Tag Archives | Antiracism

He Picked Picts to Depict

Ages ago we ruled. Before the Dane, before the Gael, before the Briton, before the Roman, we reigned in the western isles. Our stone circles rose to the sun. … Like wolves we Picts live now among the scattered islands, among the crags of the highlands and the dim hills of Galloway. We are a fading people. We pass.
– Brogar the Pict, in Robert E. Howard, “The Dark Man”

Pictish monument There are two kinds of “savage” or “barbarian” in Robert E. Howard’s fiction. On the one hand we have the good savage – fierce, spontaneous, self-sufficient, honourable, and free from the weakness, hypocrisy, decadence, and over-intellectuality of civilised humanity. On the other hand we have the bad savage – subhuman, duplicitous, creepy, a slithering lurker in darkness, the primordial “other.” The good savage’s straightforwardness is frequently contrasted with the craftiness and duplicity of urban civilisation; the bad savage, by contrast, is cunning and secretive, anything but straightforward. One is like a swordthrust in broad daylight; the other is like a garrote in the dark.

In a particularly unfortunate racist twist, the good savages are almost always Aryan – sometimes Nordic, but more often Celtic – while the bad savages tend to be non-Aryans. (Most of Howard’s barbarian protagonists are Celts; this is obvious in the case of Turlogh Dubh, Donn Othna, Donald MacDeesa, Red Cumal, Red Cahal, Black Vulmea, Eithriall, and the various Cormacs (Cormac of Connacht, Cormac Mac Art, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey), but Conan too is clearly supposed to be a Celt: the name “Conan” is Irish, he swears by the Irish god Crom, and he’s a Cimmerian. In Howard’s day the historical Cimmerians were thought, rightly or wrongly, to be Celtic, the term being regarded as cognate with “Cymric.” And since Howard’s Cimmerians are supposed to be descended from the Atlanteans, that makes Kull of Atlantis a proto-Celt too.) One Howard quote (from the Solomon Kane story “Wings in the Night”) that has regrettably achieved some popularity on neo-Nazi websites runs: “The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth.” (Incidentally, and outrageously, the Wikisource version of “Wings in the Night,” like many online Howard works, is apparently censored and omits this passage without notice.) For arguments over the extent of Howard’s racism, see Joe Marek (scroll to the bottom) on one side and Gary Romeo on the other; what Marek and Romeo between them succeed in showing – if it needed showing – is that severely racist elements in Howard’s thought coexisted with genuinely antiracist elements.

Pictish warriors In any case, in odd contrast with all this Celto-Aryan supremacy crap is Howard’s fascination with the Picts, whom he regarded – probably wrongly, but in accordance with theories fashionable in his day – as the pre-Celtic, indeed pre-Aryan, inhabitants of Britain. Howard’s Picts are, accordingly, “bad” savages, or well on their way to being such; they are portrayed (with some exceptions) as declined or declining below the human level (though they seem to have been a long time declining, as Howard’s Pictish stories range from the 1000th century BCE to the 20th century CE), and virtually as hostile, half-visible extensions of the natural environment. In their most extreme decadence they are even shown, sometimes, as furtive, subterranean, Gollum-like worm-people. Yet Howard ordinarily portrays these Picts (at least those that haven’t quite reached Gollum status) sympathetically, and indeed appears to have identified with them to the extent of imagining himself a reincarnated Pict. (Besides the Picts, another interesting exception is the African sorcerer N’longa. When first introduced, in the Solomon Kane story “Red Shadows,” he seems like a typical bad savage; but by “Hills of the Dead” he has plainly become a more sympathetic character.)

Indeed the Picts’ very decline seems to give them a romantic status in Howard’s eyes – and of course a romanticising fascination with those one regards as decadent or inferior is no less racist a reaction than condemnation or revulsion would be. Likewise, the same Rudyard Kipling who wrote “The White Man’s Burden,” championing imperialism as a supposed tool of civilisation, is also the Kipling who felt the allure of primitivism sufficiently strongly to write “Letting In the Jungle.” Such complexities don’t get their authors off the hook for anything; all they show is that these authors were confused in a variety of inconsistent ways, not just in one unitary way. Still, these complexities do make Howard – and Kipling – more interesting.

