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Learning from Wood;
The State: A
Reductio ad Absurdum; The
Reactive State;
Big Fish; 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 Nov. 28 - Dec. 4, 2004. Table of Contents: (Click on the name to go to that section) Political Liberty, Life in Amerika, Ordered Liberty without the State;
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Articles showing a
positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.
Use It or Lose It
by Charley Reese from LewRockwell.com
"Many people in this country are powerless.
They don't have much money. They don't have influential friends. And
quite often, because they are powerless, they suffer injustice. What a
wonderful country this would be if the powerless knew they were not
alone, if they knew that there are other Americans willing to use their
voices and their resources to protect them from injustice."
Egalitarianism: The Holy Grail of
Socialism
by weebies from Strike The Root
"Nature creates us as individuals,
all with different talents, characteristics, and desires. All it
can mean is that all people have equal liberty, and an
individual should have the complete freedom to choose how he or
she wants to live. Egalitarianism is actually at odds with this
concept, and would try to force individuals to accept the
dictates of the masses."
Only net tax payers should be allowed to vote
by Vin Suprynowicz from Las Vegas
Review-Journal
"Imagine how quickly the
welfare-police state would collapse, if only those who could
prove they were net tax payers were allowed to vote.
(Remember: If you pay $8,000 per year in taxes, but the
government spends $10,000 per year schooling your children,
you're a net tax recipient.)"
Articles depicting
the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
The Drug War Toll Mounts
by Radley Balko from Cato
Institute
"Our prison population has
increased by 400 percent since 1980, while the general
population has increased just 20 percent. America also now has
the highest incarceration rate in the world -- 732 of every
100,000 citizens are behind bars."
"The Tasteless Screeners Awards"
by Garry Reed from the Loose
Cannon Libertarian.
"While other libertarians
expressed outrage at this wanton waste of taxpayer's
money, this humble columnist went undercover, posing as a
$90,000 a year Cosmetics Case Inspection Specialist, to
bring you the following report. (All award nominees, it
turns out, appeared in news articles easily accessible on
the Internet.)"
Successful at Incompetence
-- The Bush Delusions
by Paul Craig Roberts from
CounterPunch
"During Bush's first term,
the value of the US dollar declined dramatically in
relation to other traded currencies. The extraordinary
diminution in the dollar's exchange value threatens its
role as the world's reserve currency. If the dollar
loses its role as reserve currency, there will be
catastrophic consequences for US living standards and
superpower status."
Some people
say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an
interesting topic.
by Anthony Gregory
from Strike The Root
"Government is an
unnecessary evil. The only reason most people think it is
necessary or good at all is because they have been bamboozled --
by government schools, government-regulated media, and
government court intellectuals."
Love and Libertarians
by Catfarmer from The Price of
Liberty
"Libertarians often appear to
seek political power at the risk of losing people who
despise it by focusing on the political process, and
alienating those who despise that process. The state offers
no character model of the prodigal child who grows beyond
the parental home to become an independent person, no model
of brotherly love."
Gambling
by Robert Klassen from
LewRockwell.com
"Political governments enter
the picture as thieves on the trade routes, extorting
their cut at the point of a gun, and forcing the item's
price up. Meanwhile their central bank is trying to
manipulate the currency exchange rate to load the dice
in their favor."
Articles
demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com
"I liken the
modern American state to a chicken that has just been
beheaded. In a final burst of energy, it flaps around wildly
and noisily in a futile resistance to its terminal state. It
makes a bloody mess of anything with which it comes into
contact. But its fate has already been determined."
The East Turned Upside
Down
by Jesse Walker from
Reason
"Still, the very
experience of overthrowing a government this way --
of building independent institutions, diffusing
power through civil society, and learning first-hand
that it's possible to say no to authority --
unleashes something that's hard for any politician
to control."
Rethinking
Secession
by Alan Bock from
Antiwar.com
"I think it would be
interesting to consider what could turn out to
be a sidelight in the Ukraine controversy -- the
idea of splitting Ukraine through secession or a
rough equivalent in granting virtual autonomy to
areas…."
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
State-Run Schools: The New Caesaropapism
by Lawrence Ludlow from
The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Once we realize that
state-run schools create and reinforce the habits of
complacency and conformity -- while instilling only
the most rudimentary skills as a way to justify their
existence -- we can understand why a cult-like
obedience to the state is so firmly entrenched and why
it is so dangerous."
Worse Than Ashcroft
by Nat Hentoff from The
Village Voice
"Alberto Gonzales,
moreover, will not in the least disturb John
Aschroft's beloved USA Patriot Act, because Gonzales
helped write it, and he wholly agrees with his
patron, the president, that nothing in it should be
changed despite the act's 'sunset clause' that
allows Congress to review sections of the act by
December 2005."
