All Thoughts Being Equal

I. At the end of the last Drunken Philosophy meeting I gave in to a bit of political-philosophy masochism and listened to a former-libertarian-now-anarchist explain how to argue your way out of paying a traffic fine. Just ask the following series of questions—not arguments, because if you try to argue the judge can just order you to pay: Is the court obliged to prove its case against me, beyond a reasonable doubt ?    - Yes. Must the court justify every point of its argument to prove the case?    - Yes. Can the court use anything but facts and evidence to justify those points?    - Yes. Is the court's reasoning based on the idea of jurisdiction ; that I must pay the fine because I allegedly violated a law in the jurisdiction of the court?    - (with growing trepidation) Yes... Then what facts or evidence can the court provide that this "jurisdiction" actually exists ?    - Bailiff! At which point the anarchist, having smugly ...

There are lots of ideas whose adherents think grant them an intellectual carte blanche , like now that they answered one of the Big Questions all their other opinions suddenly become validated. I've explored this before with atheism : sure, I agree with the idea that wait a second, nobody's actually given me good reason to (1) believe in any supernatural Higher Power, much less (2) worship the thing , but that doesn't mean my reasons are the best possible reasons. Nor does it mean that my future statements on this topic (e.g., heard from some atheists—"Isn't it dumb how all Christians believe [thing not all Christians believe]?", "fairy-tale sky daddy" straw-theism—are any more likely to be correct. This might be the halo effect in action (hey, Ron Paul even has a halo in the picture!): atheists all agree on the God question, so we may be biased towards uncriticality when one of our own starts expounding on similar topics. Now I come to libert...

Thought Catalog is a dumping ground for any brainless dribblings that happen to hit the right spots on the keyboard. One such was the fecal gem titled 9 Reasons You Absolutely Do Not Want a Feminist to Be the Father of Your Children , and since I made fun of Salon -style stupidity in critiquing libertarianism a while back , let's make fun of stupid-critiques of feminism here... by stupid-critiquing libertarianism! Tee hee and tra la! So you’ve decided to ignore my advice about dating libertarian women and you are okay with shitty sex and kinda really like the whole no accountability and no consequences deal, and you are wondering if perhaps your libertarian girlfriend might make a pretty terrific libertarian wife and mother for whatever children you conceive. No need to make sure the children are biologically hers, because a true libertarian understands that infidelity and paternity fraud are just a bit of pro-free-market activism in the face of centuries of statist oppression ...

I. The other day (N.B. months ago at this point) I got into a very interesting discussion with C. Michael Pickens, a prominent member of the Washington State Libertarian Party, on what principles should form the proper ground of a theory of liberty. In his original Facebook post, Michael claimed that "Liberty is an optimistic concept based on the philosophy of self-ownership." Someone else asked whether liberty could be grounded in concepts of free will and autonomy; Michael replied that these are themselves based in self-ownership. In the discussion, I (and the other guy) both raised the possible issue of indentured servitude—I had in mind specifically the condition of indentured servants during the early American colonial period, which was a condition of chattel slavery in all but name. Michael wasn't arguing that slavery was permissible—obviously it isn't, regardless of your libertarian principles, unless you're a Confederacy-fetishist douchebag like, s...

In my previous post I wondered about the common feminist narrative of an overwhelming fear: that women face so many threats and imminent dangers that it's mentally exhausting just to get through the day. Rather than diagnose that directly (because politics is war and arguments are soldiers ) I want to examine another case of overwhelming fear: that of white male reactionaries. Why? Well, because I'm going to give a presentation on neoreaction later this month, but also because this is prima facie a "safer" discussion topic. The last section of Nick Land's summary of neoreaction (also known as NRx or the "Dark Enlightenment") includes a "multi-part subdigression into racial terror," and attempts to explain the deeper motivations behind stuff like John Derbyshire (formerly of National Review ) giving his son "the Talk" about basically avoiding black people unless a few prove themselves sufficiently safe to befriend. For the recor...

[Note: This is a parody of a recent Alternet/Salon piece called "The 7 strangest libertarian ideas," which was silly enough to warrant a mirror-satirization. Try to decide before section II whether I'm super committed to the implied ideology or not.] I. Few movements in the United States today harbor stranger political ideas than the self-proclaimed feminists. The Tumblr school of feminism is at least as far outside the mainstream on the left as, say, a rather doctrinaire old-school form of anti-Masonism on the right. The difference is this: The mainstream media isn’t telling us that we’re in the middle of a “Anti-Masonic moment.” Anti-Masonic politicians aren’t being touted as serious presidential contenders. And all the media chatter we’re hearing about a “Feminist moment” ignores the very harsh, extreme and sometimes downright ugly ideas that are being disseminated under that banner. It’s great to have allies like MoveTheFuckOverBro working alongside other Am...

Chesterton : In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Sun Tzu , The Art of War : It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every...

Yesterday I wrote a piece for Little Green Footballs that ended up being part 2 in a three-part series on something nasty in the publication history of Reason magazine. Namely, a "special edition" from February 1976 on historical revisionism... that ended up including some really odious Holocaust denial and reads like a Who's Who of deniers and friends-of-deniers. When called out by PandoDaily , Reason editor Nick Gillespie issued a really weak-tea response: I went back and looked into each alleged denialist contributor to the special edition, and yeah, it shouldn't have been hard for 1976! Reason to say no to these cranks, and even less hard for 2014! Reason to condemn its past self and move on. I won't retread that specific ground here; if you're interested, read the LGF posts here [1], here [2], and here [3]. Instead, let's look more at the meta-level callout by Mark Ames at PandoDaily and response by Nick Gillespie at Reason . In my mind this e...

I. Robin Koerner, a liberty-minded Brit whom I heard speak at last year's Washington State Libertarian Party convention , has a new article out at Huffington Post called Your Problem With Guns or Gays Is Not Political . Given my moderate bias against guns, shockingly, I kind of agree with him. But I also think this is a case that nicely illustrates how the personal is (sometimes) political. I recommend that you go read the whole thing, but I also want to excerpt some juicy quotes. First, Koerner describes his own British noncommittal stance towards guns. As he puts it, "guns feature nowhere in British culture." I expect that most Americans would in practice find "taking tea" a bit odd, even though we academically know what it is from various imported movies and television shows, and many Americans like tea. But then Koerner gets into the meat of his point: Many decent people who have no interest in guns simply can't imagine what it must be like to be ...