The Freedom Report

The Freedom Report podcast today interviews special guest Professor Edward Stringham, economics professor at Trinity College in Connecticut. Stringham's story from the NY Daily News looks at the numbers of citizens killed in police encounters and compares the data with countries around the world. 

From the NY Daily News: 

In the United States, the overall homicide rate is 5 per 100,000. That means out of any given 100,000 Americans, five will be victims and (ignoring for the moment, perpetrators of multiple homicide) five people will commit homicide.

But what is the rate at which police kill citizens? Although official statistics have historically been scant, we now know that police killed 1,100 Americans in 2014and 476 Americans in the first five months of 2015. Given that America has roughly 765,000 sworn police officers, that means the police-against-citizen kill rate is more than 145 per 100,000.

Let us put that into perspective. In most countries in Europe the national homicide rate is 1 per 100,000, so that means American police kill at 145 times the rate of the average European citizen. The two most violent countries in the world are Venezuela and Honduras with national homicide rates of 54 and 90 per 100,000. The U.S. government issues travel warnings stating: “The Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens that the level of crime and violence in Honduras remains critically high” and “violent crime in Venezuela is pervasive.” If you are not comfortable vacationing in those countries, it is little wonder why so many Americans are uncomfortable with police who kill at more than 1.5 and 2.5 times the homicide rates of the two most violent countries.

So what conclusions should one draw from this and other data points? Professor Stringham believes that privatizing many of the duties of police forces might result in a reduction of overall violence. He points to cases such as North Carolina, where deputies are allowed to operate under a system that doesn't grant them the same immunity as public officials, thereby placing greater restrictions and responsibility on the individual officers. Is a free market in security the way to go? Tune in to our show, and subscribe to us on iTunes. 

The U.S. Army announced that all eight women who attempted to become Rangers failed to meet the basic minimum standards. Some are saying the standards should be changed. Is that the case? 

Today's episode of the Freedom Report podcast takes a look at the standards that are required for soldiers to be integrated into combat and special forces combat units in the military. Women have served honorably in the U.S. military, albeit in support roles, but now the pressure from special interest groups have called into question whether physical standards are a good enough measure for women to be integrated. 

We contrast the standards for Army rangers with the Israeli Defense Forces, (the IDF) so as to better understand why our ally in the Middle East has given women the opportunity to serve in front line combat. Today's show examines the differences between the physical standards of Israel and the United States, calling on the expertise of front-line IDF soldiers, as well as the testimony of current U.S. Army rangers who give an in depth analysis of why the American standards perhaps ought to be challenged. 

Listen in and subscribe on iTunes to the Freedom Report podcast. 

NEW JERSEY - Mischele Lewis is a suburban mom and activist who's pushing legislation to make it a crime for men to lie in order to get sex. Lewis wants the police to arrest men if they lie about things like having children, or living in a beautiful home when they really are just camping in their parents basement. One has to wonder if there would be any men left outside of prison if the bill were to pass. 

From Philly.com

I know this is going to make some readers livid, but stay with me: Introduced late last year by Assemblyman Troy Singleton, D-Burlington, the bill would make "sexual assault by fraud" a punishable offense. The bill defines it as "an act of sexual penetration to which a person has given consent because the actor has misrepresented the purpose of the act or has represented he is someone he is not."

"I think it's important because trying to deceive anyone for the purpose of sexual gratification is just wrong," Lewis told me last week as we sat on her front porch in Florence Township, N.J. "Every person has the right to knowing consent. And before they consent to be intimate with anybody, they should absolutely know 100 percent who it is that they are being intimate with.

"Whether it's as simple as . . . they slip off their wedding ring and then they engage in a relationship with someone, but the man or woman has no idea that the person they are with is married," she added. "Lying to someone else for any reason is never OK, whether it be [for] a job, a relationship, criminal history, parental history, marital history . . .. When did we become a society that thinks it's completely acceptable to lie to other people on a daily basis and think that's morally OK?

Of course, the law that is proposed is very specific, in that it only targets males through the wording of "sexual penetration," unless you're into pegging, in which case perhaps a woman might be charged if she lied in order to engage in such base activities. 