Calling Gen.
Abizaid
by David H.
Hackworth from WorldNetDaily.com
"Sadly, most of our
gold-braided elite take advantage of their
senior rank to carve out max perks for
themselves, giving new meaning to the old saw
RHIP -- Rank Has Its Privileges."
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
Feeding the
Iraq Moloch
by Ilana Mercer
from Antiwar.com
"Let's leave aside
(for the moment) the question of whether the
invasion of Iraq was unjust and unattainable
or merely mistaken and misguided. Why must we
continue to feed this false idol with more
lives? What does this make us? Worshippers of
Moloch or mere fools?"
Lie Then
Escalate -- More Casualties, More Troops
by Dave
Lindorff from CounterPunch
"If we'd had a
peace candidate running against the
president, all of this lying would have come
out, and voters would have had an honest
choice. Instead, we had a Democratic
presidential candidate who was unable to
really challenge the president on the war
because he actually supported it, and wanted
to escalate the fighting himself with an
additional 40,000 troops."
No More Moore
-- The DLC joins the witch-hunt.
by Matt Taibbi
from New York Press
"It's one thing
to avoid public appearances with a Michael
Moore, and to accept his support only
tacitly. But it's another thing entirely to
openly denounce him as anti-American, which
is what Al From did last week."
Articles
showing decentralized successes.
Do You Know the Way to...Liberty?
by Jim Davies from
Strike The Root
"The Plan's name might
be 'Liberty in Our Lifetime' or, more intriguing and more
descriptive, '1 by 1, by 2027,' but the essence is to
Educate and Replicate. Let me explain. I am convinced
that every human being has the ability to reason; that all are in
that sense rational. It seems self-evident;
animals work on hard-wired instinct, we work on brain-power. It's
a distinguishing characteristic of homo sapiens."
Playground
Economics
by John Hood from The Foundation
for Economic Education
"The kids made their own decisions
based on their own subjective preferences. Meanwhile, the
would-be rock monopolist saw his scheme fail because there was
no authority to grant him special favors.... And no one had to
mandate that the kids use a single form of currency; after some
initial barter, they settled on sticks as the denominator of
value because they were the easiest to count and exchange."
Phase Out
Social Security
by Ari Armstrong from The Colorado
Freedom Report
"President Bush's plan should not be
adopted, because it would impose mandatory, regulated accounts.
The coercive investments would be subject to political power
plays, political correctness, and interest-group warfare."
Articles
showing centrally planned disasters.
The New Austerity
by David Boaz
from Cato Institute
"This
pork-barreling is nothing new, of course. Not counting
interest payments, federal spending rose 29 percent in three
years. Only Lyndon Johnson ever spent taxpayers' dollars
faster than Bush's first three budgets. Every year the
Republican Congress spent more money than the president
requested, but Bush didn't veto a single appropriations
bill. But don't look across the aisle to the Democrats for
fiscal sanity."
Guns, Drugs and Mucho Dinero
by Emiliano Antunez from
Strike The Root
"Confiscation of private
property without due process is something we imagine only
happens to people living under Third World dictators. Yet
right here in the United States, thousands of Americans
have had their cars, boats, planes, real property and cash
confiscated without the benefit of a trial. Laws spawned
by the War on Drugs like Zero Tolerance trample the most
basic of rights and tilt the balance of power in the
government's favor. The confiscated items are sold and the
proceeds are mostly kept by the agencies that confiscate
them, as an incentive (to confiscate more) or reward."
When Force Masquerades as
Social Science
by Sheldon Richman from The
Future of Freedom Foundation
"As I say, the professional
conservationists suspect that our idea of saving
energy is different from theirs. They might have set out
to persuade us that they are right and we are wrong, but
that strategy always entails a possibility they cannot
abide: failure. Failure is not an option. So
force is their only recourse. Which means government."
War is the ultimate State intervention in
society.
by Craig
Urda Russell from Endervidualism
"The nature
of heating with wood differs so much from the nature of
heating with other fuels that I’ve been learning a
number of things about technology, about time and
patience, and about the nature of our relationship with
nature and the world."
Propagandamercial: Having
the Freedom to Endure The War On Terrorism
by Keith Stehman Shugarts
from anti-state.com
"Now you have the
opportunity to support the War on Terrorism. In a
short time, look what we have been able to do! We've
totally disarmed all air travelers, federalized
airport security, allowed greater access to your
private emails and correspondence in the name of
security, covered the Nipples of Justice, spread our
unconstitutional military out across the globe, and
denied trials to hundreds of individuals in the name
of safety."
