Archive for December, 2007
Habeas Wha?
Friday, December 28th, 2007Is posting a speech a total cop out when it comes to submitting a post? You bet. But that doesn't make this speech, concerning the ever growing disdain the Federal Government has for every American's natural right to habeas corpus, any less relevant. Please, enjoy the wonderful Judge Napolitano. ...
Vox Day on Ron Paul and the Bhutto assassination
Friday, December 28th, 2007Insightful, incisive, and correct, as usual. Money quote: "I'm increasingly coming to believe that Democrats are stupid, and Republicans are insane. Both conditions result in the advocacy of that which will inevitably lead to evil. In fact, that will be my explanation the next time someone asks me why I ...
Home air fascism
Thursday, December 27th, 2007The December 14, 2007 edition of NPR's "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow was a veritable orgy of statolatrist megalomania and top-rate fodder for libertarian ranting. Their topic during the hour in question was toxins in the air in our homes. You can listen to the entire hour here (click the play ...
Tim Swanson on the harm of State regulation of telecom
Thursday, December 27th, 2007Tim Swanson has written a collection of masterful columns for the Mises Institute, one in 2006 and two in the past week, about the harm already done to consumers by State intervention in the telecommunications industry and the harm that more State intervention will cause. I will try to amalgamate and ...
Rhino Repellant
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007Wow, it seems that by agreeing to begin a libertarian blag with my friend John, I seemingly have unleashed a monster onto the world. When he approached me with the idea, I was concerned that we would not have frequent enough updates. It seems this fear was absolutely unfounded, since ...
Gene Callahan on Rousseau
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007Gene Callahan, Austrian economist, LRC contributor, and author of Economics for Real People, runs a blag called Crash Landing. He wrote a good post about the first part of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, defending Rousseau as being a very intelligent, sharp, and skilled political philosopher, and for having ...
IP absurdity
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007It is not proof of an idea's incorrectness that it results in impractical absurdities that go against common sense, but it's a good indication. Intellectual property laws fit the bill nicely. Just because incompetent and corrupt governments give patents to undeserving parties and protect the most ridiculous, non-proprietal "innovations" and ...
Pale Blue Dot
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007I'm still convinced this is the best video on the internet.
The sad state of Zimbabwe
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007Robert Mugabe has ruined the once-nice African nation of Zimbabwe because he, too, is a fascist, insane zealot. He is a racist who seized all the white people's land and drove every prosperous, successful person out of the country. His incompetent control of the central bank has resulted in astronomical ...
Bueno para los venezolanos
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007There was an article from Time magazine that was published at Yahoo.com, Why Venezuelans Turned on Chavez. Obviously Hugo Chavez is a fascist maniac who wants to become a totalitarian dictator because of how well that's worked in Latin America's past. That, I gathered from the article, is the ...
MINIX operating system
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007When I was looking for blags to add to our blagroll, I came across movementarian.com, Tim Swanson's web page. Even if I hadn't heard of Tim Swanson, I would have added him without hesitation because of his libertarianism and obvious fixation on "The Simpsons." He could hate baseball and beer ...
China says, “Merry Christmas,” Google won’t
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007I try not to get all up in arms about the "liberal war on Christmas" and all the other PC things that Christian conservatives complain about, not because they aren't harmful or threatening or worthy of denunciation, but because the Christian/neocon right themselves are currently a large part of the ...
Eric Hoffer on the neocons
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007If I were in a position of importance at a university and I were able to specify three books that every incoming student must have read before enrolling, I would choose The Law, The True Believer, and The Law again. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer (1951) is about mass ...
I just don’t understand
Monday, December 24th, 2007When I was at a friend's apartment for a Christmas party, the subject of paying taxes came up (it's a long story, it was during a game, not a political discussion, so only I, with my obsession with libertarianism and politics, probably read anything into it). This girl who is ...
Ron Paul on WRIF
Monday, December 24th, 2007I'm honestly a little surprised at the paucity of presidential candidates' commercials I've seen on television, but that could be because I don't watch much TV and not the stations that run the majority of the commercials (basic network TV and the 24-hour news/politics channels). I do watch Tucker Carlson ...
Ron Paul on Meet the Press
Monday, December 24th, 2007Lew Rockwell wrote a pretty good summary of Tim Russert's interview with Ron Paul yesterday. My verdict on the interview was that Dr. Paul did pretty well, and the content of what he said was about as good as it could have been, but he seemed a little...defensive, unsure, unsmooth. ...
Objectivists against Ron Paul
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007Stephan Kinsella has an excellent refutation of the Objectivist disapproval of Ron Paul as candidate for president—and, indeed, his entire philosophy in general. Kinsella says, It is clear that the primary objection of Objectivists to Paul is his foreign policy views and non-interventionism. The other criticisms do not seem to ...
Minarchism, libertarianism, and negative rights
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007Jeffrey Tucker's recent account of his experience in court spawned a quite lively discussion in the Mises blag about private provision of law enforcement in the absence of a State. I made one of the comments towards the end. Many of the minarchist positions and objections are good and well ...
Origins
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007Though this website is only at the beginning of its infancy, it is already clear that the partnership of John and Kelly at blagnet.net is destined to be remembered alongside Rothbard and Mises, Jefferson and Madison, Caesar and Octavian, Roosevelt and Churchill, Watson and Crick, Lennon and McCartney, Shakespeare and ...
Defining Libertarianism
Friday, December 21st, 2007Welcome to Blagnet.net. It is our intention here to have a forum for the discussion of libertarian philosophy and how it applies to modern American politics. However, before we begin to do so, it is important, dear reader, for us to first clearly define what we mean when we say "libertarian". ...