A warhawk flies the coop
Posted in by Jonathan David Morris
I start on a personal note. I would like for the record to show that, today, I formally disavow the Republican Party as well as my past support for the Second Gulf War.
Now, let me be frank: This is something I didn’t see coming a year ago. I only saw things through a prism of GOP allegiance back then. I’m a year older now — a year wiser, I suppose. It shouldn’t be easy for an op-ed writer to admit when he’s wrong. But I was. And it is. And in light of George Bush’s latest State of the Union, saying goodbye to the Republican Party is the easiest thing I’ve done in quite some time.
This doesn’t mean I’ve gone Democrat, though. Quite the contrary. But let me explain.
There was a time not long ago when the president could do no wrong in my eyes, a time when I was willing to write, as I did in September ‘02, “I have faith in President Bush.” That time ended last summer, however, when I finally got fed up with his fiscally ridiculous ways. Indeed, John Kerry calls the Bush White House “reckless,” and when it comes to our wallets I tend to agree. And while I never thought I’d say this, the way Bush spends — and spends, and spends — I’m beginning to miss Bill Clinton.
The following is the fifth part of my account of my recent encounter with the bureaucracy of the Florida Department of Health. It will be followed by others. I have tried to be as objective as possible but readers are encouraged to take my account with the customary grain of salt. I believe that this entire episode has lessons for all libertarians.
Whether you’re forming a group or starting a business, one of the first and most important things you consider (after deciding where your focus will lie, of course) is the name of that group or business. Short, sweet, and to the point is usually best. If you get too cute, people may not take you seriously. If you get too clever, people may not recognize who you are or what you do.
Virginia’s controversial new Putative Father Registry law asks any man who has had heterosexual non-marital sex in Virginia to register with the State. Supporters say the law will help connect fathers with their children before the children are put up for adoption. Critics see it as another example of the erosion of citizens’ privacy. Both sides miss the real point of the Registry–to remove a father’s right to prevent his child’s mother from giving their child up for adoption without his consent.
I didn’t start out in the Libertarian Party as a big supporter of ending the drug war, I was more interested in economic issues and foreign policy, until I read a great deal about the Drug War and what can only be called illegal home invasions by law enforcement along with the prison industrial complex that has grown up around the issue. Twenty years ago ending the war on drugs was not high on my chart, but these days it is. So when the opportunity to attend the Olympia Hempfest, which is scheduled for the week after the Seattle Hempfest came up I wanted to make sure the Libertarian Party of Washington had a booth there.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
About 2 months ago, I wrote an article that was published in Liberty For All entitled 
Microsoft’s billionaire competitors took the wrong track. When they couldn’t out-compete MS they unleashed their paid congressdogs on the justice department who set the hounds of antitrust to gnaw upon the Gates gang. And now it looks like the Redmond crowd may wiggle out of that as well. What they should have done was sic the Center for Disease Control on them.
A state police plan to halt firearms sales in Pennsylvania from Sept. 2 through Sept. 6, ostensibly to update that agency’s background check system, is a civil rights outrage, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
For those who have made the mistake of reading my rants or, even worse, of actually listening to me, you may already know that I’m an optimist in a pessimistic sort of way. That sounds funny, but it can be summed up fairly succinctly.
