 |
|
|
 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 481, August 17, 2008 "Yep. We've sunk a long way, baby."
Send Letters to editor@ncc-1776.org
Re: "The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling" by Punkerslut Regarding Punkerslut's essay on the need to abolish mandatory schooling, I give hearty assent. I was a product of the government school system but—having seen the light shortly after my escape from that institution—all of our children have been home-schooled to avoid such indoctrination and institutionalization. There is one phrase, however, that seems to fly contrary to the rest of the piece, which one could characterize as a polemic on conformism. Punkerslut is decrying the results of the conforming collectivist mentality that results from years of government school conditioning, but she then includes in that list of ills the following: "Workers who are threatened by the idea of a union". I believe that it was Ayn Rand, in Atlas Shrugged, that referred to unions and their minions as the "mystics of muscle", who were as bad as the "mystics of the mind" (referring to the purveyors of religion and government). Rand's "ideal man" would have eschewed both. My father was part of a union—mandatory for him to work in his chosen profession in the area we lived—and they collected a lot of money from him and we received little to nothing in benefits for it outside of a sense of job security. Like the sense of personal and national security that the American people receive from the Department of Homeland Security. I've seen other union actions, and I believe them to be as bad or worse as the government. While the training of our children in government indoctrination centers (public schools) is a form of collectivism conditioning, so too Unions are another form of collectivism—similar to the way Nazism and Communism are forms of Socialism. In both cases, they're protection rackets. In both cases, you run the risk of injury if you cross them. Scott Griess
Re: "The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling" by Punkerslut So I see this article title, "*The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling*", and I think, "Ah, someone gets it." Then I read the article by this wobbly Socialist (read his site, he wants a Workers' Strike to end sexual and racial discrimination by Private Businesses) and it's just another putdown of Government Schools. The putdown is fairly accurate, but he attributes the problems to some Central Conspiracy rather than to democratic School Boards who are the true culprits, doing what the local Majority want them to do. Hello you miss the point, the problem with Mandatory Schooling is not that Government Schools are bad, the core problem is that forcing individuals to "school" their kids at all is bad. Even if they give you a voucher and tell you you can send them to any school you want, or even if they tell you you can home-school them, forcing you to do so is immoral. Larry Pendarvis
To the editor: Re: "The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling" by Punkerslut The article "The Need to Abolish Mandatory Schooling" was an excellent one. Think about the Spanish Inquisition for a minute. For anyone other than Jews and conversos, the Inquisition must simply have been an omnipresent institution that people simply adjusted to. Life went on. Every now and then an auto-da-fe was held, which most would attend as a matter of entertainment, watching someone burn. Most likely, if you asked the average Spaniard, he probably felt the centuries-old institution was necessary despite a few problems here and there. We now look back at the Inquisition in horror. How could people have permitted it to exist? Some hundreds of years from now, people will look back at us in horror, concerning the institution of government schooling. How could we have done this to our children? My only quibble with the article is right in the title, the statement that government schooling should be abolished. That implies a legislative action. Ain't gonna happen, folks. The legislature is government, and they of course have no incentive to abandon their own creation. Government schooling will come to an end when parents, by ones and twos, get fed up and remove their own children from these awful places. BTW, there is an escape hatch. Contrary to government propaganda, homeschooling not only produces better results, but is also easier than government schooling. How do I know? I asked the question, on a 1000-member homeschooling list, of all mothers who had experience both with government schooling and home schooling. The near-unanimous response was that homeschooling was simply easier. The only deviation from this was one mother who said, for one of her children, it was a wash. There is hardly an excuse left to leave your children in government schools. Inertia, maybe? Paul Bonneau
