Death Is Easy

DEATH IS
EASY
by
Russell Madden


Freedom As If It Mattered

FREEDOM, 
As If
It Mattered
by
Russell Madden



Guardian Project

The Guardian
Project
by
Russell Madden




Random

RaNdoM
by
Russell Madden










 

IMMORAL LIBERTARIANS

by

Russell Madden

 

 





I recently watched a Reason.TV program (and I use the term “reason” advisedly...) in which Reason magazine editor Nick Gillespie interviewed economist Walter Williams. The occasion was the publication of Williams’s memoirs.

In general, I admire Williams’s ideas. His biggest error is treating punk-ass terrorists as some amalgam of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini who warrant a full-scale “War on Terror” instead of being treated as the criminals and thugs they are. By treating terrorists as so dangerous, he and others who agree with him on this issue simply set the stage for the all-out assault on our rights and freedom that has occurred (and continues to occur) in the past decade.

In the interview, though, Gillespie asked Williams if he didn’t agree that since he, Williams, had benefited so much from his tax-subsidized college education that such a positive outcome for Williams justified the establishment and continuation of such government programs. Williams agreed that he might not have been able to afford to go to college if he had had to pay the full tuition amount. The yearly tuition then at Temple was $2000. At UCLA, it was $125-150 per year. Still, he said, there should have been nor be such government subsidies.

It was obvious that Gillespie was not particularly happy with Williams’s stance. He argued that over his professional college career, Williams had paid far more in taxes than he had received in tuition subsidies; that he would not have been able to do so without the subsidized college education he had received. Williams countered that the California taxpayers had not benefited from his taxes since he had not worked in that state. He had ripped them off, for certain, when he left.

Gillespie just wasn’t having it. But Williams persisted. He posed a scenario where he robbed a person of $5000 to pay for his college expenses but with the promise that someday he would pay him back. Such a situation would still be robbery. That was, in essence, no different than the State stealing the $5000 via small amounts of money taken from a large number of citizens (taxes) then giving it to Williams.

From what I have observed, this is typical of Gillespie. He is, at his core, an immoral person who wants “permission” to engage in his evasions of morality all in the name of a nonexistent “pragmatism.” This might well explain his open hostility to Ayn Rand, in particular, and Objectivism, in general. Neither of these satisfy his desire to make “exceptions” to freedom. This also probably is why Reason has degenerated to a wishy-washy rag unwilling to take a firm stand against statists and collectivists.

As the saying goes, with friends like this, who needs enemies?

(from Don’t Get Me Started!, 3-25-11)