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November 14, 2007
links for 2007-11-14
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November 13, 2007
November 11, 2007
links for 2007-11-11
These are not duplicate links but lots of stories about the increasing harassment experienced by visitors to the US in the name of security.
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November 03, 2007
Serenity and Libertarianism
For some bizarre reason, the film Serenity (and its TV series precursor - which I haven't seen yet) have been claimed as 'libertarian'. For those who haven't seen it, the film is centred on the exploits of the crew of a space ship led by a veteran of an interplanetary civil war (on the losing side).
The film opens with a bank robbery, in a scene recalling 'The Wild Bunch', although as one commenter claims here, because the money comes from taxation it has already been stolen so that doesn't count! By that logic I could hang around waiting for someone to be mugged, knock the mugger over the head and legitimately walk off with the proceeds.
I think the problem is that the people making these claims are not really familiar with Science Fiction as a literary form. They seem to think it began when they discovered it. Looking back though to the early days you will find nothing new in Serenity, not as science fiction, not as a film nor in its ideas. It isn't a bad film, just not especially original on any count.
The big bad government - the 'Alliance' - is a supposed coming together of the US and China. Joss Whedon, in the extras to the Serenity DVD sees this as positive, but you wouldn't know that from the discussion in Blogistan. It isn't an original concept by any means but ironically probably the best known version of it comes from Jerry Pournelle, an arch neocon, although in his case we have the 'Co-Dominion', an uneasy alliance between the US and the USSR. Nor would you know that the driver for humanity leaving earth was overcrowding and pollution - neither of them I suppose particularly high priorities for your average right libertarian.
The film itself is equally derivative - it contains elements of Star Wars, Alien and many others as well as drawing heavily on Whedon's own work. The character of River Tam is clearly another version of Buffy, while the Reavers recall both the myriad demons and monsters from Buffy, (especially in the climactic battle between River and the Reavers) as well as innumerable zombie films.
So is it indeed libertarian?
The short answer I suppose is no. The longer answer is 'only if you think libertarians have a monopoly on liberty' (which to be fair is what many do indeed think!) In practice it is a pirate movie - if Serenity is libertarian then so is 'Pirates of the Caribbean'.
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Free speech and democratic citizenship
Norm writes on how a concern for 'good citizenship' and democracy can become in itself anti-democratic and illiberal.
...by the very principle I'm discussing here, the principle of freedom of speech and opinion, anyone is free to say what they think the requirements of good citizenship are. That includes people running educational programmes. But decreeing the competencies of citizenship sounds rather more oppressive. It needs to be said that the principles of free speech and opinion protect a space for individual dissent, including for views that are utterly repugnant - and whether just to some people or to the vast majority - and if they are made subject to the supposed demands of citizenship or of what is democratically decided upon by some collectivity or other (however well-meaning), they cease to be principles of free speech and become simply what your fellow citizens, or someone claiming their authority, will permit you to say. They may still then count as norms of citizenship or democracy, but that will be of a coercive image of citizenship and an illiberal model of democracy.
Norm's post is a good demonstration incidentally, why the green ink brigade who infest the comments at the likes of Samizdata, really need to get out more. After all here is Norm, a man of the left by any description, nevertheless concerned for individual freedoms and the right to defend and hold those freedoms against
the collective imposition of a particular political position. But since the loony tunes right-libertarians believe the left hates liberty I don't suppose they will be reading Norm anyway.
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links for 2007-11-03
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As Sean Gabb argued, it's about as legitimate to identify the existing neoliberal model of corporate globalization with "free markets" and "free trade" as it would be to call the Soviet oligarchy under Stalin with "workers' power." The transnational corpo
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November 02, 2007
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine
From a long and impassioned post by Kevin Carson on his Mutualist Blog.
As Sean Gabb argued, it's about as legitimate to identify the existing neoliberal model of corporate globalization with "free markets" and "free trade" as it would be to call the Soviet oligarchy under Stalin with "workers' power." The transnational corporations and financial elites, and the neoliberal court intellectuals who service them, have appropriated the language and symbolism of the classical liberal movement to legitimize their corrupt power interests. In much the same way, Stalin appropriated the libertarian and humanist symbolism of the nineteenth socialist movement to legitimize the exploitative class system under the Party apparat.
The neoliberals have no more right to the heritage of the classical liberal movement--to the thought of Thomas Hodgskin, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, and Franz Oppenheimer--than Stalin had to the red banner and the Internationale. The language of free market liberalism ought to burn their filthy mouths; by their very use of the term, they set themselves up as an abomination of desolation in the holy place.
Well worth reading as an effective counterbalance to the usual right-libertarian apologias for the de facto cartels in control at the moment - supported generously by governments with our money.
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