And what about all the lies that women engage in? Those push-up bras? The "Myspace Angles" that make them look 100 pounds thinner? I can't tell you how many times I've showed up on a date with what I thought would be a cute chick, who turned out to be a chunky monkey. Should I be able to call the police on these porcine prevaricators?

Today's episode of the Freedom Report discusses what happens when someone wants the law to save them from their stupid decisions. Subscribe to us on iTunes, and leave us a 5-star review! 

The mother of a four-year-old son, Heather Hironomus, tearfully signed an order allowing for the circumcision of her boy, so that she could be released from prison. The event has stirred a national debate about the necessity of circumcision, and the question of whether all children should be allowed the right to bodily integrity.

Hironomus was imprisoned after she fled with her son, attempting to avoid the fulfillment of an agreement with the boy's father that would see him circumcised. She's now taken center stage on the issue, with anti-circumcision activists rallying to her cause, raising $50,000 in legal bills to defend her son, Chase Hironomus. The father wishes to circumcise the boy so that he looks like him.

RELATED: 7 Legal Rights And Privileges Afforded Only To Women

Currently, the laws in the United States protect girls from the practice of female genital mutilation, but not boys. While some studies argue that there are health benefits to circumcising boys, such arguments would never be allowed as evidence if applied to girls. The arguments that a reduction in the number of STD's for the removal of foreskin would be roundly pilloried if applied to the female sex. So why is there a societal double standard?

Today's episode of the Freedom Report podcast takes a look at this divisive issue, and asks why do girls have special rights that boys don't share?

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky took to the floor yesterday to mount an epic filibuster in defense of civil liberties. Paul's 11 hour speech ended just before midnight, and placed him center stage in the debate against the NSA's unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping programs.

Paul was joined in his filibuster by some Democrats who helped him maintain his voice by asking him questions. Paul was able to drink water and eat some candies to maintain his strength, while fellow presidential contenders Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz looked on.

Paul's filibuster was chided by some, who argued that his speech was not actually holding up the renewals of key portions of the PATRIOT ACT. But for the senator's supporters, it was an important stand against the NSA's powers to collect phone records of American citizens.

The House of Representatives passed legislation that would end the warrantless surveillance, and President Obama stated his intent to sign such legislation if it reached his desk. But Paul's greatest obstacles to achieving such a measure would ironically come from one of his best friends and allies, the senior senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell.

McConnell plainly wants to reauthorize the government to continue the program, and his powerful role as senate majority leader will give him wide latitude to block any attempts at reform. Will McConnell and Paul go head-t0-head in the coming weeks? Only time will tell.

Today's episode of the Freedom Report podcast welcomes a new guest host and intern for The Libertarian Republic, Laura Meyers. Please give her a warm welcome to the show by subscribing to The Freedom Report on iTunes, and leaving us a 5-star, and positive written review.

Today's Freedom Report podcast takes a look at the future of technology and its impact on liberty. Will Elon Musk's solar city project with Tesla give mankind the boost we need to get off this rock? Or are his plans doomed to fail due to solar energy subsidies that bolster his industry?

And what about our food supply? Anti-GMO activists around the world are preparing to march against Monsanto this weekend, but what would life on our planet be like if we didn't have the modern genetic engineering techniques that we use to sustain our healthy populations?

Also, how can libertarians best protect our radical belief in the primacy of the individual if we are surrounded by socialists? Max Borders, editor of The Freeman magazine and director of content for the Foundation for Economic Education joins the Freedom Report to discuss the "Ultimate Exit," or the plan behind the flight from civilization.

Max Borders' latest project is the culmination of these discussions at an upcoming conference in Austin, Texas called "Voice and Exit," where entrepreneurs and techn0-optimists such as himself will gather to discuss the future of human flourishing. Listen in on today's show for a sneak preview of what you can expect from these radical optimists.

June Lapine - AKA Shoe0nhead

The Libertarian Republic writer June Lapine posted a joke anti-capitalist meme to the Internet... but the Internet didn't know Shoe!

