| "What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you." ~ Ludwig von Mises |
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Carpe Libertatem Friday, May 16 |
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| "What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you." ~ Ludwig von Mises |
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Carpe Libertatem Friday, May 16 |
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Christopher Lempa is the guest editor today. |
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Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Jessup
Torture Policies Undermine 9/11 Case “The Pentagon’s decision to drop war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged '20th hijacker' in the 9/11 attacks, again underscores the consequences of the Bush administration’s descent into torture and other abusive treatment of 'war on terror' detainees.”
Mission
accomplished, eh George?
Matthews
Rips Right Wing Talker
No, Seriously, I Could Swear the Water in This Pot Is Getting a Little Hotter…(#3) Part 2...Part 1...a solution?
Colombia Says No US Base Planned on Border With Venezuela Of course not, the US government is bringing in the Fourth Fleet instead.
Planned US Israeli Attack on Iran: Will There Be a War Against Iran? The media has failed to cover the history of US war preparations directed against Iran. News coverage of US sponsored war preparations in relation to Iran started to surface in early 2007 in scanty press reports.
An interesting look at Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The “New Politics”: Squaring the Circle Sheldon Richman on one of the games politicians play.
Tom Knapp on Bob Barr's Iraq policy.
Insurgent American’s 35-Point Practical Guide for Action Very good ideas to help liberate yourself from state and corporate control. Be warned, you will agree with some of this and you will disagree with some of this.
California Court Overturns Ban on Gay Marriage
Comparison of Selected Fresh, Canned and Frozen Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes and Protein Foods
Eat Food, Mostly Plants, Not Too Much An interesting look at what we eat.
Not That the Actual Forbidden Knowledge Is as Interesting as That There Is Forbidden Knowledge An interesting look at infanticide.
Not satire, but anything having to do with Alan Keyes makes me laugh.
A photo blog.
In the DVD player: Jesus Camp (Yourmerica), The King of Kong (recommended), The Bourne Ultimatum (a real thriller!), The Weather Underground (recommended), Planet Earth, Disc 3 (highly recommended), Planet Earth, Disc 2 (highly recommended), Home Movie (quirky), Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (must see), Planet Earth, Disc 1 (stunning; you will sit there with your jaw agape), After Innocence (recommended), Deliver Us From Evil (must see), Street Fight (illuminating, recommended), For Love Or Country (strongly recommended), Into the Wild (good), The Office, Season 4 (funny), The Office, Season 3 (hilarious!), The Office, Season 2 (hilarious!), The Office, Season 1 (hilarious!), Word Wars (recommended), No End in Sight (must see), The Business of Being Born (must see if you may have a child in the future), Steal A Pencil For Me (recommended), Fall From Grace (Yourmerica)
Playing on Pandora or Rhapsody or emusic or in iTunes: "Glenn Tipton" by Sun Kil Moon
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Supporters Bob Murphy Matthew Bredeson Glen Allport Polo Leyendecker Donovan Conrad Gretchen Vanek Rex Bell Scott LeGear Jon Davis Matthew Bryan Jeremy Horpedahl Shelley Garcia Bill Ross Old Will Thirteen Anne Berg Jacques Martell Gilberto Heredia Derek Henson Doug Herman Ray Birks Michael White Peter Warren
Guest Editors John deLaubenfels Anthony Gregory Derek Henson Jeremy Horpedahl Robert Kaercher Chris Lempa William Muller Mike Powers
Helpers Log from Blammo Roger Young Scarmig
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The Root Cellar Recent columns by Root Strikers The
Means and Methods of a Modern Thoreau "Many of us, myself included, live far removed from Thoreau. 'Simplify, simplify,' he said, while we complicate and trivialize our lives, chasing paychecks and mirages, vague ambitions and vaguer social duties. But still we recognize a wildness in ourselves that mirrors exactly that of Thoreau, the patron saint of wilderness and non-conformity, the standard-bearer of bullshit detectors everywhere." Column by Douglas Herman.
Put Your Money Where Evil's Mouth Is Column by B.R. Merrick.
Johann Gutenberg: Genuine Inventor and Benefactor of Mankind "In contrast to the sensitivity of these early printers to the preferences of their customers, the 'products' and 'services' of government agencies are usually provided in abysmal fashion or are forced upon the public under threat of a penalty. Next time you are compelled to 'contribute' to any state bureaucracy, remember the early printers and ruminate on what has been lost." Column by Lawrence Ludlow.
A Colonial Radical in King Bernanke's Court "During war, countries often resort to counterfeiting their enemies’ currency in an effort to destroy their economy. What should we make of this practice in peacetime, under the protection of our own government, as a means of promoting economic health?" Column by George F. Smith.
