End the War on Freedom

Robert Lederman - Giuliani Postcards - Herr Rudy got lots of good press for standing around at ground zero. Some have forgotten what a fascist he was during the rest of his administration. [brianf]

Brian Fitzgerald - we need nurturing, not jobs - commentary on a speech GW made about the government's role in helping people to find jobs. I agree with Brian that GW is going about this the entirely wrong way. Unfortunately, the other guy, algore, would have been at least as bad. Repeat after me. The only role of government, if it indeed has any valid role, is to preserve individual liberty. [brianf]

I believe the goal of the government should be about promoting the general health and well being of all citizens.

I believe it's about promoting conditions in which it is possible to care for your family and neighbors without consuming so much time that you must hire other people to care for your children.

I believe it's about the "American Dream" of the 1960's that has long been forgotten. A dream that the increases in efficiency in providing shelter, food and clothing could reduce stress. Reduced stress would do a great deal to reduce the costs of healthcare and defense.

Julian Dibbell at Wired - In Gold We Trust - An article on the modest success of e-gold, "gold itself, circulated electronically". And why basing currency on gold is a really good idea. Starts with a plug for [jpfo]:

Thirty miles south of Florida's Cape Canaveral lies the town of Melbourne, home to the Action Gun pistol range, where, on a balmy Thursday afternoon, James Ray stands calmly firing round after Glock 9-mm round at a photocopied image of Adolf Hitler. Ray supplied the target himself. He purchased it on the Web site of one of his favorite nonprofit organizations (Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership), and its ideological content is not what you'd call subtle: Against the background of a standard ring target, the Füau;hrer stands in full Sieg heil mode, his arm up high and his sternum right in the bull's-eye, above a caption that reads ALL IN FAVOR OF GUN CONTROL RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND. By the time Ray has had enough of the Glock, the target is nicely perforated. Then he picks up his .44 Magnum hand cannon and blows Adolf pretty much to bits.

Yes, Jim Ray is a gun freak. But as it happens, the purpose of today's visit to the pistol range is not to huff powder fumes or celebrate the Second Amendment. He's here to show that there's a type of money you can believe in without also having to believe in the authority of the state. He's here to offer a glimpse of a world in which wealth resides ultimately not in flimsy pieces of government-issue paper but in rock-solid slabs of $279-an-ounce metal. He's here, in short, to demonstrate the vanguard of monetary technology: a 5,000-year-old form of cash called gold.

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Maybe you think you knew this already. Maybe you know gold has a specific gravity of 19.3, and that this means it's 19.3 times heavier than water. Maybe you also know gold is heavier than any element known to humans prior to the 18th-century discovery of platinum, and almost twice as heavy as lead. But until you've held 400 ounces of it in your hand, you've probably never grasped just what sort of heavy this stuff really is. Relative to its modest size, the 27.5 pounds in a standard gold bar is so much weight it's nearly impossible to accept that gravity alone accounts for the force you feel as you lift it. You're tempted to attribute some additional, almost metaphysical, power to the metal - as if the gold brick in your hand weren't just undeniably real but a gleaming avatar of reality itself.

Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - Pigs in a Poke (Libertarian Style) - Occasionally, even mainstream politicos do good things. But these are the exception that proves the rule. Mr. Reed suggests taking these examples one step further and give people what they say they want.

Take Gov. Mike Huckabee of the Razorback State. When tax-lovers bashed him for refusing to jack up taxes to cover budget shortfalls, he created a public "Tax Me More Fund." That way people who get piggish about raising taxes can prove it with a voluntary donation.

Then there's Virginia Ham State Senator Warren E. Barry who filed a bill to create an opt-out registry for death penalty foes. If the registrant is murdered, the killer will be ineligible for execution and the victim's piggybank must posthumously support the expense of keeping the killer in the pokey.

Russell Madden at Laissez Faire City Times - Cursed by Interesting Times - Mr. Madden transforms the Chinese curse into a blessing. May you live in boring times.

We are treated daily to the sorry spectacle of politicians and their cohorts praising freedom while destroying its very foundations. The principles expressed in our Constitution are transformed from cherished guidelines invaluable in helping us deal with the current crisis to unpleasant obstructions to be subverted and overcome by any means necessary. The excesses our citizens suffered in the past -- various alien and sedition acts, press restrictions, concentration camps interning our citizens -- are deemed irrelevant to this "war" or, worse, merely ignored.

Anonymous citizens slap physical flags on their car while remaining innocent of any knowledge of what constitutes true liberty. These are the same folks who see no reason for concern over national identification cards, surveillance cameras blanketing our cities, secret evidence, indefinite detentions, denial of legal representation, wiretaps on phones and computers, humiliating airport "security" searches, and the multitude of burgeoning controls inherent in establishing and maintaining an incipient police state. Abstractions mean little to such "concrete patriots." Indeed, they are the first to attack you for not mindlessly supporting the unconstitutional behaviors of the politicos hunkered down behind their concrete barriers in Washington, D.C.

Tibor R. Machan at Laissez Faire City Times - The Battle of the Brainwashers - Musings on the "12 year sentence" to which we subject our kids. Why is it that people fume over the importance of the separation of church and state, but don't get equally as hot under the collar about the separation of school and state? In a free society, both are necesary.

In a free society matters that are in significant contention, such as what children ought to be taught about sex, evolution, religion, history, race, etc., must be left to open debate. The rest will take care of itself -- electrical engineering tends not to generate a whole lot of debate until it turns to matters environmentalists are worried about. Arithmetic, geometry, chemistry, physics, biology, and so forth tend, also, to remain peaceful and the teachers of these subjects pretty much fit into nearly any elementary and high school setting, unless they begin to discuss abortion, euthanasia, cloning or stem cell research. Even if there were no attempted uniformity about these disciplines, de facto there would be little disputation from one school to the next on a great many fronts.

But when it comes to the contentious topics, it is intolerable in a free society to shove one doctrine down the throats of children whose parents consider the "teaching" to be false or pernicious. Yet that is just what the various parties of the debate aim for. They want to rule the schools the way governments in dictatorships want to rule the press, radio and TV.

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If one believes in public education, imposed on kids and paid for by taxes, then there is no principled resolution of what gets taught in the schools. Whatever side wins is always a matter of power, never of principle. It is no different from how it would be if we had a public press -- and, indeed, this is exactly what afflicts the National Endowment for the Humanities and Arts, the Public Broadcast Service, National Public Radio. So long as there is a common pool from which the service is funded and so long as it is delivered to the public at large, the issue of content cannot be settled.

L. Neil Smith at Rational Review - Klingons on Ice - Why libertarians should work at recruiting the world's jocks and jockettes.

I've often wondered if this isn't at least another reason why the socialists have made themselves the enemies of gun people. Maybe it isn't the guns themselves, quite so much as the self-discipline and exactitude that using guns proficiently and maintaining them requires -- a self-discipline and exactitude that socialists don't possess and never will.

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