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The Superfluous Man
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John Markley's blog on current politics and political philosophy, from a libertarian perspective. Has commentary on economics, war and peace, the nanny state, law enforcement, and the nature of statism.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'the left'
The "uninsured Americans" Trojan horse
One of the main issues that allegedly motivates calls for health care "reform"- be it instituting single-payer, a "public option," insurance mandates, requiring insurance companies to accept all patients or charge the same amount regardless of risk, ...
The Trotsky myth
Over at A Terrible Blogger is born, blogger rmangum has a post speculating about why Leon Trotsky's reputation has been so strong among so many Western intellectuals, given the ample evidence that the idealized image of a man who would have created a...
The Berlin Wall and the fruits of liberty
20 years ago as of Monday, the citizens of East Berlin penetrated the Berlin Wall and gained access to the West. The wall's physical destruction would not be completed for weeks, but its power was broken. My paternal grandmother was born in Germany, ...
Like maggots to carrion
Ever find yourself in a position where you think most of the people who share your opinion on the proper course of action are utterly repulsive? Watching the response to the arrest of Roman Polanski, as his apologists rally to defend him against the...
A time for gibbering panic
Back in June, the nation was rocked by the murder of abortionist George Tiller by a radical anti-abortionist and the murder of museum security guard Stephen Johns by an elderly Neo-Nazi. The result was a tremendous frenzy in the media, with much exu...
Caring about the war is so 2008
The end of August marked the close of what is now the bloodiest month for the United States forces in Afghanistan since its presence began there in 2001, with 45 confirmed deaths. I haven’t seen any numbers for Afghan deaths, but given the escalat...
Race and police misconduct
I’ve been following the case of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates with some interest. (Here's a quick bit of background, in case you've spent the last few weeks living in a sensory deprivation tank or on some sort of eremitic desert religious retrea...
Seeds of Libertarianism on the Left, Part II
We now come to the follow-up to my previous post on libertarians reaching out to the Left, and why the far Left offers better prospects than mainstream left-liberals. Last time, I talked about the idea of spontaneous order in voluntary social action...
Palin 2012: Somewhat Less Godawfulness You Can Believe In
I’m actually a little sad to see Sarah Palin go. I was no fan, but of the four candidates and running mates during the election- McCain, Palin, Obama, Biden- I found her the least objectionable. I admit that my opinion may be shaded by my reflexi...
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my pejorated name
Kevin Carson has an interesting article at the Center for a Stateless Society about the assorted meanings of the term “socialism,” which at one point was self-applied not only by statists but by individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker. Amo...
The Democratic Party I grew up with
I feel sorry for whoever owns the company that makes those “Dissent is Patriotic” bumper stickers. Their stock price must be in the toilet by now.I have thought for years that the bombing of the Oklahoma City Bombing was the best thing that ever...
Acceptable targets
Gay marriage has been prominent in the news this week, which got me thinking about recent events. Some of you may recall the recent case of Carrie Prejean, a contestant in the Miss USA Pageant. In the course of the pageant, the contestants were ask...
Seeds of libertarianism on the Left
In my post criticizing the idea of liberal-libertarian fusionism, I said that it is not mainstream liberals but people further leftward on the spectrum who offer potentially fruitful interaction, and who may be receptive to libertarian ideas. I’d ...
In search of dogs to lie down with, Part II
The idea of liberaltarianism, an ideological fusion between libertarians and welfare statist/interventionist left-liberals that has been proposed by libertarians such as Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsay, has sprung up again. (See Will Wilkinson, C.J...
Hope and desperation
I’m quite hard on American liberals, and I make no apologies for that. That said, whereas liberal pundits and politicians often make me dismayed or angry, most liberalism (or conservatism, for that matter) in the average person just makes me feel ...
Unintended consequences
Writing about the problems that arise when the government intertwines itself with an area of the private economy, in this case medicine, Roderick Long writes: When so much of the health care system has been unnaturally sucked into the federal embrac...
Ah, those stalwart champions of the common man
Reading the response to this post by Will Wilkinson, especially in the post’s comments section, made me chuckle a bit. Wilkinson argues that giving billions of dollars in taxpayer money to the Big 3 car companies would be a bad idea. This leads to ...
Yes, just like all liberals 'hate America"
A certain pet peeve of my mine has come to the fore a lot lately. Over at the blog Art of the Possible, poster Alix quotes the following from Makani Themba-Nixon: If anyone doubts that racism is alive and well in American politics, the fact that mor...
A conundrum
One of the frustrating things about politics is how difficult it can be to distinguish actual liberalism from parodies of liberalism. Case in point: Is this Slate article, "Date Local: The Case Against Long-Distance Relationships" a clever satire o...
Sheep's clothing
As the old Vulcan proverb says, only Nixon could go to China. His reputation as a devoted Cold Warrior meant no one could plausibly accuse him of being soft on Communism for opening relations with China, whereas a dove who attempted it would have be...
Sarah Palin thoughts
Well, by now everyone knows that John McCain has selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. It’s a relief for me; there used to be a bit of speculation (or perhaps just neocon wishful thinking) that he would pick Joseph Lieberman as...
New article at Lewrockwell.com
It's been a while since I've had something there, but I've got a new article up at lewrockwell.com. I hope you like it. ...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, probably the most famous anti-Communist writer of the 20th Century, is dead at 89. His death should be an occasion for self-reflection and shame in the West. Faced with the most monstrous evil in human history, how did the l...
Culture and choice
Will Wilkinson has an excellent post, “The World is Not a Zoo,” on multiculturalism and the desire to force people into certain cultures.The "zoo" metaphor strikes me as a very good one. Actually, on one of Russ Roberts' EconTalk podcasts, Micha...
Chutzpah
Imagine you’re walking down the street, minding your own business, when a stranger attacks you without provocation. He rains blows upon you until finally, desperate to protect yourself, you spot an opening and give him a single crack on the jaw. ...
Failure is an orphan. So are hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.
Kevin Carson has a post on remarks made by Matthew Yglesias, in which Yglesias said:My ideas really are basically the ideas that were at the core of the bipartisan, establishment consensus throughout the Cold War years. And they're ideas that could a...
In search of dogs to lie down with
Will Wilkinson has what I would consider a deeply misguided post about the alleged affinity between libertarianism and big government welfare statist left-liberalism. It’s sort of the bearded mirror universe double of left-libertarianism; left-lib...
Shut up and enjoy your freedom of speech!
Robert Murphy at Crash Landing comments on the following phenomenon:It always amazes me when someone will complain about the government on some issue, and then some blowhard comes back with, "You're lucky you live in a country where you have the righ...
Injustice and its non-celebrity victims
Over at Hit and Run, Michael Moynihan has a post about Mumia Abu-Jamal that got me thinking. Why did Mumia Abu-Jamal become such a prominent cause, as opposed to any of the myriad other people imprisoned in this country, many under circumstances far...
Statists distort libertarianism, Episode 4,367
Excellent post by Will Wilkinson on this embarrassing screed about libertarianism in The Weekly Standard. The Weekly Standard article is a useful reminder of how little neocons have strayed from their roots- neoconservatism is still liberalism’s ...
