Harry Browne and Why America Needs to be Broken Up

[Tim May]

On Saturday, September 15, 2001, at 02:07 PM, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote:

> I fail to see any truly effective measures that can be taken to prevent
> determined attackers from committing acts of terrorism. The only course 
> of
> action, I believe, is to eliminate their desire to commit these attacks.
>
> Harry Browne's essay[1] points out things we could have done to remove 
> the
> (suspected) motivation for this (and other possible) political 
> terroristic
> attacks. Tim May has made similar points.
> [1] http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne2.html
>


Thanks very much for the reference to the Harry Browne essay...I endorse 
every bit of it. (I first encountered Harry Browne in 1973 when I read 
his book "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World." I had just voted for 
John Hospers, the first Libertarian Party candidate the year earllier, 
the first year the new LP ran a slate of candidates. This was back, 
almost 30 years ago, when I still had a little bit of faith in the 
process of voting and democracy.)

Not much I can add to Browne's essay except to point out that these 
united states are made up of people trading, inventing, building, and 
interacting. We refer to the "states," but even this gives too much 
emphasis to the role of government. The "state" I have lived in for 35 
years is the sixth or seventh largest economy in the world.

I ask you this: If California and New York and Texas and a dozen other 
regions were independent, libertarian trading  regions, with no gunboats 
sent to rescue ZOG occupiers in Palestine and no armies sent to Europe 
to fight their war for them, and no police forces in Somalia, Bosnia, 
Macedonia, Croatia, Korea, and a dozen other hellholes, WOULD THE ATTACK 
HAVE OCCURRED?

It's time to decentralize. Since peaceful attempts have failed, maybe 
other approaches need to be used.


--Tim May