Don’t Get Me Started!

The Truth Is

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:03:05 -0600

F. Paul Wilson, Secret Circles, Gauntlet Press, 216 pages.
“Listen and think.” Mr. Kressy, Jack’s Civics teacher. (Secret Circles, p.92)
In the young adult novel Secret Circles, F. Paul Wilson continues the story of the young Jack as he lays the groundwork for the Repairman that he will become. In the first of this trilogy –– Secret Histories –– Wilson explored Jack’s teenage friendship with Weezy and Eddie Connell and how they become acquainted with Ernst Drexler, “actuator” for the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. Knowing this background illuminated the events that occurred in Ground Zero, when we saw these people converging again as adults. (The last book in this young adult trilogy, Secret Vengeance, is currently scheduled for publication by Gauntlet Press in December, 2010.)

Burning Rand

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:01:27 -0500

In Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, writer Jennifer Burns manages to cloak a biographical “analysis” of one of the most influential pro-liberty figures in a thin veil of impartial academic respectability while simultaneously trying to discredit and undercut the woman and the ideas that form the core of her presentation.

Burns seems to do well at accurately presenting various facts about Rand’s life, her supporters, and her detractors. Though I’m sure she did extensive research and saw sources few others have utilized, unfortunately, not much of new significance is revealed here.

Leave Me Alone

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:24:10 -0500

Since Thomas Frank in his editorial in the Wall Street Journal never bothers to define “freedom,” it’s unsurprising he reaches the wrong conclusions. He conflates “positive” “freedom” with so-called “negative” freedom. There is a world of moral and practical difference between government forcing one group of people to provide goods to others who have not earned those things (FDR’s version of “freedom”) and having government respect and protect the right of individuals to decide for themselves what to do (or not do) with their lives and their property (Jefferson’s version of liberty). The latter is the mark of a free people. The former is a sign of an abused people.

All Property Is Intellectual

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 15:22:45 -0500

Imagine this scenario:

After many long years of intellectual and emotional struggle, writer John G. has finished what he is certain will be a bestselling novel. Everyone who has read the book has praised its originality, its style, its thoughtful content.

JG sends his carefully prepared manuscript to a nationally renowned publisher. He can hardly contain his impatience while awaiting a response. Poverty has dogged his heels for so long, he finds it difficult to imagine what a financially comfortable life will be like.

Abusing Animals, Abusing Rights

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 13:39:27 -0500

How many times? How many friggin’ times am I going to read a “libertarian’s” bold claim that — somehow, some way — this time it’s okay to use the State to punish those who engage in immoral (but not rights-violating) behavior?

A recent article pointed out that, while animal abuse is disgusting, because animals have no rights, such heinous action is not subject to legal punishment. In a short comment, another libertarian said that animal abusers “deserve ‘an eye for an eye’ justice,’ that “animals are [NOT} ‘property,’” that a person cannot “‘own’ any sentient being,” that animal abusers “should be punished by the state,” and, finally, that “all sentient beings should be under the protection of ZAP” (the zero aggression principle).