The Motorhome Diarists (a crew of itinerant libertarian documentarists/bloggers/interviewers) have been arrested. (What for? Insufficient deference to blue gang colours, as far as I can make out; further details should be forthcoming.)
Brad Spangler suggests helping them out via their donations page.
Rand Paul (Ron Paul’s son – not named after Ayn as far as I know) just announced his – well, not his candidacy, exactly, but his exploratory committee-hood-ness, on Rachel Maddow’s show.
I took a look at his website to see whether there were any issues where he disagreed significantly with his father, but I didn’t notice any. (But the website covers a fairly narrow range of issues; there’s nothing listed, for example, on drugs, immigration, abortion, or gay rights. I reckon he’s trying to avoid alienating either libertarians or conservatives.) My overall reaction to the website was … well, boredom. Still, I wish him well in his combat with modal Republicans.
Kevin Carson’s latest C4SS paper is titled “Intellectual Property”: A Libertarian Critique.
Good stuff! Tolle, lege.
Just saw Jonathan Turley on Maddow’s show, talking about the latest torture cover-up, and saying “This administration is turning out to be the greatest bait-and-switch in history; Obama is morphing into his predecessor” – with Maddow nodding gloomily.
While I think “greatest bait-and-switch in history” is hyperbole (the Russian Revolution surely edges it out by a bit), I’m glad to see that not all of Obama’s supporters (cough, Olbermann, cough) have signed away all their civil-liberties principles upon the accession of the President Incarnate.
Well, want one or not, you’re getting one. (Conical hat tip to LRC.)
Makes me feel all 1917-ish ….
An interesting observation from Lord Acton:
At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success.
This passage by itself doesn’t argue for or against any particular alliance. It makes the point that alliances are advisable (as they must be if it is indeed true that defenders of liberty have never succeeded except by allying with defenders of something else) but also that they are extremely risky and sometimes extremely harmful. All facts worth keeping in mind – though by themselves they don’t offer any concrete guidance.