Freedom Home Page of the Week Archive Summer 1998

As you may know, Barbara Branden was part of Ayn Rand's "inner circle" of friends through the 1950's and 60's. Barbara and her then-husband Nathaniel were by Ayn Rand's side as she grew from being a relatively unknown Hollywood screenwriter to one of the greatest champions of liberty: admired by millions of fans and destined to have a large impact on the course of history.

Obviously, Barbara Branden is a woman with some interesting stories to tell. Now she has a Web site to help her tell them.

Branden is best known for telling Rand's life story in her 1983 book "The Passion of Ayn Rand," which is now being made into a Showtime television movie. The movie will star Helen Mirren (as Ayn Rand), Peter Fonda (Frank O'Connor), Eric Stoltz (Nathaniel Branden), and Julie Delpy (Barbara Branden). You can find information on the book and the movie here on the site (including a few promotional photos for the movie), plus some nuggets of information on the planned London stage version of her book, and the huge auction of Ayn Rand memorabilia that is coming in November.

Most of us know that the mass media has a left-wing bias. Journalists are certainly not the government watchdogs that we would like them to be.

The Western Journalism Center recognizes this problem, but instead of just complaining about it, they offer an alternative: the conservative e-zine WorldNetDaily.

WorldNetDaily (WND) has been especially valuable in covering "all the president's scandals." Right up there with The Drudge Report from the beginning, WND brings you to the latest and juiciest bits of news, and some interestingly speculative opinions. WND also mines other online information sources and links to everything from small e-zines to major newspapers.

Do you know anarchista ("the anarchist, libertarian, Ayn Rand reading, long haired, leather jacket and clog wearing, vegetarian crazy chick from the U of Colorado")?

Anarchista (a.k.a. Kari Marie Freckleton) is quite a girl. One her many Web activities is her Freedom Finder index. But we'll ignore that. The Free-Market Directory is much better. Really.

We prefer to talk about Kari's Daily Pep Talk. This is where she mulls on her dreams, reviews movies, and tells you about interesting Web sites. Most importantly, she talks about what's going on in the world, like the current Clinton sex scandal. (She knows that "Constitutional crises are fun!")

We highly recommend you go spend a few minutes on Kari's pages. Sure, if you're not an individualist-feminist, anarcho-capitalist vegetarian, you'll find some places to disagree with her. But what's wrong with that?

As popular reaction to the recent U.S. Capitol shootings proves, the road to a clear and consistent barrier between psychiatry and the state is still a long and winding one. Demands for coercive "preventive measures" to stop the next Russell Weston Jr. have been coming fast and furious.

Well, here's to one man who's been speeding around those wide-angled curves for about 40 years now: Thomas S. Szasz, M.D.

Szasz first broke through with "The Myth of Mental Illness" (which LSD guru and Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary called "the most important book in the history of psychiatry") and has been battling the ideological structures which serve as the bases for the "therapeutic state" ever since.

As for Szasz's new Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility, it is a real treat. Even though the site can only hope to capture a small portion of the good doctor's prolific output, that is a very good start. The Cybercenter does offer a very helpful summary manifesto of Szasz's major research concerns.

Visit this site to learn more about how modern psychiatry has conspired with the state to usurp so many of our civil liberties.

By the way, what sets Szasz (and the site, in turn) apart is his earnestness. Though he has argued eloquently for freedom for at least four decades, each Szasz speech and essay burns with the white heat of his compassion. Misunderstood by friends and family, outcast by society, and labeled "mentally insane" by the state-sanctioned psychiatric elite, many a mental health patient has at one time or another felt desperately alone in her exasperating battle for dignity and freedom. But she is never completely alone, so long as Thomas S. Szasz is around to stand alongside her in the noble defense of freedom and just plain human decency.

"These are the times that try men's souls," Thomas Paine famously wrote in "Common Sense" as the Revolution drew near. Here we find ourselves some two and a quarter centuries later in an age of relative global peace and prosperity. But these are the times that try at least one man's soul: Medical marijuana advocate and AIDS-Cancer patient Peter McWilliams.

McWilliams now sits in jail, denied crucial medication, and federally indicted along with six others for "conspiring" to cultivate marijuana. For good reason, McWilliams and company feel the charge is just a ruse to disguise the naked, shameless use of federal police power to squelch dissent in the maniacal War on Drugs. McWilliams was arrested on similarly murky charges last December and had his book-in-progress on medical marijuana seized as evidence.

