Ron Paul's unexpected ascendency in the Republican Party is going to tip off this dialog in the popular press about "Libertarianism" that already has my eyes rolling.

I recommend this article not because I think it does a good job articulating the problem with Ron Paul, but because it gets off a couple of zingers that I do strongly empathize with, such as this:

It irks me that, as far as most Americans are concerned, Ron Paul is the alpha and omega of the libertarian creed. If you were an evil genius determined to promote the idea that libertarianism is a morally dubious ideology of privilege poorly disguised as a doctrine of liberation, you'd be hard pressed to improve on Ron Paul...

I am personally interested in individual liberty. That attracts me to the Libertarian party - who claim to be interested in the same thing and whose think tanks sometimes write good papers on the subject.

Unfortunately, its a bad relationship for me, because, after years of talking to libertarians, I don't think that most of them are really all that interested in individual liberty.

They're basically just interested in not being taxed.

Some think its immoral that they should be taxed because its just like theft. Others have read elaborate rationalizations that trying to build a healthy society is counterproductive and you should just stop worrying about other people and enjoy your money. Whatever the reason, all these people care about is low taxes.

Individual liberty is more complicated than having low taxes. Individual liberty has to do with things like having a right to freedom of speech and being secure against unreasonable searches and seizures and having the right to vote and a guarantee of equal protection under the law. Only a small minority of libertarians care about those things. Most are indifferent, some are actively hostile, and almost none understand the specific policy issues involved or take personal action in support of those issues.

Ergo, we have Ron Paul. Ron Paul is openly hostile to the 14th amendment's guarantee that state governments won't violate the individual rights of people. He is someone who applies the political philosophy of the oligarchy that controlled the 19th century South to modern political issues. He is a principled man, which is more than can be said for a lot of people in politics. Sometimes his principals even lead to desirable results. But ultimately, his principals come from the time before the internal combustion engine, and were discredited in that time, by people we should regard as comparably primitive.

If THEY could think around this but YOU can't - perhaps you're not thinking.

No reasonable understanding of "individual liberty" can be framed through the lens of the political rationalizations of the Slave Power. It was a caste system that had as its central features the violent oppression of people, a total lack of social mobility, and an absence of basic political freedoms and enfranchisement. It was an oligarchy of about 300,000 people who oppressed millions.

How could a movement associated with "individual liberty" become aligned with THAT?

The answer is because they don't actually care about "individual liberty." They just care about lower taxes.

Libertarians have done a terrible job countering the widespread suspicion that theirs is a uselessly abstract ideology of privilege for socially obtuse adolescent white guys.

Libertarians cannot simultaneously have "individual liberty" and Ron Paul. But they do have Ron Paul, and they are about to be associated with him in the national conciousness in a permanent way.

Therefore, it has come time to start pointing out that "libertarianism" has nothing to do with "individual liberty."

Individual liberty is more complicated than having low taxes.

A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is An Embarrassment To The Creed | The New Republic

What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage.

APOD: 2011 December 21 - A Horseshoe Einstein Ring from Hubble

One of my favorites from XM Chill.

Burial & Four Tet - Moth - YouTube

Dagmar wrote:
Jesus.... I've only been saying this for about a week and a half now, man. I can't find any other more plausible explanation for how hard these bills are being pushed.

Its plausible. I haven't watched this yet:

This one is shorter:

RE: SOPA, NDAA, and the revolution

Charles Stross herein presents a conspiracy theory that I'll admit having considered, at least in part, but hadn't taken seriously enough to post:

The NDAA and SOPA are designed to provide tools to counter future ArabSpring & Wikileaks type events in the United States, fueled by online social media and the worsening of the housing crisis.

Copyright is just a distraction. During the revolution they want the infrastructure in place to block access to foreign coordinating sites as well as the ability to round up suspected dissidents without charge.

On some level, it doesnt really matter whether or not this is a concious desire - these bills will do what they do.

SOPA, NDAA, and the revolution

Third -- and this may have been the point of the entire exercise -- it gave Polis an excuse to insert the full lyrics of the popular Internet meme "The Internet is for Porn" into the official congressional hearing record for SOPA. (Representative excerpt: "All these guys unzip their flies / For porn, porn, porn!")

'Internet is for Porn' pops up during House SOPA debate | Privacy Inc. - CNET News

Although I'm not posting to Twitter, in general, right now, I think that it is important to recognize people in Congress who stood up for freedom today:

As an Internet security professional, I want to thank @jasoninthehouse @darrellissa @repzoelofgren & @jaredpolis for standing up to #SOPA.

Twitter / @_decius_: As an Internet security pr ...

“The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality. Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts," Smith added.

It is a fact and a reality that bogus intellectual property claims are used to silence criticism and dissent in the United States today. It is a fact and a reality that bogus intellectual property claims are used for political censorship and the manipulation of elections in the United States today. SOPA will serve to pour gasoline on the fire. These are the facts. This is the reality.

Lamar Smith lives in a fantasy land.

To assuage copyright concerns, Google-owned YouTube has engineered a filtering system enabling rights holders to upload music and videos they own to a “fingerprinting” database.

Universal said Google’s private system doesn’t count as an official takedown notice under the DMCA and thus it was immune from legal liability.

“What they are basically arguing," said Ira Rothken, Megaupload’s attorney, "they can go ahead and suppress any speech they want without any consequences. That’s not a workable paradigm.”

I also learned from this article that Universal previously argued that people can file DMCA takedown notifications without incurring liability even if they know that the target is making a fair use of the material. That case isn't resolved yet (and has been slogging its way through the court system for many years) but fortunately it looks like Universal is going to be rebuked.

I'm going to start referring to these people as "The Copyright Power." I think its an apt analogy. They think they are above the law. They don't believe that due process applies to them. They have Congress so deep in their pockets that SOPA may pass in spite of universal condemnation. They are an anti-democratic force in this country. They should be seen as such.

Regarding Google, they are now in a very difficult position. As a Youtube user, I don't want Universal to have access to a takedown mechanism wherein they will not accept consequences for malicious misuse. They could kick Universal out. Perhaps they should, but the argument that Universal has made here applies to everyone who uses this system, so Google may have no choice but to shut the whole thing down, which probably has a lot of negative consequences for Google as well.

Its the kind of situation that you'd really want to go to Congress with - get them to clarify that the DMCA's rules apply to systems like this. But Congress is bought and sold by The Copyright Power, so you can't get a fair law out of them.

How does this end? How do we get The Copyright Power to acknowledge that they are also subject to the rule of law?

The Megaupload Case just got interesting

I did not realize that SOPA had an anti-circumvention provision.

Here, I analyze just one of the problematic provisions of SOPA: a new "anticircumvention" provision (different from the still-problematic anti-circumvention of section1201). SOPA's anticircumvention authorizes injunctions against the provision of tools to bypass the court-ordered blocking of domains. Although it is apparently aimed at MAFIAAfire, the Firefox add-on that offered redirection for seized domains in the wake of ICE seizures,[1] the provision as drafted sweeps much more broadly. Ordinary security and connectivity tools could fall within its scope. If enacted, it would weaken Internet security and reduce the robustness and resilience of Internet connections.

It will be illegal to build tools that allow people to evade the U.S. Government's internet censorship infrastructure.

Stopping SOPA's Anti-Circumvention