The Roving Hands Of
Airport Insecurity
by David Brownlow from
NewsWithViews.com
"But the purpose of these
unconstitutional searches has nothing to do with
catching the bad guys. As with nearly every other
aspect of 'homeland security,' this latest attack on
our rights is intended to keep us fearful and easier
to control."
The Past seen with a
fresh look.
The Common School
Movement and Compulsory Education
by Barry
Dean Simpson from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Not long
after the common school movement began, a new movement
appeared. This new movement called for compulsory
attendance. Massachusetts passed a compulsory
education law in 1852, although the Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay settlements had compulsory laws in
the seventeenth century. The New England colonies
were the first to pass such laws and then the movement
spread westward and south. By the time Mississippi
adopted it in 1918, every state in the Nation had
ratified compulsion."
Freedom's forgotten man
by Bill Steigerwald &
Sheldon Richman from pittsburghlive.com
"Albert J. Nock ... gets
to some of the most basic principles that concern
the issues of power versus liberty. He was heavily
influenced by the German sociologist Franz
Oppenheimer, who wrote a book called 'The State.'
What Nock picked up from that is that there are two
ways to organize society, what he called 'the
political means' and 'the economic means'."
The Bill of Rights:
Antipathy to Militarism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Did the antipathy
against standing armies mean that our ancestors were
pacifists? On the contrary! After all, don’t forget
that they had only recently won a violent war
against their own government and its enormous and
powerful standing army. In their minds, the military
bedrock of a free society lay not in an enormous
standing army but rather in the concept of the
citizen-soldier -- the person in ordinary life in
civil society who is well-armed and well-trained in
the use of weapons and who is always ready in times
of deepest peril to come to the aid of his country
-- but only to defend against invasion and not to go
overseas to wage wars of aggression or wars of
'liberation'."
Articles showing the
nature of War.
Failure after Falluja?
by Ivan
Eland from The Independent Institute
"The
guerillas realize something that the Bush
administration can't seem to grasp: The real battle
for 'hearts and minds' is being fought not only in
Falluja, Mosul, Samarra, and Baghdad, but in Fargo,
Mobile, Seattle, and Baltimore. And public opinion
polls show that the administration seems to be
losing the political battle in both Iraq and at
home."
Wars And Their
Aftermath -- Things Seldom Spoken Of
by
Fred Reed from FredOnEverything
"No one in the
mysteriously named 'elite'
gives a damn about some kid from a town in
Tennessee that has one gas station and a beer hall
with a stuffed buck’s head. Such a kid is a
redneck at best, pretty much from another planet,
and certainly not someone you would let your
daughter date. If conscription came back, and
college students with rich parents learned to live
in fear of The Envelope, riots would blossom as
before. Now Yale can rest easy. Thank God for
throwaway people."
War as a False
Religion
by Bob Wallace from
LewRockwell.com
"In short, war can
give meaning and community -- and an intoxicating
power -- to some people's lives. That makes it a
religion, a false one based on hubris and being
drunk with power. Power does more than just
corrupt; it intoxicates."
Some people stand out
from the crowd.
Writer --
Louisa May Alcott : Nov. 29, 1832
from
louisamayalcott.org
"When Louisa was
35 years old, her publisher Thomas Niles in
Boston asked her to write 'a book for
girls.' ... The novel ['Little Women'] is
based on Louisa and her sisters' coming of
age and is set in Civil War New England. Jo
March was the first American juvenile
heroine to act from her own individuality; a
living, breathing person rather than the
idealized stereotype then prevalent in
children's fiction."
Economic
Journalist -- Henry Hazlitt : Nov. 28, 1894
by Bettina
Bien Greaves from The Freeman: Ideas on
Liberty (FEE)
"[H]e was easy
to approach; his manner was pleasant, not
aloof or overbearing. ... He was modest,
always thoughtful of others, and one of
the kindest and most gracious men I have
known. His friends called him Harry, and
in time I too came to call him Harry. I
was proud to have him as a friend."
Writer/Scholar -- C. S. Lewis : Nov. 29, 1898
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"C. S. Lewis,
was an author and scholar. He was born in
Belfast, Ireland. He adopted the name
'Jack,' which is how he was known to his
friends and acquaintances. He is known for
his work on medieval literature and for
his Christian apologetics and fiction,
especially 'The Chronicles of Narnia'."
Books, Movies, TV,
Media, Music, poetry, etc.
Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"The
whole movie is a saga composed of many mythic
stories as pieces. Fantasy and wonder are Tim
Burton's specialties and he doesn't disappoint with
this wonderful and fantastic movie. The movie is
billed as 'An adventure as big as life itself.'
