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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 362, April 9, 2006 Free Market Money
Send Letters to editor@ncc-1776.org
Dear Editor, It is good that you are able to find non-libertarians to write provocative essays for TLE. I was impressed with the culture of irresponsibility Mr. Jonathan David Morris promotes in his latest piece blaming the media for covering things that interest people, like Ben Affleck's girlfriends' boyfriends, which, somehow, makes the media to blame for the war in Iraq. I'm still puzzling over the secondhand logic there. Meanwhile, John Steinsvold crawled out from under whatever rock the hard core communists have been hiding under to declare that we should live without money. The problems he points to are not caused by money, but by the money cartel. Free market money would alleviate every problem he names. But, amidst his provocative material, he writes, "We are 7.4 trillion dollars in debt." And that is a lie. I am not $7.4 trillion in debt. You are not. Most Americans are not. The politicians and bureau-rats who run the country have run up this debt, and it is their obligation to pay for it, not mine. Consider Somalia. Between 1969 and 1978 it was run by a hard core Marxist dictator. Then, in 1978, he learned that the Soviets had discovered enormous amounts of natural gas in Ethiopia under the Ogaden desert - where he happened to have been born. So, he declared war on Ethiopia to regain the territory of Ogaden. The Soviets backed the Ethiopians, and he lost the war, but, managed to change sides and find allies in the West. Suddenly, bankers and the International Monetary Fund were eager to lend him money. What did he use the money for? Mostly for butchering and torturing civilians. In 1988, he had about 30,000 women and children massacred near the town of Berbera, in a feckless attempt to keep power. The people of Somalia overthrew him and chased him out of the country in 1991. Then the bankers wanted their money back. The Somalis never borrowed that money. So, they told the bankers to go to perdition. They went back to their villages and refused to form a central government to tax them and bleed them dry. So, with crops in the fields throughout the Juba and Shebelle River Valleys, the UN declared a famine in late 1992 and sent in the USA Marines. The Marine Corps commandant was unable to accept the job of collecting debts for the bankers, declared the famine ended in April 1993, and sent the Marines home. Not satisfied with an "ungoverned" Somalia, the UN declared free speech outlawed and sent Pakistani troops in UN smurf helmets to a radio station in Mogadishu to stop its further broadcasts of anti-UN commentary. The Somalis promptly killed those troops and eviscerated them. The UN declared the man in charge of that radio station, Mohammed Farrah Aideed, a criminal. The USA military sent in Task Force Ranger. So, the Somalis began shooting down Blackhawk helicopters in September and October 1993 - shot six of them out of the sky. Two crashed the same day in Mogadishu neighborhoods, and are the subject of a propaganda film. Thousands of Somalis were butchered by American troops firing directly at crowds of civilians and otherwise "going cyclical" in their own words. Now, the UN still thinks the bankers should get their money back. The IMF still wants its money. The CIA World Factbook says that the Somalis owe $2.6 billion. And John Steinsvold says we owe $7.4 trillion, as of sometime in January 2005 when he wrote his communist drivel. You can see where this thing is going. The banking cartel wants to collect those trillions in debt. If they sent UN troops from all over the world to Somalia in 1992-1993 to collect $2.6 billion and force fit a corrupt central government onto the Somali people and force them to pay taxes, what do you think the banking cartel is going to do when Americans choose to repudiate the public debt that the vile scum politicians and bureau-rats have run up? Nuke a few cities? The good news is that the Somalis have shown for the last 15 years that it is possible to live without a central government. They have been ostracized and made into pariahs, and every once in a while some self-important peacock like General Tommy Franks will demand that the Somalis be punished with carpet bombing of their port cities, but the Somalis stand as an example of what people can do if they simply tell the banking cartel to go get stuffed. Lady Liberty has illustrated once again that the constitutional government of the United States has evaporated and blown away on some stiff breeze. So, it isn't likely that anyone is going to enforce the constitution. If that's true, then the part of the Fourteenth Amendment which says that the validity of the public debt of the United States shall never be questioned is in the trash heap with the rest of it. Maybe it is time for Americans to get back on their feet, pick up their firearms, and stand up for their freedom. It is a dead cinch that with the $8 trillion debt ceiling now busted, and over $40 trillion more in federal obligations not counted in the "debt" the average American would be hard pressed to make good on this debt. It is also clear that you and I have no such obligation. You were promised a constitutionally limited government in your civics classes in high school. In the absence of any such government, what you have is tyranny. And the debts of a tyrant are no obligation of mine. Regards, Jim Davidson
