In a recent Students For Liberty blog post, my fellow campus coordinator and close friend, Wade Craig, wrote of how the torch in SFL's logo rep…
Kelly Kidwell @ studentsforliberty.org
Fire is bright and full of power. Fire is ungovernable and unafraid, passionate and even angry. Perhaps most importantly, fire has no masters. To become truly free, we lovers of liberty need to push for radical, meaningful change. We must channel our inner fire to burn down that which keeps us from living as freely as possible.
Burning it down means freeing oneself from the chains of the State and the culture that allows it to thrive. It means questioning everything, not accepting things as they are, but trying to discover what they should be. Burning it down means challenging oppression, rejecting the idea that people need masters, and taking control of your own life. It means loving fiercely, living virtuously, and speaking out against injustice. Burning it down means taking the rage that you have at those that steal, murder, and enslave without recourse, and channeling that rage into something constructive. It means innovation, learning, and even a little dancing. Burning it down means spreading liberty like wildfire.
Forest fire, though it may seem vicious, is an important ecological process. It destroys the old and the outdated, and makes room for succession forests, which become vibrant ecosystems, full of new life. So too must we destroy the State, eradicate oppression, and make way for complete liberation. The time has come for liberty-lovers to shift their focus from policy-making, getting out the vote, and cautiously stepping towards small government. Let's burn it down already!
How the state helps the most powerful. Jock, Anarchoblogs in English (2011-06-09). People moan lots about Tesco; about their seeming endless ability to land bank; their willingness to take over local businesses and "Tescopolise" whole towns. But they rarely think about how it is in fact the very state apparatus that so many see as a bastion against the so called "excesses"…(Linked Friday 2011-06-10.)
annarky's blog. 2011-06-09 14:00:00. ann arky, Anarchoblogs in English (2011-06-09). Â "EXTREMISTS" AND UNIVERSITIES. Â Â Â Recently the Cameron/Clegg millionaire cabal have been shouting there mouths off about universities not doing enough to crack down on extremists. To most people in this country, this is interpreted as meaning violent Muslim extremists, but however that is not how it will unfold. It will encompass…(Linked Friday 2011-06-10.)
Anarchy in DC. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2011-06-01). The Molinari Society will be holding its eighth annual Symposium (or seventh or ninth, depending on how one counts; let's just say our Year 8 Symposium) in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Mordor, I mean Washington DC, December 27-30, 2011. Here's the latest schedule…(Linked Wednesday 2011-06-01.)
Groves of Luxury and Idleness? Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2011-05-28). As is so often the case with right-wing critics of academia – even, or perhaps especially, those who are academics themselves (and so, perhaps, often brimming with resentment against their mostly left-wing colleagues?) – retiring sociology professor David Rubinstein, in his recent piece in The Weekly Standard, offers what I…(Linked Saturday 2011-05-28.)
Imagine No Taxation. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2011-05-26). The following letter appeared in today's Opelika-Auburn News: To the Editor: Charlotte Ward asks us to imagine a world without taxes. ("Don't like taxes? Imagine a world without these services," Tuesday.) Okay, let's try. What would it be like? True, the government wouldn't be able to provide its services any…(Linked Saturday 2011-05-28.)
The Atrocity of Hope, Part 15: Toward a New Radicalism. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2011-05-23). Chris Hedges on corporate liberalism: The pillars of the liberal establishment – the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party – all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for…(Linked Saturday 2011-05-28.)
The Manifesto of the Sixteen (1916) Shawn P. Wilbur, Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule (2011-05-25). [Here is a translation of the controversial “Manifesto of the Sixteen,” the document issued by Peter Kropotkin, Jean Grave and others, advocating support for the Allies and opposition to Germany in World War I. I had promised this to members of the Anarchist Task Force on Wikipedia quite awhile back,…(Linked Saturday 2011-05-28.)
*"Whoever does not affirm at some time the. Masha, Cyganeria (2011-05-23). “Whoever does not affirm at some time the definite..terribleness of life, never takes possession of the unutterable powers of our existence; he merely walks at the edge; and when the decision is made eventually, he will have been neither one of the living nor one of the dead.”~RilkeI know many…(Linked Sunday 2011-05-29.)
Revisionist History Day, 2011. Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2011-05-29). Today is Revisionist History Day, what others call Memorial Day. Americans are supposed to remember the country’s war dead while being thankful that they protected our freedom and served our country. However, reading revisionist history (see a sampling below) or alternative news sites (start with Antiwar.com and don’t forget to…(Linked Sunday 2011-05-29.)
Columbia SWAT team kills dog during drug raid — again. Dr. Q, Gangsters in Blue (2011-05-28). One of the most widely watched police brutality videos from last year showed members of the Columbia Police Department's SWAT team breaking into a man's home in the middle of the night, shooting his two dogs, terrorizing him and his family, and finally arresting him for a tiny amount of…(Linked Sunday 2011-05-29.)
D. McCarthy Stalks LibertyOnTour.com – Again. Ademo Freeman, Gangsters in Blue (2011-05-27). Originally posted at LibertyOnTour.com On our last day in Greenfield Beau and I headed to the local gas station to pick up a few things. On our way there we witnessed Daniel McCarthy, a member of the Greenfield police, make an illegal U-turn and park near our location. As we…(Linked Monday 2011-05-30.)