Strike The Root - a journal of liberty

In the DVD player: My Flesh and Blood (should see), Away We Go (pretty good), Coach Carter (recommended), The Guardian (recommended), Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 1: (funny), Frontline: Ten Trillion and Counting (recommended), Frontline: The Madoff Affair (MUST SEE), Taxi to the Dark Side (MUST-MUST SEE), Frontline: Hand of God (MUST SEE), Deadliest Catch, Season 1 (recommended), The Tunnel (recommended), Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (MUST SEE), Defiance (strongly recommended), Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda (MUST SEE), The Heart of the Game (highly recommended), Downfall (highly recommended), Frontline: Inside the Meltdown (recommended), White Light, Black Rain (strongly recommended), Rendition (highly recommended), Religulous (recommended), The Ground Truth (highly recommended), Frontline: The Medicated Child (recommended), I.O.U.S.A. (highly recommended), The Wire, Seasons 1-5 (highly recommended); see recommended movies

On the nightstand: Anatomy of the Bear by Russell Napier

Playing on Pandora or on Songza in iTunes: "With Stars Down" by Track a Tiger

Root Strikers

Supporters

Matthew Bredeson

Glen Allport

Polo Leyendecker

Donovan Conrad

Gretchen Vanek

Rex Bell

Scott LeGear

Jon Davis

Matthew Bryan

Bill Ross

Old Will Thirteen

Anne Berg

Jacques Martell

Gilberto Heredia

Derek Henson

Joe Stamper

Donna Mancini

Dick Mancini

Less Antman

Brent McElroy

Mike Powers

Brian Mast

Robert Sussman

Iloilo Jones

Guest Editors

Cheryl Cline

Robert Fredericks

Anthony Gregory

Derek Henson

Chris Lempa

Mike Powers

Don Stacy

Helpers

Log from Blammo

Roger Young

Scarmig

Non-Voting Archive

The Root Cellar

Recent columns by Root Strikers

Marbury

"...these days most pols try to prolong their careers by pretending to govern by the will of, or with the consent of, the governed. It's a ridiculous fiction, for if consent is given, no governing is done, while if governing is done, consent is obviously absent." Column by Jim Davies.

Does the American Empire Deserve to Die?

"Just imagine the tens of millions of innocent people crushed beneath the juggernaut of the American Empire in the past century and then try your best to justify their deaths. Could you? If you can, than yes, America deserves to survive and thrive, but if not, we deserve the trash heap as a grand idea that failed, drowned in blood." Column by Douglas Herman.

Religious Political Creep

"The Christian Reconstruction movement wants the U.S. government, and eventually the entire planet, based on the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments but with an emphasis on the Old Testament." Column by Robert Johnson.

Disunited We Stand

"Determine the best thing to do, and do it. How can everyone not benefit when everyone acts in his own enlightened self-interest? " Column by Paul Hein.

Origins

"Where and when did government start? It's quite a mystery. Given that human beings are basically harmless creatures, how did it happen that an inherently violent institution arose in human society, whose whole raison d'être is always to destroy the fundamental human right of self-governance?" Column by Jim Davies.

Human Nature

Recommended "The survival and growing prosperity of our species therefore depends entirely upon the removal of the myths, the titles, badges and uniforms--and not much else." Column by Jim Davies.

The Prince of Peace

Recommended "What is clear to me is that we mustn’t wait for prizes. We must walk away from these people, and throw their trophies in the trash. The only way to effectively bring about a revolution for the betterment of mankind is to reach the individual. The message is simple: You are freedom. You are peace. You are love. You are truth. You mustn’t wait for anyone else. You mustn’t be afraid. You mustn’t worry that mass murderers are continually lauded as bringers of peace. It will continue. But we needn’t continue along with it. They’ve set the table, but what they’re serving is rancid leftovers. Walk away. It will feel better when you do it in your own way, not the way some charismatic leader tells you to. If you are willing, you are The Prince of Peace." Column by B.R. Merrick.

On the Meaning of Voting

"...voting falls under Oppenheimer’s definition of 'political means' in the same sense that doing business with (or, more accurately, asking someone else to, on your behalf, contract with) a contract killer does: it is the solicitation of violent services offering as only payment an anonymous statement of support for an unenforceable advertised political program." Column by Per Bylund.

F*** Tibet!

"Free Tibet? Free Humanity! is the correct idea." Column by new Root Striker tzo.

