End the War on Freedom

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. -- Lord Acton

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurptions. -- James Madison

My son, Christopher, has been saving his allowance and Christmas and birthday money gifts. Today he got enough to buy a Nintendo GameCube. My wife agreed to swing for the first game, so he's playing Pikmin as I type this. Very nice graphics! Unfortunately, Nintendo chose not to bundle the game saving memory with the box. You need to buy the $15.00 Memory Card 59: half a megabyte of flash memory. We didn't get one, so Christopher can't save tonight.

River Valley Ordinance sells once-fired military .223 Remington, .50 BMG, & 20mm M103 brass that has been deprimed, full-length resized, swaged, cleaned, and polished. The .223 cases sell for $50/1000, shipping included. They also offer primed cases. They charge 1.9 cents per primer. I pay 2 cents at the gun store. And they have unprocessed cases in a number of calibers. They also sell pulled bullets, .30 caliber ("little bullets") & .50 caliber ("real bullets") and an assortment of processing machinery. [shotgunnews]

KnifeArt.com, Larry Connelley's web-based business, is reviewed by Pat Covert in the March/April 2002 issue of American Handgunner magazine. [handgunner]

In Connelley's words, "My customers are passionate about a good knife. They love viewing my website, checking in often to see what I brought home from the latest show. I update the site frequently--as soon as I get new items in--so it's like being able to attend a knife show whenever you want."

There's a new Libertarian Enterprise issue: "See Ted Run! Run Ted, Run!" Articles I liked: [tle]

• Daschle by Baloo - cartoon commentary on everyone's favorite tax and spend liberal. Hehe.
• Letter from Laura W. Haywood - Ms. Haywood agrees with Barbara Cunningham's letter last week saying that those who think the death penalty is OK are not "pro-life". Ms. Haywood points out that "pro-choice" is also a misnomer.
• Letter from Angel Shamaya - Mr. Shamaya liked L. Neil's letter to Pay Buchanan last week. Still, he agrees with Mr. Buchanan that America's borders should not be open, but for a different reason. I think he's convinced me.

  Mr. Smith said, "some libertarians enthusiastically favor open borders. But others enthusiastically do not." I happen to be one of those who does not favor opening our borders, but not because it's not an idealistically good idea. I don't favor open borders at present because, as it stands in America today, the Demopublican party will lure several million non- English-speaking folks to vote for them by taking more of my money and giving it to them, in one form or another -- and those votes, invariably, lead to yet another slew of moronic bills and laws that foolishly seek to deny my right to keep and bear any arms I damn well please (and many other rights, as well).

• Letter from William Westmiller - another good point about Barbara Cunningham's "pro-life" letter last week. He offers to debate the correct libertarian position on reproductive choice.

  Her error is assuming that the label "pro-life" means anything whatever. Literally, a person who claims to be "pro-life" should be opposed to any kind of contraception, opposed to eating any "live" thing, from animal to vegetable. A true "pro-life" person should be starving to death. It's literally a self-contradictory position.

• It Is Finally Edward Kennedy's Moment by Vin Suprynowicz - why it's time for a Kennedy/Clinton (Hitlary) ticket in 2004. Any why they will lose big.

  But it was left to Stephen Moore of the Cato Institite, writing for the National Review online under the headline "See Ted Lie," to point out the real depth of the irony here.
  
  "Sen. Ted Kennedy is arguably the biggest spending politician in the history of the United States," Moore points out. "There may be no member of Congress in either party whose spending initiatives are more responsible for our $4 trillion national debt than Ted Kennedy.
  
  ...
  
  Most pathetically, given that the only reason Sen. Kennedy is electorally bulletproof is because he bears the same last name as his martyred older brother John, all this "is certainly not John F. Kennedy economics," Mr. Moore concludes. "It was almost exactly 40 years ago when President Kennedy called for a 30 percent across the board income-tax-rate cut," which actually cut taxes for "the rich" more than President Bush would.

• It's About the Money, Stupid! by Patrick K Martin - a good tutorial on the fraud of government issued money.

  Do you know how U.S. money operates? It's very simple, The government goes to the Federal Reserve and says, "We need one Trillion (1000 Million) dollars" or whatever amount they want. The FED makes a note in their ledger and says "OK, go print 250 Billion, and your line of credit is 750 Billion, and you pay 3% interest." That's it, in a nut shell. A few key-presses and the U.S. has a Trillion dollars to pour down a rathole, neat huh? The money our government prints or otherwise uses, are debt instruments which the banks have agreed to redeem, that's all. Every dollar in your pocket is part of a mortgage on future production. The banks, in turn, depend on our interest payments to pay their debts and keep their doors open. The banks themselves have almost no assets, at least compared to the vast sums that they 'lend' the government.
  
