June 2011
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“Peace, harmony, ease, security, happiness, will be found only in Individuality.”
– Josiah Warren
May 2011
Political Hacks →
Suppose you’re the owner of a taxicab company in a largish metropolitan area. One day you notice some taxis tooling around town—and they’re not yours. They belong to an upstart competitor. His cars are newer, his drivers are nicer, and his fares are lower. Pretty soon your profits start shrinking. What are you going to do about it?
You have a couple of choices. Option A: Invest a lot of money...
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Welcome to Post-Legal America →
Is the Libyan war legal? Was bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?…
[I]f, in a country theoretically organized under the rule of law,...
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Lawless Government →
Everyone pays lip service to the rule of law. Indeed I’ve never heard of anyone rejecting it as undesirable. (It has been called impossible under prevailing circumstances but that is a different point.) So why is the principle so flagrantly violated with almost no public outrage?
Take President Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war. Even if we grant that he could legally enter that...
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Today's Memorial Day Posts
Remember Poignant required reading.
Memorial Day in Wartime - A Morbid Groundhog Day History and Perspective.
On Memorial Day I offer my own words (echoed from yesterday).
Memorial Day Pledge To end the cycle of death.
The Search for War Peace itself has even lost rhetorical favor.
The Troops Don’t Protect Our Freedoms An unpopular notion offers sad truth.
The Reinvention of...
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“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the...”
– John F. Kennedy
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The Reinvention of Historical Memory →
With three wars going simultaneously, and a few more in the hopper, Americans are sick and tired of war: they don’t want to remember it – and who can blame them? Indeed, Americans don’t care to remember much of anything, these days, least of all the disastrous wars that have plagued us in recent years. Inundated with problems that seem insoluble, convinced they can have no effect on the course...
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The Troops Don't Defend Our Freedoms →
Unfortunately, the pernicious nature of the state often uses our troops as tools to further put our liberty at risk.
One vision — the vision of militarism and empire — will bring America more violence, death, destruction, impoverishment, and loss of freedom. The other vision — the vision of a limited-government, constitutional republic with citizen-soldiers — would put our nation back on the...
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The Search for War →
In times of war, U.S. presidents have often talked about yearning for peace. But the last decade has brought a gradual shift in the rhetorical zeitgeist while a tacit assumption has taken hold — war must go on, one way or another.
“I am continuing and I am increasing the search for every possible path to peace,” Lyndon Johnson said while escalating the Vietnam War. In early 1991,...
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Memorial Day Pledge →
I will not raise my precious child to kill your precious child.
And if it is within my power,
I will not hand over my beloved child to others to kill your beloved child,
or to learn how to kill the one you cherish.
– Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
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On Memorial Day...
The most respectful way to honor fallen troops is to not continue sending more troops to die in unprovoked and unnecessary wars. Freedom IS free: it is inherent in all of us - as “endowed by our Creator,” and characteristic of our very sentient humanity - and thus we should not be wiled by trite propaganda into supporting militarism under the guise of requisite defense of freedom.
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Memorial Day in Wartime - A Morbid Groundhog Day →
Another Memorial Day. Of course it’s been around for 103 years, but this is our ninth during wartime, which means we’re simultaneously honoring dead soldiers, while were putting new ones in the ground at Arlington Cemetery.
As of Friday, 4,454 American servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq; 1,595 in Afghanistan. That doesn’t seem like a lot when you consider the more than 58,000 dead in...
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Remember →
This is required reading every Memorial Day.
Ask ten people what Memorial Day is about and you’ll probably receive ten different responses. Mentioned are claims of “recognizing those who have served and fallen in defense or service to their country,” “identifying patriots who unselfishly answered the call,” and “acknowledging the heroes of battle.” A common...
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Free Markets Are Regulated →
Just not by government, but instead by each individual economic actor.
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Warning to Neo-Cons and Pro-War Leftists:
You may not like some of my Memorial Day posts tomorrow.
A preview: the most respectful way to honor fallen troops is to not continue sending more troops to die. Freedom IS free: it is inherent in all of us - as “endowed by our Creator,” and characteristic of our very sentient humanity - and thus we should not be wiled by trite propaganda into supporting militarism under the guise of...
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“If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied...”
– Murray Rothbard
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“The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make...”
– Lao-Tsu
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Family Facing $4 Million in Fines for Selling... →
Almost nine months after a Missouri dairy was ordered to stop selling cheese made from raw milk, I share details of another hare-raising story from the Show-Me State: John Dollarhite and his wife Judy of tiny Nixa, Mo., have been told by the USDA that, by Monday, they must pay a fine exceeding $90,000. If they don’t pay that fine, they could face additional fines of almost $4 million. Why?...
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Think About This ...
gonzodave:
If you lived in a society where healthcare, disability, food, housing, and unemployment were equalized then no one might ‘fall through the cracks’ except by choice.
That’s because we’d all be living in the cracks, assuming you mean “equalized through central planning”; see Cuba.
If you lived in a society where the minimum wage was truly ‘minimum’, then...
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Abolish the State's Police →
On May 13, 1985, in the twilight of the Cold War, residents of Philadelphia were ruthlessly bombed from the sky. The enemy government was conducting a political mission, but innocent inhabitants of that distinctly American city were caught up in the attack. After ten thousand rounds were fired at civilians over a period of two hours, a helicopter swooped in and dropped C-4 and Tovex explosives,...
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“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to...”