In a January 1932 letter to H. P. Lovecraft, Howard puzzles over how his childhood fascination with the Picts managed to overcome his admitted racist attitudes (though as Lovecraft was still more racist than Howard he could probably shed little illumination on this question):

I first learned of the small dark people which first settled Britain, and they were referred to as Picts. I had always felt a strange interest in the term and the people, and now I felt a driving absorption regarding them. … Picts were made to be sly, furtive, unwarlike, and altogether inferior to the races which followed – which was doubtless true. And yet I felt a strong sympathy for this people, and then and there adopted them as a medium of connection with ancient times. … I am not yet able to understand my own preference for these so-called Picts. Bran Mak Morn has not changed in the years; he is exactly as he leaped full-grown into my mind – a pantherish man of medium height with inscrutable black eyes, black hair and dark skin. This was not my own type; I was blond and rather above medium size than below. Most of my friends were of the same mold. Pronounced brunet types such as this were mainly represented by Mexicans and Indians, whom I disliked. Yet, in reading of the Picts, I mentally took their side against the invading Celts and Teutons, whom I knew to be my type and indeed, my ancestors. My interest, especially in my early boyhood, in these strange Neolithic people was so keen, that I was not content with a Nordic appearance, and had I grown into the sort of man, which in childhood I wished to become, I would have been short, stocky, with thick, gnarled limbs, beady black eyes, a low retreating forehead, heavy jaw, and straight, coarse black hair – my conception of a typical Pict.

Howard goes on to speculate:

Sometimes I think Bran is merely the symbol of my own antagonism toward the empire. … I saw the name “Picts” first on maps, and always the name lay outside the far-flung bounds of the Roman empire. … I was an instinctive enemy of Rome; what more natural than that I should instinctively ally myself with her enemies ….

For the relevant correspondence see the most recent Bran Mak Morn anthology.

As befits their status as “other,” Howard’s Picts are always portrayed from the standpoint of some non-Pictish character. The Picts tend to figure in other characters’ stories – Kull’s or Conan’s, Cormac’s or Turlogh’s. Even Bran Mak Morn, Howard’s chief Pictish protagonist, is almost always seen through others’ eyes.

Worms of the Earth book cover There is a sole exception, “Worms of the Earth” – generally considered the greatest of Howard’s Pictish stories – where we see events from Bran’s perspective. (Howard himself noted this when he wrote to H. P. Lovecraft: “when I came to write of them, it was still through alien eyes …. Only in my last Bran story, ‘Worms of the Earth’ … did I look through Pictish eyes, and speak with a Pictish tongue!”) And it is notably in “Worms” that the character of “bad savage” gets transferred most clearly from the Picts to the titular worm-people, who seem to the Picts as the Picts seem to everybody else. But the Jekyll-and-Hyde ambiguity of Picts-as-fearful-of-the-worm-people versus Picts-as-becoming-the-worm-people runs through the entire Pictish cycle. Howard sometimes tried to resolve the conflict by distinguishing decadent and non-decadent branches of Picts, or decadent and non-decadent phases of Pictish history, but could never arrive at a consistent solution – as is most strikingly evident in the fact that Bran himself in effect becomes, in “The Dark Man,” the worm-people’s stone idol that he views with such revulsion in “Worms.”

Here’s a checklist of Howard’s chief Pictish and/or worm-people stories, with links to online versions where available:

The Shadow Kingdom (1927)
Kull of Atlantis meets the Pictish chieftains Brule and Ka-nu, as well as the serpent-people sometimes identified with the worm-people

The Cat and the Skull (1928)
Kull, Brule, and Ka-nu versus Thulsa Doom

The Screaming Skull of Silence (1928)
A quiet moment with Kull, Brule, and Ka-nu

The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune (1929)
Kull and Brule enjoy a reflective moment

Three Men Sat at a Table (unfinished, 1928)
Brule tells Kull some Pictish history

By This Axe I Rule! (1929)
Kull, Brule, and Ka-nu foil a coup

Swords of the Purple Kingdom (1929)
Kull, Brule, and Ka-nu foil another coup

The Hyborian Age (1932)
Filling in Pictish history between Kull’s and Conan’s eras

Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Conan learns some Pictish history from an unlikely source

Beyond the Black River (1934)
Conan vs. Picts on the Aquilonian frontier

The Black Stranger (1935)
Conan, pirates, and Picts on the Aquilonian frontier; later rewritten as the Black Vulmea story “Swords of the Red Brotherhood,” with the Picts transposed to American Indians

