Someone on a Facebook discussion recently told me that Gary North of the von Mises institute, former campaign worker for Ron Paul, former writer for Ron Paul's newsletter, and regular contributer to Lew Rockwell, is not representative of Libertarianism or Austrian economics...he's an anarchist.

Huh.

So...why did he write this?

http://www.reformed.org/social/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/social/let_2_paul_hill.html

The guy may be a stark barking loony...but he's no anarchist.

Basically, the guy I was talking to pulled the "no good scottsman" bit on me.  Not buyin' it.  Gary North's Austrian economics and Libertarian cred is solid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_North_(Christian_Reconstructionist)

 You don't get to back away from it and dismiss him as an anarchist just because he's also insane.

Just as an aside, if you follow that first link and read North's long screed about why the guy should not have killed the abortion doctor, do this thought experiment:  Think about what would happen if we somehow magically managed to address all the reasons that people choose abortion.  Think about if education and government assistance, and community support and in-utero surgery and genetic medicine made it possible for there to never be another abortion in our country...

In Gary North's morality, even if there was never another abortion in the U.S. EVER...we would still be under God's judgement for keeping it as a legal option.  However, if we made it illegal and instituted the death penalty for it, and then just neglected people who might need to have options and they sought out illegal ones, we wouldn't even have to work real hard to enforce the law, and we'd have done enough to clear ourselves of his wrath.

Rocky and I recently went to see "Faith Healer" at the Guthrie. It was pretty good. Not enjoyable, exactly. It was actually sort of bleakly challenging as a play. We were both really impressed by the ability of each of the three actors to dominate the stage. The story is told three times, not unlike the Akira Kurisowa film, Roshamon (sp?)...where different characters tell a story each from their own perspective. Anyway, what makes it difficult to watch is that the story is told as a series of four monologues.

Can you imagine being an actor who has to carry a 1/2 hour monologue all by him or herself? The actors did a very good job.

Anyway, I unfortunately had a coughing fit in the middle of the second monologue. Even though I had a cough lozenge in my mouth at the time. Those of you who have been to the Guthrie theater know that some attendees have an addiction to something called "fragrance layering" Basically, they bath in perfumed soap, put on perfumed lotion, spray themselves down with a perfumed body spray, and then dab a little perfume on their "pulse points". In short, they spend a lot of money to smell like Victorian era French prostitutes.

Often, if there is such a person near us, or if the residue of such a person is still on my seat, I will have a terrible time with coughing, sneezing, eye-watering, etc. This was such a night.

It was terrible, because I was trying desperately to not cough for a long time, and finally, I just couldn't help it.

A lady in front of us handed me a lozenge. Mortifying.

I had my own, but I took it rather than explain why I wasn't taking it. The coughing fit subsided, and I put it in my pocket.

When intermission came, she asked me how I liked the lozenge. I admitted that I had not yet tried it, but thanked her. She insisted that I must try it, that it was a very special lozenge, and that I would absolutely love it.

She was a nice-looking, conservatively dressed lady about the same age and style as my mother-in-law.
Prim, flesh-colored lipstick, sensible sweater of Nordic extraction over a turtleneck. A delicate gold chain with a scattering of little round shiny glass beads. Helmet hair.

Rocky mumbled something about getting me some coffee, and squeezed my shoulder to let me know that he was leaving, and I should try to catch him up when I was done with my conversation.

The lady went on about how great these lozenges were. I couldn't see a brand name on the one she gave me. It was bright yellow, round, and had an indistinguishable green image on the clear cellophane.

Her husband joined, in, singing the praises of the lozenge. They went on and on.

I excused myself as gracefully as possible, and fled. In line for coffee, I tried to explain the deeply creepy nature of the encounter to Rocky. He looked at me bemusedly, as if he were blowing off my perceptions as not quite credible.

We drank our coffee, and returned for the second half of the play. After the final bow, the older couple turned around and looked at me expectantly. "Thank you for the lozenge", I said, self-conscious of the fact that it was still in my pocket, and they obviously wanted to hear how much I liked it.

"Oh, you're welcome. These are VERY SPECIAL lozenges." (heads bobbing up and down in a way that was at the same time enthusiastic and prompting)

"Where did you get them?"

"We have a special source, you can't get them just anywhere. But they're really good." (bobblehead action continues)

"So, what are they?"

Hesitation; "We just love them. Don't you think it's wonderful?"

"Uh, yeah, so , uh, thank you very much...we have to get going, but thanks again."

I turned to Rocky as we exited the theater,

"See what I mean?"
"You threw it away, right?"
"I don't know, they sound pretty good..."
"Please throw it away."
"Roger that", I threw it away.

It's finally happened, the Ori have had one of their priors infiltrate Minnesota politics:

http://www.bluestemprairie.com/a_bluestem_prairie/2008/02/will-ruthie-hen.html

Look out Minnesota.  Here they come. 

It's that time of year again:

Duuuuuuudes!  Like, everyone has been down on libs for so long.  Like, harshing our mellow to the max, and all because we're like, lame and stuff.

But don't dispair mon frare...we're back baby!

'cause we totally went back in time and took over the Bible.  We're like rocken spiritual time-pirates.

You thought Bill and Ted had a great adventure?  Nu-uh!  Team lib totally went back in time and snuck the lovey-forgivy-sharey crap into the Bible! 

Uh-huh!  BAM!!  Yeah, take that, in yer face  Mr. Judgy-Mcvitriol Christian guys!

But uh-oh...Andrew Schlaffly's gonna take it back with an army of homeschool kids!  Bogus!

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

Get back in the funkey time-travel phone booth dudes!  We have to save the wimpy social gospel or we won't get to have a modern government or health care reform!

A friend of mine had this silly little "You might be a liberal if..." thing up on her Face Book.  So I made a parallell "You might be a conservative if..."

You might be Liberal if you think:

You might be conservative if you think:

1.
Standards for admissions to universities, fire departments, etc. should be lowered for people of color.

1)      It doesn’t matter if you can do the work.  What matters is how well you fit arbitrary selection criteria that often has no correlation with desirable outcomes.  And even if conditions in the world, and in the field of work or study change, the criteria must always stay the same.  If they changed to more accuratly reflect the actual strengths and necessary skills of a population, they wouldn't be arbirtary anymore, and the people who worked really, really hard to look good on paper would be unfairly disadvantaged.

2.
Bilingual education for children of immigrants, rather than immersion in English, is good for them and for America.

2)        Adaptive learning is evil.  Get rid of ESL programs, no math or science ‘til you learn English.  While we’re at it, those hearing-impaired whiners can learn to lip-read before they get to do math as well.

3.
Murderers should never be put to death.

3)      Murderers should be put to death.  Especially the underage and those with mental handicaps that make them incapable of being responsible for their actions;  or if they had some stupid, trumped up “alibi” like being in jail in another country for unpaid traffic fines on the night of the murder they committed.  Kill ‘em twice if their defense attorney slept through their trial and raised no objections and called no witnesses.

4.During the Cold War, America should have adopted a nuclear arms freeze.

4)      Good thing we didn’t listen to those pacifist liberal wimps when they said it was a bad idea to fund, train, and equip the Taliban, central American drug cartels – uh I mean “Freedom fighters”- and fascist regimes.  Just think about the problems we’d have nowdays if we hadn’t helped Bin Laden so much.  And a nuclear arms freeze? Don’t make me laugh!  If being able to exterminate every single person in the Soviet Union a hundred times over isn’t going to get them to back down, we NEEDED to be able to destroy them a thousand times over.  Worth. Every. Penny.

5.
Colleges should not allow ROTC programs.

5)      Actually, I think it’s just the Ron Paul Conservatives and the Lyndon LaRouch-style Trotskyites that don’t like the ROTC on campus.   ‘course, the Ron Paul conservatives would rather there not be land grant universities for ROTC to be on.  Actually, it seems that the Lyndon LaTouch crowd doesn’t like land-grant universities either.  Ron Paul and Lyndon LaRouch actually agree on a lot of stuff…

6.
It was wrong to wage war against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.

6)      Afghanistan was going to be too hard.  If it’s too hard to hit the guy who hit you first, hit the guy next to him instead.  Everyone deserves to get hit for something.  

7.
Poor parents should not be allowed to have vouchers to send their children to private schools.

7)      Private schools are better than public schools.  You can tell, because even though they only take top-performing students, and cost more per student, they have inferior equipment, inferior subject selection, inferior teacher training requirements, and fail to have significantly better outcomes as a group.  And just think how we could increase the number of private school “founders” fleeing with all the cash to the Canary Islands if we funneled more public sector money into private schools!

8.
It is good that trial lawyers and teachers unions are the two biggest contributors to the Democratic Party.

8)      Gigantic corporations are people and have a right to petition their representatives.  Lawyers and teachers, however, are not people and have no such rights.

9.
Marriage should be redefined from male-female to any two people.

9)      Gay people need to remember their “place”.  If they didn’t insist on having all the same rights and responsibilities as real people, there wouldn’t be all this trouble.

10. A married couple should not have more of a right to adopt a child than two men or two women.

10)   Children are chattel to be parceled out as rewards for conventionality.

11.
The Boy Scouts should not be allowed to use parks or any other public places and should be prohibited from using churches and synagogues for their meetings.

11)   Even though the Boy Scouts teach, practice, and enforce discrimination against people based on their personal beliefs and their sexual orientation, they should be given the special privilege to use public places without having to pay the fees that other groups pay.  Yes, they should even continue to be given extra special treatment by having parcels of federal land set aside for their exclusive use.

12.
The present high tax rates are good.

12)   The present high tax rates are terrible!  Course, with the exception of the "W" years, they’re lower than they’ve ever been since I started paying taxes…Reagan’s were higher, but those were GOOD high tax rates.  And taxes were higher under George HW Bush…but those were fine too.  I mean, if they weren’t fine, why would we have beat Clinton up so bad for lowering them?  Obama raising  taxes to the lowest rates under Reagan is just evil and terrible.  It was OK for Reagan to raise them higher ‘cause he was the greatest president ever, no matter what you say.

13.
Speech codes on college campuses are good and American values are bad.

13)   “Speech codes” on campus are terrible.  Well, not really, it would be great if we could have our own speech codes, you know the ones that require Biology professors to say that their entire area of study is completely invalid…or one where a sociology professor can’t cover current research that might indicate that abstinence only education isn’t all we hoped…but “speech codes” that could cause a Geology professor to not be tenured just because he teaches that the Earth is only 6000 years old and admits that he lied on his thesis when he said that the Earth was billions of years old…THOSE are BAD.   Telling the truth and speaking honestly about the state of scholarship in your field is against American Values.  All good knowledge was what we knew in 1800.  We will call our "Speech Codes"  "Academic Freedom" bills, because they are the opposite, and we are all about the irony.  And this isn't like stupid liberal speech codes where people just think your a dick 'cause you use the "N" word...no, our speech codes will have the force of law.  Stupid Wimpy liberals.  That'll show 'em.

14.
The Israelis and Palestinians are morally equivalent.

14)   There is only one hope for peace in the middle east.  Israel gets everything, and the Palestinians die. The Temple of Jerusalem has to be rebuilt, and then when Jesus returns in glory, the Jews and most of the rest of humanity will be slaughtered in the final battle, and go to hell. (Rivers of blood!  It'll be so great!)  Then, when we've killed all the unbelievers (including the Jews) we get to go to heaven.  Yeay team Jesus!  I can’t wait.  The only danger is that Israel might get taken over by that one group who thinks that it would be good for people to stop blowing each other up.  Let’s send the side that wants to perpetuate violence lots of money and accuse the other side of hating Isreal.  Just don't tell the Catholics that they are numbered among the unbelievers.  We need them at the moment.  The Mormons too...oh...and the Jehova's Witnesses I guess, but don't talk to them if you can avoid it.

15.
The United Nations is a moral force for good in the world, and therefore America should be subservient to it and such international institutions as a world court.

15)   We created the United Nations, and we have the veto over everything they do and decide.  We owe tons of money to them in dues that we are never going to pay, because they are completely reliant on our goodwill and continued cooperation.  In all the time they've exsisted, we've never done a single thing they've said that we wouldn't have done on our own anyway.  God, will we never be free of their oppression?

16.
It is good that colleges have dropped hundreds of men's sports teams in order to meet gender-based quotas.

16)   Who wants to watch girl’s sports?  Girls are so stupid and weak.  Any girl that wants to play sports is a dyke.  There shouldn’t be girl’s teams, and girls shouldn't get to play on boys teams either.  If a girl wants to do sports, she should move to East German where they like that sort of thing.   If we want to cut funds for education and extra-curricular activities, we should be able to without it affecting our boys sports!

17.
No abortions can be labeled immoral.

17)   Birth control is immoral and the moral equivalent of abortion, because it prevents ovulation so the egg can’t get fertilized.  Moral women who are against abortion should rely on the rhythm method, because it encourages women to abstain until the part of a woman’s cycle when the uterine lining is thinning and resistant to the implantation of a fertilized egg.  Also, using breastfeeding as a form of birth control is moral, because it is lousy at preventing fertilization, but still effective at preventing implantation.  So use the rhythm method and breastfeeding to do your abortions, because all abortions are evil, except the ones God says are OK. 

18.
Restaurants should be prohibited by law from allowing customers to choose between a smoking and a non-smoking section.

18)   I get to smoke.  If my smoke travels over to the non-smoking section and bothers your fragile asthmatic lungs, tough.  Who cares if your stupid, wimpy kid has Cistic Fibrosis, keep him home.  Whatever happened to the good old days when people with freaky diseases remained shut-ins, as God intended.  Get a personal force-field, or re-think your decision to breath, you stupid liberal whiner, you won’t infringe on my freedom with your stupid excuse about dying 5-10 years younger.  I have a right to smoke.  You’re right to life ended as soon as they cut the cord, and you were no longer a pre-born person.  And by the way, just because a place is publically licensed and falls under the legal definition of providing a “public service” doesn’t mean you have a right to go there and not have your health threatened.  This is AMERICA, liberal sucker.  The public can’t make me accommodate black people, or disabled people, and they sure as heck can’t make me address your stupid health concerns.  If you don’t like the way I act in public, stay out of the public.

19.
High schools should make condoms available to students and teach them how to use them.

19)   High Schools should protect children with ignorance and myths.  If they think they can get AIDS from sweat and tear-drops, and if they think that having unprotected sex is less dangerous than using condoms or other contraception, and if they fill in the gaps with stuff they hear from their friends, they will be able to make much better decisions for themselves.  They will automatically come to the correct conclusion that sex is a dirty, disgusting dangerous and degrading thing that God invented because he loves us and wants us to get married really really young so we can stay poor and desperate and have tons of children we can barely afford to raise so that we just spend all our time working and don’t have the time and energy to question, and just do what we are told.

20.
Racial profiling for terrorists is wrong -- a white American grandmother should as likely be searched as a Saudi young male.

20)   Racial profiling of terrorists is the best thing ever.  I mean they’re terrorists.  If they weren’t terrorist, why would they look like terrorists?  Only a very, very foolish criminal mastermind would recruit terrorists that didn’t look the part.  You look like a terrorist, you smell like a terrorist, you’re a danged terrorist.  Maybe your family has lived in Toledo for seven generations and you’ve had ancestors fight in the US military in every war for the past 150 years…but you’re still a danged terrorist.  Now step out of the line, and take off those pants again.  You fly Business class on this commuter flight to Chicago twice a week.  You know the drill Hassim.

21.
Racism and poverty -- not a lack of fathers and a crisis of values -- are the primary causes of violent crime in the inner city.

21)   All conditions in the US at a given time bear absolutely no relationship to past events.  In America, all events happen in a causal vacuum.  So you, see, the effects of slavery and racism disappeared when the institutions that perpetuated them were done away with.  When we stopped the practice of slavery, all of those children who never knew their fathers instantly became familiar with all the details of the European ideal of fatherhood.  The fact that for a time, the best jobs that black men could get to support their families took them away from their families and hometowns didn’t affect any of the kids in the subsequent generations.  The cultural conventions that sprang up to support mothers coping on their own, and the lack of prestige suffered by fathers who stayed around and worked low-paying local jobs in the rural south disappeared as soon as economic conditions changed.  As soon as our culture provided new opportunities, all of the children in the next generation instantly forgot all of the effects of the previous conditions and spontaneously acquired the means and ability to take advantage of the new opportunities.  Anyone who says differently isn’t just describing a cause and effect relationship.  They just want to make you feel badly about yourself.  Don’t let them do that to you.  Remember that you have the right to feel badly about others instead, because this is America.

22.
It is wrong and unconstitutional for students to be told, "God bless you" at their graduation.

22)   Isn’t it terrible how we’ve taken religion out of the schools?  All we have left is “God” in the pledge, and Highschool chapters of Campus Crusade for Christ, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and the Guideon Bible Handouts, the and the teachers reading the Christmas story in their classroom for story time, and the personal Bibles that people can bring to school, teachers who can’t be fired even if they physically abuse students because they had a Bible on their desk and they can claim that’s the real reason they are being fired.  Why, I went to my God-daughter’s orchestra concert a few years ago, and only half the music was religiously themed.  Only a handful had “God” or “Jesus” or “Lord” in the title.  My son’s highschool only has ONE Christian club paid for my public funds.  We’re down to just having the school’s volunteer advisor sending kids to church functions to earn volunteer hours for school credit, mandatory assemblies where the presenter preaches in the name of Jesus and makes the Catholic kids cry because he says they’re going to hell.  There was this one girl who had to be kicked off of her basketball team (which I think we established shouldn’t even exist) because she refused to pray in the name of Jesus with her highschool team before the game AS REQUIRED…and the law forced the school to reverse her expulsion!  My youngest sone was assigned a paper about an Episcopalian missionary, and my oldest son is playing Martin Luther as part of a school assignment, and everyone knows that Episcopalians and Lutherans aren't REALLY Christian!  I mean…our schools are practically atheist.

23.
No culture is morally superior to any other.

23)   Western culture is morally superior to all other cultures.  How do we know this?  Why, only Western Culture developed Western morals.  DUH!  I mean, look at all of the things they do differently than we do.  Those things are bad.  The badness of them is obvious to anyone whose moral sense was formed in Western culture.  The things they do differently from us prove that we are superior. 

And then, look at all of the things that they do that are the same as us.  See?  Even they know that we’re right.  The things they do that are the same as us prove our superiority.

Then, there’s the stuff that we do that is bad.  First of all, we always have really good reasons for the things we do that are bad.  Not like other cultures who do bad stuff just for no reason at all at least, not reasons that we care about.  Secondly, the bad things we do are not part of our culture.  They're just human sin and part of living in a fallen world, and totally not our fault.  If the world were perfect, we’d be perfect too…and everyone would be just like us.

Ben is back and blogging!  Whoot!

http://eclecticsanonymous.wordpress.com/