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Can we really have law and order without government? Some say no, some say yes. I come down on the side that says yes. Read From Upstate New York to the Horn of Africa by Spencer MacCallum

Now, I must admit, I cry just like all the rest of the suckers when Willy drives off the road, but ultimately his death is just pathos and not tragedy, because in a certain sense Willy Loman is a son of a bitch who gets what's coming to him and deserves every second of his misery. And that's Miller's point, you see. We are not to identify with this man. We are to judge him. And Linda's famous epitaph "Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a man," so often quoted approvingly by the Left, is revealed to be paradoxical. Attention must be paid to assholes? In real tragedy, essentially good people tap into the bad part of themselves and end up destroying themselves and those around them. Here, an essentially bad person destroys himself and those around him, and we as Miller's audience are expected not only to care, but to leave the theatre and "do something about it." That's very much the socialist mindset. -- from Willy Loman: Good-bye and Good Riddance by Travis Stewart in the May 2005 issue of Liberty magazine.

An analysis of Bush's speeches will show that, other than articles, conjunctions, pronouns, and similar parts of speech, the words he uses most are "liberty" and "freedom." He should have them purged from his vocabulary, and have his mouth washed out with a bar of soap for corrupting the English language. Bush is (and I hate to say this after the disastrous Clinton) the most destructive president we've ever had for liberty and freedom, with the possible exceptions of Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. — Doug Casey -- from Reflections in the April 2005 issue of Liberty.

The PATRIOT Act legitimates the notion that if we give up certain freedoms, the government will keep us safer. I reject that notion from a moral and legal point of view. I also reject it from a practical point of view. It doesn’t work. The government doesn’t need our freedoms to keep us safer. No one—no lawyer, judge, or historian—can point to a single incident in American history where national security was impaired because someone insisted on their right to free speech or their right to privacy or their right to due process.

The government can take all the credit that it wants on the basis of the PATRIOT Act, but the government cannot point to a single successful prosecution for terrorist activity where the evidence obtained was under the PATRIOT Act—at least a successful prosecution that wasn’t overturned eventually. The PATRIOT Act creates one new independent crime, the crime of speaking.

-- From an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, author of "Constitutional Chaos" in the March 2005 issue of Reason.

Besides, what is America but an idea? It is not the cobbled-together territories and peoples of just another nation-state. The true America is in many places now, in Estonia and Bangalore, in Santiago and south China, wherever the spirit of freedom is advancing against statism and stagnation. My tribe is these true Americans, wherever they live. -- Anonymous -- From the essay "Outsource Me, Please" in the March 2005 issue of Liberty.

There is so much stupidity out there, no one can keep track of it all, but there are some darn good attempts at it.
You can't go wrong with Reason Magazines Brickbats for 2005.

In “Cut-Rate Diplomas”, Paul Sperry tells the tale of “Dr.” Laura L. Callahan, who held important posts at the Departments of Labour and Homeland Security until she was forced to resign after it became clear that her Ph.D. came from an unaccredited diploma mill. When the Government Accountability Office investigated eight federal agencies at random, it discovered that nearly 500 employees, including some 257 at the Department of Defence alone, boasted similarly bogus degrees.
-- Nick Gillespie
I think I should get a diploma off the internet. Save lots of time & money.
Read Cut-Rate Diplomas at Reason online and yet again marvel at how stupid people who work for the government are. Then give these same people control of health care. Why? Because you are stupid also.

We have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that hertofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probably cause.
-- Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Chief
Remember, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear from the nice Gestapo officer.

And how, given the same 38 months and 27 days in which our parents built 90,000 tanks, tens of thousands of landing craft, 300,000 military aircraft, 600,000 jeeps and 7,000 ships, we are straining to turn out 15 sets of Humvee armor a day. And why, exactly, that isn't your fault.
-- William Merritt
Yea, what the fuck is up with this?
You tell me what the fuck is up after reading Saving Spc. Wilson at the Liberty web site.

An example of the first category is that you have a right not to be killed, meaning I have an obligation not to kill you. That is the normal, negative rights, libertarian approach.
An example of the second sort of right, which some libertarians accept but I am reluctant to, is again the right not to be killed, but meaning this time that someone has an obligation to protect you from being killed, to stop anyone else from killing you. If you follow through on the logic of that kind of right you conclude that taxes are justified, because the taxes are being used to pay for the police. You have a right to be protected from crime, and therefore I don't have a right not to contribute to the police.
People don't usually make the argument in that form, but that really is the logic of it. If you say that my right not to be killed means my right to have people stop other people from killing me, that requires positive actions and is a claim against other people, just as my right to eat would be.
The third category is the one you are raising. The first two are both rights that you have against me, your claim that I am obligated to not murder you or to stop him from murdering you. The third category is not a claim that you have against me but an obligation that I recognize that I have to behave in a certain way -- an obligation owed as it were to myself, not to you. You have no right to demand that I feed you, but if you are starving and I readily can feed you, I am a bad person if I don't. And I suspect most libertarians believe that. Rand might not admit that she believed that, but I think she did.
-- David Friedman
Having suffered thru a number of philosophy classes in my life, it's very evident that most people, even philosophy majors & professors, don't grasp the differences here.
Read the entire article What's Right vs. What Works: a discussion with Charles Murray, David Friedman, David Boaz, and R.W. Bradford.

