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Ruwarchy 2.0

By on March 28, 2008 6

I’ve created a monster!

A monster of a name, anyway: Ruwarchy! It’s inspired Less Antman to give his unofficial Ruwart site that name.

Mary Ruwart While obviously prompted by Mary Ruwart’s announcement of her presidential bid, Ruwarchy.com isn’t specifically a Ruwart campaign site; it’s more of an all-things-Ruwart site, and indeed seems deliberately designed to be welcoming to libertarians who reject electoral politics. The site proclaims itself a forum for “those who want to advance the pure libertarian ideas Dr. Ruwart champions in whatever way they choose,” and there’s even a section of the website devoted to “non-party activism.” Moreover, Antman has argued elsewhere that even anti-electoral libertarians have reason to welcome her campaign, on the grounds that “it should improve sales of her books,” and “since neither book actively promotes voting or politics, this will aid the entire movement, including those who reject political campaigning as a persuasion technique.”

But there’s plenty of stuff for partyarchs too, including a section devoted to overturning the 2006 gutting of the LP platform.

In the meantime, the official Ruwart campaign site is being run by the hardline anti-electoral Brad Spangler. Go figure.

I suspect anti-electorals will have especially mixed feelings about Ruwart’s candidacy. On the one hand, she’s promoting a much more radical form of libertarianism than Ron Paul is; on the other, for that very reason she’s more likely than Paul to lure potential anti-electorals into electoral politics.

Ruwart’s campaign will also be an interesting test of how much radicalism is left in the LP. If someone like Barr or Gravel beats Ruwart to the nomination that would probably be a sign that it’s lost its soul irretrievably.

Vote War No More

By on March 27, 2008 0

If you’d like to add your signature to a statement saying “I will only vote for or support federal candidates who publicly commit to a speedy end to the Iraq war, and to preventing future ‘wars of aggression’,” click here.

Nonvoters take notice: given the logic of “only,” this pledge means merely that you won’t vote for candidates who don’t meet this test, not that you will vote for some candidate who does – so you can sign with a clear conscience.

And no, I don’t know why “wars of aggression” is in scare-quotes.

A Song I Wrote All By Myself

By on March 27, 2008 3

Whoever knows fear BURNS at the touch of the MAN-THING Man-Thing
I think I fear you

but I wanna know for sure

so come on and
hold me tight

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!

… I fear you …

Time Will Run Back

By on March 26, 2008 0

The following letter appeared in this morning’s (26 March) Opelika-Auburn News:

To the Editor:

I was startled to see Rudy Tidwell’s response Feb. 27 to a letter of mine that was published in your paper four years ago.

Tidwell refers to my letter as though it were recent; he dates it Dec. 19, but gives no year. In fact there were two letters from me on the subject of Tidwell’s views on “Invictus,” one published in your pages on Feb. 22, 2004, and the other on Dec. 23, 2004. I haven’t written anything on the topic since then. Moreover, Tidwell already responded in print to both letters at the time (whether on the letters page or in his column I forget); so I’m not sure why he’s resurrecting this old dispute.

Four years having passed, I unsurprisingly no longer have handy the original column by Tidwell that I was criticizing at the time, and your readers don’t have access to it either. (It doesn’t seem to be on the Internet.) So it’s unclear how they can be expected to judge between my description of it (as an insult to the author of “Invictus”) and Tidwell’s description of it (as merely a disagreement with the poem’s ideas).

I do recall, however, that Tidwell described anyone who agreed with the message of “Invictus” as “in a worse condition than an imbecile,” a memorable phrase which I may perhaps be forgiven for interpreting as an insult to the author (as well as to many others), and not merely as a criticism of the author’s ideas.

Roderick T. Long

A Note on the Shakespeare Authorship Controversy

By on March 26, 2008 3

I submitted the following as a comment on this story but it hasn’t appeared on the page yet, and anyway it’s a point worth making separately:

I have no view as to whether the plays are by de Vere or by W.S. But I think we should distinguish between those arguments for de Vere that are worth taking seriously (such as the similarity of passages in the plays and poems to earlier, unpublished writings of de Vere) and those arguments for de Vere that are not worth taking seriously (such as that no mere commoner like W.S. could possibly have been cultured enough to write the plays, that only an aristocrat could have done so). The first argument is striking (though not necessarily decisive) evidence; the second argument is mere class prejudice, easily counterexampled.

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