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Monday, June 17

Guest Editor

Sharon Secor is the guest editor today.

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photo courtesoy of Justin Jensen
Mr. Snowden Departs
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR When I mentioned here last year that I'd made a little web site at TinyURL.com/QuitGov, there were, incredibly, some who poured scorn on the idea – which was, as stated, to introduce to its employees the news that it's dishonest to work for government, and so to prepare their minds for the day when one or more of their friends invites them to consider more detailed ideas about freedom and so to quit government employ in disgust. I certainly...
NSA admits they listen to U.S. phone calls without a warrant, more than half the Senate skips briefing.
Original article Well, if we the people don't care enough to do anything about it, why should they? 
Bloomberg Plan Aims to Require Food Composting
Original article “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting.” Ha. I think they should do so voluntarily, then dump it in front of city hall. (NYT, Free Reg Req)
Putin slams Cameron: Do you want to supply arms to people who eat their enemies' organs?
Original article Well... I guess they figure their money is as good as anybody else's. At least anybody else who is trying to buy enough arms for a small war.
Ex-Communist Spy Chief Says Europeans Have a “Dependency Mentality”
Original article Wow, Mr. Putin does seem to be on a sassy little roll lately.
Heaven Forbid We Have Lawmakers Live Like the Rest of Us
Original article Michael Schaus recently wrote: “In a recent interview with Politico, Representative John Larson (D-CT) explained that the President’s signature piece of legislation is “unfair” and should immediately be challenged. Of course he has no problem with the Federal government strong arming states into Federal Healthcare Exchanges or punishing employers for hiring full time workers. . . He’s not even concerned about the infringement on religious liberties through the now...
Keene Sues Six Parking Meter 'Robin Hoods' Who Put Money in Expired Meters
Original article How nice of them to interfere with the armed street gang extorting people via tickets.
Screwtape Embraces The Internet
Original article “What matters is we are fast approaching the day when, by showing the humans a picture of a wounded puppy or a homeless kitten, we can provoke in them such squalls of outrage that they will abandon their laws, their morals, and their reason.” (From the always intelligent and entertaining Popehat)
NSA Copies All Internet Data, Creates Dossiers on Every User
Original article “And, of course, all of this data is collected and kept on innocent people without a warrant or any probable cause.”
15 Foods You Can Regrow From Scraps
Original article At least you can until they make your garden illegal.
Primary Care Doctor Shortage Set To Get Worse, USA
Original article I'm very sure that it is.  A good time for those that are not already familiar with medicinal plants and natural healing to do some studying.
Archaeology Class Searching Revolutionary War Site
Original article A step in the right direction, but I wish they would teach them more about the reasons for the war. I don't think they teach it too deeply these days. After all, the founding fathers went to war against what was then the biggest empire in the world over FAR less government misuse and abuse than we see all around us today.  
Many Economists See Fed Cutting Bond Buying by Fall
Original article Well, at least they'll reduce the amount of bond buying they tell us about.
A Theory Of Everything ... Has Physics Gone Too Far?
Original article "Science's hunt for a unifying account of how the world works requires us to entertain everything from hidden dimensions to multiple universes. But are these ideas based on fact or fiction?"
Today in History
Original article You know what they say about people who don't know their history...
The Emperor's Clothes
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Paul Hein 2010-09-09 03:00
By Paul Hein.   Exclusive to STR   Having, by sheer good fortune, escaped any formal training in economics, I often feel like the little boy who observed that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes. “Shush,” I’m told. “You don’t know anything about it. It’s too complicated for you to understand.”   Well, maybe so. Despite that,...
No One Believes in Equality
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Bob Wallace 2010-09-09 03:00
By Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   No one believes in equality, no matter what they claim. To be totally equal, people would have to be totally identical, the way two quarters or two nickels are identical. And being identical, they’d be interchangeable.   The closest to total equality and total identicalness in nature are bees and ants, but even they are not...
C.S. Lewis Called for a Christian Theocracy
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Robert L. Johnson 2010-09-09 03:00
By Robert L. Johnson.   Exclusive to STR   After reading articles by David J. Theroux of the C.S. Lewis Society which had links at www.strike-the-root.com and which paint the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis as a freedom loving libertarian, I had a hard time reconciling what little I do clearly know of Lewis with the claims made by Theroux. The only book I’ve read that Lewis wrote...
Libertarianism and Its Impersonators
9.5
Jakub Bozydar W... 2010-09-07 03:00
By Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski.   Exclusive to STR   The distortion of reality begins with the distortion of the words used to describe it. That is why, whenever one notices that a word one thinks of positively experiences an upsurge in popularity, one should remain cautious. It is certainly possible that such an occurrence indicates a genuine increase in the appreciation for and...
Mosque Madness!
9.5
Patrick Coleman 2010-09-03 03:00
By Patrick Coleman.   Exclusive to STR   In a July 1st article in Capitalism Magazine, Amy Peikoff argued from her Objectivist position that we should, along with all of our favorite ideologues from the neo-conservative movement, un-peacefully resist the building of a mosque a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Actually, it is an “overflow prayer space for a nearby mosque,”...
The Fake TV Challenge Recommended
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B.R. Merrick 2010-09-02 03:00
By B.R. Merrick   Exclusive to STR   In spite of my opposition to The War on Certain Kinds of Drugs, I wish to inaugurate a new war against another one. I have good reasons for doing so. This drug is cheap. It is everywhere. It is insidious. Once it is in your bloodstream, it is nearly impossible to extricate. It becomes infused with the cells of your body...
The 'Muslim Menace'
