Ah, I love stuff like this. It makes blogging so easy. From TMZ:
The season six winner of “The Bachelor”… Mary Delgado — who was arrested last year for allegedly punching her fiance, “Bachelor” Byron Velvick — was busted again on Saturday night for public intoxication, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct at Lorina’s Cantina in Del Rio, Texas.
We’re told the Cantina called the cops because Delgado refused to leave the bar, saying it was her “constitutional right” to stay as long as she wanted. [emphasis mine]
Golden.
What an utterly warped understanding of rights – that negates the property owner’s rights entirely, replacing them with a fictitious (and seemingly unconditional) set of patron rights.
From my least-favorite-2008-presidential-candidate’s brand-new book Do the Right Thing:
The real threat to the Republican Party is something we saw a lot of this past election cycle: libertarianism masked as conservatism. And it threatens to not only split the Republican Party, but render it as irrelevant as the Whig Party.
Of course, I’d frame it inversely, that the real and most damaging threat to liberty is the Republican Party, whose alligients oh-so-casually throw around the small-government lingo but fail to deliver on anything even remotely close.
Instead, decade after decade with their paternalistic impulses, hyper-religious moralism, and corporate socialism, the association continues to bastardize the philosophical reputation of liberty.
Wow. Usually, collectivists like to shroud their redistribution rhetoric, typically in dishonest, relationally-inverse-from-what’s-really-going-on terms (i.e. create jobs, more tax cuts for the rich, etc).
Lots of quote-gems here for the McCain campaign. I can’t imagine some scaled-down version of this one will go unnoticed.
The tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community-organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.
The second NoFx song in my NLADP series (first one here), this one arguing against marijuana prohibition via the principles of self-ownership and personal autonomy. Lyrical excerpt below:
Why be sad when happiness can be bought for a little more then free
Modern day prohibition
Are we men? Are we children?
At what age can I choose how to live
The only real drug problem is scoring real good drugs
Haven’t we learned our lesson
The corner store sells finer scotch
But who’s got uncut powder?
We just want what is ours! Dignity!
Remember the punk/ska movement of the late ’90s? I was in high school and it was a pretty big deal. Definitely the trendiest music-wave I’ve ever lived through and I, yes, I embraced it…with blind, groundless elitism.
An odd psychology, indeed…one that celebrated its underground quality, its exclusiveness, in a totally ostentatious manner. I mean, I went of of my way to advertise the punk and ska bands I liked, only to condemn them when they achieved commercial success (i.e. Green Day, Goldfinger, Blink 182)
…as if money corrupted the creative process or purity or whatever, I’m not sure. I said “sell out” and “poseur” a lot though–I was dumb and in high school.
Anyways, in 1994, the Santa-Barbara based punk band Lagwagon put out the album Trashed and the song “Know it all” quickly became a fan favorite. It’s a song made fun of this music-snob attitude–it’s stupidity, it’s hypocrisy.
And alot of the bands on the college charts are great bands
Until they get signed. Then you hate them
It’s such bullshit – you used to love them you hypocrite…
I remember you and I listening to bands that we liked
Only the songs mattered to you
But now you’re a D.J. and preaching that hype
“Corporate Rock Sucks”…
The bands are good ’til they make enough cash
To eat food and get a pad
Then they’re sold out and their music is cliché
Because talent’s exclusive to bands without pay…
Why am mentioning this? And, moreover, why is this song apart of my libertarian dance party mix?
Because I think this song speaks to the belief that the exchange of money corrupts integrity and creativity, that commerce negates morality. That getting paid for one’s talent diminishes the value or meaning of that talent. (It doesn’t.)
And you can’t say that this attitude doesn’t exist. All to often it finds its way into our public policy, obfuscating legitimate issues like organ transplants or prostitution and making debate on their merits a pipe dream.
Finally, I explain the seemingly nebulous Nietzschian reference. Whoo! Actually, as it turns out, I had already explained it long ago. From a religious studies paper I wrote in 2005 for Robert Williams (my fav professor at UIC):
…life’s ultimate spheres of expression…the two fundamental drives that govern the world. These drives or spheres–inherently opposed to each other–are embodied in Greek culture by the art deities Apollo and Dionysus…
The Apollinian drive–striving towards that which is structured, sculpted and measured–symbolizes all that has form and shape. Because objects that have form consequently have a limit or a physical restraint, the Apollinian drive can be thought of as a cognitive faculty that organizes and individuates, making sense out of an otherwise incoherent reality…
Where as all is shaped and individuated in the Apollinian sphere, in the Dionysian drive “everything subjectives vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness” (BOT, p.36). This tendency yields the collapse of the individual–the collapse of limitations and coherenecy–and manifests a state of personal detachment or temporary self-oblivion. “Its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence contains, while it lasts, a lethargic elemtn in which all personal experiences of the past become immersed.” (BOT, p.59).
If one thinks of the state of mind intoxication or music brings, where one’s inhibitions and individual concerns vanish–sometimes thought of as ‘losing oneself (in the whole)’–one gets a better idea of this drives. Nietzsche specifically references ancient orgiastic festivals where “the most savage natural instincts were unleashed” (BOT, p.39), and consequently, a situation in which all order, civility, and individuality disappeared…
…this feeling of a higher community–a mystical feeling of oneness among many…The Apollinian drives is necessary is protecting man from the chaotic rapturous ecstasy of Dionysus, giving him a foundation from losing himself completely self-oblivion.
I think Nietzsche’s metaphysical dichotomy speaks to the human condition. Moreover, I think a libertarian dance party–an event that combines a uniquely Dionysian activity (the dance party) with an Apollinian message (lyrics espousing a libertarian philosophy) is the perfect way to express that condition. It’s celebrating individuality collectively!
With that said, let’s jam out to this week’s pick:
In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air…He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy…He is no loner an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the Primordial Unity”.
This weekend’s song–No Government by Nicolette–correlates quite well with the quote above…for a number of reasons.
For one, the techno beat.
Secondly, the lyrics border on a naive form of anarchism, which–if you ask me–is, well, fairly naive. The quote above is similarly incomplete and Nietzsche will be the first one to tell you. Tune in next week for the why!
The season six winner of “The Bachelor”… Mary Delgado — who was arrested last year for allegedly punching her fiance, “Bachelor” Byron Velvick — was busted again on Saturday night for public intoxication, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct at Lorina’s Cantina in Del Rio, Texas.
