Front page date

Wednesday, May 22

Guest Editor

Robert Taylor is the guest editor today.

Syndicate content


photo courtesoy of ixtussy
Holder: We’ve Droned 4 Americans, 3 by Accident. Oops.
Original article The Obama administration finally admits it.
Guitars, Eccentric Billionaires, and Space Travel
Original article Space travel, once the domain of Russian dogs and astronaut golfers, is being taken over by private enterprise and entertainment moguls. And it's fabulous news.
The Government Wants A Backdoor Into Your Online Communications
Original article The new proposal reportedly allows the FBI to listen in on any conversation online, regardless of the technology used, by mandating engineers build "backdoors" into communications software.
Does Innovation Require the Patent Office?
Original article It’s the market, not the bureaucracy, that innovates.
Bangladeshi Workers Need Freed Markets
Original article Crony capitalism deprives Bangladeshis of property rights, freedom of exchange, and work options. The people need neither the corporatist status quo nor Western condescension. They need radical land reform and freed markets.
No Taxes? There's an App For That!
Original article It's called internationalizing yourself and your wealth.
Liberty Activist Illegally Searched and Arrested After Kokesh Hearing
Original article "Your megaphone might be a weapon," says the arresting officer to liberty activist and former Marine Kyle Prouty when he asked why he was being detained.
War: Big Government’s Best Friend
Original article A resource page by Thomas Woods.
Bitcoin Can’t Be Stopped, But Can It Be Spoiled?
Original article Government and Bitcoin businesses both think more regulation of the private digital money is inevitable.
Massachusetts Teenager Facing Terrorism Charges and 20 Years in Prison
Original article For a rap song and Facebook posts that didn't show subservience to the state.
The 'Smart Gun' That Terrifies the Gun-Grabbers
Original article Technology proving once again that perhaps the future is brighter than we think for liberty.
Power Corrupts
Original article Give some people power over others and they will use that power to further their agenda, and to protect themselves from attack, without regard to the consequences of those others.
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution
Original article Neighborhood workshops, desktop manufacturing, household micro-enterprises and online horizontal networks of peer producers will come to dominate the informal economy that must arise as the state-allied formal economy stagnates and decays.
Gun Rights and Gay Rights Go Hand in Hand
Original article It may baffle Seattle liberals, but a poster combining the two being seen around the city is perfectly consistent and libertarian.
Obama Fed Grapes While Urging Press Conference To Enjoy Orgy
Original article Satire.
The Boston Tea Party: An Attack on Property Rights?
10
Paul Bonneau 2012-07-17 00:00
Column by Paul Bonneau. Exclusive to STR Here and there I have noticed some strange treatment of the Boston Tea Party among libertarians, a sort of shame that such an event has normally been celebrated in our culture. Were the participants bad people? Should we be ashamed of them?   One example of such treatment is Charles Adams' exposition of early American taxation:   Recently...
Tolstoy: Close, But No Cigar
9.66667
Jim Davies 2012-07-13 06:39
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR I'd heard somewhere that Leo Tolstoy was an anarchist, so reckoned it was high time I read War and Peace. Thanks to gutenberg.org, I was able to download both that and Anna Karenina and enjoy the pair of them on vacation rainy days. Having done so, I must dismiss the rumor; he was an extraordinary author and thinker, and upset Establishment clerics and...
Let Us Prove That Anarchy Can't Work
10
Paul Bonneau 2012-07-10 00:00
Column by Paul Bonneau Exclusive to STR In my recent Facebook escapades, this challenge came up: “My longstanding challenge to create a society larger than a commune or a small town that functions well without any government is still open. Create one, and you'll shut me up quick. Until then, I'm going to refer to your notions as ‘unproven theories’ at best, and ‘utter...
Very Special People
9.16667
Jim Davies 2012-07-09 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR I've tried, but have not been able to agree with Paul Bonneau's recent article Libertarians Are Nothing Special. Quite the contrary, I think libertarians are extraordinarily special.   Many of us begin by taking an interest in the political scene, and vote for a libertarian candidate in some election. That's a mistaken strategy, yes, but as a starting...
A Heartening Discovery
10
Paul Hein 2012-07-06 00:00