Insuring Health

"When [American voters] voted for 'free' health care, they were proactively declaring, by pulling those voting levers, that it was fine and dandy by them to take the needed funds from their neighbors and ultimately to shoot them dead if they refused. So it's not really ignorance alone; there is, at root, an ethical question at work, and it centers on the gross immorality of casting a vote. Yes, politicians are malevolent or stupid, most likely the former in my view, but everyone who votes for them is complicit, up to his neck, actively taking part in the most humongous act of armed robbery in the history of man. That is not 'insurance'--a perfectly sound idea involving the voluntary sharing of the risk of heavy but unpredictable loss--this is theft, neither more nor less. That is the real, moral disease that has infected the core of this society and no amount of medical care is going to cure it." Column by Jim Davies.

Ringo's Law and the Healthcare System of Doom

Recommended "By now it should be clear to anyone: This government 'help' has made things dramatically worse in healthcare, just as government reliably makes things worse in all spheres of life that government involves itself in. For many reasons, coercive government is the worst way to do anything. Like gravity, Ringo's Law is a built-in rule of the universe, omnipresent and unavoidable. There is no country on Earth where the Law is not conspicuously on display: 'Everything government touches turns to crap'." Column by Glen Allport.

Behind the Wire: An Insider's Reflections on Gitmo

"I admit that I do not have, nor am I aware of anyone having, all the information necessary to determine the guilt or innocence of each person detained in Gitmo. Therefore, I honestly confess that I have no basis on which to claim justification for my actions in continuing the confinement of fellow human beings while I was there." Column by new Root Striker Daniel Lakemacher.

I Don't and Won't Vote: Here's Why

"I have a very hard time believing that grown adults, quite able to grasp the concepts I laid before them, do not understand what they are intentionally doing by being so foolish, shortsighted, self-degrading, and destructive as to continue voting in political elections." Column by Alex R. Knight III.

Let Us Awake Now

Recommended "Freedom comes from within. It does not come from without. It does not come from a charismatic leader. It does not come with a set of instructions....It does not come from being given your freedom only after you prove yourself to your parents, teachers, pastors, or other authority figures. It does not come from any God who demands obedience before He promises blessings (or threatens curses). It does not come from delineated rights. It does not come from The Constitution. It is you from whom freedom springs. It is you in whom freedom thrives. No one gave it to you. Like Dorothy and her ruby slippers, your way home was with you all the time." Column by B.R. Merrick.

The Blinding Fog of War

Recommended "Only when individuals give up their humanity and principles to kill for the king can the obscene drama of war begin. Only when the state witnesses the fact that individuals are willing to surrender their benevolence and decency to fight, kill and die whenever ordered can the state feel confident to attack still more liberties that individuals hold dear." Column by Roger Young.

Time for Government to Finally Ban Itself

Recommended "After centuries and millennia of tyranny, war, mass murder, torture, corruption, legalized theft, unjust imprisonment, economic devastation, and other needless evil, isn't it finally time we banned the cause of all that horror? Can we not find the strength to end this intrusive, violent, coercive scam – this conspiracy against love and freedom, this formalized über-criminal empire, this sick enabler of Hitler and Stalin and Kim Jong-Il and so many other psychopaths, this boot on the neck of every man, woman and child? Is it not time, and long past time, to stop putting up with government wars and government concentration camps and government injustice and government central-planning inefficiency (directly or via government-granted monopoly) and other methods of government impoverishment and cruelty? Will we not finally understand that running society via coercion and violence is not merely inefficient but horribly, shockingly wrong?" Column by Glen Allport.

A New Strategy for Liberty, Part 1

An open letter to Ron Paul supporters. Column by Stewart Browne.

A New Strategy for Liberty, Part 2

MUST READ Secession in three easy steps. "Just as the rules of basketball favor those who are tall, strong, and have a good jump shot, the rules of democracy favor those who want to grow the government. For decades, we have been playing by Goliath's rules, the very rules that allowed Goliath to rise to power in the first place. The only way we can play away from our weakness is to get out of the electoral politics game altogether." A brilliant column by Stewart Browne.

It's Time to Get Passionate About Not Voting

Recommended "The non-voting libertarians won the ethical debate years ago, but the voting libertarians are still more numerous and visible because they want to get out there and do something. We need to share the difficult truth with these people that their efforts in the political arena are hopeless. We need to remind them that libertarians have already won the hearts and minds of America and still Washington grows. We need to explain to Libertarian Party types that the most powerful force in a democracy is not the will of the people, it is the phenomenon of your own personal bailout." Column by new Root Striker Stewart Browne.

