I’m hearing a lot of negativity — constructive negativity, but negativity nonetheless —  from my comrades on the libertarian left, concerning the US federal government’s “shutdown.” As the Center for a Stateless Society’s Kevin Carson notes with reference to “furloughed” government employees, “[S]ome of what government workers do — for example cops who enforce drug…

Cory Doctorow, guest of honor at the upcoming FenCon science fiction convention in Dallas, notes (“During the shutdown, some scientists can’t talk about science,” Boing Boing, October 4) that some of his fellow speakers will be unable to speak if the government shutdown continues. Because they’re government space scientists, they fall under the purview of the…

The government shutdown is teaching us a lot about the “public sector” — mainly that it doesn’t exist. For many folks Autumn is a season for getting out into the wild, for viewing fall colors, building camp fires, breathing in the still sweet air and plainly enjoying the great outdoors — “our” public lands. With…

On the 28th of September four European classical-liberal and libertarian parties signed the Utrecht declaration and covenant of European Classical liberal and Libertarian parties which provides the foundation for the new European Party for Individual Liberty (EPIL). The coming years will show if the EPIL can bring a new perspective on the principle of liberty…

Libertarian science fiction author J. Neil Schulman made some waves at this year’s Libertopia conference in San Diego, CA when, following Angela Keaton of Anti-War.org’s talk, titled “The War At Home: What Domestic Violence, Homophobia, and Misogyny Have To Do With Empire,” he demanded that Keaton refer to Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently serving 35…

In 399 BCE, for the crime of “corrupting the youth” and undermining belief in the customary gods of Athens, Socrates was sentenced to drink a cup of hemlock. If the goal was to silence Socrates’ voice, it’s safe to say that plan backfired in a big way. The story of Socrates stands second in the…

How many times have you heard a politician, addressing some issue of regulatory policy, speak of “all the stakeholders” being at “the table?” That phrase has become popular recently, in particular among sponsors of maximalist copyright law proposals like SOPA and ACTA. “All the stakeholders had seats at the table — the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft…

The long-awaited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013 report is now making headlines. The report is designed to inform the global community about the current state of climate science — the scientific debate, consensus and (most importantly) data. We will learn of the latest scientific projections of temperature increase, sea level rise and extremes in weather. The report is seven…

“You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a television, you wouldn’t steal a movie.” Sounds familiar doesn’t it? For years the copyright industry has been telling us that piracy is a crime. However, recently another supposedly heinous copyright crime has been added to the list: exposing racism. On September…

Rightists like David Brooks and former UN ambassador John Bolton, are, predictably, going ballistic over Edward Snowden — not only over his leaks, but over everything he represents to the society they identify with. By unilaterally deciding to leak documents, Brooks writes (“The Solitary Leaker,” NYT, June 10), Snowden has betrayed the “respect for institutions…

In a recent Esquire column (“Dianne Feinstein Defines ‘Journalist,’” September 19), Charles Pierce recalled presidential historian George Reedy’s prediction years ago that so-called “shield laws,” which protect reporters against criminal prosecution for not revealing their sources, would involve de facto government licensing of the press. After all, the law would have to define who qualified…

Every once in a while a government functionary slips up and inadvertently lets out the truth about how things work, in tones so frank it leaves us shaking our heads and wondering if we really heard correctly. That’s what happened when Blake Ewing, an Austin area assistant DA, expressed his true feelings (“Breaking Bad Normalizes…

Libertarian Harry Browne famously wrote that government “knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’” But with deficits and recessions looming, governments have been getting stingier when it comes to handing out crutches. The U.S. House of Representatives recently…

Recently someone on an email discussion list I follow pointed out that authors or publishers of copyrighted pieces may be reliant on royalty income for their subsistence. The alternative to proprietary information might be that “only people with income from other sources (such as academic salaries) [would] be able to make their voices heard.” I…

The Constitution did not keep President Obama from attacking Syria. The people did. Think about that. Obama, his top advisers, and many of his partisans and opponents in Congress insist that the president of the United States has the constitutional authority to attack another country without a declaration of war or so-called “authorization for the…

Robert Reich (“Syria and the Reality at Home in America,” Nation of Change, September 7), noting that the share of the population either working or seeking work was at a thirty-year low, writes “A decent society would put people to work — even if this required more government spending on roads, bridges, ports, pipelines, parks…

A few days ago, US Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) recycled his familiar contention that “[w]hat enables [the United States’] war-friendly philosophy is the fact that there is no military draft to dodge.” Yoking ordinary people to the decisions of the political class, he argues, would somehow disincentivize U.S. bellicosity abroad. In tandem with Rangel’s proposal…

Forbes contributor psychiatrist Dale Archer asks whether America’s wealth gap could lead to a revolt. Highlighting recent fast food workers’ strikes and the struggle for a “living wage,” Archer observes that “disparity between the nation’s top earners and the bottom 80 percent has grown exponentially over the past three decades, and it’s been exacerbated by…

When is a war not a war? According to John Kerry, launching cruise missiles at Syria is not a war. Testifying before the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry said, “President Obama is not asking America to go to war.” Kerry’s argument seems to hinge on the idea that no American ground troops will likely…

When you take a big dose of syrup of ipecac, you get a big stream of projectile vomiting. And when someone calls for a living wage, you get a nice big vomit stream from the usual suspects on the Right, denouncing such calls on the basis of what they call “hard-headed economic rationality.” Response to…