“I am of the opinion that the properties proposed for expropriation are absolutely essential for the safety and security of Canada,” reads the final decision from Ottawa, signed by Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose. “For that reason and in absence of valid justification to do otherwise, I have confirmed my intention to expropriate.” And with [...]
Category Archives: Libertarians
Reason # 305 for why we need property rights in the Charter
Posted by Peter Jaworski on June 19, 2012 Comments Off
Neil Peart, bleeding heart libertarian
Posted by Peter Jaworski on June 18, 2012 1 comment
This should interest co-blogger Terrence Watson: Neil Peart, like many of us, was an Ayn Rand fan in his twenties. Neil Peart, of course, is the drummer for Canadian rockers Rush, who are slowly getting the kind of respect that they deserve (I’m not really a fan, but it doesn’t matter. They are amongst the [...]
Should the libertarian movement engage with Occupy Toronto?
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on October 18, 2011 9 comments
My initial gut reaction to the Occupy movement was to dismiss it with a sneer. I had spent many of my post-secondary education years witnessing incoherent, ineffective, and politically-stunted protests, and I assumed that the Occupiers were cut from the same cloth. Most of the news reports I came across (both hostile and friendly) seemed [...]
Ontario Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever talks marijuana on The Arena
Posted by Peter Jaworski on September 16, 2011 21 comments
Paul McKeever, leader of the Ontario Freedom Party, went on Michael Coren’s The Arena yesterday to talk about marijuana and freedom. Here’s the video, with a little bit of snark on my part afterwards: The snark: ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
Atlas Shrugged, the movie, coming to Canada
Posted by Peter Jaworski on September 13, 2011 Comments Off
Here’s the press release: Pacific Northwest Pictures has acquired all rights for Canada to “Atlas Shrugged Part 1″ and will distribute through its Cross Country Releasing. Deal was announced Saturday at the Torono Film Festival. Pic opened to $1.8 million at 299 screens in the U.S. in April and finished its run with a $4.8 [...]
One year later: Marc “Prince of Pot” Emery sentenced to five years in U.S. prison
Posted by Peter Jaworski on September 10, 2011 Comments Off
Today is the one-year anniversary of Marc “Prince of Pot” Emery being sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison. Jodie Emery, his wife, posted the following comment on her facebook page: One year ago today, Marc was sentenced to 5 years in US federal prison. It was either a 5-year deal or 30-to-life. Marc [...]
Marc Emery endorses Freedom Party of Ontario
Posted by Peter Jaworski on September 7, 2011 1 comment
In his latest letter to his wife, Jodie, Marc “Prince of Pot” Emery talks about the political party he helped to found in Ontario — the Freedom Party. Emery sees this year as a “renaissance” for the political party that tries to stay true to Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. Not only has the party been [...]
Bleeding heart libertarianism on the radio
Posted by Peter Jaworski on April 4, 2011 Comments Off
Matt Zwolinski, one of the founders of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, chats on the radio about libertarianism and his bleeding heart: Zwolinski on KPBS’s These Days ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
U.S. Libertarian Party: They hate us because we bomb them
Posted by Peter Jaworski on March 21, 2011 Comments Off
The U.S. Libertarian Party issued the following press release today: Giving little thought to the lessons of history, President Obama has begun attacking Libya with the full support of virtually every member of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle issued the following statement today: “President Obama’s decision to order military attacks [...]
In defense of ranking freedoms
Posted by Peter Jaworski on March 15, 2011 13 comments
Over the last week, I’ve been keen on trying to figure out how various countries stack up according to various freedom indices. It started with my claim that I’m a libertarian mostly for empirical reasons. In my Bleeding heart libertarians post, I wrote: While I share liberal value commitments, I have certain empirical beliefs that [...]
Atlas Shrugged: The Trailer
Posted by Peter Jaworski on February 13, 2011 Comments Off
They’re finally making a movie version of Ayn Rand’s giant opus Atlas Shrugged. It’s going to be a three-part movie, the first of which comes out in March. I’m looking forward to it already. Here’s the movie website, and here’s the trailer: ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
What would John Galt do?
Posted by Peter Jaworski on January 30, 2011 8 comments
If you’re a virtue ethicist, you’re supposed to do what the virtuous do. If you’re an Objectivist, that means doing what John Galt would do. John Galt is the character in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who quits working and persuades all the other smart people (the “men of the mind”) to quit with him and [...]
Libertarian Party response to State of the Union Speech
Posted by Peter Jaworski on January 26, 2011 2 comments
This evening, Libertarian Party Executive Director Wes Benedict spoke in response to the addresses from President Barack Obama and Congressman Paul Ryan: Transcript of Benedict’s response: ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
Freedom Party: End the Beer Sales Tax
Posted by Peter Jaworski on December 21, 2010 Comments Off
The Freedom Party of Ontario has been putting together a few clever YouTube ads in order to push their platform, and garner a bit more attention. (As it is, libertarians in Ontario can choose between the self-described “objectivist” Freedom Party, or the Ontario Libertarian Party. I assume vote-splitting is rampant.) They got my attention, since [...]
Ayn Rand and freaking out
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on November 29, 2010 3 comments
Reason Magazine in its usual insightful way sums up my feelings towards Ayn Rand exactly: ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
The Nation smears libertarians, Glenn Greenwald fixes it
Posted by Peter Jaworski on November 24, 2010 2 comments
I’m sort of stunned by a pretty silly piece in The Nation — an otherwise fine left-wing publication which I read on occassion. The piece, entitled “TSAstroturf: The Washington lobbyists and Koch-funded libertarians behind the TSA scandal,” rips into the “Don’t touch my junk” guy, and accuses this libertarian of playing some role in a [...]
David Nolan, founder of Libertarian Party, dies
Posted by Peter Jaworski on November 21, 2010 1 comment
In tragic and unexpected news, David Nolan, who helped found the U.S. Libertarian Party in 1971, has passed away. Apart from founding the U.S. Libertarian Party in his living room, he is also well known for inventing the Nolan Chart, a three-dimensional chart that better captures political divides compared with the traditional “left-right” spectrum. According [...]
Twitter question period with Danielle Smith
Posted by Peter Jaworski on November 11, 2010 6 comments
Leader of the Wildrose Alliance Party Danielle Smith doesn’t shy away from difficult questions on twitter. She doesn’t mind having a rag-tag team of libertarians ask her a few difficult, and some not-so-difficult, questions. Beginning a few days ago, Rob Breakenridge (who hosts, in our opinion, the best political talk radio show in the country), [...]
“Libertarians were always too busy talking and complaining to do any work”
Posted by Peter Jaworski on November 9, 2010 8 comments
Someone saying they were a Republican Precinct Chairman somewhere left a comment on a blog that is worth repeating: The Country Club Republicans put up most of the money and provided meeting places. Important. The religeous right provided a lot of work. It was they that walked precincts and they that worked phone banks. Very [...]
Murray Rothbard’s “Mozart was a Red” performed at Johns Hopkins University
Posted by Peter Jaworski on October 19, 2010 3 comments
Libertarian Austrian economist Murray Rothbard used to hang out with libertarian novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. But Rand thought that if you like 1920s tiddley-winks music then that meant you were awesome and rational and super, but if you enjoyed Mozart or Prokofiev, you were some sort of closet Communist. Rothbard lampooned that thesis — “Sense of [...]