I bet newcomers to LewRockwell.com will be baffled as to why this piece (which excoriates Hollywood for its pro-communist propaganda, denounces left-wing thuggery, and soft-pedals right-wing thuggery) and this one (which excoriates Hollywood for its anti-communist propaganda, denounces right-wing thuggery, and soft-pedals left-wing thuggery) are both featured favourably on LRC today.
Well, you see, kiddies, once upon a time there was a man named Murray Rothbard ….
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
A lot of people who voted for Obama probably thought he would be different from his predecessor on the whole kidnapping-people-and-taking-them-to-other-countries-to-be-tortured thing.
Turns out, not so much. (Conical hat tip to Stephan Kinsella.)
Yes he can!
In honour of Charles Darwin’s bicentenary, an observation:
How are statists and creationists alike?
For one thing, as I’ve observed before, both “distrust invisible-hand processes and cannot conceive of order emerging except through some sort of centralised top-down control.”
For another, both raise the same hackneyed objections to spontaneous order again and again, as if these objections had not been answered in detail over and over. (For a good collection of links on evolution, see the TalkOrigins FAQ.)
For yet another, each loves to characterise its opponents as being religiously rather than scientifically motivated; statists accuse libertarians of having a “religious faith in the free market,” while creationists complain about the “Darwinist religion.” (Note: it is dialectically out of order to accuse one’s opponents’ conclusions of being faith-based until one has addressed and refuted – or at least shown some sign of understanding – their arguments.)
That’s why the spectacle of pro-market creationists and anti-market evolutionists would be amusing if it weren’t so depressing; each employs the same sloppy thinking and yahoo tactics on one issue that it rightly deplores on the other issue.
In fairness, it must be conceded that the opponents of statism and creationism share some vices as well. Many evolutionists write as though the truth of evolution established all sorts of metaphysical theses it does not remotely support (such as reductive materialism and sociobiology); likewise one all too often sees proponents of libertarian economic reasoning attempting to use it to undergird various dubious psychological, ethical, and sociological theses (such as psychological egoism, ethical subjectivism, or some variety of right-libertarianism).
Oh well. Anyway, happy birthday Charles Darwin!
Just now Rachel Maddow’s show is featuring a clash between Maddow’s economically and historically illiterate assertion that FDR’s domestic programs ended the Great Depression and Mitch McConnell’s economically and historically illiterate assertion that World War II ended the Great Depression. Whee! Left-wing ignoramuses facing off against right-wing ignoramuses! Salvation through slaughtering piglets versus salvation through slaughtering people! Where’s that libertarian channel?
In other news, left-libertarians will find Ben O’Neill’s new piece on Chomsky a bit frustrating. It attacks Chomsky at a point where he certainly needs attacking, and rightly complains that “Chomsky’s quarrels with private business entities do not rest on any allegation of the initiation of force either by these corporations or on their behalf”; moreover, O’Neill even cites Kolko re the dependence of corporate power on government intervention. So far, so good.
Nevertheless, the Kolko references notwithstanding, the tone of O’Neill’s piece still conveys the impression that existing corporate structures, with all their Dilbertian irrationality and obnoxious hierarchy, are mostly the result of the free market and so to be defended, thus leaving the reader with the old choice between vulgar liberalism (treating various nasty features of the prevailing corporatism as though they constituted an objection to the free market) and vulgar libertarianism (treating the case for the free market as though it justified various nasty features of the prevailing corporatism). In fact, given the impact of statist intervention on corporate structure, Chomsky’s characterisation of corporations as “private tyrannies” can be vindicated on purely libertarian grounds – as Kevin Carson does in his new book Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective. (And of course it’s also worth saying that even forms of power that don’t involve or depend on coercion can still be harmful and worth fighting – noncoercively, of course.)
While we’re on this topic – I haven’t forgotten my promise to respond to some of the later criticisms in the Conflation Debate; life has just been über-hectic lately.
Bush and Cheney are out! Hurray!
Our new President has just been eloquently, articulately, ignorantly haranguing and threatening us. Oh well.
