I recently came across the following video. I would like to see a transcript of the full speech and know when this was delivered.

A number of things are misleading here.

It’s misleading to cast Lysander Spooner as a Confederate-apologist. Spooner was a militant abolitionist who had advocated the expropriation of slave estates by slaves and partisan warfare against slaveholders. He was also involved in a failed plot to capture the governor of Virginia to exchange him for John Brown. Spooner’s No Treason doesn’t honor the Confederate government but criticizes the Northern government’s priorities in carrying out the war to keep the South in the union. It’s not exactly the kind of thing that should have a Confederate military flag flown behind it without further explanation.

Paul mentions that slavery elsewhere was abolished without war – as if it didn’t require two to make a war, that the whole thing was the north’s fault, and had nothing to do with the entrenched power of the Southern slaveholding elite.

Paul brings up the concept of compensated emancipation – to bribe slaveowners to free the humans they had kept as property. Besides inferring that it would be less costly than war he doesn’t go into the ethical concerns here. He also doesn’t address the practical concerns of how free labor could be implemented without re-organizing a society based on racial hierarchy. (Paul does not say it here, but Confederate apologists frequently exclaim “but the north – including Lincoln himself – was racist too!” It is true that racism was not limited to the South but there are certainly degrees in racism and degrees to which it defines society].)

A typical defense that Paul does employ is to highlight differences in economic organization and advantages given to northern manufacturers, without acknowledging that Southern industry, including sugar manufacturing centers, was based on slave labor. Federal enforcement of slavery was a massive subsidy to the big business of slaveholding.

Paul insists that Northern elites cynically used the issue of slavery to “cancel out individual choice” yet what individual choice did slaves have? There is a major difference between consent of the people and consent of the states, and coming down on the side of states is not very libertarian.

The political elite of the Confederate states didn’t secede just to see if they could, but because they were worried about the institution of slavery. See the statements made by Confederate elites worried that the national government would restrict slavery too much.The political elite of the North was more concerned with keeping the Union together and building their political power than they were with the freedom of black people, yet pressure from refugee ex-slaves, abolitionists, and international politics eventually brought the north largely on the side of abolition, though a struggle over what emancipation would mean continued.

As the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approached, I thought I should write something about it. But then I was hesitant to do so. What more could I say that hasn’t already been said? And if I was going to write it as a news commentary, how would I put my thoughts on the event into such a format?

As someone who was 16 when the attacks were made, I would have to say that the entire politically-involved period of my life has been colored by the post-9/11 period it took place in. Since I was too young to be aware of the Soviet collapse, I would consider September 11, 2001 the defining historical event of my lifetime.

As someone who studies history, I’d like to think about what September 11 will mean in the long run. So that’s the standpoint I took in my 9/11 commentary, which is available for reading at Center for a Stateless Society.

It’s not uncommon to hear that “everything changed” on September 11, 2001. While it is not true that policies that came after September 11 were always different from what was done before, the tragic attacks on that day did lead to major changes. As we remember the events of ten years ago, we should also reflect on how to build a better world.

(Read the rest: What is a Post-9/11 World?)

It is good that people remember September 11, but thinking about September 11 is better than just remembering. As difficult as it might be to think about so many lives destroyed, people who could be neighbors, people dead because they were in the way of a murderous act of political violence, we do no service to the dead or to the living by keeping our minds away from the task.

On July 17, 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out after an attempted military coup. On July 19, the people of Catalonia armed themselves against the reactionary and fascist forces and began a social revolution that would later be crushed by its numerous enemies. Murray Bookchin offers a good overview in his essay After Fifty Years: The Spanish Civil War.

In a class I took for my master’s degree in history at the City College of New York, students were assigned to complete a digital history project. I chose to do a project on the Modern School movement in America, using a WordPress platform. The class is finished, but I can always make changes to the site. Suggestions are welcome.

The project website is: TheModernSchools.wordpress.com.

I could write a detailed post on Independence Day and its meaning. But since I’m busy I’ll just say that fireworks big and small are awesome and that Thomas Paine is still a badass.

I’ve been meaning to share some info about books I’ve read lately, especially after the responses from Thinking Liberty fans to our recent book recommendation contest.

I haven’t read every page of all of these, and obviously my agreement with them varies, but they are all interesting.

Gary Chartier, The Conscience of an Anarchist
I now have a go-to book for introducing anarchism, and this is it.

Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944
Part history and part sociology, this study of Polish society under German occupation offers a number of insights on occupation, insurgency, and underground society.

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Excellent description of mass murder under Hitler and Stalin.

Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, Coexistence
This well-written examination of Hamas includes discussion on how social connections and social power were used to amass political power behind a radical ideology.

Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide
Compelling narrative of the author’s travels and thoughts as he attempts to comprehend genocide by Europeans.

Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights
A critical view of civil rights politics in the US.

Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
Moyn argues that an ideology of Human Rights became in the 1970s the last utopian program as other utopias failed to deliver.

Edward Said, The Question of Palestine
Somewhat dated, but certainly relevant introduction to Palestinian grievances.

Segev, Tom. One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate
Detailed work that conveys the excitement of empire and nation building without glorifying it.

Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
Detailed analysis of how Palestinians became refugees.

Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Well-written political and military history.

Itamar Rabinovich, The War for Lebanon, 1970-1985
Can be dry, but describes conflicts within Lebanon and how the country became a center of regional conflict.

Jackson Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany
Good textbook overview of Nazi Germany. New editions are expensive, but they do claim to have integrated recent scholarship in several areas.

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century
Discusses the troubles of Europe in the Twentieth Century (I’ve only read the first two chapters as of this post).

David Crew (editor), Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945
The essays authored by Bartov, Mallman and Paul, Kershaw, and Browning are excellent writings that challenge some common views of the Nazi order. I expect that the essays that I haven’t read are also worthwhile.

Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life
I’ve as yet only read the chapter “Young people: mobilisation and refusal,” which is a fascinating examination of how the Nazis gained and lost power among German youth.

Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe.
Well-written 600 pages of how Nazi Germany conquered and ruled. Contains a detailed index.

Peter Carlson, Roughneck: The Life and Times of “Big Bill” Haywood.
Exciting biography of the larger-than-life union organizer.

Joseph R. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement.
Contains less detail on Haywood’s life than Carlson’s book, but more analysis of related labor issues.

Penny A. Weiss and Loretta Kensinger (editors), Feminist interpretations of Emma Goldman.
A number of essays examining Emma Goldman in feminist contexts.

And a couple of books that looked interesting and I intend to read:

Peter Gelderloos, Anarchy Works

John M. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931.

George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements

My contribution to the 2011 APEE Topics in Free-Market Anti-Capitalism panel is now available for download from my archives page:

Capitalism, Free Enterprise, and Progress: Partners or Adversaries?

The paper disentangles the concepts of capitalism, free enterprise, and progress in the context of the early Industrial Revolution. While a lot more could be written about the topic, the paper manages to address multiple issues that such an exploration would raise.

I was able to present most of the information from the paper during my allotted time. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time for questions, but the panel did not seem to be received negatively.

I thank Roderick Long for inviting me onto the panel, and thank everyone I interacted with at APEE for the conversation.

Agora IO, the online agorist un-conference, was really cool! Presenters logged into a site that let them broadcast live audio and video, and anyone watching could type questions or comments into a chat room the presenter could view.

It was the first time I did anything like this (I think it was only the second time I’d even used a webcam). I definitely hope to participate in more events like it. Had I realized that the archived recording would begin automatically I would have been better prepared, at least added some exaggerated drama to the necessary typing.

The actual talk went well. I had two pages of brief notes on topics I’d never discussed in a speech before, so a lot of it was made up as I went along. With the audience participation it proved very thought-provoking.

Thanks a lot to George Donnelly for all the work he put in to make Agora IO such a success.

My talk is embedded below. You can view all the talks (except for one it seems) at the Agora IO archives.

I’m posting some particularly interesting articles on revolts in Egypt and Libya. If you have other suggestions, please share.

How to Help Libyans Stay On the Internet Despite Government Restrictions

Libya: protesters vow to march on Gaddafi’s palace

Roots of the Egyptian revolutionary moment

Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off everywhere

The Secret Rally That Sparked an Uprising

Made in America: Mubarak’s Most Brutal Thugs Trained With FBI

Behind the Arab Revolt is a Word We Dare Not Speak

The Arab world is on fire: dialogue with a Syrian anarchist

Here are some books that readers of this blog might find useful.

The Russian Anarchists by Paul Avrich is a great source on anarchism in Russia from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

I haven’t yet read any of Nestor Makhno’s accounts of the revolution and civil war in Ukraine, but I presume they will be excellent.

The Russian Revolution by Sheila Fitzpatrick is an excellent short overview of the events of 1917.

Agorists in particular might be interested in Chapter 6 of Stephen Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain. In Kotkin’s narrative, the “shadow economy” in Stalinist Russia is a sphere of freedom and source of basic goods for the individual, but is also a mechanism by which Stalinist projects were able to be sustained.

Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, by David Remnick, is an excellent account of the collapse of the Soviet Union from an American journalist inside the USSR.