Neither Big Government nor Big Business

Keith Preston criticizes the mainstream narratives that promote the myth of big government and big business being antagonists of one another.

Topics include:

The false narratives maintained by liberals and conservatives alike regarding the relationship between State and Capital.

The rise in recent years of popular movements rooted in economic discontent.

The Work Esthetic

By Robert Anton Wilson If there is one proposition which currently wins the assent of nearly everybody, it is that we need more jobs. “A cure for unemployment” is promised, or earnestly sought, by every Heavy Thinker from Jimmy Carter to the Communist Party USA, from Ronald Reagan […]

Classical Liberalism’s Impossible Dream

By Robert Higgs I can understand why someone might embrace classical liberalism. I did so myself more than forty years ago. People become classical liberals for two main reasons, which are interrelated: first, because they come to understand that free markets “work” better than government-controlled economic systems in […]

An Anarchist Looks at Memorial Day

By Thomas Knapp “Memorial Day,” according to Wikipedia, “is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May …. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service.” I confess to mixed feelings. On the one […]

Radicalizing the Center, Part Two: Reflections on Movement Building

Keith Preston continues his discussion of how to bring revolutionary anarchist ideas into the mainstream.

Topics include:

How the prevalence of cultural leftist fanaticism within the anarchist milieu is undermining the growth of the movement and outreach efforts.

Why the state is a unique institution of oppression and why efforts to equate statism with other forms of authoritarianism are misguided.

How the Left Has Failed the Working Class

By Samuel Goldman The New Yorker‘s George Packer can’t decide what to think about 21st-century America. On the one hand, Packer likes developments that enhance the lifestyles of the educated upper middle class: “marriage equality, Lipitor, a black President, Google searches, airbags, novelistic TV shows, the opportunity for […]

Welcome to Islamberg

Law Enforcement Today In Hancock, NY an Islamic community that sits on 80 acres of land has decided to form its own government.  They call their community: The Town of Islamberg.  They have their own mayor, deputy mayor and five town council members.  None of them are elected, […]

Community or Leviathan?

By Patrick Deneen In his most recent diagnosis of the state of America’s political soul, the journalist and political thinker E.J. Dionne begins with a simple thesis. In the opening pages of Our Divided Political Heart, he asserts that “American history is defined by an irrepressible and ongoing […]

Gun Control Won’t Eliminate Guns

By Mark Crovelli No single issue in the American political arena illustrates the similarity of American liberals and American conservatives than the issue of gun control. This claim will no doubt appear counterintuitive, because conservatives and liberals have been bickering over gun rights for as long as anyone […]

The Human Cost of the War in Iraq

MIT Conventional wisdom in American politics focuses only on American costs in the war in Iraq: the casualties to U.S. soldiers, the financial costs, and sometimes the strategic costs. But the human cost to the Iraqis themselves are nearly ignored in political discourse, the news media, and intellectual […]

Antiwar.Com Sues the FBI

Antiwar.com is taking the FBI to court! We demand records regarding surveillance of Antiwar.com. One FBI memo called us “a threat to national security.” We’re Americans engaged in peaceful, constitutionally protected activity: what used to be called journalism. The FBI must admit this, and promise to cease and […]

Beyond Sectarian Anarchism: Radicalizing the Center

Keith Preston reflects on recent violent conflicts within the anarchist milieu and discusses more constructive approaches.

Topics include:

How the variety of hyphenated forms of anarchism will continue to grow as anarchism becomes a more prevalent political ideology.

How the many hyphens within anarchism need not be a source of division but of strength and potential outreach to an ever greater number of constituencies.

The need for leaders and activists to emerge in different anti-state movements who recognize the need for a united revolutionary front against common enemies.

Rednecks doing Yoga

by Rachel Haywire

What’s the difference between a redneck and a yoga-scenester?

Nothing. They are both degenerate subcultures. The yoga-scenesters think they are better than the rednecks, prancing themselves above

The European Miracle

By Ralph Raico This essay originally appeared as “The Theory of Economic Development and the ‘European Miracle’” in The Collapse of Development Planning, edited by Peter J. Boettke. Among writers on economic development, P.T. Bauer is noted both for the depth of his historical knowledge, and for his […]

Emma West timeline

Libertarian Alliance This is a timeline of the events concerning the prosecution and trial of Emma West, who was recorded on video while on a London tram. Her case has previously been the subject of comment here, in particular by Robert Henderson.