I am, within the confines of reason, elated to announce to you that Libertarianism: A Novel has finally been completed and may be found at the above link. This long-awaited aesthetic treatise on the philosophy of FREEDOM and LIBERTY, with a special introduction by none other than Ludwig von Mises, should serve to clarify the various misgivings of those who would seek to castigate individual self-determination and the glory of the free market. Consider this as a warning: to approach this text as anything other than a TRUE INDIVIDUAL one must be willing to risk all of one’s systems and values. The truth is not political, it is just correct.
Special thanks to Sam Stein for cover design/layout, and to Evelyn Pappas for putting me in touch with Ludwig von Mises.
Sharing of the text is encouraged and indeed almost obligatory, though not without the proper adjustments to allow for perpetuation of the free markets whose praises every word contained herein can be said to sing.
For my libertarian lurkers, Happy Holidays!
I am, within the confines of reason, elated to announce to you that Libertarianism: A Novel has finally been completed and may be found at the above link. This long-awaited aesthetic treatise on the philosophy of FREEDOM and LIBERTY, with a special introduction by none other than Ludwig von Mises, should serve to clarify the various misgivings of those who would seek to castigate individual self-determination and the glory of the free market. Consider this as a warning: to approach this text as anything other than a TRUE INDIVIDUAL one must be willing to risk all of one’s systems and values. The truth is not political, it is just correct.
Special thanks to Sam Stein for cover design/layout, and to Evelyn Pappas for putting me in touch with Ludwig von Mises.
Sharing of the text is encouraged and indeed almost obligatory, though not without the proper adjustments to allow for perpetuation of the free markets whose praises every word contained herein can be said to sing.
This is probably the funniest and best greatest thing on the internet today ever.
Your gimmick blog, the one you’re still vainly hoping gets picked up as a book to be made available at Urban Outfitters, will never be as incredible as this. Stop. Trying.
Remember, give me Liberty™ or give me Death™. ©
Sproul RIGHT NOW. Cal students have filled tents up with balloons and have gathered to reclaim Sproul Plaza. Chanting “Whose space? Our space!”
(Sorry these photos are so shitty…I took them in PhotoBooth on my laptop.)
Tents in the sky? You can’t explain that.
Q
Anonymous asked:
Are we witnessing the decline of the middle class as Marx predicted? Would a workers revolution even be able to destroy the modern state with the rise of such deadly technology as we have today? Would it even be desirable?
A
Well I feel compelled to make a couple of clarifications, for example Marx never made predictions. He was NOT, emphasis on not, Ms Cleo or Nostradamus. In other words, please do not associate the word predict with Marx in the future. If anything Marx was attempting to do for political economy what Darwin did for the biological sciences. By the way Marx was not the first or the last economist to make that or similar observations. In fact some consider Marx merely a Post-Ricardian but that’s just silly. As for the other questions, I’m not sure where to begin but I’d rather not make predictions either.
When commentators, politicians, and journalists pose questions as to the potentially dangerous aspect of regime change in the Arab world, they are pointing to the possibility that Islamist governments may be formed in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria. American and European fears of Islamists are certainly not because they represent a threat to personal freedoms (just look at the record of personal freedoms in Saudi Arabia, America’s strongest Arab ally) but because Western powers are afraid of what an Islamist-inspired foreign policy might look like. Simply put, the fear is that Islamist governments may realign themselves against the US/Israel camp, although, looking again to Saudi Arabia, there is little evidence to suggest that Islamism is inherently at odds with the foreign policy objectives of the United States and of Israel. In this way, gay Arabs are only the latest fodder used to fan the flames of Islamophobia in political, media, and public discourse. The idea is that Islamist governments are inherently intolerant of non-normative sexual behavior, and that that intolerance is unacceptable to the international community today. This statement, in turn, rests upon several assumptions: 1) Secular authoritarian regimes have been the protectors of women and gays in the Arab world, and 2) The international community, via the discourse of human rights, can cherry pick injustices and politicize them within a liberal discourse of tolerance. Under the twinned discourses of “tolerance” and “Islamophobia”, a state’s treatment of its gays and its women is used as a marker for “backwardness” or “civilization”. As Wendy Brown reminds us, the use of human rights abuses to justify the War on Terror speaks this violent logic; that those who are intolerant do not deserve to be tolerated [by those who both set the standard and are tasked with upholding it, when it suits them]. Homophobia within Palestine, for example, which is bizarrely presented as unique and exceptional, becomes a justification for why Palestinians are less deserving of justice, equality and a state than the liberal, tolerant and democratic Israelis.It is significant that populations such as gays, women, and Christians are being harnessed to promote fear of what will emerge post Assad, for example. In part, we should not be surprised; if the pinkwashing campaign has taught us anything, it is that Israel, by promoting itself as the protector of gay Palestinians, successfully cleaves human rights from political engagement and uses the ideological capital of “tolerance” to promote itself as a protector of freedom in a sea of intolerant, backwards, and dangerous Arabs/Palestinians. One could ask, as one Palestinian queer activist is fond of saying, is there a secret doorway in the apartheid wall visible only to gay Palestinians? In the context of the Arab Spring, this separation of human and political rights accomplishes many of the same objectives. It posits the Assad, Mubarak, or Ben Ali regime as preferable in terms of human and minority rights to the Islamist governments that may follow them. And it renders the political rights and will of all Arabs, gay and straight, male and female, old and young, citizens and non-citizens, Christian and Muslim and Jewish, a prospect that we, the secular and the liberal, should be weary of.
How did I miss this?
