I’ve begun writing columns at Libertarianism.org. I’m starting with a series on the ancient Greeks and their legacy for libertarianism; the first one, on Homer’s treatment of Achilles and militarism, is up now.
Tag Archives | Arma Virumque
Call for Abstracts on Police and Anarchism
[cross-posted at C4SS, BHL, and Public Reason]
Call for Abstracts
for the Molinari Society’s next Eastern Symposium, to be held in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting, January 6-9, 2016, in Washington DC. (Note that this meeting is the week after New Year’s, rather than, as in past years, just before New Year’s. This later time is expected to be the new normal for the Eastern APA henceforth.)
Symposium Topic:
Police Abuse: Solutions Beyond the State
Submission Deadline:
18 May 2015
Abuses of power by police officers, especially abuses motivated by racial bias, are at last beginning to receive increased public scrutiny. Anarchists have long regarded police misconduct as a deep-rooted and systemic problem, one requiring radical rather than reformist solutions, but have not always agreed about what a radical solution should look like. Some anarchists have advocated a system of private security firms held in check by market competition; others have looked to volunteer and mutual-aid watch groups responsible to the communities they patrol; still others have rejected both models as insufficiently different from the government police system they’re supposed to replace.
Would/should there be police, or something like police, in an anarchist society? If so, how might they be restrained from abuses? If not, what institutions or practices might secure protection from invasive behaviour instead?
Abstracts should be submitted for the 2016 Eastern Symposium by 18 May, 2015. Submissions from any point of view (anarchist or otherwise) are welcome. Please submit an abstract only if you expect to be able to present the paper in person at the Symposium. (Final papers should be of appropriate scope and length to be presented within 15-30 minutes.) Submitting authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their papers by 31 May, 2015.
Submit abstracts as e-mail attachments, in Word .doc or .docx format, PDF, or ODT, to longrob@auburn.edu.
For any questions or information, contact Roderick T. Long at the above email address.
(In other news, the Molinari Symposium originally scheduled for this year’s Pacific APA in Vancouver has been postponed to next year in San Francisco; details to follow in due course.)
iRad I.4 in Print, iRad I.3 Online
[cross-posted at BHL]
For various reasons (well, mainly money), the fourth issue of the Molinari Institute’s left-libertarian publication The Industrial Radical has been delayed for nearly a year; but today it is finally at the printer. Issue I.4 features articles by William Anderson, B-psycho, Jason Byas, Kevin Carson, Nathan Goodman, Irfan Khawaja, Tom Knapp, Smári McCarthy, Grant Mincy, Anna Morgenstern, Sheldon Richman, Amir Taaki, Mattheus von Guttenberg, Darian Worden, and your humble correspondent, on topics ranging from the Manning / Snowden whistleblower cases, the protests in Brazil, deference to authority, America’s foreign policy morass, Obama’s war on the environment, and the myth of 19th-century laissez-faire to alternative currencies, identity politics and intersectionality, abortion opponents as rape apologists, the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman case, the inside scoop on PorcFest, and why anarcho-capitalism cannot be a form of capitalism.
Issue 2.1 will follow soon thereafter, and we’ll be on an accelerated schedule until we’re caught up.
With each new issue published, we post the immediately preceding issue online. Hence a free pdf file of our third issue (Spring 2013) is now available here. (See the first and second issues also.)
Want to write for The Industrial Radical? See our information for authors and copyright policy.
Want to subscribe to The Industrial Radical? Visit our online shop.
Want to give an additional donation to the Molinari Institute? Contribute to our General Fund.
iRad I.3 in Print, iRad I.2 Online
The third issue (Spring 2013) of The Industrial Radical will be back from the printers and on its way to subscribers shortly, featuring articles by Less Antman, Jason Lee Byas, Kevin Carson, Nathan Goodman, Anthony Gregory, Trevor Hultner, Charles Johnson, Joshua Katz, Thomas L. Knapp, Abby Martin, Chad Nelson, Sheldon Richman, Jeremy Weiland, and your humble correspondent, on topics ranging from NSA surveillance and whistleblowing, the Turkish revolt, the Boston lockdown, the Keystone XL pipeline, intellectual property, and the futility of gun control in an age of 3-D printing, to compulsory schooling, American militarism, conscription, worker exploitation, property rights, prison ethics, rape culture, the pros and cons of communism, and the dubious legacy of Margaret Thatcher.
With each new issue published, we post the immediately preceding issue online. Hence a free pdf file of our second issue (Winter 2013) is now available here. (See the first issue also.)
Want to write for The Industrial Radical? See our information for authors and copyright policy.
Want to subscribe to The Industrial Radical? Visit our online shop.
Want to give an additional donation to the Molinari Institute? Contribute to our General Fund.
Warder of the Brain
I don’t have an opinion as to George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence. (The usual method of arriving at such a judgment seems to be to take a look at the party affiliation on one’s own voter registration card, but it didn’t work for me.) But the latest argument against Zimmerman strikes me as pretty silly.
The claim is that Zimmerman must be a liar because he claimed not to be familiar with the legal concept of “stand your ground,” despite having once taken a course in which that concept was explained at length in class.
I mean – seriously? One thing I’ve learned in over two decades of teaching is that explaining something at length is no guarantee that anyone in the class – even the best students – will remember anything about it.
Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other
The guy who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council’s offices was wearing a “backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches.”
So is this like carbon offsetting?