End the War on Freedom

Unlimited Freedom of Speech was formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) Free Speech Society. P.T. Cattani, who maintained it there, has turned over maintenance to Cliff Kadmon, and it has moved to its new home at freespeech.org. Added to my links page in the Freedom/Liberty section. I found out about it because Mr. Kadmon linked from his Political and Social Ideas page to my Vin Suprynowicz page and sent me email informing me of the link. Their site is primarily a huge collection of links, nicely categorized. Their quotes page has lots of goodies, a few of which are repeated below.

Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. -- H.L. Mencken

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson

All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the world to do the fighting for them. -- Emma Goldman, 1917

Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -- Noam Chomsky

Brian Fitzgerald - Super Granny: Defender of Justice: I think I've seen this before, but it's worth another read. How an elderly Florida lady successfully defended her car with a handgun, well sort of. Hehe. [brianf]

Brent Simmons' inessential.com has taken a decided turn in style recently. He used to talk almost entirely about technology. Not any more. He even had a pointer a few days back to a site with some of the best pictures of declad dolls I've ever seen on the web. 'nuf said. [brent]

J.D. Tuccille at CivilLiberties.About.Com - Pot payback: Californians are creating recall elections for elected drug warriors who won't support Prop. 215. Good for them. [market]

Tibor R. Machan at Laissez Faire City Times - Corporations and "Fair" Taxes: Besides being criminal, taxes hurt everybody.

Basically, this also teaches us that there is no such thing as a fair or just tax. And that should be clear: anything taken from people by coercion cannot be fair or just. It is like discussing the fairness of loot stolen from people. There just isn't such a thing, any more than there can be an ethical murder or rape or robbery. These are inherently wrong and cannot be made good or fair or just no matter how one juggles them around.

Jack Wenders at Laissez Faire City Times - Modern Liberal Idealism; Religion or Self Interest? Modern liberals seem to always talk about people in the plural. They measure everything by the collective good, where "good" is determined by the measurer, not the measured. Mr. Wenders argues that this behavior can be seen to be selfish, though criminal, or religious. For some reason it is considered criminal when one person steals but justified when a government steals.

People are, because they can only experience their own pain and pleasure, naturally self-centered. Being naturally self-centered, they want to make themselves better-off. One way to do this is purely introspective--make yourself better off by self-production, by living within yourself in a way that is self-satisfying. But one can also make himself better off by interacting with others, and these interactions can be classified in two general ways--coercive and voluntary.

Coercive interactions are necessarily redistributive: one person is made better off while another is made worse off. I know of no moral standard, religious or otherwise, that condones coercive individual behavior, except in self-defense.

On the other hand, voluntary interactions are productive because all are made better off in their own judgement. This, of course, is what leads classical liberals to emphasize voluntary association as the ideal social interaction.

But from the individual's standpoint, it is often better to simply receive from others in redistributive fashion than to produce for others to get the same thing. Thus, to advocate redistribution rather than production is often perceived as the easiest way for any individual to get ahead. In order to justify and advocate self-interested redistribution, individuals need a collectivist view of the world. Thus, the demand for a collectivist view of the world may be, ironically, a product of individual self-centered behavior. It is often easier to steal than produce, especially, as I shall argue below, if the moral consequences of theft are condoned when done collectively.

Tamara Audi at the Detroit Free Press - Soccer moms enlist in battle over guns: how do you fight a million soccer moms against guns? With another million for guns. Hehe. [market]

Joanna Glasner at Wired - Amazon Loses Patent Suit Round: The preliminary injunction has been lifted. Barnes & Noble may now use a web buying system resembling Amazon's one-click, at least until the trial in September. [cafe]

Bruce Perens at Technocrat.net - Future plans for Technocrat: after threatening 10 days ago to shut down the site, Mr. Perens has decided to keep it going but with a different focus. Exactly what he means remains to be seen.

Pete Townshend - Napster: He of The Who tried Napster with his son over his 500K ADSL connection. He liked it. He comments on being a music artist in the world of broadband information distribution. [xray]

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