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Wednesday, May 22

Guest Editor

Eric Field is the guest editor today.
 

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photo courtesoy of ixtussy
Adam Kokesh Arrested in Philadelphia while Engaging in Free Speech
Original article
Bullhorning Philly Fed Detention Center
Original article Video footage of protest. 
On Target Pressure Points: Government Paranoia
Original article
Verizon Wireless Secretly Passed AP Reporters' Phone Records to Feds
Original article Thanks, Verizon.  Way to go with your customer service. 
IRS Denied Nonprofit Status to Free State Project
Original article
The Collapse of Journalism, and the Journalism of Collapse
Original article
Dan Carlin: Probing the President
Original article
Pentagon Spec Ops Chief Sees ’10 to 20′ More Years of War Against al-Qaida
Original article
Robert Anton Wilson and Karl Hess: Subversion for Fun and Profit
Original article Video of a 1986 conversation between R. A. Wilson and Karl Hess. 
Scott Horton Interview with Jed Morey
Original article Jed Morey, a journalist with Long Island Press, discusses the Pentagon’s “power grab” of unilaterally granting itself authority over civil disturbances; giving local military commanders the same authority as the president during some ill-defined emergency; preparing domestic military operations with the NDAA and Northern Command; and the pushback coming from Congress and the National Governors Association. Podcast by Scott Horton. 
Washington Gets Explicit: Its 'War on Terror' Is Permanent
Original article
Theres a Question Mark Hanging Over the Apostrophes Future
Original article An everyday example of conflict between the state and society. 
Little Boy Has New Hand 3D Printed
Original article
The Path Is (The Destination Is the Path) Recommended
8.71429
tzo 2010-08-17 03:00
Column by tzo.   Exclusive to STR     Voluntaryists are by definition in favor of the elimination of the State. This is all well and good, but who will eliminate it, and by what method? It makes sense that the Voluntaryist himself must actively participate in the process, as those who are not with him are against him and are resistant to the idea of a Stateless society. But by what...
Corn Starch--The New 'Terrorist' Weapon
8.66667
Roger Young 2010-08-13 03:00
Column by Roger Young.   Exclusive to STR   The powers-that-be in Dallas are in a tizzy after several locations around the area received envelopes of white powder determined to be corn starch. The popular cooking ingredient was said to be accompanied by a “chilling note.” A spokesman reported that the note said “something to the effect of 'Al-Qaeda in the USA.’...
Bankers on Trial
9.25
Jim Davies 2010-08-10 03:00
Column by Jim Davies.   Exclusive to STR     Several of my friends insert the two letters "st" in the middle of the word, to express the view that bankers make up a large, organized criminal class. Here, I'll follow the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty, and check some of the evidence, but meanwhile leave those letters out.   At root, a bank...
Bumper Stickers
8.85714
tzo 2010-08-10 03:00
Column by tzo.   Exclusive to STR     If there is one message that must continually be broadcast to people in order to improve the quality of life on this planet, it is this: Politics is aggression. Until this simple understanding becomes widespread, we will all continue to bog down in the mud.   Politics is aggression.   Recently while driving I noticed that the car...
Ortega and the State
9.66667
Michael Kleen 2010-08-02 03:00
By Michael Kleen.   Exclusive to STR    José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was the preeminent Spanish philosopher of the first half of the 20th Century. A complex figure, he was at the same time an elitist, a classical liberal, and a republican. He was born into a wealthy bourgeois family, became the Chair in Metaphysics at Complutense University in Madrid in 1910, and he was...
Government Securities
8.75
Jim Davies 2010-08-02 03:00
By Jim Davies.   Exclusive to STR     Those who lend money to the government participate in a fraud, for all of them know that it has only one way ultimately to pay either interest or principal: by stealing it. So if they ever lose it (and they will, as below) there will be no sympathy from this quarter.   They do the lending by purchasing municipal bonds and Treasury Bills,...
The Philosophy of Authority
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tzo 2010-07-30 03:00
By tzo.   Exclusive to STR   “Authority” is one of those words that is commonly used but less commonly understood. It may be claimed that a person has the authority to decide what to do with his own life and property, and it may also be claimed that a police officer has the authority to arrest a person who has broken the law. How does the concept of authority properly apply...
Ten Briefly Described Problems of Egalitarianism
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Jakub Bozydar W... 2010-07-30 03:00
By Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski.   Exclusive to STR   I tend to agree with Isaiah Berlin and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn that liberty and equality do not naturally go hand in hand. In fact, more often than not the choice between them is an either/or one. Let us make no mistake here – I am not referring to the kind of equality than no libertarian would hesitate to endorse, that is, the...
The Anti-American American Empire
9.5
Tony Pivetta 2010-07-29 03:00
By Tony Pivetta.   Exclusive to STR   The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile, the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily...
Envy, Guilt and Self-Destruction
0
Bob Wallace 2010-07-28 03:00
By Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   Oh, if only the Left was right and people were infinitely malleable blank slates! My heart would soar if it was true. All the differences between men, women, races and ethnic groups – if they were all environmental, just twiddle some societal knobs, and presto-chango! We’d get just about as close to Heaven on Earth as we...
Clearing the Throne for a New King
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Emmett Harris 2011-07-05 00:00