Wolves Beyond the Border (unfinished, 1934?)
Pictish skullduggery on the frontier during Conan’s Aquilonian coup

Picts by Frazetta The Lost Race (1924)
Picts in ancient Britain on their way to becoming the worm-people

Men of the Shadowsexcerpt (1925)
A Norse-Roman soldier meets Pictish chieftain Bran Mak Morn and learns some Pictish history

A Song of the Race (?)
Bran Mak Morn and more Pictish history

Kings of the Night (1930)
Thanks to time travel, Kull of Atlantis meets Bran Mak Morn

Worms of the Earth (1932)
Bran Mak Morn meets the subterranean worm-people and steals their stone idol – generally thought to be Howard’s best Pictish story

Tigers of the Sea (unfinished,?)
Cormac Mac Art vs. Picts

Night of the Wolf (1930)
Cormac Mac Art and Picts vs. Vikings

Spears of Clontarf (1931)
Turlogh Dubh and a Pictish seeress at the battle of Clontarf; rewritten as “The Grey God Passes/Twilight of the Grey Gods,” with more supernatural elements and with the Pictish character altered to one of the faërie folk instead; the tale is retold yet again, from a modern perspective, in “The Cairn on the Headland,” but still no Picts

The Dark Man (1930)
Turlogh Dubh meets Bran Mak Morn as the stone idol of the Picts

Gods of Bal-Sagoth (1930)
Turlogh Dubh on an island adventure; no Picts per se, but somewhat Pict-like enemies, plus the story is a direct continuation of “The Dark Man”

Ballad of King Geraint (1927)
Turlogh Dubh in another battle alongside a Pictish comrade

The Valley of the Lost / Secret of Lost Valley (?)
Worm-people in frontier Texas, clearly unrelated to the Picts

The Little People (1928)
The Picts as worm-people in modern times

The Black Stone (1930)
The stone idol of the worm-people (explicitly distinguished from Picts) shows up in modern Hungary

The Thing on the Roof (1930)
Another artefact of the worm-people (described as being from the same culture as that of “The Black Stone”) shows up in modern Central America

The Children of the Night (1930)
Modern racial memories concerning Picts and worm-people; a Conrad & Kirowan story, plus Bran Mak Morn and the stone idol get a mention

The Dwellers Under the Tombs (1932)
Worm-people in modern times; a Conrad & Kirowan story, better than most of the modern-times stories

Marchers of Valhalla (1932)
Modern racial memories concerning Picts; a James Allison story

The Valley of the Worm (1934)
Modern racial memories concerning Picts and something like worm-people; another James Allison story

The Garden of Fear (1933)
Modern racial memories concerning “little brown people” who seem to be Picts; yet another James Allison story

People of the Dark (1931)
Worm-people both in racial memories and in modern times


Watching God From the Palace of Skulls

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Since her “rediscovery” in the 1970s, Zora Neale Hurston has been studied primarily by scholars in women’s studies and African-American studies – fields that, much like libertarian studies, tend to be enormously insightful in some areas and vastly ignorant in others. (Indeed, much of the knowledge generated by libertarian studies tends to lie in women’s studies’ and black studies’ zone of ignorance, just as much of the knowledge generated by women’s studies and black studies tends to lie in libertarianism’s zone of ignorance.) As a result, academic scholars working on Hurston tend to be baffled by her politics. Again and again in the academic literature on Hurston, one finds some version of the puzzled question “Why does she seem so sensibly left-wing on some issues and so horrifically right-wing on others?” Libertarianism is so far off their radar that they don’t even recognise that that’s the best label for her. Hurston makes most sense when placed in conjunction with such other “Old Right” literary figures as H. L. Mencken, Isabel Paterson, Albert J. Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, Garet Garrett, and Ayn Rand – but their works are largely terra incognita in contemporary academia.

Zora Neale Hurston That said, it must be conceded that labeling a Hurston a libertarian may alleviate only so much of the puzzlement. Hurston has a way of unpredictably lurching leftward on one issue and rightward on another in such a way that almost any reader, libertarian or otherwise, is likely to find her infuriating at some point. (But this is of course likewise true for the other writers listed above.)

