>Really?

> Just thought the opening paragraph over at the African American Environmentalist Association’s blog was a bit funny: What is the first sign of a dictator-in-waiting? He seizes the assets of the multinational corporations. ‘Elected’ president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez just took operational control of such assets from U.S. companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, […]

>The Impossibility of being Pro-War and Anti-Paternalist

>Are certain “liberventionists” listening? The British Independent’s Patrick Cockburn reports that Iraqi Sunnis aren’t too keen on being partitioned off from the rest of the city “for their own good” by U.S. forces: There seems little doubt that Sunnis in districts of Baghdad being isolated by the walls do not see them as designed for […]

>Carnival of Anarchy Blog: Violence or Peace?

> This from Carnival of Anarchy: On the weekend stretching from April 27-29, the Carnival of Anarchy blog will touch upon the important question of anarchism and violence. It has been a topic of contention among political radicals for ages and I hope there will be a diversity of opinion displayed. The contributors to the […]

>Johann Hari on the Travesty of Medicalized Children

>British journalist for The Independent and Attitude, Johann Hari offers a nice (if I can put it that way) article on the liberal dispensation of the diagnosis of ADHD – and its corollary, Ritalin – among British schoolchildren. Let’s start with the diagnostic problems. When you look at the criteria for classifying a child with […]

>Liberals vs. Conservatives on Charitable Giving

> Arthur Brooks, Professor of Public Administration at Syracuse University has discovered something counter-intuitive: Conservatives are more charitable than Liberals. His new book is called Who Really Cares, and it analyses charitable giving along political lines. In an excerpt found on his webpage he writes, The data tell us that the conventional wisdom is dead […]

>An Introduction to the Modern School Movement

>Peruse this excellent website, Friends of the Modern School, to learn of the revolutionary educational doctrines being promoted in the early twentieth century. Spanish anarchist Franscisco Ferrer provided the intellectual foundations, with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger, among many others, getting involved. Irony Central informs us that the most radical rejecters of the state schooling […]

>Where Conservatives and Conservative Libertarians Converge

>Theodore Dalrymple, in his book Life at the Bottom, is critical of the excessively individualist view that holds that the “anti-social” homeless should be tolerated as simply those that have chosen a way of life that is in stark contrast to the middle class mainstream. (The rich – by definition not mainstream – can also […]

>A Notable Quotable (I know, I can’t take credit for this phrase)…

>“No consistent eugenicist can be a ‘Laisser Faire’ individualist unless he throws up the game in despair. He must interfere, interfere, interfere!” – Fabian Socialist Sidney Webb, as referenced in Thomas C. Leonard’s essay “Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women’s Work”.

>Egalitarianism, the Military and Chuck Rangel

>I’ve always had a hunch that the regimentation and conformity of the military was the dark side of egalitarianism. Congressman Charles Rangel has confirmed it. His defense of the draft, from his website: The question of whether we need a universal military draft will be important as long as this country is placing thousands of […]

>A Pic to Ponder

>The figure on top is the infamous British art critic and thinker John Ruskin impaling a money grubbing darkie, the very embodiment of what the “dismal science” – economics – meant to Ruskin. The tag “dismal science” actually refers to the threat that economics posed to the old order – hierarchy, natural slaves and masters […]