End the War on Freedom

"Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." -- John F. Kennedy

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." -- Will Rogers

"I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight." -- Rita Rudner

From The Federalist, sadly mostly full of war-mongering in the latest issue:

A Los Angeles carjacker was none too savvy when he tried taking on the Florida International University judo team at a Hollywood gas station. Tyrone Jermaine Hogan had just taken another car, assaulting its occupants, when he abandoned it and attempted to commandeer the judo club's rented minivan. Instructor Nestor Bustillo described the encounter: "We had this guy like a pretzel on the ground." The FIU judo team was visiting LA to teach a self-defense class.

Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe - For safer streets, give women guns - there have been a number of attacks, rapes, and murders in the Boston area of late. Women are applying in larger than usual numbers for firearm identification cards, so that they can carry... mace and pepper spray. Most of the police departments won't give out concealed carry permits. Fie! [firearmnews]

Tami Kimball at MSNBC - Residents Take Up Arms Following Attacks - good for them. [firearmnews]}

Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules at the NYCLU - NYCLU Calls On U.S. Attorney's Office To End Staged "Perp Walks" - a letter to U.S. Attorney James B. Comey of the Southern District of New York asking him to stop parading arrestees in manacles in front of the TV cameras. I agree. Kuro5hin discussion here. [kuro5hin]

Tim Richardson at The Register - BT loses hypertext claim - British Telecom has lost in court on their claim to have a patent on the concept of the hyperlink. Good. Slashdot discussion here. [register]

Ed Henry at Ether Zone - The War Is On: Iraq Attack Already Underway - The U.S. and England have already begun to mass troops, and some initial skirmishes have already happened. GW will have his little war, whether we like it or not. [trt-ny]

Qatar News Agency via Inter Press Service News Agency - Egypt will not let US warships pass through Suez Canal - good. [grabbe]

Jules Varwig at anti-state.com - Damn It, Then - liberty requires responsibility, something that is sadly lacking in today's gummint mass'a's. Mr. Varwig remembers his youth in the late sixties: [anti-state]

I recall that I used to set out to go hunting on the outskirts of town with my shotgun carried on the handlebars of my bicycle. Somehow, even within the irresponsible constraints of my youth, I had convinced my parents that I was responsible enough to carry a firearm. I suppose they expected that I wouldn't stop off to blast neighbor's dogs or kids along my path to the hunting grounds. Since my armed passage went without remark by citizens or official authority alike, they too must have been either convinced that I was indeed responsible enough to go armed without indulging in murder or -- more likely -- that my parents were responsible enough to recognize and decide on my level of responsibility.

I wasn't an anomaly among the youth in the community. Many of us had the privilege to carry firearms granted not by the State, but by our parents, who were more familiar with our individual levels of responsibility than some faceless bureaucrat could ever be.

Taking Children Seriously "is an educational philosophy. Its most distinctive feature is the idea that it is possible and desirable to bring up children entirely without doing things to them against their will, or making them do things against their will, and that they are entitled to the same rights, respect and control over their lives as adults." There is a FAQ and a bunch more. I like this idea in general, but the web site doesn't do a very good job of selling it, at least not that I found in my short perusal. I find this to go just slightly too far. There are times when young children need to be physically restrained so that they do not seriously injure themselves. Expecting them to follow adult orders is, however, an abomination, as is corporal punishment. Use the rod, damage the child. [vroman]

The Week Online with DRCNet - Can We Make That a Line Item? Alabama County Gets Blatant on Asset Forfeiture as Revenue Enhancer - cash flow problems? What cash flow problems? We'll just enroll one of our officers in the d.e.a. and expect to rake in more armed robbery, er... asset forfeiture, money. [drcnet]

The Week Online with DRCNet - Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead: Bob Barr Defeated in Georgia Primary - Too bad there aren't just two bad witches in this movie. [drcnet]

Barr is a former federal prosecutor whose combative, conservative, civil libertarianism -- he supported asset forfeiture reform, raised the alarm about the FBI's Carnivore program and spoke out about the excesses of the federal government in the wake of September 11 -- was marred by a blind spot the size of the Georgia Dome when it came to drug policy. Although Barr rose to national prominence and talk show ubiquity by becoming the first congressman to demand President Clinton's impeachment and then serving on the House impeachment team, it was his ideologically driven, pathologically moralistic stance on drug policy that has made him the bête noire of the medical marijuana movement.

