The grain is in the wood before the sawyer gets to it. It doesn’t matter how you crosscut or rip or turn it, the grain reveals itself, predictably but in an unique way. The history of the wood is there to see. Such is the spirit of the Irishman and the Irishwoman. The Túatha is part of how the stock will be seen, no matter how it is turned.
Category: Finding the Challenges
Meat Puppets
The facts are that there are way too many damaged people. How does a voluntaryist navigate the minefield? I propose the meat puppet theory as a way to quantify the existence of jerks, warmongers, and other broken people.
Influences I
Whenever someone asks me which philosophers I follow, I very quickly branch off into persons who do not seem to be philosophers within the narrow meaning of the term, lover of knowledge. But how could Mark Twain possibly be not that? If asked who are the great wits, I will come up with a list from all over the place. In what universe would we think Lewis Carroll was not as witty as could be?
A Voluntaryist Completes the Proust Questionnaire
Remember the premise, to wit: This would be a good architecture for an interview with a very objective voluntaryist. So I have put myself into the personification of a scholarly, principled, individualist voluntaryist to imagine how honest answers to these questions might look.
My Mother, on the Chattanooga City Bus
I don’t remember a great deal about this adventure. I was very young. But as I recall, my mother, Ruth Marjorie Ryan Carigan, went up against the back-of-the-bus norm of Chattanooga during World War II. She, a white and very young mother from Boston, rode on the back of the bus, with her two toddlers and the black people of Chattanooga
A Voluntaryist Begins The Proust Questionnaire
I recently encountered the Proust Questionnaire. It is a regular feature in “Vanity Fair” magazine, where it is answered by a guest celebrity. When I got about halfway through I thought, “Voila! This would be a good architecture for an interview with a very objective voluntaryist.”
POTUS
I have come upon a new usage for the term POTUS. Actually, it is an old usage. It refers to the position but not directly to the incumbent. This works in the same way as does the juxtaposing of tyrant and tyranny. Is there a difference between the Emperor of Rome, Caesar, Nero, or Caligula?
Our Trip to Ireland
This past Autumn, we finally made a trip to Ireland. It was so overwhelming that I could not decide where to start in writing about it. I’ve been fermenting the tale for nearly 4 months now.
Old Ideas
One of the paths that I am wandering now, from this inspiration, is to consider disposable ideas from the view of a voluntaryist. There follow some ideas for which I would suggest early retirement.
State Education: Money
Eventually, per Rothbard, the pols saw that leaving the marching minions holding promises instead of solid specie was a dream come true. But they did also realize that an honorable verbal promise was an oxymoron. Enter the written promise, aka the IOU, aka scrip, aka paper currency. The typical note promised exchange for the purported full amount in gold, not sooner than 1 year hence. Many of the veterans began to barter these slips of paper for those things for which they could not wait a year — things like food!