Freedom Home Page of the Week Archive Winter 2001

Great Web magazines are hard to find. Many function primarily as advertisements for a print version of the magazine and don't contain much that is current or complete. Others are just collections of links to articles on other sites. Capitalism Magazine is neither of these. A project of Objectivist Mark da Cunha, Capitalism is a spiffy, up-to-date magazine packed with original content not available anywhere else.

With a full archive of articles indexed by topics like Economics, Education, Philosophy, Science, Arts and Antitrust, you will always find something here of interest (and that last topic inspires the most spirited defense of Bill Gates you will read). And when you need to get your editorial column fix, ("I'm jones-in' baby. Set me up with an explanation of the California electricity crisis!"), you can count on the regular columns by Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Michelle Malkin and more.

But what makes Capitalism Magazine really bookmark-worthy is that it's not just libertarian/Objectivist philosophy and politics. The magazine is updated every day with the latest breaking news from the best news sources on the Web, making it a great home page and second site to check in the morning, (after FMN of course).

The statistics can get overwhelming: Over 60% of the 1.7 million American citizens currently behind bars are non-violent drug offenders. The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than that for a rapist, child molestor, or bank robber. This is insane and outrageous, but there's something about numbers: People don't get too worked up about 'em. But give people a human drama, and they'll go to the barricades. And no group has done more to put human faces on the statistics in our ongoing "War on Drugs" than the November Coalition.

The November Coalition's Web site is the most genuinely moving one to be featured as Freedom Page of the Week. It's a real tear-jerker. There is no question that the War on Drugs is fundamentally wrong in every way. Neither philosophically nor practically is there any rational justification for this ongoing travesty. But how often have you thought, really thought, about the individual victims: the first-time offenders whose lives are stolen from them; the spouses and children who are left behind to struggle on? Their stories are told here, and they are unforgettable.

At The Wall, the names, numbers, photos and stories of hundreds of prisoners are posted. You can flip through them, one by one. You will read about Cynthia Dickerson, who was framed in a "reverse sting" by a pressuring "friend," and has a 9 year, 1 month, and 1 day sentence to serve. Terry Anderson, mother of 2, received a 30 year sentence which is, in her words, "just one year shy of the length of time I've been on this earth."

The Wall got me choked up, but the Children of War section is devastating. Read 10-year old Philip Gaines' letter to the judge, begging for his mother's freedom: "...my birthday is coming up in October the 25 and I need my mom to be here on the 25 and for the rest of my life." (The plea fell on deaf ears, and first-time offender Dorothy Gaines is serving a 19-year sentence.)

Libertarian activism has suffered because political activists are usually culled from the ranks of idealistic college students, and it's hard to inspire said idealists to get active for a philosophy which, on the face of it, is not very idealist or active (i.e., "Laissez-Faire"=Leave us alone.) A recent Free-Market.Net Forum discussion revolved around the question: "What works best when trying to convince young leftists?" The new Web site, Bureaucrash, might have the answer.

Bureaucrash is a young and growing "network of guerilla activists dedicated to the idea of a free and creative society." In practice, this works out as a Web site full of flyers, stickers, announcements and, most importantly, ideas. And the ideas are so well-presented that Bureaucrash is sure to be an important part of a growing libertarian youth movement.

Take a look at Bureaucrash's campaign Politics Hurt which asks the instantly provocative question: "Are Your Politics Hurting Someone?" The question should make anyone, even a libertarian, step back and think for a moment. And for that reason, it will also beg a question in response: "What do you mean?" See the Web site. Read the flyer. And find out how the best intentions can lead to murderous results.

Argus, named after the mythological giant with 100 eyes, is the latest project of the Promethean movement (whose Promethea Web site is also worth a visit, and not just because it is perhaps the most visually attractive libertarian site on the Web). Keeping with the theme of its namesake, Argus of the Web also has 100 eyes. It is a portal to the 100 best Web sites dedicated to fighting oppression in all its guises.

Argus defines oppression as "any unprovoked, intentional action ... which forcefully damages or forcefully limits the achievements of a recipient of its effects against his or her desire, such that the result is directly detrimental to that recipient." And, if that definition isn't enough to convince you that Argus isn't talking about the kind of oppression that exists between an employer and employee (i.e., "bogus oppression"), you can take my word for it. You'll find no calls for abolishing property here.

