinism known as
compatibilism. This is
the view that the concept of
free will should be
redefined so that it no
longer involves a free
choice among alternatives
and can thus be made
compatible with the
mechanist/reductionist model
of the universe."
What is
the Meaning of New Year's?
by Scott McConnell
from Capitalism
Magazine
"On New Year's Day
many people accept, often
more implicitly than
explicitly, that happiness
comes from the achievement
of values. That is why you
resolve to be healthier,
more ambitious, more
confident. You want to enjoy
that sense of purpose,
accomplishment and pleasure
that one feels when
achieving values."
Miscellany
Articles not
easily classified.
2004 –
Year of the Slave
from What
Really Happened
"You are a
slave. I know that’s not what you want to hear as you
hoist your New Year’s champagne, but it is the
unpleasant truth that we all face going into 2004."
50 Ways to Leave Leviathan
by The
Hunter from Doing
Freedom
"Ever
since the Bush administration decided that a more 'compassionate'
updated form of national socialism was a better
solution to the problem of terrorism than the
tradition of freedom and liberty that is the
birthright of all Real Americans, a lot of freedom
lovers have been acting demoralized and bewildered."
Free Hunter:
Fight Ohio's Gun-Grabbing Goons
by Don
Lobo Tiggre & Sunni Maravillosa from Liberty Round
Table
"...[Y]ou
may have read some of his essays in the Sierra
Times, The Price of Liberty, Doing Freedom!
[TE: Like the one directly above], or a
number of other publications. Or you might have met
him at a Gun Rights Policy Conference, Second
Amendment Sisters event, or science fiction
convention. ...
And now Hunter is in trouble. "
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