Journalist.
During the 1970s, the City University of New York broadcast Day at Night, wherein James Day interviewed various individuals influential in politics or culture. In 1974, he interviewed I.F. Stone and they discussed Stone’s views on free speech, journalistic independence, tolerance, his motivations for starting his Weekly Reader, and his beginnings in journalism. Some notable quotations follow the …
Continue reading “I.F. Stone on free speech, independence, and government power”
I wrote the following column for The Post on Friday: Americans consistently and greatly exaggerate the value and benefit of democracy. It must be admitted the worst tendency in democracy is that it destroys the conception of a private realm wherein political and social power cannot intervene without committing a great injustice. The culprit causing such mischief, …
Continue reading “Unrestrained democracy exudes no justice, liberty”
Once again, Glenn Greenwald illustrates why he’s one of the best political commentators around: What’s most striking, and ironic, is that the Norwegian response to the Oslo attack is so glaringly un-American even though its core premise — a brave refusal to sacrifice liberty and transparency in the name of fear and security — was …
Small update today: A short draft of a piece I’m currently writing and pondering. a manifesto à la The Sharon Statement and The Port Huron Statement. 1. When a policy requires reformation, we are reformers. 2. If an institution necessitates abolition, we are abolitionists. 3. If tradition or a societal structure preserves voluntary and peaceful action …
I’ll have Socialist Cliché #3 written in a few days, God willing. In the meantime, here is a fantastic lecture by Leonard Read.
…during World War I, as illustrated by Schenck v. United States (1919) . Charles Schenck, the secretary of the Socialist Party of America, was responsible for the distribution of a pamphlet advocating opposition to the draft. For such a heinous crime against American military intervention, the Supreme Court upheld Schenck’s conviction under the Espionage Act …
It is impossible to splinter social freedom from economic freedom; the loss of economic freedom limits the individual’s choices in social freedom, while the limitation of social freedom curbs and renders useless the individual’s economic freedom. Freedom is living within one’s means as he or she sees fit without harming another. No division exists between …