Freedom Home Page of the Week Archive Summer 2001

So I'm at the library the other day. I'm browsing through the reference section (the sign of a true nerd.) And there are several collections of "Great Books", you know the kind where you pay $50 a month to have a new "Great Book" mailed to you every month. I start skimming the titles. The usual suspects are here: Herodotus, Plato, Bacon, Dickens,... and Marx. "Marx??" I think. I go over the titles once more to see if there's any precedent. Nope, no Mein Kampf. No Protocols of the Elders of Zion. No Turner Diaries. And yet, even in this country, one of the most fear-mongering, paranoid conspiracy theorists of all time still maintains a position of respect. An author who was not just benignly wrong, like a flat-earther or Paul Ehrlich, but devastatingly wrong. So wrong that millions died. Sigh. There is much work to be done.

That good work is being done by economics professor Bryan Caplan at his online Museum of Communism. As Bryan puts it, the museum's purpose is to "do for Communism what the Holocaust Memorial Museum does for Nazism: namely, to educate the public about mass murder, widespread slave labor, and other human rights violations committed by Communist regimes." The museum has been a personal project of his for several years but, unlike many other similar personal projects, this one continues to be updated. Until it becomes obvious to all that communism equals death, the museum will not be complete. Current special exhibits include "Pol Pot and the Marxist Ideal", "Much Ado About Nothing: Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War", and "Blacklisting Hollywood's Communists: A Qualified Defense". And those are just the special exhibits. The museum's main entry leads to a detailed history of communism, plus some information about the Marxist, and Czarist, origins of communism.

If economics, and humanity, is going to move forward towards the good, we will have to take a few steps back and move Marx from the realm of economics to that of utopian fantasy. History alone has borne that out, given that wherever Marx's ideas are tried, people start dying en masse. The remaining hurdle is to teach people that history, and teach it so it sticks. (Marxism is a very tenacious fantasy. It seems to stick to people's brains like tar.) So, if you know anybody who says things like "Well, what happened in Russia wasn't really communism" or "That bastard Elia Kazan sold out honest, patriotic Americans", send them to the Museum of Communism today.

My only significant encounter with our justice system is when my car was broken into about 4 years ago. The guy was caught doing it, so no lasting damage was done. But the police and the prosecutor begged me to make my scheduled appearance as complainant. Without me, they could do nothing to this guy. I felt personally violated enough to make my appearances. At the first one, the defendant didn't show. At the second one, the relevant police officer didn't show. At the third one, everyone showed but the would-be car thief's attorney did... something... which scared the prosecutor off. She told me, "Go home. There's nothing we can do. He's gonna get off."

So, a guy breaks into my car. If I'd done nothing about it, I'd have only lost some intangible sense of security. But since I did do something, I lost that sense of security PLUS three days of work. I'm the one who ended up getting punished!! In pursuit of justice, justice just got farther away.

Admittedly, this is nothing. I should count myself lucky that that's the greatest injustice I've suffered. Many others have not been so lucky, as Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters Bill Moushey and Bob Martinson have shown in their famous 10-part series, Win At All Costs. Written in 1998, this piece of reporting is so important, and so timeless, that it remains a popular Web site in 2001.

It's good reading. Moushey and Martinson tell stories of people who have been emotionally and financially raped by conspiracies of conviction-mad prosecutors, bootlicking grand juries, and paid informants looking for reduced sentences. Each story is made very personal by intimate background information and photos of the participants. You will not come away from these stories unmoved. And you'll have a good understanding of just how irretrievably corrupt our government justice system is.

In further praise of "Win At All Costs" I have to add that, after years of seeing the phrase "right-wing zealot" tossed around, and wondering whether I'd ever see the phrase "left-wing zealot", with this report my waiting comes to an end. They use the phrase "left-wing zealot". Yeah, it's to say that Arnold I. Burns is "no left-wing zealot", but what a relief to know that there is such a thing, even if Arnold I. Burns isn't one.

No one disagrees that race relations in this country are bad. More frightening to contemplate is the fact that, to many, they don't seem much better today than they were fifty years ago. They may even be worse. How can this be? Fifty years ago, it was a common belief that people of different colors were essentially different animals. Today, few explicitly believe that, and yet animosity between the colors seems to be getting worse and worse.

Ward Connerly has an answer that America should contemplate. The problem is that the whole concept of race needs to be re-thought. Or maybe "un-thought" would be a more appropriate verb. If we really value racial equality under the law, then the law should not consider race at all. Race should be the law's blind spot. The Abolitionist Examiner, which features a commentary by Connerly this month, is dedicated to exploring this idea of "freedom from racial identity and racial group-think". Every two months, TAE posts new articles by Connerly and others using reason to attack destructive policies like affirmative action, welfare, racial census data, reparations, and more. And, because interaction with these ideas is just as important as dissemination, every article features a link to a discussion forum.

