I’ve slacked on updating the blog lately, but here’s a few updates: I now write a column for The Post which runs every Monday this quarter. My first column discusses the perils of government intervention in the economy. CIA Operative in Libya to gather intelligence on rebel fighters The Obama administration has sent teams of …
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Libya
Isabel Paterson link aggregation
Lately I’ve received hits from individuals searching for Isabel Paterson, which has led me to attempt an aggregation of online information about Paterson. If I’ve missed any, leave a link in the comments section or e-mail. Literature Archive (Mises Institute) A Woman with impact Twitter account for Paterson quotations Finding Atlas I.M.P. (abbreviated biography in …
The wisdom of Albert Jay Nock
I finished Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert Jay Nock, an intellectual autobiography of sorts written in 1943. I highly encourage reading as much of Nock as an individual can find: luckily, the Mises Institute has free e-books of Memoirs, along with a handful of others and various articles. I’ve selected some especially relevant …
The Westboro Baptist Church and the first amendment
The recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to protest at military funerals elicits two thoughts. 1) “Justice is always the same in the case of men and things you do not like, as in the case of those you do like.” -Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, …
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Omnipotent Government (preface)
For my final paper in sociology class, I’m analyzing the social problem of statism: the tendency to harness political power to achieve social change. I have not written the paper itself yet (or began it, for that matter), but I have borrowed Omnipotent Government by Mises (from the wonderful Alden Library at Ohio University) to …
Theory and behavior: a master-slave relationship
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. -John Maynard …
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The impossibility of utopia through polity
Politics can be accurately described as individuals with power attempting to bend law and reality to legislative will. Human behavior and the economic fact of scarcity is expected to conform and act in accordance with the social policy and political philosophy of whichever political party controls the government bureaucracy. Rather than attempt to construct a …
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The Wisconsin debacle
Oh, union drama and Wisconsin: how quickly you have caused conservatives to demonize unions, liberals to saint them, and libertarians to choose a side under threat of irrelevance and bi-partisan hatred. As a result of visiting D.C. Thursday-Sunday for the ISFLC and scrambling to balance classwork, I haven’t had time to follow the events, but …
Individualism through collectivism!
Democratic freedom came to be envisaged not as the preservation of immunity from the State but as full participation in the power of the State. Democracy popularized and in a significant sense sanctified the State relationship. The continuous expansion of political power and responsibility that has been inherent in the democratic state would be inexplicable …