Re: "Home of the Brave?", by John Steinsvold http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle361-20060402-03.html This is a joke, right? I mean, that doesn't pass as libertarian philosophy, does it? Communism, certainly; libertarianism, not! If we have such a dearth of current, thoughtful, libertarian essays that we have to resort to printing this nonsense; then, maybe we should dig into the libertarian archives of the past and reprint from them freely. Chuck Gullion
[There were only 2 articles submitted for last issue, so I had to scramble, and this was in the in-box as well. Sometimes yer gots to kick the ant-hill....—Editor] Supreme Court's Gun Cases Posted Online Six years of research into firearm decisions by the Supreme Court is now available on the web at gunlaws.com. Completed by three nationally recognized gun-law scholars, David Kopel, Stephen P. Halbrook and Alan Korwin, a comprehensive section of their groundbreaking book, "Supreme Court Gun Cases," published by Phoenix-based Bloomfield Press, can now be referenced without cost at the company's website. The widely held belief that the High Court has said little about guns is inaccurate. Their decisions use the word "gun" or related terms such as rifle, handgun, shotgun, pistol, machinegun and similar more than 2,900 times, in more than 90 cases, spanning nearly two centuries. All the cases have been summarized with respect to the gun issues they address, and these are posted with complete case citations. The book itself contains the actual decisions, and provides plain-English analysis and essays on the Court's activity in this politically charged field. More than a dozen of the cases deal with the controversial issue of guns used in self defense, one of the surprising discoveries of the research. Those cases had been "lost" to the public debate for decades. Many read like novels, with lovers climbing through bedroom windows, Wild West shootouts, a mutiny, corrupt judges, conspiracies, mob ambushes, drunken brawls, drug busts, family feuds, cattle rustlers and international criminals. Sixty of the cases were decided after the famous 1939 "U.S. v. Miller" case frequently cited by gun-control and gun-rights advocates. The most recent case posted is "U.S. v. Bean" from 2002, in which a U.S. citizen lost his right to arms for an arrest for bringing ammunition into Mexico. Two subsequent gun-related cases, "Small" (2003) and "Castle Rock" (2005) will be posted soon. General information about "Supreme Court Gun Cases" is here— http://gunlaws.com/SCGC-News.html The newly posted case index with summaries is here— http://gunlaws.com/Supreme%20Court%20Summaries.htm The authors are available for interview. Contact:
Kens: Maybe it's just me. Maybe I didn't see the same movie. Whatever the case, the "V for Vendetta" euphoria was lost on me midway through the movie, but several specific objections stuck with me since the initial "after viewing" discussion. First, while objections against the Right were raised, there was no equal remonstrations against the Left. The point missed was THE STATE, not just the Right side of the political spectrum, is the real enemy. There was nary a whimper about socialism or the equal dangers from the Left side of the Statist aisle. Second, tangentially there was quite the wholesale indictment of religion. Irreligiosity is given as the "belief" of the moral person...almost as if Ayn Rand herself had a hand in script editing. (Remember that Rand edited out a Catholic priest in "Atlas Shrugged" because of the "conflicts" she found between a belief in God and her own epistemology and metaphysics. Thou shalt not suffer a contradiction and all that...baloney) Of course, the Koran as a source of beauty and enlightenment and is given special mention....gag me.... Third, the blatant oppressed homosexual thread that ran through two characters was a little too much. Frankly, I can't think of any segment of the population whose "aggrieved status" is more contrived. The "love that dare not speak its name" in yesteryear these days can hardly shut up when it comes to being shoved down our throats in entertainment and the media. Evidently nothing short of society's enthusiastic embrace will do. Typical. "V for Vendetta" is hardly an espousal of natural rights, but rather leftist twaddle half-heartedly (the left part) bemoaning the State. And the "good guys" somehow couldn't find a way to have, and use, guns? Well, it figures..... K. Jack Chleva
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