"Paying this stupid fine would be an admission of defeat. More importantly, it would be an admission of guilt when there was none, to an unaccountable body of judges and cops who couldn’t read their own damned signs. It therefore, in a way, would become a voluntary tax, and I will pay no voluntary taxes. There was a principle worth fighting for here. As an anarchist, I knew that I would have to fight." Column by B.R. Merrick.
NASA, the Aerospace Welfare Queen "Instead of perpetuating its gold-plated make-work projects and revering its state-sponsored 'official heroes,' we should recognize NASA for what it is—a resuscitated Roman coliseum that stages useless spectacles that hypnotize taxpayers while bleeding them dry." Column by Lawrence Ludlow.
Scapegoating and the Anti-Immigrant Hysteria MUST READ "...Americans, like most people, would rather not look too closely at their unattractive traits. We like to pretend that we are self-sufficient, honest people. But our desire to rely upon and preserve the welfare state reveals the truth about who we really are. Instead of facing up to the theft and self-deception that surround our support of the welfare state in its various manifestations, we simply project our traits onto people who seem different because they are poor and desperate and have nowhere else to go to make a better life. Furthermore, when we accuse these immigrants of 'breaking our laws' to come here, perhaps we should remember that the kind of laws they are breaking are the kind that were firmly in place in the Soviet Union before it fell – laws against making a profit, earning a good living, and creating one’s own destiny. In other words: laws against freedom." Column by new Root Striker Lawrence Ludlow.
"...is Ron Paul’s approach fundamentally flawed or is he trying to move us closer to the libertarian ideal of non-aggression?" Column by George F. Smith.
"Ransome's error was exactly that of virtually all of our neighbors at election time--for ballots are merely bullets, in drag....The voter is saying, as he pulls the lever or presses the screen, 'I want you to be ruler, and if you win and anyone refuses to submit to your rule, it's okay by me if you kill him.' Ultimately, that's exactly what always occurs." Column by Jim Davies.
Between state governments and the federal government. Column by Per Bylund.
Will We See the Return of Ted Westhusing? "Kill all you want, we'll send more." Column by Wilt Alston.
The Narrative of the 'Free Republic' "The anarchist view of history can only regard the transfer of political power as directly analogous to the transfer of criminal power, as in the example of organized crime. Since in the anarchist approach all state power is considered criminal, any transfer of that power can be far more accurately understood by looking at criminal gangs, rather than repeating the quasi-ethical ramblings of self-interested state propagandists." Column by Stefan Molyneux.
"Tolerance also means you have to put up with my libertarian-anarchist views. Tolerance means living in the same neighborhood with a gun enthusiast. Tolerance means living next to a black family, not taking someone else’s money with your hired guns to keep the black family in its place, far away from you. Tolerance, for all its current pomposity, is a generally uncomfortable word when it is truly understood." Column by B.R. Merrick.
"It isn't pleasant contemplating diminished wealth and living standards for the nation you call home, but living in a fantasy world is more expensive and dangerous than seeing things clearly." Column by Glen Allport.
"Yet one look at "Yankees versus Red Sox" will show you that division and rivalries are part of our human nature, not simply a bastard spawn of politics and Statism. We cannot fully escape from this, even if we can and should work to minimize the kind of destructive, artificial divisions we get through Statism. Indeed, it will be a long time before we are fully able to "live free or die" as long as our lives and society are shaped by such political conflict and power-mongering." Column by Marcel Votlucka.
"Government has no use for a money that’s scarce: it limits its reach. It limits its reach by limiting its ability to inflate." Column by George F. Smith.
Recommended "So what are the black-clad youngsters so filled with hatred and so prone to destroy? They call themselves anarchists, but they are the embodiment of the statist principle: 'do as I say – or else.' The masked hordes rioting the streets calling for anarchy want power; they want the power to do as they please, and they want the power to separate action from responsibility. They want the freedom to act – without consequence. They demand respect from others in the sense of fear, obedience and subjection rather than appreciation and admiration; they want to be the state and control its powers." Column by Per Bylund.
I'm an Anarchist, and I Don't Hate the Troops Recommended "But sometimes our prized objectivity blinds us to what everyone else has been taught to see. We don't understand that while we have overcome our indoctrination, others see it as a source of meaning and structure, and still others live to defend that – the cops and the soldiers that some hate for defending this system." Column by Marcel Votlucka.
An Open Letter to Voters: Please Don't Recommended "Like the man who bayonets a baby to save a city, when a man votes, he necessarily approves of the means used to obtain his end. The means of attaining any political end in a tax-based government is the coercion of tax dollars from innocents: an act of aggression. Quite simply, if you vote, you de facto support the infliction of violence upon your neighbors...." Column by new Root Striker Geoff Turecek.
