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"Libertarians should never succumb to the egalitarian idea of justice that says everyone should get screwed equally. That's a concept of collectivism. Libertarians demand that everyone's rights be protected equally. Thievery through eminent domain is still thievery whether it's your house or David Souter's that's being stolen."
http://www.freecannon.com/LostPrinciplesHotel.htm
"Redistricting ballot initiatives are being pushed in California, Florida and at least six other states. These are vital reforms. I can't think of a better way to bring more moderate and responsible voices into politics than for there to be real races in the general election. Partisan gerrymandering has redirected nearly all the 'contest' part of contested elections to the primary, where candidates compete to appeal to the most extreme party loyalists."
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/31/Columns/Giving_elections_mean.shtml
"Twenty-five states and hundreds of localities are working to enact laws against this type of takings. Property owners became concerned and pushed for legislation, which they are getting. Imagine that! But this is precisely how the system is supposed to work."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/kelo-calamity.html
"In a free society, each person is his own private property; I own myself and you own yourself. ... The fact of self-ownership also helps explain why theft is immoral. In order for self-ownership to be meaningful, a person must have ownership rights to what he produces or earns. A good working description of slavery is that it is a condition where a person does not own what he produces. What he produces belongs to someone else. Therefore, if someone steals my computer, he's violated my ownership rights to my computer, which I earned through my labor, and therefore my human or civil rights to keep what I produce."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050803.shtml
"Mrs. D's life is ruined, but there are a couple bright spots for the rest of us. First, we need not fear that the dreaded hallmark of dictatorships, the secret trial, will trouble us in America. Why bother when citizens eagerly convict in open court those defending themselves against the government's debauchery?"
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=7079
"Federal FOIA officers violate the law on a regular basis. Yet the Justice Department has never sought criminal sanctions against federal employees who violate Americans' right to know how the government is using its power over them."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0504c.asp
"I have none of the above qualifiers for John Roberts Jr., and will wait for the hearings to see whether my questions are asked -- and how they are answered. Mine will begin with how deferential does he believe the Supreme Court should be to presidential powers in a time of war, based on his recent District of Columbia Circuit Court agreement in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, denying constitutional protections, especially due process, to detainees at Guantanamo Bay."
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff072805.asp
"The police are terrible at hearts-and-minds just as soldiers are, and for the same reasons: They are incorrigibly authoritarian, clean-cut blue-collar believers in personal responsibility and self-discipline who find themselves shepherding anarchistic, often ethnically disparate people who don't care about anything the cops believe. Drill instructors and hippies. The two come to hate each other."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/CBP.shtml
"In anarchy, people would demand judicial services for all the reasons that people desire law itself: They would want to satisfy their desire for abstract justice, but they would also want to foster predictable business relationships, as well as enjoy a good reputation among their neighbors."
http://www.mises.org/story/1874
"The State imposes, controls, robs, kills and invades, all of which is wrong. These actions are unhealthy for the souls of the citizens. They are also very costly. But I think we may not fully understand the long-term dynamic of some of these costs. Costly social programs, once begun, go on and on and on. War can last generations, even after it supposedly has officially ended."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff9.html
"If Libertarian Leftism (i.e., radical Rothbardianism, New Libertarianism, agorism) is to ever recapture the Left from a dying (some would say dead) Marxism, it has to hammer out a class theory upon which to build a new movement. With such a theory, we can finally sweep Marxism into the 'dustbin of history' and, as SEK3 once wrote, 'the revolutionary agorist cadre (New Libertarians) will supplant neo-Marxists in the new movements and institutions of present and future Left currents and will reduce to vestigial status or annihilate hopelessly Marxist-controlled institutions of the past'."
