EDITORIAL MATTERS:
I think most of the bugs are swatted by now. Everything is probably
where it is supposed to be in the new site. Probably.
There is no weekly cartoon this week. I couldn't find one that
struck my fancy.
And now a word from our Publisher, L. Neil Smith:
["The Dysfunctional Society", by Butler Shaffer] is almost certainly
the best political essay I have ever encountered. I'd like to run it in
The Libertarian Enterprise, if that's all right with you. [To
which Mr. Shaffer said "You certainly may run it!!"]
So we did!
Ken Holder
Editor, TLE
ARTICLES
Letters to the Editor
Letters from the Badnarik Campaign, Rex Curry, and Stephen P. Gordon
• FULL STORY
Guns Are Good For You
by Chris Claypoole
Sometimes it's really strange how random inputs come together.
Earlier today, I was reading an essay by Eric Raymond
that had been linked in a post by Russell Whitaker on the smith2004-discuss Yahoo group.
While very good on its own, the theme of this very insightful essay
thudded home like a dropped anvil because of a conversation a few
days before.
• FULL STORY
The United States of Prohibition
by Jonathan David Morris
As I've said a couple of times in this column, I'm
leaving New Jersey after 26 years when I get married
in August. My soon-to-be wife and I are leasing a
townhouse in a magical paradise called Pennsylvania.
In fact, we began moving stuff in this past weekend.
We won't be living there till after the wedding,
though. We don't want to live in sin. But anyway, all
the shuffling around I've done lately has led me to
think long and hard about the way laws differ from
state to state--especially when it comes to liquor
laws. Some states are better than others, but none are
ideal. All want to stand between you and your idea of
a good time.
• FULL STORY
The Lesser Evil vs. The Greatest Good
by Lady Liberty
The 2004 election is now only three months away, and at the height
of summer, the campaign rhetoric continues to heat up. We're
inundated with negative campaign ads; we're flooded with media
reports of who is campaigning where; and most of us are left shaking
our heads over the futility of finding even one candidate that's
wholly acceptable. It's that lack of acceptable candidates over the
course of many years now that's had most of us shrugging our
shoulders and resignedly casting a ballot for the lesser evil, and
which has finally come to mean that some no longer go to the polls
at all.
• FULL STORY
Are You Going to be Free or Not?
by Ron Beatty
Imagine, if you will, a country that was born in blood, blood shed
to purchase freedom from oppression. Imagine a country where for
many years, even though government was intrusive and annoying, as
all governments are (at best), the people were still free to
innovate, to experiment, to learn, to grow, without government
supervision. Imagine a country where all you needed to make a fresh
start was the guts and will to move on, to find a new land, where
you could make a complete new beginning, if you had the strength and
courage to take advantage of the opportunity, to face the inherent
risks of settling a comparative wilderness. Imagine if you will, a
country where the people were free, and more importantly proud of
being free, where they could and would do whatever it took to make a
better life for themselves, where the only unforgivable sin was lack
of trying.
• FULL STORY
The Dysfunctional Society
by Butler Shaffer
Like the Titanic, the American ship-of-state has hit an iceberg, and
it is not timely to ask the ship's orchestra for an encore of
"America the Beautiful!" A recurring theme in these articles is that
the American branch of Western civilization is in a state of
complete collapse, and that only a fundamental change in our
thinking about the nature and forms of social behavior can reverse
our destructive course. I return to this topic not because I enjoy
playing Cassandra -- the "disaster lobby" is already packed -- but
because I am unable to count myself among the "ignorance is bliss"
crowd that would prefer such probing questions as whether Janet
Jackson should be fined for exposing her breast on television; the
propriety of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "girly man" comment; or whether
gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry.
• FULL STORY
AIDS Efforts Undermined by U.N. Politics
by Wendy McElroy
During the 15th International Conference on AIDS held earlier this
month, the Bush administration refused to pledge an additional $1 billion to the United
Nations to fight AIDS. The U.N. expressed outrage. Instead, it should have apologized for
politicizing AIDS and explained where its figures are coming from.
• FULL STORY
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