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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
A Fearful Master; We're fighting for "freedom" in Iraq – but certain Web sites are off limits to U.S. soldiers
Post Date: 2006-03-03 14:05:08 by Brian S
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"Government is not reason," George Washington reputedly said, "it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." The fear factor works both ways: the present administration has spent a great deal of time and energy on scaring us half to death with tales of imminent terrorist attacks – especially around election time – but they, in turn, stand in fear of their own subjects, particularly the ones in uniform. That is why the Pentagon is now censoring the Internet, declaring certain Web sites – including those of some major news organizations – off limits to military personnel. Check out this e-mail from a U.S. ...
Buchanan: The Neocon Temptation
Post Date: 2006-03-03 11:49:02 by Brian S
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Posted: March 3, 2006 "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed ..." There may be a better description of what is happening in Iraq than the words of Yeats. It does not come to mind. Before President Bush ordered Gen. Tommy Franks to invade, four forces held Iraq together: Saddam's regime, the Baath Party, the secret police and the army. The conquering Americans, as has been their way from Sherman to LeMay, smashed them all. The center that held Iraq together, repulsive as it was, is gone. But, the comment of Yuval Diskin, head of the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, may yet prove incisive: "I'm not ...
Ebla: An Untold Story
Post Date: 2006-02-27 08:24:23 by continental op
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"Which is preferable for man and for society, abundance or scarcity?" ~ Frédéric Bastiat, (1801?1850) Economic Sophisms What is it about abundance that people fear? Whether we like it or not Robert LeFevre was correct in his analysis of man?s love for government. Indeed, man establishes then condones the excesses, abuses, and maltreatment of the state. This stems from a perception of imminent danger in the form of marauding hoards, raptorial neighbors, predacious social misfits, war, sickness, aging, poverty, the lack of food, not being clothed, not having shelter or not being kept warm. In short, the basics of life and happiness are consigned to whims of ...
The war against blondes
Post Date: 2006-02-27 08:20:52 by continental op
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I will freely admit that I am perhaps more partial than most to the Nordic beauty. This may be due in part to growing up in Minnesota, where one is surrounded at all times by blondes named Johnson, Nelson and Olsen, where "ON or EN?" is a most commonly asked question, where "swedegians" are considered half-breed mongrels and where girls who look exactly like Scarlett Johansson do not receive Maybelline contracts, but work as janitors at the local health club instead. Minnesota is, perhaps, the only state in the Union where there are more Kirstins, Kjirstins and Kjerstins than Christines of either the "C" or the "K" variety. For my first six months at ...
Remembering a libertarian pioneer
Post Date: 2006-02-26 08:17:00 by continental op
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Remembering a libertarian pioneer By ALAN W. BOCK Senior Editorial writer The year 1943 was a significant year for a philosophical tendency that apparently had been reduced to a "remnant" by the success and popularity of the New Deal: Americans who believed the country was about individual liberty and that this implied an economic system of minimal taxation and regulation and maximum free enterprise, or laissez-faire. Four books that would help to revive the tendency were published that year. Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," later made into a movie starring Gary Cooper, was the most popular, and, with her later novel, "Atlas Shrugged," had perhaps the biggest ...
Obese America
Post Date: 2006-02-26 08:14:32 by continental op
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As our national waistline inflates faster than the Weimar Republic?s fiat currency, Americans aggressively pursue a cure for the obesity epidemic. Looking for the easy way out, our overweight compatriots are willing to try anything, from eating nothing but grapefruit to buying any book with the words "Lose Weight" in the title. Our undying desire to slim down, compounded by supreme gullibility, makes the legendary quest for the fountain of youth look promising by comparison. But, as a law of nature, the equation for losing weight has been and always will be: consume fewer calories than you expend. While the "consume fewer calories" part of the remedy is purely a matter ...
Government Makes Things Worse
Post Date: 2006-02-26 08:13:09 by continental op
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For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every government action, there is necessarily an opposite and unintended reaction, though sometimes it can be much more than equal. In my previous article, I wrote that the interventions of forcible government into human activity serve to distort incentives: Whenever government acts, you and I as a necessary result face circumstances in which we are personally rewarded for behaviors that are not in line with the spirit of the law; nor are these behaviors typically what would be best for human progress. Today, I treat the same subject from a different direction ? by showing that government attempts to solve problems always ...