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/08/building-new-class-theory.html
"The 'best available options' are heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, by such means as land theft and draconian labor policies; and the corporations that use sweatshop labor tend to gravitate toward such authoritarian regimes, and often have incestuously close relations with those governments."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/08/vulgar-libertarianism-watch-part-10-im.html
"The institutional order is, perhaps, most threatened by what could be called a 'big bang' in the information revolution reignited by Gutenberg. The Internet, cell-phones, iPods, websites and blogsites, are just the more recent tools available not only to institutions, but to individuals desirous of communicating directly with tens of thousands at a time. In these new technologies and systems lie the means by which the vertical is collapsing into the horizontal."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer115.html
"Why do it? Because it's a howling hoot. Because learning to master virtually any shooting skill makes people more self-confident and capable. Because it's a first-class fireworks display (as you see when night falls on the happy machine gunners). And because these are, after all, real-live military weapons in the hands of American civilians -- where they belong."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050801.html
"[T]he new service has to keep us safe without pushing America further toward Big Brother, the all-powerful, centralized, national security state represented by the Department of Homeland Security, the 'PATRIOT Act' and much else coming out of Washington. So what should this new 4GW armed service be? The answer of our working group at the symposium was, 'a militia'."
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=6850
"When we started homeschooling, I soon found, to my great surprise, that my son was rapidly learning things on his own that I couldn't have dreamed of. I had thought I'd be a good teacher, what I hadn't realized was that he would be his own best teacher. ... And that's the way it works - our minds learn easily from our natural inner pursuit of knowledge."
http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/13-4article5.htm
"About two weeks ago, the FBI admitted in federal court to collecting thousands of documents on non-violent activist groups, including the ACLU, Greenpeace and various antiwar organizations. The ACLU, suing under the Freedom of Information Act, requested to see its files, but the FBI insists it cannot turn over its 1,173 pages of documentation on the ACLU for another eight or more months, as it needs that time to 'process' them."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1544
"'Our first reaction is that this is a clear case of DEA-instigated political persecution,' said BCMP spokesman Kirk Tousaw. 'Marc is the leader of the BCMP, and anyone familiar with cannabis policy reform knows who he is. Every dime that has come through his hands goes back into his activism, and the DEA decided it was time to shut him up'."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/398/marcemery.shtml
"According to economic theory, monopoly profits are higher than competitive profits. Kelo becomes a way to get around anti-trust laws and increase concentration in the name of public benefit. Libertarians might be tempted to welcome the demise of anti-trust, as they see it as government intrusion, but not if they consider Kelo's public choice aspects. Kelo opens up new channels of rent-seeking that enhance government power."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08052005.html
"Many are obviously clinging to the false hope that there is some government absurdity yet to occur that will get the “80 million gun owners” riled up enough to fight back. However, that does not appear to be very likely. We have moved the line in the sand so many times our occupiers just laugh at us." Too many "WEs" but still an interesting article.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Brownlow/david44.htm
"In Iraq, like everywhere else, if things don't add up, it is safe to assume that politics is involved. Although the insurgency in recent months has worsened, Gen. George W. Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, astonishingly claims that security in Iraq has improved and that substantial U.S. troop withdrawals are possible by as early as next spring. What gives? The congressional elections in 2006."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1542
"The party routinely refuses compliance with FOIA requests, as well as requests from the Inspector General and the General Accounting Office. It lied and continues to lie outrageously with regard to the Iraq war. It has convinced the country and even themselves that there is something immensely clever, and even principled, about the way that it lies, cheats and bends laws and rules to get what it wants."
