What Do You Mean "We", White Man?
The Office Of The White House Counsel, which oversees the usage of all executive-branch insignias, is expected to approve a new eagle-free presidential seal as early as next week.
# L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - There is No "Joe Sixpack" - libertarians don't need to appeal to some imaginary "Joe Sixpack", but they do need to compete with football and rock concerts. Most people are pretty much unaware of government, and will remain so until things get mighty bleak, at which point they'll revolt.
... Americans are the brightest, most progressive, most peaceful people in the history of the planet, and somehow most of them manage to get out of bed in the morning and do it every day, despite being looted and hobbled by vicious swarms of insanely violent, parasitic bloodsuckers who call themselves governments, federal, state, and local.
We can't change that by trying to fool folks into becoming free, with not-quite-clever strategies and half-assed, deceptive tactics. The Libertarian Party has been trying to do exactly that for decades, condescending to the people around us, trying to protect their tender sensibilities from the "terrible" truths about genuine, unvarnished libertarianism.
Heaven forbid they should find out that we want them to keep every cent they earn, to spend it exactly as they wish, on whatever they happen to want, to possess the tools to defend themselves and their families when nobody else can do it, and to enjoy absolute, inviolable privacy.
Heaven forbid Americans should discover that we want to take the criminals depriving all of us of those simple things, extract as much restitution from them as possible, then throw them in jail somewhere, so they can feel like the rest of us feel most of the time, thanks to them.
Heaven forbid.
# L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Defense of Marriage - marriage isn't threatened at all by homosexuals. Get government out of the picture, and marriage between man & woman, man & man, woman & woman, or man & sheep will work quite well, thank you very much. [tle]
The only thing that's wrong with our marriage customs is that we've placed them in the hands of an institution that can only beat people up and kill them. That's what we need to correct--it's all we need to correct--by completely privatizing marriage once again and letting people formalize their relationship in whatever venue they choose.
# Pat Schroeder & Bob Barr at The Washington Times - Reining in Google - Ms. Schroeder & Mr. Barr are usually on the opposite sides of issues. Not on Google's new Print Library Project, however. Both consider as intellectual property theft Google's plan to scan three libraries into their search engine and provide "snippets" coupled with paid advertising. [progressivenews]
# William Rivers Pitt at Truthout - It's Still There - the White House web site page detailing the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is still there. Mr. Pitt doesn't expect the Busheviks to ever disavow their lies, but he does expect Democrats in Congress to admit their mistake in believing those lies. [progressivenews]
Harry Reid's so-called "stunt" on the Senate floor this past Tuesday - invoking Rule 21 to create a closed session, during which he demanded an investigation into how we were dragged to war in Iraq - brought the issue of the never-found weapons of mass destruction back into the daylight. It's about damned time. This ball of thorns is three years old now, and we have come nowhere near addressing its roots.
# David R. Henderson at Antiwar.com - Who Is 'We'? - why you and I should stop identifying with the actions of the government as something "we" did. Change the language. Change the reality. [progressivenews]
One of the beliefs that most distinguished the fascists, Nazis, and communists of the 20th century was their organic view of society. Proponents of all three ideologies thought of society as an organism -- and of each of you, dear readers, as simply a cell in some part of the organism. And just as our cells have no importance outside their ability to serve our whole body, in the aforementioned three ideologies, our whole beings had no importance aside from their ability to serve the whole society. So, of what value was the individual? He was simply a tool for the ends of others, none of whom have importance either because they, also, were tools. And if society was an organism, then it made sense for the head to run things, right? Government was thought to be the head. And, of course, because there were many people within government, the true head was leader of the government -- Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin or Stalin.
