EDITORIAL MATTERS:

Welcome to the 310th issue of The Libertarian Enterprise!

This is a big issue this time. A baker's dozen of articles—if we count the letters page as an article, more than that if we also count the 3 letters. Such a deal we have for you! And that illustration up there is the cover for the new, un-censored edition of Tom Paine Maru by L. Neil Smith, which is going to be published very soon. You'll hear about it here first.

This issue's Motto comes from "Conservatives and the Second Amendment", by Anthony Gregory.

This issue's Special Thanks! go out to D.A., R.W.B., and S.F. for their generous donations to the "Keep TLE Going Fund". We do appreciate it! you are invited to make your very own donation to that effort. TANSTAAFL! Read all about how at:

http://www.ncc-1776.org/donate.html

Another way to donate, of course, is to buy stuff from Amazon.com and/or Laissez-Faire Books (or Tiger Direct!) using one of our links.

And speaking of links, you can order The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel from:

Laissez-Faire Books   or  Amazon.com

Ken Holder
editor@ncc-1776.org
Editor

ARTICLES

Letters to the Editor
Letters from Jim Davidson, Steve Seech, and the Free State Project
• FULL STORY

Conservatives and the Second Amendment
by Anthony Gregory
Nearly anyone will tell you that conservatives are much more favorable than liberals toward the Second Amendment. Conservatives will tell you this, and so will most liberals and libertarians.
• FULL STORY

Heinlein's Wisdom as Taught by Sergeant Taylor
by Ali Hassan Massoud
I remember as a kid that Starship Troopers blew me away. I was raised by anti-war, quasi-pacifist baby-boomer parents who absolutely believed and so indoctrinated into me the belief that anyone who served in the military was a either a misguided victim if they were conscripted, or bloodthirsty psycho that liked the idea of fighting and killing if they were a volunteer.
• FULL STORY

End it, Don't Mend it
by Abe Clark
Political reality has set in. President Bush appears to be giving up on the idea of partially private Social Security accounts, and turning his energies toward more modest reforms, such as raising the retirement age. Although the private accounts plan tried to address one of the system's biggest flaws, the lack of individual ownership of any financial assets, many libertarians correctly opposed it for adding a forced government savings plan on top of an already bad idea. Several libertarians have proposed more reasonable plans to phase out Social Security over the next several decades, realizing that any true reform must solve the problem permanently. There is a more obvious solution, however, and one that libertarians shouldn't be afraid to rally behind: Stop taking money from working people in the name of Social Security, and stop giving it to other people. Immediately.
• FULL STORY

The Thievery Society
by Todd Andrew Barnett
Politicians are something else. When power attracts them like a magnet attracting metal, they don't hesitate to seize it—not even for a moment's notice. Once they attain the reins of that power, they impose a gamut of statist machinations upon the American people the likes of which no one has ever seen in the history of American politics. And then before you are aware of it, they will employ cute buzzwords that are merely crafted to be of paramount importance (when it really isn't) on one hand, but, on the other, are cleverly designed to disguise what they truly mean. When they use words like "freedom," "liberation," and "ownership," what they truly mean is "control," "slavery," and "thievery." President Bush's much-touted, much-heralded "ownership society"—a state-created machination devised and utilized to give "ownership" to you in the form of a nationally coerced savings program masquerading as private accounts while diverting funds from an aging nationally socialized retirement program, thus only guaranteeing a meager income—is an obvious epitome of said buzzwords.
• FULL STORY

Censorship and Mind Control
by Ron Beatty
As I'm sure most of you have noticed, there has been a very strong movement in Congress to legislate freedom of speech out of existence.
• FULL STORY

Vermont Agrees to Disagree
by Jonathan David Morris
Did Vermont just secede from the Union? You may have missed it, but roughly 50 Vermont towns passed resolutions last week calling for the return of their National Guardsmen from Iraq. "They can't do that," you say. Sure they can. They just did.
• FULL STORY

Government Gets It Wrong (Again)
by Caleb Paul
Restricting the flow of labour, either within a country, or across countries is ultimately detrimental to the economies of both. Acknowledging the mistake is a start, but tying the recovery down with bureaucratic red tape doesn't help either.
• FULL STORY

Is it Time for National Freedom Event?
by Robert F. Hawes Jr.
I was glad to see Dada Orwell's article of several weeks ago concerning how the liberty community could use an event or gimmick of some type to win some much-needed publicity in the media. Speaking as a Christian and a former conservative, I truly believe that there are many people in this country who are more "Libertarian" or "Jeffersonian" in their thinking than they realize. That was certainly the case with me at one time. I had heard of the Libertarian Party, but I had mistaken ideas about what libertarians really stood for. I saw the world only in shades of Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative. That narrow viewpoint changed in time, once I challenged some of my own fundamental notions, and I know that many of us could share similar stories.
• FULL STORY

What Have We Done For Our Heroes?
by Donald Meinshausen
We seem to be people starved for heroes. I remember in 1979 during the Iranian hostage crisis the cretins who call us our media called the bureaucrats encaged at the embassy heroes. Now the best term you could call these people is victims. They, wisely or not, waited passively until rescued and nothing else. The same term was also applied to the victims of 9/11 thereby cheapening the concept of hero.
• FULL STORY

What a State We're In!
by Lady Liberty
This week, I was in the audience for the annual "State of the City" address offered up by the City Manager of the town where I live. I try to attend these yearly talks to see what our local government thinks the rest of us think. Fair enough. So here's what I think: While I don't think anything that was said was particularly surprising, I think that some city leaders might be a little surprised by what it is I think about what it was I actually heard when I listened between the lines.
• FULL STORY

Filtering Entertainment
by Jay P Hailey
From a Libertarian perspective, Star Trek sucks. It's a space fantasy rooted in a brain damaged little atheist socialist utopia. The writers as a general rule are either inhabitants of the political left wing or arguably outright sociopaths. How can I watch that?
• FULL STORY

Cosby Case Shows Media's Muckraking Mania
by Wendy McElroy
One headline declares, "Bill Cosby free of sexual assault charge." Another states, "Cosby says sorry to wife." The headlines are technically true but they leave a curiously inaccurate impression.
• FULL STORY

Help Support TLE, click on our advertisement and affiliate links even if you don't buy anything ... some of them will pay us for that!

Back to 2005 Issues Archive