TAE is a simple Web site, without a lot of fancy ornamentation. Just clear-cut, reasonable ideas presented simply and directly. But it's simplicity is in direct proportion to it's importance. There is not much hope for freedom in this country when it seems as if we are often on the verge of a race war. It will be difficult to legalize drugs knowing that the most deleterious effects will probably land on the poor and disadvantaged (who, thanks to affirmative action and the welfare state, happen to be racial minorities.) The same goes for gun laws. Only once we are in agreement that the current views of race, and the liberal activist state, are the problems which exacerbate the economic and philosophical "racial divide", will we be in a good position to loosen up gun restrictions, end the drug war, and bring to light all those other freedoms which libertarians love.

Among my favorite 50's horror films are those Roger Corman classics, Attack of the Living Wage, Son of the Living Wage, and The Curse of the Living Wage.

I can hear you saying, "What are you talking about? Not even Roger Corman would expect us to believe something so silly. A Living Wage?? Feh!" And you're right. Roger Corman never did such a thing. No, if it doesn't work in theory, and it doesn't work in practice, it can only be a production of the American Left. And, sadly, the Living Wage isn't just a harmless movie monster. It really exists, and it's coming to your town.

Essentially, the Living Wage is just a euphemism for a minimum wage instilled by other means. There are now 62 Living Wage ordinances in 24 states. On average, these active wages are $9.66 per hour, nearly double the current federal minimum wage ("...and with nearly double the damage to the poor and unskilled! Buy now!!")

With the help of general economic ignorance, plus the money and organizing power of the activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the idea of the Living Wage is gaining momentum and it's going to take money, organizing, and economic education to fight back. The Employment Policy Foundation's new website, Living Wage Research, is there to help with the education.

The numbers are in, and there for your disposal. Living Wage Research has supplied the ammunition to attack economic ignorance from any angle: from the characteristics of low wage earners, to the penalties imposed on employers, to those always-present unintended consequences like the effect Living Wage laws have had on non-profit organizations. With the help of LWR, we can make sure that this monster gets a stake through it's heart before daybreak.

A "haven" is a place of refuge, and libertarians on the web need as many of those as we can get. Say you're browsing the web, innocently looking for a film review, and you come upon a column by Roger Ebert, who defended Clinton, complaining that Bush lacks refinement. You may need a place of refuge. Or maybe you're going through your e-mail and someone has forwarded you a speech by actor Tim Robbins which haughtily proclaims that the problem with American politics isn't that Republicans compromise too easily with socialists, but that the Democrats have moved too far to the right! The vein in your forehead starts to throb. You start to sweat. You throw up your arms in frustration and yell "Is there anyone sane in this world???" You need a place of refuge.

When you desperately need to be reminded that thinking people still exist, Liberty Haven is your port. As soon as you arrive, you'll be treated to instant gratification in the form of LibertyHaven's Quote of the Day, a small taste of sanity which will make you crave MORE. And MORE is what you'll find. Liberty Haven is a library of libertarian-leaning articles on topics ranging from Labor Unions to Consensual Crimes to Art. These are articles, not books, so none of them should require a time commitment of more than 10 or 15 minutes. With over 5,000 articles stored here, you will always find something new. And I really do believe that reading one or two of these a day will go a long way towards reducing that peculiar stress that comes of encountering foolishness on a daily basis.

It's happened to all of us. You tell someone you're a libertarian and they say "Oh, that's that Lyndon Larouche guy, right?" or (and I'm not making this up) "Ugh! Don't you guys believe in slavery??"

It's a hard pill to swallow: The majority of Americans have no idea what a libertarian is. But that doesn't mean they're not libertarians. The Advocates for Self-Government is founded on the belief that many of those people just haven't found the word for what they believe. The Advocates have been responsible for almost all the libertarian outreach tools you can find: from wallet-sized copies of the famous Nolan chart, to instructional audio tapes on communication skills and political activism, to the ubiquitous "libertarian event in a kit": the Operation Politically Homeless booths that you've seen at parades, festivals, and other events. And with their new project, Discover Liberty, the Advocates don't show any signs of quitting.

The goal of the Discover Liberty program is to "take the message of liberty to 500,000 people in 12 months." By assisting activists with setting up 2,000 Operation Politically Homeless booths in all 50 states, the Advocates expect to make 500,000 positive contacts. Based on previous experiences with the OPH booths, this should mean that 250,000 people will talk to a libertarian and take the World's Smallest Political Quiz, 72,500 people will score in the libertarian quadrant of the quiz, and about 36,000 people will leave their addresses for more information. 36,000 people is roughly equivalent to the current total membership of the national Libertarian Party. That's a great goal to strive for, and it doesn't seem impossible.

