Okay, I don’t want to start liveblogging the damn convention, but Biden just had two accidental moments of honesty: “When we said we were going to have an open convention, we meant this” (pointing around to the open-to-the-sky arena), and “We’re here for the cops.”
Plus, one of the commentators said that the moral of Obama’s candidacy is that if you obey your parents you can grow up to be president.
On a more serious note: I just caught the end of al-Gore’s speech, after which the convention organisers started playing the 60s anthem “Let the Sun Shine In.” There’s a certain obscenity in playing that song while in the streets outside the flag-bestooned arena, the true heirs of the 60s are being herded and arrested.
I’m back from Indianapolis – about which more later. In the meantime, I note that Mary Ruwart has an interesting article on how the LP is turning its back on libertarianism’s “natural constituency … the impoverished, the downtrodden, and the young.”
Speaking of Ruwart, I’m surprised that, despite widespread dissatisfaction with Barr, I haven’t seen any online discussion of a Ruwart write-in campaign. (If I vote at all this year, it’ll be a write-in – most likely of Ruwart.) Also, this (admittedly not much publicised) petition for Ruwart to run again in 2012 has only 13 signatures so far.
Agorist Demerit Count: 5.5
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
The Molinari Society will be holding its fifth annual Symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia, December 27-30, 2008. Here’s the latest schedule info:
GIX-3. Monday, 29 December 2008, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Molinari Society symposium: Authors Meet Critics:
Crispin Sartwell’s Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory and
Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan, eds., Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?
Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market Street, Room TBA
Chair: Carrie-Ann Biondi (Marymount Manhattan College)
Critics:
Nicole Hassoun (Carnegie Mellon University)
Jennifer McKitrick (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Christopher Morris (University of Maryland)Authors:
John Hasnas (Georgetown University)
Lester H. Hunt (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
Jan Narveson (University of Waterloo-Canada)
Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson College)
William Thomas (Atlas Society)
As part of the APA’s new policy to prevent free riders, they’re not telling us the name of the room until we get to the registration desk. As part of our policy of combating evil we will of course broadcast the name of the room far and wide as soon as we learn it.
Happily, we have once again avoided any schedule conflicts with either the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society (Dec. 28th, 11:15 -1:15) or the Ayn Rand Society (Dec. 28th, 2:00-5:00).
In other news, the schedule for next month’s Alabama Philosophical Society meeting in Orange Beach is now online.
I often disagree with Scott Adams’ “nonfiction” remarks (he’s neither sufficiently libertarian nor sufficiently left), but his comic strip continues to capture what the actual experience of being in the business world is like – as in today’s installment. As long as libertarians are perceived as offering denials of, rather than solutions to, this pervasive feature of most people’s everyday life, we won’t make many converts – nor will we deserve to.
During the Saddleback forum, when Obama was asked about evil, he replied:
Evil does exist. I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil – sadly – on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children. And I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely. And one of the things that I strongly believe is that we are not going to – as individuals – be able to erase evil from the world. That is God’s task. But we can be soldiers in that process. And we can confront it when we see it.
Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil. Because a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil, in the name of good. And I think one thing that’s very important is having some humility in recognizing that just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t mean we are going to be doing good.
Then during the televised postmortem, Charles Krauthammer referred to this remark as “postmodern.” Funny; I thought it was Christian.