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Jim Davies 2010-09-01 03:00
By Jim Davies.   Exclusive to STR   Is there one, really? Quite a few think so. I wonder how many of them know what Muslims believe. I wonder how many of those know what they believe themselves, and why. Anyway, let's take a look--and if there is one, let's think how such a menace would be handled in a free society. To those kindly concerned that I might be targeted by terrorists...
Declare 9-11 'Government Blowback Day'
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Lawrence M. Ludlow 2010-08-31 03:00
By Lawrence M. Ludlow.   Exclusive to STR   This September 11, let’s help to change the “meme” that has been used by the U.S. government to terrorize Americans into submission and to cynically manipulate the grief of those who lost loved ones in the 9-11 attack of 2001. This year in your community, join hands with others who understand the meaning of the event. Carry...
Why People Believe Government Is Here to Help Us Recommended
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Paul Bonneau 2010-08-27 03:00
By Paul Bonneau.   Exclusive to STR     The tenacity of the meme, that government is here to help us and protect us, is hard to understand. All evidence throughout history points in the opposite direction--that government is here to prey on us, and that if there is anything we need protection from, it is our own governments. Why do people cling to this harmful meme?   A...
Blame Wikileaks?
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Patrick Coleman 2010-08-27 03:00
By Patrick Coleman.   Exclusive to STR   The media controversy concerning the recent leak of over 91,000 military reports, termed the “Afghan war diary,” by Wikileaks.org has focused very much around the supposed moral culpability of Wikileaks as an organization, its founder, Julian Assange, as well as the accused leaker, Bradley Manning, who now faces 52 years in prison for...
Scaring Away the Alligators
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Duane Colyar 2010-10-29 03:00
Column by Duane Colyar.   Exclusive to STR   Economic stimulus programs, which are akin to taking money out of the economy with one hand and putting it back into the economy with the other, work wonderfully--for politicians, that is. Taxpayer money can be channeled to buy the support of politically connected industries and groups. Accordingly, one can assume that politicians embrace the...
Inflation Infatuation
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Emiliano Antunez 2010-11-02 03:00
Column by Emiliano Antunez.   Exclusive to STR   Don’t you just love three dollar a gallon gas and spending almost $250 a week on groceries that used to cost you just $200 only two or three years ago? Whoever coined the statement “money is no object” was either Chairman of the Federal Reserve or a high-ranking economist of the Weimar Republic.   Last week in a...
Gropers, Peepers, and What To Do
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Jim Davies 2010-11-18 04:00
Column by Jim Davies.   Exclusive to STR   John Pistole, our nation's Groper in Chief, told Margaret Warner on PBS' News Hour on November 16th what a shame it would be if travelers missed their connections at Thanksgiving because more of us than usual elected to "opt-out" of what are becoming known as the TSA's new "porno scanners"--in favor of a highly intrusive pat...
Martial Law vs. 'Let Us Separate'
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Scott Lazarowitz 2010-11-23 04:00
Column by Scott Lazarowitz. Exclusive to STR It seems that President Obama, Congress and especially Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are determined to cause economic collapse in America. Some people, such as economist and investment analyst Peter Schiff and trend forecaster Gerald Celente, have been predicting that, because of Washington’s spending sprees, debts, perpetual wars and...
What Are They Teaching Them?
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Guest 2010-12-10 04:00
Column by Cristian Gherasim. Exclusive to STR In France and Germany, students are forced into a dangerous indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, immoral and unhealthy, these children are raised on prejudice and bias. As they prepare for admission to some of the best European universities, they study from textbooks filled...
Skipping Down the Road to Serfdom
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Duane Colyar 2010-12-29 04:00
Column by Duane Colyar.   Exclusive to STR   As noted by the author in a previous column, over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher and historian, Thucydides, wrote in the History of the Peloponnesian War that power, once granted, will always expand to control what it can. Recognizing the wisdom of Thucydides and other political philosophers, and knowing that concentrated power...
Progressivism Is Not Progressive
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Alex Schroeder 2011-01-05 04:00
Column by Alex Schroeder.   Exclusive to STR   War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Since the initial publication of George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, these statements have become part of our vocabulary; they exemplify the troubling extreme of authoritarian manipulation of language. Orwell understood, perhaps better than any other prominent novelist, the...
The Republic Is a Fraud
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Paul Bonneau 2011-02-01 04:00
Column by Paul Bonneau.   Exclusive to STR   Have you ever noticed how many people have bought into this notion that America is a republic? It’s amusing in a forum to use the word “democracy”; invariably, someone huffily states we have a Constitutional Republic, as if that statement closed the matter for good. How silly is that?   The Wikipedia article for the...
The Producers and the Parasites
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Bob Wallace 2011-03-01 04:00
Column by Bob Wallace.   Exclusive to STR   I have expended several thousand brain cells – which now means I am pretty much out of them – trying to figure out who are the producers and who are the parasites.   Are firefighters parasites? They don’t produce anything, but they are necessary. Are the police necessary? They don’t produce anything...
A Pragmatic Approach to Anti-Statism
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Michael Kleen 2011-03-10 04:00
Column by Michael Kleen. Exclusive to STR The modern state is the reality of the contemporary world. I say it is the reality because there are few things in the world that the state does not touch. There are few remaining frontiers (aside from perhaps the Internet) where liberty can be expressed in its fullest nature. Even the most adamant anarchist is forced to live within the state, to live by...
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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