Anarchoblogs

Gramercy Green: tower of terror?

I’m shocked to learn that NYU has a student residence hall called “Gramercy Green” (a misleadingly bucolic name for an intimidating 22-story structure) at E. 23rd St. & 3rd Ave. – just two blocks away from E. 24th St. & 2nd Ave., or “Intersection Zero,” where a student recently assaulted a taxi driver for being Muslim.

It’s remarkably insensitive toward the cabbie community for NYU to operate, so close to the site of the tragedy, a center catering to the very group responsible for causing the tragedy, namely students! That would be like having a McDonalds at Hiroshima.

NYU’s so-called Gramercy Green is less a building than it is a knife at the throat of Manhattan’s yellow rows of taxis. We demand that NYU respect our feelings by demolishing their Intersection Zero School for Assassins.

Christopher Hitchens looking sinister

To his credit, Christopher Hitchens is no fan of the anti-mosqueteers, whose arguments he has called “so stupid and demagogic as to be beneath notice.” But, as usual, he undermines his case by issuing very anti-mosqueteer-ish attacks on Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the non-ground-Zero non-mosque.

I don’t know enough about Faisal Rauf to assess the charge that he’s less moderate than he seems. I do know, however, that the main argument that Hitchens and others have been offering savours of merde du taureau.

Hitchens’ (and others’) chief case against the imam is that he made shady and creepy, or sinister (a favourite term of Hitchens’), remarks about 9/11 on 60 Minutes a few weeks after the attacks.

So okay, let’s check out Faisal Rauf’s shady, creepy, sinister sentiments:

Faisal Abdul Rauf, perhaps strangling an invisible baby

Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. … There are always people who will do peculiar things, and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. … God says in the Koran that they think that they are doing right, but they are doing wrong. … [Anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world] is a reaction against the US government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, and where we ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries. … I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened …. because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.

Oh, I see. So by “shady,” “creepy,” and “sinister,” Hitchens evidently means “utterly reasonable and obviously true.” Now wonder he wrote a book about Orwell.

I’m curious to know what the right-wing anti-mosqueteers’ response will be to this proposal (CHT Starchild) to open a gay bar – catering specifically to gay Muslims – next to the non-Ground-Zero non-mosque.

It puts them in a bit of a bind, I should think. Lately, people who’ve never given a damn about the rights of gays before have been invoking Islamic homophobia to justify their own Islamophobia. It’ll be interesting to see whether the conservatives’ newfound concern for gays will extend to a support for this latest effort, i.e., whether their anti-Muslim bigotry will be strong enough to overwhelm their usual anti-gay bigotry.

In other words: will the anti-mosqueteers be willing to pass beyond mere lip service, suppress their gag reflex, and swallow a gay bar? (Sorry.)

I reserve the right, however, to remain skeptical about the claim that the bar will have better music than the Islamic center. But then, I really like Islamic music.

The current (Aug. 30) New Yorker has an exposé (sort of) on the Koch brothers. As you’d expect from such a piece, it largely criticises the Kochs for their virtues while giving them a pass for their sins; but anyway, libertarians will find it interesting even though it mostly misses the point.

Ron Paul vs. Rand Paul on the non-Ground-Zero non-mosque.

How come whenever Rand Paul deviates from Ron Paul it’s always in the wrong direction?

See Sheldon Richman on the phony contrast between American “free enterprise” and European “socialism.”

I’m done with my two-week libertarathon – tiring but fun. Now just two weeks before fall classes begin!

I notice that the Mises Institute has a lot of good pamphlets out, suitable for tabling – including Fréderic Bastiat’s The Law, Gustave de Molinari’s Production of Security, Étienne de la Boétie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Carl Menger’s Origins of Money, and Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State and Left & Right: The Prospects for Liberty. (Now they just need to publish this baby.)

In other news, check out Kevin Carson on a day in the life under the corporate state.

As William Gillis points out, two important histories of individualist anarchism in the u.s. are now online: Eunice Schuster’s (confusingly titled) Native American Anarchism (1932) and Rudolf Rocker’s Pioneers of American Freedom (1949). These join James Martin’s (sexistly titled) Men Against the State (1953) and William Reichert’s Partisans of Freedom (1976), already online, making a nice quartet.

In related news, Mises.org just put up an article on Sam Konkin by Jeff Riggenbach.

Non-libertarians attack non-mosque at non-Ground-Zero.

On Friday I’m off to Bryn Mawr to teach in an Institute for Humane Studies seminar on Advanced Studies in the Tradition of Liberty. This’ll be my first IHS event since the past century, I believe. My topics will be “Justice and Utility,” “Intellectual Property: Pro and Con,” and “Libertarians and the Left.” The other lecturers will be Randy Barnett, Steve Davies, John Hasnas, Amy Phillips, George Selgin, and Kit Wellman; here’s a schedule. This looks like a lot of fun.

I was at an IHS event at Bryn Mawr in 1994; if I recall correctly, the main street has a Borders at one end and a Barnes & Noble at the other, so I know where I’ll be during free time. (And on the free afternoon I imagine a bunch of us will take the train into Philadelphia.)

As soon as I get back, Mises University begins!

Addendum: At the request of IHS I’ve taken down the schedule.