Food Farce

It is bad enough that the UN wastes US taxpayer dollars on unproductive, counterproductive, wasteful, and corrupt socialist programs in all parts of the world, now it has used our money to create a little piece of propaganda to indoctrinate the young into how great at least one of the UN's functions is.

I speak of "Food Force", the brainfart of the World Food Programme (why they always gotta spell UN words in American using French spellings?). This is a video game that seeks to indoctrinate youngsters about hunger and the work of the aid agency, hoping to capitalize on youth appeal of video games to indoctrinate kids, in a much more slick presentation than the equivalent of FBI anti-drug messages we've all seen at the start of any movie or video game. They proudly admit they are specifically targeting the most impressionable, aged 8 to 13 years old, justifying their targets as, "children in the developed world who don't know what it's like to go to bed threatened by starvation," as if watching Kallista Flockhart, Mary Kate/Ashley, and other anorexics in the entertainment media doesn't happen.

"In an exciting and dynamic form, Food Force will generate kids' interest and understanding about hunger, which kills more people than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis." What they leave out is that most people who die of hunger do so because some tyrannical collectivist government used its food distribution system to fight a food war against dissidents, minorities, or other groups. In many other instances, it is the UN itself that creates the hunger by spreading scare propaganda to entice people to flee to refugee camps under UN control to justify the expenditure of UN funds.

Lynch Breaks "No Income Tax" Pledge...

CONCORD -- Governor Lynch today announced a comprehensive tax plan to solve the state's educational funding crisis. According to sources within the governor's office, the plan includes a general income tax of 4% and a 4% sales tax. "I believe our new tax plan addresses the inherent unfairness in New Hampshire's funding of public education. It's unfair that some property in the state is worth more than other property, and it's unfair that some people in the state make more money than other people. Our tax plan fixes both problems." According to Lyonel Tracy, incoming NH Dept of Education Commissioner, "The state constitution says that the state must cherish public education. From this language, it is obvious that the founding fathers meant that educational funding should be controlled by the state and supported by broad-based, statewide taxation. Given this clear mandate from the state constitution, I applaud the Governor's new tax plan." A source within the NH Dept of Resources and Economic Development said, "The Governor's new tax plan preserves the New Hampshire Advantage: our tax rates are about 1% less than Massachusetts across the board. That's more than enough to incent companies to move jobs to New Hampshire."

Let the impeachment follies begin.... sheesh, I leave town for a month and the whole state falls apart.

Balloting Issues at Dartmouth...

As you may recall, I was involved in organizing a little protest April 1st at Dartmouth, regarding an April Fools demand to vote in the Dartmouth Trustee Election, in response to Dartmouth students voting illegally in NH elections this past November. Ed Naile, who has taken the lead with glee, has recruited quite a number of ballots completed by CNHT members and and has sent the following email to the Dartmouth Review:

From: "Ed Naile"
To: dartlog@dartreview.com
Subject: Coalition of NH Taxpayers
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 20:13:12 -0400


To The Dartmouth Review.

Greetings from the Coalition of NH Taxpayers:

Sorry you are having so many alumni report questions regarding Trustee ballots.

Since The Coalition of NH Taxpayers took matters into our own hands on April 1 we have assembled 150 ballots and sent them to the Alumni relations Office. They should arrive there tomorrow.

We used genuine NH Guest Receipts from a NH restaurant which we believe, after carefully reviewing our Bylaws, to be just as valid for voting in our Dartmouth Trustee Election as Dartmouth students Texas or Pennsylvania drivers licenses, Dartmouth ID cards, and letters from the Admissions Office are in NH elections for Governor and Congress.

Our favored candidates are Peter Robinson and Todd Wyniki. In fact, those two are the only Trustee Candidates to receive any Coalition votes. How about that!

In any case, we hope you will stop by the Alumni Relations Office about the time they get their mail and make sure our ballots are received. Obviously we plan on challenging any attempt at disqualifying our legitimate right to vote in NH elections even if we have to come back to Hanover next April 1 to claim our equitable rights.

Our good friend, Bud Fitch, at the NH Attorney General's Office seems to have a very broad, evolving, unique, amorphous, and vague interpretation of who can vote in NH which we are sure will include our ballots so it should not be a problem.

Thank you for the excellent coverage of our April 1 "protest" on your web site.