What you will find are reviews of and links to some of the most intriguing political sites on the Web, many of which you might not even find on Free-Market.Net(!). For example, on the "Divided and Persecuted" page, you'll discover a group called Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda, dedicated against the inclusion of 'minority' and religious exhibits at the Chinese Communist Party owned and operated "Spendid China" theme park in Florida. (Who knew there was a communist theme park in Kissimmee?) On the "Dissidents" page, you'll find out about political prisoners in Cuba, Turkey, Vietnam and the U.S. Other directory pages include "Economic Controls," "Spying and Privacy" and "War and Genocide".

All this, plus another stunning achievement in design, make Argus a site that you will want to visit at least 100 times.

Maybe we owe gratitude to the various fear-mongers out there: the groups who constantly berate (and legislate) about the horrible dangers posed by meat, tobacco, genetically engineered food, fill-in-the-blank, etc. After all, there is usually no quicker wqy to point out the absurdity of a statist, anti-individual-reponsibility position than to point to one of those guys' Web sites ranting about the need for a new law to rein in America's "obesity epidemic" or some such.

Then again, giving hits to their Web sites might just encourage them. You're better off bookmarking NannyCulture.com, the Web site of the Guest Choice Network. This group comprises 30,000 restrateurs and bar owners who have united to stop the nannies from doing to them what they did to Poland.

The Guest Choice Network collects research, op-eds, and news articles (as well as their own original work), and posts them on their site, categorized by demon-of-the-moment: fatty foods, meat, GE food, tobacco, etc. A stroll through the site can prove disheartening (but does it put you at risk for heart disease? Only your lawyer knows for sure.) I promise that you will be surprised, then aghast, at the number of would-be nannies out there and the leaps of logic they're willing to go through to stay in the spotlight.

The tobacco and gun industries are currently taking the biggest whuppin'. And, if the nannies get their way, your favorite snack food will probably be next. After that, what? Automobiles spring to mind. What about microwaves? Or better yet, we may as well get rid of electricity altogether. There really is no logical stopping point except, maybe, giving up this civilization thing and returning to the trees. As Richard Berman, head of the Guest Choice Network says, "Everyone's Next."

Regular readers may have noticed that I rarely give the Page of the Week award to personal home pages: those web pages which are the project of a single dedicated person, rather than of an "official" organization. This lack of attention is attributable to two factors: 1.) I'm lazy, and following the many obscure links and Web rings which typically leads one to these pages rarely seems worth the time when... 2.) Most personal web pages just aren't very good. They are typically poorly designed collages of graphics and essays which, though I may agree with their conclusions, are either illogical rants or so full of grammatical and spelling errors that they can't be recommended as representative of libertarians.

All of which makes Doug Payton's Consider This! a refreshing treat. Doug succeeded on the first count by being an aggressive self-promoter and e-mailing me directly, and on the second count by being a hell of a writer. His lucid and biting commentaries range from notes on the recent election, to a critical examination of school vouchers, to a new look at the Titanic phenomenon.

The highlight of the site is the essay, "They Call Me A Reactionary Right-Winger". This piece was written in response to a liberal Webmaster's article "The Reactionary Right-Wingers Call Me a Liberal", and it addresses the many ways in which so-called liberals totally misunderstand the conservative way of thought. The essay so thoroughly deconstructs liberal myths about conservatives that it would make a good FAQ to carry around every time you need a quick response to some piece of liberal demagoguery.

Heterosexual AIDS. Black church burnings. Pesticides. Global warming. Erin Brockovich. Liberal politicians and media lapdogs could not stay in business if, every year or so, they didn't find something new to scare the pants off the uninformed and make them vote Democratic. And since the doors to the media and academia are mostly shut to conservative types, it's a daunting task to inject a little calm truth into the stream of panicked lies.

But author/journalist/attorney Michael Fumento is a brave man. In 1990, his first book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, debunked the widespread claim that heterosexuals were just as likely to contract AIDS as homosexuals were. This made him very unpopular in leftist circles. But thankfully, he didn't stop there. With three more books and countless articles exposing liberal scare tactics, he's become one of the most hated men in America. The truth hurts. (Fumento is really quite proud of his hated status. He regularly posts the hate mail he receives on his Web site.)