MUST READ "I like this analogy because it reveals how voting is an act of submission: When you no longer resist tyranny, but agree to submit to the threat or use of force and do as you are told, when you no longer question the higher authority because you are allowed to choose your supervisor. In the process you condemn your offspring and future generations to be subjects of this authority establishing an institution of tyranny that eventually is accepted unquestioningly, perhaps even celebrated." Column by Mark Davis.
Recommended "Libertarians engaging in a political campaign to have someone elected have from my point of view given up their claim on liberty; they are no longer striving for liberty as number one, but are working to give someone power to liberate them. Is this really a way forward? Is it to love liberty to give it up?" Column by Per Bylund.
Danger Is My Middle Name--And So Is Yours MUST READ "Nothing is completely safe, including eating and breathing. And if nothing is safe, then throwing people in prison for doing something that endangers them is insane, even without considering the dangers of arrest and imprisonment, which are substantial. Using coercion to "save people" from their own choices is a huge, horrifying mistake that can only lead to ever-larger disaster, because the list of dangerous activities includes everything that people might ever do." Column by Glen Allport.
Recommended "Being offered a choice between two violent alternatives is not the same as being free to choose....People can only freely choose governments, if they have the choice not to choose governments." Column by Stefan Molyneux.
A Stato-Libertarian Analysis of Immigration Recommended "Thus the argument for immigration controls calls libertarian theory itself into question! On this one issue, libertarianism does not work. On this one issue, apparently, a libertarian (laissez faire) immigration policy is ultimately bad for liberty!" Column by Wilt Alston and Stefan Molyneux.
Recommended "Without the United States federal government, the Fed would not exist and the money used by Americans would be gold and silver – things which could not be counterfeited constantly to supply 'money' for war, for special interests, and for other groups and purposes opposed to the interests of the average American. Nor would Americans be forced to literally borrow money – money created from thin air – from a privately-owned central bank (as our government does now) and then pay interest on it as part of the national debt. What a scam!" Column by Glen Allport.
Recommended "Have you heard [Rudy Giuliani] talk? I can't endure it for a minute. I thought I hated hearing Shrub mutter. But at least there's a strain of comedy value in the Babbling Bush. He sounds kind of funny, like an evil but goofy clown. There's a chuckle to be had on occasion. Even if it's black comedy. Rudy is just terrifying, not funny at all. His speech is just as incoherent, just as sleazy, just as totalitarian as Bush's. But he comes off as even more disjointed in his thinking with even a more maniacal drive toward fascist rule." Column by Anthony Gregory.
Recommended "What have we bought with all that money? Thousands of dead American soldiers, many thousands more injured, 655,000 (and counting) dead Iraqis, cancer-causing depleted uranium poisoning in Iraq (and DU particles are being spread around the planet on the winds), a ruined Iraqi infrastructure (which had already been wrecked in the first Gulf war and which a decade of sanctions kept in poor repair), millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing the mess we have made of their country, an increased threat of terrorism in America, widespread use of torture by our own government, a sharply lower opinion of America by people in other nations, and (on a separate invoice, for additional money) a police state here at home." Column by Glen Allport.
MUST READ "But what you’re doing, what you’ve been doing for 20 years, is telling people that the Klan can be good if only the right person is in charge. You’re giving people false hope, because the Klan can never be good." Column by Stefan Molyneux.
Recommended "Thus it must be that many children are delivered into the public school system with their independence already undermined, and filled with unease in the face of arbitrary authority. This lesson can only have come from their parents." Column by Stefan Molyneux.
Recommended "There is no part of life too miniscule for a politician to get his nose into if it smells faintly of funding or power, and nothing the whoring masses won’t sell for a shiny new promise." Column by Retta Fontana.
The Earthly Lesson of Jesus' Crucifixion Recommended "No: despite the famous 'washing of hands' by Pontius Pilate, this horrifying, gruesome murder was at least semi-official policy, like so many millions of other murders by empires and democracies and tin-pot dictatorships throughout history. Jesus was murdered by Roman soldiers, and in such a way as to drive the point home to all who saw it, or who even heard rumors about it: We can do this to anyone we want, anytime we choose, and talking about love is as good a reason to kill you as any – especially if others start taking you seriously. We are in charge of your life, and the penalty for forgetting that is death. Fear us and obey, or die." Column by Glen Allport.
Recommended "The apparatus of the state is a machine designed to place an artificial barrier between human beings, thereby enhancing the need for more government. When we refuse to participate in the pretense, the machine stalls. It has no fuel to run on if humans refuse to be grist for its mill. It’s like Toto pulling back the Wizard’s curtain to reveal the frail, ignorant, old guy who doesn’t know how to get home, either." Column by Retta Fontana.
