The libertarian fantasy: “What’s Left?” January 2020 (MRR #440)

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

John Rogers
Kung Fu Monkey — Ephemera, blog post, 3-19-09

The idea of expanding the traditional one-dimensional Left-Right political spectrum into a two-dimensional political map is an old one. Beginning in the 1950s, several double-axis models were proposed: Authoritarian-Democratic/Radical-Conservative (Eysenck), Left-Right/Ideological Rigidity (Greenberg & Jonas), Traditionalist-Secular/Self Expressionist-Survivalist (Inglehart), Liberty-Control/Irrationalism-Rationalism (Pournelle), and Kratos-Akrateia/Archy-Anarchy (Mitchell). The American libertarian David Nolan proposed his two axis diamond-shaped Nolan Chart in 1969 based on economic freedom and political freedom, which everybody knows about but nobody uses outside of libertarian circles. Which brings is to the problem of libertarianism.

#assassinatetrump: “What’s Left?” January 2018, MRR #416

Assassinate the President!

GG Allin, crooner

It was spring, 1980. We were organizing a Students for Peace benefit at the Spirit Club. The Spirit Club was a dive bar’s dive bar in San Diego. SfP started at UCSD soon after Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

We booked the club for an evening early in the week and agreed to pay the bar’s minimum for the night. As I recall, we had four bands play and barely broke even. A competent ska/2-tone quartet named Fire opened with danceable beats and solid political lyrics. We’d heard they were affiliated with the ultra-Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, more specifically its youth auxiliary, the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. The RCP had a long history of—and an interest in—youth organizing, and they used the RCYB to cultivate young recruits as well as a street presence. It was early in the evening, the attendance was sparse, so we had time to chat with the band.

Affordable glass housing

A while back, a former MRR columnist who was canned by the coordinators asked for my support. He had the delusion that he was entitled to his columnist position on the basis of a verbal promise Tim Yo had supposedly given him, even though no one else at the magazine—past or present shitworkers, contributors or coordinators—could confirm this. This former columnist is a free speech absolutist, and he raised holy shit whenever anybody—Tim Yo or the coordinators since Tim died—dared to change a comma in what he wrote. Yet he never ever raised a peep whenever another MRR columnist who covered oi! and street punk music was regularly censored for what he wrote. And he routinely censors posts critical of him on his Facebook page and on his other websites. So I wrote a couple of columns calling him an asshole.

Now, I’m being asked to remove references to someone’s legal last name in a recent post below by the individual in question. I was quoting another post online in which his legal last name appears, and he knows full well that once something has been posted on the web, it is essentially in the public domain and therefore a joke to expect anyone to remove the offending post. He is accusing me of collaborating with the original poster in doing him harm by quoting the post with his legal name, even though he has spent the last decade telling my friends and enemies alike that I was allegedly behind various online pseudonyms and flame wars. Needless to say, I’m declining his request.

I call bullshit on anyone who demands anonymity for themselves yet who routinely outs others, as well as on anyone who protests against censorship of their right to free speech yet who regularly censors others critical of them. People who live in glass houses are always advised not to throw stones.