The Laissez Faire City Times Articles

Published November 1997 to August 2001

by Wolf DeVoon

" White House staff scripted every question asked at President Bush�s set piece "town hall meeting" in Orlando, proof of which is the fact that CNN had the question graphics loaded in show order, ready to air at the precise moment when hand-picked shills stood up on cue to recite them."

De Facto Anarchy

We are already free. So act like it.

"On and off, during the past three years, I've urged you to pack up and scram, before it becomes impossible to get an "essential travel" permit from your local Homeland Defense Committee and Draft Board.

You still have time, I suppose, to diddle and fret a while longer � but soon enough, the common sense imperative of saving your own skin (and those belonging to your libertarian loved ones) will inspire personal mobilization. Here's a list of destinations that I recommend."

"Let's begin as Ayn Rand often did, by defining our terms. A scourge is 'a whip used to punish people; someone or something causing misery; any cause of distress thought of as divine punishment.' A religion is "man's expression of his acknowledgment of the divine; a system of beliefs and practices relating to the sacred and uniting its adherents in a community."

"I suspect that I am prone to making trouble. And I've decided to make more trouble than usual this year by authoring The Freeman's Constitution.

A few months from now, it will take effect as the basis of a new legal system that many of you will reluctantly end up accepting and using as a standard of civil justice and due process among freemen."

"Forget recession. A recent analysis by Wall Street Journal staff reporters Stephen E. Frank and E.S. Browning nailed the unfolding global technology collapse for what it truly is � a burst bubble of speculation that will never recover, period, end of story."

"Those of us who remember a happier, less hysterical American Experience were first to acknowledge "electronic commerce." At the time (circa 1960), it required vacuum tube analog circuitry, data entered on punchcards, and output to a mechanical teletypewriter. How quickly things change."

"For twenty-something years, I mistakenly believed that my book manuscripts and shorter works were ignored for lack of merit. Now, thanks to Dr. Francis Fukuyama, I understand why I failed as a political pathfinder."

"If you believe that our dream images are significant, here's a doozey:"

"It is sensible and proper to sequester your financial assets and head for the encrypted hills�but this is not the same thing as saving industrial civilization; it is merely covering your own butt."

"There is abundant evidence that people cling to their dignity, no matter what. Why? Because it is fundamental to human nature and intimately tied to survival."

"Before we fight World War III in cyberspace, let's consider why justice must be done by private individuals�not governments."

"At the insistence of a friend, I've been studying the Journals of Ayn Rand (Dutton, 1997). It illuminates her achievement in splendid detail."

"It's a great privilege to work for a scoundrel. If you ever get a chance to assist one, I congratulate you for showing some initiative and a dab of courage."

"Oh, dear. Here we go again. Al Ruddy says he's going to make a movie of Atlas Shrugged, after 30 years and three previous attempts to pull it off."

"Folks who speculate about nontraditional legal systems generally have my blessing, however misguided their efforts. It is more important to talk about smashing the state, than it is to make sense."

"In the beginning there was land and water and sky. We lived as nomads and foragers, gathering fruit and seeds where it was possible, taking fish from the rivers and game from the forest."

"When Queenie befriended a young actor in Hollywood a couple years ago, I found him parked on our sofa, looking brash and sincere and naive."

"After careful consideration of everything I�ve observed during my first two weeks in Laissez Faire City, I can say with a high degree of confidence that the difference between Galt�s Gulch and this joint is -- not much."

"Our ability to grasp the notion of courage is awakened by a personal encounter with mortality. And, for reasons which I do not fully understand..."

by Wolf DeVoon

"I am going to convince you that the Libertarian Party is terminally ill and we should give it a decent memorial somewhere, maybe a Disney-ABC-Go Network link to a Stossel chat icon on AltaVista. It won't get many hits, but who cares?"

"To win an argument, impeach the dead. That's the macabre strategy of Jeff Walker's 400-page history of Objectivism, entitled The Ayn Rand Cult."

"One of the most peculiar problems in issuing a book on anarchy is that the law of copyright (which is enforced by government) seems to contradict and sabotage the author's political purpose."

" I'm going to give a simple, precise definition of anarchy. Despite historical misunderstanding of the term, anarchy is a form of social organization in which there is no sovereign state."

"Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two white teenagers who lived in the wealthy Denver suburb of Littleton decided to kill themselves. They also killed a dozen other teenagers, . . ."

"Humans exist in perfect freedom. Obedience is a choice. Government is therefore an illusion. Just pick up the telephone and summon a policeman to attend a crime in progress (robbery, rape, murder, kidnapping)."

"Let's start by defining our terms. A "value" is something you want to gain or keep. A lot of people think that life is a fundamental value, to be preserved at all costs."

"You can depend upon it: when a London Times economist swears that the moon is made of dust and rock, then in reality it's green cheese. And if Janet Bush is the soothsayer in question, assuring us that nothing's amiss in the financial night sky, then lunar cheddar is well past its sell-by date and starting to rot."

"Pack a lunch, grab a pencil, and follow me.

Perhaps more than other writers, I might have given you the impression that democracy is a combination of institutional folly and criminal conspiracy; that there is nothing we can do to halt bonehead regulation, mounting taxes, urban decline, laughable Wall Street share prices, McJobs that don�t pay a living wage, and global economic collapse on the back burner."

"Last September, as global financial markets were crashing, the economics editor of The London Times, Anatole Kaletsky, noted with approval the soothing words of Alan Greenspan, which created a temporary stock market rally. "Capitalism can prosper only with the support of sound government," Kaletsky declared..."

"Yesterday I suffered a complete mental breakdown while listening to Al Gore. Contact with other human beings is extremely difficult for me now. The most I seem able to do is listen to vapid radio broadcasts or read in silence. ..."

by Wolf DeVoon

"British prime minister Tony Blair likes government, and positively heaves with enthusiasm for the future of democracy. Well he should. Tony Blair is the best thing that happened to British socialism since the invention of income tax. . . ."

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