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.
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How To Do Things With Words
I propose some new terminology: left-conflationism and right-conflationism.
Left-conflationism is the error of treating the evils of existing corporatist capitalism as though they constituted an objection to a freed market. Right-conflationism is the error of treating the virtues of a freed market as though they constituted a justification of the evils of existing corporatist capitalism.
Yes, these are basically just Kevin’s “vulgar liberalism” and “vulgar libertarianism” in new garb. And yes, the new terms sound more awkward and jargony than their predecessors.
But the advantage I claim for them is that they also sound less insulting than their predecessors. Of course neither set of terms entails anything about the etiology of the views it names. Nevertheless, left-conflationism and right-conflationism sound like intellectual mistakes, ones that well-meaning people might fall into; by contrast, vulgar liberalism and vulgar libertarianism sound like character flaws – the outlooks of, well, vulgar people. And to be sure, in many cases they may be. But not all; and we only make it harder for ourselves when our terminology alienates the very people we’re trying to persuade.
I’m not suggesting that we should simply junk the terms “vulgar liberalism” and “vulgar libertarianism.” There’s a time for polemics, and when we want polemical terms it’s handy to have them. But when we’re not engaged in polemics, it’s also handy to have a term for our interlocutors’ position that isn’t a conversation-stopper.
An End to Allegiance, Part 2
The following letter appeared in yesterday’s Opelika-Auburn News:
To the editor:
Jim Evans is quite right to point out Saturday that the founders (well, most of them) would not have approved of the insertion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. (Some of the founders would probably have had a problem with “indivisible” as well.)
But he omits the still more important fact that most of the founders would not have approved of any Pledge of Allegiance at all, with or without such phrases.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by the nationalist socialist Francis Bellamy. The term “allegiance” refers to the duty of obedience and subordination that medieval serfs owed to their feudal lord – their “liege.”
The American founders, by contrast, waged and won a revolution against the Old World idea that we owe allegiance to our governments; the United States was founded on the opposite principle, that our governments owe allegiance to us.
The founders would have been horrified to learn that two centuries after the American Revolution, schoolchildren would be forced to recite loyalty oaths to the government. The Pledge of Allegiance is one of the most blatantly un-American documents ever written.
Roderick T. Long
For a previous post on the pledge, see here.
Boston Anarchist Thinking Brigade, Part 2
My paper for the upcoming Molinari Symposium is now online.
In related news, Gary Chartier has decided to boycott air travel in order to protest the irradiate-or-grope screening process; I’ll be reading out his responses (along with Kevin Carson’s commentary) in absentia sua. Doug Den Uyl will also not be attending (though he’s not boycotting anything as far as I know); Doug Rasmussen will read out their joint commentary.
Atlas Shrunk, Part 3
Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart
Richard Gleaves has seen the first ten minutes of the Atlas Shrugged movie and lived to tell about it. (See also this.)
At the moment, my main hope for this movie is that it will be successful enough to prompt someone else to remake it. But we’ll see.
C4SS Launches Wikileaks Mirror
For Immediate Release
12/05/10
POC Thomas L. Knapp
Media Contact:
media@c4ss.org
530-618-C4SS
Technical Contact:
admin@c4ss.org
ANARCHISTS LAUNCH WIKILEAKS MIRROR, ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
December 5th — “Censorship has always been wrong and irresponsible,” says Brad Spangler. “Now it’s another thing: Impossible.”
Spangler, director of the Center for a Stateless Society, announced on Sunday that the Center is now mirroring Wikileaks — an international whistle-blower site which reactionary elements in the US government have worked assiduously to suppress over the last week — and encouraging and assisting others in doing likewise.
“I feel [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton’s pain,” says Spangler. “Wikileaks’ release of 250,000 diplomatic cables previously hidden behind a state secrets wall has been tremendously embarrassing to her, not to mention implicating her in an international identity theft scheme that looks a lot like Watergate and the Zimmerman Telegram rolled into one.
“But embarrassment or not, state officials have no right to hide their misdeeds from the people who foot the bill, in money and blood, for government actions. Nor, now, do they have the power to do so.”
Using custom software developed by C4SS web administrator Mike Gogulski, the mirror site (wikileaks.c4ss.org) updates daily from Wikileaks’ servers regardless of where those servers are located.
C4SS is also making the software publicly available and encouraging others to mirror Wikileaks as well. “This is an opportunity for those who support freedom of information to take action,” says Gogulski. “We particularly hope to see people and organizations with greater resources than we dispose of — the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, or US Representative Ron Paul’s IT staff — making use of those resources, and of the tool we’re offering, to settle this issue once and for all.”
“The toothpaste is out of the tube and we intend to keep it out of the tube,” says Spangler. “This information will remain publicly available to anyone who cares to look it over.”
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about 300 words
C4SS Mirror of Wikileaks:
http://wikileaks.c4ss.org
Information on setting up your own mirror:
http://c4ss.org/content/5238