Ed Naile
Chairman CNHT

Ed and I have very complimentary senses of humor, apparently. BTW: The administration has extended voting in the Trustee Election until May 6th, so you can still vote. When asking for a ballot at the Alumni Relations office, remember to bring proof of matriculation, like a baseball cap or rugby shirt with the Big Green "D" on it, a fraternity shirt or ring, maybe a campus parking ticket, a Monday Morning Hangover or a near fascimile of a holier-than-thou liberal attitude (looking down your nose at members of politically incorrect demographic groups suffices).

Illegal Tax Exempt Funding of Leftist Groups

Cybercast News Service says "Legality of Leftist Funding Questioned"

While non-political groups like the Free State Project are denied tax exempt status, radically left political activist Ramsey Clark and his Stalinist cohorts get away with using the charitable exemption laws to funnel funds into their extremist groups.

Anti-Drafters: Daft or Crafty?

A number of individuals in the Libertarian movement have been ranting for several years now about the 'impending' US military draft. Michael Badnarik was predicting during his presidential run that it was to be implemented by this past January, no matter whether Bush or Kerry won the election. The idea was that military recruiters were not meeting their recruitment targets, so therefore there would need to be a draft. There was a bill in congress, sponsored by the most radical left Democrats, to institute a draft, which was soundly defeated by the Republicans before the election.

Why would the left wing democrats sponsor a draft bill? Because they recognised that without an individual threat to the average high school or college student, they had no hope of getting youth or soccer mom support for the Kerry candidacy or for an anti-war movement. Consequently, the anti-war movement has fizzled, and the organizers have been desperately trying to invent a draft to get their movement restarted. They are now trying to 'counter-recruit' and interfere with military recruitment in public schools and on college campuses, on the theory that curtailing legitimate volunteerism into the ranks will force the government to institute a draft. This is possibly the most cynical strategy I've ever seen, but in keeping with the philosophical foundations of those who are orchestrating this campaign..

If the war is over, why would they care? It turns out the anti-war, anti-draft movement isn't so purely motivated as they present themselves to be. The two primary groups opposing war in Iraq and a fictitious 'draft' are ANSWER and the International Action Center. IAC was founded by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, but it is staffed, as is ANSWER, by the marxist-leninist-stalinist-baathists of the World Workers Party (yes, baathist). The WWP is the primary source of most anti-war propaganda in the US, and it is clear why: they received funds before the war from Saddam Hussein to do so.

As J Michael Waller says in Insight On The News:

"The demonstration planners are, in fact, professional agitators who have mass protest down to a science, having participated in or run grass-roots mobilizations since before most of today's picketers were born. Critical authorities on U.S. radicalism say the track record of the leaders reveals not a principled opposition to war but a calculated commitment to undermining U.S. security and foreign policy, regardless of their ideology, and exploiting the naïveté and idealism of whatever influential or mainstream people can be persuaded to join them."

That this clearly treasonous behavior has been ignored is not surprising. Treason is par for the course with the left, and often regarded as a thing to be celebrated. What is truly shocking is the number of Libertarians who so easily spout Stalinist-Baathist propaganda.

The Worst of Evils...

"Live Free or Die,
Death is Not the Worst of Evils."
- General John Stark,
Revolutionary War Hero

I grew up in New Hampshire, and still make it my home. I've had the above quotation embedded in my subconcious since I learned to read license plates (being the state motto, "Live Free or Die" is on all NH license plates). Most people focus on the first phrase and ignore the second, but I think the second is of paramount importance, particularly when one is making those life or liberty/life or death decisions so crucial in the battle for freedom throughout history.

To hear the bunkertarian types say it, nothing is more important to any one individual than that individuals life. This is the essence of their "screw you, I've got mine" take on liberty and the zero agression principle: so long as nobody is trying to kill them specifically, they couldn't give a rats ass about their next door neighbor, or at best, doing anything for them is a true favor.

The idea that there are higher principles worth laying one's life down for, or greater evils than one's own demise that are worth the risk of dying in the attempt to defeat them seems anathema to the bunkertarian. Thus, to a bunkertarian, it is 'collectivist' to save that cute chick down the street from being robbed, raped, or killed by some hoodlum.

Some of them take it to absolute extremes, in enforcing an extreme individualist form of Orwellian "Newspeak" in which it is 'collectivist' to use words like "we", "they", "them", "us" and some regard it as an initiation of force for you to describe any one individualist in terms of some group set they may belong to, even just demographically. The idea is that using collectivist words enforces collectivist thought and thus behavior, and in being collectivist in thought by definition one is initiating force against others.

