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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 592, October 17, 2010 "Taxation is theft. Taxation is slavery. And taxation is the fuel of war."
Send Letters to editor@ncc-1776.org
Remember, remember on Second November,
anon Please feel free to add a verse There are a few problems with the arguments of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) proponents. The first thing is that they depend on rights; but there is no such animal. A right is nothing but a meme that is present (or not, or inconsistently) in people's brains. One can claim to own a thing, but it means nothing if he cannot prevent others from taking it. IPR proponents are like somebody who pins a $1000 bill to the wall at work, saying "This is mine," and then complains when it turns up missing some day. Yeah, you may call the person who took it a thief, if that makes you feel better; but it doesn't get your $1000 back. In a sense, the act of pinning it to the wall brings into question your claim of ownership, no matter what you say or think about it. It's better when people keep a firm grip on reality. The next problem is that to keep things like $1000 bills pinned to the wall from disappearing, it takes a fair amount of effort and cost (some things are more easily protected than others). Guards need to be hired. There is no better justification for the state protection racket than their claim that they can guard stuff. So, IPR proponents unwittingly rationalize the existence of the state. Now, I imagine some IPR proponents would prefer to buy their protection on the free market. If so, they should do that, and stop going on and on about IPR. They don't need our agreement to protect their property. We don't have to become IPR converts. They should just shut up and protect their stuff as best they can, and stop making arguments helpful to the state. As to whether people should abscond with $1000 bills that are pinned to the wall, that is a personal matter. I wouldn't do it if I thought there was an owner who could reasonably be found; but that's just me. I don't stay awake at night, mad that others might not be so nice. Again, it's just reality. Deal with it. Paul Bonneau
[Interesting assertion about rights. Who's idea is that?—Editor]
The big news this month is that I now have eleven thousand cartoons up for
sale at CartoonStock:
And, I continue to add new designs to my store at Zazzle. And you're invited to visit my cartoon blogs, each of which feature a new
cartoon every weekday:
And there you'll find links to other cartoon blogs updated from time to time. Also, on my main site:
And do feel free to come and 'like' my Facebook page Facebook page where I link to new posts, and generally babble about things that catch my interest, cartooning-related or not. Thanks for listening! Rex May
Spite and Malice So apparently the order to ban the re-importation of a million Korean War M1 Garands and Carbines was issued by Ms. Hillary and not Prez Barry. In the immortal words of Artie Johnson, "Verrry Inter-esteeng." If BO does nothing he can look like a good guy to the Brady Bunch while denying responsibility to the rest of us. If he rescinds the order he comes off as a good guy to the pro gun crowd, including liberals who are pro gun (there really is such a critter) and liberal Congressman who need to placate a pro gun base. So did Clinton help Obama out of party loyalty by taking the hit on this issue? Or will Obama rescind the order and use that as a starting point to distance himself from the Clintonistas? BO has some skill at political gamesmanship even if his administrative and leadership skills are less than his current job requires. Considering how fast Springfield Armory and Kahr, among others, could run off and sell a million Garands and M1 Carbines and sell at a reasonable price the ban is an exercise in spite. Then again spitefulness seems to be one of the trademarks of the current ruling class, both nominal left and right. Meanwhile, back in the 1920's my grandfather got blacklisted for pro-union activity. He got a job as a handyman in El Paso and earned enough money to buy a home in Sunset Heights, then a relatively upscale neighborhood and he did it during the Depression. My mom and aunt still live there. There is nothing blocking the view of Juarez from their back porch except for a few telephone wires. My ancestral home is between El Paso City Hall (which has been hit by stray bullets from a gunfight in Juarez and Bell Hall at UT El Paso which has experienced a similar fate. I believe the term is bracketed. Don't know if modern or veteran weapons could do much about stray bullets, but they might be useful in expressing an opinion if the Zetas brought the drug war into El Paso or tried to expand their protection and kidnapping for profit rackets into here. Might also be useful in expressing opinions about the misuse of government power in the US. Which may explain Ms. Hillary's spiteful little act of victim disarmament. A.X. Perez
"2014 going to get real loud ..." Re.: "Letter from A.X. Perez" [last issue.] Yeah, I have to agree with your assessment there. If the Tea Party never forms a core with identifiable leadership, they will become supreme, and here's why: I've maintained for some time now that whenever a group of people form an organization with membership such as did the Libertarian Party, they eventually get taken over by their enemies. This is an excerpt from the book Empire of "The City" by E.C. Knuth: On page 77 there there's a passage which applies in SPADES to what I speak:
If you may grasp that whole thought, then you will have understood how the party of the Democrats was hijacked in the late 1870's by the communists, and the party of the Republicans was hijacked in the late 1890's by the fascists. Betwixt the two there has been collusion on a grand scale. For further— and complete evidence of that—all you need do is read Carroll Quigley's tome Tragedy & Hope. Think: What happened to the Libertarian Party? It was hijacked by the Republicans. They are essentially—if not completely—obviated. So then, the 'Tea Party' must ALWAYS be without any kind of leadership or even a central core. It must ALWAYS be leaderless and amorphous, being merely a collection of people having the same ideas. In that way, it will never be 'taken over' and subverted much beyond the smallest collection of individuals having it in mind to do such. They are as the air itself: Pervasive and everywhere at once. A loose collection of people is like distributed computing: Each plays a part suitable to his abilities, and all the others act as quality assurance for the message. If one person goes off-message, the others will say so. That's counter to what a constituted organization does, for everyone must toe the party line and soon the organization is perverted by enemies leaking in. Every man and woman is his/her own leader. That's why the MSM is so agitated over the Tea Party: There's no identifiable core to vilify and condemn. So they're left with attacking EVERYONE who identifies with the Tea Party, and THAT is killing them! E.J. Totty
Reread Heinlein's Magic Inc. The Old Man was a player in Depression Era politics for a while and his insights into (or at least descriptions of) the legislative process are still valid. I strongly recommend reading this book and a few others by the Grand Master. The state is not going away quite as fast as we like. Any insight into how it works is useful. I understand Heinlein wrote a book on how the people can regain control of the government but have not been able to obtain a copy. Maybe it's time to republish so we can prepare for 2012. Given the realities of politics it takes two years to get things moving in the right direction. Several people reading this prefer the drop out of the game theory and I suspect they're right. Those of us trapped in the game by temperament and/or circumstances need to know how to play right lest we get sucked into deals with the devil. A.X. Perez
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