Austro-Athenian Empire » No Borders

Torremolinos, Torremolinos

Roderick — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:58:30 +0000

A successfully iconic satire destroys the viability of its target. After Tina Fey’s celebrated skit on SNL, for example, Russia’s visibility from Alaska could never again be invoked without derision as an argument for Sarah Palin’s expertise in international affairs. This is a lesson that Sean Gabb really should have taken to heart before offering this particular defense of race-baiting anti-immigrant politician Enoch Powell ….

We therefore say this with regard to Enoch Powell. He was a classical scholar of great brilliance and distinction. His Lexicon to Herodotus (1938) is one of the most valuable works ever produced on the ancient historian. As well as in Latin and Greek, he was fluent in every main European language, and in Welsh. He was also at least competent in several ancient and modern oriental languages.
— Sean Gabb, 2011

And then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday’s Daily Express and he drones on and on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres.
— Monty Python, 1972

Have a Coke and a Smile

Roderick — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 05:48:32 +0000

Okay, this is now my favourite Coke ad ever:

The Time I Commented On the Time He Committed … Oh, Just Go Read It

Roderick — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:52:59 +0000

I left a comment on James Leroy Wilson’s “The Time I Committed Election Fraud.”

Jim Crow Returns to Alabama, Part 2

Roderick — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 04:50:34 +0000

For a giggle, check out this critique (CHT Brandon) of my recent immigration post, by a “John J. Ray, M.A., Ph.D.” (Yes, he’s one of those.) The best bit is when the guy infers my deranged mental state from my picture. Yes, this picture. René Allendy, move over!

Jim Crow Returns to Alabama

Roderick — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:52:13 +0000

This past Thursday the Alabama legislature put on their white hoods and enacted the harshest anti-immigrant regime in the country, one even more tyrannical than Arizona’s ethnic-cleansing laws.

As in Arizona, the new edict “allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant if the person is stopped for some other reason”; but it also “requir[es] schools to find out if students are in the country lawfully,” “requires all businesses to check the legal status of workers using a federal system called E-Verify,” “makes it a crime for landlords to knowingly rent to an illegal immigrant,” and in a flourish of pure petty malice, “mak[es] it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.”

The old Jim Crow laws enforced discrimination based on the colour of a person’s skin; the new Jim Crow laws enforce discrimination on the basis of a person’s birth on the wrong side of an imaginary line. Though of course racist motivations are not exactly absent.

To make sure that racism and misogyny continue to march hand in hand, the legislature also passed an abortion ban on the same day. Well heck, if the state can treat immigrants as second-class persons, why can’t it do the same to women, and force them to use their bodies as incubators for unwanted fetuses?

If only we could get some Republicans in power! They’re for smaller government, you know.

Imagine No Taxation

Roderick — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:46:13 +0000

The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News:

To the Editor:

Charlotte Ward asks us to imagine a world without taxes. (“Don’t like taxes? Imagine a world without these services,” Tuesday.)

Okay, let’s try. What would it be like?

True, the government wouldn’t be able to provide its services any more. But it also would no longer be able to forbid competitors from offering such services non-coercively. With formerly governmental services no longer insulated from market competition, their quality would rise and their prices would fall.

Government would also no longer be able to rig markets in favor of the corporate elite and against the poor and middle class. Most governmental redistribution is from the less to the more affluent, not vice versa. Getting rid of taxation and the plutocratic policies it supports would eliminate the chief cause of poverty.

Gone too would be the ability to enforce laws against “lodge practice” – laws that deprive the poor of low-cost health care in order to enrich the medical establishment. That one change would do far more for health care than either the liberals’ state-run solution or the conservatives’ corporate-run system.

Oppressive policies like harassing immigrants [deleted by the newspaper: and downloaders] and pot smokers, or bombing Pakistani children, would be unsustainable in a freed market. And police brutality would be a lot harder to maintain if security services were competitive.

Liberals claim to be advocates for the disadvantaged, but all too often support regulations that entrench established interests and make it impossible for the poor to compete.

Conservatives claim to oppose big government, but in practice support corporate welfare, anti-union laws, intrusions into personal liberties, a bloated military-industrial complex, and grants of monopoly privilege and cronyism cloaked in the language of “deregulation” and “privatization.”

And taxation makes all this possible.

To learn more, check out the websites of the Center for a Stateless Society and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left.

Roderick T. Long

Defending Canadian Censorship

Roderick — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:12:38 +0000

Some of you will be interested in my exchange (as berserkrl) with atheron and ginge_muppet in the comments section of this story.

A Slightly Less Unknown Ideal, Part 2

Roderick — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:19:03 +0000

Sheldon’s American Conservative article on left-libertarianism is now online.

A Slightly Less Unknown Ideal

Roderick — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:33:44 +0000

The newest (March 2011) issue of The American Conservative features an article by Sheldon Richman titled “Libertarian Left: Free-Market Anti-Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal.” It discusses, inter alia, the Center for a Stateless Society, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Roy Childs, Karl Hess, Thomas Hodgskin, Benjamin Tucker, Gabriel Kolko, Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, William Gillis, and your humble correspondent. It’s a great piece to use to introduce left-libertarian ideas to the neophyte. (It’s currently available online only to subscribers, alas.)

Float Time, Part 3

Roderick — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:35:05 +0000

It’s not every day that I wake up to find Patri Friedman being quoted in my local newspaper; but this story actually made the Opelika-Auburn News this morning.