RE: "The Rage Against Self-Defense" by Sean Gangol In a recent issue of TLE, Sean Gangol described the curious case of Mr. Horn of Texas who's still being pursued by "higher officials". Sorry, but it gets worse. In Shingle Springs, California, back on June 5, 2007, Eric Mies went off his rocker and shot and killed his father. (Turns out he may well have been suffering a schizophrenic episode, although we don't know for sure as he was resisting diagnosis and treatment.) The local sturmtruppers rolled out and managed to totally ignore any attempt to rationally talk down Mr. Mies. Instead, they engaged in a gun battle wherein Mr. Mies was fatally wounded. Three of the sturmtruppers were also wounded—and have since recovered! Two of the three sturmtruppers have just filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Mies' 66-year-old mother, a hospice nurse, for $4,000,000—EACH! They claim they are 'owed' this because of loss of long-term employment opportunities, EMOTIONAL pain and suffering and PUNITIVE DAMAGES against Mrs. Mies because she failed to recognize the danger her son presented to them. This, despite the massive benefits package they each received upon being wounded and despite the fact that they joined the force knowing they could well find themselves in dangerous and life-threatening situations. So get ready to toss out the "firefighter rule". While it hasn't happened, I'm sure that as soon as this poor woman is financially ruined, each and every firefighter or LEO injured in a gun battle held on Wal-Mart or Costco property will find that they also need to sue punitively over the poor judgement of these companies in being held up. Yep. We've sunk a long way, baby. Derek Benner
Re: "Hassled for Carrying a Gun by Powell Police" by Fran Tully Was this clown actually the sheriff, or was he a deputy? In either case, it's probably time for you and your attorney (and your friend if possible) to have a sit-down on the record discussion concerning this event with the elected sheriff and the chief of police in Powell. A number of crimes and torts occurred here, none of them on your part, and the outright ignorance on the part of all the peace officers present is inexcusable. I have also noticed that there is no Citizen's Defense League in Wyoming, as there is in Virginia, West Virginia and a few other states. Perhaps it is time for one to be organized. Frank Ney
Dear Editor: I am somewhat confused by a statement in a letter by Mr. Perez in the 8/10 issue of The Libertarian Enterprise. Could either you or he please explain to me how 'temple prostitution' or even ordinary prostitution constitutes a 'scam'? Generally in acts of prostitution, both the parties involved know what they are getting and giving, so I fail to understand wherein the 'scam' lies in this particular situation. Ann Morgan
This was on Yahoo Wed, Aug 13, 2008. The Bold areas are by my hand as a means of pointing out the mordacious meat of this story. But hey, this must be a work of fiction right?? A town Mayor and Police Chief who believe that only their trained tin badged pitbulls have the right to not only defend themselves, but to be out of their homes whenever they want without question. To see it for yourself, go to:
To make your voice heard, sent letters to: [email protected] Sick Sick Sick Steve Bub
*HEADLINE: Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew *
* * On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional. * * *Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the **Mississippi River** long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.* * * "Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I'm fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here*," **Mayor** **James** **Valley** said. "The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution."* * * The area under curfew, in what used to be a West Helena neighborhood, sits among abandoned homes and occupied residences in disrepair. *White signs on large blue barrels warn those passing by that the area remains under curfew by order of **Mayor** **James** **Valley**. The order was scheduled to end at **3 p.m.** Tuesday, but Valley said the city council's vote would allow police to have the same powers across Helena-West Helena.* * * Among the curfew operation's arrests, 10 came from felony charges, including the arrest of two people carrying both drugs and weapons, Fielder said*. The police chief said the officers in the field carry military-style M-16 or M-4 rifles, some equipped with laser sights. Other officers carry short-barrel shotguns. Many dealing crack cocaine and marijuana in the city carry pistols and AK-47 assault rifles, he said.