Author Archive
Alicia Keys: “I am an anarchist”
Saturday, February 27th, 2010Alicia Keys classifies herself as an anarchist. I'm not sure I agree with her conspiracy-like theories and certainly not her donation to the Democratic Party, but for someone famous and unexpected to call herself an anarchist and appear to actually know what it means is pretty cool. Maybe she's considered ...
Let the Canadian women celebrate how they want!
Saturday, February 27th, 2010Rarely have I been so pissed off in recent memory as I was at the outcries that the idiotic Olympic committee and the "international community" gave to the Canadian women's hockey team for its celebration following its gold medal victory, but what nearly made me yell at my TV was ...
Health care is not a right
Friday, February 26th, 2010Health care is not a right. No one has a right to health care. This has been said before and explained in better, more detailed terms than I'm going to here, but it bears repeating and needs explaining plainly and frequently. As difficult as it is to define abstract ideas ...
Quote of the day
Friday, February 19th, 2010All government is, after all, nothing more than an absurdity, a usurpation, and a crime, inflicted on the vast majority of peaceful people, without their consent, by the dictation of a select few men who have neither the wisdom, nor the virtue, nor the right to presume to rule over ...
Stupid census commercial
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Have you heard that radio commercial encouraging people to participate in and cooperate with the census because it allows local, state, and federal governments to allocate money for schools and determine how many teachers a town needs and so forth? The narrator says there are four science teachers in this ...
Economics link of the day
Thursday, February 11th, 2010I really liked this article that I found from Reddit: Economics In Four Dimensions. Here are two good passages to entice you: The most complex factor in the study of economics is time. Because liberal and statist economic theory does not properly account for the fourth dimension, it rarely predicts economic ...
Internet uprising overturns Australian censorship law
Friday, February 5th, 2010I don't think this news story got enough attention: from Ars Technica I read that an internet uprising led to the overturning of a very Orwellian censorship law in Australia. The law, which had taken effect just weeks prior, banned anonymous political commenting online. Can you imagine the twisted set ...
Campaign finance reform is pretty simple
Monday, January 25th, 2010Many of my friends and millions of people in the blogosphere/social-mediasphere have expressed their outrage and indignation at the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want to promote or oppose whatever political candidates or causes that they want. One of my friends said she was ...
One year of Obama crimes and failures
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010Barack Obama is already a terrible president, a war criminal who belongs in prison beside Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. He is an economic ignoramus who despises private enterprise, exalts the State over the individual, and dreams of a world in which the inert, gray, bureaucratic mediocrity of corporate-State ...
David Henderson: in defense of Avatar
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010If you haven't seen Avatar yet, you should; the plot might be incredibly predictable and, actually, almost identical to that of Poul Anderson's novella Call Me Joe or Robert F. Young's novella To Fell a Tree, but what you get out of it is the best visual, graphical, cinematic experience ...
Fish in a barrel 6
Thursday, December 17th, 2009For some combination of reasons, the main one probably being the coming of the Second Great Depression and the need of so many people to save money, the exorbitant price of a college degree is being criticized and questioned more loudly and frequently than I can remember. For instance, Peter ...
Obama-bashing quote of the day
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009In reality, the quote of the day is Chris Floyd's entire post about Tony Blair's warmongering glorification of the Iraq War and Obama's warmongering glorification of any war the Imperial Federal Government embarks on—in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, no less! But since I know you all read Chris Floyd's ...
Monopolistic law-enforcement systems are a racket
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009My friend got a new car, a white Subaru Legacy, to replace his old white Subaru Legacy. Apparently, Michigan law lets you transfer your old license plates to your new car in some (all?) situations, so he just took his license plate off of his old Legacy and put it ...
The auto bailout money will not be repaid
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009And there will be more of it. Probably multiple times. Until the automotive industry is a de facto arm of the Imperial Federal Government. If you think this is not an explicit goal of the Obama regime, leave your address in the comments so I can mail you a tall, ...
Robert Fisk: Obama is a disaster
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk says Obama's foreign policy is a disaster potentially worse than Bush's, and that it is incomprehensible why Obama has taken on the Afghan war with such enthusiasm. I think it's safe to say that the libertarian community in general predicted his continuation of neoconservative, ...
Amanda Knox: guilty…or is she?
Monday, December 7th, 2009I was very intrigued by this short video featuring an Italian lawyer, who has practiced in the U.S. and in Italy, explaining the differences between criminal trials (specifically, the judges and juries) in the two countries. He was being interviewed in the context of the conviction of Amanda Knox, the ...
