The Ideas of a Socialist

Arthur Koestler, author of the celebrated novel Darkness at Noon, was many things; writer/journalist, investigator of the paranormal, political prisoner, womanizer and suicide. But, more than anything, he was a committed socialist, although a vociferous critic of the Soviet Union. In 1944 he wrote the following in his essay The End of an Illusion:

"The paramount lesson which we have to draw from the failure of the Russian experiment is that economic factors are important, but not all-important. The regimental tailor is not a socialist institution, and a nationalised economy may become an instrument of tyranny and reaction. By concentrating all its attention on the economic issue, the Left became deaf to the strange and changing moods of the People. Their religious nostalgia turned into free valences of the soul, apt to fuse into the wrong compounds of chauvinism, mysticism, addiction to new myths.
The weaning of the Left, the breaking up of the false emotional compounds, is one half of the task. The other half is the creation of a new fraternity in a new spiritual climate, whose leaders are tied by a vow of poverty to share the life of the masses, and debarred by the laws of the fraternity from attaining unchecked power. If this seems utopian, then socialism is a utopia.
The age of enlightenment has destroyed faith in personal survival; the scars of this operation have never healed. There is a vacancy in every living soul, a deep thirst in all of us. If the socialist idea cannot fill this vacancy and quench our thirst, then it has failed in our time. In this case the whole development of the socialist idea since the French Revolution has been merely the end of a chapter in history, and not the beginning of a new one."

The Latest From Judy Shelton

Judy Shelton, monetary authority and critic of fiat money and government deficit financing, has apparently been inspired to address the debt ceiling fiasco:

She's certainly one of the more interesting economists you'll ever run across. Here's a great interview with her from November of 2009.

The Big Three

Linsey Hamilton leads usual adversaries Emma Bast and Terra James toward the finish line of a scratch race at the National Sports Center Velodrome in Blaine, MN on July 28, 2011.

Changes Down on the Farm?

This report tells us that the DOT is considering a requirement that operators of farm equipment have a Commercial Driver's License and follow the rules that apply to other CDL operators. The story tells something of the background of the operation of farm machinery in the US, that family members, often as young as twelve, have been using powerful equipment to plow, cultivate, harvest and process crops. Of course, farming also had a juvenile component before mechanization. Kids drove horses and oxen centuries before the introduction of the tractor.

No doubt the ostensible reason for considering this policy is safety, both for the operators of the equipment and the public at large. Isn't that always the case? That's why there's a picture of a baby drowning glued to the side of a 5-gallon paint bucket. That's why you'll be arrested for driving without a fastened seat belt. And there's no doubt that farming can be a dangerous pursuit. Every year we hear about farmers entangled in equipment with a resulting loss of limb or life. So tractor drivers should be registered just like pistol owners. Thank goodness for the state and its concern for our safety and well-being.

It gets more weird every day

A Pennsylvania mommy is going to trial because she got on a school bus to see if her child was OK. Apparently it's against the law, at least in Pennsylvania, for an adult to get on a school bus. And although this particular incident seemed to have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction months ago, county attorney Charles F. Chenot III isn't going to let the matter disappear. As he says, if they do, sex offenders with kids on the bus will jump on and molest other students.

Naturally, the first thing that a normal person would think is that there needs to be a little of that increasingly uncommon, especially in educational circles, common sense used here. Maybe every parent shouldn't succumb to panic when they perceive a situation where their child could be in danger. And maybe the authorities could have the judgement to disregard an isolated incident where no actual harm has been done. But that misses the real point.

Through some tortuous logic, the state is legally responsible for the education of residents of a certain age. In exchange for this obligation the state and schools themselves make regulations regarding the conduct of the students and parents. Why? Why is the government involved in something like bussing children to school in the first place? Even if you can justify the behemoth US public education system, how is it possible to extend the justification for instruction to transport? At one point, there couldn't have been any bussing to schools because there were no buses. How did we arrive at the conjecture that hauling kids to school at government and ultimately the taxpayers' expense was part of the education package? Must have been before they turned the schools into subsidized restaurants.

I remember asking the bartender at a saloon in the hamlet of Interior, South Dakota where the school was. He replied that there was no school, the kids went to Wall, 32 miles up the road. I said that was a long bus ride every day. He said, "Yeah, it would be, but they drive theirselves."

Stephen Pearl Andrews

Individual anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews said this in a continuing discussion with Horace Greeley and Henry James in 1853:

"The most stupendous mistake that this world of ours has ever made is that of erecting an abstraction, the State, the Church, Public Morality, according to some accepted standard, ...into a real personality, and making it paramount to the will and happiness of the individual."

"Give up...the search after the remedy for the evils of government in more government. The road lies just the other way-toward individuality and freedom from all government... It is the inherent viciousness of the very institution of government itself, never to be got rid of until our natural individuality of action and responsibility is restored. Nature made individuals, not nations; and while nations exist at all, the liberties of the individual must perish."

Quoted from Men Against the State, James J. Martin, The Adrian Allen Associates, 1953.

Queen of Wheels

Minnesota Elite Women's Criterium Champion Teresa Moriarty

Perhaps the most successful female Minnesota athlete that doesn't play with a ball or don skates is cyclist Teresa Moriarty, who through the years has won every local road race of note and continues to be a sterling representative of her sport. In this year's edition of the state criterium championship, held before a deserted state capitol building in St. Paul, she attacked from the start and soloed in front of the pack for the entire race, sprinting up the hill to the finish line with a 36 second advantage. Yesterday she once again showed who's the boss in local women's cycling with a victory in the inaugural "South Side Sprint" in Minneapolis. Moriarty has occupied this spot for some years now but no one seems to be able to push her off the throne.


Teresa escorts a participant in the kid's race to the finish line after her own triumph a few minutes earlier.