http://nypress.com/18/31/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
"Despite a Republican president, last year the number of pages of the Federal Register hit a new high, up 6.2 percent over the year before. A joint study by the Mercatus Center and Washington University reports that the administration is proposing still more staff and money for regulatory agencies next year."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4064
"Writing in The American Conservative's Aug. 1 issue, former military intelligence and CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi, now a partner in Cannistraro Associates, says that the vice president (who, according to the U.S. Constitution, has no authority but to break a tie vote in the U.S. Senate up to and until the day the president keels over or is removed from office) has instructed the Air Force to begin preparing plans for a full-scale air war against Iran's 'suspected' nuclear weapons sites using the excuse of the next terrorist attack."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6888
"Do people do things for us because those people are good, because they love us? Sometimes they do. Your family loves you, and your friends would sacrifice things for you. But for most of us, family and friends is a pretty small group. We can't rely on just those few people for all the things we need in the world. Something other than love, and altruism, has to organize all the thousands of activities and choices we all depend on every day."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Mungerinvisiblehand.html
"Turns out, we all have a monkey. ... Ina May says if we can short-circuit the mind during physical pursuit, we can let our inner primate do the work. 'It's a short way of saying not to let your over-busy mind interfere with the ancient wisdom of your body,' she writes in Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. 'Monkeys don't think of technology as necessary to birth-giving; Monkeys don't obsess about their bodies being inadequate…Monkeys don't do math about their dilation to speculate how long labor might take…Monkeys in labor get into the position that feels best, not the one they're told to assume…' "
http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=5083
"The mass destruction of human life and property by States in the 20th century are its hellish voyages. The extent is so vast that many say 'Let us do away with the murderous State.' But the vast majority of people on the planet are not persuaded by such raw facts. Those who benefit from the evils of States always cleverly concoct and select counter-facts to defuse any widespread anti-state sentiment."
http://www.mises.org/story/1871
"Economic planning rests on the erroneous assumption that the best and most efficient economy and social order is a product of purposeful and deliberate design by a committee of wise men appointed by the government, rather than the result of spontaneous development by human beings peacefully working together. The social engineer believes that wise men have the knowledge, the insights, the detailed information needed to combine with the power of the state to create an improved social order. History tells us otherwise -- just ask the Russians or the Poles."
http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050801/OPINION/108010097
"The real cost of labour to the employer and the real remuneration to the worker are normally equal. Welfare, given in merit goods, opens up a gap between the two: the cost of the part-cash, part-welfare package to the employer rises above the real value the workers subjectively place on the package."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Jasayinstability.html
"The Second Amendment does not mean a private employer has to welcome guns in its parking lot, any more than the First Amendment means I have a right to give speeches in your living room."
http://www.reason.com/sullum/080505.shtml
"ACR has backed bills to end what it calls 'big-box subsidies,' and on that point we agree. Skewing the playing field by subsidizing particular companies is unfair. On the other hand, backlash against chain stores is so intense in some states that legislators have proposed additional taxes, called the 'Big Box Tax,' on large stores. That's not right, either. Fair competition requires a level playing field with all players operating by the same rules."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001228.html
"The memory of Jean Charles de Menezes will fade quickly from the public mind, just another poor sucker victimized by the madness that calls itself Government in these strange and evil times. As for his killers, they shall not be named (let alone blamed), other than in the citations for bravery and heroism in the line of duty that are being written, a la Waco and Ruby Ridge."
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle330-20050731-02.html
"Consider the implications if the Bush administration escapes accountability: The executive branch will have established itself as above the law. The executive, armed with a compliant media, will have war-making power subject only to successful PR spin. It means the final end of the people's right to declare war via elected representatives in Congress."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08022005.html
"As Randolph Bourne said in 1918, 'War is the Health of the State': 'The moment war is declared … the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives...."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6833
" 'War' is a crucial term. It evokes a war frame, and with it, the idea that the nation is under military attack -- an attack that can only be defended militarily, by use of armies, planes, bombs, and so on. The war frame includes special war powers for the president, who becomes commander in chief. It evokes unquestioned patriotism, and the idea that lack of support for the war effort is treasonous. It forces Congress to give unlimited powers to the President, lest detractors be called unpatriotic."
http://www.alternet.org/story/23810/
"Perhaps most important, we must understand that in national security as in other areas, government too often wins by failing. As conservatives have long recognized, government always wants more power and more resources. Big government always wants to become bigger government. The next conservatism must not allow big government to become bigger by waving the 'national security' flag."