Column by Paul Hein. Exclusive to STR Decades ago I heard a speaker say that, in any dispute with authorities about an alleged violation of a law, the important thing was to read the law, word for word. The implication was that those citing the law might not know what the law actually said.   I put that theory to the test years ago when the local city rulers cited me for having “weeds...
Writing 'The Troy Standard'
10
AGFredericks 2012-06-28 00:00
Column by new Root Striker A.G. Fredericks. Exclusive to STR   “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down in front of a typewriter and bleed.” ~ Ernest Hemingway   It may be written in black and white, but if you search between the lines of The Troy Standard, you are sure to find the red stains of which Mr. Hemingway spoke: my blood.   I always wanted to...
Robbing Peter to Pay Pablo
10
Paul Hein 2012-06-25 00:00
Column by Paul Hein. Exclusive to STR I like to go out to eat. Three or four times a month my wife and I--usually on the spur of the moment--will decide to go out to lunch at a neighborhood restaurant. We are lucky to have several quite close to home that serve excellent food.   It’s not only the food that I enjoy. I marvel at the snippets of conversation I overhear from other diners....
Libertarians Are Nothing Special
9.75
Paul Bonneau 2012-06-25 00:00
Column by Paul Bonneau. Exclusive to STR Libertarians (and anarchists) like to think of themselves as enlightened beings. I get to see a nice cross-section of them on Facebook, many having something like “voluntaryist” as part of their Facebook name. The strange thing though, is that their behavior is almost indistinguishable from anyone else over there.   Yes, they may have at...
Holy Scripture: The United States Constitution
8.16667
Entito Sovrano 2012-06-22 00:00
Column by new Root Striker Entito Sovrano. Exclusive to STR  The Constitution of the United States of America has been the written document that the vast majority of people in both the freedom movement and the “truth movement” in the United States have referred to when advocating a better society. Whilst attempts to limit government through such a document were admirable (...
Newt's Letter
10
Jim Davies 2012-06-20 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Government tries to justify its ubiquitous spying on private correspondence on the back of 9/11. It's just another government lie. The events below took place four years earlier.   Back in 1997, Mr Gingrich was a powerful figure in DC – Speaker of the House. Soon afterwards he swapped wives and was cast into outer darkness for a decade, but recently he ran...
Trade Deficit: Hooray!
10
Paul Hein 2012-07-31 00:00
Column by Paul Hein. Exclusive to STR With an election looming, our politicians are wailing and bemoaning the economic crisis, which, given their policies and legislation during the past century, was inevitable and predictable. They express grave concern over the balance of payments and trade deficits, among other things.   If you do any research at all on those subjects, you will be...
Compassion in a Free Society
10
Jim Davies 2012-08-09 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. One of the ugliest things said about freedom advocates is that in a society without government, large numbers of poor people would be trampled underfoot. Critics say that if all were free selfishly to pursue our own ends, many would be left behind, to suffer and starve. That such a society would be harsh, uncaring, divisive, mean. That it's necessary to have a government, to...
Maximum Salary
10
Eric Field 2012-08-13 00:00
Column by Eric Field. Exclusive to STR Hamilton Nolan of gawker.com likes taxes. Or at least he has fantasies about forcing taxes on those he perceives as undeserving of wealth. In his August 8th column, Nolan endorses French president Francois Hollande’s proposed 75% on all incomes over $1.2 million per year. Nolan identifies one problem with Hollande’s tax proposal; that many of...
Magic 'Money'
10
tzo 2012-08-14 00:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR Where does U.S. “money” come from? If you’re not sure, the answer that follows may surprise you a bit.   The process begins with the Treasury Department creating a bond. Treasury bonds represent the Federal government asking for loans. When a Treasury bond is “bought,” what is really happening is that the “buyer” is...
Muddy Waters
10
Paul Hein 2012-08-14 00:00
Column by Paul Hein. Exclusive to STR The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Obamacare matter stirred up interest in the subject of federal taxation, and just what the government can, or cannot, tax. This, I gather, was because of the expectation--not to be realized--that the Court, if it ruled Obamacare constitutional at all, would do so on the basis of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution....
