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Carpe Libertatem

Thursday, January 8

Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Jessup

Inflation?

Column by Jim Davies.

Police May Soon Use Pain Guns That Heat Skin With Microwaves

Universal Healthcare and the Waistline Police

As Paul Hsieh writes, intrusive regulation is just “one of the greatly underappreciated dangers” of universal healthcare.

Krugman Is No Liberal

Anarchy 101

A heavily cartooned book makes an introduction to anarchism more palatable.

Anarchoblogs, Rebooted!

Anarchist blogs conveniently aggregated.

A Presumption Against Violence

John Schwenkler writes,“[I]t’s hard for me to take seriously the claim that a genuinely Christian view of war could be anything but radical in its rejection of violence as anything other than a very, very last resort.”

What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel?

“If you get your news from an American television network, no matter how horrible you think what’s happening in Gaza is, the reality that you are not seeing is much, much, much worse.”

Teen Birth Rates Up in 26 States

“[T]he the new state-by-state data gives credence to the idea that the downturn in birth rates is over.”

Extremes

Dennis Perrin on a now-familiar twist of language:  “Qassam rockets with variable range and destructive capabilities: ‘extremist.’ F-16s, helicopter gunships, tanks, bunker busters and white phosphorus -- democratic.”

October Hysteria in Hindsight

“After Lehman failed and 'credit markets froze' in the second half of September 2008, many people proclaimed that a second Great Depression would unfold. In hindsight, we readily see that at least one of the purported pathways to depression was never followed.”

Libertarian Girls

Blogger John Petrie finds it easier to discuss anarchocapitalism on the internet with strangers than to converse about it openly with friends, let alone female ones.

Female Protectionism Redux

Bryan Caplan can’t find any libertarian girls either:  “[B]eing male has roughly as much effect on economic beliefs as 1.7 steps on a 6-point educational scale.”

Mass Transportation

Kent McManigal says:  “Passing ‘laws’ that require me to use your transportation is not ‘doing it better.’ If you get your friends in government to do so ‘for the common good,’ and then make us run the disarmament gauntlet to get on board, I will personally do all I can to undermine you and your transportation monopoly.”

Is the Death Penalty a Dying Breed?

2008 saw fewer state executions.

Obama Wants 600,000 More Federal Bureaucrats

“[Obama] says he wants to create three million new jobs, eighty percent of them in the private sector. I'm no math genius, but 20 percent of three million works out to be 600,000 new bureaucrats to harass the American people.”

The Think Tank Index

Foreign Policy Magazine ranks the think tanks.

Police State Killing Caught on Tape

Cancer and Statistical Illusion

Tyler Cowen on the deadly diseases cancer and “economicitis.”

How the City Hurts Your Brain

Jonas Lehrer, Thoreauvian. 

Apple’s New iTunes Pricing and DRM-Free Songs:  The Results of Competition

Donated Kidney Is Center of Divorce Dispute

“A Long Island doctor is demanding that his estranged wife give him back the kidney he donated to her seven years ago. Dr. Richard Batista's lawyer Dominic Barbara says his client would also be satisfied with the value of the kidney: $1.5 million.”  Might the legal system acknowledge that an organ can be priced above zero?

Terror Experts Warn Next 9/11 Could Fall On Different Date

Light With Shadow

A photo blog.     

STR Blog

Past Strikes

Links

In the DVD player: War, Inc. (decent), Something's Gotta Give (cute), The Commitments (disappointing), Black Book (strongly recommended), Face/Off (amazing thriller), Seven Years in Tibet (OK), Winter Soldier (must see), Lars and the Real Girl (cute), The Power of Nightmares, Part 1 (very interesting, recommended), Frontline: News War (interesting), August Rush (recommended), Inside North Korea (must see), Deadwood, Season 2 (highly recommended), Deadwood, Season 1 (highly recommended, similar to "Firefly", with some libertarian themes. Don't miss the fascinating Bonus Material disc, which explains the seemingly gratuitous profanity), Inside Hurricane Katrina (recommended), Aftermath: The Remnants of War (must see), The Men Who Killed Kennedy (incredible, must see, especially the last segment), Baghdad ER (must see), Children of Men (highly recommended), Shooter (must see), Why We Fight (strongly recommended), The Lives of Others (strongly recommended), Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (highly recommended), Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (recommended), Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (must see), Deliver Us From Evil (must see), No End in Sight (must see), The Business of Being Born (must see if you may have a child in the future)

Playing on Pandora or Rhapsody or emusic or in iTunes: "Gazelle" by The Green Pajamas

Dec 31, 2008

Who should be the Root Striker (columnist) of the Year?