Further Adventures in the Quantum Wrongness Field, Economic Crisis Edition

MUST-MUST READ "If printing up trillions of dollars to 'stimulate spending' is going to save the economy, why do we ever put up with even the slightest recession? Just print that funky money, boys and girls! Give every citizen a high-speed color laser printer and require everyone to download the Official Dollar Jpeg Files and then print, print, PRINT those dollars nonstop, day and night! Every man, woman, and child would be a multi-billionaire, and economic activity would be red-hot forever!" Column by Glen Allport.

Misallocation

Recommended "What's being done is (a) to fabricate some money that has not been saved by postponed consumption and is not owned by someone who earned it (because fiat money isn't earned by anyone and stolen money is certainly not owned by the thief) and then (b) to spend it on projects that seem likely to give jobs (of some kind . . . any kind) to people who will vote, come next election--so that, presumably, the cycle can be repeated." Column by Jim Davies. (Editor's pick)

Law and Ethics: Unrelated

Recommended "Laws are made by people who are, for the most part, the very scum of the earth; if something they impose on society is ethically beneficial, therefore, the coincidence involved is considerable. They are drawn from those with an urge to dominate, who have quite often never done a day's work in their lives....Instead of being benevolent, disinterested and morally upright, therefore, lawmakers are normally psychologically freakish, kleptocratic, mendacious, murderous, irrational and hypocritical." Column by Jim Davies.

Why Does the World Feel Wrong?

Recommended "Moreover, we should consider that the state not only acts like a recruitment center for psychopaths, but that psychopaths probably invented the state to take advantage of the rest of us. I can give you no better explanation for the existence of an organization that fails in every ethical dimension and invokes psychopathic thinking at every turn than this." Column by Will Groves.

The Year Ahead: 2009, Part 2

MUST READ Column by Glen Allport.

The Year Ahead: 2009

MUST READ "The America of Henry David Thoreau, of Mark Twain, of Walt Whitman, of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine and the millions more who brought this nation into being and kept it alive in their hearts and, to a large extent, on the ground, for so long – that America, the real America, the 'asylum for mankind' that Paine wrote about so eloquently – that America is gone, fading already into myth and legend, gone soon even from living memory as the last citizens who remember America's dying embers wink out from this world, one by one." Column by Glen Allport.

Grand Theft America: "All Your Wealth Now Belong To Us"

Recommended "By now, the original idea of America – as a haven for mankind and a place where freedom from tyranny was the plainly-stated and largely-attained goal – has simply been lost. The concept and benefits of freedom are no longer understood by the majority of Americans; the all-powerful State and its shackles are now everywhere, including deep in the mind of the average person." Column by Glen Allport.

Signs of Autumn

Recommended "That is directly where my pushing of a button on an electronic voting screen leads. It leads to the threat of violence from the government that is encouraging my participation. I am...engaging in a violent act by silently threatening those with whom I disagree." Column by B.R. Merrick. (Editor's pick)

Crop Seeding in America

Recommended "The state’s money removes the idea of limited means, and since it’s controlled by the state, it removes the idea of limiting the state. Given the federal influence on education, media, and just about everything, should we be surprised no one is on center stage calling the government a counterfeiter? " Column by George F. Smith.

I Don't Mind If You Keep Voting, But Do You Mind If I Keep Laughing While You Do?

MUST READ "I don’t care who the candidate is. I don’t care what issues to which he seems to gravitate. I don’t care about his record, his leadership qualities, the apparent first-lady-ness of his wife (or her husband), his insider-ness or his outsider-ness, his race, his height, his weight, how well he speaks, how wonderfully he photographs, the nation of his birth, how likely it might be that he’s fun to drink with, or his appreciation for unique uses for a fine cigar." Column by Wilt Alston. (Editor's pick)

The Meaning and Value of Gold

MUST READ "Can gold prevent such horrors [the democide of the 20th Century]? No, not entirely, but gold can and does reduce the likelihood of such horrors when used as a nation's money. Gold as money provides a strong limiting factor on the resources available to government, and in so doing, gold saves and improves the lives of millions." Column by Glen Allport. (Editor's pick)

Not to Worry, They're on Our Side

Recommended "It’s pointless to look at their campaign platforms. They’re made up of words, and words to a politician are like drops of water on a hot skillet – they sizzle, then they’re gone. We know a priori both candidates are certified, homogenized, lobotomized statists, otherwise they wouldn’t be the two contenders." Column by George F. Smith.