* "We've had people call us, expressing concern for their children," Fielder said. "They had to sleep on the floor, because of stray bullets." Fielder said officers had not arrested anyone for violating the curfew, only questioned people about why they were outside. Those without good answers or acting nervously get additional attention, Fielder said. However, such stops likely violate residents' constitutional rights to freely assemble and protections against unreasonable police searches, said Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its packed Tuesday meeting. Because of that, Dickson said any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned. *"The residents of these high-crime areas are already victims," she said. "They're victims of what are happening in the neighborhoods, they're victims of fear.* But for them to be subject to unlawful stops and questioning ... that is not going to ultimately going to help this situation." The council rejected Dickson's claims, at one point questioning the Little Rock-based attorney if she'd live in a neighborhood they described as under siege by wild gunfire and gangs. *"As far as I'm concerned, at **3 o'clock** in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at **3 o'clock** shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."* The curfew is the second under the mayor's watch since the rival cities of Helena and West Helena merged in 2006. That year, Valley set a nightly citywide curfew after a rash of burglaries and other thefts. Police in Hartford, Conn., began enforcing a nightly curfew for youths after recent violence, including a weekend shooting that killed a man and wounded six young people. Helena-West Helena, with 15,000 residents at the edge of Arkansas' eastern rice fields and farmland, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living. In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward. "And thou doest no harm do as thou will." Most of you recognize this as the statement of ethics of the Craft. It is not incompatible with the Christian "Do as you would be done by," arguably the two statements compliment each other. Tyrants do not subcribe to these philosophies. They seek to rule the rest of us by force and deception, which is in fact an indirect application of force. Often they put a gloss of religion on their acts, claiming that their authority comes from God. Unable to tell who in a population of subjects is loyal they adopt the attitude, "Kill them all, God will surely know His own and take them to heaven." Sooner or later those who would enforce tyranny will seek to fight us. They will send a force of willing accomplices and dupes to kill most of us, beat the rest of us into submission, or die trying to accomplish these goals. Now is the time to for us to use words and images to help the dupes realize they are on the wrong side, and to make as many accomplices as possible realize that we offer more and better rewards than the tyrants do. Ideally when the time of armed struggle comes we will only have to fight those too wedded to evil, too stupid to realize they are fighting for evil, or too lacking in moral courage to accept the fact that they've been played for mugs. I have no desire to kill my enemies' dupes. If those who support my enemies more voluntarily can be persuaded to switch sides, words cost less than bullets. Just as long as they're smart enough to stay bought. Then we can concentrate on destroying tyrants and those who are so evil, stupid, and/or cowardly they need a master to take care of them. History is full of stories of good men who fought well for tyrants that did not deserve their loyalty ( and I'll leave you free to think of your own examples.). Now is the time to strip our enemies of these paladins. Let our enemies sort themselves out, and leave God free to make prettier rainbows and butterflies. A.X. Perez
To the Editor, TLE: Sir: I notice that, once again antiwar.com is begging for money in another "pledge week". Fair enough; it costs money to run a big site like theirs. My only objection is to their claiming to be an "antiwar" site when, in fact, they often promote warmongers. In an article published at TLE I pointed out that the above-mentioned site has difficulty distinguishing antiwar sentiment from pro-war cheerleading. Mr Justin Raimundo, who this year alone has lauded Barry Obomber as some kind of "antiwar candidate" and bemoaned the "capture of the right" by "the war party" (as if the American imperial right wing has not always been as bellicose as its left wing counterparts) is an outright Buchananite. As a matter of fact, antiwar.com runs columns by that former Nixon campaigner and associate of Don Quixote Rumsfeld, Mr Patrick Buchanan. This guy only opposes the empire losing a war; he never opposes it successfully conquering some poor land that has something that his masters covet. This is "antiwar"?! Surely, there are better ways to spend one's hard earned cash than in propping up a fifth columnist like dotty old Aunty War. Keeping it in business can only please that dear old aunty's hubby: Uncle Sam. I recommend that TLE's readers instead send a contribution to TLE if they truly want to aid the cause of... Peace and Liberty. Kapt Kanada a.k.a. Manuel Miles
TLE AFFILIATE Help Support TLE by patronizing our advertisers and affiliates. We cheerfully accept donations!
|
|
|
|
Contents
Next
