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Tag Archives | Anarchy

The Revolution Comes to Las Vegas

By on April 16, 2008 2

Alliance of the Libertarian Left I’m pleased to announce a new ALL affiliate, the Southern Nevada Alliance of the Libertarian Left. (Check out Charles Johnson’s blog for a description of their tax day activism.) I’ve posted the new link on all-left.net.

In related news, does anyone have current info on ALL’s earlier affiliates, the Kansas City Libertarian Alliance and the Richmond Left Libertarian Alliance? Their websites seem to be dead. And are there any other ALL affiliates out there whose info should be posted on all-left.net?

You Can’t Spell RUWART Without WAR

By on April 16, 2008 3

Healing Our World - old and new editions Mary Ruwart’s candidacy is a great opportunity to promote her book Healing Our World. (Obviously her book can also be used to promote her candidacy, but for those of us whose chief strategic focus is social transformation in the long run rather than winning votes in the short run, the first way of putting it is more salient.) Buy the new edition, Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression (plus extra copies to inflict on your friends, especially your liberal/lefty friends), or read the earlier edition, Healing our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle, for free online (and send the link around). (By the way, although the new edition is a fair bit longer than the old one, it’s not quite as thick as the accompanying pic would imply.)

This is an especially good book to introduce to people who think that free-market policies benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. (Plus Ruwart manages to make radical positions seem friendly and unthreatening, unlike some libertarians spokesfolk who manage to make even fairly moderate positions sound alarming.)

Getcha Evil Here! Getcha War Here!

By on April 8, 2008 3

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Last Friday I presented a revised version of my talk “On Making Small Contributions to Evil” to the Auburn Philosophical Society.

Herbert Spencer and Gustave de Molinari This coming weekend I’ll be presenting a paper on “Herbert Spencer, Gustave de Molinari, and the Evanescence of War” at a panel on “The Libertarian Antiwar Tradition from the 1930s to the 1950s” at the Historians Against the War conference in Atlanta. Fellow panelist David Beito will be presenting ”Zora Neale Hurston, Rose Wilder Lane, and Isabel Paterson on Race, War, Individualism, and the State.”

Cavilers may object that Spencer and Molinari weren’t strictly 1930s-50s era guys. Well, Brian Doherty was going to present something topically relevant but had to back out, so I’m replacing him and had to throw something together at the last minute, and this is it.

How Swamp Thing Got His Groove Back

By on April 2, 2008 12

Swamp Thing was always a much-better-than-average comic book. But it didn’t become a great comic book until Alan Moore (of Watchmen andSwamp Thing V for Vendetta fame) started writing it, in a classic 45-issue run that revolutionised the comics industry and, inter alia, directly laid the foundations for a still more celebrated work, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

In this video, Moore explains some of the reasoning that led him to take Swamp Thing in a new direction (with a fairly obvious ethico-political subtext – Moore is an anarchist, after all). In most genre fiction, Moore notes, “transformation is seen as horror, change is seen as a source of horror, and the status quo is seen as source of comfort and stability.” Hence prior to Moore’s run the scientist-turned-monster protagonist spent a lot of time shambling around “bound by fungus and feeling sorry for himself … like Hamlet covered in snot,” whereas Moore decided to have Swamp Thing embrace his new status, “exploring the possibilities of change and transformation, trying to show it as a positive thing.”

Phantoms of Lost Liberty, Part 3

By on April 2, 2008 8

The Libertarian Nation Foundation website at libertariannation.org has been having the following problem:

Libertarian Nation Foundation 1. For some people, it worked if you didn’t put www in front of the address but not if you did.
2. For others, it didn’t work at all, with or without www.
3. For still others, it worked fine, again with or without www.

I guess (3) wasn’t really a problem, except insofar as it prevented those who, like me, were in group (3) from realising that there was a problem.

In any case, mighty webmaster Wayne Dawson thinks he’s fixed it. But he was in group (1) while I was in group (3), so it’s hard for us to tell whether problem (2) was fixed. Therefore: if you were previously in group (2), would you do me the favour of checking out the link, both with and without the www, and letting me know whether it works? Muchas gracias!

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