Fumento.com documents much of Fumento's activities over the past 10 years. Hundreds of columns covering scary topics like cell phones, breast implants, Gulf War Syndrome and Bill Clinton, can be found here. One highlight from the past year is his expose of the real Erin Brockovich, which actually elicited a response from the wannabe whistle-blower (and her lawyer.) Brockovich's letter, and Fumento's admirably patient follow-up, can all be found here as well.

It's shaping up to be a good year for libertarian think tanks. President-Elect Bush may not be a libertarian, but he sure is naming some libertarian-friendly think-tankers for his cabinet. Though she has many accomplishments, I'll always remember Linda Chavez (Manhattan Institute) as I first saw her: as host of the 1990 edition of Milton Friedman's Free To Choose documentary series. And rumour has it that champagne corks were popped at the Cato Institute when Gale Norton (Competitive Enterprise Institute) was named for Secretary of the Interior.

So, if you caught a bit of righteous egocentrism from last week's "Where's my space odyssey?" rant, you may now be asking, "Where's my cabinet post?" Well, it don't come easy. What think tanks have you been affiliated with lately? Or, if you really wanna get Dubya's eye, why don't you start your own?

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is here for you. Since 1981, Atlas has helped numerous free-market think tanks get their footing by offering grants, fellowships, workshops, conferences and just about anything else you can think of. But, to paraphrase our nation's orange growers, it's not just for think tanks anymore. Atlas also offers significant resources for individuals: Anyone looking for advisors, friends, or sparring partners can benefit from Atlas' famed Free-Market Directory, the virtual white pages of the libertarian movement. And you libertarian University professors still have a couple of weeks left to apply for a Freedom Project grant.

If Democrats get really crazy in 2004 and nominate Hillary, you should have until at least 2008 to get the attention of a conservative president. That's plenty of time, if you get to work early and start using the tools at Atlas today.

Sigh. 2001 and still no space odyssey. I don't think it's asking a lot. I tromped all the way here, through the seventies, eighties and nineties, and all I ask for is one simple space odyssey. So come on, civilization! Pony up the space odyssey. Chop chop.

Looks like we're gonna be waitin' for a while. In the meantime, we have our dreams, Kubrick's movie and the Island One Society. Island One is a "beast of the information age, a well which is intended as a meeting place for future space colonists and business people of a libertarian or at least live and let live bent." Why we're meeting in a well, instead of a hall or some more hospitable location, is anybody's guess. But at least the well is a big one, because it's crammed with information.

At Island One, there are the usual condemnations of NASA which can be found at any libertarian space Web site. There are also interesting examinations of the various free settlement experiments being proposed and implemented around the globe, a good amount of history including the full texts of the various space treaties which have been ratified, and, if you need further convincing that getting off this sitting-duck planet is a good idea, plenty of information about comets and asteroids.

So, civilization, I'll let this one slide for a bit. Get to Island One, sit in the corner, and think about the mess you've made. You'll come around. But don't even think I'm gonna accept a rain check on The Year We Make Contact.

Christmas is over. The election debacle has ended. Year 2000 is next to go, and I suspect most people are feeling one of two emotions around this time (maybe both): Joy and/or Frustration. Either way, I've got the Web site for you.

Whether the steam you need to blow off is the black and pungent steam of holiday tension, or the pink and fluffy steam of holiday exuberance, you know that slapping Hillary Clinton around might just do the trick. Professional troublemaker David Horowitz knows what you crave and, not wanting to see you arrested for assault of an elected official, he presents SlapHillary.com. All you need is the Flash5 plugin, and you can finally take the shot you've been dreaming of since '92. You might even want to open a browser window especially for SlapHillary and keep it open all the time. (You know she'll be working hard to earn your slaps for the next 6 years.)

And, as if giving "thesmartestwomanintheworld" a crack across the jaw wasn't enough, you can now also "apologize" to Bill, and pound, poke, and pummel The 3 Media Stooges: Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings. All of it free, all of it endlessly fun, all of it a great way to start a new year. Have a happy one.