– Edward Abbey (via icansmellthegasoline)
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“The measure of the state’s success is that the word anarchy frightens people,...”
– Joseph Sobran (via bulletinmypocket)
The Truth Behind Chrysler’s Fake Auto-Bailout Pay... →
The Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion.
Oh, and Obama plans to make this “success” a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign.
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Cop Kills 14-Year-Old →
“He just hit me once,” the student later recalled in a sworn deposition. “It wasn’t a fight. It was nothing.”
Unfortunately, [Officer Daniel Alvarado of San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District Police] happened to be prowling the intersection in his patrol car, and witnessed the trivial dust-up.
“Freeze!” Alvarado shouted at [14-year-old Derek Lopez], who bolted from the scene....
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Go Ahead and Mess With Texas; It's Run by Pussies →
An unfortunate follow-up to this post from yesterday:
[T]he chief Senate sponsor of the Texas bill targeting TSA groping of airline passengers has withdrawn the measure, saying support quickly dwindled after the feds threatened to [essentially] create a no-fly zone over the Lone Star State. Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) blamed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the state Senate, for...
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“Sometimes it seems that the beau ideal of many conservatives, as well as of many...”
– Murray Rothbard explaining how conservatives and modern liberals are essentially the same creature. (via blistexfan)
—-
Wait, liberals are banning football now? People need to keep me up to date on our new ways of ruining fun and freedom!
(via murmurtheblues)
“now”? “up to...
“Sometimes it seems that the beau ideal of many conservatives, as well as of many...”
– Murray Rothbard explaining how conservatives and modern liberals are essentially the same creature. (via blistexfan)
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Bringing It All Back Home →
Republican members of Congress—nigh lockstep supporters of the Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, and the PATRIOT Act when their party controlled the executive branch—profess to have rediscovered the Constitution during the first two years of the Age of Obama. …
[W]hat if the Anti-Federalists, those often prescient opponents of the new Constitution in 1787–88, were correct in asserting...
Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn Report Shows Taxpayer... →
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“[I]n most things that matter, Obama is not even Bush-lite: he’s more like...”
– Robin Koerner in the Huffington Post (via hipsterlibertarian)
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“The state is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical...”
– Henry David Thoreau
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Pink Pork Deemed Safe Just in Time for Memorial... →
Updated guidelines released yesterday by the USDA say that, finally, we can cook pork just a little bit less and not have to worry about it being undercooked. The guidelines lowered the “safe” temperature for pork to reach before being considered cooked down from 160 to 145 degrees, meaning pork can be slightly pink.
For those of us who don’t rely on government to tell us...
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Feds Threaten No-Fly Zone Over Texas →
Yesterday the U.S. Justice Department warned that the federal government may cancel all flights out of Texas if the state legislature approves a law aimed at preventing the Transportation Security Administration from groping airline passengers without probable cause. H.B. 1937, which was approved unanimously by the state House of Representatives and is being considered by the state Senate,...
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"If You Don't Like It, You Can Leave"
freemarketliberal:
Possibly the most disturbing statement to me is “if you don’t like it, you can leave.” It’s a thoughtless justification for crimes against humanity under the implication that since the majority or the law deems something “okay” something must be “okay.”
Honestly though, when you ask the senders of this message if it was “proper” for anti-Civil Rights groups to tell...
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“I’m Jewish. Eating pork or shellfish is not allowed in my tradition, but I...”
– Minn. State Rep. Steve Simon, advocating against a state amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. The amendment would pass.
Get government out of marriage.
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100 Years of Myths about Standard Oil →
The mechanism of predatory exploitation of consumers requires substantial monopoly power that is used to increase prices, thereby reducing the outputs sold. But Standard Oil had no initial market power, with only about 4 percent of the market in 1870. Its output and market share grew as its superior efficiency dramatically lowered its refining costs (by 1897, they were less than one-tenth of...
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The Myth of Natural Monopoly →
If competition is viewed as a dynamic, rivalrous process of entrepreneurship, then the fact that a single producer happens to have the lowest costs at any one point in time is of little or no consequence. The enduring forces of competition — including potential competition — will render free-market monopoly an impossibility.
The theory of natural monopoly is also ahistorical. There is no...
“The free market is not an ideology or a creed or something we’re supposed to...”
– P. J. O’Rourke. (via libertarians)
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Drug Offenders in California's Overcrowded Prisons →
In the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision requiring California to reduce its prison population by about 30,000, Dale Gieringer of California NORML notes that the state was incarcerating nearly 25,000 drug offenders at the end of last year:
A total of 8,587 inmates were being held specifically for simple possession of a controlled substance. Another 1,401 were being held for...
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The Unbearable Lightness Of Libertarian Thought -... →
vruz (via ryking):
Hellblazer
One of the things that always struck me as more than a bit strange about the Libertarians was this overwhelming tendency to jump up and start shooting at the drop of a hat. Now, granted, there are a few prominent Libertarians who don’t think war should be a first resort… [b]ut, quite frankly, this brand of Libertarian is so few and far between that I think...
“[T]here can be no consent since there is no way to opt out. The argument from...”
– James Ostrowski: The Myth of Political Consent
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The Bipartisanship of the Patriot Act →
Several days ago I noted that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had agreed to a four-year extension of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — a bill Democrats everywhere once claimed to revile — without a single reform (despite the long and documented history of its abuse and despite Obama’s previously claimed desire to reform it). Tonight, a cloture vote was...
