The very first Nobel Peace Prize was given to a libertarian economist and peace activist.
A few years later, they started giving it to mass murderers.
The latter tradition seems to be the one they’ve chosen to continue.
"Austro" as in Rothbard and Wittgenstein, "Athenian" as in Aristotle and smashing-the-plutocracy.
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.
Wait, Molinari supported a form of compulsory education at one time?
Yes, he thought parents should be required to educate their children (though he didn’t want education state-funded or state-provided, and presumably he thought enforcement of this requirement should be done by protection agencies rather than the state).
How would a protection agency enforce education?
Parents want to educate their kids, probably more than they want anything else. I don’t know why he would think that some half-assed law would be required.
Then there’s that whole “natural curiosity” thing on the part of the kids, which is actually a much more solid basis for formal education, since it’s their lives and not their parents wishes that matter.
Approaches that proceed from the latter justification usually results in the death of said natural curiosity early in the game, leading to more compulsion down the line and and perpetuating the myth that it really must have been necessary after all.
If parents naturally desire their children’s educatuion, then why do most parents try to prevent their children from developing spiritual independence, demanding instead unearned respect and unexamined obedience, religious and social conformity, respectable marriage, and conventional social position?
True education does not consist in the acquiration of skills and inner furnishings useful for collectivist socioceconomic advancement; true education involves the exploration of reality, the development of potential, or the refinement of imagination. Most importantly it means individual examination of the principles by which we know, live, and value.
Very few of the world’s parents, classes, and cultures encourage these values; those that do encourage them do so unevenly and typically upon a foundation of injustice. Many parents want their children to be doctors and lawyers (or their local equivalent); few wish them to be artists and philosophers. I think that the first thing one must do if one is to ever hope to be educated is to choose one’s own perception over inherited authority, and parents are often this authority’s most immediate avatar.
Not a Prize But a Signpost
Roderick,
When are you going to win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Studies show that only international mass murderers win the Nobel Peace Prize. Thus Roderick will be running for Secretary General of the UN, and if he wins will initiate massacres the like of which haven’t been seen since blah blah blah.
What if he doesn’t kill anyone, but we tell everyone he did?
Or Arthur Silber! I am pleased to see him writing again.