A Baker’s Dozen Reasons Why Torture is Wrong

Posted on 2014-12-16 by TPOL Nathan

by Nathan Barton

WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, WHOEVER DOES IT

  1. Torture is immoral: it not only violates the Zero Aggression Principle in every way, and the Golden Rule, but it treats humans worse than animals.
  2. Torture is counterproductive: when torture is used, it inevitably becomes a situation in which the person being tortured dies, becomes catatonic, or makes up whatever information or responses the torturer wants to hear.  There is no way to tell whether they are speaking the truth or not.
  3. Torture does NOT make a nation using it safer, because the fact that torture is being used generally results in more anger and more vicious responses: not just torture by the other side, but reprisals on combatants and noncombatants alike. It is sometimes called “blowback,” and it is very common. Continue reading →
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Libertarian Commentary on the News: #14-51A: Schools – places of fear, trauma and death

Posted on 2014-12-15 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Good morning.  Government-run, tax-funded “public” schools continue to be more and more of an embarrassment to the Fifty States and our communities, as they seek to denigrate any ideas or beliefs not accepted by the educational elite, further destroy parental authority and responsibility, and promote the ideals of transnational progressivism in every way.  But it is more than just their educational philosophy and practices that makes these such evil places.  There is the brain-dead stupidity of too many of them, the dogmatic certainty and predilection to slavish obedience to laws and regulations and whims, and the fact that they are target rich environments for perverts, sadists, and abusers of all kinds. Continue reading →

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Disappearances: American Style?

Posted on 2014-12-14 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Warning: This column contains disturbing information and speculation which may anger and upset many people.  It is intended to challenge us to think outside the box and our comfort zone, and examine if things are much, MUCH worse than we might imagine.

Mexico’s civil war continues, as the sides are seen more clearly.  The cops (now being merged into a single national “federale” police force, apparently) are one side: an enemy to the people as a whole as well as to the drug lords and the other government officials.  According to the WaPo, Mexicans’ search for students’ bodies reveals a history of hidden deaths. Forty-three students went missing in September, but they were hardly the first. Their abduction by police has let loose a flood of new accusations. Continue reading →

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The Bill of [Rights] Restraints

Posted on 2014-12-14 by MamaLiberty

By Robert Greenslade
© Nitwit Press

With the 223rd anniversary of the adoption of the Amendments commonly known as the Bill of Rights only days away (December 15th), a majority of the American people still do not understand the true intent of the Amendments. They believe the Amendments are the source of their individual rights and the federal government was granted the general power to secure those rights. In reality, the Amendments did not create any individual rights or grant the federal government any general power. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-50F: Stormy weather, natural and political

Posted on 2014-12-13 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Good morning. Hope you have a great weekend.  Stormy weather swept the Pacific Coast for the past several days, possibly ending the “worst drought in 1200 years.” Of course, the Californians are never happy: now they are complaining about the 70-mile-ah-hour winds and more mudslides and the fact that the school children of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley are running loose for an unplanned three-day weekend. (Got news, guys, those “schoolchildren” in Berkeley have been running wild for the last several weeks protesting police violence against blacks.)  By Monday, it will be the parents screaming, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Anyway, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains (our stomping grounds) will get a new taste of winter weather this weekend as remnants of that storm pass through and mess up airflow. Continue reading →

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RIP: Bill of Rights Day – Mourning

Posted on 2014-12-12 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Monday is “Bill of Rights Day” and I think it is appropriate to use the opportunity to remember the late and great document which once helped us keep some hard-won liberties.

Therefore, I’d like to suggest that you wear black armbands, or a black ribbon, in memory of the United States Bill of Rights, which once meant so much and was such an important part of that other dead document, the United States Constitution.

I realize that there are many more Bills of Rights (or “Right”) in this world, including at least Fifty, one each for the Fifty States, and of course, the first known Bill of Rights, that of the English and later the English and Scots and Welsh and Irish peoples, dating to 1688.  (It, too, died long ago.)  Sadly, the Fifty States’ Bills of Right are as dead in this post-republic era of the Pax Americana and American Empire as the one, of ten articles, which amended that poor document, the Constitution of 1787. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-50E: Tyranny at the state level

Posted on 2014-12-12 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Good morning.

People constantly seek ways to place the Fifty States in various orders of “liberty” and “tyranny” and best and worst place to have a business, own a home, or retire.  But it seems impossible to track everything that makes life miserable for residents and everyone else who has to do business in or travel through the state.  Consider Michigan: I’ve been fortunate to only have to be in that stinking, politically-polluted cesspool twice in my life, but there are millions of people trapped in the place.  Today, as pro-government, pro-state a magazine as American Legislator features an article about How Michigan’s Absurd Laws Criminalize the Entire Population.” The stats are mind-boggling, including how many more crimes they create each year, that 27% of the state budget pays for incarceration of convicts, and that its penal code has more provisions and sections than Carter’s Little Liver Pills.  As Lady Susan pointed out in a recent commentary, what does it matter if it is the FedGov or one of the Fifty States that owns the land, steals the money, and trashes liberty?  At least it is easier to escape Michigan to a more free state (relatively) like Wyoming or South Dakota, than it is to escape from the Fifty States to Mexico or Canada. Just don’t think going to Illinois is an escape… Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-50D: This and that

Posted on 2014-12-11 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Good morning. Just a little of this and that on the Home Front today, for our midweek review.

First, some home front news, showing how the police forces have continued to get even MORE corrupt (if that is possible).  Because a cop refused to taze a man armed with a knife and threatening self-harm, and instead talked him down and got him to surrender peacefully (so that another, freshly-arrived cop could needlessly taze him), he was fired because he did NOT use violence to resolve the situation. So here we have a case of a “good cop” (assuming such exists anymore) who is punished for keeping the peace instead of resorting to violence.  Soon no doubt to be followed by similar examples across the nation. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-50C: Historical changes in the Middle East; dead letters

Posted on 2014-12-11 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Whether we want to admit it or not, history is constantly being rewritten, and what we see in the world today is much different in many ways that what was seen a quarter- or half-century behind us, or the same time in the future.  We just don’t realize the huge changes, most of the time, because they are incremental.

It is kind of interesting, historically, when you think about it.  For almost 2500 years, from the time of the “Babylonian Captivity” after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, there have been Jews scattered throughout the lands of Mesopotamia and Persia and Arabia.  For more than nineteen hundred years, since the preaching of Peter and Andrew and Thomas in those lands, there have been followers of the Christ in those same regions. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-50B: Government wars on religions

Posted on 2014-12-09 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

This morning (oh! Good morning!) let us talk about the wars on religions. There are definitely religious wars by government: although it is claimed that Western governments, including the United States, have been waging a “crusade” against Islam, it appears more accurate to say that the FedGov, Her Majesty’s governments (UK, Canada, elsewhere), and various European countries have been waging war against the various types of “christianity” while Islam is “protected.” They attack in a variety of ways, some blatant and some very subtle.  Here are some examples. Continue reading →

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