| No human being has the right -- under any circumstances -- to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation. The Zero Aggression Principle |
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Looking for Freedom?
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January
22, 2007 The government and the media want us to think that we are engaged in an apocalyptic struggle against terrorists "who want to take away our freedom and undermine our very way of life." It is not some Islamopsychopath in a cave in Afghanistan who is denying Mr. Fincher his freedom. It is our own wretched and pathetic excuse of a government in Washington and its flunkies in Little Rock , Springdale and Fayetteville . "The terrorists" have not even taken over Afghanistan, one of the poorest most backward countries on earth. Our own government, however, has been slicing and dicing our Constitution and Bill of Rights for decades. The Bill of Rights guarantees rights that already existed prior to being put to paper in 1791. The Second Amendment states, in part, that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Any restriction upon that right, no matter what the reason, is unconstitutional. Period. (Read the rest here)
Left
Wing Socialist wants to make Minutemen Domestic Terrorists State Representative Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, a former Green Party member whose political ideology makes socialists and tyrants everywhere jump with joy, has introduced legislation that would target individuals who patrol the Arizona border with Mexico. Under her bill, anyone not officially affiliated with law enforcement, who patrols to detect illegal activity while in possession of any weapon, would be classified as a domestic terrorist. The proposed legislation would make the so-called crime a felony and impose a mandatory jail sentence of at least six-months, even if the prosecutor recommends probation. After doing some research on Sinema and reading her bio, it is obvious to me that she is just another left wing socialist who is a legend in her own mind. In her imperial arrogance, Sinema apparently believes her statute trumps the Arizona Constitution. Fortunately for the people of Arizona, when it comes to firearms, that is not the case. (Read the rest here)
Things
Could Get Ugly Ignoring bad laws is both a really good idea and a singularly bad one. The good part of ignoring unconstitutional laws is that (technically, at least) it's not only legal for us to do so but mandatory under the Constitution itself. The bad news is the likely result of doing the right and patriotic thing, which may involve such negative consequences as arrests, fines, seizures, and jail time. While I can't and won't encourage you to ignore any duly legislated laws (mostly because it would be illegal for me to do so), I can point out that people in sufficient numbers ignoring laws will spread the risk out over so many people that the risks to any given individual may suddenly plummet into the acceptable range. There are, after all, only so many cops, courtrooms, and jail cells! And while I'd certainly never suggest you take it on yourself to accept an even larger risk, I will say that precedents can be very, very good things when it comes to overturning bad laws. (Read the rest here)
Factual
Crime Data Ignored On December 28, 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the United States announced that the IPV rate had declined between 1993 and 2004. Domestic violence advocates were quick to attribute that decrease to the 1994 Violence against Women Act (VAWA). They claimed VAWA funded training for law enforcement officers and increased prosecution is responsible for that decrease. There is no data to support that claim. The author of the BJS-IPV report states there is no consensus why IPV victimization has declined. Perhaps because so many advocates want to believe that IPV is caused by sexist, assertive and aggressive males whose goal is to oppress passive and docile females, they have been rendered unable or unwilling to see, understand or acknowledge important empirical data as evidenced by this most recent BJS-IPV report. (Read the rest here)
Everybody
Supports the Troops Mr. Speaker, I have never met anyone who did not support our troops. Sometimes, however, we hear accusations that someone or some group does not support the men and women serving in our armed forces. This is pure demagoguery, and it’s intellectually dishonest. The accusers play on emotions to gain support for controversial policies, implying that those who disagree are unpatriotic. But keeping our troops out of harm’s way, especially when war is unnecessary, is never unpatriotic. There’s no better way to support the troops. Since we now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not threatening anyone, we must come to terms with 3,000 American deaths and 23,000 American casualties. It’s disconcerting that those who never believed the justifications given for our invasion, and who now want the war ended, are still accused of not supporting the troops! This is strange indeed! (Read the rest here)
Men:
