Life, Love, and Liberty

The quote of the day feature is back!

“It’s no secret that after 9/11, the administration authorized the use of waterboarding, and that the technique was used on a number of detainees in 2002 and reportedly stopped in 2003. But the administration has never explicitly admitted that.

In fact, when Dick Cheney, seduced into loose talk by a friendly interviewer, confirmed that “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives,” the White House furiously backpedaled, and Tony Snow did his best to proclaim that “a dunk in water” had not been a reference to waterboarding, but just “a dunk in the water.”"

~ Paul Kiel

Thanks, Tony. I feel much more reassured now.

Sexuality for the Masses

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul
Reviewed by Gwen Masters

Doing It Yourself — a Short Handbook for Guys by Jaie Helier

If you’re looking to have a satisfying session of self-love, then you should check this guide out!

Pornsaint Ashlynn Brooke by pornopapa

I Come in Peace by M. J. Woo

The Strange Credibility of Polyamory by Pepper Mint

I currently practice polyamory (i.e. I have the freedom to be involved in as many romantic-sexual relationships as I feel comfortable with), and I find it to be a very worthwhile lifestyle. I am only really deeply in love with one person right now, but that could change. I don’t really think I’d have the energy or time for another deep romance right now though.

Dolphin Sex by Comrade Cripple

Yeah, you read the above right

End the American Empire!

Red in Tooth and Claw: American Terror, Then and Now by Chris Floyd

Chris Floyd recounts the CIA’s legacy of atrocity.

A Bogus Libertarian Defense of War by Sheldon Richman

Remembering America’s Forgotten Vietnamese Victims by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt

The Empire That Must Be Obeyed
What Gives the US the Right to Claim a Moral Monopoly Over the World? by Paul Craig Roberts

McCain and the Militarist Mentality
His electoral comeback is an ill omen by Justin Raimondo

Under Curfew, This Is No Life by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail

Pathetic Arguments for Foreign Intervention by Sheldon Richman

Economics for the People

Capitalism V. The Free Market by Wendy Mcelroy

Anarchy vs Limited Government

In which I fail to be Reassured by Charles Johnson (Rad Geek)

Charles Johnson points out that evasion of unjust government laws — in some cases — has been more successful than lobbying efforts that aim to get the laws off the books.

Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand by Roy Childs

This is Roy Child’s classic attempt to convert Ayn Rand to libertarian anarchism. I’ve pondered trying to write a piece that argues for mutualist anarchism on the basis of Rand’s defense of ethical egoism. I currently consider myself to be an advocate of egoism, and I find Rand’s defense of selfishness (properly defined) to be wonderfully life affirming.

The Next American Electoral Spectacle

The Danse Macabre of US Style Democracy by John Pilger

The Era of Dynastic Politics, Where Nothing Ever Changes
President Hilary by Paul Craig Roberts

Is Liberalism Fascistic?

Goldberg’s Trivial Pursuit by Austin T. Bramwell

The above is an interesting review of Jonah Goldberg’s book that attempts to link liberalism with fascism. I actually believe that certain policies promoted by particular left-liberals today are supported by fascist philosophical premises, but the review doesn’t indicate that the book makes a good argument for this. I also don’t really care for the politics of Jonah Goldberg. He is published in the odious National Review.

Libertarian Tag by Roderick Long

The ‘Good War’ Is a Bad War by John Pilger

Libertarian Foreign Policy in the Hobbesian Crosshairs: A Reply to Bret Stephens by Robert Higgs

Ground Zero: On the Front Lines of a War Crime by Chris Floyd

An Imperialist Comedy by Chalmers Johnson

Friends Who Fuck by Marianne

Comrades,

I need advice on how to stop paying taxes for war. What are the legal ways to do this?

Sincerely,

Venus Cassandra
Independent Citizen of Cassandrastan

“No one who supports putting a drug user in jail has any right to shed crocodile tears over the death of someone whose life they have proved willing to throw away. The middle class moralist prides emself for saving their victims from the shadows’ imagined atrocoties. Yet it is such a moralist who supports the real, unimagined atrocity of destroying other peoples’ lives because the moralist feels threatened by their existence as a creeping social plague. It would not matter if the prohibition laws could not be shown to have caused this young woman’s death. Every arrogant bourgeois who supported a law to jail her for her regulation alread pronounced their intention to regard her life, choices, and dreams as worthless.