Column by Emmett Harris. Exclusive to STR July Fourth represents a day off from work, cookouts in the back yard, singed arm hair from the over exuberant use of lighter fluid, the overindulgence of heady quaffs, and the cause of post traumatic stress in canines everywhere. Oh, and like all other holidays in our brave new America, endless paeans to the military, especially emanating from those...
Government Is an Obsolete Idea (and Castro Proves It)
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Alex R. Knight III 2011-08-02 00:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III   Exclusive to STR   Fidel Castro is one of the only personages within recent memory--and this was while talking to a host of news reporters back in the 1990s--who repeated the Marxist myth that ideally, Communism would eventually make governments disappear. Of course, when then asked when the world could expect to see the Cuban government disappear,...
A Decade of Striking the Root
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Alex R. Knight III 2011-08-10 00:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III   Exclusive to STR   Although for myself personally, it’s been very close to half that long at the time of this writing. My very first STR column, “The Trouble With Star Trek,” appeared on August 22, 2006. It was the first time I came to recognize the immense power of the Internet. I’d only learned of STR’s...
Why You Can Drive Over 65
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Alex R. Knight III 2011-12-21 01:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III Exclusive to STR  I’m not referring to age – though the answer to that, if you qualify, is probably that your eyesight and reflexes are still good enough to get behind the wheel and make it from point A to point B without causing any 20-car pileups or running down any small children. I am referring to the the maximum speed limit cap on most...
Crossing the 10% Rubicon
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Alex R. Knight III 2012-01-09 01:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III. Exclusive to STR A very recent article published in Science Daily reveals the findings of a study that has yielded some very positive information for the Voluntaryist movement. In short, that once an ideology or set of beliefs is fervently held by ten percent of any given group or population, it invariably becomes the predominant philosophy throughout the...
Dictates to the Union
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Emmett Harris 2012-01-27 01:00
Column by Emmett Harris. Exclusive to STR  The other night, President Obama continued the modern tradition whereby the current White House denizen annually assaults the airwaves with a stream of teleprompter words that rival Lunesta in their ability to induce drowsiness. I’m referring, of course, to the State of the Union Address.    It was a long, boring, and typically...
I Can Do It; You Can't
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Paul Hein 2012-01-30 01:00
Column by Paul Hein. Exclusive to STR President Obama was served with a subpoena to appear in an Atlanta court on January 26, to offer proof of his eligibility to be on the ballot in Georgia in the upcoming presidential election. Georgia law, as I understand it, requires that all candidates for federal office be qualified to hold the office to which they aspire.   Of course, Obama did not...
Should Anarchists Be Tolerated?
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Paul Bonneau 2012-02-10 01:00
Column by Paul Bonneau. Exclusive to STR  I had earlier addressed the question of tolerance of anarchists, in this article. At some point, it occurred to me to actually ask the question. After all, we have these wonderful forum tools that include polls!   I went to my favorite gun forum, one I recommend, by the way, Oleg Volk’s Gun Rights Media. On a sub-board called “Ethics...
This Is What Bureaucracy Looks Like!
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JGVibes 2012-02-15 01:00
Column by JGVibes. Any of us who grew up with government schooling were given a very inaccurate view of what bureaucracies are all about.  This should not be so much of a surprise because the school system itself is a bureaucracy, so they have an obvious bias.  The last place that we should expect to find information critical of the establishment is an organization that is a...
Abolishing Prisons
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Jim Davies 2012-02-17 01:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR The words "escape" and "prison" fit together like hands in gloves in the mind of every prisoner, but in that of every warden, the two will never meet; or not on his watch, not if he can help it. So prisons don't have fire escapes. Instead, they are built of materials that will not burn; concrete, steel, brick. They look dull, but they...
An Armed March on Washington? MUST READ
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Alex R. Knight III 2013-05-07 06:52
Column by Alex R. Knight III. Exclusive to STR Perhaps never before have I encountered a proposal within Liberty Movement circles that has generated more controversy faster and further than Adam Kokesh’s planned July 4th march on Washington, District of Criminals, in which he states that himself and the other participants “will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to...
The Orwellian Paradigm--Killing You, For Your Own Safety MUST READ
9.625
fmoghul 2013-04-10 08:12
Column by Faisal Moghul. Exclusive to STR Almost 30 years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment. In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George...
Frameworks, Virtual Reality and Civil Society: A Manifesto for the Doctrine of Love and Freedom MUST READ
10
Glen Allport 2012-12-06 08:44
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism. - 1...
Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift MUST READ
0
Glen Allport 2012-05-14 00:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR   Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"   Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...
Terrorist Alert: Government Extremists Threaten Americans MUST READ
9