Last Great Hope of the Republican Party A few years ago Democratic pollster Celinda Lake sounded the alarm that the Dems needed to reach out to male voters, or else resign itself to becoming a party of the perpetual minority. At first everyone laughed her off. Then candidate John Kerry disastrously admitted in the 2004 campaign that his wife and daughters "kick me around," and New York Times writer Frank Rich accused Kerry of being a Girlie-Man. (Read the rest here)
The
Future of Freedom Foundation The most peculiar passage in President Bush's much-dissected "surge" speech was this: "I have made it clear to the prime minister [Nouri al-Maliki] and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people." What could the president have meant by that? On one level it's a waste of time to even ask the question. Bush says what he needs to say in order to justify whatever it is he wants to do. The standard isn't truth and logic but appearance. How will it look to the American people and, presumably, historians far in the future? (Read the rest here)
The
Independent Institute Although President Bush’s escalation of the Iraq War has been opposed by a substantial majority of the American people, many generals, the Iraq Study Group, and most Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, the most important opposition may come from Iraqis. Although Bush had trouble correctly reading the results of the November 2006 congressional elections, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki got the message loud and clear. When Maliki met Bush in Amman, Jordan, later in November, he hoped the newly chastened American president would be sensible enough to lower the U.S. profile in Baghdad. Maliki demanded that the United States turn most of the security responsibilities in Baghdad over to the Iraqi government and withdraw U.S. forces to the outskirts of the capital. Rather than training Iraqi security forces and moving toward the exits, however, the president has decided to do the opposite. His escalation of the war will now result in U.S. forces bearing the brunt of the fighting and dying in the Iraqi capital. (Read the rest here)
Individual
Liberty - 101 Those who disparage the ideas of deregulation and limited government claim that we need a large activist government to reign in the excesses of capitalism. Such persons trust government bureaucrats to enforce regulations in a responsible manner. The actual record of big government indicates that such trust in government is unfounded. One of the latest examples of bureaucratic excess involves the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida. The Hemingway Home is famous for its six-toed cats, about fifty of them. These cats are descended from Ernest Hemingway's own six-toed cat. These cats have been a tourist attraction at the Hemingway Home and Museum for decades. Visitors to the Hemingway Home obviously have no objection to these cats, and the caretakers of the Hemingway Home do control the size of their cat population. Yet the Federal Government has recently moved to regulate these cats. (Read the rest here)
From
The Archives (05/25/04) Recently while sorting through some paperwork, I came across a transaction statement from a mutual fund company. The transaction? A small, inactive account had earned a penny, and the penny was automatically reinvested - thus, the statement. I wondered for a moment why a sensible company would spend their time and resources (and a stamp) on a transaction statement for a measly penny - particularly within a week of the end of the quarter, when the company would issue regular quarterly statements. There's gotta be a law protecting the consumer from the evil mutual fund company, I thought to myself, to shoehorn them into maintaining such an extraordinarily inefficient business practice. (Read the rest here)
External
Articles The
Federal War on Gold Given the rising price of gold and the fact that federal spending is totally out of control, the prospect of gold confiscation and criminalizing the private ownership of gold by federal authorities inevitably rears its ugly head. There are few things that federal big spenders hate more than gold. Why? Because they know that, historically, gold has provided the best means by which people could protect themselves against the ravages of a rapidly depreciating currency. The mainstream press often uses the term “inflation” to describe rising prices. That’s incorrect. Actually, when the general price level is rising, that’s a result of inflation, not inflation itself. Inflation is the process by which governments print up the money to pay for ever-increasing expenditures. (Read the rest here)
The
Mailbag
Afghanistan made it back to the news headlines again, this week. Fuel prices seem to be dropping, which angers OPEC; Chavez is really getting around these days, and the Congressional thugs are being themselves. Business as usual, this third week of 2007. But the good news is, we are still fighting for our liberty! Never give up! On to the news. Afghani
Front: I really don’t know if these should be considered true civilians, or just local mercenaries, but it is still a welcome change to see some good news reported. (Read the rest here. Two full pages.)
From The Libertarian Enterprise
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