Lane suggests that a symptom common among schizophrenics was glossed over by the doctor in question, who recommended cannabis to address his insomnia.  Even if true it wouldn’t say anything about marijuana in this case, because the mans psychological problem was clearly not the one the marijuana was intended for.  If he means to hint that it made his mental stability worse somehow, then, well, science suggests otherwise thus far.  Nice try…

That said, I’m firmly in the “it’s no one’s business to give a fuck if you DO just want to get high” camp.

-Cops taser belligerent drunk driver, find out he’s a cop too.  Naturally he’s still on normal duty pending investigation, an odd courtesy considering he admitted he was drunk.  Rules are for little people.

-Shorter Will Wilkinson: “Y’know, maybe if the U.S. didn’t spend a fuck-ton on mass death…”

^^^^my general though w/r/t the type of attitude Kevin Carson talks about here, in a nutshell.

The Senate voted Wednesday to extend for a year key provisions of the nation’s counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month. In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act.

The Senate approved the bill on a voice vote with no debate. It now goes to the House.

Bipartisanship.  If it doesn’t have an entry in Urban Dictionary, then it needs one.

Cue realization of contradiction for comedic effect in 3…2…1…:

“Glenn, the library isn’t free! It’s paid for with tax money. Free public libraries are the result of the Progressive movement to communally share books. The first public library was the Boston public library in 1854. It’s statement of purpose: every citizen has the right to access community owned resources. Community owned? That sounds just like communist. You’re a communist!”

-John Stewart

Good for a chuckle, but there’s a larger tell of what this says about the Right & its incoherence.  It’s obvious why Shouty Glenn didn’t realize what he was saying with that line: he, like myself & like most reasonable people, sees nothing particularly bad about public libraries.  In fact, I think it’s safe to say if the extent of government were merely communal availability of books then there’d be little for all but staunch Objectivists to complain about.

Now, since Beck & presumably most other right-wingers in the U.S. aren’t including libraries on their list of Absolute Collectivist Evil, they can’t possibly be as purely anti-collective as their rhetoric suggests.  Of course, we already know this because they hold sacrosanct even more such things as the public army, public police forces & public national bouncers AKA “immigration agents”.  Their true argument, as a result, is haggling over what should be collectively provided for & what shouldn’t — making them no different than the people they scream about on the means.

As if that wasn’t enough, we have the fact that government is not the only way to do collective provision of goods.  Some on the Right even mention charity, of course, but there have also been co-ops, mutual aid associations, various cultural organizations, myriad methods of providing something to and as a group.  If something is a collective outside of government then there is no grounds, political or moral, to interfere.  Approve of it?  Then join.  Disapprove?  Then don’t.  Simple.

Sure, there’s the hypocrisy of using anti-collective rhetoric when you don’t have a problem with collectivism for things that you personally like.  But I would go further & say that other than the most devout of Ayn Rand followers, we’re all collectivists to some extent.

I personally want “public” to actually mean the public rather than the state, which makes me a radical.  Others, though they acknowledge their collectivism, don’t make that distinction, so they’re part of the mainstream.  Those who make arguments that suggest the mere idea of commons is downright wicked, when their true reasoning is “my collective is wonderful, yours is evil”, have a more appropriate label: dumbass.

I wholeheartedly approve of the Crapper Retreat, btw.  If you’re gonna be there awhile, might as well be comfortable.

The regime would gain support as ordinary Iranians rally around the flag. The opposition would be forced to support a government under attack from abroad. The regime would foment and fund violence from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Persian Gulf. The price of oil would skyrocket — which, ironically, would help Tehran pay for all these operations.

It is important to recognize the magnitude of what people like Palin are advocating. The United States is being asked to launch a military invasion of a state that poses no imminent threat to America, without sanction from any international body and with few governments willing to publicly endorse such an action. Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade, proof positive that the United States is engaged in a war of civilizations.

Mkay, he beat down that obvious idiocy.  So where does he go from here?

The United States should use the latest IAEA report to bolster a robust containment strategy against Iran, bringing together the moderate Arab states and Israel in a tacit alliance, asking European states to go further in their actions, and pushing Russia and China to endorse sanctions. Former secretary of state James Baker suggested to me on CNN that the United States could extend its nuclear umbrella to Israel, Egypt and the Gulf states — something that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hinted at as well.

At the same time, Washington should back the “Green Movement” in Iran, which ultimately holds out the greatest hope for a change in the basic orientation of Iran’s foreign policy.  (emphasis mine)

Translation: “Hey, Tehran!  Double-time it on the murders of those activists, wouldja?”

Here’s an alternative proposal: Leave the “green movement” alone because any association with the US is poison.  Meanwhile, drop the idea of sanctions because they don’t actually hurt the regime, since as we’ve already established they could give half a fuck about their people.  As for any pursuit of nukes, remember that the most likely target of any future nukes already has nuclear weapons.

The term “market anarchism” is a dead tell that it’s a right-wing group. Proudhon, for example, wouldn’t be associated with “market” anything. Those idiots are followers of Gustave de Molinari . So we’re firmly in Bob Roddis* territory here.

This logic sounds familiar…

(* - I added the Bob Roddis link so you can tell who he’s talking about.  I’d never heard of him until I did a search.)

Edit: I didn’t want to turn it into an argument.  Honestly, I more wanted to see Matt’s reaction, considering unlike most of the prog bloggers he’s actually encountered a left-libertarian before on a serious issue.  Didn’t even intend on this becoming a subject of a post.  I brought up the Labor Theory of Value as an example of something a right-wing group wouldn’t support & got this response from a commenter:

Actually Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner were both right-wing anarchist who adhered to the labor theory of value. It looks like these guys are mostly Rothbard fans, and Rothbard was influenced by both of those guys. Of course, being a good little Austrian, Rothbard rejected LTV himself. But I guess those guys didn’t get that memo.

Benjamin Tucker: right-winger.  You know, that guy that said of his own philosophy that “it wants to deprive capital of its reward”…

1. “Hey man, I got some pizza.  You want a slice?”
2. “We’re going to see a movie, wanna come?”
3. “Does the US Constitution allow the president to order the massacre of a village of civilians?”
4. “While you’re up, could ya grab me a brew?”