As I have said before, in an ideal world, I am an anarcho-capitalist. That is the world of 'ought', as in 'how it ought to be'. Being a realist, I recognise that is not the world we all live in, we live in the world of 'is'. Getting from 'is' to 'ought' takes baby steps, a few steps forward, maybe a step back once in a while.

I regard a lack of progress towards 'ought' from 'is' to be a greater evil than death. When bunkertarian litmus tests, Star Chamber antics, and public drubbing and denouncing (as you've seen in some of the comments to my blog) cause the movement to be dismissed by moderate and mainstream sympathizers, then we are not moving toward 'ought'. As the saying goes, the perfect can be the enemy of the good.

First CMH of the Iraq War

President Bush, on April 4th, awarded the first Congressional Medal of Honor of the Iraq war, posthumously, to Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, who was mortally wounded while defending 100 pinned down men of his engineering unit from a Baathist assault force and killed between 20-50 Baathist troops. His widow had their 11 year old son accept the award, as "he is now the man of the house."

For the whiners: Sgt 1st Class Smith was a volunteer, as were 100% of his men. The Draft doesn't exist, and hasn't existed since the end of the Vietnam War, so the original libertarian and paleo-conservative opposition to war doesn't exist there: nobody is forced to go and risk their lives. Nor do rants about 'backdoor drafts' or hysteria about recruitment goals not being met have any validity in reality. The fact is that 100% of the men and women who enlist do so entirely voluntarily, they are apprised of the risks of going into combat, and they are themselves responsible for fully reading the enlistment contract in its entirety.

Secondly, as proven by G Edward Griffin, no individual person pays for our foreign wars, directly. Income taxes, wrongly taken, only pay for interest on the national debt, most of which is due to welfare state spending. Most federal taxes come from corporate profits, capital gains, excises, and tariffs, all of which are constitutionally legitimate. You can legitimately whine that this results in higher prices for things you buy, as well as inflation.

Nobody obligates you to buy stuff from the corporate system, or use FRNs. If you don't like the way the majority of the economy is, you need to go and create your own economy. That is what I am working on, and all allegedly self-described libertarians should do the same.

Funny Money: Those $2 Federal Reserve Notes

There was a very funny story on slashdot the other day, referring to another blog that referred to an original story (subscription to the Baltimore Sun required) in which a fellow bought a stereo from Best Buy that turned out broken. When he got it replaced, he was told they'd waive the installation fee, but the cashier still insisted he pay for installation.

Apparently this fellow is a believer in the saying "being forewarned is forearmed", because he responded to this rude cashiers demands by paying the installation fees ALL in two dollar bills. Fifty seven or so two dollar bills (apparently he gets them at his bank just to screw with people).

The cashier was not only rude and extortionate, but ignorant as well. She claimed that there was no such thing as a two dollar bill and treated them as counterfeit. She called police, who were also ignorant and arrested him overnight. It took a secret service agent to straighten everybody out and get the poor fellow released.

This is reminiscent of a similar story about a fellow who tried to pay for a burrito at Taco Bell with a two dollar FRN to an ignorant cashier. That story can be found on Snopes.

It is no wonder that the dollar is tanking in international markets if our own citizens don't recognise the legal tender of their own country. Many Americans don't even know that Susan B Anthony and Sacagawea dollar coins exist and are actually dollar coins, not quarters. People have been subjected to so many different quarters now (50 different reverse sides, one on each state) that I am sure that there is already a conspiracy theory out there that this is to so confuse the people about what is or is not valid currency that they stop caring or checking.

This seems to be happening, but with a different result: the collective subconcious cultural gestalt apparently is getting the sinking feeling that their currency is debased, devalued, and possibly even worthless.

We are now seeing an issuing of ten different nickel coins from the US mint, and in 2004, the Federal Reserve issued several hundred million new two dollar notes. I predict the next step will be that the fed will start issuing several or many different $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, and $50 designs, such that nobody will be able to tell what is or is not valid currency any more by sight, they will require electronic scanners to do so.

Why would they do this? One idea is it so that when hostile nations with hundreds of billions of FRNs in their vaults decide to dump them on the market in preparation for a military action, the fed could suddenly say "all the green ones are now invalid", thus negating the value of foreign currency reserves. I don't know, but I think there is something more significant going on than that the mint is trying to make more money off of coin collectors.

A Force for Freedom

Those of you who have not read G Edward Griffin's book, "The Creature From Jekyll Island" really should do so. It is a history of money, coin, fractional reserve banking, central banks, and the Federal Reserve Bank and its real owners. Griffin shows how fractional reserve banking has been used by governments to obtain funds to finance big budget projects like wars and welfare programs by borrowing on future tax receipts and collateralizing their debts by seizing private property for national parks and forests.

