End the War on Freedom

# Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - Invasion of the Privacy Snatchers - commentary on the Census Bureau's "American Community Survey". He responds with his own survey: The National Government Paper-Pusher's Mandatory Mental Colonoscopy.

The American Community Survey is the FedGov's workaround for the deeply despised Boston Tea Party inspiring long form that some citizens were saddled with during the last Great Invasion of the Census Snoopers.

Only worse.

Rep Ron [Paul], who tried to fight off its funding, describes this 24-page monstrosity as a multimillion dollar marketing research rip-off, conducted coercively by Congress on behalf of big business at the expense of you and me.

The questions on this cross-exam are ludicrous, insulting, intrusive and, as Rep Ron puts it so rightly (and much more politely than I), "is none of the government's business."

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How many days were you sick last year? If that means "sick of government," you could honestly answer "all of them." And the Nosy Parker Blue Plate Special of the Survey is: "Do you have trouble getting up stairs?" I could candidly counter this question with "yes" because my house doesn't have an upstairs.

# Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership - Bullets to Save Ballots - the winners of JPFO's essay contest have been announced. I haven't read them yet. [jpfo]

# Ron Beatty at The Libertarian Enterprise - Are You Going to be Free or Not? - compares Bushnev with Abe Lenin, not quite deserved by GW, yet, but certainly a possibility. [tle]

Then, in a time of great turmoil and civil unrest over the slavery issue, a great tyrant rose to power, a tyrant who has been turned into a saint by the descendants of these free men and women. In the year 84 AL, Abraham Lincoln came to power, a failed businessman, a man who was at the very least neurotic, and possibly psychotic, who had suffered several nervous breakdowns, even before the stresses of the War of Northern Aggression came to rest on his shoulders. This was the beginning of the end for the free peoples of this once great nation. Under the aegis of this tyrant, the Constitution became perverted and twisted.

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Now, 139 years after the death of the first great tyrant, another has risen to power. This new tyrant, just like the first, is a failed businessman. Like the first, he exhibits signs of mental instability, claiming that 'god' gives him orders to guide some aspects of national policy. Like the first tyrant, he is using a time of national upheaval to further his own goals of personal power.

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Under this new tyrant, American citizens can be held without bond, without legal representation, and can be subjected to torture, all in direct violation of the Constitution this tyrant has sworn an oath to his 'god' to protect and defend. This tyrant has led us to an undeclared war which has killed over a thousand American and allied troops, and thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians, all for a lie. Now that more and more citizens are objecting to the tyrant's abuse of power, he is threatening to use his legal powers to protect his illegal assumption of powers. Does this seem a little strange to anyone else?

# Butler Shaffer at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Dysfunctional Society - observations of modern-day Amkerika. [tle]

You may also recall how, immediately after 9/11, most Americans quickly got back into line and, emulating members of Congress, fell to their knees reciting, as their new catechisms, whatever unfocused and dishonest babbling oozed from the lips of George W. Bush. Flag manufacturing suddenly became a major growth industry, as the faithful lined up to purchase and display this symbol of unquestioning obedience to state power. Fear--carefully nurtured with a steady diet of "warnings," color-coded "alerts," and, that scariest of all specters, those "unknown" forces of which we were told to be constantly aware--laid claim to the souls of most Americans. Even today, nearly three years after 9/11, a so-called "independent 9/11 commission" advises of the need for the state to centralize all of its spying, surveillance, and other information-gathering functions into the hands of one agency to be headed up by some born-again Laventri Beria, perhaps under the appropriate title "Inspector General."

There have also been trial-balloon news reports that the Bush administration will propose a national system of psychological profiling of Americans, to be followed up with appropriate drugs to alleviate identifiable "problems." The generation with which I grew up--having read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World--would have treated such a proposal with alarm. I suspect that the response of most prostrated Americans today would be that, as long as the drugs are FDA approved, and no groups are singled out on the basis of race, gender, lifestyle, or religion for "treatment," there would be little objection.

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These are not temporary measures--like wartime rationing--that will be put aside when an emergency is over and "normalcy" returns. The Bush administration's allusions to the unending nature of the "war on terror" tells us that the "emergency" is a permanent one. The "terrorism" against which the state now organizes itself goes far beyond suicide bombers crashing airliners into office buildings. It is the "terror" experienced by a politically-structured establishment that has reached the outer limits of its efforts to control life processes in service to its narrow ends. A world that is becoming increasingly decentralized--whether in the form of alternative schooling, religions, and health-care; less-structured business-management practices and communications systems; political separatist movements, etc.--strikes terror in the minds of those who have created and become dependent upon centralized systems. The "terrorist" forces against which the state now mobilizes its most restrictive, punitive, surveillant, and violent mechanisms of control, is life itself; it is you and me, as Pogo Possum so insightfully observed a half-century ago.

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The "freedom of expression" about which even the politicians like to prattle, has been twisted from a celebration of pluralism into a demand for a stifling uniformity of thought and action. We live in a period of rigidly enforced "political correctness," a practice containing a glaring contradiction: an alleged belief in "diversity." But the reality of "diversity," particularly on college campuses, amounts to nothing more than the encouragement of men and women from a variety of racial, ethnic, and lifestyle groups who advocate state collectivism. If you doubt this, observe how genuine diversity--in the form of libertarian/free market opinion, anti-feminist women speakers, or blacks who are critical of the plantation politics of the Democratic party--is discouraged (or even prohibited) on many campuses. Freedom of expression is important to any healthy society because it challenges existing thought and practices. It is supposed to be disruptive of the status quo. But as the protestors in Boston have discovered as their messages are kept imprisoned in wire cages on an isolated street distant from the Democratic convention, "free speech" in America is now confined to speech that is comfortable to establishment interests!

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