Glen Allport 245 50% Stefan Molyneux 242 50%

Total votes: 487

View All Polls

Root Strikers

Supporters

Bob Murphy

Matthew Bredeson

Glen Allport

Polo Leyendecker

Donovan Conrad

Gretchen Vanek

Rex Bell

Scott LeGear

Jon Davis

Matthew Bryan

Bill Ross

Old Will Thirteen

Anne Berg

Jacques Martell

Gilberto Heredia

Derek Henson

Ray Birks

Michael White

Peter Warren

Joe Stamper

Donna Mancini

Dick Mancini

Less Antman

Guest Editors

Cheryl Cline

Anthony Gregory

Derek Henson

Chris Lempa

William Muller

Mike Powers

Helpers

Log from Blammo

Roger Young

Scarmig

Non-Voting Archive

Israeli State Terrorists on the High Seas

Robert Johnson on the ramming of the Dignity.

Public Works Don't

"How is the capital to be raised?  The market has an elegant solution ready: Capital is invested on the basis of how sound the business plan appears to those who own the money and will carry the risk, and how well it seems likely to yield profits in comparison to other possible ways to invest the same, fixed chunk of money...."  Column by Jim Davies.

Citizen Gain

Column by Retta Fontana.

Problem Solving 101

"It is obvious that the statist method requires the least amount of intelligence and effort, but repeating that process doesn’t bring one any closer to a credible solution.  Statist solutions typically will make any problem worse and spread it around to more people."  Column by Mark Davis.

The Year Ahead: 2009

MUST READ "The America of Henry David Thoreau, of Mark Twain, of Walt Whitman, of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine and the millions more who brought this nation into being and kept it alive in their hearts and, to a large extent, on the ground, for so long – that America, the real America, the 'asylum for mankind' that Paine wrote about so eloquently – that America is gone, fading already into myth and legend, gone soon even from living memory as the last citizens who remember America's dying embers wink out from this world, one by one."  Column by Glen Allport.

To Secede or Not to Secede...Is That the Question?

New Root Striker Duane Colyar reports on the 3rd North American Secessionist Convention.

Night

"It was one of the most brutal exterminations in human history, committed by agents of the government of a people just as civilized as ours and almost as democratic; and now, the memory of it is slipping away. I cannot express how deeply tragic that is."  Column and book review by Jim Davies.

Fear Not the Gallows, Ye Radicals

"To paraphrase Stephan Molyneux, empires grant a certain amount of liberty to their citizens in order to make us more happy, efficient, and productive, and thus encourage more economic growth--which they then exploit through taxation to expand their own profit and power.  Likewise, it is more efficient to maintain a façade of liberal democracy over other methods.  If the people find it favorable, it makes it so much easier for the ruling class to claim and defend a sense of legitimacy--and thus maintain power and privilege."  Column by Marcel Votlucka.

Does Obama's Love of Lincoln Make Him an 'Uncle Tom'?

"But I can’t understand how a mulatto politician can sing the praises of a former politician who was so opposed to the existence in this country of mulattoes."  Column by Robert Johnson.

The Moral and Ethical Dilemma of Conducting 'Business' With the State

Column by new Root Striker Ryan C. Underwood. 

JFK and Obama--Profiles in Courage and Cowardice

"Those leaders who dare express a genuine determination to change the corrupt system once in office are probably warned by handlers, perhaps warned several times, that any idealistic breach, any ethical intention to overturn the entrenched money power system is a death sentence."  Column by Douglas Herman.

Public Works (and Won't Works)

Column by Les Lafave.

Killer Job Market

"The inescapable reality of being a member of the government’s armed forces is that you serve some of the most corrupt and incompetent politicians known to history. You put your life on the line and take the lives of others for cheaters, thieves and liars who infect the halls of Congress and the White House.  Why would anyone knowingly do such a thing?"  Column by Robert Johnson.

I Believe in Common-Sense Too, Obama

I'm buying more guns.  Column by Alex R. Knight III.

Bailout!

George F. Smith has an idea for a new board game.

An Anarchist's Carol

"...Ebenezer Scrooge is given the greatest lesson in life, and the greatest lesson that any anarchist can learn.  Life is for living; not money, not ego, not rules, not toeing the line, and certainly not for merely getting by...."  Column by B.R. Merrick.

Barry Sotero

"I write this on December 5th, and today Supreme Court members meet (in camera!) to decide whether Barry Sotero is qualified to be US President. That's the name by which Obama was known when a boy at school in Indonesia."  Column by Jim Davies.

M

"Government money is wickedly deceptive in every age and place...."  Column by Jim Davies.