Robert Vroman at anti-state.com - The Jim Bell System Revisited - Mr. Vroman responds to criticisms of Assassination Politics. Long. I experienced revulsion when I first read about Jim Bell's invention. I got used to it, however, and now think it makes a lot of sense, though my opinion of it doesn't really matter. If there's a market for it, it will happen, legal or not, immoral or not. I got the Taking Children Seriously link from this article. [anti-state]

Young denounces AP on the grounds that it uses a tactic of the State, i.e. "terror", against the State itself, and this is a reprehensible flaw. Saying that AP is terror because it kills tyrants, is like saying shooting a mugger is terror. Well, yes. If you were unfortunate enough to live in a neighborhood inhabited by gangs, and got a reputation for shooting harassers without hesitation, this would effectively "terrorize" the gangsters into leaving you in peace, or so goes the "armed society is a polite society" school of thought.

However, AP does not even qualify as terror in the political sense.

The precise political science definition of terrorism is "a group that uses force against an intermediate target in order to bring about a desired decision from an ultimate target". In other words, a terrorist is ill equipped to directly attack the hated government, so instead he blows up a school bus, and issues a public ultimatum that unless the government meets some of his petty demands he will strike again. The logic being that the government is incapable of protecting every school bus all the time, and the terrorist has nothing else to do but plan his next bombing, so he can essentially strike at will. He hopes that eventually the State will tire of this harassment and acquiesce, usually because the population becomes exasperated at the government's ineffectual attempts to stop the attacks, and it is in danger of losing its power, not due to any compassion for the school kids.

AP does not follow this model, primarily because, unlike the terrorist, it can indeed strike the ultimate targets directly and does not need to play deadly games with intermediate symbols. If anything, AP should be described as guerrilla warfare.

...

It undoubtedly sounds arrogant, but I would say that less than 1% of global population has any concept of how the world (i.e. economics) really works, and of those that do, most have got it horribly wrong. However, when they are forced to suddenly make do for themselves in the absence of authority, as is the case of Somalia, Ancapism spontaneously appears without the presence of wise graduate student mentors preaching Mises. It sure would be nice, naturally, if Bob could go over and warn them off from accepting UN overtures of providing "stable governance", but the point is they were able to find profitable anarchism on their own, with little to no knowledge of economics and certainly no deep respect for pacifism. All it took was the total destruction of their state, the means notwithstanding. On the other hand if Murphy expects to get some percentage of the population to side with him before picking up a hammer, he will definitely be taking the long uphill route.

...

Lastly, it seems clear to me that AP is superior because it is a market process. People exchange value for perceived value. They invest their money for the benefit of removing aggressive people from society. On the other hand, Murphy is advocating a "educate the masses" routine that depends solely on he and his colleague's dedication to the cause. Not to disparage his efforts, honestly, if anyone can do it, the current crop of anarchist intellectuals has got my fullest confidence. However, I really don't think anyone is going to listen until they are already living in it. I see the economic wizards role as after the fact guides in the new wonderful world of anarchism wrought by AP and other market strategies. Once everyone is stuck in their regional equivalents of Somalia, and wondering what the hell just happened, Bob and co, will step in and say, "Hey, isn't this great, look how much more we can get done now!"

Bob Murphy at anti-state.com - The Politics of Destruction, Part Deux - Mr. Murphy responds to Mr. Vroman's latest salvo on AP. [anti-state]

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