Month: October 2006

Ah, the joys of the transitional library. Google Books, which obviously searches its “full texts” using raw OCR scans, actually returns 37 books with the phrase “T)EAR SIR.” (When you do the search, it will tell you there are 50, but. . .) The full phrase, “T)EAR SIR—Tn reply to the queries eoutaiiied tn YOur note of the 26th nIt..” is from Self-paying Colonization to North America: Being a Letter to Captain John P. Kennedy by M. Wilson (A. Thom: 1848), which looks quite interesting, although at least one page-scan is entirely unreadable. That’s sad, because this is a genuinely […]

I’m in the midst of gathering together the last year’s worth of research, for a much-needed overhaul of the Libertarian Labyrinth site. I have high hopes that the site can be a really useful resource for libertarians of various stripes who value the lessons of history. In the meantime, here is a round-up of all of the material on William B. Greene, mutualism, mutual banks and land banks I have posted to this blog and The Very Idea! William Batchelder Greene Mutualist and transcendentalist bits – William B. GreeneMore William B. GreeneJust a bit more on Greene and TranscendentalismOn Why […]

Since class members will be wrapping up their work for the semester with a response to Kevin Carson’s “A Strategic Green-Libertarian Alliance,” we need to spend a little time dealing with the two keywords: libertarian and green. Both terms are contested, and are claimed by significantly diverse political movements. Wikipedia’s disambiguation page for the term Libertarianism is useful, essentially dividing those who have claimed the term between libertarian socialist and libertarian capitalist traditions, while acknowledging that the two currents are united by a preoccupation with individual liberty. All libertarians are likely to be definable, positively, in terms of a commitment […]