Life, Love, and Liberty

Please consider signing this Free Burma! petition.

Hat tip to Matt Jenny.

Courtesy of Chris Floyd.

December 5, 2002 — If any of us are to have a future worth having, the world’s leaders, the members of Congress, the US corporate media and people of all political persuasions who value freedom and democracy had better start seeing George W. Bush for what he is: a sociopath and a passive serial killer.

Psychiatrists tell us that all serial killers lack the emotions that make us human; that they have to learn to emulate those emotions in order to get by in society. Hence, a charming, well educated fellow like Ted Bundy who is known to have murdered 15 women and may have killed 36 before he was caught.

While Bush is no Bundy, when it comes Bundy’s education and acquired charm, and to our knowledge has never personally murdered anyone, it has been evident to us that there is something missing in George W. in terms of his lack of compassion and empathy. As governor of Texas, he set a record in signing death warrants — 154 in five years. He even made fun of the way convicted killer Karla Faye Tucker begged for her life.

If we believe the psychiatrists, a sign of a future serial killer is a child who delights in torturing and killing animals. George W., as a child, did exactly that. In a May 21, 2000, New York Times’ puff piece about the values Bush gained growing up in Midland, Texas, Nicholas D. Kristof quoted Bush’s childhood friend Terry Throckmorton: “‘We were terrible to animals,’ recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. ‘Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,’ Mr. Throckmorton said. ‘Or we’d put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.’”

On Sept. 12, 2000, Baltimore Sun reporter Miriam Miedzian wrote, “So when he was a kid, George W. enjoyed putting firecrackers into frogs, throwing them in the air, and then watching them blow up. Should this be cause for alarm? How relevant is a man’s childhood behavior to what he is like as an adult? And in this case, to what he would be like as president of the United States.”

The whole article is here, if anyone is interested in reading it all.

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government”
-Edward Abbey

Hat tip to Brad Spangler for tuning me into this Edward Abbey quote. In reflecting on the meaning of Independence Day from British colonialism, one shouldn’t forget that the battle for freedom from the Federal regime continues. Anarchists should reclaim the mantle of patriotism from those who idenify it with glorification of the nation-state and being lockstep behind government policies.

Looking through the blogosphere today, I’ve run across some choice July 4th posts by fellow rabble rousers.

-Kevin Carson chimes in with an excellent smackdown to those who credit the war machine for the existence of our freedoms. He provides a great list of genuinely patriotic quotes from classic hell raisers like Smedley Butler and Voltairine de Cleyre.

-Jake Freeman gives a nice run down on good reading with encouragement to be counter-economic and find some illegal fireworks.

Don’t forget to consider buying a black flag or a Gadsden one.

“The Market is the sum of all voluntary human action. [4] If one acts non-coercively, one is part of the Market.”
-Samuel Edward Konkin

“The State is a group of people who have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly of the use of violence throughout a given territorial area. In particular, it has acquired a monopoly of aggressive violence, for States generally recognize the right of individuals to use violence (though not against States, of course) in self-defense”
-Murray Rothbard

The world is full of risks and this is never going to change. Given the inability to change this, favoring one politico-economic system over the other can’t be based on notions of completely eradicating risk. The presence of or lack of state involvement will not produce utopia. A question remains, knowing that perfection isn’t possible, should the state or market be favored? As an Individualist Anarchist, I favor opting for the choice that grants the widest amount of freedom possible to individuals. Not only do I have a moral opposition to state coercion but varying individual context makes choosing the market far more practical. To flesh out this claim, I’ll look at some examples where a choice between market and state can be made.

Drug regulation, via requirement of written permission from a doctor, is an obvious example. Here, the practicality of favoring the market is readily apparent. Say, someone who is terminally ill and in severe pain could use some morphine. Why should they or someone acting on their behalf have to track down a doctor or hospital and thus have their suffering prolonged any longer than necessary. Some would say that this system is in place to protect people from themselves and abusing drugs but a terminally ill person is more likely to care about relieving pain than developing an addiction. This same logic applies to the Federal Drug Administration which has not been full proof in protecting people from unsafe drugs. Delay of a drug to market, could have fatal consequences for those whose lives might be saved. One such example is the AIDS medicine dextran sulfate being kept off the shelves when patients might have decided the benefits outweighed the risks in their particular situation.