I love this article by Paul Craig Roberts on the “true cost” of the Iraq war and think everyone should read it.
But there’s one sentence in this otherwise-outstanding piece to which I take exception. Roberts writes: “The fascist Republican Federalist Society has put enough federal judges in the judiciary to rule that the president is above the law.”
This is nonsense.
First, let’s tackle the claim that the Federalist Society is “fascist” and “Republican.”
The Federalist Society was formed by law students who were frustrated by the left’s dominance at law schools. They created the organization to provide a forum for alternative voices: namely, those of conservatives and libertarians.
Here’s how the Federalist Society functions. There’s a national headquarters in Washington (a red flag, I’ll grant you), there are student chapters in almost every law school, and there are lawyers’ chapters in various cities.
The student and lawyers’ chapters generally do one thing: host lectures and debates. These events feature speakers ranging all the way from people Roberts would probably call “fascist” to anarcho-capitalist libertarians such as Randy Barnett and Walter Block. One frequent Federalist speaker is Roberts’s fellow columnist at Antiwar.com, Doug Bandow, whose lecture topics include the American Empire.
Who decides who will speak at these events? Each chapter’s members. If the members tend to be more conservative, they may bring in more conservative speakers. If the members tend to be more libertarian, they may bring in more libertarian speakers.
Islam was founded by a successful merchant, and the religion was largely pro-market until the colonial disease of socialism infected the Muslim world. The Koran calls the merchant the most honorable man, saying that nine of ten of God’s bounties come from trade.
Today LewRockwell.com offers another excerpt from my book. This one is about why government-funded school vouchers aren’t compatible with libertarianism. (Yesterday, LRC ran an excerpt about Ronald Reagan.)
I do understand why some libertarians like vouchers: they rightly feel bad for the actual, real-world children who are forced by law to attend horrible government schools, whose parents can’t afford other alternatives. If the government is going to coerce people, it’s understandable to want to minimize the harm done.
But as I argue in the book, vouchers would do more harm than good. Even if we can’t abolish government schools anytime soon, the best way to rescue as many kids as possible is through private, voluntary means.
Here are two more articles I’ve written on this topic:
The song was written in 1971 by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, a long-time resident of Slidell, Louisiana.
Live 04/16/83 in Hamburg, Germany: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (guitar/vocals), Homer Brown (tenorsax), Bill Samuell (tenorsax), Joe Sunseri (baritonesax), Craig Wroten (piano), Miles Wright (bass), Robert Shipley (drums).
The premise of his article is that the legitimacy of professional licensing is well-established and the practice should be expanded to parents.
While one could argue that it doesn’t follow from professional licensing being applied to various professions that it should be expanded to parents, this article is really illustrative of why libertarians should oppose professional licensure outright.
It’s a slippery slope from licensing florists to licensing parents. Once you concede the legitimacy of some licensing, then more outrageous nonsense inevitably follows.
In a recent post, Akiva claimed that people (in general) get the government they deserve. The US is an imperial-warfare state and a growing surveillance-police state, not to mention a nanny-welfare state. Boston Legal’s left-liberal attorney Alan Shore echoes Akiva’s sentiments in a closing argument in defense of, oddly enough, a tax protester (video below). [...]
The Obama Administration insists that “‘Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft,’ and it should be dealt with accordingly.” Nonsense, of course. Only scarce goods can be property and therefore only scarce goods can be stolen. Ideas or information patterns are nonscarce goods. If I take your bicycle, you don’t have it anymore. If I copy your [...]
All my life I’ve heard the same story: Socialism works in Scandinavia. The usual example of this practical central planning is Sweden. But occasionally someone notices that Finland is run along a similar model, and, except for the high incidence of alcoholism and suicide, we’re told that the Finns are happy and healthy and all-around [...]
Nina Paley, a creative artist and anti-copyright innovator, creator of Sita Sings the Blues (see The Creator-Endorsed Mark as an Alternative to Copyright; Interview: Nina Paley on Copyright; Nina Paley’s “All Creative Work is Derivative”; Power to the Pixel 2009: Nina Paley), has posted on her blog a fascinating exchange with Cory Doctorow about the [...]
I was reading Sarah Lacy’s “If You’ve Got Social Media Fatigue, UR DOIN IT WRONG” on TechCrunch and was reminded of a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s seminal essay “Civil Disobedience” that I discuss in chapter 6 of my dissertation. First the passage from Lacy’s article: Sometimes metrics can be a bad thing and beware of [...]
Although I find Kenyon’s analysis of the radical socialists interesting, ultimately I disagree with his categorization of libertarianism’s 3 options: Libertarians can allow themselves to be absorbed into the Republican Party and work to expand the Liberty caucus. Libertarians can abandon the Republican Party to work exclusively through the Libertarian Party. Libertarians can jettison electoral politics altogether and refuse to [...]
Ross Kenyon analyzes the radical socialist movement of the Progressive Era in an attempt to discern why they failed and how libertarians can learn from their failures in order to create the ideal libertarian society today. Ross Kenyon is a news analyst with the Center for a Stateless Society and a senior at Arizona State [...]
The next time someone claims that not having intellectual property laws will squash the little guy and let established companies rule the day, I’m going to remember to bring up Netflix. Mike Masnick at Techdirt reports on Blockbuster’s recent decision to file for bankruptcy — after the heroic Netflix has stolen most of their customers: [...]
Some people are upset that Toys “R” Us stores are carrying an action figure of the serial-killer TV character ‘Dexter’ intended for adult collectors. Now seems like a strange time to get upset about toy stores carrying an action figure of a fictional killer. After all, Hasbro started selling G.I. Joe figures based on real-life [...]
