I had not intended to write anything on the death of Nelson Mandela. Partly because I am exhausted, but mainly because I wish to demonstrate my right not to mark his passing in any way — notwithstanding any affection I might bear the man. I feel that it is a right that needs to be…

Stephen Moss discusses Jeremy Scahil’s, Dirty Wars. Karam Filfian reviews Dirty Wars. Anthony Papa asks for a pardon of both drug war prisoners and the turkey. Deepak Tripathi discusses Obama’s Middle Eastern policy. David Macray discusses the plight of ex-convicts. Ahmad Barqawi discusses Bandar’s reign of terror. David Rosen discusses the private security threat to…

The end of apartheid in South Africa was neither the first nor the last people’s revolution to be betrayed by its own victorious leadership. Perhaps the premier example was Russia’s Bolshevik victory in 1917. Compare the party’s policies after the October Revolution to its rhetoric before. Lenin’s book “State and Revolution,” written to appeal to…

They don’t create oppression; they just make it possible What I’m about to say may surprise you, but I assure you it’s the honest truth: in my personal experience, cops are overwhelmingly decent folks. They almost always conduct themselves “professionally” and have generally treated me with respect. I’m not saying stories of law enforcement abuse haven’t…

In Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri observe that, because of network communications and radically cheapening production technology, capital accumulation is becoming “increasingly external to the production process.” But rather than working with this trend and exploiting the opportunities it offers, they argue, the Social Democratic approach is “to reintegrate the working class within capital.”…

I declare myself to be a capitalist and anti-capitalist, a socialist and anti-socialist, all at once. No, this is not my resignation of all use of politically descriptive terminology, and I am not declaring myself a moderate between two polar opposite camps. So how may I hold to each of these positions simultaneously? It is…

As the White House struggles to rouse itself from its self-induced ObamaCare public relations nightmare, the primary excuse — at least regarding the canceled health insurance portion of the fiasco — has been to claim that the relevant policies were “substandard” and, therefore, harmful to individual consumers. Ergo, the “substandard” plans needed to be abolished…

On the November 10 episode of the Stossel Show, libertarian commentator John Stossel had an exchange with anarcho-capitalist writer David Friedman on the possibility of “privatizing everything” (i.e. all government functions). When they got to military functions, their discussion shed considerable light on what “privatization” means to a lot of the libertarian Right. “Much of…

Novo livro (Escalada: Mudança de Jogo em 2012, por Mark Halperin e John Heilemann) afirma que o presidente dos Estados Unidos Barack Obama afirmou a seus assessores, durante sua última eleição, ser “realmente eficaz em matar pessoas.” Ele está certo. Por exemplo, na última sexta-feira um ataque de drone [avião não tripulado] visando Hakimullah Mehsud, do…

Em Washington, D.C., o ativista James Babb, da Associação do Júri Plenamente Informado, colocou cartazes informativos nas estações de metrô perto dos tribunais. Esses cartazes informam os passantes acerca da nulificação pelo júri, o velho direito dos jurados de julgarem tanto os fatos quanto a lei. Essa doutrina tem longa e venerável história; o direito dos júris…

Chris Dillow, a heterodox economist who owns Stumbling and Mumbling blog, attacks managerialism from a position decidedly on the Left. But it’s a Left that’s friendly to markets, decentralism, and self-management, and hostile to the New Class version of bureaucratic socialism that dominated Britain from the Webbs to Harold Wilson. The central focus of Dillow’s critique of…

Sean Gabb, successor to the late Chris Tame as Director of the Libertarian Alliance, is very much a man of the Right: a composite of Burkean and Little Englander, roughly equivalent to the Old Right or paleolibertarians on this side of the Atlantic. In his critique of managerialism and the corporate state, however, he has much…

C4SS Fellow, Jason Lee Byas, joins the podcast team of Rachel, Eamon, and Mark of the The El Paso Liberty Hour. They discuss Market Anarchy, the Center for a Stateless Society and the Anarchist movement within Libertarianism. Check Out Politics Conservative Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Be First In Media on BlogTalkRadio  

Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology [PDF] We commonly look at ideology from the perspective of the ruling class, as a legitimizing tool. But ideology serves the purposes of the ruled, as well—as a guide to action in their class interest. The respective ideologies of rulers and…

The Lawrence, Kansas Journal-World‘s Peter Hancock writes that US Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) finds Bitcoin “a difficult subject” (“Senator says ‘Bitcoins’ are challenge for regulators,” November 25th). And in certain respects Moran is correct. Encrypted digital currencies do imply a technical learning curve for users (and presumably for creators). It seems pretty obvious, though, that what…

Criminality, Counter Economics and the Silk Road, or We’re All Illegalists Now! At this point in time, it seems of little doubt to most that Ross Ulbricht was none other than a Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR). According to files obtained by the feds off of Ulbricht’s computer, it also appears that he is the first…

A friend of mine recently shared a blog post by a friend of his on liberty and guns in the Republic of Georgia. In the post, the author, Neal Zupancic, argues that people who need to be armed in order to feel safe cannot be said to be free or safe, and by implication that…

Review number five is upon us! Let’s begin. Ashley Smith discusses the imperial roots of sectarian violence in Iraq. Horace G. Campbell discusses counter-terrorism and imperial hypocrisy. Daniel White offers us some notes on the American Empire. Sheldon Richman discusses the urgency of stopping war with Iran. Dave Lindorff discusses the question of whether security…

Last week’s TGIF, “One Moral Standard for All,” drew a curious response from Matt Bruenig, a contributor to the Demos blog, Policy Shop. In reading his article, “Libertarians Are Huge Fans of Initiating Force,” one should bear in mind that the aim of my article was not to defend the libertarian philosophy, but to show that most people live…

Libertarians make a self-defeating mistake in assuming that their fundamental principles differ radically from most other people’s principles. Think how much easier it would be to bring others to the libertarian position if we realized that they already agree with us in substantial ways. What am I talking about? It’s quite simple. Libertarians believe that…