• i just want to express my support for what julian assange is. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-06-17). i just want to express my support for what julian assange is doing with wikileaks. listening to the msm, you'd think it was obvious that videos of america's heroes slaughtering civilians should be kept secret. um, why exactly? i guess i could see how some information should be kept secret, though… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• There is no libertarian case for restricted immigration. Less, Anarchy Without Bombs (2010-06-19). It is almost 30 years to the day since Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee Ed Clark set off a firestorm of criticism within the party for indicating that he didn't think free immigration should be immediately adopted.  One of the strongest criticisms came in a post-mortem of that campaign by Mr…. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Bobbing Along on the Beautiful Briny Sea. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-19). From the "you can't make this stuff up" department: [BP CEO Tony] Hayward took a break from overseeing the energy giant's efforts to contain the undersea leak so he could watch his 52-foot yacht "Bob" participate in the J. P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. If you put… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• The Machinery of Freedom now online! Less, Anarchy Without Bombs (2010-06-18). More than 30 years ago, the first edition of David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom was the book that first made me comfortable calling myself an anarchist. The second edition, from 1989, has been out of print for a while, but David has just put online a complete copy of… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto. Kevin Carson, Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism (2010-06-15). The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto is now available in hard copy format. The eBook version is here. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Three more officers fired – Burbank Leader. police excessive force – Google News (2010-06-18). Three more officers fired / Burbank Leader / All of the officers were fired for allegedly acting improperly or using excessive force. While some of the alleged misconduct occurred during the robbery … (Linked Saturday 2010-06-19.)

• Louis Armstrong death metal version of “What a Wonderful World” Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing (2010-06-16). (Thanks, Adam!) (Linked Sunday 2010-06-20.)

• What We Read When We Don't Read the Internet PRESENTS! Au Revoir, Pretty Horses; Or, Why I Don't Read Man Books Any More. Tiger Beatdown (2010-06-20). “Some more telling characteristics of Manfiction: … 2. Male characters cannot communicate with their sons, brothers, and fathers. Or anybody else, really; but they are particularly hampered in inter-man relationships (this is important to emphasize regularly, because the only men who are capable of talking in polysyllabic phrases to other men are gay, and the only thing less manly than writing thoughtfully about women is writing about gays. An inability to communicate is the literary equivalent of the empty seat between two dudes in a movie theater). Instead of communicating the men will drink a lot, commit random acts of violence, beat their sons or pets, and drive around in trucks without speaking. These men do not have daughters.” (Linked Sunday 2010-06-20.)

Happy Sunday, y’all! As you may know, in the U.S. it’s Father’s Day today. Remember: necktie fashions come and go, but Shamelessness is forever.

So what have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

It’s R.S.W. time again, which puts me in a bit of a quandary. Not about who to recognize in the Watch: Bruce Bartlett’s recent column on libertarianism and Jim Crow obviously deserves a place in the R.S.W. far more than any lesser imitator. But Bartlett’s post does raise a very serious problem: the problem of how I’m supposed to decide which pull-quote from the post actually represents the most ridiculous Ridiculous Strawman that Bartlett has to offer?

Is it Ridiculous Strawman A (of the free market):

The Court’s philosophy in these cases led logically to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which essentially gave constitutional protection to legal segregation enforced by state and local governments throughout the U.S.

As we know from history, the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation.^[1]

Or is it Ridiculous Strawman B (of the libertarian philosophy and freedom):

In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s [?! sic — Ed.] gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. … Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn’t work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.

Long-time readers may remember that Bartlett was already named as an R.S.W. laureate a little more than a year ago (in which he decided that the problem with American libertarians is that they never talk about interventionist foreign policy or the War on Drugs). But such a man of action is not content to rest on his laurels, and he has certainly outdone himself this year.

As usual, of course, I have little interest in defending a weaselly conservative statist like Rand Paul; and none at all in defending the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s. But I do have some passing familiarity with the libertarian philosophy, and with the meaning of the term free market; and I think that if you consider almost a century of legal segregation enforced by state and local governments to be the right setting for a historical on free market outcomes; or looking at what happened under politically-enforced white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs and the KKK to be a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy — apparently on the notion that libertarian anti-statism is identical with a doctrine of unlimited States Rights, and the free market is identical with the market outcomes that you get when pervasive racism and segregation are explicitly required by an extensive system of government economic regulation — well, then, you, sir, are eminently qualified for the R.S.W.

See also:

• GT 2010-06-18: In a freed market, with no government anti-discrimination laws, what will stop bigoted business owners from resegregating America?
• GT 2010-05-23: Shameless Self-promotion Sunday (on Rand Paul Vs. Rachel Maddow)

1. ^[1]Of course, to be fair to Bartlett here, it is true that the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation in the American South. Neither did a Communist invasion of the United States, or a visitation by space aliens. Guess what all of these things have in common? —R.G.↩

A. We will.

Context-Keeping and Community Organizing. Cato Unbound (2010-06-18):

David Bernstein makes the strongest libertarian case I can imagine for Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His key point—which I fully embrace—is that the Southern states operated the equivalent of a "white supremacist cartel" in public accommodations….

But as Sheldon ultimately argues, there’s more than one way to break a cartel, and starting out with the notion that the *only* options are one kind of federal law or another kind of federal law, is simply to beg the question. We can't dismiss [direct action by nonviolent social movements] as impractical because it had been working several years before Title II was enacted. … Title II, in other words, was unnecessary. But worse, it was detrimental…. [W]hat is given like a gift can be more easily taken away, while what one secures for oneself by facing down power is less easily lost. … The libertarian answer to bigotry is community organizing.

• Debate Over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-06-16). I will be participating in an online discussion about the appropriate libertarian position on the 1964 Civil Rights Act as part of the Cato Unbound series. David Bernstein of George Mason University Law School has kicked it off with his essay here. My response will be posted Friday, followed by… (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-16.)