http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewCommentary.asp?Page=%5CCommentary%5Carchive%5C200507%5CCOM20050722e.html
"Questions surrounding the dissolution and foundations of government have plagued Americans since the earliest times. The migration of Europeans to begin new colonies in North America eventually culminated in one of the most significant political secessions in world history: the separation of the people in those thirteen colonies from their mother country."
http://www.voluntaryist.com/callforpapers.php
"According to the Raich decision, the growing of plants for use at home is economic activity because it involves the production and consumption of a 'commodity.' Under this reasoning, the growing of a single tomato plant in a container on one's balcony is economic activity and thus may be regulated by Congress. Congress could even prohibit a child from painting a picture to hang on the wall in the child's room because this involves the production of a commodity. Moreover, if all children created their own art, then this could substantially affect the interstate market for art."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1545
"The Grateful Dead had a policy of allowing anyone to bring recording equipment to their concerts, record the show, and make copies for friends so long as they didn't charge for them. As with all other market phenomena, the result was unpredictable."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0508b.asp
"Grotius' libertarian view of freedom of the seas could expect to meet stern opposition in many countries, but the greatest opposition was in England, where the Stuarts mobilized scholars in their defense."
http://www.mises.org/story/1880
"It is doubtful the American people would have supported an invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam might some day try to develop weapons. Why should he use them against the United States? Without provocation he'd have no reason to commit personal and national suicide."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0508a.asp
"The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- the hibakusha -- have continually warned, 'Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.' In the end, I believe this is the most important lesson of Hiroshima. We must eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cronkite.php?articleid=6892
"The Air Force provided the newspapers with an aerial photograph of Hiroshima. Significant targets were identified by name. For anyone paying close attention there was something troubling about this picture. Of the 30 targets, only four were specifically military in nature. 'Industrial' sites consisted of three textile mills."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001010500
"[W]hen the president says that the terrorists 'want us to retreat from the world so they can spread their ideology of hate,' he's got it entirely wrong. They already are spreading their ideology of hate. Alas, America's intervention has made more people listen more closely."
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=8393
"Around 1827 she established a school for Black children. While the school was to be self-supporting, by 1838 the level of funding was insufficient and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society took over."
"After settling back with his family in Lansingburgh, New York, outside Albany, Herman began to write down his stories at the urging of his sisters. The result was five books all drawing on his experiences at sea."
http://www.mobydick.org/hm.html
"Since his death in 1988, traditional Keynes-ian economics has been eclipsed, union power is no longer viewed as sacrosanct, apartheid has ended in South Africa, and there has been a renewed appreciation and understanding of the free market. To no small extent this has been due to the ideas and principled stance of William H. Hutt. For those of us who had the privilege to know him, his greatest influence was through the wit and humor with which he made his case."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=4399
"Once John W. Campbell began redefining the field in late 1937, Simak returned to science fiction and was a regular contributor to Astounding Stories throughout the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1938-1950)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Simak
"[T]he movie depicts what is possible under even a limited scheme of medical freedom. It should also be said that although the movie shows how limited medical freedom was even 10-20 years ago, it is more limited now as more research funding is controlled by political entities. The Odones battle disease and its ally death to save their child. The performances of Nolte and Sarandon are especially excellent."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/lorenzos_oil_1992.htm
"What if rocket scientist Wernher von Braun hadn't worked for the Nazis before and during World War II but instead had made aerial weapons for the anarchists in Spain? What if, while fleeing Europe and her arms manufacturer husband Fritz Mandl, on her way to Hollywood, actress Hedy Lamarr had met, inspired, and become the lover of von Braun? What if, instead of being crushed between the Republicans (Communists) and Nationalists (fascists) during the Spanish Civil War, disparate anarchist factions had successfully linked arms and won out (with the help of von Braun's rockets)?"
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-if.html
"A wink, a smirk, a thinly veiled threat, a secret handshake or pat on the back between all of you and plots became part and parcel of foreign and domestic policy. I applaud you! But now that you're here, fallen at last into my circle, why do you suddenly demand straight answers? Did you ever give anyone straight answers?"