Indeed, that is Edward Bloom's sense of life: it is
a wondrous adventure to be lived to its fullest. "
Dead Men Hawk Some
Wares
by Jeff Taylor from
Reason
"Products themselves
have the star power today, like the Hummer ad that
presents the butt-ugly truck as an ever-enveloping
mandala of joy and happiness, not unlike the
orgasmic Thickburger."
The Man Without A
Hobby -- Adventures of a Gregarious Egoist
by Tibor R. Machan
from Laissez Faire Books
"It seems Machan has
had dealings with almost every major libertarian
of his time. In addition to Ayn Rand, there`s
Nathaniel Branden, Leonard Peikoff, Robert Hessen,
Roy A. Childs, Jr., David Norton, Bob Poole,
Murray Rothbard, Ralph Raico, Henry Veatch, Milton
Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and on and
on."
Humor, satire, cartoons,
parodies, food, popular music
and other things to amuse.
Iraq Adopts Terror Alert
System
from The Onion
"The country's current
threat level is elevated, or Code Yellow-Orange.
Citizens living in towns with populations of 1,500 or
more should prepare for the smoke of burning vehicles to
obscure the sun and expect hostages to be tortured for
several days before being killed."
Thanks-for-Nothing Turkey
by Mark Fiore from The
Village Voice
So much to be thankful
for!
In Tearful Resignation,
Ridge Admits He Is Color Blind -- Choosing Terror Alerts
Was 'A Living Hell'
by Andy Borowitz from
Borowitz Report
"'For the last two years,
I have lived in mortal fear that my eeny-meeny-miny-mo
system of choosing alert levels would eventually come
to light,' he confessed."
Scientific
and scholarly studies, philosophical essays,
in-depth and longer articles.
Anarchism & Justice - Part I -- I.
Preface
by
R.A. Childs, Jr. from The Last
Ditch
"[I]n
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries, for the
first time in mankind's history,
there arose a number of
revolutionary movements designed
to overthrow the 'Old Order,' to
abolish the society of status
and replace it with the society
of contract, to establish a
society of liberty, free trade
and individualism, where only
stagnant regimes had existed
before. At the heart of these
revolutionary movements was the
ideology of classical
liberalism, the ancestor of
libertarianism."
The Logic of Economic Law
by Marcus Verhaegh from Ludwig
von Mises Institute
"Hence, for Kant, laws about
economic value generally have
to be given by what Kant calls
'reflective judgment': this is
a type of judgment that does
not aim at describing what is
the case in nature, but rather
lays out how we humans are to
think about nature and the
things in nature -- such as
people. Thus we get a more
'hermeneutical' approach in
social science than we find in
natural science: a greater
sense of issues of meaning and
interpretation is required,
since the concern in social
science should be with how
phenomena relate to the human
viewpoint, rather than with
the nature of things as spatio-temporal
objects."
Palestinian Girl, Interrupted --
How military morality makes bad
apples of us all
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst from
Antiwar.com
"A
little girl running in fear
from armed men is killed in
cold blood. A wounded man is
killed at point-blank range.
Families who panic at
roadblocks or don't understand
they're supposed to stop are
pumped full of bullets --
babies, grannies, and all. The
world is left gasping, unable
to speak, because it is clear
to us now: No level of
killing will ever qualify as a
war crime in cultures
where military values override
our moral values."
Articles not
easily classified.
Who Is Being 'Unserious'
on the Terror War?
by Radley Balko from Tech
Central Station
"Cato's experts have made
it quite clear that those who perpetuate attacks
against the U.S. should be held accountable with
retaliation that is swift, severe, and thorough, and
that foreign governments who stand in the way of such
retaliation should also be held accountable. But
unless we're prepared to annihilate the entire Arab
world, it would be foolish not to at last have a look
at the factors that may have motivated 9/11, and, if
possible, to ameliorate those factors where we can."
Education
by Ron Beatty from
The Libertarian Enterprise
"How many school
administrators are petty tyrants, abusing their
authority and office? For example, refusing to
allow a teacher to give children a copy of the
Declaration of Independence, because it mentions
god? Or perhaps suspending a high spirited young
girl for the stated reason that she does
cartwheels?"
Congressional &
Presidential Irresponsibility
by Harry Browne from
HarryBrowne.org
"I heard one
Congressman say that the provision was inserted
into the bill by mistake. How does that happen?
Did some Congressional staffer intend to put the
provision in his doctoral thesis and wrote it into
the spending bill by mistake? Or does a provision
like that have legs, and can wander into a bill if
someone mistakenly leaves the door open?"
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