Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Speaking of taking offense at Columbus Day (as Sean Gangol discusses elsewhere in this issue), why don’t Indian chauvinists just celebrate it as “World’s Greatest Navigation Error Day”, and cock a snoot at the palefaces. Columbus died still insisting that he had reached China.

Furthermore, while both Columbus and the ancients believed the world is round, the ancients’ estimate of its size was much closer to the modern estimates than Columbus’. One wonders if Columbus really made an honest mistake, or whether, true to crony capitalism, he deliberately understated the size of the Earth in order to get Queen Isabella to hock her jewelry to fund his mercantile little caper.

Either way, there should be a portrait of Columbus in every navigation and coast piloting classroom in the world.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the resemblances between the reservation system in North America and apartheid in South Africa, and the reactions of some people when you point them out.

In This Issue

This week’s editorial cartoon is a quote from the great H. L. Mencken: “Mencken: The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” But you know what’s amazing: the government school system is so incompetent it can’t even do that any more. Today it breeds and trains illiterate, innumerate, and incompetent intellectual marshmallows, who are useless even for its limited purposes.

And the great, sardonic irony is that today it limps forward because when it is questioned, its vested interests, like the administrators, school boards, and teachers unions, scream like some idiot from an episode of the Simpsons, “Won’t someone think of the children!” Pray tell, how does this farce of an education system serve its poor victims and inmates?

However, there’s hope. See below.

L. Neil Smith on voting out the incumbents.

Sean Gangol on real independence for American Indians.

Our editor, Charles Curley, takes a close look at a ray of sunshine in the apocalyptic future of education in the US.

Michael Chamberlain details how the Biden administration has played hob with science. Less than half of Americans trust the CDC on COVID-19. Do you wonder why?

Events

On August 16 – 19, 2023 Liberty International will host the 37th edition of the annual Liberty International World Conference in Madrid, Spain. This year’s main theme is “Prosperity and Longevity Through Liberty” and will encompass discussions on the past, present, and future challenges faced by the freedom movement and its evolution over time.

This year’s conference will reunite 200+ attendees and 10+ pro-liberty organizations from all around the world in the heart of Madrid at Ateneo de Madrid. The conference´s agenda will include keynote sessions, panel discussions, debates, film screenings and other entertaining activities. In addition, we will have two days of cultural tours around Madrid!

The World Science Fiction Society will meet at its annual shindig, Worldcon, October 18-22, in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. We expect the Libertarian Futurist Society will present its annual Prometheus Award at Worldcon, as usual. The LFS has release a list of the finalists for Best Novel.

Your event here? Let your editor know!

Links! Have we got Links!

With an ideologically aggressive president, and with the states becoming more and more dependent on money from the federal government, the table is set for fiscal blackmail of conservative states. First out: abortion laws. The America Report: Abortion and Fiscal Blackmail The author, Sven Larson, is U.S. citizen born in Sweden.

Vive the great state of Jefferson! Secession is a threat Californians should take seriously

From Jonathan Turley: “We are Restricting Freedom … for the Common Good”: Irish Green Party Calls For Limiting Free Speech. The Irish Greens go full Orwellian: They had to restrict the freedom in order to save it.

Armed ATF & IRS Agents Hit Montana Gun Store With “Soviet-Style Intimidation Raid” Some people don’t intimidate that easily.

Since we’re into science fiction and politics and conspiracy theories around here: Transcript: Discussion of “Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut: Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi on the 1961 story and its relationship to the Kennedy Assassination, Trump, and digital censorship

Did diversity kill the crew of the Titan? The Truth About the Titanic (video) and “Diversity” Instead of Competence (article).

Regulatory follies: Wildfires are not subject to regulation, so they don’t count against a state’s pollution. That was nice of Congress when they wrote the Clean Air Act. But prescribed (deliberate and managed) burns do count against a state’s pollution. But prescribed burns can help reduce wildfires and the pollution and other damage wildfires cause. So says PERC‘s Shawn Regan. Fight Wildfires With Fire (if EPA Allows) For more information, see PERC’s Burn Back Better: How Western States Can Encourage Prescribed Fire on Private Lands