September 2007 - Posts
Good news, everybody. Antares 8, my shop at www.cafepress.com/antares8, now has T-shirts that read "Old Socialists Never Die, They Just 'Disappear.'" Get them now!
Also, thanks to the good offices of Amazon.com and the free market, I was able to procure a copy of The Astronaut Farmer on DVD. So my review should be written next week. Trust me, if you haven't seen this movie, you should. It's the quintisessential libertarian movie.
The other day one of my Poets and Poetry of New England classmates was arrested in his dorm. The police apparently waited for him in his room or suite and took him when he got back. They said they had a warrant, but he never saw it. He was taken to the police station and spent most of the night in a cell. Never was he told why he was arrested, why he was in a cell, and he was never charged with anything. The news hits home.
Missing that item of clothing that just screams "freedom?" Check out Antares 8, my new Cafe Press online store. My products feature the green and gold Ama-gi I use as my blog header. Alas I have only managed to make T-shirts, but keep an eye open. Antares 8's website is http://www.cafepress.com/antares8. Check it out!
A copule years ago a book was published called The Lucifer Effect. It recorded a long-running experiment at Stanford University where some students were "prison guards" and other students were "inmates." To make a long storty short, the gaurds basically went power mad and a mini-Abu Gharib ensued. Things got very bad and the experiment was terminated because the "gaurds" were being so violent.
The reason I bring this up is because of all the recent reports about out-of-control police seriously injuring people with tasers, or even this new story about the MIT student with a "fake bomb" at Logan Airport. As mentioned in a previous post, I believe the United States is transforming into a "prison-state." The police are certainly acting like out-of-control prison guards to me.
Newsflash: Government monopoly fails. Again. As usual.
On September 6 I ordered an item of apparel (a Ron Paul t-shirt) online. On the ninth it was shipped via UPS from Ohio to a warehouse in New York City, arriving on the twealth. It has not moved since.
Need we really speculate about why? USPS is not responsible to the consumer, being a government monopoly (our oldest and most maligned, too) it is responsible to the government. To my knowledge only twice in its history has the USPS turned a profit. Every other year Congress has voted money to make up the balance. Think about that. A "business" that's been failing for 232 years. Makes you want to go "wtf?" Congress has legislated restrictions on competitors' pricing. It's outrageous.
Everything I see on Lew Rockwell's site recently reinforces a notion I have been developing. The United States is a police state already and we are moving beyond it to even greater levels of oppression. This new form I like to call a prison state. The prison state is a state where all the citizens' (inmates') activities are carefully controlled, like in prison. A central authority makes all the decisions and regimented life gradually is eroded until one fears freedom and actually wants to be controlled, like ex-cons who commit crimes just to be returned to jail.
It's only a matter of time before the State uses the "environmental crisis" as an excuse to rigidly control all economic activity.
Welcome, everyone, to Marxism-Lennonism, my new blog on the Austrian Network. Now it's my turn to compete in the blog market for your attention, your comments, and the inevitable hate mail. I'm an anarcho-capitalist, I am in the midst of organizing a grassroots movement for Ron Paul in a school with a large number of socialists, the local Republican club proudly boasts to being "cheerleaders of the Empire," I'm majoring in physics, I'm going to be doing fencing, and (hopefully) sketch comedy. So, yeah, it's gonna be a busy year.
P.S. All hate mail can be sent to this address:
Your Local Incinerator
C/O I don't
Anyhoo, as soon as I can rent or purchase a copy I'll be reviewing the classic film The Astronaut Farmer, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis, which I can't believe Lew Rockwell and his bloggers missed.