Notes on Democracy: Mencken Vents His Spleen for His Era and Ours

Recommended "Read onward as Mencken’s delightful microscope tears into the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt with relish—exposing them and their adoring constituencies for what they are. If Machiavelli took off our blinders and exposed the rancid underbelly of tyrants in The Prince, Mencken did the same for democracy in this gem of a book." Column by Lawrence Ludlow.

Everyday Anarchy, Part 5

MUST READ "When we think of a truly free market...we understand that we do not have to work for years and years, and give up thousands of hours and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, to satisfy our wishes. If I want to shop for vegetarian food, say, I do not have to spend years lobbying the local supermarket, or joining some sort of somewhat ineffective advisory board, and pounding lawn signs, and writing letters, and cajoling everyone in the neighborhood – all I have to do is go and buy some vegetarian food...." Column by Stefan Molyneux.

Everyday Anarchy, Part 3

MUST READ "The statist looks at a problem and always sees a gun as the only solution – the force of the state, the brutality of law, violence and punishment. The anarchist – the endless entrepreneur of social organization – always looks at a problem and sees an opportunity for peaceful, innovative, charitable or profitable problem-solving." Column by Stefan Molyneux. Spread this one far and wide.

Scapegoating and the Anti-Immigrant Hysteria

MUST READ "...Americans, like most people, would rather not look too closely at their unattractive traits. We like to pretend that we are self-sufficient, honest people. But our desire to rely upon and preserve the welfare state reveals the truth about who we really are. Instead of facing up to the theft and self-deception that surround our support of the welfare state in its various manifestations, we simply project our traits onto people who seem different because they are poor and desperate and have nowhere else to go to make a better life. Furthermore, when we accuse these immigrants of 'breaking our laws' to come here, perhaps we should remember that the kind of laws they are breaking are the kind that were firmly in place in the Soviet Union before it fell – laws against making a profit, earning a good living, and creating one’s own destiny. In other words: laws against freedom." Column by new Root Striker Lawrence Ludlow.

The Anarchist Vote

MUST READ "I like this analogy because it reveals how voting is an act of submission: When you no longer resist tyranny, but agree to submit to the threat or use of force and do as you are told, when you no longer question the higher authority because you are allowed to choose your supervisor. In the process you condemn your offspring and future generations to be subjects of this authority establishing an institution of tyranny that eventually is accepted unquestioningly, perhaps even celebrated." Column by Mark Davis.

Danger Is My Middle Name--And So Is Yours

MUST READ "Nothing is completely safe, including eating and breathing. And if nothing is safe, then throwing people in prison for doing something that endangers them is insane, even without considering the dangers of arrest and imprisonment, which are substantial. Using coercion to "save people" from their own choices is a huge, horrifying mistake that can only lead to ever-larger disaster, because the list of dangerous activities includes everything that people might ever do." Column by Glen Allport.

Money

Recommended "Without the United States federal government, the Fed would not exist and the money used by Americans would be gold and silver – things which could not be counterfeited constantly to supply 'money' for war, for special interests, and for other groups and purposes opposed to the interests of the average American. Nor would Americans be forced to literally borrow money – money created from thin air – from a privately-owned central bank (as our government does now) and then pay interest on it as part of the national debt. What a scam!" Column by Glen Allport.

The Worst Way to Do Anything

Recommended "What have we bought with all that money? Thousands of dead American soldiers, many thousands more injured, 655,000 (and counting) dead Iraqis, cancer-causing depleted uranium poisoning in Iraq (and DU particles are being spread around the planet on the winds), a ruined Iraqi infrastructure (which had already been wrecked in the first Gulf war and which a decade of sanctions kept in poor repair), millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing the mess we have made of their country, an increased threat of terrorism in America, widespread use of torture by our own government, a sharply lower opinion of America by people in other nations, and (on a separate invoice, for additional money) a police state here at home." Column by Glen Allport.

My Son: Klan Reformer

MUST READ "But what you’re doing, what you’ve been doing for 20 years, is telling people that the Klan can be good if only the right person is in charge. You’re giving people false hope, because the Klan can never be good." Column by Stefan Molyneux.

E-Passport: Doorway to the Panopticon

MUST READ "The logistics of trying to interconnect 189 governments’ databases quickly escalates well beyond the realm of 'nightmare' into some kind of Lovecraftian singularity of technological horror." Column by Scarmig.

Importing Freedom

MUST READ "Immigrants weren’t in charge when we lost our freedoms. White guys were. Millions of 'illegal immigrants' threaten you somehow? Compared to your neighbor who votes Democrat or Republican and demands his Social Security? Puh-lease!" Column by Stefan Molyneux and (new Root Striker) Wilton Alston.