Grand Theft America: "All Your Wealth Now Belong To Us"

Recommended  "By now, the original idea of America – as a haven for mankind and a place where freedom from tyranny was the plainly-stated and largely-attained goal – has simply been lost. The concept and benefits of freedom are no longer understood by the majority of Americans; the all-powerful State and its shackles are now everywhere, including deep in the mind of the average person."  Column by Glen Allport.

Signs of Autumn

Recommended  "That is directly where my pushing of a button on an electronic voting screen leads.  It leads to the threat of violence from the government that is encouraging my participation.  I am...engaging in a violent act by silently threatening those with whom I disagree."  Column by B.R. Merrick.  (Editor's pick)

Crop Seeding in America

Recommended  "The state’s money removes the idea of limited means, and since it’s controlled by the state, it removes the idea of limiting the state.  Given the federal influence on education, media, and just about everything, should we be surprised no one is on center stage calling the government a counterfeiter? "  Column by George F. Smith. 

I Don't Mind If You Keep Voting, But Do You Mind If I Keep Laughing While You Do?

MUST READ  "I don’t care who the candidate is.  I don’t care what issues to which he seems to gravitate.  I don’t care about his record, his leadership qualities, the apparent first-lady-ness of his wife (or her husband), his insider-ness or his outsider-ness, his race, his height, his weight, how well he speaks, how wonderfully he photographs, the nation of his birth, how likely it might be that he’s fun to drink with, or his appreciation for unique uses for a fine cigar."  Column by Wilt Alston.  (Editor's pick)

The Meaning and Value of Gold

MUST READ "Can gold prevent such horrors [the democide of the 20th Century]? No, not entirely, but gold can and does reduce the likelihood of such horrors when used as a nation's money. Gold as money provides a strong limiting factor on the resources available to government, and in so doing, gold saves and improves the lives of millions."  Column by Glen Allport.  (Editor's pick)

Not to Worry, They're on Our Side

Recommended  "It’s pointless to look at their campaign platforms.  They’re made up of words, and words to a politician are like drops of water on a hot skillet – they sizzle, then they’re gone.  We know a priori both candidates are certified, homogenized, lobotomized statists, otherwise they wouldn’t be the two contenders."  Column by George F. Smith.

Notes on Democracy: Mencken Vents His Spleen for His Era and Ours

Recommended  "Read onward as Mencken’s delightful microscope tears into the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt with relish—exposing them and their adoring constituencies for what they are. If Machiavelli took off our blinders and exposed the rancid underbelly of tyrants in The Prince, Mencken did the same for democracy in this gem of a book."  Column by Lawrence Ludlow.

Everyday Anarchy, Part 5

MUST READ  "When we think of a truly free market...we understand that we do not have to work for years and years, and give up thousands of hours and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, to satisfy our wishes. If I want to shop for vegetarian food, say, I do not have to spend years lobbying the local supermarket, or joining some sort of somewhat ineffective advisory board, and pounding lawn signs, and writing letters, and cajoling everyone in the neighborhood – all I have to do is go and buy some vegetarian food...."  Column by Stefan Molyneux.

The Loopy Dynamics of Feedback

Recommended  "In any rational reality there would be some kind of reciprocity between the actions of humans in relations with each other.  Somewhere along the line there arose the idea of 'sovereign immunity.'  And even though we realized a couple of centuries ago that the idea of 'sovereigns' having power over others is really, really stupid, we still think it is all right for hired thugs to be completely devoid of any responsibility for their actions."  Column by Nonentity.

Everyday Anarchy, Part 3

MUST READ "The statist looks at a problem and always sees a gun as the only solution – the force of the state, the brutality of law, violence and punishment. The anarchist – the endless entrepreneur of social organization – always looks at a problem and sees an opportunity for peaceful, innovative, charitable or profitable problem-solving."  Column by Stefan Molyneux.  Spread this one far and wide.

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.

The Anarchist Vote

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.

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.

Money

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.

The Worst Way to Do Anything

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.

My Son: Klan Reformer

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.

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.

Importing Freedom

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 Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If the power to vaporize a city with a single bomb is not sufficiently god-like for you, just wait."  Column by Glen Allport.

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.

Are You a Submitizen?

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.

The Preamble Reconsidered

MUST READ  "And so it was 'ordained and established'--the wind was sown. Today, we reap the whirlwind."  Column by Jim Davies.

Legalize Methamphetamine!

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.

How, Why?

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.

Defining Anarchy

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 New Orleans (city, parish, state and federal).  The undeniable fact is that they all four failed to provide the services they had promised to provide when they were justifying the theft of individual resources called taxes."  Column by Mark Davis.

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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