Confronting the Myth of Gun Control
10
fmoghul 2012-08-15 00:00
Column by new Root Striker Faisal Moghul. Exclusive to STR   In the wake of the Batman massacre in Aurora, Colorado, and now the Sikh Temple attack in Oak Tree, Wisconsin, the mainstream media’s propaganda blitz has predictably inundated the airwaves with the conventional, yet fallacious, orthodoxy that more guns equal more armed crime. Against this backdrop, some lawmakers have sought...
Opinion and Reason
10
Jim Davies 2012-08-20 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR From time to time a market researcher calls me up and asks for a few minutes of my time to answer his or her survey questions. I always answer “Yes, I'll be happy to; what rate are you offering?”   “What was that, again?”   “What are you offering to pay? My opinions, on a range of topics, are highly valuable. So is my...
The State of Freedom
10
tzo 2012-08-31 00:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR Unknown to most Americans, there is a 51st state tucked away amid the Rocky Mountains. It is smallish but there nonetheless, if only in my imagination. Since its admission to the Union 50 years ago, the inhabitants of this State—which is named Freedom—have lived by excepting a rule by which the rest of us abide:   They do not use United States...
A Letter to Young Paulians Recommended
10
Jim Davies 2012-09-10 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR You've just been kicked in the teeth, and this is to convey sympathy and comfort, as well as sincere congratulations for what you've done – along with suggestions about what you might best do next.   The way you have been treated by your own Party is a scandal that will long reverberate – and was so stupid even from the Party's perspective...
My Journey Into Voluntaryism
10
Dylan Delikta 2012-09-11 00:00
Column by new Root Striker Dylan Delikta. Exclusive to STR   I never in a million years would have thought that I would become a libertarian anarchist. Of course, neither did my family, or my friends, or anyone else who got to know me throughout my life. When I was younger, my political views were primarily shaped by my father, although my public school teachers played a subordinate role in...
An Armed March on Washington? MUST READ
10
Alex R. Knight III 2013-05-07 06:52
Column by Alex R. Knight III. Exclusive to STR Perhaps never before have I encountered a proposal within Liberty Movement circles that has generated more controversy faster and further than Adam Kokesh’s planned July 4th march on Washington, District of Criminals, in which he states that himself and the other participants “will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to...
The Orwellian Paradigm--Killing You, For Your Own Safety MUST READ
9.625
fmoghul 2013-04-10 08:12
Column by Faisal Moghul. Exclusive to STR Almost 30 years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment. In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George...
Frameworks, Virtual Reality and Civil Society: A Manifesto for the Doctrine of Love and Freedom MUST READ
10
Glen Allport 2012-12-06 08:44
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism. - 1...
Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift MUST READ
0
Glen Allport 2012-05-14 00:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR   Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"   Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...
Terrorist Alert: Government Extremists Threaten Americans MUST READ
9
Glen Allport 2012-03-26 00:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR   Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?   The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:   Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps ["...
The State Is a Firing Squad MUST READ
10
JGVibes 2012-02-17 01:00
Column by JGVibes.   Exclusive to STR   Although the common perception of human nature is very negative, the truth is that most people who aren’t mentally ill have a very difficult time committing acts of violence. Usually it takes a sizeable payment and a fair amount of manipulation to convince someone to act violently, and even then a tremendous amount of guilt typically...
How the 1% Took America's Wealth--and How to Get It Back MUST READ
9.25
Glen Allport 2011-12-01 01:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR  - 1 - Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth   In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...
'Anarchy or Minarchy' Is Only Half the Question, Part 2 MUST READ
9.5