Get it straight: the military does not protect our lives or our freedoms
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009War is the health of the State.—Randolph Bourne Today is Veterans' Day, formerly called Armistice Day. But, our exalted warmongering Statolatrist congressmen and senators and presidents couldn't have a holiday that celebrated the end of a colossal State endeavor, so in 1954 they renamed it Veterans' Day. The attention paid to ...
Because in a free society, people would attack each other without provocation or fear of punishment from a higher legal authority
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009A man returns home from drinking one night to find part of his house on fire. He warns everyone, wakes them up, helps them outside, then goes back inside to rescue someone who, he had just learned, was asleep upstairs. Do the police officers at the end of the driveway ...
IP absurdities, part 23,984
Friday, October 30th, 2009"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." —Voltaire Apparently hosting a Harry Potter–themed dinner party for charity around Halloween is an infringement of Warner Bros.'s copyrights.
Comic of the day
Friday, October 30th, 2009This is three years old, but it is today's comic in my Dilbert page-a-day calendar. It's so appropriate for the real world of internet debating in general and political debates in particular.
Fish in a barrel 5
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009A Texas jury decided to sentence a murderer to death after consulting their Bibles during deliberation. People who lack a solid grasp of important socio-political issues (Statists) will use this revelation to distract from the real issue. The issue they will harp on is whether this represents some violation of ...
Quote of the day
Sunday, October 18th, 2009"Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history." —Steve Wynn, Fox News Sunday, October 11, 2009
Quote of the day
Friday, October 16th, 2009Charles Johnson, October 14, 2009: If you want a recipe for real disgust with the prevailing political establishment, and a real opening for radical critique, one of the things that has to happen is that dissidents need to begin to see that even the longed-for best-case scenario can’t possibly deliver what ...
Fish in a barrel 4
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009Yeah, I'm not too worried about those Scandinavian socialist utopias leaving the United States in the dust in terms of wealth, technology, and quality of life any time soon. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner says Americans are just going to have to get used to saving more of their money. ...
Free-market medicine link of the week
Sunday, October 11th, 2009Health Care: A Future Free-Market Alternative by Ross Levatter, published in the October 2009 issue of The Freeman. It is a relatively detailed description of Dr. Levatter's vision of the way the purchase and provision of health care would work in a free society: the way all other aspects of ...
An “up-or-down vote on health care”?!
Saturday, October 10th, 2009Sadly, we have yet another example of liberal short-sightedness and overall inability to understand the key part of an issue: this petition that the political action committee Progressive Change Campaign Committee is going to submit to Harry Reid. It reads, "Any Democratic senators who support a Republican attempt to block ...
Anarchist Elliot Madison wrongfully arrested, robbed
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009In a continuation of law-enforcement agencies' general disdain for and dismissal of our civil liberties, Elliot Madison, a self-described anarchist, was arrested for using Twitter and a police scanner to help G20 protesters coordinate their efforts and avoid police officers. The charges on which he was held don't indicate any ...
Fish in a barrel 3
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Nate Anderson of Ars Technica wrote, Licensed spectrum came into being for a reason. In the early days of radio, unlicensed radio stations in urban areas regularly got into "power wars" with rival stations, leading to plenty of static. Compared to this free-for-all, the licensing of radio stations in the US, ...
Obama: More government school is the answer!
Sunday, September 27th, 2009Perhaps you've heard that the Savior of America and his Secretary of Education are proposing rules (edicts backed with explicit threats of murder) that would add hours to the school day and days to the school year. This is so typical of the simple-minded Statism that pervades Washington that I'm ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, September 17th, 2009"If the achievement of a free society is to require that a million bleeding heads of torturing tyrants, damnable dictators, pandering politicians, sadistic generals, privileged policemen, criminal soldiers and psychotic, irresponsible “servants” be hoisted on pikes to surround the palisades of the free cities, count me in for the headsman’s ...
Fish in a barrel 2
Thursday, September 17th, 2009California tax officials: legal pot would bring $1.4B. No, you still don't quite seem to get it. If it is TAXED and REGULATED, both of which are restrictions or extortions backed with explicit threats of murder, then by definition it is NOT LEGAL. You mean, "Legal except only in the ...
Obama’s speech about socialized medicine
Thursday, September 10th, 2009I didn't watch the Savior of America's speech to Congress about further socializing our health care and insurance industry because I already knew everything he was going to say. Why would I waste my time with it? He probably said our health care system is broken, that it's too costly ...
