Archive for February, 2008
LRC blag back to normal?
Friday, February 29th, 2008Now that Ron Paul's presidential run has petered to an unfortunate end, I sincerely hope the Ron Paul fan club can go back to blagging about politics, freedom, and the State in general, and not Ron Paul and the election and polls all day, every day. Maybe now when I ...
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Thursday, February 28th, 2008If you took a college philosophy course, perhaps you learned about Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which is one of the most fascinating and memorable images in literary history, especially in the history of philosophy. It is from chapter seven of The Republic. I was prompted to find this tale ...
“The Moment of Truth” and real trash TV
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008J.H. Huebert is less forgiving of Barack Obama than I am. He implies Obama is evil, in fact.
Flu shots: “recommended” to “mandatory”?
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Karen De Coster made a prediction that I made to myself when I read this announcement this morning: The Imperial Federal Government is now recommending that all children between the ages of 6 months and 18 years get a flu shot once a year. I predict that within our lifetimes, ...
Kosovo’s secession
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008On the morning of February 18, the day after the region of Kosovo announced its secession and independence from Serbia, someone at work had the radio on NPR, which was mainly broadcasting the BBC's coverage of the Kosovo secession. Most of the coverage, especially the comments they played from citizens ...
Should governments block websites?
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008This is apparently what passes for moral-political discourse at the BBC.
Anti-racism laws mutate racism into newer, stronger form
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008The Onion is again closer to the truth than most people appreciate. I'm starting to think that many of their writers are nothing short of geniuses.
Election results leaked early by Diebold
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Ahh, how the Onion speaks (closer to) the truth more often than our traditional "news" outlets! Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early. Money quote: "This country is based on the fantasy that the government is the voice of the people."
The collapse of the nation-state
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Gary North wrote a fantastic column explaining why he thinks the central government of the United States will slowly decay until it collapses, and why he expects minarchism to return to this country during the lives of his grandchildren. He starts out with a list of government functions that libertarians ...
Fatal asthma attacks and smoking bans
Monday, February 25th, 2008Recently I blagged about a poor girl who suffered a fatal asthma attack induced by the cigarette smoke at the restaurant she worked at, and that this would surely lead to a state-wide smoking ban in "public" (i.e., private) businesses. While I haven't heard any news about such fascist legislation ...
Statist troll bingo
Monday, February 25th, 2008You can play anywhere, any time! (Created by Francois Tremblay.)
Legal or moral?
Monday, February 18th, 2008My Mises Institute copy of The Law arrived today, and I couldn't help but start reading it. It is my favorite political writing of all time, minarchist though it is. (If Bastiat had lived another decade or two instead of being taken at the age of 49 by tuberculosis, he ...
The production of security
Sunday, February 17th, 2008Gustave de Molinari, the original anarcho-capitalist, on monopolistic vs. free provision of security services. Hat tip: Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises blag.
Do we really want another black president
Friday, February 15th, 2008after the events of Deep Impact?
My anarchist conversion
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008Encountering some other anarcho-capitalists' web pages recently, like Roderick Long and Charles Johnson, got me to reminiscing about the single, specific thing that made me convert from Frederic Bastiat's minarchism to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism. I don't know how many libertarians can identify a single experience or essay or moment that led ...
The Dukes of Hazzard as Christ figures
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008I can't believe I've just now gotten around to checking out Roderick T. Long's blag, Austro-Athenian Empire. It is quite insightful and entertaining. I first heard of Dr. Long, I think, from his essay about the anarchic Icelandic Free State at LRC. Don't miss the suggested readings he lists at ...
Stefan Molyneux on the Ron Paul revolution
Monday, February 11th, 2008Stefan Molyneux wrote a good essay about the nature of the Ron Paul revolution and why it failed to ever get off the ground.
Honesty and evil
Monday, February 11th, 2008Some recent exchanges with my roommate prompted this post. I have given up writing very critical things about my close friends without their knowledge, so I am not here to secretly lambaste her. Luckily, I don't even think anything very critical of her, so I abstain from criticizing her out ...
Smoking bans
Sunday, February 10th, 2008Well, I guess Michigan will be getting a statewide ban on smoking in public (i.e., private) establishments soon. Sad, both for the woman who died from a smoke-induced asthma attack and for the state of our civilization that we cry for government coercion to solve every problem people face. This ...
Good writing
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Johnny Kramer has some good advice on how it's done and how it's not done. I have a feeling that, when I read his column more carefully and thoroughly, I will see how a lot of his no-no's apply to me. I am not a trained writer, I admit (trained ...
Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich
Thursday, February 7th, 2008A friend of mine, Chris, wrote a cheerful and optimistic note about the upcoming election on Facebook: Due to extreme boredom, a desire to exercise my brain, and the fact that I am still apparently unqualified to be hired for any job in the Athens area, I have decided to write ...
High rents are usually caused by…
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Anyone, anyone? Bueller?... Bueller?... Government! Ding ding ding ding ding! I'm not sure if Brian of the MGoBlog was being serious or mocking the business-hating State worshipers who surround him in Ann Arbor when he wrote this blag post about Leopold Brothers closing, but I'm sure plenty of our enlightened ...
Obama’s landslide in Georgia
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008I think the reason Barack Obama won the Georgia primary so handily is because Georgia and presumably a lot of the rest of the south is vehemently anti-Hillary. I wasn't surprised Obama won South Carolina so handily. I think a lot of voters, even loyal Democrats, whether they really knew ...
Republicans are idiots
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008On CNN just now, as one of their pundits was breaking down the Georgia votes this Super Tuesday and reporting on some of the exit poll survey statistics, he said that in Georgia and in previous states, Republican voters who identified themselves as dissatisfied with President Bush largely voted for ...
One man’s despair is another man’s hope
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008John Derbyshire is great. I'm glad the staff of National Review hasn't figured this out and fired him yet. In what I think was his official endorsement of Ron Paul, he quoted Paul Johnson from his book Modern Times: "Like FDR, he [i.e. John F. Kennedy] turned Washington into a ...
Internet geeks aren’t largely libertarian
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008The Ron Paul fan club made a big deal about his extensive support on the internet, as evidenced by the success and popularity of Ron Paul forums, his success in so many online polls from news outlets (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc.) after debates, his online donations that totaled a lot ...
Reworded broadband plan resold as new and improved
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008Tim Swanson, who closely follows the internet and telecommunications world for the Mises Institute, posted an update on the theft, corporate welfare, and monopoly protection that constitutes federal telecommunications policy, which he wrote extensively about in December (here and here). This week a report (pdf) was issued by EDUCASE which ...
Drugging unruly children is a method of social control
Friday, February 1st, 2008A letter to the editor of Nature this week strongly objected to the widespread and involuntary administration of Ritalin to children, and to a recent claim, published in Nature, that ADHD is heritable and very prevalent. Sir Sahakian and Morein-Zamir's reference to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as heritable and affecting 4–10% of ...
The State is NEVER wrong
Friday, February 1st, 2008A good post about more law-enforcement abuses, which was one of the blag posts that trackbacked to J.D. Tuccille's aforementioned blag post. (Oh, but imagine the horror of a law-enforcement agency that wasn't the highest instance of legal authority in a state! Why, bad things would happen to good people ...
It IS happening here
Friday, February 1st, 2008Republocrats currently use fear-mongering on two big issues to garner support for their various State interventions into our lives—terrorism for some, global warming for others. Perhaps it can be said that libertarians also use something akin to fear-mongering in our debate and discussion, though of course I think it is ...