Glen Allport 2011-04-13 03:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR  This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:   ·      Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny ·      Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin ·      The Missing Key...
Oh, Stanley MUST READ
10
tzo 2011-03-30 03:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR   Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist best known for his Milgram Experiment, a study conducted in the 1960s.   Dr. Milgram wanted to research the relationship between obedience and authority, and he was at least partly motivated to do so by the events of the Nazi Holocaust. It greatly troubled him that so many supposedly good people could...
The Pathocracy Unmasked MUST READ
10
Glen Allport 2011-02-11 04:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR - 1 - Exposed as Criminals and Psychopaths, the Coercive Elite are Desperate to Stop the Flow of Honest Information     "When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next." CCR...
The Licensing Effect Recommended
0
Lawrence Samuels 2013-05-10 08:28
The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action. Column by L.K. Samuels. Exclusive to STR Good intentions rarely make good laws. Those who do evil almost always think they are doing good for goodness’ sake. Nobody sees himself as evil. As Will Smith, the American actor, once quipped, “...
The Pugsley Plan Recommended
8.5
Jim Davies 2013-01-14 08:46
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...
Ed Schultz and His Alleged Middle Class Heroes Recommended
10
Angelo Mike 2013-01-04 01:00
Column by Angelo Mike. Exclusive to STR Ed Schultz has set quite the task out for himself. On his New Year’s Eve broadcast on MSNBC, he announced who his “Middle Class Heroes of 2012” are. Schultz is a self-styled liberal, so his recipients of the title “Middle Class Hero” are predictable and worthy of a certain amount of eye rolling. The general reverence for...
The Trials Recommended
8.33333
tzo 2012-12-11 08:49
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR To anyone who has seen or read The Reader (a synopsis of the relevant part of the story is here), one of the main questions raised in the story is, "What should be done with Hanna?" Was she responsible for her actions even if she was so thoroughly indoctrinated so as to be completely confused by the charges against her? She asked more than once, while...
464 Lost Years Recommended
8.25
Jim Davies 2012-12-10 08:48
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him. Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...
The Duty to End the State Recommended
10
Jim Davies 2012-11-30 08:53
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Many reading this already understand the Self-ownership Axiom; that we each own our own lives by right, and hence that all government is an unnatural and ruinous appendage. Among those who do, though, surprisingly there is disagreement over what to do about it. Some hold that resistance by such voluntaryists in the present government-saturated environment...
Why I'm Leaving America Recommended
10
SailboatDiaries 2012-11-07 01:00
Column by new Root Striker Michael Fielding. Goodbye, America. For as long as I’ve lived you’ve been my only home. I’ve had a wonderful life here. Your inhabitants are almost universally kind, and I’ve become lifelong friends with many of your citizens. All of my family lives here, everyone I have ever known or loved, and I will miss them all a lot. But after 22 years, I...
Voting Is Not Rational Recommended
9.66667
Stephen Nichols 2012-11-01 00:00
Column by Stephen Nichols. Exclusive to STR While reading Paul Bonneau’s recent column on STR entitled “Voting Is Not Irrational,” I was taken aback by the obvious flaws in his analysis and the conclusions resulting from that analysis. It’s been a few days since his article was published and I’ve been formulating my response to it for some time. Let me now share with...
St. Abe Recommended
0
Jim Davies 2012-10-23 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR When the Church of Rome has in mind to elevate one of its heroes or heroines to the status of sainthood, it follows a certain procedure – one element of which is to hear the opinion of an advocatus diaboli – a devil's advocate. His job is to reason against the proposed canonization, so reducing the probability of error. That task fell in...
A Reason Not to Vote Recommended
10
Stephen Nichols 2012-10-18 00:00
Column by Stephen Nichols. Exclusive to STR I don't know about you, but I take a look at my financial situation pretty regularly. I like to keep tabs on my family's spending and keep things under control. I also like to reduce or eliminate any unnecessary expenses. Take a moment to review this chart of some recent family spending: Notice anything big that sticks out there? Yeah, me...

 

 Reprint Rights