Freedom Home Page of the Week Archive Spring 1998

Philosopher, novelist and iconoclast Ayn Rand was noted for saying, among other things, that America's most persecuted minority was big business. If so, no big busines is more persecuted than Microsoft, and no man more reviled than Microsoft founder and CEO, Bill Gates. No matter which way he turns, it seems, he finds his company the subject of another Department of Justice antitrust suit or investigation.

Well, now Rand's disciples are fighting back to defend Bill Gates with Web sites like this one from "The Committee for the Moral Defense of Bill Gates." After you've browsed the site's large volume of original writings (and RealAudio recordings) defending Gates and Microsoft, you can sign an online petition that will be presented to US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Janet Reno, and President Bill Clinton. A good number of outbound links to other anti-antitrust writing and research rounds out the site.

Here is the brand-spanking-new site for the brand-spanking-new organization, The James Buchanan Center. JBC is an "education, research, and outreach organization" at George Mason University (which with each passing year strengthens its claim to being the academic center of the free-market universe).

The first thing you'll learn at the site is who James Buchanan is and why the center is named for him. Learn about the groundbreaking work Buchanan and others have done in the fields of Public Choice economics and market process analysis. You'll also find information on JBC's graduate fellowships, its eight-session regulatory policy course for congressional staff, as well as its popular seminars and colloquia. The site also features a quarterly newsletter and mailing list.

First Mensch Magazine was here, and we were happy. Then it went away, and we were sad. But now it's here for good, new and improved as Real Mensch, and we're happy again!

Why are we so overjoyed? Why Real Mensch is only the "menschiest" satirical e-zine out there. Tune in this month to learn a little bit about Karl Marx, "the philosopher-freeloader." But there's more: humorous daily quotes, slang du jour ("doing our part to corrupt the language," they write) and Mensch Magazine archives if you missed them the first time around. So take an hour away from planning your "Seinfeld" finale bash and go "where the politics aren't too serious." It's now a biweekly so check back in a week or two for more brand-new menschiness.

Project Freedom is the official Web site of U.S. House representative Ron Paul of Texas, the only libertarian Republican in that august body. Anyone concerned that Paul's shifting political status means a compromise in principle need only visit his Web site for a wonderful reminder of his earnest devotion.

At this crisply designed "frames" site you'll find Paul's biographical info, press releases, speech transcripts, a weekly column ("Texas Straight Talk," which is archived), and information about committee work and legislation he is sponsoring. On that front, you'll want to read this week's column regarding Paul's Liberty Amendment to the Constitution, a sweeping piece of legislation that would: (a) repeal the 16th Amendment (you know, the one legalizing the national income tax), (b) prohibit national estate and gift taxes, and -- the really big one -- (c) force the national government to remove itself "from all activities not specified as an enumerated power of the federal government" by the year 2001.

Wouldn't that make a sweet beginning to the new American century? Alas, the Liberty Amendment has no chance for passage, but now it is on the agenda, at least. So no longer can freedom lovers honestly say they have only enemies in the Congress, for there may be no greater friend to liberty than Congressman Ron Paul.

R.J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, has spent a lifetime studying the relationship between centralized power and mass murder.

He has reached a not-so-stunning but still very valuable conclusion: "Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely." This much should be clear from Rummel's mind-boggling collection of statistics correlating the lack of individual freedom in a given society and that society's tendency towards democide (mass murder) and aggressive war.

That liberal democracies have been the most successful at securing safety and peace for their citizens seems obvious. Yet many peace researchers have let their socialist tendencies blind them to the simple, but crucial, connection between individual freedom and peace. Rummel is not afraid to go where the evidence leads, making a subtly-argued and statistically sophisticated case for the superiority of societies which respect pluralism, diversity and individual freedom. Such societies are not only more peaceful and safe, but also more stable over time, given their ability to adjust to the shifting winds of popular sentiment.