Misconceptions about libertarianism and Statism
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009I find that correcting misconceptions about libertarianism amounts more to correcting misconceptions about the State than anything else. Statists don't understand libertarianism because they don't understand their own philosophy. Libertarianism is individual liberty, personal sovereignty, voluntary association, and moral egalitarianism for all people. By "moral egalitarianism" I mean everyone is ...
5 myths about health care around the world
Sunday, August 30th, 2009This article by T.R. Reid in the Washington Post was pretty informative. It corrects five myths about provision of medical care and insurance in several developed countries, basically explaining how all of them are better or cheaper than ours. It doesn't make me enthusiastic about adding even more government perturbations ...
Ted Kennedy, good riddance
Saturday, August 29th, 2009The more gracious sensibilities inside me prevent me from ranting and raving about what a terrible scourge on humanity Edward Kennedy was, but he really was a terrible senator. I detest the common notion that we should focus only on the recently deceased's good qualities or only say kind things ...
Socialized medicine links
Thursday, August 27th, 2009I really enjoyed the following writings about health care and the proposed socialization of it in the United States. They say it better than I am (currently) able to, and are all well worth taking the time to read. Two posts from David Z. at No Third Solution: Is it “Un-American” ...
Plaxico Burress shouldn’t be imprisoned
Monday, August 24th, 2009I am appalled and depressed at the nonchalance with which everyone on the TV and the radio reports the Plaxico Burress plea-bargain to accept two years in prison for shooting himself in the leg. How anyone can become so confused about rights and morals and crime and government that they ...
Medical contrarianism isn’t always right
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009A few years ago, for a stretch lasting a year or two, I boycotted LewRockwell.com because their all-too-frequent Creationist columns were embarrassing to the libertarian movement and I didn't want to be associated with those types of people, nor reward the publication of such hokum with additional page hits. It ...
Damn dams
Thursday, August 6th, 2009Your humor du jour, from my friend's Facebook page, one of my four libertarian friends in the world: this funny email exchange between an environmental bureaucrat and an innocent citizen.
GM’s bankruptcy and government control/ownership
Monday, July 13th, 2009I also liked this post from the Coyote Blag: Though it [General Motors] was able to shed some plants and employees, it will have most of the same stifling work rules on the shop floor. It did, however, manage to shed a lot of interest payments to creditors who ...
Rahm Emanuel: we can cancel your right to bear arms at any time
Sunday, July 12th, 2009One of the most telling, and disturbing, facts about Barack Obama was his choice of Joe Biden as VP and Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. Both are creeps, both are criminals, both are frightening warmongers who are terrible on civil liberties. Here's the latest appalling example from Rahm Emanuel. ...
Pirates: orderly anarchists
Saturday, July 11th, 2009Libertarian psychologist and Skepticblagger Michael Shermer has an interesting review of Peter Leeson's new book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, in the July 9, 2009 issue of Nature. While neither Shermer, nor Leeson, nor I would defend pirate societies as the pinnacle of liberty and cultural progress, ...
Matthew Martens is pure evil
Thursday, July 9th, 2009Today's inductee into the Special Hell is Matthew Martens, the federal prosecutor who used illegal, underhanded, and downright evil tactics to railroad real estate attorney Victoria Sprouse in a travesty of a criminal trial. William L. Anderson sets the record straight with his usual excellence: The prosecution, led by Martens, convinced ...
Obama Defense Dept. advocates post-acquittal detentions
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009We'll see if this actually happens: Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, ...
Government health insurance, Social Security, private mortgage lenders
Sunday, July 5th, 2009At this site and others you might have come across the libertarian argument that State-provided medical insurance will out-compete private medical insurance because the State has the privilege of coercing ever-increasing tax revenues out of its captives. For instance, I blagged about Sheldon Richman's recent column putting forth this and ...
Quote of the day
Sunday, July 5th, 2009"Minarchy is the theory that free market capitalism is best protected by a socialist monopoly." —Less Antman, in response to Sheldon Richman's post
Weekend links
Saturday, June 20th, 2009Not much time to blag; here are my favorite readings from the last couple weeks (apologies for not including something good that you wrote; I don't have much time for reading, either). Will the American auto industry fail? at No Third Solution. How zoning rules would work in a free society by ...
Obama’s impossible healthcare reform promises
Saturday, June 20th, 2009Another excellent column by Sheldon Richman. He quotes Obama: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. Then Richman ...
This just in: Americans are stupid
Friday, June 19th, 2009No, this isn't just stupid. It's stupid and evil and inhumane. As if electing complete idiots with no economic knowledge and no regard for individual rights to the presidency every four years for the last several decades weren't proof enough: A jury ruled in favor of the RIAA, against the ...