For my recent Liberty Fund conference I re-read Hurston’s best-known novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. What does the title mean? If you’ve seen the somewhat Hallmarkised tv-movie you may remember Halle Berry lying in the water, saying dreamily “I’m watching God”; but that scene was invented, it’s not in the book. The title actually comes from the following passage. The context is one in which the main characters have made no preparation against a coming hurricane because those with greater social authority seem unworried: “The folks [= poor and/or blacks] let the people [= rich and/or whites] do the thinking. If the castles thought themselves secure, the cabins needn’t worry.” But the “people,” and consequently the “folks” who relied on them, are wrong and the hurricane is devastating:

They huddled close and stared at the door. … The time was past for asking the white folks what to look for through that door. Six eyes were questioning God. … The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. (ch. 18)

Despite the religious connotations of the phrase and title (in fact all four of Hurston’s novels have titles with religious connotations), Hurston’s meaning as I interpret it is not especially religious – just as Hurston herself was not especially religious. (She wrote in her autobiography, “Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down.”) As I read this scene, and the novel as a whole, the phrase “watching God,” and likewise the novel’s theme, concerns the contrast between being directly oriented toward reality (“watching God,” “questioning God”) and viewing reality through the lens of other people’s opinions and expectations (“asking the white folks what to look for”) – or in Randian terms, psycho-epistemological independence versus social metaphysics (though Rand would probaly not have used “God” as a metaphor for objective reality). Although the specific example involves blacks’ psycho-epistemological dependence on whites, the novel’s theme is not primarily racial, but is concerned at least as much with women’s dependence on men, individuals’ dependence on the community, and the community’s dependence on its leaders.

Their Eyes Were Watching God - movie version Hence Janie, the heroine, learns to dismiss the intrusive opinions of the town gossips by saying “If God don’t think no mo’ ’bout ’em then Ah do, they’s a lost ball in de high grass” (ch. 1), and again advises her friend Pheoby: “Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got to go to God [in this case probably a metaphor for dying], and they got to tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” (ch. 20)

This reading of the novel’s theme helps, I think, to explain why the character of Joe Starks, the black entrepreneur born with “uh throne in de seat of his pants,” is such an ambivalent figure, apparently both liberatory and oppressive (alike in his relation to the townspeople and to Janie). On the one hand, he encourages his fellow townspeople’s psycho-epistemological indepedence in urging them to develop greater political autonomy, e.g. to start their own post office. Some of the townspeople insist: “Yo’ common sense oughta tell yuh de white folks ain’t goin’ tuh allow [a black man] tuh run no post office.” But Starks convinces others that “Us talks about de white man keepin’ us down! Shucks! He don’t have tuh. Us keeps our own selves down.” And in fact the town does get its own black-run post office and much else beside.

Joe Starks is based on the real-life founder of Hurston’s home town, Joe Clarke, as described in Hurston’s autobiography:

Eatonville, Florida, is … a pure Negro town – charter, mayor, council, town marshal and all. It was not the first Negro community in America, but it was the first to be incorporated, the first attempt at organized self-government on the part of Negroes in America …. Joe Clarke had asked himself, Why not a Negro town? Few of the Negroes were interested. It was too vaulting for their comprehension. A pure Negro town! If nothing but their own kind was in it, who was going to run it? With no white folks to command them, how would they know what to do? Joe Clarke had plenty of confidence in himself to do the job, but few others could conceive of it. (Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings, pp. 561-565)

The fictional Starks, like the historical Clarke, expands the horizons of his townspeople’s conception of what is possible for them – thus turning their eyes toward “God,” in Hurston’s metaphor.

On the other hand, Starks to a significant extent substitutes himself for the whites as the intermediary between the townspeople and objective reality. When he first shows up in town he asks: “Ain’t got no Mayor! Well, who tells y’all what to do?” – to which he receives the magnificent answer “Nobody. Everybody’s grown.” But Starks in the end succeeds in getting himself elected mayor, and Hurston describes his rule in rather La Boétiean terms:

The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe’s positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down. (ch. 5)

Janie expresses the central paradox of Joe Starks when she tells him: “You have tuh have power tuh free things, and dat makes you lak a king uh something.” (ch. 6)

Likewise in his relationship with Janie, Starks contributes to her independence by freeing her from a grim marriage and broadening her horizon, but he expects her to take on the role of passive beneficiary of his own independence, “building a high chair for her to sit in and overlook the world,” rather than becoming an active participant in that independence, with the result that she finds heself more oppressed than liberated – at least until she learns to stand up for the truth that “[s]ometimes God gits familiar with us womenfolk too, and talks his inside business,” i.e., that women can be oriented directly to reality rather than dealing with it always through the intermediary of men’s perceptions.