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001235.html
"Firefly shooting scripts are available here and transcripts for most of the episodes here. However, I have been unable to find transcripts for three episodes: 'Trash,' 'The Message,' and 'Heart of Gold.' To remedy that situation, I have taken the shooting scripts and used them as the basis for the missing transcripts."
http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/Firefly_Transcripts.html
"Forcefully seizing the helm in the race to the bottom of PC absurdity, the NCAA Friday effectively banned 'hostile' and 'abusive' team nicknames and mascots. ... The next logical step, it seems, would be for the overwrought, bed-wetting race fretters to forcefully invoke a directive aimed at the 'hostility' and 'abusiveness' of Caucasian based nicknames. They probably won't, so we will do it for them."
http://freefreedomtoldhere.blogspot.com/2005/08/ploy-named-sioux.html
Flash animated cartoon
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0532,fiore,66628,9.html
"Despite massive cuts in recent decades, some remnants of math and science instruction continue to plague many school districts. These courses, Chao argued, waste valuable time and money. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings defended the nation's public-school system. 'Educators do a lot to ensure that the most hopeless students slip through the cracks,' Spellings said. 'Arbitrary rules, irregularly enforced discipline, and pointless paperwork are just the first things that come to mind'."
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4131
"The time: right about now. The location: these days, just about any place in the United States. The characters: an accountant, a Chevy Cavalier, a poodle, and several police dressed completely in black, just like ninjas in a cheap kung fu film."
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/08/01/wallace.htm
"That phrase, 'an end to evil'? It's the title of a propaganda book by David Frum and Richard Perle. They describe the U.S. as the greatest force for good in the world today, and pretty much everyone outside the U.S. as evil . . . so they have to be eradicated. See how it works? The U.S. -- a tribe, of course -- is composed of 'the People' and those outside the U.S. are not only non-people (although the term 'collateral damage' is used) but evil."
http://endervidualism.com/bwallace/necessity_of_enemies.htm
"The big advantage of investment over employment, as the examples of open source and blogging suggest, is that people working on projects of their own are enormously more productive. And a startup is a project of one's own in two senses, both of them important: it's creatively one's own, and also economically ones's own."
http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html
"In short, too much saving can be bad for your health, so it is held. However, what generates instability is not too much savings but too much money out of 'thin air.' Furthermore, what matters for economic growth is not monetary saving but rather the stock of real savings. This stock, however, cannot be established quantitatively."
http://www.mises.org/story/1882
"[T]here is a fellow in my street who runs a 'community association'. His neighbours have declined to join, but still he purports to represent us. The council encourages him because it is easier to negotiate with one self-appointed leader than with assorted individuals with distinct concerns. That, of course, is the point of communities."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-1718696,00.html
"Antisweatshop activists -- who argue that consumers should abstain from buying products made in sweatshops -- harm workers by trying to stop the trade that funds some of the better jobs in their economies. Until poor nations' economies develop, buying products made in sweatshops would do more to help third-world workers than San Francisco's ordinance."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1543
"Over the past two decades, the Boy Scouts has been both a flash point and the ground of sustained struggle between traditional and PC values. The central issue is whether the Boy Scouts is a private or public organization."
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0803.html
"Most of this rigmarole was already in place on Sept. 11, 2001, and it stopped not a single intended hijacker -- not a one. It would not stop them today, since metal detectors do not pick up plastic box cutters. The American populace is being conditioned with incredible speed to accept the conditions of a de facto police state with no regard to our privacy or dignity, let alone the solemn guarantees of the Fourth Amendment."
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jul-31-Sun-2005/opinion/2503702.html
"The metallic thumping that came from across the street had finally gotten on my nerves when I took my eyes off the PC screen and looked out the window. What I saw was a middle-aged man vandalizing a phone booth. He expertly wielded a sledgehammer and there was something energetic and methodical in the way he went about destroying the booth -- a kind of senseless resoluteness -- that forced me to leave my desk, get closer to my window and watch him 'at work' for a full minute."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Martinezentrepreneurs.html
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