Lapine, AKA Shoe0nhead, a critic of extremist feminism, posted a photograph of herself last week that was a parody of anti-capitalist liberals who whine about capitalism from the comfort of their $600 iPhones. 

Shoe's troll went mega-viral, with most people believing that she was being serious. But who can blame them really? According to Skeptic's Dictionary, Poe's Law states that it's difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between parodies of fundamentalism and their genuine proponents, since they both seem equally insane. Truly anti-capitalist weirdos and economic illiterate leftists made June's satire hard, but not impossible, to spot. 

And since it wasn't impossible, doesn't this just make old Mark Twain's adage even more true; that a lie can run around the world twice before the truth can put on its... Shoe? 

Prominent conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet shared the meme, without any indication that he knew it was satire. And while it's not quite certain whether or not he saw it as such, he later admitted he did, his credulous truther fans certainly were hornswoggled by it. Heck, even a fellow writer at The Libertarian Republic was taken in by the prank. So what sort of responsibility do we have to let people know that we're making a joke, if any? 

This episode of the Freedom Report podcast is sure to make you laugh, cry, and make you think twice before sharing the latest meme. Oh who are we kidding, we know you're gonna share that stupid sh*t anyway. 

"Libertarianism, in my view, in the current world, is just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. Anarchism is quite different from that. It calls for an elimination to tyranny, all kinds of tyranny. Including the kind of tyranny that's internal to private power concentrations."

-Noam Chomsky

"Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs."

-Ayn Rand

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended."

-Frederic Bastiat

"At the Last Judgment, libertarianism may find itself reduced to a minority of one, and its name will be not Legion, but Rothbard."

-Russell Kirk

Venture into the wilds of any libertarian message board, or the comments section on any libertarian article, or any of a lovely variety of subreddits or Twitter feeds, and you inevitably encounter quite possibly the most unfortunate figure ever witnessed in political discourse: The anarcho-capitalist.

These human whirligigs of confusion perpetually pirouette between discussions, trying desperately to live in some undefinable area of the political spectrum. They are at once a refutation and a vindication of the horseshoe theory of politics -- that the extreme Right and the extreme Left end up in the same place; a refutation because neither the extreme Right nor the extreme Left wants anything to do with them, but a vindication because they seem to end up in those sad places all the same. Theirs is an existence marked by endless conspiracy theories, utopian delusions, and rags soiled by the reading of the latest Lew Rockwell blog posts.

For a mercifully long period of time, they have been irrelevant. However, in the present age, they have become a menace to the liberty movement, mostly by virtue of their ghoulishly enthusiastic willingness to apologize for, and make alliances with, the web-grown species of Left-wing fascism known as "Social Justice." But this is not a surprise. Anarcho-capitalism is simply a Trojan horse for Left-wing anarchism, and those that believe in it are either too deluded to see this, or too beyond reason to care. As to the form Left-wing anarchism takes, it can only be described as, with apologies to Thomas Hobbes, bellum Tumblrum contra omnes.

In short, anarcho-capitalism is stupid, delusional, crypto-Leftist garbage.

Oh yeah, you thought Austin's listicle was bad? It was gentle. He at least believed in this nonsense at one point, and saw the light. You'll find no such charity here.  Anarcho-capitalism is rotten down to its warped bones. It is optically suicidal, congenitally toxic, and philosophically incoherent. At its best, it is nothing but a confused defense of subsidiarity. At its worst, it is sophistry designed to permit fascism of every variety. What is more, it has been tried, and we have seen the outcome, in the real world, or as close as anyone will let this bloodyminded worldview get.

It is about this last point that I'll spend most of my time, but we should touch on the first few briefly just as groundwork. First, there is the philosophy's optics problem. No point wasting time: Anarcho-capitalism is the best friend of the entire clickbait-driven Left, which constantly tries to tar libertarianism as an unreasonable, fringe ideology. It is to every Gawker, Salon, or Daily Show writer what the Scarecrow was to Dorothy Gale: A brainless strawman useful only as a crutch for venturing deeper into their personal fever dream.

