And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. Welcome to C4SS’s newest regular blog, Wars and Rumors of Wars. Here, we will explore issues of war and peace, ranging from foreign and military…

In one of my blog posts; I discussed property rights and the Civil Rights era sit-ins. This post is a further exploration of the subject. I said the following in the previous post: These bills make an Orwellian use of terms like freedom. The ability to exclude people for irrational and arbitrary reasons is not…

What do you call a “withdrawal” that doesn’t end drone strikes? A faux one. The term withdrawal implies an exit from the area. If U.S. drones will continue to kill people in Afghanistan, the military presence is not truly over. We should be worried about the continued and apparently indefinite use of imperial violence by…

Alternet just can’t stop publishing attacks on libertarianism. The article is titled “10 Reasons Americans Should be Wary of Rand Paul’s Libertarianism, Especially Young People“. It mistakenly labels Rand Paul a libertarian. He has stated he isn’t one: They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my…

Consumerism is often derided by leftists. It’s viewed as an outgrowth of capitalism and markets more generally. There is truth in the notion that commercialism is a product of markets, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. As Ellen Willis stated: First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable…

I had my first experience with the Canadian state this week. The immigration authorities questioned me about my trip to Canada. One dicey moment was when the customs officer asked about whether I paid taxes or not. I replied that I only pay sales tax. I haven’t made enough money to pay income tax since…

Perfect freedom is often dismissed as a fantasy. This post is aimed at refuting that notion. A good starting point is the late Ellen Willis’s distinction between personal and sovereign freedom. The former pertains to the ability to do whatever you want as long as you obey the law of equal freedom. This law stipulates…

This is the final part of a trinity of posts on Lynn Stuart Parramore’s recent Atlernet article called “3 Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode“. The first two posts in the series dealt with selective contentions about her thoughts regarding the libertarian attitude towards inequality and public goods. This one is about her thoughts on…

This is part two of a three part series on an article by Lynn Stuart Parramore of Alternet. The first part focused on a contention she made about libertarians and inequality. This post discusses her take on libertarians and public goods. Our focus is on her thoughts about national defense. As she puts it: Another…

Lynn Stuart Parramore recently wrote an Alternet article titled “3 Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode“. She identifies three areas where our heads will supposedly explode. They are inequality, public goods, and regulation. She evidences no awareness of the existence of left-wing market anarchists or any other type of libertarian leftist. In her world, the…

Is there a connection between egoism and nihilism? Does Ayn Rand’s brand of ethical egoism amount to a form of nihilism? These are the questions addressed in this blog post. Let us turn to dictionary.com for a definition of nihilism: ni·hil·ism: 1. total rejection of established laws and institutions. 2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity. 3. total…

Left-libertarians need a psychological theory and practice to augment their philosophical framework. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) represents a good choice for left-libertarians, because it emphasizes individuality and social interest. It was formulated and begun by the psychologist, Albert Ellis. The central idea of it is that our beliefs about things that happen to us…

Chris Matthew Sciabarra is a dear friend and fine scholar. His book, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, is part of a broader Dialectics and Liberty trilogy. The other two books in the series are Marx, Hayek and Utopia and Total Freedom: Towards a Dialectical Libertarianism. All three are worth checking out, but this post focuses…

Several states have recently considered passing laws allowing legal discrimination against LGBT people. These laws are based on the notion of religious freedom. What is the proper left-libertarian response to these laws? The answer is advocacy of direct action. If the laws pass, we left-libertarians should engage in sit-ins analogous to what the Civil Rights…

The Libertarian Alliance blog posted my piece on why libertarians are not conservatives. It wasn’t received very well. The poster of the article argued thusly: Note: In my view, this is a silly article. The author does to conservatism just what the more brain dead conservatives do to libertarianism – that is, to pick out…

Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Karl Jaspers coined the term “Axial Age” to describe a widespread, fundamental shift in ethical values that occurred in a number of societies in the mid-1st millennium BCE. It included the rise of Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and the prophetic movement of…

My blog post on the differences between conservatives and libertarians has caused some controversy. These criticisms and comments deserve to be answered. Let’s start with a comment made on this page by N8chz: Libertarian and conservative are practically opposites, but America is a special place. American libertarianism is a different breed of libertarianism and American…

Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology James Scott describes the general phenomenon as “symbolic jiujitsu.” Prophetic rebellious movements in non-state spaces “appropriate the power, magic, regalia, and institutional charisma of the valley state in a kind of symbolic jiujitsu in order to attack it.” [145] And symbolic jiujitsu…

Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Scott argues that the popular religion—or “folk Catholicism”—of Christian Europe, far from serving ruling interests, was practiced and interpreted in ways that often defended peasant property rights, contested large differences in wealth, and even provided something of a millennial ideology with revolutionary import….

Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Scott does not go far enough, however. He goes too far in stressing the dependence of ideologies of resistance on recuperated content from ideologies of domination, and then neglects the reverse. By definition, we have made the public transcript of domination ontologically…