If you're an activist, check this out now. If not, reading over the site might convince you to become one. If being a part of this great program isn't enough to convince you, the Advocates, being libertarians, understand that incentives matter: I'm talkin' about prizes.

Here's a radical statement for you: If anything on this Earth can be said to be "yours," it is contained by the borders of your skin. It seems obvious, doesn't it? If it's a part of, you, then it must be yours, mustn't it? And if something is yours, then you inherently have the right to do with it as you please, including sell it for money. (Anti-abortionists, let's disregard for the moment the issue of whether this statement applies to a fetus. I only have a couple of paragraphs here.)

And yet, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 prevents you from making such a sale. As with most Congressional acts, this one relies on a sort of superstitious, fairy-tale notion -- this time, that human organs shouldn't be viewed as commodities. Since a commodity is commonly defined as "something useful which can be turned to commercial or other advantage," this notion defies sense. Obviously, an organ is useful and can be turned to all kinds of advantages. Why it is okay for an organ to be donated, (i.e., sold in exchange for positive feelings of generosity) but not sold (i.e., donated in exchange for cash) is beyond the realm of reason.

These arguments, and more, get a fuller airing at the excellent web site, OrganSelling.com. Here you will learn that over 5,800 people die in this country, every year, because they can't get the replacement organs which they so desperately need. You will also learn a basic economic principle which our legislators prefer to ignore: price caps cause shortages. A price cap of zero will cause a massive shortage, which in this case condemns about 16 people to death every single day. Thanks a bunch, Uncle Sam!

OrganSelling.com covers all the bases of the issue. A page of Documents and Articles will give you all the facts you need to know, plus an inspirational poem from the sister of an organ donor. The Proposal page details how a free market in organs would probably work, and the Common Objections page will allay your fears that bands of murderous entrepreneurs would form to harvest organs. After you've read through the site, be sure to stop by the List of Signers to publicly endorse the radical notion that your organs are yours.

Browse most online archives of political cartoons and you'll find that they are all remarkably similar. How many cartoons have you seen which made fun of Cheney's pacemaker or attempted a serious statement about the "need" for nationalized health care? One gets the impression that cartoonists just skim the editorial page of the New York Times for a subject. This is what makes Russmo.com such a relief. Not ony are Russmo's cartoons funny, but they display the depth of political thought that one can only get from libertarians.

Posted every Sunday, Russmo points his pen at the IRS, gun-control advocates, public schools and (oh yes, he is STILL worth laughing at) Bill Clinton. In addition to the cartoons, there is a nice page of links to supporting documents, a page for leaving praise and complaints, and Russmo's "No Apologies" oath.

The historical revisionism began the day after the Supreme Court ruled against Al Gore. "The election was stolen and handed over to Bush by a right-wing activist Supreme Court" blared the sirens of the leftist propaganda machine, and they continue to blare that message today. Right-thinking people who know that totalitarianism can happen here, and if it does it will come from people like Al Gore and Ralph Nader, should be very afraid of this message working to put an enemy of liberty in the White House in 2004. But this week, a debate is taking place that may help shed some light on the issue.

One of Slate magazine's regular features is the Dialogue, a week-long debate between two esteemed professionals on (usually political) issues. It's always fascinating to watch great minds engage and this week's debate promises to be the WWF Smackdown of political debate. I'm talkin' Alan Dershowitz v. Richard Posner over The Supreme Court and the 2000 Election. (Now imagine Marv Albert saying "YES!!")

The debate just started yesterday so we don't yet know how it's gonna turn out, but I have a pretty good guess: Posner is gonna kick Dershowitz's Dershowitz so HARD and I can't WAIT! Of course, lefties are pretty thick-headed so whether Dershowitz will realize how hard his Dershowitz got kicked is still up in the air. And if HE doesn't get it, you can bet that the average globalization-protestor in the street isn't gonna have his mind changed either. So it will be up to you and me to remember Posner's arguments, and his forthcoming victory, so we can repeat it in 2004.

By comparison with the rest of the world, American kids aren't very good at taking tests. I hesitate at saying that they're dumber than the rest of the world. They're just not very well educated. The fact that the reasons for this are well-documented by the likes of Milton Friedman and others who call for the dissolution of the federal education monopoly hasn't prevented liberals from demanding that more and more money be thrown down this particular black hole. To this day, most advocates of school choice also advocate Friedman's solution: school vouchers.

