In case you missed it, Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson’s Liberty Forum talk is online, and you can view it with some commentary by Charles over at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

There are other videos up at Blog of Bile Video. Jabob Hornberger’s speech, which I haven’t viewed yet, is online at the Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Somebody filmed Brad Spangler’s speech, and it will hopefully be available online soon.

Announcing the 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair:

April 17, 2010
11am-7pm
Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Manhattan

I will be there with some other excellent folks at an Alliance of the Libertarian Left table. We’ll have some mutualist, agorist, and individualist books and buttons. Some for sale, some for a requested donation. I look forward to some interesting discussions with other anarchists.

If you want to know more about our plans or want to offer suggestions, don’t hesitate to email me at darianworden[at]gmail[dot]com

I don’t feel like waiting for the forum registration process to be completed so I’ll just say it here: Seth Cohn is an authoritarian liar. He claims that he tried having a conversation with myself and others at Liberty Forum but we did not respond. What actually happened is that he started yelling at us and shaking his fingers in our faces about “somebody” counterfeiting lunch tickets at Liberty Forum. He absolutely refused to answer any of our questions [EDIT- He might have given us a bullshit non-answer here and there but he was demonstrably unwilling to have a real conversation - my bad] and he responded to every challenge by yelling louder and taking a more aggressive posture.

I was going to let the issue go because I understand someone being angry and acting irrationally when an event that he cares about and probably worked hard on is defrauded. Also, I’d rather not help cast negative attention on the Free State Project or Liberty Forum, which was an absolutely fantastic event. And frankly, I want to spend my time on productive things.

However, Cohn continues to lie about myself and others in online forums related to the FSP and New Hampshire activism, and I can only assume that he is lying about me in person also.

With one idiotic tirade Cohn deliberately insulted two people who were invited to speak at Liberty Forum, three people staffing a LF vendor table (two of whom plan to move to NH), and a longtime New Hampshire activist who was a leading figure in organizing a major contributing event to Liberty Forum. Instead of giving any of these people the apology they deserve he continues to self-righteously insult their integrity. In addition, he tries to portray everyone who disagrees with him on anything in the forum threads as people who support stealing from and defrauding the Free State Project.

Complaining about the likely defrauding of an organization while you yourself repeatedly lie to the public is hypocritical at best. I would have helped the Liberty Forum organizers deal with issues at the event if I was asked to. However, I was not asked to do anything of the sort. One man told me to be quiet while he tried to exert some kind of social status bully bullshit on me before he stormed out of the room. If Cohn actually believes this counts as a conversation, there is a deeper problem.

Until Cohn admits that he was wrong and displays willingness to repair bridges that he burned, I hope he makes good on his promise to not associate with me.

[EDIT - In case this hastily-written post doesn't make it clear enough, Cohn did in fact initiate the exchange by yelling accusations at six people while using aggressive body language. He has tried to portray events as happening otherwise.]

Last night Tennyson, bile, and I discussed Liberty Forum with special guest Laur. The archive is online at patriotradio.com. Bonus: the archive contains a clip about hussies and crashing a van before Thinking Liberty musically begins.

Charles Johnson gave a superb talk at Liberty Forum. Thanks to Bile’s video, I got to see the 2 minutes I missed, and people who weren’t there get to see everything.

Charles lays it down:

Freedom is not a conservative idea. It is not a prop for corporate power and the political-economic statist quo. Libertarianism is, in fact, a revolutionary doctrine, which would undermine and overthrow every form of state coercion and authoritarian control. If we want liberty in our lifetimes, the realities of our politics need to live up to the promise our principles — we should be radicals, not reformists; anarchists, not smaller-governmentalists; defenders of real freed markets and private property, not apologists for corporate capitalism, halfway privatization or existing concentrations of wealth. Libertarianism should be a people’s movement and a liberation movement, and we should take our cues not from what’s politically polite, but from what works for a revolutionary people-power movement.

Check it out at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

And Rad Geek is a really cool person to hang out with too.

During the recent Alternatives Expo at New Hampshire Liberty Forum, I gave an informal talk on the connection of free-market libertarian thought to the left. I went through some history, discussed things of value in the present anti-authoritarian left, and noted some philosophical and strategic reasons for thinking in terms of left rather than right or neither.

I do think it would have been better if I’d got more sleep (Liberty Forum creates a lot of fun, fatigue-obscured memories), if I’d talked a little about the often complicated relationship between libertarian socialism and free market libertarianism, and if I’d given more examples of mutual aid, solidarity, and left/post-left anti-authoritarian groups (though I will take credit for bringing Situationist ideas to Alt Expo). It also would have been good to discuss why a libertarian society hasn’t existed on a continental scale at least for a very long time, and why that doesn’t make it unfeasible for one to exist in the future.

But it went really well, and everyone in the room seemed to enjoy it.

Bile already posted the video of the speech online. He also recorded the Q&A session after my speech, as well as Charles Johnson’s Liberty Forum talk, but hasn’t had time to post them yet. Stay tuned to Blog of Bile Video for the goods. [Update: the Q&A session is now online and posted below.]

Much thanks to the Free State Project, the Liberty Forum staff, and Jack and the Alt Expo crew for an outstanding weekend. Thanks to Bile and Laur for video, carpooling, and general tomfoolery. Thanks to everyone who came to my talk and to everyone else who made Liberty Forum and the Alternatives Expo such a good time. I’m really looking forward to Porc Fest, and have a few plans to contribute to its awesomeness.

Kreator – Demon Prince

AAAAARGH!

An inventor gives you a gift. It is an ingenious device which incorporates a multitude of previous innovations. By using this machine, you will understand how it works and be able to refine future generations of the device to operate more efficiently, accommodate new demands, and break new ground in human understanding.

Instead, you put the machine on a pedestal and insist on making copies of it as close to the original as possible.