Tag: Trump
The Trump-Era “Free Speech” Shell Game
In Wisconsin, buzz has been building over a “Campus Free Speech Act” which creates harsh penalties for interrupting, protesting, or otherwise disrupting speakers invited onto colleges campuses. Meanwhile last week, 61-year-old Code Pink protester Desiree Fairooz was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison for laughing.
Reactionaries Have Always Been “Post-Truth”
Nationalism and all other forms of traditionalism have always been “post-truth”. One might think that this is an odd statement, since reactionary movements are so often characterized by a kind of absolutism. Liberals and leftists have always been the ones who are accused of vacuous relativism.
Decriminalize Immigration, Free Movement for All!
The United States recently experienced its first wave of large-scale anti-immigration raids following the election of Donald Trump, who made the mass deportation of “illegal” immigrants a central part of his campaign. Although ICE officials claim that these raids targeted individuals with criminal records, immigrant rights groups dispute this claim, arguing that law-abiding people were…
Vermin Supreme’s Inauguration Was A Riot!
If you didn’t already hear, Vermin Supreme was recently inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20th, 2017 and the celebrations couldn’t have been more festive. Tens of thousands of people or more showed up to show their support with fireworks, musical performances, cannabis, campfires, and more. But there was another man trying…
Daily Molotov: January 27, 2017
Welcome back to the Daily Molotov, all the news that’s fit to make you hate the state. We took a couple days off because honestly, the news has been overwhelming for the last week and sometimes you just need to decompress. But we’re back now. Here’s today’s top news. From the New York Times After signing an…
La Sinistra Lieta di Tradire Libertà e Cosmopolitismo
[Di Edmund Berger. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 15 gennaio 2017 con il titolo Leftist Politicians Will Always Happily Betray Liberty & Globalism. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] Nel suo discorso di nuovo anno, soprannominato “il giorno del caos”, il leader del partito laburista britannico Jeremy Corbyn ha colto l’occasione per far…
Trump is keeping his promises. We must keep ours
The sun has not yet set on Donald Trump’s first week as President of the United States, and already he has made good on several major campaign promises. He has signed executive orders that pave the way for the forceful restructuring of the ACA, begin construction on both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines,…
An “Open Source Insurgency” Against Trump?
In movements like the struggle for economic justice or against the authoritarian state (Occupy, Black Lives Matter, etc.), we usually see arguments for “diversity of tactics” made by radicals against liberal criticism of black block tactics like smashing windows and things of that sort. There’s still a lot of that kind of criticism, obviously —…
Leftist Politicians Will Always Happily Betray Liberty & Globalism
In his first speech of the new year, an event now being dubbed the “day of chaos”, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn seized opportunity to unleash torrents of his confusion in his support base and back-pedal on one his long-held positions. Bowing to the pressure of the conservative wing of the party — and to…
The Coming State of Fear
Well, it seems that any lingering question on whether or not the happenings on social media platforms are truly politically relevant can finally be put to rest. While most of us prefer the edge of communication media that cuts away from the dynamics of power, president-elect Trump has managed to do quite the opposite by…
The Cronyism Machine: On Trump’s Energy Politics
At times I think back to the days of George W. Bush’s wayward administration and find it hard to believe it ever happened. The nepotism was so flagrant, with each and every move so unabashedly self-serving. Don’t get me wrong, Obama’s presidency was not devoid of its own revolving doors and conflicts of interest; we…
Against Greatness
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about making America “great again” – from a man who seems not to care how many people’s liberty he violates in order to pursue his conception of national greatness. In this context, I’m happy to announce the Molinari Institute’s latest t-shirt, which features a quotation from Jeffersonian political activist…
Trump, Carrier, and the Corporate State
Should free-market advocates applaud the deal Donald Trump brokered to keep some Carrier jobs from being transferred to Mexico? I believe the right answer is no. A virtue of the market process is precisely its impersonal nature. People are free to engage in exchanges subject only to the freedom of others to refuse offers they…
Where Do We Go From Here?
I confess my reaction on Election Night, when it first looked like Trump might get in the White House, was sheer panic. It was a bit like Philip K. Dick’s “Black Iron Prison” closing down. On a personal level, I was about as terrified as the night I was arrested and put in jail. Now,…
Trump Or No Trump, We’ll Bury the Carbon Economy
We’ve seen a lot of panic on climate change issues, and understandably so, since Trump’s election. But let’s not overestimate what Trump can actually do to derail progress, or underestimate what we’ll continue to do despite him. First, whatever you think of government policies on such matters, the national and local governments of a major…
Violence and Freedom in a Borderlands Trump Rally
The rally against Trump in Fountain Hills, Arizona, on the 19th of March, 2016, was met with great resistance and critique from both the Left and the Right largely using arguments about “freedom” and “violence.” As these are important and seemingly misunderstood themes, I’ve chosen to weave analyses of them through this report-back. Freedom is…
Trump’s Toxic Aggrieved-Nation Shtick
The key to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — the feature that explains nearly everything else about that toxic dump — is his aggrieved-nation shtick. Just about everything Trump says (when he’s not adoring himself or belittling others) is about how the once-great American nation has been humbled by the rest of the world. To hear…
On Trade, Sanders and Trump Are Peas in a Rotten Pod
Neither Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, nor Donald Trump, the self-described terrific businessman, knows squat about economics. If their polices were enacted, regular working people would be harmed. This is most clear with trade. Sanders and Trump are flaming protectionists, which means they peddle perhaps the oldest, most-thoroughly discredited economics doctrine ever spoken. (An…
Trump’s Creators
The Donald Trump phenomenon is indeed the creature of the Republican establishment, but there’s more to it than that. For decades the Republican leadership (committed to corporate privilege and costly empire) encouraged a base of jingoists, protectionists, nativists, and other “politically incorrect” types, whom it then largely took for granted. The leadership wanted their votes,…
Sanders & Trump are too Establishment on Syria
Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton both want the U.S. government to set up a “safe zone” in Syria to care for refugees from the raging civil war. You may assess their judgment by noting that Secretary of State Clinton and Sen. Rubio also pushed for bombing and regime change in Libya, which was crucial in spreading bin…
Anarchy and Democracy
Fighting Fascism
Markets Not Capitalism
The Anatomy of Escape
Organization Theory