The Price of Liberty

The First Citizen and His Ministers
Top Obama Adviser: Congress Will Approve Government-Owned Health-Care This Summer
CNSNews.com
Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that President Obama intends to promote a health-care reform plan that will include creating a government-owned health-care company. He predicted that Congress will enact such a plan by the end of the summer. Axelrod said that a government-owned health-care company would “give consumers a better deal."…

Predictions like this are usually garbage, BUT they are a good indicator that the Administration intends to push this rotted and stinking bag of tripe right into our faces. If passed, this will join Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, the Postal Service and other examples of incredible government incompetence, waste, and stupidity. (Read the rest here)

Canaries in the Coal Mine
By The Hunter

My Grandpa O'Neal worked in the coal mines in Weir, Kansas 50 years ago or more. I've still got his carbide lamp and the cap he wore it on. From what he told me about those mines, I doubt they had ROOM to have a cage with a canary in it to warn them of gas. But it is certainly true that miners over the centuries used canaries and other small animals to warn them of bad air or gas. They were more sensitive to the danger than their human masters, and when they keeled over the miners knew they were running out of time. We are starting to see the political equivalent of those canaries fairly regularly now.

This isn't the first time I've made this observation, nor indeed am I naive enough to think I'm the only one who's noticed what is happening. Both the economic hard times and the concern of a lot of the citizenry about the ratcheting up of oppression contribute to the kooks coming out of the woodwork. I always refer to guys like Roeder, von Brunn, or Muhammad (just to mention the latest 3) as 'windup wackos". Not because I think there's some sort of sinister plot using them to further some grand design, but because the press seizes on them and trots out the same old tired advocates of victim disarmament every time, like clockwork. (Read the rest here)

In a Convention of Sovereign States, July 4, 2009
The unanimous Declaration of the fifty united States of America
By Robert Greenslade

In the Course of securing Liberty and establishing the Republic, our Forefathers Dissolved all allegiance to the British Crown and declared the American Colonies to be free and independent States. This separation from the mother country Transformed the newly established States into separate Sovereign political entities.

That in 1781, the thirteen united States, Severally, entered into a league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare called the Articles of Confederation. Under this Compact, each State retained its Sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which was not expressly Delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. This limited Confederation did not consolidate the thirteen united States, or their People, into one nation. (Read the rest here)

From The Archives
Liberty Incident Command System Part 4
By David Neilson

Using the Liberty Incident Command System

Triggering a Response
The Incident Command System is flexible enough to manage any size or type of incident or event. On a small incident, the Incident Commander (IC) will perform all command functions and coordinate the actions of all resources. The original IC will remain in command until he is relieved at the end of an operational period, or until he passes the position on to a more experienced or better qualified individual.

When an incident such as the arrest of a team member for a political crime triggers a Level One protest by a team or network, the first responder on the scene is the IC. The first thing the IC will do is size up the situation, give the incident a name to avoid confusion with any other incident or event, and establish an Incident Command Post.

After the initial size up, the IC will call for the resources needed to deal with the incident. (Read the rest here)

Others view Communism as the far greater evil, a godless philosophy that eventually doomed many more millions of souls in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

Yet these staggering numbers pale in comparison to the toll of unborn children whose lives are claimed each year by abortion. Each year 42 million of these procedures are performed around the world. As the Alan Guttmacher Institute boasts on its website, “About one in five pregnancies worldwide end in abortion.”

So while Communism consumed 100 million persons over the course of a century, abortion has snuffed out the lives of 420 million innocents in the last 10 years alone. (Read the rest here)

There's a word for blaming a group for actions of an individual: it's called "prejudice." Let's put things in perspective.

The lawless acts of someone reportedly distraught because "his Social Security had been cut and that he was barely making it" hardly qualify him as a Constitutionalist, that is, someone who believes in "the supreme law of the land."

Based on a percentage of the whole, it makes more statistical sense to tar members of Mensa, to which he alctually belonged at one time, with the guilt for the alleged actions of James W. von Brunn than it does to blame "conservatives." And clearly, that makes no sense. But being pegged as something we're not isn't the main danger facing not just the people of the right, but all of us. (Read the rest here) (Read the entire article at the source website. Use the back button to return.)

