According to Olbermann, if the u.s. govt were abolished, crime would rise and we’d immediately be conquered by other countries.
Oh yeah, just like Somalia?
I didn’t bother writing him this time. The man is impervious.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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Where does this paranoia about invasion come from? Any time I get into a discussion about this, someone always says, “we’d be taken over by (insert random country.)”
Well, in fairness, it’s not like any major geopolitical player worth their salt wouldn’t immediately rush in with espionage teams and funnel all their resources into subversion of whatever resistant force or city-on-a-hill example came to be.
And just because there are functioning anarchistic methods of running a stateless society doesn’t mean they’d be adapted in full. There is some substance behind the perception of “state-removal” as equating police strike.
If I were Putin I’d definitely try to invade / peacekeep, etc. Whatever got me permanent bases and access to certain resources. And if I were the strategists in the PRC I’d create all sorts of trial corporations, militant groups, funnel money into them and try to purchase gain some degree of control or influence over everything I could.
Does he think anyone but you and your “cronies” is out to abolish it? Is this another tirade against generic conservatives?
Sean Hannity won’t abolish the government, Keith.
Relax ( :
I find it funny, because I find an anarchic country far less susceptible to invasion than a country in the sort of civil war that some conservatives think a better alternative.
It’s pretty ironic because as Chomsky has pointed out America is situated such that it is one of the most defensible regions in the world, with two oceans separating it from the continents that started the last two world wars. Or is he seriously suggesting Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are going to take over the US? :p
Actually Olbermann said we’d be conquered by “everyone including Liechtenstein.”
That comment is totally meaningless except in what it reveals about Olbermann’s view of cultures that for some mystifying reason exist outside the United States.
What word would describe that view? Xenophobic? Bigoted? Ignorant? Something that encompasses all three?
No, it’ll be those militaristic Canadians, with their spiky helmets and their eye patches and their fabulous mustaches.
Actually, we’ve already infiltrated you, and are lying in disguise. One word from our fearless leader, Nanook, and we will pelt you with snowballs until you surrender your women to us.
What have you heard about the Somali beaches?
I hope this comedy piece mocking the idea of Somalia as a libertarian paradise gets it wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0
According to Ed Schultz, a Ron Paul-type national government would mean no traffic lights or air-traffic control. *Sigh*
Yes, airlines and airports would certainly not be willing to set up any ATC to prevent ruinous insurance premiums.
Ha! It didn’t work in Red Dawn, it won’t work now!
Since Canada is so dangerously eager to provide ex-America with social services.
So, der Olbermann is offering the generic far-right arguments for government, then?
What a surprise.
You mentioned that you elected not to email him this time and that he is impervious. Are you saying that he failed to respond to your emails or that he failed to change his position?