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In Defense of Liberty

Just for the record, I am a Libertarian. It has come to my attention that many people don't know what "Libertarian" means. I am often treated to the joke (I think it's from a Dennis Miller routine) "I'd vote Libertarian but I like roads." (racous laughter on soundtrack)

Here's a nice essay on contractualization and tolerance which explains more than I can.

Our Friend, Junk Science

Well the DHMO debate rages on. I apologize, it was a joke! For more junk:

• Everything You Know Is Wrong (EYKIW)
  A cleansing mental enema.
• JunkScience.com
  All hail the all-seeing, all-knowing and all-debunking Eye.
• Junk Science in the Courtroom
  This one's scary.
• The Skeptic's Refuge
  Careful here, this site is designed to sell books, but there's a lot of good essays too.

Interesting...

As a show of support for my fellow bloggers, I direct your attention these two Blogs of Note:

• Commentariat
  Interesting and topical.
• This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow
  Good stuff. Ponder privacy, weep with the Sad Kitten.

Stay tuned! More to come!

DHMO: Pro and Con

Perhaps you've seen the warnings, perhaps not. The issue of DHMO in the environment is too big for me to ignore.

• Con: Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division
• Pro: DHMO: Your All-Natural Friend

Read, and decide for yourself.

Remember the Fallen, Honor the Brave

You may be asking "What will replace World Trade Center?" IMHO a twin memorial. One section left in ruins, like the memorial in Hiroshima, and one section a park dedicated to the Fireman, Police, Paramedics and all other Emergency Personell who daily put themselves in harm's way.

Liberty Alert!

Like I said before, people, we are at war. Take your stand on the front lines:

• sharedvoice.org
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• National Libertarian Party

I am so glad I'm not alone in my stance for a reasoned response and against the childish posturings of rhetoric and revenge.

Eyewitness Accounts

A view from someone who was there.

Another view from Manhattan.

Warning Signs

You know, we were warned about this day. I'm not talking about Nostradamus, I'm talking about Thomas Jefferson:

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless... From the conclusion of this war [for independence] we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and thier rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for thier rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of theis war, will be heavier and heavier, till out rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.
--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia

Our liberty is under assault, both from without and within. Those who love liberty are constantly under attack, fighting a war of thoughts and words. Every day, every 24 hours, each one of us is called on to claim our individual responsibility for defending our personal liberty. Each one of us who faces the resposibility squarely, who asks the questions and challenges the authorities, brings the benefits of liberty closer to all of us.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
--Ephesians 6:12:: NKJV

The struggle for liberty is not against "flesh and blood," but against the irrational fears and the philosophies based on those fears that hold us in slavery. These are the shackles that Jefferson spoke of. We must face the fact that every day brings a new tyrant, a new prince, a new power, a new ruler of the darkness, with a new philososphy of fear, a new absolute authority, a new host of wickedness.

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
--Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Speech May 15, 1951

We must not submit to fear. We must not submit to the philosphy of fear that demands obedience to an immaterial ultimate authority and calls for death to unbelievers. We must not submit to the propaganda of fear that demands obedience to a corporeal, temporal authority and calls for posturings of power and strength and unreasoning retribution.

Obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame,
A mechanized automoton.
--Percy Bysshe Shelly, Queen Mab

Why We Fight

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty

Yesterday I spoke against war, but the truth is, we are at war. This is not a new war. This war began when a human mind first conceived of liberty. Every human who desires to live with the benefits of liberty must stand as a warrior to defend that liberty. For liberty to survive this war, it must be liberty for all, and only when each one of us stands to defend our individual liberty will we truly have liberty for all.

Another Fallen Ally

Key Foe of Taliban Is Dead, U.S. Says

Ahmed Shah Masoud, a warrior-intellectual who beat back seven Soviet incursions into his home region in the 1980s, was the victim of a bomb hidden in a television camera or on the body of a man posing as a journalist that went off at the remote base of the Northern Alliance in Khodja Bahauddin, according to Masoud's aides.

Sounds familiar, anyone remember La Penca? Someone stole a page from the CIA playbook.

Johnny get your Gun!

Chronology of terror

1:04 p.m.: President Bush, speaking from an undisclosed location, says that all appropriate security measures are being taken, including putting the U.S. military on high alert worldwide. He asks for prayers for those killed or wounded in the attacks and says: "Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."

Same shit different day. You know, there are places in this world where the bombing of major buildings is business as usual. Terrorism is as old as the Bible. Terrorism is the rage of the underclass. Terrorism is the tool of those who have abandoned rationality and feel they have nothing else left to lose.

From home-grown terrorists like McVeigh to today's attacks, terrorism is what you get when the marginalized strike back at an indifferent elite. Terrorism is what you get when the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" grows too big and too fast. Terrorism is the knee-jerk backlash of the undeclared war on human rights that grinds us down day after day after day.

Already the war drums are sounding, listen:

"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it,'' said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. The Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed nearly 2,400 people and drew the United States into World War II.

Johnny get your gun, America's going to war! Look, Pearl harbor was a military action taken by military units against a military target during a time of war. It is an insult to the memory of those who died, both in Pearl Harbor and Manhattan, to compare a military action to this criminal act of premeditated murder. An act not only criminal, but wholly immoral when viewed in the light of any rational philosophy. I have no illusions that these irrationally motivated attacks will be used as a pretext to war, but they are still in essence criminal acts. These acts call for justice, the rationally applied rule of law, not a vigilante mob.