He also details how a select group of bankers, involving the socialist Fabian Society, underhandedly founded the Federal Reserve bank, engineered the 1929 Crash, and now use the American taxpayers to finance the manipulation of economies around the world through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It isn't a conspiracy 'theory' when it is historical fact.

There are a large number of questions I have for Griffin about details in his book, but overall I think this is a must-read. I encourage you, as does Griffin, to check the facts for yourself.

If what you discover is alarming enough to you that you think something needs to be done about it, you might consider joining Griffin's organization Freedom Force International and start or join an FFI chapter in your area. You might join the national LP, or Free State Project, or your state Libertarian Party, but what is important is that when you read something like this that gets you motivated, you need to do something about it besides go to the fridge for a beer and turn on the tv.

Now, I am not a Gold Bug. I think having gold and silver money is a fine idea, but that the market should be free to decide what sort of money it wants. My primary peeve with the Federal Reserve is that it is a monopoly. I don't mind fractional money so much, primarily because it tends to be backed by land and other real assets that generally represent a broader spectrum of the economy than narrow niche commodities like gold and silver. What I think is important is that the market should be free to decide what sort of money it wants at any given time.

Yes, people spend money into the economy through the taking on of debt for the property they buy with that debt. The individuals right to contract, under the US Constitution, is unlimited, and should stay that way. Banning people from obtaining fractional money if they want it is as bad an idea as banning people from having metal money.

There are a number of individuals who are Griffin supporters who have some sort of religious opposition to debt. Fine. That isn't me. I don't like being in debt any more than the next person, but most people don't inherit a trustfund, many people starting out in the world have no choice but to take that risk in hopes they will be able to turn what they borrow into a bigger return than what it costs them in interest. Most people actually do accomplish this, else the banking industry wouldn't be in business and our economy would not have a net positive growth trend over the long term after inflation and population growth.

I have other issues with Griffin's writing, but that doesn't detract from the historical facts he has documented so well, as well as his writing about how banking works.

Taking a Break with John Stossel

As I am currently on a working vacation to the sunny state of Florida, I have been getting to know our Libertarian bretheren here in the Palm Beach County area. This past Sunday was a brunch at the Royal Palm Polo Club to catch one of the last polo matches of the season.

The previous Tuesday, the 29th, I went down to FAU to attend a talk given by ABC's John Stossel, co anchor of 20/20. John is promoting his book, "Give me a Break", of course, and the talk dealt with his realization as a consumer affairs reporter that the real problem for most Americans in their daily lives was not private industry, it was government regulation, how he grew from being a screaming yellow bellied liberal as a young reporter to a solid pro-enterprise libertarian today.

Hosted by Palm Beach County Libertarians and the FAU Young Republicans, John put on a great talk that was a bit more in depth than you normally see on his news program, and followed it with a Q&A session with the audience. I got up, identified myself, and asked John what he thought of the Free State Project. He explained to the audience what the FSP was, stated it was a great idea that people should look into if they feel disenfranchised where they are at now, and surmised that he may move up to NH some time in the future.

Matriculation is a State of Mind

I recently conceived a protest which took fruition today at noon, on the Dartmouth College campus, in which libertarians and conservatives demonstrated to obtain ballots in the college's trustee election currently underway. Why, you ask? Well, it seems that over 400 Dartmouth students, not residents of NH, voted in the November elections, along with thousands of other non-resident college students, to help turn the voting tide in favor of the democrats.

The college administration refuses to help identify resident and non-resident students. The town, thanks to past student-dominated elections, now refuses to enforce state law in verifying the validity of election day registrants.

There are other reasons:
a) NH residents have gifted Dartmouth over the years with not one, but two whole townships for their benefit.
b) Dartmouth College so dominates life in Hanover and the Upper Valley in general that the decisions it makes have a serious impact on the lives of every resident of the region. This justifies claims to have input in the process to select Dartmouth governance.
c) We in NH have been subjected, over many years, to sermonizing and pontificating from so many holier-than-thou politically correct Dartmouth Professors that we feel that we have earned the requisite credit hours to be considered alumni.
d) Assistant State Attorney General For Covering Up Voter Fraud, Bud Fitch, is quoted and on the written record as stating to fraudulent voters, "residency is a state of mind." If so, then matriculation is also 'a state of mind'.