I wish I had any hope of overcoming this dualised, fear-ridden and bigoted consciousness. But I think most Americans (and people throughout the world) are wedded to this kind of life, psychically and socially, which demands the forcible suppression of alternatives for its persistence. And I fear that this kind of life, while horrid, is ineradicable and dominant for socially functional reasons.

But that aside- I have no patience for those who talk of the ‘good intentions’ of those ‘concerned’ about drug use. Anyone who doubts that should remember that the same people who mourn that ‘drugs’ killed this woman would, if a miracle had granted her resuscitation, greeted her return to the world with courts, manacles, and jail.

For words constitute the distinct chime of the leper’s bell of social conservatism:

“FOR YOUR OWN GOOD”.

~ Lady Aster

“When you strip away all the verbiage, all the intellectual tap dancing, and all the efforts to “understand” and be “tolerant,” that is the inescapable, the terrible bottom line: many of you think we are Freaks. Speaking for myself with regard to these issues, I don’t want you to “understand” me or to be “tolerant” of me. I don’t want you to “study” me, and try to graph all the various points of similarity and difference between us: I want you to recognize that I am completely and entirely a human being, just as you are. And I want you to understand fully what that means, and to genuinely mean it.

It is one thing to be openly hated and despised, as gays and lesbians are by many on the right. We’re used to that, and we got used to it a long time ago. As was required, we manufactured intellectual and emotional armor to protect ourselves. In the current climate, we have to put it on every single damned day. It weighs a great deal, and it exacts an awful price. But without it, we would suffer injuries too grievous to be borne.

But how much worse it is to be cajoled into taking off that armor — to hear you tell us that you understand we’re “just like you” in all the ways that matter, and that we’re really “just the same” — and then to read or hear about “how easy” you think it is to “make fun” of us, especially when our status as Freaks is too obvious. How much worse it is when we believe you, when you tell us you think we’re all equal — except that you can get married, while almost every leading Democrat will say, well, no, we can’t get married. But we can have “civil unions.” Because, you see, Freaks don’t get married.”

~ Arthur Silber

“Love offers the model of perfect communication: the orgasm, the total fusion of two separate beings. It is a glimpse of a transformed universe. Its intensity, its here-and-now-ness, its physical exaltation, its emotional fluidity, its grateful acceptance of the value of change - everything indicates that love will prove the key factor in recreating the world. Our emotionally-dead survival cries out for multidimensional passions. Lovemaking sums up and distils both the desire for, and the reality of, such a way of life. The universe lovers build of dreams and one another’s bodies is a transparent universe: lovers want to be at home everywhere.”

~ Raoul Vaneigem

If Lysander Spooner were alive today, he’d be the ripe old age of 200. He’d probably also be shocked at the current state of America.

In honor of his memory, I present three choice quotes:

“The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that — however bloody — can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.”

~ Lysander Spooner

“Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting.”

~ Lysander Spooner

“A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.”

~ Lysander Spooner

Update: I corrected the age. I give a hearty thanks to Roderick T. Long for pointing out my error in the comments section. I had put 121, instead of 200.

“One last thought needs to be considered. As mentioned, the apparatus necessary for a full-scale genocide has already been created. The Nazis managed to exterminate millions of Jews and other groups. The only active armed resistance occurred in the Warsaw ghetto. Originally containing three hundred thousand Jews, the gradual Nazi deportation program eventually reduced the population to forty thousand. It was at this point that an armed resistance movement, armed with homemade weapons and led by courageous youth in their twenties, began. They succeeded in warding off the Gestapo for a month before finally being crushed. So far the only public official courageous enough to advocate genuine resistance to what is being done to America today has been former New Hampshire state representative Tom Alciere. Let’s not make the same mistake as the Europeans of sixty years ago.”

~ Keith Preston

“The Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound book when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of human wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of original sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty-Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.”

~ Mikhail Bakunin

Update: I’ve been told by a friend that Satan is actually not the serpent in the Genesis story. However, Bakunin’s point that God is forbidding man from the pursuit of knowledge still stands.

“I feel John Mackey is advising we listen to everything *wrong* with the left- the Puritanical moralism characteristic of the original Progressives, while simultaneously slamming the door in the face of the liberatory impulses that represent the left at its best. While I do think libertarians should learn more empathy and compassion, that is a far cry from absorbing the notion that moral idealism equates with transcending selfishness. In my opinion versions of idealism which tell people to subordinate their interest to a greater good are the problem- ultimately because I think they destroy and torment the best passions in individuals. It is worth noting that Mackey makes no arguments for unselfishness but merely appeals to popularity and ‘common sense’.”

~ Lady Aster

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

~ Ayn Rand