Ragged segue: Hurston’s political essays are a mixed bag, thanks to the lurching-left-and-right mentioned above; but I want to close by quoting some particularly good passages on imperialism. While Hurston is sometimes accused of being an “Uncle Tom,” in the following passages she seems more like Malcolm X:

I know that the principle of human bondage has not yet vanished from the earth. I know that great nations are standing on it. I would not go so far as to deny that there has been … progress toward the concept of liberty. Already it has been agreed that the name of slavery is very bad. No civilized nation will use such a term anymore. Neither will they keep the business around the home. Life will be on a loftier level by operating at a distance and calling it acquiring sources of raw material, and keeping the market open. It has been decided, also, that it is not cricket to enslave one’s own kind. … If a ruler can find a place way off where the people do not look like him, kill enough of them to convince the rest that they ought to support him with their lives and labor, that ruler is hailed as a great conqueror, and people build monuments to him. …

Now, for instance, if the English people were to quarter troops in France, and force the French to work for them for forty-eight cents a week while they took more than a billion dollars a year out of France, the English would be Occidentally execrated. But actually, the British Government does just that in India, to the glory of the democratic way. … I do not mean to single out England as something strange and different in the world. We, too, have our marines in China. We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideals of a country of their own. … The United States being the giant of the Western world, we have our responsibility. The little Latin brother south of the border has been a trifle trying at times. … He must be taught to share with big brother before big brother comes down and kicks his teeth in. …

But there is a geographical boundary to our principles. They are not to leave the United States unless we take them ourselves. Japan’s application of our principles to Asia is never to be sufficiently deplored. … Our indignation is more than justified. We Westerners composed the piece about trading in China with gunboats and cannons long decades ago. Japan is now plagiarizing in the most flagrant manner. …

FDR All around me, bitter tears are being shed over the fate of Holland, Belgium, France and England. I must confess to being a little dry around the eyes. I hear people shaking with shudders at the thought of Germany collecting taxes in Holland. I have not heard a word against Holland collecting one-twelfth of poor people’s wages in Asia. That makes the ruling families in Holland very rich, as they should be. What happens to the poor Javanese and Balinese is unimportant; Hitler’s crime is that he is actually doing a thing like that to his own kind. That is international cannibalism and should be stopped. Hitler is a bandit. That is true, but that is not what is held against him. He is muscling in on well-established mobs. Give him credit. He cased some joints away off in Africa and Asia, but the big mobs already had them paying protection money and warned him to stay away. The only way he can climb out of the punk class is to high-jack the load and that is just what he is doing. President Roosevelt could extend his four freedoms to some people right here in America before he takes it all aboard [sic, presumably for “abroad”], and, no doubt, he would do it too, if it would bring in the same amount of glory. … He can call names across the ocean, but he evidently has not the courage to speak even softly at home. Take away the ocean and he simmers right down. … Our country is so busy playing “fence” to the mobsters that the cost in human suffering cannot be considered yet. …

As I see it, the doctrines of democracy deal with the aspirations of men’s souls, but the application deals with things. One hand in somebody else’s pocket and one on your gun, and you are highly civilized. … Desire enough for your own use only, and you are a heathen. Civilized people have things to show the neighbors.

This is not to say, however, that the darker races are visiting angels, just touristing around here below. They have acted the same way when they had a chance, and will act that way again, comes the break. I just think it would be a good thing for the Anglo-Saxon to get the idea out of his head that everybody else owes him something for being blonde. … The idea of human slavery is so deeply ground in that the pink-toes can’t get it out of their system. It has just been decided to move the slave quarters farther away from the house. …

To mention the hundred years of the Anglo-Saxon in China alone is proof enough of the evils of this view point. The millions of Chinese who have died for our prestige and profit! They are still dying for it. Justify it with all the proud and pretty phrases you please, but if we think our policy is right, just let the Chinese move a gunboat in the Hudson to drum up trade with us. The scream of outrage would wake up saints in the backrooms of Heaven. And what is worse, we go on as if the so-called inferior people are not thinking; or if they do, it does not matter. As if no day could ever come when that which went over the Devil’s back will buckle under his belly. (Folklore/Memoirs, pp. 790-93)

