Today's Guest:
Professor Thaddeus Russell
Author of: A Renegade History of the United States
Miss a show? Here's the archive.
Author of: A Renegade History of the United States
Prof. Russell discusses the Walter Block controversy, white envy of slaves, prostitutes advancing women's roles in society and the control of academia by left wing orthodoxy.
Miss a show? Here's the archive.
Interesting interview. I enjoyed it very much.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the great interview.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to hear Prof. Russell's thoughts on why the left wing orthodoxy embraces Howard Zinn's work but not his own.
Russell takes down socialist Michael Harrington for being the total social authoritarian when it comes to poor whites and poor blacks.
ReplyDeletehttp://reason.com/archives/2012/06/08/the-paternalists-bible
Russell's view is quite similar to my view of “progressives” as completely paternalistic authoritarians/totalitarians. This explains why they will never become libertarians or even dare analyze (much less mention) the non-aggression principle or basic concepts of the Austrian School such as economic calculation. Just thinking about the NAP puts in one's mind the potential of the poor to do as they please so long as they do not initiate force against others. The concept of economic calculation requires people to be free of violent intervention so that we might know what they actually value as the result of voluntary transactions (and it emphasizes the violent nature of intervention, something "progressives" refuse to think about). Such an idea in practice totally cuts the meddling “progressive” out of the picture and leaves him/her with nothing to do and no one to boss around. These ideas are apparently too frightening for the “progressive” to deal with.
“Progressives” cannot bear to even think about the NAP or economic calculation and they certainly could never fairly state or express these ideas if only to refute them. As a result, we get from them nothing but “racist racist racist” and the Neo-Confederate name calling. We should not be surprised, because this how they will always respond to us. And we should be constantly making a big deal about it. It causes them to panic. They simply do not know how to respond to us without making fools of themselves and it is just so much fun to watch.