And what about its intellectual roots? Well, you can't talk about anarcho-capitalism without properly naming its original exponent as Murray Rothbard. Now, as anyone who knows the career of Murray Roth

LA Times Points Out That Progressives Are Libertarians of Convenience

A new column from the LA Times tears into progressives for being hypocrites, calling them "Libertarians of onvenience" when it comes to government regulations. 

Aaron Ren penned a column describing how urban progressives decry regulation when it comes to food trucks or marijuana, but think that Wal-Mart and cigarettes should be regulated out of existence. They love Uber and Lyft, but ban plastic bags. Libertarians of Convenience lack a baseline understanding of how all regulations are fundamentally at odds with liberty. 

Liberals will counter with the argument that they only want to regulate industries that are obviously bad for people, but that is turned on its face by the reality that they seek to deregulate the raw milk industry, which hospitalizes approximately 100 a year, and sickens nearly 1,000. 

And look at e-cigarettes, for example. Liberals want them as tightly regulated as regular cigarettes, even though there is no scientific link to cancer. It doesn't matter. Libertarians of convenience lack a fully realized understanding of economic freedom, and thus are hypocrites, regulating the industries they see as uncool, and deregulating whatever is their fad of the week. 

Today's episode of the Freedom Report podcast takes aim at these progressive hypocrites, and points out that these accusations do often describe many conservative's beliefs on regulation as well. 

Full disclosure, I am a former students at RPHS, graduating in 1999 and was a student ofKen Simon's.

PECULIAR, MO - Raymore-Peculiar High School teacherKen Simon, 70, is out of a job after showing his senior class a video from 1959 which taught people to avoid strangers because they might be homosexuals. Simon, interviewed byThe Libertarian Republic, describes the permanent suspension as a bullying tactic from an administration which has been trying to push him out for a long time, ostensibly because of his age.

The video in question was a "Boys Beware" PSA, and was created by theIngelwood, Calif., Police Department, for training purposes. The filmtalks about homosexuals as pedophiles.

Jimmy played baseball all afternoon and didnt feel like walking home so he decided to thumb a ride, the film explains. You see, Ralphs a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate relationship with members of their own sex, but by now Jimmy felt a fondness for Ralph and they continued to go places together.'

Simon showed the video in a class that was designed to teach students about law enforcement, and the changing attitudes towards homosexuality. A police department that created such a PSA today would probably be shut down from protests in no time.

Ken Simon

I did say right when I started, lets look at this and see how things have changes since 1959, Simon said.

Simon says the real agenda behind this doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality, though. He arguesthat the school principal had it out for him, and describes a confrontation three years ago. PrincipalSteven Millercalled him into the office and harshly criticized him, suggesting that he had "nothing to offer the school."

Simon also received a note threatening that he would be terminated in 30 days if he did not improve. This note was handed to him in front of his students, causing him to break down crying in front of the class. While it may be illegal to terminate someone due to their age, Simon believes that this is exactly what's happening. Simon says that other teachers told him he was given the law enforcement class specifically because it was designed for him to fail. The principal wanted him out, and was looking for any excuse he could find.

With two weeks of classes left to go, Simon is banned from attending graduation, and has been cut off from the school's email accounts so that he can speak to other teachers. He plans to protest by appearing at the final day of school's classes and sitting outside with a sign to the students saying "Happy Graduation." Simon is retiring this year, but he says it wasn't really by choice. He claims that Principal Steven Miller wanted him out and found any excuse he could to eject him.

Students, alumni, and friends who want to support Ken Simon aresigning a petition here at Change.org.As of now there are 2,482 signatures, with a goal of 5,000.

Donna McDonald, who signed the petition and whose children were taught by Simonsaid to Fox 4that, Everyone who knows him knows how wonderful he is. If there were more teachers like him, it would be a better place, she said. We have to stand behind our teachers.

The heads of the school can be contacted at the information below.

Steven Miller, Principal, (816) 892-1402

Kristina Martin, Associate Principal, (816) 892-1406