Basic Human Rights

American Student, Freed From Russian Jail, Is Home

``It's great to be back in the land of the free ... and a country where basic human rights are respected,'' an exhausted-looking Tobin ... told reporters at a press conference in an airport hangar.

Is that a fact, Jack? Wise up, sport. If you had been arrested by federal agents for marijuana possession here, "in the land of the free", you would still be in jail!

BTW, Jack, seeing as how you and your father are such good buddies with Pres. Bush, maybe you could ask him to put a good word in for some other wrongly imprisoned folks here at home?

Father Narc Update

Thursday, July 19th,House OKs Faith Initiative 233 to 198. more

Oh my Stars and Garters!

They're at it again!

Salon.com Politics | House to vote on flag protection amendment

The proposed amendment, sponsored by Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., and John Murtha, D-Pa., states simply: "Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."

First, the nit-picking. May I draw your attention the the phrase physical desecration of the flag? Yes? Thank you.

How, pray tell, can you desecrate that which is not sacred to begin with? If there is a religion which regards the flag of the United States as sacred, then the flag is already protected by the First Amendment. Well, at least regarding the flag as sacred is protected, just as the act of burning the flag is protected. Ironic, isn't it?

Thus endth the nit-picking.

So, what makes this piece of cloth so special? Some people tell me it's because men die for it. A piece of cloth? Why? Because of what it represents. Ah-ha! Now, we're getting somewhere. What does it represent? Oh, uh ... Liberty, Freedom, Democracy ... all that stuff. Well! I'll certainly lay my life on the line for Liberty! But, exactly which part of the flag is Liberty, and which part is Democracy? Uh ... that's stupid!

No, it's not stupid, I'm just making a point: the meaning of a symbol (in this case, a flag) is derived from its context, it is not intrinsic to the symbol itself.

Sorry to break it to you like this, but to some people, burning the flag of the United States is the symbolic destruction of tyranny, and act of Liberty. To some people, "desecrating" the flag of the United States is the Democratic voicing of an opinion. Support Liberty! Desecrate a flag today!

Tenant Rights

Tenant Activists Win Market Street Building, Media Yawns, by Randy Shaw

A Declaration of Independence

For what purpose does society exist if not for the individuals composing it? If it is not for the individual, then he should withdraw from it. If society refuses to look out for his welfare, then he should oppose it. The reason for society is that it gives the individual some advantage that he does not possess alone. But when those advantages cease, then his relation with it should cease.
—Charles T. Sprading, Freedom and its Fundamentals

As a human being, I have certain elements of being which serve to define my temporal existence.

1. I have a mind, capable of rational thought, for the most part.
2. I have a body, hindered by only a few infirmities, capable of performing labor.

These definitive elements are inseparable from my self, a human being. It follows then, that my thoughts and my labor are themselves inseparable from my self.

As a human being, I find it in my best interest to keep these aforementioned elements in some functional state. This requires me to meet certain needs:

1. I need food, essential for the functioning of mind and body.
2. I need shelter, useful as protection from the elements and to promote healthy sleeping habits.
3. I need companionship, social interaction to keep my thoughts rational.

To meet these needs I choose a strategy of cooperation, I am willing to use the labor of my mind and body to produce items and services for others in exchange for items and services of equal value.

Now comes the nasty part.

When I present myself to make this exchange, I am forbidden to present myself as myself. The labor of my mind and body, inseparable from my self, is treated as a thing, separate from my self, available to be bought and sold like any other thing. This is "business as usual." It is also an insult to me as a human being.

This constant insistence that I be a thing and forego nearly half my earnings in the form of "taxes" for the privilege, is intolerable. I further contend that the constant grinding pressure of this system that demands that human beings are things is the source of the moral erosion and sudden violence in these United States.

Therefore, while my mind is still demonstratively rational, I withdraw my mental and physical labor from the system, and encourage all rational people to do the same.

BTW: Happy X-Day!

Dole vs. Bush

(That's Elizabeth vs. Jenna!)

So, what happens when the "three strikes law" collides with the president’s daughter? One more margarita for Jenna and we'll find out. Economist.com takes a good look at the fires being lit for a new American witch-hunt.

(But then again, who cares about the drinking habits of a third-generation spoiled little rich kid anyway?)

Tools of Satan!

In honor of July 3rd, Decriminalization Day, I've added a link to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to my sidebar.

Warning! This site contains tales that will shock and terrify you! Shudder with revulsion as you witness:

• A Texas store clerk arrested for selling adult comics to ... adults!
• Florida artist Mike Diana sent to jail for ... drawing pictures!
• An Oklahoma store owner hounded into submission for selling adult comics to adult ... policemen!

These are not tales for the faint of heart!

And absolutely not for children!

Question of the Day!

Do you like seeing ads on websites? To vote Yes, scroll over to the ads, click on them, and buy stuff! To vote No, click on the PayPal button. When the donations exceed the revenue from the ads, the ads come off. I estimate that to be about 3 clicks. Take your pick.

Holiday Update

Only 3 more shopping days to go! more

For another "drug war" success story visit JustSayBlow.com and let the White House know where you stand on the issue of federal funds and drug abuse.