THINKING ABOUT CHARACTER July 27, 2010
For the next few days I will be carefully rereading my 1993 novel
_Pallas_, which I didn’t know at the time would become the foundation
for the four-volume “Ngu Family Saga” I’m in the middle of writing
now.
I’m doing this because Phoenix Pick will be rereleasing _Pallas_
in a few weeks and it’s necessary to check the proofs. It’s actually a
little more complicted than simply reading the book. This time, my
lovely and talented wife Cathy is reading the proofs to me from the
computer, while I follow along in the …
REGARDING PROP. 19
Dear Richard Lee and friends,
With regard to Proposition 19, I wish I felt free to help you, but I despise the idea of justifying the “legalization” of marijuana — or of anything else — on the basis of the revenue it would generate for government. There was no Constitutional justification for outlawing marijuana in the first place, and its cultivation, sale, and possession are all Ninth Amendment rights.
I understand your motivation in conducting this campaign. Understand me, that taxation is slavery. Taxation is the fuel of war. Offering the State something …
_ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO_ July 25, 2010
From _The Libertarian Enterprise_
Number 580, July 25, 2010
A few days ago, in a peculiar sort of sidebar to an argument I seem to be having with a handful of trendy lefties who resent the fact that I insist on ownership of what I write, somebody named Rick over on a blog at the Mises.org site decided it was time to open another front.
I would post the URL here, but this frigging software won’t let me do it.
Responding to an article of mine that had recently been published in The Libertarian Enterprise concerning Intellectual Property Rights, or, more precisely, to …
THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW July 14, 2010
Immediately upon passage of this measure, every act, bill, decree,
directive, edict, executive or administrative order, initiative, law,
mandate, ordinance, proclamation, regulation, resolution, rule, or statute,
promulgated or enacted by any agency or any other part of the United
States government between January 19, 2009 and January 21, 2013 or the
end of the Barack Obama Administration, shall be null and void.
LETTER TO GLENN BECK & COMPANY June 17, 2010
Gents –
I support your desire to keep youth baseball fully competitive in nature. May I suggest a procedure by which it can also be uniquely valuable to these kids as professional players of he future?
Every inning, rotate the defensive positions. In the first inning, a given kid pitches. In the second inning, he catches. In the third, he plays first base, and so on, through all nine positions. All the other kids rotate in the same order.
I thought of this idea because I got sick of watching “my” team, the …
LOOKING FOR BURKE June 9, 2010
The 1960s were bleak years for anyone interested in individual
freedom, although many of us in the libertarian movement got off to a
serious start in that decade of Lyndon Baines Johnson and his “Great
Society”.
One of the few bright spots in the dark and terrible wilderness of
television was a series of lectures given by an individual who seemed
to stand with one foot on the libertarian side of a divide that was
considerably narrower back then, and the other on the conservative
side.
His name was …
A DIFFICULT QUESTION June 2, 2010
As many of my readers are aware, I am fairly close to finishing my
second non-fiction book, to be called _Where We Stand_, a sort of
unprecedented manual, not of libertarian theory, but of libertarian
policy.
As might be expected, this little book has a rather long chapter
on the proper place for “law enforcement” in a free society. For those
who are familiar with my writing — especially a brace of essays
entitled “Toward A Police Reform Movement” — it should contain no
surprises.
As I prepared my police …
LETTER TO A TALK HOST April 27, 2010
A few minutes ago, I wrote e-mail to a Denver talk show host. Peter
Boyles, of KHOW, is a former liberal, and a protege of assassinated
radio personality Alan Berg, whose perpetual rudeness — especially to
people who agreed with him — was the reason I _stopped_ listening to
talk radio in the 80s. Over the years, Boyles has gradually drifted to
the right until today he’s sort of an amiable populist conservative
who says things that are almost libertarian occasionally.
He’s managed to run Colorado’s governor out of office by investigating
a scandal when no other media wanted to …
HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT’S PHILOSOPHER-THUGS March 24, 2010
On the heels of news yesterday from famously boring, overly-polite Canada, that those who didn’t want anyone to hear Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottowa had surrounded the venue wielding rocks and sticks, providing the cowardly institution with an excuse to cancel the event — it churlishly accused Coulter of provoking the violence — we hear even more threats this morning against the spirit of the First Amendment.
Former Colorado Governor Roy Romer was one of the most comically incompetent chief executives this state — with its a long, dismal history of comically incompetent chief executives — ever endured. …
A LONG RANGE SHOOTING MOMENT March 8, 2010
Sometimes you have to stop and smell the gunpowder. I just got this URL from our friend Brian Wilson, under the heading “Impressive”. http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRYwMrsaLxs I replied to Brian:
You’re right. That’s impressive even if you’re opposed to this particular war (which I am).
I have to confess, though, that I don’t think the guy is really a sniper, or the Barrett .50 is really a rifle. It’s the first time I’ve seen the attraction of that kind of gun, a whole new class of weapon, somewhere between small arms and light …
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