For these reasons I, and Ed Naile, President of the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers, today declared the Dartmouth Trustee Elections, (open to voting until April 22nd) to be open to all NH residents.

So, today, a group of NH residents I recruited traipsed up to the Dartmouth Campus, demonstrated, and requested ballots from the administration. As soon as I get back to NH from Florida, I will be seeking my own ballot.

We hope that non-resident college students will take a lesson from this: there are a lot more NH residents than there are students in this state. We control the legislature. We can, if we choose, impose governance on any NH chartered corporation that colludes in the violation of the law, as such activity as conspiracy to commit vote fraud is grounds to 'pierce the veil' of the Dartmouth corporation. I don't think that most students or alumni are willing to 'go nuclear' on this issue, so I hope that this demonstration raises the point with non-resident students that they need to respect the sanctity of NH elections BY NH RESIDENTS.

If college students are so irresponsible so as to risk the future viability of their alma mater, then so be it. If current college leadership is similarly irresponsible, then it is clearly time for new choices in trusteeship at Dartmouth. For this reason, I support the election of petition candidates Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88. They promise to return a sense of responsibility, citizenship, and balanced leadership to Dartmouth.

Getting Down to Business...

Lets look at Neil's column in detail to see where he is right, wrong, etc:

"There followed about a hundred lines of dialog between another old friend of mine, "Anton", and this "Mike" individual, of whom I had heard, although I'd never conversed with him, myself."

Now this is hard to understand, since he's published one of my essays and a number of my LTEs to The Libertarian Enterprise. I understand that disavowing people is a tactic of minimizing the importance (and thus the message) of one's opponent in a debate and typical of a passive-agressive personality. His putting my name in quotes, I don't know if that is to "protect my anonymity" or just to imply I am a fictional person or not worthy of being referred to by my proper name. Again, his whole behavior here belies someone engaging in passive-agressive behavior (Gee, where is the ZAP when you need it?)

"Sad to tell, he's a vice chairman of a state Libertarian Party."

True enough. I was drafted to this position, I did not seek it. Now that I am in it I am working as hard as I possibly can to make the LP in my state as powerful and *relevant* to the issues that most enhance or detract from the liberties of the people of my state. National politics has little to do with this work.

Neil continues:"Now it's undoubtedly true, in many instances, what "Mike" asserts about the Zero Aggression Principle being held by some as "universally objective", by which I think he means "rooted in natural law" like the Pythagorean Theorem, or Newton's laws of motion, but it certainly isn't by every libertarian, and possibly not even by a majority. Many libertarians just see it is the only practical way killer apes can get along.
Thus when "Mike" continues, "... then [meaning 'therefore'] you are morally obligated to contribute to liberating those who [have been] initiated against and [are] unable to defend themselves ... " he skates out onto thin ice, breaks through, and falls in. Like so many others who labor to make a point they know damn well is spurious, he doesn't deserve that "therefore", and with a ceremonious drumroll I pretend to be hearing, I hereby take it away from him and break it in half. "

Now hold on a minute there pardner, you're jumping on the context changing bandwagon so typical of a yellow journalist with a chip on his shoulder. Neil specifically left out the part where I state essentially that if you see it as a proper application of the ZAP to defend the rights of ANYONE but yourself at any time, for any reason, in any way, you can't put qualifiers on WHO is worthy of the efforts of others in defense of their liberty.
And, no, I don't believe one has an automatic obligation to others simply for the sake of those others. That wouldn't be appropriate.

Neil goes on:"Knowing his audience, "Mike" tries to dodge it, to make it seem like an act of enlightened self-interest: " ... because as history has shown, initiators will eventually get to initiating against you, always."

No they won't. History doesn't show any such thing. Some will and some won't. Recent studies, for example, demonstrate what we knew all along, that the U.S. was never in any danger of invasion by Japan or Germany, and that we could have sat out World War II in perfect safety. "

