Author: Bionic Mosquito

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. –        Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963, Washington, D.C. Walter Block has written a brilliant piece, echoing this most famous line of what is perhaps King’s most famous speech.  From Walter: I recently heard a young black male student give thanks to the fact that at my school, Loyola University New Orleans, for the first time in his academic career, he has had teachers who “look like … Continue reading →

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Or…try living life as a minority in a dying empire… The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan We are now at the end of the Second Balkan War.  Having recovered some of the previously lost territories, there was a new sense of optimism.  For decades, the outskirts of Empire were whittled away, mostly by colonial Western powers – a dying empire.  The end result of this most recent war was to turn the tide…if only momentarily. The Ottomans were determined to play both sides against the other in the fast-approaching war, delaying for an extended … Continue reading →

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Oh yes he did. One of my weekly listens is the interview of Stephen F. Cohen at the John Batchelor Show.  The discussion, as you know, regards the situation of the New Cold War, Russia-gate, etc.  Cohen is one of the few prominent academics and voices that consider a) that in many ways it is the US government that is forcing the issue toward a New Cold War, and b) so-called Russia-gate is a big fat nothing-burger. This week they are discussing the supposed Russian meddling in the election, social media, etc.  At the 17 minute mark of part one, Cohen offers: Being a … Continue reading →

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The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan Between 1908 and 1913, the Ottoman Empire faced grave internal and external threats. That’s putting it mildly.  The Young Turk Revolution; domestic reformers; European Imperial Powers; the Balkan Wars; Armenians and Arabs seeking greater autonomy. On July 23 1908, Sultan Abdülhamid II convened a cabinet meeting.  The Ottoman army in Macedonia demanded a return to the constitution of 1876.  Some background on the Ottoman Constitution: …Western educated Armenians of the Ottoman Empire drafted the Armenian National Constitution in 1863. The Ottoman Constitution of 1876 was under direct influence of … Continue reading →

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There is unrest in the Forest There is trouble with the trees For the Maples want more sunlight And the Oaks ignore their pleas. –        The Trees, Rush Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, by Murray Rothbard This book is a compilation of sixteen essays by Murray Rothbard.  The title of the book is also the opening essay: Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature.  It is this opening essay that I will examine in this post. For well over a century, the Left has generally been conceded to have morality, justice, and “idealism” on its side; the Conservative opposition to the … Continue reading →

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The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan In this book, Eugene Rogan tells the story of the Great War in the Middle East – not from the side of the Great Powers, but from the side of the Ottomans. He begins with the story of his great-uncle, Lance Corporal John McDonald.  His great-uncle was born in a small Scottish village.  Along with his friend, Charles Beveridge, McDonald enlisted with the 8th Scottish Rifles (the “Cameronians”) when war broke out. They said farewell to friends and family on 17 May 1915, headed to the eastern Mediterranean.  They … Continue reading →

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I can hear the howls in the audience already, given the title of this post…. Jordan Peterson gave a presentation entitled “12 principles for a 21st century conservatism.”  While I will not cover all twelve, there are several that dovetail nicely with topics discussed here and with my views of the cultural soil required if one wishes to develop and maintain a reasonably libertarian social order. As I am taking his comments from a video and not a transcript, I have done my best to capture the words and the intent. The fundamental assumptions of western civilization are valid.  He determines this … Continue reading →

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Taken from a comment at the post “Trade Winds”: Anonymous February 9, 2018 at 5:56 AM There’s so much fracturing within the libertarian movement for a variety of reasons currently and a host of ill will being generated as a result that seems to be making it difficult for movement towards common goals. To which I replied: I have been thinking quite a bit about this recently, the idea of a “libertarian” movement. I am wondering…if the objective is to achieve a move toward liberty, perhaps it isn’t a “libertarian movement” (as the term is generally understood) that will get … Continue reading →

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Wait until the open borders types get their hands on this one.  Watch the venom and vitriol start to fly. Which country would do such a dastardly deed?  Is it the United States?  No.  Is it Germany?  Nein.  Sweden?  Nej.  France?  Non. Israel has started issuing deportation notices to African asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. Woops.  This might be a problem. The 20,000 people who are not held in the country’s open detention facility will be expected to leave within 60 days, or risk being imprisoned indefinitely. Twenty-thousand?  That’s it?  Israel can’t even absorb 20,000 refugees?  Don’t they understand the value of cultural diversity, the economic gains, the liberty of those seeking asylum? … Continue reading →

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In my search for societies, traditions and cultures that might have held to something approaching the non-aggression principle for an extended period of time (outside of the medieval western tradition), I decided to look here: Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History, edited by John W. Hall and‎ Jeffrey P. Mass.  Let’s just say, at least with this effort, I came up snake eyes. The journey already began with the cards stacked against me.  I found very little available in English on this period of Japanese history.  After looking through the handful of choices, I settled on this book – capturing a series of essays … Continue reading →

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 Today I feel like the guy who brought the king some Bud-Light, although I have the feeling that Hoppe would prefer a nice Waldhaus Schwarzwald Weisse while overlooking the Bodensee and enjoying a nice Wiener Schnitzel.  From Hans Hoppe and his essay On Getting Libertarianism Right: Throughout the entire period, the Ludwig von Mises Institute – mises.org – and Lew Rockwell – lewrockwell.com – have stood out as bulwarks against the infiltration of libertarianism by leftist thought….More recently, outlets for explicitly and decidedly anti-leftist libertarian thought have proliferated. There is “Bionic Mosquito” with his blog – bionicmosquito.blogspot.com. I should end this post now, as it can only go downhill from here!  Yet, … Continue reading →

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It’s true: U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. It turns out the Russians have a reason to be upset about the expansion of NATO.  And this isn’t … Continue reading →

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The Great Heresies, by Hilaire Belloc Belloc offers his view of the transitions that occurred in the west after the Reformation and the modern heresy that followed – the heresy that we, in fact, are currently living through.  It will be my last post on this book. The Transition In the aftermath of the Reformation, men of Europe would come to regard religion as a secondary thing; at the same time, the dissolution of the Catholic position in Europe would unleash energies that Catholicism restrained – especially in competition and commerce. Both Catholic and Protestant cultures advanced in physical sciences and … Continue reading →

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The Great Heresies, by Hilaire Belloc No one can deny that the evils provoking reform in the Church were deep-rooted and widespread.  They threatened the very life of Christendom itself. In this post I will examine Belloc’s treatment of the Reformation.  As has been the case for all of my posts on this general topic, I will not examine or discuss the theological issues (beyond the historical impacts).  In this post, I will not even examine the impacts on the culture and tradition. Instead, I will examine the story itself, the history of the Reformation as seen by Belloc.  Through this history, one might … Continue reading →

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The Libertarian Case for Israel, by Alan Futerman, Rafi Farber, and Walter Block. As a follow-up to my review of Alison Weir’s book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, I would like to examine this essay regarding the libertarian case for Israel. After noting the anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab world, the authors comment: What is much more vexing is that a similar attitude is pervasive among the libertarian community (and, even, shonda, amongst, happily, a very small percentage of Jews) where Israel is often picked out as a particularly pernicious state relative to … Continue reading →

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