Posts by Russell Brown
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Okay, okay, the limits of scahednfreude and all.
I'll blog about something sensible tomorrow ...
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From The Independent this week. All the pieces are starting to fall into place ...
And if you look back at the world of 1979, it now seems unimaginable. Exchange controls; wage controls; closed shops; and the state, for reasons which had gone unexamined for years, owning airlines and car manufacturers. Thatcher had an almost Marxist sense of historical inevitability, and her success was such that she changed not just the world but the way we look at the world. To try to imagine the reach of the state in 1979 is, in a phrase of the time, to think the unthinkable.
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The snake/ladder connecting a certain sort of Marxist and a certain sort of Libertarian can be observed in the Revolutionary Communist Party and its journal Living Marxism, which launched with this badass utopian sloganeering:
We live in an age of caution and conformism, when critical opinions can be outlawed as 'extremism' and anything new can be rubbished as 'too risky'. Ours is an age of low expectations, when we are always being told what is bad for us, and life seems limited on all sides by restrictions, guidelines and regulations.
The spirit of LM is to go against the grain: to oppose all censorship, bans and codes of conduct; to stand up for social and scientific experimentation; to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs. These are basic human values that cannot be compromised if we are ever going to create a world fit for people.
That crowd includes Great Global Warming Swindle producer Martin Durkin and the people behind the rather successful Spiked.
Spiked is certainly lively -- it can be pretty good. But large tracts of it -- including its wacky pro-smoking campaign -- are about not letting the facts get in the way of a good ideology.
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Chuck Norris would know all about that. Afterall he counted to infinity. Twice.
I only get that joke because I have a 13 year-old son.
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been on the ladyhawke kick for a while thanks to my friends |The Joint and Pinacolada Records. Like her foxy Sharon O'Neill look too.
Totally ...
Hype Machine is my crack.
I'm in yr blog chekin out yr top Hypem tracks.
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__This video is not available in your country__
I've never seen that on YouTube before..shame
Me neither.
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As far as I can tell, a better version can be found on the Hype Machine.
Ah. Well spotted.
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um..stroke of inspiration. what happened? 1994 is back in fashion again? the tragic decline of western culture mapped track by track since the 70s, 'i've lost my way" to be sure. exemplified by the fact that one of the links has already been removed. Justice with nursery rhyme lyrics, cutting edge.
Oh, actually it wasn't removed -- I b0rked the link. It's fixed now.
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And I'm not the only one to have this opinion. Here's a second opinion from a Randian on Objectivist Living (I'm sure you're familiar with the site):
Mr. Perigo has misused the strongest forms of moral condemnation so often that he seems no longer capable of making relevant distinctions.
If your fellow Randians are coming out with observations like this then you should probably be re-thinking your style.
There's heaps more where that came from. As explained in comment here, Objectivist Living was set up by Michael Stuart Kelly after a falling-out with the Perigo faction.
The higher-level schism is between Perigo and Barbara Branden, the author of The Passion of Ayn Rand. Branden's husband Nathaniel is supposed to have had an affair with Rand -- or not, if (like Perigo) you believe the contention of James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics that the Brandens mischaracterised their relationship with Rand and should therefore be excommunicated.
There got to be so much schisming a couple of years ago that some wag came up with The Official SoloSchism Form Letter, to make denunciations easier and more convenient. It's quite funny, and clearly targeted at Perigo.
There's further amusement here, including this quote from an "ex-Objectivist":
The only other thing I can say about the Club's obsession with excommunicating people is that it strikes me as an initiation ritual of sorts--like how the Cosa Nostra makes you whack a guy to "make your bones." It's also an obvious way of generating false self-esteem, which is something I see a lot of in O's. After all, most of their lives revolve around taking credit for the work of a dead philosopher who in turn borrowed heavily without attribution.
And another one here:
Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket. You people can't even see that you have become living parodies, can you?
Following this thing could, I can see, become addictive ...
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great example - involving apples, even - here)
I had to quote it ...
RAM is a Granny Smith apple -green on the outside, white on the inside. The sad remnants of Socialist Worker are a Braeburn apple - red on the outside, white on the inside. The Workers Party is a tomato - red all the way through, and proud of it. We intend to keep it that way.
Fabulous.
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