index -- The Price of Liberty

"It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service in this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

~ Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933
Two time recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor

The response to my article, Worshipping The State: Why They Die, has been tremendous, with the overwhelming majority of responses being positive. Especially pleasing was the number of emails I received from veterans of Vietnam, Korea and even WWII.

It appears that with time old soldiers begin to see the words of General Smedley Butler to be true, especially today, as they pertain to this nation’s immoral, illegal war. (Read the rest here)

In a recent column on World Net Daily, Robert Ringer states that "In order to preserve freedom, some freedoms must be restricted."Although I have heard similar things God knows how many times since 9/11, this particular column got my dander up. I guess it is because it so neatly summarizes the panic mentality that has come over so many Americans in the last five years.

Ringer says he wishes things were otherwise, but in a world gone mad he believes that surrendering freedom in order to preserve freedom is a "reality."Orwellian Doublethink doesn't get much more straightforward than this.

Ringer wrote this in response to the recent removal of six Muslim imams from a US Airways flight before it departed Minneapolis for Phoenix. According to the AP report, "Witnesses said the men prayed in the terminal and made critical comments about the Iraq war, according to the police report, and a US Airways manager said three of the men had only one-way tickets and no checked baggage." (Read the rest here)

The National Coalition Against Domestiec Violence (NCADV) has organization in all fifty states, it is often presented as the national leader concerning domestic violence and its political power drives national domestic violence policies. The NCADV website claims that its mission and purpose is:

The NCADV believes violence against women and children results from the use of force or threats to achieve and maintain control over others in intimate relationships, and from societal abuse of power and domination in the forms of sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, able-bodyism, ageism and other oppressions. The NCADV recognizes that the abuses of power in society foster battering by perpetuating conditions, which condone violence against women and children. Therefore, it is the mission of NCADV to work for major societal changes necessary to eliminate both personal and societal violence against all women and children. (Read the rest here)

Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership
America's Aggressive Civil Rights Organization

The Declaration of Independence states that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". This means that there are certain rights which everyone has, simply by being alive. Yet we are often reduced to petitioning politicians to acknowledge these rights.

Bill of Rights Day is December 15, less than three weeks away. While we applaud those politicians who introduce a Bill of Rights Day resolution, and those local governments that agree to it, we want to stress that it is NOT necessary to wait for government to throw you a few crumbs. There are lots of things you can do without a politician's "permission": (Read the rest here)

President Bush just returned from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Vietnam where he failed to get support for his sanctions against North Korea from anyone, including South Korea. Except for a few snatches here and there in the news, you would hardly know that this had been a meeting about economics.

On Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 23, 2006, the New York Times published an article titled "Fed Chief's Help Enlisted for Trip to Press China" that covered how our new Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, will be traveling to Singapore in December with Federal Reserve Chairman Bernard Bernanke to meet with economic leaders at the next Group of 7 meeting and to "press for changes in Chinese economic policies long criticized by the (U.S.) administration and Congress." (Read the rest here)

This weekend, a friendly argument offered a revelation of sorts. It also explained a whole lot about why people vote as they do, and why politicians lead as they do.

There's a new party game out in time for the holidays called "Would You Rather." It's really less a competition than it is a device for getting interesting conversations going. The premise is a fairly simple one. Players are asked a series of questions beginning with the words, "Would you rather...?" Players then discuss their answers as they try to reach a consensus. It's the utter ridiculousness of many questions that are supposed to make the game fun to boot (for the record, it's not, but we didn't know that when we first took out the box). (Read the rest here)

Am I the only one who is worried about the collapse of the traditional American family right before our very eyes?

Census Bureau bureaucrats are not in the habit of making apocalyptic pronouncements, but last year Mark Mather reported that the "dramatic decline" in the married population is "one of the biggest demographic stories of the past several decades." Now, married couples account for a minority - 49.7% to be exact - of all U.S. households. (Read the rest here)

The war in Iraq goes on, but we shouldn't let it overshadow the war at home -- one that frequently takes the lives of people who don't deserve to die. It's known as the War on Drugs, but it's really a war on people who themselves are not making war against anyone. Too often individuals minding their own business are killed by government officers. In the name of decency, this war must end.