A Short Guide to Market Anarchy Deconversions

Recommended "[Market anarchy] means everyone is allowed to live the way they want, according to their value system. Everyone has different value systems, and all that statism does is impose the ruling class value system over everyone, creating social warfare. In an M.A., there would be no more need for social warfare because everyone would be free to live the way they want." Pamphlet by Andrew Greve, Aaron Kinney, David Pearson and Francois Tremblay.

The Two Great Evils and the Hammer of Infinite Power

Recommended "There is no doubt that the Hammer of Infinite Power is coming; the leading edge is already here. It smote Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If the power to vaporize a city with a single bomb is not sufficiently god-like for you, just wait." Column by Glen Allport.

Murdering the Group, Saving Individuals

MUST READ "It’s the same with immigration, the national debt, welfare, the war on terror and all the other state-driven and media-obscured questions of the day. Obsessed by details, blind to the obvious, we are like swimmers in shark-infested waters worrying about cramps." Column by new Root Striker Stefan Molyneux.

How We Can Get There From Here

MUST READ "So the main task to be completed in my opinion is to so educate every member of society one by one as to convince him that a zero government society is the only kind consistent with his human nature and the only one that will maximize his pleasure in life; and that must be done by reason. So the two obstacles to surmount are the vast numbers involved, and the ugly fact that most people have been so well indoctrinated that they are barely open to reason; they live rather by myth, prejudice and superstition." Column by Jim Davies.

Are You a Submitizen?

MUST READ "How has it come that we no longer see each other as people? How can we reverse this trend? The next time you are asked for identification, consider the ramifications of participating in this system. Who owns you?" Column by NonEntity.

The Preamble Reconsidered

MUST READ "And so it was 'ordained and established'--the wind was sown. Today, we reap the whirlwind." Column by Jim Davies.

Legalize Methamphetamine!

MUST READ "The question of who gets to make decisions about the disposition of certain property is central to understanding freedom. Who gets to decide what activities are too dangerous for you? Should I get to decide what activities are too dangerous for you? What about your neighbor? Or the majority? Or the president? Or Congress? Or some judge? In a free society, the owner of the property gets to decide how the property is used. Because you own your body, I assert that you should decide how your body is used or abused." Column by Marc Victor.

How, Why?

MUST READ "There is a certain suspension of disbelief attendant to those social and political theories endorsing endless and boundless murder, theft and fraud (i.e. "statecraft"); one must believe, with the naive faith of a child who believes that world hunger can be eradicated by making a law that everyone can have ice cream for dinner if they want it, that one may kill the goose bearing golden eggs and still have eggs every day for the taking. The iron laws of time, human desire, and economics are in the process of refuting that belief; its defense rings hollow, there are no believable Utopian adherents of this philosophy anymore, only those that make no pretense about wanting to kill millions of people and suck the marrow from their bones for the sake of their own glorification and what they conceive of as a better world, organized by boot heel and rifle butt." Column by Szechuan Death, who sounds like a libertarian Mark Morford.

SpyChips: How Major Corporations and Govt. Plan to Track Your Every Move With RFID

MUST READ Chapter 1 of a new book by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre. You can buy the book by clicking on the link at the end.

Defining Anarchy

MUST READ "To define anarchy as statist-government failure is such an obvious distortion of the concept of a free society that it is hard to decide where to begin to dismantle such thoughtlessness. I like to begin by simply pointing out that at least four layers of statist-government agencies still claim jurisdiction over the area known as New Orleans (city, parish, state and federal). The undeniable fact is that they all four failed to provide the services they had promised to provide when they were justifying the theft of individual resources called taxes." Column by Mark Davis.

Serene Outlaw: Henry David Thoreau in His Second Century

MUST READ "At times, Thoreau thundered at his readers like a Calvinist preacher, rhapsodized like an Indian prophet, stung like a gadfly or chided their sensibilities as a droll friend. The odd collection of essayists who write for Strike The Root, and the thousands of readers who peruse the columns there may hardly reflect on the moralist under whose portrait their work appears, but by striving to write essays on a variety of topics, many of them dedicated to the rights of individuals, they keep his standards alive." Column by Doug Herman.

Important News and Offers from Strike The Root!

"The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will exist — is a kleptocracy, meaning 'rule by thieves'. Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won't willingly fork over to end poverty, then maybe they'll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a cover for what's really going on, like the colors of competing gangs." ~ L. Neil Smith			About
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Carpe Libertatem Saturday, November 7