McWilliams, a best-selling author of self-improvement books, has been a leading light of the medical marijuana movement almost since its beginning, agitating for safe, legal, medical use of marijuana in many different forums including the Internet with this excellent site. Visit it to get the latest news on the McWilliams case and to find out what you can do to help. And, if you're not too busy, check into the magazine itself, which is chock-full of information about the benefits of medical marijuana and the tremendous social harm caused by its illicit status as part of the wider War on Drugs.

As we reported in a recent edition of LibertyNow, Reason Online is not the only libertarian juggernaut shaking things up with a new Web look. The Web's home for the best in Austrian economics has also been redesigned. The Mises Institute's fresh Web look makes it considerably easier to navigate for upcoming events, Institute-published books and periodicals, information of interest to scholars, and news and updates about the world of Austrian economics. And if you don't know where to find what you want, now you can use the site's handy search engine. So, don't just sit there, start pointing-and-clicking your way there right now!

Sometimes, in our search for new and exotic sites to profile here, we overlook the most obvious selections. This week's choice is one of those obvious ones: the home page for "free minds and free markets," Reason Online.

This Reason magazine site has been newly redesigned for an efficient and pleasant browsing experience. In addition to selected articles from this month's magazine, you'll find Reason's take on breaking issues, Reason's brand new weekly e-letter, and access to the work your favorite Reason staff writers are doing for other publications.

Oh, and did I mention that Reason Online features a full-text searchable index of the magazine going all the way back to 1994? Well, now I just did! And that's not everything, I'm sure, because there's just so much information available. Reason Online is, like its ink-and-paper counterpart, one of the best sources around for current information on liberty.

Ayn Rand has finally made it full circle! Born in Russia, she emigrated to the United States in search of freedom. As it became clear that America was not as free as it should be, she tried her best to promote liberty through her novels and her philosophy of Objectivism. Her ideas have permeated American culture, and are now working their way into her home country.

This Web site is a beautiful example of the state of Objectivism in Russia. Among the features (all in Russian) is a page with information on the translations of her books.

Propaganda, this page points out, is not just a fact of history, stuck in between the pages of Mein Kampf or planted in one of Mussolini's balcony speech mobs. It is used everyday for all sorts of purposes, though its most disreputable users are, by far, politicians. Browse these well-written pages to learn about the different aspects and techniques used by propagandists, old and new. It just might make you a more informed consumer of political information.

Cato has done it again: they have faithfully presented their principled free-market research in an accessible and convenient Web interface.

The relatively new Center for Trade Policy Studies site, dedicated to "increasing public understanding of the benefits of free trade and the costs of protectionism," offers the latest research and opinion on free trade. You'll find a publications library, links to other trade policy sites, a CTPS events calendar, and audio and video archives of the events you've already missed. Another first-rate job by Cato.

For many children, the summer is just a small refuge from government-run schools where violence, disobedience and patronizing self-esteem curricula are omnipresent. Isn't it time to let the free market improve these children's schools?

Tired of school choice efforts frustrated by powerful teacher unions and the educational bureaucracy, groups like the Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation (a.k.a. CEO America) are looking to do privately what many state governments are unwilling to do: give disadvantaged children the opportunity to succeed at the private or parochial schools of their choice. CEO America and its affiliates across the country have given away 45 million dollars in privately funded vouchers to more than 12,000 children since 1991.

The CEO America Web site also features school choice research, a forum for debate and strategy, and the latest news on legislative efforts across the country.

To whatever extent that voting can make a difference within a given electoral system, the U.S. single-member, majority-takes-all scheme seems to stifle a broader scope of political conversation and debate, further entrenching the Democratic/Republican hegemony.

At least, that's what the folks at The Center for Voting & Democracy say. Their Web site considers several electoral options which are supposed to enhance a voter's options when pulling the lever, including proportional representation, instant runoff voting, ranked preference voting, and multiple member districts. The CV&D site offers careful introductions to the range of alternative systems, detailing their perceived benefits and drawbacks.

This Web page hosts historical essays adapted from Mackinac Center Senior Fellow Burt Folsom's new book, "Empire Builders: How Michigan Entrepreneurs Helped Make America Great."

And there have been many: Do the names Kellogg, Ford and Dow ring a bell? Folsom retells the daring innovation and boundless drive that helped these men get rich while transforming the quality of life in the United States and around the world. For a historical perspective on the past, Folsom also includes a couple of essays from the book retelling some misguided early attempts at activist government. Through it all, Folsom displays a good sense of humor and a real passion for his subjects.

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