A young couple, just starting out, is scrimping and saving on important things like food, while spending lavishly on things like $300 sunglasses. She won't let her house mate ride public transportation (not a bad thing, mind you, being financed coercively) to save money because it would be "embarrassing" to the family. None of anyone else's business under normal circumstances. Until...

In order to be able to make ends meet, they apply for food stamps.

Another person, not me, becomes incensed upon hearing the woman bragging about their "smart shopping" with the stolen money, and raises objections. He says "I am paying for your food. Money is taken out of my paycheck every payday to pay for your food stamps!"

Shocked upon hearing this, the woman says: "No, We are just trying to save money". (Read the rest here) (Read the entire article at the source website. Use the back button to return.)

Anchorage Libertarian Examiner
Another high-speed chase, shots fired by cops...and no word on charges
By Kevin Wilmeth

Go read this short article from the ADN about a high-speed chase in Kenai.

Boy, the reporter sure doesn't seem to want to ask the obvious questions here. I mean, unless there's something really wrong with my reading ability, the article makes pretty clear the following:

    * At some point, the cops opened fire on a vehicle they were chasing for "erratic driving".
    * After the shots, a child was pushed out of the vehicle.
    * The official police spokesperson was not aware of what charges were to be filed. (Read the rest here) (Read the entire article at the source website. Use the back button to return.)

The Ludwig von Mises Institute
The Fed Might Have Painted Itself into a Corner
by Frank Shostak

What most commentators and Fed policy makers don't tell us is that monetary pumping has given rise to various bubble activities. These bubble activities are supported by real savings that have been diverted from wealth generators by means of pumped money. Also note that the pumped money has prevented the removal of various old bubble activities. Hence, contrary to popular thinking, the massive money pumping has actually weakened the economy's bottom line.

If the Fed were to start taking some of the newly pumped money from the economy, i.e., to curb the money-supply rate of growth, this would hurt various old and new bubble activities. It would set in motion an economic bust. (Remember, bubble activities are not self-funded; they require money "out of thin air," which is employed to divert real savings to them from wealth generators.)

(Read the rest here) (Read the entire article at the source website. Use the back button to return.)

The Future of Freedom Foundation
The Idiocy of Gun Control
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The news media is reporting that an armed man shot and killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday with a 22-caliber rifle.

That’s impossible. It just cannot be true.

Don’t the media know that the Holocaust Museum is located in Washington, D.C.? Don’t they know that despite the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller, our nation’s capital nonetheless has maintained a strict regime of gun control? Don’t they know that it’s illegal in D.C. for people to carry a loaded rifle and fire it within the jurisdiction of the district? Don’t they know that there is even a law in D.C. against shooting someone else with a gun? (Read the rest here) (Read the entire article at the source website. Use the back button to return.)

The Independent Institute
Europe Goes Right
By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

The European parliamentary elections have dealt a devastating blow to the left. Even if many of the victorious right-wing parties have been responding like socialists to the economic recession, the election results express mistrust in the ability of Europe’s true socialists to address the so-called failures of free enterprise.

In those countries where socialist parties are in power—such as Spain, Portugal, Austria, Britain or Hungary—they were resoundingly defeated. In conservative-controlled countries such as France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland or the Flemish part of Belgium, the socialists also took a severe beating. Only in two countries, Slovakia and Greece, did the left beat the right—in the case of Greece because of an ethical scandal. The right-wing parties will control roughly 40 percent of the European Parliament against the socialists’ 22 percent. (Read the rest here) (Read the entire article at the source website. Use the back button to return.)

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It finally came to me - and that's when I left the city, abandoned a goodly percentage of my goods, and gave all that was behind me a good, stiff Randian Shrug. The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.

[Mama's Note: This is much more of a personal ramble than the blogs usually posted here, but the author offers many wonderful freedom insights, in a context that is both entertaining and stimulating. He's "doing freedom" in a very real way, and willing to share that journey with us.]

Welcome to Kent McManigal's "Liberty" website. I am an anarchist and radical libertarian who wants to spread the word about true liberty.

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