Now hold on a minute there, Neil. Since when do we libertarians demand that fictional lines in the sand, known as national boundaries (or oceans for that matter) mean ANYTHING with respect to the ZAP? You sound like some sort of nationalist to me here. Isn't initiation against dirty europeans or chinese people just as offensive to you as against your good white Bunker-American brothers? What about the Jews, for instance? Or are you going to go off on some revisionist rant blaming them for what was done to them?
I don't know what history books you've been reading, bub, but the one's I read have detailed information about, and photographs of, advanced weapons programs by both Germany and Japan intended to attack the US. Multi-stage ballistic missiles, massive flying-wing bombers, and super-submarines capable of cruising off the US coast for many months, not just sinking ships but bombarding coastal cities. Japan not only initiated force against the US (remember Pearl Harbor? Attu? The Phillipines(which were US territory at that time)?), but had planned to invade the western US. Tojo was hot for it, only to be dissuaded by Yamomoto who warned "There is a rifle behind every blade of grass."
History also shows that even before the US entered into the war, Nazi submarines were sinking massive amounts of interstate coastal traffic along the Atlantic seaboard, killing large numbers of Americans, which the Roosevelt administration covered up. I know people who were involved, or who had relatives whe were involved, in the Civil Air and Civil Naval efforts to combat the U-boats. I understand that Neil, living in his western bunker, is likely to never have come in contact with such people, which makes it so much easier to deny this real history.
Neil also seems to ignore the Japanese depredations upon American citizens in Alaska, many civilians who were killed or kidnapped. But of course those Americans were funny looking Aleutian natives, so they must not count as much as Americans in the lower 48.
I find it quite odd that Neil seems to be taking the Chomskyan course of denying real history of war and genocide by tyrants the world over, who are only limited by their ability to obtain and use resources, the willingness of free people or less unfree people, to oppose them, or their own mortality. While American libertarians like him try to paint our own government as the greatest evil to befall mankind, I see the French libertarians doing the same about their own government, while simultaneously approving of US foreign policy in Iraq. How could both groups be libertarian yet disagree on the justice of actions in Iraq?
Neil seems to like the tyrant rationalizing revisionist rant, that American refusal to trade with Japan was 'agression' that deserved violent response. Oh, Please.
Besides Neil, it appears you actually agreed with my principle of doing good for one's own self interest when you said in your May 23rd, 2004 editorial, "Perhaps more importantly, as a civilized people ("Here Smith goes with that 'we' stuff again, Martha!'), we do not protect the rights of helpless individuals—including our prisoners—for their sake, but for our own."
So which Neil am I talking to now? One who repudiates what he said on May 23rd? Or is it the same Neil on May 23rd who pimped for Saddam when he said, "Saddam Hussein was no paragon, to be sure. But he did head the most secular and progressive state in the Middle East." Am I hearing this right? Is L Neil Smith endorsing the fasco-socialist regime of Saddam Hussein just because it was the most 'progressive'? Since when is Neil a Progressive? HE claims to be Libertarian.

Neil goes on to rant:"Following a long series of historical "examples", nearly every one fallacious, "

Only fallacious to revisionists who deny history in order to conform with their prejudices. The examples, btw, were proposed by "Anton" not myself, here is what he said:

"Come now, surely you can think of one or two tyrants who held power until old age, yet never carried it beyond their home state (or its immediate neighbors anyway), let alone all over the world. Franco, Mobutu, Marcos, Somoza, Pahlavi, Suharto, Duvalier .... I'd say they> are the rule, Hitler and Stalin the exception."

In this, Neil misrepresents Anton's words as mine.
Of course Anton left out Mao, Pol Pot, Tojo, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Ghengis Khan, Mohammad, Charlemagne, Edward Longshanks, Julius Caesar (and dozens of other Roman Emperors), the Conquistadores, Tamerlane, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, among many other would-be Ozimandiases of history. He ingores that current day dictatorships like Castro, the Sandinistas, Kim, and Vietnam have a long record of trying to export communist tyranny into many countries. Just because none of these tyrants ever succeeded in conquering the entire world doesn't mean they didn't want to or would not have, it only means that some people stood up to them and put them down, or they died before completely realizing their dreams.

Neil continues his rant:"he goes back to misrepresenting collectivism as a form of individualism: "So in the end, it is really self-defense ... If you refuse to act on your principles, you are a hypocrite and externalizing the costs of your self-defense on others as well as endangering them. Inaction in the presence of tyranny against anyone breeds more tyranny against everyone." "

This isn't collectivism, any more than carrying a concealed weapon is collectivism versus carrying openly. A person carrying concealed creates an umbrella of deterrence, because a criminal cannot determine who might or might not be armed. Those who do not carry at all are free-riding on the voluntary efforts of those who take responsibility for their self defense. Is Neil arguing here that a concealed carrier is a collectivist while an open carrier is not? Does Neil agree that a person who refuses to go about armed is externalizing the costs of their self defense upon others, or not? That is, after all, what an unarmed person is doing. Does Neil argue that if those who refuse to go about armed are billed for their externalization of their costs of self defense on others, that that is collectivism?
A person who refuses to oppose tyranny of any kind (or worse yet, buys into that tyrants propaganda, rationalizations, and historical revisionism as an excuse to refuse to oppose that tyranny, as Neil does below in parrotting Baathist propaganda) is externalizing the costs of their defense against that tyrant just as if they were walking around a ghetto unarmed, expecting to be defended by those who take responsibility for their self defense.