But not 4Choice. This new organization argues that, with all due respect to Friedman, vouchers are "a bad funding system that calls to mind standing in line for food stamps." Their proposal is based on the success of the GI Bill, where GI's were allowed complete freedom to choose any school to attend, even (gasp!) religious schools. 4Choice believes that the path to good education in this country can be found by changing only one thing: allowing parents to choose which school their kids attend rather than the government designating one of their schools.

This solution may not be as revolutionary as others. It doesn't abolish the Department of Education. But it could go a long ways towards weakening it by revealing the inherent flaws in federal monopolies of any service. Just allowing some competition into the system can work wonders, after all.

Whoa! HOW long has it been since Freedom's Nest was the Freedom Page of the Week? (Hint: the award was given by some web site called Free-Market-dot-COM.) And that's just not fair, because Freedom's Nest is worthy of visiting not just every five years, not just every year, but weekly. Maybe even daily.

As long as Free-Market.net has been around, Freedom's Nest has been one of the best libertarian sites on the web. Conceived as an index of libertarian quotes, Freedom's Nest has grown into, well, a REALLY GREAT index of libertarian quotes. (Why mess with a good concept?) Indexed by author and subject, there are over 1600 morsels of wisdom here. Find an author whose quotes ring particularly true, and you can jump to a bio and bibliography. Or, if you're not feeling particular, you can sign up to have random quotes e-mailed to you daily.

Jumping from the thoughts of Eric Hoffer to Thomas Sowell to Ludwig von Mises is a heady activity. Use Freedom's Nest with care. It is one of the most addictive libertarian sites on the web.

A new play called "Take It Deep" opened in Chicago this weekend. It is the story of door-to-doot meat salesmen in Los Angeles, an occupation which the playwright Ben Byer experienced first-hand for several years. The web site for the play, Meatmen.net, is brilliantly designed and the content is pretty interesting regardless of whether you plan to see the play. At the very least, I recommend listening to Byer's RealAudio "Analysis of the Craft" (of selling meat, not of writing plays) as well as a RealAudio recreation of an actual meat "pitch." But when there are so many hard-working libertarian think tanks, columnists and activists, WHY is Meatmen.net this week's Freedom Page of the Week? A couple of reasons ...

First of all, in accord with Ayn Rand's proclamation that selfishness is a virtue, I pick this particular play to promote because, well, I'm in it. But wait. There's more ...

Libertarians will like this play because it is one of the least squishy/lefty plays ever put on the stage. It's an unashamed celebration of meat-eating, capitalism and go-get-em-slugger joie de vivre. But, like us Libs, it can't be described as right-wing either. It's also an unashamed celebration of sex, drugs, foul language and underground hedonism.

Now, admittedly, the capitalists in this play are pretty unsavory. Since there is a strong argument that the principal characters are simply con artists, some people will come away from the play believing that it is a standard liberal condemnation of capitalism. Well, that's part of the fun of intelligent theater: the arguments afterwards. I happen to believe that a key line at the end of the play reveals it to be a distinctly libertarian condemnation not of capitalism, but of force and fraud. But I'm not gonna spoil the play for you, so you Chicagoans are just gonna have to come to the Wing and Groove Theater and figure out which line I'm talking about. And you out-of-towners are either gonna have to call everyone you know in Chicago, tell 'em to see the play and report back to you, or just pile a bunch of friends into a van yourself and get out here before we close on July 15.

The first politically-minded book that I ever voluntarily read was Christina Hoff Summers' classic, "Who Stole Feminism?" and I really only read that because I was angry at a (now ex) girlfriend who was heavily into "women's studies" and the like. Our arguments were often sprinkled with heady phrases like "patriarchal hegemony." Naturally, this got under my skin pretty quickly and drove me to find a book which would help me easily refute all the nonsense which was streaming out of her mouth. "Who Stole Feminism?" nicely fit the bill.

Hoff Summers is just one of the great minds behind the Independent Women's Forum and their new web site, SheThinks.org. Since April, SheThinks.org has been providing a haven of sanity for college students who are inundated with the male-bashing and victimology which has become the hallmark of modern-day feminism. The Take Back The Campus ad campaign, which has been placed in college newspapers around the country, offers up for dissection "The Ten Most Common Feminist Myths" and, if you've never heard these whoppers before, you haven't been on a college campus in awhile.

The site is packed with articles which are interesting to men and women alike. Speaking as a dude, I particularly enjoyed Rod Dreher's article, The Taming of the Dude, which echoes some of George Gilder's ideas about the civilizing of men. And John Dizard's book review of, (I'm not making this up nor is he), "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory," is best read while eating steak.

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