Glen Allport 2012-03-26 00:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR   Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?   The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:   Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps ["...
The State Is a Firing Squad MUST READ
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JGVibes 2012-02-17 01:00
Column by JGVibes.   Exclusive to STR   Although the common perception of human nature is very negative, the truth is that most people who aren’t mentally ill have a very difficult time committing acts of violence. Usually it takes a sizeable payment and a fair amount of manipulation to convince someone to act violently, and even then a tremendous amount of guilt typically...
How the 1% Took America's Wealth--and How to Get It Back MUST READ
9.25
Glen Allport 2011-12-01 01:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR  - 1 - Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth   In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...
'Anarchy or Minarchy' Is Only Half the Question, Part 2 MUST READ
9.5
Glen Allport 2011-04-13 03:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR  This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:   ·      Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny ·      Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin ·      The Missing Key...
Oh, Stanley MUST READ
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tzo 2011-03-30 03:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR   Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist best known for his Milgram Experiment, a study conducted in the 1960s.   Dr. Milgram wanted to research the relationship between obedience and authority, and he was at least partly motivated to do so by the events of the Nazi Holocaust. It greatly troubled him that so many supposedly good people could...
The Pathocracy Unmasked MUST READ
10
Glen Allport 2011-02-11 04:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR - 1 - Exposed as Criminals and Psychopaths, the Coercive Elite are Desperate to Stop the Flow of Honest Information     "When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next." CCR...
The Licensing Effect Recommended
0
Lawrence Samuels 2013-05-10 08:28
The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action. Column by L.K. Samuels. Exclusive to STR Good intentions rarely make good laws. Those who do evil almost always think they are doing good for goodness’ sake. Nobody sees himself as evil. As Will Smith, the American actor, once quipped, “...
The Pugsley Plan Recommended
8.5
Jim Davies 2013-01-14 08:46
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...
Ed Schultz and His Alleged Middle Class Heroes Recommended
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Angelo Mike 2013-01-04 01:00
Column by Angelo Mike. Exclusive to STR Ed Schultz has set quite the task out for himself. On his New Year’s Eve broadcast on MSNBC, he announced who his “Middle Class Heroes of 2012” are. Schultz is a self-styled liberal, so his recipients of the title “Middle Class Hero” are predictable and worthy of a certain amount of eye rolling. The general reverence for...
The Trials Recommended
8.33333
tzo 2012-12-11 08:49
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR To anyone who has seen or read The Reader (a synopsis of the relevant part of the story is here), one of the main questions raised in the story is, "What should be done with Hanna?" Was she responsible for her actions even if she was so thoroughly indoctrinated so as to be completely confused by the charges against her? She asked more than once, while...
464 Lost Years Recommended
8.25
Jim Davies 2012-12-10 08:48
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him. Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...
The Duty to End the State Recommended
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Jim Davies 2012-11-30 08:53
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Many reading this already understand the Self-ownership Axiom; that we each own our own lives by right, and hence that all government is an unnatural and ruinous appendage. Among those who do, though, surprisingly there is disagreement over what to do about it. Some hold that resistance by such voluntaryists in the present government-saturated environment...
Why I'm Leaving America Recommended
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SailboatDiaries 2012-11-07 01:00
Column by new Root Striker Michael Fielding. Goodbye, America. For as long as I’ve lived you’ve been my only home. I’ve had a wonderful life here. Your inhabitants are almost universally kind, and I’ve become lifelong friends with many of your citizens. All of my family lives here, everyone I have ever known or loved, and I will miss them all a lot. But after 22 years, I...
Voting Is Not Rational Recommended
9.66667
Stephen Nichols 2012-11-01 00:00
Column by Stephen Nichols. Exclusive to STR While reading Paul Bonneau’s recent column on STR entitled “Voting Is Not Irrational,” I was taken aback by the obvious flaws in his analysis and the conclusions resulting from that analysis. It’s been a few days since his article was published and I’ve been formulating my response to it for some time. Let me now share with...
St. Abe Recommended
0
Jim Davies 2012-10-23 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR When the Church of Rome has in mind to elevate one of its heroes or heroines to the status of sainthood, it follows a certain procedure – one element of which is to hear the opinion of an advocatus diaboli – a devil's advocate. His job is to reason against the proposed canonization, so reducing the probability of error. That task fell in...
A Reason Not to Vote Recommended
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Stephen Nichols 2012-10-18 00:00
Column by Stephen Nichols. Exclusive to STR I don't know about you, but I take a look at my financial situation pretty regularly. I like to keep tabs on my family's spending and keep things under control. I also like to reduce or eliminate any unnecessary expenses. Take a moment to review this chart of some recent family spending: Notice anything big that sticks out there? Yeah, me...

 

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