Shut Up About the 'Bill of Rights' and Play the Ace Recommended "Anarchists view rights as ethical truths that transcend states, statesmen, and time, and that exist independent of historical circumstance; and anarchists must present this view unabashedly, clearly, and without equivocation, to critics and would-be converts alike. If we appeal to “Bills of Rights,” it will look like we don’t truly believe in the natural, transcendent status of rights and liberty." Column by Thomas Van Wyk.
E-Passport: Doorway to the Panopticon MUST READ "The logistics of trying to interconnect 189 governments’ databases quickly escalates well beyond the realm of 'nightmare' into some kind of Lovecraftian singularity of technological horror." Column by Scarmig.
MUST READ "Immigrants weren’t in charge when we lost our freedoms. White guys were. Millions of 'illegal immigrants' threaten you somehow? Compared to your neighbor who votes Democrat or Republican and demands his Social Security? Puh-lease!" Column by Stefan Molyneux and (new Root Striker) Wilton Alston.
A Short Guide to Market Anarchy Deconversions Recommended "[Market anarchy] means everyone is allowed to live the way they want, according to their value system. Everyone has different value systems, and all that statism does is impose the ruling class value system over everyone, creating social warfare. In an M.A., there would be no more need for social warfare because everyone would be free to live the way they want." Pamphlet by Andrew Greve, Aaron Kinney, David Pearson and Francois Tremblay.
The Two Great Evils and the Hammer of Infinite Power Recommended
"There is no doubt that the
Hammer of Infinite Power is coming; the leading edge is already here. It smote
Murdering the Group, Saving Individuals MUST READ "It’s the same with immigration, the national debt, welfare, the war on terror and all the other state-driven and media-obscured questions of the day. Obsessed by details, blind to the obvious, we are like swimmers in shark-infested waters worrying about cramps." Column by new Root Striker Stefan Molyneux.
How We Can Get There From Here MUST READ "So the main task to be completed in my opinion is to so educate every member of society one by one as to convince him that a zero government society is the only kind consistent with his human nature and the only one that will maximize his pleasure in life; and that must be done by reason. So the two obstacles to surmount are the vast numbers involved, and the ugly fact that most people have been so well indoctrinated that they are barely open to reason; they live rather by myth, prejudice and superstition." Column by Jim Davies.
MUST READ "How has it come that we no longer see each other as people? How can we reverse this trend? The next time you are asked for identification, consider the ramifications of participating in this system. Who owns you?" Column by NonEntity.
MUST READ "And so it was 'ordained and established'--the wind was sown. Today, we reap the whirlwind." Column by Jim Davies.
MUST READ "The question of who gets to make decisions about the disposition of certain property is central to understanding freedom. Who gets to decide what activities are too dangerous for you? Should I get to decide what activities are too dangerous for you? What about your neighbor? Or the majority? Or the president? Or Congress? Or some judge? In a free society, the owner of the property gets to decide how the property is used. Because you own your body, I assert that you should decide how your body is used or abused." Column by Marc Victor.
MUST READ "There is a certain suspension of disbelief attendant to those social and political theories endorsing endless and boundless murder, theft and fraud (i.e. "statecraft"); one must believe, with the naive faith of a child who believes that world hunger can be eradicated by making a law that everyone can have ice cream for dinner if they want it, that one may kill the goose bearing golden eggs and still have eggs every day for the taking. The iron laws of time, human desire, and economics are in the process of refuting that belief; its defense rings hollow, there are no believable Utopian adherents of this philosophy anymore, only those that make no pretense about wanting to kill millions of people and suck the marrow from their bones for the sake of their own glorification and what they conceive of as a better world, organized by boot heel and rifle butt." Column by Szechuan Death, who sounds like a libertarian Mark Morford.
SpyChips: How Major Corporations and Govt. Plan to Track Your Every Move With RFID MUST READ Chapter 1 of a new book by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre. You can buy the book by clicking on the link at the end.
MUST
READ "To
define anarchy as statist-government failure is such an obvious distortion of
the concept of a free society that it is hard to decide where to begin to
dismantle such thoughtlessness. I
like to begin by simply pointing out that at least four layers of
statist-government agencies still claim jurisdiction over the area known as
Serene Outlaw: Henry David Thoreau in His Second Century MUST READ "At times, Thoreau thundered at his readers like a Calvinist preacher, rhapsodized like an Indian prophet, stung like a gadfly or chided their sensibilities as a droll friend. The odd collection of essayists who write for Strike The Root, and the thousands of readers who peruse the columns there may hardly reflect on the moralist under whose portrait their work appears, but by striving to write essays on a variety of topics, many of them dedicated to the rights of individuals, they keep his standards alive." Column by Doug Herman.
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