“Rudolf Rocker, who had been strongly influenced by Benjamin Tucker, started work on Pioneers of American Freedom during World War II. Professor Arthur E. Briggs started translating the book into English from Rocker’s native German in 1941. He took over for Rocker’s previous English translator Ray E. Chase as he had died. The book was published with the help of the Rocker Publishing Committee in 1949.”

“The first part of the book consists of a series of essays on the American liberal thinkers Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Abraham Lincoln. Rocker emphasizes the importance these men assign to individualism, freedom, and the subordination of the state to the welfare of the individual. This, Rocker claims, is a great similarity between anarchist and liberal thought.”

Complete introduction plus link to an online text of this classic book @http://www.againstallauthority.org/?p=19

“Thus it is that in the “war on terrorism” our government is building, brick by brick, a new police state, called “Security.” Consider, for example, this item from The Washington Post:

    The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

    The administration wants to add just four words — ‘electronic communication transactional records’ — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the ‘content’ of e-mail or other Internet communication.

    But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

“There now. Don’t you feel safer and more secure already? Or do you have that creepy feeling that somebody is looking over your shoulder?”

Full warning against the new police state by Jack Kenny @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/959-jack-kenny/4167-a-police-state-youd-better-believe-in

Recent nation-wide tests of academic skills found California students tied with Louisiana students for last place! More than half the students int he California State University system are taking remedial classes in reading or math!

The public schools have become a political football. Religious activists seek to have “creationism” taught in the science classes, while too many of our social science teachers promote obsolete socialist doctrines. Neutral scholarship is the unlamented victim.

Among the ideas currently being proposed to improve American education, school choice stands out as particularly innovative and thoroughgoing. Implementation of school choice proposals would change the relationship of students and their parents to the education system.

Read this classic essay from 1996  by Gene Berkman @ http://www.antiwar.com/berkman/edchoice.html

Riverside Area Libertarians will meet  Thursday August 12, 2010 to discuss School Choice & Competition in Education – details @ http://www.rclp.org/

“For more than a decade, Microsoft went about its business, developing software, selling it to customers, and — happily, legally — making money. Then in 1995, after repeated assaults by the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Microsoft broke down and started playing the Beltway game — defensively at first.”

“Washington politicians and journalists sneered at Microsoft’s initial political innocence. A congressional aide said, “They don’t want to play the D.C. game, that’s clear, and they’ve gotten away with it so far. The problem is, in the long run they won’t be able to.” ”

Full commentary on how government preys on businss by David Boaz @ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11972

“Good news, though: Construction of Kabul’s 900,000-square-foot Police Training Center is “progressing according to plan.” After $27 billion spent, Afghan police are still “illiterate, corrupt, and trigger-happy,” their instructors lament, but a spiffy new training complex can’t hurt.”

“Enough. With American casualties mounting, it’s clearer than ever that “Operation Enduring Freedom” has become a sickening waste of blood and treasure.”

Complete commentary  on another war without end by Gene Healy @ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11975

“The bill was opposed by all of Russia’s political parties except the pro-Kremlin United Russia, which has 315 seats in the 450-seat Duma. United Russia’s chairman is Vladimir Putin. The report said the measures were proposed by the government in the wake of the March 29 Metro bombings by Chechen separatists.”

“A Reuters report cited Kremlin critics who say the FSB, “formerly headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, could use its additional powers to target and intimidate opposition groups.” The report also noted: “The FSB was formed from the remains of the KGB, which was broken up in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. Its influence grew greatly after Putin became president in 2000 and ordered it to lead the fight against Islamist rebels.”

Full report on Russia’s emerging police state by Warren Mass @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/4020-russia-gives-new-powers-to-kgb-successor

Here are ten reasons to end the wars now. I hope you’ll take a look at some of the links.

1. American military and contractor casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. Iraqi and Afghanistan civilian and military casualties.

3. These wars are a tremendous waste of taxpayer money in a time of extreme deficits, high unemployment and a falling stock market.

4. Invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq feeds terrorism.

5. Osama Bin Laden and his co-conspirators who attacked the World Trade Center were Saudi Arabian.

6. As Congressman Ron Paul recently said: “In Afghanistan, we are fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending their homeland. Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s.”

7. Most Republicans in Congress now admit Iraq was a mistake.

8. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s comments show that even the hawkish Republican Party can’t support this war with a straight face.

9. As James Madison said, “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” (Witness the PATRIOT Act.)

10. The U.S. military has been in Iraq over seven years, and in Afghanistan almost nine years. It’s time to give peace a chance.

(Note, the LP doesn’t necessarily endorse the organizations linked above. We encourage you to research these issues for yourself.)

Source: The Libertarian Party @ http://www.lp.org/blogs/staff/lp-monday-message-10-reasons-to-end-the-wars-now

“The story behind the federal land grab and the fight of the former owners to reverse what many perceive as an injustice has a fascinating history behind it. The land that eventually came to be called Harris Neck was at one time the property of a slave-owning plantation owner named Margaret Ann Harris. In her last will and testament, Harris deeded the lands of her former plantation to her former slave, Robert Dellegall. Dellegall’s descendants have lived in the vicinity of Harris Neck ever since, and between 1865 and 1942 had grown to include 75 African American families.”

“World War II changed the lives of Harris Neck’s black families drastically, however. During the summer of 1942, two American tankers were sunk off the Georgia coast, presumably after being torpedoed by German submarines. The federal government decided that it was necessary to build a new Army Air Corps field in the area as a base for aerial surveillance of the coastline. When the federal advance team came to McIntosh County to search for a location, however, members of the county’s establishment recommended the land on Harris Neck for the base. This made little sense, since a parcel of land of equivalent size that was largely uninhabited lay nearby.”

Full storyof another wartime injustice by Warren Mass @http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/3924-black-landowners-fight-to-reclaim-land-taken-by-feds

“There is a potentially simple and relatively pain-free policy solution out there- one that will actually improve what residents get out of their state, instead of requiring them to lose out on something.  That potential solution is a statewide educational voucher program.”

“In a report by the Federal government, which was kept quiet until Democrats in Congress had a chance to sunset funding for D.C.’s innovative private school voucher program, a Federal study concluded that the private school voucher program in D.C. had delivered better results (students pulled ahead of their non-voucher peers in reading, while performing as well in math) at one quarter of the cost!”

“Average tuition at private voucher schools was $6,620, just under 25% of the $26,555 that the District of Columbia spends on education per pupil. Think of what this could mean for California. Education could actually improve and only cost 25% as much as it does presently.”

W.E. Messamore looks at the numbers and sees a way to balance the budget:http://caivn.org/article/2010/06/15/school-voucher-program-could-help-fix-californias-crippling-budget-deficit

“Sure, Reagan spent boatloads — some $2.8 trillion all told — on the military. And yes, he funneled money and guns to anti-communist rebels like the Nicaraguan Contras and Afghan mujahideen, while lecturing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that wall. But on the ultimate test of hawkdom — the willingness to send U.S. troops into harm’s way — Reagan was no bird of prey. He launched exactly one land war, against Grenada, whose army totaled 600 men. It lasted two days. And his only air war — the 1986 bombing of Libya — was even briefer.”

Peter Beinart takes a second look @ Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/think_again_ronald_reagan