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Liberty and Power

  • Jun 14, 2010

    Activists' Goal Keeping Haitians in Poverty

    by Liberty and Power

    Monsanto wants to help the Haitian people by donating proven hybrid seeds which will result in higher yields and greater crop diversification. However, because they are a corporation mindless activists with no personal stake in the issue are strenuously opposing and lying about this on the grounds that anything a corporation does has to be evil. In his excellent article about the situa
  • Jun 13, 2010

    Which End, if Any, Is Near?

    by Liberty and Power

    Some people have always occupied themselves in crying out that the end is near. This sort of thing has been going on for millennia. But lately, it seems to me, the volume of such doom-saying has risen markedly. Websites that feature apocalyptic forecasts have grown like weeds on the Web, and at least one well-known libertarian site has shifted from more analytical material to heavy doses of gloom-and-doom. An odd aspect of this increasing tendency toward Chicken-Little-ism is that it now comes f
  • Jun 11, 2010

    Obama as the Pentagon's Best Friend

    by Liberty and Power

    Here's a fact that you would never know if you relied on Sean Hannity, Dennis Miller, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin for all of your daily news. Barack Obama's latest military budget is the highest since World War II. Veronique de Rugy presents the case for cutting the Pentagon.

    While she makes some valuable points about the role played by military contractors and waste in driving up costs, she could have sai

  • Jun 7, 2010

    Atlas Shrugged to Go Into Production

    by Liberty and Power

    The entertainment site Deadline reports,

    For almost two decades, Hollywood has tried unsuccessfully to turn Ayn Rand’s 1100 page classic Atlas Shrugged into a feature film with actresses ranging from Angelina Jolie to Charlize Theron to Faye Dunaway. John Aglialoro, the entrepreneur who 17 years ago paid $1 million to option the book rights, is tired o

  • Jun 5, 2010

    This Is Why Communists Shoot Rich People

    by Liberty and Power

    I read this heartwarming story in today’s Wall Street Journal about a couple, richer than Croesus and more self-absorbed than a movie starlet, who have decided to sell, for a mere $68 million dollars, a 30,000 square foot, 12 bedroom complex – pardon, home – they have just completed for themselves. No kids. Just themselves. Maybe they have a lot of friends.

    Private payrolls came in at a m
  • Jun 4, 2010

    Garris on Israeli/Gaza

    by Liberty and Power

    Scott Horton, my favorite radio host, interviews Eric Garris at Antiwar.com on the Israel blockade and Israel. Listen here.
  • Jun 2, 2010

    Consent of the Governed?

    by Liberty and Power

    What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.” When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British Empire, they declared, among other things: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, espec
  • May 31, 2010

    Billionaire Entrepreneur Complains of Regime Uncertainty

    by Liberty and Power

    Speaking to CNBC in Las Vegas recently, Steve Wynn, the billionaire developer and operator of entertainment properties, said: “Washington is unpredictable these days. No one has any idea what’s next . . . the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying recovery.” Wynn complains of “wild, uncontrolled spending” and “unbeli
  • May 30, 2010

    Nonvoting (by Carl Watner)

    by Liberty and Power

    In his On The Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849), Henry David Thoreau asked:

    How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. ... What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

    There are two principal demands that governments make: your taxes and vote. (Of course, there are many other 'demands', such as military service, send your c
  • May 28, 2010

    Should Whites-Only Lunch Counters Be Allowed?

    by Liberty and Power

    Okay, let's get right down to it. Our side is asked, incredulously, "Do you mean that someone should be allowed to have a whites-only lunch counter?"

    The standard libertarian answer is, "Yes, although I don't approve of the racist policy."

    I say, "No. He shouldn't be allowed."

    What?! Heresy!

    Chill out.

    He shouldn't be allowed, but it's not the literal force of government or private parties that should
  • May 28, 2010

    The Paranoid Center: The Global Version

    by Liberty and Power

    If only the history profession, now bogged down in the same old tired paradigms, had a few scholars like Jesse Walker. An example of Walker's innovative thinking is his extremely important analysis of the role of the paranoid center in American history. Now, as Walker notes, the great Glenn Greenwald points out that
  • May 26, 2010

    NY REVIEW OF BOOKS Deplores Growing Libertarian Sentiment

    by Liberty and Power

    The May 27 issue of The New York Review of Books contains an article entitled"Tea Party Jacobins" by Mark Lilla. The article denounces the"radical individualism" that it identifies as motivating a growing populism on the right and left. Here are some sample quotations:

    "A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that h
  • May 25, 2010

    Twelve Parallels in Political Economy

    by Liberty and Power

    The federal budget is to a tolerable government

    as the Palace of Versailles is to a two-car garage.

    ***

    The Code of Federal Regulations is to the rule of law

    as a trainload of cyanide is to a nutritious diet.

    ***

    A member of Congress is to the preservation of our liberties

    as a member of the Mafia is to the propagation of Christianity.

    ***

    The Pentagon budget is to the cost of ade