Many commentators are comparing Egypt to Iran of 32 years ago, mostly to warn of the risks of the country descending into some sort of Islamist dictatorship that would tear up the peace treaty with Israel, engage in anti-American policies, and deprive women and minorities of their rights (as if they had so many rights under the Mubarak dictatorship)
[…]The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:
“It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us – but more specifically on them, these … workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.
One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say … All of them are based on the elimination of the [president]. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?”
The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini’s return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.
Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall. Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of “insanity” that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one’s government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.
‘The Shaping of a New World Order’ by Mark LeVine [Al Jazeera], February 6, 2011.
An example of why you must immediately hand over power to the people.
“When I arrived to Venezuela for the first time in 1993, the country was in severe turmoil. Constitutional rights had been suspended and a nationwide curfew was imposed. Repression was widespread, the economy was in crisis, several newspapers, television and radio stations had been shut down or censored, and the government had imposed a forced military draft targeting young men from poor communities. There was an interim president in power, because the actual president, Carlos Andres Perez - hailed by Washington as an “outstanding democrat” - had just been impeached and imprisoned for corruption. Perez eventually escaped confinement and fled to Miami, where he resided until his death last month, living off the millions he stole from the Venezuelan people.
Even though a new president was elected in 1994, constitutional rights remained suspended on and off for years, until the elections in 1998 that brought Chavez to power. Since then, despite a short-lived coup d’etat in 2002, an economically-shattering sabotage of the oil industry in 2003 and multiple attempts against his government during the following years, President Chavez has never once limited constitutional rights nor imposed a curfew on the population. He hasn’t ever ordered a state of emergency that would limit rights or shut down any media outlets. He even issued a general pardon in 2007 giving amnesty to all those involved in the 2002 coup, with the exception of individuals directly responsible for crimes against humanity or homicide.” - Eva Golinger on Venezuela
The views I am reading on tumblr right now about interim governments and maintaining economic levels are an example of privilege at it’s finest. You can’t hand over power to Sulayman, end-of-story. Sulayman is being denounced on the streets, just like Mubarak, by the hundred of thousands of people who did not protest to maintain the status quo (if even for a few months more.) In addition, any argument that the Egyptian’s are incapable of deciding their own fate, under any guise, is the sign of a well adjusted imperialist mind (to paraphrase Cornel West), to defend Mubarak by arguing that he should remain in power until September is ignorant and to make this argument solely about maintaining the Israeli-Egypt peace is an insult to the Egyptians and the people living in Gaza who have seen conditions deteriorate to unsustainable humanitarian levels during this “peace” period. The Egyptians are risking it all because the conditions are increasingly atrocious and they seek to change that as quickly as possible. For them, it is better to protest, break curfew and gamble with their lives than it is to live one more day under the status quo. We, those of us who have never experienced such a situation, in America and Canada simply cannot even begin to fathom that level of despair or that level of oppression. (It’s like the TSA frisk but they place Sulayman places you in torture chambers instead.) You and I are aware of the chants in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez etc…, the people are speaking and they want to restructure the government from top to bottom.
Another bit of advice, the general rule is to never trust an Arab army. They, like Latin American armies, will jump at the opportunity to maintain or gain power. (See Venezuela in 2002, 4 years after Chavez became the leader.) Without changing the army generals, you are asking the new president to reduce the power granted to the army and the vast network (some say 1-2 million) of Mubarak spy goons. This will be incredibly difficult unless you have complete and immediate regime change. With that said, Nasser, bless his soul, was not Sadat and he was certainly not Mubarak. Nasser was a different kind of Arab military man so do not lump these leaders together, in fact, Nasser would have cried tears if he saw what Mubarak has done to Egypt.
As was the case with any other nation in the last two decades who has transitioned into a democratic style of governance, we should be supportive of the ensuing chaos because it will happen (interim government or not) and because these are the growing pains of a democracy. That is why it is called a revolution and not a reform, a reform does nothing for the people. Health care reform was not revolutionary, it was slightly less of the same but it still largely remains the same. A revolution is supposed to make you uncomfortable, it is about taking to the streets and demanding an immediate change (even if you risk losing it all!) To assume that one can have a revolution and maintain pre-revolutionary levels of stability or economic activity is ridiculous. NO nation has been capable of that, it takes years or decades to recover from true revolution and even then it comes at a significant cost. The right to self-determination is as crucial now as it was in 1776. I don’t know enough about 1784 to determine if it was better than 1774 but I assure you that thousands died and continued to die to ensure that semblance of a democracy was available for future generations (and Americans still haven’t fully mastered the concept.) This is the logic that privilege can afford, it is okay to demand change but only within certain comfort levels. NO FUCK THAT I’M SORRY THAT IS NOT CHANGE, that is not a revolution. That is your well-adjusted mind spewing fantasies about the very nature of getting your feet wet, this is why American conditions continue to deteriorate before our eyes and yet we do nothing. When the system is fucked, you change the fucking system. You uproot it from the ground and you fucking it burn and plant another seed, it might be a fledgling at first but it can blossom into a beautiful and sturdy tree that gives back to it’s people as much as they give in. These are the risks that accompany a revolution, this is why so many have tried and failed (even with this knowledge and against all odds.) The important thing is that we let the people of Egypt select their own fate as they have more than enough capable minds to draw a resolution. We as a nation, and other nations, should be supportive at every step of the way. In any case, check your fucking privilege, I’ll check mine too. Viva la revolucion.
Also related: Why we shouldn’t fear the Muslim Brotherhood
Also related: Meet Mubarak’s American fan club