By now many people have heard that an 88-year-old Atlanta woman who lived alone was shot dead November 21 by police raiding her home on the basis of a confidential informant's claim that he had bought crack cocaine from a man at that location. However, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the unidentified informant says the police told him after the shooting to lie about the drug buy. (Read the rest here)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—A few years ago, I had a chance to do some in-depth research into the war that Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru’s de facto spymaster, was waging against a small group of journalists, former spies and an exiled businessman intent on bringing an end to Alberto Fujimori’s regime. It was not a pretty affair—the dictatorship killed, tortured, imprisoned or caused various critics to flee the country before it came crumbling down.

As I delved into the cloak-and-dagger world of Montesinos’ dirty war, I learned three lessons, all of which came back to me last week as I read the spooky saga of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector who died after being poisoned in London with a byproduct of uranium. (Read the rest here)

Once again the possibility of reinstating a military draft is being discussed in Washington, and while the idea seems remote it is not unthinkable.

Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, soon to be a powerful committee chair, has openly called for reinstating the Selective Service System. Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey claims that our ground forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq are stretched far too thin, and desperately need reinforcements. Meanwhile, other political and military leaders suggest that several hundred thousand additional troops might be needed simply to restore some semblance of order in Iraq. We are nearing the point where a choice will have to be made: either decrease our troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan significantly, or produce thousands of new military recruits quickly. So a discussion of military conscription is not purely academic. (Read the rest here)

The fundamental dogma of all brands of socialism and communism is that the market economy or capitalism is a system that hurts the vital interests of the immense majority of people for the sole benefit of a small minority of rugged individualists. It condemns the masses to progressing impoverishment. It brings about misery, slavery, oppression, degradation and exploitation of the working men, while it enriches a class of idle and useless parasites.

This doctrine was not the work of Karl Marx. It had been developed long before Marx entered the scene. Its most successful propagators were not the Marxian authors, but such men as Carlyle and Ruskin, the British Fabians, the German professors and the American Institutionalists. And it is a very significant fact that the correctness of this dogma was contested only by a few economists who were very soon silenced and barred from access to the universities, the press, the leadership of political parties and, first of all, public office. Public opinion by and large accepted the condemnation of capitalism without any reservation. (Read the rest here)

Does Anybody Really Know Where the Money Comes From?
Does Anybody Really Care?
by Wilton D. Alston

There was a time when the myth of fiscal conservatism permeated the legend of Republicans long dead. At one point in time people would brag about being "a Goldwater Republican" and keeping government spending on a short leash. From conversations with my own conservative acquaintances, I know that there are still Republicans who think their party is all about controlling spending. (No, I didn’t check to see if this opinion was a drug-induced hallucination, but I have my suspicions.) There are also those Democrats who can regale you with stories of how Clinton, when he wasn’t enjoying a fine cigar, ran a budget surplus and whatnot. (Read the rest here)

Libertarian Commentary on The News 26 NOV - 2 DEC 2006
By Nathan A. Barton © 2006

Home Front:
New citizenship test questions unveiled
Seattle Post Intelligencer
"Alicia Bowers, a Panamanian immigrant, can easily recall that George Washington was the first U.S. president. She knows the three branches of government are legislative, executive and judicial. But Bowers, who took a course to study for the U.S. citizenship test she plans to take, was stumped when asked why there are three branches of government?She also couldn't answer two other draft questions the government wants to try out on 5,000 immigrants who volunteer in 10 cities in an attempt to revise the citizenship test. The government unveiled to mixed reaction 144 draft test questions Thursday. Officials plan to begin trying them out early next year and begin using a redesigned citizenship test in 2008. .... "The people, they have to go to school to study that and take some courses in order to answer and have the right answers," Bowers said after she couldn't answer "What does the Constitution do?" and "Name one important idea found in the Declaration of Independence." [Editor's note: What'd be really interesting is using this as the 'high school exit exam', -MLS](11/30/06)

Sadly, no one has sent in any suggestions for what the questions should be. You do still have a chance to make YOUR suggestions, at TPOL-News at Libertyhaven.com. (Read the rest here ) 2 full pages!

Features From The Last Issue

Repeating History
By Lady Liberty

Feminist Infiltration into the Conservative Ranks?
By Carey Roberts

Personal Preference and Local Tyranny
by Scott McPherson

Economic Coercion Is Not an Effective Foreign Policy Tool
By Ivan Eland

From The Archives:
Thanksgiving Day, 2004
Susan Callaway, Editor

Individual Liberty - 101
From The Ludwig von Mises Institute
A Century of War
By John V. Denson

External Articles:
David Crockett, Charity, and Congress
by Edward S. Ellis
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