Paking It In
Post Date: 2006-02-26 08:09:53 by continental op
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The riots in Pakistan are hardly news anymore: if they appear in the paper at all, it is on page C17, between a story on starvation in the Sudan and a report that Mrs. McGillicuty fell down the stairs. The riots continue nonetheless, seemingly unconcerned that the rest of the world is no longer watching. Perhaps it should. Periodic riots are normal in parts of the world; England was famous for them in the 18th century. But when rioting continues day after day, it can serve as a sort of thermometer, taking the temperature of a population. Pakistan, it would seem, is running a fever, one that shows little sign of breaking. On the surface, the rioting is a protest against cartoons of ...
Lest We Forget
Post Date: 2006-02-26 08:04:34 by continental op
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Fifty years ago today Nikita Krushchev gave his Secret Speech to the Closed Session of the Twentieth Party Congress in which he denounced Joseph Stalin. At that time Krushchev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held the most powerful political office in the world. The power that Stalin had accumulated in this position had made communism unsafe for communists. Heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution had been subjected to "barbaric tortures" and forced to incriminate themselves "with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes." Krushchev denounced Stalin before the Party Congress "in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in ...
Handing U.S. port security to UAE is terrible idea
Post Date: 2006-02-25 18:37:44 by RickyJ
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On Sunday, the Australian government issued the following alert to its citizens: "We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in the United Arab Emirates because of the high threat of terrorist attack. We continue to receive reports that terrorists are planning attacks against Western interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Commercial and public areas frequented by foreigners are possible terrorist targets." The United States has approved a business deal that would turn over the operation of six major American ports to a company that is owned by the UAE, the very country Australians are to be wary of visiting. The obvious question: If it is dangerous for an Australian ...
War in Error
Post Date: 2006-02-24 08:26:16 by continental op
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War in Error Sending a general to do a sheriff?s job By Andrew J. Bacevich Small events sometimes reveal large truths. Last month?s U.S. missile strike in the remote Bajaur district of Pakistan was such an event. Aimed at taking out Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden?s chief deputy, the strike missed its intended target and killed as many as 18 residents of the small village of Damadola. But the episode did not end there: outraged Pakistanis rose up in protest; days of highly publicized anti-American demonstrations followed. In effect, the United States had handed Muslims around the world another grievance to hold against Americans. In stark, unmistakable terms, the Damadola affair lays ...
Cesar Chavez, Minuteman
Post Date: 2006-02-24 08:23:35 by continental op
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Cesar Chavez, Minuteman The UFW leader was no friend to illegal immigration? until he became an ethnic figurehead. By Steve Sailer In California, only three birthdays are official state holidays: Jesus Christ?s, Martin Luther King?s, and Cesar Chavez?s. Beatification as a secular saint, though, isn?t always good for the soul. A recent four-part exposé by reporter Miriam Pawel in the Los Angeles Times revealed how the labor leader turned revered ethnic icon descended into paranoia, megalomania, and general crack-pottery in the 15 years before his death in 1993. Today, his United Farm Workers functions less as a union?it represents only 2 percent of the California agricultural ...
Who Elected Hamas?
Post Date: 2006-02-24 08:20:12 by continental op
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Who Elected Hamas? We did?with help from the Israelis and Fatah. by M.J. Rosenberg The Nixon-China analogy is growing stale. Every time an extremist takes power anywhere, the starry-eyed immediately trot out the ?but it took Richard Nixon to go to China? example as evidence that the newest ideologue to win an election will pull a 180 once he?s in office. Using this logic, Hamas, now that it has been elected to lead the Palestinian legislature, is in a position both to make peace with Israel and to make it stick, something the more moderate Fatah could not do. Unfortunately, the Nixon analogy probably doesn?t apply here. Nixon was a pragmatist, not an extremist. Nor was his opposition to ...
IRAQ: The U.S. invasion has boomeranged, creating a different deadly threat.
Post Date: 2006-02-22 17:48:59 by Brian S
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ON JAN. 29, 2002, President Bush infamously singled out three countries for his "axis of evil": North Korea, Iran and Iraq. But the number of words he devoted to each revealed a great deal about his intentions: 17 to North Korea, 19 to Iran and 84 to Iraq. The president suggested that these three states posed grave danger not only because they sought to develop WMD but because they could share such weapons with terrorists. By devoting more words to Iraq, Bush began making a case that would later become familiar to Americans: Iraq was this nation's most serious threat. Yet we now know that Iraq was not the closest to developing WMD. North Korea already had them. Iraq also was not ...