There were no data that supported the notion that Bush gained votes because of the gay-marriage ballot measures, let alone that the measure had won the election for him. In fact, the data suggested that he would have done better if the gay-marriage proposals had not been on the ballot.
-- R.W. Bradford
Imagine that, someone actually looking for verifiable data about the election instead of simply projecting his own desires upon it.
Read Lies, Damned Lies, and Election Analysis at the Liberty web site.

I get along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with wishy-washy liberals, who want everyone to get along. I can walk up to a Christian and say, “I’m an atheist. I don’t believe this. State your point.” They state their point. That’s what respect is. Respect can be calling someone “you stupid fucking asshole.”
-- Penn Jillette
This is why I get along better with right wing idiots than left wing idiots also.
Read the full interview with Penn Lillette: Love and Memory and Humanity at Reason online.

For the first time in human history, global civilization is threatened with collapse.
-- Stanford population studies professor Paul Ehrlich, in a speech to the Ecological Society of America in Portland, Oregon, August 2 2004

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.r
-- Ehrlich in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb
Will the idiot *please* shut the fuck up! Nothing he predicted in The Population Bomb happened, nothing he predicted in The Population Explosion happened. He lost his bet on the price of precious metals. Ehrlich has been wrong about everything he has said, yet the tree hugging hippies still mindlessly believe anything to fall from his mouth, or ass as the case may be.

The American people, rather than being infused with an understanding of what individual freedom means, are indoctrinated from childhood to the grave to pledge allegiance to a flag -- the ultimate golden calf, the false idol.
-- Andy von Sonn
America = the flag = the government. That's not it folks. American is the land, the spirit, the freedom. The government is the enemy, the oppressor, the evil. You can't link the two with a piece of cloth.

Ever notice that no one asked any handicapped people what they think of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Read Disabling the Handicapped at the Liberty web site.

There is so much stupidity out there, no one can keep track of it all, but there are some darn good attempts at it.
You can't go wrong with Reason Magazines Brickbats for 2004.

We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
-- Sen. Hillary Clinton
Fuck you and your common good.

Fighting fire with fire, fighting drugs with drugs. Only in a country where people thing you can have a War On Drugs (TM).
Read Injecting Tyranny at Reason online.

Not that I haven't already explained all about marriage, gay, straight and otherwise, but here is a good review of an interesting and important book: 'Gay Marriage: Why It is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America' by Jonathan Rauch
Read Marriage Is Fabulous at the Liberty web site.

Time to clear up some of the fog around government spending:
Read Freedom and Spending Under Reagan from the Liberty web site.

The Democrats oppose Bush much more than they oppose the war. Witness the 'Anybody but Bush' chanted, mantralike, at Democratic conventions and caucuses from coast to coast. For ordinary voters and ordinary party members, this mantra also means 'end the war,' but for party regulars and bureaucrats it means something far different: winning the presidency is necessary for Democrats to get jobs and power in the federal government.
-- R. W. Bradford
Yea, and 'Anybody but Bush' did a great job of winning the electing didn't it? Maybe the Demoidiots need to read some self help books: Focusing your energe, making a list of beliefs, having beliefs.

Liberal racism & hate, yet again.
Read 'Blood Will Out' in this issue of Reflections at Liberty. Tell me it's not true.

TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I've ever seen. People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.
-- John Perry Barlow
I've been saying this for years also. Read Amusing Ourselves to Death, Virtual War and Brave New World. Connect the dots.

Read the Reason interview with John Perry Barlow.

The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking down by cowards and its fighting done by fools
-- Thucydides
There you have it. The explanation of our politicians and our military.

Taxes are not the price we pay for civilisation; rather taxes are the price we pay for not building a civilised society. The higher the tax rate, the greater the failure. The lower the tax, the more voluntary, and the more civilised, our society is.
-- Mark Skousen

I dream of having a U.N. arms control and inspection team coming to the United States to remove assault weapons from the hands of all National Rifle Association members. I dream of another U.N. team shutting down the 15,000 chemical plants in this country that are essentially biological weapons waiting to happen.
-- Paul Hawken
And the left wing idiots wonder why those of us who love freedom hate & fear the United Nations. I dream of a time when people like Hawken are deported to China.

The most potent and significant expression of statism is a State educational system. Without it, statism is impossible. With it, the State can, and has, become everything.
-- Samuel L. Blumenfeld
The State has become everything. I've been trying to tell you idiots for years what the purpose of public education is: To create a group of citizens smart enough to do their jobs and keep the economy going, but too stupid to question the government.

Communism must always spread. It cannot create wealth, only redistribute it, so it must constantly expand. The way to kill it is to say 'stop'.
-- Alexandras Shtromas
Sounds a lot like government, doesn't it? Time to say 'stop' maybe? Ya think?

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