Book recommendation

Well, I know what book I’d like to recommend for next year’s Prometheus Award - Cory Doctorow’s young adult novel, Little Brother. From the book jacket:

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Do yourself a favor and get a copy. It’s the most pro-freedom book I’ve read this year.

And they call themselves “Libertarian”

Yet another example of why the LP is a hindrance to the cause of liberty: Libertarian Party selects Bob Barr as 2008 presidential nominee. Bob “Drug Warrior” Barr a libertarian? Give me a break!

Burn baby, burn

Burning Porcupine Festival 2008 : Anarchy In Your Head

Thanks to posts over at Rich’s & Art’s, I picked up a copy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  It’s a fascinating read and ties together a ton of other ideas I’ve absorbed from other authors, ranging from Jerzy Kosinski to Ayn Rand to Jacques Monod to Alfred Korzybski.   I highly recommend it.

Speaking of Kosinski, it was a book review of his book Passion Play that led me to cancel my subscription to the National Review.  It wasn’t that the review was negative, it was that they made the factual error of saying that Kosinski won the National Book Award for his novel, The Painted Bird, when he actually won it for Steps.  Coming as it did after the Review’s scurrilous article on libertarianism, that error was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

More reading goodness

How did I miss the start of L. Neil Smith’s new story? I must be slipping…..

A Wendy McElroy forum that may interest you … and a new show

Libertarian Politics Will Never Work

In other news, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles got off to a rousing start Sunday night.

Answering the tag

Sunni has tagged me to answer a freedom-oriented meme: “What motivated you to start looking into Anarchistic/Libertarian thought?”  My short answer echoes a book written by Jerome Tuccille, It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand.

A slightly longer answer:
‘Twas the bicentennial.  I had briefly dropped out of college when my parents reneged on their promise to pay for my first year of college and I had to work to pay off that bill before the college would let me continue. A co-workers at one of my jobs told me he thought I ought to read The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. I read not only that title, but also Atlas Shrugged, Anthem and all of her non-fiction.

By that time I read all those books, I’d managed to pay for my first year of college and was back in school and I found myself in the University Library, looking in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature for mentions of Rand and Objectivism. One of the articles I found mentioned libertarianism and the Libertarian Party and that the LP headquarters was in the same city as my school. The next thing you know, I found myself at their doorstep. If any of you have read L. Neil Smith’s description of the Propertarian Party headquarters in his novel, The Probability Broach, then you have a pretty accurate picture of what I found. And like Win Bear, I walked away with a copy of Murray Rothbard’s, For A New Liberty, (in Smith’s book the author was Mary Ross Bird) which led me from Rand’s limited government model to full blown anarchism.

Too Funny!

From Richard Nikoley:  Ron Paul for Condom of the United States. Who says libertarians have no sense of humor?  And George sure makes more sense to me than Walter Block.

Sunni nails what I’ve been thinking

Frodo or Boromir? | Sunni and the Conspirators. The cartoon says it perfectly.

My Republican is better than your Republican

From Wendy McElroy’s blog: My Republican is better than your Republican. When I read it I recalled one of Wally’s old posts.