Meanwhile, Rummel's home page is a deep, content-rich site very deserving of your attention. Bookmark it right away and visit when you have a couple of hours to sink yourself into the trenches of fact-based peace research instead of the anti-American rantings of most Utopian peaceniks.

Social Security reform is a hot issue right now. Some sort of privatization is not just possible, it seems almost inevitable.

Perhaps the most promising plan for reform is the one being championed by Paul Farago of Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute. Farago's site presents and promotes the plan to allow "individuals to voluntarily opt out of the unfunded spend-as-you-go scheme in favor of saving in a personal retirement account."

Read the site FAQ for more detail on the plan. And stay updated by subscribing to Farago's ss-optout-l mail list, which has featured over 110 news items since January of this year, all archived and easily accessible on site.

No, this is not one flat tax page or a flat tax page, but The Flat Tax Home Page, and deservedly so.

Part of House Majority Leader Dick Armey's larger Freedom Works site, The Flat Tax Home Page puts at your fingertips a broad range of material for anyone interested in radically overhauling the IRS.

Dick Armey first proposed his postcard-sized tax form plan way back in April, 1994. Since then, Armey's flat tax plan has spurred one presidential candidacy (1996 Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes) and a number of competing sales tax plans. And this last winter, Americans were shocked, shocked to discover that IRS agents routinely harass the poorest and most defenseless taxpayers in order to fulfill their quota of yearly audits. Who'd a thunk it, huh?

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. You can, essentially, find the answer to any of your flat tax questions at this week's choice. First up is an index of Armey speeches and op-eds explaining why the flat tax is needed and why the current code should be abolished. Also included as part of The Flat Tax Home Page are the full text of Armey's proposal, a flat tax FAQ, the flat tax calculator, a sample of the postcard-sized form, and even an index of viewpoints on the flat tax from think tanks and policy centers around the country.

On the news channels nowadays, you see plenty of liberal feminists hypocritically apologizing for President Clinton's sexual boorishness. And you see conservative women claiming he is guilty of a crime (i.e., sexual harassment) that many of them are supposedly opposed to in principle.

Amidst the distorted, mixed messages flying across our airwaves, at least one sound voice of reason and liberty rings clear and true. It belongs to Wendy McElroy. Libertarian, individualist-anarchist and feminist, Ms. McElroy has established herself as possibly the most respected woman in freedom circles since Ayn Rand.

And here, finally, is her very own home page. It's an any-browser, all-text page with sizable excerpts of McElroy's books on pornography, sexual politics, and intellectual survival. You'll also find her preface to the popular anthology, "Freedom, Feminism and the State," and many of her published essays covering a broad range of topics, from Michel Foucault to "The Non-Absurdity of Natural Law."

We libertarians like to think that our worldview, by virtue of its superiority, ought to attract the most brilliant, rigorous minds to its defense. This is a treasured reality in the case of Ms. McElroy.

Just as the anti-smoking lobby and the would-be Internet censors have used children as pawns in their game of fearmongering, so the anti-gun folks have stepped up to the plate, citing the Jonesboro, Arkansas shootings as an example of guns run amok. "How do guns run amok all by themselves?" you may ask, which just goes to show how smart you are.

Some pro-freedom writers like columnist Stephen Chapman have answered this latest challenge with a calm, rational, even-handed approach. But perhaps, given the highly emotional nature of the Jonesboro tragedy, what the American conversation needs badly now is a no-holds-barred, guns-are-great defense of the right to keep and bear arms.

Well, there's almost no better place to go for that than Joe Zychik's Gun Truths Home Page, a collection of essays examining the benefits of gun ownership and the hazards of gun control, today and in the past. You may remember Zychik as the author of The Zychik Chronicle, in which case you know how powerful his writing can be. In addition to Zychik's fully-loaded prose, you'll find contributions from other talented writers, covering topics as diverse as the Holocaust and "Art, Freedom and Firearms."

