End the War on Freedom

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. -- Somerset Maugham

shotgunman.com is a new location for firearms-related discussion. Not much there yet.

Karl Hess at Playboy via François-René Rideau - The Death of Politics - originally published in Playboy in 1969. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Mirrored here. [smith2004]

Radicals and revolutionaries have had their sights trained on politics for some time. As governments fail around the world, as more millions become aware that government never has and never can humanely and effectively manage men's affairs, government's own inadequacy will emerge, at last, as the basis for a truly radical and revolutionary movement. In the meantime, the radical-revolutionary position is a lonely one. It is feared and hated, by both right and left -- although both right and left must borrow from it to survive. The radical-revolutionary position is libertarianism, and its socioeconomic form is Laissez-faire capitalism.

Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit: that all man's social actions should be voluntary: and that respect for every other man's similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life, is the ethical basis of a humane and open society. In this view, the only -- repeat, only -- function of law or government is to provide the sort of self-defense against violence that an individual, if he were powerful enough, would provide for himself.

If it were not for the fact that libertarianism freely concedes the right of men voluntarily to form communities or governments on the same ethical basis, libertarianism could be called anarchy.

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.

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I was a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign. During the campaign, I recall very clearly, there was a moment, at a conference to determine the campaign's "farm strategy," when a respected and very conservative Senator arose to say: "Barry, you've got to make it clear that you believe that the American farmer has a right to a decent living."

Senator Goldwater replied, with the tact for which he is renowned: "But he doesn't have a right to it. Neither do I. We just have a right to try for it." And that was the end of that.

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Riots in modern America must be broken down into component parts. They are not all simple looting and violence against life and property. They are also directed against the prevailing violence of the state -- the sort of ongoing civic violence that permits regular police supervision of everyday life in some neighborhoods, the rules and regulations that inhibit absolutely free trading, the public schools that serve the visions of bureaucracy rather than the varieties of individual people. There is violence also by those who simply want to shoot their way into political power otherwise denied them. Conservatives seem to think that greater state police power is the answer. Liberals seem to think that more preferential state welfare power is the answer. Power, power, power.

Ron Paul in the House of Representatives via LewRockwell.com - Stop Identity Theft -- Make Social Security Numbers Confidential - a speech Dr. Paul gave on introducing H.R.219, the "Identity Theft Prevention Act". The bill text is not yet available from Thomas. Soon, hopefully. [patrick]

Mr. Speaker, today I introduce the Identity Theft Prevention Act. This act protects the American people from government-mandated uniform identifiers that facilitate private crime as well as the abuse of liberty. The major provision of the Identity Theft Prevention Act halts the practice of using the Social Security number as an identifier by requiring the Social Security Administration to issue all Americans new Social Security numbers within five years after the enactment of the bill. These new numbers will be the sole legal property of the recipient and the Social Security administration shall be forbidden to divulge the numbers for any purposes not related to Social Security administration. Social Security numbers issued before implementation of this bill shall no longer be considered valid federal identifiers. Of course, the Social Security Administration shall be able to use an individual's original Social Security number to ensure efficient administration of the Social Security system.

L. Neil Smith at Rational Review - We were almost free - once in 1776 and again in 1989, but neither lasted for long. [smith2004]

Democracy, as the saying goes, is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Hitler claimed to be a democrat, and so did Stalin.

Democracy is also a state of perpetual warfare between voracious special interest groups -- all competing for a cut of trillions stolen for them from the Productive Class by government thugs -- and between the individual politicians, bureaucrats, and lawyers who champion and cater to them. Best of all (from their viewpoint), it means perpetual employment for all three, because it never, ever ends. Last year's "final" vote is always subject to revision or reversal by next year's session of the legislature, if not by "the people" at this year's election.

What keeps it going is this simple fact: the lust for power over other people's lives is a sickness, an incurable, insatiable pathology that leads, when it can, to the accumulation of more and more power. There never lived a city councilman (or woman) or county commissioner, in a brand new cheap blue suit from Sears, who didn't gaze at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door and imagine himself being called "Mr. President." The ultimate, collectivized expression of that individual lust for power is the 20th century Superstate.

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When the Wall fell in 1989, for a brief shining moment it looked like we might be free, free from oppressive taxation (people were talking about a "Peace Dividend"), free from being spied on and controlled by an unconstitutional government using unconstitutional laws.

Thomas L. Knapp at Rational Review - In the spirit of compromise ... - a proposal to do both the democrats' and the republicans' economic stimulus packages. But if you've got to choose one, get rid of social security and medicare withholding. The dems only want to do this temporarily, but hey, if a little is good, a lot is better, no? [smith2004]

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Conscription Is Collectivism - why the U.S. should never re-institute the draft. It is incompatible with the principles of a free country, and the military doesn't even want it.

I believe wholeheartedly that an all-volunteer military is not only sufficient for national defense, but preferable. It is time to abolish the Selective Service System and resign military conscription to the dustbin of American history. 500 million dollars have been wasted on the Selective Service System since 1979, money that could have been returned to taxpayers or spent to improve the lives of our nation's veterans.

Ronald Reagan said it best: "The most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral." He understood that conscription assumes our nation's young people belong to the state. Yet America was founded on the opposite principle, that the state exists to serve the individual. The notion of involuntary servitude, in whatever form, is simply incompatible with a free society.

Maryclaire Dale of AP via The Taunton Gazette - Group bucks notion that gays and guns don't mix - Pink Pistols get some press. [smith2004]

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