December 2011
“If I go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor,...”
– Benjamin Tucker
a-petro-manifesto:
Roman Law: From Laissez-Faire to Statism
One of the most powerful influences in the legal and political thought and institutions of the Christian West during the Middle Ages was the Roman law, derived from the republic and empire of ancient Rome. Roman law classically developed in the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD. Private law developed the theory of the absolute right of...
“Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the...”
– Left-wing icon and liberal powerhouse Glenn Greenwald on the fallacies of the progressive attacks against Ron Paul.
“Ron Paul is vilified for missing a few paragraphs out of hundreds of newsletters...”
– Hosanna Myers
Highlights from Paul's 'Liberty Defined'
andygoesforth:
I’m 58 pages in to Ron Paul’s new book, and I’ve highlighted some passages that I liked:
“Indefinite detention without charges or a right to counsel is now an established precedent for anyone in the world, including an American citizen, declared “an enemy combatant” by a single U.S. official.”
“Tyranny always begins with oppression of unpopular minorities.”
“If two parties...
“It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize Paul harshly and point out the horrible...”
– Glenn Greenwald
“I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever...”
– Ron Paul on marriage
The Marginal Utility of Bickering: Why You... →
You’re addicted to Internet arguing because you’re almost always arguing against either a very stupid person or a very smart person, and those are the two types of people most fun to argue with.
[…]
…[W]e can model Internet arguing as a simple two-person game. Evidence for this is limited, but let’s say a smart person can write circles around a dumb person, so in any smart-dumb pairing,...
“But the ultimate aim of freedom is the enlargement of those capacities in which...”
– F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 394
1 tag
“With the election behind us, our country turns hopeful eyes to the future. I...”
– Ron Paul (2008)
5 tags
Ridley: Markets versus Capitalism
The anti-capitalists, now more than 50 days outside St Paul’s, have a point: capitalism is proving unfair. But I would like to try to persuade them that the reason is because it is not free-market enough. (Good luck, I hear you cry.) The market, when allowed to flourish, tears apart monopoly and generates freedom and fairness better than any other human institution. Today’s private sector, by...
4 tags
FA Hayek on the origin of large, centralized...
…the whole matter is one of extreme complexity and difficulty, and I cannot say, that I have definitely made up my mind. My main doubt is whether it really is the corporate law which has given rise to corporations bigger than they would become under the … free market, or whether it is not largely the greater influence on the political machine, which the great corporation exerts,...
“In sum: the President can kill whomever he wants anywhere in the world...”
– Glenn Greenwald
1 tag
Montanans Launch Recall of Senators Who Approved...
puddinheadwilson:
On Christmas Day the US Senate voted 86 - 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial. Now, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill. Montana is one of nine states with provisions...
“The characteristic of a free society is that it can function in spite of the...”
– Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History (1966)
“For a nation to love liberty, it is enough that she understand it; for her to be...”
– Marquis de Lafayette, Address to the National Assembly, Paris (1789)
4 tags
'PEOPLE NOT PROFITS' is backwards
People not profits. This slogan tells us that grasping avaricious corporations focus too monomaniacally on their bottom lines, and in so doing cause terrible harm. What’s needed, it continues, is a focus on people – individual, quirky, imperfect, sometimes needy, sometimes secure: the building blocks of society, too complex to be reduced to an aggregated figure in a sales spreadsheet. A...
1 tag
“‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all over the net
libertarian...”
– Mikayla Hall: The Night Before Christmas…Libertarian Edition
Mikayla Hall: The Night Before... →
mikaylahall:
Stolen from KJ Herr’s Facebook Page: “Twas the night before Christmas, and all over the net Libertarian infighting, as good as it gets. The young cats and rookies, the intellectual debtors watch left and right scrum over racist news letters. ————————————————————————————————— Should…
10 Reasons NOT to Abolish Slavery →
evilteabagger:
You guys should really read this.
“I don’t like the use of force. I like voluntaryism. That’s what a free society...”
– Ron Paul
“Since the land area of the globe has been parceled out among particular States,...”
– Rothbard, Anatomy of the State
“There are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
– Albert Camus, The Plague
4 tags
Must-read: The 10,000 Year Explosion
fringeelements:
http://www.4shared.com/document/uPkRyfFl/The_10000_year_explosion.html
This book talks about GENETIC evolution that occurred in man in the past 50,000 years, and how agriculture and civilization had their own evolutionary pressures that changed the nature of man.
It’s not light reading, but if you’re willing to look up words it is absolutely mind-blowing. At least it was for...
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good...”
– Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
1 tag
Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens on...
Dawkins: I've always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.
Hitchens: Yes; it's broken down with me.
Dawkins: It's astonishing how much traction the left-right continuum [has] . . . If you know what someone thinks about the death penalty or abortion, then you generally know what they think about everything else. But you clearly break that rule.
Hitchens: I have one consistency, which is against the totalitarian--on the left and on the right.
Fumbling, Inarticulate Obituary Writer Somehow... →
whipporwill:
(via the Onion)
Capitalism Is the Enemy of Democracy?
georgeoughttohelp:
http://www.truth-out.org/capitalism-enemy-democracy/1323789051
The title of the article is almost right. Democracy is the enemy of capitalism, and capitalism is the friend of the poor.
The most significant accomplishment for Occupy Wall Street (OWS) to date is that the Occupiers have managed to poke a hole in the legitimacy of neoliberal capitalism and its central claim...
“I conclude that the moment of near despair is quite often the moment that...”
– Christopher Hitchens
“One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority”
– Christopher Hitchens