One early morning last December, Peter McWilliams was working at his computer when DEA agents paid him a house call. How nice of them to visit.

What wasn't so nice was when they handcuffed McWilliams and seized his computer, which housed most of the resource material for McWilliams's upcoming book, "A Question of Compassion: An AIDS-Cancer Patient Explores Medical Marijuana." This came only 17 days after McWilliams criticized the DEA in a Variety Magazine article. Think there was a connection? You must be one of those conspiracy nuts.

Read the author's firsthand account of the experience at The Peter McWilliams Home Page, which would be well worth a visit even without all this hubbub. Of course, there's a lot of space devoted to the medical marijuana issue, but there's much more, including the entire text of the well received 1996 book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society." You'll also find the full text of some other McWilliams books about love, life, depression, and terminal illness. McWilliams is a good writer with a quirky, common-sense take on things. In other words, he's just the kind of guy we need the DEA to hunt down.

In honor of Women's History Month, we present a group that is making women's history right now by promoting feminism and defending free speech.

When the censorial feminist voices of Catherine Mackinnon, Andrea Dworkin and NOW get too loud for you, take comfort that organizations like Feminists for Free Expression are gradually getting louder and more widespread.

Founded by Dr. Marcia Pally and currently headed by Jennifer Maguire and Joan Kennedy Taylor, FFE is "a group of diverse feminists working to preserve the individual's right and responsibility to read, listen, view and produce materials of her choice." They take an activist approach to educating the public about censorship, defending the rights of supposedly sexist organizations like Playboy, and attacking the pro-censorship forces of governments both local and federal.

Their Web site features a large, high-profile Speakers Network; a bibliography of books (some by FFE members) relating to feminism, censorship, and pornography; an online series of pamphlets; and the full texts of some of their amicus briefs to the courts.

Well, you've been outraged, now it's time to get pissed off! You'll find a new reason to be PO'd every day in a heavily hyperlinked rant that will get your blood boiling.

PissedOff has featured the words of L. Neil Smith, Ron Paul, Vin Suprynowicz, and Leon Felkins. You'll find that these writers are PO'd about any number of things, but some of the more popular targets of derision are the war on drugs, taxes, the mainstream news media, the religious right, and the fools in government. Their writing is sharp, often wry, and always provocative.

As far as site design and navigation, it's easy going. The only graphic on almost any page is the PO'd logo at the top. Featuring a black background and bright foreground colors, pissedOff is simple yet elegant.

We guarantee that you will not agree with everything you read at pissedOff, but we're glad to give some recognition to a site that's cutting straight through to the visceral without sacrificing any of the contemplative.

Five years ago this past Saturday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the Branch Davidian "compound" outside Waco, Texas, to execute a search warrant. Claiming ATF agents fired first, the Branch Davidians defended themselves, killing four agents in the process. Fifty-one days later, 76 Branch Davidians -- men, women and children -- suffered horrible, fiery deaths, their charred bodies barely identifiable among the ashes of their religious home.

The story behind this triumph of raw state power over life and liberty is, in many ways, even uglier than the tragedy itself, and deserves solemn remembrance by anyone who cherishes liberty.

The first place to go is Public Action's Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum. This massive online exhibit will take you step-by-step through the horrible events, from the day the ATF raided to the Congressional hearings regarding Waco in 1995.

Another valuable site to investigate is the home page for the Academy Award-nominated documentary, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement." You can order the video online, read reviews, or participate in online discussions about this stirring documentary. Understandably, the film has opened many eyes -- especially among the Hollywood cognescenti -- to the horrors of a government without boundaries.

Finally, bookmark the home page for Dick J. Reavis's excellent book, "The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation." Here you may order an autographed copy for only $8. Reavis testified before Congress in 1995 and offers up a relatively "objective" view of the Waco tragedy. The site features a Waco FAQ, Reavis's Congressional testimony, book excerpts and more.

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