  I know, I know, your thinking that this cannot possibly be right. If the banks have no assets, how can they lend anything to anybody? After all, I can't lend people money that I don't have, the whole thing makes no logical sense! Well congratulations, you now know the dirty little secret that the government does not want you to know. The Federal Reserve system is a lie. The monetary system is a FRAUD. The government and the banks are engaging in a conspiracy to steal YOUR LABOR!
  
  Money, whether Dollars, Euro's, Yen, Pounds, or Marks, is LABOR. It is a means of exchanging your labor for the labor of someone else, that's all, nothing else. Money, of itself, has no objective value. It is the hours and minutes and days of your life transformed into an easily traded form. Money is just a way of simplifying barter. You give your labor to someone who needs it, and you get something to trade to the guy who has something YOU need...

• National ID: I Just Can't Do It by Joel Simon - how drivers licenses are morphing into a National ID, soon to be required to get government authorization to do damn near anything. It's time to stop this now, people. Personally, I think the proper solution is to completely eliminate automobile registration and government licensing of any kind. I've been really tempted to remove the license plates and registration from my car and go out driving. It's hard to do this alone, however. I'll just end up in jail, or worse, and noone will even know about it except my fatherless family. But this would actually be a very simple form of mass protest. If a million of us agreed to get arrested for driving without license or registration, it would make a point. Hasn't this been done already in Michigan?

  Now, I know that the mere mention of a slippery slope on this subject is supposed to be enough to assure your status in the lunatic fringe. Fine; so be it. We already have in place a system in which without properly authorized paperwork we may not purchase, keep or bear arms, and we may not travel by air. This isn't a slippery slope, people. We've been pitched over the cliff. If those things can be prohibited without our papers being in order, absolutely anything can. My California ID card is a license to buy guns and to fly as well as to drive. And it can be revoked at any time, for any reason or none. As the system becomes more widespread and efficient, the list of things I need this little plastic license's permission for will inevitably expand.
  
  Prove that you're NOT a felon before you buy a gun. Prove that you're NOT a terrorist before you board a plane. Prove that you're NOT a drug dealer before we'll return your property. Prove that you're NOT a seditionist before you start a web page, or a newsletter. "Innocent until proven guilty?" That's just outmoded thinking, like those yellowed pieces of paper with the crabbed hand-writing we used to see in elementary school. Don't you know there's a war on?

• Hollywood Hegemony by Jeff Elkins - huge U.S. coporations have corrupted copyright law. But you knew that.

  Intellectual property law has long since crossed any reasonable boundry, when it's used to attack hapless customers and programmers. There are grave questions regarding whether current electronic data will be even accessible by future generations as computing platforms evolve. In a grotesque perversion of copyright laws originally intended to protect artists of all stripes and encourage artistic development, the tables have been turned to protect the revenue streams of huge corporations in perpetuity.

• Freeing the Inner Slave by Jim Duensing - people who wear badges and/or uniforms are just people. Their opinions are no better or worse than anyone else's. As soon as enough people realize this, they will no longer be able to get away with tyranical behavior.

  Once the afflicted comes to view those ordering him around as "just people" and not as demigods injected with superhuman powers, he will ask the appropriate question. "Would I expect these actions from a friend? Would I accept them of an enemy?" If the answer is no to both questions, he will be viewing the situation appropriately. He may still have to take actions he disproves of, but at least he will know he is sacrificing principle for practicality. Like when you pay off the IRS so they don't run into your house with a tank equipped with a flamethrower.
  
  ...
  
  First, most of the afflicted are followers. It is part of the psychosis to accept another's ideas instead of creating your own. Followers need leaders. They need heroes. So, be a hero. Resist tyrannical agents. Tell the badge holder's loudly and unashamedly (so the afflicted can hear you). "I would not expect these actions from a friend. I would not accept them of an enemy. And I will not accept them from you."
  
  ...
  
  Second, the psychosis exists differently in different individuals. Most on the Right believe it is a moral good for governmental agents to ransack a suspected drug dealer's home in an effort to chase a white powder. Most on the Left believe it is a moral good to confiscate nearly everything an entrepreneur makes in order to increase the standard of living of the idle.

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