Neil goes off the deep end here:"The inconvenient fact for "Mike" is that blocading somebody else's borders and letting upwards of half a million kids die for lack of medicine and proper nutrition, invading two countries that never did anything to America, and murdering tens of thousands of pregnant women and ten-year-old goatherds can hardly be considered acts of self- defense. "

Baathism is Stalinism. There is no qualitative difference between the two agendas. Stalinism is also the agenda of groups here in the US and throughout the west such as the World Workers Party, and organizations they control like ANSWER, the main anti-war group protesting US action in Iraq. ANSWER is essentially a front for Baathist propaganda, which was then disseminated by WWP into the progressive and libertarian community by morons like Noam Chomsky, alleging that all these alleged deaths in Iraq during the sanctions were due to the sanctions and not to the well documented fact that Saddam was scamming the oil for food program left and right in concert with corrupt high UN officials for his own personal gain. I am rather disgusted that Neil sees fit to reproduce Baathist/Stalinist propaganda here as if it is fact, and yet, am extremely shocked to see that he thinks he can get away with using it to bolster his argument, or that he thinks that libertarians are dumb enough to buy into this Stalinist crap.
This has about done it. Libertarians parrotting stalinist propaganda. Who is the collectivist now, Neil?

More infantile Neilamania:"But the really fun part is when he finally pulls his pants down and shows us what he's got. It isn't very much, sadly enough, but this is what he has been leading up to, all along: "The national LP," "Mike" whimpers, "has put itself so far out to lunch with its idiotic anti-war message that it is simply not being listened to by the GOP anymore ... "
Gasp! Horrors! The country's right-wing socialists are being put off by the truth! "

Whose truth, Neil? There have always been significant numbers of libertarians in the GOP who look to the US LP, the Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, among other libertarian sources, including the vaunted L Neil Smith, for guidance and inspiration. When they see these sources parroting Baathist/Stalinist propaganda, they can't help but shake their heads in astonishment and disbelief that libertarian instincts for anti-authoritarianism of any kind have overwhelmed the movements rational faculties for discerning truth from balderdash. They see that our potent allergies to domestic tyranny have been coopted by the message of the World Workers Party to serve the ends of foreign thugs.
If you, Neil, put any credence at all in Griffin's "The Creature from Jekyll Island", you should understand the complicity of the western left with 3rd world thugs against America.

Neil digs deeper:"He wabbles onward, ' ... where once we had significant influence (the presence of our people writing the tax cuts is a lingering influence) ... '
I don't know who "our people" are supposed to be. Anybody who writes policy under which even one individual has a cent stolen from him is not "our people", simply another enemy who has to be dealt with."

Our people, like Cato, and other sources of libertarian inspiration to small government conservatives and libertarians who happen to be in government, few as they are. One in particular is Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, who wrote Bush's tax cuts and was once quoted as saying, "I'm not totally against government, I just want to shrink it down small enough that I can strangle it in the tub." Is Neil saying that this isn't the sentiment of a libertarian?
Here in NH, our own party chair, John Babiarz, spent two years as a personal advisor to Republican Governor Benson, who cut state property taxes nearly in half during his tenure in office. Of course, this wasn't enough for obnoxious purists like Neil, but this is an example of what gains we can make when we work rationally rather than fanatically.

Neil finally gets to the point of all this:"And here comes the reason I was sent this tantrum: " ... but the LP's loopy treatment of our own government as the bigger threat to liberty, and in some cases (like L. Neil Smith) saying we deserved 9-11 ... "
Wrong again. In the first place, whenever you say something like "our government", speak for yourself. I didn't order it. I don't want it... I've never said that we deserved what happened on September 11, 2001...What I have said is that previous administrations going back more than fifty years are responsible for what happened on that day.."

