Tag Archives | Left-Libertarian

Uncle Sam Goddamn

 
(Video CHT Kelly Patterson via Charles.)

Lyrics:

Welcome to the United Snakes
land of the thief
home of the slave
the grand imperial guard
where the dollar is sacred and proud

Smoke and mirrors, stripes and stars
stolen for the cross in the name of God
bloodshed, genocide, rape, and fraud
writ into the pages of the law, good lord
the cold continent [?] latchkey child
ran away one day and started acting foul
king of where the wild things are – daddy’s proud
’cause the Roman Empire done passed it down
imported and tortured a work force
and never healed the wounds or shook the curse off
now the grown up Goliath nation
holdin’ open auditions for the part of David
can ya feel?
nothing can save ya, you question the reign
you get rushed in and chained up
fist raised but I must be insane
’cause I can’t figure a single goddamn way to change it

Welcome to the United Snakes
land of the thief
home of the slave
the grand imperial guard
where the dollar is sacred
and power is God

All must bow to the fat and lazy
the fuck you obey me
and why do they hate me – who me?
only two generations away
from the world’s most despicable slavery trade
pioneered so many ways to degrade
a human being that it can’t be changed to this day
legacy so ingrained in the way that we think
we no longer need chains to be slaves
lord, it’s a shameful display
the overseers even got raped along the way
’cause the children can’t escape from the pain
and they born with the poisonous hatred in their veins
try an’ separate a man from his soul
you only strengthen him and lose your own
but shoot that fucker if he walk near the throne
remind him that this is my home – now I’m gone

You don’t give money to the bums
on a corner with a sign
bleeding from their gums
talking about you don’t support a crackhead
what you think happens to the money from your taxes?
shit, the government’s an addict
with a billion-dollar-a-week kill-brown-people habit
and even if you ain’t on the front line
when Massa yell crunch time you right back at it
plain look at how you hustling backwards
at the end of the year add up what they subtracted
three outta twelve months your salary pay for that madness
man, that’s savage
what’s left? – get a big ass plasma
to see where they made Dan Rather point the damn camera
only approved questions get answered
now stand your ass up for that national anthem

Custom made (you’re so low)
to consume the noose (you’re so low)
keep saying we’re free (you’re so low)
but we’re all just loose (you’re so low)
keep saying we’re free (you’re so low)
but we’re all just loose (you’re so low)


IP Query

anarchy vs. copyright

A question for IP experts: What is the legal status of falsely claiming copyright?

I often see reprints of works that are definitely in the public domain, stamped by their publishers with a current copyright (with no qualification as to what’s being copyrighted, e.g., no restriction to a new introduction or to new illustrations – and often there’s no such new material in any case).

Given that such copyright notices could be interpreted as implying a threat of force that is regarded as illegitimate even under current IP law, is there any law against what they’re doing? Are they vulnerable to any sort of cease-and-desist order? Or are false copyright notices just regarded as harmless speech until they make an effort to enforce them?


Six Hours of Your Life That You’ll Never Get Back

DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE -- ENLIST

Today commemorates the day that thousands lost their lives during the six hours after an end to World War I had been officially agreed to through negotiation, because the powers that be wanted the symbolism of ending the war at 11:00 on 11/11 (hell, why not 11:11 on 11/11?); see World War I: Wasted Lives on Armistice Day. (CHT Jesse Walker.)

Of course, the lives that were lost in World War I before Armistice Day were pretty much wasted too; but at least it was pretended (on both sides) that those lives were lost in the service of some cause of great significance – democracy, or Kultur, or an end to all further war. By contrast, on Armistice Day the pointlessness of all the mass slaughter, along with the attitude of the powerful to those under their control, was revealed without disguise, in all its naked unloveliness. Happy Armistice Day.


Rothbard vs. Plotinus

Plotinus by Raphael

Plotinus by Raphael

Rothbard was a smart guy, but man, he really didn’t know anything about Plotinus.

Now it’s no crime to be ignorant of Plotinus – but as Rothbard himself says, it’s a bad idea to have a “loud and vociferous opinion” on things one is ignorant of. And unfortunately, Rothbard – evidently through reliance on Thomas Molnar and Leszek Kolakowski, neither of whom apparently knew a damn thing about Plotinus either – has uncritically picked up some loud and vociferous opinions on Plotinus.

Plotinus says that God, or the One, is “self-sufficing” and “utterly perfect above all,” and that it creates out of a kind of overflowing fullness, because it does not “grudge … to give of itself.”

But according to Rothbard, Plotinus’s view is that God is imperfect and “creates the universe out of loneliness, dissatisfaction, or …. felt need.”

Moreover, Rothbard tells us that according to Plotinus, “creation, instead of being wondrous and good, is essentially and metaphysically evil,” and that redemption will not come until the “painful state of creation is … over.”

By contrast, here’s what Plotinus actually says about the goodness of creation:

To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace could overtake the Soul of the All. … We assert its creative act to be a proof not of decline but rather of its steadfast hold. … And when will it destroy the work? If it repents of its work, what is it waiting for? If it has not yet repented, then it will never repent: it must be already accustomed to the world, must be growing more tender towards it with the passing of time. … What reflection of that [intelligible] world could be conceived more beautiful than this [material world] of ours? What fire could be a nobler reflection of the fire there than the fire we know here? Or what other earth than this could have been modelled after that earth? And what globe more minutely perfect than this, or more admirably ordered in its course could have been conceived in the image of the self-centred circling of the World of Intelligibles? And for a sun figuring the Divine sphere, if it is to be more splendid than the sun visible to us, what a sun it must be.

So is Plotinus a “reabsorption theologian”? Sure, in some sense. But Plotinus is constantly trying to reconcile the sense in which creation needs to be transcended with the sense in which it needs to be embraced – just as, y’know, orthodox Christianity does too. (And although the Gnostics are interestingly different from Plotinus, what Rothbard says doesn’t apply to them either – mainly because for them, while the material universe is indeed evil (by contrast with Plotinus), God does not create the material universe, and so a fortiori does not create it out of a lack of self-sufficiency – and the immaterial universe that God does create is not evil.) Reabsorption theology is a lot more subtle and nuanced than the cartoon version you’re going to get if you’re relying on a Catholic apologist who wants to use it as a cudgel to beat the Gnostics with and a postmodernist who wants to use it as a cudgel to beat the Marxists with.


Mystery Speaker, Part 2: Mystery Resolved

Roderick in dunce cap

Oops!

Well, embarrassingly enough, it turns out that last March I did receive, and accept, an invitation to speak at ISIL’s upcoming January conference.

I guess my financial crisis over the summer completely blew it out of my memory, and so I most unfairly took the fault to lie with ISIL rather than with your humble correspondent.

Well, I’m glad I noticed the announcement on the website, or I wouldn’t have made plans to attend! Now I will.

And at least now you know I haven’t been kidding about my conical hat….


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