index -- Price of Liberty

November 28, 2005

Overheard (or not) on Election Day
By Lady Liberty

There are always a lot of polls conducted in connection with election day. Are you going to vote for this guy or that one? Do you think the most important issue is that one or this one? I even conducted my own impromptu poll this year, the results of which assured me that most people still think voting matters (although some were cynical enough to think that, if voting really mattered, it would be illegal).

Other political statistics are bandied about year 'round, especially when they represent particularly bad news for someone. Ohio Governor Bob Taft, for example, is suffering from even lower approval ratings than did Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. President Bush isn't suffering popularity woes quite as bad as Taft's, but the numbers aren't good, either. Worse than being unpopular is an even more recent poll that shows a significant number believe the president to be dishonest. (Read the rest here)

D.C. & Vegas: A Tale Of Two Sin Cities
By Doug Newman

For most of my life I had no interest in visiting Las Vegas. I do not gamble and I thought that if I had seen one neon light I had seen them all.

Alas, I was wrong. I have been to Vegas twice in two years and I have enjoyed it quite a bit. While I am not morally superior to anyone, I do not partake in the city’s steamier entertainment offerings. However, I do allow myself to drop a few bucks in the slots.

At the end of my first visit, I was driving to the airport when my cell phone rang. I told my friend I would call her back after I arrived in Denver. I asked myself: “Is it legal to talk on a cell phone when driving a car in Nevada?” I answered: “This is Vegas! Everything is legal!” (Read the rest here)

The American Resistance
By Ted Lang © 2005

The time has arrived - a designation must be assigned to the increasing number of Americans who are fed up and terrified by the unbelievable and staggering criminal acts perpetrated both domestically and internationally by the Bush gang. Bush and his GOP are targeting and immediately attacking any and all inspirations of accurate journalistic reporting of administration wrongdoing, proving all the more how despotic American government has become.

Only days ago, the Washington Post broke the story of secret prisons abroad, and what was the reaction on Capitol Hill? Republican Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, was angered not by the illegal activity and the disgrace it brings upon America, but offered instead: “My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security - period. That is a legitimate concern.” If this isn’t a clear case of a simpleton shooting the messenger, I don’t know what is! (Read the rest here)

The Nature of American Denial
By Sartre

At the core of self delusion is the inability and/or the unwillingness of facing reality. While psychological disorders can often explain abnormal behavior in individuals, the exegesis for deviant social attitudes and accompanying conduct is reserved for society. Or so we are told! But does this make sense to you? As long as you accept that reality does exist and that it can be understood, it follows that we have the right, the ability and the obligation to comprehend it and adjust our actions accordingly.

Most Americans view, of their own personal identity, is inculcated by the political culture. Delmar England, in his provocative work - Mind and Matters, The World in a Mirror - offers this valuable insights into our mutual and shared condition: "In human affairs, as surely as effect is preceded by action, action is preceded by belief, and belief is preceded by thought and conclusions." (Read the rest here) (click "back" button to return to The Price of Liberty)

Our Courts
By Jeff Adams

What was wrong yesterday is right today

On November 8th, The State.com, the online rag for the South Carolina newspaper by the same name, had an interesting tidbit posted. In bold print, the headline read ‘Court upholds dismissal of barbecue sauce suit.’ It might not sound so interesting, unless you are familiar with the case.

Back in 2000, when people of the state of South Carolina were debating removing the Confederate Battle Flag from where it flew atop the capitol dome, South Carolinian Maurice Bessinger decided to exercise his right to speak out on the subject. Mr. Bessinger is a businessman who has a string of restaurants and sells a mustard-based barbecue sauce (you can check it out here). (Read the rest here)

Requiem For The Leftist Welfare Utopia
By Carey Roberts

Leftists have devised a simple yet amazingly effective formula to engender social discord: break up the family, marginalize fathers, and then blame the whole mess on men.

The pattern can be traced back to LBJ's Great Society which spawned welfare programs that withheld benefits as long as dad was around. Then came Roe v. Wade, which disenfranchised fathers from the most fundamental decisions involving their unborn young.

Next, no-fault divorce laws set the stage for widescale child custody awards to moms. And finally draconian child support programs sent low-income dads shuffling off to debtor's prison. (Read the rest here)

The Failure of Nation-Building in Bosnia and Iraq
By Ivan Eland

The State Department is using a 10-year anniversary party celebrating the Dayton accords to make more “progress” on Bosnia’s future. The reality is that the interventionist U.S. foreign policy elite, led by the Bush administration’s Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, is hosting the conclave of Bosnian leaders in Washington this week to “fix” the Bosnian constitution enshrined by the Dayton accords. The elite want to create a strong central government and abolish the rotating presidency in favor of a national president and two vice presidents. This plan is only likely to make the still precarious situation in Bosnia deteriorate. Even worse, these interventionists would like to take lessons from the failed attempt at nation-building in Bosnia and use them to attempt to remedy the desperate situation in Iraq.

After the U.S. suffered a bloody nose in Vietnam, U.S. interventionism temporarily fell out of favor. The U.S. foreign policy elite—who see the globe as a giant chessboard and who don’t mind sending other peoples’ sons and daughters to die in faraway brushfire wars that have little to do with actually defending the United States—derisively called this “casualty aversion.” As casualties in Vietnam rose, the American public rightly became suspicious of the interventionists’ pet projects abroad. (Read the rest here)

Too Late For Corrective Action
By Ed Henry

On the road to bankruptcy, we’ve passed the point of no return. We’re over the top. The Bush administration borrowed $94.4 billion in October and as of the 18th of November the national debt has gone up another $55.7 billion. That’s a total of $150 billion in less than seven weeks or more than $21 billion a week, three billion a day weekends included.

By an overwhelming majority, the Senate just approved a $492 billion Pentagon defense budget for 2006, the fiscal year that we’re already into without an agreed budget and operating on “continuing resolutions” or the elements and allocations of last year’s budget. It was just a few years ago that the media was in a panic and talking about government shutdowns because of conditions like this, but today there’s not a peep from our so-called watchdogs. (Read the rest here)

Your Feedback and Comments
The Mailbag for This Week

Thanksgiving Libertarian Commentary on the News for Week of 20-26 November 2005
For all our problems in the American Union today, I still count my blessings and give thanks that my family and I are not in most of the rest of the world. Curtailed as our freedoms are, and as fervently as we long for and work for a new birth of liberty in this land, we cannot help but be grateful that we have kept as much and lost as little as we have. This week, we again need to remember that our liberties are dependent on our efforts to keep them!

Government-run, Taxpayer-funded Schools
A few items to start out, today, tied with other news of interest.

Rhode Island: Schools fail on recruitment notification
NBC 10 News
"Rhode Island school districts have been put on notice that they must clarify their policies regarding military recruitment in schools. NBC 10's Kelley McGee reported that a provision in the No Child Left Behind Act gives military recruiters access to student information unless their parents sign a form that allows students to opt out of the process. This form is supposed to be sent home with every student, but a recent survey of Rhode Island schools by the American Civil Liberties Union found otherwise. 'The one thing that's very clear is that the vast majority of parents and students had no idea that this information about them was being released to the military without their knowledge,' said Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU's Rhode Island affiliate." (11/22/05)

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but you HAVE to get your kids out of these schools. At the same time, if these parents pay so little attention to the news and the world around them that they don't know military recruiters can get the info unless they act, they are probably also too lacking to get their kids out. (Read the rest here) (Two full pages!)