Looking for Freedom?

Uppity Men
By Carey Roberts

Let's face it, we've been snookered.

They promised gender liberation, now we're becoming dependents of the Nanny State. They averred no fancy for special treatment, now we have affirmative action. They said they only wanted to give women a voice, now we've got speech codes. They claimed to be for gender equality, now boys are struggling just to keep up in school.

Why has it taken so long for us to catch on? (Read the rest here)

Diagnosing our Health Care Woes
by Congressman Ron Paul - R - TX

No one disputes the diagnosis: American health care is in lousy shape. As a practicing physician for more than 30 years, I find the pervasiveness of managed care very troubling.

The problems with our health care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market. (Read the rest here)

War Is Horrible, but . . .
By Robert Higgs

Anyone who has done even a little reading about the theory and practice of war, whether in political theory, international relations, theology, history, or common journalistic commentary, has encountered a sentence of the form “war is horrible, but . . . .” In this construction, the phrase that follows the conjunction explains why a certain war was (or now is or someday will be) an action that ought to have been (or ought to be) undertaken notwithstanding its admitted horrors. The frequent, virtually formulaic use of this expression attests that nobody cares to argue, say, that war is a beautiful, humane, uplifting, or altogether splendid course of action and therefore the more often people fight, the better. (Read the rest here)

The United States of Barbarism
by James Bovard

The U.S. Senate is cutting a deal with President Bush to make America a banana republic. Last week, three senators reached an agreement with the White House that will de facto permit the CIA to continue torturing people around the world. And the deal will prevent anyone -- including Bush administration officials -- from being held liable for the torture.

This is the latest sign that our elected representatives in Washington believe that the federal government deserves absolute power over everyone in the world. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned recently that Bush's efforts to gut the Geneva Conventions would cause the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." (Read the rest here)

Individual Liberty - 101
From The Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Justice and Prudence of War: Toward A Libertarian Analysis
By Roderick Long

The libertarian "non-aggression principle" expresses the conviction that forcibly to subordinate the person or property of another to one's own aims is to assume an unjustifiable inequality in authority between oneself and the other. And it is because this equality in authority likewise holds between private citizens and public officials that governments are forbidden to exercise any powers not available to people generally; libertarianism requires not just equality before the law but equality with the law.

It follows that a consistent libertarian theory of warfare must apply the same prohibitions and permissions to governments and private individuals alike. In this respect it will be radically different from nonlibertarian theories, which typically grant government actors more latitude in the use of violence than private actors; a libertarian theory must be equally permissive — or equally restrictive — with both. (Read the rest here)

From The Archives: (11/28/05)
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.

(Read the rest here) (This is as relevant now as it was almost a year ago. ML)

External Articles You Should See!
Trial By Jury In Danger Of Extinction
by Jim Kouri

One of the most important constitutional rights is the right to a fair and open trial. The Sixth Amendment guarantee is apparently a personal right of the defendant, which he may in some circumstances waive in conjunction with the prosecution and the court, but it is the defendant's decision.

Because this right is so fundamental in the United States, the US Supreme Court in the past has had little occasion to deal with the right. It is a right so fundamental that it is protected against state deprivation by the due process clause, but it is not so absolute that reasonable regulation designed to forestall prejudice from publicity and disorderly trials is foreclosed. (Read the rest here) (Second great article here too!)

Your Feedback and Comments
The Mailbag for This Week (9/25/06)

Libertarian Commentary on The News
By Nathan A. Barton © 2006

Libertarian Commentary on the News, 17 - 23 September 2006
Let's dive right in, with a sad piece of news I missed.

Culture Wars: Oriana Fallaci RIP
Sept. 15 (Bloomberg)
Oriana Fallaci, the best-selling Italian journalist as renowned for her diatribes against Islam as her interviews with the political leaders of the late 20th century, has died. She was 77. Fallaci died late yesterday in a hospital in Florence where she was being treated for lung cancer, according to her publicist Paolo Klun. He said she had returned to die in the city of her birth about 10 days ago. "It was her last act of love,'' he said.

I missed this story last week, but readers deserve to know of the loss of this gallant fighter for freedom - hardly a libertarian, but still a vital defender of western civilization all her life. She fought the Fascists and National Socialists in the 30s and 40s, fought Communism in the 50s and beyond, and fought Islamic hegemonists in the new century. She will be missed. (Read the rest here - 2 full pages)

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