“WHAT THE HELL ARE CHURCHES DOING IN THE WEST BANK?”

They are there because about 10% of Palestinians are Christians, and Christians tend to build and attend Christian churches.

Also because the territory West Bank includes some minor points of interest to Christians, such as, oh, Bethlehem.

Mark,

I think a large part of the popularity of NC licenses derives from an entry-level confusion in principles. People pushing for “free content” still mostly haven’t gotten the distinction between “free speech” and “free beer.” “Noncommercial” restrictions sound like a good idea if you think that the issue is whether the price of obtaining the content is or is not $0.00. They sound like an awful idea if you think the issue is what you can or cannot do with the content once you’ve obtained it. Many people who are choosing free content licenses are aware that big commercialized copy-monopolists are the problem, but make the mistake of identifying the commerce as the problem rather than the monopolistic privileges. Since people who consider themselves culturally and politically progressive tend to be at least suspicious of commercialism anyway, they’re quite likely to miss the more subtle but more important point about the means by which the copy-monopolists have extorted their money. In any case as long as the two different issues aren’t clearly distinguished, there won’t be a clear set of first principles behind “free content” communities.

Kurtiss,

This brings me to what I view as the CC philosophy, which is not “let’s be slightly less evil,” or to be “open source,” but to give the creator a choice! That choice is precisely what’s needed to create a rich ecosystem of commoners that can interact with existing copyright systems.

If CC is not aiming at providing open (free-as-in-speech) content, but rather in giving creative types more control over specifying the permission profile on their works, then they need a less misleading name. They should not be calling themselves “Creative Commons” or talking about “free culture,” if what they mean is “creative control” or “machine-readable general licensing syntax and semantics.” They should decide just what they are promoting (whether this is freeing content, or just minting new data structures for creative types to express the restrictions they do or do not place on licensed use), and then work from the clearer set of first principles.

Starr,

Criticism of Barnett’s work should of course focus on the position advocated, not a misunderstanding of the position. But if Barnett tells us that he is deliberately obscuring or downplaying his real position in some forums, then he does bear some of the responsibility for misunderstandings of his work, even if he makes his position more clear in other forums. Particularly when Barnett knows that large portions of the intended audience of his book aren’t familiar with those other forums.

Kennedy,

Note that in his exchange in JLS 19.4, Barnett also more or less stated openly that he knowingly obscured his anarchism out of considerations of audience:

… While there is much that I disagree with in Huebert’s review, in this Reply I will focus on one crucial respect in which he misunderstands my thesis. This concerns the concept of constitutional legitimacy I develop and defend in my book.

Part of the fault for this misunderstanding may be mine. Although I fully expected some libertarians to make this mistake, because my book was aimed at a more general audience, I nevertheless did not address it explicitly. For this reason, I am sincerely grateful to Mr. Huebert for putting this misconception into print and thereby providing me with the perfect forum in which to rectify it …. (71, emphasis added).

… So when Mr. Huebert observes that I “do not address how a government may legitimately have a monopoly on the use of force and the provision of defense” (p. 105), he reveals his misunderstanding of both my project and my argument. It should not be clear that I do not address this question because I continue to deny that “government may legitimately have such a monopoly,” although I would now substitute the word “justly” in place of “legitimately” in this particular context. (75)

I do wonder why he thinks it wouldn’t matter to his “general audience” (including the general run of Con Law scholars) whether he is defending (1) the legitimacy of the “lost” Constitution as one legal system among many in an anarchistic social order, or rather (2) the legitimacy of the “lost” Constitution as the basis for a monopoly State. In any case, it should hardly be surprising that the many, who do not read JLS, misunderstand his point.

Bithead:

So, you needed to buy Sudafed in BULK? Musta been one hell of a cold.

What the fuck business is it of yours whether she needed to buy sudafed in bulk or not?

What business is it of the government’s?

For what it’s worth, I’ve written before about Kinsella’s taxpayer-ownership argument and the claims about ownership of roads in comments at No Treason.

I think the funniest thing about the whole thing is the spectacle of a mad dog defender of Thomas DiLorenzo and Hans Hermann Hoppe coming out for centralist nationalism and majoritarian popular sovereignty in determining ownership claims over government property.

Do you seriously mean to suggest that Bush the Younger’s presidency is worse than that of James Buchanan (1857-1861), the useless doughface who actively collaborated in the perpetuation of Southern race slavery, who applauded the court for the Dred Scott, enforced the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, threw his political prestige behind the slavers’ constitution in Kansas, stormed Harper’s Ferry, and presided over the careening of the country towards sectional war? That Buchanan ought to be excused on the grounds that the times on the eve of the American Civil War were less troubled than in 2001-present? That seems factually false; and if the issues were less complex—slavery being obviously inhuman and the Slave Power being a manifest power for evil—that speaks against Buchanan, not for him. Idiocy and incompetance are one thing; open complicity with evil is another.

One might also mention presidents like Andrew Jackson—an active slaveholder and a successful genocidaire)—or Woodrow Wilson—a militant white supremacist who instituted Jim Crow throughout the Executive branch and fought against women’s suffrage, and who, after running for re-election as the peace candidate, deceived the United States into what may have been the single most pointless bloodbath in world history, instituted a military draft to rustle up a slave army to fight it, and repressed the intense opposition to it through the expedient of throwing political dissidents in prison under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.

Perspective, please.