Augustine2004's opinions on Lew Rockwell, Plato, and assorted other subjects

[Augustine2004]

If you put your mouse pointer on the row of green boxes under my name a popup proclaims that I have put on sassy pants. Whoever wrote that, I guess, is a woman who has an overactive imagination. The adjective I am not going to attach to the last two words in the previous sentence, I leave to your imagination.

[Augustine2004]

Eric Peters suggests how we may start to recover our liberty (actually, we've already made a good start by recovering our right to bear arms, a subject he discusses here--unfortunately the comments have bad language)

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...ujq1AJeCNe_Zfw

Another example is the coalition against the use of fluoride compounds (Healthy Liberty Coalition, which includes Fluoride Action Network (FAN), Mercola.com, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Consumers for Dental Choice). Tremendous progess, though unfortunately much remains to be done. More or less a grassroot effort.



I think it would be more cost-effective to go after the executive branch of the USFG, prune it by 95% or so, though.

There is a lesson here. Citizens can organize and force the USFG to change. I would prefer total elimination, but I'd be happy with huge cuts. Coalition To Prune the Federal Government (COTOPRUFEG . . . hmmm better find a better name)

[Augustine2004]

Until reading this essay http://lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard296.html I had not an inkling the American Revolution was as much a result of English thought as American. I did not know before the name of Thomas Hollis of Lincoln's Inn.

[Augustine2004]

just discovered: pricedingold.com

[Augustine2004]

Surprising and welcome news. I hope this is a start of a strong trend
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewr...es/115106.html

[Augustine2004]

I'm not sure Murray Rothbard is distinguishing correctly between pietistic Christianity and liturgical Christianity here
http://lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard297.html
Or perhaps the category "liturgical" is kinda trivial as defined.

[Augustine2004]

Thomas J. DiLorenzo asserted that "[The USFG] did nothing while as many as 1 million former slaves died of disease shortly after the war [Between the States] in the worst public health disaster in American history." ----- http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo233.html
He does not offer a reference.

The Wikipedia article on the Reconstruction Era of the United States didn't help, except possibly this sentence: "Historian Eric Foner argues, 'What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure.'"

Tantalizing. Maybe a few of you readers are quite knowledgable about that era.

[Augustine2004]

To me, this passage resembles a description of the TSA:

The 20th-century passport phenomenon is perhaps best described by the erstwhile Interior Minister of Germany, who said that “All the experts essentially recognize that the really dangerous people almost always find a way to get in and out. Passport requirements, and especially visa requirements, thus result in a heavy burden on the movement of the broad mass of innocent travelers. An enormous – and largely useless – administrative effort is expended trying to get a few wrongdoers by issuing millions of passports and visas to innocent people.”

--------- http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/jackson-w1.1.1.html

[Augustine2004]

Porter Stansberry, a investment researcher, wrote, " . . . when the Rockefellers' interest in the [Grasberg complex] mine [one of the most prolific in the world] was threatened in the 1960s, the U.S. government engineered a civil war in Indonesia [leading to one of the largest mass killings] in history." Later, he said it was "CIA-orchestrated."

I checked Wikipedia. No mention in the Grasberg article nor in the history section of the Indonesia article.

I think Porter is reliable, so it's frustrating to be unable to use Wikipedia to confirm what he said. He didn't give references or cite anything else. Anyone know anything about Indonesia in the 1960s?

[Augustine2004]

Race hustlers and mob inciters like Al Sharpton represent such polarizing forces in America today. Yet Sharpton has become a White House adviser, and Attorney General Eric Holder has been photographed literally embracing him.

------------ http://lewrockwell.com/sowell/sowell102.html

Makes you wonder, does it? Obama through his administration policies causing all the racial violence (blacks attacking whites) that's going on (see the article linked above)?

[Augustine2004]

How can anyone think wartime is a time of prosperity, generally speaking? According to this article, Keynesians claim WWII bettered American lives. "Battered" would be a better word.
http://www.theamericanconservative.c...me-prosperity/

[Augustine2004]

By now you've undoubtedly heard of the decision by Bolivia's foreign minister to kick out Cola Coke because of that fateful Mayan Calendar date: "Dec. 21 should be the end of Cola Coke." There will be a shift from capitalism to communitarianism. Things will go better without Coke.

[Augustine2004]

Psst! Interested in a place with a long history of zero government you may never have heard of? http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/a-...esidency-8270/

[Augustine2004]

Doug Casey decried the effort by the State to get people to behave irresponsibly, "for generations now." Feed, clothe, medicate 'em, and tell them what's right and wrong. He said, "This encourages people, subtly and overtly, to act in irresponsible ways. It's no surprise then that irresponsibility and criminality is what we get." Certainly people are being raised and taught to not take responsibility for their lives, but I don't know what Doug is talking about, I mean, about the subtle ways the State is encouraging people to act in irresponsible ways. Can you think of an example?

[Augustine2004]

I wonder whether it can be proven that whenever and wherever government exists, we should expect that for every winner of governmental favor there are more than one loser (a poor soul who loses more to the government than he gains from it).