End the War on Freedom

"It would be a far better world if more politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it. Every minute Clinton spent banging Monica Lewinski he wasn't screwing the rest of us or the world. Every time she knelt before that mighty cigar - she was a heroine." -- Mike Taht

Alternative Science - Is your brain really necessary? - apparently not for a few people with IQs of 120 or more and almost no gray matter inside their heads. [grabbe]

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - HillaryCare, Republican Style - What Hillary Clinton couldn't accomplish ten years ago, George Bush just squeeked by Congress. Socialized medicine, Amerikan style.

Seniors have been terribly misled about this new Medicare scheme. The essence of the new plan is government control. Government will play an even greater role in deciding what drugs seniors get, how doctors and pharmacies are paid, how private medical information is distributed, and what drug companies benefit most. The plan moves America disastrously toward a complete government takeover of medicine.

In order to participate, seniors must choose between staying in traditional Medicare and joining an HMO/PPO organization. This means either a federal bureaucrat or a nominally private-sector bureaucrat will decide what drugs will be available. Both Medicare and HMO bureaucrats inevitably will be forced to control costs, because the demand for subsidized drugs will be unlimited. They will do so by rationing drugs, especially expensive drugs. Bureaucrats may even go so far as to forbid seniors from using their own money to buy Medicare-covered drugs, just as Medicare rules now prohibit use of private funds to buy unapproved health-care services.

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Taxpayers certainly can't afford an expansion of Medicare. Economists estimate the new program will cost between 3 and 4 trillion dollars over time, all financed by payroll taxes. Even as the added drug coverage makes Medicare more expensive, more seniors than ever will be herded into the program. This new strain on taxpayers will be especially acute when the large Baby Boomer generation retires and younger workers are expected to pay the bills.

Helen & Harry Highwater at Unknown News - Company fined $6,000 for answering customer's question - The Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security has an Office of Anti-Boycott Compliance that enforces a law making it illegal for a U.S. company or citizen to help enforce a boycott that is unsanctioned by the U.S. government. A North Kansas City company told one of their customers that their product did not contain anything made in Israel. They were fined $6,000 for doing so. Sheesh. [smith2004]

If K-Mart is having a sale on cheap plastic chess sets and we ask the clerk whether the board or pieces were made in Israel, is the clerk allowed to answer? Must the store promptly file a form with the Bureau of Industry and Security reporting that we asked?

Well, we'll be asking the forbidden question in every store we enter. Not because we're boycotting Israel -- we're not. Heck, if we were boycotting products from countries whose policies are abhorrent, we'd start by boycotting anything marked "made in USA."

We'll be asking the forbidden question because we believe in freedom. In a free society, the government doesn't tell people what questions they can ask, and what questions they can't, and what questions must be promptly reported to the authorities.

William Stone, III at The Libertarian Enterprise - Why I'm a Libertarian - because government doesn't work, and the Zero Aggressions Principle does. [tle]

The real objection to voluntarily donating money private charities money rather than seeing it stolen by government functionaries is that it would force all the millions of parasites currently in government employ to actually go out and work for a living.

All our social and political ills would get solved overnight. All those who currently have power on the strength of an all-powerful (but inept) central government would have to find real work for a change.

And that frightens the hell out of them.

Want to know why we're starting to see terrorist activities on American soil? Why more than fifty percent of respondents in a recent Gallup poll believe that governments present an immediate threat to American freedom? Why the Militia Movement has become so popular and is now gearing itself to defend Americans against tyrannical government intrusion?

Because governments--particularly the United States Federal government--do pose an immediate threat to the freedoms we've always enjoyed.

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There are individuals who believe government can be limited, that by prescribing strict bounds for it, the individuals drawn to it will never seek additional power. While this is an interesting notion, in all of human history, government power has never been permanently curbed.

Having "a little government" is precisely identical to being "a little pregnant." At first, it doesn't show. After a while, it gets a little bigger. Ultimately, it causes a lot of unavoidable pain--and never really goes away for the rest of your life.

Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - Congress of Goons - commentary on ProtectYourVote.org's program against the Continuity of Government concept (COG). Mr. Reed has decided that COG really stands for Congress of Goons.

Suppose, back on that day forever identified simply as 911, United Flight 93 had plowed into the US Capitol instead of plowing up a field in Pennsylvania. And suppose that Congress had been in session, packed full of reps sitting or standing or leaning or just hanging about. Can you imagine the implications?

I certainly can. I'd really miss that grand old building. It's not that I'm waxing sentimental over governmental symbolism, I just think that particular piece of architecture would make a really great museum someday. Sort of a Hall of Horrors where future generations of emancipated schoolchildren can go on field trips to ooh and aah over displays of political corruption and greed and constitutional abuses back in the dark old pre-libertarian days. But others see a different kind of calamity. All of our leaders would die and there would be no Continuity of Government! Nobody to tell us what to do! Nobody to think for us! Nobody to force us to be sensitive and diverse and compassionate. Nobody to tell us to crawl out from under our beds and go back to our jobs where the real work of this country gets done every day!

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