I am not a Christian in anything but an aesthetic sense; but I have to confess that I’m a real sap for Christmas. Not the sentimentalized, garishly lit Santa Claus Christmas; I’m a real Grinch when it comes to Rankin-Bass animation or Frank Capra movies. And not the johnny-come-lately sanctimonious and politicized Happy Birthday, Jesus! fundamentalist Christmas, either; the holiday is not an opportunity for public display of your piety. I mean the simple, quiet, peaceful, earnestly and humbly Christian Christmas. As Linus would say:

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

— Luke, Chapter 2

That’s what it’s all about. May we all have peace, joy, and light in the coming year. Merry Christmas, everyone.

1. Malcolm X is a really, really fine film. I always remember that it is fantastic, but I never remember just how good it is until I watch it again.

2. I am flying to Dallas to do some almost-Christmas visiting with my family; while I will have Internet access a fair amount of the time, all the non-family-visiting time I take will be turned over to finishing the essay that I’m co-authoring with Roderick, which we will be presenting a mere week from today at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division conference in Boston. I should be back around Christmas or so, but I don’t know if there will be any substantial blogging prior to the New Year. We’ll see.

   The essay we’ll be presenting, in case you’re interested, is on libertarianism and feminism; I’ve mentioned the topic, in considerably less detail, here before: see Why Libertarians Need Feminism and Government and the pink-collar ghetto, and touched on related themes in Pro-Choice on Everything, Part I, Because of assholes like this guy…, April March, and EC OTC in OZ, among other places. The overarching project is an effort to show that radical feminism and libertarianism can and should be reconciled–they can because the points where there seems most obviously to be contradiction are actually mostly the result of misunderstandings, either of each other or of one’s own position (misunderstandings that can be dispelled, in part, by the illuminating example of the nineteenth century individualist anarchists, as Roderick has argued before); and they should because they have a lot to offer one another both in terms of theoretical insight and strategy. Unfortunately, some past attempts by libertarians to incorporate feminism into their analysis (take Wendy McElroy’s iFeminism—please!) have fallen straight into a couple of notorious traps: (1) dancing to the divide-and-conquer tune of definition-by-opposition–that is, isolating some ill-defined bogey-woman of Evil Radical Feminism, attacking it mercilessly, and then forgetting to say anything in particular about male supremacy; and (2) attempting a hyphenated feminism synthesis in which the feminism is entirely swallowed by the libertarianism. Our hope is to help suggest a more productive way forward.

3. Happy Festivus! (Thanks, Max.)

Cheers, everyone.

A new advice column–sure to be syndicated in a newspaper near you soon. Because everything is simpler when you reject the State as such.

Dear Dr. Anarchy: How could a dangerous provision be signed into law without anyone in Congress actually having read it?

Sincerely,
Worried in Washington

Worried: To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

Politicians are never going to stop being irresponsible. That is their job. I suggest that you dump them.

Yours,
Dr. Anarchy

Dear Dr. Anarchy: My pharmacist is refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception because he’s a sexist prick. What can I do?

Truly,
Bristling in Britain

Bristling: Your pharmacist only has the power to be a slimy control freak because a bunch of politicians–most of them men–have given him exclusive control over whether or not you and your neighbors can get needed medicine–by banning you from buying it over the counter. I suggest that you dump them immediately.

Yours,
Dr. Anarchy

Dear Dr. Anarchy: We have reached the point where serious lawyers are being paid serious fees by a big company to shut down the PB&J operation of a grocery store. How can we fix a broken patent system?

Sincerely,
Flummoxed in Florida

Flummoxed: Abolish it.

Sincerely,
Dr. Anarchy

Dear Dr. Anarchy: Can this marriage be saved?

Yours,
Hopeful at the Home Journal

Hopeful: No. Marriage can’t be saved. Abolish it.

Yours,
Dr. Anarchy

Next week: Dr. Anarchy answers your tax questions!

I’ve been putting most things on the back burner for the past few days while I get together graduate school applications and polish off a few other tasks that have been on the to-do list for a bit too long. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure…

• Now that you’ve already liberated your Office software (thanks, OpenOffice.org!) and your web browser (thanks, Mozilla Firefox!), you can also reclaim your inbox with the public release of Mozilla Thunderbird, a top-notch open source, standalone e-mail client. It features (inter alia) adaptive spam filters, nice RSS / Atom newsfeed support, and extra-useful Saved Search folders. Migrating from AOL? Outlook? Outlook Express? Eudora? No problem! That’s the thing about open source software: they keep making software that works. Score another one for the free world.

• Patent protectionists show once again how they make our lives better and reward innovation. Another threat to technological civilization will no doubt soon be averted by further intellectual enclosure. (Thanks, Copyfight.)

• Fred Vincy has a thorough take-down of editorial hand-wringing over boys’ supposedly declining educational prospects. In fact, the whole thing is a huge sham (for some tangentially related points, see GT 2002-02-06: The Weird, Wild World of Anti-feminism), and as Fred points out, several steps of the argument apparently require you to presume that the money men make is more important than the money women make. It also includes, among other chicanery, this marvelous explanation of the problem: The small group of experts who research the problem only now is beginning to trace its outlines. It isn’t so much that schools have changed in ways that hurt boys. It’s that society has changed in ways that help girls. Helping girls? O tempora! O mores! (Perhaps someone at USA Today does need help with their verbal skills, after all…)

• George Bush really did tell Tony Blair The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur. You can test your knowledge of our Prince President’s gnomic wisdom at the BBC.

• Now that Fallujah had to be destroyed in order to save it, military commissars now have a free hand to build their model city in the heart of the Sunni Triangle. Bright ideas for liberated Fallujah include apartheid-style passbooks for all Fallujans and possibly industrial conscription in which all work for Fallujan men is organized under military-style batallions and directed by Army commanders. (For those keeping score, that’s one of Leon Trotsky’s theses about the possible uses of the Red Army after the Civil War drew to a close. It managed to horrify even his fellow Bolsheviks–no small feat, that. Freedom is, indeed, on the march.)

So it goes in this possible world. There should be some more in the way of non-lazy posting coming soon.

feministe has been nominated for the 2004 Weblog awards (in the Best of Top 250-500 category). feministe is not only tremendously incisive and interesting, it also has the unanimous endorsement of every single resident of this secessionist republic. The Rad Geek People’s Daily urges the international community to show their support for feministe. It’s an election even an anarchist can participate in with a clear conscience.

You can vote once per day from now until December 12th. Vote early, vote often.