Now, Neil, lets look at what you actually said in previous columns of yours, which is what I was referring to, particularly your May 23rd, 2004 editorial, when you said, "it was people I called "Europanoids" (to include Americans) who initiated force in the Middle East"
I am also referring to (as you are above) to your May 9th, 2004 editorial when you state clearly that, "Americans and Europeans are the aggressors in this conflict, and what happened in New York on September 11, 2001, was an act of long-delayed retaliation."
So, NO Neil, you clearly are NOT just pointing your finger at the US Government, presidential administrations, or congress. You are placing collective guilt upon Americans and Europeans in general. That is the way I read your statements above, and the way anyone who can read english will read them. This is why I stated in my post to my private email list that you have stated that "we deserved 9-11". There is no other possible interpretation for what you have said above without some very serious, and very Washingtonian backfilling and spinning.
This whole new attack by you on me is rooted in this. If you don't recall saying this, go back and look at your own website. If you disagree with my interpretation, you need to give an honest retraction or correction. No spinning, no backfilling, no hem-hawing.

Now Neil accuses me:"It's what crypto-Republicans like "Mike" call libertarians."

I've been a libertarian for a number of years and voted for anyone of our people on the ballot that I could. I have also voted for libertarians running as Republicans, and I have voted for Republicans in order to keep socialist democrats out of office. That I've never found a Democrat who was worth a damn is more commentary on Democrats than on me. The only reason I registered as a Republican was to have an impact on their party, and because of a long standing fight with the state GOP over allowing the LPNH to be a major party. We've warned them to fix their laws or we'd take over their party.

"The same people fondly parrot the line, "The perfect is the enemy of the good," meaning that those of us who insist on the "perfect"—by standing on principle and avoiding compromise with evil—get in the way of those whose view is "more realistic". But what I've noticed is that if it weren't for those of us who insist on the perfect—embarrassing the gradualists and compromisers by reminding them why we all got into politics in the first place—there'd never be any good. "

Reminding us is fine, Neil. Denouncing us, parroting stalinist propaganda to us, is going too far around the bend, even for you. It must be a slow news day on the Lazy-S ranch to be spending your time picking on little old me.

Neil " [snipping a quote of mine about original legislative writing I'm doing]...Good for "Mike". (I hear they're trying this in Montana, too. I wonder who thought of it first.) "

I had no idea anyone in Montana was trying it. I've been working on this since I heard of the US v Stewart case. That I don't use the word militia in it is important to political salability and totally unimportant to its ultimate utility, so there is no point in purposely using flash-words to rile up the opposition. This is likely a new concept to Neil, of not intentionally pissing off the opposition (he prefers to piss off his allies).

Neil:"It's long past time that individuals like "Mike" were made to understand that the Libertarian Party is not now, and never was an appendage of the Republican Party. "

I never said it was Neil, and that is where you are mispresenting MY words. Trying to work with another party to get good freedom oriented legislation through is called coalitioning, and it is the best way to work when you are a small third party. If I can find Democrats willing to support our legislative agenda as well, I am perfectly willing to work with them. Of course for Neil, being totally inconsequential to government but perfectly right is more important than having any influence at all.

Neal gets insulting now:"So to "Mike's" libertarian constituents, I suggest that it's time to remove him from the office he holds under false colors and find somebody to replace him who believes in the ZAP and really is a libertarian. "

I never asked for the job, I was drafted. I have also never hidden my views on foreign policy from anybody in the state party or nationally. I have supported libertarian candidates of all sides of the issues of foreign policy. I also don't think a Free West Bunkertarian like you has any right to tell a party in another state who can and can't be one of their leaders, and I don't think an absolutist fanatic like you has any right to be going around imposing litmus tests on who is and who isn't a libertarian, like some latter day Judge Jeffries in his Star Chamber. Of course you are just the sort of abrasive nut who would cut off his nose to spite his face.
If you, Neil, have the nads to make an issue of it, you need to come here to NH, join the LPNH, become a NH resident, and recruit support for your own candidacy to replace me. You are welcome to the job if you are honest enough to come here, get down to business, and vote me out (if people here will have you). Until then you are just one more pussilanimous purist prick sitting on his armchair strutting verbal barrages on the internet, and not moving the movement forward.
So far all I have seen is passive-agressive initiation of verbal violence against me by Neil, misrepresentation, lies, and baseless accusations against me by you. You are going to need bigger ammo than that. The one thing I said about you specifically is, as I showed by quoting you from your own website, exactly true.
There is plenty of room in the LP for people who disagree on foriegn policy issues, because the Nolan Chart really doesn't address foreign policy, it only addresses domestic economic and social issues. We are going to have to have a whole new z axis of foreign policy if we are going to be fragmenting the party with the L Neil Smith Litmus Test of Bunkertarian Purity.
I have to go now, I have some real libertarian politics to work on...