Oregon: A Paradise for the Mentally Incompetent
Post Date: 2006-02-22 07:57:26 by continental op
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Did you know that it is against the law to pump your own gas in Oregon? For those who live in the Peoples Republic of Oregon, we have to suffer the indignity of being treated like absolute mental incompetents every time we need to fuel up our automobiles. This "no-self-serve" law was passed in 1951 and should have been repealed long ago. Although there are many lame excuses as to why this law is still in force, anyone with half-a-brain understands that it is a make-work law forcing gas station owners to hire the barely-employable or those who are just breaking into the work force. And these pump-jockeys, as far as Oregon?s lawmakers are concerned, keep us idiot-citizens from ...
David Irving
Post Date: 2006-02-21 19:07:09 by continental op
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The trial and conviction of David Irving provides much food for thought. First, there is Irving?s own confession that he is a ?holocaust denier.? Whatever one may think of the merits of Irving?s work, his confession?for whatever motive (probably fear)?casts an ugly shadow on what he has done. He and many of his defenders have always denied this charge. Now he has admitted it, there is no more to be said. Then, there is his recantation. You see, he is now convinced, after going through Adolf Eichmann?s papers, that the Nazis really did kill millions of Jews. That should about do it for Irving?s admirers who based their defense of the Third Reich on his work. Irving?s foolish and dishonest ...
Republic for Sale
Post Date: 2006-02-21 15:04:33 by continental op
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Despite mounting policy setbacks and declining public support, until recently the Republican Party stood triumphant. President George W. Bush was re-elected. The GOP strengthened its control of Capitol Hill. From Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, Republicans gained major media beachheads. Moreover, the GOP has been asserting control over other organs of influence, including Washington?s fabled ?K Street,? or lobbying sector. In fact, the latter reflects a conscious strategy of increasing the Republican presence among lobbyists, commonly termed the ?K Street Project.? The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that ?a decade after Republicans launched a campaign to oust Democrats from top ...
The Law
Post Date: 2006-02-21 08:27:07 by continental op
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006 The Law (Stirling Translation, 1874) by Frederic Bastiat [Posted on Saturday, February 18, 2006] [Subscribe at email services and tell others] The law perverted! How has this been accomplished? The right to assistance, the poor man's plunder Partial and universal plunder Explaining plunder. Socialism confounds Government and society. Bossuet | Fenelon | Montesquieu | Rousseau | Raynal | Mably | Condillac | Saint-Just | Robespierre | Billaud Varennes | Lepelletier What sort of liberty should be allowed to men? What is law? What ought it to be? I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion? [The essay was published in French in 1850. This piece was published in ...
The Conservative Reform Game
Post Date: 2006-02-21 08:19:18 by continental op
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Here we go again. The reform game. In the wake of the federal government?s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is unveiling ?reforms? that will ensure that such federal disasters never happen again. Yawn! Just more standard conservative ?reform? claptrap. This is par-for-the-course conservatism. Engage in the never-ending game of criticizing federal paternalistic programs for being ?inefficient? or for having ?waste, fraud, and abuse? and then calling for ?reform,? always in the perpetual but futile quest to make such programs succeed. Another example of this standard conservative reform nonsense is a recent op-ed entitled ?The Junkets ...
Darwinian Graffiti
Post Date: 2006-02-21 08:16:51 by continental op
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I can never sufficiently thank Al Gore for creating the Internet. It has become an indispensable tool for my work and even an important part of my life. I owe it new friendships and the renewal of dear acquaintances, to mention only two of its countless benefits. The drawbacks are hardly worth complaining about. But if I were the plaintive type, I might wish that Mr. Gore had also invented a Coward Filter. Now and then I get messages from people who don?t like what I write. Usually they are reasonably polite and intelligent; sometimes they correct me in real errors and leave me indebted. But then there are the others. I got several of them in a single day after I wrote about my friend ...
Those Cartoons: A Libertarian Analysis
Post Date: 2006-02-21 08:14:36 by continental op
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There are several perspectives now making the rounds regarding those cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. For those who have been in Rip Van Winkle land, they first surfaced in Denmark and are now being reprinted all over the world. The libertarian claim is that these caricatures did not constitute fraud, force, or the threat of initiatory violence; therefore no physical sanctions should be visited upon the cartoonists, or those who reprint their work. This does not mean that such artistic acts were nice or moral or appropriate or considerate; they were not. They hurt the feelings of vast numbers of people, Muslim and non-Muslim. But, as long as private property rights and freedom ...
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