Catching Up Around the ‘Sphere

February 18, 2008

The underlying theme of this blog post via Bill St.Clair is a bit more revolutionary than I typically endorse, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t points well worth pondering:

Lesson No. 4: Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate liars. Just because a tyrant is “democratically elected” does not mean he believes in democracy.

…

LESSON NO. 6: While nations do not always get the leaders they deserve, they always get the leaders they tolerate. And anyone who tells you that “It Can’t Happen Here” is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no “house rule” that bars tyranny coming to America.

No. 6 meshes well with Boettie’s Discourse, which is, coincidentally, one of the most concise and concrete explications of the libertarian epistemology. You can read it in an afternoon, if you’re so inclined.

Also, via Bill St.Clair, is this brief piece on Abe Lincoln, one president who consistently draws ire from libertarians, and respect from statists of all color (no pun intended.) Lincoln is generally credited with ending the abhorrent practice of slavery in the United States. What often, if not always, goes without saying, is that dissolving this institution cost nearly a million American lives. Every other civilized nation in the world, by the mid-19th century, had peacefully abolished the practice. Our civil war, despite its ends, should be viewed as a catastrophic government failure. I bought this book for my mother, who enjoys biographies of historical figures, for Christmas a few years ago, after hearing DiLorenzo speak at the Mises University seminar in 2006. I’ve never read the book, but I should borrow it from her.

I received The Age of Turbulence from her, this past Christmas. Maybe we should swap.

A lot of libertarians have been linking to this primer on the “Subprime Crisis” recently. Yes, it’s 45 slides, but you can view it in a few minutes. I’d recommend it.

Via FSK’s Shared Items, I came across this debunking of the myth of “gun free” zones.

Citizens should demand, in the very least, that ‘gun free zone’ laws either be completely enforced - or immediately repealed. Thanks to these liberal ‘let’s depend on the government - rather than ourselves‘ laws, students and faculty continue to remain sitting ducks. When will people realize that the best defense against armed crazies is the private individual citizen?

In the interest of full disclosure, I always argue that legislation infringing the rights of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding people from owning guns only ensures that criminals will continue to be armed, at the expense of everyone else.

Check out the “Carinval of Libertarians via Consent of the Governed

And submit your entires to the market anarchist blog carnival, by 2/27/2008. The new edition will be hosted here, on February 29.