May Day 2001
From "Sunbeams" in the May 2001 issue of The Sun:
Being asked to decide between your passion for work and your passion for children was like being asked by your doctor whether you preferred him to remove your brain or your heart. -- Mary Kay Blakelyand:
I figure when my husband comes home from work, if the kids are still alive, then I've done my job. -- Roseanne Barr
Kevin Tuma - Up in Smoke - cartoon commentary on the war on freedom, er... some drugs. HoohoohoohoohoohooOoo!
I sent the following letter to the editor of the Albany Times Union. The TU doesn't print op-eds on their web site, so I can't link to the article in question.
No More Infringements
An op-ed in the 4/30 TU claimed that additional infringements of the second amendment would not be sufficient to prevent future violence. I agree. Disarming the victims will never work. Hanging a "Helpless victims zone" sign on our schools will not protect our children. More likely the opposite. Simply brandishing a weapon is often sufficient to repel an attacker.
Even though self-defense is a good reason for personal firearms ownership, that is not the purpose of the second amendment. Our right to keep and bear arms was guaranteed by the authors of America's Bill of Rights because they had recently fought for independence from British tyranny. America's militia armed with personal weapons defeated England's army. The spark that ignited the shot heard round the world was an attempt by the Crown to confiscate those weapons. The Founders wanted to ensure that future tyranny could be quashed in a similar manner.
Anyone who would deny the ability of individuals to protect their families and their liberty is inviting history to repeat itself. Russia, China, Germany, Cambodia, and many other governments were able to murder millions of their own people because those people were first disarmed. Don't let it happen here.
There's a name for a country where only the police have guns. It's called a police state.
Bill St. Clair
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Respect for Life begins with Respect for the Constitutional Rule of Law - Dr. Paul comments on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. He believes that fetuses are human beings, and as such, abortion is murder. He also believes, however, that the federal government has no power to say anything about this. It is up to the states to decide how to handle this issue. As I've said before, I consider a fetus to be part of its mother until it is born and breathing on its own. What she decides to do with it before then, including contracting with a doctor to abort it, is nobody's business but hers.
The only true federal crimes are those listed in Article I (treason, piracy, and counterfeiting); all other crimes are left to the jurisdiction of the states under the 10th Amendment. Yet Congress finds it much easier to federalize every human evil rather than uphold the Constitution and respect states' rights.
There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise, "Invasions".
- Letter from Keith Shugarts - good commentary on the recent supreme court nullification of the fourth amendment via a story about David Boaz being ticketed for not wearing his seatbelt.
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Another Letter from Keith Shugarts - U.S. drug demand causes the
wars in Columbia and other Andean nations according to U.S. Foreign
Minister Colin the Fickle. Not! America's war on drug users is the
responsible party.
Colin the Fickle was obviously asking for more money to combat the drug scourge that the government created so the government can tax you more, put more police on the streets to pull you out of your cars and arrest you then search your car for those drugs that they've declared illegal thereby obliterating any 4th Amendment protections you might have had.
- Another Letter from L. Neil Smith - L. Neil's Forge of the Elders is now available in paperback for $7.99 (discounted by BN to $7.19). This letter includes a couple of reviews. I bought it in hardcover when it first came out. Good stuff. Buy. Now.
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The Confederate Flag by Scott Callahan - I have been joining with
many other libertarians in supporting the Confederate flag as a symbol
of liberty. If James Epperson's
Declarations of Causes of Seceding States is accurate, slavery
was also a big factor in the South's secession, and many of us should
be biting our tongues.
To recognize the importance of slavery to the creation of the Confederacy is not to embrace the demise of states' rights and the growth of federal power that existed prior to the Civil War, nor is it to deny that such federal encroachments on freedom existed then or continue to exist now. However, to ignore or dismiss it, as Rockwell and many other libertarians tend to do, and to champion the Confederacy as a great defender of liberty, is to ultimately, even if inadvertantly, associate the notion of states' rights and limited government with the defense of an evil, pernicious institution, namely slavery. The idea of states' rights has suffered greatly from this association for far too long. The way to rehabilitate it is not to hide the role that slavery played in the creation of the Confederacy, but is instead to castigate the Confederacy for erroneously attempting to use a noble concept to defend an ignoble institution. Libertarians, with a commitment to individual freedom wholly irreconcilable with the institution of slavery, ought to be among the most ardent critics, not champions, of the Confederacy.
Kevin B. O'Reilly at Laissez Faire City Times - The Danger of Hepatitis B Vaccine - giving Hepatitis B vaccine to infants is criminal. The vaccine causes much more harm than the disease, largely because infants are at so little risk of contracting the disease. But try to convince the medical establishment of this.
Reed Lindsay at Narco News - Legalization Seen as Key to Winning Drug War; Consensus Growing - Reducing America's demand for drugs is the only way to affect the suppliers in South America. Legalization is the beginning of that process. [grabbe]
In the past two months, the Chihuahua state governor and a high-ranking federal police official have remarked on the failure of anti-narcotics enforcement and the possible benefits of legalization. Moreover, in March, President Vicente Fox, despite his January pledge to wage "a war without mercy" on drugs, told a Mexico City daily he agreed that legalizing narcotics was the only way to win such a battle.
Libertarian Party Op-Ed by Steve Dasbach - A Surprising Quiz: Bush's First 100 Days -GW has accomplished a whole slew of klinton and Gore's goals in just 100 days.
In fact, after looking at the record of President Bush's first 100 days, there's really only one thought experiment question left to ask: Why was the outcome of the 2000 presidential election so fiercely contested -- since it seems to have made no real difference who won?
