the funnies

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 February 26 by Anton

Tonja Steele – a swell sight-gag.
PVP – growing older but not up.

Posted in cartoons | Leave a comment

“Just say slavery.” “Slavery it is, sir!”

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 February 25 by Anton

Thomas DiLorenzo on the role of tariffs in the troubles of 1861.

. . . when the Republican Party gained power in the late 1850s the top item on its agenda was to increase the average tariff rate from 15% [in 1857] to 32% and then to over 47% [in May 1860]. . . .
Abraham Lincoln was a lifelong protectionist and . . . at the 1860 Republican Party convention . . . won the support of the Pennsylvania and New York delegations (the two largest) by convincing them that no other candidate was more devoted to protectionism than he was.

There’s more, and it’s rather better written than DiLorenzo’s own book.

Posted in history, tax+privacy | Leave a comment

one strip at a time

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 February 25 by Anton

Day By Day makes a change from Republican-bashing cartoons by, you guessed it, bashing Democrats.
But tastefully.

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the last veto

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 February 25 by Anton

Hey hey! Today’s headline in The Daily Review (Hayward, California) is: Jurors find merit in nullification. As I said before, nullification is not the whole story in the case that prompted this; but it’s good to see it in the air, as it were. Continue reading →

Posted in constitution | Leave a comment

essence

Posted on Sunday, 2003 February 23 by Anton

Ross Douthat writes in part:

No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that’s just why it remains on the ideological fringe — because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

Hey, thanks for the idea!

I followed a link or two from Glen Whitman’s Agoraphilia, packed with bloggy goodness.

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selective violence

Posted on Saturday, 2003 February 22 by Anton

Duncan Frissell (Technoptimist) explains How to Invade Iraq Without Violating the Non-Aggression Principle (In case you felt the need to). Link from Daniel Boone (Nolo Consentire).

Posted in militaria | Leave a comment

the young empire

Posted on Friday, 2003 February 21 by Anton

In “An American Empire! If You Want It instead of Freedom, Part 1”, Richard Ebeling quotes Garet Garrett on the symptoms of imperialism. “Second, domestic-policy issues become increasingly subordinate to foreign-policy matters.” But perhaps this was inevitable; foreign policy is the one field in which the central authority is most thoroughly exclusive under the US Constitution (power is shared with the provinces to some degree in most other matters), and so naturally ambitious politicians would tend to be attracted to it and favor it.

I’ll think about whether and how to address this problem in my new utopian constitution – when I’m not wearing my anarchist hat!

Posted in militaria | Leave a comment