Columbus I see, too, that while we all talk about justice more than any other quality on earth, there is no such thing as justice in the absolute in this word. We are too human to conceive of it. We all want the breaks, and what seems just to us is just what favors our wishes. If we did not feel that way, there would be no monuments to conquerors in our high places. It is obvious that the successful warrior is great to us because he went and took things from somebody else that we could use, and made the vanquished pay dearly for keeping it from us so long. To us, our man-of-arms is almost divine in that he seized good things from folks who could not appreciate them (well, not like we could, anyway) and brought them where they belonged. Nobody wants to hear anything about the side of the conquered. Any remarks from him is rebellion. This attitude does not arise out of studied cruelty, but out of the human bent that makes us feel that the man who wants the same thing we want, must be a crook and needs a good killing. “Look at the miserable creature!” we shout in justification. “Too weak to hold what we want!” (Folklore/Memoirs, pp. 765-66)

[T]he powerful Kingdom of Dahomey, finding the slave trade so profitable, had abandoned farming, hunting, and all else to capture slaves to stock the barracoons on the beach at Dmydah to sell to the slavers who came from across the ocean. … [Q]uarrels were manufactured by the King of Dahomey with more peaceful agricultural nations … they were assaulted, completely wiped off the map, their names never to appear again, except when they were named in boastful chant before the King …. The too old, the too young, the injured in battle were instantly beheaded and their heads smoked and carried back to the King. He paid off on heads, dead or alive. The skulls of the slaughtered were not wasted either. The King had his famous Palace of Skulls. The Palace grounds had a massive gate of skull-heads. The wall[s] surrounding the grounds were built of skulls. You see, the Kings of Dahomey were truly great and mighty and a lot of skulls were bound to come out of their ambitions. While it looked awesome and splendid to him and his warriors, the sight must have been most grewsome and crude to western eyes. Imagine a Palace of Hindu or Zulu skulls in London! Or Javanese skulls in The Hague!

Royal Throne of Dahomey One thing impressed me strongly from this …. The white people had held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true[,], and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. That did away with the folklore I had been brought up on …. I knew that civilized money stirred up African greed. That war between tribes was often stirred up by white traders to produce more slaves in the barracoons and all that. But, if the African princes had been as pure and innocent as I would like to think, it could not have happened. No, my own people had butchered and killed, exterminated whole nations and torn families apart, for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. … It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory. Lack of power and opportunity passes all too often for virtue. If I were King, let us say, over the Western Hemisphere tomorrow, instead of what I am, what would I consider right and just? Would I put the cloak of Justice on my ambition and send her out a-whoring after conquests? It is something to ponder over with fear. (Folklore/Memoirs, pp. 707-08)


Random July 4th Roundup

Happy Independence Day! Celebrate the American Revolution! The one currently underway, I mean.

Old Glory Meanwhile, check out this article about how easy it is for our immigration laws to turn a U.S. citizen into an undocumented alien overnight, and the Kafkaesque nightmare that awaits those attempting to undo the tangle.

In other news, the first comment in over two years has been added to the Mises blog post discussing the Kevin Carson JLS symposium. I link to it because otherwise no one will see it (I only know about it because I authored the original post and so receive automated updates). Those interested in the pros and cons of the labour theory of value, take a look.


Abolition Past and Future

For thousands of years, slavery went unchallenged in principle. Then in a single century, slavery was abolished and more than seven million slaves were freed. The scope and speed of this transformation makes it one of the most amazing feats in modern history.
– blurb for Jim Powell, Greatest Emancipations: How the West Abolished Slavery

I haven’t read Powell’s book, but this quotation (along with the fact that, in most of the western world, abolition was accomplished without much violence, the American South being an outlier) should give today’s abolitionists reason for hope whenever the task of doing away with the state seems overwhelming.


Turn That Frown Upside Down!

A panel of Federal apparatchiks is complaining that this proposed Martin Luther King statue is “too confrontational”:

proposed M. L. King statue

Ah yes. After spending decades carefully blurring King’s image to make him seem safe and non-threatening to the political establishment, the last thing our rulers want is a statue that might suggest an intractable King.


Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes