Life, Love, and Liberty

My Queen CD has been lost for ages but I’ve got fond memories of tunes from it like Under Pressure(Live) and I’ll be picking up another copy soon.

Preface-Why Dialectical Method And Defining-Overview Of Contents

1.The Meaning Of Libertarianism-Defining
A.Political Level
B.Cultural Level
C.Economic Level
2.The Interconnections-Case Studies
A.Gay Marriage
B.Children’s Rights
C.Property Ownership
3.Broad Preferences-Dialectical Fashion
A. Anti-statist Politics
B. Cultural Liberalism
C. Free Market Economics-Defined using the late Sam Konkin’s wording of “The Market is the sum of all voluntary human action. If one acts non-coercively, one is part of the Market.”1

Footnotes
1.Samuel Edward Konkin, New Libertarian Manfiesto Second Edition, (Koman Publishing,1983). Unauthorized edition available online at http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm1.html Captured May 1st, 2006. Chapter 1

The classic Blue Brothers film tipped me off to the fablous musical duo of Sam Moore And Dave Prater and I could never get enough of Hold On! I’m A Comin’.

I’ve never heard any Joan Osborne beyond What If God Was One Of Us but it’s enough to make me give her more of a listen.

The world can be a scary place full of uncertainties and unanswered questions. A struggle to cope with this has been a daily fixture of my life for ages. I’ve found that simply being yourself and staying focused on your passions helps a lot. The friendship I have with Chris has resulted in lots of good additions to my library. The inspiration for this piece came from The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden that Chris sent me during hard times. It’s a practice of mine to return to it when I’m feeling depressed. I am given a boost by it’s promotion of motivation stemming from confidence in yourself rather than by fear. This kind of philosophical encouragement is a real help in dealing with depression since I try to pursue joy rather than avoid having to deal with anything at all. The painful emotions are still there but balanced out by keeping busy with my passions and moving forward on goals. This is my new approach to handling ill emotions and it’s been working wonders. I haven’t repressed any negative feelings but they don’t dominate nearly as much.

A warm thanks to Chris for sending this text along!

Let’s celebrate the O’Jays today with three rocking tunes.

-Love Train

-For The Love Of Money

-Sunshine

I’d only heard the classic Love Train from this group untill recently but For The Love Of Money led me to explore them further.

This will be the first part in a series of posts that explores the meaning of Libertarianism and Individualism to me. It’s meant to inform myself on why I view these brands of thought as valuable but I want to open it up to feedback.

The convictions we hold on life and the world are sometimes more tacit than conscious. They reside in our subconscious as givens but aren’t always articulated. I started developing an explicit interest in constructing a comprehensive politics after September 11th. This tragic event awakened a fascination in current events that’s continued ever since. My first exposure to post 9-11 political polemics was a column by Mark Morford. I quickly discovered a lot more material beyond the opinion section of periodicals and became drawn to radicalism. The state centric forms of radical philosophy never spoke to me like libertarianism did. I use the term in the broadest sense possible because my original reading was mostly in non-market left-libertarian collectivism. The internet was scoured for information and books like Living My Life by Emma Goldman were devoured. I read on everything from the drug war to foreign policy in my self-education. The more orthodox ways of looking at these issues were already familiar to me so I got to see the “other” side. A combination of reading, observation, and gut feeling led me to value a critical libertarian perspective on many questions. I’ve yet to reject this basic outlook but the specifics have changed over time. My discovery of individualist and free market thought that departed from the status quo had a huge impact. I read Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Kevin Carson, and incorporated it into my knowledge base. A transformation occurred that left me an individualist with an appreciation for parts of my past. It’s time I put the reasons behind this into words.

I just finished listening to the entire Beauty and the Beast Broadway musical on CD and I have to praise it. It was my hope to find the soundtrack from the animated movie at Halfprice Books but I settled for the musical when it was nowhere to be seen. The whole album is worth exploring from start to finish but some songs that really strike a chord are:

-Belle

-No Matter What

-Be Our Guest

-If I Can’t Love Her

-Enr’acte/Wolf Chase

-Something There

-Human Again

-Beauty And The Beast

-Transformation

-Beauty And The Beast (reprise)

Let me know if these sounds gell with you!

I’ve been putting together a list of materials I’ll need for research so I wanted to share it.

-The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard.

-Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children by John Holt.

-Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy by Chris Matthew Sciabarra.

-Studies in Mutualist Political Economy by Kevin Carson.

-The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand with editing and additional essays by Leonard Peikoff.

-The work of Karl Hess.
-The Death of Politics

-In Praise of Decadence by Jeff Riggenbach.

-Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use by Jacob Sullum.

-The work of Alice Miller

I’ve used a Mates Of State tune before and I discovered another good one called Parachutes(Funeral Song). Their sound is an eccentric one that’s worth checking out.