The above verse is the opening of a fantastic holiday poem which also wishes for "A stake driven through Marx's heart / By Smith's invisible hand" and "No Algore cries of deforestation / Ruining private farms." The poem was written in 1997, and in 2000 we may have finally gotten that last wish, but the other wishes remain standing. "A Libertarian Christmas" is just one of many treats to be found at a Web magazine that has earned its second Freedom Page of the Week award, The Libertarian Enterprise. (The last one was awarded during Christmas week of 1996 and, after all, Christmas is a time for tradition, i.e., repetition.)

The Libertarian Enterprise is one of the best libertarian magazines around. It is published by perennial gadfly L. Neil Smith, and features his uncompromising work as well as that of John Taylor, honorary editor Vin Suprynowicz, and many others. Smith is one of the great libertarian sci-fi authors, but many LP'ers may only know him as the recent spoiler of the Arizona presidential ballot. If you want to know why he did it, you can find out here and, since Smith is such a fair-minded and reasonable fellow, Harry Browne's response is also published here.

The magazine, once published only monthly, now offers fresh original commentary every week. And if you've been missing it, much of the content is archived and searchable from the home page. If, like me, you're unfortunate enough to live in the recently snowed-under midwestern United States, and looking for reasons to stay inside and avoid shoveling, you'll find plenty of them at The Libertarian Enterprise. I think there may even be enough here to keep you busy until spring.

The new symbol of the anarchocapitalist movement combines the traditional symbol of anarchism, the Circle-A, with the dollar sign and the yin/yang symbol of natural balance. This symbol also happens to be the logo of Anarchism.net, a great home page for anarchocapitalism.

Very few Web sites are dedicated solely to this most radical branch of libertarianism. The Ludwig von Mises Institute talks about it occasionally, usually through the voice of A-C's biggest champion: Murray Rothbard. David Friedman's personal Web site only covers the work of one author: David Friedman. (Who can blame him?) But Anarchism.net searches these sites, and many more, for the best anarchocapitalist content and indexes the material on a single page, so you'll always know where to find Rothbard, Friedman, and other greats like Wendy McElroy, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Ken Schoolland. This simple, elegant site also features a useful Questions & Answers page which helps with some of the most difficult problems of anarcho-capitalism, like police provisions, courts, law and the rights of children.

And for those who like to wear their political affiliations on their arms, or their lapels, Anarchism.net has made "Anarcho-pins": Neat little "silver-like" pins featuring the dollar-sign logo. The perfect Christmas present for budding Dagnys and Johns. (My birthday is also coming up, hint-hint, though I think I'm really more of a budding Ragnar.)

In a February 2000 essay titled "Why Read the Classics in Economics?," Peter J. Boettke argues that not only does reading the great economists of the past offer us "a glimpse of the genius of an earlier age" but that, from them, "we can still learn important ideas which are useful for addressing the problems we find pressing today." This is a controversial idea. Prominent economists like George Stigler and Paul Samuelson are defenders of what Boettke calls "the Whig perspective," that the current mainstream of thought has already absorbed all that could be important from past writers: "There are no lost gems -- no $20 bills lying on the sidewalk of intellectual life."

Thankfully, the Web allows more space than ever to store lost gems, for those of us who feel there may still be riches to find. The Library of Economics and Liberty, a project of The Liberty Fund, is a gold mine. Here you'll find full texts by classic writers of political economy like Bastiat, Hume, Malthus, Marshall, Mises, Ricardo and Say. That's a full education in economics, and it's all free. Since the texts are HTML versions, you don't even need Adobe Acrobat or any special program, other than your browser, to read them.

In addition to this great library, there is a Contributor's Forum which offers original articles and essays (plus follow-up letters) by some of the most prominent thinkers in the libertarian movement. (Boettke's essay, which can almost be read as a manifesto for the entire site, can be found here.)

The Liberty Fund has been publishing inexpensive versions of important books for a long time. (I got my introduction to Austrian Economics through a copy of Mises' "Socialism" which I purchased from them.) The Library of Economics and Liberty is as inexpensive as it gets, and I thank The Liberty Fund for making it available.

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